Category Archives: Solar Cycle 24

A Difference Of Opinions on Entering A Mauder Minimum


Forbes.com posting “Sun Flatlining Into Grand Minimum, Says Solar Physicist on JANUARY 20, 2014. Yes, the posting is nearly two years old. But the snowdriftsimagesdiscordance about the Sun’s influence in the Earth’s climate could not be more evident in the posting.

From the posting:

“My opinion is that we are heading into a Maunder Minimum,” said Mark Giampapa, a solar physicist at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. “I’m seeing a continuation in the decline of the sunspots’ mean magnetic field strengths and a weakening of the polar magnetic fields and subsurface flows.”

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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. hotsunimagesBut 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:

solartressactive6dec15

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.

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Duke’s Dr. Brown Believes Temperature Records Are Being Deliberately Tampered To Support Man-Made Global Warming Theory


I no longer consider it remotely possible to accept the null hypothesis that the climate record has not been tampered with to increase the warming of the present and cooling of the past and thereby exaggerate warming into a deliberate better fit with the theory instead of letting the data speak for itself and hence be of some use to check the theory.”

Those words are by Dr Robert J Brown of Duke University in a WUWT posting titled “Is There Evidence of Frantic Researchers “Adjusting” Unsuitable Data? (Now Includes July Data)”.

In late May or early June, USHCN announced that the “Pause” was broken as they had found that the sea surface temperatures (sst) were being underreported. They said temperature measuring buoys that they placed in the ocean needed correction and they added 0.12C to those measurements. Never mind that these buoys were equipped with the best temperature measuring devices. But alas they were not giving the answer they needed. So they used ocean going vessels’ water intake measuring devices to correct the buoys. See “NOAA Alleges New Temperature Data Refutes The “Pause But Does It?
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Little Ice Age By 2030?


Professor Valentian Zharkova of Northumbria University presented her results Cold-Weather-Cartoonfor a new model of the Sun’s interior dynamo to the Royal Astronomical Society. Zharkova and her team believe they have made a discovery that allows them to predict solar activity. From the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting 2015 – report 4” posting:

“We found magnetic wave components appearing in pairs; originating in two different layers in the Sun’s interior. They both have a frequency of approximately 11 years, although this frequency is slightly different [for both] and they are offset in time,” says Zharkova. The two magnetic waves either reinforce one another to produce high activity or cancel out to create lull periods.

The model predicts that the magnetic wave pairs will become increasingly offset during Cycle 25, which peaks in 2022. Then during Cycle 26, which covers the decade from 2030-2040, the two waves will become exactly out of synch, cancelling one another out. This will cause a significant reduction in solar activity. “In cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other, peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun. We predict that this will lead to the properties of a ‘Maunder minimum’,” says Zharkova”

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New Solar Cycle Charts Now Reflect The Revised Sunspot Counting System.


bigspotfd_thumbRevised Sunspot number as discussed in previous posting of July 2015 numbers can be seen below:new #solarterrestialjuly

Below is the Sunspot number posted before the numbering was changed to match the new criteria discussed in the “Sunspot Number History Change Is Underway“.

solarterrestrialjuly1-2015

The only thing different is the green line the “30 day Wolf Number. The new number is greater than the old one.

Quoting SILSO: “In the values themselves, the most prominent change will result from the elimination of the 0.6 factor formerly used by the Zürich Observatory to scale the modern numbers down to the scale of the initial Wolf observations. This factor has always led to some confusion and now has lost its sense more than 130 years after Wolf’s observations. This change will thus raise the scale of the entire sunspot number time series by a factor 1/O.6, which may significantly affect software using the sunspot number as input.”

cbdakota

 

Solar Cycle 24: June 2015 Update


How Cycle 24 June Sunspot plot will look when the new Sunspot numbering system is used is not yet clear. Using the “old Wolf system” that is the sun-womanInternational Smoothed Sunspot number basis, it would be expressed as 57.2 thirty day average versus last months number of 58.8.   The number for June 2015 is estimated to be 46.9 when the smoothing process is employed. What ever the measuring system, Cycle 24 is still heading downward to a minimum.

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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 400yrsofsunspotcyclesUnknownreleased, 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.

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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.

sunspotIDimages

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

solar-cycle-sunspot-numbermay15NOAA

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

solar-cycle-10-cm-radio-fluxMAY15NOAAThe F10.7cm is comparable to the Sunspots chart in magnitude and direction.

The following chart shows data through the 14th 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.

solarterrestialchart14may15cbdakota

Skeptic Reference Sources–Part 1


There are several excellent sources for Skeptics. This posting provides a the sunsource 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.

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