Solar geomagnetic activity is at an all time low – what does this mean for climate?

Updated 2009 Dec 08 2201 UTC
Joint USAF/NOAA Report of Solar and Geophysical Activity
SDF Number 342 Issued at 2200Z on 08 Dec 2009
Analysis of Solar Active Regions and Activity from 07/2100Z to 08/2100Z: Solar activity was very low. No flares occurred during the past 24 hours. The solar disk was void of sunspots.
Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be very low.
Geophysical Activity Summary 07/2100Z to 08/2100Z: The geomagnetic field was quiet.
Geophysical Activity Forecast: The geomagnetic field is expected to be quiet for the next three days (09-11 December).
http://www.solarcycle24.com/

Cold ahead with a warming tax!

Would it be possible for the solar geomagnetic activity to affect the dynamo inside the earth by interacting with its magnetic field? Could it be possible that this reduced magnetic interaction be responsible for the increased tectonic activity during solar minimum? Is it just possible that a weaker interaction between the two magnetic fields could have the interior of the earth cool down slightly and this cooling would be responsible for the increased tectonic activity, because of a small volume change due to cooling?

Anthony,
In the last couple of years now the tempratures seems fairly stable and I kind of expected them start dropping visibly.
What is the expected lag between this reduced sun activity and until we actually get lower temps?

Oh Crap! Now I’ll have glacier-side property!

Is it an all time low, or merely the lowest on record. Either way it allows for an interesting opportunity to disconfirm Svensmark’s hypothesis. But let’s not lapse into warmist type hyperbole and confirmation bias.
That said I do worry it might be about to get a lot colder, and we are just not preparing for that scenario.

Thanks for the update!. Really chilling, as “The chilling stars”. This is real, all the rest, copenhagen etc. is forgettable monkey business.

Even a prolonged period of cooling will not put off the True Believers. They’ll just say that a cool sun is masking a runaway warming trend that’s all our fault, and it’ll shoot off again just as soon as the Scottish and Northern English ice-cap melts.

Anthony –
First – another big thank you for your work, most especially on the emails material and on the Darwin temperature record (when you add that to the Swedish professor’s comments on Fennoscandinavia I raises huge questions over the reality of global warming in the past 50 years).
However, in relation to the low AP, cosmic rays and climate – I have some comments:
* Svensmark and colleagues seem to have abandoned their work on cloud correlations in favour of cloud chambers – which is a shame – both are necessary, but the latter locks up all that expertise for several years underground, when just a fraction of the CERN millions would provide for a better surveillance of the satellite record on clouds and correlations with GCR flux;
* That correlative work was getting difficult after cycle 22 and was harder to establish for cycle 23 – we still don’t know why. In my own survey (reported in ‘Chill’) there seems to have been a break point around 2001 when cloud cover increased by 2% globally after falling by 4% over the period 1980-2000 (and allowing extra sunlight to the ocean – quite enough to drive all the late 20th century warming);
* GCR are not the only relevant factor related to a low AP – during the Little Ice Age/Maunder Minimum, there is evidence that the jetstream shifted southward, and Drew Shindell at NASA was working on correlations of the solar wind and UV-induced chemistry in the upper atmosphere to changes in the polar vortex which then affected the jetstream.
* the jetstream redistributes cloud cover – and a spatial change can be just as important as a percentage change – it also directs the vortices that suck heat out of the oceans upper waters and then dump it on land.
I suspect that when the AP low for several decades, the shifts noted above lead to a gradual cooling down of the planet – especially in the northern hemisphere where the oceans store heat at depth – and then as the AP recovers, so do the oceans, but slowly – as in ‘recovery from the LIA’ and the upward trend of the last 150 years.
Would love to get some feedback on this supposition. Leif did tell me he thought Shindell abandoned the work because of changes to the solar proxy – but that did not make a lot of sense, since it is the AP we are discussing, and the recent pattern would tell us that when sunspots disappear, the AP is low – as also does the be-10 and c-14 record (which Leif doesn’t trust either!). So – lots to discuss.

The top graphs starts in 2000 the bottom graph in 1930 so they are different time series.
REPLY: Yes, so? This is clearly identified in the body of the post. Both are valid. – A

Amir Netz (10:57:21): What is the expected lag between this reduced sun activity and until we actually get lower temps?
Possibly in the range from 3 to 9 years. Stephen E. Schwartz has estimated the characteristic time constant for our planet to be 8.5 years
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
Natural ocean cycles may “hide the decline” though… 🙂

You’ve just exposed my trump card that I was going to use on those AGW’ers.

Ray (10:53:30) :
“Could it be possible that this reduced magnetic interaction be responsible for the increased tectonic activity during solar minimum?”
Could you provide a link to a publication / data on the hypothesis of increased tectonic activity during solar minimum. I have heard that claim before but never seen any data to substantiate,
…. call me a skeptic, but I would like to see the data & let it do the talking

The lack of solar activity has a number of effects on the earth including on the earth’s ionosphere. High frequency (15 MHz and up) radio activity has been very low or impossible in recent years due to the ionosphere. Thomas F. Giella, I believe he used to work for NASA, has been predicting an extended period of low solar activity for some time. He’s got some interesting stuff, if you can dig it out here http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o1.htm
Dr. Svalgaard’s position makes a lot of sense to me. A lot more than poorly kept temperature records that have to be cooked to show warming.

Amir Nitz writes “What is the expected lag between this reduced sun activity and until we actually get lower temps?”
I dont know the answer. During the Maunder minimum sunspots disappeared around 1645. The coldest temperatures were recorded in England in the mid 1680’s. L&P suggest sunspots may disappear around, but before 2020.

Doug (11:18:26) : I don’t really see any correlation with temperature.
Well, if we assume that HMF B influence cloud cover, it follows from the first law of thermodynamics that it is the time integral of HMF B that should correlate with temperature. So, if we integrate HMF B over time and compare with global temperature, we see the following curve (two parameter fit):
http://i25.tinypic.com/fb97ph.jpg
We note that the cooling has started. This model may be modified to also include radiation, but I am uncertain whether this is a good idea.

“The ranking Republican on the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming said Tuesday he is going to attend the Copenhagen conference on climate change to inform world leaders that despite any promises made by President Obama, no new laws will be passed in the United States until the “scientific fascism” ends.”
Sensenbrenner to Tell Copenhagen: No Climate Laws Until ‘Scientific Fascism’ Ends
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/09/sensenbrenner-climate-fascism/

For those who say it will get colder, oh it will probably get colder alright.
NOAA will have to extend the chart space downward if we’re going to see how low the AO index is now forecast to go
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_ensm.shtml
The NAO looks to be forecast to go through a similar nosedive downwards as well
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.sprd2.gif
Meanwhile the AAO index is forecast to go positive, a far cry from when it collapsed as seen in this link
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/aao.sprd2.gif

This post is relevant to one of my articles which I’ve referred to a couple of times already so I won’t link to it again at this stage.
Suffice it to say that according to the SABER satellite it seems that a more turbulent solar energy flow actually increases energy loss from the stratosphere to space whereas a more stable energy flow seems to decrease energy loss from the stratosphere to space.
One has to set against that effect the fact that during a period of active sun there is a very slight increase in the power of the solar energy flow.
Consequently the current solar quietness would seem to be allowing the stratosphere and higher levels to settle down with a REDUCED flow of energy to space. Thus the change in the late 90’s when the stratosphere started to warm again following the cooling of the stratosphere during the previous period of active sun.
In contrast the more lively the sun the more energy gets into the oceans even if the change in solar power is only small.
Then the issue is as to when that solar energy is released back to the air by ocean SST variability.
The tropospheric temperature therefore depends on the balance between the rate at which solar energy is released from ocean to air (much more variable than was ever anticipated when the CO2 theory was proposed), the rate at which the hydrological cycle pumps energy from surface to stratosphere and then finally the rate at which energy is lost to space from the stratosphere.
The troposphere has warmed up a bit this year because the oceans are releasing energy a little faster due to the ongoing moderate El Nino event and the rate of energy transfer by the hydrological cycle is being slowed down a little by the quiet sun allowing the stratosphere to accumulate energy a little.
In the meantime the past strong La Nina is still working through to the polar oceans so the poleward air masses have cooled in both hemispheres allowing a greater contrast between equatorial and polar air masses, hence the large movements of air recently between the poles and the mid latitudes as exemplified by the cold air plunges over the US and so far relative mildness in parts of Russia.
I think the implications of the SABER findings for an analysis of the net global energy flow at any given time needs urgent investigation.
As I have suggested in my article at Climaterealists.com the implications appear to solve several longstanding observational puzzles.

Maybe if Obama only taxes us on warm days we’ll be OK.

and from the Sydney Morning Herald:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/climate-emails-a-dirty-war-swirls-around-swindle-20091209-kk69.html
“The computer models used to predict future climate change scenarios take these simple concepts and some other variables, such as solar activity, into account. ”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHA!
The elephant in the room is that at least solar physicists acknowledge somethjing is wrong with our understanding of the Sun.

OT in a way, but if the likely result is an increase in cloud cover and so a cooling effect, then what about the massive increase in aircraft contrails since the ‘sixties?
Do contrails have a warming, or a cooling effect? Can anybody point to work on their effects?

Is it just me, or do temperatures seem to lag the spikes in activity by about 5-7 years?
I’m just wondering if there is any correlation there. To my mind it looks as though we are due to have at least 3 more years of cooling after the step-down that occured in 2005.

Why is this sunspot scarcity so hard to undrstand? It’s clearly a CO2 forcing.

ashes to ashes, funk to funky,
we know Major Tom’s a junkie,
strung out on heaven’s high,
and hitting an all time low.
– David Bowie

Man has killed the Sun with runaway CO2!

“What is the expected lag between this reduced sun activity and until we actually get lower temps?”
Several years, most likely. The majority of the heat stored in the Earth’s climate system is in the oceans. It takes considerable time for that heat to decline. Think if it like a tire with a varying amount of air coming in (solar radiation changes, cloud cover changes, etc) and a varying amount leaking out (radiation into space modulated by cloud cover depending on type and altitude of clouds). As you put more air in and increase the pressure, you get more volume/unit of time leaking out (as you increase the temperature of the planet, it radiates more heat into space) so the tire will inflate some but at some point reach equilibrium at a larger size as Earth would reach equilibrium at a higher temperature and then settle. Now if you increase the cloud cover, you reduce the radiation into the system, that is like slightly decreasing the amount of air being pumped into the tire but increased clouds can also reduce the amount radiated into space at night, too.
Other things are at work, too. If the ocean cools a little, then the amount of evaporation reduces a little. This reduces the absolute humidity (though probably not the relative humidity) of the air. Less water vapor means less greenhouse warming from Earth’s most powerful greenhouse gas. So the colder it gets, the colder it CAN get still because as the oceans cool, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere drops. But less water vapor would mean less cloud cover so that balances. But increased GCRs might result in a higher cloud cover for a given humidity than in a period of lower GCRs. See? It is a complicated system but it appears to me that the “system” is inclined to cool more easily than warm because warming causes increased evaporation which increases cloud cover and heat transport to the upper troposhere which tends to cool the surface. There doesn’t seem to be any such limitation on cooling. The colder it gets the dryer the air becomes allowing more heat to radiate out at night (and in polar winter) than the decrease allows in due to less cloud cover. When it gets cold the net albedo might remain the same because while you have decreased clouds, you have increased ice which acts to reflect much of the heat back into space.
I believe that is why glaciation is the “normal” state. We have 100K years of glaciation punctuated by 10K years of interglacial warmth. I believe “cold” is the more stable state over the long term. Also, I haven’t seen any data on GCR rates prior to the Holocene but I suspect there are some because there are some papers behind pay walls that appear to have such information. We tend to come out of glaciation only when insolation is most favorable but there is something else at work.
We come out of glaciation to interglacial temperatures in less than 100 years. Now consider that Chicago was under 5000 feet of ice. Imagine a block of ice that is, say, 500 square miles in surface area and a mile thick sitting someplace at about the latitude of Chicago in North America today. How long do you think it would take to melt that ice? It won’t melt much in winter. In fact, will will probably accumulate in mass in winter. And the ice itself will affect surface temperature so it would still be fairly cold in the middle of that 500 square mile area at night as breezes blow across that ice even in summer. And there won’t be a lot of thermal updrafts over it to get storms started. The weather would be more stable over the ice than over land surrounding it.
Something else acts to melt all that ice in such a short period of time and I believe that something else is rain and quite a lot of it. You can melt back quite a lot of ice if you have rain practically every day for a month in the middle of summer. A very gradual increase in solar insolation is not going to cause a very fast collapse of the ice sheet in only a few decades time without some other trigger.

Re:
Jeff L (11:24:52) :
Ray (10:53:30) :
“Could it be possible that this reduced magnetic interaction be responsible for the increased tectonic activity during solar minimum?”
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?2003ESASP.535..393S&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf
It looks like we are one eruption away from a new (gore?) minimum

Jeff L (11:24:52) :
It’s more complicated than what I said earlier but apparently there is a strong connection.
Maybe those could be a start:
http://www.khalilov.biz/pdf/About%20possible%20influence%20of%20solar%20activity%20upon%20seismic%20and%20volcanic%20activities%203.pdf

I want to put together a simple sequence for posting to internet forums, but I’m still fairly new to all this. Can someone knowledgeable advise on the following:
Increased solar activity (sunspots etc)
==> increased solar wind
==> reduced cosmic rays reaching earth
==> reduced ionized particles in atmosphere
==> reduced cloud formation
==> reduced albedo effect
==> increased solar energy reaching earth’s surface
==> increased global temperatures
OR
Reduced solar activity (sunspots etc)
==> reduced solar wind
==> increased cosmic rays reaching earth
==> increased ionized particles in atmosphere
==> increased cloud formation
==> increased albedo effect
==> reduced solar energy reaching earth’s surface
==> reduced global temperatures

Now we need a really good volcanic eruption (away from civilization, of coarse) to put the ice-ing on the cake.

RT @Not_Evil
NASA TOO !!!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/03/researcher-says-nasa-hiding-climate-data/

And just remember, some of the sun specks they count today would never have been counted by Galelao.

Forgot to mention, some interesting information comparing previous cycle records can be found at
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html

Hey all, Ive notices its been pretty gray in the sky these last couple of months. Lots of rain not as much blue sky here in the tropics. We’ve been sleeping with the ac off most evenings also.
It would be interesting to see the cloud density figures.

Secret Draft Leak Proves More Damaging Than ‘Climategate’ As Climate Talks Are …
CleanTechnica – Mridul Chadha – ‎2 hours ago‎
The leakage of an alternative negotiations draft has put the credibility of the Conference of Parties in question. The leaked draft was prepared by so …

Gore states arctic ice to be gone in 5-15 years. Wow is he just so smart. I guess he knows just about everything.
The last suit you’ll wear, has no pockets.
You can’t take it with you, when you go.
When that hand full of dirt, goes back into the earth.
What your worth, only heaven knows.

Ray et. al.,
The question about Solar activity affecting the interior of the earth is one I’ve posed a number of times over the last 6 months and have never gotten a response.
The question of tectonic activity hadn’t occurred to me. My question is whether it might not account for the heat of the core.
The solar wind was discovered by the Russian Luna 9 spacecraft in 1979. Its effects on the ionosphere and satellites have been the focus of research.
It comprises thermally ejected protons and electrons – the electrons travel 39 times as fast as the protons (square root of the mass ratio). When electrons and protons travel at different speeds you have an electric current. You also have an associated magnetic field – Love & Marriage, Abbott & Costello.
The core of the earth is a 2,000 mile diameter ball of mostly iron. It rotates – once a day. As I remember from 5th grade, when a ferrous metal rotates in a magnetic field electrical currents are induced. It heats up. The thermal inertia of the core would smooth transient effects but might cause long term variations in internal temperature.
I haven’t heard of any identified proxies for solar wind so we’re stuck with info going back to 79.
All studies I have seen for the effects of solar output on earth weather have been about microwave and up radiation. I don’t believe the idea of solar wind coupling has been looked at.

I have never studied the sun or followed the physics, except in the most general terms, of those who do.
Frankly I have no idea what this means, if it means anything at all. Perhaps it does but our instrumentation only goes back some fifty years. Before that we have only basic observations and supposed proxies most of which are about as reliable as trying to tell past temperature by a tree.
However I can predict with a high degree of certainty that this will cause immense interest, discussion and disputation amongst solar physicists. astronomers and others who study the sun. Some of it quite bad tempered.
And that for all the excitement the great ‘Consensus’ will be ‘ We don’t know’ and ‘Time will tell’
Bit different from so called climate science you know.
Probably because these are the real hard headed people of science: not poseurs, charlatans and mountebanks. Believe it or not they can actually add and subtract and even understand statistical analysis.
Which is more than many of their counterparts in the upper echelons of climate science seem able to do.
Understand I do not mean to insult the many genuine scientists who do good work on weather and climate, only the fraudsters, the forgers and the High Priests of AGW.
And as for old Sol I foretell that we shall see what we shall see. And I didn’t even consult my Tarot cards.
Kindest Regards.

Roy Lofquist (13:53:45) :
Charged particles (from the solar wind) going through the magnetic field of the earth induces a current and such current generates a magnetic field. Most of the time it reinforces the original magnetic field, generating a dynamo. The induced magnetic field is what protects the surface of the earth during pole reversal… good thing it’s there!

Roy,
The coupling between the solar wind intensity (or the solar activity for the same reason) with the earth activity seems very interesting because as I see it, it’s very hard to explain. The idea you propose seems to be a valid one, but based on my intuition the magnitude of the direct effect seems to be much smaller than what’s required to have a sensible warming of the core. An indirect effect might have a higher effect. When we create a current in the core, there is a torque applied to it. The torque is small too, but this might make the core of the earth try to spin at a different angular frequency than the mantle, which is not metallic. The core, but especially the mantle have a tremendous angular momentum and the result of this friction might cause warming at the core/mantle interface. I didn’t go thru the numbers yet, but so far, this makes sense.
Also another idea than went thru my mind, but I also think it has an insignificant magnitude would be a direct heating. We know that the only solar particles that penetrate to the core of the earth are the solar neutrinos. Their production also fluctuates along with the solar cycle (showing that the burning process in the sun also correlates to the solar activity cycle) and they do carry an important amount of the total energy output. Anyway, even if they do penetrate the earth to the core, the absorption optical depth of neutrinos is much larger than the earth radius, so they don’t do much heating. The earth is pretty much transparent to neutrinos.

I don’t understand the point here.
If low solar activity = colder temperatures, and we now have warmer temperatures despite the low solar activity, doesn’t that make the argument for AGW stronger?

I think it would be a hoot to find that the Mayans had it right and that 12/21/2012 turns out to be the first day of a VERY long winter.

It would be interesting to plot hurricane/storm activity along with solar activity over the last ten years I looks like they would match up pretty well .

Another possibility is that our planet is being heated from the little ice age just like a cold cabin can be heated from a fireplace; a perfectly constant sun will warm up our planet until the heat radiated to space is balanced by the heat input from the sun. This does not explain the origin of the little ice age, however, while we are aware of the short ocean cycles, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) ~1 yr period and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) ~30 yr period, can we be certain that longer ocean cycles do not exist? What about a Little Ice Age Oscillation (LIAO) with a period of several hundred years? 🙂

Ray,
I think the cause and effect is the opposite. To posit that earth has a magnetic field implies that there is some permanent magnet involved. The core is molten – no permanent magnet. What we perceive as the earth’s magnetic field is actually the interaction of the rotating core with the magnetic field entwined with the solar wind.
Hypothesis – the historical reversal of the magnetic poles occurred when the SW went to zero at some point. The orientation of the field (NS) is very sensitive to initial conditions. A DC motor can be started CW or CCW with a small initial push in either direction.
The main point is that I wonder if the SW, interacting with the rotating core is making a significant contribution to the internal temp that has been overlooked.
It’s been 45 years since I worked the equations and my old textbooks have turned to dust. I don’t have the time or the energy to reeducate myself. I was hoping that somebody who was more current with the numbers could offer any insight.
Regards,
Roy

P. Hager (12:02:12) :
The radio bands are nicely divided up.
HF = 3MHz – 30MHz
VHF = 30MHz – 300MHz
UHF = 300MHz – 3GHz
& so on.
DaveE.

Plasma cosmologists believe the sun is not driven by fusion but is a electric ball of plasma with connections across space just like electric circuits. I wonder how many astrophysics scoff at them and don’t allow them to publish their theories and work? An electric universe makes for common sense but I really don’t know. I find dark matter and other such stuff hard to believe too. I also wonder what Dr Svalgaard and Dr Svensmark think about an electric universe and if true ,how could this have an effect on our weather?
Maybe I read too much for someone with just a science degree. But–Like I have said before-I did spend last night reading WUWT.

AndyL (15:09:15) :

I don’t understand the point here.
If low solar activity = colder temperatures, and we now have warmer temperatures despite the low solar activity, doesn’t that make the argument for AGW stronger?

Does the water in your kettle immediately settle back to room temperature when you turn down the heat?
DaveE.

Dear DaveE,
I made a good analogy once – think it was 1952. However, the mathematician joke has been good for many years and I slip it in whenever I can.
Regards,
Roy

Something else acts to melt all that ice in such a short period of time and I believe that something else is rain and quite a lot of it. You can melt back quite a lot of ice if you have rain practically every day for a month in the middle of summer. A very gradual increase in solar insolation is not going to cause a very fast collapse of the ice sheet in only a few decades time without some other trigger.
Crosspatch,
I think there is a bit more to it.
The oceans lose the very large quantities of heat they gain from solar radiation, by evaporation. That water vapor then gets transported by the atmosphere and falls as precipitation.
Basic physics tells us that the heat energy gained by the water vapor when it evaporates is lost when it condenses to water droplets and then precipitation. Hence, the proportion of the water vapor evaporated from the oceans that condenses over land is the proportion of the heat lost by the oceans that is transferred to the atmosphere over land.
That amount of heat is very large. My rough calculations says it is approximately equal to the total solar heating of the land surface (averaged across the globe).
When orbital changes increase solar isolation and thus cause ocean warming, atmospheric water vapor will increase, resulting in increased precipitation over land and increased atmospheric temperatures over land.
Precipitation falls disproportionately on land due to mountains. And it’s a peculiarity of the Earth’s topography that mountains are disproportionately on the western side of land masses. So increased precipitation causes a stronger fohn/chinook effect over land masses, such as your Chicago example.
So, while you are likely correct that rain causes rapid melting the ice, it is primarily due to warmer atmospheric temperatures warming the rain, rather than increased precipitation, or at least both effects will be at work.
BTW, some very interesting comments in this thread. The hydrological cycle is indeed the elephant in the climate that many are trying to claim is a rather small and insignificant elephant.

kevin roche (13:08:44) :
A couple of weeks ago Science daily reported on a study using lake sediments in the tropics which showed a perfect correlation of climate change with orbital dynamics affecting solar radiation reaching the earth. … If it affects climate in the tropics shouldn’t it also affect it elsewhere on earth, either directly on mediated through the effects on the tropics.
The tropics are different, because the atmosphere is saturated with vapor all the time (over short timescales – less than a day – any humidity gain is rapidly lost as precipitation). Hence, humidity can’t increase in the tropics to the extent it can at higher lattitudes.
Increased solar heating of the oceans will be largely released to the atmosphere toward the poles, which obviously takes time to be transported poleward.
Hence, increased solar heating of the oceans will be disroportionately released to the atmosphere toward the poles, with a time lag increasing as you go poleward.

Does anyone know where to find the powerpoint originals or a pdf of the powerpoint originals of his slides (Jasper Kirkby, CLOUD Spokesperson, CERN). All I was able to find was his presentation from last year which only includes about a third of the slides
Oops, I was able to find it – I searched for him at CERN not for his presentation and then looked for it after finding the CERN links for him
for downloading the video in various qualities
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073?ln=en
for downloading the presentation slides in pdf
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=52576
He raises more questions then he answers.
A true researcher at heart 🙂
enjoy,
David Gibson
Thank you

supercritical (11:57:16) :
OT in a way, but if the likely result is an increase in cloud cover and so a cooling effect, then what about the massive increase in aircraft contrails since the ’sixties?
Do contrails have a warming, or a cooling effect? Can anybody point to work on their effects?

A year or so after 9/11, I watched a presentation by a researcher on this very topic. He asserted that contrails contributed to a significant amount of cooling, claiming much more than expected. It was interesting that he stated he was able to use the time during “no fly” over the US to gain a lot of data on the subject. Perhaps the most interesting part of his talk, was that this meant AGW was ever more dangerous and much greater than ever before (same old clap-trap). But, this researcher at least claims that contrails do provide some sort of cooling effect anyway.

Is their a graph of total earth cloud cover over the last few years that can be matched up against that graph?
It’s fine talking about theory and cloud chambers, but lets take a look at the global values. From reports I have seen there seem to be no correlation actually from Earth observations between amount of cloud an changing number of cosmic rays….
Andy

Pardon my spelling, their and there, I hope my mother doesn’t read this WUWT thread !
Andy

It is good to see Dr Svalgaard here again. Perhaps the last
time he was here we exchanged a few friendly words over
solar wind. The science is still the same, but it bears
repeating.
The most basic physics goes like this: When there is a
conductor moving through a magnetic field you get
a current — given there is something to conduct the current.
The spinning, orbiting earth has a magnetic field that is not
aligned with the spin axis of the earth. The solar wind, being
in part an electric current, interacts with the earth’s magnetic
field. Potentials must be induced, and since the atmosphere
of the earth and the core of the earth are conductors, there
are currents.
How much of this heats the earth’s core? I have not done
any calculations, but there must be some heating. Either
eddy current heating (like you get in magnetic braking
systems) or atomic spin-axis alignment heating (like in
MRI imaging systems).
Lots of things heat the earth. Incoming cosmic rays heat
the earth, as do incoming space rocks.

Leif Svalgaard (22:01:47) :
I thought that might be it. Do the magnetic reconnection events allow any wind to seep through? Or does the actual reconnection event buffer the wind out of the way? Or is this not at all well studied to make any kind of assertion? I am not peddling any theories, I am just curious. Huge magnetic connections with the sun are fascinating and intimidating at the same time.
Btw, I hope you enjoyed some extra time with grandchildren while you were gone. Days with my grandparents are some of my best childhood memories. 🙂

Leif Svalgaard (23:04:06) :
That would certainly explain why small changes in TSI do not cause much in the way of direct forcing changes. I guess what I am actually thinking about is the total of ways that the Sun can affect the Earth. If small changes in TSI + giving Svensmark the benefit of the doubt (solely to bounce around in my head) + energy from reconnecting + GHG forcing + ocean damping + Milankovic cycles et cetera, it seems like it would all be relatively stable, so why would the climate seem to be relatively stable, geologically speaking, as frozen instead of where we are now? I am surely in over my head, but being a glutton for learning stuff, I simply do not stop thinking and asking questions as they arise even if they are silly. I just have a hard time believing that only one factor (GHGs) can produce the catastrophic effects that are assigned to it by all the latest science and models. That is where I have a hard time grasping how a seemingly minor part of the Earth has such a grandiose effect.

Frank Perdicaro (22:29:28) :
Potentials must be induced, and since the atmosphere
of the earth and the core of the earth are conductors, there
are currents.
I would expect the energy exchange to be more kinetic than heat, maybe adding some amount to the Earth’s wobble.

“Brian (13:24:21) :
Hey all, Ive notices its been pretty gray in the sky these last couple of months. Lots of rain not as much blue sky here in the tropics. We’ve been sleeping with the ac off most evenings also.
It would be interesting to see the cloud density figures.”
This has most definitely been the case in the subtropical region of South Africa too. Something is changing, there is near constant cloud and rain.

Patrick Davis (17:10:30:)
I suspect energy security has a lot to do with it, too, but until recently it wasn’t politically correct to mention that most of the world’s oil is in countries run by bandits. Still, if they can get the peasants to pay even more tax and feel guilty as well, then that’s all to the good in their eyes. Especially if, as you say, they can claim the credit for future cooling as well. A contrite, grateful populace willing to pay up. Ideal.

Dr. Leif could write a book for laypeople? so we could ask less stupid.

Hi, I’d like to mention a thing or two:
If your prediction (facing colder times) is right, politicians and environmental activists will think THEY have saved the planet from the climate going wild…

Anyone with knowledge of Norwegian language?
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/vaer/artikkel.php?artid=596385

Andi Hasenkopf (03:13:10) :
They have pre-claimed this by stating that Global Warming causes Global Cooling. It’s nothing more than a rubber check written by political science.
We really do need empirical data.
We really do need it because:
1.) There’s too much polyscience-driven computer-model agenda out there.
2.) The hemispherical winters are starting to look like where the 70’s left off.
3.) Nature abhors a vacuum. Man will supply whatever he can find to stuff into the void to answer the question, come what may.
Would you rather it be some real hard scientific evidence, or the other stuff?
The trajedy here is that too much time & resource went into bad science.
Now that the pressure is on, we are forced to make do with what we have.
Does AP index help us?

Well, fair enough it is looking like a genuine sunspot now:
http://i50.tinypic.com/1zbtbpz.jpg
4 small flares associated with it in the last 24 hours, a coronal mass ejection most likely came from the region when it was pointing away from us last week.
From http://www.solarcycle24.com

Same talk, but on the CERN servers.
This raises the question of whether cosmic rays may directly affect the climate, providing an effective indirect solar forcing mechanism. Indeed recent satellite observations – although disputed – suggest that cosmic rays may affect clouds. This talk presents an overview of the palaeoclimatic evidence for solar/cosmic ray forcing of the climate, and reviews the possible physical mechanisms. These will be investigated in the CLOUD experiment
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/
Ps I am from Europe ( NL ) CERN is really one of the most important science centers. It’s the place of the Large Hadron Collider and they really invented the internet (al least the www part and html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee )

Leif Svalgaard (07:30:58) :
Tank you
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (09:41:30) :
Tanks for translating the article
Paul Vaughan (11:49:54) :
Thanks
Have traced a video of the event

REPLY: Probably the “bat signal” sent up by alarmists in trouble – Anthony

The amount of Ozone in our atmosphere in part is a result of the amount of UV produced from the Sun. TSI may vary by a small amount, but the UV variance can be much higher across different spectrums of the UV band during the 11 year solar cycle.
There have been reports on WUWT that this UV variance can influence the amount of low level cloud cover.

Leif,
Magnetic reversals have left a geologic record. I have read articles and books that offer differing opinions regarding the net effect of reversals on climate and geological processes. These opinions range from negligible to catastrophic. Could you share your ideas regarding this? I also remember that prior to a reversal the Earth’s magnetic field weakens and “wanders” to a large degree. Currently, magnetic North is situated above Canada, quite a way from the rotational pole. If you were a betting man, what are the odds of a reversal occurring near term?

Leif –
“A reversal could put some of our ideas on how things work to the test.”
Things like, say, human civilization?

Leif,
Many, many measurements since 1960 indicate that:
a.) The Sun is NOT a ball of hydrogen, but this lightest of all elements accumulates at the top of most stellar atmospheres;
b.) The Sun formed on the remnant neutron star that remained after the precursor star exploded 5 Gy ago and ejected all of the material that now orbits the Sun; and
c.) The Sun is heated by repulsive interactions between neutrons [1-4].
Have you considered how a compact, energetic solar core might produce changes in the surface appearances of activity from a solar dynamo – actually a neutron star ?
1. “Attraction and repulsion of nucleons: Sources of stellar energy”, J. Fusion Energy 19,(2001) 93-98.
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts/jfeinterbetnuc.pdf
2. “€œNeutron repulsion confirmed as energy source”, J. Fusion Energy 20 (2002) 197-201.
http://web.umr.edu/~om/abstracts2003/jfe-neutronrep.pdf
3. “On the cosmic nuclear cycle and the similarity of nuclei and stars,” J. Fusion Energy 25 (2006) 107-114.
http://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-th/0511051
4. ” The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass,” Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) 847-1856.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609509
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel

Wow!
Sorry that I intruded.
Thought that you might have considered the possibility of interactions between orbiting planets and a dense solar core energized by repulsive interactions between neutrons.
You probably doubt neutron repulsion?
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel

Leif Svalgaard (07:58:32) :
“As I said, your ideas are pseudo-science and nonsense and it does seem reasonable to waste bandwidth [electronic as well as human] on such aberrations.”
Should we understand the science is settled?

Leif Svalgaard (08:38:24) :
“On this issue, it is ’settled’. This does not mean that there is not more to learn, but the science is settled the same way as it is settled on whether the Earth is flat or round, 6000 years or 4.6 Billions years old, whether atoms exists, etc.”
4.6B… determined by tree rings, sediment, or personal experience?
You believe there is order (as opposed to absolute chaos) to the laws of the physical universe – correct?
And the science is settled, provable – correct?
At what point has science been capable of proving that everything in the universe (energy, matter, time, etc…) became from nothing (absolute void)?
Are you not amazed by the the existance of life?
What about the existance of the environments on earth, which have held so many forms within a relatively tiny window of temperature, humidity, O2, CO2, all the minerals and nutrients necessary to support life, in virtually all ‘corners’ of the globe.
The immense number of coincedences required for one robust lifeform to have survived, let alone the millions of fragile lifeforms, make the odds of your (implied) Godless origin of the universe an insanely impossible prospect.
So we disagree. I believe my proof trumps yours, because I have, by faith, an answer to the existance of life, the universe and everything AND it’s not “42”.

1. Quoting Leif Svalgaard (07:58:32) :
“The newborn universe was 75% H and 25% He [with insignificant amounts of Li, B and Be]. All heavier elements [O, Si, Fe, U, etc] are built by well-understood nuclear synthesis. The heaviest stars explode as supernovae and so ‘enrich’ the interstellar medium by increasing amounts of ‘metals’. The increasing metal-content with age is directly measured in stars of different ages. The processes by which stars shine and explode and by which elements are formed are well-understood and there are no puzzles. As I said, your ideas are pseudo-science and nonsense and it does seem reasonable to waste bandwidth [electronic as well as human] on such aberrations.”
2. Quoting Leif Svalgaard (07:58:32):
“it does NOT seem reasonable to waste bandwidth [electronic as well as human] on such aberrations.”
Two of many sets of experimental data directly falsify Leif’s obsolete ideas from B2FH [Rev. Mod. Phys. 29 (1957) 547-650]:
At the birth of the solar system, MEASUREMENTS show that:
1. Excess Xe-136 accompanied the primordial He in diverse meteorites and in Jupiter:
1a.) Meteorites: http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1975Data.htm
1b.) Jupiter [“Isotopic ratios in Jupiter confirm intra-solar diffusion”, Meteoritics and Planetary Science 33, A97 (1998) abstract 5011]
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc98/pdf/5011.pdf
2. Molybdenum isotopes in iron meteorites display nucleogenetic isotopic anomalies because the iron came directly from the iron-rich region of the supernova that gave birth to the solar system.
2a.) University of Tokyo: http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1991Data.htm
[Qi-Lu, Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Tokyo, 1991]
2b.) Harvard [Nature 415 (2002) 881-883] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v415/n6874/abs/415881a.html
It is time to address the data, Leif.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel

Leif Svalgaard (13:05:30) :
No supernova sustains my faith.
As a father, whose child just recovered from a significant case of pneumonia, in about three days(!), I am grateful to God, for creating the persons who are drawn to science and develop medications such as antibiotics.
Having participated in the birth of our children and been interactive with their innately power ‘little’ minds, from birth to date… I find creation amazing.
I believe our little planet is a dynamic system with a purpose. The data which science craves and processes, continues to show the non-accidental nature of nature.
My hope for you, is that a question, such as “How did NOTHING create EVERYTHING?” will take root in your heart and hold you until you look UP in a different way.
[OK, can everyone stick to what can be proven? ~dbs, mod.]

A nearby supernova? I hope not.
Hoyle, after he had chucked me off his team for being a big bang heretic, wrote a book about that which was probably fairly accurate in it’s descriptions of the effects.
Well at least as accurate as we can imagine. I forget the details.
Still at the time when the USSR threatened us in the UK with their SS20’s to deter the deployment of cruise missiles some left wing councils put up notices declaring they were nuclear free zones. The joke being that one had a nice fission reactor right in the middle of the zone.
However since the SS20’s were never launched I think we may learn a lesson.
What we really need is a very large notice saying ‘NO SUPERNOVAS PERMITTED HEREABOUTS.’ English readers of my age would add ‘PENALTY FIVE POUNDS’
Should do the trick I reckon.
Kindest Regards.

Dr. Svalgaard
I missed your previous post perhaps because I was posting myself.
I could not disagree with you more strongly that total energy in this Universe approximates to zero. This is an argument which I have fought against all my life.
From a classical viewpoint this Universe is a naked singularity and therefore to exist must possess a unique identity in terms of energy, entropy and handedness. It is not and cannot be symmetrical.
The Elsewhere from which perhaps it came and of which we know nothing might well be symmetrical. But we could speculate that this universe is the result of some imbalance in that Elsewhere which produced the big bang: or indeed possibly and more likely two or any other even number of them. We simply don’t know: but I have hopes we may find out in time. If there is time enough.
I do not disagree, despite it’s arbitary nature, with Professor Hawkin’s Cosmic Law of Censorship: that is that Nature Abhors A Naked Singularity, at least as far as it applies inside this Universe. And indeed it has allowed us to show that black holes obey the second law of thermodynamics. We have other ways of showing that today.
No Sir. This Universe has energy, entropy and handedness.
Kindest Regards

Leif Svalgaard (13:05:30) :
The total energy of the existing Universe is probably zero, and getting nothing from nothing is not such an improbability. And proper understanding of the Universe and physics in general is not elitist at all, anybody can obtain such knowledge [and cheaply].
In US banking, creating a bubble (something out of nothing) is a sure way to create an implosion (nothing out of something.) They call it theft. But in the case of banks, the banks have something to be stolen and eventually the theives are caught and the something is returned.
I know a vacuum bubble can be created out of something (i.e. cavitation in fluid stream.) Now you propose creating energy and matter and dimensions out of nothing and that it is a simple matter (not such an improbability.) Are there not laws of thermodynamics at play? I know biologists attempt to step around those laws, but physists?
If, for argument sake, we live in a bubble, sucked, no blown, no… something’ed out of nothing, then our existence is futile; the eventuality is nothingness. Based on this: “why?” Why breathe, breed, work, think, try? What is your purpose?
Leif, I do not see where I indicated politics and religion are bedfellows. I believe I referred to science and politics. Climategate seems to be settled science… 🙂
I am not out to SAVE people. I am powerless to do so. I am studying, as best I can in short order, politics and enough science, to become better at defending my family and Nation from enemies domestic and foreign. I appreciate those things I am learning in both areas, here (thanks WUWT and all contributors). I am telling as many people as I can find, about this site. And, if occation allows, I attempt to bring my found tidbits, in hopes to contribute, news, humor, myself as best I can… If that is not of value here, so be it. I will attempt to quietly watch the chatter and discoveries, but will still send others to this site.
Let’s call off this ‘debate’, because of cold. Ok…

Quote: Leif Svalgaard (20:25:14)
“So, are all other stars then like the Sun, in the sense that they are balls of Iron surrounding a neutron core [which by the way is not made of Iron] formed by a supernova in situ?”
Probably so. But the measurements cited above were made on the Sun
However, this manuscript [“Neutron repulsion confirmed as energy source”, Journal of Fusion Energy 20 (2003) 197-201] shows that :
a.) Nuclear energy from neutron repulsion is greater than that from fusion.
b.) Nuclear energy from fusion is greater than that from fission.
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2003/jfe-neutronrep.pdf
All stars appear to have moved lightweight elements to the surface and to have discharged waste hydrogen (“smoke”) to interstellar space, but the Sun is the only star close enough for detailed measurements.
Why ask about other stars?
That may be a clever debate technique, but it is obviously a ploy to avoid addressing experimental data that show the Sun sorts atoms by mass [Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) pages 1847-1856].
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609509
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel

Quote Leif Svalgaard (21:27:40) :
“So, all other stars must also have a neutron star at their center . . .etc. … ad infinitum.”
Enough evasion! We don’t have data from “all other stars”, Leif, so . . .
Please, Leif, just address the experimental data that show the Sun sorts atoms by mass [Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) pages 1847-1856].
http://www.omatumr.com/Overheads/Overheads.htm
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609509
With kind regards,
OLiver K. Manuel

[snip]
Just address these two observation, Leif, one at a time:
1. Why are lightweight isotopes enriched in the solar wind?
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1983Data.htm
2. Why are lightweight s-products enriched in the photosphere?
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/2005Data.htm
Here is additional evidence that the Sun sorts atoms by mass and selectively moves lightweight ones like H and He to its surface:
http://www.omatumr.com/Overheads/Overheads.htm
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609509
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel

Stop avoiding experimental data, Leif.
Measurements show that:
1. Lightweight isotopes are enriched in the solar wind.
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1983Data.htm
2. Lightweight s-products are enriched in the photosphere.
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/2005Data.htm
Two totally independent measurements reveal mass fractionation in the Sun. Both measurements indicate that the bulk Sun is composed mostly of Fe, O, Si, Ni and S – just like ordinary meteorites and rocky planets.
http://www.omatumr.com/Overheads/Overheads.htm
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609509
How do these data fit the standard solar model of a Hydrogen-filled Sun?
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel