Sunspot update: The Sun continues to boom!
It is time for my monthly sunspot update, taking NOAA’s most recent update of its monthly graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere and adding my own analysis as well as some additional details to provide the larger context.
During August the Sun continued to confound the experts, with the number of sunspots not only greater than July’s high count. the August count exceeded the numbers from December 2001 (215.5 vs 213.4), the last time the Sun was this active.
None of the predictions by anyone in the solar science community had predicted this level of activity.
The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community for the previous solar maximum. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007 for the previous maximum, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The blue curve is their revised May 2009 prediction. The red curve is the new prediction, first posted by NOAA in April 2020.
In 2020 the solar science community had been divided as to what it thought might happen in this solar maximum. A majority went with the NOAA science panel prediction in April 2020 calling for another weak minimum, similar to the one in 2014. A few dissented, however, and instead predicted in June 2020 that the maximum would be one of the strongest ever. Those dissenters however backed down from their own prediction in April 2023, revising their prediction downward so that it was still higher than the NOAA prediction but no longer anywhere as intense.
The numbers in August suggest their original prediction was right. Their decision to change their prediction however tells us that this prediction — as well as all the others — was not based on any solid understanding of the Sun.
The graph to the right shows clearly how long it has been since the Sun had this many sunspots. Though no one knows what will happen in the coming months — and I mean absolutely no one — it does appear that the Sun is about to have the most active solar maximum in more than two decades, with the further possibility that this maximum could match or exceed the strong maximums in the 1980 and 1990. There is even a chance that it could exceed the peak of the 1957 maximum, the strongest maximum so far measured with a record sunspot count of 359.4 in October 1957.
If this high activity occurs, it is also likely that the Earth’s climate will be warmed by it. The mechanism for this warming is not yet identified with any certainty, but the data has shown that in the past 2,000-plus years, when the Sun has a lot of sunspots the climate warms, and when it has few the climate cools.
If it does warm, it is also certain that our propaganda press will not mention the possibility that the Sun is a factor. That leftist media will instead immediately claim — with little evidence — the cause is the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the evil use of fossil fuels by human beings. They will make this claim despite these known facts:
1. CO2 is a trace gas in our atmosphere and a very very VERY minor contributor to any warming, if any at all. Water is the main global warming component, and without it our climate would be ten to twenty degrees cooler, likely making the Earth much less habitable. The entire theory of human-caused global warming requires this trace gas to somehow instigate warming by that atmospheric water.
2. To date, not one model based on this theory has been successful in predicting the actual temperature changes over the past thirty years. These models missed the long pause in warming that occurred in the past two decades (that by the way corresponded to the weak activity on the Sun). They also generally fail to predict the climate we know happened when they are set to run beginning during any past year.
3. The Earth’s climate is a very complex and chaotic thing. The Sun too is very complex and behaves in ways we do not understand. We have only been studying both with any real accuracy for less than a half century. To predict what will happen next is really impossible at this moment, based on our level of knowledge and ignorance. Scientists are guessing. Some are legitimately trying to guess based on their limited knowledge. Others are guessing for political reasons, and it is this latter group who always declare their guesses are certain and right.
Remember these realities in the coming years. It will help you identify incompetent, ignorant, and politically biased news sources as well as the scientists whose focus is not good research but a desire to push a political agenda.
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We hit 105°F on the back deck this afternoon. It must be anthropogenic global warming.
But wait…
We hit -38°F on the back deck in January. It must have been anthropogenic climate change.
Warming. Cooling. Drought. Rain. Snow. Is there nothing CO2 can’t do?
Totally off topic, did you see this from the Boeing capsule:
https://x.com/SpaceBasedFox/status/1830180273130242223?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1830180273130242223%7Ctwgr%5E0691139e1547ae6fbf992e1706eebb94da4d348b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finstapundit.com%2F670248%2F
Most comments are saying it’s alien lifeforms, a lot are saying it’s ghosts. I think that they left the screen door unlatched and it’s banging open and shut in the solar wind.
Blackwing1: It is obviously a coke bottle caught in some gear that is causing the ping.
Blackwing1: I heard about this (and heard the sound) from the Daily Mail this morning.
Most commenters there are blaming Boeing and its Starliner and their DEI problem, lack of quality control, etc.
And many are questioning how two astronauts can be stuck on the ISS when we walked on the moon more than 50 years ago.
Allan
“If its not a Boeing, I’m not going”
Blackwing1
I was going to parody AC/DC’s ‘TNT’ (Scott/Young/Young Albert 1975) referencing your comment on CO2, then realized, the second verse of the song pretty much works as written:
“I’m dirty, mean and mighty unclean
I’m a wanted man
Public enemy number one
Understand
So lock up your daughter
Lock up your wife
Lock up your back door
And run for your life
The man is back in town
Don’t you mess me ’round”
To comment on the actual topic at hand this TEDX video explains why the solar cycle (and climate) predictions are a fools errand. The other TEDX video referenced at the end is one Bob posted for an Evening Pause at my suggestion some years ago and the Heisenberg quote it notes at the beginning puts it even more succinctly. Recommended. : )
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S3i6tJ4XNqA
Here’s a link to the 2nd video…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PMerSm2ToFY&pp=ygUUdmFuIGdvdWdoIHR1cmJ1bGVuY2U%3D
Star Trek
“Is the parking brake on?”
https://youtu.be/JNQGpjTjPtI
0:49
Weather is the turbulent flow, enhanced GHE is sticking a spoon in a cup and stirring.
Andrew, the oceans also experience turbulent flow. And yes, GHEs are a perturbation of the atmosphere, but so are MANY things like the Tonga eruption last year that blasted enormous quantities of water vapor into the upper atmosphere and most likely triggered the rash of higher temperatures this last year as that took quite a long time to disperse and dissipate.
The point is that because of its inherent chaotic and sensitivity to even small perturbations turbulence makes long term predictions of turbulent systems impossible. Not difficult, impossible. At least with today’s physics and computational technologies. Look at the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, a persistent vortex that has been observed for centuries and which in the last 20 years or so diminished in size by about 50%. No one predicted that, nor could they. And the same goes for the turbulent fluid dynamics of Sol which makes predicting sunspot activity a fool’s errand as well.
My 2 cents anyway.
MDN,
You wrote: “The point is that because of its inherent chaotic and sensitivity to even small perturbations turbulence makes long term predictions of turbulent systems impossible. Not difficult, impossible.”
Your takeaway from those two videos was the opposite of what they said. Long term prediction of the system is done every day. It is why we can make airplanes fly despite the turbulent flow that quickly develops in the boundary layer. It is why we can predict the wind drag on a car despite the turbulent flow at the back window. It is why turbulent flow is induced on golf balls, making their trajectories predictable.
What we cannot do is predict where any given molecule or “cell” will go next in a turbulent flow. We don’t have to in order to understand the long term macro-flow of the air. This same applies to long term solar cycles. When there were few sunspots over decades (long term), temperatures were lower than during a regular cycle of sunspots. We cannot predict the daily temperature from the number of sunspots, but we may be able to predict Little Ice Ages or maybe even the onset of the glacial periods of the current ice age.
But we need more data and information before we know whether the solar cycle truly is causal. The empirical evidence, so far, suggests it is.
“Remember these realities in the coming years. It will help you identify incompetent, ignorant, and politically biased news sources as well as the scientists whose focus is not good research but a desire to push a political agenda.” – Robert Zimmerman
Yes, reality (the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them). As always, I encourage anyone interested in learning about the climate and anthropogenic impacts to seek out that knowledge. Perhaps one day Mr. Zimmerman will as well.
David wrote: “As always, I encourage anyone interested in learning about the climate and anthropogenic impacts to seek out that knowledge.”
I have been seeking out this relationship for decades. So far all I have found is an assumption based upon another assumption. There is no empirical data that defines the amount that CO2 affects the Earth’s temperature (all the models make a guess at this value, but as we have seen, these guesses are wrong). There is no empirical data that shows that man’s contribution to the CO2 in the atmosphere is not adequately countered by nature.
We do know, however, that historically CO2 increases follow temperature increases, as is happening with the end of the Little Ice Age. We also know that the earth, the soil, releases CO2 with increasing temperatures, which could explain why this pattern happens and is happening now. There is not yet empirical data that shows this portion of nature’s contribution to the CO2 in the atmosphere.
There is a large number of natural contributors to CO2, man adds a mere 2% to that value, and we do have empirical data that shows this. There are a large number of natural contributors to other greenhouse gases, and we have empirical data for some of this, too.
Other factors, perhaps less obvious, also are in play. I worked on an experiment on a satellite that measured energy input to the Earth through electrons following the magnetic field to the poles and measured the amount of energy that went back into space via the X-rays produced by the resulting auroras. Several other instruments also took measurements of other natural factors that affect the upper atmosphere. The net gains in energy are yet additional natural contributors to the Earth’s temperature.
There are studies that show that the plant and animal life in forests and jungles emit so much H2O that they also increase the temperature in those areas, increasing the average over the planet. Yet another aspect of global warming and climate change.
Global warming, the coming ice age, and climate change are complex processes that we have no handle on at all. What you may think you know, you don’t. Someone fed you BS, and you took the bait hook, line, and sinker, and now you are caught on their hook. If you are interested, I encourage you to seek out knowledge about the other aspects, processes, and natural impacts to climate. Climates are constantly changing and have since long before man was man.
After all, the Little Ice Age ended when man contributed to the air little more than his breath, the breaths of his draft animals, and his cook fires. What do you suppose caused that end? It wasn’t man. He didn’t truly industrialize until after WWI, the war to end all wars, and the Little Ice Age peaked a quarter millennium earlier.