Sunspot update July 2019: Almost no sunspots
Time for my monthly sunspot update. Below is the July graph of sunspot activity released by NOAA yesterday, annotated to give it some context.
July was about as inactive as June, with only two sunspots appearing during the entire month. As with June, one of those sunspots had the polarity for the next solar maximum, signaling once again the beginning of the next cycle.
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, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction, extended in November 2018 four years into the future.
We have now seen sunspots with a polarity matching the next solar cycle for two months in a row. In every case those sunspots were weak, lasting only a day or so, but they were visible and trackable, more evidence that we will not see a grand minimum in the coming decade. Whether the next cycle will be weak or not remains unknown, though the data suggests it will be weak.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Time for my monthly sunspot update. Below is the July graph of sunspot activity released by NOAA yesterday, annotated to give it some context.
July was about as inactive as June, with only two sunspots appearing during the entire month. As with June, one of those sunspots had the polarity for the next solar maximum, signaling once again the beginning of the next cycle.
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, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction, extended in November 2018 four years into the future.
We have now seen sunspots with a polarity matching the next solar cycle for two months in a row. In every case those sunspots were weak, lasting only a day or so, but they were visible and trackable, more evidence that we will not see a grand minimum in the coming decade. Whether the next cycle will be weak or not remains unknown, though the data suggests it will be weak.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The text is confusing. Paragraph two seems to be talking about August data as though it already exists. Is this a prediction, or did you mean July data (and presumably June)?
Dennis Parker: I have corrected the post. I was talking about data from July and June, not August and July, which is why it made no sense.
Thank you.
Are changes of the geomagnetic field intensity related to changes of the
tropical Pacific sea-level pressure during the last 50 years?
Luis Eduardo Antunes Vieira,1 Ligia Alves da Silva,1,2 and Fernando Luı´s Guarnieri3
Received 22 January 2008; revised 17 March 2008; accepted 9 April 2008; published 26 August 2008.
[1] The influence of solar variability into the lower atmospheric regions has been
suggested on different atmospheric parameters in different time scales. However, a
plausible mechanism to explain these observations remains unclear. Although it is widely
accepted that the climate change over the past 50 years is attributed to human
influence, we present the case that local climate change in the tropical Pacific may be due
to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field strength. The changes in the tropical Pacific
circulation have been observed during the last 50 years, and they are attributed to the
increase of the global surface temperature. However, a geomagnetic modulation of the net
radiative flux in the southern tropical Pacific was recently suggested. Moreover,
comparisons of long-term reconstructions of the Northern Hemisphere surface temperature
and solar activity proxies indicated that the existence of a geomagnetic signal in
climate data would support a direct link between solar variability and their effects on
climate. Here we show that in the tropical Pacific the sea-level pressure, which is a
component of the Walker circulation, could be related to the magnetospheric, ionospheric,
and upper-atmosphere processes which may propagate downward to the lower
atmosphere. Furthermore, we show that the changes in sea-level pressure and the Walker
circulation are correlated to the westward drift of the magnetic anomaly. We compare
the region averaged monthly values of the sea-level pressure in the tropical Pacific with
those of the magnetic field intensity near the surface for the last 50 years. We find that
the sea-level pressure in the tropical Pacific is increasing as the magnetic field intensity is
decreasing. The correlation coefficient of the sea-level pressure 36-month running
means versus the magnetic field intensity is 0.96. We anticipate our investigation to be a
starting point for a more sophisticated investigation of the coup
John: You put the link to this paper in the “website” box requested when you post a comment. Wrong place, as that only puts the link under your name, and is intended for those who have their own webpage.
Here is that link [pdf].
I am interested in the data from the Maunder and Dalton minima. If we use the same type of equipment, I want to know the correlation of data to today’s instruments.
Question:
Will the old techniques “see” these sun spots, seen with today’s equipment, that are from the next cycle?
If we look at the trend of the past cycles, one might “guess” that the next cycle will be lower than the last: purely from a logical perspective. Changes tend to be gradual in nature with very few abrupt changes being seen unless “other” events coincide.
This is the same question I have. There were no satellites in orbit around Earth or the Sun imaging sunspots during the Maunder & Dalton Minima. The sunspot AR2745 July 22 2019 set a record small size of zero-millionths and lasted less than 24 hours. Would that have been counted way back when? If it were not counted then there would have been a 28 day streak of no sunspots lasting till August 5 2019. There seems to be a new tendency in science circles which compares apples to oranges.
A review of sun spot detection technology in use during the Maunder and Dalton minima, would be very informative. Reference to specific article for this review would be required. I am tiered of hear-say evidence.
The apples and oranges question is related to detection limits; verifiable and repeatable detection limits. Yes, and also doing the experiments with that old technology today and comparing to current data available.
A systematic evaluation of funding going to researchers would also be important to ferret out possible bias.