I saw this yesterday, but I decided to wait a day just in case it disappeared. It’s quite the surprise to see the New Scientist dedicate a story, much less an editorial saying that the sun has a role in climate.
Here’s some excerpts:
THE idea that changes in the sun’s activity can influence the climate is making a comeback, after years of scientific vilification, thanks to major advances in our understanding of the atmosphere.
…
So far, three mechanisms have come to light (see diagram). The best understood is what is known as the top-down effect, described by Mike Lockwood, also at the University of Reading, and Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London. Although the sun’s brightness does not change much during solar maxima and minima, the type of radiation it emits does. During maxima the sun emits more ultraviolet radiation, which is absorbed by the stratosphere.This warms up, generating high-altitude winds. Although the exact mechanism is unclear, this appears to have knock-on effects on regional weather: strong stratospheric winds lead to a strong jet stream.
The reverse is true in solar minima, and the effect is particularly evident in Europe, where minima increase the chances of extreme weather. Indeed, this year’s cold winter and the Russian heatwave in July have been linked to the sun’s current lull, which froze weather systems in place for longer than normal.
The second effect is bottom-up, in which additional visible radiation during a solar maximum warms the tropical oceans, causing more evaporation and therefore more rain, especially close to the equator.
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The third solar influence on climate is extraterrestrial. Earth is bombarded by cosmic rays from exploding stars, which are largely deflected by the solar wind during solar maxima and to a slightly lesser degree in minima.
One theory held that cosmic rays cool the planet by helping to form airborne particles that water vapour condenses onto, increasing cloud cover. However, models suggest the effect is tiny (Nature, vol 460, p 332). Just to be sure, though, the idea is being tested by the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Initial results are expected in the next six months.
A theory that has more traction with climate scientists says the rays may change cloud behaviour rather than formation. Using weather balloon measurements, Harrison has shown that clouds have charged layers at their top and bottom, and he suggests that ions produced by cosmic rays might be responsible (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2010GL043605). “The charge might make it easier for larger water droplets to form,” he says, causing rain to fall sooner during solar minima. “But that’s just one of many possibilities.”
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DUH!
Though, all in all, though, refreshing for New Scientist. Let’s see how it all plays out.
One point of ridicule though: Who the hell are “climate skeptics”?
What a stupid, stupid statement.
“Uh…..I’m skeptical of the climate.”
WHAT??
Nonsense.
“CAGW Skeptics” is a much more accurate term….but you know…..they will never use that one because it throws their whole multi-billion dollar game, under the bus.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
A theory that has more traction with climate scientists says the rays may change cloud behaviour rather than formation. Using weather balloon measurements, Harrison has shown that clouds have charged layers at their top and bottom, and he suggests that ions produced by cosmic rays might be responsible (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2010GL043605). “The charge might make it easier for larger water droplets to form,” he says, causing rain to fall sooner during solar minima. “But that’s just one of many possibilities.”
I like this.
Over the past 10 years living half my time in a rural dry area, I have noticed that good rains come with thunder and lightning. The past few years very few such storms have come in my area. Thunder and lightning are connected with the charges on clouds, and maybe this long minimum is discharging them before they come over the olive groves in my area 🙁 .
What about solar activity’s ability to bring done power grids and Cause northern lights? Doesn’t this solar activity also have the power to create eddy currents in the oceans and warm them at least a little bit? Or cause other effects on the climate.
A little behind the curve are they not?
Its been known for years that the sun drives the climate and weather but it did not fit the CAGW/GCD narrative and if there is one thing thing the alarmist industry hates most is anything that contradicts their narrative.
Its the sun stupid! It drives the oceans and it drives the winds and it governs our entire existence on this earth, what is so hard to understand? Without the sun there would be no clouds and no rain and no wind and no biomass, it IS the climate driver and everything else plays a supporting role, the sun is the star in more than one sense.
A climate sceptic? huuuh!
I’ve long thought that a heliocentric perspective has a certain appeal.
Nothing like an onset of cooling to make some climate scientists open their eyes to mechanisms ignored during the previous warming period. I can’t help but note the condescension still out there regarding the causes of that warming though.
I tend to think the New Scientist is just hedging its bets here. Just in case these “sun” people are right. I suspect we will see other publications saying more or less the same thing in the next little while. Having once “hitched their wagon” to settled science they will be careful not to get either left behind or make that mistake again.
This is nothing but a story that allows them to explain the 30 year cooling cycle we are in.
Lower global temperatures will not disprove CAGW, the human caused CO2 driven warming is just “in hiatus” by the temporarily inactive sun and the warming will come back with a vengeance.
Here we go again. Waffle, waffle, waffle.
“”Where solar effects may play a role is in influencing regional weather patterns over the coming decades. Predictions on these scales of time and space are crucial for nations seeking to prepare for the future.””
So what went on in the past? Is this all NEW information?
And just how weak is the so called “backradiation” from CO2 when viewed through the Maxwell_Boltzmann energy distribution curves of our predominately COLD troposphere?
I love that third reason where they are trying to shuffel to a position of saying that Svensmark is right and wrong at the same time. My money says that CLOUD will show Svensmark to be right and the people who claim that the cosmic ray effect is small will be shown to be wrong.
The correlation between solar cycles and climate has been very good. And while correlation may not be causation, blowing off the effects of the sun for the purpose of promoting AGW, and because we couldn’t explain how those effect were produced, has simply been bad science on the part of the warmers. Will the IPCC be publishing lessons on how to dance backwards.
One more point. We seem to be getting new information about factors of climate variability at a fairly constant rate. Of course this is as it should be. But what has always bothered me is that the modelers at one point decided that they had the elements of variability nailed down well enough to make century predictions – when really all they had was a few of the elements of variability and the rest was just thrown at CO2 with the explanation of “what else could it be?”
They forgot another possible mechanism. During low solar activity less ozone is created and therefore more UV light reaches the surface. This causes phytoplankton in the oceans to produce a chemical that enhances cloud cover.
May they tell us too, that climate is he sum of local weather patterns over a longer time ?
Certainly not.
I wonder which explanation has Mr Giles for +0.7 deg C global temperature rise between 1905-1945.
Leif, I told you so.
“There are extravagant claims for the effects of the sun on global climate. They are not supported”.
I think there is a typo there. It was meant to be:
“There are extravagant claims for the effects of human emissions of carbon dioxide on global climate. They are not supported”.
Everybody knows that the most important driver of the global climate is the sun. Don’t they? It seems to me that the difference in climate between that in polar regions and that in equatorial regions is the sun. Am I right?
So no effect in the past, but expect a cooling effect in the future.
After spitting on Svensmark’s work, they acknowledge it here, then marginalize it, then attempt to steal it out from under him with a variation. Despicable.
So a 0.1% change in the sun’s brightness can’t possibly have any global effect yet a 0.01% change in Co2 (from 28oppm-380ppm or 100/1,000,000) can have a catastrophic effect on the global climate. Really?
Michael, it is even worse. The CO2-induced warming allegedly started in 1975, so you should say “0.004% change” in the composition of atmosphere (390 vs 350 ppmv).
We got it wrong…..No No, the sun dun it!! The new D word guys covering their Ass!!
However I welcome the more inclusive recognition of other relevant sciences, next it will be discovering variable weather, it affects the models, don’t blame us.
Michael in Sydney says:
September 24, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Uh, yeah. Changes in the Solar “Constant” directly affects watts/m^2 whereas the change in CO2 (280ppm to 380 ppm is a 36% increase in my math). While the logarithmic effect will reduce the effect significantly over the change from 180 to 280 ppm, It’s still a substantial change. OTOH, CO2 is overrated as a climate “disruptor” so that 36% increase won’t have a big impact on the immediate survival needs of people in the Australian outback or a tropical island.
Oh, I get it. The sun affects the weather, but not the climate.
Good news. When they start publishing stories like this in a comic like New Scientist, you know that a tipping point has been reached. Watch (I mean Wattch) this space.
Well I didn’t start seeing cloudy days that I thought would never end until winter ’08-’09.
Before Chaiten in May ’08 and then followed by 4 more VEI-4’s it was sunny days that I thought would never end.
You’d think the GCR’s should have been forming a lot of clouds by summer ’08 if they were more than a very weak influence.
The clouds change their behavior alright. The bigger ash gets washed out until what’s left is very fine ash aerosols and sulfate ions, etc to form less dense clouds. Clouds that produce little rain.
Eyjafjallajökull produced a lot of good size dense cloud producing ash and ultraviolet absorbing particles.
We’ve definitely had a lot bigger solar dimmimg shock than the last solar minimum cycle.
First they vilify skeptics for eons, now they triumphantly declare that the sun has an influence. What opportunistic apple-polishers.