Archives par mot-clé : Sun

June Solar Update

by David Archibald, July 6, 2018 in WUWT


We have only 300 years-odd of detailed solar observations with telescopes, half that of magnetic records, half again in the radio spectrum and less than that for most modern instrument records (and 12 years of Watts Up With That to interpret it). So as the months pass our knowledge of solar activity is still growing appreciably. The evidence points to a major transition of activity in 2006 which has returned us to the solar conditions of the 19thcentury. 19th century-type climate is expected to follow.

Figure 1: F10.7 Flux 1948 to 2018

Solar minimum and ENSO prediction

by Javier, July 5, 2018 in WUWT


Two solar physicists, Robert Leamon from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Scott McIntosh from the High Altitude Observatory at Boulder, CO, have made an interesting observation that links changes in solar activity with changes in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

As they reported at the AGU 2017 Fall Meeting, the termination of the solar magnetic activity bands at the solar equator that mark the end of the Hale cycle coincides since the 1960’s with a shift from El Niño to La Niña conditions in the Pacific.

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See also here

Quiet Sun: More than 3 months without a sunspot

by Dr Carlo Tesla, July 2, 2018 in A. Watts, WUWT


What if the worst is to come?” – Dr Carlo Testa.

2 July 2018 – “The Belgian department of solar physics research (SIDC) says we are about to touch 100; that is, a hundred days in which we do not see spots on our sun,” says Italian meteorologist Dr Carlo Testa.

During a time of  few or no sunspots (a solar minimum) the Sun emits less energy than usual, says Dr Testa. “According to some scholars this situation could lead to climatic upheavals.”

Suffice it to recall, says Testa, that between 1645 and 1715 the most significant solar minimum of history, the Little Ice Age, occurred, bringing years and years marked by very strict winters that lasted until June. (…)

THE SUN ALLERGY OF CLIMATE RESEARCHERS

by  Ulli Kulke, June 29, 2018 in GWPF


Henrik Svensmark, head of solar research at Denmark’s Technical University in Copenhagen, is one of them. And he ventures far ahead in the climate debate, the research with perhaps the greatest significance of our time. His research is contested, of course. Nevertheless, Svensmark and his critics agree that the topic “sun” deserves more attention in climate research. The participants are particularly interested in the complex interplay between our central star and ionizing emissaries from the depths of the galaxy – “cosmic radiation”.

Svensmark says: “The climate is influenced more by changes in cosmic radiation than by carbon dioxide”. CO2 has an effect, of course, “but it is far less than most current climate models assume, and also less than the influence of cosmic radiation”. In his opinion, a doubling of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere would cause an increase in global temperature of at most one degree, and not two degrees, as is now generally accepted.

In other words, the “climate sensitivity” of carbon dioxide is only half as high as assumed (…)

Scientists Find Sun-Driven Temperature Changes Led CO2 Changes By 1300-6500 Years In The Ancient Past

by Kenneth Richard, June 7, 2018 in NoTricksZone


It has long been established in the scientific literature (and affirmed by the IPCC) that CO2 concentration changes followed Antarctic temperature changes by about 600 to 1000 years during glacial-interglacial transitions throughout the last ~800,000 years (Fischer et al., 1999Monnin et al., 2001Caillon et al., 2003Stott et al., 2007Kawamura et al., 2007).
In contrast, two new papers cite evidence that the timing of the lagged CO2 response to temperature changes may have ranged between 1300 and 6500 years in some cases.  It would appear that a millennial-scale lagged response to temperature undermines the claim that CO2 concentration changes were a driver of climate in the ancient past.

The approaching solar cycle 24 minimum continues the long slide in solar activity

by Javier, June 7, 2018 in WUWT


Solar cycle 24 is ending and we are approaching a time of minimal solar activity between solar cycles 24 and 25, known as a solar minimum. Despite claims that we understand how the Sun works, our solar predictive skills are still wanting, and the Sun continues to be full of surprises.

The surprising 2008 solar minimum

Solar scientists did not pay much attention to the early warning signs that the Sun was behaving differently during solar cycle 23 (SC23), and to most the surprise came when the expected solar minimum failed to show up in 2006. The SC23-24 minimum took place two years later (Dec 2008, according to SIDC), and despite showing only a tiny difference in total solar irradiation compared to previous minima of the space age, it displayed significantly reduced solar wind speed and density, extreme-UV flux was 10% reduced, the polar fields were 50% smaller, and the interplanetary magnetic field strength was 30% below past minima.

Solar Activity Drought: Now Only 28% Of What Is Normal…Arctic Sea Ice Volume Greater Than 2014!

by F. Bosse and F. Vahrenholt in P. Gosselin, May 25, 2018 NoTricksZone


The sun was inactive in April, as we currently find ourselves in the minimum between solar cycle (SC) 24 and the coming solar cycle 25.

The recorded mean sunspot number (SSN) for April was 8.9, which is only 28% of what is usual 113 months into a solar cycle. In April, 16 days were spotless. The following chart shows sunspot activity (…)

Are we headed for a deep solar minimum?

by Anthony Watts, May 23, 2018 in WUWT


Have you been keeping an eye on Sol lately? One of the top astronomy stories for 2018 may be what’s not happening, and how inactive our host star has become.

The strange tale of Solar Cycle #24 is ending with an expected whimper: as of May 8th, the Earthward face of the Sun had been spotless for 73 out of 128 days thus far for 2018, or more than 57% of the time. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, as the solar minimum between solar cycle #23 and #24 saw 260 spotless days in 2009 – the most recorded in a single year since 1913.

Cycle #24 got off to a late and sputtering start, and though it produced some whopper sunspots reminiscent of the Sol we knew and loved on 20th century cycles past, it was a chronic under-performer overall. Mid-2018 may see the end of cycle #24 and the start of Cycle #25… or will it?

Solar Activity Flat Lines…Cycle 24 Weakest In 200 Years…Link To Recent Northern Hemisphere Ice Rebound?

by F. Bosse and Prof. F. Vahrenholt, April 28, 2018 in NoTricksZone


As the current solar cycle nears an end, it will go down as the weakest in close to 200 years. And as inhabitants of the northern hemisphere dig themselves out of an especially icy and snowy winter and Arctic sea ice rebounds, it may all be in part linked to low solar activity as many scientific studies have long suggested.

Figure 1:  The current solar cycle no. 24 (red) compared to the mean of the previous 23 recorded solar cycles (blue) and the similar solar cycle no. 5 (black)

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New paper finds strong evidence the Sun has controlled climate over the past 11,000 years, not CO2

by ‘hockeschtick‘, November 27, 2014


A paper published today in Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds a “strong and stable correlation” between the millennial variations in sunspots and the temperature in Antarctica over the past 11,000 years. In stark contrast, the authors find no strong or stable correlation between temperature and CO2 over that same period.

We have thus shown
  • Strong correlation between solar activity and climate over the past 11,000 years of the Holocene
  • Strong lack of correlation between CO2 and climate over the past 11,000 years of the Holocene
  • Solar activity explains all 6 well-known warming periods that have occurred during the Holocene, including the current warm period
  • The 20th century peak in sunspot activity is associated with a 40 year lag in the peak global temperature

Green Failure: German Solar Industry Crashes And Burns…Solar Jobs See Blood Bath!

by Michael Kruger, April 21, 2018 in P Gosselin NoTricksZone


Michael Kruger at German skeptic site Science Skeptical here writes about how solar energy indutry in Germany has disintegrated spectacularly.

What follows are 4 charts that show us some shocking trends, and how in reality the German solar industry has seen a bloodbath that can be rated as one of the worst in a long time. The reality is that Germany’s green revolution is far from being a model for the world.

Solar activity over nine millennia: A consistent multi-proxy reconstruction

by C.J. Wu et al., April 5, 2018 in Astronomy&Astrophysics


.pdf (13 pages)

The solar activity in the past millennia can only be reconstructed from cosmogenic radionuclide proxy records in terrestrial archives. However, because of the diversity of the proxy archives, it is difficult to build a homogeneous reconstruction. All previous studies were based on individual, sometimes statistically averaged, proxy datasets. Here we aim to provide a new consistent multi- proxy reconstruction of the solar activity over the last 9000 years, using all available long-span datasets of 10Be and 14C in terrestrial archives.

Svensmark: “Global Warming Stopped And A Cooling Is Beginning” – “Enjoy Global Warming While It Lasts”

by H.. Svensmark, June1 , 2016 in Principia.Sci.International


The star that keeps us alive has, over the last few years, been almost free of sunspots, which are the usual signs of the Sun’s magnetic activity. Last week [4 September 2009] the scientific team behind the satellite SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported, “It is likely that the current year’s number of blank days will be the longest in about 100 years.” Everything indicates that the Sun is going into some kind of hibernation, and the obvious question is what significance that has for us on Earth.

If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which represents the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring “nothing”. But history and recent research suggest that is probably completely wrong. Why? Let’s take a closer look.

A conversation with Dr. Willie Soon – on polar bears, the sun, and Earth’s climate

by Dr. Willie Soon, April 14, 2018 in WUWT

Dr. Willie Soon is an independent solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has been studying the Sun and its influence on the Earth’s climate for more than a quarter of a century. A short while ago, he had a conversation with Mr. Grégoire Canlorbe, an independent journalist who is also vice president of the French Parti National-Libéral (“National-Liberal Party,” conservative, nationalist, and free-marketist). Here Dr. Soon speaks for himself. 

Canlorbe: You say polar bears are far less endangered by global warming than by environmentalists dreading ice melt. Could you expand?

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It appears Solar Cycle 25 has begun – Solar cycle 24 one of the shortest and weakest ever

by A. Watts, April 12, 2018 in WUWT


Evidence of a Cycle 25 sunspot found

In our previous post: Solar activity crashes – the Sun looks like a cueball, 

Our resident solar physicist, Dr. Leif Svalgaard commented and provided a link to something reported by his colleagues, something that likely would not have been possible without the fantastic solar observations of NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observeratory (SDO).

It seems a small sunspot has been observed, that has the opposite polarity of cycle 24 sunspots.

Tools to Spot the Spots

by Willy Eschenbach, March 30, 2018 in WUWT


People have asked about the tools that I use to look for any signature of sunspot-related solar variations in climate datasets. They’ve wondered whether these tools are up to the task. What I use are periodograms and Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD). Periodograms show how much strength there is at various cycle lengths (periods) in a given signal. CEEMD decomposes a signal into underlying simpler signals.

Now, a lot of folks seem to think that they can determine whether a climate dataset is related to the sunspot cycle simply by looking at a graph. So, here’s a test of that ability. Below is recent sunspot data, along with four datasets A, B, C, and D. The question is, which of the four datasets (if any) is affected by sunspots?

Extreme winter weather, such as ‘Beast from the East’, can be linked to solar cycle

by University of Exeter, March 20, 2018 in PhysOrg


Periods of extreme cold winter weather and perilous snowfall, similar to those that gripped the UK in a deep freeze with the arrival of the ‘Beast from the East’, could be linked to the solar cycle, pioneering new research has shown.

A new study, led by Dr Indrani Roy from the University of Exeter, has revealed when the is in its ‘weaker’ phase, there are warm spells across the Arctic in winter, as well as heavy snowfall across the Eurasian sector.

The research is published in leading journal Scientific Reports, a Nature Publication, on Tuesday, 20 March 2018.

 

Do-It-Yourself: The solar variability effect on climate.

by Javier, March 13, 2018 in WUWT


So, you still don’t believe small changes in solar activity can significantly affect climate? You know a very cold period during the Little Ice Age coincided with the Maunder Minimum, but you have heard that the Little Ice Age could have had other causes, like volcanoes. You have been told repeatedly that since 1980 solar activity has been decreasing while global temperature has been increasing, so it can’t be the Sun.

Not so fast. There is a vested interest in climate change not being due to the Sun, as the Sun can’t be taxed or prevented from doing what it does. A further problem is that solar physicists have no clue about how the Sun can show centennial or millennial periodicities. As they prefer to talk about what they know, they reject such periodicities, even though we have evidence in cosmogenic records (14C in tree rings and 10Be in ice cores).

And if I tell you that little changes in the Sun have a disproportionate effect on climate you won’t believe me. You shouldn’t believe me. You shouldn’t believe anybody. Science is not about believing. Religion is about believing. So, I propose that you prove to yourself what effect little changes in the Sun have on climate.

Qu’est-ce que l’Alliance solaire internationale ?

by Connaissance des Energies, 12 mars 2018


L’ Alliance solaire internationale est une initiative lancée par l’Inde et la France lors de la COP21 qui vise à « augmenter de manière significative la production d’électricité solaire » dans les 121 pays situés en totalité ou en partie entre les tropiques du Cancer et du Capricorne (des pays en voie de développement pour la grande majorité).

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En juin 2017, l’Alliance solaire internationale indiquait que 33 pays avaient signé son accord-cadre et que 6 l’avait ratifié : l’Inde, la France et 4 territoires insulaires (Fidji, Maurice, Nauru, Tuvalu)(5). Il est nécessaire que 15 pays ratifient cet accord-cadre pour qu’il entre en vigueur. En mars 2018, l’Alliance solaire internationale a été officiellement lancée à New Delhi, en présence d’Emmanuel Macron et d’une vingtaine de dirigeants d’Asie, d’Afrique et d’Océanie.

Le gouvernement indien s’est engagé à abriter le secrétariat de l’Alliance solaire internationale pour une durée de 5 ans (jusqu’en 2021).

IT’S-THE-SUN Climate Science Steamrolls Into 2018

by K. Richard, February 22, 2018 in NoTricksZone


According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC) and computer modeling, the Sun’s role in modern-era climate change checks in at somewhere slightly above nothing.

And yet it is increasingly evident that more and more scientists across the globe do not take the position that the Sun’s influence on climate change is negligible.

In 2016 and 2017, for example, over 250 papers (see here and here) linking the Sun to climate changes were published in scientific journals.

Forecast for Solar Cycle 25

by J.A. Marusek, February 2018, in WUWT


The sun is the natural source of heat and light for our planet. Without our sun, the earth would be a cold dead planet adrift in space. But the sun is not constant. It changes and these subtle changes affect the Earth’s climate and weather.

At the end of solar cycle 23, sunspot activity declined to a level not seen since the year 1913. [Comparing Yearly Mean Total Sunspot Numbers1]

The following was observed during the solar cycle 24: (…)

Maunder Minimum & The CET

by P Homewood, February 10, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


As mentioned yesterday, scientists now believe we could be heading into a 50 year period of reduced solar activity similar to what happened in the mid-17th century, which could lead to a drop in global temperatures of “several tenths of a degree Celsius”.

 As has been pointed out, climate is a far more complex matter than climate scientists admit, and one about which we still know very little.

Whether a Maunder-like Minimum will happen again in the next few years, and whether it will have the effect claimed, remain to be seen.

But there is considerable evidence that the Maunder Minimum did coincide with a sharp fall in temperatures across the NH, as NASA show above.

See also here