Nicola Scafetta Comments on “Solar Trends And Global Warming” by Benestad and Schmidt
From Climate Science — Roger Pielke Sr.
On July 22 2009 I posted on the new paper on solar forcing by Lean and Rind 2009 (see). In that post, I also referred to the Benestad and Schmidt 2009 paper on solar forcing which has a conclusion at variance to that in the Lean and Rind paper.
After the publication of my post, Nicole Scafetta asked if he could present a comment (as a guest weblog) on the Benestad and Schmidt paper on my website, since it will take several months for his comment to make it through the review process. In the interests of presenting the perspectives on the issue of solar climate forcing, Nicola’s post appears below. I also invite Benestad and Schmidt to write responses to the Scaftta contribution which I would be glad to post on my website.
GUEST WEBLOG BY NICOLA SCAFETTA
Benestad and Schmidt have recently published a paper in JGR. (Benestad, R. E., and G. A. Schmidt (2009), Solar trends and global warming, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D14101, doi:10.1029/2008JD011639).
This paper criticizes the mathematical algorithms of several papers that claim that the temperature data show a significant solar signature. They conclude that such algorithms are “nonrobust” and conclude that
“the most likely contribution from solar forcing a global warming is 7 ± 1% for the 20th century and is negligible for warming since 1980.”
By using the word “robust” and its derivates for 18 times, Benestad and Schmidt claim to disprove two categories of papers:
those that use the multilinear regression analysis [Lean and Rind, 2008; Camp and Tung, 2007; Ingram, 2006] and those that present an alternative approach [Scafetta and West, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2008]. (See the references in their paper.)
Herein, I will not discuss the limitation of the multilinear regression analysis nor the limits of Benestad and Schmidt’s critique to those papers. I will briefly focus on Benestad and Schmidt’s criticism to the papers that I coauthored with Dr. West. I found Benestad and Schmidt’s claims to be extremely misleading and full of gratuitous criticism due to poor reading and understanding of the data analysis that was accomplished in our works.
Let us see some of these misleading statements and errors starting with the less serious one and ending with the most serious one:
1. Since the abstract Benestad and Schmidt claim that they are rebutting several our papers [Scafetta and West, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2008]. Already the abstract is misleading. Indeed, their criticism focuses only on Scafetta and West [2005, 2006a]. The other papers used different data and mathematical methodologies.
2. Benestad and Schmidt claim that we have not disclosed nor detailed the mathematical methodology and some parameters that we use. For example:
a) In paragraph 39 Benestad and Schmidt criticize and dismiss my paper with Willson [2009] by claiming that we “did not provide any detailed description of the method used to derive their results, and while they derived a positive minima trend for their composite, it is not clear how a positive minima trend could arise from a combination of the reconstruction of Krivova et al. [2007] and PMOD, when none of these by themselves contained such a trend).” However, the arguments are quite clear in that paper and in the additional figures that we published as supporting material. Moreover, it is not clear to me how Benestad and Schmidt could conclude that our work is wrong if Benestad and Schmidt acknowledge that they have not understood it. Perhaps, they just needed to study it better.
b) In paragraph 41 Benestad and Schmidt claim that: “It is not clear how the lagged values were estimated by Scafetta and West [2006a]“. However, in paragraph 9 of SW06a it is written “we adopt the same time-lags as predicted by Wigley’s [1988, Table 1] model.” So, again, Benestad and Schmidt just needed to study better the paper that they wanted to criticize.
c) In paragraph 48 Benestad and Schmidt claim that: “over the much shorter 1980-2002 period and used a global surface temperature from the Climate Research Unit, 2005 (they did not provide any reference to the data nor did they specify whether they used the combined land-sea data (HadCRUT) or land-only temperatures (CRUTEM).” However, it is evident from our work SW05 that we were referring to the combined land-sea data which is properly referred to as “global surface temperature” without any additional specification (Land or Ocean, North or South). We also indicate the webpage where the data could be downloaded.
d) In paragraph 57 Benestad and Schmidt claim that: “The analysis using Lean [2000] rather than Scafetta and West’s own solar proxy as input is shown as thick black lines.” However, in our paper SW06a it is crystal clear that we too use Lean’s TSI proxy reconstruction. In particular we were using Lean 1995 which is not very different from Lean 2000. Benestad and Schmidt apparently do not know that since 1978 Lean 1995 as well as Lean 2000 do not differ significantly from PMOD because PMOD was build (by altering the published TSI satellite data) by using Lean 1995 and Lean 2000 as guides. Moreover, we also merge the Lean data with ACRIM since 1978 to obtain an alternative scenario, as it is evident in all our papers. The discontinuity problem addressed by Benestad and Schmidt in merging two independent sequences (Lean’s proxy model and the ACRIM) is not an issue because it is not possible to avoid it given the fact that there are no TSI satellite data before 1978.
3. In Paragraphs 48-50 Benestad and Schmidt try to explain one of our presumed major mathematical mistakes. Benestad and Schmidt’s states: “A change of 2*0.92 W/m2 between solar minimum and maximum implies a change in S of 1.84 W/m2 which amounts to 0.13% of S, and is greater than the 0.08% difference between the peak and minimum of solar cycle 21 reported by Willson [1997] and the differences between TSI levels of the solar maxima and minima seen in this study (~1.2 W/m2; Figure 6).” Benestad and Schmidt’s are referring to our estimate of the amplitude of the solar cycle referring to the 11-year modulation that we called A7,sun = 0.92 W/m2 in SW05. Benestad and Schmidt are claiming that our estimate is nor reasonable because in their opinion according to our calculations the change of TSI between solar maximum and solar minimum had to be twice our value A7,sun , so they write 2*0.92=1.84 W/m2, and this would be far too large. However, as it is evident from our paper and in figure 4a in SW05 the value A7,sun refers to the peak-to-trough amplitude of the cycle, so it should not be multiplied by 2, as Benestad and Schmidt misunderstood. This is crystal clear in the factor ½ before the equation f(t)= ½ A sin(2pt) that we are referring to and that Benestad and Schmidt also report in their paragraph 48. It is hard to believe that two prominent scientists such as Benestad and Schmidt do not understand the meaning of a factor ½! So, again, Benestad and Schmidt just needed to think more before writing a study that criticizes ours.
4) Finally, Benestad and Schmidt’s paper is full of misleading claims that they are reproducing our analysis. Indeed, Benestad and Schmidt’s paper is self-contradictory on this crucial issue. In paragraph 85 Benestad and Schmidt claim that they “have repeated the analyses of Scafetta and West, together with a series of sensitivity tests to some of their arbitrary choices.” However, in their paragraph 76 Benestad and Schmidt acknowledge: “In our emulation, we were not able to get exactly the same ratio of amplitudes, due to lack of robustness of the SW06a method and insufficient methods description.” It is quite singular that Benestad and Schmidt claim to have repeated our calculation, at the same time they acknowledge that, indeed, they did not succeed in repeating our calculation and, ironically, they blame us for their failure. It is not easy to find in the scientific literature such kind of tortuous reasoning!
In fact, the reason why Benestad and Schmidt did not succeed in repeating our calculation is because they have misapplied the wavelet decomposition algorithm known as the maximum overlap discrete wavelet transforms (MODWT). This is crystal clear in their figures 4 where it is evident that they applied the MODWT decomposition in a cyclical periodic mode. In other words they are implicitly imposing that the temperature in 2001 is equal to the temperature in 1900, the temperature in 2002 is equal to the temperature in 1901 and so on. This is evident in their figure 4 where the decomposed blue and pink component curves in 2000 just continue in 1900 in an uninterrupted cyclical periodic mode as shown in the figure below which is obtained by plotting their figure 4 side by side with itself:
Any person expert in time series processing can teach Benestad and Schmidt that it is not appropriate to impose a cyclical periodic mode to a non stationary time series such as the temperature or TSI records that present clear upward trends from 1900 to 2000. By applying a cyclical periodic mode Benestad and Schmidt are artificially introducing two large and opposite discontinuities in the records in 1900 and 2000, as the above figure shows in 2000. These large and artificial discontinuities at the two extremes of the time sequence disrupt completely the decomposition and force the algorithm to produce very large cycles in proximity of the two borders, as it is clear in their figure 4. This severe error is responsible for the fact that Benestad and Schmidt find unrealistic values for Z22y and Z11y that significantly differ from ours by a factor of three. In their paragraph 50 they found Z22y = 0.58 K/Wm-2, which is not realistic as they also realize later, while we found Z22y = 0.17 K/Wm-2, which is more realistic.
This same error in data processing also causes the reconstructed solar signature in their figures 5 and 7 to present a descending trend minimum in 2000 while the Sun was approaching one of its largest maxima. Compare their figures 4a (reported above), 5 and 7 with their figure 6 and compare them also with our figure 3 in SW06a and in SW08! See figure below where I compare Benestad and Schmidt’s figures 6 and 7 and show that the results depicted in their Figure 7 are non-physical.
Because of the severe and naïve error in applying the wavelet decomposition, Benestad and Schmidt’s calculations are “robustly” flawed. I cannot but encourage Benestad and Schmidt to carefully study some book about wavelet decomposition such as the excellent work by Percival and Walden [2000] before attempting to use a complex and powerful algorithm such as the Maximum Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT) by just loading a pre-compiled computer R package.
There are several other gratuitous claims and errors in Benestad and Schmidt’s paper. However, the above is sufficient for this fast reply. I just wonder why the referees of that paper did not check Benestad and Schmidt’s numerous misleading statements and errors. It would be sad if the reason is because somebody is mistaking a scientific theory such as the “anthropogenic global warming theory” for an ideology that should be defended at all costs.
Nicola Scafetta, Physics Department, Duke University
Gratuitous errors are a commonplace on Schmidt’s blog. It seems his peer reviewed papers are much the same. This won’t surprise the regulars on WUWT much, but I hope Nicola Scaffeta’s robust rebuttal of this poorly researched and badly executed paper will be taken note of by the Journal which has diminished it’s reputation by publishing it.
Looks like Benestad and Schmidt (the BS paper) has been thoroughly ro-busted!
This scientific contribution will be ignored, also. All that matters is politics and green religion.
Gavin needed quality control for his work, but it would have cost a half a million dollars.
Schmidt and his band are only interested in the methodology artifacts that support the AGW hypothesis – hence the hockey stick, warming in Antartica and now solar trends – it really doesn’t matter if they understand or don’t understand the original purpose of the tools used.
If it is peer reviewed, it must be true! [end sarcasm]
It is simply amazing how many people quote a study and claim it is valid simply because it is peer reviewed. This is yet another example showing how peer reviewed does not mean validated. I have seen studies both for and against GW that full of factual or logical errors, but they were peer reviewed. We need to stop thinking that being peer reviewed is what is required to be accepted as valid.
The battleground is not in the camp of the skeptics or of the warmists. Each side is entrenched in their beliefs. Rather the battle for public understanding lies with the moderates, those who have not formulated a strong emotionally charged opinion and are seeking to understand the facts and draw their own conclusions. This group is being turned off by the outlandish claims of impending doom, lack of integrity and data manipulations of the AGW scientists, such as with the obvious inconsistencies between reported temperature increases and their own back yard observations.
The AGW scientists are under the false impression that they can make any sort of claim, distort any set of facts, with absolute impunity since a supportive mainstream media will play along. This is where they are dead wrong. The general population is much smarter than that and they over time begin to comprehend that they have been presented with manipulated, distorted or outright false claims and data.
An excellent case in point was the Clinton health care plan during his first term. The mainstream media fawned all over this plan and it appeared on the surface as though there was little organized opposition. The mid-term elections demonstrated otherwise as conservatives were overwhelmingly elected and controlled Congress for the next decade. I can foresee this happening again. Cap and Trade (as well as various other liberal causes) are not setting well with the general population and a new wave of more conservative politicians will be descending upon Washington DC.
Those scientists who are guilty of manipulation and false claims may end up with shorter tenures than they had expected when they first embarked on their journeys of deceit.
Quite similar to the “adjustments” made in TSI with the purpose of leaving CO2 as the only climate forcing: (Scafetta presentation at EPA)
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/wkshp.nsf/vwpsw/84E74F1E59E2D3FE852574F100669688#video
TheWord (05:34:23) : This scientific contribution will be ignored, also. All that matters is politics and green religion This is sadly true…however Scafetta is doing the fight in favour of reason and common sense.
No doubt Dr Scafetta will receive a fulsome apology from Dr Schmidt and Dr Benestad along with one from the reviewers of their paper.
After all that is what a professional would do if they have traduced a fellow professional’s work.
Looking at Figure 7 above its an inverted Hockey stick, boys and their toys I don’t know.
Please clarify whether it is Nicole or Nicola (male or female) Scafetta.
I have a wee bit of sympathy for the malefactors; when I and some colleagues were using wavelets a few years ago, we found the literature rather hard work, and at least one of the published algorithms flawed. Still, their error does seem to be pretty gormless.
The last time we published work demolishing another author’s, we did send him a copy of our paper at the same time we submitted it for publication, to give him a chance to defend himself to us before the paper became “in press”. It also gave him the chance to point out any errors we might have made. Had the malefactors adopted such a courtesy, they might have avoided egg-on-face.
Pots & kettles immediately spring to mind. 😉
DaveE
It is not only in climate science. When someone defending orthodoxy reads a challenge to that orthodoxy, they get angry, and angry people can not read text carefully or do calculations properly. I had a paper on spotted owls with radio collars where we stated that every bird that vanished was tracked down and the collar removed (alive or dead) except one. A nasty attack on us ignored that and claimed that birds that left the area could have died (and other claims that were erroneous). I would rate these responses as nearly as heated as in the climate literature.
Wow! That was a painful spanking. Great Article.
“2. Benestad and Schmidt claim that we have not disclosed nor detailed the mathematical methodology and some parameters that we use.”
Gavin Schmidt has a lot of gall to say this given the truly pathetic state of documentation of his sorry code, Model E!!
For those who haven;t seen this, here is the “documentation” of Model E:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/
Schmidt, G.A., R. Ruedy, J.E. Hansen, I. Aleinov, N. Bell, M. Bauer, S. Bauer, B. Cairns, V. Canuto, Y. Cheng, A. Del Genio, G. Faluvegi, A.D. Friend, T.M. Hall, Y. Hu, M. Kelley, N.Y. Kiang, D. Koch, A.A. Lacis, J. Lerner, K.K. Lo, R.L. Miller, L. Nazarenko, V. Oinas, Ja. Perlwitz, Ju. Perlwitz, D. Rind, A. Romanou, G.L. Russell, Mki. Sato, D.T. Shindell, P.H. Stone, S. Sun, N. Tausnev, D. Thresher, and M.-S. Yao 2006. Present day atmospheric simulations using GISS ModelE: Comparison to in-situ, satellite and reanalysis data. J. Climate 19, 153-192.
Not one differential equation to be found…nothing…zip…
Of course, it is my belief that this kind of sloppy research is tolerated (and perhaps encouraged) at GISS.
Extract: ‘After the publication of my post, Nicole Scafetta asked if he could present a comment ‘
Surely ‘Nicole’ and ‘Nicola’ bespeak a ‘she’?
I had a quick look at RC. Someone pointed out Nicola Scafetta’s rebuttal. Gavin doesn’t seem worried and he’s told people to ‘stay tuned’…
“Benestad and Schmidt claim that we have not disclosed nor detailed the mathematical methodology and some parameters that we use.”
Well why should you disclose that since they only want to use it to prove you were wrong?
Frank S (06:32:03) :
“Surely ‘Nicole’ and ‘Nicola’ bespeak a ’she’?”
Only in English or Latin derived languages? Anyway – it doesn’t matter. Women are easily as smart as men!
It does show how one can adjust a little parametre here, err on the high side of an assumption there and leave in a small error there hoping that noone will find it and one can continue to pop out 3.0C per doubling every time.
The observational values of most aspects of the climate are confined to such small variation margins, that if one believes in 3.0C per doubling strong enough, you can find it in every assumption you make, data you adjust, and calculation you do not disclose.
imapopulistnow (06:06:47) : “The battleground is not in the camp of the skeptics or of the warmists. Each side is entrenched in their beliefs. Rather the battle for public understanding lies with the moderates, those who have not formulated a strong emotionally charged opinion and are seeking to understand the facts and draw their own conclusions.”
I have sought to understand the facts and drew my conclusions with the result that I am now a moderate unemotional skeptic and I am sure many of us skeptics fall in the same category.
Agree Jimmy…
Agreed, I should say
In German Nicola is female, but in Italian it is male.
“Frank S (06:32:03) :
Extract: ‘After the publication of my post, Nicole Scafetta asked if he could present a comment ‘
Surely ‘Nicole’ and ‘Nicola’ bespeak a ’she’?”
Nope! I knew a Nicola and a Nicala, a male and a female, who married (Circa 1993-ish).
Phillip Bratby: You wrote, “Please clarify whether it is Nicole or Nicola (male or female) Scafetta.”
Dr. Nicola Scafetta is a guy. Scroll down in the following link.
http://www.acrim.com/staff.htm
Patrick Davis (07:06:15) :
“Frank S (06:32:03) :
Extract: ‘After the publication of my post, Nicole Scafetta asked if he could present a comment ‘
Surely ‘Nicole’ and ‘Nicola’ bespeak a ’she’?”
Nope! I knew a Nicola and a Nicala, a male and a female, who married (Circa 1993-ish).”
Sorry, should have been “Nope! I knew a Nicola and a Nicola, a male and a female, who married (Circa 1993-ish).”
An excellent article, written with logic and thoroughness.
sloppy research is tolerated (and perhaps encouraged) at GISS.
I would agree. What shame!
Where is the NASA that made the world stand still to see man take a step on to the moon?
Jimmy Haigh (06:39:06) :
Frank S (06:32:03) :
“Surely ‘Nicole’ and ‘Nicola’ bespeak a ’she’?”
Only in English or Latin derived languages? Anyway – it doesn’t matter. Women are easily as smart as men!
————-
That’s not fair! We men have to really work at being smart.
Phillip Bratby (06:10:58) :
Please clarify whether it is Nicole or Nicola (male or female) Scafetta.
He is italian and his name is Nicola (masculine). Nicole it is feminine.
The “holy” hockey stick will prevail and all of us will be sent to the stake.
Benestad gets coverage on this issue at the nerwegian meteorology site yr.no:
Tilbakeviser omstridt solteori (“Rejects controversial solar theory”)
http://www.yr.no/nyheter/1.6711345
Some Google tranlated excerpts:
“A new detailed review of this hypothesis has recently been published in the prestigious journal, Journal of Geophysical Research (jgr).
– The american estimates of the solar influence is based on a very simple model, which is not even based on natural laws, “said Rasmus Benestad, one of the researchers behind the new program.
– A re-enactment of the results of this model suggests that the results that were originally published in the scientific journals were not robust or accurate.
The new analysis includes both actual measurements, and studies where these measurements have been replaced with values from climate models. This way, the methodology that the U.S. researchers used have been tested out.”
Right.
No comment, just thanking Nicola Scafetta for finding the rat in Benestad and Schmidt’s Paper and Roger Pielke for his relentless crusade against the “Biggest Hoax in the History of human kind”.
And I want to thank Anthony (can’t thank him enough) and all the people involved in making this the best blog available at the world wide web.
Agreed. http://clubpenguinmasterscp.wordpress.com
I’m glad you picked this one up Anthony.
Just so people understand, this is a very simplistic error made by Dr. Schmidt. Any signal processing person should have easily caught and corrected the error. In wavelet transforms it’s quite common to wrap the signal in a circle to handle end point issues (similar to filtering endpoint problems) and in my experience wrapping the data is typically a standard option on wavelet algorithms, however in a (non-stationary) signal with a changing amplitude in the form of a trend you would never tie the endpoints together.
The level of embarrassment on this will not be typical as compared to a paper with mistakes like Steig et. al. It is equal to any mistake made in blogland yet is in a published ‘peer reviewed’ paper.
Sorry: nerwegian => norwegian
(Benestad is norwegian)
Scientific brutality. And totally appropriate.
If people are interested, I’ve done a centroid video plot of Arctic sea ice which is pretty revealing.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/arctic-ice-weather-patterns/
Gavin Who?
RealWhat?
If memory serves me well, these studies used regression analyses or some other similar method to remove the effects of volcanic aerosols and ENSO. They then use other statistical techniques to extract a solar signature. But the flaw with this was discussed in my post “Regression Analyses Do Not Capture the Multiyear Aftereffects of Significant El Nino Events”…
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/07/regression-analyses-do-not-capture.html
…which was also posted here at WUWT…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/27/why-regression-analysis-fails-to-capture-the-aftereffects-of-el-nino-events/
And if the studies do not consider the upward step changes in ~40% of the surface area of the global oceans that are caused by significant El Nino events, then they are mistaking those step changes for solar signatures and anthropogenic causes.
Both BS and SW commit the same error [apart from the mutual errors and mud slingings], namely to assume that there was an increase in TSI during the 20th century larger than even the solar cycle change of TSI, such that TSI at solar max 100 years ago was significantly smaller than TSI at solar min today. This increase did not take place and so the whole discussion of periodic functions is completely moot from the outset.
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%201900-now.png shows [the red and pink curves] the likely trend [or lack thereof] in TSI since 1900. There is no large change during the 20th Century.
Gavin is trained as a debater, and debate judges often give out points regardless of the quality of the point being made. The game is: you make the point and it’s up to the other side to refute your point.
Peer review is a preliminary step. General review is where the action is. Anyone who tries to imply that a paper that has survived peer review is unassailable is misleading.
imapopulistnow (06:06:47) :
The battleground is not in the camp of the skeptics or of the warmists. Each side is entrenched in their beliefs.
imapopulistnow,
EXCUSE ME!
I totally disagree with your assessment that skeptics, like warmists are entrenched in their beliefs.
The skeptics, as we find them at this blog, strongly focus on the science and distance themselves from believes.
That is the big difference between warmists and skeptics.
Frank S (06:32:03) :
………………
Surely ‘Nicole’ and ‘Nicola’ bespeak a ’she’?
Nicole, Nicola; Nicolas, S:t Nicholas, Santa Claus; bearded fella. Most likely a “he”.
JGR referees and the peer reviewed system are exposed. Once again.
Meanwhile … Michigan applies for federal disaster aid as 27 counties suffer 30% or greater crop damage from cold weather.
Presentation by Nicola Scafetta from February 2009
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/wkshp.nsf/vwpsw/84E74F1E59E2D3FE852574F100669688#video
I believe thats whats known as being spanked and sent to bed with no tea!
My mistake re ‘Nicola’. Thanks for the info. And, by the way, I wish him well. We need more like him.
It’s very trendy in “peer-reviewed” circles to use some new analysis method, such as wavelet transforms. Vulgar resort to canned routines instantly provides an aura of high erudition. That the basics have not been mastered by the user (or canner, in some instances) and the technique is misapplied seems, unfortunately, beyond the ken of most reviewers.
While it will be interesting to see how RC plays this; however, this short tale exposes the awful truth, which many of us know already, that peer review doesn’t always mean very much.
I have had one peer review help catch some very bad errors that would have lead to great embarrasment in a paper, and for which I remain grateful to this day. Yet, another at another time suggested some every bad errors that I should, in fact must, make in order to get the paper accepted. Here are some reasons I’ve determined why peer review goes wrong in general, not just in the GW context.
1) Peer reviewers see review as a way to gather intelligence, rather than a duty and service to science and one’s peers. (I have had reviewers leak details of a paper to a third party, and then sit on their review until the last minute.)
2) Peer reviewers do not think that a poorly done review will hurt their reputation because it is often anomymous to the author, so they put in insufficient effort. We really should get rid of reviewer anonimity–or make it double blind.
3) Peer reviewers often do not understand what they are reviewing, but appear loathe to admit as much for fear of loosing reputation with the referee and journal editor.
4) In a particularly contentious area of research and debate, some peer reviewers over estimate their ability or knowledge in a rush to be “defender of the faith.”
5) Peer reviewers sometimes look at the review as a way to promote one’s own work–sometimes to the point of demanding that their own important work be cited (which destroys anonimity, of course).
6) Peer reviewers allow the author’s reputation, or affiliation with prestigious organization to cloud their judgment. In fact, peer review is just about a death sentence to the talented amateur.
Unfortunately, tradition being what it is, and the limitation of journal space and pressure to publish, means that peer review is probably with us to stay. None the less we all need to maintain skepticism against claims about “peer review.”
This is not related but the cool weather is catching up to use here in Ky. Flooding rains are pouring down in record rates. Louisville is flooded, 6″ in one hour. We are getting the same up I-71 towards Cinn. OH. It’s like it’s April or May here.
I’m not particularly impressed with either side. One side presents a, largely incomprehensible, paper, replete with arithmetic, and logic, errors; and the other side responds in kind.
Has ANYONE, ANYWHERE conducted an “EXPERIMENT?”
You know, where they, actually, MEASURE the effects of CO2 concentrations in “real,” “honest-to-goodness” Air?
sorry about the poor spelling, it’s haling here now as well.
This does not surprise me at all. I have said it before, and I will say it once again … Gavin Schmidt is the ultimate hack!
Further, he couldn’t program his ass out of a brown paper bag if he had to….
Leif Svalgaard (08:11:13) :
the likely trend [or lack thereof] in TSI since 1900. There is no large change during the 20th Century.
I think Leif should declare that he is a personal friend of Claus Frohlich, who is in ACRIMonious dispute with Nicola Scafetta and others over ‘adjustments’ made by Frohlich to the data the PMOD TSI series is constructed from.
I would advise those interested to check the EPA presentation by Scafetta linked by nogw on this thread. Especially pages 12-20, particularly the text of the letters on or around page 16.
They’re both wrong. At least according to this “study”. http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090803/sc_livescience/savetheplanethavefewerkids .
The firing range is open. Take your best shots. 😀
Off post slightly 😀
Sorry about this but someone on this site provided a link to The Greenhouse Conspiracy, on UTUBE, in which Professor Scneider is shown to be a liitle free with the actualite when questioned about his support for Global Cooling.
UTube say “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”
If there is another link I would appreciate. Some nutter on CIF is saying that global cooling is an urban myth.
oops sorry please read some misguided person instead of nutter.
Leif Svalgaard (08:11:13) :
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%201900-now.png
I think the Lean reconstruction of TSI on this graphic may be one of Judith Lean’s earlier efforts and if so should not to be confused with the Lean reconstruction referred to in the letters included in the Scafetta EPA presentation.
Over the last years Lean seems to have gone from a reconstruction which would be consistent with a solar explanation for C20th warming to one more in line with the outlook of her employers.
It seems that the Benestad and Schmidt paper is yet another piece of evidence in support for my theory that any piece of crap gets past peer-review and published as long as it supports the AGW hypothesis. On the other hand, papers disproving the AGW hypothesis have to be extremly well-written, and by known climate scientists, to even have a chance of getting considered for publication.
tallbloke (09:48:13) :
I think Leif should declare that he is a personal friend of Claus Frohlich, who is in ACRIMonious dispute with Nicola Scafetta and others over ‘adjustments’ made by Frohlich to the data the PMOD TSI series is constructed from.
I’m also a personal friend of Wilson and Hudson of ACRIM and of Lean, Wang, Preminger, and Schatten of TSI reconstructions. And what has being a good friend and colleague to do with anything?
Furthermore, the BS and SW papers using TSI before 1978 have nothing to do with PMOD. Lastly, I’m a strong critic of Claus’s contention that [PMOD] TSI is dropping off the chart, having shown him that he has calibration problems.
The real issue is that climate researchers persist in using TSI reconstructions that the solar community has long left behind in the dust.
Galileo’s discoveries were peer-reviewed. Cardinal A said they were dangerous rubbish, Cardinal B said they were heresy and Cardinal D said he ought to be locked up.
John S. : “Then a miracle occurs”
http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php
(and a backup in case the above intro page changes to a different image…)
http://www.scienceteecher.com/miracle.htm
tallbloke (10:10:07) :
I think the Lean reconstruction of TSI on this graphic may be one of Judith Lean’s earlier efforts and if so should not to be confused with the Lean reconstruction referred to in the letters included in the Scafetta EPA presentation.
Over the last years Lean seems to have gone from a reconstruction which would be consistent with a solar explanation for C20th warming to one more in line with the outlook of her employers.
Lean’s later efforts were with Wang and is labelled ‘Wang’. There is no confusion. Both SW and BS rely on an increase of TSI during the 20th Century that did not occur. Who do you think is Lean’s employer?
Lean in her 2008 SORCE presentation clearly states that no long-term variation of TSI has been detected and questions if any exists. The basic point still stands: Both papers use outmoded TSI and the conclusions of both papers are suspect. That one suspect one disagrees with another suspect one is not important, nor surprising.
Another example of why it is good to provide supporting and intermediate data, since if that had been done in the first instance, it would have been less likely that the errors in the audit would have slipped through the review process. It is trivially easy to claim ‘we failed to reproduce the exact result’ if there is not open access to the source. If the source is made available, the errors can be explicitly addressed (such as using a precise invalid data set). I think that a failure to at least acknowledge a contrary TSI input series must be seen as a failing though.
I wonder if peer review in this case is more than a “right on” from like-minded friends?
While y’all were discussing The Weather, ole Sol went nighty-night again.
The 10.7 cm flux is back down to 67.
http://solarcycle24.com/
Getting close to another 30 spotless days in a row.
I haven’t looked lately, has NASA re-re-revised their forecasts for SC24?
The Big Question: If spotlessnes continues like this (a minor eruption evry 30-60 days, then back to slumber, with flux numbers slowly oscillating between 67 and 72 and spotlessness at ~80%) at what point do we have a probable Dalton-like Minimum (inconvenient)? At what point a Maunder (big disaster)?
If, for example, at Christmas everything’s roughly the same, are we in a Dalton? If next year at this time we are roughly the same, is it a Maunder?
Rhetorical questions, as I wouldn’t believe anyone’s answers anyway.
It’s clear to me that prsvious attempts to forecast SC24 were universally based on one extrapolation or another, and that there’s substantailly NO reliable understanding of the fundamentals. Oh, except that Humans caused warming, which is still going on despite the physical evidence to the contrary, and we’re all gonna die because of it. mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Leif Svalgaard (10:14:54) :
Lastly, I’m a strong critic of Claus’s contention that [PMOD] TSI is dropping off the chart, having shown him that he has calibration problems.
The data displayed on the woodfortrees.org site shows PMOD as up to date and falling off the bottom of the chart. You said yesterday that PMOD is no longer updated since you convinced Claus Frohlich he had calibration problems. I asked you whose data was being used on the woodfortrees site under the PMOD series but you didn’t reply.
If it is SORCE data, which has dropped around 0.8W/m^2 since mid 2003, then it means TSI is currently well below it’s level at last minimum by at least 0.1W/m^2.
The sun it would seem, is a more variable star than your reconstruction would lead us to believe.
The ACRIM data reflected that too, before it got smoothed into monotonous conformity.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod
I don’t know enough about the TSI recons to know if Leif is right about there being little change (or how certain such a claim really is). What I do know is that Solar versus AGW is a false dilemma. Even spontaneously arising chaotic behavior in clouds could cause warming and cooling. And we can’t know whether such changes occurred or not. The influence of solar factors should be studied, and Scafetta and West are doing well to investigate the issue. Ultimately I think that the lack of “change” in TSI may not matter that much (partly because the response to the solar cycles would be expected to be damped compared to the long term fluctuations) especially since the results in their various papers were marginally effected by the choice of TSI proxies (with even better results for the ones which showed less variability!) But in any case, it just goes to show how uncertain the situation really is.
Lean 2000 and Lean 1995. I wouldn’t say that a claim “Lean 1995 which is not very different from Lean 2000” was robust without performing a sensitivity analysis.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/lean2000_irradiance.txt
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/lean1995/irradiance_data.txt
Having interacted with college students since I first began teaching them in 1970, I assert that they generally sort themselves along the left/right political axis as follows: The students in the numerical-oriented majors such as business, science, engineering, mathematics, computer science, etc., generally tend toward the right end of the political spectrum, while the non-numerical oriented students in the humanities tend toward the left end. Outside of a statistically robust study, I am aware that such a personal, simplistic generalization is subject to criticism, but to the extent that politics is a part of the whole AGW debate, would the preceding observation about students carry over into the scientific community? In other words, would a valid statistical study support or refute the hypothesis that the warmist camp of scientists would be more numerically challenged than the skeptic camp of scientists?
Leif Svalgaard (10:29:05) :
Both papers use outmoded TSI
I prefer to think of their reconstruction and yours as the high and low estimates between which the truth is lurking.
After all, with the obvious and explicitly confirmed calibration and splicing difficulties in play, categorical statements seem somewhat out of place.
tallbloke (10:48:33) :
I asked you whose data was being used on the woodfortrees site under the PMOD series but you didn’t reply.
Because I don’t know where they get the data from. I get PMOD from Claus.
If it is SORCE data, which has dropped around 0.8W/m^2 since mid 2003, then it means TSI is currently well below it’s level at last minimum by at least 0.1W/m^2.
You have always had a tendency to quote data wrongly to support your views. SORCE has dropped 0.53 W/m2.
Here are the numbers:
year SORCE PMOD diff
2003 1362.39 1365.83 4.44
2004 1361.26 1365.70 4.44
2005 1361.09 1365.52 4.43
2006 1361.01 1365.44 4.43
2007 1360.91 1365.33 4.42
2008 1360.87 1365.29 4.42
2009 1360.86 1365.25 4.39 <:=== since Sept. 2008, PMOD is unreliable
The numbers for PMOD are his latest [that he sent me – and are also on his website]. He seems to have gotten some of the calibration problems fixed, except after Sept. 2008.
then it means TSI is currently well below its level at last minimum by at least 0.1W/m^2.
We don’t know what TSI was at the last minimum to an accuracy of 0.1 W/m2, and considering your being wrong about the 0.8 for SORCE, I would not place much credence in your 0.1.
The sun it would seem, is a more variable star than your reconstruction would lead us to believe.
Considering the above, you have no basis for saying this.
hareynolds (10:47:44) :
Rhetorical questions, as I wouldn’t believe anyone’s answers anyway.
Then nobody would bother answer, so you can stay happy in your ignorance…
year SORCE PMOD diff
2003 1361.39 1365.83 4.44
correction to 2003.
Here is the complete SORCE and PMOD records:
http://www.leif.org/research/SORCE-PMOD.png
They now agree well [apart from a constant difference of 4.44 W/m2, which I have added to SORCE], and except from erratic behavior of PMOD since September 2008.
I am the editor of a journal that overcomes to certain extent the peer review problem by publishing the full review and back and forth comments and corrections. Maybe they should do the same (maintaining anonymity of course}
FT (11:52:34) :
I am the editor of a journal that overcomes to certain extent the peer review problem by publishing the full review and back and forth comments and corrections. Maybe they should do the same (maintaining anonymity of course}
Which Journal?
This is the way forward, with one small modification: if the reviewer so desires, his name should be on the review. That way, the reviewer could get credit for the [sometimes large amount of] work that went into the review. Also, the readers could be warned that the reviewer did not want to be known [which carries information too].
Leif Svalgaard (11:30:52) :
year SORCE PMOD diff
2003 1361.39 1365.83 4.44
Fair cop, I was eyeballing this graph, which seems to have a generally higher level. I guess the year average got pulled down by the anomalous downspike.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_640x480.png
Doesn’t change the woodfortrees graph though. I hope Paul Clark will put us straight on where he is getting the data from, and how it’s been spliced, because “PMOD” is currently at around 0.25W/m^2 less than the last two minima. Which is a lot.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod
To me, it seems likely that Scafetta’s contention that the ACRIM gap was incorrectly bridged by PMOD is correct. The cycle 22/23 minimum should be higher, thus making the current minimum less anomalous.
We’ll have a better idea when we see where TIM/SORCE bottoms out.
Interesting, but does the science matter any more? Read this and weep.
Carbon captures UK imagination
Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large | August 05, 2009
Article from: The Australian
BRITAIN is a case study in the urgency and agony of climate change politics.
Gordon Brown and David Cameron, the leaders of its main parties, see climate change as the generational imperative, yet there is no guarantee their targets can be met.
At Westminster a revolution in governance is advanced. Leading departments have been allocated a legally binding carbon budget running parallel with financial budgets. Under Foreign Secretary David Miliband, British soft power and its foreign policy are being recast with a diplomatic strategy to market Britain across the world as a climate change leader. Prime Minister Brown argues the essence of being a successful society depends on de-carbonising the economy. The revolution is bipartisan: the Tories, heading for victory in next year’s election, attack Labour for not doing enough more effectively and march behind their banner, “Vote blue, go green”.
Rarely in the history of democracies has a new idea been embraced so passionately without any certainty its goals can be realised or what the consequences involve. With Britain legally pledged to cut emissions from 1990 levels by 80 per cent by 2050, one-third by 2020 and 22 per cent by 2012, such policies can be achieved only with a new political culture and immediate action.
British ministers work to promote this whole-of-government revolution. In Whitehall, many of the civil service advisers are young, enthusiasts and women. Behind the parties are tacticians who argue that climate change credentials are critical to carry the under-40 voters.
There are three big political messages from a week of briefings inside the British system. First, catastrophic Al Gore-type negative warnings, although still essential, must surrender to another narrative: that climate change is about positives and clean energy is an opportunity for new jobs and investment. For Britain, this polemic is essential to prevent the global financial crisis from ruining the momentum on climate change.
Energy and Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband — the Foreign Secretary’s brother — recently said: “We think that the environmental industries in Britain can generate about an extra 400,000 jobs by 2015. What’s happened in the past is that we have been good at generating some of the low-carbon energy but not so good at getting industry to locate here. People want to hear what is the post-recession economy going to look like and where are the jobs going to come from. We know the world is switching to low carbon and Britain needs to be at the forefront of that.”
The British road map is laid out in last month’s Low Carbon Transition Plan. By 2020, renewable electricity will rise to 30 per cent, with wind power pivotal to this target; nuclear is seen as vital, with government looking to new nuclear power stations; and the assumption is that Britain stays a fossil fuel nation. Britain’s plans assume no alternative to fossil fuels in coming decades and this drives a huge campaign to make carbon capture and storage viable in technological and commercial terms. For Britain, its entire strategy hinges on bringing CCS to fruition.
Second, the road map is plagued by doubt, uncertainty and technologies not yet commercially applied. Pricing carbon via relying on the European emissions trading system is not sufficient. British policy says that the ETS alone “will not be enough to enable the rapid development and use of low-carbon technologies”. This opens the door to far-reaching winner-picking, government interventions, subsidies and renewable energy targets. The policy calls for financial support for renewables worth pound stg. 30 billion between now and 2020. There is a huge drive within the Whitehall bureaucracy to identify and support such projects.
As the policy concedes, such targets are “very challenging”. They mean a “more active and strategic role for government” by encouraging businesses to invest and “mobilising individuals and communities across the country”. Britain is completely unapologetic in its constant argument that “market forces on their own” cannot do the job. The carbon price won’t be high enough to force the new investment needed.
But it will be a hit-and-miss affair. A Danish company has just closed its wind turbine manufacturing operation on the Isle of Wight. In response, Ed Miliband admitted there were planning problems and that “people have significant concerns about wind turbines being put up in different areas”.
Meanwhile, ScottishPower at its Longannet power station on the Firth of Forth is testing a small prototype unit that captures carbon for the first time in any British coal-fired station, the aim being full application by 2014.
The problem is not technology but cost. So, huge government financial support for CCS is unavoidable. The British intent is to kick-start a new CCS industry. Frankly, it has no choice, as Britain’s emission targets cannot be reached without CCS as onesolution.
There remains, however, a reluctance to confront the economic downside of this overall structural transformation of Britain’s economy. How many jobs will be lost? Who will bear the higher energy costs? When these questions were pressed in Whitehall, there was always one resort: the Stern bible. Indeed, it is tempting to think the embrace of Nicholas Stern’s report is the greatest intellectual movement in Whitehall since the embrace of John Maynard Keynes last century. Stern is the constant reference point: the message is that a low-cost, high-carbon option does not exist and Stern has shown “that the costs of action will be far less than the costs of inaction”. It would be nice to think the politics will end here, but that would be a false conclusion.
Third, Brown in his recent “Road map to Copenhagen” speech spelled out one essential condition for a global compact: a decision by the rich nations to help finance emission reductions by the developing nations. Brown proposed a $US100bn ($119bn) global fund (bribe is more accurate) in an effort to bring the big emitters from the developing world into the tent. Sounds good, you think?
Just consider the politics. The big developing emitter is China, a net creditor power with the largest foreign currency reserves in world history. It invests these reserves in the US, funding America’s current account deficit. The idea of the rich nations (led by the big debtor power the US) generously financing China’s emission cuts despite China’s huge surplus will sound to the man in the street like an act of madness.
In Whitehall, private views about Copenhagen recall those of Kevin Rudd: it is difficult to discern how a meaningful, comprehensive agreement can be reached. A visitor leaves Whitehall seeing no need to change his perception that China’s national interest means that it will not meet the size and type of emission action demanded by the developed nations. As for India, forget it.
There is, however, no gainsaying that a revolution has occurred in Britain with climate change policy entrenched in its laws, civil administration, political culture and foreign policy.
The consensus is even collapsing in Germany
http://www.climatedepot.com/
peer review:
would have Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac’s
ideal gas law survived peer review at his time?
would have Catalan’s conjecture made it through peer review?
would have Pierre de Fermat’s conjecture made it through peer review?
was Alfred Wegener’s theory of plate tectonics accepted by peers?
was Einstein’s general relativity accepted by his peers?
was Galileo Galilei view accepted?
was Giordano Bruno’s view accepted? It was burned, together with him.
Peer review is to create consent.
The soul of science is neverending doubt and – very often – plain dissent.
I haven’t read the entire thread so please forgive if this question has already been answered.
Nicola Scafetta is most likely an XY. (Nicola Tesla is another dude with the same first name)
AlanG (12:22:09) : So…”GREEN-GO” to nowhere?. After all, all will rest in peace under a mile of ice. But, what if well informed politicians have conveniently bought houses in the bahamas?
tallbloke (12:15:54) :
Fair cop, I was eyeballing this graph, which seems to have a generally higher level. I guess the year average got pulled down by the anomalous downspike.
Yes, but only by 1/10 W/m2, but it is always questionable to omit what doesn’t ‘fit’
To me, it seems likely that Scafetta’s contention that the ACRIM gap was incorrectly bridged by PMOD is correct. The cycle 22/23 minimum should be higher, thus making the current minimum less anomalous.
This would make the difference between 22/23 and 23/24 even larger, so I don’t understand that statement. Solar activity during 21/22 minimum and 22/23 minimum were close, it is the 23/24 that is the odd man. One would expect 21/22 to be high too, then.
We’ll have a better idea when we see where TIM/SORCE bottoms out.
It has already.
“they applied the MODWT decomposition in a cyclical periodic mode”
LMAO when I read this
“it is not appropriate to impose a cyclical periodic mode to a non stationary time series […] This severe error […]”
True – & TRUE.
tallbloke (12:15:54) :
We’ll have a better idea when we see where TIM/SORCE bottoms out.
There is some evidence that the solar magnetic flux is related to TSI. Scafetta even subscribes to that [indirectly by using data by Krivova and Solanki]. Here are the directly measured HMF for the past five minima:
year IMF B magnitude nT
1965.5 5.06
1976.5 5.45
1986.5 5.74
1996.5 5.11
2009.3 4.12
It is possible to deduce IMF [or heliospheric magnetic field at Earth] since about 1835. Here is a plot back to 1900: http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric-Magnetic-Field-Since-1900.png
It shows that HMF now is just what it was 1901-1902, so on that note TSI now should be what it was back then, and temps too [if one believes that temp has anything to do with TSI]. The green curve is B derived by our ‘competitors’ [Lockwood et al.] who have finally come around to do it [almost – they still got cycle 14 slightly wrong] right. Also shows that if anything 21/22 should be higher than 22/23.
That TSI should be related to the solar magnetic field makes good sense physically as it is the magnetic features that are responsible for the faculae and spots. the 0.25 W/m2 lower TSI [if you believe we have that so well in hand – I don’t, but we don’t know, really] is not inconsistent with the HMF the past 30 years.
Of interest is that the HMF graph [and by extension the TSI graph] show very little correspondance with any of the temperature graphs out there. This seems to be true even if you hide some heat in the oceans for a decade. If you want to store it for longer [say 100 years] then we can’t say much either way.
Paul Vaughan (13:27:07) :
“they applied the MODWT decomposition in a cyclical periodic mode”
This doesn’t matter if the data is faulty to begin with [which it is]. So discussing what is wrongly done to garbage is just silly.
“an ideology that should be defended at all costs”
I began suspecting it had escalated to the extremist level of “at all costs” a few years ago. Recent events have convinced me beyond doubt that this is what is happening.
My perspective is that of an ecologist with grave concerns about what this is doing to the reputation of both science & the environmental movement.
My understanding of “Peer Review” was that your paper was reviewed by selected “peers” looking for inconsistencies, errors in calculation and unsupported departures from orthodoxy on the given subject. I have never understood it to mean that this meant the paper to be unassailable, only that it should be free of error. It would also be usual in my circles for the names of the Peer Reviewers to be published together with a precis of their critique.
Good for Dr Scafetta in his robust rebuttal, this entire debate is now about keeping the politicans onside for the “Global Warming is all Human” debate so the research funbding keeps flowing in their direction. As Alan G points out in a foregoing comment, Whitehall and the UK politicians are now committed to CO2 reductions that are not only unattainable, but pretty pointless considering that the UK’s CO2 output is a drop in the ocean compared top India or China, neither of whom seem worried.
Leif Svalgaard (13:05:07) :
tallbloke (12:15:54) :
To me, it seems likely that Scafetta’s contention that the ACRIM gap was incorrectly bridged by PMOD is correct. The cycle 22/23 minimum should be higher, thus making the current minimum less anomalous.
This would make the difference between 22/23 and 23/24 even larger, so I don’t understand that statement. Solar activity during 21/22 minimum and 22/23 minimum were close, it is the 23/24 that is the odd man. One would expect 21/22 to be high too, then.
I think the difference would remain the same, but 23/24 would still drop below 22/23 and slightly below 21/22 rather than massively below both of them.
But it doesn’t much matter. Those sufficiently interested can download the data and splice away to whatever fit they think is right, within the uncertainties pointed up by the properly open debate engendered by you, Nicola and others.
AlanG (12:22:09) :
At Westminster a revolution in governance is advanced. Leading departments have been allocated a legally binding carbon budget running parallel with financial budgets.
To which I can only respond with a derisory “yeah, right!” Every year at budget time the government has proudly announced financial targets for the economy. Every year, Mr “No More Boom and Bust” Brown has heavily amended those targets (sometimes several times over) when they are missed. So why does anyone think it will be different this time? What good is making a “carbon budget” legally binding? What are the sanctions when it’s missed? Who are they going to sue?
Let’s face it, the British economy is effectively bankrupt so there is no money to spend on any of these insane schemes. In 2 or 3 years time we will be spending as much on debt interest as we do on Defence, Justice and Security COMBINED.
Some people play Fantasy Football. Over here we seem to be playing Fantasy Government.
AlanG invited us to read and weep. Me, I read and roared with laughter.
Leif:
Is the raw data available for this plot? Heliospheric-Magnetic-Field-Since-1900.png
Bob Tisdale, Thanks for the emphasis on Trenberth & Stepaniak on your blog. Science appears to be about one millimeter from a major breakthrough on ENSO. Once this happens, the solar-terrestrial controversy will be left an inch from resolution. The only thing blocking progress is conventional interference.
“There is, however, no gainsaying that a revolution has occurred in Britain with climate change policy entrenched in its laws, civil administration, political culture and foreign policy.”
Yes, this is exactly the point. The whole movement is a top down movement, not bottom up as some people eg David Cameron seem to think. It makes me laugh (in a tragi-comedy sense) that you can see a poster in your local library proclaiming enthusiastically that “everyone’s talking about climate change and what they can do to help” followed by a list of planet saving actions like not leaving your tv on standby. Well I’ve got news for these people that inhabit planet zod – nobody, but nobody is talking about climate change in my circles. And whenever I mention global warming to people they seem to think it’s a load of rubbish.
However, that said, the future looks bleak indeed. One only hopes that there are still enough old school conservatives in Camerons party who will put the brakes on some of the more outrageous initiatives. But I’m not holding my breath.
Jeff Id (07:43:09) “I’m glad you picked this one up Anthony. Just so people understand, this is a very simplistic error […] The level of embarrassment on this will not be typical”
Agreed …and of course we see the usual parade of strawman counter-points being dished out liberally upthread to nurse the injured faithful (…eat up! I hear the mushrooms are hallucinogenic)
Leif Svalgaard (13:48:16) :
Paul Vaughan (13:27:07) :
“they applied the MODWT decomposition in a cyclical periodic mode”
This doesn’t matter if the data is faulty to begin with [which it is]. So discussing what is wrongly done to garbage is just silly.
Actually, it makes Benestad and Schmidt doubly wrong. Which is itself informative.
Steve Hempell (14:13:16) :
Is the raw data available for this plot? Heliospheric-Magnetic-Field-Since-1900.png
It is a subset of the full dataset at
http://www.leif.org/research/HMF-1835-now.xls
Leif,
“This doesn’t matter if the data is faulty to begin with [which it is]. So discussing what is wrongly done to garbage is just silly.”
I’m going to have to agree with the gigo point, however the extremely low technical level of the mistake is what makes this so interesting. It shows such a complete misunderstanding of the algorithms function that it has left a smirk on my face all day. It’s astounding to me that someone who spends his blogging days proclaiming superior knowledge and intellect to all who will listen found such a large and obvious pile of poo to jump into.
I cannot wait to read his answer to this one, it seems he’s preparing himself for a disagreement/rebuttal so it will be interesting.
I have a question for you though. Your dataset clearly shows no trend, why wouldn’t they use that if it will guarantee the point they obviously want is proven? They can claim this is the correct data to use not that one and the consensus continues. Is there some stigma or disagreement with the derivation of your curve vs theirs?
Dave (14:33:31) :
Actually, it makes Benestad and Schmidt doubly wrong. Which is itself informative.
But it also makes Scafetta wrong, and BS are not wrong because SW show they are wrong as SW themselves are wrong.
John S. (09:22:26) “It’s very trendy in “peer-reviewed” circles to use some new analysis method, such as wavelet transforms.”
Most of the wavelet transforms I see published don’t show anything.
Wise words from Cleveland’s “Visualizing Data” website apply here:
“The data analyst needs to be hard-boiled in evaluating the efficacy of a visualization tool. It is easy to be dazzled by a display of data, especially if it is rendered with color or depth. Our tendency is to be mislead into thinking we are absorbing relevant information when we see a lot. But the success of a visualization tool should be based solely on the amount we learn about the phenomenon under study.”
http://www.stat.purdue.edu/~wsc/visualizing.html
If a wavelet transform is going to show something useful, the analyst will (usually) know this before they produce it. We are far from the stage when most editors will know what to look for in a wavelet plot.
However, wavelet methods are powerful and it is important that people don’t simply reject wavelet plots because they do not understand wavelet methods. (This actually happens a lot.) More efficient education is the key. [Wavelet methods are actually simple. They will withstand the test of time.]
Leif Svalgaard (12:03:11) :
Here
http://users.comcen.com.au/~journals/bioinfo.htm
online-j-bioinformatics.com
OJB
Peer review this.
Peer review that.
…Whatever,
nevermind.
Block nothing.
Read everything.
and Integrate the elements of truth.
A more efficient education system would help eliminate related fears.
See Dr. Nicola Scafetta’s web site.
Bam! Wow, that’s quite the cutting response to a cutting error filled critique.
Thanks Leif:
Is this stuff readily available on your website? I looked but could not find it before I asked. Just so I don’t have to bug you in the future! :]
Jeff Id (14:51:01) :
I have a question for you though. Your dataset clearly shows no trend, why wouldn’t they use that if it will guarantee the point they obviously want is proven? They can claim this is the correct data to use not that one and the consensus continues. Is there some stigma or disagreement with the derivation of your curve vs theirs?
It goes back to the Hockey Stick. If you can show that there is no temperature variations over centuries, then clearly you don’t need the solar input. This was tried, but the HS is now so discredited that some climate variation must be admitted, e.g. coming out of the LIA, therefore the Sun in invoked assuming [and selecting data with] a large TSI variation to take us out of the LIA, and to explain why temps rose from 1900 to 1960 [as much as from 1970-now]. Therefore AGW needs and must have solar forcing [and a lot of it]. There is even an AGW argument that says that since the Sun has decreased its activity since the 1950s [cycle 19 in 1957 was the biggest ever], but temps have risen in spite of that, man must be the culprit. Take away the solar card and AGW is at a loss to explain the natural variability.
Steve Hempell (15:40:14) :
Is this stuff readily available on your website? I looked but could not find it before I asked. Just so I don’t have to bug you in the future! :]
Everything I do is on my website. Click on ‘files’ at the bottom of the page. There is a lot of junk there too.
A little OT, sorry, but this is important.
http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/free/news/template1&paneContentId=5&paneParentId=70104&product=/ag/news/topstories&vendorReference=cdc37f49-a12b-4710-8d92-f41326abfc58
Partial Quote:
Climate Bill a Land-Use Battle
Questions Loom Over Possible Acreage Shift From Crops
Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., said an analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation that said 40 million acres would come out of crop production. Farm Bureau had used EPA data to make that forecast. Johanns also wrote in a later op-ed piece that “another analysis predicts a loss of 78 million acres to trees. That’s nearly 20 percent of our nation’s total cropland — a staggering number.” Republicans on the Senate Agriculture Committee have also called for more hearings on the bill.
The climate bill, H.R. 2454, is designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and to continue to reach an 83 percent reduction by 2050. Agriculture is expected to be affected by possibly higher energy and input costs, particularly if coal plants convert to cleaner-burning natural gas. Natural gas is a key component in fertilizer production.
An EPA analysis of the climate bill last month stated overall land area in crops would shift to forest under the bill. But that analysis was completed before House lawmakers struck an agreement that created agricultural carbon offsets. The EPA has not released an updated study factoring in an agricultural carbon program pushed by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn.
“That modeling was done before the whole deal with Chairman Peterson,” said Fred Yoder, an Ohio farmer who has closely followed the legislation. “If you just run the numbers, there’s no way to get enough carbon credits to take land out of production.”
Leif,
Thanks for the answer, fantastic really. Can you point me to the basis for the TSI you demonstrate vs theirs. Anything you can find would be very interesting.
RE: “Take away the solar card and AGW is at a loss to explain the natural variability.”
Take away the direct solar card(s)?
Now, if we want to talk about some larger card, for example, interactions between the magnetosphere, general “fabric” of the near space abroad’s complete EM spectra, geophysical energetics, and, various oscillations in currents, terrestrial thermal gradients (in the oceans and air), etc, I am not even sure what the cards really are.
So much research yet to do to understand natural variability.
Leif
There is even an AGW argument that says that since the Sun has decreased its activity since the 1950s [cycle 19 in 1957 was the biggest ever], but temps have risen in spite of that, man must be the culprit. Take away the solar card and AGW is at a loss to explain the natural variability.
That’s a dumb and easily disproved argument though. The average number of sunspots was higher in the ’90’s due to the short minima and steep rises/falls of short cycles than it was in the 50’s/60’s/70’s, even with the highest cycle recorded in the middle. And much much higher than it was at the turn of the century around 1900-1910. Which is why Scafetta and West’s phenomenological reconstruction is NOT ‘garbage’ as you so quaintly describe it.
Thanks for the info on Heliomagnetism by the way, it fits well with my LOD and Geomagnetic data.
Look at figure 6 in the BS09 paper. This is the TSI used in the paper. Whether it is right or wrong is another argument, it is the data used.
Look at figure 7 in the BS09 paper. This is the solar signature claimed to be the result of the TSI data that is used in the paper.
Scafetta has highlighted the figures as they approach the year 2000.
Reported TSI goes up yet solar signature goes down.
Scafetta claims that this non-physical behaviour is the result of a very basic mathematical error.
How did the authors miss this?
How did the peer reviewers miss this?
Do they not even take the time to look at the pictures?
Paul Vaughn (14:52:36):
I agree completely!. But the full-color plates make for a pretty interesting picture in visually dull journals. The effect is much like the centerfold in Playboy.
Leif Svalgaard (16:09:46) :
Steve Hempell (15:40:14) :
Is this stuff readily available on your website? I looked but could not find it before I asked. Just so I don’t have to bug you in the future! :]
Everything I do is on my website. Click on ‘files’ at the bottom of the page. There is a lot of junk there too.
Perhaps Steve Hempell was looking for this information:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/tsi_data/six_hourly/sorce_tsi_L3_c06h_m29_v09_20030225_20090728.txt
leif at (08:11:13) – re: your figure
Sorry Leif I’m coming to this late and I don’t follow the solar stuff closely but please can you expand on how the green “dTSI/dt per year” green line is calculated? Is it on an average value of the data sets plotted or referenced to a specific one? And over what period is the rate of change annualised?
Apologies if this is covered/obvious and I’ve missed it.
tallbloke (16:35:38) :
That’s a dumb and easily disproved argument though. The average number of sunspots was higher in the ’90’s due to the short minima and steep rises/falls of short cycles than it was in the 50’s/60’s/70’s, even with the highest cycle recorded in the middle. And much much higher than it was at the turn of the century around 1900-1910. Which is why Scafetta and West’s phenomenological reconstruction is NOT ‘garbage’ as you so quaintly describe it.
Thanks for the info on Heliomagnetism by the way, it fits well with my LOD and Geomagnetic data.
There’s still something which has not been considered; the rate of photonic excitation and deexcitation effect. We could add also another effect provided by the interplanetary medium due to the mentioned photonic excitation and deexcitation which definitively modifies the temperature of the stratosphere and of the troposphere.
Out on a limb here given the current discussion, but some of the topic makes me ask if the is a way to determine how much radiant heating comes from the photosphere (the observable disk) at ~5,778 K and ~32 arc minutes verses the corona at ~5×106 K, which covers a highly variable but comparable angular segment of the sky?
Re: my last, that should read ~5×10^6 K
Wavelets aren’t really “new,” though I suppose compared to something like Fourier analysis, you could call them new. I did my MS thesis on wavelets in 1995, and at least one of my references was to Haar in 1910 (though Haar did refer to his basis in terms of wavelets). Ingrid Daubechies’ “Ten Lectures on Wavelets” was published in 1992. Indeed, she credits Morlet, Grossman, Arens, Fourgeau, and Giard with the name circa 1982-1983. We (the signal processing community) have had plenty of time to understand and incorporate wavelet analysis methods into our general framework.
Mark
The mistake resides on taking the bulk load of energy that is hitting on the Earth’s atmosphere when we should monitor the intensity of insolation on the surface. It is useless to measure the amount of solar radiation at any point of the outer space emitted on August 3 2009 if there is something at the thermosphere or at the ionosphere which could be modifying the means of access organization for such radiation, reducing the insolation or increasing it?
We must not be so childish as to think that only the “skins” or the “peels” of ocean and land are heated up. Heat is energy in movement and it is dissipated or dispersed into the system that is at a lower temperature. Sometimes, when taking temperatures of large volumes of water, yes, we notice the surface layer is hotter than the subsurface layer, but the energy is flowing towards that colder subsurface layer, though we don’t “see” the process.
tallbloke (16:35:38) :
“Take away the solar card and AGW is at a loss to explain the natural variability.”
That’s a dumb and easily disproved argument though.
It is not my argument, it is theirs… And explains why they like the old TSI-reconstructions.
Which is why Scafetta and West’s phenomenological reconstruction is NOT ‘garbage’ as you so quaintly describe it.
They also use a TSI reconstruction with a secular trend, so have the same problem. See their Figure 1A in http://www.acrim.com/Reference%20Files/Sun%20&%20Global%20Warming_GRL_2006.pdf
Thanks for the info on Heliomagnetism by the way, it fits well with my LOD and Geomagnetic data.
It shouldn’t as the HMF has nothing to do with either [I’m assuming the ‘Geomagnetic’ is the main field and not the transient activity]. In any case it doesn’t fit the Global Temperatures at all.
slow to follow (17:04:27) :
can you expand on how the green “dTSI/dt per year” green line is calculated?
That line shouldn’t be there as it is not relevant for the discussion, but I was reusing an old Figure and was just too lazy to remove the green line. It is simply the difference in TSI from one year to the next.
Jeff Id (16:30:22) :
Can you point me to the basis for the TSI you demonstrate vs theirs. Anything you can find would be very interesting.
In Froehlich, C. & J. Lean (2004) Solar Radiative Output and its Variability: Evidence and Mechanisms, Astron..& Astrophys. Rev.,
12(4), 273. Doi:10.1007/s00159-004-0024-1. they discuss the problem:
1) there is a clear solar cycle in TSI
2) is there in addition also a long-term, secular component?
In a presentation at the AGU Fall meeting in 2007 we argued that there is no evidence for a long-term change: http://www.leif.org/research/GC31B-0351-F2007.pdf
The Figure on page 9 is from Froehlich and Lean 2004.
That leaves the solar cycle variation.
If you look at the ‘trend’ in reconstructions of TSI since Hoyt and Schatten’s 1993 attempt to today, you’ll find that the long-term secular trend has slowly grown smaller and smaller. At the SORCE 2008 meeting Judith Lean reminded us that no long-term trend in TSI has been detected and questioned if such a trend even existed. Here is one of her slides: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEAN2008.png
SSam (17:24:07) :
Out on a limb here given the current discussion, but some of the topic makes me ask if the is a way to determine how much radiant heating comes from the photosphere (the observable disk) at ~5,778 K and ~32 arc minutes verses the corona at ~5×106 K, which covers a highly variable but comparable angular segment of the sky?
That’s precisely what I am referring to. The effective temperature of the photosphere is not so high (relatively); it’s 5800 K. Nevertheless, the temperature of the interplanetary medium (IPM) above the Corona is 100000 K. This temperature decreases as the distance from the Sun increases, i.e. it decreases in an inverse proportion to the square of the distance from the Sun to the explored system.
Leif Svalgaard (17:36:40):
In your response to Jeff Id (16:30:22) you forgot to mention that the correlation coefficient between the proportion of HSG and the TSI is higher from your reconstruction than from Lean’s reconstruction. 🙂
SSam (17:24:07) :
how much radiant heating comes from the photosphere (the observable disk) at ~5,778 K and ~32 arc minutes verses the corona at ~5×106 K, which covers a highly variable but comparable angular segment of the sky?
A total solar eclipse gives you a good shot at this. The corona radiates about a million times less than the photosphere.
Because the solar wind is so thin the amount of heat in it is negligible.
Mark T (17:30:11) :
We (the signal processing community) have had plenty of time to understand and incorporate wavelet analysis methods into our general framework.
The same goes for every other discipline I know of [perhaps with the notable exception of ecology]. Perhaps the general public is less up-to-date than the scientific community, so some outreach might be important.
Nasif Nahle (17:54:27) :
In your response to Jeff Id (16:30:22) you forgot to mention that the correlation coefficient between the proportion of HSG and the TSI is higher from your reconstruction than from Lean’s reconstruction. 🙂
I apparently don’t need to 🙂
but in general, just because it fits better does not mean it is better. The reconstruction has to stand on its own merit [or lack thereof].
Leif Svalgaard (18:10:17) :
Mark T (17:30:11) :
We (the signal processing community) have had plenty of time to understand and incorporate wavelet analysis methods into our general framework.
The same goes for every other discipline I know of [perhaps with the notable exception of ecology]. Perhaps the general public is less up-to-date than the scientific community, so some outreach might be important.
Wavelet analysis methodologies have been incorporated to evolutionary ecology and paleoecology. I don’t know why the modern ecology is a solid block resistant to progress. Perhaps because it has been sequestered by other non factual disciplines?
In their 2006 paper, Scafetts and West conclude:
“Thus, if it happens that a TSI proxy reconstruction with small secular variability such as Lean2005 better represents the historical TSI evolution, the logical conclusion would be that the climate secular feedback to TSI change and/or alternative solar effects on climate (such as UV and cosmic ray change effects) are much stronger than what would occur if other TSI reconstructions with larger secular variability would more faithfully represent the real TSI evolution.”
Now, let me go the next step: with a TSI reconstruction [such as mine] with NO secular variability, their logical conclusion would be that the climate secular feedback to TSI change is extremely much [in the limit infinitely] stronger. This was my original reason to comment on blogs [started out at Tamino’s – and was banned; then ClimateAudit where the discussion ran to 4000 posts without any progress; and now here, still without any real resolution of the problem], because I was asking the ‘climate people’ [I thought] if they could help me understand such hypersensitivity, which would likely lead to runaway [yet the long-term climate is stable within narrow bounds].
Leif,
For TSI, I see you reconstructed it using geomagnetic data. Am I understanding correctly that you modified sunspot records over time by the geomagnetic Y component to correct for reduced historic observation acuity in comparison to the present?
Nasif,
I just read an online article about your comment above after a google search and understand your point.
Jeff Id (19:00:32) :
For TSI, I see you reconstructed it using geomagnetic data. Am I understanding correctly that you modified sunspot records over time by the geomagnetic Y component to correct for reduced historic observation acuity in comparison to the present?
Partly. Rudolf Wolf who invented the sunspot number used the geomagnetic record to ‘splice’ together records from different observers. His successors either forgot or dismissed this objective technique with the result that the sunspot number calibration suffered. We presented the following at the Solar Physics Divisions meeting in June:
The Waldmeier Discontinuity [Recalibration of the Zurich Sunspot Number]
Leif Svalgaard (Stanford), Luca Bertello (UCLA), & Edward W. Cliver (AFRL)
“When Max Waldmeier took over the production of the Sunspot Number, Rz, in Zurich in 1945 he was relatively inexperienced in the art of divining sunspot numbers [Friedli, 2005] and he feared that the sunspot numbers may not have had the same calibration as the existing series produced by the previous Zurich observers. We suggest that his fear was not unfounded and that the Zurich sunspot number be increased by 20% to match the modern record. In this poster we explore three reasons and methods on which we base this conclusion.
(1) The range of the diurnal variation of the East-component of the geomagnetic field controlled by FUV-induced conductivity of the day-side ionosphere is a strong proxy for solar activity, as already Rudolf Wolf had noted in 1856, and indicates a 22% increase of the sunspot number from 1946 onwards.
(2) The Greenwich Sunspot Areas (and the Group Sunspot Number, Rg, largely derived from the areas) indicate a 17.5% increase of Rz coincident with Waldmeierís tenure.
(3) The Ca II K-line index [see poster 15.16 by Bertello et al.] indicate a 20% increase in Rz around 1946.
Of course, it would be more convenient to increase the pre-1946 numbers by a similar amount rather than change the modern numbers which may be ingredients in operational forecast techniques.”
Paper here: http://www.leif.org/research/SPD-2009.pdf
The other [and more significant] departure is the lack of evidence of a secular trend in TSI at sunspot minima
————-
We realize it will be a long hard slug to turn this ship around. The solar community might be a lot easier to convince [at least judging from the comments at the meeting] than the climate ‘researchers’ [of both stripes] that want/need a solar connection.
Leif Svalgaard (18:36:07) :
Leif Svalgaard (18:36:07) :
Nasif Nahle (17:54:27) :
In your response to Jeff Id (16:30:22) you forgot to mention that the correlation coefficient between the proportion of HSG and the TSI is higher from your reconstruction than from Lean’s reconstruction. 🙂
I apparently don’t need to 🙂
but in general, just because it fits better does not mean it is better. The reconstruction has to stand on its own merit [or lack thereof].
The theory of truth compels theorists to be coherent with other related theorists. Although I agree with your feeling on no needing to mention it because you feel your theory is robust alone, other theorists could feel the need of mentioning this correlation, true?
On your other opinion about your failure to bring the debate onto the intensification of the solar signal by the Earth thermal system, I think you’re not being fair in your judgment… I don’t like to get myself personal, however, for a first and last occasion, I think you have not been enough clear on your purpose. I am sure people here have gotten the idea and are trying to find the mechanism. Don’t you think so?
By the way, do you know why river quartz grains are more susceptible to insolation than sea quartz grains? Perhaps the answer to the big question resides in this humble phenomenon.
I love the off topic stuff…
noaaprogrammer (11:12:23) : you said…
“Having interacted with college students since I first began teaching them in 1970, I assert that they generally sort themselves along the left/right political axis as follows: The students in the numerical-oriented majors such as business, science, engineering, mathematics, computer science, etc., generally tend toward the right end of the political spectrum, while the non-numerical oriented students in the humanities tend toward the left end.”
Your observation is undoubtedly true, however, students eventually self select different paths. Those heading to the Ph.D. tend toward left politics, while the right tending typically leave after B.Sc. or M.Sc. and head toward business and industry.
The climate bill thread here points to an article that states…
“according to press reports, EPA is projecting this legislation would take 56 million crop acres out of production due to afforestation.”
This would be more humorous if it didn’t illustrate how the government wastes time and money. Exactly how are we to meet the administration’s targets on ethanol production, which requires a hundred million acres of new cropland when congress is writing legislation that takes such out of production?…the two arms of government like those of Dr. Strangelove …
Correction: I wrote in my post Nasif Nahle (19:35:02)
“Leif Svalgaard (18:36:07):
Leif Svalgaard (18:36:07):”
It should have been as follows:
“Leif Svalgaard (18:36:07):
Leif Svalgaard (18:56:20):”
I apologize… 🙁
Nasif Nahle (19:35:02) :
I think you have not been enough clear on your purpose. I am sure people here have gotten the idea and are trying to find the mechanism. Don’t you think so?
Frankly, no. As long as they can beat down AGW, it doesn’t matter how or with what, true or false – as long as it works.
My purpose was set out clearly here: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2470
By the way, do you know why river quartz grains are more susceptible to insolation than sea quartz grains?
No, perhaps you could explain why any grain is susceptible to insolation in the first place…
Leif, a couple of questions about the slide:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEAN2008.png
I thought you previously stated that sunspot activity during the 19th century was as intense as the 20th. Is the graph incorrect?
What caused the spike in TSI near the end of 2003?
Nasif and Leif,
I’ve been reading Leif’s links and have read one from Nasif I found by google search. The theory that sunspots were underestimated makes sense but as an engineer I cannot determine the quality of the data from these links.
I’m left with the impression that it’s a plausible and even likely correction to the data but there isn’t enough information in the links to give me certainty. How good were the magnetic measurements over 100 years ago? Are they better than the ridiculously overreaching global temp records from that time frame?
Leif , I think your poster paper, discussed at (19:21:43), answered my first question.
Tom in Texas (19:51:24) :
I thought you previously stated that sunspot activity during the 19th century was as intense as the 20th. Is the graph incorrect?
You could say that. Lean is using the Group Sunspot Number which is different from the Zurich number and need a larger correction, see: http://www.leif.org/research/CAWSES%20-%20Sunspots.pdf
What caused the spike in TSI near the end of 2003?
Two very large sunspot groups that took a bite out of TSI.
ftp://howard.astro.ucla.edu/pub/obs/drawings/2003/dr031029.jpg
Jeff Id (19:52:16) :
How good were the magnetic measurements over 100 years ago?
they were good enough [and even 100 years before that they were OK]. The measurements are of an angle, and the variation is of the order of 10 arc minutes which could be easily measured, Bradley discovered the 20 arc second aberration in 1725. Also, the figure on page 11 of http://www.leif.org/research/Napa%20Solar%20Cycle%2024.pdf shows the declination at Prague measured in 1840-1849 compared to modern measurements at the same place. As you can see, even minute wiggles are the same in both plots. So the measurements are of good quality and are not in doubt [by anybody].
tallbloke,
You might want to check out Figure 2 (SOLID GOLD) in:
Trenberth, K.E. & Stepaniak, D.P. (2001). Indices of El Nino Evolution. Journal of Climate 14, 1697-1701.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/tniJC.pdf
This relates to:
1) our earlier discussion (including the phase relations plots I posted).
2) Tsonis, A.A.; Swanson, K.; & Kravtsov, S. (2007). A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts. Geophysical Research Letters 34, L13705.
http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/2007GL030288.pdf
3) Zolotova’s, Charvatova’s, Sidorenkov’s, & Vangeneim’s work.
4) Bob Tisdale’s graph:
http://i35.tinypic.com/166wxnk.jpg
Also – Figure 3 in:
Keeling, C. D. & Whorf, T. P. (1997). Possible forcing of global temperature by the oceanic tides. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 94(16), 8321-8328.
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8321.full.pdf?ijkey=YjbRA3bMQaGic
–
Re: Nasif Nahle (17:35:04)
I’m with you on insolation & depth.
–
Re: Mark T (17:30:11)
Thanks for the note. I spent the last 6 years working for a statistics department and only encountered 1 brief mention of wavelets aside from my own work. (Regrettably, tradition is acting as a (20 year) brake in some corners. It’s an uphill battle fighting stubborn convention.)
–
tallbloke,
I’ve run into the argument that aa is confounded with UV which affects LOD. The physicists can argue about such things; in the meantime I’ll run analyses with multiple datasets when there are controversies and state conclusions with a full set of qualifiers [in anything formal].
You might find the following interesting:
http://syrte.obspm.fr/journees2005/s2_12_Chapanov.pdf
http://syrte.obspm.fr/journees2007/PDF/s4_18_Chapanov.pdf
http://pecny.asu.cas.cz/cedr/download/chapanov1a.pdf
(I’m not suggesting these works are final products.)
–
John S. (16:56:10) “[…] The effect is much like the centerfold […]”
An institution for which I once worked once published against my will a very long article full of very colorful wavelet & time-integrated cross-correlation plots, even though the article was not even remotely ready for press. (I did not sign the consent forms.) You are right: People are eager to use the attractive plots. I am concerned that this will cause a backlash against good plots (coming from people who wouldn’t know a good wavelet or time-integrated cross-correlation plot from a bad one, but who are otherwise very dignified, educated, & intelligent …and thus formidable opponents politically & administratively).
Leif Svalgaard (19:45:45):
By the way, do you know why river quartz grains are more susceptible to insolation than sea quartz grains?
No, perhaps you could explain why any grain is susceptible to insolation in the first place…
Now it was me who wasn’t enough clear. It’s a bit complicated, though. If I compare the proportions of HSG of sea samples with riverbed samples, the latter show a higher percentage of stained quartz, almost all samples show proportions above 11%, than sea samples.
I have also have found, preliminarly, that the sea samples contain greater amounts of magnetite, gold and other minerals. Perhaps it is the explanation (?).
Jeff Id (19:52:16) :
Nasif and Leif,
I’ve been reading Leif’s links and have read one from Nasif I found by google search. The theory that sunspots were underestimated makes sense but as an engineer I cannot determine the quality of the data from these links.
I’m left with the impression that it’s a plausible and even likely correction to the data but there isn’t enough information in the links to give me certainty. How good were the magnetic measurements over 100 years ago? Are they better than the ridiculously overreaching global temp records from that time frame?
I’m able to respond on my work. My databases were taken from the assessment of Dr. Bond and colleagues, which coincides with the investigations of other geologists and paleobiologists.
I didn’t correct the last figure (labeled like “Today”) from Dr. Bond’s database when I was writing the article, though I’ve found a percentage higher than that of Dr. Bond. As an interim measure, it is 6.25% for the most recent layer.
The solar variability debate is not really settled. Leif’s arguments seem reasonable and those pointing to more variability are also reasonable.
We do know that the Sun is a variable star. It has at least a 9-13 year cycle. It may also vary by larger amounts on longer time-scales, it might not, it may skip cycles, it might have weaker cycles every now and again, it might make no difference anyway. But it is a remarkably stable variable star.
What we do know is that it is acting out of character right now – at least out of the character that we are certain about. The effect might be so small we will not notice any climate changes at all from it or it could be as much as a few tenths of degree C change.
My neighbors know that this is coldest below normal 8 month period we have had on record. Other places are warmer of course. I’m okay with it being warmer. I’m good with a Sun perking up a little. If not, I’m okay with global warming, I just wish it would finally show up.
From 10Be cosmic ray fluxes Steinhilber et al. reports:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Holocene-TSI.pdf
that
“The entire record of TSI covering the past 9300 years is shown in Figure 3. Throughout this period TSI has varied by approximately 2Wm−2”
This extreme variation was reached only rarely and most of the time TSI stays within +/-0.5 w/m2 of average. A variation much lower than normally assumed in climate studies.
Bill Illis (20:40:49) :
The solar variability debate is not really settled. Leif’s arguments seem reasonable and those pointing to more variability are also reasonable.
Which other ones?
It seems that my short article is attracted the attention of many people! I would like to thank you for your comments.
I just would like to briefly address a comment from Leif Svalgaard.
Leif is claming that TSI did not change on a secular scale, more precisely he claims that at each minima TSI reaches the same value.
The secular TSI reconstruction by Leif contrasts with those proposed by all other authors (Lean, Hoyt, Solanki, Lockwood etc) that present a certain degree of secular solar variability. Indeed, all these TSI proxy reconstructions present different amplitudes of the secular trends.
Personally, I believe that nobody (Leif as well as everybody else) can be 100% sure about the secular TSI behavior. The reason is quite simple, we just do not have secular TSI data against which testing the TSI proxy reconstructions nor we have complete and rigorous dynamical solar models that predict the solar behavior. So, everybody can say more or less whatever he wants.
The real problem is whether a proposed TSI is reasonable or not.
Personally, I do not believe that TSI does not present secular trends as Leif claims. The reason is because it is not easy that a turbolent system such as the sun returns always at the same “exact” value at each minima. Of course, the above is not the “scientific” prove that Leif’s TSI is erroneous. We just do not have TSI data about the past to scientifically test the hypothesis.
The things are different if we look at the last decades when direct satellite TSI observations are available. Although there exists a controversy between PMOD and ACRIM about the relative position of the TSI minima in 1986 and 1996, all experimental TSI satellite groups agree about the fact that the current TSI minimum is well below the minimum in 1996.
See for example the violet daily TSI satellite data in the figure reported in
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEAN2008.png
The violet daily TSI satellite data indeed look like ACRIM composite: the nimimum in 1996 is higher than the minima in 1986 and 2008.
Again, the above does not disproves Leif’s proxy TSI reconstruction, because there may be the possibility that all experimental TSI satellite groups (ACRIM, PMOD, TIM etc.) are wrongly reporting the correct TSI value! However, from a purely scientific point of view (that is, a theory is scientific if and only if it is supported by some data) right now Leif’s proxy TSI reconstruction is contradicted by the above experimental finding. Also other TSI proxy reconstructions such as Lean’s ones are contradicted by the above finding.
So, I believe that Leif should do his best to convince all experimental TSI groups to correct their published satellite TSI data by proving them exactly where their detectors and/or algorithms are failing. Until then, I believe that we need to look at the TSI data for what they say. What they right now say is that TSI presents multidecadal trends that the current TSI proxy models fail to reproduce. Thus, in my opinion most of the effort should be in trying to develop better solar models.
Nicola Scafetta (21:30:21) :
Leif is claming that TSI did not change on a secular scale, more precisely he claims that at each minima TSI reaches the same value.
Not exactly. TSI reaches a value determined by the residual solar activity which is not zero. It is even possible that the open magnetic flux determines TSI. My claim is that there is no other long-term, secular trends over and above the open flux, e.g. as given by the Heliospheric Magnetic Field. The HMF can be reliably determined back to 1882 and with somewhat greater uncertainty back to 1835 and shows no secular trend, specifically HMF in 1901-1902 is just what it is right now, thus TSI should be the same then as now.
The argument that we can only use the TSI we have actually measured invalidates the Phenomenological Method of determining climate sensitivity based on the TSI we have not measured.
Very interesting.
Usually there is pickup on a new Schwabe cycle before the old has petered out entirely. (But this time, not so much.) The new cycle is said to have begun at the point where the new polarity spots outnumber the old.
It seems entirely plausible that TSI would vary at the minimums, seeing as how the crossover points cannot be at identical levels identical each time.
Trends? Why not? Almost everything involved here is part of some sort of trend. Even if there were no underlying trend, there could be a trend in terms of the point of crossover.
evanmjones (21:49:14) :
Even if there were no underlying trend, there could be a trend in terms of the point of crossover.
I don’t see how. Can you construct an example?
evanmjones (21:49:14) :
It seems entirely plausible that TSI would vary at the minimums, seeing as how the crossover points cannot be at identical levels identical each time.
Yeah… Amplitude is what fluctuates. It seems that, for larger amplitudes, larger effects on Earth’s climate.
Benestad and Schmidt use of constants tend to lessen solar forcing
eg
Albedo *
30 239.26 w/m^2 Benested and Schmidt
28.9 255.9 w/m^2 Kim and Ramanthan
28.6 256.1 w/m^2 CERES
29.6 255.2 w/m^2 Erbes
* Energy at the earths surface in a non absorbing atmosphere
I already had written about increases of amplitude of solar irradiance:
http://www.biocab.org/Amplitude_SI_Svalgaard_s_Database.jpg
The amplitude of the solar irradiance is what has fluctuated and increased since 1610 AD; the intensity of solar irradiance has increased, in consequence.
In concluding his comments above, Nicola Scafetta :
I just wonder why the referees of that paper did not check Benestad and Schmidt’s numerous misleading statements and errors. It would be sad if the reason is because somebody is mistaking a scientific theory such as the “anthropogenic global warming theory” for an ideology that should be defended at all costs.
It is one more proof that the famous “peer review” method of journals depends on the integrity and willingness to work hard in evaluating a paper of the reviewers. It is an “honor system”. Honor systems are as strong as the weakest link in the chain, and it seems to me that in climatology there are many week links.
I’m not a scientist but I spent many months trying to learn as much as I could about Global Warming (and I was COMPLETELY neutral when I started) and there was one thing that was very obvious to me. Almost all of the the “skeptics” of AGW kept making some very, very thoroughly debunked arguments over and over again even though they were obviously false. To me, that’s a SURE sign that they are biased or lying. It doesn’t take a scientific genius to know when people are scamming you. It just takes a good bullshit detector (and I DO have that!). Maybe some of you skeptics are unbiased and telling the truth, but you’ve been so completely overwhelmed by the liers and scammers that your voice is lost in the crap.
Angel (22:55:50) :
“It just takes a good bullshit detector (and I DO have that!).”
I think it’s faulty.
Nasif Nahle (17:08:17) :
We could add also another effect provided by the interplanetary medium due to the mentioned photonic excitation and deexcitation which definitively modifies the temperature of the stratosphere and of the troposphere.
Thanks for that Nasif. I’m a graph junkie at the moment. Got any good ones which illustrate the effect?
Leif Svalgaard (17:36:40) :
They also use a TSI reconstruction with a secular trend, so have the same problem. See their Figure 1A in http://www.acrim.com/Reference%20Files/Sun%20&%20Global%20Warming_GRL_2006.pdf
The other [and more significant] departure is the lack of evidence of a secular trend in TSI at sunspot minima
Yes, but they have explained why they think Frohlich’s ‘Adjustment’ of the TSI data is wrong and why they bridge the ACRIM gap differently, producing the trend in TSI at minima which supports their argument. Personally, I can see some merit in what they have produced, though as I said earlier, I regard their reconstruction and yours/Frohlich’s as the boundaries between which the truth is lurking.
Paul Vaughan (20:08:53) :
You might want to check out…
Thanks Paul, I will. We need to find a place for ongoing discussion, perhaps a thread on solarcyle24.com?
“they applied the MODWT decomposition in a cyclical periodic mode […] it is not appropriate to impose a cyclical periodic mode to a non stationary time series […] This severe error […]”
This is still funny hours later.
Re: Nicola Scafetta (21:30:21)
Thank you for your insightful comments Dr. Seeing more than one side of a story helps cut through the usual BiaS.
Re: Angel (22:55:50)
Welcome to the discussion Angel. Please feel welcome to be very specific. Regards, Paul.
Show me, Angel. What ‘thoroughly debunked’ arguments?
===================================
Leif Svalgaard (20:54:40) :
From 10Be cosmic ray fluxes Steinhilber et al. reports:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Holocene-TSI.pdf
that
“The entire record of TSI covering the past 9300 years is shown in Figure 3. Throughout this period TSI has varied by approximately 2Wm−2″
This extreme variation was reached only rarely and most of the time TSI stays within +/-0.5 w/m2 of average. A variation much lower than normally assumed in climate studies.
A lot of the reason it’s a much lower variation is because it’s calculated from a TSI slope which has been ‘adjusted’ to keep the minima value level between cycles 21/22 and 22/23. This is what the argument over the ACRIM gap bridging is all about and why it is important.
The much lower TSI at 23/24 minimum is the chicken coming home to roost.
I await a reply from the currently holidaying Paul Clark of woodfortrees.org on the provenance of his TSI ‘PMOD’ data and the splicing method employed, and who it was employed by…
Regardless of all that, the document is a great piece of work whichever vertical scale people prefer to calibrate against it and I congratulate all those involved in it’s production, both cited authors and behind the scenes collaborators.
Leif Svalgaard (21:48:21) :
My claim is that there is no other long-term, secular trends over and above the open flux, e.g. as given by the Heliospheric Magnetic Field. The HMF can be reliably determined back to 1882 and with somewhat greater uncertainty back to 1835 and shows no secular trend, specifically HMF in 1901-1902 is just what it is right now, thus TSI should be the same then as now.
Your graph:
http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric-Magnetic-Field-Since-1900.png
shows an increasing trend from 1900 to 1993, just before the cycle 22/23 minimum. In fact, as an absolute quantity, ignoring the cyclicity it increases on average right up to 2005, just around the time cooling becomes evident.
This would seem to be not inconsistent with the global temperature changes observed since 1900. Especially if the raised SST’s around the war years are seen to be problematic in the light of information about the bias of cooling water intake sensors in military vessels.
Angel (22:55:50) :
“I’m not a scientist but I spent many months trying to learn as much as I could about Global Warming (and I was COMPLETELY neutral when I started) and there was one thing that was very obvious to me. Almost all of the the “skeptics” of AGW kept making some very, very thoroughly debunked arguments over and over again even though they were obviously false. To me, that’s a SURE sign that they are biased or lying. It doesn’t take a scientific genius to know when people are scamming you. It just takes a good bullshit detector (and I DO have that!). Maybe some of you skeptics are unbiased and telling the truth, but you’ve been so completely overwhelmed by the liers and scammers that your voice is lost in the crap.”
Woaht? And you used to be neutral?! Meh!
And now you look on science skeptics as lairs and scammers and debunked?
You are absolutely right, you are NOT a scientist.
Angel. Don’t bother reading anything not written by scientists or engineers.
Leif Svalgaard (18:56:20) :
Now, let me go the next step: with a TSI reconstruction [such as mine] with NO secular variability, their (Scafetta and West’s) logical conclusion would be that the climate secular feedback to TSI change is extremely much [in the limit infinitely] stronger.
I think this argument is known in the trade as a ‘reductio ad absurdum’.
This was my original reason to comment on blogs [started out at Tamino’s – and was banned; then ClimateAudit where the discussion ran to 4000 posts without any progress; and now here, still without any real resolution of the problem], because I was asking the ‘climate people’ [I thought] if they could help me understand such hypersensitivity, which would likely lead to runaway [yet the long-term climate is stable within narrow bounds].
I would recommend you read James Lovelock’s original Gaia hypothesis for how it is that the earth has such a strong tendency to homeostasis (stable life benefiting climate). Although he has been lumped in with the ‘mother earth worshiping green leftist pinko communist enviro-whackos’ his analysis is cogent, measured and informative. Back then he was nobody’s fool.
What you come away with is a better understanding of how the earth can be sensitive to small external changes, yet resilient in it’s internal systems myriad methods for achieving equitable balance.
“I completely beleive in Global warming! ”
But not spelling I see. Still without rational thought I suppose accuracy is irrelevant.
Leif,
I get what’s going on now. The variometer data does indeed seem easy to calibrate and is likely trustworthy. I assume there are multiple datasets with good quality match to each other?
Now I’m left wondering how the corrections to sunspot numbers were calculated. Are the corrections simply the magnetic data through Wolf’s equation?
I wonder if you would mind emailing the data and calcs for the corrections to me. It seems like an interesting thing to do a post on.
Also, I see that in your discussion with Dr. Scafetta he claims a contradiction with recent sat data due to a shift in the minimum, I assume from your certainty there are ground based variogram equivalent measures which also demonstrate this slight shift in minimum values. It seems to me that, that would conclude any disagreement between you.
The same question again: Is Angel a man or a woman?
The Earth is a big system and it doesn’t respond greatly to small variations. That’s more a job for some of its subsystems by indirect means. Maybe Leif is right and there is 0 secular trend in TSI coming from the Sun and reaching the Earth’s orbit. Approximately 30% of that of that highly stable TSI is being reflected away in albedo which is tremendously variable in comparison. 80% of that albedo is cloud cover (and atmosphere) and cloud cover varies from moment to moment on the small local level and it is evidently significantly variable at the global level over time. Clouds and cloud formation are subject to about everything as well. Differences in TSI content, cosmic rays, air pollution, natural particulates, downwelling insolation – you name it- it probably has some bit of an effect in the creation and nature of clouds. And when that cloud fraction (or type of cloud makeup) changes – the effective TSI impacting the Earth has changed and it varies in the multiple W/m^2 arena – which is enough to have some impact without having super sensitivity to TSI or CO2 or anything else directly from W/m^2 power density variations.
BTW, I’m enjoying these presentations by the heavy hitter solar guys like Leif & Nicola. However, I think I’ve got to side with Leif on the simple concept that fusion in the solar furnace is an incredibly low power generation per m^3 volume or mass of material and that energy is superheavily averaged over area and filtered by long time constant filters so it’s got to be low variation over the longer time frames. That leaves the magnetic field and its effects to vary which are rather miniscule relative to total power for the Sun. Maybe it’s a bit simplistic to think in just those terms but it seems to make some sense.
Leif Svalgaard (22:06:44) :
evanmjones (21:49:14) :
Even if there were no underlying trend, there could be a trend in terms of the point of crossover.
I don’t see how. Can you construct an example?
Suppose the sunspot series consists of two cycles of opposite polarity. Suppose that for whatever reason, there is a run of cycles more active than previously, or one of the two cycles gets slightly out of kilter with the other either in terms of phase angle or longevity.
Any of these three possibilities will affect the value of the ‘crossing’ between cycles.
Given that the Hale cycle of sunspot polarity would indicate that something like this is actually going on in the sun, it seems like a reasonable bet.
[REPLY – Yes, that’s what I meant. ~ Evan]
Mark – You can add financial analysis to the list where wavelet analysis is used. It has been used there for over 15 years. In addition, it is used in 2D spatial filtering, along with Spectral analysis.
Mark T. (17:30:11):
Usually it takes a few decades for an analytic technique developed in one field to become fully cross-disciplinary. “Climate science” has not even adequately grasped ordinary power spectrum estimation, what with raw FFT periodograms being presented (usually as functions of period, no less) as “power spectra,” in blithe ignorance of the fundamental Wiener-Khintchine Theorem, which is pre-WWII. Less-venerable decimation-in-frequency (or time) algorithms remain largely terra incognita. And the subtleties of the difference between circular autocovariance of a record (similar to the cyclical repetition implicitly used by BS here) and the true sample autocovariance sometimes escapes even some signal processing engineers bent on doing things efficiently. Yet unwarranted resort to wavelet transforms and SSA is made ever more frequently in fashion-conscious “climate science.” Go figure!
tallbloke (01:00:38) :
Yes, but they have explained why they think Frohlich’s ‘Adjustment’ of the TSI data is wrong and why they bridge the ACRIM gap differently, producing the trend in TSI at minima which supports their argument.
The ACRIM gap is a red herring. The HMF is the same now as 108 years ago at the minimum between cycles 13 and 14. Solar activity now is as low as it was then. TSI should then be that same then as now under the assumption that the Sun’s magnetic field is the underlying cause for variations in TSI. This is independent of ACRIM contortions.
tallbloke (01:35:29) :
This is what the argument over the ACRIM gap bridging is all about and why it is important.
See above.
Your graph shows an increasing trend from 1900 to 1993, just before the cycle 22/23 minimum. In fact, as an absolute quantity, ignoring the cyclicity it increases on average right up to 2005, just around the time cooling becomes evident.
No, it does not. The average B for cycles 17-18-19 is 6.892 nT, and for 20-21-22-23 it is 6.518. There is no upward trend. The central fact is still that HMF and TSI right now are back to 1901-1902 values. Cycle 23 was very much like cycle 13, and cycle 24 looks [so far] to be much like cycle 14. If solar activity and TSI is the main driver of our climate we would expect 1890-1910 temperatures to be similar to 2000-2020 temps. I don’t think this is [or will be] the case. You could argue that all the heat [or cold] is hidden somewhere and will materialize shortly, but the same argument could then be made for cycle 13/14 as SC10-11 were on par with SC21-22 http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric-Magnetic-Field-Since-1835.png
tallbloke (02:26:07) :
“their (Scafetta and West’s) logical conclusion would be that the climate secular feedback to TSI change is extremely much [in the limit infinitely] stronger.”
I think this argument is known in the trade as a ‘reductio ad absurdum’.
The question here is where the absurdity lies.
I would recommend you read James Lovelock’s original Gaia hypothesis
I’m no fan of Mother Earth hypothesis. There is nothing that says that Nature ‘strives’ to achieve ‘equitable’ balance. Rather it has to live with the hand it is dealt, and it apparently does that by NOT being sensitive to small external changes.
Jeff Id (05:48:46) :
I assume there are multiple datasets with good quality match to each other?
Yes, many stations, and all show the same.
Now I’m left wondering how the corrections to sunspot numbers were calculated. Are the corrections simply the magnetic data through Wolf’s equation?
Almost, except done with modern data. This http://www.leif.org/research/CAWSES%20-%20Sunspots.pdf describes the process.
I wonder if you would mind emailing the data and calcs for the corrections to me. It seems like an interesting thing to do a post on.
I would gladly do so, except that it is not in a polished form [yet – the usual excuse] to let you wander over it without a guide nearby, But I’ll send you something, then you can give it a look.
Also, I see that in your discussion with Dr. Scafetta he claims a contradiction with recent sat data due to a shift in the minimum, I assume from your certainty there are ground based variogram equivalent measures which also demonstrate this slight shift in minimum values. It seems to me that, that would conclude any disagreement between you.
Yes there is a similar change as is clear from the Figures. The important issue though is not that particular problem but the whole 170-year record.
cba (06:35:56) :
That leaves the magnetic field and its effects to vary which are rather minuscule relative to total power for the Sun.
Very careful measurements by Bill Livingston over the past 30+ years of the temperature of the Sun in non-magnetic regions show no detectable variation. This from an earlier posting:
Some spectral lines are VERY sensitive to even minute changes in temperature. Livingston et al. have very carefully measured the line depth of such temperature-sensitive lines over more than 30 years spanning three solar cycles [Sun-as-a-Star Spectrum Variations 1974-2006, W. Livingston, L. Wallace, O. R. White, M. S. Giampapa, The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 657, Issue 2, pp. 1137-1149, 2007, DOI; 10.1086/511127]. They report [and I apologize for the somewhat technical turn my argument is taking, but if you really want to know, there is no avoiding this], ‘that both Ca II K and C I 5380A intensities are constant, indicating that the basal quiet atmosphere is unaffected by cycle magnetism within our observational error. A lower limit to the Ca II K central intensity atmosphere is 0.040. This possibly represents conditions as they were during the Maunder Minimum [their words, remember]. Within our capability to measure it using the C I 5380A line the global (Full Disk) and basal (Center Disk) photospheric temperature is constant over the activity cycles 21, 22, and 23′”.
I have known Bill Livingston [and White] for over 35 years and he is a very careful and competent observer using the best and biggest solar telescopes in existence.
tallbloke (06:49:57) :
Any of these three possibilities will affect the value of the ‘crossing’ between cycles.
And how is that different from the ‘underlying trend’ [which would be measured how?]. The cross-over is just another [slightly different] marker of minimum. Page four of http://www.leif.org/research/Most%20Recent%20IMF,%20SW,%20and%20Solar%20Data.pdf shows the last three cross-overs. BTW, the cross-over [as you can see] does not happen at the statistical minimum [gray curve].
Jeff Id (05:48:46) :
The variometer does indeed seem easy to calibrate and is likely trustworthy.
They are very robust devices. You can even use one to open a can of worms. :0)
Leif Svalgaard (08:33:56) :
The HMF is the same now as 108 years ago at the minimum between cycles 13 and 14. Solar activity now is as low as it was then. TSI should then be that same then as now under the assumption that the Sun’s magnetic field is the underlying cause for variations in TSI. This is independent of ACRIM contortions.
The debate over the splicing of the data from different platforms concerns periods of time prior to now. Maybe TSI was the same at solar minimum in 1901, but I don’t think that is particularly relevant to the issue of the ‘adjustment’ of ACRIM data from the 1990’s.
The average B for cycles 17-18-19 is 6.892 nT, and for 20-21-22-23 it is 6.518. There is no upward trend. The central fact is still that HMF and TSI right now are back to 1901-1902 values. Cycle 23 was very much like cycle 13, and cycle 24 looks [so far] to be much like cycle 14. If solar activity and TSI is the main driver of our climate we would expect 1890-1910 temperatures to be similar to 2000-2020 temps. I don’t think this is [or will be] the case. You could argue that all the heat [or cold] is hidden somewhere and will materialize shortly, but the same argument could then be made for cycle 13/14 as SC10-11 were on par with SC21-22 http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric-Magnetic-Field-Since-1835.png
And what was the average from 1900-1930 from your graph? The upward trend was from then to now, not from cycle 17.
A great deal of extra heat has been stored in the oceans as the satellite altimetry tells us. Why you continue to pretend this is mysterious is beyond me. My calcs show that this has been building up since 1935 and so of course temperatures won’t be the same now as in 1911 just because the sun is suddenly less active after a long period when it was at it’s most active.
I’m no fan of Mother Earth hypothesis. There is nothing that says that Nature ’strives’ to achieve ‘equitable’ balance. Rather it has to live with the hand it is dealt, and it apparently does that by NOT being sensitive to small external changes.
If you bothered to read and digest the book you’d understand that the system is VERY sensitive to small external changes, but because there are a very large number of feedback mechanisms in the biosphere, these are dealt with in a myriad of ways. Try it, you might learn something worthwhile. Lovelock is not in the least sentimental about ‘mother earth’ in his book. It’s mostly factual stuff about atmosphere and ocean, and the biological processes which make our planet’s atmosphere and ocean very different from what they would be if there was no life on earth.
Why and how has earth’s near surface temperature remained almost constant while the sun has increased it’s output by 30% ?
Read the book and find out.
British soft power and its foreign policy are being recast with a diplomatic strategy to market Britain across the world as a climate change leader.
I believe Zimbabwe is actually the leader. They have done more to curtail their CO2 output than any other nation on earth.
AlanG (12:22:09)
A question for you sir: Have the Brits all gone daft?
tallbloke (09:53:49) :
TI don’t think that is particularly relevant to the issue of the ‘adjustment’ of ACRIM data from the 1990’s.
And the ACRIM data problem is not particularly relevant to the issue of the long-term variation of HMF and TSI. So, to keep introducing this red herring is a waste of bandwidth [peoples’ and networks’]
And what was the average from 1900-1930 from your graph? The upward trend was from then to now, not from cycle 17.
The trend stopped in the 1950s, as we are now back to where we started.
My calcs show that this has been building up since 1935
And why did the oceans not store heat before 1935?
Why and how has earth’s near surface temperature remained almost constant while the sun has increased it’s output by 30% ?
Try CO2 from outgassing. There was hardly any biosphere for the most part of the Earth’s age.
tallbloke (09:53:49) :
My calcs show that this has been building up since 1935
And why did the oceans not store heat before 1935? for example during the very active years 1840-1880, when average HMF B was 6.5 nT.
Angel (22:55:50)
Angel, there’s an involved discussion above between Leif Svalgaard and tallbloke: who are you dismissing, or both?
tallbloke (01:00:38) “[…] perhaps […] solarcyle24.com?”
No, but we can swap notes around here occasionally. Be sure to check out Figure 2 in the Trenberth & Stepaniak article I referenced upthread.
Leif: “Try CO2 from outgassing. There was hardly any biosphere for the most part of the Earth’s age.”
you might need to clarify or correct that.
The problem with peer reviews is that they are typically restricted to within the specialty of the writer. Many papers would be improved if the reviewers included experts in the methodologies used to reach the conclusions like mathematicians and statisticians.
tallbloke (01:00:38) :
Thanks for that Nasif. I’m a graph junkie at the moment. Got any good ones which illustrate the effect?
You’re welcome. Sorry for the delayed response. Regarding your petition, unfortunatelly I’ve not graphed the effect yet, though I think there are some papers on this issue.
Paul Vaughan (15:07:56) :
Be sure to check out Figure 2 in the Trenberth & Stepaniak article I referenced upthread.
I downloaded the pdf and fig 2 is the cross correlation plot of the +- lags of nino 3.4 vs the trans nino index. If I understand correctly, the magnitudes are the celcius difference of SST.
An area relevant to our previous discussion is the 1905-1930 period, a strong positive PDO and according to the graph TNI leading nino 3.4 by a year or so. The period end coincides with the anomaly in the Chandler period you pointed up with your wavelet analysis a while ago.
I’m struggling to ‘get’ what it is you are driving at beyond that so I hope you’ll give us your analysis.
Paul, I note the shifts also tie in with reversals of long term trends in length of day. Good result, thanks.
cba (15:20:29) :
Leif: “Try CO2 from outgassing. There was hardly any biosphere for the most part of the Earth’s age.”
you might need to clarify or correct that.
What he actually needs to do is overcome his prejudice and read Lovelock’s original book to better inform himself. Lovelock’s description of the evolution of the atmospere and oceans raises important questions about the temperature stability of earth in comparison to planets with no biosphere. Lovelock understood the vast power of the biosphere as a shaper and governor of the atmospheric and oceanic dynamic equilibrium.
Leif Svalgaard (11:40:55) :
And the ACRIM data problem is not particularly relevant to the issue of the long-term variation of HMF and TSI. So, to keep introducing this red herring is a waste of bandwidth [peoples’ and networks’]
It’s very relevant to the understanding of the fact that the sun is not as invariate as your thesis suggested, though the recent big drop of TSI has changed that analysis somewhat. The fact that despite our best efforts at calibration TIM reads 4.4W/m^ lower than the previous satellite, which saw 50% of the change between solar max and solar min that ACRIM did hardly seems irrelevant to me. It tells me there is a large enough amount of uncertainty in TSI measurement that nothing categorical can be deduced about it’s levels a hundred years ago for a start.
And what was the average from 1900-1930 from your graph? The upward trend was from then to now, not from cycle 17.
The trend stopped in the 1950s, as we are now back to where we started.
There is little point in getting into debates about when treds should be measured from and to, but I note the densely packed short minimum cycles of the late C20th produced almost the same average as the period containing the highest Rmax cycle despite their waning amplitudes.
I can see why you don’t want to answer the question, because I have calculated the percentage change in sunspot numbers between the various periods. The bottom line is that the linear trend was up over the C20th as a whole according to your graph.
My calcs show that this has been building up since 1935
And why did the oceans not store heat before 1935?
They did, and gained ocean heat content quite stronly during the high cycles of the mid C19th. But the gradual slight fall in ocean heat content according to my model from 1870 to 1935 due to the sunspot average being slightly below the equilibrium value is in big contrast to the sharp increase indicated by the much more active sunspot cycles between 1935-2003.
Your revisions to sunspot numbers will alter the curve and the equilibrium value if they become generally accepted. I sincerely hope Jeff Id is successful in his quest to look at the data himself, to corroborate or contradict your thesis. Are the original logbook records of the magnetic readings accessible by the public? Where are they kept?
My opinion/prediction is that the next few solar cycles will show us all just how variable the sun can be in it’s activity, and that will be the real test of the various hypotheses and data estimations. It’s going to be a fascinating story to watch unfold.
Your estimation based on the polar fields for solar cycle 24 is for an Rmax of ~75 around 2013.
My estimate based on barycentric nonsense(tm) is much less. ~45-55 a year later, if it really gets going at all.
But the sun is very unpredictable and difficult to read from previous behaviour as we are finding out, and I won’t take the result as proof of the correctness or falsity of either your theory or mine. So we’ll be able to carry on arguing about it for a long time to come I hope. 🙂
tallbloke (01:52:11) :
The fact that despite our best efforts at calibration TIM reads 4.4W/m^ lower than the previous satellite
The absolute value of TSI has always varied between satellites [and more than the 4.4 W/m2]. This is not relevant. What matters is the relative precision which is much better [something like 0.007 W/m2].
Are the original logbook records of the magnetic readings accessible by the public? Where are they kept?
yes, here: http://swdcwww.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/hyplt/index.html and other places.
Thanks Leif.
By the way, using my data combination techniques and a bit of barycentricnonsense(tm) I’ve got a prediction for the Ap index to 2015 here with a hindcast to 1934 to show it’s strengths and weaknesses.
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ap-prediction-1.gif
Lets see how it goes. If it’s on the mark I think solar cycle 24 will be long and low, with an Rmax 12 month average spot count of around 45-55 in 2015.
tallbloke (07:31:39) :
I’ve got a prediction for the Ap index to 2015 here with a hindcast to 1934 to show it’s strengths and weaknesses.
The hindcast to 1934 doesn’t look too good. Here is Ap back to 1844: http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-2008.png or here http://www.leif.org/research/Ap%201844-2009.pdf
Hmmm, thanks. The correlation breaks down where the numbers of the two series get too far apart. I need to learn something about detrending algorithms I think.
Which of the long list of geomag stations have the furthest back records Leif?
tallbloke (09:42:52) :
Which of the long list of geomag stations have the furthest back records Leif?
At Kyoto, that would be Niemegk [NGK] back to 1890. There are others, like Greenwich and Prague and Helsinki that go back to the 1840s. Most of those have not been digitized and placed in public archives. I’m digitizing the old records from published ‘yearbook’ and have a lot of that old data and am working hard to get it all done and making it all available, but ain’t there yet [perhaps another ten years of work]. Section 7 [and Table 6] of http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf give more details on old stations.
tallbloke (07:31:39) :
I’ve got a prediction for the Ap index to 2015 here with a hindcast to 1934 to show its strengths and weaknesses.
when making such predictions [especially when using Ap at minimum in the process] one must be aware of the effect shown on page 4 of
http://www.leif.org/research/Ap%201844-2009.pdf namely that Ap at Odd-Even minima is about 3 units lower than at Even-Odd minima. The reason for this is understood [has been for 30 years] and has nothing to do with the Sun [to first order], but is a consequence of the geometry of the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth. You see, there are MANY such pitfalls lurking on the way. That Ap at this Odd-Even transition is so low is thus an artifact of the data, as far as the Sun is concerned, as the effect is terrestrial and not solar.
Leif Svalgaard (10:30:42) :
Maybe you aren’t the person to ask this question of, but how much energy is used by plants from TSI? Does changes in plant cover change the amount of TSI that is actually re-emitted by Earth? It would seem logical to me that ‘unused’ TSI is an important factor in climate studies, not TSI as a total figure.
I did not mean re-emitted, on second thought, I mean used to provide heat.
David (10:47:15) :
Maybe you aren’t the person to ask this question of, but how much energy is used by plants from TSI? Does changes in plant cover change the amount of TSI that is actually re-emitted by Earth?
And I may not be the right person to answer, but plants change the albedo of the Earth, so do have some effect on the climate.
tallbloke,
I think you’ll appreciate this:
Abarca del Rio, R.; Gambis, D.; Salstein, D.; Nelson, P.; & Dai, A. (2003). Solar activity and earth rotation variability. Journal of Geodynamics 36, 423-443.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Abarca_delRio_etal_JGeodyn03.pdf
In particular, see figures 7 & 8. My concern is that a lot of research (which seems to focus on 1950+ or 1980+) is not even attempting to account for the REVERSED phase relationship that persisted for over 100 years.
tallbloke (00:56:16) “Paul, I note the shifts also tie in with reversals of long term trends in length of day. Good result, thanks.”
It’s more than just LOD. It’s earth orientation (more generally), lunar nodal cycle, solar system dynamics, & aa/CRF change-points that show up in the relationship between N34 & TNI. This is the stuff Tsonis, Swanson, & Kravtsov (2007) were encouraging us to go after. This is why I say science appears to be about 1 millimeter from a major breakthrough on ENSO. Trenberth & Stepaniak’s insights into the 2D nature of ENSO constitute a landmark research development. Some of Trenberth’s statements lead me to believe that he may be on the wrong trail with his ideas about the 1976 change-point (& oblivious to the earlier ones possibly (?)), but this may be funding & allegiance -related, so I consider it possible (perhaps likely) that he is still (secretly perhaps) a contender in the contest for an even bigger ENSO breakthrough.
Leif Svalgaard (11:49:29) :
David (10:47:15) :
Maybe you aren’t the person to ask this question of, but how much energy is used by plants from TSI? Does changes in plant cover change the amount of TSI that is actually re-emitted by Earth?
And I may not be the right person to answer, but plants change the albedo of the Earth, so do have some effect on the climate.
————————
Yes, they also absorb some energy to make their food. Just wondered if this has ever been studied robustly, as it may be progressing faster than expected.
Leif Svalgaard (10:30:42) :
That Ap at this Odd-Even transition is so low is thus an artifact of the data, as far as the Sun is concerned, as the effect is terrestrial and not solar.
This is why I’m using a blend of LOD and solar data as a proxy for terrestrial magnetic response.
I’m digitizing the old records from published ‘yearbook’ and have a lot of that old data and am working hard to get it all done and making it all available, but ain’t there yet [perhaps another ten years of work].
Caramba! Can’t be the most exciting work. Good on you for taking it on. No sneaky adjusting though, promise? We want photos of the original yearbook so we can make random checks. 😉
tallbloke (00:45:27) “I’m struggling to ‘get’ what it is you are driving at beyond that so I hope you’ll give us your analysis.”
tallbloke, I don’t have an ‘end-result’, but I’m on the complex-conditioning trail and the barriers are falling like dominoes. It is impossible to predict how long this process takes (could be days, could be decades).
Anecdote: In my traverse across 7 disciplines, the most comparable complexity I have encountered was in the area of evolutionary biology & population genetics. On the genetic ‘landscape’ there exist paradoxical multi-dimensional equilibria that easily evade the non-inquiring mind. There are analogies with annealing in materials science and optimization algorithms employed in statistical computing.
Paul Vaughan (11:58:14) :
tallbloke,
I think you’ll appreciate this:
Abarca del Rio, R.; Gambis, D.; Salstein, D.; Nelson, P.; & Dai, A. (2003). Solar activity and earth rotation variability. Journal of Geodynamics 36, 423-443.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Abarca_delRio_etal_JGeodyn03.pdf
As it happens I’ve been playing with LOD and solar data myself. As well as the Ap prediction above I found this link with AAM.
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=glaam-lod-tsi.gif
The sticky out bits are the el ninos.
David (13:08:33) :
David (10:47:15) :
Maybe you aren’t the person to ask this question of, but how much energy is used by plants from TSI? Does changes in plant cover change the amount of TSI that is actually re-emitted by Earth?
Yes, they also absorb some energy to make their food. Just wondered if this has ever been studied robustly, as it may be progressing faster than expected.
These should get you started: (the one in bold is a good read)
DeFries, R. S., G. P. Asner, and R. A. Houghton, editors. 2004. Ecosystems and Land Use Change. American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC.
Foley, J. A., R. DeFries, G. P. Asner, C. Barford, G. Bonan, S. R. Carpenter, F. S. Chapin, M. T. Coe, G. C. Daily, H. K. Gibbs, J. H. Helkowski, T. Holloway, E. A. Howard, C. J. Kucharik, C. Monfreda, J. A. Patz, I. C. Prentice, N. Ramankutty, and P. K. Snyder. 2005. Global consequences of land use. Science 309:570-574.
Global Land Project. 2005. Science Plan and Implementation Strategy. IGBP Report No. 53/IHDP Report No. 19, IGBP Secretariat, Stockholm.
Meyer, W. B., and B. L. Turner. 1994. Changes in Land Use and Land Cover: A Global Perspective. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge England; New York, NY, USA.
Ruddiman, W. F. 2003. The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago. Climatic Change 61:261-293.
Turner II, B. L., W. C. Clark, R. W. Kates, J. F. Richards, J. T. Mathews, and W. B. Meyer. 1990. The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere Over the Past 300 Years. Cambridge University Press with Clark University, Cambridge; New York.
tallbloke (13:14:37) :
No sneaky adjusting though, promise? We want photos of the original yearbook so we can make random checks. 😉
You can digitize them for me.
tallbloke (13:45:32)
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=glaam-lod-tsi.gif
Suggested:
Consistent use of anomalies – i.e. use anomalies for both variables (for interannual comparison) or use raw series (to compare annual structure).
Related:
Schmitz-Hubsch, H.; & Schuh, H. (1999). Seasonal and short-period fluctuations of Earth rotation investigated by wavelet analysis. Technical Report 1999.6-2 Department of Geodesy & Geoinformatics, Stuttgart University, p.421-432.
http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/gi/research/schriftenreihe/quo_vadis/pdf/schmitzhuebsch.pdf
[See Figure 1.]
And:
Y.H. Zhou, D.W. Zheng, & X.H. Liao (2001). Wavelet analysis of interannual LOD, AAM, and ENSO: 1997-98 El Nino and 1998-99 La Nina signals. Journal of Geodesy 75, 164-168.
http://www.shao.ac.cn/yhzhou/ZhouYH_2001JG_LOD_ENSO_wavelet.pdf
alt:
http://202.127.29.4/yhzhou/ZhouYH_2001JG_LOD_ENSO_wavelet.pdf
–
Question: How do you produce the top plot? [& note: its top portion is obscured by webpage headers — this cannot be cured by copying/pasting to elsewhere]
David (10:47:15) :
Leif Svalgaard (10:30:42) :
Maybe you aren’t the person to ask this question of, but how much energy is used by plants from TSI? Does changes in plant cover change the amount of TSI that is actually re-emitted by Earth? It would seem logical to me that ‘unused’ TSI is an important factor in climate studies, not TSI as a total figure.
Fortunatelly, I’m not Leif and he’s not me, but I can answer your question. In gross numbers, terrestrial plants absorb ~1% of the total solar radiation striking on them.
For example, yesterday, the average insolation here was 706 W/m^2; the amount of energy absorbed by plants would have been 7.06 W/m^2. Remember that this load of energy absorbed could change at a specific hour of the day and according to the efficiency of a determined plant species.
On the other hand, the amount of energy transformed into chemical potential energy is about 10%, i.e. 17 calories/s.
Leif Svalgaard (11:49:29) :
“David (10:47:15) :
Maybe you aren’t the person to ask this question of, but how much energy is used by plants from TSI? Does changes in plant cover change the amount of TSI that is actually re-emitted by Earth?
And I may not be the right person to answer, but plants change the albedo of the Earth, so do have some effect on the climate.”
Ramanathan has some interesting thoughts on this.eg
“Although the clear sky albedo of Amazon is less than 15% (compared with Sahara
value of 34 %), the clouds even out the albedo differences and hence Amazon all
sky values are close to Saharan values. This similarity cannot be attributed to a limiting value of Amazon albedo to, say, a value close to 30%. The annual mean albedo of Amazon is most likely determined by land-atmosphere-
ocean interactions limiting the cloud fraction and its thickness by the availability
of cloud water and nuclei. However, it is intriguing why the mean albedo of this region over a longer time period is close to 30%. Similar annual mean and large scale average values are found over the other tropical cloud systems as well.
The GAIA hypothesis has remained untestable ]. We need a more testable hypothesis that not only addresses the questions raised here but also explains the
albedo puzzles posed in this paper.
Leif Svalgaard (14:12:51) :
tallbloke (13:14:37) :
No sneaky adjusting though, promise? We want photos of the original yearbook so we can make random checks. 😉
You can digitize them for me.
Well my last contract finished a little while ago and I haven’t heard back from the University about the last post I applied for (they are making a lot of people redundant in budget cuts at the moment), so if there might be some funding available for the work, I would consider it an honour to take up your offer of a position as your research assistant on the project.
Paul Vaughan (14:18:29) :
Question: How do you produce the top plot? [& note: its top portion is obscured by webpage headers — this cannot be cured by copying/pasting to elsewhere]
Paul, it is NOAA’s AAM graph, with my curve overlaid on the bottom plot.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/aam/glaam.76.present.gif
Re: tallbloke (23:22:55)
Thanks tallbloke. That clears up a few things. Be careful with some of the NOAA series. I caught them posting a “monthly” link to a smoothed version of the GLAAM series. (Last time I checked there were still 2 versions of the series posted – and there are all kinds of link-pathways, so I wouldn’t be confident that they fixed them all.) I also suspect some of their other “monthly” series are actually smoothed. It pays to run some diagnostics. The recent fuss about McLean, de Freitas, & Carter (2009) was instructive. We need to start pushing hard for raw series. Anomalies are not enough, particularly when posted without the backbone structure.
tallbloke (23:19:07) :
Leif Svalgaard (14:12:51) :
tallbloke (13:14:37) :
No sneaky adjusting though, promise? We want photos of the original yearbook so we can make random checks. 😉
You can digitize them for me.
I’ve got some time on my hands! Anything I can do for the price of a virtual beer?
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation
I’m coming late to this party as usual, and already responded to ‘tallbloke’ privately, but just for reference…
WoodForTrees PMOD graph uses the data from:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/data/irradiance/composite/DataPlots/
specifically:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/data/irradiance/composite/DataPlots/composite_d41_62_0906.dat
(unfortunately the “0906” is a date, which means I have to manually change the update script every now and then – everyone else provides a fixed URL.)
WFT does no more than parse and plot this data; I’m not doing any fancy splicing or anything else. It does seem to be updated every couple of months – whether accurately or not is beyond my understanding!