Sunspots - Prediction of New "Dalton Minimum"

Global COOLING Anyone?

Nearly TWO YEARS ago (January 2009 and December 2009 [nearly FIVE years ago now]) I predicted that the now current Sunspot Cycle #24 would peak at 80. I am now revising that down to a peak of only 60, based on a great posting by David Archibald at Watts Up With That, the most widely read and respected climate website in the world.

We may be in for a new Dalton Minimum similar to the period from 1790 to 1830 when temperatures were unusually low. Indeed, we may come to welcome the cushion of warmth, perhaps 0.1 to 0.2ºC, that may be due to recent human activities. (The IPCC Climate "Team" claims 0.6 to 0.8ºC rise mostly due to human-caused Global Warming, but that is most likely an over-estimate.)

As the graphic shows, at the time I made the 80 prediction, NASA was predicting a peak of 104, having revised it downwards a couple of times from their original, wildly high estimate of a 156 peak. The most recent NASA projection is 90.

Description of the Graphic

[Click graphic for larger version] The base for the graphic is from Archibald's posting (Figure 9). The BROWN curve plots actual data from Solar Cycles #3, #4, #5, and #6 (late 1700's through early 1800's). The GREEN curve plots the corresponding actual data for Solar Cycles #22, #23, and the first part of #24, (1990 through December 2010)

I have added the annotations in RED and GRAY, indicating NASA's incredible string of highly incorrect predictions from 2006 to most recent (red hoops) and my original January 2009 prediction and my revised prediction (gray hoops).

Historical Correlation of the Dalton and Maunder Minima with Sunspot Activity

The very cold temperatures from 1790 through 1830 are usually explained as being due to increased volcanic activity, including the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815 that caused the Year Without a Summer, 1816. However, low solar activity, with peak Sunspot counts of only 45 for Sunspot Cycles #5 and #6, is most likely the major cause. Even lower Sunspot counts (below 10) occurred during the earlier Maunder Minimum (1650 to 1700). These periods of Global Cooling were marked by crop failures that are inimicable to human life.

Explanation of the Effect of Sunspot Counts on Climate

The NY Times interviewed Henrik Svensmark last year about his theory of Sunspots and Climate:

One possibility proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and other scientists at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen looks to high-energy interstellar particles known as cosmic rays. When cosmic rays slam into the atmosphere, they break apart air molecules into ions and electrons, which causes water and sulfuric acid in the air to stick together in tiny droplets. These droplets are seeds that can grow into clouds, and clouds reflect sunlight, potentially lowering temperatures.

The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.

But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.

“I think it’s an important effect,” Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.

Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years.

Conclusion

Before we destroy industrial economies with extreme measures to reduce carbon emissions, it will be a good idea to consider how that might not only not be effective in reducing human-caused Global Warming, but how a bit of carbon-warming could be welcome during the coming period of Global Cooling. By the way, I am still in favor of an across-the-board Carbon Tax because the steady rise in CO2 levels is unprecedented and that is the most intelligent way to utilize our market-based economic system to speed the development of renewable energy sources. However, that effort has a multi-decade time horizon and is no emergency.

Ira Glickstein

Sunspots Coming 'Round the Mountain When They Come?

The best experts at NASA have been predicting the imminent ramp-up of Sunspot cycle #24 since 2006. Well, here it is almost 2010, over three years later, and there has been a bit of an upsurge in Sunspot activity. At long last, it appears a Sunspot ramp-up may be coming 'round the mountain* pretty soon - but they won't be drivin' six white horses when they come!

The base figure above is from NASA/NOAA and shows their latest prediction (May 2009) which is the lowest and latest of the four red hoops. You can see that the actual Sunspot observations (black jig-jags with blue smoothing) do not quite match up with NASA's latest prediction. They also fall far short of the previous predictions which I have annotated into the figure as the three higher red hoops. [Click on image for larger version.]

Climategate - Cooking the Books on Global Warming

WHISTLEBLOWER'S REVENGE

If documents from any corporation or government office included the phrases "hide the decline" or "Mike's Nature trick" or asked colleagues to destroy certain emails ahead of a freedom of information request, the media would be all over it. Wouldn't they?

If the whistleblower released computer programs with programmer's notes that said:

shouldn't usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted

stop in 1940 to avoid the decline

There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations

What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah - there is no 'supposed', I can make it up. So I have :-)

Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!

that would be absolute proof the data was invalid. Wouldn't it?

Well, all this, and much more, has happened over the past two weeks, but, so far, the media is treading softly.

WHY?

Because the alleged malfactors are the very scientists who gave us the Global Warming scare. They "cooked the books" to push Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) - the idea that humans are mostly responsible for recent warming and the idea the Earth is close to a "tipping point". AGW is a sacred cow to politicos who have long planned to ride to riches and control of the global economic system.

Well, that old AGW sacred cow ain't going nowhere anytime soon.


WELCOME TO CLIMATEGATE

Today I Googled "climategate" and got 10,600,000 hits, a Google on "global warming" yielded fewer, 10,200,000 hits. The new term was invented only a week ago!

In my March 2009 postings on the Global Warming "Tiger" (see figure above) I allocated 30% of the apparent warming over the past 150 years to "Data Bias", defined as unintentional exaggeration of the amount of waming, primarily due to the encroachment of artificial heat sources on the measurement devices. I assumed the AGW scientists were basically honest, but unintended experimental bias had marred their results by about 30%.

Well, a couple weeks ago, thousands of emails and computer programs were released, possibly by an inside whistleblower from the major UK Climate Research Unit (CRU). Accuweather quotes Eduardo Zorita, a contributing author of the 4th assessment report of the IPCC: "research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files."

Just as Madoff got into trouble when the declining stock market caught him short and exposed his Ponzi scheme, the AGW climate scientists have been caught short by the unexpected stabilzation and small decline in global temperatures, probably due to changes in sunspot activity and other natural cycles that are undoubtedly the major cause of long-term climate changes.

WHY IT IS ABSURD TO ESTIMATE CLIMATE CHANGE TO TENTHS OF A DEGREE PER DECADE

The whole idea of accurately estimating changes that average a tenth of a degree per decade in global climate over centuries is absurd because, as we all know, temperature varies by tens of degrees every day!

We have recorded temperature readings that go back about 150 years, most manually read by volunteers or weather station employees who had to trudge 30 to 100 feet or more out to remote thermometers morning and night in all sorts of weather. If they were five (or fifteen) minutes early or late, the data would easily be off by tenths of a degree or more. If a new person took the job, he or she might follow a different schedule. With the advent of automatic reading, over the past few decades, the devices required electrical power and that caused many of them to be moved closer to buildings, where artificial heat sources biased the readings. Over the years, as hot air conditioner vents were added to buildings and asphalt driveways expanded, many thermometers were further biased by new heat sources. All this added to the experimental bias.

Data prior to about 150 years ago must be obtained from proxies, such as tree-ring data that give an indication of temperature on the basis of the rate of growth. However, variables other than temperature affect tree growth, such as rainfall and atmospheric CO2. Such data cannot approach accuracies of even one degree, much less precision to tenths of a degree.

Recognizing the possibility of bias and lack of precision, the experimenters wrote computer programs to process the data to adjust these biases. Of course, that opened the possibility some scientists would exploit the processing to hide inconvenient temperature declines and exaggerate AGW. It is clear from the emails and computer programs that have been released that some scientists took that opportunity to adjust the data to fit the story they wanted to tell. They believed that Global Warming was mostly due to human activity. They manipulated the data to tell that story!

You will hear much about Climategate in the main stream media soon.

Ira Glickstein

PS: Let me be clear, I believe there has been actual warming over the past 150 years, and some percentage of it is due to human burning of previously sequestered carbon (coal, oil, natural gas). I favor reasonable action, including a revenue-neutral Carbon Tax, to reduce the rapid rate of increase of atmospheric carbon gases.

Arctic NOT Ice-Free till 2060 at the Earliest!

According to the UK Met Office the Arctic will NOT be ice-free by the summer of 2020 as many climate "experts" continue to predict. Nope, it will be at least 2060 before that happens. Mark it on your calendars!

Also mark my prediction that "pigs will fly" in 2060, and "hell will freeze over" in the same year :^) Seriously, I have made predictions for 2052 and beyond in my free online novel. The beauty of making predictions fifty years in the future is that most of us will be dead by then and those who are alive will have forgotten.

Good news for the polar bears! Not so good for the shipping companies that planned trans-Arctic routes for transporting oil. Or for Global Warming alarmists.

The full text of the UK Met Office October 15th release is here. Key excerpts (with emphasis added):

"Modelling of Arctic sea ice by the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model shows that ice invariably recovers from extreme events, and that the long-term trend of reduction is robust — with the first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080. It is unlikely that the Arctic will experience ice-free summers by 2020.

"Analysis of the 2007 summer sea-ice minimum has subsequently shown that this was due, in part, to unusual weather patterns. ..."

"The high variability has made it difficult to attribute the observed trend to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, ...

"About half of the climate models involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report, show that ice declines in steps — failing to recover from extreme years. The observed temporary recovery from the 2007 minimum in 2008 and 2009 indicates that the Arctic ice has not yet reached a tipping point, if such exists."

In other words, the low point for Arctic ice in 2007 was mostly due to Natural Cycles in the ocean currents and solar phenomena, and not Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) due to human release of formerly sequestered carbon. About half of the most recent IPCC climate models are wrong about Arctic ice. We are nowhere near any kind of tipping point.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still concerned about the continuing rapid increase in atmospheric CO2. However, we have decades to figure out how to deal with it most effectively without further wrecking our economies via the Cap and Trade scam. I hope the coming decades of stable temperatures, and perhaps a bit of Global Cooling, will allow cooler heads to prevail and chose something like a revenue-neutral Carbon Tax. That kind of Carbon Tax would require minimum government enforcement and political chicanery. It would be hard to cheat on. Most importantly, it would actually work to reduce carbon emissions over time, harnessing market forces to do so.

Ira Glickstein

BBC NEWS: What Happened to Global Warming?

OK, if you don't trust me on Global Warming, how about the good old BBC NEWS? (09 Oct 2009).

**********************************

"What happened to global warming?

"By Paul Hudson
"Climate correspondent, BBC News

"This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

"But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

"And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

"... last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years. Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers. But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself. ...

"One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up."

**********************************************************************************************

I've been on this case for quite a while. See my postings that go back over a year.

Ira Glickstein

The Sunspots are Coming! The Sunspots are Coming?

This colorful image is not an aboriginal prayer rug, but plenty of folks at NASA are "praying" it is evidence long-delayed Solar Cycle #24 has started or is about to start. As I reported last month in An "Inconvenient" Minimum and back in January in Where Have All the Sunspots Gone?, NASA previously predicted SC#24 would start late 2006 or early 2007. It is at least two years late.

No one can tell if the old cycle has ended until the new cycle has built up some steam over about a six month period. Well, the above Sunspot Prayer Rug may provide new evidence they may be able to declare SC#24 actually started last December or January.

DESCRIPTION OF FIGURE

The vertical axis is latitudes on the Sun, with the Sun's equator at the middle. The horizontal axis is years, from mid-1994 to the present. The red-yellow bands represent solar jet streams, thousands of miles below the surface of the Sun.

The vertical blue line at the left indicates when SC#22 ended and SC#23 started. Note that the start of a solar cycle is marked by a jet stream that initiates at about 45º North and South latitudes and spreads up and down as the years go by. SC#23 began in 1997 when the jet stream from SC#22 got down to what they call the "critical latitude" of 22º. NASA is excited that the jet stream from SC#23 is now down to about that critical latitude! That, they say, could (finally) mark the start of (long-awaited) SC#24.

DISCUSSION

Well, they could be correct - or not. The black contours on the Sunspot Prayer Rug represent sunspot activity. Note that the black contours representing SC#22 end in 1997. Nearly simultaneously, new black contours representing SC#23 sunspots begin in the mid-latitudes.

A possible problem with the NASA interpretation is that the SC#23 sunspots end in mid-2008, but the SC#24 sunspots have not cranked up yet, a year later. This is very different from the transition between SC#22 and SC#24 when the new cycle started in earnest immediately after the old cycle ended. Why is this transition so different from the previous one? Could the year-long sunspot pause indicate a more fundamental change in the Sun's internal, natural cycle behavior? Perhaps the idea that a new cycle will begin when the jet stream gets to 22º latitude does not apply in the current and very different situation?

HOW YOU CAN HELP NASA

A few weeks ago, I added a new feature to this Blog where you can watch the day-to-day development of the next sunspot cycle. Have a look in the right-hand column, just below the Dilbert comic for a NASA-supplied image of the Sun. That image will change daily and allow you to help NASA look for sunspots.

WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT SUNSPOTS?

As described in a previous posting on this Blog, there is an historical connection between periods of low sunspot activity and cooling trends. If the start of SC#24 is further delayed, it is likely it will peak later and at a lower level than originally expected. If we are lucky enough to get a series of weak sunspot cycles, that may provide decades of cooling that may counteract the estimated 0.5ºC actual warming our Earth has experienced over the past 150 years.

Although CO2 levels continue to increase at a rapid pace, it appears the Global Warming trend has abated, or perhaps reversed a bit, over the past ten years. A bit of Global Cooling will give us breathing room to correct our excessive release of previously-sequestered carbon (coal, oil, gas) into the atmosphere. Right now, the politicos are hell-bent on imposing the Cap & Trade Scam that will further destroy our economy and not reduce Global Warming very much. Let's hope they will reject that approach and work on something more conservative that will actually work, such as the Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax .

Ira Glickstein

Global Warming Tiger - Natural Cycles

This is the third of the series Global Warming - Tale of the Tiger.

Read the first posting in this series: Tale and a description of the figure to the left. I believe the apparent 0.8ºC increase in Global Temperature over the past 150 years is due to three major causes and one minor one, as indicated by the parts of the "tiger". (The second posting details Data Bias.)

NATURAL CYCLES
This posting is about NATURAL CYCLES that I estimate are responsible for about 40% of the apparent warming. In other words, 0.3ºC to 0.4ºC of the apparent 0.8ºC temperature increase is due to natural cycles not under human control.

You are familiar with three of the natural cycles that affect the energy input and heat balance of the Earth: 1) diurnal - the daily rotation of the Earth, 2) seasons - Earth's yearly orbit around the Sun, and 3) sunspots - 9 to 13-year magnetic cycles on the Sun. Sunrise to afternoon temperatures vary by 10ºC or more and seasonal temperatures by 40ºC or more.

However, these cycles have no long-term effect on surface temperatures. They are not the cause of Global Warming. However, when scientists are trying to detect long-term temperature variations of fractions of a degree, multi-degree daily and yearly variations complicate the task.

Individual sunspot cycles are not long enough to have significant effects on global temperatures. However, when a multi-decadal series of especially short-strong cycles, or long-weak cycles occur, there are significant effects, see (7) below.

Three more natural variations are called Milankovitch cycles: 3) eccentricity of Earth orbit around the Sun, 4) axial tilt, and 5) precession. These changes do not increase or decrease the total amount of solar radiation falling on the Earth. However, they change the relative distribution between the polar and equatorial regions. It turns out that the more energy that falls on the polar regions, the more the Earth warms, and vice-versa. These cycles run from 19,000 to 400,000 years and they are the most likely cause of the approximate 100,000 year glaciation cycles seen in the ice core records. Over the past 20 thousand years or so, according to ice core data, the Earth has warmed by over 10ºC. During most of that time, human activity had no effect on global temperatures. The Milankovitch cycles may have contributed 0.1ºC or more to the 0.8ºC apparent Global Warming over the past 150 years.

Another set of cycles of interest are: 6) multi-decadal oscillations of the oceans, including the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (20-30 years), Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (15-20 years) PDO and IDO, El Nino-Southern Oscillation (3-8 years) ENSO, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (70 years) AMO, and others. These cycles are associated with temperature variations of 1ºC or more, and they may have contributed 0.1ºC or more to the 0.8ºC apparent Global Warming over the past 150 years.

The last cycle of interest is: 7) multi-decadal magnetic activity variations on the Sun. As I noted above, individual sunspot cycles, per se, are not associated with significant global temperature variations. However, a series of especially short and strong cycles may be associated with multi-decadal warming trends. Conversely, a series of especially long and weak cycles may be associated with multi-decadal cooling trends. See Solar variation for an excellent discusion.


CORRELATION OF TEMPERATURE WITH SUNSPOT NUMBER TRENDS


The figure (from Solar variation, with annotations in green and pink by Ira) compares global temperature with CO2 and Sunspot Number. [Click the diagram for a larger version.]


The upper dark red curve shows how temperatures have increased by an apparent 0.8ºC over the past 150 years. Note that there was a dip around 1860, another around 1910, and a third around 1950. A small, relatively short rise followed the 1860 dip, a larger, longer rise followed the 1910 dip, and the 1950 dip was followed by a very long and strong rise. That last rise has triggered current Global Warming fears.

The middle blue curve shows how CO2 has increased steadily since 1850, with a particularly rapid rise from 1960 to the present. (The reason the blue curve gets brush-like after 1960 is better measurement equipment that captured seasonal variations.) The correlation between CO2 rise and temperature rise has lent credence to the theory that rising CO2 levels are the main cause of Global Warming.

The lower yellow curve shows sunspot number variations. The thin line shows the individual 9 to 13-year sunspot cycles and the thicker line is the multi-cycle average.

My annotation shows, in green, the sunsport cycles that peaked below 80 sunspots/day. Note the correlation between those low cycles and the dips in global temperature experienced about a decade later. Annotations in pink indicate the sunspot cycles that peaked above 110 sunspots/day. Note that the peaks are correlated with those more active sunspot cycles.

In particular, note that six of the last seven sunspot cycles have peaked above 110 and that correllates with the global temperature rise from 1950 to 2000. However, since 1999 there has been a stabilization of global temperatures and, since 2005, a dip of nearly 0.2ºC in the non-smoothed data. That dip is NOT correlated with any dip in CO2 level rise - indeed CO2 levels are rising faster than ever.

Therefore, it is plausable that CO2 levels, while significant, are NOT the primary cause of Global Warming.

So, what is the main cause? Well, look at the thick yellow smoothed sunspot curve. It has been on the downswing for the past decade! The latest averages are below 80!

Couple that with the two-year (and counting) delay in the expected start of sunspot cycle #24. In 2006, NASA experts predicted cycle #24 would start at the end of 2006 or early 2007 and that it would be a doozy, peaking over 150! But, here at mid-2009 #23 has probably not ended yet nor has #24 started. So, NASA's latest prediction is that #24 will be be a weak kitten, peaking at 90. (I predicted, back in January that it would peak even lower, at 80. Also see an "Inconvenient" Minimum.)

CONCLUSIONS

Sunspot activity is better correlated with global temperature than CO2 levels. It is probably responsible for about 40% of the apparent Global Warming we have experienced over the past 150 years and over 0.3ºC of the actual warming. If the coming sunspot cycle is further delayed and if it is as weak as expected, that could stabilize global temperatures for a decade or more and give us breathing room to control CO2 levels in a conservative way.

Ira Glickstein

Sunspots Gone? An "Inconvenient" Minimum!

[Click on graphic for larger view] Back on January 8th, I posted Where have all the sunspots gone? where I predicted the next solar cycle would peak at a sunspot number of 80 near the end of 2013 or the start of 2014. The experts at NASA had predicted, back in 2006, that the peak would be over 156. By January 2009 they had lowered their prediction to 104. Well, yesterday, NOAA (part of NASA) has a new prediction that is down to 90. Anyone see a pattern here?

We will see if my amateur predictions fare better than those of the best experts our tax money can support!

The above graphic shows how NASA has dropped their predicted sunspot peak number levels from 156+ down to 90, and their predicted peak year has slipped from as early as 2010 to as late as 2013. (A typical government project slips schedule, but the cost usually goes up, not down! It has been said "If the government was in charge of the Sahara desert, in six years there would be a shortage of sand. Well, now there is a shortage of sunspots - but that is a good thing, read on! :^).

I think it is worthwhile to repeat some of the NASA hype back in 2006 when they made their original predictions that have turned out to be so bad: (from: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm March 10, 2006)

"It's official: Solar minimum [end of Cycle #23] has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet. Like the quiet before a storm.

"This week researchers announced that a storm is coming [start of Cycle #24] --the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). 'The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one,' she says. ..."

Well, here we are almost at the middle of 2009 and, despite the hype above about the "official" solar minimum having been declared in March 2006, it may not yet have arrived. Indeed, according to http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/index.html (NOAA SWPC - Space Weather Prediction Center, 08 May 2009):

"Minimum will now occur no earlier than August, 2008. For every month beyond March 2008 that minimum slips, it is necessary to shift the prediction curves by the same amount. SWPC commenced doing so in mid-February and will continue to do so, unless or until the prediction panel sets a new predicted date for the time of solar minimum. ..."

THIS IS ALL GOOD NEWS. This solar minimum will be mighty "Inconvenient" (to borrow from our former Vice President) to the Global Warming alarmists. But it is good news for those of us who have been a bit skeptical about our being close to any kind of "tipping point" with respect to Global Warming.

Don't get me wrong, I am still concerned about the rapidly rising levels of CO2, and as I've written here on the Blog many times, I (along with James Hansen the #1 NASA alarmist, but also a wide assortment of pundits and politicos from the right and left) favor a punitive Carbon Tax on all previously sequestered carbon (coal, oil, gas) as a sane alternative to the Cap & Trade scam currently being pushed through Congress.

Reduced sunspot number is historically associated with cooling periods. See the diagram from Wikipedia, on how sunspot activity has varied since the year 1600. According to NASA the period from about 1645 to 1715, called "Maunder Minimum" or "the Little Ice Age", corresponded to a time of little sunspot activity. The "Dalton Minimum" in the early 1800's was a shorter and smaller drop in solar activity. These periods saw considerable Global Cooling.

The period since 1940 has seen relatively higher solar activity that corresponds to the observed Global Warming. I do not expect to see a great deal of cooling in the coming decades, but, if we are in an "Inconvenient" minimum, that will give us the breathing room to implement some conservative actions to control CO2 emissions in a way that will not further wreck the world's economy.

Ira Glickstein

Where have all the sunspots gone? NA-SA search-ing,
Where have all the sunspots go-ne? NASA don't know.
Where have all the sunspots gone? Global Cooling, anyone?
Will NASA ever learn? Will NA-SA ev-er learn?

Where has all the carbon gone? Green-house gas-es,
Where has all the carbon go-ne? Come down as snow!
Where has all the carbon gone? Heating houses, everyone,
Will NASA ever learn? Will NA-SA ev-er learn?

Where has Global Warming gone? Point not tip-ping,
Where has Global Warming go-ne? Its gonna slow.
Where has Global Warming gone? Normal seasons of the Sun,
Will NASA ever learn? Will NA-SA ev-er learn?


As Yogi Berra famously observed, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

Florida Innundated by Global Warming Flooding

These photos are real and not photoshopped. They were taken last week as I paddled the Withlacoochie River not far from Nobleton, FL.

It seems the worst fears of this 2001 NRDC Report FEELING THE HEAT IN FLORIDA - Global Warming on the Local Level have come true!

Or, maybe not - I'm more than sure this roadsign was dropped into the river as a practical joke by some central Florida rednecks, or, perhaps it was washed into the river by a storm. (Thanks Tad for the photos.)

The water was actually a bit low in this part of the Withlacoochie and we had to change the plan from a one-way paddle to an out-and-back. At one point I got hung up on a sand drift and had to push my way out and at another on a submerged log and had to rock out.

But, it all makes for a nice story, doesn't it? Like Global Warming.

Oh, and has anybody seen any sunspots lately?

Ira Glickstein

NASA Predictions: Where have all the sunspots gone?

Also see the Updated version of the sunspot minimum

With thanks to http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/13/where-have-all-the-sunspots-gone/ and appologies to Pete Seeger:

Where have all the sunspots gone? NA-SA search-ing,
Where have all the sunspots go-ne? NASA don't know.
Where have all the sunspots gone? Global Cooling, anyone?
Will NASA ever learn? Will NA-SA ev-er learn?

Where has all the carbon gone? Green-house gas-es,
Where has all the carbon go-ne? Come down as snow!
Where has all the carbon gone? Heating houses, everyone,
Will NASA ever learn? Will NA-SA ev-er learn?

Where has Global Warming gone? Point not tip-ping,
Where has Global Warming go-ne? Its gonna slow.
Where has Global Warming gone? Normal seasons of the Sun,
Will NASA ever learn? Will NA-SA ev-er learn?

As Yogi Berra famously observed, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

NASA CHANGES PREDICTIONS, THEN CHANGES THEM AGAIN

When NASA scientists make predictions about the long-term future (six to twelve years) you don't expect them to make drastic changes in only a few months. Yet, they just have!

Back a few months ago (October 2008, see left side in photo above) NASA predicted that the upcoming sunspot cycle would peak at a higher level than the previous cycle which recently ended. The previous cycle peaked at around 120 in the year 2000. NASA predicted the upcoming cycle would peak at around 137 early in the year 2012, an increase of about 15% over the past cycle.

As the diagram above indicates, NASA smoothes short-term jagged excursions in sunspot counts and plots the yearly average as a smoothed bold curve. They also provide a range of about plus and minus 20% as indicated by the smooth curves above and below the average. All predictions refer to the smoothed averages.

This month (January 2009, see right side in photo above) NASA revised their prediction and now say the upcoming cycle will peak at a level some 30% below their prediction of only three months ago! They say it will peak at about 104 late in the year 2012, a decrease of about 15% below the past cycle. That is a grand total of 30% below their prediction of only three month ago!

If we go back a few years ago, to 2006, they were predicting a peak of 145 for the coming cycle, so the latest prediction is more than 40% lower than their original one. OY!

WHY THE CHANGE IN NASA PREDICTIONS?

Back in 2006 NASA predicted the previous cycle was ending and the next would begin in late 2006 or early 2007.

Well, here it is 2009 and the next cycle has not begun!

That delay is the reason for the change in predictions. The next sunspot cycle was expected one or two years ago but has yet to materialize.

This is our US Government taxpayer money at work!

IRA'S PREDICTIONS

I am no weather or climate expert, but I think I can do better than NASA. My prediction, shown in the annotations above, is that the upcoming cycle will peak at about 80 in the year 2013 or perhaps even 2014.

Note that my prediction is that the peak will be reached a year or more later and will be near or below the lowest edge of the NASA plus and minus 20% band for NASA's October 2008 prediction. Please make a note of my prediction and, in 2013 or 2014, let me know how I did! Of course, anything posted to the WWW becomes a more or less permanant record so there will be proof if I am correct (and I will appologize if I am wrong).

WHY ARE SUNSPOT CYCLES IMPORTANT?

Sunspot cycles are about 11 years long, with some as short as 9 years and others as long as 14. It turns out that average global surface temperatures are correlated with the number of sunspots and inversely correlated with the length of the sunspot cycle.

Although human activity, such as burning formerly sequestered carbon from petroleum, coal and natural gas and releasing heat energy and CO2 into the environment, accounts for a substantial fraction of the current Global Warming trend, most climate change is due to the natural cycles in the activity of the Sun and changes in the orbit and tilt of the Earth.

The above diagram, from Wikipedia, shows how sunspot activity has varied since the year 1600. According to NASA the period from about 1645 to 1715, called "Maunder Minimum" or "the Little Ice Age", corresponded to a time of little sunspot activity. The "Dalton Minimum" in the early 1800's was a shorter and smaller drop in solar activity. These periods saw considerable Global Cooling.

The period since 1940 has seen relatively higher solar activity that corresponds to the observed Global Warming.

POSSIBLE BENEFIT OF DECREASED SUNSPOT ACTIVITY

If, as now appears possible, sunspot activity is actually decreasing, and if that trend continues (two big "ifs") we may experience a reduction in the rate of increase in Global Warming and, who knows, perhaps a bit of Global Cooling!

This could give us time to control our energy usage and switch to more carbon-neutral sources such as wind, water, biomass, direct solar, and nuclear, along with recycling and conservation. We may also benefit from the affects of globalization in raising living standards and reducing fertility rates.

However, so long as population continues to increase, along with worldwide standards of living, it is inevitable that we will continue to release more heat energy and sequestered carbon into the environment for the forseeable future.

The only "hope" we have to reverse this trend would be a nuclear war or a genetic engineering disaster that might block the sun for a season and/or reduce the population drastically. No one would wish for such a "solution".

Thus, unless the apparent reduction in sunspot activity leads us to an extended global cooling or temperature-neutral period, we will have to learn to live with a warmer Earth.

Ira Glickstein