Solar Cycle 25 Blog

"We can expect the onset of a deep bicentennial minimum of total solar irradiance (TSI) in approximately 2042±11 and the 19th deep minimum of global temperature in the past 7500 years – in 2055±11. After the maximum of solar cycle 24, from approximately 2014 we can expect the start of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055±11." --Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, Russian Academy of Science, 1 February 2012

Abstract

Temporal changes in the power of the longwave radiation of the system Earth-atmosphere emitted to space always lag behind changes in the power of absorbed solar radiation due to slow change of its enthalpy.

That is why the debit and credit parts of the average annual energy budget of the terrestrial globe with its air and water envelope are practically always in an unbalanced state. Average annual balance of the thermal budget of the system Earth-atmosphere during long time period will reliably determine the course and value of both an energy excess accumulated by the Earth or the energy deficit in the thermal budget which, with account for data of the TSI forecast, can define and predict well in advance the direction and amplitude of the forthcoming climate changes.

From early 90s we observe bicentennial decrease in both the TSI and the portion of its energy absorbed by the Earth. The Earth as a planet will henceforward have negative balance in the energy budget which will result in the temperature drop in approximately 2014.

Predicting the amplitude of Solar Cycle 24 was a big business. Jan Janssens provides the most complete table of Solar Cycle 24 predictions at: http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/SC24.html

Prediction activity for Solar Cycle 24 seemed to have peaked in 2007. In year before, Dr David Hathaway of NASA made the first general estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/10may_longrange/

Based on the slowing of the Sun’s “Great Conveyor Belt”, he predicted that

“The slowdown we see now means that Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries.”
He is very likely to have got the year wrong in that Solar Cycle 25 is unlikely to start until 2025.

In this paper: http://www.probeinternational.org/Livingston-penn-2010.pdf,

Livingston and Penn provided the first hard estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude based on a physical model. That estimate is 7, which would make it the smallest solar cycle for over 300 years.

Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

Solar Cycle 24 is now three years old and predictions of the date of solar maximum have settled upon mid-2013. For example, Jan Janssens has produced this graph predicting the month of maximum in mid-2013, which is 54 months after the Solar Cycle 23/24 minimum in December 2008:

For those of us who wish to predict climate, the most important solar cycle attribute is solar cycle length. Most of the curve-fitting exercises such as NASA’s place the next minimum between 2020 and 2022 (eg: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/06/nasas-november-solar-prediction/). Solar minimum in December 2022 would make Solar Cycle 24 fourteen years long, which in turn would make the climate of the mid-latitudes over Solar Cycle 25 about 1.0°C colder than the climate over Solar Cycle 24.

Amazon Link

ISBN 978-1-4614-0570-2

Provides a detailed introduction to the dynamics of the Sun and how it affects Earth, both physically and culturally

The layouts and visuals in the book are truly stunning and the book includes a number of images never published before
Contains additional information and a large number of animations to go on SpringerExtras

The center of our Solar System is a star, one among billions of stars in our own galaxy. This star, which we call the Sun, gives rise to all life on Earth, is the driver of the photosynthesis in plants, and is the source of all food, energy, and fossil fuels on Earth.

For us humans, the Sun as seen with the naked eye appears as a static and quiet yellow disk in the sky. However, it is in fact a stormy and variable star and contributes much more than only light and heat. It is the source of the beautiful northern and southern lights and can affect our technology-based society in many ways.

The Sun is, like astronomy in general, a good entrance to natural science, since it affects us in so many ways and connects us to many other fields of science, such as physics, chemistry, biology, and meteorology.

On Dec. 31st, a wave of ionization swept through the high atmosphere over Europe when sunspot AR1389 unleashed another M2-class solar flare. "There was a very clear sudden ionospheric disturbance on my VLF radio instruments," reports Rob Stammes, who sends these data from the Polar Light Center in Lofoten, Norway:

"The sun is below the horizon where we are located north of the Arctic Circle," says Stammes. "This event shows we still have some contact with the sun."

Click source for more

Solar particles interact with Earth's magnetosphere. (Source: NASA)

No surprise here. Just more inconvenient results for CO2 broken-record dogmatists

New paper: GISS temps and solar activity

A recent paper published by the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar Terrestial Physics (74) 2012 87-93 and authored by Souza Echer et al. suggests that solar cycles, to a substantial extent, drive global temperatures, and that likely through amplification mechanisms.

The paper is titled: On the relationship between global, hemispheric and latitudinal averaged air surface temperature (GISS time series) and solar activity.

The authors decomposed average air surface temperature series obtained from GISS and sunspot number (Rz) from 1880 – 2005 to see if a correlation could be found. They performed a cross correlation analysis between band-passed filtered data around 11-year and 22 years.

CLICK to see large image

The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 99 in February of 2013. We are currently about three years into Cycle 24. Increased activity in the last few months has raised the predicted maximum and moved it earlier in 2013. The current predicted size still make this the smallest sunspot cycle in over 80 years.

Predicting the behavior of a sunspot cycle is fairly reliable once the cycle is well underway (about 3 years after the minimum in sunspot number occurs.

Click source to see FULL report

After five years of surprising quiet, the sun roared to life in 2011.

Our star erupted with numerous strong flares and waves of charged particles. Many researchers predict the surge will culminate in a peak in the sun's 11-year activity cycle in 2013.

This year also marked several key advances in scientists' understanding of the dynamics driving our favorite star. Here are some of the solar highlights of 2011:

Solar flares and CMEs

Having been relatively quiet since 2005, the sun spouted off a number of powerful flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) this year.

CMEs are made up of massive clouds of plasma that are sent streaking through space in any direction at several million mph. When these clouds are aimed at Earth, they can spawn geomagnetic storms that wreak havoc with GPS signals, radio communications and power grids

Click source to read FULL report from Nola Taylor Redd

Amazon Link

WHEN Siberian conditions hit Britain this time last year everyone was caught out, including the weathermen.

Global warming, we had been told, meant the snowy conditions we remember from our childhoods would be just that: memories.

But following the bitter cold of the past two winters those predictions are beginning to look rather wide of the mark. now a new book, Frozen Britain by meteorologists Ian McCaskill and Paul Hudson, suggests that rather than facing milder winters we could be in for some more Arctic big freezes.

Certainly, despite everything that the global-warming lobby has suggested, our climate may be dictated by more than just man- made toxins pumped into the atmosphere. One of the key indicators – which has fallen out of favour with the computer-obsessed meteorologists of today – is the sun.

According to McCaskill and Hudson the clues to our future weather may lie with the sun.

“In the past few years it has been behaving very oddly,” Hudson says.

In the past, when there have been periods of relative inactivity on the surface of the sun they have been followed by years of cold winters.

Research published recently showed that in the early 1800s when activity on the sun was remarkably low for many years there was a dramatic change in the weather.