Experienced solar observers have been predicting the solar max for Cycle 24 will be around May this year.
That may turn out what happens and we have a “rabbit ears” pattern formed. Time will tell but just now who would bet on it ?
My earlier posts on Cycle 24 which extend back to late 2006.
Reversal of the sun’s magnetic poles is likely in May, maximum inclination of the heliospheric current sheet etc. The maximum in sunspot numbers was a year ago, and F10.7 flux. The significance of the very quiet sun now as we approach reversal is that activity is going to become very weak after it. Then we will have a long, very flat tail for the rest of the cycle. Note that the Ap index is very weak – effectively flatlining at solar maximum.
The paralels with Cycle 5 are intriguing:
www.landscheidt.info/images/sc5_sc24_19.png
That fella came close to developing bunny ears late in the piece.
There is little doubt that solar activity is a major driver of climate.
Readers of my paper “Planetary Surface Temperatures. A Discussion of Alternative Mechanisms” will realise that it is merely a review paper of other studies. Some of the references do in fact refer to papers published in, for example, The Journal of Atmospheric and Solar Terrestrial Physics. Another reference is to work done by Hans Jelbring whose 1998 thesis was Wind Controlled Climate. Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm University. 111pp.
The concept of the temperature gradient in an atmosphere developing at the molecular level is not my original work by any means. Hans Jelbring (in my Ref [11]) wrote “Hence, the atmospheric mass exposed to a gravity field is the cause …”
Either you accept the fact, first postulated by Loschmidt in the 19th century, that the requirements of both the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics dictate that an autonomous thermal gradient must develop in a still gas in a gravitational field, or you accept the naïve conjecture of climatologists, who usually have little understanding of physics, that there would have been an isothermal atmosphere in the absence of water vapour and so-called greenhouse gases. The latter requires a blatant violation of both the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics because it assumes that, every time a molecule moves upwards, energy is created and entropy decreases.
Doug Cotton