Large Spike in Cycle 24 Sunspots and F10.7 Solar Flux

Solar Cycle 24 still has some surprises.   Both the NOAA  Sunspot count and F10.7 solar flux spiked.  The right hand side of the chart below, from Solen  shows the Sunspot count to have peaked at about 120 and the F10.7 solar flux above  130.  Sunspot count and Solar Flux usually act in unison. Dr Svalgaard says that F10,7 is a more reliable indicator of solar activity than Sunspots

Last major update issued on September 6, 2017 at 05:00 UT. Update posted at 13:50 UT

The generally accepted  way to portray  Sunspots is using a smoothed count from Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations (SILSO). SILSO data is provided by the  Royal Observatory of Belgium, in Brussels. That number is charted below as Ri smoothed. ” Smoothed” is the process of averaging the daily numbers over some period of time. Silso number uses a formula* (see below) that incorporates some 13 months of monthly data.

In the chart  below, Ri is the total monthly Sunspots that were occasioned by the solar polar fields,  north (Rnorth ) and south (Rsouth).

Spikes in activity are not  uncommon as can be seen in the above chart which chronicles Solar Cycle 24 from its beginning to the current time.  I am still surprised at this late date.

cbdakota

*The Silso formula:

The smoothed count is a 13-month averaged sunspot count using this Belgium’s formula:
Rs= (0.5 Rm-6 + Rm-5 + Rm-4 + Rm-3 + Rm-2 + Rm-1 + Rm + Rm+1 + Rm+2 + Rm+3 + Rm+4 + Rm+5 + 0.5 Rm+6 ) / 12
Rs = smoothed monthly sunspot count
Rm = One month’s actual sunspot count
The “-6” through “+6” appended to each Rm is the number of months before or after the month whose smoothed count is being calculated. The beginning and ending months in the formula are only given half the value of the others.*

Sun And Global Temperature Change

In an earlier posting, the case for CO2 controlling global temperature change was discussed. Several cases were examined that suggest that CO2 probably is a minor factor.  Yes, I do have a bias that the Sun is most likely the main driver of global climate. But I believe that bias is well founded.

As I began to prepare a posting on this topic, on 10 June a new posting on WattsUpWithThat by Mike Jonas appeared.   It covers, most of what I had planned to say.  He says it very well, albeit in a lot of words.  His Figure 7, “Correlation of sunspot cycle length with temperature” is thought by some to have been disproven, so you may want to tread lightly on that. I also think that he should have used an article from December 2016 CERN publication that strengthened his case for the Svensmark theory of galactic cosmic rays/cloud formation/cooling.  See my comment on that by clicking here.

My thoughts on this topic would be less informative than those by Mike Jonas.  Thus I am reblogging his posting:

WattsUpWithThat

Indirect Effects of the Sun on Earth’s Climate

By Mike Jonas  10 June 2017

For a long time, I have been bitterly disappointed at the blinkered lopsided attitude of the IPCC and of many climate scientists, by which they readily accepted spurious indirect effects from CO2-driven global warming (the “feedbacks”), yet found a range of excuses for ignoring the possibility that there might be any indirect effects from the sun. For example, in AR4 2.7.1 they say “empirical results since the TAR have strengthened the evidence for solar forcing of climate change” but there is nothing in the models for this, because there is “ongoing debate“, or it “remains ambiguous“, etc, etc.

In this article, I explore the scientific literature on possible solar indirect effects on climate, and suggest a reasonable way of looking at them. This should also answer Leif Svalgaard’s question, though it seems rather unlikely that he would be unaware of any of the material cited here. Certainly just about everything in this article has already appeared on WUWT; the aim here is to present it in a single article (sorry it’s so long). I provide some links to the works of people like Jasper Kirkby, Nir Shaviv and Nigel Calder. For those who have time, those works are worth reading in their entirety.

---

Table of Contents:

1. Henrik Svensmark

2. Correlation

3. Galactic Cosmic Rays

4. Ultra-Violet

5. The Non-Linear System

6. A Final Quirk

Abbreviations

References

 

To read the entire posting click here

 cbdakota

 

 

Svalgaard Discusses How He Forecasts Solar Cycle Activity–Cycle 25 Will Be Up Soon

Before Solar Cycle 24 began, estimates of how active it would be were made by many experts. Because the Sunspot counting system has changed, the estimates have to be translated from the predictions made before the change. NASA’s top Expert using Sunspot as a proxy for activity, estimated it would be in the well over 160 (new system number ca. 265). Most of the estimates at the time were like NASAs. However, Cycle 24 has been much less active than most of the experts expected. The count using the new numbering system for Cycle 24 peak Sunspots at the Solar Maximum is 117. On the other hand, Leif Svalgaard and his partners estimated about 70 (new system ca. 117) which turns out to be as good as it gets. Estimating what Solar Cycle 25 will look like is already underway with many expecting Cycle 25 to be less active that has been the case with Cycle 24.

Because Svalgaard had forecast that Cycle 24 would be much less active and the forecast came reasonably close to the actual number count, it makes me curious about how he did it and what is he is predicting about Cycle 25 now. Well, I have already given that away in my 22 March 2016 blog titled “Dr Svalgaard makes a preliminary prediction of Cycle 25 size.” He thinks it will be close to the size of Cycle 24 and prehaps a little bit bigger. Once again he seems to be the contrarian.

So, how does he make these predictions. This blog will let you see the method he uses.

Indian, Japanese and Chinese Scientists Publish Research That Predicts Little Ice Age or Maunder Minimum Coming Soon.

The Times of India posted “Sunspots point to looming “little ice age” quoting scientists and astronomers from Physical Research Laboratory in India and their counterparts in China and Japan have fresh evidence that Earth may be heading for another “little ice age” or maybe even another Maunder Mimimum.

Their findings are very similar to those of our scientists. They report that:

“….our blazing sun has been eerily turning quiet and growing less active over the last two decades.”

November 2015 Solar Cycle 24 Update

Solar Cycle 24 activity has peaked and it is trending down to minimal Sunspot numbers. As most Solar Cycles are nominally 11 years in length, one might guess that December 2019 would be the end of Cycle 24 and the start of Solar Cycle 25. But don’t bet too much money on that date. Eleven years is 132 months. But Cycle 23 was not completed until 149 months after it began. The chart (courtesy of Solen.info) below shows the current state of Cycle 24:

Looking at the Solar Cycle 24 progress chart (courtesy of Solen.info) below one can see that the South Polar Field (green line) has been the source of most of the Sunspot activity the past year or so.   And it has really taken a tumble since midyear.

Sunspot Number History Change Is Underway

For those readers of this blog that follow the monthly update of Solar Cycle 24, things are about to change. For the better I think, but until the final report is released, we wont know for sure. Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations (SILSO) a part of the World Data Center has issued a Sunspot Bulletin that says:”

                                           Warning of Major Data Change

Over the past 4 years a community effort has been carried out to revise entirely the historical sunspot number series. A good overview of the analyses and identified corrections is provided in the recent review paper: Clette, F., Svalgaard, L., Vaquero, J.M., Cliver, E. W.,”Revisiting the Sunspot Number. A 400-Year Perspective on the Solar Cycle”, Space Science Reviews, Volume 186, Issue 1-4, pp. 35-103.

Now that the new data series has been finalized, we are about to replace the original version of our sunspot data by an entirely new data set on July 1st. On this occasion, we decided to simultaneously introduce changes in several conventions in the data themselves and also in the distributed data files.

Solar Cycle 24 May 15 Update–Belated

Updating Solar Cycle 24 May 2015 status indicates that despite an uptick in Sunspots, the trend is still moving away from the maximum to quieter times.

The May International Sunspot number was 58.8 versus April’s number of 54.4. (Click on charts to enlarge.)

The F10.7cm solar flux number, perhaps the best indicator of solar activity, can be seen on this chart:

The F10.7cm is comparable to the Sunspots chart in magnitude and direction.

The following chart shows data through the 14^th of June.  Cycle 24 is still a long way from minimum (estimated to be in 2019 by NASA, although my guess is it will be at least a year more) and that can be seen by the NOAA Sunspot number that shot up about one week into the month of June.

cbdakota

Skeptic Reference Sources–Part 1

There are several excellent sources for Skeptics. This posting provides a source for Solar Research Papers.   The amount of Sun based research may surprise you, because the Warmers continue to tell us that the Sun is not important.

Some of the research is readily available and some is behind paywalls. But I suspect that just looking at the available research will occupy you for some long time.   The source is Club du Soleil  Click here to see  this source.

There are several additional resources that I will post soon.

cbdakota

Solar Cycle 24 Activity Continues To Decline

The April 2015 Solar Cycle 24 Sunspot number rose somewhat in April, but the forecast is for a continued decline in activity.   The 2015 monthly Sunspot counts were: January = 67.0, February=44.8, March=38.4 and April=54.4.   The daily Sunspot counts seesawed, but definitely with a downward trend, Ri(black).  This can be seen be examining Rsouth (green). While Rnorth has been reasonably quiet for a year or so, Rsouth has been the major contributor to the total number since late 2013.

Predicting Solar Cycle 25. Are We Heading For Another Maunder Minimum?

A study was published in 2012, “Sudden transitions and grand variations in the solar dynamo, past and future” by Cornelis DeJager and Silvia Duhan . The authors attempt to predict whether Solar Cycle 25 will transition to a “Grand Minimum” or “Regular “ Episode. They believe the Sun is transitioning from a “Grand Maximum” to one or the other aforementioned Episodes. This study is being used because their prediction was based upon knowing the Solar Cycle 24’s maximum Sunspot number which we now have.

First a look at the “Episodes” that the authors have placed the Solar Cycles from 1620 to the present.

The diagram shows the sunspot numbers plotted against time. The three Grand Episodes are marked by their different colors. They are separated by vertical black lines.