Quick primer:
Beryllium-10 is an isotope that is a proxy for the sun’s activity. Be10 is produced in the atmosphere by cosmic ray collisions with atoms of oxygen and nitrogen. Beryllium 10 concentrations are linked to cosmic ray intensity which can be a proxy for solar strength.
One way to capture earth’s record of that proxy data is to drill deep ice cores. Greenland, due to having a large and relatively stable deep ice sheet is often the target for drilling ice cores.
Isotopic analysis of the ice in the core can be linked to temperature and global sea level variations. Analysis of the air contained in bubbles in the ice can reveal the palaeocomposition of the atmosphere, in particular CO2 variations. Volcanic eruptions leave identifiable ash layers.
While it sounds simple to analyze, there are issues of ice compression, flow, and other factors that must be taken into consideration when doing reconstructions from such data. I attended a talk at ICCC 09 that showed one of the ice core operations had procedures that left significant contamination issues for CO2. But since Beryllium is rather rare, it doesn’t seem to have the same contamination issues attached. – Anthony
Be-10 and Climate
Guest post by David Archibald
A couple of years ago on Climate Audit, I undertook to do battle with Dr Svalgaard’s invariate Sun using Dye 3 Be10 data. And so it has come to pass. Plotted up and annotated, the Dye 3 data shows the strong relationship between solar activity and climate. Instead of wading through hundreds of papers for evidence of the Sun’s influence on terrestrial climate, all you have to do is look at this graph.
All the major climate minima are evident in the Be10 record, and the cold period at the end of the 19th century. This graph alone demonstrates that the warming of the 20th century was solar-driven.
The end of the Little Ice Age corresponded with a dramatic decrease in the rate of production of Be10, due to fewer galactic cosmic rays getting into the inner planets of the solar system. Fewer galactic cosmic rays got into the inner planets because the solar wind got stronger. The solar wind got stronger because the Sun’s magnetic field got stronger, as measured by the aa Index from 1868.
Thus the recent fall of aa Index and Ap Index to lows never seen before in living memory is of considerable interest. This reminds me of a line out of Aliens: “Stay frosty people!” Well, we won’t have any choice – it will get frosty.
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but what about the sunspots? (or lack thereof)….. lots of great info here, but it sure seems that the solar minimum grows deeper every day.
Intriguing.
How recent is this concatenation, and what are the arguments against?
Did your models correctly predict the increase in global temp. the last two months like UAH did? I’m curious if you saw that coming.
Plus don’t forget to put SST’s into the equation, unless its the sun’s activity driving see temperatures which later drag temps. up and down.
Another great post… another dagger in AGW…
Sunspots are just one aspect of Solar Activity:
From the Space Weather Prediction Center
Updated 2009 Mar 17 2201 UTC
Joint USAF/NOAA Report of Solar and Geophysical Activity
SDF Number 076 Issued at 2200Z on 17 Mar 2009
Analysis of Solar Active Regions and Activity from 16/2100Z to 17/2100Z: Solar activity was very low. The disk remains spotless. No flares were observed.
Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be very low.
Geophysical Activity Summary 16/2100Z to 17/2100Z: Geomagnetic field activity was at quiet levels. The greater than 2MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit reached high levels again today.
Geophysical Activity Forecast: Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be quiet for the forecast period (18-20 March).
Just go to solarcycle24.com and have a look at the Magnetogram over the space of a couple of days. Funny things happening to plages, with the most recent on being the dipoles being blown about like fishing nets in arcs.
David, if you are about:
Why would Be10 show the solar inactivity and C14 not?
And what happens when the two are combined (not overlayed, but values added and then halved)?
Do we end up with a mess or a better SC proxy?
This wraps things up neatly. Leif is correct when he says the varience of solar output is not enough to drive the temperature change. But if the increased cloud cover occurs from more high energy neutrons ionizing the atmosphere, then increased solar output makes us warmer indirectly by reducing cloud cover and albedo. It’s still the sun, but not directly.
We actually have and are increasing a whole system of directly measuring sunlight at the earth’s surface, ie. PV solar panels. Their efficiency is directly proportional to cloud cover, humidity, smog, etc. Many have the capability of continuous record keeping built-in. It seems like for very little money, $2-3M, several hundred existing systems could be monitored.
I don’t think I want to hang my hat on one correlation (your one downward trend coupled with this century’s one warm period) with saying that there is causation. Especially if the connecting mechanism is still up in the air. Oceanic affects correlate with warm and cold periods over and over again, and are coupled with plausible mechanisms. So tell me your thoughts on whether or not you will be able to find more correlations like this one, and tell me what your hypothesized mechanisms are?
You should be ashamed of yourself !!!
With the Greenland ice sheet melting away, you just go up there and keep drilling.
Obviously, you don’t care about the polar bears.
Pamela: This would be one correlation, another piece of the puzzle. Seems to me there are quite a few. Leif is saying that solar activity was normal duing the Maunder Minimum. Maybe C14 shows something we cannot observe, and Be10 shows what we actually see (or is felt on Earth). Mechanisms also could be plentiful.
When Eddy remarked in his interview that he chose not to pursue climate connection because it was messy, he was telling us something.
Why cannot the theoretical hat of climate be hung (tentatively) on both the twin towers of solar and oceanic forcing (not equal however)?
I emphasize not equal.
Most of the earth’s heat budget is stored in the oceans. Yet some studies are linking some large-scale heating events such as the Super El Nino 1998 to beyond Earth…..
Leads one to believe that there might be two main drivers….or perhaps even THREE:
The Oceans, the Sun, and GCRs.
But not necessarily in that order.
If I understand Leif’s argument correctly, TSI varies little over time.
And this does appear to be true.
TSI however, assumes that all energies of the EM spectrum interact with matter identically. It does not take into effect ionization of atmospheric gases and aerosols, ozone, etc.
Heating of the ionosphere and upper atmosphere from a stronger solar wind, cme events, and solar flares are also not considered.
Wouldn’t the expansion of the upper atmosphere reduce the rate at which heat is lost from the planet?
If CO2 supposedly adds an extra two watts per meter, perhaps it is the atmosphere that is not allowing that extra two watts to escape into space simply because it is thicker.
First, the Oct. 2005 drop in Ap is again highlighted with no explanation. Come on folks, tell me why?
I have a problem with the second line graph (from john-daly). It seems to have some artistic issues. Can’t think of a better term. The horizontal (x) axis starts at 1070 –tick- 1090, and then goes to 1910. So are those first two supposed to be 1870 and 1890? Then the chart seems to have three parts with correlation coefficients shown, all about -0.8. Equal signs seem to be missing. Then in the first and third parts the lines seem to track extremely well – intuitively, isn’t this a positive correlation? The middle part (1090 to 1940) or, as I think, 1890 to 1940, is out of phase so isn’t than a negative, shown as -0.83? So if we clean up this graph, what is it showing?
Other than the above, interesting stuff! I haven’t seen Aliens, but the “Stay frosty” greeting I will send on to the three Catlin Artic folks trekking toward the North Pole. Cheers!
One thing that has always puzzled me about the notion that solar variation isn’t enough to change the global climate is based on how I think of the entire system as a whole. The best analogy I can think of is air going into a balloon that has a hole in it. The air coming in is solar energy. The air leaking out is radiation into space. At any given moment the earth is receiving energy on one side and shedding it on the other. Now on any given day, things like clouds will alter the amount received or allowed to escape but given a steady input, the overall balance shouldn’t change much.
Now imagine the amount of air being added reduces slightly. This is a slight reduction of energy 24x7x365 being added to the system. If this continues over a long enough period of time, the system would have to experience a net loss of energy. The question is if it would be enough to make a difference. Now people who say that the amount of change in a solar minimum us much less than a diurnal change or a seasonal change are, I believe, incorrect because solar radiation doesn’t change on a diurnal cycle. The earth receives the same amount of energy (more or less) at all times and at all seasons. The only difference is where it is being added and where it is escaping.
Now seasonal changes will be significant because albedo is great at around the equinoxes but again, this also balances out as the season progresses. But if I reduce the amount of energy being put into the system for a year or two years or ten years, the overall system should leak energy to space because there is nothing on the other side of the planet that would necessarily restrict radiation to the same extend that irradiation has reduced. Clouds are (again) the unknown factor here.
But I am having a hard time reconciling the notion that you can reduce the energy input to the system over a long time period and not reduce the net energy in the system after that time has elapsed.
Can someone help me understand this better if I am on the wrong track?
Robert Bateman: half-life
C14: 5730 years
B10: 1,5×10^6 years
The aim of this work was to use an Iterative Regression Analysis Method for the determination of periodicities in geophysical time series. This method gives, for every identified sine function, its three parameters and their standard deviation due to measurement errors and to the presence of adjustment residues. This feature allows to select the most important periodicities with higher amplitude/deviation ratio. The method described was applied to the analysis of the main periodicities in time series of atmospheric cosmonuclides (atmospheric carbon 14 and beryllium 10 of ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica), mean surface temperatures and indicators of atmospheric volcanic dust. During the time interval of these series, the periodicities found were compared from the point of view of possible causal associations between such phenomena as solar activity, cosmonuclide concentrations in the terrestrial atmosphere, atmospheric circulation, temperatures of the air and volcanic dust in the atmosphere.
I saw a similar talk on ice cores last year. The contamination problem was an important part of the presentation and cast considerable doubt on CO2 data from Vostok and Law Dome.
I asked the presenter after the talk whether he thought the presence of hydrocarbons in the drill fluid could affect CO2 and other trace material in the core and his answer was an unequivocal yes.
I then asked whether this affected his position on AGW and his answer was also unequivocal – NO.
I suspected then (and still do) that his funding, which includes trips to the Antarctic and Greenland, is somewhat dependent on his keeping on message.
There seems to be 2 main camps on climate.
One is the AGW only CO2 can influence warming and
Two is the sun is the main driver through solar activity and spectral changes.
TSI may not vary that much, but the NUV certainly does, and cosmic rays do have a known effect making low-lying clouds. Couple that with the shrinking of the ionosphere and Oceans flipping to cold and increased albedo due to growing cold (ice, snow) and it really doesn’t matter that TSI remains aloof.
Dunno why the oceans would flip cold, but they did.
Dunno why a farmer would up and tell me his crops are all funny and then tell me there has to be something wrong with the sun. But he did. Blew me away.
The guy ought to know, he pays attention to everything and has been at it for 50 years.
Folks who are close to nature are far more apt to notice the changes around them than folks cooped up in offices. No matter what is going on.
I will put this up a very recent web article on my statistical model using AA solar-magnetic index, AMO & PDO and a small amount of CO2 which also shows with a lag period of meaned AA readings from 0 to 15 years, how solar-magnetic influences also show very good correlations with global temps, much like the David has posted. there is something there more thann the TSI shows imo and that of many others it seems. there are too many “coincidences” in solar-magnetic and ocean cycles to not see that they are the main drivers of global temperature. All the ups and downs and peaks and troughs (apart from the volcanic) can be seen in them. You mau not agree with all I have done here in the model, but it all rings true in the right direction to me.
FORECAST MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE TRENDS FROM 2009 TO 2050
http://www.holtonweather.com/global.htm
Cheers
Robert Bateman wrote: “Folks who are close to nature are far more apt to notice the changes around them than folks cooped up in offices. No matter what is going on.”
Agreed. We don’t give enough credit to plants because they can not talk. But phooey on us for not paying attention to what they are saying. The proof is not in the pudding….it is in the yield.
Something is up with the sun…..plages that in any other time would be blossoming into good ‘ole 101 dalmation spots. Yet nothing.
Fascinating times.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
crosspatch, you are right.
What you are talking about is the solar forcing equivalent of Mann’s ‘warming in the pipeline’ from the CO2 forcing. That is the warming (or cooling) from a longer term change inTSI that only occurs after a time lag (which may be years).
I puzzled over this for a while and then puzzled over why other people, particularly climate scientists weren’t puzzling over it.
I concluded that there isn’t any science to support one position over another. And the instantaneous effect of forcings is just an assumption. Further, the reason no one wants to talk about it, is because scientists don’t like their assumptions questioned, because it throws doubt on everything they think they know.
Which takes into the realm of epistemology, Kuhn and paradigms. Rather arcane subjects for a blog like this.
Five days of straight rain here in Virginia. Last time we saw the sun? One week prior to today.
This is a stunning reversal from the mature-warm stage of the AMO, which brought the SE US record heat and drought. The persistent subtropical anticyclone has finally been beaten down.
Low clouds for one week….and then a clearing sky tonight….only to be enveloped by zero visibility fog a few hours later.
The cycles of mother nature. I am not complaining….because to us, “AMO” does not mean “love.”
Fascinating times. Question for David….what is the next set of stats/data related to the Be10 you are going to produce??
Thanks for your hard work….will be interested to see….
CHRIS
Norfolk, VA
Re: solar variation isn’t enough to change the global climate
OR IS IT???
OK Floks, here’s my take on what I think is a recent find that could be the missing feedback required to justify the solar impact on climate:
Per the link below, we know the atmosphere expands and contracts in 11 year, 27day and 9 day cycles….
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39356/title/Solar_wind_pushes_atmospheric_breathing
Based on this relation, one has to imagine what this change effects:
1)The total volume of the atmosphere is in relation to the 3rd power of the change in atmospheric height.
2)Changing volume will have enormous effecs on atmospheric circulation
3)Changing atmospheric circulation effects the ability to radiate heat into space.
4)And what about V1 / T1 = V2 / T2 gas laws
Can anybody provide a graphic that correlates atmospheric height and surface temperature?
It is a common human frailty that when one believes strongly in a cause [AGW or more rabidly Anti-AGW] a certain blindness or perhaps expressed better – selective vision, sets in and drives people to less than candid use of Figures and Data. So it is with this post.
The use of 10Be and 14C proxies is fraught with pitfalls. The production rate may be set by solar activity [the current paradigm says the Heliomagnetic Field. HMF], but the deposition rate in the ice and wood depends on terrestrial factors, climate, geomagnetic field, and volcanic eruptions [as 10Be attaches to aerosols]. Beer and McCracken have in two recent papers [see references in links below] attempted to reconstruct the ‘equivalent’ Climax Neutron Monitor count from the 10Be data and from that the driving HMF.
We have looked carefully at their reconstruction and are in the process of submitting a paper addressing serious issues we see with their result. a preliminary report was presented at last year’s SORCE meeting in Santa Fe: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20From%20McCracken%20HMF.pdf with some background information in http://www.leif.org/research/Consensus-I.pdf
The issues are complex and will often be too involved for people to take the time to study and understand them. This fact is vigorously exploited by people with agendas, by serving up simplified [sometimes even wrong or deceptive; allowed according to Gore to get the important point across and save the planet – the end justifying the means] and misleading graphs [hockey sticks and ice cores].
So, I’ll be equally simplistic [as the details have been discussed in full already on this blog] and just point out a few items of interest:
1) It has been trumpeted with great fanfare that the solar wind is the weakest ever observed. The fact is that the solar wind [and the HMF] now is what ir was 108 years ago, so shouldn’t the curve on Figure 1 go back up to where it was 108 years ago? This has conveniently been left out.
2) The major peaks in the 10Be record are mainly due to strong volcanic eruptions. The aerosols produced scour the stratosphere clean of 10Be and increases the deposition rate. Volcanic eruptions also produce cooling, of course, so that will help the correlation.
3) The Ap-index being the lowest ever is due to erroneous data from the SWPC. This has been pointed out here already, so Figure 2 seems a deliberate distortion. Correct geomagnetic activity is known back to the 1840s [ http://www.leif.org/research/Seminar-SPRG-2008.pdf ].
4) Correlation coefficients calculated on heavily smoothed data [Figure 3] are severely inflated and do not represent correct statistics.
In all, I would personally have been embarrassed if this had been my post, but then I’m not an agitator for an agenda [which I understand justifies inaccuracies for the sake of the good].