Slashdot Mirror

http://www.flepos.be/ but this only covers flanders in belgium but there are similar services for the rest of belgium. The service is free but you need to register. From http://www.gps.oma.be/networks_tutorial.php you can find links to other networks across europe but I don't know if they are free.

There have been FIVE magnitude 8.5 or greater mega-quakes since 2004. This seems odd since there have only been two dozen of these bad boys since the 1700s.

Hmmmm. We're just coming out of the deepest solar minimum in the last century or more. Wonder if other mega-quakes happened around solar minima? Yup. November 1755 (Lisbon), November 1833 (Sumatra), August 1868 (Arica Peru), November 1922 (Valenar Chile), March 1964 (Prince William Sound Alaska), February 1965 (Rat Islands Alaska). Could there be a link between the solar cycle and plate techtonics? Think interplanetary magnetic fields and remember that we're riding big plates that float on a molten spinning magnet.

Step 1: Get a list of reaaallly big quakes since the 1700s. 8.5+. The interplate kind, not the run-of-the-mill intraplate stuff. You can find a list here. Or get a fuller list of historical quakes at usgs.gov.

Step 2: Get the monthly sunspot numbers since records were kept. The Royal Observatory of Belgium has a data set here.

Step 3: Note the correlation between mega quakes and low sunspot numbers. The median sunspot number is 47, the median sunspot number at the time of 8.5+ quakes is 23. (Same when you move the hurdle down to 8.3+ and include a lot more earthquakes) Make an x-y scatter plot in OpenOffice Calc or MS-Excel. Visually note how many occur within a few months of solar minimum.

Step 4: Recall that the next solar minimum is due in ten years.

Steps 5-9: ...

Step 10: Profit!

Solar Influences Data Analysis Center

or has NASA backtracked from calling 2008 the start of a new one?

Never mind, I just found a couple of things that suggest NASA, nor anyone else, really know when cycle 24 will actually start:

http://solarchaos.blogspot.com/2008/11/history-of-cycle-24-predictions.html

http://solarchaos.blogspot.com/2009/04/nasa-4.html

And this shows actual sunspots have been deviating from predicted sunspots for the last 6 months or so:

http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfjmms.html

after all, there's over 300 years worth of data on sunspot counts:

http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-data/

Pick your own interval for analysis.

Yes, I was in a hurry this morning and did indeed miss your references. (I am used to looking under "References", not "Data Sources".)

However, looking at it more thoroughly now, your graphs are anything but straightforward for the lay person to understand, largely from the lack of information on the page.

Above, you cite your temperature data source as
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
but in the Wiki entry, the stated source of temperature data is
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/solanki2004-ssn.txt
which data is originally from Jean Jouzel, from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in France. The former source does not reference the latter in any obvious way. So, which is it?

Similarly, above you cite
http://sidc.oma.be/
as your source for records of sunspot data, but on the Wiki page you cite the Solanki data
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/solanki2004-ssn.txt
and again, the source cited above does not appear to reference the data source you cited in the Wiki article in any obvious way.

I do not see any citation for source of your CO2 data anywhere on the Wiki page, even within "Data Sources". The only two sources are the ones I have just mentioned.

There is a reference to the Mauna Loa data on a different page, linked to by one of the "related images", but that is not the page you originally referenced.

My point being that considering just the information that was presented, as I saw it, even WITH the two sources you referenced, does not exactly prove anything.

Along that line, there is no explanation as to how deuterium data relates to sunspots. Is it a linear relationship? How would a reader know? If so, great, but if not the graph would have little meaning. Nowhere is there any explanation as to the kinds of relationship here.

In any case, I see where there could have been a mistake, pointing me at that page rather than the other one linked to within that page. But under the circumstances, I think it should be pretty obvious why I basically stated "Huh? This doesn't appear to mean anything." And in fact, as given, it didn't.

And this chart is made up of data that came from... where?

The data sources listed in the Data Sources section on the page.

I did not see ANY citations of sources on that Wikipedia page

You didn't look too hard. The sites from which the raw data was taken are all listed. A cursory inspection of those sites will provide the information you want. Since that seems to be too much work:

• Temperature data is from the Climatic Research Unit in the UK. Among the papers on this dataset are:
  1. Brohan, P., J.J. Kennedy, I. Harris, S.F.B. Tett and P.D. Jones, 2006: Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850. J. Geophysical Research 111, D12106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006548
  2. Jones, P.D., New, M., Parker, D.E., Martin, S. and Rigor, I.G., 1999: Surface air temperature and its variations over the last 150 years. Reviews of Geophysics 37, 173-199.
  3. Rayner, N.A., P. Brohan, D.E. Parker, C.K. Folland, J.J. Kennedy, M. Vanicek, T. Ansell and S.F.B. Tett, 2006: Improved analyses of changes and uncertainties in marine temperature measured in situ since the mid-nineteenth century: the HadSST2 dataset. J. Climate, 19, 446-469.
  4. Rayner, N.A., Parker, D.E., Horton, E.B., Folland, C.K., Alexander, L.V, Rowell, D.P., Kent, E.C. and Kaplan, A., 2003: Globally complete analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice and night marine air temperature, 1871-2000. J. Geophysical Research 108, 4407, doi:10.1029/2002JD002670
• The sunspot data is drawn from the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center in Belgium. Among the many many papers published using these datasets are:
  1. Carbonell, M., Terradas, J., Olivier, R. and Ballester, J.L. The statistical significance of the North-South asymmetry of solar activity revisited, A&A, 476, p 951-957.
  2. Balthasar, H. Rotational periodicities in sunspot relative numbers, A&A, 471, p 281-287.
  3. Pishkalo, M. Reconstruction of the Heliospheric Current Sheet Tilts Using Sunspot Numbers, Solar Physics, 233, p 277-290
  4. Kunjaya, C., Radiman, I., Dupe Z., Herdiwidjaja, D., Hakim, M.I.
     On The Prediction of El Niño 2002 Based On the Peak Of Sunspot Number in 2000, Proceedings of the ISCS Symp. 2003: Solar Variability as an Input to the Earth's Environment, ESA SP-535.
  5. Rybak, J. Karlovsky, V.
     Mutual relations of the intermediate periodicities of the Wolf sunspot number, Proceedings of the ISCS Symp. 2003: Solar Variability as an Input to the Earth's Environment, ESA SP-535 p.145-148

  You can see this page for a full list.

• The CO2 data was drawn from two listed sources. The first is the Mauna Loa observatory, and the second is the Law Dome ice core project in Antarctica. Both data sets are available via the NOAA. Mauna Loa data is from the Earth Systems Research Laboratory, Global Monitoring Division. Among the papers using this data set are:
  1. C.D. Keeling, R.B. Bacastow, A.E. Bainbridge, C.A. Ekdahl, P.R. Guenther, and L.S. Waterman, Atmospheric carbon dioxide variations at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, Tellus, vol. 28, 538-551, 1976.
  2. K.W. Thoning, P.P. Tans, and W.D. Komhyr, Atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory 2. Analysis of the NOAA GMCC data, 1974-1985, J. Geophys. Research, vol. 94, 8549-8565, 1989.

  The Law Dome data was taken from Word Data Center for Paleoclimatology Ice Core Gateway. Among the papers using this dataset are:

  1. Etheridge, D.M., G.I. Pearman, and F. de Silva. 1988. Atmospheric trace-gas variations as revealed by air trapped in an ice core from Law Dome, Antarctica. Ann. Glaciol.

And this chart is made up of data that came from... where?

The data sources listed in the Data Sources section on the page.

I did not see ANY citations of sources on that Wikipedia page

You didn't look too hard. The sites from which the raw data was taken are all listed. A cursory inspection of those sites will provide the information you want. Since that seems to be too much work:

• Temperature data is from the Climatic Research Unit in the UK. Among the papers on this dataset are:
  1. Brohan, P., J.J. Kennedy, I. Harris, S.F.B. Tett and P.D. Jones, 2006: Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850. J. Geophysical Research 111, D12106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006548
  2. Jones, P.D., New, M., Parker, D.E., Martin, S. and Rigor, I.G., 1999: Surface air temperature and its variations over the last 150 years. Reviews of Geophysics 37, 173-199.
  3. Rayner, N.A., P. Brohan, D.E. Parker, C.K. Folland, J.J. Kennedy, M. Vanicek, T. Ansell and S.F.B. Tett, 2006: Improved analyses of changes and uncertainties in marine temperature measured in situ since the mid-nineteenth century: the HadSST2 dataset. J. Climate, 19, 446-469.
  4. Rayner, N.A., Parker, D.E., Horton, E.B., Folland, C.K., Alexander, L.V, Rowell, D.P., Kent, E.C. and Kaplan, A., 2003: Globally complete analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice and night marine air temperature, 1871-2000. J. Geophysical Research 108, 4407, doi:10.1029/2002JD002670
• The sunspot data is drawn from the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center in Belgium. Among the many many papers published using these datasets are:
  1. Carbonell, M., Terradas, J., Olivier, R. and Ballester, J.L. The statistical significance of the North-South asymmetry of solar activity revisited, A&A, 476, p 951-957.
  2. Balthasar, H. Rotational periodicities in sunspot relative numbers, A&A, 471, p 281-287.
  3. Pishkalo, M. Reconstruction of the Heliospheric Current Sheet Tilts Using Sunspot Numbers, Solar Physics, 233, p 277-290
  4. Kunjaya, C., Radiman, I., Dupe Z., Herdiwidjaja, D., Hakim, M.I.
     On The Prediction of El Niño 2002 Based On the Peak Of Sunspot Number in 2000, Proceedings of the ISCS Symp. 2003: Solar Variability as an Input to the Earth's Environment, ESA SP-535.
  5. Rybak, J. Karlovsky, V.
     Mutual relations of the intermediate periodicities of the Wolf sunspot number, Proceedings of the ISCS Symp. 2003: Solar Variability as an Input to the Earth's Environment, ESA SP-535 p.145-148

  You can see this page for a full list.

• The CO2 data was drawn from two listed sources. The first is the Mauna Loa observatory, and the second is the Law Dome ice core project in Antarctica. Both data sets are available via the NOAA. Mauna Loa data is from the Earth Systems Research Laboratory, Global Monitoring Division. Among the papers using this data set are:
  1. C.D. Keeling, R.B. Bacastow, A.E. Bainbridge, C.A. Ekdahl, P.R. Guenther, and L.S. Waterman, Atmospheric carbon dioxide variations at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, Tellus, vol. 28, 538-551, 1976.
  2. K.W. Thoning, P.P. Tans, and W.D. Komhyr, Atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory 2. Analysis of the NOAA GMCC data, 1974-1985, J. Geophys. Research, vol. 94, 8549-8565, 1989.

  The Law Dome data was taken from Word Data Center for Paleoclimatology Ice Core Gateway. Among the papers using this dataset are:

  1. Etheridge, D.M., G.I. Pearman, and F. de Silva. 1988. Atmospheric trace-gas variations as revealed by air trapped in an ice core from Law Dome, Antarctica. Ann. Glaciol.

Sitting in Southern Florida for a second hurricane season that hasn't been seen in 30 years, of inactivity, one has to wonder about the CO2 hype. I know, I'm a nasty old troll that will be mod way down because I dare to think differently then the Gorebull Warming crowd here on /. Be as that may for those reading the negative karma replies, Cap and Trade is a return of the central planning http://youtube.com/watch?v=k4oBjbe8BIA/ days of an era we all would like never to come back. For those of you who really do think I'm a troll, here is an easy $125K right in your pocket, just take this test: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-25-2007/0004669458&EDATE=/.

If we do look at Gorebull Warming, let us remember that since the dire predictions of massive warming if the CO2 ppm is doubled, yet where is this because we are what, ~75% to that ppm already? Shouldn't my house been blown away already from none stop hurricanes? Or could it be Solar Activity: http://sidc.oma.be/products/quieta/ has quiet down causing more clouds (cosmic rays increase production of clouds) which keeps a bit cooler.

They thought things were going to stay the same, but it turns out that things are about to change.

The number of sunspots has been near constant (on average) over the past 20 years, yet they are at the highest level in over 1000 years for the last 60 years "yet the average temperature of the earth has continued to increase". This shows the author doesn't understand lag times between applying extra energy input to the atmospheric system versus the time required for the large mass of the Earth's ecosystem to respond by warming land, sea and air to the point where average temperature changes can be measured.

A lot of the data, particularly ice cores, is all publicly available. Look it, do your own analysis.

Solar variation data: http://sidc.oma.be/DATA/
Ice core data: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/
Detailed Greenland ice core Data: http://www.glaciology.gfy.ku.dk/pages/data.html

Jedidiah.

There's not that much data; only one satellite has been taking long term measurements, and that for less than a decade. But here is the data. There's considerable day to day variation, even when seen from orbit. (From the ground, it's hopeless.) There's an upward trend from 1996 to 2000, and then some dropoff. The total change is about 2 watts/square meter, from about 1366 to 1368 W/m^2.

For relativistic blueshift, the frequency of light will scale by the lorentz equation:
f' = f * sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)
For a 10% blue shift, the relative speed would have to be about 0.4*c = 1.2x10^8 m/s = 432,000,000 KPH = 268,430,000 MPH.
Hell, protons coming off of the sun only hit one million MPH.

High speed meteors hit the atmosphere around 80 km/s (damn fast if you think about it!) = 288,000 KPH = 175,950 MPH. This would result in only a 0.000000712% change in apparent wavelength. Not to mention that it will slow down drastically as soon as it hits the atmosphere.

Besides, there is no reason to think that even if there were any blueshift it would cause these things to be more visible to the human eye. I would imagine that it has something like a blackbody spectrum which will cover a very large portion of the visible spectrum, with the peak concentrated somewhere around the yellow - where our eyes are pretty sensitive already.

Furthermore, optical background radiation is only a few photons per second - not hardly enough to make any difference to the human eye, and AFAIK, sunspots have nothing to do with it. Besides, sunspots aren't particularly out of whack right now: Solar Physics Dept of Belgium (Official sunspot counts).

I dread to think of the assumptions that have been made in electrical and electronic equipment that would be affected by this!