Solar Science Bipolar Disorder
Guest post by Steven Goddard
About once every 11 years, the sun’s magnetic poles reverse. However some high profile solar scientists reverse their own polarity more frequently.
The BBC reported Wednesday that Mike Lockwood at the University of Reading has established a statistical link between cold weather and low solar activity.
The UK and continental Europe could be gripped by more frequent cold winters in the future as a result of low solar activity, say researchers.
“By recent standards, we have just had what could be called a very cold winter and I wanted to see if this was just another coincidence or statistically robust,” said lead author Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at the University of Reading, UK.
To examine whether there was a link, Professor Lockwood and his co-authors compared past levels of solar activity with the Central England Temperature (CET) record, which is the world’s longest continuous instrumental record of such data.
The researchers used the 351-year CET record because it provided data that went back to the beginning of the Maunder Minimum, a prolonged period of very low activity on the Sun that lasted about half a century.
“Frost fayres” were held on the Thames during the Maunder Minimum
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The Maunder Minimum occurred in the latter half of the 17th Century – a period when Europe experienced a series of harsh winters, which has been dubbed by some as the Little Ice Age. Following this, there was a gradual increase in solar activity that lasted 300 years.
Professor Lockwood explained that studies of activity on the Sun, which provides data stretching back over 9,000 years, showed that it tended to “ramp up quite slowly over about a 300-year period, then drop quite quickly over about a 100-year period”.
He said the present decline started in 1985 and was currently about “half way back to a Maunder Minimum condition”. More at the BBC
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His study was basically a rehash of what many others have done previously over the past few centuries, but he has the BBC’s ear – because in 2007 he prominently claimed just the opposite.
No Sun link’ to climate change
Tuesday, 10 July 2007
“This should settle the debate,” said Mike Lockwood
Similarly, in 2006 David Hathaway at NASA reported that the Sun’s conveyor belt had “slowed to a record low.”
May 10, 2006: The Sun’s Great Conveyor Belt has slowed to a record-low crawl, according to research by NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. “It’s off the bottom of the charts,” he says. “This has important repercussions for future solar activity.”
Then on March 12, 2010 he reported the exact opposite:
March 12, 2010: In today’s issue of Science, NASA solar physicist David Hathaway reports that the top of the sun’s Great Conveyor Belt has been running at record-high speeds for the past five years.
In 1810, the great English astronomer William Herschel established a link between sunspot activity and the price of grain in Europe – a proxy for climate. As far as we know, he never reversed polarity on that belief. Modern solar science is just coming around to what Herschel hypothesized 200 years ago.
==========================
UPDATE: Full Lockwood et al paper at Environmental Research Letters here
Abstract. Solar activity during the current sunspot minimum has fallen to levels unknown since the start of the 20th century. The Maunder minimum (about 1650–1700) was a prolonged episode of low solar activity which coincided with more severe winters in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Motivated by recent relatively cold winters in the UK, we investigate the possible connection with solar activity. We identify regionally anomalous cold winters by detrending the Central England temperature (CET) record using reconstructions of the northern hemisphere mean temperature. We show that cold winter excursions from the hemispheric trend occur more commonly in the UK during low solar activity, consistent with the solar influence on the occurrence of persistent blocking events in the eastern Atlantic. We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect. Average solar activity has declined rapidly since 1985 and cosmogenic isotopes suggest an 8% chance of a return to Maunder minimum conditions within the next 50 years (Lockwood 2010 Proc. R. Soc. A 466 303–29): the results presented here indicate that, despite hemispheric warming, the UK and Europe could experience more cold winters than during recent decades.
Figure 2 from the paper:
- Figure 2. Variations since the mid-17th century of the following. (a) The mean northern hemisphere temperature anomaly, ΔTN: black shows the HadCRUT3v compilation of observations [17, mauve shows the median of an ensemble of 11 reconstructions (individually intercalibrated with the HadCRUT3v NH data over the interval 1850–1950) based on tree ring and other proxy data [18–23]. The decile range is given by the area shaded grey (between upper and lower decile values of ΔTU and ΔTL). (b) Average winter Central England Temperatures (CET) [5, 6] for December, January and February, TDJF. (c) The open solar flux, FS, corrected for longitudinal solar wind structure: dots are annual means of interplanetary satellite data; the black line after 1905 is derived from ground-based geomagnetic data [1]; and the mauve line is a model based on observed sunspot numbers [14]. Both curves show 1 year means. (d) Detrended winter CET, δTDJF, obtained by subtracting the best-fit variation of ΔTN, derived using the regressions shown in figure 3(b): the width of the line shows the difference resulting from the use of ΔTN = ΔTU and ΔTN = ΔTL prior to 1850. In all panels, dots are for years with δTDJF < 1 °C (the dashed horizontal line in (d)), colour-coded by year using the scale in figure 3(a). Data for the winter 2009/10 are provisional.”]
Ah Ha!
So the Sun, which has no effect on climate (says U.N), has an effect on climate!
I knew sooner or later science WOULD/WOULD NOT discover, the primary mechanism that DOES/DOES NOT affect the weather.
Now that we kNOW/DON’T KNOW what effect the Sun IS/ISN’Thaving on the planet, we CAN/CAN’Tset a new tax regime that WILL/WON’T save the planet from GLOBAL WARMING/COOLING.
Luckily we’vre prepared an army of useful idiots to beg the UN for a totalitarian government based on what we KNOW/DON’T KNOW, and can get
down to really screwing mankind over for having such a NEGATIVE/POSITIVE effect on the CLIMATE/ARTIC ICE/UNICORNS/FAIRIES…
Ah me,….when did science get so schizophrenic? I feel terribly Post normal.
man….this is fun stuff….i wish these cycles were quicker…i am so curious to see what is next.
” more research is needed” oh dear……….
If the sun continues to sleep, the next decade should be quite interesting. No wonder they are trying to rush through a carbon dioxide treaty.
A couple more winters like the last one, recovery of the Arctic sea ice and they will start talking “Oh my Gosh and Ice Age Cometh” the UN needs and international tax to protect us” ….. No I forgot they already changed it to the all encompassing “climate change”
If it does, it’s mechanism unknown.
“The Earth-facing side of the sun is blank–no sunspots.”
http://www.spaceweather.com/
….this sucker is nowhere near to being out of its minimum!! I think it’s broken but good!!
Hey, glad I like ice fishing!! Leif, where are you?
“It is not like the sun is warm or anything.” Al Gore is a short lecture to Barrack Obama.
We all know what’s coming next: “if it wasn’t for the decrease in the Sun’s activity we would all have been fried due to increased carbon dioxide emissions so a carbon tax is more urgent than ever.”
Who would ever have thought that ‘science’ could be so flexible.
Ouch! Dr. Lief is gonna have a lot to say about this. If the correlations are for real, but its not TSI, as Dr. Lief swears it isn’t… then WHAT?
Think electricity and plasma physics, and it becomes easier to explain.
pat (22:28:22) :
Al Gore’s sun may be cool, but the interior of his earth is millions of degrees.
I always suspected that that big yellow thing up there might have “something” to do with it getting hotter, and cooler.
See, us Mississippians can be “smart,” too.
CRS, Dr.P.H. (22:26:17) :
this sucker is nowhere near to being out of its minimum!! I think it’s broken but good!!
Well, a wee bit out 🙂
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
Sun/Weather-Climate claims have always shown those contradictory tendencies, so luckily one can always explain everything, because either it goes one way and it fits [sometimes] or it goes the opposite way and that fits too [sometimes]. In another thread [that is dying down] we discussed the claim that there was a reasonable match between solar activity and temperatures. A specific example was brought out: Solanki sunspots causing Moberg temperatures. And indeed there is a correlation: sunspots ‘explain’ less than 4% of the temperature variability [thus not really something to write home about:
http://www.leif.org/research/Moberg-Solanki-Correlation.png
Loehle Temp vs. Solar activity [TSI] show even less correlation.: http://www.leif.org/research/Loehle-Temps-and-TSI.png
But, hey, there is good funding to be had when you can claim a connection the climate. I do it myself 🙂 e.g. line 222 in http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric%20Magnetic%20Field%201835-2009.pdf [which BTW is in the final stages of peer-review].
Landscheidt cycles. Old stuff – http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/
Welcome to the 1800s, Dr. Lockwood.
A rat deserting the sinking good ship AGW!
OT a little. There was a rather large volcanic eruption in Iceland on Monday. Which may have a cooling effect, first upon Europe.
Too soon to say more.
Look! See Mike. See Mike run. Mike has seen the writing on the wall…
The BBC is suffering bipolar madness about this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8615789.stm
Halfway down the page there’s a picture of the Sun with the caption “Solar activity has been in decline since 1985, says Professor Lockwood”. Directly under that the Beeb has the audacity, in the middle of an article, to link to “No Sun link’ to climate change” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7327393.stm)
Normally related topics are linked to in the side bar, but not this time.
Steve, this is not worthy of you, at least regarding your implied criticisms of David Hathaway. Five years lapsed between Hathaway’s first report and the second and from reports available via a quick Google, much research has been done in the meantime. Not only that, but if the “conveyor belt” was slow five years ago, why could it have not sped up since then? If the normal cycle is ~11years, those five years represent almost a half cycle. Perhaps the surprise is that the belt speed is passing through record extremes, but let’s face it, measurements on which this work is based go back only to 1996, just over one cycle’s duration. It is surely a work in progress, not a definitive study.
Lots and lots of lag, Leif.
That, and the system is rather slow.
Think of how long it takes to stop an ocean liner or a freight train.
This is way worse.
If the Sun is oatmeal (sorry, my wife understands what you mean but I never got oatmeal…my loss) then the Earth is Heinz 57 climate sauce. If you added another ingredient, nobody would notice the difference.
Three years ago, Lockwood put the last nail in the coffin of his current theory.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8615789.stm
Yabut Hansen said 2009 was the hottest in 100’s of years!
Whether the sun is a root of this jet stream blocking / AO going negative I do not know, and am not qualified even to speculate. But one things does occur to me; using the CET as a solid reference for mild/cold winters/years without qualifying the data with the prevailing wind direction (which I assume we do not have) is pretty meaningless. But then even using a thousand or even 10,000 thermometers six feet off the ground to measure global temperatures is a bit of a joke, when there is as much heat energy in the first 8 feet of the ocean as there is in the whole of the atmosphere, and the time lag for the oceans to warm up a fraction of a degree must be decades. The best analogy for this I have heard is a doctor in A&E/ER trying to measure the patient’s temperature by dangling a thermometer an inch above his forehead.
Leif (the sun is constant) Slavgaard will be groaning, perhaps, but UV variability effecting the stratosphere, effecting the jetstreams is currently my favourite explanation as to why the weather is sensitive to the solar cycle. If the jetstreams (north and south) move closer to their poles during solar minimums then that would effect the Earth’s overall temperature (climate) as the total outgoing LW radiation changes. The jetstreams are the barrier between the cold polar air masses and the warmer air masses nearer the equator. LW radiation is non-linear as it varies withT^4. If the total mass of warm air changes then the total energy emitted by the Earth would also change so changing the Earth’s temperature over time.
I agree with Leif in the sense that that TSI variability is not sufficient to explain temperature changes on Earth. However there may be some kind of amplification going on here on Earth – volume of air masses or changes in cloud cover, or both.
Wikipedia has the following (good article) at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
Changes in ultraviolet irradiance
* Ultraviolet irradiance (EUV) varies by approximately 1.5 percent from solar maxima to minima, for 200 to 300 nm UV.[42]
* Energy changes in the UV wavelengths involved in production and loss of ozone have atmospheric effects.
o The 30 hPa atmospheric pressure level has changed height in phase with solar activity during the last 4 solar cycles.
o UV irradiance increase causes higher ozone production, leading to stratospheric heating and to poleward displacements in the stratospheric and tropospheric wind systems.
* A proxy study estimates that UV has increased by 3% since the Maunder Minimum
Bryn (23:38:57)
Please read Hathaway’s statements more closely. In 2006 it was at a record low. Now he says that it has been at a record high “for the past five years” (2005-present)
That means that 2006 was a record low and a record high.
It is to hoped that the migration of scientists from the perceived mainstream wisdom of the day(AGW/MMCC/AAM)to a more rational sceptical and common sense position will become common in the months to come.
The so called consensus is failing, the models are failing to match real world observations and the narrative is starting to look like what it is.
Science is and always has been about proving others wrong, falsification of others work and the constant improving of science through ever more detailed research.
No theory can be above critisism, no scientific discovery is above questioning and critisism, the certainty of the fool has no palce in science as history as proved again and again, the brightest scientific brains of the 18/19/20th centuries held beliefs and certainties that we now know are ridiculous.
Newton himself a genius of the ages held views so utterly wrong that we would laugh at them now, Einstein himself made errors of epic proportions and yet he is rightly regarded as a giant.
Science is the escape from ignorance, the dogged messy and determined pursuit of knowledge that has always entailed fighting against the commonly held wisdom of the day. Theories come into being and are knocked down to be replaced with better theories, old certainties are destroyed and new ones take their place.
The vain attempt to somehow preserve a theory from falsification and critisism is merely delaying the eventual demise of that theory, when the protected theory falls it will fall harder and hurt those supporters harder, it is to be hoped that more scientists will realise this and move out of the way before they are crushed by the fall out.
Leif, your post appeared after I had sent mine so apologies. The only possible explanation I have for the fact that ‘nothing correlates’ is Lindzen’s comment that the climate is never at equilibrium. The overall temperature then becomes a running mean.
i see ‘robust’ again. think I’ll vomit.
Cassandra King (23:55:42) :
Beautifully written.
Thanks.
The sun has an effect on earths’ climate cycles?
I’d never have guessed that in a million years.
@cassandra king: “The vain attempt to somehow preserve a theory from falsification and critisism is merely delaying the eventual demise of that theory, when the protected theory falls it will fall harder and hurt those supporters harder, it is to be hoped that more scientists will realise this and move out of the way before they are crushed by the fall out.”
Good post I like the last sentence, it brings to mind the eugenics craze of the last century.
Steve, let’s give them a break, there is no merit in consistency in science, and if you are a real scientist you report what you’ve seen. In fact it takes a lot of courage to reverse your previous opinions in the face of new evidence.
Anyway, the alarmists will tell you that this in no way contradicts the CAGW theory, because nothing does.
AlanG (23:49:18) :
* Ultraviolet irradiance (EUV) varies by approximately 1.5 percent from solar maxima to minima, for 200 to 300 nm UV.[42]
Lots of confusion about UV. The EUV which has a an Extremely low wavelength of ~30 nm [that’s the E in EUV] varies in phase with the sunspot number, but there is Extremely little of it [0.0005 W/m2 or so] and it doesn’t get down to the stratosphere.
The 200-300 nm ordinary UV actually varies inversely with the sunspot number: fewer spots, more UV. see the bottom two panels of http://www.leif.org/research/Erl70.png
* A proxy study estimates that UV has increased by 3% since the Maunder Minimum
cite, please. I bet it is based on Hoyt and Schatten’s obsolete TSI.
“established a statistical link between cold weather and low solar activity”
You couldn’t make it up could you.
stevengoddard (23:55:32) :
That means that 2006 was a record low and a record high.
Hathaway said in 2006 that the data [up to 2004] were at record low, so no disagreement.
Lockwood said in 2007 that there was no sun link to our current climate change, which has been unfolding over the last century. In context ,that claim was a response to those who claimed that AGW was in fact a result of the sun’s behavior over that period. In what way does his latest paper contradict this? In this paper,according to the abstract ,he discusses the influence of current low solar output over a short term and small area; “We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect.” In what way is Lockwood reversing his professional “polarity” here?
Fitzy (22:05:08) :
Ah Ha!
So the Sun, which has no effect on climate (says U.N), has an effect on climate!
I knew sooner or later science WOULD/WOULD NOT discover, the primary mechanism that DOES/DOES NOT affect the weather.
Now that we kNOW/DON’T KNOW what effect the Sun IS/ISN’Thaving on the planet, we CAN/CAN’Tset a new tax regime that WILL/WON’T save the planet from GLOBAL WARMING/COOLING.
Luckily we’vre prepared an army of useful idiots to beg the UN for a totalitarian government based on what we KNOW/DON’T KNOW, and can get
down to really screwing mankind over for having such a NEGATIVE/POSITIVE effect on the CLIMATE/ARTIC ICE/UNICORNS/FAIRIES…
Ah me,….when did science get so schizophrenic? I feel terribly Post normal.
Ahhh Fitzy – a commenter after my own left ventrical…
All claims a bit dubious science of course.
The geomagnetic field and the sunspot activity are correlated
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC9.htm
and so is the GMF and CET(central England Temp).
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC8.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETt.htm
Wait, wait, Figure 2 shows a fit of the solar flux to a short version of the Hockey Stick. Suspicious isn’t it?
‘Lockwood is quick to point out that even if the recent lull in sunspot activity extends into another Maunder minimum, the effects are regional and it will not offset global warming. “This is very much a European phenomenon,” he says.’
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100414/full/news.2010.184.html
OK so he says this will affect only Europe but then says a Maunder Minimum will not affect global temps ~ er warming?
Does not make sense to me; surely a Maunder Minimum like effect would have global consequences, or am I not seeing this clearly?
Having now read this and the linked articles, am I missing something.
Lockwood is saying low sun activity = harsher winters over Europe.
Is that it???
OT, but there is an article in today’s FT about Climategate. It’s on their web site but behind a paywall so I’m transcribing some of the article from the paper. Perhaps someone else has a login. This will all be old news to people here. The FT is still in full establishment mode and their reporting is as selectively misleading as it is out of date.
Sceptics quizzed by police on beliefs
Police investigating the alleged theft of e-mails behind the recent “Climategate” uproar have been telephoning climate change sceptics to question about their political and scientific beliefs.
The Norfolk Constabulary was called in by the University of East Anglia after thousands of climate scientists’ confidential e-mails were published on-line last November. The documents appear to show the scientists concealing information and manipulating data to fit their theories although two independent inquiries have cleared the university of wrong doing…
Well, state of mind is acceptable evidence in a UK court of law so there is nothing sinister here folks 🙂 Should I volunteer and tell them about climate sensitivity, the PDO and the way CRU obstructed FOI requests and cooked the [temperature] books? Perhaps not.
It’s nice to know that we have a different sun in Australia and that our CO2 will cause our temps will remain on the increase.
“We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect.”
Steve @23:55:32,if you read the March 12th NASA article,you’ll see this:
‘The second surprise has to do with the bottom of the conveyor belt’….etc.
[Hathaway]”While the top of the conveyor belt has been moving at record-high speed, the bottom seems to be moving at record-low speed. Another contradiction”
They say one thing, sceptics say another, we are called all sorts of names then down the line they concur or disagree. The science is settled. This is why I am sceptical of ANY new claims by these so called climate scientists. They really don’t know!!
My humble paper showed a remarkable correlation between global temperatures and the position of the Earth’s magnetic poles, but some journals rejected it because it was just a correlation with an unknown mechanism, yet here we see correlations without a mechanism seized on as the new truth.
However surely Lockwood is wrong as the hockey stick doesn’t show the low temperatures of the little ice age so it couldn’t have happened, or was Mann wrong?
Today’s Telegraph in the UK
“The ‘hockey stick’ that became emblematic of the threat posed by climate change exaggerated the rise in temperature because it was created using ‘inappropriate’ methods, according to the head of the Royal Statistical Society.”
[off topic. try tips and notes. ~ ctm]
I think people might be reading more into this than they should. Lockwood is not suggesting that solar activity is going to increase earth’s temperature – just that it may trigger the (well-known) cycles which affect ‘regional’ climate. Note that although it was a cold winter in *some* parts of the NH, the earth, as a whole, was particularly warm.
I’m not sure the solar link even exists. The coldest UK winter in the past 250 years was in 1962/63. This, though, occurred during solar cycle with the highest sunspot ever recorded (SC 19). Also Lockwood himself is quoted as saying “If we look at the last period of very low solar activity at the end of the 17th Century, we find the coldest winter on record in 1684, but the very next year – when solar activity was still low – saw third warmest winter in the entire 350-year (CET) record. ”
So there appears to be a link – except when there isn’t.
Finally there is the mistaken belief on this blog that AGWers don’t accept a solar-climate link. This is WRONG. In addition to the Lockwood study (above), Gavin Schmidt, Mike Mann and Drew Shindell have been involved in maunder minimum studies which come to pretty much the same conclusion as Lockwood.
They need solar variability in order to explain past climate fluctuations (repeating myself again). Without solar variability they would have to admit they didn’t know what was responsible for previous changes. Be warned!
OT
Iceland just farted on England. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. ROTFLMAO. Check the news.
@ stan stendera (22:57:14) :
“A rat deserting the sinking good ship AGW!”
Not if the BBC story is anything to go by:
“But they added that the phenomenon only affected a limited region and would not alter the overall global warming trend. ”
It’ll take more than evidence to shift these people’s beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful phenomenon and has a tendency to produce warmth even where there is none. Here in the Uk we are now fully committed, by both major parties’ policies, to enormous reductions in emissions of that deadly pollutant CO2. If we don’t freeze or fry, we’ll certainly be even more impoverished than we are currently.
Here’s a link to the Shindell et al paper (published in 2001) referenced in John Finn (01:05:53) :
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Shindell_etal_1.pdf
From the Abstract:
Shindell et al. 2001
Shindell, D.T., G.A. Schmidt, M.E. Mann, D. Rind, and A. Waple, 2001: Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum. Science, 294, 2149-2152, doi:10.1126/science.1064363.
We examine the climate response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. Global average temperature changes are small (about 0.3° to 0.4°C) in both a climate model and empirical reconstructions. However, regional temperature changes are quite large. In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift towards the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation as solar irradiation decreases. This leads to colder temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere continents, especially in winter (1-2°C), in agreement with historical records and proxy data for surface temperatures.
You must read the BBC’s hilarious report from one Mark Kinver, science and environment “reporter”. It’s here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8615789.stm
After the opening two paragraphs in which he reports the highly inconvenient truth that researchers have found that winters in Europe are going to get even colder, he quickly adds a third paragraph:
“But they added that the phenomenon only affected a limited region and would not alter the overall global warming trend”.
Why is this so hilarious? Recently, one of Kinver’s BBC colleagues, Justin Webb, conducted a fawning Radio 4 interview with Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, which consisted of several pat-a-cake questions about how awful climate change was, leavened only by a couple of references to the Climategate scandal.
Nowhere was there a “third paragraph” equivalent in this interview offering the AGW sceptic position.
And needless to say, none of the BBC’s ‘nodding dog’ correspondents ever challenge the science. Neither Kinver, Webb, nor Roger Harrabin (environment “analyst”) display any journalistic enquiry or, indeed, ask any meaningful science-based questions.
I complained three weeks ago to the BBC about the lack of impartiality and the absence of balance and journalistic enquiry and received a fatuous and complacent response from a duty editor.
So now here we have a report which says that – wonder of wonders – the sun is seriously affecting the earth’s climate; indeed, the effect is so dramatic that it will create increasingly cold winters in Europe but that NONE of this has got anything to do with general global warming (because that, you see, is caused by minute increases in a trace gas).
And Kinver et all just sit there, having their heads patted and offered biscuits, in rapt attention as to what the nice professor is telling them.
Sadly, the BBC has lost all credibility in its reporting of AGW issues. Someone is clearly pulling the strings of these reporters and it is pathetic to see, particularly with journalists such as Roger Harrabin who I believe to be basically an honest reporter but who is clearly struggling within a BBC-imposed straitjacket as to what he can and cannot investigate and publish.
I am sorry to say, though, that my reaction as a former journalist, to Kinver’s po-faced acceptance of Lockwood’s bizarre explanation was hilarity. You really could not make this stuff up.
Steve,
In the WUWT article on 3/12/2010, Hathaway explained that the ‘top’ of the solar conveyor belt is moving fast while the bottom is moving slow… and no one understands/knows why.
“Sunspots are supposedly rooted to the bottom of the belt,” says Hathaway. “So the motion of sunspots tells us how fast the belt is moving down there.”
He’s done that—plotted sunspot speeds vs. time since 1996—and the results don’t make sense. “While the top of the conveyor belt has been moving at record-high speed, the bottom seems to be moving at record-low speed. Another contradiction.”
Leif Svalgaard (22:47:50) :
Would this not lend some more credance to the theoires of Svenmark et al?
Also, Mike Lockwood was the one last year who said something along the lines of “if the low solar activity was going to cause a cooling of temperatures we would have seen it by now”. Mind you that was when he was supposed to be at Southampton Univerisy, the fellow does get about a bit! His message does seem to be a tad inconsistent.
AtB:-)
Independent – 20 March 2000
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past
“According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
———
BBC – 14 April 2010
Low solar activity link to cold UK winters
“The UK and continental Europe could be gripped by more frequent cold winters in the future as a result of low solar activity, say researchers.
……..
…said lead author Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at the University of Reading, UK.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8615789.stm
The atmosphere warms and expands when the sun is more active.
The expansion then seems to facilitate an increased upward flow of energy from below. That increase in energy coming up from below adds to the solar warming effect in the upper layers which become warmer than they would have done just from the solar changes.
The extra warming of the upper layers is at the expense of cooling in the lowest layer, the stratosphere, so the stratosphere will cool when the upper layers warm and vice versa as per observations. Note that this is redistributive effect and not an offence against radiative physics.
The effect cannot have any significant impact below the tropopause because below the tropopause the heat transfers are dominated by convective and conductive processes rather than radiative processes.
The stratosphere is thus a varying buffer between the conductive and convective processes in the troposphere and the radiative processes from tropopause to space.
The changes in the stratosphere then feed back to variability in the intensity and size of the Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations.
When those oscillations are ‘negative’due to a quiet sun the polar high pressure cells migrate equatorward and mid latitudes become colder. Just as we have seen over recent seasons. The opposite happens when the sun is more active as per the late 20th century warming.
That is the concept already set out in various articles by me at climaterealists.com and this is yet another piece of research appearing to support it.
It is a global mechanism. It operates in addition to the variable rates of energy release from the oceans, sometimes offsetting the oceanic effect and sometimes supplementing it.
The combined solar and oceanic processes resulting in latitudinal shifts in the jets and all other air circulation systems provide a complete explanation for all observed climate variability with any CO2 effect either neutralised in the process or wholly unmeasurable compared to natural variability.
Sorry Leif but I don’t have any numbers just a logical interpretation of real world observations. Let the professionals work it out.
Cassandra King (23:55:42) :
“The vain attempt to somehow preserve a theory from falsification and critisism is merely delaying the eventual demise of that theory, when the protected theory falls it will fall harder and hurt those supporters harder…”
I said the same thing on another thread.
“LightRain (23:46:06) :
Yabut Hansen said 2009 was the hottest in 100’s of years!”
That’s because he hangs around in a trenchcoat and safari hat even in the summer.
At last some sense coming from the BBC regarding the shaky state of ‘consensus’ climate science! The whole of the NH has had a very cold winter. It would be useful to see if the same pattern of a strongly negative AO has had a wider area of impact than just N Europe. If this is the case, then over time the changes will have a big impact on global climate.
Here’s a bit more information about AO /polar vortex:-
http://air.geo.tsukuba.ac.jp/~tanaka/papers/paper112.pdf
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml
I also don’t think that what Lockwood describes will turn out to be the only link between the sun and Earth’s climate. There will be multiple effects due to changes to the sun’s total energy emissions/spectrum as our planet has multiple connections to the sun.
Another possible albedo changing effect is the presence of varying levels of microscopic ice in the mesosphere, which are very reflective as evidenced by noctilucent clouds.
Paper here:-
http://www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/EPS/pdf/5107_08/51070799.pdf
We still have much learn and the climate change debate is far from over.
Lockwood demonstrates link between low sun and low temps.
Does that mean that as the sun has been at it`s most active since the mid 50`s than in the last 11,500 years there is now a link between an active sun and higher temps.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/ThesunNOAA.jpg
rbateman (22:25:01) :
If it does, it’s mechanism unknown.
But pretty much everything has been ‘mechanism unknown’ at one time, especially my ability to get rich.
Fitzy writes tellingly … “Now that we kNOW/DON’T KNOW what effect the Sun IS/ISN’Thaving on the planet, we CAN/CAN’Tset a new tax regime that WILL/WON’T save the planet from GLOBAL WARMING/COOLING.” (etc)
This is the era of quantum politics – superpose all possible theories/conclusions/opinions and make sure you get the right (or more correctly the Left’s) answer. It’s a new(-ish) scientific+political uncertainty principle – the Science may be uncertain, but we know what we are going to do!
Leif Svalgaard (22:47:50)
ROTFL. I had to read line 222 to see what side you would take and you did not take either! I should have predicted that.
Thought you guys would pick this up, blogged it as:
“AGW news: cold weather caused by low solar activity [BBC] [categories: who knew; really; not news]”
with links to Beeb and here, gud werk 😉
Dear Leif,
Following the sun-earth connections since about 30 years, after reading a book about the influence of solar activity on earthly phenomenom (spelling?), I still don’t know what to think. Like you said, some correlations hold up, but a decade later vanish completely… Landscheidt showed some connections from solar cycles with ENSO, PDO,… which he could predict with reasonable accuracy years ahead. Don’t know if that still is true after he passed away…
The old book also showed an increase in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and the solar cycle, with maxima at the end of solar minima. Seems to be confirmed these days. Have you any knowledge on the connection between solar (magnetic?) cycles and movements of the earth plates?
Sorry to dissappoint you guys but this is clearly propaganda designed to protect global warming theory. Read it again. What they are saying is “oh look, its getting cold in Europe so now Brits and Germans don’t believe us anymore!”. So they need to explain away the REALITY of colder snowier winters whilst leaving global warming theory and the dangers presented by AGW intact. So they tell us that global warming is real, but will be over-ridden by reducing incoming solar energy. However, they tell us that this will only affect UK and Europe and only during the winter. Say what? How can a reduction in solar energy only affect Europe and the UK???? Surely that is just an outright LIE!
It seems to me to be yet another one of those deliberate attempts to propagandise AGW and this time they have used a popular theory from the sceptic camp to bolster it. They hoped we would fall for this hook line and sinker and we have.
It astonishes me what these guys will stoop to. Why are they so strongly driven to behave this way???
I’m really, really confused. How can any changes in the sun have only a small regional effect on earth?
Is this an attempt to prove that the MWP and LIA were also regional and also caused by solar variations?
Leif Svalgaard (00:36:26) :
cite, please. I bet it is based on Hoyt and Schatten’s obsolete TSI.
Thanks for that chart,. That quote was pasted straight out of the Wikipedia article which says citation needed 🙂 The article reads fairly well for a Wikipedia article but I can’t comment on the accuracy.
My guess is that the weather is sensitive to changes in the sun but nothing correlates because, as Lindzen says, the climate is never at equilibrium. The overall temperature then becomes a running mean.
John Finn (01:05:53)
Finally there is the mistaken belief on this blog that AGWers don’t accept a solar-climate link. This is WRONG
Without solar variability they would have to admit they didn’t know what was responsible for previous changes. Be warned!
BBC – 14 April 2010
Low solar activity link to cold UK winters
“The UK and continental Europe could be gripped by more frequent cold winters in the future as a result of low solar activity, say researchers.
We are duly warned
Incidentally, the coldest period of the entire holocene was 1850-1870’s, so nothing from the last 40 years is above natural variability. Just a perfectly normal climate within the historical range
[off topic. how about tips and notes? oh and it’s on the front page of every news site ~ ctm]
O.T.
[yes it is ~ ctm]
Of course Real Climate knew it was the sun all along. Look at their homepage banner: a raging, boiling sun at solar maximum.
Ryan (03:05:08) :
“However, they tell us that this will only affect UK and Europe and only during the winter. Say what? How can a reduction in solar energy only affect Europe and the UK???? Surely that is just an outright LIE!”
Exactly the same thought here. Have they studied other similar regions of the earth for this effect. I bet in a few years time he will expand this effect to other parts of the globe and win a Nobel Prize (along with Gore). One blaming the the sun for colder winters and one blaming CO2 for warmer winters and hotter summers.
oldgifford (00:56:38)
re North Magnetic Pole speeding and temperatures raising:
here they show that NMP wandered since 1600 to Canada, then it made an about-face approx. at 1850 and since then it heads to Siberia.
Any thoughts about the temp and NMP movements in these older times?
http://www.tgo.uit.no/articl/roadto.html#map
And now this!
Iceland volcano erupts…
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/iceland-volcano-brings-floods-travel-chaos-to-europe/story-e6frf7lf-1225854273572
Dave Harrison at 22:32 says: “We all know what’s coming next: “if it wasn’t for the decrease in the Sun’s activity we would all have been fried due to increased carbon dioxide emissions so a carbon tax is more urgent than ever.”
Yeah, Dave you’re right…. I hate to say it, but yes, I have already heard a variation of that from some of my friends who are convinced of AGW.
Mike Haseler (03:35:04) :
[off topic. how about tips and notes? oh and it’s on the front page of every news site ~ ctm]
[still off topic. how about tips and notes? put in tips and notes ~ ctm]
I note he made sure to make an offering to appease the AGW deities, lest he anger them and suffer a reduction in their blessings. This past winter is a great example of why using ‘average’ anything can be very misleading, just like the ‘average’ temperature on Mercury is about 234F (-300 nighttime vs 765 daytime), what does that tell you about the planets energy budget? Not a whole lot, really.
BBC would never have put the story up if it hadn’t contained the following :- “But they added that the phenomenon only affected a limited region and would not alter the overall global warming trend.”
Same old same old – move along nothing to see here.
I am amazed by the continued claim that the effects of the Maunder Minimum were “european only”. This has always been a bit of handwaving to try and help explain away the MWP – if they admitted that the Maunder effects were global, they would have to admit that the sun affects global temperatures. No, no, can’t do that.
The very simple reason it appeared to be concentrated in Europe is because Europe was the only area of the world measuring and recording reliable temperature records at the time. Remember, this is the century *before* North America began to be widely settled by Europeans. (A handful of struggling coastal settlements was all at that time) And who was around to know if Siberia or either pole was extra cold or not during the Maunder?
They are using the excuse of having no records for these areas to claim that this “proves” that the cooling off didn’t happen there.
I find a better correlation between spotless days, or sun cycle length, and temperature than between sunspot # or integrated flux and temperature–looking at multidecadal averages. There is a delay, as it takes a while for the oceans to warm or cool to move toward a new setpoint and equilibrium. Spotless days/ cycle length, by the way, correlate better to temperatures than carbon dioxide level does, so the “no correlation” argument cuts sharper that way.
But the caveat to it all is that global temperature data is highly manipulated junk. U.S. Temperatures are a little more believable, though not uncorrupted by station location problems, as Anthony revealed to the world.
Yes I should be taking a shot across Leif’s bows but way OT seems more relevant. It’s worth checking Icecap for recent SPPI publications….
Yes Leif, I still respect Mr. Sun’s right to scientific representation. A correlation between localized temperatures and solar cycles could lead to pointed questions about what moderates free oscillators (Babcock) in said cycles. L…? Barry someone…? Sorry, couldn’t resist 😉
Leif,
From NASA Science News:
What is hilarious is the claim that the sun only affects Europe’s climate, and it has nothing to do with the whole planet.
See the graphs on page 3 of the following link. For 1000 years there has been a correlation between solar activity and the Andes glaciers and temperature proxies from other areas.
http://aps.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
The abstract of the Lockwood et al. paper says:
“We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect. Average solar activity has declined rapidly since 1985 and cosmogenic isotopes suggest an 8% chance of a return to Maunder minimum conditions within the next 50 years (Lockwood 2010 Proc. R. Soc. A 466 303–29): the results presented here indicate that, despite hemispheric warming, the UK and Europe could experience more cold winters than during recent decades.”
So they “stress” that this is “not a global effect”. I fail to understand how this can be known and, therefore, how it can be stressed on the basis of the study they conducted.
Their paper reports that they studied the Central England Temperature (CET) and obtained a correlation between “the seasonal December/January/February (DJF) means, TDJF, of the CET record ” and the “open solar flux, FS, corrected for longitudinal solar wind structure”.
Hence, on the basis of this correlation, they predict that future winter CET values will be cold in the UK. If – and only if – one accepts that the correlation is a result of a causal link then their prediction can be accepted. Indeed, their prediction provides a test for the postulatd causal link.
However, they state their argument for this finding not being a global effect as follows:
“Winter CET values are known to be strongly modulated by the NAO [8] and modelling has shown that stratospheric trends over recent decades, along with downward links to surface, are indeed strong enough to explain much of the prominent trend in the NAO and hence regional winter climate in Europe between the 1960s and the 1990s [9]. It has been reported that geomagnetic activity rather than solar activity has a stronger statistical relationship to the NAO [38] which, given that the former is highly correlated with FS (indeed FS used here is derived from geomagnetic activity data) is consistent with the effect of FS on Central England Temperatures revealed here. Our subsequent studies (not reported here) on solar modulation of various blocking indices have confirmed previous studies [7], and we stress that this phenomenon is largely restricted to Europe and not global in extent [41].”
So, they “stress” that “this phenomenon is largely restricted to Europe and not global in extent [41].” based on “studies (not reported here) on solar modulation of various blocking indices ” that are reported in their reference [4].
That reference is
Mann M E 2002 Little ice age Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change vol 1 ed M C MacCracken and J S Perry (New York: Wiley) pp 504–9 (ISBN 0-471-97796-9)
Anything related to work of “Mann ME” concerning temporal and spatial temperature variations pertaining to the “Little Ice Age” requires careful consideration because his ability at such statistical analyses has been demonstrated to be less than adequate by the Wegman enquiry: see e.g.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/temperature-data/Wegmanfactsheet.pdf
Hence, it seems that the only things that can reasonably concluded from the analysis of Lockwood et al. are:
(a) there is an apparent correlation between winter CET and solar activity,
(b) if this correlation indicates a causal link then future winter CET values will be cold in the UK,
(c) this indication provides a test for the suggestion that such a causal link exists,
(d) it is not known if the indication only applies to the CET rgion.
Richard
Speaking of bipolar disorder, read the quote from Michael Mann in this account of The Sun blamed for Europe’s colder winters, from Physicsworld.com. Final paragraph has Mann claiming he has long known the sun was responsible for cold 300 years ago and warmth 1000 years ago. Has he forgotten he invented the Hockey Stick?
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/42298
Louis Hissink (22:38:36) :
Think electricity and plasma physics, and it becomes easier to explain.
——————–
Reply:
True, or just take a look at what the sun is doing (or not doing) now:
http://www.cfbw.com/sunspotcount.htm
I personally like the Milankovitch Cycle the most although despite Lief’s efforts am not convinced the solar imprint is not there if you go out to the Gliessberg Cycle, Jose Cycle and longer. Once you get down into decades however, there is a lot of signal noise. You get into decade length resolution and the Ocean’s cycles interfere. I do like some of Lindzen’s work where solar cycles were overlaid on Ocean cycles. It was rather compelling. Of course there is the indirect relationship of cosmic rays or other forms of influence imbued through the ancilliary effects of the magnetosphere.
It’s all fun as long as we don’t get stupid and start talking about magical trace gas effects.
I understand now. Cycle 24 will be the most intense on record and has no effect on climate, and it is also the weakest in a hundred years and affects the climate only in those geographic areas where funding might be obtained. This is due to the simultaneous record slow and fast speed of the Sun’s conveyor belt.
The science is both settled and not settled, and the debate is over. Hensmark is both wrong and correct, and the Maunder minimum had cold and normal weather.
Just a few years ago, Mike and others published a paper “conclusively” showing that changes in the solar constant could not explain climate variations. Funny, now that the dam on AGW has broken how many papers are starting to turn up which are actually looking at what is going on. A good sign.
Yup, the regional only bit is terribly unsupported. However, if true, aren’t the English going to be highly amused by cooling off when the rest of the world heats up?
It seems quite obvious that this is karma for the sins of East Anglia. That’s about as well supported as their claim that this sun effect is European only.
===================
Time to bring up the correlation between Nile levels and aurorae again.
===============================
So now we know that cold European winters are no longer due to the slowing of the Earth’s Gulf Stream Conveyor Belt (which is not happening) but rather the simultaneous speeding up and slowing down the Sun’s Conveyor Belt. Mann says the hockey stick is both correct and incorrect because of sunspots which he understood all long.
The science is settled and always has been. Perhaps all the (non) melting Arctic ice is affecting the Sun?
AlanG (23:49:18) :
o The 30 hPa atmospheric pressure level has changed height in phase with solar activity during the last 4 solar cycles
This is a subject that interests me; does anyone have a reference?
Ryan (03:05:08) :
“…….It astonishes me what these guys will stoop to. Why are they so strongly driven to behave this way???”
That is a heck of a lot easier to answer than what drives climate.
It is very simple MONEY and POWER. Scare the stuffing out of people so they give up their wealth and freedom in return for security. Bullies have been doing it since they figured out it was easier to beat up the little guy and steal his daily catch that it was to hunt for themselves.. Now the bullies want control of the entire world instead of just a business district (Chicago mob style) or a village (Warlords)
Nothing has changed except the size of the playing field and the method used for scaring people into submission.
“By recent standards, we have just had what could be called a very cold winter and I wanted to see if this was just another coincidence or statistically robust,” said lead author Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at the University of Reading, UK.”
He said the magic word, “robust”. Shields up!
The correlation between the use of that word and the ferocity of support for the opposing position is robust.
John Trigge (00:49:25) :
It’s obvious we have a different sun down here. Up there, their sun goes from left to right across the sky, unlike our proper right to left!
Their moon is upside-down as well!
No doubt these unpredictable solar cycles which have a large impact on UK climate are correctly modeled in the Met Office GCMs, which forecast a warm winter for the UK last year and have overestimated UK temps in nine out the last ten years.
No doubt Mann will use this to defend the validity of his stick.
A convenient explanation for an inconvenient fact, namely Europe is not getting warmer.
Obviously, this theory will require years of diligent study and consequential grant funding increases.
Dr. Hathaway’s two observations may not be contradictory because he is referencing the solar conveyer at two different locations. The quote from the first NASA report which should have been included in this article is the following:
Quote:
“Normally, the conveyor belt moves about 1 meter per second—walking pace,” says Hathaway. “That’s how it has been since the late 19th century.” In recent years, however, the belt has decelerated to 0.75 m/s in the north and 0.35 m/s in the south. “We’ve never seen speeds so low.”
In 2006 Dr. Hathaway was observing a high level of asymmetry between the northern and southern hemispheres of the sun as measured by the speeds of the respective solar conveyers. So why is this important? The southern hemisphere of the sun continues in a quest state while the northern hemisphere is exhibiting increased activity relative to the south.
On Dr. Hathaway’s website there are several solar butterfly diagrams which I would like to call to your attention. First there is the classic long-term solar butterfly diagram based on the daily sunspot area which suggests diminished activity in the southerner hemisphere during this cycle; both the GIF and PDF files can be expanded for better viewing of the current cycle.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/BFLY.pdf
There is a solar butterfly diagram of recent activity but it is too small to be of any real value.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly_recent.gif
In addition to solar butterfly diagrams based on the daily sunspot area, Dr, Hathaway also maintains a solar butterfly diagram based on solar magnetic activity and it is here where things become interesting; unfortunately this diagram was last updated on January 4, 2010.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/magbfly.jpg
I would very much like to see an update of this diagram over the last three months as it suggests a magnetic asymmetry in the sun which was not observed in Solar Cycles 22 and 23. The sun may not be returning to “normal” as much as some people would like it to.
I would also be interested in any hemisphere asymmetry in the recent L&P observations. Unfortunately the publically available data doesn’t track by sunspot number although a number can be inferred from some observation dates.
Michael Ronayne
Nutley, NJ
IF CORRECT, even on a European scale only for the next 100 years, this is very interesting for the EU policy on climate change.
The EU bureaucrats has been to the forefront in pushing the climate change agenda on behalf of its citizens with major cross subsidies of green technologies and higher taxes on carbon fuels.
But if the study is shown to be correct, Why should Europeans try to reduce production of CO2 when doing so will have no or minimal impact on their climate.
Furthermore given that Greenland would remain deeply frozen as well for the next 100 years due to this regional change, the risk of rising sea levels for developing or other countries would be low to non-existent.
Given that the Peak oil doomsayers project that fossil fuels will be depleted by the end of the 21st century, then the production of CO2 from these depleting fuels could if anything have a slightly mitigating impact on the solar cooling.
Plenty of time then to develop renewable energy sources that do not involve taxes and scaremongering.
Again though only if the deductions are correct (it could just have been an unusually cold winter).
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/21dec_cycle24/
Lockwood starting to appear to come on board. What next, Mann, Jones, Briffa or even Svalgaard?
We do live in interesting times.
Meanwhile the Sun remains blank, 6 days and counting.
The real question s not what is happening but how do you tax it. Taxing the sun seems to lack PC but who knows maybe that is next.
Lockwood said THAT??? I can’t believe a purported climate expert would say that maritime air is clean. Obviously the guy has never watched a car disappear from rust or battle the constant filmy windows that those who live next to the ocean have to deal with.
Catlin update: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1265734/Pictured-Arctic-Survey-team-escape-disaster-ice-cracks-tent.html
I have noticed that much was written since early 2009 about the impending SC 24 but have seen nothing of substance since. Is it that, despite all we learned about previous cycles over the past 40 years using the latest technological gizmos, we cannot predict or explain accurately what we are seeing now because it is part of a longer cycle and our current base line is too small? I’m confused (more so than I normally am).
Steven Goddard–the “prognosticators” sure got that one wrong! Note that your reference predicing a strong Cycle 24 is circa 2006, way before they had a clue what this next cycle was/is going to do.
I’m now reading where, at the rate the current cycle is going, the intensity might be only half what they predicted four years ago. They can’t predict solar cycles any better than they can predict weather a month out, or climate 100 years out.
pgosselin (04:11:01) :
And now this!
Iceland volcano erupts…
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/iceland-volcano-brings-floods-travel-chaos-to-europe/story-e6frf7lf-1225854273572
Today’s MODIS shows the plume heading over to Norway:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?T101051135
Is this Gaiaesque performance irrlevalent?
…-
“Ash from Icelandic volcano grounds flights across northern Europe”
“The wind is blowing the ash to the east,” Hjordis Gudmundsdottir of the Icelandic Airport Authority told AFP, adding: “It’s amazing really.”
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2909631
Stephen, you say the atmosphere warms and expands under solar mediated conditions and that this causes a change in upward air flow. I question the mathematical strength of this expansion to do this. Just estimating, I fail to see how a very tiny solar mediated expansion of the stratosphere can influence the troposphere with such a magnitude of change in density that columns of air originating at the surface of the Earth reach higher. That is not to say that columns of air cannot reach higher. My hunch is that this happens within the troposphere-Earth coupling and is mediated by Earth bound pressure gradients and storm cells, which may be tied to Earth bound oscillations in such pressure gradients. We are a leaky valved planet without the additional help from some variation in solar mechanisms. And not to overuse a hated phrase, but the idea of a “tipping point” is probably a normal part of our atmosphere’s cyclic behavior. The tipping points bring us back to cold which allows us to heat up again, like the bucket garden fountain that fills the bucket up to its tipping point, only to have it tip over and start again.
Notice to all Climate Scientist:
The suns waxing and waning will only be allowed to occur over Europe. We have only permitted this to assure UK children will know what snow is. The sun will radiate at stable rate over the rest of the globe where CO2 will cause global warming.
Volcanic eruptions will only be allowed to occur where they do not exceed our estimated amount. Supervolcanic eruptions are hereby banned for the next 1000 years.
References to Arctic sea ice are banned until they reflect the Global Warming Narrative. Ice sheets are strictly prohibited from entering New York City limits.
The only areas that will be allowed to not participate in Global Warming are where there are rural unadjusted temperature data sets. However, Nasa and CRU are making sure that these obviously unimportant data sets are deleted so Global Warming will be available to everyone.
sarc/off
Did anyone see the BBC program about the Wonders of the Solar system where Brian Cox showed the Flow of Rivers is directly related to the Sun?
John V. Wright (01:18:14) :
I can’t agree with you. Harabin, Black et al are, IMHO, as far from honest as Zebra, and that’s at the end of the alphabet. The BBC gave up impartiel reporting a very long time ago. It has been taken over by liberals more liberal than the LibDems.
jinki (06:02:37) :
Which sun are you looking at?
http://spaceweather.com/index.php
The list of scientists from all over the world predicting cooler weather for the world for the next several decades continues to grow .The current El Nino will likely go neutral by May/June of this year . North and South Pacific are cooling and the PDO will likey resume its cool phase . The Arctic SST is cooling. Just some signs that confirm what all these scientists have been saying.
Various global cooling forecasts for the next 1-3 decades
William M Gray, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Atmospheric sciences, Colorado State University
“A weak global cooling began from the mid-1940’s and lasted until mid-1970’s. I predict this is what we will see in the next few decades”
http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/gray2009.pdf
Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Geology, Western Washington University.
“Setting up of the PDO cold phase assures global cooling for next approx. 30 years.
Global warming is over. Expect 30 years of global cooling, perhaps severe [2-5
Degrees F]”
He predicts several cooling scenarios
The first is similar to 1945-1977 trends, the second is similar to 1880-1915 trends and the third is similar to 1790-1820 trends.
http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork09/PowerPoint/Don_Easterbrook.ppt#630,38,Projected global temp to 2100
and
http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork09/PowerPoint/Don_Easterbrook.ppt#608,49,Implications
Syun Akasofu, Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus , University of Alaska, also founding director of ARC
He predicts the current pattern of temperature increase of 0.5C /100 years resulting from natural causes will continue with alternating cooling as well as warming phases. He shows cooling for the next cycle until about 2030/ 2040.
http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork09/PowerPoint/Syun_Akasofu.ppt#524,30,Slide%2030
Mojib Latif, Professor, Kiel University, Germany
He makes a prediction for one decade namely the next decade [2009-2019] and he basically shows the global average temperatures to decline to a range of about 14.18 C to 14.28 C from 14.39 C in 2008 [ I don’t have final figures for 2009]. I eyeballed the numbers from his graphs
He also said that you may well enter a decade or two of cooling relative to the present temperature level, however he did not indicate when any two continous decades of cooling would happen or whether the second decade after the next decade was cooling.
http://www.wcc3.org/sessions.php?session_list=PS-3
Noel Keenlyside, Dr., from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University.
Quote from BBC article
The Earth’s temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.
A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7376301.stm
Anastasios, Tsonis, Professor and Head of Atmospheric Sciences Group University of Wisconsin, US
“We have such a change now and can therefore expect 20 -30 years of cooler temperatures”
This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”
Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29469287/from/ET/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html
Henrik Svensmark , Professor DTU, Copenhagen
Indeed, global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth, on the contrary. This means that projections of future climate is unpredictable, writes Henrik Svensmark.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fjp.dk%2Fopinion%2Fkronik%2Farticle1809681.ece&sl=da&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Jarl R. AHLBECK, D.Sc., AboAkademi University, Finland
Therefore, prolonged low solar activity periods in the future may cause the domination of a strongly negative AO and extremely cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia.
http://www.factsandarts.com/articles/future-low-solar-activity-periods-may-cause-extremely-cold-winters-in-north-america-europe-and-russia/
Alexander Frolov, Dr Head of Russia’s state Meteorological Service Rosgidromet
‘From the scientific point of view, in terms of large scale climate cycles, we are in a period of cooling.
‘The last three years of low temperatures in Siberia, the Arctic and number of Russia mountainous regions prove that, as does the recovery of ice in the Arctic Ocean and the absence of warming signs in Siberia.’
Mr. Tishkov, deputy head of the Geography Institute at Russian Academy of Science, said: ‘What we have been watching recently is comparatively fast changes of climate to warming, but within the framework of an overall long-term period of cooling. This is a proven scientific fact.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1260132/Russian-weatherman-strikes-blow-climate-change-lobby-announcing-winter-Siberia-coldest-record.html#ixzz0jEmocuXH
Mike Lockwood, Professor of Space Enviornmental Physics , University of Reading, UK
The UK and continental Europe could be gripped by more frequent cold winters in the future as a result of low solar activity, say researchers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8615789.stm
jinki (06:02:37) :
Lockwood starting to appear to come on board. What next, Mann, Jones, Briffa or even Svalgaard?
We do live in interesting times.
Meanwhile the Sun remains blank, 6 days and counting.
Mann and Gavin Schmidt were on board nearly a decade ago as I pointed out earlier. See this paper
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Shindell_etal_1.pdf
From the Abstract:
Shindell et al. 2001
Shindell, D.T., G.A. Schmidt, M.E. Mann, D. Rind, and A. Waple, 2001: Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum. Science, 294, 2149-2152, doi:10.1126/science.1064363.
The Abstract reads
We examine the climate response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. Global average temperature changes are small (about 0.3° to 0.4°C) in both a climate model and empirical reconstructions. However, regional temperature changes are quite large. In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift towards the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation as solar irradiation decreases. This leads to colder temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere continents, especially in winter (1-2°C), in agreement with historical records and proxy data for surface temperatures.
Wake up people. You’re being set up for a mighty fall. If it does get a bit colder across Europe – well that’s what was expected; If not – then CO2 forcing is overcoming natural cycles. Win-Win for the AGWers.
The Sun is the sole source of energy into our Earth-atmosphere system. It is what drives the Earths atmospheric and oceanic circulation whose main role is to transport the excess heat that arrives at the equator towards the poles. Every climate scientist knows this basic truth. And that there needs be a balance between what comes in (from the sun) and what goes out (infrared radiation from the Earth and atmosphere back out to space) or else we would heat up or cool down.
The planet and our weather is very sensitive to small variations in solar input and where this input is received, otherwise we wouldn’t have gone from glacial to interglacial periods. What this study is saying (that many seem to be missing in their understanding) is that the solar activity during the last solar minimum was anomalously low (below normal). This lower than normal solar input is received by the entire planet, which will affect the transport of that incoming heat within the atmosphere. This study is focusing on how this lower than normal solar input affected atmospheric circulation what directly affect the weather in the UK during winter. That’s all the study is looking at.
>>> Stephen
>>>” more research is needed” … oh dear……….
Erm. More funding is needed….
.
From their paper…
The results presented in section 4 allow rejection of the null hypothesis, and hence colder UK winters (relative to the longer-term trend) can therefore be associated with lower open solar flux (and hence with lower solar irradiance and higher cosmic ray flux). A number of mechanisms are possible. For example, enhanced cooling through an increase in maritime clouds may have resulted from the cosmic ray flux increase [25]. Alternatively, tropospheric jet streams have been shown to be sensitive to the solar forcing of stratospheric temperatures [26]. This could occur through disturbances to the stratospheric polar vortex [27] which can propagate downwards to affect the tropospheric jets, or through the effects of tropical stratospheric temperature changes on the refraction of tropospheric eddies [28]. Interestingly, early instrumental records from the end of the 17th century indicate an increased frequency of easterly winds influencing the UK temperatures [29]. This has also been deduced from indirect proxies [30, 31], including the spatial patterns of changes in recorded harvest dates [32]. This suggests a link with the incidence of long-lived winter blocking events in the eastern Atlantic at low solar activity [33, 34]. These extensive and quasi-stationary anticyclones are characterized by a reversed meridional gradient of geopotential height and easterly winds [7, 33, 35]. Blocking episodes can persist for several weeks, leading to extended cold periods in winter as the mild maritime westerly winds are replaced by continental north-easterlies and the land surface cools under cloudless skies. In particular, long-lived Atlantic blocking events at more eastward locations have been found to be more prevalent at sunspot minimum than at higher solar activity, an asymmetry that is enhanced by the phase of the quasi-biennial oscillation, and this leads to colder winters in Europe [7]. This evidence suggests that changes in the occurrence of blocking could be acting to amplify the solar-induced perturbations to the tropospheric jet stream [26]. Blocking events have been shown to modulate the stratosphere via upward propagating planetary wave disturbances, but the magnitude, extent and lag of the correlations over Europe strongly suggest that the perturbation to the stratospheric wind pattern can, in turn, influence the blocking [35]. This feedback may be the mechanism by which solar-induced changes to the stratosphere influence European blocking events. Other evidence supports this idea. For example, changed position and frequency of blocking events may be seen as a manifestation of modes of low-frequency circulation variability which have been found to respond to solar activity [36] giving increased/decreased frequencies of easterly/westerly circulation patterns over Europe under conditions of low solar activity [37]. Winter CET values are known to be strongly modulated by the NAO [8] and modelling has shown that stratospheric trends over recent decades, along with downward links to surface, are indeed strong enough to explain much of the prominent trend in the NAO and hence regional winter climate in Europe between the 1960s and the 1990s [9]. It has been reported that geomagnetic activity rather than solar activity has a stronger statistical relationship to the NAO [38] which, given that the former is highly correlated with FS (indeed FS used here is derived from geomagnetic activity data) is consistent with the effect of FS on Central England Temperatures revealed here. Our subsequent studies (not reported here) on solar modulation of various blocking indices have confirmed previous studies [7], and we stress that this phenomenon is largely restricted to Europe and not global in extent [41].
.
On a more serious note, I m still looking for a link between solar activity and the path of the jetstreams.
This cold (N. Hem) winter was caused more by the jetstreams running more south than usual, not be a general cooling of the atmosphere. Magnetic flux will cause changes in the Earth’s magnetosphere, but can it also change the path of jetstreams?
.
Fitzy (22:05:08) :
WAS/IS funny.
How the hell did Butterlies get in this discussion, we are talking about Mermaids with slippery tails.
Everyone knows the sun is hot, that is not rocket science, but the trick is getting to Cancun and a Spring Break.
I sailed to Copenhagen and had an awesome holiday but some clown told me a short cut north of Canada. On the way home .
Anyway Captain Jack is going to Cancun, even if he has to sail the Horn and Good hope.
Some one has to look for Merminks with fishy tails.
STEPHEN PARKER (22:21:04) :
” more research is needed” oh dear……….
If they were actually studying something that had a use for making life better I wouldn’t mind sending them a bit of money. But global warming study isn’t doing much but giving the promise of raising the cost of everything. So I’m sending a bit of my money (through taxes) to find reasons to tax me more and raise the price of everything. (scratches head)
>>Michael (01:14:25) :
>>Iceland just farted on England. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help
>>myself. ROTFLMAO. Check the news.
Thats was Iceland’s way of getting its own back We closed their banks down and demanded all our money back (how, why?), so Iceland closed down our entire airspace to commercial aviation.
Quid pro quo, I presume.
.
I forgot, Aaargh. Me Mateys.
Dont tell shiela boffins, you know what they are like. Jealous like.
Mateys.
Wont be free worken girls, girls in gee strings aargh and looking for man snorkelling.
Aargh.
rbateman (23:39:49) :
Lots and lots of lag…….
One time I bought a birthday present for a friend. Some days later I gave it to him on his birthday. He was happy when he got it. He wasn’t happy on the day I bought it though. So there is no connection between me buying the present and my friend being happy because they didn’t happen at the same time.
That’s the science! Look at the data! 😉
But who done Zen and Butterfly clapping.
stevengoddard (06:01:28) :
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/21dec_cycle24/
Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one.
Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,”
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
This isn’t your father’s NASA.
What I found annoying in Lockwood’s appraisal of his study results was his unsupported assertion (assuming the report faithfully reflects his appraisal):
“Professor Lockwood was keen to stress that “blocking” only affected a limited geographical region, and would not have a widespread impact on the global climate system.
To illustrate the point, he said that while the CET record showed that this winter was the UK’s 14th coldest in 160 years, global figures listed it as the fifth warmest.
He said that one of his colleagues at the University of Reading referred to Europe as “blocking central”.”
I attribute his ‘limited regional affect’ to his limited regional look at the “blocking” affect, because there were numerous weather reports here in the US of this same “blocking” affect being the cause of a lot of the severely cold weather in the midwest and across the south, not to mention several of the east coast winter storms.
The ash cloud from the Iceland volcano is visible on Modis. The ash cloud is more significant than the description of the size of the eruption in the media.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2010105/crefl1_143.A2010105113500-2010105114000.4km.jpg
or
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?T101051135
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2010105/crefl1_143.A2010105113500-2010105114000.2km.jpg
“We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect”
Yeah, changes in solar output are only going to effect England. What is this guy smoking?
Bipolarity is between post-modern agnosticism vs. reality gnosticism, among the prophets of uncertainty and lie and men of certitude and truth, in between evil and good, darkness and ligh. The battle of the end of times.
Solar Minimum, plates movements, big earthquakes, volcanic eruptions.
All this bother over AGW when the real deal is tectonic activity picking up intensity.
Iceland’s volcanic rant is dancing a jig over the friendly EU skies well over 1,000 mi. distant. Air travel grounded.
It was a cold winter only in places where it was winter, like Siberia, Europe and the US.
Oddly enough, it was not a cold winter in the Southern Hemisphere, where it was summer.
Does anyone else have a problem with the data bases used in the article to arrive at these results?: Tree rings mixed with HadCRUT, mixed with sunspots counts, mixed with modern solar flux data, mixed with detrending adjustments, but no UHI adjustments, all to produce a conclusion of a small effect that is supposedly limited to Europe…..and robustly asserted as usual.
And what about the statement “….cosmogenic isotopes suggest an 8% chance of return to a Maunder minimum within the next 50 years…” Really?, not 7% or 9%? Or a more reasonable range of say 2 to 12%? Fancy words to cover fuzzy data forced into creative analysis producing pseudocertainty, robustly asserted.
.
If the cooling will only affect the UK and Europe, better open up those old coal pits again ‘cuz I don’t think all those windmills and solar panels going to do much good.
Fitzy, I have to say that’s probably the best comment I’ve read on the global warming stupidity in the past year.
Tilo Reber (08:03:20) :
with all due respect, changes in solar output do affect the entire planet, but will be manifested in different ways via atmospheric and oceanic circulation. The amount of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface is not equal everywhere, more is received at the tropics than at the poles, so our weather is driven by the need to redistribute this energy. I’m not an atmospheric scientist so I don’t understand all the blocking mechanisms in the atmosphere, I know some basic things like how winter in the Northern Hemisphere is dominated by high pressure over Siberia (the Siberian High), high pressure over the Beaufort Sea, low pressure on the Atlantic and Pacific sides (including Alaska and Canada). Depending on the strength and and locations of these pressure cells, ridges and troughs will form that impact the jet stream.
Surely there is going to be a link to how much input the earth receives from the sun and atmospheric circulation patterns. It would be important for science to understand exactly what happens when there is less or more solar input than normal. A study like this gives 1 view, and then what typically happens is more scientists will look into the problem, either finding a similar conclusion or a different mechanism responsible for the observed cooler UK winter temperatures. And so goes the process of scientific discovery, whether it is in climate science, space science, medicine, etc.
@Ryan Spear
“It astonishes me what these guys will stoop to. Why are they so strongly driven to behave this way???”
Follow the money.
For many centuries my ancestors passed on the myth that it was cooler in the shade. I find it to be cooler but at the same time a tradition that is hard to break. If less light comes past the clouds of the volcanic ash, Europe could be cooler. That will mess up the anamolay records. The warmistas need heat for validation.
The obvious is sinking in. The sun’s heating capacity of the earth (atmosphere) consists of two important components: The light (infra-red) component and the magnetic component, responsible for the heating of water. Water vapor is in “classical terms” a very potent greenhouse gas; its formation and distribution aropund the globe is heavily influencing the distribution of weather systems; therefore influencing the climate. The average temperature of the earth from the point of view has not changed much at all.
Steve Goddard:
I hear ya.
I think that climatologists fall into the “It’s Not the Sun Stupid” category, on the whole, because of their predilection for studying atmospheric events, and the competition for funding among solar and atmospheric scientists and others is ever paramount.
There is a lot more money to be made in CO2 as the culprit. Although Leif, a most honorable scientist, has mostly been above the politics of the fray, I believe that he is still somewhat dependent on seeing the atmosphere as the predominant driver, when we all intuitively recognize that the sun is the boss of us! [Just my opinionated observation]
I point out two fallacies that may or may not be operative:
1) A fallacy about our perception of the suns variability. Surely in Europe, where taxes approach 70%, a 2 or 3% variation in various wavelengths from solar highs to lows does not seem like much. But, without the sun as the center of our solar system, what would earth’s temperature be? Ignoring tidal or radioactive decay for a moment, the answer is -270°C or thereabouts. Earth’s temperature, let’s take it at 300°C higher than that (30°) for ease of calculation. Work with me here, please. 0.1% of this amount is 0.3°C. A fluctuation of 2% is 6°C! This number accounts for between one and two standard deviations from what we GUESS are normal temp. boundaries over the past millenia.
2) Correlation vs. causality – We are an impatient species. We look for solar effects to show some statistical trend within a year or ten [see John Finn et.al. @ (01:05:53)]. However, we know that there are many thermal sinks on land and deep oceans that resist changes that would be instantaneous otherwise. The sea gobbles up excess heat and spits it out at a later time, such as the PDO, farting excess heat out of the atmosphere when it needs to, as one example. The Coriolis effect distributes heat pole to pole. The poles seesaw. Etc.
We all have our axes to grind, and our livelihoods to ensure. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we keep the honor of science at the forefront of our behaviors. I appreciate the insight of the WUWT blogs very much, keep the back-and-forth going!
stevengoddard (08:15:19) :
Truth is stranger than fiction rides again.
They forecast Spring for Winter, Summer for Spring and Barbecue for Summer.
A hockey-sticked forecast.
Not happening.
There is, however, a whole lot of shakin’ going on.
So, it’s the sun…..except that it only has a regional effect….except that this last harsh winter also occurred across North America and several other regions…and the (Land Based) Global Mean Temp record is a construct of ALL regions stitched together to represent a global mean. Perfectly clear now.
Clarifying….Land Mass regional temps extrapolated across vast open oceans where no record exists.
All very interesting and a good discussion. I think we do need to recognize that Lockwood et al. are only reporting what they found and have not attempted to extrapolate it further then the data is believed to represent. Pielke Sr. has been advocating for years that regional things must be taken first regionally and that those things can influence the whole. This work and many of your comments strongly reinforce the idea that we don’t know way more then we think we do. Hershel’s hypothesis is not yet falsified and stands. Now we need to stop speculating and understand the processes behind it before we run off making predictions that will only embarrass the predictor in the future.
Taxing the Sun is more difficult than taxing innocent people that has been told that they are responsible and that they will have to pay, for the Sun’s action?
I can see how solar physicists got fooled into thinking the sun was not a player in the climate change debate. Plotting the HadCrut 350 years of DJF, the linear trend is +1.5C in that period. Plotting the trend with a polynomial fit (more likely for a recovery from LIA) gives 1.25C over 350 years. It can be seen that when the AGW climatideologists were examining this unimpressive temp rise they could see that they had their work cut out for them. This couldn’t be allowed to stand. Moreover, when someone drew to their attention a book or two from the middle ages on proper trimming of Scottish grape vines for maximum yield, they realized that the MWP had to be pushed down below today’s temps and the little Ice Age stretched forward to tilt the line back more. It turned out that given the variability of tree growth in a given grove due to microclimatic affects, one could select trees to bend the lines all they needed and when these pesky trees showed “divergence” after 1960, heck, they could replace this stretch with downtown thermometer records. Solar physicists were provided with this handcraft and saw that the sun had no effect. After the CRUemails, they have come back out of the woodwork to find that yes there is, indeed, a clear effect.
I got a chuckle from spaceweather.com today:
Maybe I missed it but exactly what is the mechanism that affects the AO but not other oscillations?
Seems more likely that we’re seeing the effects of the El Nino combined with other ocean heat releasing phenomena. If that is the case then this effect is truly global and we may just be seeing its initial phases.
{stevengoddard (08:15:19) :
It was a cold winter only in places where it was winter, like Siberia, Europe and the US.
Oddly enough, it was not a cold winter in the Southern Hemisphere, where it was summer}
Steve, Here in Vancouver, we had of course a very warm Jan/Feb/midMarch.
But the temps then dropped below seasonal normals, snowed like crazy for a couple of weeks (Whistler had a record Dec. snowfall, and now it looks like they will record their second snowiest winter), and voila, we are now up to 85% of our normal snowpack, so the vaunted water worries of just 2 months ago are basically gone!
We have just gotten back to our seasonal temps these past few days. Funny how some think that like the swallows at Capastranno, climate is the same monotonous cycle year after year…..
Bill Illis (07:50:27) :Volcanic eruptions are more frecuent at solar minimums (along with big earthquakes), like the VEI=6 Huaynaputina Volcano during the Maunder Minimum. If you enable Google-Earth for showing USGS information on earthquakes, plate tectonics, volcanoes, you´ll see action everywhere.
In Island are expecting the eruption of the Katta Volcano, after the recent eruptions of the other volcanoes. Here a video:
http://www.3tv.cl/index.php?m=video&v=11361
jeff brown (07:11:08) :
The planet and our weather is very sensitive to small variations in solar input and where this input is received, otherwise we wouldn’t have gone from glacial to interglacial periods.
The orbital changes causes variations a hundred times larger than solar activity. So the planet is not very sensitive to solar input, other than what we would expect from simple energy balance. A rough calculation shows why. The difference between glacial and interglacial temperature is about 5 degrees. A hundred times less than that is 0.05 degrees, which is about the difference between solar min and max.
k so you get a link and delete me anywayz, kthx, np, censorship alive and well, jeez i must be far out
Maybe the quick burst of activity for the last few months was the peak of SC24 … downhill from here.
bubbagyro (08:44:13) :
Earth’s temperature, let’s take it at 300°C higher than that (30°) for ease of calculation. Work with me here, please. 0.1% of this amount is 0.3°C. A fluctuation of 2% is 6°C!
The percentage change in temperature is 1/4 of the percentage change of radiation, so a fluctuation in radiation of 2% means a change of temperature of 2%/4 = 0.5%, or 1.5°C.
Yes Leif of course you are correct that orbital variations cause much larger solar input variability than the 11 year solar cycle. Otherwise we could be heading for another ice age 🙂
But given your expertise in the area of solar variability, do you think the changes in recent solar activity will be detectable in climate and weather patterns? From my knowledge solar variability explains less than 10% of the observed warming over the last 150 years. I would like to know where the other 90% comes from. GHGs certainly have been implicated, but what are the other factors?
This is how a proper science journalist picks Lockwood’s paper apart.
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/817-link-between-low-sun-and-low-temperatures.html
JonSelf (09:12:20) :
Very proper, indeed.
Jeff:
“with all due respect, changes in solar output do affect the entire planet, but will be manifested in different ways via atmospheric and oceanic circulation.”
Really doesn’t matter. If a decrease in solar output brings about a temperature decrease in England, it will do the same accross the rest of the planet. Temporary variations in regions will not change the fact that the temperature anomaly for the whole planet will change, not just England. Furthermore, even regional variations tend to be temporary and seldom last more than a decade or two.
JonSelf (09:12:20) :
This is how a proper science journalist picks Lockwood’s paper apart.
While generally correctly done, there are some inaccuracies [some due to the literature, not the journalist]. It is stated in the figure caption that the open flux [before 1900] is derived from the sunspot number [correct], but then later that “They use the open solar flux measurement of solar activity which by using historic observations of geomagnetic effects can be reconstructed back to about 1700”. This is in conflict with the above, and is not what was done. We can use geomagnetic data [back to 1835] to infer the open flux [better term is Heliospheric Magnetic Field – as not all the flux is ‘open’] and it does not show any marked difference between the 19th and 20th centuries as the first Figure claims. See Fgure 10 in http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric%20Magnetic%20Field%201835-2009.pdf
Lockwood is still under the AGW hammer as can be surmised that even his thesis that an inactive sun cools us off has the caveat that this only affects UK and continental Europe, not the rest of the world! Wow the sun is not only effective it is selective. But hold on here. The LIA extended beyond Northern EU: Please excuse the lack of links (they are easily googled). This is a paragraph of an arcticle I wrote for a newspaper in 2007 that rejected it:
“…The first time the Thames froze in recorded history was in 1607 and the last in 1814. In 1780, New York harbour froze and people walked on the ice from Manhattan to Staten Island. One third of Finns died of starvation and famine was rampant throughout Europe in the middle of the Little Ice Age when the growing season was shortened. In 1622, the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn estuary in Istanbul froze. In 1836, snow fell in Sydney Australia, an event never before or after seen by European settlers. In the mid 17th Century, glaciers advanced in Switzerland down into the valleys crushing numerous villages. Permanent snow for many years occurred on mountains in Ethiopia and in Mauritania where it hadn’t been seen before by modern man. Even Hollywood’s disaster extravaganzas fall short of this end-of-the-world like drama….”
Thanks, Leif. But 1.5° is a lot of heat. That is, of course ignoring concomitant effects of increased solar magnetic shield, which decreases cosmic rays, which decreases cloud cover, which decreases temp. further. Add in other possible asymmetric terrestrial amplification of radiation from a putative magnetic field lensing effect, or other factors we don’t understand yet.
This, IMO, is a true “forcing”, unlike the fantastic forcings attributed to CO2, because the incoming net increased heat has to be distributed away from earth by hypothetical weak mechanisms that may have century long sinusoidal variation.
JonSelf (09:12:20) :
This is how a proper science journalist picks Lockwood’s paper apart.
It is also clear from the Figures shown that the open flux now is back to where it was 110 years ago, while temperatures [top panel] are not. So the Sun does not seem to be a major driver here [except in Central England, apparently 🙂 ].
bubbagyro (09:49:17) :
Thanks, Leif. But 1.5° is a lot of heat. That is, of course ignoring concomitant effects of increased solar magnetic shield, which decreases cosmic rays, which decreases cloud cover, which decreases temp. further.
Except that the cosmic ray flux has not changed [apart from the obvious solar cycle effect] over the past 2/3 century.
John Finn (01:05:53) :
“I think people might be reading more into this than they should. Lockwood is not suggesting that solar activity is going to increase earth’s temperature – just that it may trigger the (well-known) cycles which affect ‘regional’ climate. Note that although it was a cold winter in *some* parts of the NH, the earth, as a whole, was particularly warm.”
Excellent! So the sun activity as described by Lockwood is really so specific that it distinguishes where to affect the -well known to boot!- regional climate! And Lockwood & Johnny Finn can write this with a straight face!
Man what’s next? The solar cycle made my garden bloom before yours too? Next it will also discriminate between good CO2 citizens and bad ones perhaps? Lockwood’s credibility is zero. Academics are simply trying to explain and own after the fact what Piers Corbyn was able to predict with accuracy, i.e. the present winter events.
Tilo Reber (09:33:31) :
Tilo, that is simply not true, for if it was then global warming would be global. Temperature is redistributed around the planet by the atmosphere and the ocean. Then too the warming in the 1930s/1940s would be global, but actually it was in the eastern Arctic.
I appreciate the comments from Jeff Brown and bubbagyro and Leif too but this scenario of warming is highly political. Govts. must believe in global warming to justify the taxes that are levied. It really doesn’t matter if the science is right or wrong. The science used will that to justify new taxes. This whole scenario is just a con which govts. will buy into to justify new taxation. The days of govt. for the people are long gone. Govt. is for the elite and they will make money from it. Yes, there have have been honest politicians in the past – I do not subscribe to the view that all politicians are corrupt. There have been many decent and upright people in politics. But right now we are dealing with a bunch of swindlers – some are malicious and some and are just stupid. How many of them have a science degree?
It really doesn’t matter. You are being taken for a ride and you will be hammered with your taxes. There is one prime mover of the global temperature and that is the Sun. The way things are going, we should be preparing for the next ice age, not global warming.
Michael (01:14:25) :
Iceland just farted on England. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. ROTFLMAO. Check the news.
Actually, Scotland (oh and Ireland)! But close(ish)!
Lockwood is making a “yes, but” argument.
Yes, the Sun impacts climate, but only in Europe.
“Yes, but” arguments are usually in actuality last ditch arguments.
Beware of those in science who claim absolute certainty in the face of uncertainty about issues that are problematic — it’s likely they are simply attempting to be a shaman or worse, a charlatan.
New Scientist – 12 April 2010
“Sun rules Earth’s mysterious ‘night shining’ clouds
The researchers suspect that the amount of ultraviolet light Earth receives from the sun explains the link. The sun’s emissions of UV light are not uniform, so as it rotates UV-bright regions move in and out of view of Earth”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627554.300-sun-rules-earths-mysterious-night-shining-clouds.html
Leif:
True, but “apart from the obvious solar cycle effect” says that cosmic ray effects are apparent and do have an effect at least in fast solar cycles, but the effect over a Milankovich time frame is still unknown. I am thinking hundreds or thousand year stacked sinusoidal influences. And this is just one issue.
Grumpy Old man (10:26:59) :
There is one prime mover of the global temperature and that is the Sun.
The Sun is not the mover of small fluctuations of temperature around that grand average that is indeed determined by the Sun. Changes [primarily caused by Jupiter’s eccentric orbit] of the orbital parameters of the Earth cause glaciations, even if the Sun were absolutely constant. The climate system is not in equilibrium and therefore [as all such systems] has oscillations all on its own].
#Mike Lockwood : The UK and continental Europe could be gripped by more frequent cold winters in the future as a result of low solar activity, say researchers.
When will the honourable Mr. Lockwood discover that he is living on an island, at the edge of a big ocean basin and the North Sea, that are used to store a lot of incoming sun ray and deliver it at another time, but only according the rate of solar activities admitted, either high or low. My suggestion to Dr. Lockwood is to define “Climate as the continuation of the oceans “ , http://www.whatisclimate.com/ and he would not question that sun activities and air temperatures are closely related.
bubbagyro (10:30:41) :
but “apart from the obvious solar cycle effect” says that cosmic ray effects are apparent
What I meant was that at each solar minimum, the cosmic ray flux that we have observed since the early 1950s have returned to the same same [averaged over many stations – that can show small individual differences], so there has been no trend to explain any temperature trends.
E.g. http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux.png
or Figures 7 and 8 in http://www.leif.org/research/Historical%20Solar%20Cycle%20Context.pdf
wws (04:41:08)
I am amazed by the continued claim that the effects of the Maunder Minimum were “european only”. This has always been a bit of handwaving to try and help explain away the MWP – if they admitted that the Maunder effects were global, they would have to admit that the sun affects global temperatures. No, no, can’t do that.
From http://www.co2science.org
Medieval Warm Period Project
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 819 individual scientists from 487 separate research institutions in 43 different countries … and counting! This issue’s Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Smreczynski Straw Lake, Tatra Mountains, Southern Poland. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project’s database,
ArndB 10:31:47
I want to thank you for your witty insight of two decades ago. That one phrase opened a lot of my eyes.
==================
I suspect maybe, Leif, a correlative trend will never be found, because so many different processes are responding to the many orders of energy transfer from the sun. And yet, it integrates.
================
Gary Pearse (09:42:15) :
This is a paragraph of an arcticle I wrote for a newspaper in 2007 that rejected it:
“…The first time the Thames froze in recorded history was in 1607 and the last in 1814.
Perhaps it was rejected because it’s wrong. You may be confusing the first recorded Frost Fair with the first recorded freezing of the Thames. The Thames has been frozen on several occasions throughout the last 2000 years – even during the MWP.
Antonio San (09:56:09) :
John Finn (01:05:53) :
“I think people might be reading more into this than they should. Lockwood is not suggesting that solar activity is going to increase earth’s temperature – just that it may trigger the (well-known) cycles which affect ‘regional’ climate. Note that although it was a cold winter in *some* parts of the NH, the earth, as a whole, was particularly warm.”
Excellent! So the sun activity as described by Lockwood is really so specific that it distinguishes where to affect the -well known to boot!- regional climate! And Lockwood & Johnny Finn can write this with a straight face!
What is it you find hard to understand? Lockwood belives that changes in solar activity affect circulation patterns which will result in a ‘blocking’ of the warm atlantic air which ensures winters in the UK and Europe are milder than they would otherwise be.
Do ask questions if you’re not sure about anything.
James F. Evans (10:27:39) :
Lockwood is making a “yes, but” argument.
Yes, the Sun impacts climate, but only in Europe.
He is not saying that at all. He is saying that low solar activity will trigger a shift in atmospheric circulation patterns which may cause cooling over western europe. The same shift may cause warming elsewhere. A bit like what we’ve experienced during the recent winter.
David Jones (10:48:32) :
wws (04:41:08)
I am amazed by the continued claim that the effects of the Maunder Minimum were “european only”. This has always been a bit of handwaving to try and help explain away the MWP – if they admitted that the Maunder effects were global, they would have to admit that the sun affects global temperatures. No, no, can’t do that.
“They” have already admitted that – several years ago. I don’t suppose it’ll hurt to post the link again:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Shindell_etal_1.pdf
Shindell et al. 2001
Shindell, D.T., G.A. Schmidt, M.E. Mann, D. Rind, and A. Waple, 2001: Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum. Science, 294, 2149-2152, doi:10.1126/science.1064363.
The Abstract reads
We examine the climate response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. Global average temperature changes are small (about 0.3° to 0.4°C) in both a climate model and empirical reconstructions. However, regional temperature changes are quite large. In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift towards the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation as solar irradiation decreases. This leads to colder temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere continents, especially in winter (1-2°C), in agreement with historical records and proxy data for surface temperatures.
The problem is that there has been very little change in solar activity over the past ~50 years, so we need something else to explain the late 20th century warming.
John Finn (11:50:13) :
Shindell, D.T., G.A. Schmidt, M.E. Mann, D. Rind, and A. Waple, 2001: Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum.
That old paper used the invalid Hoyt&Schatten TSI reconstruction and should not be referenced any more.
Are Livingstone and Penns sunspots still on course to “disappear” in the next decade
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/03sep_sunspots/
Can’t find anything new since this from nasa
John Finn (11:50:13) :
The problem is that there has been very little change in solar activity over the past ~50 years, so we need something else to explain the late 20th century warming.
The authors (Lockwood et al ) raise interesting problems in the last paragraph.
Lastly, one can invert the title of this paper and ask `Does the occurrence of lower/higher solar activity make a cold/warm winter in Europe more likely (than the climatological mean)?’ Our results strongly suggest that it does, which has implications for seasonal predictions
Implications are then are how do we distinguish between the ‘agw” forcing signal and what seems to be perturbation to dissipative process’s by dynamical effects,eg Egrova et al 2004
Atmospheric effects of the solar irradiance variations
during 11-year solar cycle are investigated using a chemistryclimate
model. The model is enhanced by a more detailed
parameterization of the oxygen and ozone UV heating rates.
The simulated ozone response to the imposed solar forcing
shows a positive correlation in the tropical stratosphere and a
negative correlation in the tropical mesosphere, in agreement
with theoretical expectation. The model suggests an
acceleration of the polar night jets in both hemispheres and
a dipole structure in the temperature changes at high latitudes.
The model results also show an alteration of the tropospheric
circulation air resulting in a statistically significant warming
of 1 K in the annual mean surface air temperature over North
America and Siberia. This supports the idea of a solar-climate
connection
Rozanov et al. (2005) in a CCM examined the effect of continuous, low intensity, electron precipitation on the atmosphere. They predicted that the EPP{NOx increases would result in up to 30 % annual ozone decreases in the polar stratosphere. This would lead to cooling of the polar middle stratosphere by up to 2 K, with detectable changes in the surface air temperature (SAT).
Questions arise.
Finn:
Little changes? I thought we were on the verge of putting soot on the north pole to stop the imminent ice age?
Average temp. changes are small? By models? Reconstructions?
Are you being sarcastic? Is 50 years enough to establish any earth-solar system correlations? This is the crux of man’s problem with climate, IMO. He is the center of all things but cannot see the big picture of geologic time scales.
The measurers of all things climate have had their pinkies on the weighing balances. One recent development I have looked into is the measurement of the amount of CO2 in millennia past. Ice core bubbles were examined and CO2 measured. The samples were lower than some imagined – until a group at Scripps found that CO2 permeated solid ice slowly, but inexorably.
I knew this had to be true from basic physical chemistry, that all gases diffuse through solids, but the 2008 Scripps work was the first to demonstrate that principle with CO2 and ice.
So the magnitude was off, is that it? But the trend was there, correct, and current CO2 levels are nearing unprecedented? Not at all. Fick’s first and second laws of diffusion state that permeation depends on initial concentration of the thing. Rate of diffusion, then, is the differential of concentration over time, dc/dt. What that means is that a higher concentration of CO2 in ice initially depletes faster than a lower concentration would, so that diffusion, given enough time, equilibrates until the final concentration of the outside is reached. So, given enough time, all Vostok ice samples will have the same concentration as the atmosphere outside, more accurately stated, approach the outside concentration as a limit, in a non-linear regression.
Now, this was all obvious to me, as a physical chemist. But not to the climatologists who were writing peer-reviewed paper after paper expounding on the ice-bubble data showing the past CO2 was the same as today. What were they paying attention to when they studied basic physics in high school and college?
John Finn (11:31:31) :
Gary Pearse (09:42:15) :
This is a paragraph of an arcticle I wrote for a newspaper in 2007 that rejected it:
“…The first time the Thames froze in recorded history was in 1607 and the last in 1814.
Perhaps it was rejected because it’s wrong. You may be confusing the first recorded Frost Fair with the first recorded freezing of the Thames. The Thames has been frozen on several occasions throughout the last 2000 years – even during the MWP”
I guess I trusted other’s work and would agree to stand corrected if you could direct me to information on the earlier freezing of the Thames. I don’t feel so bad knowing that so many high profile scientists appear to also have erred on even such a matter as the existence of the MWP. I do think your remark is unnecessarily unkind in saying that “perhaps it was rejected because it was wrong….” Since the CRU tapes, we see that not only did the leading climate scientists get it wrong, they even cooked the science.
[quote Leif Svalgaard (10:46:05) :
bubbagyro (10:30:41) :
What I meant was that at each solar minimum, the cosmic ray flux that we have observed since the early 1950s have returned to the same same [averaged over many stations – that can show small individual differences], so there has been no trend to explain any temperature trends.
E.g. http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux.png
or Figures 7 and 8 in http://www.leif.org/research/Historical%20Solar%20Cycle%20Context.pdf
[/quote]
Dr. Svalgaard, you’re comparing local changes in cosmic rays to global changes in temperature.
I though it might be interesting to compare local changes in cosmic rays to local changes in clouds (as cosmic rays are said to directly affect clouds, not temperature).
The results do show a trend and the trends are in the same direction.
Southern Extra Tropics
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/magicj/SoExt1.jpg?t=1271362270
South Pole
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/magicj/SoPol1.jpg?t=1271362266
Northern Extra Tropics
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/magicj/NorExt1.jpg?t=1271362278
North Pole
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/magicj/NorPole1.jpg?t=1271362273
Now if you look closely at those graphs, you’ll notice that in the 2000s you’ll see cosmic rays going up without clouds going up. So I took a look at water vapor during the same time. It’s going down, apparently preventing clouds from increasing with cosmic rays. The sole exception to this is the North Pole.
South Extra Tropics w/ Water Vapor
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/magicj/SoExt2.jpg?t=1271362268
South Pole w/ Water Vapor
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/magicj/SoPol2.jpg?t=1271362265
Northern Extra Tropics w/ Water Vapor
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/magicj/NorExt2.jpg?t=1271362276
North Pole w/ Water Vapor
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/magicj/NorPol2.jpg?t=1271362274
Sorry if a commenter has already said this, i didn’t read them all…
The sun’s lack of activity causes cold winters in Europe but the rest of the globe stays unaffected, says Lockwood.
Let’s just say that this sounds unlikely to me.
CRS, Dr.P.H. (22:26:17) :
this sucker is nowhere near to being out of its minimum!! I think it’s broken but good!!
Well, a wee bit out 🙂
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
———-
Hah!! I’m in the process of writing a science fiction novel called “Return to Stockholm,” about the travels of a young, handsome astrophysicist named Leif who travels the earth, providing guidance as the planet reels from a dimming sun and slips into a new ice age!
I’m having a tough time on the romance parts though….Pachuri is a tough act to follow!
Thanks, Leif!
Ok, i just repeated what others said and because it’s so good i also repeat this link:
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/817-link-between-low-sun-and-low-temperatures.html
which talks about the weakness of the conclusion.
magicjava (13:24:15)
I’m not qualified to assess the quality of your data but it is very convenient for me.
While the sun was more active and the ocean surfaces warm there were more clouds and more water vapour (faster hydrological cycle)
With the sun starting to get less active and the ocean surfaces cooling we see less clouds and less water vapour (slower hydrological cycle).
The consequent disjunction with cosmic rays seems to falsify the Svensmark proposal and of course there is also now a growing disjunction between temperatures and CO2 quantities. During the warming spell the correlation between cosmic rays and the rising temperatures appears to have been coincidental and easily reversed subsequently.
So my idea about the speed of the hydrological cycle varying to balance out disequilibria between oceanic and solar forcings appears to be holding whilst other ideas fall by the wayside.
Cassandra King (23:55:42) :
==============================
Well said!
Chris
Norfolk Virginia USA
Leif Svalgaard (12:23:02) :
John Finn (11:50:13) :
Shindell, D.T., G.A. Schmidt, M.E. Mann, D. Rind, and A. Waple, 2001: Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum.
That old paper used the invalid Hoyt&Schatten TSI reconstruction and should not be referenced any more.
I know, but my point was to show that Gavin Schmidt and Mike Mann etc were perfectly prepared to embrace the solar-climate link. The fact that the link may not exist is as damaging to the AGW case as it is to the sceptics case.
Gary Pearse (13:21:04) :
I guess I trusted other’s work and would agree to stand corrected if you could direct me to information on the earlier freezing of the Thames. I don’t feel so bad knowing that so many high profile scientists appear to also have erred on even such a matter as the existence of the MWP. I do think your remark is unnecessarily unkind in saying that “perhaps it was rejected because it was wrong….” Since the CRU tapes, we see that not only did the leading climate scientists get it wrong, they even cooked the science.
Sorry for the apparent tone of the remark.
If you google “thames frozen over” you should get a number of links. The Wikipaedia link actually mentions the first and last Frost Fairs in 1608 and 1814 respectively. However it also states that “One of the earliest accounts of the Thames freezing comes from AD 250”
The londonline link, i.e. http://www.londononline.co.uk/history/thames/3/ gives a history of thames freezing events which should be reasonably reliable.
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing.
John Finn your description of atmospheric patterns needs updating. Ask if you don’t know.
Stephen Parker.
You should always say “more research is needed” at the end of a paper. You are going to apply for a new research grant, more laboratory space, more post-grad research assistants (at least 4 of them must be Chinese or Korean) and air fares and hotel fees for you and the two prettiest research assistants at international conferences. You can’t do that if you give the implication that the problem is solved.
1st. Let’s put aside that I don’t hold great store with the whole Global mean temperature thing.
Having put that aside, it appears that the apparent connection between Solar cycles & mean average temperatures started to diverge mid 20th century.
What else started to diverge from mean average temperatures about then? It’s on the tip of my tongue but I can’t quite place it.
DaveE.
The Maunder Minimum was cold. Is there a correlation? Probably.
Here is the WUWT link for the battle of the graphs
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/08/the-medieval-warm-period-linked-to-the-success-of-machu-picchu-inca/
Stephen Wilde (15:09:11) : “While the sun was more active and the ocean surfaces warm there were more clouds”
I think you have this the wrong way round.
DirkH (14:35:36) : “Sorry if a commenter has already said this, i didn’t read them all…”
Me too.
I don’t think much of this Lockwood paper. It goes through a whole list of possible mechanisms – clouds, cosmic rays, jet streams, etc – and then singles out one way of looking at it (without any apparent justification) which can be tied into “blocking events” which make the whole thing local to Europe.
But given that the cold hit North America and much of Asia at the same time, I would suggest that they have made the wrong pick.
John Finn (15:39:43) : “The fact that the [solar-climate] link may not exist is as damaging to the AGW case as it is to the sceptics case.”
Zero=zero. The solar-climate link plays no significant role at all in the AGW case, so its absence would make no difference. At one level, a solar-climate link would also make no difference to the sceptics case, which is that AGW is grotesquely exaggerated through bad science, cherry-picking, etc. However, a proven solar-climate link at a meaningful level would explicitly disprove AGW because it would show much of the IPCC Report and the climate models to be incorrect – not that any further disproof is really needed.
Again, to remind us all. The causalities are all subject to varied interpretations, but the main issue to focus on is that the AGW hypothesis is bankrupt, and the consensus has shifted to the skeptical side, where science should always dwell, anyway.
Three legs of the AGW stool:
1) The earth is abnormally warm and getting warmer – this has not been proven. Most new data show that we are within statistical probability of the “norm” whatever that is. Theorists have not proved their case, and the burden of proof is on them.
2) CO2 is a driver of climate change (previously called global warming) – this has been tested and proven wanting. CO2 has been higher when the earth was colder, and CO2 has lagged temperature. Theorists have not proved their case, and the burden of proof is on them.
3) Man’s CO2 generation is the cause – this is the most absurd, since human generation is miniscule, and CO2 is anyway not a strong greenhouse gas compared to most others. Theorists have not proved their case, and the burden of proof is on them.
Any one of these, proven false, has falsified the entire house-of-cards hypothesis that mankind is causing the earth to warm. Each step has been falsified. Unfortunately for the alarmist, all legs of the stool are off, and his bum is on the turf.
[quote Stephen Wilde (15:09:11) :]
magicjava (13:24:15)
I’m not qualified to assess the quality of your data but it is very convenient for me.
[/quote]
The data is correct. Or, at the very least, I’m representing it correctly.
The water vapor vapor and cloud data is from the ISCCP website.
http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/
I’ve processed their equal area grid products into UAH-like regions.
The Southern Extra Tropics cosmic ray data is for Hermanus, South Africa and is provided by North-West University, South Africa.
http://www.puk.ac.za/physics/data/
The Northern Extra Tropics cosmic ray data is for Climax, CO and is provided by The University of New Hampshire.
ftp://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/DailyAverages.1951-.txt
All other cosmic ray data is provided by The Bartol Research Institute at The University of Delaware.
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/
All of it will be released in spreadsheet format in my Climate Scientist Starter Kit, Version 2.0, which I hope to have ready around the end of the month.
[/quote]
While the sun was more active and the ocean surfaces warm there were more clouds and more water vapour (faster hydrological cycle)
With the sun starting to get less active and the ocean surfaces cooling we see less clouds and less water vapour (slower hydrological cycle).
[/quote]
It’s an interesting idea and I hope to learn more about it.
[quote]
The consequent disjunction with cosmic rays seems to falsify the Svensmark proposal and of course there is also now a growing disjunction between temperatures and CO2 quantities. During the warming spell the correlation between cosmic rays and the rising temperatures appears to have been coincidental and easily reversed subsequently.
[/quote]
I don’t know if it falsifies it, but it may have to be modified to take the amount of locally available water vapor into account. Which only makes sense. You can’t make clouds without water vapor, no matter how many seed particles you have.
M White (12:33:12) :
Are Livingstone and Penns sunspots still on course to “disappear” in the next decade
I think so. Here is my plot of their data updated until a few days ago:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
magicjava (13:24:59) :
I though it might be interesting to compare local changes in cosmic rays to local changes in clouds (as cosmic rays are said to directly affect clouds, not temperature).
The long-term trends of CRs at different locations can be different, but since CRs come from the Galaxy, the shorter-term wiggles from station to station are pretty much the same. http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux3.png
John Finn (15:39:43) :
The fact that the link may not exist is as damaging to the AGW case as it is to the skeptics case.
Which is why they can join in claiming it must be the Sun [sometimes, except when it is not]. Explains some of the hostility and ad-homs lopped at suggestions that perhaps the climate can have internal natural variations.
Mike Jonas (19:12:21) :
However, a proven solar-climate link at a meaningful level would explicitly disprove AGW
So it is easy to have confirmation bias: you like an idea just because it supports your idea, no matter what its inherent merits are.
Multivariate coupling involving ENSO (El Nino / Southern Oscillation), as represented by SOI (Southern Oscillation Index) [detrended & repeat-1-year-smoothed] in the following:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/SAOT_Lunar_SOI.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/SAOT_Lunar_aa_SOI.png
More details here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/VolcanoStratosphereSLAM.htm
Mike Jonas (19:12:21)
“Stephen Wilde (15:09:11) : “While the sun was more active and the ocean surfaces warm there were more clouds”
I think you have this the wrong way round.”
I’ve had another look in light of your comment Mike. There is clearly a downward step change in both water vapour (especially) and clouds around 2000 which is when I first noticed the jets starting to move back equatorward. I’ve set out that date of 2000 in several places in my writings over the past two years.
It is true that even during the warmer period back to 1983 if one applies smoothing there was a slow decline in both water vapour and clouds from 1983 to 2000 but that just suggests that the warming spell peaked early on, possibly shortly before 1983.
Ideally I’d like to see the same data presented back through the earlier cooling spell to see if the pattern holds up. Perhaps magicjava could consider that ?
Further to (01:07:18)
By “the warming spell peaked early on” I mean that the maximum power of the factors giving rise to the warming trend peaked early on. The actual peak of warming did not arrive until around 1998 with the El Nino of that year.
It’s so easy to misspeak in a forum environment 🙂
If Lockwood can’t make up his own mind, how can he ever hope to make up my mind?…
jeff brown (07:11:08) :
“The planet and our weather is very sensitive to small variations in solar input and where this input is received, otherwise we wouldn’t have gone from glacial to interglacial periods. What this study is saying (that many seem to be missing in their understanding) is that the solar activity during the last solar minimum was anomalously low (below normal). This lower than normal solar input is received by the entire planet, which will affect the transport of that incoming heat within the atmosphere…”
Good to see some common sense, Jeff, although trying to understand the way small changes to the full spectrum of solar energy output affect Earth’s energy transport systems is difficult, due to the non-linearity of the system. Global mean temperature is a very poor proxy for the complexity of our climate system.
Mike Jonas (19:12:21) :
John Finn (15:39:43) : “The fact that the [solar-climate] link may not exist is as damaging to the AGW case as it is to the sceptics case.”
Zero=zero. The solar-climate link plays no significant role at all in the AGW case, so its absence would make no difference.
So what are the “detection and attribution” studies about? The IPCC can confidently explain past climate changes by solar forcing and increased volcanic activity. They then state, quite correctly, that there has been little change in solar activity over the past ~50 years and that it is only by including ghgs that they can explain recent warming. The ‘traditional view’ of past solar activity is totally consistent with ghg-induced wartming in the late 20th century.
Ironically, a lack of solar variability (as suggested by Leif Svalgaard for example) might cause a re-think on the cause of past climate change which would significantly reduce the confidence in those attribution studies. They would have to admit they don’t know what caused past changes which might naturally lead us to the question of how do they know what caused recent changes.
John Finn (03:44:08) :
They then state, quite correctly, that there has been little change in solar activity over the past ~50 years and that it is only by including ghgs that they can explain recent warming.
My point is that solar activity now is where it was 110 years ago and the temps are not. This is usually countered by invoking ‘lags’ to explain away the non-similarity. With enough lags at suitable times, one can claim support for anything. I do not find such explanations convincing.
Leif Svalgaard (06:26:33) :
My point is that solar activity now is where it was 110 years ago and the temps are not. This is usually countered by invoking ‘lags’ to explain away the non-similarity. With enough lags at suitable times, one can claim support for anything. I do not find such explanations convincing.
Just another example of the old guard not understanding what’s really going on in the real world. Poor old Leif still thinks the recent activity is similar to 1900, which will end his career. We are in a very different place.
I too must comment on the use of the temp series in the above. I love a delicious stew (preferably made with a good beer), but it does not work as a way to combine different types of temperature measures and call it one entity (though I appreciate the effort to color code the connections in the average).
There are numerous different types of proxies for reconstructed temperature. Picking the set that best fits together at the connections seems to me designed to make a pretty graph that fits a theory. In essence, a bias.
In my statistics class, bias was the first, middle, and last lecture. In other words, we didn’t discuss any kind of statistical or descriptive calculation without discussing potential bias (heck, it’s so prevalent it is even figured in mathematically). In the writing above, there are so many areas of bias, my mind’s eye can’t pick anything significant out at all without wanting to clean the bias off my glasses.
Clive E Burkland (07:41:57) :
Poor old Leif still thinks the recent activity is similar to 1900, which will end his career. We are in a very different place.
Take a look at the third panel [Fs] of Figure 2 shown in the posting at the top of the page, and tell us how different the black curve [from 1900 to now] is in 1900 compared to now.
“”” John Trigge (00:49:25) :
It’s nice to know that we have a different sun in Australia and that our CO2 will cause our temps will remain on the increase.
“We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect.” “””
Well John, don’t forget that you are on the other side of the pizza, so your CO2 is upside down. So the heating would be on the other side of the cO2 as well.
Leif Svalgaard (09:59:42)
The point Clive is making is that the simple observation that solar output may be much the same now as in 1900 is climatically irrelevant.
There are many other variables including oceanic effects that are very different now from what they were in 1900.
Even if one concedes that every feature of solar effects on Earth is identical to the way things were in 1900 the climate outcome would be very different.
And I still doubt that that black curve tells us the entire solar story.
Stephen Wilde (10:53:03) :
There are many other variables including oceanic effects that are very different now from what they were in 1900.
Even if one concedes that every feature of solar effects on Earth is identical to the way things were in 1900 the climate outcome would be very different.
I don’t see any quantitative ‘features’ or models or even handwaving ‘explanations’ that list or take into effect any ‘different’ conditions. Show me some.
Leif Svalgaard (12:53:49) :
Stephen Wilde (10:53:03) :
There are many other variables including oceanic effects that are very different now from what they were in 1900.
Even if one concedes that every feature of solar effects on Earth is identical to the way things were in 1900 the climate outcome would be very different.
I don’t see any quantitative ‘features’ or models or even handwaving ‘explanations’ that list or take into effect any ‘different’ conditions. Show me some.
———
REPLY: Hi, Leif! As I recall, didn’t the CRU models include adjustments for increased anthropogenic air pollutants since around 1900?
Carbon dioxide of course, they hang on that feature, but I believe they also tried to model increased particulates and sulfur dioxide aerosols in some kind of mish-mash procedure. It was nothing terribly convincing, but man’s influence on the atmosphere since 1900 has been well-established.
As McIntyre points out, Briffa’s team really downplayed the effects of pollution upon tree growth, which throws a monkey-wrench into the dendroclimatology models.
Of course, a few more Icelandic volcanoes and it won’t matter! Hope the family is doing well, Chuck
Leif Svalgaard (12:53:49)
Ocean surface temperatures are generally higher than they were then.
The current state of each of the individual ocean oscillations is different from 1900.
Air circulation systems are not in the same latitudinal positions nor of the same intensities.
The biosphere is running the carbon cycle faster.
Albedo is not the same.
The relative temperatures of stratosphere, troposphere and all the other layers of ocean and air are not the same as they were then.
The long spell of more active cycles in the 20th century leading up to now is very different to the activity level of solar cycles pre 1900 which means that the state of the energy budget is very different with a lot more ocean heat content.
Sun and oceans are both at different stages of their various multiple overlapping cycles.
On present observations the sun may soon be dropping below the 1900 level of activity to go nearer Maunder Minimum levels.
Lots more but no point boring readers.
Stephen Wilde (14:08:21) :
Lots more but no point boring readers.
Lots of loose statements. No numbers. E.g. you say “albedo is not the same”. Why says? What is is now? what was it then? Give the numbers. Otherwise one cannot compare. The ONE thing we KNOW is different is that CO2 is a higher now. Perhaps we should take that into account… Except we don’t really know what CO2 was in 1900, or do we? shoe me how, where.
Now, I agree that the climate was different back then [that was my whole point], but all our indications are that the Sun was not. So, we have two ways we can go:
1) the Sun has nothing to do with anything, and we don’t have a problem, or
2) something else is changing the climate, so that the impact of the same Sun might be different. I’m willing to buy that, but that also removes the Sun as the major driver.
I’ll not comment on the unsavory tone of ‘Clive E Burkland (07:41:57)’
Leif Svalgaard (14:52:27) “[…] something else is changing the climate, so that the impact of the same Sun might be different. I’m willing to buy that, but that also removes the Sun as the major driver.”
Putting it that way clarifies.
Leif Svalgaard (09:59:42) :
Take a look at the third panel [Fs] of Figure 2 shown in the posting at the top of the page, and tell us how different the black curve [from 1900 to now] is in 1900 compared to now.
The current value looks lower than 1900 and closer to 1800. This where you are going wrong, just looking at history it is far more likely this cycle and the next will be more like SC5 & SC6. If so you have been flogging the wrong horse, but time will tell.
Clive E Burkland (21:36:46) :
The current value looks lower than 1900 and closer to 1800.
The Figure is tiny. Look at the date on a larger scale:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1002/1002.2934.pdf
The 1900 and 2009 values are identical with the errors [which are about 1/4 nT]
it is far more likely this cycle and the next will be more like SC5 & SC6.
“Likely”? has to be based on something, not just wishful thinking or gut-feeling. Comparing with #5 and 6 is very uncertain because the sunspot number was very poorly determined for those cycles. The geomagnetic data that is used to compare 1900 with 2009 are well-determined.
Leif Svalgaard (21:59:07) :
Clive E Burkland (21:36:46) :
The current value looks lower than 1900 and closer to 1800.
The Figure is tiny. Look at the date on a larger scale:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1002/1002.2934.pdf
Especially Figure 11.
Leif Svalgaard (21:59:07) :
“Likely”? has to be based on something, not just wishful thinking or gut-feeling.
As mentioned history gives us all the data required. The previous 4 grand minima are all spaced at the same interval, a grand minimum now will further complete that pattern. The big difference being 1900 was not during a grand minimum.
None of this academic hair splitting really matters. Shut up and pay your skyrocketing utility bills with devalued dollars. My power company just jacked the rates up 30% to cover bogus Green initiatives. They’ve got us by the shorties.
Leif Svalgaard (22:00:31) :
Clive E Burkland (21:36:46) :
The current value looks lower than 1900 and closer to 1800.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1002/1002.2934.pdf
The HMF B value for 1901 was 4.06 nT, for 2009 4.05 nT
Leif Svalgaard (12:53:49) :
I don’t see any quantitative ‘features’ or models or even handwaving ‘explanations’ that list or take into effect any ‘different’ conditions. Show me some.
Stenchikov et al 2009
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011673.shtml
In the summary.
Radiative forcing produced by explosive volcanic events that have occurred in the historic period lasts for about 3 years. The volcanically-induced tropospheric temperature anomalies reduce below noise after approximately 7 years. The sea ice responds on the decadal time scale. Deep ocean temperature, sea level, salinity, and AMOC have relaxation time of several decades to a century. This suggests that the Tambora subsurface temperature and sea level perturbations could last well into the 20th century, interfering with the effects of the devastating Krakatau, Santa Maria, and Katmai eruptions which occurred respectively in 1883, 1902, and 1912, producing a cumulative impact on the deep ocean thermal structure in the 20th century.
Leif, 06:26:33.
With enough different solar phenomena, of varying orders, impacting enough different earthly processes, then there may always be enough different ‘lags’ to make it very difficult to find the correlations and the causations. I know, not very convincing, but perhaps partially explanatory.
=================
Leif Svalgaard (22:46:41) :
Looks like a classic case of Bait & Switch.
Leif Svalgaard (22:46:41) :
Clive E Burkland (21:36:46) :
The current value looks lower than 1900 and closer to 1800.
Lets go back to the bait, I have drawn a red line under the 2009 value.
http://i40.tinypic.com/s2y5n7.png
There is mountains of references re the 200 year period. Here is a few.
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=it&tl=en&u=http://www.spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/researcherswhopreviouslydiscoveredthebicentennialcycle.doc&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhj174S4ghC7rYR0X3GrSGx9qTnVEA
kim (02:21:47) :
then there may always be enough different ‘lags’ to make it very difficult to find the correlations
On the contrary, the more it wanders all over the place, the easier it is to find something, somewhere that looks like support for your favorite pet idea.
Clive E Burkland (07:15:07) :
Lets go back to the bait, I have drawn a red line under the 2009 value.
And it is higher than the 1800s. And matches the 1912-13 values 4.18 nT] . Lockwood’s values for before that are not very concordant. He actually doesn’t even have a 1901 value. See Figure 11 of http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1002/1002.2934.pdf
There is mountains of references re the 200 year period.
Of course, there is. Just as there is a mountain of evidence for an 90-100 year ‘period’, and both periods are but approximate anyway. We have long suspected that cycle 24-26 would be small. ‘Grand Minimum’ is a different matter. The Dalton does not even qualify in my opinion. It is at the same level as 1900s, significant, but not Grand.
Irrespective of what we dredge up, the observational fact is that activity now is back to where it was 109 years ago. That simple. Whether the next cycle after 24, will be much smaller than 24, we don’t know, but usually several small cycles come together [as several large ones do]. The interesting question is what makes the difference, i.e. what makes the next one small [or large], if the current one was large or small].
Steinhilber gave a talk last week at http://www.issibern.ch/workshops/cosmicrays/
Click on ‘Talks’. the click on Thursday and find Steinhilber.
There were many talks of interest to the readership here. Check them out. Almost every one is very good.
To focus on something relevant to the topic, Steinhilber shows a Figure of TSI reconstructions since 1600:
http://www.leif.org/research/Steinhilber-TSI-vs-Others.png
Note how with time [from 1995 to 2010 – red curve is Steinhilber 25 year mean] the curves get flatter and flatter and the Solar Radiative Forcing [right-hand scale] gets smaller and smaller.
The 2001-2010 decade is not on the plot. but is down from the previous decade.
Leif Svalgaard (09:36:35) :
red curve is Steinhilber 25 year mean
Or 11-year or 22-year ‘cycle’ averages. The talk was a bit unclear on that.
Leif, if you get a chance, can you take a look at the stuff I’ve been adding here? http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/VolcanoStratosphereSLAM.htm
If so, thank you.
Regards,
Paul.
Leif Svalgaard (09:07:23) :
There is mountains of references re the 200 year period.
Of course, there is. Just as there is a mountain of evidence for an 90-100 year ‘period’, and both periods are but approximate anyway. We have long suspected that cycle 24-26 would be small. ‘Grand Minimum’ is a different matter. The Dalton does not even qualify in my opinion. It is at the same level as 1900s, significant, but not Grand.
Don’t get your periods mixed up, no one is proposing grand minima on a 100 year cycle. There is a reduction of solar activity between every 200 year grand minima but that reduction is quite different. The reduction is not as severe and does not come in cycle pairs, SC12, 14 & 16 are a good example of this each having stronger cycles each side of them. Excluding the Dalton is your way of ignoring the regular solar grand minima cycle, you should listen to the mountains of research suggesting otherwise.
Clive E Burkland (18:08:17) :
Don’t get your periods mixed up, no one is proposing grand minima on a 100 year cycle. There is a reduction of solar activity between every 200 year grand minima
No there isn’t. Don’t believe everything you pick up on the Internet. Grand minima occur at random, e.g. http://www.springerlink.com/content/x78q151618615613/
“We demonstrate that such ability to reproduce the Grand Minima phenomenology is not a general feature of the dynamo models but requires some specific assumption, such as random fluctuations in dynamo governing parameters”. or
http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.0385
“The occurrence of grand minima/maxima is driven not by long-term cyclic variability, but by a stochastic/chaotic process”
Paul Vaughan (18:04:25) :
Leif, if you get a chance, can you take a look at the stuff I’ve been adding here? http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/VolcanoStratosphereSLAM.htm
One would think it obvious and going almost without saying that the extent and severity of optical extinction due to volcanic dust depends on the circulation of the atmosphere, no?
Leif Svalgaard (18:24:46) “One would think it obvious and going almost without saying that the extent and severity of optical extinction due to volcanic dust depends on the circulation of the atmosphere, no?”
I certainly would – but I haven’t seen these results involving SOI+L90 anywhere.
The results suggest that critical information can be gained by understanding how the ~1940 El Nino differs from those nearer to 1885 & 1975 due to decadal SOI phase relations with volcanic activity.
If you see something in the more recent additions that warrants cautioning, I’m listening.
Leif, perhaps I can ask a more pointed question:
Can physicists predict when the next nutation obliquity phase reversal will occur?
Paul Vaughan (14:31:34) :
Can physicists predict when the next nutation obliquity phase reversal will occur?
I don’t know what that is or that there was one.
Paul Vaughan (14:31:34) :
Can physicists predict when the next nutation obliquity phase reversal will occur?
In general we can predict orbital elements hundreds of thousands of years before and after the present.
Leif Svalgaard (20:17:12) “I don’t know what that is or that there was one.”
Nutation obliquity shows a roughly bidecadal pattern in recent decades, but you will note (International Earth Rotation Service (IERS) data) that there was a three-decade-long wave earlier in the 20th century.
Leif Svalgaard (20:21:16) “In general we can predict orbital elements hundreds of thousands of years before and after the present.”
Can you enlighten us by sharing the date of the next terrestrial nutation obliquity phase reversal? (If there is superior terminology, I welcome enlightenment.)
Paul Vaughan (21:40:33) :
Nutation obliquity shows a roughly bidecadal pattern in recent decades,
The NU is not a simple periodic function and has no well-defined ‘phase’, so no ‘reversal’ either. For your purposes, the following formula may be used:
http://www.neoprogrammics.com/nutations/Nutation_In_Obliquity.php
A visualization is here:
http://www.pietro.org/Astro_Util_StaticDemo/MethodsNutationVisualized.htm
The nutations in longitude and in obliquity are the two component of the nutation [a single physical phenomenon] along and perpendicular to the ecliptic. The two components show circular movement in opposite directions with different amplitude, but with the same frequency
A better terminology is: ‘nutation in obliquity’, because it is a small wiggle on the obliquity.
Leif Svalgaard (05:48:57) “[…] ‘nutation in obliquity’ […]” / “The NU is not a simple periodic function and has no well-defined ‘phase’ […] The two components show circular movement in opposite directions with different amplitude, but with the same frequency”
So am I to understand the apparent change in phase ~1930 more properly as resulting from a change in amplitude?
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/NutationObliquity__.png
I need to make sure I am communicating properly, so thanks for steering me towards more conventional expression.
Also, I can only find records back to 1900. Is that the limit of observations? If so, can I trust estimates based on the algorithms? Seeing a much longer record would probably answer several of my questions in one quick shot, so if estimates are sufficiently precise to substitute for observation, this will be valuable.
Paul Vaughan (12:21:28) :
So am I to understand the apparent change in phase ~1930 more properly as resulting from a change in amplitude?
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/NutationObliquity__.png>/i>
I don’t know where you get the graph from. As far as I know, the nutation in obliquity is much more regular [albeit with a smaller wiggle superposed]. But set up a program based on th algorithm and check for yourself. But why the nutation in obliquity? that is only one component of the total nutation, and the smaller, to boot.
Also, I can only find records back to 1900. Is that the limit of observations?
No, the observations go back hundreds of years. Was discovered in 1728.
can I trust estimates based on the algorithms?
Yes, for your purposes. There are some dispute and improvements when the accuracy is driven up into thousandths of arc seconds [milli arc seconds]. But you can ignore those.
Leif Svalgaard (13:00:11) :
Paul Vaughan (12:21:28) :
So am I to understand the apparent change in phase ~1930 more properly as resulting from a change in amplitude?
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/NutationObliquity__.png
I don’t know where you get the graph from. As far as I know, the nutation in obliquity is much more regular [albeit with a smaller wiggle superposed]. But set up a program based on the algorithm and check for yourself. But why the nutation in obliquity? that is only one component of the total nutation, and the smaller, to boot.
Here is what I get:
http://www.leif.org/research/Nutation-in-Obliquity.png
The small wiggles are mostly due to a semiannual variation.
Leif Svalgaard (13:00:11) :
Here is what I get:
http://www.leif.org/research/Nutation-in-Obliquity.png and
http://www.leif.org/research/Nutation-in-Obliquity-and-Longitude.png
http://www.leif.org/research/Nutation-1920-1960.png
The small wiggles are mostly due to a semiannual variation.
The last plot is the total nutation during 1920-1960, graphed from its two components.
Leif Svalgaard (13:44:25) “I don’t know where you get the graph from.”
I’ve isolated the decadal-timescale component of observational records of nutation in obliquity obtained here:
http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/
Thanks for the graphs which you have posted.
If you can point to materials that will clarify the difference between the curves which you have plotted and the curve which I have plotted, that will be greatly appreciated. I need to learn the proper terminology to describe the curve which I have isolated from the IERS observational data.
Paul Vaughan (17:03:58) :
I’ve isolated the decadal-timescale component of observational records of nutation in obliquity obtained here:
http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/
The polar wander is not the nutation of the obliquity. You conflate the two. Nutation is where the axis of rotation moves, i.e. the North Pole points toward a different star. Polar wander is where a planet undergoes a solid-body rotation with respect to its spin axis, like if you try to spin a ball of butter about a fixed axis [e.g. a pin stuck through it]; the butter ball may slide off to the side, especially if it not perfectly round. It is because the Earth is really triaxial and is not perfectly rigid.
I just found this link to Lockwood’s paper if anyone is interested:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/2/024001/pdf/1748-9326_5_2_024001.pdf
Oh, by the way, the sun is blank today, no sunspots! I think the sucker is broke, probably needs new (conveyor) belts, just like my car!
Leif Svalgaard (14:52:27) :
2) something else is changing the climate, so that the impact of the same Sun might be different
I’ll offer a 3rd option based on your 2nd one:
something else is changing the Sun AND the climate, which keeps both the Sun and the Earth’s internal mechanisms intact, but capable of being affected down the chain of command.
When Earth was going through it’s latest warming period, so were other Planets. That’s an unaccounted for effect. It is possible that the entire Solar System was affected by external forces.
And further, it is possible that only the Planets observed to warm were affected, but the Sun is only cosmetically affected.
So, does NASA have any new info on the Planets they observed to be warming, as in they are now cooling?
Leif Svalgaard (20:07:23) “Nutation is where the axis of rotation moves, i.e. the North Pole points toward a different star. Polar wander is where a planet undergoes a solid-body rotation with respect to its spin axis, like if you try to spin a ball of butter about a fixed axis [e.g. a pin stuck through it]; the butter ball may slide off to the side, especially if it not perfectly round. It is because the Earth is really triaxial and is not perfectly rigid.”
I already understood this.
Leif Svalgaard (20:07:23) “The polar wander is not the nutation of the obliquity. You conflate the two.”
IERS calls the variable nutation in obliquity. They give 5 output variables: LOD, polar motion x, polar motion y, nutation in obliquity, & nutation in longitude (along with error estimates for each).
rbateman (23:44:44) :
When Earth was going through it’s latest warming period, so were other Planets.
Links, please.
The outer planets move so slowly in their orbits that what we see may just b seasonal changes. The microwave temperature of Uranus has declined from ~255 +/- 10 K (circa 1984-86) to ~200 +/- 8 K in 2002. http://aas.org/archives/BAAS/v34n3/dps2002/279.htm
“Mars’ atmosphere now seems to be both colder and dryer than measured by the Viking landers [1976]”
http://nineplanets.org/mars.html
Paul Vaughan (03:04:49) :
They give 5 output variables: LOD, polar motion x, polar motion y, nutation in obliquity, & nutation in longitude (along with error estimates for each).
I don’t think so. They may give the tiny difference [dEps] between the calculated mean nutation and the actually observed one; like climate people talking about the ‘anomaly’, although this is not standard terminology in EOP. The latter being influenced by non-astronomical things, like the climate/weather and volcanism. One of your [perennial] problems is that your never show the actual units of what you graph, but normalize it somehow. This is bad practice, as it makes the ‘smell test’ harder.
Leif:
Two of the links are rather old for the Global Warming on other worlds, which is why I am interested in any recent follow-ups/corroborating observations.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/pluto.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton.html
rbateman (10:02:35) :
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/pluto.html
Pluto’s orbit is very eccentric and the increase is likely simply that Pluto was getting closer to the Sun [as the paper mentions]. Since then, Pluto is receding from the Sun, so the ‘warming’ should subside [after the inevitable lag that people often invoke to explain away discrepancies].
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
talks about ‘three summers in a row’. Here is a reasoned paper on Mars:
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/uploads/File/People/mir/Szwast_JGR2005JE002485.pdf
“Finally, we show that the apparent long-term darkening of the southern mid and high latitudes between the Viking and MGS eras is largely a consequence of the timing of image acquisition relative to global dust storms and surface dust ‘‘cleaning’’ by the seasonal ice cap; it does not represent a steady decadal-scale, secular change.”
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton.html
From the clip: “The moon is approaching an extreme southern summer, a season that occurs every few hundred years.”
Yeah, summer is a clear indication of global warming. Works here on Earth too. It is indeed warmer during the summer.
It is amazing to what lengths people will go to maintain their myths, rather than try to read and understand what they cite.
Leif Svalgaard (05:30:23) “They may give the tiny difference [dEps] between the calculated mean nutation and the actually observed one; like climate people talking about the ‘anomaly’, although this is not standard terminology in EOP. The latter being influenced by non-astronomical things, like the climate/weather and volcanism.”
These notes are very helpful, particularly since I have no local access to people with expertise in EOP.
–
Leif Svalgaard (05:30:23) “One of your [perennial] problems is that your never show the actual units of what you graph, but normalize it somehow. This is bad practice, as it makes the ’smell test’ harder.”
As discussed previously, this is a matter of competing paradigms about what is good practice. From a statistical point of view, it is drilled into students heads that rescaling does NOT affect measures like correlation, wavelet transforms, etc. From a data visualization perspective, normalization optimizes human perception of pattern.
I welcome your reiteration of this message about how to cater to a physics audience.
I get the point:
Physicists have different priorities and may be suspicious of claims based on graphical presentations that are conforming to paradigms other than those which are conventional in mainstream physics. (And this statement extends beyond physics.)
I thank you for reinforcing this point, particularly as I have no local access to physicists who will answer questions about such things. (They prioritize study of other things (e.g. dark matter) and have maintained a policy of not hiring people with interest in celestial mechanics for decades, something I am told may be about to change, however, which is welcome news from my perspective).
Leif:
I’d prefer to use a bit of math. Since I am not so good at it, I have posted below the data for Neptune from The Sky (Software Bisque) from 3 years.
April 20, 2010
Neptune
Phase: 99.978%, Apparent magnitude: 7.94
Heliocentric ecliptical:
l: 326°33’30.4″ b: -00°26’52.1″ r: 30.021379
Geometric geocentric ecliptical:
l: +328°15’12” b: -00°26’28” r: 30.473975
Mean geometric ecliptical:
l: +328°15’09” b: -00°26’28” r: 30.473963
Triton : 30.019939055501 r in AU (JPL HORIZONS)
————————
1998
Phase: 99.972%, Apparent magnitude: 7.92
Heliocentric ecliptical:
l: 300°12’14.5″ b: +00°21’16.8″ r: 30.141702
Geometric geocentric ecliptical:
l: +302°06’57” b: +00°21’16” r: 30.152565
Mean geometric ecliptical:
l: +302°06’53” b: +00°21’16” r: 30.152553
Triton : 30.140919921374 r in AU (JPL HORIZONS)
—————————
1989
Phase: 99.975%, Apparent magnitude: 7.91
Heliocentric ecliptical:
l: 280°33’43.1″ b: +00°54’55.1″ r: 30.216640
Geometric geocentric ecliptical:
l: +282°22’09” b: +00°55’32” r: 29.885389
Mean geometric ecliptical:
l: +282°22’06” b: +00°55’32” r: 29.885376
Trtion: 30.216593378272 in AU (JPL HORIZONS)
I would be inclined to think that the Heliocentric r is what we want, but I included the geocentrics as well. I used JPL’s Horizon to compute Triton’s Heliocentric r in comparison to Neptune, since The Sky Planetarium program does not give me Triton.
What I don’t know how to arrive at is the difference in degrees F that should result from watts/meters^2 out to Neptune/Triton for the 3 years.
Neptune/Triton is moving away from the Sun in elliptical orbit, so either the measurements are in error, the uncertainties too large, or there is more to be determined here.
Can you tell me what values should I plug into 1=S/4*pi*r^2 and what representation of the equation should give the needed answer.
Leif:
Oops, I should have quoted this fromt the 1998 MIT triton link:
“At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming. Percentage-wise, it’s a very large increase,” said Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory. The 5 percent increase on the absolute temperature scale from about minus-392 degrees Fahrenheit to about minus-389 degrees Fahrenheit would be like the Earth experiencing a jump of about 22 degrees Fahrenheit. ”
The -392F and -389F need to go into 1=S/4*pi*r^2 formula.
Paul Vaughan (12:41:33) :
From a statistical point of view, it is drilled into students heads that rescaling does NOT affect measures like correlation, wavelet transforms, etc.
If it makes no difference, then why rescale in the first place? It adds another step, and makes the result more difficult to visualize. Physics is a very intuitive science. You usually intuit the result, then dress it up with math.
rbateman (13:15:37) :
April 20, 2010
Phase: 99.978%, Apparent magnitude: 7.94
Geometric geocentric ecliptical:
l: +328°15′12″ b: -00°26′28″ r: 30.473975
1998
Phase: 99.972%, Apparent magnitude: 7.92
Geometric geocentric ecliptical:
l: +302°06′57″ b: +00°21′16″ r: 30.152565
1989
Phase: 99.975%, Apparent magnitude: 7.91
Geometric geocentric ecliptical:
l: +282°22′09″ b: +00°55′32″ r: 29.885389
The apparent magnitude [seen from Earth] is increasing [getting dimmer] as it should.
But more importantly “the moon is approaching an unusually warm summer season that only happens once every few hundred years. Elliot and his colleagues believe that Triton’s warming trend could be driven by seasonal changes in the absorption of solar energy by its polar ice caps.”. So, no solar activity link.
Leif Svalgaard (14:32:37) “If it makes no difference, then why rescale in the first place? It adds another step, and makes the result more difficult to visualize. Physics is a very intuitive science. You usually intuit the result, then dress it up with math.”
You are a physicist. My academic background has 7 branches. One of my roles has been teaching Stat 101 online. Another has been learning data visualization techniques based on psychological research. When attempting to make it intuitive for math-anxious arts students to understand via the online medium concepts like correlation, things go MUCH more smoothly if the teacher supplies helpful visuals. (The cost of not doing it right is a murderous onslaught of phenomenally time-consuming questions.)
–
I thank you again for your very helpful comment on ‘dEps’.
Cheers.
Paul Vaughan (16:12:33) :
When attempting to make it intuitive for math-anxious arts students to understand via the online medium concepts like correlation, things go MUCH more smoothly if the teacher supplies helpful visuals.
And that means using meaningful units that the students can understand and relate, feet, Fahrenheit, AUs, etc, rather than e.g. standard deviations [often used for normalization].
Leif Svalgaard (17:11:56) “And that means using meaningful units that the students can understand and relate, feet, Fahrenheit, AUs, etc, rather than e.g. standard deviations [often used for normalization].”
You are either missing or ignoring the point.
A REQUIRED learning outcome of Intro Stats is that students understand that THE UNITS ARE IRRELEVANT STATISTICALLY (and when I say REQUIRED, bear in mind that the learning outcomes are not set by lowly instructors, nor are they even necessarily set by department chairs — they are generally set by multi-institution committees to ensure credit-transfer eligibility).
Practical significance vs. statistical significance is another learning outcome. THAT is where your point fits in (and THAT is best left to practitioners in other fields — it is NOT AT ALL REASONABLE to expect statisticians to be well-versed in what is PRACTICALLY significant IN EVERY SINGLE FIELD — the Stat’s teacher’s job is to teach STATISTICAL concepts — of course the students take other courses as part of a well-rounded program, so they are not limited to acquiring only a statistical perspective – they’ll run into important lessons from folks like you IN OTHER COURSES).
You can afford to show a little respect to other fields. When I was in the Statistics Department I never heard my superiors barking at the physics profs about how to teach Physics 101.
–
Thanks for the notes on ‘dEps’. That was constructive.
Leif Svalgaard (14:32:37)
What I really wanted to know is how to work the W/m^2 by the inverse square law correctly and run the numbers, but not specifically for the solar activity link. The temperature of other planets at distance from the Sun would be a refreshing break from the fixation on Earth and it’s trace C02 fuss.
Paul Vaughan (18:29:34) :
A REQUIRED learning outcome of Intro Stats is that students understand that THE UNITS ARE IRRELEVANT STATISTICALLY
How do they understand that other that you simply TELL them that up front. This should not be hard to understand: X = a X’ + b.
But there are situations where the unit is not constant, e.g. the Richter scale, the Kp index, the magnitude of stars, and many others. These indices you cannot perform the usual statistical calculations on, like calculating the moments. This would be a valuable lesson that only for variables for which the units do not matter, do the usual statistical procedures make sense at all, making the whole thing a tautology.
If statistics is to have any value, it must be used in real-world situations, where input values have units, and where results should be presented in those same units to make sense to the non-statisticians that are the raison d’etre for using statistics at all. You show respects for your ‘users’ rather than they show respect for your field.
These comments are as constructive that I can make them.
rbateman (18:34:59) :
What I really wanted to know is how to work the W/m^2 by the inverse square law correctly and run the numbers
The temperature, T, in Kelvin is given by T = Ts * SQRT(Rs/(2*As)), where Ts is the temperature of the Sun = 5780K, Rs the radius of the Sun = 696,000 km, As the distance to the Sun which for the Earth is 149,600,000 km. Doing the numbers for the Earth we get Te = T = 279K. For a planet at distance Ap [in AU], the formula is simply Tp = Te/SQRT(Ap). So for Neptune where An = 30 AU, Tn becomes 279*SQRT(1/30) = 50K.
The above assumes that the planets are black bodies, while in reality they reflect a certain fraction of the energy from the Sun and thus would be at a lower temperature. On the other hand, there is a ‘greenhouse’ effect that raises the temperature above that of a black body, depending on the amount [pressure] of greenhouse gases. The net effect is that the two opposing effects often nearly cancel, so the formula given is not too bad. An exception is Venus with its extremely dense atmosphere.
Leif Svalgaard (19:34:02) : correction
to rbateman (18:34:59) :
For a planet at distance Ap [in AU], the formula is simply Tp = Te*SQRT(1/Ap). So for Neptune where An = 30 AU, Tn becomes 279*SQRT(1/30) = 50K.
For a gas planet, one might debate what the temperature means, where to measure it, etc. The temperates calculated here are ‘effective temperatures’, that is, the temperature at which the planet radiates away what it gets from the Sun.
Leif Svalgaard (20:21:08) :
As long as one does the same type of measurement from a far enough distance to get a mean temp. Measuring Earth is a problem becasue we are on Earth. It would be helpful to measure Earth plus the other available planets from Mars orbit, while measuring the planets from Earth orbit.
Re: Leif Svalgaard (19:34:02)
Leif, I appreciate your comments. The ladder of powers is addressed but the course is moving too fast for most students to appreciate it deeply. Stat 101 is a jam-packed course with a limited scope. Underlings (even ones who score 70% “excellent” in ratings from students) who are too pushy with an education-reform agenda may quickly lose their contracts or get reassigned to less desirable duties. (At first I considered reassignment to climate research a demotion. Later it became evident that while the pay was lower, the freedoms were much higher.)
On a lighter note, your pal Piers Corbyn has released a new bedtime story you might want to check out:
http://fintandunne.com/audio/BeautifulTruth-10-03-31.mp3
Sweet dreams.
Paul Vaughan (00:04:52) :
Piers is easy listening. I’d welcome him doing a guest post on a general forecast for summer oh-10.
rbateman (12:38:32) “Piers is easy listening.”
He’s a talented communicator – colorfully packs a lot of details into short soundbites.