Spencer on solar geomagnetic to earth climate connections

I fihd Dr. Spencer’s writings the most enjoyable and informative of the few climate scientist’s blogs I follow. A health dose of skepticism, use of scientific methods, the ability to admit his opinions are incorrect when faced with facts, and an easy down-to-earth writing style, make Dr. Spencer a great ambassador for true climate science.

The Terra CERES and the Geomagnetic AP Indices for 2000 to date don’t look very similar to my casual eyeballing. Whereas the 1932 to date Geomag AP DOES look more compelling, at least as regards to the 1970s but rather less so for the 1998 global temp peak that is recorded elsewhere, and which if there really were a direct correlation with Geomag AP would have been a cold snap.
I look forward to Dr Spencer’s continuing work in this area, it will be interesting to see if this Cosmic Ray dog really can hunt.

I’d ask Gavin to identify the cause(s) of the tree ring divergences.
The dendro Scientists have had a couple of decades to work on this issue rather than just throw up their hands and ignore the data.

If you’d like to see cosmic rays, build yourself a cloud chamber. This usually consists of a transparent container with supercooled alcohol vapor (cooled with dry ice). When cosmic rays go through the container the charge on the particle causes the supercooled alcohol to condense forming a track. It is like having a meteor shower in a bowl. Very cool, literally and figuratively.
Google “cloud chamber” and you’ll get lots of links on how to make one. You can do it with household materials. Try it, and I think you’ll enjoy the results.

The AP index was almost as low as it was in the ’70s in the late ’90s, but there was some kind of El Nino event in ’98. If clouds modulated SSTs, then this would be the opposite of what you would expect, wouldn’t it?

And why does NASA not already have a detailed analysis of this?

I’ve posted twice on Realclimate.org asking if Gavin or Eric were interviewed regarding the editorial that ran worldwide about Copenhagen.

That is because RC is not a “conversation” in the normal sense of the word. It is a “discussion” but more along the lines of what goes on in a lecture hall and not what goes on around a table or in a lounge.
When you post it is basically like passing a note to the lecturer with your question. The lecturer can review your note and those of others and decide which ones to answer at the end of the lecture.
Postings at RC are like lectures. The communication is intended to be in mostly one direction. The entire notion of RC was to allow a certain group of people to put stuff “out there” and present it in the way they wanted it presented. In other words, the entire basic purpose of RC is to get the correct “spin” on the message.
So for you to expect a message to be actually posted that is not in line with the agenda is somewhat unreasonable unless it (their reason for posting) is so they can roundly criticize you and your question so as to prevent others from asking the same one later.
RC is not a science site. It is a “translation” site where they hope to translate their “science” so that it can be “properly” understood but people outside the academic community. And by “properly” understood I mean that it is important that people reach the conclusion they want them to reach. If your comment or question is counter to that objective, you should have no expectation of it ever seeing the light of day.

Enjoy the results of supercooled alcohol? I think I just might partake of an experiment or two!
But paging Dr Svalgaard, or anyone that can recommend me a good textbook on solar science. This stuff intrigues me and I know little about it, other than a gut feeling that the Sun has a large influence on our climate. Made more interesting by having it’s own cycles and events, and emitting in a wide spectrum. Because (at least to me) it’s quite variable, it’s easy to find correlations, but would like to understand what they mean and whether they mean anything.
Given it’s current odd behaviour, it’s something I’d like to learn more about.

Mars has cirrus water clouds, like Earth (compared to the other alternatives) and even snow (observed by the Phoenix lander).
Mars also followed the terrestrial warming trend with south polar dry ice sublimations.
What do we see on Mars recently? Is there an increase in cirrus cover potentially due to cosmic ray effects? Is more dry ice surviving the south polar summer?

As far as I know, no one has looked for or talked about slight changes in the sun’s angular diameter (that is, the “size” of the sun in the sky) as a way for changes to occur in the sun’s output. When scientists say that the solar irradiance does not vary enough to have a significant effect on the earth’s climate, they are talking about the apparent brightness of points on the sun’s surface — but if that surface did stay more or less the same brightness while the sun’s angular diameter increased, the sun would end up sending more solar radiation to the earth. An increase in solar output from a small increase in the sun’s angular diameter would, by the way, also explain the observed of warming on Mars (and I believe, other places in the solar system) over the last several decades at the same time the earth has been warming. The cosmic-ray cloud-formation hypothesis has nothing to say about the observed warming of other places in the solar system, and global warming skeptics would be wise to reserve some skepticism for it on those grounds alone.

Something changed in 2003. We need to find out what the something was ASAP.

[quote]Interesting but doesn’t Svensmark propose low and thicker (therefore more reflective) clouds as agents of global cooling?[/quote]
Mid level clouds I believe. The big fluffy white ones. They can reflect sunlight back into space. Enough that they can _easily_ counter the warming from standard AGW models.
Higher level clouds actually absorb heat, lower clouds I think are a mixed bag, some absorb some reflect.
Anyway, check out CERN’s CLOUD experiment for ongoing developments in this area.
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CLOUD-en.html

Dr. Spencer,
I agree with your skepticism about the links behind the sun, cloud formation, and temperature. Just because something offers a possible explanation about CO2 not being the main driver of increased temperature does not mean that alternative science is PROVEN. It is at best theoretical and while it MAY be occurring, CO2 MAY be the cause of climactic warming.
Lets not paint ourselves into a corner where we act like those that came before us, quick to find causation when only correlation is occurring. I am not sure Svenmark even has that to a large extent.
Thank you for this honest article.

crosspatch (10:26:15)
The difference between ideology and science is that if the discovery of new evidence casts doubt on the prevailing hypothesis, then there is reasonable grounds for dismissing that hypothesis. In ideology, if such evidence is presented then it is to be censored.
The triumph of science in the modern world came about largely through Galileo, who was quite brilliant. It seems that official climatology today is at the same stage of the papacy in Galileo’s day. The notion that the earth revolved around the sun was heresy to the Church, since it took man away from the centre of the universe. Similarly, to show that co2 – actually, the small part that is anthropogenic – does not follow what the official position says it does similarly dethrones man as the centre of the climate system, and should therefore have no need to atone for his sins.

crosspatch (10:28:51) :
I would change ‘AGW verification’ to ‘AGW verification & promotion’.
It takes a lot of money to tie up the MSM.

magicjava (10:49:29) :
[“quote]Interesting but doesn’t Svensmark propose low and thicker (therefore more reflective) clouds as agents of global cooling?[/quote]
Mid level clouds I believe. The big fluffy white ones. They can reflect sunlight back into space. Enough that they can _easily_ counter the warming from standard AGW models.
Higher level clouds actually absorb heat, lower clouds I think are a mixed bag, some absorb some reflect.”
its pure speculation on my part, so need correction from those who know better but: Precipitation is increasing everywhere, and cumulonimbus clouds are quite high (rainstorm clouds) whilst lower strata clouds give drizzle. Coupled with a solar minimum, we have increased precipitation.

Atomic Hairdryer (10:26:38) :
But paging Dr Svalgaard, or anyone that can recommend me a good textbook on solar science.
I’ll hazard a guess that the recommendations by Leif Svalgaard are better than the one I’ll recommend, but I’ll recommend it anyway: Plasma Physics For Astrophysics by Russell Kulsrud, published by Princeton Press.
Both the solar wind and cosmic rays are forms of plasma and both are covered in the book I mentioned.
The key idea behind this, as I see it, is the clouds. Regardless of whether or not it proven cosmic rays help form clouds, it’s the clouds themselves that affect the climate. The cosmic rays don’t change the climate directly.

Actually, you can “see” cosmic rays (or rather their byproducts) when you are the ISS. When a muon goes through the right area of your skull it causes a flash of light in you visible field.

” If clouds modulated SSTs, then this would be the opposite of what you would expect, wouldn’t it”
Think of tying a single rope to a bull in a china shop.

I can’t see or feel cosmic rays. They sound kind of New Age to me.
Don’t you?…just watch your face every morning in your bathroom’s mirror, year after year.Cosmic rays are 90% protons=hydrogen nucleii, powerful reducers.
Have you wonder why human life length is aboout that of the Gleissberg cycle?

Leif Svalgaard (11:21:03) :
rbateman (11:12:26) :
Have you looked at AMS (American Meteorological Society) as a source?
No, I think it is the enthusiasts that have to go looking, then come back with what they found…
They already did. One of them wears a Nobel and owns an Oscar.

I’m still being mentally exercised by this finding:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=36301
“Sunspots unleash solar flares that create a ripple effect well beyond Earth. But when that energy flow does reach Earth, the atmosphere reciprocates by ejecting radiation as a cooling effect to maintain the planet’s energy balance. That cooling response creates the expansion and contraction of the upper atmosphere.”
The implication being that the stratosphere and upper levels of the atmosphere lose energy faster to space when the solar wind is more turbulent.
Comments from Roy and Leif would be especially welcome.

I also am waiting to see what comes of CERN’s Cloud experiment. Here is an hour long presentation by Dr. Jaspar Kirkby about what the hypothesis is and how they are going to test it. If you haven’t watched it, you are missing out.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/

Don’t know if this link has been already been posted but I found it interesting:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/175641-climategate-revolt-of-the-physicists
It presents a lecture by Jasper Kirkby on recent research being done by physicists.

“The implication being that the stratosphere and upper levels of the atmosphere lose energy faster to space when the solar wind is more turbulent.”
Imagine a balloon. It has a given surface area. Now warm the air inside the balloon. The balloon will expand. This expansion increases the surface area allowing it to radiate more heat away.

Errata – I meant 6000 feet not 6000 meters.

Welcome to the club! The theory of low-level cloud cover being the primary short-term temperature control mechanism of planet earth is very old. The theory that sunspot activity modulates cosmic radiation striking the earth and that cosmic radiation seeds low-level clouds is also relatively old. The fact that volcanic activity does the same thing is also known and even the AGW crowd does not dispute the volcanic connection.
The boys and girls at CERN are very excited to think they may be well on their way to proving the cosmic-ray-cloud-seeding theory. My personal opinion is that if the sun continues its current funk, everyone had better get out their woolies. The AP index seems to be mimicking it’s behavior at the onset of The Little Ice Age when temperatures dropped very rapidly according to archeological evidence.
CH

Perception is 9/10 of reality. That’s how they tried to brainwash everyone into believing AGW with the corporate media they own. Repeating the same thing over and over again for decades has almost done the Trick.
This is why we need to propagate our perceptions which in fact are reality, but the masses don’t know they are reality. The masses just need to have something to consume. This is why we must promote the Solar Minimum till it hurts and we’re blue in the face talking about it. This is why we must show winter scene pictures and winter scene videos always to our advantage. Show the blizzards across North America and Europe as much as possible.
The middle class are the thinking class, which is why it is constantly being widdled away. Best way to do that NAFTA and CAFTA. Make it impossible for the middle class to gain any ground. Going back to bilateral trade agreements may save the USA and our culture if we act in time.

This may be OT but, then again, it may not be. Whatever, it’s super interesting. Weather patterns (literally) on Saturn:
http://www.sphere.com/science/article/cassini-spacecraft-images-show-mysterious-hexagon-on-saturn/19273284

My Christmas present this year is Climategate. I don’t need or want anything else. I want to give as a present a DVD titled “ClimateGate: Everything They Didn’t Want You to Know” to everyone I know. When the ask, who are they? I’ll say, watch the movie.
I need you to help me with this. Can we put together a Climategate video we can burn to DVD from a torrent file of the information we have so far? The movie can always be revised in the future. Lots of snow blizzard scenes and stuff about the Solar Minimum in it. I need your feedback on this. Please address this comment directly with your feedback. Can we do this?
Thank You
MJN

” Leif Svalgaard (10:20:50) :
If the mechanism is supposed to be via cosmic rays, the relevant correlations should be between cloud cover and the cosmic ray intensity”
During the 50’s and early 60’s the US was doing air burst H-bomb tests. These would put out a LOT of gamma/X-ray’s. The USAF measured the atmosphere, before and after, the big firework. My guess is that much of this has now been declassified.
You could look back at this data and see if they found cloud formation afterward….

Also the monsoon and seasonal variations in oceanic zooplankton & chlorophyll.
Rats!!
AMONGST THE MANY VARIABLES…etc…
If I think of any more worth mentioning, Fang and I will make another entry.
/Spanish Inquisition Sketch

Thanks Roy. So we can say that on the face of it Solar Geomagnetic Ap is not associated with cloud formation. What is the certainty that Ap is associated with GCR? It sounds like sound reasoning (Solar Ap) might be an indicator. But I would think that Terrestrial magnetic fields are the key and first we might whether Solar Geomagnetic Ap has a straight or lagged R2 to Terrestrial fields? Might that be a missing link or did I read it wrong on which field was used?

OK, one thing is, my familiarity with the bulge is a good bit higher than the stratosphere. But, the higher the clouds, as I understand it, the more they induce net warming.

I know nothing about the sun’s effect on clouds but my practical experience in a now neglected technology may be helpful. Long before geostationary satellites made communication anytime, anywhere so easy, my introduction to the effect of the sun on day to day activities on earth started when, over fifty years ago, I joined the UK Army, and trained as a radio operator using morse code. We were given a course in radio theory, which included the constitution of the upper parts of the earth’s atmosphere used in radio transmissions, the ionosphere.
There are three layers of the ionosphere which control point to point radio. These are termed the D, E and F layers. The highest, the F layer, is about 200 miles above the earth. The sun’s radiation causes ionisation of the atmosphere which makes the layers electrically conductive. The D and E layers lie below the F layer and are less important, the F layer being the principal element in long distance communications. At night time, in the absence of the sun’s radiation, the D layer ceases to exist while the F layer becomes a single layer. During daylight hours, under the effects of exposure to the sun’s radiation, the D layer reappears and the F layer separates into two distinct layers called F1 and F2. This is settled science originated by Marconi in 1901, and fully developed in the first twenty five years of the last century. It is non-controversial, but today is largely forgotten as reliance on point to point radio communication has greatly reduced.
Maintaining communications required a transmitted signal to enter the F layer and be bent, or refracted, back down to earth. If the frequency of the transmitted signal was too low, it would be absorbed in the atmosphere. If the signal frequency was too high, the signal would pass through the atmosphere and be lost in space. Therefore, careful calculation of the route the signal had to take between sender and receiver, as well as the skip distance, i.e. point of return to earth, time of year and time of day was required.
At night the effect of the absence of sun’s radiation and the subsequent reduction in electrical conductivity of the ionosphere, is that a radio link using a transmitter at a frequency of 15 to 20 Megahertz during the day, would have to reduce its frequency to circa 3 to 5 Megahertz during the night. The absence of the sun’s radiation introduced a factor of over three in the choice of day/night frequency.
The most important overall element in frequency selection was the point in the average eleven year sunspot cycle at the time. If sunspot activity was at a peak, then much higher levels of ionisation of the atmosphere occurred, creating greater electrical conductivity enabling higher radio frequencies to be used. Conversely, if sunspot activity was at minima, electrical conductivity decreased and usable frequencies would be greatly reduced. In my experience, usable radio frequencies reduced by at least 15 – 20% during sunspot minima.
If sunspot activity has such demonstrably dramatic affects on the upper atmosphere, it is a racing certainty that it affects the twelve miles or so of the lower atmosphere that controls our weather.

crosspatch (12:05:23)
Yes, the increased surface area has already been proposed by me as the reason for the increased rate of energy loss during a more turbulent solar energy flow.
However I likened it more to the wind causing waves so that the more turbulent flow of energy from the sun causes ripples in the boundary layers in the upper atmosphere causing a greater surface area for each and a faster flow of energy to space from the top of the stratosphere upwards.
Note that this is contrary to normal expectations.
What it means is that the cooler stratosphere during a period of more active sun (late 20th Century) is caused by the higher level of turbulence in the flow of energy from the sun and NOT by an increase in GHGs keeping back more energy in the troposphere.
In fact the consequent cooling of the upper atmosphere more than offsets the extra surface warming from the slightly more active sun and mitigates the heating effects from warmer ocean surfaces but only during the current interglacial whilst there is a coincidence between active solar cycles and warm ocean cycles.
Once that coincidence ceases the solar and oceanic cycles start to reinforce one another rather than offsetting one another leading to the wilder climate variations observed during ice ages.

Can the current buildup of the record amount of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic be explained by the current solar minimum?

I, like Dr. Spencer, am skeptical on AGW and on the cosmic ray hypotheses. Dr. Spencer, if you read this, is there any possibility that minute global cooling due to tiny percentage reductions in solar radiation intensity at a global scale might result in slightly higher cloud cover (due simply to the mean temperature being ever so slightly closer to the dew point because of lag effects of moisture compared to incident solar radiation), thereby accelerating the cooling and causing more cloud, with the reverse process occurring during periods of slightly higher solar radiation? In a sense, I am proposing two ‘vicious’ cycles, cooling and warming, as enhancement mechanisms for the proportionally tiny changes in solar radiation intensity with the solar cycles. Of course, I am sure that other natural processes (eg. oceanic circulation, change variations in snow cover and even perhaps AGW) could mask or compensate for such a hypothesis at different time-scales. I guess I am just interested to hear whether there is a reason that this rather elementary hypothesis of mine is wrong.

Typo: In the previous message, I meant ‘chance’ variations, not ‘change variations;’

Dave L (11:26:26)
I had problems earlier today playing the CERN Jasper Kirkby lecture until I found the video on the main document server which plays perfectly.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073
Definitely one of the most outstanding presentations and absolutely essential viewing, in my opinion.

Alarmists take note:
Tilo Reber (09:43:18) “When I think of all the times that I’ve seen Gavin refer to “natural climate variability”, and I knew full well that he didn’t know what “natural climate variability” he was talking about, this all comes back as extremely funny. To be more clear, I asked Gavin directly to identify the natural variability that was effecting temperature since 1998. He deleted my comment.”
Thanks for sharing these telling anecdotes.

Sorry, I should have entered a question at the end about how that theory might have an effect on our geomagnetic field and our climate. I’m not trying to hijack anything.

I also have recently developed arthritis and my touch typing has gotten miserable.

After the interplanetary geomagnetic index (Ap) is homogenized to correct for the step function in Oct 2005 the current value is no longer unprecedented. The science is settled.
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/1096/apnoaadec2009.png

>Bart (13:14:21) :
>
>OK, one thing is, my familiarity with the bulge is a good bit higher than the >stratosphere. But, the higher the clouds, as I understand it, the more they >induce net warming.
I, too, expect to get pummeled for dabbling in things I am not trained in…BUT… I have had the same idea.
I have the idea that when there is a bulged area of clear atmosphere, it is like a thick comforter on a sleeping person–it promotes more warmth. By the same token, a reversed situation, where the clear part of the atmosphere is thinner, that will lead to the cold of space being closer to the surface of the earth…leading to more cold, like a sleeping person covered only by a thin sheet.
Didn’t they say last December that the ionosphere was not where they expected it to be? Wasn’t it 400 meters lower than they expected to find it? How thoroughly do we track its height?

Maybe i should have used the analogy of a variable fan on a grain cleaner and that would have been even simpler.

Wow – someone on CNN just referred to Global Warming as “weird science that they’ve manufactured” as the last word of a discussion about Sarah Palin trying to become the Anti-Gore

Leif Svalgaard (15:56:12) :
It appears to me you think I am arguing something I am not.
I am not arguing about the surface. I am not conceding anything, but I want you to forget about the surface pressure.
I am arguing that the diurnal bulge increases the volume of the upper atmosphere, more than it increases temperature, and since pressure is inversely proportional to volume divided by temperature in an ideal gas (PV=nRT and all that), I am guessing that the pressure in the upper atmosphere most likely decreases.
My focus is entirely on the upper atmosphere, OK?

Here is a comparison using many different aspects of magnetism and comparing it to temperature variability.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/EarthMagneticField.htm

Leif Svalgaard: (14:17:06)
“If it increases the rate of energy loss to space during a period of more turbulent solar activity then it would have an effect on climate.
What energy loss?
Reply:
The energy loss described in my link:
“Sunspots unleash solar flares that create a ripple effect well beyond Earth. But when that energy flow does reach Earth, the atmosphere reciprocates by ejecting radiation as a cooling effect.”
I take that as meaning a net cooling effect i.e. the cooling exceeds the energy value added by the very tiny increase in solar power. Rather like the way increased windspeed over a mobile fluid takes away energy faster due to the wind pressure creating waves that increase surface area.
Leif Svalgaard:
“Also, if the Earth’s warms, its energy loss to space will increase correspondingly.”
Reply:
Of course it does but you keep saying that the variation in solar power is too small to account for observed temperature variations so the Earth warming is not the cause of the increased rate of energy loss to space. It has instead to be caused by the extra turbulence of the energy flow impacting the upper atmosphere and causing disturbances that increase the surface area of all the layers down to the top of the stratosphere.

Fitzy – you suspect that the earth is tethered electromagnetically to the sun?
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/news/magnetic_tremors.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Giant_Electrical_Tornadoes_In_Space_Drive_The_Northern_Lights_999.html
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2009/arch09/090429stir.htm

You just had to do it, didn’t you! And with a nice stretch of spot free days, too.
But now you post on sunspots, and: Daily Sun: 10 Dec. 09
Emerging sunspot 1034 is a member of new Solar Cycle 24. Credit: SOHO/MDI
http://spaceweather.com/
It’s not a very impressive one, though.
http://spaceweather.com/images2009/10dec09/midi512_blank.gif?PHPSESSID=kbk87q8jm8b4f2bavjfspqmg16
(it’s at about 10:00, just coming over the rim)

While rare, a solar “superstorm” can, and and even has, occurred.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/23oct_superstorm.htm
But when that happens again, cloud cover or the lack of it will be the least of our worries.

Leif Svalgaard (17:05:59) :
“Upper atmosphere is from 100 km on up. Not many clouds up there.”
The bulge can extend from about 100 km to maybe 500 km. The atmosphere in it is not very comparatively dense, but the volume grows with R^3, so I would imagine that could be sucking a large number of air molecules from the higher altitudes (~8-23 km I am guessing) which do have clouds.
At the risk of sending you on another tangent, the difference between stormy and fair weather at the surface is less than 10% of total pressure, so in an analogous situation, it might not take too much mass exchange at high cloud forming altitudes to make a big difference.

Crosspatch:
The question was posted with respect to the posting of the global editorial on Realclimate.org.
RC.O posted a preamble to the editorial with the disclaimer that the mods of RC took no position on the editorial.
This prompted two very relevant questions:
1. Why won’t you take a position on the editorial?
2. Were you instrumental in its authorship?
If they participated in its authorship, then they are being dishonest about not taking a position about it…it’s their own workproduct.
In the end, the issue is transparency.

Roy,
If my memory serves me correctly there is a major correlation between cloud cover and various climatic oscillations, in particular the ENSO. it would be interesting to see the crosscorrelation between the Ap index, cloud cover and the ENSO. My guess is that the correlation between the cloud cover and ENSO is much higher than the correlation between the Ap index and the ENSO. If that is the case then this strongly suggests that the ENSO and the sun are fairly independent factors that control cloud cover. In that case it should be possible to filter out the ENSO-contribution to get a better correlation.

Regarding increasing cloud cover. Given that many, but not all, met sites record sunshine hours, can this data be used as a proxy indicator for cloud cover (or tha lack of)? By this I mean, are we seeing any noticeable decreases in sushine hours around the world, and if so does this confirm an increase in cloudiness? Or is this just too simplistic?

-35 F in Wyoming USA this morning
-58 F in Siberia Russia this morning
I don’t think -PDO explains that

Onar Åm (19:30:43) :
Basically, that is where I was headed with my comment earlier. The problem is that if(<–) the sun warms the ocean, then when the AP index goes down and theoretically, cloud cover goes up, SSTs should also go down?
But then I got thinking about how land masses bleed their radiative energy faster than water and it only made sense that the land temps would drop before an El Nino and cooler air would settle over the Pacific which would then allow heat to escape and warm the continents, which would then bleed the energy off into space. Then I decided I was thinking way too deeply about it and sat down with my daughter to color.

Show the hard data and the apparatus used to observe & measure Sun output data 100 years ago, or 150 years ago and so on.
Without hard data, “proxy” paleo-reconstructions are problematic.
Reconstructions are not primary evidence, rather reconstructions are a series of assumptions.
Any and all assumptions must be viewed with scepticism, especially any that can’t be directly verified.
Essentially, AGW relies on assumptions for its viability as a science.
Too many assumptions.

I just want to say I double checked Svensmark’s comments on clouds and I was wrong to say it’s medium height clouds that are correlated to cosmic rays. It’s low-level clouds. My apologies for the mistake.

Leif Svalgaard (21:03:30) :
[/nit pick on]
“No, because R2 is almost the same as R1, say R2 = R1 + dR, then R2^3 = R1^3 + 3R1^2*dR, and (R2^3-R1^3) = 3 R1^2 dR, hence R^2 not R^3.”
You mean, approximately when you have a thin shell of uniform depth? Hmm… where have I heard that before?
[/nit pick off]
OK, here’s another completely off-the-wall suggestion. The bulge acts like a lens, focusing the light in such a way as to warm the troposphere and cool the stratosphere, and vice versa when the bulge diminishes. By focusing the sunlight inward, it takes a shorter path to the surface, so it doesn’t spend as much time taking the longer path “sideways” through the atmosphere. It might not be as crazy as it sounds. Generally speaking, objects on the horizon are refracted a full 1/2 degree or so through the atmosphere. The inward flux is so large that even a small change might have a significant effect.
I’m just throwing out ideas here so, no snark from anyone, please.

One small spot for the Sun, one giant storm for the nation’s heartland.
Kind of ironic. and that pic of the Sun at the top made me do it.

Why do so many people speculate inaccurately about what they imagine Henrik Svensmark thinks, when all but his very latest work was set out in plain language by him and me, in our book The Chilling Stars, published in 2007 and updated in 2008?
The geomagnetic field has very little influence on the Svensmark effect. Here’s what we wrote on pp. 59-60 of The Chilling Stars (both editions).
“The calculations focused on the cosmic-ray activity in the lowest 2,000 metres of the atmosphere, which contributes to the formation of the climatically important low clouds. Remarkably, as many as 60 per cent of the all-important muons are products of cosmic rays coming in from the Galaxy with so much energy that the Sun’s magnetic defences offer no protection against them. They are not involved in the climatic variations over the centuries due to changes in the Sun’s behaviour. Over millions of years, the input of these energetic cosmic rays changes as the Earth travels with the Sun through changing scenery in the Galaxy. Later in the book we’ll see how big the consequences were for the Earth’s climate.
“The remaining 40 per cent of cosmic rays that influence events in the lower air are subject to control by the Sun’s magnetic field. That’s plenty to account for the swings between warm and cold periods already described. But the Earth’s magnetic field has a much weaker effect. The outcome of the calculations is that only 3 per cent of the cloud-making muons that penetrate to low altitudes originate from incoming particles of such relatively feeble energy that changes in the Earth’s magnetism can affect them.”

I’ve already said why there won’t be much of a corelation between total cloud cover and magnetic index \ cosmic ray count.
cloud formabilty increases with increasing cosmic ray counts.
But also,
Precipitation-abilty ( cloud destruction ) also increases with increasing cosmic ray counts.
The net amount of cloud does not change much.
Clouds form easier, but also precipate easier.
You can’t have your cloud and eat it.
Average cloud lifetime decreases with increasing cosmic rays.
The main effect of increase in cosmic rays on climate is the variation in location of cloud cover, which shifts to the oceans. This warms the oceans slightly, while the land becomes colder and more arid.
I’d like to see a wattsupwiththat article on this effect. But we’ve got 150 ideas in the comments on how GCR cause Earth temperture to go down. So the idea is somewhat lost in the blizzard. I’m glad you posted Roy Spencer’s take on the increase GCR = increase cloud cover because it shows it to be poor at best and likely false. Now we’ve got that theory out the way ( again ), can we please move onto the truth?

Leif Svalgaard (17:05:59)
“Even the largest solar flares produce only 1/4,000 extra energy from what we get from TSI and that only for a few minutes. In fact, only one case has been observed.”
I don’t see that that matters. You are still fixated on energy content rather than the degree of turbulence in the flow of energy through space to the Earth from the sun.
The observed ‘breathing’ of the upper atmosphere, which you confirm has been known about for decades suggests that the rate of energy loss from atmosphere to space does vary with the turbulence or unevenness of the flow of solar energy through space to the Earth.
A deductive leap needs to be made so as to realise that if such an effect occurs on a small scale with individual solar flares then that effect is going to be present on a very much larger scale as the level of solar turbulence changes over centuries from say Maunder Minimum to Modern Maximum and back again.
The fact that the absolute power of the sun varies hardly at all seems to be irrelevant. What seems to happen is that the more uneven, irregular, turbulent (or whatever) the flow of energy from the sun is then the faster energy is lost from the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere to space.
The more stable it is the less quickly energy is lost from the upper layers to space.
The SABER observation is evidence of that.
The observation referred to by Tenuc is evidence of that.
The observation that the cooling of the stratosphere correlates with an active sun and a warming stratosphere correlates with a less active sun is evidence of that.
All the earlier knowledge about the ‘breathing’ effect is evidence of that.
Once one reverses the sign of the temperature effect of a more active sun then a great deal falls into place as I have pointed out.
Reversing the sign allows an obvious balancing act to emerge whereby the temperature of the troposphere is dictated by interplay between oceans and sun. Sometimes offsetting one another and sometimes reinforcing one nother.
The evidence that a reversal of the sign is correct is that one can then postulate a reason why interglacials are relatively stable ( ocean effects are offset by solar effects and vice versa) and why glacial epochs are so unstable (ocean and solar effects compound one another resulting in much larger temperature swings).
It also follows that ocean effects and solar effects are not always timed so as to offset one another as they do currently (on average). You have previously accepted that the current timing of weak sun with low temperatures (such as during the Maunder Minimum) might be coincidental. I now agree with that. It would seem that with current landmass distributions that timing has to be as it now is to allow an interglacial at all.
So, during say the Carboniferous one would regularly see low solar turbulence reducing energy loss to space and a build up of energy in the troposphere during periods of warm ocean surfaces that would not be fully offset by reductions of energy in the troposphere during periods of cool ocean surfaces thus a warm period overall.
During ice ages the ocean warm periods would be met with a less active sun thus both processes acting to accumulate energy in the troposphere at the same time whilst during ocean cool periods there would be a more active sun thus both processes acting to reduce energy in the tropsphere with the warmer spells failing to fully offset the cooling of the cooler periods leading to large climate swings and ice cap growth.
The logic seems sound and it fits rather a lot of real world observations.

Nigel :
.
Why do so many people speculate inaccurately about what they imagine Henrik Svensmark thinks, when all but his very latest work was set out in plain language by him and me, in our book The Chilling Stars, published in 2007 and updated in 2008?
.
I also wondered . I hope that it is now clearer for everybody after your comment .

meemoe_uk (02:25:30) :
As a former science teacher (I am resting on my lauels and reading this for entertainment) I have spent some fair amount of embarrassing moments in front of a class trying to get a cloud chamber to work. As you may know if the saturation of alcohol is not high enough there are no particle traces. My own partially educated guess is that Leif Svalgaard’s phenomenon is based on creating clouds in marginal conditions of water vapor saturation where no clouds would form in normal conditions, and cause denser clouds than normal conditions would form.
Admittedly there is also rain in marginal conditions as well. But as a Louisiana boy, born and breed, I can say I never saw a cloud dissapate after raining on me for as much as a week at a time. Though no rain falls out the bottom, the cloud still reflects off the top.

The sun’s behavior is a major player behind the ENSO phases and we all know that the latter can have an effect upon global temperatures. So might I suggest when looking for possible relationships between solar and climate, or even weather, that you look into the prior forecasting record of those who have been using this type of methodology for over a decade now. (And not one miscue ever, ENSO phase wise. ) Just a helpful hint Roy.

“To be more clear, I asked Gavin directly to identify the natural variability that was effecting temperature since 1998. He deleted my comment.”
May I suggest a special blog? The “RealClimateCensored blog” of deleted comments from that blog. It would be quite interesting.
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2009/12/realclimate-blog-part-of-climategate.html

One thing is for sure though. At the moment the sun is not doing much. According to Ace ( http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/lists/ace2/200912_ace_swepam_1h.txt ) the wind has dropped to 225.8 (2009 12 05 0400 55170 14400 0 0.2 225.8 -1.00e+05) and the Ap index has been at or below 1 for 4 days this last week ( http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/lists/geomag/7day_AK.txt ).
What was that theoretical minimum wind speed Lief?

I’m confused about the number of sunspots. This article says 1 (image at top of article.
The widget has “#13 sunspots”. I sthat 13 or a reference to spot 13?
The image way down on the right of the blog has two discernable spots, but more on the grey image.
Can anyone help?

Interesting bit on solar turbulence:
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/12/11/weir.space.and.dimmed.sun.creates.200.million.mile.long.lab.bench.turbulence.research
Normally the ‘noise’ from violent eruptions on the sun would disturb the turbulent flow. Ulysses’ controllers had cleverly contrived for the spacecraft to pass over each of the Sun’s poles during two different solar minima making it possible not only to gather data but also to be able to compare two different energy levels in a turbulent flow. The level of turbulence is down by a factor of 2 in the most recent solar minimum compared with the previous one.

I got to thinking (something I typically try to avoid): Could the solar cycle cause changes in the spectrum of solar irradiance? If so would this have an effect on the chemicals that make up the oceans and atmosphere–water and nitrogen? Wiki says water absorbs UV and near IR; Nitrogen absorbs sunlight in the EUV wavelengths. Sunlight has a low UV component, although it increases owing to magnetic fluctuation associated with sunspots. So, sunspots cause UV, which causes water and nitrogen to absorb energy and heat up. Remove the sunspots: Water and nitrogen don’t heat as much.
Or should I return to an avoidance of thinking?

Ipse Dixit (11:33:53) :
There is something to be said about a shift in Solar Spectrum.
I believe it has done just that, as TSI is constrained to a very narrow range.
The atmosphere is generally opaque to the lower ranges of UV, so a drop in visible but an increase in UV would lead to a change in how Solar Energy interacts with the atmosphere and surface.
This would make for a much better topic that kicking the TSI bucket around.

tallbloke (09:53:53): Does anyone know what magnetism is? In terms of fundamental particles and their motions?
To understand electricity and magnetism I would recommend “Introduction to Electrodynamics” by David Griffiths;
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Electrodynamics-3rd-David-Griffiths/dp/013805326X
David explains in terms of useful analogies the beauty of Maxwell’s equations.

If we are headed into to a little Ice Age how fast does the Global temperature drop?
From Eichler et al GRL 36 (2009) it appears from my mark one eyeball to take 50 years. I assume on a geologic scale that is very fast but on a human scale that’s when my grand kids get to 50. No grand kids yet but soon.
Thanks Leif for posting here. I’ve see you’re posts and work and you are simply amazing.

Leif Svalgaard (12:14:23) :
Can you quantify those changes, or has someone already done this?
By opposite directions, do you mean that as Solar Activity drops, Solar Irradiance changes to an increase in UV and IR, and as Solar Activity rises Solar Irradience changes to decrease in UV and IR?

Don’t know if this is cricket, if not then please delete.
Picked this comment off of http://www.scepticalscience.com, was just wondering if Dr. Spencer could comment on it .
{quote} Robert Ellison at 11:05 AM on 12 December, 2009
Amongst the Major Unknowns in Climate are the following
Solar
Phenomenological reconstructions of the solar signature in the Northern Hemisphere surface temperature records since 1600
N. Scafetta and B. J. West
JGR Received 18 January 2007; revised 4 May 2007; accepted 5 June 2007; published 3 November 2007.
[1] A phenomenological thermodynamic model is adopted to estimate the relative contribution of the solar-induced versus anthropogenic-added climate forcing during the industrial era. We compare different preindustrial temperature and solar data reconstruction scenarios since 1610. We argue that a realistic climate scenario is the one described by a large preindustrial secular variability (as the one shown by the paleoclimate temperature reconstruction by Moberg et al. (2005) with the total solar irradiance experiencing low secular variability (as the one shown by Wang et al. (2005)).
Under this scenario the Sun might have contributed up to approximately 50% (or more if ACRIM total solar irradiance satellite composite (Willson and Mordvinov, 2003) is implemented) of the observed global warming since 1900.
Clouds
“The new method is a conceptual breakthrough in how we analyze data,” said Anthony Del Genio, a scientist at GISS and co-author of the companion paper.
“What it shows is remarkable,” said Wielicki (Dr. Bruce Wielicki of NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.) “The rising and descending motions of air that cover the entire tropics, known as the Hadley and Walker circulation cells, appear to increase in strength from the 1980s to the 1990s. This suggests that the tropical heat engine increased its speed.
The faster circulation dried out the water vapor that is needed for cloud formation in the upper regions of the lower atmosphere over the most northern and southern tropical areas. Less cloudiness formed allowing more sunlight to enter and more heat to leave the tropics.”
“It’s as if the heat engine in the tropics has become less efficient using more fuel in the 90s than in the 80s,” said Wielicki. “We tracked the changes to a decrease in tropical cloudiness that allowed more sunlight to reach the Earth’s surface. But what we want to know is why the clouds would change.”
The results also indicate the tropics are much more variable and dynamic than previously thought.
“It suggests that current climate models may, in fact, be more uncertain than we had thought,” Wielicki added. “Climate change might be either larger or smaller than the current range of predictions.”
The observations capture changes in the radiation budget-the balance between Earth’s incoming and outgoing energy-that controls the planet’s temperature and climate.
The previously unknown changes in the radiation budget are two to four times larger than scientists had believed possible. The reason why and the degree to which it changed are surprising scientists and create a powerful new test for climate models.
“The question is, if this fluctuation is due to global climate change or to natural variability,” said Del Genio. “We think this is a natural fluctuation, but there is no way to tell yet.”
Complexity
Climate shifts occurred 4 times in the last 100 years around 1910, the mid 1940’s, the mid 1970’s and 1998/2001 (Tsonis et al, 2007, Swanson et al 2009). The lack of global warming since 1998 is consistent with the climate behaving as a forced nonlinear oscillator. Small changes in forcings (solar, gases and aerosols, albedo) are alternately amplified and damped (nonlinear) by global climate processes and climate then oscillates for a time around a different climate mean.
The direct impact of greenhouse gas increase since the start of industrialisation is about 0.5 degrees centigrade of global temperature increase theoretically. It is not insignificant as energy in the climate system. The total effect is unknown because it feeds into a dynamic climate system of sun, orbit, ocean, atmosphere, ice, clouds, gases and aerosols operating interactively. All of these change all the time. The exponential growth of ice cover is implicated as factor in ice ages – extreme nonlinear climate events. Global cloud cover has been known to change from ISCCP data collected from 1984 and the argument has been about cause and effect. There is a little more cloud cover since about 1999 – which came first the clouds or the current cooling? The question is meaningless as climate is dynamic and complex. Small changes in initial conditions lead to climate fluctuation which then settles into a different mean climate state.
Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov (2007), A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L13705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030288.
Swanson, K. L., and A. A. Tsonis (2009), Has the climate recently shifted?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L06711, doi:10.1029/2008GL037022.
At the policy level – it is a matter of social, economic and environmental risk. Continued global economic growth is critical for billions of people now and increasing greenhouse gases increases forced system instability – a balance of risk is required. {end quote}
The continued lack of warming in the atmosphere and muted warming or cooling (depending on which researcher) of the ocean and atmosphere suggests that there is less urgency and that alternative development strategies proposed by Bjorn Lomberg amongst others can provide a better and less economically risky (to billions in the developing world) solution. A few decades is all that is required to develop dozens of low cost options for energy and development – a real market solution as opposed to the ‘ecosocialist’ aspirations of one website I have recently visited

Re: tallbloke (02:34:22)
I applaud your synthesis & pioneering research.
I will clarify: I am not criticizing your time-integration bandwidth. Rather I am drawing attention to the confounding – as I said, it is thick – so thick that this cannot be underscored enough. I am suggesting that we keep in mind that there may be lurking variables that are (at least partially) confounded with the variables we study. This is not a trivial consideration. In fact, I would say that opponents have capitalized on a lack of awareness of this.

Roy and everyone – I haven’t had time to trawl through all the comments – but it is all great stuff – I would need a day to follow up all the links – but congratulations on this very open exploration.
Even the critics of Svensmark’s GCR/cloud hypothesis – for example Sloane and Wolfendale, found that 25% of cloud percentage variability could be linked to the GCR flux (despite how that was represented as debunking the theory in the media). But, my intuition tells me we are dealing with several factors. The variable solar wind has electrical as well as magnetic effects – voltages are involved, as well as pulses strong enough to clear charged particles (aerosols), then as Stephen Wilde points out (and Drew Shindell at NASA) there are chemical and heat reactions in the upper atmosphere that transfer to lower levels – most especially in the polar vortex. These can affect the jetstream. We need to think not just about percentage cloud shifts, but also spatial shifts because the ‘global warming’ heat store is not homogenous – it is located in ocean gyres and the jetstream shifts will affect the rate of heat removal.
Leif – the low pressure centres in the Atlantic and Pacific are caused by vortices that suck air upwards – warm moist air that then creates clouds in a spiral pattern – and this effectively removes heat from the ocean surface (global warming is mostly located in the upper 300m) and dumps it westward on land. That air mass has to go somewhere – and my question to meteorologists is – are the high pressure downward air flows that spiral in the opposite direction, with dry cloudless air, also connected to the up-spirals? Rather like (analogous) the magnetic loops on the Sun!
That system willl also radiate heat outward from the planet at night. The high pressure systems will allow more sunlight in and remove insulation from warm northern waters.
There is a good long term correlation between low magnetic field (from proxies) and low temperatures – over several decades. I suggest (in my book ‘Chill’) that periods of low magnetic activity cool the planet by altering the storm tracks over the oceans and that it takes centuries to recover (as from the Little Ice Age).
As to the present – there WAS a step change in cloud cover registered by the Big Bear Solar Obs and ISCCP in 2001 – a reversal of the 1980-2000 trend of 4% global cloud decrease, with 2% up and maintained to 2006 (the last data I saw). Nobody yet has an explanation for this phase-shift that I am aware of.
You can also follow the SW wave upwelling at the top of the atmosphere from the GISS FD data. It does look to be correlated with the magnetic cycle – there are pulses of extra SW to the earth surface (less reflection) at the solar cycle maximums for 1990 and 2000. This radiation flux dwarfs the computed effect of CO2 radiative forcing over the same period at about 5:1 (I don’t know enough physics to know if that RF includes a gain factor or not).
I wish I had time to put in references and links – but am very busy with the UK media circus following the Copenhagen jamboree – its been a fascinating experience watching what various editors do with my material – from the Times, the Mail and Al Jazeera – only the latter used my full text and did not alter my words, tone or meaning!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6946144.ece
It is called Science or Soundbite. It is, by the way, heavily ‘edited’ – that is to say, transformed in tone and in some crucial areas of content but the new me is very much more moderate – and no bad thing for the Times!
This is the bit that is left out –
‘This conclusion is supported by recent climate shifts that run counter to model predictions. From the data on cycles I could predict that after 2007, when Arctic summer ice reached a record low, it would start to recover. It has grown by 10% each year since. The models also predicted that the high-level winds known as the jet-stream would shift north as the globe warmed. The jet-stream directs wet weather from the Atlantic and in 2007 it shifted south, bringing widespread flooding to Western Europe.
I have seen a minority report in NASA’s archives which shows that the jet-stream shifts south in cycles as the magnetic field of the sun falls and this was characteristic of the Little Ice Age. Ominously, in 2007 the field fell to an all time low and this repeated through 2008 and 2009, as did the floods. Many solar scientists point to a link between this magnetic field and climate on Earth and when the field is low, the Earth cools. During the low in the 17th century the Thames froze every winter for fifty years and summers were a wash out.’
Too scary for the Times to contemplate, but not the Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1234515/Copenhagen-climate-change-summit-The-world-COOLING-warming-says-scientist-Peter-Taylor—prepared.html
and Al Jazeera (not to be confused in the MidWest with Al Q…..) gave the best undedited coverage:
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/climatesos/2009/12/2009124191343603151.html
These are all online articles – I have failed to penetrate the national dailies paper versions here – the left-liberals don’t want to know, and the right-wing press want business as usual and no scary cooling.
Am doing my best to get it out there! Thanks for all the help this site offers for the opening of minds and the recovery of real science.
and this bit:
No real climate scientist ever said natural causes are acting alone.
(i.e. the IPCC were setting up a false statement)
is replaced by this:
In other words . no real climate scientist ever said humans were solely to blame for global warming
(in fact – most of them have said something very close to that and the IPCC in particular)
and it is is exactly the opposite of what I said (full version and context – see below)

Leif Svalgaard (12:14:23) :
Ipse Dixit (11:33:53) :
Could the solar cycle cause changes in the spectrum of solar irradiance?
It can and it does. It seems that UV and infrared change in opposite directions even if TSI is constant. These changes are not large, though.
rbateman (12:19:38) :
Ipse Dixit (11:33:53) :
There is something to be said about a shift in Solar Spectrum.
I believe it has done just that, as TSI is constrained to a very narrow range.
The atmosphere is generally opaque to the lower ranges of UV, so a drop in visible but an increase in UV would lead to a change in how Solar Energy interacts with the atmosphere and surface.
This would make for a much better topic that kicking the TSI bucket around.
FergalR (15:30:33) :
rbateman:
Less UV at minimum I believe:
“A 12-year low in solar “irradiance”: Careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft show that the sun’s brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at extreme UV wavelengths since the solar minimum of 1996.” from
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm
A 6% decrease in the UV spectrum seems like a significant amount. If I had reduced my speed by 6%, I wouldn’t have gotten that speeding ticket for going 89 mph (FHP seldoms writes tickets for less than 15 mph over the limit).
So, is it true that Nitrogen is heated only by EUV? Is it also true that H2O is heated by more efficiently by UV and less efficiently by IR?

CERN has an experiment called CLOUD that will try to find the connections, if any, between cosmic rays and cloud formation.
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CLOUD-en.html

Excuse me the spam, but as a layman in that field (my background is economics) and curious in the clima subject I allways ask the basic questions before going to more complicated questions.
One basic question I do a lot of times is: why are poles too cold? The standard answers aren´t, in my opinion, the best.
I i was and alien, outside the Earth, I could do the same question. Why are the Earth poles so cold?
North south are only positions relative to us, inhabitants of Earth. And the energy from the sun can´t explain all. Especially the diferences between the tropical temperatures and poles temperatures. Maybe more is needed to understand that clivage between so extrems in temperatures.
But, hey, Im only a layman who likes read and understand that kind of things.

“Computing correlation coefficients on running means is a statistical no-no, that right there causes me to put the paper aside.”
I see. But how they could exclude noise of data, in that samples? I mean, in some way they treat the raw data and exclude noise.
But maybe they are wrong.
Just another note. What causes the trap of the cold air inside the artic poles and later releases that air in direction of equador? Even Marcel Leroux didnt have the answer to that process.
I mean, I understand the outbreak if I use the thermodinamic process. What I dont understand is the trap of the cold. And that trap in the process, at somepoint releases the air. To me is very sugestive to look geomagnetic fields teking action in that process.
In the same way, when I think why the cold air in the poles are “traped” and why that cold can´t balance more the differential between poles and equador, I just think in magnetic fields. To me, even Im not expert in the area, I Know cold and hot are only energy. And that energy should balance more the temperatures differential between poles and equador. The only thing that I see that fits the process is taking all Earth as a magnetic body with… 3 poles! Who seems to me bizarre and strange.
Anyway, as I see the process, something happens when the sun magnetic state induces changes in the earth rotation. Changes everything. The air circulation too. In the process everything changes. Solids, liquids and gases. Changes the geomagnetic fields in our planet or even the magnetic north pole. Even in smal part. If we take in consideration all that things happening, even in small changes, maybe that explain the correlation between LOD and temperatures. And geomagnetic solar activity.
This is my humble opinion. As a layman, off course.