It is December 2010 and time once again to reassess the sun's transition into Solar Cycle 24. What lies ahead just over the horizon? What are Solar Cycles?
The sun goes through a periodic change around every eleven years where the polarity of the sun's magnetic field changes poles. Essentially the sun's magnetic north pole becomes the south pole and vice versa. This is a normal process. As these poles realign and the magnetic field is the weakest, there is an absence of sunspots and this period is referred to as a solar minimum. A solar cycle or SC for short is measured from one solar minimum to the next.
But even though the cycle repeats, the intensity of the solar cycle varies significantly. Scientists have been monitoring sunspots since the 1700's. There observations have shown when the sun gets deafly quiet such as during the Maunder and Spörer Minimums; the world experiences great cold periods.
These periods were so cold they were referred to as the Little Ice Ages. What is different about Solar Cycle 24 and why is it relevant? Since the sun has finally entered solar cycle 24 (SC24) with the resurgence of sunspots, most people have turned away from tracking the strength of the rebound. Had they looked, they would have found that the surge into this next solar cycle so far has been rather weak.
The Average Magnetic Planetary Index (Ap index) is a proxy measurement for the intensity of solar magnetic activity as it alters the geomagnetic field on Earth. It has been referred to as the common yardstick for solar magnetic activity. Ap index measurements began in January 1932. The quieter the sun is magnetically, the smaller the Ap index.
This solar minimum is rather unusual. If we define a period of quiet sun as those months that produced an Ap index of 6 or less and compare the total number of quiet months within each solar minimum, then the results would be: Minimum Preceding Number of Months with Solar Cycle Ap Index of 6 or less
SC17 11 months
SC18 2 months
SC19 2 months
SC20 5 months
SC21 0 months
SC22 0 months
SC23 3 months
SC24 31 months and counting
Last month (November) produced an Ap index of 5. The sun still remains relatively quiet.
The sun provides us with warm sunshine that keeps our planet from becoming an uninhabitable frozen wasteland. The sun's magnetic field also protects our planet from cosmic rays that flood our galaxy. These cosmic rays are responsible for changing earth's climate by changing the degree that the earth is covered with clouds.
So the study of the sun's magnetic field is not an abstract field of research but rather one that has a direct effect on Earth's climate and weather. For the past three years during the winter, many places experienced some of the coldest, snowiest weather in decades at the same time the sun's magnetic field produced these 31 quiet months. This occurred in both the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres. This trend continues into the current winter.
What is the assessment of various solar scientists? There are some scientists that believe the sun, rather than leveling off into a new state in Solar Cycle 24, will continue to free fall throughout this solar cycle. Several scientists including David Hathaway (NASA), William Livingston & Matthew Penn (National Solar Observatory), Khabibullo Abdusamatov (Russian Academy of Science), Cornelis de Jager (The Netherlands) & S. Duhau (Argentina) and Theodor Landscheidt (Germany), have forecasted that the sun may enter a period similar to the Dalton Minimum or a more severe "Grand Minima" (such as the
Maunder Minimum or Sporer Minimum), a decade from now in Solar Cycle 25.
A few scientists including David C. Archibald (Australia) and M. A. Clilverd (Britain) have warned this might even begin in Solar Cycle 24. We are at the transition into Solar Cycle 24 and this cycle has already shown itself to be unusually quiet. I contacted David Archibald and requested an update of his graph that compares Solar Cycles 3-6 with Solar Cycles 22-24. David gladly obliged.
1. The solar minimum leading up to Solar Cycle 24 was the weakest observed in terms of Ap index since measurements first began in January 1932.
2. The sun has definitely undergone a state change.
3. Observationally, solar cycles 3-5, thus far, come very close to matching solar cycles 22-24. This supports the theory that the Earth is transitioning into a Dalton Minimum type event.
4. The winter weather has produced unusual snowfalls and cold weather in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres for approximately four years now (counting this winter in the mix). This is what might be expected if the Earth is sliding into a new Dalton Minimum.
So what might be over the horizon?
I recently compiled an early weather chronology. I had to translate over 200 pages of Old German text in the process. At around 3 pages per day, this was no simple task. This weather chronology is available here. (Icecap Note: an amazing work) Because the pdf file is 6.5 MB, it might take a little time to download. To answer the question about what might be over the horizon in regards to weather, review the chronology for the years 1798-1823, the approximate timeframe of SC5 & SC6 - the Dalton Minimum. Read post here.
Icecap Note: SIX days this month have been spotless days bringing the total for this transition to 819 days, most in 100 years. The monthly sunspot number now two years after the minimum in December 2008 has failed to reach 30, and the solar flux has not yet reached 90 sfus. To give you a perspective, the last maximum in 2000 peaked at a sunspot number of 120, down 20% from the prior cycle and the monthly flux maximum was near 200. Usually the max occurs 3 to 4 years after the minimum. But the amazing story is the Ap index as James showed - it has been ‘0’ the last two days. More after the first of the year.
Meanwhile follow the daily summary here, the monthly progression here and see more here.
See also Eric Werme’s post in the Concord Monitor here. Anthony Watts summarizes the current solar state including an Ap Index of 0 the last two days here. See table here.
A paper presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting this week finds that Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic experienced a “dramatic” Medieval Warming Period from 800-1200 AD with temperatures 2 to 3 degrees C higher than the mean temperature of the past 100 years. Ellesmere Island was also in the news this week due to a discovery of a mummified forest where “no trees now grow” due to its “current frigid state.”
A 5,000 year alkenone-based temperature record from Lower Murray Lake reveals a distinct Medieval Warm Period in the Canadian High Arctic
D’Andrea, W. J.; Bradley, R. S., American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #PP43C-10
Lake-based paleotemperature reconstructions are of particular importance in the Arctic, where other useful archives (e.g., tree rings, speleothems) for developing dense networks of quantitative climate records are absent or limited. Lacustrine alkenone paleothermometry offers a new avenue for investigating the evolution and variability of Arctic temperatures during the Holocene. We have generated a ~5,000 year long, decadally-resolved record of summer water temperature from the annually-laminated sediments of Lower Murray Lake on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic. The varved sediments of Lower Murray Lake allowed high-resolution sampling and excellent chronologic control of the sedimentary record. We calibrated the alkenone paleothermometer for Lower Murray Lake using previously published data as well as new data from lakes in Norway and Svalbard, providing a quantitative record of temperature variability for the past 5,000 years. The previously published mass accumulation rate from Lower Murray Lake has been interpreted as a paleotemperature record and provides complimentary information to the new alkenone record. Melt percentage measurements from the nearby Agassiz Ice Cap provide another independent summer temperature reconstruction for comparison. Most strikingly, the alkenone record reveals warm lake water temperatures beginning ~800 AD and persisting until ~1200 AD, with temperatures up to 2-3 deg C warmer than the mean temperature for the past 100 years. This dramatic medieval warm period on Ellesmere Island interrupted a distinct (neoglacial) cooling trend that had begun approximately 2000 years earlier. Furthermore, the three warmest intervals seen in the alkenone record during the past 5,000 years correspond to the periods during which the area was occupied by Paleo-Eskimo groups, providing evidence that local climate conditions played a significant role in determining migration patterns of people of the Arctic Small Tools tradition.
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Mummified forest provides climate change clues By Alicia Chang, AP Science Writer
AP Dec 16, 2010: “On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic where no trees now grow, a newly unearthed mummified forest is giving researchers a peek into how plants reacted to ancient climate change.
That knowledge will be key as scientists begin to tease out the impacts of global warming in the Arctic.
The ancient forest found on Ellesmere Island, which lies north of the Arctic Circle in Canada, contained dried out birch, larch, spruce and pine trees. Research scientist Joel Barker of Ohio State University discovered it by chance while camping in 2009.
“At one point I crested a small ridge and the cliff face below me was just riddled with wood,” he recalled.
Armed with a research grant, Barker returned this past summer to explore the site, which was buried by an avalanche 2 million to 8 million years ago. Melting snow recently exposed the preserved remains of tree trunks, leaves and needles.
About a dozen such frozen forests exist in the Canadian Arctic, but the newest site is farthest north.
The forest existed during a time when the Arctic climate shifted from being warmer than it is today to its current frigid state. Judging by the lack of diverse wood species and the trees’ small leaves, the team suspected that plants at the site struggled to survive the rapid change from deciduous forest to evergreen.
“This community was just hanging on,” said Barker, who presented his findings Thursday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
The next step is to examine tree rings to better understand how past climate conditions stressed plant life and how the Arctic tundra ecosystem will respond to global warming.
Since 1970, temperatures have climbed more than 4.5 degrees in much of the Arctic, much faster than the global average.”
Note: the alarmist claim in the last sentence above from James Hansen/GISS is based upon extrapolated temperatures from sites up to 1000 miles south and is contradicted by data from the Danish Meteorology Institute, which has direct measurements from multiple sites in the high Arctic:
Science Daily 1999 - as posted on Real Science by Steve Goddard
Northern Climes, Buffeted By Stronger Winds, 7 To 10F Hotter
A team of scientists from Columbia University has shown that warm winters in the northern hemisphere likely can be explained by the action of upper-atmosphere winds that are closely linked to global warming.
Global mean surface temperatures have increased in the range of 0.6 to 1.2F since the late 19th century. But far more severe warming has taken place over wide regions of northern Eurasia, Canada and Alaska, with temperatures averaging 7 to 10F warmer in the last 35 years, according to data previously compiled by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.
The research, which appears in the June 3, 1999 issue of the British journal Nature, offers no predictions on what temperatures future winters will bring, but suggests a continuation of the current trend for three to four more decades.
If warming trends continue, said Drew Shindell, associate research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research and lead author of the report, northern regions of Europe and Asia and, to a lesser extent, North America, can expect winters that are both warmer and wetter, with increased rain and snow.
“Based on this research, it’s quite likely that the warmer winters over the continents are indeed a result of the increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Dr. Shindell said. “This research offers both a plausible physical mechanism for how this takes place, and reproduces the observed trends both qualitatively and even quantitatively.”
Other authors of the Nature paper were Gavin A. Schmidt, associate research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research; Ron L. Miller, associate research scientist in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia, and Lionel Pandolfo, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Drs. Shindell, Schmidt and Miller also maintain an affiliation with the NASA Goddard Institute.
The physical mechanism the authors suggest is a redistribution of heat closely related to recent changes in atmospheric wind patterns, an indirect consequence of greenhouse warming. Greenhouse gases trap heat at the Earth’s surface, while cooling the stratosphere, a region of the atmosphere that extends from about seven to about 30 miles above the planet’s surface. This cooling has increased the speed of the stratospheric jet stream and has strengthened a lower atmosphere vortex of west-to-east, counterclockwise winds that naturally forms over the polar region each winter.
During the winter, the ocean retains heat better than the land. So when the dominant west-to-east winds increase, they carry warmer air from the oceans to the continents, and colder continental air to the oceans. In North America, the Rockies intercept the warmer winds, so the effect is stronger west of the mountains and is mitigated in central and eastern portions.
The Columbia team used several versions of the NASA Goddard Institute’s general circulation model, a computer construct that predicts the Earth’s climate when certain inputs are varied. Model simulations suggest that much of the increase in surface winds and in continental surface temperatures during the winter months is induced by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In the model, increasing greenhouse gas emissions lead to a warmer surface and, at the same time, a colder stratosphere. The large wintertime continental temperature increases produced in the model correspond quite well with what scientists actually observe. But when the researchers used a version of the climate model that did not adequately represent the stratosphere, the results did not jibe as well with reality.
Colder polar temperatures in winter, and warmer temperatures in the middle latitudes, are actually part of a natural cycle of climate variability, which made the warming trend more difficult for the scientists to isolate. The temperature differences are reflected in sea-level pressure, which decreases in the Arctic region and increases at the middle latitudes; this cycle is called the Arctic Oscillation and is second only to El Niño in its effects on global weather. In the NASA Goddard Institute simulations, increasing greenhouse gases caused a preference for one phase of this cycle over another, with stronger west-to-east surface winds at the Northern Hemisphere middle latitudes, leading to the increased surface temperatures over land.
“Despite appearing as part of a natural climate oscillation, the large increases in wintertime surface temperatures over the continents may therefore be attributable in large part to human activities,” Dr. Shindell said. “The impact of greenhouse gases on climate through surface wind changes may be as large as, or in some areas larger than, the more direct impact of global warming.”
The research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Now alarmists claim that cold winters are caused by the greenhouse effect. The mark of a truly dishonest religion. See Steve’s post here. H/T Marc Morano.
Also see on Watts Up with That here how Climate Central Climate Central confuses weather and climate in spinning the extremes of the last year as very likely the result of greenhouse gas induced climate disruption. Anthony and responders show how these are weather extremes that are not unprecedented and can be explain usually by natural variability.
Millions of people hoping to make an early getaway faced travel misery as the big freeze brought renewed chaos.
All planes were grounded at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports.
Forecasters warned that Britain was heading for the coldest December on record, with a current average temperature of minus 0.7C - five degrees C (9F) below the long-term average.
Blizzards and plummeting temperatures on Friday night, coupled with heavy snow on Saturday, crippled a huge section of the nation’s road, air and rail networks, with little sign of the situation improving.
The North West of England was hit with deluges of up to 10in of snow causing widespread disruption and accidents on major roads and motorways. Hundreds of motorists found themselves stranded on the M6 in Manchester.
Parts of the south were also blanketed by snow overnight, with fresh falls predicted to dump as much as a foot of snow on parts the South East and the Midlands.
Temperatures dropped as low as minus 13C in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, overnight with thermometers at Gatwick falling to minus 11C. Forecasters say temperatures will struggle to rise above freezing over the course of the day.
Mark Seltzer, a forecaster for the Met Office, said widespread snow would cause treacherous travel conditions. “A lot of snow has fallen across the North West of England overnight but it should ease off during the day,” he said. “A lot of snow also fell in the South West overnight and it will progressively move into the South East and parts of the Midlands and East Anglia throughout the day. “There could be local accumulations of 20-25cm. Temperatures will struggle to get over freezing and although the snow should ease off tonight, it will return to eastern areas on Sunday.”
This weekend had been expected to be the busiest for retailers and commuters in the run-up to Christmas Day, but many people were struggling to leave home in the face of the weather.
Heathrow closed its runways after failing to keep them clear of ice and snow. Earlier thousands of passengers had found themselves trapped on-board their planes on the Tarmac as the airport ran out of parking spaces. Long delays were caused as every plane had to be de-iced before take-off, meaning that there were not enough stands for incoming aircraft and leaving thousands of passengers waiting for up to four hours.
Meanwhile there were claims of “chaos” inside terminals as travellers whose flights were cancelled were told to go home and file lost baggage reports rather than wait for their luggage to be returned from planes. The disruption came during one of the busiest times for the airport, when it handles more than 200,000 passengers a day. British Airways grounded all its flights out of Heathrow until at least 5pm on Saturday. Shortly after both the airport’s runways were closed until 4pm to allow them to be cleared of snow snow clearing.
35,000 Deaths Feared in New Arctic Blizzards By Sarah Westcott, Daily Express
DEATH rates are set to soar “scandalously” this winter as a new Arctic blast batters Britain with temperatures on a par with Siberia.
Experts predict a dramatic increase in cold-related fatalities as we suffer the bitterest winter in a century, causing 12 deaths every hour. Britons face spiralling energy bills while the death toll this winter could reach 35,000.
There are also fears some mail may not reach its destination by Christmas Day because of the freeze. Forecasters said temperatures could plummet to record lows in the run-up to Christmas, putting tens of thousands of vulnerable people at risk.
Charities warned of pensioners suffering “Dickensian” conditions, resorting to riding on buses or huddling in shopping centres just to keep warm. Millions of Britons are being forced to turn down their thermostats as gas and electricity prices spiral.
Jonathan Powell, senior forecaster with Positive Weather Solutions, said icy conditions were on the way back by the middle of next week after a brief weekend thaw. He said plummeting temperatures could even surpass the -27.2C (-17F) recorded in Braemar in 1982 - the coldest temperature in Britain.
Studies show a drop in temperature of just one degree is followed by 200 heart attacks. People aged between 75 and 84 and those with a history of heart disease appear to be most vulnerable. Last year the number of deaths linked to the cold weather reached nearly 28,000 in four months, sparking claims that the UK has the highest winter death rate in northern Europe.
Neil Duncan-Jordan, of the National Pensioners Convention, said: “Rising bills and severe weather are going to put tremendous pressure on older people and we believe last year’s death rate of nine pensioners an hour could go up to 12 every single hour. “It is a scandal that winter deaths are on the increase.”
Jonathan Powell said the prolonged cold snap would leave Britain “the coldest country in the northern hemisphere” and “on a par with Siberia”. Read much more here.
Now that the AO has gone negative this month so far, I check the -AOs below -1 since 1950 and plotted the temperature anomoly for each year. Here is what I found.
