Dalton Minimum Returns

Forecasting the parameters of sunspot cycle 24 and beyond

- Abstract: Solar variability is controlled by the internal dynamo which is a non-linear system. We develop a physical–statistical method for forecasting solar activity that takes into account the non-linear character of the solar dynamo. The method is based on the generally accepted mechanisms of the dynamo and on recently found systematic properties of the long-term solar variability. The amplitude modulation of the Schwabe cycle in dynamo's magnetic field components can be decomposed in an invariant transition level and three types of oscillations around it. The regularities that we observe in the behaviour of these oscillations during the last millennium enable us to forecast solar activity. We find that the system is presently undergoing a transition from the recent Grand Maximum to another regime. This transition started in 2000 and it is expected to end around the maximum of cycle 24, foreseen for 2014, with a maximum previous sunspot number Rmax=68±17. At that time a period of lower solar activity will start. That period will be one of regular oscillations, as occurred between 1730 and 1923. The first of these oscillations may even turn out to be as strongly negative as around 1810, in which case a short Grand previous Minimum similar to the previous Dalton one might develop. This moderate-to-low-activity episode is expected to last for at least one Gleissberg cycle (60–100 years). (Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Volume 71, Issue 2, February 2009, Pages 239-245 )

My emphasis added.

Regulate, Punt or Prepare

Russ Steele, Author

As the sun continues its slumber with little sign it will return to normal activity any time soon, what should we do? Regulate? Punt? Prepare?

Take a look at this total solar irradiance from NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite. The SORCE mission began collecting TSI data in February 2003. Inspection of the SORCE TSI plot below show variations in the TSI have continued to decline in amplitude. If cycle 24 has started, there are no signs of it in the the SOURCE data.

If as forecast by credible solar scientist the sun remains quiet for the next 20-30 years, and the earth cools as it has in the past, we can expect some significant changes in growing seasons here on earth. Shorter growing seasons result in smaller crop yields, and less food for expanding populations. What are the governments demanding reduction in carbon emissions, by restricting the development of reliable energy sources that are independent of the climate, going to do with the hungry cold mobs that are demanding food for their children and heat for their babies when the sun remains in it's slumber?  

Benny Peiser writes at CCNet "Given the unexpected arrest of the global warming trend and the extraordinary behaviour of our sun, it is prudent to reassess the solar-climate link with extra rigour. The current climate lull provides the scientific community and the world's decision makers with a respite. They would be well advised to spend more time and money on the study of our variable star whose intrinsic dynamics and climatic effects remain a mystery to this day."

And Davis Whitehouse asks: "Could the Sun play a greater role in recent climate change than has been believed? If the Earth cools under a quiet Sun, then it may be an indication that the increase in the Sun's activity since the Little Ice Age has been the dominant factor in global temperature rises. That would also mean that we have overestimated the sensitivity of the Earth's atmosphere to an increase of carbon dioxide from the pre-industrial three parts per 10,000 by volume to today's four parts per 10,000. Or the sun could compete with global warming, holding it back for a while. For now, all scientists can do, along with the rest of us, is to watch and wait."

What do you think we should do?  Should we continue down the path of restricting our production of reliable energy sources? Or, should we just wait to see what happens with the sun, and then if warming returns continue to restrict CO2 production?  Or, should we be preparing for the coming cold and reduction in food sources? I would like to know your thoughts.  

Cross Posted at NC Media Watch.

H/T to Guest Post on WUWT by Guillermo Gonzalez. More information at WUWT, including some more detailed graphics analysis.

Solar ISN mean dips below 1.00

Russ Steele

Check this out at Watts Up With That. Paul Stanko of NOAA writes Anthony  to tell him of an interesting development in his tracking of the International Sunspot Number (ISN).
Paul writes:

My running mean of the International Sunspot Number for 2009 just dipped below 1.00.  For anything comparable you now need to go back before 1913 (which scored a 1.43) which could mean we’re now competing directly with the Dalton Minimum.

Just in case you’d like another tidbit, here is something that puts our 20 to 30 day spotless runs in perspective… the mother of all spotless runs (in the heart of the Maunder Minimum, of course!) was from October 15, 1661 to August 2, 1671.  It totaled 3579 consecutive spotless days, all of which had obs.

To say that that we in interesting times is a huge understatement. We are about to enter a Grand Minimum, which in the past have produced a cooler planet, while out government is preparing for run-away global warming.  Who could have predicted this stupidity? 

What happens when the sunspots are gone?

Russ Steele

Joe Roy the Connecticut Weather Examiner has some thought in his article
Sunspots, where have they gone?

Current solar cycles similar to pre Dalton Minimum

Russ Steele

Joseph D’Aleo at ICECAP has an update on the sun spots and ice extent here. He is predicting that the solar min could be Jan 2009, creating cycles similar to those preceding the Dalton Minimum.

Kick for a larger graphic

Joe writes:

If it [sun] stays quiet the rest of this month, the minimum can be no earlier than November 2008, at least a 12.5 year cycle length. I believe January 2009 is a better shot to be the solar minimum as sunspot number would have to be below 0.5 in June 2008 to prevent the running mean (13 month) from blipping up then. April needs only to stay below 3.2 and May 3.4 to get us to January. This would be very like cycles 1 to 4 in the late 1700s and early 1800s, preceding the Dalton Minimum. That was a cold era, the age of Dickens and the children playing in the snow in London, much like this past winter.

Sun and Sea connection:oceans as a calorimeter

Russ Steele

Click for a larger graphic

Israeli Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv has written and paper showing the solar connection to global warming:  'IPCC cannot ignore that the sun has a large climatic effect on climate' Here is part of the Dr. Shaviv's paper to be published in Journal of Geophysical Research.

Over the 11 or so year solar cycle, solar irradiance changes by typically 0.1%. i.e., about 1 W/m2 relative to the solar constant of 1360 W/m2. Once one averages for the whole surface of earth (i.e., divide by 4) and takes away the reflected component (i.e., times 1 minus the albedo), it comes out to be about 0.17 W/m2 variations relative to the 240 W/m2. Thus, if only solar irradiance variations are present, Earth's sensitivity has to be pretty high to explain the solar-climate correlations (see the collapsed box below).

However, if solar activity is amplified by some mechanism (such as hypersensitivity to UV, or indirectly through sensitivity to cosmic ray flux variations), then in principle, a lower climate sensitivity can explain the solar-climate links, but it would mean that a much larger heat flux is entering and leaving the system every solar cycle.
The IPCC's small solar forcing and the emperor's new clothes.

Now, is there a direct record which measures the heat flux going into the climate system? The answer is that over the 11-year solar cycle, a large fraction of the flux entering the climate system goes into the oceans. However, because of the high heat capacity of the oceans, this heat content doesn't change the ocean temperature by much. And as a consequence, the oceans can be used as a "calorimeter" to measure the solar radiative forcing. Of course, the full calculation has to include the "calorimetric efficiency" and the fact that the oceans do change their temperature a little (such that some of the heat is radiated away, thereby reducing the calorimetric efficiency).

It turns out that there are three different types of data sets from which the ocean heat content can derived. The first data is is that of direct measurements using buoys. The second is the ocean surface temperature, while the third is that of the tide gauge record which reveals the thermal expansion of the oceans. Each one of the data sets has different advantages and disadvantages.

The ocean heat content, is a direct measurement of the energy stored in the oceans. However, it requires extended 3D data, the holes in which contributed systematic errors. The sea surface temperature is only time dependent 2D data, but it requires solving for the heat diffusion into the oceans, which of course has its uncertainties (primarily the vertical turbulent diffusion coefficient). Last, because ocean basins equilibrate over relatively short periods, the tide gauge record is inherently integrative. However, it has several systematic uncertainties, for example, a non-neligible contribution from glacial meting (which on the decadal time scale is still secondary).

Nevertheless, the beautiful thing is that within the errors in the data sets (and estimate for the systematics), all three sets give consistently the same answer, that a large heat flux periodically enters and leaves the oceans with the solar cycle, and this heat flux is about 6 to 8 times larger than can be expected from changes in the solar irradiance only. This implies that an amplification mechanism necessarily exists. Interestingly, the size is consistent with what would be expected from the observed low altitude cloud cover variations.

I noted the ocean cooling and reduction in sea level rise here.

More Details from StormX

Russ Steele

This is an interesting look forward, base on the past:

Sunspot impact on our climate

Russ Steele

Stormx has some very interesting graphics on the impact sunspots, or the lack of sunspots, has on global temperatures.

Click for a larger Graphic

The most reliable and widespread global weather observations have only been recorded since the mid 20th century. Unfortunately that is a period when generally high sunspot activity occurred, thus making it difficult to accurately quantify the impacts of decadal sunspot minima on climate. However, the regular reoccurrence of the 11-year sunspot cycle makes it possible to ascertain the short term impacts of sunspot minima and maxima on climate. Presumably, if short term climate is influenced every 11 years, then longer periods of sunspot inactivity would cause larger changes in climate. The availability of historical global weather observation analyses since 1948 allows us to compare surface temperatures during periods of high sunspot activity and periods of low sunspot activity. From 1948-2000, five complete solar cycles occurred and the 10th and 90th percentiles of sunspots each month were used to differentiate periods of low activity versus high activity. Temperature anomalies were averaged only when sunspots exceeded 160 (~ 90th percentile) and when sunspots were less than 10 (~ 10th percentile). It was found that the global average temperature anomalies during low sunspot periods were around 0.35°F cooler than during high sunspot periods. Even more significant is the notable impacts on the tropical east Pacific. La Nina is apparently favored during periods of low sunspots as surface temperatures averaged cooler than normal by more than 1°F over portions of the tropical east Pacific. The Storm Exchange science team will continue to monitor the current sunspot cycle and further expand our solar minima research to gain a better understanding of the impacts on agriculture and energy.

Full article here.

Russian view of current solar minimum

Russ Steele

The potential for another Dalton Minimum or another Little Ice Age is summarized  in the LaRouche Political Action Committee Newsletter. The article by Gregory Murphy and Laurence Hecht, Editors of 21st Century Science & Technology is titled: Deepest Solar Minimum is Nearly a Century: Global Warming. Most readers are up on the science, but I found the Russian perspective interesting.

The Russian Forecasts

The continued solar inactivity is consistent with forecasts that have been coming out from Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg, over more than a year. On Jan. 22, 2008 senior scientist Khabibullo Abdusamatov, head of the Space Research Lab at the Pulkovo Observatory, said in an interview with RIA Novosti that, "temperatures on Earth have stabilized in the past decade, and the planet should brace itself for a new Ice Age rather than global warming."

Abdusamatov warned correctly, at the beginning of 2008, that global temperatures would drop slightly that year, rather than rise, due to unprecedentedly low solar radiation in the past 30 years, and would continue decreasing even if industrial emissions of carbon dioxide reach record levels. According to Abdusamatov’s 2008 forecast: "By 2041, solar activity will reach its minimum according to a 200-year cycle, and a deep cooling period will hit the Earth approximately in 2055-2060. It will last for about 45-65 years and by mid-21st century the planet will face another Little Ice Age.”

Belittling the global warming scare, Abdusamatov pointed out: "According to scientists, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has risen more than 4% in the past decade -- but global warming has practically stopped. Had global temperatures directly responded to concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, they would have risen by at least 0.1 degrees Celsius in the past ten years -- however, it never happened."

Read the whole article here.

Solar danger, we are at the cross roads (updated)

Russ Steele

James Marusek, a retired U.S. Navy Physicist and Engineer who has conducted solar research writes that "we are now at a crossroad. Two paths lie before us. Both are marked with a signpost that reads "Danger"! Down one path lies monstrous solar storms. Down the other path lies several decades of crushing cold temperatures and global famine. Since this site focus on the return of a Dalton Minimum lets look at the path to crushing cold and global famine.

The Sun slipping quietly towards a Dalton Minimum or even a Grand Minima such as a
Maunder Minimum.

Climate change is primarily driven by nature. It has been true in the days of my father and his
father and all those that came before us. Because of science, not junk science, we have slowly
uncovered some of the fundamental mysteries of nature. Our Milky Way galaxy is awash with
cosmic rays. These are high speed charged particles that originate from exploding stars.
Because they are charged, their travel is strongly influenced by magnetic fields. Our sun
produces a magnetic field wrapped in the solar winds that extends to the edges of our solar
system.

This field deflects many of the cosmic rays away from Earth. But when the sun goes quiet
(minimal sunspots), this field collapses inward allowing high energy cosmic rays to penetrate
deeper into our solar system. As a result, far greater numbers collide with Earth and penetrate
down into the lower atmosphere where they ionize small particles of moisture (humidity) forming
them into water droplets that become clouds. Low level clouds reflect sunlight back into space.
An increase in Earth's cloud cover produce a global drop in temperature.

If the sun becomes quieter than the old solar cycles, producing more than 1028 spotless days,
then we might slip into a Dalton Minimum or maybe even a Grand Minima such as the Maunder
Minimum. This solar state will last for decades. Several solar scientist have predicted this will
begin in Solar Cycle 25, about a decade from now. But a few have predicted this will occur now
in Solar Cycle 24. A quiet sun will cause temperatures globally to take a nose-dive. We will
experience temperatures that we have not seen in over 200 years, during the time of the early
pioneers.

 

I will explore more of James Marusek paper in future posts. He has some excellent evidence take from literature of the time. If you cannot wait, you will find his paper here.