When Solar Cycle 25 activity is view versus the forecasted path and comparison to that of SC 24’s actual path seems to provide somewhat different conclusions.
The comparison of SC 24 and SC 25 when viewed at the same amount of time after the cycles started make them look like they are on the same track. Look at about 30 to 31 months after cycle start, the green line (SC 25) and the brown line (SC24) essentially at the same place. Graph curtsey of Solen.com
NOAAs Spaceweather has this to say about SC25’s activity.
“ SUNSPOT COUNTS HIT A 9-YEAR HIGH: In a continued sign of strength for Solar Cycle 25, sunspot counts just hit a 9-year high. This plot from NOAA shows how the monthly sunspot number skyrocketed in January 2023.”
Spaceweather‘s take is versus the official forecast chart, so that doesn’t mean much at any point in time except for the end point. The first chart shows only the smoothed sunspot number.
The Spaceweather chart goes beyond the smoothed sunspot numbers with the December and January raw numbers going up rapidly. SC last roughly 11 years. On the Spaceweather chart, it shows SC 24 sunspots jumped in 2012 which is 11 years ago.
We will have to wait to see if the numbers in the coming months continue the upward trend.
The chart above shows the forecast for Solar Cycles 25, 26 and beyond by Valentina Zharkova.Phd. She believes that she and her team have determined how to forecast solar cycle activity. Solar Cycle 25 is underway and she predicts it will be less active than Solar Cycle 24 and Solar Cycle 26 will be much less active.
Madame Zharkova is much bolder than many other experts with respect to when or if there will be a solar minimum. Before we discuss Madame Zharkova, let’s look into some of the issues that surround the question of an upcoming Solar Minimum.
** The video begins at (2 minutes and 14 seconds.)
To begin with, look at the December 2022 Global temperature. It dropped to an anomaly of 0.05C from November 2022’s 0.17C anomaly. This measurement continues the decline of global temperatures since the last El Nino where the anomaly peaked at about 0.4 C. (Red line)
This has resulted in a number of people saying we are on our way to another “little ice age”. Let’s look at several predictions of serious global cooling
ENSO is the system name acronym for and the Southern Oscillation. It a major factor affecting global temperature.
The El Nino (ocean warming) and the La Nina (ocean cooling) are considered natural phenomena, meaning that they are not man-made actions. A simplistic description of this phenomena is that over a period of time sun and or submerged volcanos, warm a body of western Pacific Ocean, lying along the equator and its temperature rises. This causes atmospheric changes and the hot water flows eastward to the coast of South America. This is called El Nino. After several years the conditions change and the body of water flows westward and cool, deep ocean water along South America coast rises This is the La Nina.. This ebb and flow has a major effect on global weather.
The above chart illustrates the Nino and Nina occurrences from 1990 to the present. Comparing the temperature chart and the Ninos charts show that when an El Nino occurs the global temperature rises. Conversely global temperature drops when a La Nina occurs. The charts seems to show that El Ninos are stronger that La Ninas. (It would be interesting if someone had measured the chart area for the two.)
Now eyeballing the charts, it looks like the strong El Ninos, a natural occurrence, are the major mover of the global temperatures.
Examining the global temperature chart, the period following the 1997 -1998 El Nino, stretching out to about 2015 shows that global temperature is flat, in other words, no significant change in global temperature was recorded. Something like 15/16 years. This happened even though atmospheric C02 was increasing. Does this relegate CO2 to be only a minor forcing? Does this indicate that the sun (or volcanos) are causing global temperatures to rise?
Viewing Solar Cycles.
Solar Cycle 24 was much less active than its predecessors. The new Cycle 25 activity is almost identical to Solar Cycle 24 as can be seen in the following chart
Cycle 25 at 30 months after cycle start is the green line and that is where Cycle 24, the black line, was at thirty months. The other Cycles, from other years, that had unusually low activity are shown on this chart. Cycle 24 the black line was less activity than the others.
For contrast, the following chart shows the “Modern Maximum”, group of Cycles, meaning very active. The chart is a little dated as the last rising blue line is Solar Cycle 24.
The solar cycles 24 and 25 are substantially less active than their predecessors. There is really no strong signal yet that the temperature is dropping due to low activity Solar Cycles. Perhaps there is a time delay built into the system.
Cloud Formation due to weak Solar Cycles
This allows us to examine three theories. First comes the Svensmark theory: From the posting “comes this description of the theory:
“In 1995, Henrik Svensmark discovered a startling connection between the cosmic ray flux from space and cloud cover. He found that when the sun is more active–more sunspots, a stronger magnetic field, larger auroras, stronger solar winds, etc.–fewer cosmic rays strike the earth and cloud cover is reduced, resulting in warmer temperatures.” When the sun is inactive, more of them penetrate the atmosphere. Upon reaching the lower atmosphere where more sulphur dioxide, water vapor, and ozone is present, the cosmic rays ionize the air, releasing electrons that aid in the formation of more CCN and form more dense clouds. This increase in low-cloud amount reflects more solar energy to space, cooling the planet.”
CERN set up chambers to test this theory. While there was some verification, they said that cosmic rays did form clouds, but the formation was much too small to have any effect. It appears that there are many that still think Svensmark is correct. We will have to wait to see future developments.
There are some new theories positing that Ultra Violet (UV) is a player.
First some UV information from Wiki: “The Sun emits ultraviolet radiation at all wavelengths, including the extreme ultraviolet where it crosses into X-rays at 10 nm. Sunlight in space at the top of Earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 50% infrared light, 40% visible light, and 10% ultraviolet light, for a total intensity of about 1400 W/m2 in vacuum.[22]
The atmosphere blocks about 77% of the Sun’s UV, when the Sun is highest in the sky (at zenith), with absorption increasing at shorter UV wavelengths. At ground level with the sun at zenith, sunlight is 44% visible light, 3% ultraviolet, and the remainder infrared.[23][24] Of the ultraviolet radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface, more than 95% is the longer wavelengths of UVA, with the small remainder UVB. Almost no UVC reaches the Earth’s surface.[25]
The shorter bands of UVC, as well as even more-energetic UV radiation produced by the Sun, are absorbed by oxygen and generate the ozone in the ozone layer when single oxygen atoms produced by UV photolysis of dioxygen react with more dioxygen. The ozone layer is especially important in blocking most UVB and the remaining part of UVC not already blocked by ordinary oxygen in air.”
Here is one of the UV theories It is called the Winter GateKeeper Hypothesis. I would like to say that I know enough to describe this hypothesis, but I can not. Dr Judith Curry has posted it on her site, which I think is a favorable appraisal of this hypothesis. She has also noted another researcher which seems to have a favorable opinion. So I will give you a summary:
“The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis integrates different components of the transport system in the stratosphere, troposphere, and ocean. A schematic of the energy processes involved is presented in Fig. 8.1, with energy transport represented by white arrows. Solar modulation starting in the stratosphere affects all transport, and Vinós (2022) showed a solar effect on ENSO and the polar vortex. The mechanism by which solar activity modulates ENSO activity is still unknown, but this author proposes a solar modulation of the Brewer-Dobson tropical upwelling, known as the “tropical route” of the “top-down mechanism” (Maycock & Misios 2016; Vinós 2022).”
“Fig. 8.1. Northern Hemisphere winter meridional transport outline. The energy gain/loss ratio at the top of the atmosphere determines the maximal energy source in the tropical band and the maximal energy sink in the Arctic in winter. Incoming solar energy is distributed in the stratosphere and troposphere/surface where it is subjected to different transport modulations. Energy (white arrows) ascends from the surface to the stratosphere at the tropical pipe (left dashed line) and is transported towards the polar vortex (right dashed line) by the Brewer–Dobson circulation. Stratospheric transport is determined by UV heating at the tropical ozone layer, which establishes a temperature gradient affecting zonal wind strength through thermal wind balance, and by the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). This double control determines the behavior of planetary waves (black arrows) and determines if the polar vortex undergoes a biennial coupling with the QBO (BO). In the tropical ocean mixed-layer, ENSO is the main energy distribution modulator. While the Hadley cell participates in energy transport and responds to its intensity by expanding or contracting, most energy transport in the tropics is done by the ocean. Changes in transport intensity result in the main modes of variability, the AMO, and PDO. Outside the tropics, most of the energy is transferred to the troposphere, where synoptic transport by eddies along storm tracks is responsible for the bulk of the transport to high latitudes. The strength of the polar vortex determines the high latitudes winter climate regime. A weak vortex promotes a warm Arctic/ cold continents winter regime, where more energy enters the Arctic exchanged by cold air masses moving out. Jet streams (PJS, polar; TJS, tropical; PNJ, polar night) constitute the boundaries and limit transport. Red oval, the part of the Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis studied in Veretenenko 2022. Figure from Vinós 2022”
Finally, a few notes about the Zharkova theory.
From the posting in Principia Scientific titled “The Woman Who Could Cancel Net Zero”comes another theory. The woman in this case is Professor Valentina Zharkova of the University of Northumbria. The professor’s fields are applied mathematics, plasma physics, pattern recognition, solar-terrestrial physics and solar activity. She forecasts that “in the next 30yrs, global warming problem will be last thing in our mind. Then the solar cycles return to being active.
With her team, she has studied the Sun’s many magnetic fields. She says that sunspots are not a strong enough signal to base any predictions on. So the team separated the magnetic fields in separate components with a principal component analysis using Eigen vectors and Eigen values. She used the output to create a method to predict solar cycle activity. She maintains that she demonstrated that the teams work can closely match the past solar cycles and they can use it to project the future solar cycle activity.
It would be enormous step in understanding the Sun if Dr Zharkova’s system proves out. It might well be a big hit on the man-made global warming theory, too.
The government science agencies, NOAA and NASA determined that Solar Cycle 24 ended November 17, 2019 and Solar Cycle 25 began. Solar Cycle 24 was the least active cycle in 100 years. There are several ways to express solar activity, but sunspot counting is the most frequently used method. Solar Cycle 24 smoothed maximum count was 116.4 in April 2014. The highest unsmoothed count was 146.1 in February 2014. The smoothed count is the official number. It is smoothed over 13 months. Six months before and six months after. The smoothed count method is detailed at the end of this posting if you are curious.
The consensus of the experts regarding the predicted count of Cycle 25, at maximum, will be 115. This prediction came from the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel made up international experts according to PhysOrg posting . In my May 2020 posting of a summary of expert’s predictions, NASA predicted that Cycle 25 would be the least active Cycle for 200 years. NOAA however, predicted it would be more active than Solar Cycle 24.
The following chart compares Cycles 23, 24 and the predicted Cycle 25:
Some say that you can tell how active a cycle will be by the early formation of sunspots. Lots of sunspots right away would mean an active cycle. And conversely, slow development of sunspots would likely be the opposite. If that is true, perhaps you can make a prediction from the following chart courtesy of Solen info solar :
Virtually everything on this chart is Cycle 24. This chart’s info box is probably very hard to read. So let me describe the lines to you. The dashed lines are the smoothed sunspot numbers. The blue dashed line is the sum of the smoothed sunspots in the Northern and Southern solar polar fields. You can probably see that the blue dashed line crosses the solar max (the vertical red line) where the smoothed sunspots are at about 116. But to make our predictions, we need to actually unsmoothed monthly sunspot reading. That is the brown line. Here again this line is the sum of the Northern and Southern solar polar field sunspots. In February, 2014, the monthly max of 146 was registered. Those numbers, 116 and 146, are the ones noted in the opening of this posting.
Comparing the brown line peak at 9 months after Solar Cycle 24 began, it looks like it is about a monthly 7 sunspots. Doing the same for Cycle 25, at 9 months it looks like a monthly sunspot count of 7. That would suggest to me that perhaps those that say 24 and 25 are going to be the same, may be right. But I would not make a bet on that.
As Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame Baseball player, was alleged to have said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
cbdakota
Smoothed Count Method.
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.*
I usually summarize topics gleaned from postings. But this one is written with a lot of interconnections from one of his 29 bullet points to another bullet point that segmenting it dilutes his reasoning. The source of this information is a posting, 11 March 2020, by Dr. Roger Higgs on the Electroverse web site.
29 BULLET POINTS PROVING THE SUN CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING, NOT CO2: BY A GEOLOGIST, FOR A CHANGE (DR ROGER HIGGS)
Dr Roger Higgs, Geoclastica Ltd, Technical Note 2019-11, 6th April 2019, amended 7th March 2020 on ResearchGate (LINK HERE).
We urgently need to expose the ‘CO2 = pollutant’ fallacy being forced upon your children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces by schools, universities, governments and mainstream media worldwide, and to denounce it in scrupulously truthful terms easily understood by the public, including those youngsters themselves.
Here are the 29 bullet points proving CO2’s innocence:
1) The IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has no geologists among the hundreds of authors of its last major report (2013-14) and at most 1 geologist in the next report (due 2022; see my Technical Note 2019-10). Thus IPCC focuses on only the last 150 years (since thermometer records began, ~1850), yet Earth is 30 million (sic) times older, 4.5 billion years! Geologists know that Earth has warmed and cooled throughout this time. Climate change is perfectly normal.
2) The IPCC’s very existence relies on public belief in man-made- or ‘anthropogenic’ global warming (AGW) by carbon dioxide (CO2) emission. IPCC authors, mostly government and university researchers, are biased by strong vested interests in AGW (publications; continuance of salaries; research grants). Similarly, universities have sacrificed their impartiality by hosting institutes mandated to confirm and act on AGW, e.g. Grantham Institute (Imperial College), Tyndall Centre.
3) The claimed ‘97% consensus among scientists’ that AGW exists is a deception. It refers in fact to polls of recent publications by ‘climate scientists’, i.e. atmospheric scientists, lacking deep-time perspective (Bullet 1), whose numbers opportunistically exploded in the post-1990 AGW boom, creating a strong incentive for bias (Bullet 2).
4) No educated person ‘denies’ global warming: it has been measured (Bullet 11). ‘Global-warming denier’ and ‘Climate-change skeptic’ are deceitful terms for man-made-global-warming doubters and deniers (most of the world’s scientists?).
5) CO2 is a ‘greenhouse gas’. But, as CO2 rises, its theoretical heat-trapping ability sharply declines, already 67% ‘used up’ at 100 parts per million (ppm) CO2, 84% at 300 ppm (NB 275 ppm when industrial CO2 output began; Bullet 8), 87% at 400 ppm (today 415 ppm) and >99% at 1000 ppm. Moreover, Climate Sensitivity (CS), the warming due to doubling CO2, is guesswork. IPCC ‘estimates’ CS from climate models (circular reasoning) as probably between 1.5 and 4.5 (300% contrast!), but models are defective (Bullet 6). In reality CS might be very near zero, perhaps explaining why up to 7,000 ppm in Phanerozoic time (Bullet 7) did not cause ‘runaway’ warming.
6) Climate models (by climate scientists; Bullet 3) are so full of assumptions as to be useless or highly misleading, e.g. forecast 1995-2015 warming turned out to be 2 to 3 times too high. Bullet 19 gives another drastic failure. Even Wiki (2019) admits: “Each model simulation has a different guess at processes that scientist don’t understand sufficiently well”. Models dismiss the sun’s fluctuations and omit the multi-decade delay between these and resulting warming or cooling. This time-lag, due to ocean thermal inertia (mixing-time), is grossly underestimated by IPCC (Bullets 21, 22).
The Global Warming Policy Forum on 15 May 2020 posted “The Sun Has Entered “Very Deep” Solar Minimum”/authored by David Whitehouse. It provided a list of predictions of SC 25’s maximum sunspots. I have rearranged the chart to show the predictions that suggest it will be less active than SC 24, those that expect SC24 and SC25 to be nearly identical and those that predict it will more active.
As a benchmark, SC 24 sunspots at maximum were 116.4
I have been wondering if the very quiet Solar Cycle (SC)24 would result in a slowing down of the rise of global temperatures. And that it might even halt the rise or perhaps even result in a downward trend. Certainly, the prognostications by many of my compadres, the skeptics, have been for that to happen. I look at my go-to anomaly temperature chart, the satellite measuring system know as UAH, (University of Alabama at Huntsville) and I see that the temperature continues to rise. The Watts Up With That site’s ENSO meter (below) had not gone into the la nina area, but in fact, seems to be indicating more el nino. However, for several months, now,
And the UAH temperature anomaly has taken a significant two month drop.
Dr Spencer’s site posted “UAH Global Temperature Update for April 2020:+0.38 deg. C. Spencer says:
“In April, 2020, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its 2nd largest 2-month drop in temperature in the 497-month satellite record.”
The UAH temperature anomaly is shown below.
One can see the last two El Ninos on this chart. The El Nino that peaked in 2010 followed by a La Nina brought the anomaly down to the zero line. Then the temperature anomaly began to rise and peaked out during the 2016 -2017 El Nino. But after a drop, it turned into a rather depressing climb.
More on Solar Cycle 24. It began in December 2008. It has been the least active SC for over 100 years. The SCs activity beginning with SC17 through SC 23 is unprecedented and this period is often called the “Modern Maximum”.
Sunspots are considered a proxy for solar activity. The more sunspots the more activity. Sunspots were first recorded by Galiello in 1610. Formal recording of sunspots began about 1750. The naming of SCs began from that time. SC nominally are 11 years long.
So, does mean that low solar activity may not have a significant, if any effect on global temperature. But maybe there is a time delay. I guess we will have to wait and see.
When you look at the following chart, there is one very notable dip in the number of sunspots attributed to SC5 and 6 beginning about about 1800. The temperatures recorded during this time dropped significantly. For example the Thames River is said to have frozen over in the winter during that period. This period is known as the Maunder Minimum. Chart is courtesy of Solan In fo
SC 21, 22, 23 and 24 are plotted on the following chart. Comparing SCs 21, 22, 23 to SC 24 makes evident the low activity of SC24. The Chart is courtesy of Solan Info.
Because SC 24 is reasonably a match to SC5 and 6, one can see why many of our scientists considered history would repeat itself by experiencing low global temperature
While it is not unexpected that experts predicting how active Solar Cycle (SC) 25 will be compared to SC 24, the new forecast from NASA is significantly different than the National Weather Service forecast.
A few weeks ago, I reported that the National Weather Service forecast for SC 25 activity would be slightly greater than SC 24. They added:
“The expectation that Cycle 25 will be comparable in size to Cycle 24 means that the steady decline in solar cycle amplitude, seen from cycles 21-24, has come to an end and that there is no indication that we are currently approaching a Maunder-type minimum in solar activity.”
Research now underway may have found a reliable new method to predict this solar activity. The Sun’s activity rises and falls in an 11-year cycle. The forecast for the next solar cycle says it will be the weakest of the last 200 years. The maximum of this next cycle – measured in terms of sunspot number, a standard measure of solar activity level – could be 30 to 50% lower than the most recent one. The results show that the next cycle will start in 2020 and reach its maximum in 2025.
The NASA prediction did not discuss the possibility of a Maunder minimum. However their prediction does not rule out a Maunder minimum in progress as it forecasts SC25 will not be the end of a steady decline in solar cycle amplitude.
Both of the predicting groups acknowledge that they are still far from a full understanding of how the Sun works. So, we will just have to wait and see.
Prior to the advent of SC 24, there were many predictions of its level of activity. Most of the predictions were for a replicate of SC 23. Leif Svalgaard’s predicted a major change in its level of activity. He was predicting about half as active as were most of the predictors and we know now that he was right. Svalgaard’s method used the Solar Polar Field Strength to make the prediction.
I know many of you know all about the solar polar fields, but for those that do not, let me review what the following chart tells us.
The X axis is time beginning on 7 Dec 1976. It extends out to 2 Feb 2019 showing part or all of SCs 21,22,23 and 24. Solar Cycle 24 began January 2008 and is forecast to end late 2019 or early 2020. SC 24 was at maximum activity during April 2014 with a smoothed sunspot number of 111.. The maximum typically occurs when the South magnetic field and the North magnetic field reverse positions. In the chart above, the red (South) moving line crosses the zero Field strength line noted on the Y axis going south and the north (Blue) moving line crosses zero going north. These fields continue toward the poles where they begin producing sunspots in the high Sun latitudes. The fields begin to move toward the zero line and the new SC 25 will begin.
To make the prediction one has to use the black line, the north field strength minus the south field strength, to make the prediction. The time to make the prediction is when the black line is the furthest from the Y axis zero line. This occurred in the spring of 2004 so they predicted SC24 to be small. If you look at the black line, say in January 2018 it is about the same distance from the zero line so the gurus are saying SC25will be about the same size as SC24.
If Leif Svalgaard reads this, he would probably say I have oversimplified the procedure and do not have it exactly right. So be it.
The National Weather Service posted the following “Solar experts predict the Sun’s activity in Solar Cycle 25 to be below average, similar to Solar Cycle 24”
April 5, 2019 – Scientists charged with predicting the Sun’s activity for the next 11-year solar cycle say that it’s likely to be weak, much like the current one. The current solar cycle, Cycle 24, is declining and predicted to reach solar minimum – the period when the Sun is least active – late in 2019 or 2020.
Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel experts said Solar Cycle 25 may have a slow start, but is anticipated to peak with solar maximum occurring between 2023 and 2026, and a sunspot range of 95 to 130. This is well below the average number of sunspots, which typically ranges from 140 to 220 sunspots per solar cycle. The panel has high confidence that the coming cycle should break the trend of weakening solar activity seen over the past four cycles.
“We expect Solar Cycle 25 will be very similar to Cycle 24: another fairly weak cycle, preceded by a long, deep minimum,” said panel co-chair Lisa Upton, Ph.D., solar physicist with Space Systems Research Corp. “The expectation that Cycle 25 will be comparable in size to Cycle 24 means that the steady decline in solar cycle amplitude, seen from cycles 21-24, has come to an end and that there is no indication that we are currently approaching a Maunder-type minimum in solar activity.”
This is the Experts’ chart below and it shows the 24 SCs with the maximum sunspots ( see Y axis) and the time it occurred.. Also, the Experts have plotted SC25 on the chart::
The Experts are also predicting SC26 when they say “The expectation that SC 25 will be comparable in size to SC 24 means that the steady decline in solar cycle amplitude, seen from cycles 21-24, has come to an end and that there is no indication that we are currently approaching a Maunder-type minimum in solar activity.”
Sometime ago, every month I blogged a brief report on the activity of the Sun. I have the urge to do that again, so here goes.
Solar Cycle (SC) 24 has just about run its course. It is forecast to give over to SC 25 in late 2019/early 2020 and when it does, that’s call the 24SC minimum.
Sunspots are a proxy for Solar activity. The chart below shows the average number of sunspots in each month. The blue dashed line is a 13-month averaged sunspot count. It is the official sunspot number. (The formula for the count is shown at the end of this posting.) The official number of sunspots peaked in April of 2014 thus the solar maximum happened then.
The chart below illustrates how recent SCs compare to SC 24:
All three of the preceding SCs were much more active than SC24.
As side note, the SCs on average last for 11 years, or saying another way, 132 months. At one time, it was believed that if the SC was over before 11 years it was generally an active SC. More than 11 years, less active.
The chart below shows the 24 SCs and the chart makers attempt at a SC25. The X axis is in years from 1749 to an estimated 2040. The Y axis is sunspots
One can see that SCs 23, 22, 21, 19, and 18 represent a very active sun. The maker of the chart calls this the “modern warm period”. Looking back the chart maker has noted the time of the “Dalton Minimum” and the “little ice age”. These periods of low solar activity coincide with the periods of low global temperatures. Perhaps you can see why many scientists are forecasting that global temperatures will soon be dropping. Also one can speculate that the global warming we have experienced may be a product of the past 60 years of a very active sun. Ok, now one more reading of the chart might suggest that we are due for a period of low solar activity thus a drop in global temperatures. The chart maker’s projection of SC 25 to be lowest in recorded history is very likely to be wrong. However the batting average of the predictors of future SCs is not too stellar so who knows.
Throughout the recent past, claims were made that the global temperature was going to drop because SC 24 was relatively inactive. I do not think that the temperature did drop. I believe I read one article where the claim was that SC 24 was the reason that the increased CO2 in the atmosphere did not raise the temperature as much as it should have. I don’t believe that one.
Was SC 24 definitely an uniquely quiet SC? I think so.
The sunspot activity of the cycles in comparison. The numbers in the diagram are obtained by summing the monthly differences between the observed SSN and the mean (blue in Fig.1) up to the current cycle month 125. ( I am not sure whom to attribute this chart but I got it from Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt and Frank Bosse who write the diekaltesonne blog.)
This shows that at just about 10-1/2 years, SC 24 has had 4464 fewer sunspots than the average SC. It also shows that SCs 5 and 6, had the fewest sunspot and those two SC are coincident with the Dalton Minimum. SC 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 were way low on sunspots and they coincided with the little ice age.
It is clear that the sun was much less active as demonstrated by the sunspot record. I expected a clear sign by the end of its cycle, which we have not yet seen, of a cooling global temperature trend. Some think we have that, but I do not see what I expected from the UAH satellite global temperature readings. The temperature has declined since the last El Nino but it has not been lowered to the temperature before that El Nino.
Next a look at Solar Cycle 25.
Cbdakota
Sunspot Counting–Woolf Number
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.*
Probably the most important environmental action the Trump administration can take is to eliminate the Endangerment Finding (EF). The EF was used to have CO2 and several other so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs) inserted in the Clean Air Act. That action has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enact regulations without any input from Congress. Giving the EPA free reign has given the radicals in that Department the leverage to try to regulate fossil fuels out of existence.
As recently as 30 January this year, just a little over a month ago, EPA Director Pruitt said in a Congressional hearing that he was reviewing a challenge to the EF. Red teams, blue teams and all that but not one to my knowledge has been formed. Nothing seems to be getting done. It is over a year ago that the Pruitt was named Director.
Posting of that hearing by USA Today, reported:
“Pruitt spent much of the hearing touting some of the priorities he sees as important: aggressively cleaning up Superfund sites, modernizing water systems tainted by lead and cleanup of abandon mines.”
Good objectives but minor league compared to the EF. And that list of his priorities will eventually be done as both parties want them done. He needs to concentrate on getting things done that the Democrats will not do if they get back in power.
Climate Change Sanity 
