April 1, 2009: The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.

2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year’s 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days: plot. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008. Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year’s 90 days (87%). It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: “We’re experiencing a very deep solar minimum,” says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

“This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Above: The sunspot cycle from 1995 to the present. The jagged curve traces actual sunspot counts. Smooth curves are fits to the data and one forecaster’s predictions of future activity. Credit: David Hathaway, NASA/MSFC.

Quiet suns come along every 11 years or so. It’s a natural part of the sunspot cycle, discovered by German astronomer Heinrich Schwabe in the mid-1800s. Sunspots are planet-sized islands of magnetism on the surface of the sun; they are sources of solar flares, coronal mass ejections and intense UV radiation. Plotting sunspot counts, Schwabe saw that peaks of solar activity were always followed by valleys of relative calm - a clockwork pattern that has held true for more than 200 years: plot.

The current solar minimum is part of that pattern. In fact, it’s right on time. “We’re due for a bit of quiet- and here it is,” says Pesnell. But is it supposed to be this quiet? In 2008, the sun set the following records:

A 50-year low in solar wind pressure: Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft reveal a 20% drop in solar wind pressure since the mid-1990s - the lowest point since such measurements began in the 1960s. The solar wind helps keep galactic cosmic rays out of the inner solar system. With the solar wind flagging, more cosmic rays are permitted to enter, resulting in increased health hazards for astronauts. Weaker solar wind also means fewer geomagnetic storms and auroras on Earth.

A 12-year low in solar “irradiance”: Careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft show that the sun’s brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths and a whopping 6% at extreme UV wavelengths since the solar minimum of 1996. These changes are not enough to reverse the course of global warming, but there are some other, noticeable side-effects: Earth’s upper atmosphere is heated less by the sun and it is therefore less “puffed up.” Satellites in low Earth orbit experience less atmospheric drag, extending their operational lifetimes. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, space junk also remains longer in Earth orbit, increasing hazards to spacecraft and satellites.

A 55-year low in solar radio emissions: After World War II, astronomers began keeping records of the sun’s brightness at radio wavelengths. Records of 10.7 cm flux extend back all the way to the early 1950s. Radio telescopes are now recording the dimmest “radio sun” since 1955: plot. Some researchers believe that the lessening of radio emissions is an indication of weakness in the sun’s global magnetic field. No one is certain, however, because the source of these long-monitored radio emissions is not fully understood.

All these lows have sparked a debate about whether the ongoing minimum is “weird”, “extreme” or just an overdue “market correction” following a string of unusually intense solar maxima. “Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high,” notes Hathaway. “Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We’re just not used to this kind of deep calm.” Deep calm was fairly common a hundred years ago. The solar minima of 1901 and 1913, for instance, were even longer than the one we’re experiencing now. To match those minima in terms of depth and longevity, the current minimum will have to last at least another year.

In a way, the calm is exciting, says Pesnell. “For the first time in history, we’re getting to see what a deep solar minimum is really like.” A fleet of spacecraft including the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the twin STEREO probes, the five THEMIS probes, ACE, Wind, TRACE, AIM, TIMED, Geotail and others are studying the sun and its effects on Earth 24/7 using technology that didn’t exist 100 years ago. Their measurements of solar wind, cosmic rays, irradiance and magnetic fields show that solar minimum is much more interesting and profound than anyone expected.

Modern technology cannot, however, predict what comes next. Competing models by dozens of top solar physicists disagree, sometimes sharply, on when this solar minimum will end and how big the next solar maximum will be. Pesnell has surveyed the scientific literature and prepared a “piano plot” showing the range of predictions. The great uncertainty stems from one simple fact: No one fully understands the underlying physics of the sunspot cycle. Pesnell believes sunspot counts will pick up again soon, “possibly by the end of the year,” to be followed by a solar maximum of below-average intensity in 2012 or 2013. But like other forecasters, he knows he could be wrong. Bull or bear? Stay tuned for updates. Read more here.

Still some level of uncomfortable denial on the part of Hathaway who in late 2006 had proclaimed solar minimum and that solar cycle 24 was underway. It is at the very least like the cycles of the early 1900s but may be more like the early 1800s, the Dalton Minimum. As they said, time will tell.

See also this paper in Energy and the Environment by Oliver Manuel.

Windmills and solar panel arrays have become symbols of America’s growing interest in alternative energy. Yet as Congress begins debating new rules to restrict carbon dioxide emissions and promote electricity produced from renewable sources, an underlying question is how much more Americans will be willing to pay to harness the wind and the sun.

Curbing carbon dioxide emissions - a central part of tackling climate change - will almost certainly raise electricity prices, experts say. And increasing the nation’s reliance on renewable energy will in itself raise costs. Fifteen months into a recession, that prospect does not sit well in some quarters. “Consumers right now are extremely price-sensitive,” said Barry Moline, executive director of the Florida Municipal Electric Association, whose member utilities serve about three million people. Federal efforts to rein in carbon dioxide emissions are starting to seem inevitable. The Environmental Protection Agency last week moved to regulate heat-trapping gases as harmful pollutants. And the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are hoping to push through a cap-and-trade bill that would force polluters to curb their emissions or buy permits from cleaner producers. Congress is also discussing whether to require that a certain percentage of the nation’s electricity come from renewable sources.

The effect of any these measures will be to increase the cost of electricity. Regulation of carbon dioxide emissions will increase the cost of burning coal, a carbon-heavy energy source and currently the cheapest form of fossil fuel. Higher production costs will result in higher electricity rates. A quota for renewable energy sources will also raise rates because utilities will pass on increased costs to consumers.

And wind and solar power are generally more expensive than the fossil fuels they are meant to supplant. If carbon dioxide penalties made coal power more expensive, as some environmentalists argue is inevitable, the relative cost of renewable energy might decrease. But consumers will still pay more. Some experts not aligned with either camp estimate that wind power is currently more than 50 percent more expensive than power generated by a traditional coal plant. Built into the calculation is the need for utilities that rely heavily on wind power to build backup plants fired by natural gas to meet electricity demand when winds are calm. Read more here.

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.” Eric Hoffer

James Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), and Andrew Weaver, lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports, made statements clearly designed to frighten people. 

Both men are politically active in climate change and at the forefront of the attempt to convince the world that CO2 is a problem.  Their remarks are intended to scare people by threatening impending doom - nothing new - except there is increasing urgency and fear because their message is failing. As Andrew Weaver summarized, “All those fossil fuel emissions need to be eliminated. And we must do so quickly if we are to have any chance of stabilizing the climate and maintaining human civilization as we know it.”

Hansen increases urgency for action claiming we are on the verge of a tipping point, defined as follows. “Tipping points can occur during climate change when the climate reaches a state such that strong amplifying feedbacks are activated by only moderate additional warming.” We’re reaching a tipping point, but it’s not the one Hansen anticipates. We’re close to the point where the public and politicians realize they have been totally deceived about the nature and cause of climate change. Even before a shift to concern about the economy polls showed a growing shift in public opinion.

Weaver is also troubled by his own definition of dramatic change occurring. He wrote in a March 24 article, in the Vancouver Sun, “There are many depressing things about being a climate scientist these days. The emerging data is going from bad to worse and the political leadership is still acting as if we have all the time in the world to deal with global warming.” Yes, it’s depressing but because people are not fooled any more and politicians are not acting as Weaver expects. And yes, emerging data is going from bad to worse, but only because it shows CO2 is not causing warming.

Other remarks by both men indicate their fear. For example, Hansen said, “The democratic process doesn’t seem to be working.” It’s a bizarre comment from a civil servant prior to his apparently breaking US law (the Hatch Act) again by participating in a public protest at the headquarters of E.ON, a power firm in Coventry, England. The push for elimination of CO2 emissions is failing because, despite his histrionics, democracy is working.

A few days later in the Vancouver Sun article ironically titled “‘Environmentalists’ are abandoning science,” Weaver wrote, “The scientific community has a very solid understanding of what is causing global warming: It is overwhelmingly because of the combustion of fossil fuels. Thus, the solution to the problem is as simple as it is daunting: The elimination of fossil fuel use in our economies.”

Weaver claims he and his IPCC colleagues “have been as a clear as we know how about the science and the measures needed.” This is simply not the case. Their rules mean they only look at human causes of climate change. They produce a political summary for policymakers then used to make sure the science report agrees with the summary. (Canada Free Press)

More important, the entire claim of human caused CO2 global warming is based on computer models that simply can’t work. It’s not surprising Hansen and Weaver are computer modelers; they have the most invested in these claims and the most to lose professionally and politically. I watched over the years as computer modelers took over and dominated climate science, particularly through the IPCC. But as Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton, said in the May 1999 issue of the American Physical Society and still valid today, “They are not yet adequate tools for predicting climate.” However, “If we persevere patiently with observing the real world and improving the models, the time will come when we are able both to understand and to predict. Until then, we must continue to warn the politicians and the public: don’t believe the numbers just because they come out of a supercomputer.”
Read much more here.

I’ve been receiving a steady stream of e-mails asking when our latest work on feedbacks in the climate system will be published. Since I’ve been trying to fit the material from three (previously rejected) papers into one unified paper, it has taken a bit longer than expected but we are now very close to submission. We’ve tentatively decided to submit to Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR) rather than any of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) journals. This is because it appears that JGR editors are somewhat less concerned about a paper’s scientific conclusions supporting the policy goals of the IPCC - regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, JGR’s instructions to reviewers is to not reject a paper simply because the reviewer does not agree with the paper’s scientific conclusions. More on that later.

As those who have been following our work already know, our main conclusion is that climate sensitivity has been grossly overestimated due to a mix up between cause and effect when researchers have observed how global cloud cover varies with temperature. To use my favorite example, when researchers have observed that global cloud cover decreases with warming, they have assumed that the warming caused the cloud cover to dissipate. This would be a positive feedback since such a response by clouds would let more sunlight in and enhance the warming.

But what they have ignored is the possibility that causation is actually working in the opposite direction: That the decrease in cloud cover caused the warming not the other way around. And as shown by Spencer and Braswell (2008 J. Climate), this can mask the true existence of negative feedback. All 20 of the IPCC climate models now have positive cloud feedbacks, which amplify the small about of warming from extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But if cloud feedbacks in the climate system are negative, then the climate system does not particularly care how much you drive your SUV. This is an issue of obvious importance to global warming research. Even the IPCC has admitted that cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty in predicting global warming.

Significantly, our new work provides a method for identifying which direction of causation is occurring (forcing or feedback), and for obtaining a more accurate estimate of feedback in the presence of clouds forcing a temperature change. The method involves a new way of analyzing graphs of time filtered satellite observations of the Earth (or even of climate model output). Well at least I thought it was new way of analyzing graphs. It turns out that we have simply rediscovered a method used in other physical sciences: phase space analysis. This methodology was first introduced by Willard Gibbs in 1901.

I am confident the work will get published eventually. But even if it didn’t, our original published paper on the issue has laid the groundwork, it would just take awhile before the research community understands the implications of that work. What amazes me is the resistance there has been to ‘thinking out of the box’ when trying to estimate the sensitivity of the climate system. Especially when it has been considered to be ‘thinking in the box’ by other sciences for over a century now.

The new paper title is, “Phase Space Analysis of Forcing and Feedback in Models and Satellite Observations of Climate Variability”. It just rolls of the tongue, doesn’t it? And it is truly unfortunate that the AMS, home of Lorenz’s first published work on chaos in 1963, has decided that political correctness is more important than the advancement of science. Read more here.

Flooding continues over North Dakota, the northeast third of South Dakota,and northwest Minnesota. On the Red River at Fargo (Cass County), North Dakota, the National Weather Service has issued projections of a crest of 43 feet, 24 feet above flood stage. That’s as high as the levees go and is nearly 3 feet above the previous all-time record of 40.1 feet set in 1897.

Volunteers and national guardsmen are out in force, building levees, rescuing and evacuating those that need to get to higher ground. Cold temperatures are hampering efforts, freezing damp sandbags and making the job that much more strenuous for volunteers. 800 more National Guard troops and 150 Red Cross personnel are arriving in the area this weekend. The cold has slowed the melt and the river rise but milder temperatures especially Sunday will increase the melting of the recent snow in the basin.

Elsie, one of two Stensgard family dogs, sands on the earthen and sandbag dike surrounding the Stensgard home, not pictured, which overlooks a flooded outbuilding as the Red River continues to rise, Wednesday, March 25, 2009 in Fargo, N.D. Due to the flooding, the Stensgard home can only be reached by boat. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster). See larger photo here.See photo Journal here.

Officials patrol the swollen Red River between Morehead, MN and Fargo, ND. See larger photo here.

Upate: As expected another storm is underway Monday with another heavy precipitation event with 6-18 inches of snow. 

See larger image here.