Oops: Sunspot Count Lower than Projected - Unexpectedly!

If you've been tracking the debate on the sun's influence on climate, then you know that (somewhat counter-intuitively) the sun's luminosity (energy output) increases when there are more sunspots (see here for an explanation).  For years, climate scientists left solar luminosity variation out of their models, and denied that it had any significant effect on weather or climate.  Skeptics of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have long been pointing to the high sunspot counts (and therefore high solar luminosity) of the last solar cycle as a likely cause of the global warming observed in the '90s and early '00s.  Over the past couple of years, even the mainstream climate scientists are changing their position on this, as more and more observational evidence comes in that the skeptics were right.

Meanwhile, over at NOAA they've been trying to predict what the current solar cycle's sunspot count will be, and they keep getting surprised – by how low the count is  (see chart below, sourced here).  At the same time, all observational evidence of continued global warming has come to a halt – temperatures have been flat for over five years now.  AGW skeptics point to this as evidence that the solar luminosity is causing global warming, but really all they have so far is a good correlation; causation has yet to be established.  But...some mainstream climate scientists are now pursuing observations aimed to establishing that causation (see, for example, the recent observations showing that solar luminosity variation in the ultraviolet spectrum is far higher than it is in optical – and the energy output of the sun is much higher in that spectral region than it is in the optical region).

Oops: Sun Spot Count Unexpectedly Low – Again......

Solar scientists have various models aimed at predicting the variabilities in the sun's luminance (or irradiance, the sun's total energy output).  The main (though not the only) variable is related to sunspot count – somewhat counter-intuitively, the lower the sunspot count, the lower the sun's luminance.  Skeptics of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), myself included, have pointed out the close correlation between the sun's luminance and temperatures in the Earth's atmosphere.  In particular, the rising temperatures seen in the '90s and early '00s exactly corresponded with higher sunspot counts (and higher solar luminance).  Recent mainstream climatology studies have, somewhat obliquely, found the same thing.

So it is of great interest to AGW skeptics to note that the more recent lack of a warming trend in Earth's atmospheric temperature correlates rather well with a lack of sunspots – the sunspot counts are coming in consistently well below the predictions by the solar scientists' models.  Besides providing yet another really nice example of models gone horribly wrong, this also provides more support for the skeptic's hypothesis that the primary driver of “global warming” isn't greenhouse gases at all, but rather solar luminance.

The latest solar luminance numbers from NASA are plotted at right, with the dots being the actual data and the blue curve the smoothed equivalent.  The green curves are the predictions (from 2007) of the two main families of solar luminance models, each with their cadre of solar science supporters (there were also a few solar scientists who thought both models were bunk).  The red curve is a revised model, published in 2009 at which point it was quite clear that both original models were way off.  The 2009 model isn't faring much better.

Robert Zimmerman, who collected and published this data, says:

Meanwhile, on January 2 the solar scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center once again lowered their prediction for the upcoming solar maximum, dropping their predicted peak sunspot number from 72 to 69. This is the fifth month in a row that they have changed their prediction, and the fourth in a row in which they have dropped it. Considering that we are now only a few months from when they say maximum should occur, their constant revision of their prediction suggests they really haven’t the faintest idea what causes the solar cycle, and are merely guessing at what they think will happen.

I agree. They haven't a clue. I wish they would just admit the mystery and get to work solving it!

Giant Solar Flare...

NASA is tracking a large sunspot group, named Active Region 1302 (or AR1302).  One of its satellites captured this image of AR1302 emitting a gigantic flare.  The photo inset of the Earth is there to give you an idea just how big that flare is.  Via APOD, of course...

Sunspots...

I've posted before about the unusually low number of sunspots we're seeing right now, and about the correlation between the number of sunspots and the overall solar radiation. It may seem a little counterintuitive, but the fact is that the sun radiates more energy when there are more sunspots, and vice versa.

Well, the low number of sunspots continues. At the moment we are experiencing the longest sustained period of low sunspot occurrence since 1928, and there's no end in sight yet. That also means we're experiencing a long and sustained reduction in solar radiation output, and therefore of its heating of the Earth. Historically periods of low sunspot activity have correlated nicely with periods of lower temperatures on the Earth, most famously with the period known as the Maunder Minimum. Naturally, the warmenists loudly proclaim that variations in sunspot activity will have no impact on the Earth's climate – they are certain that the correlations of historical low sunspot activity and low temperatures is entirely coincidental.

Looks like we may have a chance here to find out for sure. If our low sunspot activity continues for another year or so, the warmenists will have a hard time explaining a “coincidental” drop in global temperatures. Which, by the way, we're already seeing.