Sunspots 2014: Solar Cooling To Arrive?

Dangerous AR1944!

It’s a shiny new year… a time for bold predictions.

Here are four 2014 prognostications you won’t read anywhere else:

• All forecasts of future sunspot activity made in 2014 will be scary low!
• A revised 400-year long sunspot record will erase the “Modern Maximum”
• By the end of 2014 the sun will be on its way to solar minimum
• Global cooling on Earth will finally start to show!!

Some predictions sharply contradict current solar activity.

December 2013 was the second most active sunspot month so far this solar cycle. Only November of 2011, over two years ago, produced more sunspots than last month.

Even as these words are written a menacing X1.2 Class CME is barreling toward Earth. It was ejected from giant sunspot group AR1944. NASA’s sunspot count yesterday hit 245, the highest seen in years!

Prediction is a tricky business… but… you have to climb out on a limb to pick the best fruit…
No guts, no glory… No pain, no gain…
Ya gotta break a few global warming alarmists to make a climate change omelette!!

So… here goes…

What Makes You So Right, Smarty Pants??

Elementary, My Dear Watson…

The graph above shows we should be trending down toward solar minimum right now. Sunspots are not yet cooperating. But looks can be deceiving. Not shown is that the sun’s magnetic field has reversed polarity at both poles, a sure sign we are past the mid-point of Cycle 24.

There are all kinds of collected data backed up by theory indicating that we are on the down side of solar activity in general and that Cycle 25 is gonna be a whole lot smaller than this puny one!

Talk is cheap unless it is backed up with data. So, here are some data…

Total sunspots have been decreasing over the last three sunspot cycles

The sun’s total magnetic field has been declining since 1975

The sun is dramatically changing:

1. Total sunspots are decreasing
2. The sun’s overall magnetic field is decreasing
3. Individual sunspot umbral fields are weakening. See left==>

Together, these and other changes add up to less magnetism at the sun’s surface. Less magnetism means a less active sun. Less umbral magnetism means sunspots are fading away. Fewer sunspots means less radiant energy leaves the sun. Less radiant energy means Earth cools.

Why is this happening?

It is a new concept, but some scientists have linked increases and decreases in solar sunspot activity to cyclic planetary perturbations that affect the solar dynamo.

Based on past sunspot activity R. J. Salvador created a mathematical model that reconstructs the solar sunspot cycle over the last 1,000 years and forecast what is to come the rest of this century. His paper, “A mathematical model of the sunspot cycle for the past 1000 yr” was published in the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics on 11/15/2013.

R.J. Salvador forecasts a “quiet Sun for the next 30 to 100 yr” based on planetary cycles

In 2013, all solar physicists talked about was a growing belief that Cycle 25 will be even weaker than this one. The first prediction was for only 7 spots during solar max next cycle.

In 2014, more precursors like those recorded on the downside of Cycle 23 will start showing up in Cycle 24. They will be used to forecast Cycle 25 activity. More scientists will make predictions based on new data as it becomes available this year and next. Based on what has come out so far, this author predicts they will all be very low.

2014: Year of the Revised Sunspot Record!

Solar sunspot counts make up the longest continuously recorded set of data in all of science. It was started by Galileo back in 1609 just after the invention of the telescope. It is a fundamental scientific dataset. Studies in many disciplines of science depend on its absolute accuracy.

It’s been known for decades that the sunspot record is flawed. Over the centuries changes in the way sunspots are counted by different astronomers have introduced inconsistencies into the record that need to be corrected.

A group of solar physicists called the SSN Workshop was formed in 2011 to resolve the discrepancies. They have held 3 conferences since then.

One important discrepancy is a counting change made in the 1940s. a new counting method added about 20% more spots to today’s counts than before the change was made. That error artificially created the “Modern Maximum“. There is no modern maximum. It is just a counting artifact!

The SSN workshop will hold its 4th and final conference in May 2014 to decide what changes to make to the record. They will publish a paper with their final findings.

It isn’t formalized yet, but this writer feels that by the end of 2014 the “Modern Maximum” will be declared null and void. Other changes will be made to the sunspot record going all the way back to the beginning.

The Big Chill

Total Solar Irradiation (TSI) has increased at the same time as Earth’s temperature

Everyone knows by now that global warming stopped about 17 years ago, contrary to IPCC predictions calling for steady increases. Nobody knows why. Nearly 25% of the increase in CO₂ into Earth’s atmosphere has happened since then.

Everyone also knows that the amount of temperature rise observed cannot be explained by changes in solar radiant energy (TSI) alone.

The IPCC credits low sunspot activity as one of the reasons for a “hiatus” from atmospheric global warming so far this century in its newest AR5 report

This author believes that while researching explanations for the “hiatus” that new climate forcings involving TSI, solar wind intensity and cloud formation will be discovered. If found, that would explain the extraordinary correspondence between the above graph and earth’s observed global temperature profile.

The effects of decreasing solar activity starting in 2014 will be enough to start seeing global temperatures barely begin to edge downward.

Conclusions

As of this minute, gigantic sunspot group AR1944 is pointed directly at Earth. It has already launched one dangerous Class X1.2 CME towards Earth yesterday. According to NASA’s spaceweather.com, it is “crackling with solar flares” and its not through. NASA says it “has a ‘beta-gamma-delta’ magnetic field that harbors energy for more X-class solar flares”.

The sun could hardly be more violent than it is right now. The 245 spots counted yesterday might be a record for this cycle.

That being said, data suggests that 2014 solar activity may have come in like a lion, but it’ll go out like a lamb. Inexorable movement towards solar minimum will become apparent.

More precursors indicating the strength of the next solar cycle will start appearing and all of them will suggest we are on the doorstep of the the weakest activity in 200-400 years.

In 2014 we will see the sun start to slip into a long hibernation and the seeds of global cooling will start to show up.

Advertisement