Re: [TECH]:: The sun has gone out - still

>> The sun continues to behave in ways not seen in modern scientific
>> history. Nobody interested in such things says nowt.

>> Now the guardians have started moving the goalposts.

>> Latest sunspot figures still have the sunspot activity at
>> historically low levels (about non existent) and the new cycle
>> refusing to start - now arguably 1 year + late and no sign.


> Russell,
> Be very carefull with interpreting sunspot numbers (which is something
> very
> different forom the number of sunspots)

Actually, not "very different from" - just "different from" - it's an
attempt to deal with the way that sunspots tend to cluster - presumably on
the basis that a number of close sunspots tend to have a common source /
cause so the groups are given more weighting than individual spots by a
factor of 10.

This leads to the ERRONEOUS impression that is given on that ARRL page that
the number is NOT an indicator of activity, when in fact it's an attempt to
produce an activity indicator for spotty data (groan).

ie at times of VERY VERY VERY low sunspot activity, such as now, and the
last year or so, it is often possible to identify number of groups and
number of spots just by looking at the number.
eg 12 = 1 + 2.   24 = 2+4.
But, of course, when at more typical levels (eg 90%+ of the time previously,
then the result is not so easy to adduce. eg a sunspot number of 65 cannot
mean 6 groups and 5 total spots. So at most their can be 5 groups = 5 + 15.
BUT there may be 4 groups = 4 + 25, or 3 + 35. For high numbers it gets very
uncertain BUT the aim never was to convey groups + spots numbers with the
index - it was and is intended as an activity indicator. The 1:10 weighting
is presumably an empirical ratio that just happens to "work" in periods of
low activity. It was devised over 160 years ago (in 1848) and is still being
used, so his empirical constants can't have been too too bad.

                Sunspot number = a x (bx groups + all_spots)
                a <= 1, b = 10.

 What makes that ARRL page even wronger is that there is also a multiplier
added to the calculation (a above) for how good or bad your observing
equipment is, how good your eyes are, how long you have been staring at the
sun, ...  Well, the first anyway - ie observing situation. This "scaling
factor" can vary results by perhaps 20% without people minding too much -
the aim is to get a consistent result withing\ the same record. But that
means cross comparison between records needs to be done with care.

AND the ARRL man seems to be trying to be the sort of person who encourages
conspiracy theorists - by seeming to make up soothing theories of his own as
he foes along. Nothing excites conspiracy theorists more than being offered
"manifestly flimsy" [tm] excuses.

ie he invokes " ...  a daily financial news organ grossly misquoted an
astrophysicist, claiming he ..." and thereby dismisses the "fact" [tm] that
there are numerous crank.. er scientists 'out there' who are quir\te happily
holding quite similar theories without having to rely on said financial
organ or physicist. Gargoyling for the Maunder minimum maudlin meanderings
(just the 1st two please)  will turn up all the discussion and conspiracy
theories desired. Also some good science. As is generally well known by all
and sundry by now, a period of very very very low sunspot activity AND thus
sunspot number on the 1800's (when  ~ 0 + 0 = 00 was the order of the day
for years) corresponded to an exceptionally low decades long low temperature
period in Europe when the Thames froze at London and a large percentage of
Scandinavians died. There are arguments that this was a geographically
localised effect, and that may be so (and even if it was the base cause MAY
have been correlated with sunspot activity) but true or not, it's not
something that one scientist and one financial organ brought about.

As I noted in my original post, there are theories of how sunspot activity
MIGHT correlate with earth's weather conditions.  Gargoyle knows should
anyone care to know.

I also noted (or was that only to NOAA?) that SOME of the other indicators
(proton end electron energies, Hydrogen line RF, ...) are also producing
somewhat anomalous results while others are not. ie the sun is doing
something interesting but not utterly absolutely different than normal,

As for moving the goalposts, at least they now have a message saying that
they are doing so. But the explanation given, while an adequate statement of
what they are doing, is a poor explanation of what the graphs represent. It
is probably not reasonable to assume the same max and min as they assumed
before, the rate of change is almost certainly going to be different and in
fact anything else may well happen. The "most scientific" choices available
to them are to either leave the old indicators in place - which shows how
unexpected the current results are, or remove the indicators totally from
now on because their is as yet no better scientifically based idea of what
is expected to happen. Just sliding the old curves across is worse than
useless. Whatever.


> Seel also the latest Solar Opdate column on the ARRL website:
> http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2009/03/06/10688/?nc=1

I seen :-)

> Your " moving the goalposts" opbservation is also explained. Nothing
> sinister there :-)

As above, maybe just stupidity and lack of rigour. But I am sceptical about
the 'deep silence' from the keepers of the norm, who are far from silent
when reality's sometimes apparently random fluctuations seem to confirm
their pet theories :-).

The sea ice has interesting things to say (record thaws, record freezes) but
nobody can with certainty yet say what it's saying. 1000+ feet of ice over
NY city, or 15+ feet of water over Florida should settle it one way or the
other :-).



         Russell


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