I see that it will be high tide on the Sun in early June this year:
Wild speculation – Will solar cycle 24 peak around this time?
358 years (2×179 years) ago, in July of 1653, there was an even higher tide during the Maunder Minimum:
Gerry Pease: Solar High Tide June 2011
Posted: January 25, 2011 by tallbloke in Astronomy, Astrophysics, climate, Solar physics, solar system dynamicsComments
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Hi Gerry,
Thanks for this. Please would you explain the significance of the 179 year period for the benefit of new readers. Many thanks.
My own view is that ‘peak’ is hardly an appropriate word for the max of this solar cycle. I think it will sulk along with a slight rise somewhere between now and late 2014, and then tail off on another long downslope.
Wow,
Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Sun, Earth, and Jupiter all line up together.
That is impressive!
The significance of the 179 year period is that the configuration of the giant outer planets closely repeats itself every 179 years. This planetary perturbation cycle causes the motion of the Sun with respect to the solar system barycenter to closely repeat with the same 179 year periodicity.
The repetition is not exact, but extends also to the inner planets as a resonant pattern. As most of you reading this are aware, there seems to be a very strong correlation with solar activity on the 179 year cycle. Correlation is not causation, but causation demands correlation!
I think that maximum stirring would yield minimum energy output right after the event. Maximum output would be just as the stirring began. We will soon see! Maybe I am all wrong. 😉 2013 would be the most quiet point in a long quiet period and 2029 thru 2031 period the greatest in output due to the least stirring. This will be a nice test,I might get to see it all. pg
The Jose cycle
“causation demands correlation!”
Well said sir!
tallbloke says:
January 25, 2011 at 10:46 am
My own view is that ‘peak’ is hardly an appropriate word for the max of this solar cycle. I think it will sulk along with a slight rise somewhere between now and late 2014, and then tail off on another long downslope.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I agree that cycle 24 will almost certainly have an exceptionally low amplitude and a fairly flat top, making it difficult to identify a ‘peak.’ I think, though, that it could conceivably start tailing off as early as 2013.
Thanks to Geoff Sharp, you can also see my powerpoint presentation,
“Sunspot Cycle Phasing with Conjunctions of Jupiter and Inner Planets, 1894-2006” at
http://www.landscheidt.info/pdf/gep.ppt
Gerry asks:
January 25, 2011
“Wild speculation – Will solar cycle 24 peak around this time?” => June 3, 2011
Not likely. SC24 will only be two and a half years old by then, and it is expected to be around twelve years long. Most cycles have a rise time of between thirty and forty percent of duration, which would give mid 2012 as the earliest likely maximum.
There is an even closer alignment of the tidal planets Venus, Earth, Jupiter and Mercury on May 24, 2012, closely followed by a transit of Venus on June 5, June 6, 2012. The tidal patterns suggest that the likely time for the sunspot maximum will be from Sept. to Dec. 2012.
I agree with Tallbloke that activity may stay at around that level for a while. I speculate that a secondary peak is likely in about March 2014 which could be either slightly lower or higher.
Re: your comment on Jose cycle spacing, May 24, 2012 is exactly 357.2=178.6×2 from March 14, 1655, when the same alignments occurred. But there is a catch, that is only just past the minimum between SC -9 and SC -8! From this and other checks, the length of the solar cycle is not quite an even multiple of the Jose cycle.
Roy,
I pretty much agree with your analysis, with one notable exception. If there is a secondary or third peak as late as 2014, I believe it will most likely be significantly lower. Even NASA/MSFC now predicts a smoothed peak in June/July of 2013, and each one of their long series of predictions has been for an earlier smoothed peak than their previous predictions:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
I even think the smoothed peak could be in 2012, with an outside chance of it being this year. Notice the trend from October, 2010 to now:
http://www.solen.info/solar/
We’re in a Grand Minimum. The rules have changed, and our best historical model is the Maunder Minimum of 1649-1700. The Maunder was in the early years of telescopic observations, and there were very few observers and observations from which to deduce the peak times of the extremely low amplitude solar cycles in that era. That is why Solar Cycle Number One officially started in 1755.
Roy,
Thanks for calling my attention to the alignment of March 14, 1655. The Sun is out of the alignment, presumably because of the influence of Uranus and Neptune near quadrature on that date. The angular separation of those two planets is much greater in the conjunction of May 24, 2012, and the Sun is very much in the alignment then.
This constitutes a major difference between the conjunctions, and will be a significant departure from the Maunder event on May 24, making predictions even more difficult.
Gerry said:
January 27, 2011 at 7:06 pm
“We’re in a Grand Minimum. The rules have changed, and our best historical model is the Maunder Minimum of 1649-1700.”
There is no doubt that solar activity has gone down over the last few cycles, but I believe that a reality check on the short and medium term implications is in order. SC24 is almost certain to be relatively low, but will still be higher than the best estimates of the Maunder Minimum (MM) Period. Beyond SC24 we have no real way of knowing. If the various longer term cycles prove to be a reliable guide, activity will remain low for at least the next few solar cycles, although at this stage I doubt if they will fall to MM levels.
World atmospheric temperatures are currently at historically high levels, similar to those during the Medieval Warm Period, and based on the proxy records future temperatures are much more likely to fall than rise. Assuming that does happen, temperatures will not fall to quickly to ice age levels such as in the MM. Reconstructions such as the Loehle & McCulloch, 2008 (See link given by tenuc on January 18, 2011 on the ‘Millennial cycle in solar system dynamics’ post.) show that it took from around AD900 to AD1600 for the temperature to fall from the equivalent of the current level to the MM level. Proxy reconstructions covering the Holocene indicate that higher rates of fall occur quite regularly, so the fall to a MM type low could happen sooner, but still likely to be two to three hundred years away.
In the meantime, shorter term cycles of significant temperature variations will no doubt occur, which would mean that something like a Oort level cool period could quite possibly develop during the next fifty to one hundred and fifty years.
The question of tides keeps coming up.
I am quite sure that like many others my understanding of the causals is inadequate as are the usual explanations, especially when there are counter-intutives.
Given the solar tide matter is also needing more insight into below surface, we need deeper too.
The linked PDF might be useful.
http://www.jal.cc.il.us/~mikolajsawicki/gravity_and_tides.html
A trail to that comes from this Bad Astronomy page
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/tides.html
Tim,
Those are interesting links to information about Earth tides. Regarding solar tides, I think you will find
Click to access Orbital_Resonance_and_Solar_Cycles.pdf
to be very informative. Detailed tidal information follows the discussion of orbital resonance and solar cycles.
Bear in mind that little is known about the physics of tidal forces on the Sun because it is not a solid body, although some believe it has a solid core. Especially beware of overly simplistic (back of the envelope type) calculations intended to convince people that planetary tidal forces on the Sun are negligible, and therefore unworthy of consideration.