Sun blank again

Just two days after sunspot 983 was reported, it has now disappeared. They just aren’t sticking around like they used to. This is yet another indication of the bottomed out solar minima we are in.

It will be very interesting to see if the cycle 24 predictions by Hathway at NASA for an even stronger cycle will materialize.

Though there does seem to be more discussion of a weak cycle 24 than a strong one as of late. Personally, I think this graph of Average Planetary magnetic index (Ap) is quite telling in the step that occurred in 2005. From the data provided by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) you can see just how little magnetic field activity there has been. I’ve graphed it below:

click for a larger image

What is most interesting about the Geomagnetic Average Planetary Index graph above is what happened around October 2005. Notice the sharp drop in the magnetic index and the continuance at low levels.

From this story on space.com where they talk about the opposing views solar scientists have for cycle 24 they offer some opinions. NOAA Space Environment Center scientist Douglas Biesecker, who chaired the panel, said in a statement:

 [...] despite the panel’s division on the Sun cycle’s intensity, all members have a high confidence that the season will begin in March 2008.

We shall soon see if they are correct, March starts this Saturday.

Nature will truly be the final arbiter of this argument.

UPDATE: Jeff C writes

I thought you might find this chart interesting.  Since sunspot cycles overlap and there is no clear start/stop, the “start” of the new solar cycle is usually defined as the smoothed sunspot minimum between cycles (as opposed to the appearance of the first reversed-polarity spot). Although different definitions are sometimes used, this seems to be the most common and accepted variation.

The enclosed chart shows the transition from cycle 22 to cycle 23 back in 1996.  It is interesting how the first new cycle sunspots appeared over a year before the commonly accepted May 1996 start date of the new
cycle.

I’m unsure of the cycle start date definition used by Douglas Biesecker, but if it is the commonly accepted definition, he will be way off.  It will be interesting to see if they claim the appearance of a few reversed cycle sunspots count as a “start”.  If so, then cycle 23 actually started back in March 1995 and is 13 years old.

Click for a larger image

This La Niña Likely to Have Legs

As I mentioned in my post here about one of the satellite data sets (RSS) that showed a marked cooling globally in 2008, La Niña and PDO seem to be drivers of this change. Here is Joe D’Aleo’s take on it below. - Anthony

By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM ICECAP

Evidence is growing this La Niña will be a longer term event. Most similar important La Niñas are often multi year events (1949-1951,1954-1956, 1961-63, 1970-1972, 1973-1976, 1998-2001). Though the easternmost Pacific near South America has warmed at the surface as the seasonal weakening of the tropical easterlies led to weakened upwelling, it is still cold beneath. Below you can see the latest depth-section of ocean temperatures (top) and anomalies (bottom). Temperature are in degree Celsius. Note the large reservoir of subsurface anomalously cold water (up to 4 degrees C) in the eastern tropical Pacific at 50 to 100 meters.

 Also see the latest CPC depicted ocean heat content in the tropical Pacific. This shows the heat content remains at near maximum deficit levels.

 

These suggest as the easterlies increase again, cooling will return to the east Pacific and La Niña will persist at least well into 2008. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has dropped strongly negative (latest value from NCEP is -1.54 STD). This decline may represent another Great Pacific Climate Shift as the PDO warm and cold phases tend last 25 to 30 years and the last change , to a warm Pacific, occurred in 1976. See more in this pdf here.  If indeed the PDO shift is the real deal, we might expect more La Niñas and fewer weaker El Niños over the next few decades with a net tendency for cooling. Add to that a quieter sun and eventually a cooling Atlantic, and you have a recipe for global cooling.

However, this has its own drawbacks, La Ninas bring more drought and summer heat waves, landfalling hurricanes, large tornado outbreaks, spring floods, winter snows and cold outbreaks than their more famous counterpart, El Niño, which has dominated during the warm PDO era. A while back, Stan Changnon did an interesting analysis which I reported on recently here that suggests the era we have gone through since the late 1970s with dominant El Niños was unusually benign with more benefits than damages and will be looked on as the golden era, a modern climate optimum. Even if all this is correct, you might expect the media and enviro-alarmists ‘evidence’ we are affecting our climate to morph from warming and ice melt to the climate extremes characteristic of La Niñas.

See full pdf here. 

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