UPDATE: Lead author Ben Laken responds in comments below.
I’ve reported several times at WUWT on the galactic cosmic ray theory proposed by Henrik Svensmark which suggests that changes in the sun’s magnetic field modulate the density of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) which in turn seed cloud formation on Earth, which changes the albedo/reflectivity to affect Earth’s energy balance and hence global climate.
A new paper published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics suggests that the relationship has been established.
Figure 1 below shows a correlation, read it with the top and bottom graph combined vertically.
As the authors write in the abstract:
These results provide perhaps the most compelling evidence presented thus far of a GCR-climate relationship.
Dr. Roy Spencer has mentioned that it doesn’t take much in the way of cloud cover changes to add up to the “global warming signal” that has been observed. He writes in The Great Global Warming Blunder:
The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.
Well, it seems that Laken, Kniveton, and Frogley have found just such a small effect. Here’s the abstract and select passages from the paper, along with a link to the full paper:
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 10941-10948, 2010
doi:10.5194/acp-10-10941-2010
Cosmic rays linked to rapid mid-latitude cloud changes
B. A. Laken , D. R. Kniveton, and M. R. Frogley
Abstract. The effect of the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) flux on Earth’s climate is highly uncertain. Using a novel sampling approach based around observing periods of significant cloud changes, a statistically robust relationship is identified between short-term GCR flux changes and the most rapid mid-latitude (60°–30° N/S) cloud decreases operating over daily timescales; this signal is verified in surface level air temperature (SLAT) reanalysis data. A General Circulation Model (GCM) experiment is used to test the causal relationship of the observed cloud changes to the detected SLAT anomalies. Results indicate that the anomalous cloud changes were responsible for producing the observed SLAT changes, implying that if there is a causal relationship between significant decreases in the rate of GCR flux (~0.79 GU, where GU denotes a change of 1% of the 11-year solar cycle amplitude in four days) and decreases in cloud cover (~1.9 CU, where CU denotes a change of 1% cloud cover in four days), an increase in SLAT (~0.05 KU, where KU denotes a temperature change of 1 K in four days) can be expected. The influence of GCRs is clearly distinguishable from changes in solar irradiance and the interplanetary magnetic field. However, the results of the GCM experiment are found to be somewhat limited by the ability of the model to successfully reproduce observed cloud cover. These results provide perhaps the most compelling evidence presented thus far of a GCR-climate relationship. From this analysis we conclude that a GCR-climate relationship is governed by both short-term GCR changes and internal atmospheric precursor conditions.
I found this portion interesting related to the figure above:
The composite sample shows a positive correlation between statistically significant cloud changes and variations in the short-term GCR flux (Fig. 1): increases in the GCR flux
occur around day −5 of the composite, and correspond to significant localised mid-latitude increases in cloud change. After this time, the GCR flux undergoes a statistically significant decrease (1.2 GU) centred on the key date of the composite; these changes correspond to widespread statistically significant decreases in cloud change (3.5 CU, 1.9 CU globallyaveraged) over mid-latitude regions.
and this…
The strong and statistically robust connection identified here between the most rapid cloud decreases over mid-latitude regions and short-term changes in the GCR flux is clearly distinguishable from the effects of solar irradiance and IMF variations. The observed anomalous changes show a strong latitudinal symmetry around the equator; alone, this pattern
gives a good indication of an external forcing agent, as
there is no known mode of internal climate variability at the
timescale of analysis, which could account for this distinctive
response. It is also important to note that these anomalous
changes are detected over regions where the quality of
satellite-based cloud retrievals is relatively robust; results of
past studies concerned with high-latitude anomalous cloud
changes have been subject to scrutiny due to a low confidence
in polar cloud retrievals (Laken and Kniveton, 2010;
Todd and Kniveton, 2001) but the same limitations do not
apply here.
Although mid-latitude cloud detections are more robust
than those over high latitudes, Sun and Bradley (2002) identified
a distinctive pattern of high significance between GCRs
and the ISCCP dataset over the Atlantic Ocean that corresponded
to the METEOSAT footprint. This bias does not
appear to influence the results presented in this work: Fig. 6 shows the rates of anomalous IR-detected cloud change occurring over Atlantic, Pacific and land regions of the midlatitudes during the composite period, and a comparable pattern of cloud change is observed over all regions, indicating no significant bias is present.
Conclusions
This work has demonstrated the presence of a small but statistically significant influence of GCRs on Earth’s atmosphere over mid-latitude regions. This effect is present in
both ISCCP satellite data and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data for at least the last 20 years suggesting that small fluctuations in solar activity may be linked to changes in the Earth’s atmosphere via a relationship between the GCR flux and cloud cover; such a connection may amplify small changes in solar activity. In addition, a GCR – cloud relationship may also act in conjunction with other likely solar – terrestrial relationships concerning variations in solar UV (Haigh, 1996) and total solar irradiance (Meehl et al., 2009). The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records (e.g.,Bond et al., 2001; Neff et al., 2001; Mauas et al., 2008).
Further detailed investigation is required to better understand GCR – atmosphere relationships. Specifically, the use of both ground-based and satellite-based cloud/atmospheric monitoring over high-resolution timescales for extended periods of time is required. In addition, information regarding potentially important microphysical properties such as aerosols, cloud droplet size, and atmospheric electricity must also be considered. Through such monitoring efforts, in addition to both computational modelling (such as that of Zhou and Tinsley, 2010) and experimental efforts (such as that of Duplissy et al., 2010) we may hope to better understand the effects described here.
It seems they have found the signal. This is a compelling finding because it now opens a pathway and roadmap on where and how to look. Expect more to come.
The full paper is here: Final Revised Paper (PDF, 2.2 MB)
h/t to The Hockey Schtick
Leif?
Lief is still in orbit.
So, what they’ve done is propose a theory, think about how it might be realised in the real world then used empirical observations to prove their hypothesis. Groundbreaking.
So, it’s the sun after all. Who would have thought that…
Can we now put the CAGW-theory to rest, please? I truly hope so.
Mr. Svensmark, if you read this post, please leave a comment over here!
Hm, it’s just a model. We don’t trust models.
So, let me get this straight…….
All we have to do in order to stop Global Warming is build an enormous great solar-magnetic shield.
Excellent! How much will this cost the Developing and Western World economies – we are doing it for the children, after all!
Wow, thanks for this! David Archibald also followed up on this Sun-GCRs-cloud-climate theory, although he is a geologist, not a solar physicist. I remember last year, there was a WUWT article showing that GCRs were about 19 percent higher than previous year’s level, as the Sun was generally “sleeping”.
Anthony
Notice the dodge in the conclusions:
“The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming”
REPLY: No dodge, conclusions are printed in full in my post. My point is that they found the signal, nothing else. Take off your blinders. – Anthony
Excellent news if confirmed by other studies too.
“solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming”
Have had? Past tense? What’s changed? Of course, now CO2 is the only driver for global climate.
http://climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.gif
There are some trends, but not in direct relation with sun cycles. But obviously changes in cloudiness has serious effect on climate.
In teresting, but I would be more convinced if they had more than 10 days worth of data. How about a full year, to take into account seasonal variations too.
.
What exactly does the news mean? Is there a historical trend that would lead to decreased cloud cover? Covering the instrumental record?
That there is a correlation is very interesting. That it supports one or other of the parties is even more interesting and does not seem to have been articulated.
Hi,
you forgot to mention the following conlcusion of the paper:
“Based on the relationships observed in this study […] we speculate
that little systematic change in temperature [due to cloud cover changes, see text] at mid-latitudes has occurred over the last 50 years. However, at shorter time-scales this phenomenon may contribute to natural variability, potentially reducing detectability of an anthropogenic signal.”
which is in line with
“The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have
had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic
warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records”
So to sum it up, the authors show that clouds are related to short-scale variability of the climate and that on long periods, systematic changes in the cloud cover can explain changes in temperature… far below what has been observed during the 20th century. In my sense, it is another proof that the solar influence is way weaker than the rest in the context of the recently observed warming.
REPLY: Gosh, another person wearing blinders. Conclusions (including what you cite) are printed in full in my post. My point is that they found the signal, nothing else. – Anthony
Interesting. Any news from the Cloud experiment being run at Cern? It could provide some experimental validation of these findings.
So if this ends up true it was the sun after all.
Now who would have ever guessed such an outlandish reason.
There is a strong correlation between the Arctic temperature and the Earth magnetic field. However the correlation is negative, weaker field higher temperature. If the Svensmark’s effect is at work it is in reverse; weaker magnetic field, more GCR, more clouds above the Arctic, higher temperature. More clouds in the Arctic (for 6 months of the year) acting as a ‘GH’ gas prevent excessive cooling, a well known effect in the middle and northern latitudes during winter months.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.htm
That sounds plausible.
Yay, what a coincidence!
This morning after my usual sweep of Climate blogs, I wondered whether we’re going to hear more about the much anticipated CLOUD experiment at CERN and whether.
This news was not exactly what I was looking for, but it is close. Another win for science.
Interesting graphs, I think a longer time period would be needed to show a good relationship though.
The -10 to -7 days on the graph doesn’t seem to show the sharp chage in cloud change that’s observed in the -2 to +2 days part of the graph though. In fact it’s got a lower GCR of -1 to -2 but a positive cloud change (CU).
Please correct me if I’m reading this wrong though as I haven’t read the paper fully.
Upon seeing the usage of NCEP-Reanalysis surface air temperatures, I quit reading.
Indeed very interesting – but still the need for a genuflection to the orthodoxy.
Anthony, your quote below “and this…” is wrong: Between “The observed anomalous changes show a strong” and “shows the rates of anomalous IR-detected cloud change occurring”, 18 lines of text are missing.
I first misread the PDF in the same way myself, it’s easy to do since the missing part of the text appears below the figure in the left column on the next page.
And btw, thank you for a very interesting article!
REPLY: Thanks, disjoint fixed – Anthony
Great news! Once the link between solar activity and climate is well understood we can stop all this nonsense about carbon dioxide.
Our friends in the AGW camp love to hoot, “Ah, you say the precise mechanism is not yet understood! Your belief that one day it will be is thus an article of faith! You denialists are irrational.” Well, Newton may not have understood precisely how gravity worked, but he had a keen eye for cause-and-effect.
Come on, the astrophysicists! Show us how the sun regulates global warming – and cooling – and we’ll move on from this sorry episode of neoapocalypticism. Man made? This was always an outbreak of hubris!
Yes indeed, they still have to secure future funding.
“The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records”
Such a totally unsupported and self-castrating statement was necessary to include in order to get published in the sick, corrupt field of climate science. LOL.
It’s the Sun wot dunnit!
Ilove this sentence:
“The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records (e.g.,Bond et al., 2001; Neff et al., 2001; Mauas et al., 2008).”
You have to laugh at the “magic phrase” needed to mollify the CAGW gatekeepers that was necessary to get the paper published. Can’t have the new discovery upset the CAGW applecart. If you look you will find a similar phrase in practically every recent paper published even if it has nothing to do with climate science – disgusting.
So all that CO2 has stopped the climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links. That pesky CO2 is more powerful than we thought.
The author has his own website here:
http://benlaken.com/index.html
He’s very young: looks like he’s only just finished his PhD.
I’d like to resolve the question as to whether the change in cosmic ray intensity is a direct driver itself or a mere proxy for solar changes that cause the cloud changes by other means.
The thing is that the cloud quantity changes also seem to be accompanied by latitudinal jet stream shifting which would itself encourage more clouds by stretching the air mass boundaries along greater distances and causing more air mass mixing. I don’t think anyone has suggested that more cosmic rays shift the jet streams.
It would be nice to know which is the more direct cause of the cloudiness changes.
Ralph wanted a greater timescale
From Wikipedia:
In cooperation with other scientists, Veizer compared the reconstructed seawater paleotemperature records for the past 545 million years with the variable galactic cosmic ray flux (CRF) reaching Earth and reconstructed partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 (pCO2).
According to a – cautiously worded – paper in Nature 2000[3] written together with Yves Godderis und Louis M. François, the results can be reconciled if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were not the principal driver of climate variability on geological timescales for at least one-third of the Phanerozoic eon, or if the reconstructed carbon dioxide concentrations are not reliable.
From Viezer and others
Abstract. In recent years the variability of the cosmic ray flux has become one of the main issues interpreting cosmogenic elements and especially their connection with climate. In this review, an interdisciplinary team of scientists brings together our knowledge of the evolution and modulation of the cosmic ray flux fromits origin in theMilkyWay, during its propagation through the heliosphere, up to its interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere, resulting, finally, in the production of cosmogenic
isotopes in the Earth’ atmosphere. The interpretation of the cosmogenic isotopes and the cosmic ray – cloud connection are also intensively discussed. Finally, we discuss some open questions.
In 2003, together with Nir J. Shaviv, an Israeli astrophycisist, Veizer published a paper in Geological Society of America confirming [2], a reduced (capped) influence of carbon dioxide to Climate Change and attributing a more significant influence to cosmic rays. While the mechanism seems not yet to be fully understood, the empirical data showed a suitable fit.
Wikipedia has an artcle that is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Svensmark’s theory. A certain William M Connolley “helped” write the article.
As I know nothng about Cosmic Rays, this leads me to believe that Svensmark is probably right.
WMC (We Manufacture Consensus) and his cronies can be useful afterall.
Hi Ryan, whats wrong with NCEP reanalysis data?
Makes far more sense than blaming human use of fossil fuels and the CO2 we produce from that energy producing effort. ( This is 3% of the total annual CO2 production, the 97% being from natural emitters according to the US Dept of Energy).
But… but… the CAGW hypothesis explains all the warming of the last century (once the models have been calibrated and adjusted as required). There is simply no need to look any further.
My protest has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you can’t tax clouds. [/sarc]
Wow ! Who`d have thought that great big ball of nuclear powered fire in the sky could cause the earth to warm.
Ryan Maue says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:25 am (Edit)
Upon seeing the usage of NCEP-Reanalysis surface air temperatures, I quit reading.
#####
yup. i guess everybody forgets they are not observations. suddenly when observations that nobody trusts are fed into a Reanalysis model (and they cant be right) the result is suitable to use to test a theory. selective skepticism
SteveE says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:17 am
The -10 to -7 days on the graph doesn’t seem to show the sharp change in cloud change that’s observed in the -2 to +2 days part of the graph though. In fact it’s got a lower GCR of -1 to -2 but a positive cloud change (CU).
And that is precisely the problem with this analysis.
This is OT, but I came across a spectacular timelapse video of the Aurora over Norway. It’s well worth a look!
Who Knew, Magnetic fields interact with ionic gases and cosmic radiation to produce forces that shape our planets climate and the solar system, Next someone will suggest Gravity holds the solar system together in some sort of periodic orbiting tug of war!.
vukcevic:
Thank you for your observation in your post above at November 25, 2010 at 1:04 am.
It says;
“There is a strong correlation between the Arctic temperature and the Earth magnetic field. However the correlation is negative, weaker field higher temperature. If the Svensmark’s effect is at work it is in reverse; weaker magnetic field, more GCR, more clouds above the Arctic, higher temperature. More clouds in the Arctic (for 6 months of the year) acting as a ‘GH’ gas prevent excessive cooling, a well known effect in the middle and northern latitudes during winter months.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.htm ”
OK. I get that. You say you observe the opposite of the Svensmark Effect over “middle and northern latitudes”.
But it is not clear to me from the graph in your link what you mean by “middle and northern latitudes”, and that graph is labelled as showing “Arctic” data. So, according to the data you present, it seems to me that your finding applies to the Arctic and possibly both polar regions.
But the paper by Laken et al. considers “the most rapid mid-latitude (60°–30° N/S) cloud decreases operating over daily timescales”; i.e. Lakis et al. have investigated a different region of the Earth than your analysis. And their findings concur with the Svensmark Effect.
At this moment I have no reason to dispute your findings or the findings of Lakis et al.. So, the difference between those findings suggests interesting paths for investigation: but before commenting on that, I point out that if both you and Lakis et al. are right then the effect which Lakis et al. seem to have detected would dominate for global climate.
Very little solar radiation is received in near-polar regions and heat is transported to those regions from warmer climes by ocean currents, so near-polar regions are net emitters of radiation. The effect you describe (and I quote in this post) would reduce the net emission so keep the “middle and northern latitudes” warmer in winter months. But the effect would be small because radiative fluxes are relatively small in those regions.
Much more solar energy is received at 60°–30° N/S than in the polar regions. Therefore, small modulation of radiative fluxes by clouds in the 60°–30° N/S region would have greater effect than large modulation of radiative fluxes by clouds in polar regions.
Hence, if both you and Lakis et al. are right then the net effect would agree with the Svensmark hypothesis.
Which brings us to interesting directions for research.
Firstly, your finding and the finding by Lakis et al. each needs to be confirmed.
Then, both empirical and theoretical explanations for the different findings need to be evinced. (As an aside, there are some possibilities for this. The Svensmark Effect relies on the velocity of comic ray particles providing Einsteinian time dilation to enable them to penetrate the atmosphere to levels where clouds form, and the height of the troposphere – so altitudes of clouds – varies with latitude. The Earth’s electromagnetic field strength and direction differs near the poles from elsewhere so cosmic ray fluxes differ there. Etc.)
After that, the effects of cloud modulation on radiative fluxes at different latitudes needs to be quantified.
Finally, the effect of these different flux modulations in different regions on heat flows (a) around the planet and (b) to and from the planet need to be determined.
All potentially interesting stuff, so I again thank you for your comment.
Richard
I was struck by Ryan’s comment also. I assume the NCEP-reanalysis temps are not so good? A bad thing to use for correlation of their theory?
The 95% significance level is also a bit weak. What is lacking is a simple mention of how many key days were used. When doing a superposed epoch analysis a standard test is to divide the data set into two halves and show that the effect is present in both. This was not done.
“SteveE says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:17 am
The -10 to -7 days on the graph doesn’t seem to show the sharp change in cloud change that’s observed in the -2 to +2 days part of the graph though. In fact it’s got a lower GCR of -1 to -2 but a positive cloud change (CU).”
Not necessarily a critical issue.
It’s perfectly possible to have a robust correlation on a longer timescale but a weak or non existent correlation on shorter timescales.
That would be typical of a coherent system overall but with lower level elements of chaotic variability or other lower level shorter term forcings overlaying the primary forcing from time to time.
Objections based simply on such lower level features are just churlish. It is the wider picture that matters.
Not to put too much of a dampener on it, but there’s not much more to the two signals than the global warming hogwash – a down and an up – and such a relationship is pretty easy to come by pure chance.
Give me an up – down – up – down!
It would only have taken a week more of data and we could all be jumping for joy. Why hasn’t this been done … of course because they’re spending all the money “proving” global boring and nothing is left for serious science!
vukcevic says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:04 am
There is a strong correlation between the Arctic temperature and the Earth magnetic field.
Coincidence, the correlation breaks down when you go back in time, e.g. to the MWP.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 25, 2010 at 3:17 am
It’s perfectly possible to have a robust correlation on a longer timescale but a weak or non existent correlation on shorter timescales.
The nature of the superposed epoch method is such that it applies to the shorter time scale, i.e. that of the width of the graph. So you are saying that on a time scale of 3 days it works, but on a time scale of 10 days it doesn’t have to. That is special pleading.
A bonbon for Cancun
Steven Mosher says (November 25, 2010 at 2:39 am):
Ryan Maue says (November 25, 2010 at 1:25 am (Edit)):
Upon seeing the usage of NCEP-Reanalysis surface air temperatures, I quit reading.
#####
yup. i guess everybody forgets they are not observations. suddenly when observations that nobody trusts are fed into a Reanalysis model (and they cant be right) the result is suitable to use to test a theory. selective skepticism
With all due respect, Sirs Mosher and Maue – it would have been much appreciated if you’d told us peasants without PhDs in climate-related fields why using this NCEP Reanalysis is bad, and perhaps even told us peasants lower down the food chain what this beast actually is, ahem, the acronym stands for.
Otherwise, your contribution feels a bit like the sneering we’re used to when lectured from a great height by certain people on certain blogs who shall be nameless.
Thanks in advance for your forthcoming explanations.
“The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records….”
As others have commented, this is a fascinating and rather sad quote.
Clearly the author felt the need to state his belief in the orthodoxy, while at the same time his interesting work provides yet another argument that will eventually destroy the orthodoxy
He says plainly that this mechanism has had a significant effect on climate in the past. Proxy data from around the world (see the recent WUWT post about the MWP/LIA global extent) clearly shows that the mild 20th century warming was very similar to previous events. If the earlier events were driven by this mechanism, as he suggests, then it seems somewhat obvious that the 20th century warming may well have had the same cause. The fact that solar activity was extremely high during the 20th century strongly supports this.
I’m sure the author realises this. To suggest that mechanisms that have driven the Earth’s climate for thousands of years suddenly stopped in 1900 is almost beyond ridiculous. But no doubt he felt he had to say this. So very sad.
Still, those few words which he will no doubt come to regret are of little significance in the greater scheme of things. What really matters is that this significant work will help to move climate science, by whatever small amount, back towards honesty and the rule of empirical evidence and logic over pseudo-religious beliefs and rotten computer models.
Chris
I think I’ll wait for the movie to come out.
Read Stephen Wilde in the November 25, 2010 at 2:10 am post. There’s a lot more going on before and after clouds form. And as others have pointed out, this paper could use some replication/verification.
I think I’ve never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
================
Er… they said the model doesn’t work??!?
These results provide perhaps the most compelling evidence presented thus far of a GCR-climate relationship.
But you are happy to believe them because it fits your theory?
Anyone see a contradiction here?
Yes, I noted that too. You can’t get a paper published without tipping your hat to the AGW crowd.
Richard S Courtney says: November 25, 2010 at 3:06 am
…………..
I have strong reservation regarding the Svensmark effect, that it has sufficient ‘power’ to achive what is implied, but if it does than following could be the result:
In winter months the Arctic insolation is minimal, its thermal input is from the North Atlantic’s current system:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
In the summer months insolation is the main factor, on annual bases the ratio is probably more like 40:60 solar vs currents.
It is a well known fact that clouds act as a ‘blanket’ in cold winter nights, and even in many winter days above 50N cloudy day could be warmer than sunny (heat gets in, but does not radiates back as effectively as when is cloudless).
This is perfectly in line with GCRvs clouds hypothesis, if applicable, it is just what is relevant and where. Albedo is the main factor in tropical and subtropical regions up to 12 months , temperate regions 8-9 months and polar regions only 3-5 summer months.
One point to bear in mind is that long term changes in geomagnetic field are in the region of 1000s nanoTesla, while for sunspot cycles are in order of 10s of nanoTesla.
But again I think magnetic field is not cause or a a consequence of temperature changes, but happen to be a parallel side effect. According to my research it is the North Atlantic precursor, and geomagnetic field happen to be fellow travellers along the same time line.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
Brent Hargreaves says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:53 am
Great news! Once the link between solar activity and climate is well understood we can stop all this nonsense about carbon dioxide.
—————–
Weird logic. Seems to be a rerun of the strangely popular idea that only one thing can affect climate at a time. So every time we find some new thing that affects climate that somehow it proves everything else is excluded; like CO2. Errr no.
When I read the title, I got excited.
Then I read the words “statistically robust” , “reanalysis” , “GCM’s” and my shoulders slumped.
Having read the rest, I think I understand the purpose of this paper. i.e. these are alarmists who are trying to establish what “natural variations” caused warming and/or cooling PRIOR to mans sins.
The layout of the paper is so so familiar. “We have a theory, ROBUST models confirm our theory, but we need more grants to look further into it.”
Anyone wishing to gain some knowledge about GCR’s and galactic influences on our climate may like to visit the website of that brilliant young physicist NIR SHAVIV http://www.sciencebits.com/
Vukcevic,
The negative correlation that you mention may come about because of the difference in albedo between cloud and ice.
Low Earth (Solar?) magnetic field –> more cosmic rays –> more cloud
would normally indicate cooling. However, cloud is less reflective than
the underlying ice, and there is net decrease in albedo near the poles.
Similarly,
High Earth (Solar?) magnetic field –> less cosmic rays –> less cloud
would normally indicate heating. However, over the poles less cloud
means that sunlight reflects of the bare ice, increasing albedo an so
leading to cooling near the poles.
You have to laugh at the “magic phrase” needed to mollify the CAGW gatekeepers that was necessary to get the paper published.
———–
I have to laugh at people whose lips and tongue are green because they have drunken to much cool aid.
I’d like to see more skepticism about conspiracy theories. I see too much gullibilty.
Leif Svalgaard says: November 25, 2010 at 3:25 am
…………………..
As I just said in my comment to Richard S Courtney:
“I think magnetic field is not cause or a consequence of temperature changes, but happen to be a parallel side effect. According to my research the North Atlantic precursor and geomagnetic field happen to be fellow travellers along the same time line.”
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
Correlation is always there, but it need not be always negative:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
The reasons for these prolong periods, could be clear to anyone who considers all the factors affecting the North Atlantic’s currents circulation.
Correlation has to be positive or negative only if there is a direct link of cause-consequence, but that may not be case here. However, you may be aware (at least of theoretical possibility) of close circuit systems where positive feedback flips into negative and vice versa, I do not think that is case here, but the science may prove otherwise.
Kniveton has used the superposed epoch method on clouds before, e.g. in a paper with Brian Tinsley: http://www.utdallas.edu/nsm/physics/pdf/tin_dcgcc.pdf
In it they discuss the ‘Wilcox’ effect on storminess from passage of the Heliospheric Current Sheet. Back in 1973 I was co-author of the ‘discovery’ paper on the Wilcox effect: Wilcox, J.M., P.H. Scherrer, L. Svalgaard, W.O. Roberts, and R.H. Olsen, Solar magnetic sector structure: Relation to circulation of the Earth’s atmosphere, Science, 180, 185, 1973. One of the speculations was that the cosmic ray intensity [which is also organized by the polarity of the sun’s magnetic field] was somehow involved. As with so many sun-weather effects, the Wilcox-effect eventually died.
Yarmy says: November 25, 2010 at 2:10 am
quote
The author has his own website here:
http://benlaken.com/index.html
unquote
And he works on the Earthshine Project, one of the most visionary efforts in all of climate science. Respect!
I had trouble interpreting the paper, not least because PDFs are very jerky on this machine. Presumably the GCR change shown in Fig. 3 is a sudden drop with concomitant mid-latitude drops in cloud cover at low and medium altitudes. To me, however, what stands out are the anomalies, equal and opposite cloud _increases_ in a few selected areas. It’s the odd bits that prove the science: looking at the warm spike off North America I’d have guessed it was an indication of (pause for groan from all present) previously reduced aerosol levels caused by oil and surfactant pollution. But looking at the other areas which are warming, I realise I’ll have to think a bit. Why the big blob in the Pacific for instance?
Dr Laken, if you want to see another large influence on aerosols, leave the telescope and amble down to the westerly facing slopes of Tiede, just above Puerto de Santiago and look west as the sun sets. On a still day you can see the pollution from the town’s drains trailing off all the way to the horizon fifty miles away. Think about what that stuff coating the water will do to the production of aerosols. Multiply the population of Santiago up to 5 billion and imagine the result if you multiply that oil smooth by the same amount. Enough oil drains down the world’s sewers to coat the entire ocean surface every fortnight.
But all I’ve got is a hammer, so everything looks like a nail.
JF
I’ve parked my posting for Judith Curry’s future thread on alternative GW theories on her latest Open thread.
Why are cloud changes increasing at the start of the study (day -8 to -10) when the GCR flux is low?
This is “non-Svensmark”, but since someone (incorrectly I guess) suggested that Svensmark’s study rejects long term solar impact, a correlation study by Cornelis de Jager and Silvia Duhau, “The variable solar dynamo and the forecast of Solar Activity: Influence on Terrestrial Surface Temperature” may be relevant.
http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2010-Variable-solar-dynamo3.pdf
They’ve studied correlation between solar cycles and temperature, and predict a solar minimum.
(Abstract of a previous 2009 de Jager/Duhau study:
http://ncwatch.typepad.com/dalton_minimum_returns/2009/02/no-warming-until-after-2014-and-maybe-not-then-.html )
….not forgeting that 90% of GCR are PROTONS (Hydrogen nucleii), able to react with ozone and oxygen.
While it hasn’t come up in the comments so far, Svensmark says the cloud effect would be most pronounced in clean maritime air where the clean air means few condensation nuclei exist (cosmic rays create muons which ionize SO2 derived from DMS released by decay algae, IIRC and may not).
This study suggests an obvious followup. Since this presumes changes in cloud cover at mid latitudes, then people should look for changes in real cloud cover and correlate that with latitude and ocean/land surface (including distance from land upwind).
vukcevic says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:04 am
What if Svenmark´s effect is a side effect while magnetism is a cause?
Did you check it with the beryllium proxy?
We should not necesarilly expect heat caused by IR (LWR): When I prepare my breakfast, I expect heat from Microwave :-), others, directly from plasma….. or is it somebody out there prohibiting some parts of the spectrum to change wavelengths/frequencies?
Stephen Wilde says:
November 25, 2010 at 2:10 am
I’d like to resolve the question as to whether the change in cosmic ray intensity is a direct driver itself or a mere proxy for solar changes that cause the cloud changes by other means.
The thing is that the cloud quantity changes also seem to be accompanied by latitudinal jet stream shifting….
_________________________________________________________
Stephen,
Have you taken into account the fact that changes in cloud cover will change the amount of energy hitting the earth instead of being reflected? Especially when 70% of the earth’s surface is water?
This last year or two seems to indicate there has been some sort of change in the jet stream behavior. We also have the change from warm to cool in the PDO.
At this point I do no think anyone can tell what the confounding effects are from the cosmic ray/cloud cover changes.
Radio flux f10.7 from Solar cycle 24 is tracking well below the level of cycle 20, which was during the cold 1970s.
Based on the relationships observed in this study […] we speculate
that little systematic change in temperature [due to cloud cover changes, see text] at mid-latitudes has occurred over the last 50 years. However, at shorter time-scales this phenomenon may contribute to natural variability, potentially reducing detectability of an anthropogenic signal.”
which is in line with
“The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have
had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic
warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records”
…
In my sense, it is another proof that the solar influence is way weaker than the rest in the context of the recently observed warming.
And that’s exactly the sense they wanted to leave you with, despite their own admission that they don’t have any proof of that, and it’s just their “speculation.” Basically this paper is an appology for the recent observed levelling/decrease of temperature (“Oh, temporary cloud issue” while trying to ignore the issue on larger time scales.
Here’s the question that they totally glossed over… if the effect is signifigant enough to be “detectable in palaeoclimatic records” (read as: HUGE time scales), then how is it possible that the effect has had no long-term influence within the last 50 years, but only short-term recently? Hmm?
Their logic doesn’t follow at all, which isn’t surprising since it’s not really logic. It’s an excuse.
There is more to cloud cover than fraction of the coverage. Droplet size also matters.
Was it Lindzen that proposed something a few years ago about albedo brightening of the clouds being a regulator?
Richard S Courtney says:
November 25, 2010 at 3:06 am
vukcevic:
Thank you for your observation in your post above at November 25, 2010 at 1:04 am.
It says;
“There is a strong correlation between the Arctic temperature and the Earth magnetic field. However the correlation is negative, weaker field higher temperature. If the Svensmark’s effect is at work it is in reverse; weaker magnetic field, more GCR, more clouds above the Arctic, higher temperature…..
____________________________________
SWAG:
IF Vukcevic is correct for the poles and Laken et al. are correct for the mid latitudes, perhaps this might effect the jet stream as Stephen Wilde pointed out???
Mods, pls del prev post (mea culpa on formatting).
Are you possibly confusing or not differentiating between Earth’s magnetic field and the solar magnetic field?
The two would seem to be operative in different areas of ‘space’ …
.
OT, except on the thankfulness part:
Mr. Watts, you are something I am thankful for.
I appreciate your work, the forum you provide for your many intelligent commenters, and the work of those titans who, like you, stand for the hard discipline that science used to be, and may become again through the efforts of those with whom you stand.
Many happy returns of the day to all, and no matter what else is happening in our various corners of the planet, if we have the power and connection to run a computer, not to mention a wonderful place like this to visit, it is indicative that we all truly have much to be thankful for!
Further thought on cosmic rays, cloud cover, and temperature.
The rise in skin cancer was coincident with rise in global temperatures. Cancers are caused by penetrating radiation (UV-B at least, perhaps cosmic rays as well.) Is it possible that during this period cloud cover was abnormally low?
Now, cloud cover is returning to a more natural state, causing temperatures to drop. I don’t know that skin cancer has been on the decline for the past few years, but would be another interesting correlation to investigate.
If so, you’d have a very interesting correlation between radiation reaching the earth and global temperatures, which would imply that cloud cover is a huge factor.
—————
I see they used two data sets, both satellite data and reanalysis data: ” . . . ISCCP satellite data and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data . . . “
John
I’ve never been convinced that GCRs are much more than a small effect. This paper doesn’t change that feeling very much. However, it does show that our favorite GCMs are missing yet another factor. I wonder how many missing climate elements it takes before people realize they have been pretty much useless.
That the NAO has flipped to the negative mode, could it ´be linked to solar activity?
Hi everyone, thank you for all taking an interest in my work, I didn’t expect such a response – I like all the comments!
I am a bit pressed for time as at the moment, but I wanted to attempt to leave a (hopefully) clarifying comment:
Firstly, I would say (and I sure I speak for my co-authors Dom and Mick also here), this work does not comment on global warming and it should not be interpreted to cast doubt on recent anthropogenic warming. What it does, is rather establish that there may be good evidence of a Cosmic Ray – cloud signal detectable in satellite observations of clouds, which has traditionally been a very murky area as over the last 10 or so years, published work in this area has dealt with small sample sizes, and observations of limited statistical significance.
So, the important thing here is that it finds interesting evidence to suggest that this complicated element of (theoretical) natural atmospheric variability, may be operating. Note I said variability: this work does not identify a trend, and indeed at the end of the paper we state
“assuming that there is no linear trend in the short-term GCR change, we speculate that little (0.088 C/decade) systematic change in temperature at mid-latitudes has occurred over the last 50 years”
From the research I got the impression that any Cosmic ray – cloud link is strongly dependent on not only variations in Cosmic rays themselves, but also on the state of the atmosphere. I.e. if cosmic rays are enhancing microphysical processes connected to clouds, then it is very likely be governed by the cloud conditions.
In fact, I suspect that this is why the approach we have used in the ACP paper has been successful at identifying a relationship: past approaches used rare high magnitude decreases in the Cosmic Ray flux to test for cloud changes – these events were essentially random, and therefore are insensitive to atmospheric conditions.
To comment on a few Posts:
Guido Guidi says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:00 am
Interesting. Any news from the Cloud experiment being run at Cern? It could provide some experimental validation of these findings.
Ben—I heard Jasper Kirkby speak very interesting experiment in Easter, and he is being very careful not to release any results before he has done a thorough analysis.
wayne says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:01 am
So if this ends up true it was the sun after all.
Now who would have ever guessed such an outlandish reason.
Ben—No Wane!
Ryan Maue says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:25 am
Upon seeing the usage of NCEP-Reanalysis surface air temperatures, I quit reading.
Ben—I think this is an important point I would like to reply to.
We are aware of the limitations associated with NCEP (for anyone unfamiliar, NCEP reanalysis are not observations as Ryan rightly says – they are a mixture of observations from various sources fed in to a Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model). NWP’s are similar to weather forecast models, which predict the weather. To re-state, this model is fed with up-to-date observations from many sources, and represents a best-guess at conditions based on our understanding of physical processes, and our knowledge of recent atmospheric conditions (from observations). Uncertainties with a dataset are not to say they are incorrect, or should not be used. In fact using them in a large composite as we have done is a good way to handel uncertainty, as it is essentially an ensemble.
If we discarded any dataset with issues there would be nothing left to use! As scientist, we can only work with best guess and attempt to minimise uncertainty.
Also, I think that most people would agree when you have distinct datasets showing a comparable response (as we do), it is a good verification of the reliability results.
Steeptown says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:56 am
Yes indeed, they still have to secure future funding.
Ben – that would be nice, if you have any floating around send it my way!
Yarmy says:
November 25, 2010 at 2:10 am
The author has his own website here:
http://benlaken.com/index.html
He’s very young: looks like he’s only just finished his PhD.
Ben – I did just finish, about 3 months ago!
I would like to reply to more posts, but I have run out of time. Thank you all again for the interest, the work is on-going, so hopefully there will be more publications on the way.
Best ,
–Ben
Speaking at the 3rd International Climate Cobnference in Berlin, Dec. 3-4, 2010:
Prof. Dr. Henrik Svensmark, Denmark, Atmospheric Sciences
Prof. Dr. Nir Shaviv, Israel, Astrophysicist
Prof. Dr. Jan Veizer, Canada, Paleo-geologist
I’m attending, and I’m now really really looking forward to it!
Leif Svalgaard says: Coincidence, the correlation breaks down when you go back in time, e.g. to the MWP
Could you explain or reference that remark?
Since there seems to be a large disagreement about the magnitude, extent and even existence of MWP, making such a bland comment about correlation is rather meaningless.
Who’s version of MWP does not correlate ?
What is it “coincident” with. Your other comments on the paper are interesting I think you need to be a lot clearer about what you are saying here.
regards.
Leif, you beat me to it.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 25, 2010 at 3:17 am
It’s perfectly possible to have a robust correlation on a longer timescale but a weak or non existent correlation on shorter timescales.
You responded:
November 25, 2010 at 3:17 am
The nature of the superposed epoch method is such that it applies to the shorter time scale, i.e. that of the width of the graph. So you are saying that on a time scale of 3 days it works, but on a time scale of 10 days it doesn’t have to. That is special pleading.
Some events in nature have cumulative affects, either occurring due to real cumulative build-up (IE ice ages), or occurring by chance because the event happened hundreds of times (Sun exposure and skin cancer). Other events in nature do not have cumulative affects (this Arctic blast blowing up my skirt in Wallowa County will end in a few days). If Steven wants to state a case for cumulative affects, plausible mechanism must be the arbiter, else you run the risk of falling into the butterfly affect as your fallback mechanism.
Steven, it is very clear from the graph that a plausible mechanism exists for short term cosmic ray affects. But once things rebound in short order, what is the mechanism for cumulative affects? Especially if you can’t find lingering evidence of the short term affect after it goes away?
_Jim says: November 25, 2010 at 5:21 am
Are you possibly confusing or not differentiating between Earth’s magnetic field and the solar magnetic field? The two would seem to be operative in different areas of ‘space’ …
No I am not. The heliospheric magnetic field impends GCR entry into heliosphere. The Earth’s magnetic field does the same for the magnetosphere. When the GCR count is calculated it is first adjusted for variation for the strength of the Earth’s dipole (which is different to the Arctic MF) and than remainder is attributed to the strength of the heliospheric field, mainly defined by the SSN.
see also:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be.htm
Oops. Sorry folks I don’t know how to add italics and my egg nog coffee has addled my brain. Leif’s comment ended with “…That is special pleading.”
WhichBruce Cunningham says:
November 25, 2010 at 3:10 am
I was struck by Ryan’s comment also. I assume the NCEP-reanalysis temps are not so good? A bad thing to use for correlation of their theory?
“Assume” , either positive or negative, is never a good staring point. If you have a doubt check it out.
I am now , sadly, skeptical about all these temperature records and more skeptical the more they are “reanalysed” or whatever. However, I would not dismiss it out of hand. Most of the dubious adjustments seem to concern longer term variation. There is some hope that they may accurately reflect such short term changes.
P. Solar says: November 25, 2010 at 6:11 am
……………
It is a reference to my correlation:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
(temperature reconstructions vs GMF).
See my reply:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/25/something-to-be-thankful-for-at-last-cosmic-rays-linked-to-rapid-mid-latitude-cloud-changes/#comment-536878
One more point, clear skies do not lead to a hot Earth. It all depends on necessary factors. Under clear sky conditions, strong radiative cooling can plunge temperatures into negative numbers, if other necessary factors are present. The picture graphic used is somewhat misleading in my opinion.
REPLY: Well I did say “simplified” in the caption, and given I posted this late last night, it was the best I could find. Zzzzz. I agree though, and the authors note that state of the atmosphere is also a significant factor. – Anthony
Enneagram says: November 25, 2010 at 5:08 am
…………..
For time being the Antarctica is the main problem to the ‘magnetic field’ being the key. Magnetic field there, in the first approximation, has had linear decay during last 150 years, so no obvious correlation. My view of this is as follows:
The Earth has a large hemispheric asymmetry in number of respects: geophysical, oceanographic and geomagnetic etc.
Northern Hemisphere is mainly influenced by events in the Arctic ; transpolar current with number of gyres, shallow Greenland-Scotland ridge, specifics not available in the SH, that make the Arctic’s temperatures more vulnerable to the external influence.
In contrast the SH by itself is far more stable, not only due to larger water mass but also the circumpolar current acting as a giant flywheel in hydro / thermo -dynamic sense, which is far less prone to the short term disturbances. North Atlantic’s effect on the Southern hemisphere is only a partial ‘cross-talk’ on a decadal time scale, due the oceans’ conveyer belt, resulting in an out of phase polar temperature variability.
I have no data on the Antarctica’s Beryllium, the Arctic’s is questionable for very good reason.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be.htm
Pamela Gray says:
Steven, it is very clear from the graph that a plausible mechanism exists for short term cosmic ray affects. But once things rebound in short order, what is the mechanism for cumulative affects? Especially if you can’t find lingering evidence of the short term affect after it goes away?
Showing a short term effect establishes the mechanism, upto now being refuted as unproven, that links solar factors other than simple direct insolation.
This means we need to look at long term magnetic and other effects, not just flares.
Even if this effect just happens for a few days at a time, that affects the energy entering the system. That will not remain as a pocket of hot air but the energy is still there. A series of such events is necessarily accumulative.
Since this is not just a local effect it could be significant over a very large area.
Pamela Gray says:
November 25, 2010 at 6:40 am
Steven, it is very clear from the graph that a plausible mechanism exists for short term cosmic ray affects. But once things rebound in short order, what is the mechanism for cumulative affects? Especially if you can’t find lingering evidence of the short term affect after it goes away?
Does it have to be cumulative? An accumulation of what? Not of the short term effects, but a long term change in galactic cosmic rays, if the short term effect is valid, can be argued to produce a similar increase in cloud cover. If during the ten days the clouds follow the leader galactic cosmic rays, it is possible to argue that a long term leading would also be followed in a similar way.
I find this observation similar to what the CLOUD is trying to do at CERN. That will also be a short term effect by construction, but it would show that condensation follows the amount of radiation supplied.
Lets recapitulate: If condensation follows the amount of radiation supplied then the plot above seems to me to be a confirmation.
Just my opinion, but recent work showing a very tight correlation between N hemisphere summer insolation & rate of ice-changes seems to preclude any other significant influence(s), including GCRs or CO2, at least at the time-scales involved in the studies (the last 800k yrs).
Correct me if I am wrong, but, as I interpreted the wording in your first post (I cannot read your mind therefore have only your words to go by) it looked as if you only considered near-earth effects, and implied the solar effects were somehow only earth-centric and not heliosphereic related (at some, say, +100 earth radii away from earth):
As we all know, the Sun’s “solar magnetic field” extends throughout our galaxy whereas the Earth’s does not extend throughout our galaxy, therefore, the “solar magnetic field” is capable of affecting, say, “sweeping away GCRs” before ever coming close to seeing the effects of the Earth’s magnetic field …
Good to see we have cleared that up.
.
Above, in reference to this phrase in the text, “prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming”, Gail Combs says:
“You have to laugh at the “magic phrase” needed to mollify the CAGW gatekeepers that was necessary to get the paper published.”
Reminds me of something my daughter, who works for a big architectural firm told me recently. All architects working on large projects where any government funding might be involved have to insert stereotypical “green language” and green modifications to even have their proposals considered. Not surprisingly, most in the field are committed to AGW.
This brings back to what all chemists know very well: The formation of hydroxides in a solution; they usually form as fluffy compounds floating in the middle and above solutions.
In the present case we also have an hydroxide formation, in the “atmosphere solution”: That of Hydrogen Hydroxide H-OH (charged “water” that we use to call “Clouds”). ..and that H ( a METAL for which we are “THANKFUL”-as said above-) in this case comes from “above”.
Note:These charged hydrogen nucleii sometimes smash our cellphones’ chips.
The butterfly effect, little things mean a lot. Give a girl a small diamond ring and see what happens, don’t give her one at all and see what happens. It is certainly worth looking into to see what the results are in weather. It just might be useful to know.
ninderthana says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:25 am
……………
Agree, but I think albedo is relevant only with a direct reference to latitude and time of the year i.e. insolation. Albedo is far more important factor at lower latitudes than within the polar circle, let’s say: tropical and subtropical regions up to 12 months , temperate regions 8-9 months and polar regions only 3-5 summer months. Cloud cover is reverse: cooling in tropics, warming effect in polar regions.
Hence: Svensmark’s effect (more GCR more cloud, if proven) cools tropics, warms the Arctic, but I am not yet convinced that GCR count is high enough to affect cloud formation to the required degree.
There is also a point of the negative feedback here: stronger the HS magnetic field, less GCR, less cloud, more heat, more evaporation, more cloud, i.e. less cloud results in more cloud, hmm…
Anthony, I am thankful for a vigorous scientific debate on WUWT Thanksgiving morning. Hope your family is enjoying renewed health and greetings to all the magnificent commenters on WUWT. Now back to cooking.
Gail Combs:
Thank you for your post at November 25, 2010 at 5:20 am which responds to my post at November 25, 2010 at 3:06 am by saying;
“SWAG:
IF Vukcevic is correct for the poles and Laken et al. are correct for the mid latitudes, perhaps this might effect the jet stream as Stephen Wilde pointed out???”
Yes, that is a good example of the kinds of effects that I was supposing may possibly exist when I wrote in my post;
“Finally, the effect of these different flux modulations in different regions on heat flows (a) around the planet and (b) to and from the planet need to be determined.”
But please, please note my point that said;
“Firstly, your finding and the finding by Lakis et al. each needs to be confirmed.”
I listed the logical progression from that point to my final one.
Speculating on what a research study could lead to is good because it gives reason and incentive to conduct the research. But, very importantly, one needs to first determine
(a) whether the effect(s) to be studied is (are) known to exist with significant certainty
and
(b) if the magnitudes of the effect(s) is (are) significant or trivial.
Concentrating on what the research may provide can induce a false confidence in the importance of the effect. The determinations I state as (a) and (b) MUST take major priority over everything else or gross error is inevitable.
Indeed, AGW is a clear example of such error. No agreed determination of ‘climate sensitivity’ to atmospheric GHG concentration changes exists, but political and economic policies are being based on indications of GCMs that assume high climate sensitivity. If the climate sensitivity is low then AGW is trivial and the horrific costs of adopting the policies are not needed. But if the climate sensitivity is high then adoption of the policies may be essential.
Richard
Pamela Gray says:
November 25, 2010 at 6:54 am
I assume you must mean at night? As radiative cooling is unlikely during the day with sunlight hitting the surface!?
but yes, the graphic is rather simplified, but I guess it’s because it relates only to GCR’s
P. Solar says:
November 25, 2010 at 6:11 am
What is it “coincident” with. Your other comments on the paper are interesting I think you need to be a lot clearer about what you are saying here.
This has been discussed on another thread. The main point is that main magnetic field of the earth [and in the Arctic] has been decreasing steadily the past two thousand years and the temperatures have not been steadily rising the past two thousand years.
Now, Vuk says that the correlation is negative except at times when it is positive. In my book that means ‘no correlation’.
Yarmy says:
November 25, 2010 at 2:10 am
The author has his own website here:
http://benlaken.com/index.html
He’s very young: looks like he’s only just finished his PhD.
Exactly he’s the first author who is usually the most junior, often a grad student, the faculty come later in the list.
This ia all fascinating stuff, a great post!
Does anybody remember this from last year, poor old Prof Lockwood, possibly?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8008473.stm
With three harsh NH winters just gone, & a harsh SH one from which they are only just emerging, shouldn’t somebody tell him?
vukcevic says:
November 25, 2010 at 6:41 am
The heliospheric magnetic field impends GCR entry into heliosphere. The Earth’s magnetic field does the same for the magnetosphere. When the GCR count is calculated it is first adjusted for variation for the strength of the Earth’s dipole
If the GCRs have any effect it would be with the GCRs actually reaching the atmosphere, so they should not be corrected when correlated with temperatures. Here is a graph of the uncorrected GCRs [represented by their proxy 14C] and the Earth’s [or the Arctic’s – it doesn’t make much difference which one] magnetic field strength [dots]. You can clearly see that they are strongly anti-correlated [as they should be according to our understanding of how this works]. The tiny wiggles are solar activity related changes. It should be clear that the variation of the main field is by far the dominant, so if climate follows the GCR flux, it should follow the 14C curve. I don’t think it does. You can get around this problem by claiming that we do not know anything about past climate anyway.
Here is a graph of the uncorrected GCRs
Forgot the graph: http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
Steven Mosher says:
November 25, 2010 at 2:39 am (Edit)
Ryan Maue says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:25 am (Edit)
Upon seeing the usage of NCEP-Reanalysis surface air temperatures, I quit reading.
#####
yup. i guess everybody forgets they are not observations. suddenly when observations that nobody trusts are fed into a Reanalysis model (and they cant be right) the result is suitable to use to test a theory. selective skepticism
I suspect NCEP reanalyses are not as bad as some make out. The reason I suspect this is because I found an interesting correlation between solar activity and the NCEP reanalysis of specific humidity at the tropopause. The odds of it being a chance match are very small.
tallbloke says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:18 am
I suspect NCEP reanalyses are not as bad as some make out. The reason I suspect this is because I found an interesting correlation between solar activity and the NCEP reanalysis of specific humidity at the tropopause.
This is expected from Leif’s Law: “if the data matches my pet theory, the data is good” :–)
_Jim says:
November 25, 2010 at 7:48 am
As we all know, the Sun’s “solar magnetic field” extends throughout our galaxy whereas the Earth’s does not extend throughout our galaxy
The sun’s magnetic field does not really extend throughout the Galaxy in any meaningful way. It is confined to the Heliosphere by the interstellar medium just as the Earth’s magnetic field is confined to its Magnetosphere by the solar wind [the interplanetary medium]. The fields at times connect, so you might say that the Earth’s field is connected to the Sun’s field which is connected to the Galaxy’s field which is connected to the filed of the Local Group, which is connected to …[etc], but that is like saying that the the Petaluma River extends all the way to China…
Ryan Maue : Upon seeing the usage of NCEP-Reanalysis surface air temperatures, I quit reading.
Discarding the entire paper for this reason seems an over-reaction, as the authors found that the effect was present in both the ISCCP satellite data and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data.
ps. Thank you for your response, Dr. Laken, much appreciated.
This is a very interesting study. The conclusion seems to be that under certain atmospheric conditions, GCR’s impact cloudiness. There seems to be a strong physical basis for this correlation. It has taken special work to find incidences of this phenomenon, and previous workers have been unable to discover it.
The authors say that this could have contributed significantly to global climate prior to the rise of anthropogenic influences. This is regarded by some posters as obeisance to the dominance of “Warmers”, rather than as a scientific statement.
It is pretty simple to see why this statement was made. While there has been a 11 year cyclic variation of Cosmic Rays with time since 1950, there is no overall increasing trend in Cosmic Rays to match the trend of increasing temperatures. Check out the following graph extracted from the book “The Chilling Stars”
http://www.realclimate.org/images/TheChillingStars.jpg
A civilized discussion by intelligent people.
This amplifies the value of WUWT.
Thanks to Anthony and all his friends.
Also Happy Turkey Day to all south of the line, the 49th that is.
Richard S Courtney
I am very grateful for your constructive comments. They are great inspiration for further thoughts. I am certain that climate is among the most complex problems the science has to disentangle. Most of my incidental and often incoherent comments are aimed at probing into new aspects of the climate change causes, previously neglected, but for time being I do understant that is far removed from what rigour of science requires.
My thanks again.
My thinking on this.
They have detected a signal in cloud on the time scale of a few days due to changes in GCR that are (key point) only 1-2% of the solar 11-year cycle GCR changes. Now, if this is important for climate scales, it should also cause something significant to happen in the 11-year cycle, particularly since those GCR changes are much larger. But when we look at the 11-year cycle, at a stretch we only see 0.2 C oscillations in global temperature. So, I suspect that while these short-term fluctuations are interesting, they are not saying anything about climate even at the decadal scale.
Ben Laken 6.06
What a civilised reply. An object lesson to certain big names in this field as was the clarity of your paper.
I shall watch your future work with great interest.
Tonyb
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:17 am
@ vukcevic
………………………….
I thought I was, by default, the master of confounding statements, but I take my hat off, sir.
WOW…if their methodology is good, that observational result between ISCCP and cosmic ray flux is pretty amazing.
…waiting to see if Hansen will claim that it’s actually the cloud changes causing the changes in cosmic ray activity…which occur BEFORE the cloud changes.
vukcevic says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:04 am
I thought I was, by default, the master of confounding statements, but I take my hat off, sir.
Not confounding, just wrong.
LazyTeenager says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:19 am
So every time we find some new thing that affects climate that somehow it proves everything else is excluded; like CO2. Errr no.
Just for you, Lazy, the argument is: Nobody doubts that the atmosphere, including its CO2, keeps us warm. Some of us doubt that variations in CO2 PPM, undeniably rising steadily for many decades, was the main driver of the 1975-1998 uptick. (Had that uptick continued to 2010 we’d have become less sceptical about Carbon Monomania.)
My phrase “all this nonsense about CO2” was shorthand for “the dumb assertation that burning fossil fuels takes us closer to a tipping point beyond which a positive feedback will be triggered, leading to Thermageddon, when in fact the climate is an imperfectly-understood complex adaptive system with a multi-billion year track record of supporting life.”
tallbloke
NCEP reanalyses: I guess the point I would make to WUWT readers is this. If you read here for a while ( or write here) you will find several persistent themes among “some” commenters:
1. the observation record is junk,biased,tampered with,not accurate…[choose one]
2. Models have to get things perfectly or they are junk
3. You cannot model the climate.
4. Raw observations are better than adjusted data
5. etc
Now I happen to disagree with all of these statements (especially #5). So, it was
interesting to see people applaud a study that uses Reanalysis data.
if you believe that the observation data is junk or biased you need to understand exactly how Reanalysis works. what are the inputs? If you distrust GCMs or models in general you need to understand the kinds of models that get used to do Reanalysis.
Being selectively skeptical about this things wont cut it.
I have no issue with Reanalysis ( or any other data adjustment, data infilling, data extrapolation, data modelling) “observations”. However, before you test a theory using them you have to realize that you are comparing two models. a theory and a model of data. This entail carrying forward errors and uncertainty in the model of the data.
A point Briggs would make if he were here, he’s not so I’ll make it.
vukcevic says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:04 am
He is a respected “Advocatus diaboli”…Friction is needed to make fire, but in order to make Light, electricity is better, and to make magnetism too (in fact both are twins, as Oersted showed it).
It is sad to me that we all have to qualify, “look, please stop suggesting this has something to do with global warming”…
eadler-“The authors say that this could have contributed significantly to global climate prior to the rise of anthropogenic influences. This is regarded by some posters as obeisance to the dominance of “Warmers”, rather than as a scientific statement.”
It’s not a scientific statement, it’s a stupid statement, I’m sorry to say. The effects did not suddenly stop effecting the climate altogether after some mysterious “time of anthropogenic influences” and they will effect it in the future. This is NOT to assert that the “justification” (a lack of trend) is wrong, just that, saying that they think it can’t have contributed to the recent trend, does NOT mean that it no longer contributes to climate variability and trends, especially in the future. If the sun’s activity changes significantly in the future, this would impact our forecasts for the future, for example, and existing forecasts would probably end up being wrong because they didn’t include this effect.
The fact is that this will have some impact on our understanding of AGW. Of course it doesn’t “negate” it altogether, nothing could conceivably do so. But every change in our understanding of climate has some significance for our understanding of AGW, in some way, even if indirectly. The authors of the study emphasize that this effect can’t, as far as they can tell, directly impact the attribution of recent warming. So? The questions that are interesting about AGW are much more than just the attribution issue in recent decades.
Great debate, really enjoyed reading it so far.
Anthony, your blog has quality and quantity. Most of the time ! 🙂
Andy
vukcevic wrote, “I have no data on the Antarctica’s Beryllium […]”
Maybe have a look here…
Horiuchi, K.; Uchida, T.; Sakamoto, Y.; Ohta, A.; Matsuzaki, H.; Shibata, Y; & Motoyama, H. (2008). Ice core record of 10Be over the past millennium from Dome Fuji, Antarctica: A new proxy record of past solar activity and a powerful tool for stratigraphic dating. Quaternary Geochronology 3(3), 253-261.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-8612.html
data: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/domefuji/domefuji-10be2008.txt
This is another step forward…..!
P Gosselin says:
November 25, 2010 at 6:08 am
Well, I won’t be attending, I’ll just be sitting at home feeling very jealous!
Enneagram says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:23 am
electricity is better, and to make magnetism too
You have that backwards. In Nature [except very rare places, like our non-conducting air] it takes magnetism to make electricity.
It’s good that others are finding the same thing Svensmark had painstakingly taken years to find. Others are catching up to where he is.
eadler says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:43 am
There is no overall increasing trend in Cosmic Rays to match the trend of increasing temperatures.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/TheChillingStars.jpg
Probably the blue line on the graph is due to the UHI effect.
This report demonstrates Association NOT Causative connection.
Solar particle emission flux, the suns general magnetic field and cosmic rays reversed all move together – they are proxies for each other; so don’t confuse association and causation. Straightforward examination of EVIDENCE shows the CR agency theory to link solar activity (11yr) to earth’s weather does not work (or it might have up to 0.3% effect) . The link is directly solar particles which are magnetically linked (22yr cycle) please see “World cooling has…. and comments therein – http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3307&linkbox=true&position=4
Thanks Piers Corbyn WeatherAction
Roy W. Spencer says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:11 am
…waiting to see if Hansen will claim that it’s actually the cloud changes causing the changes in cosmic ray activity
Funny. 🙂
Richard S Courtney says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:03 am
“SWAG…..
“Firstly, your finding and the finding by Lakis et al. each needs to be confirmed.”
I listed the logical progression from that point to my final one.
Speculating on what a research study could lead to is good because it gives reason and incentive to conduct the research. But, very importantly, one needs to first determine
(a) whether the effect(s) to be studied is (are) known to exist with significant certainty
and
(b) if the magnitudes of the effect(s) is (are) significant or trivial.
Concentrating on what the research may provide can induce a false confidence in the importance of the effect…..
_________________________________________________________
Richard,
I certainly agree this information needs to be verified, validated and repeated. That is why I called it a Silly Wild A… Guess. I doubt very much we will have a really good idea of all the factors effecting climate, much less how they interact in my lifetime so it is fun to speculate a bit and hope we see some of our speculations proved true or false.
Ben Laken commented, “From the research I got the impression that any Cosmic ray – cloud link is strongly dependent on not only variations in Cosmic rays themselves, but also on the state of the atmosphere. I.e. if cosmic rays are enhancing microphysical processes connected to clouds, then it is very likely be governed by the cloud conditions.”
Not inconsistent with what Karin Labitzke has been saying:
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/
Since ClimateGate there seems to be a growing consensus that the Science is un-settled (as exhibited by this post) !
vukcevic & ninderthana,
Interesting exchange. A few years ago when I studied relationships between geomagnetic aa index and a variety of terrestrial indices, I found nonrandom seasonal variations (weak or no winter correlations; moderately strong summer correlations). I am left not with conclusions, but questions…
vukcevic, could the coupling sign-switches you note be related to spatial pressure & circulation patterns? (e.g. eddies on opposite sides of a jet…)
What timetochooseagain said.
vukcevic November 25, 2010 at 1:04 am says:
There is a strong correlation between the Arctic temperature and the Earth magnetic field. However the correlation is negative, weaker field higher temperature. If the Svensmark’s effect is at work it is in reverse; …
This reverse correlation actually might make sense, recognizing that clouds also can trap heat underneath them. As the main cause of melting is from warm air and water from lower latitudes, more cloud cover would decrease the rate of heat loss to space, facilitating melting.
Ben Laken, “If we discarded any dataset with issues there would be nothing left to use! As scientist, we can only work with best guess and attempt to minimise uncertainty.”
If this is really true, then a “statistical robust relationship” between the model and NCEP reanalysis data only means significance with respect to the mean of an estimated trend.
That in turn means the uncertainty of the relationship must be convolved with the uncertainty in the trend to get the true total uncertainty in the result.
How certain does the relationship look when one does that?
Looking at Figure 4 of the paper, I note that the 95% confidence interval bands vary with the value of the data, becoming zero when the data pass through zero. This shows that the 95% confidence interval was calculated as a percent relative to some reference, which was then scaled by the relative magnitude of each data point.
True statistical confidence intervals of empirical data are not scaled by the magnitude of the measurement, but are an interval of resolution determined by the instrument and the noise in the measurement including systematic error.
One can also note that GCMs have never demonstrated predictive capacity, so it’s hard to see how correspondence with a GCM output implies physical causality.
Paul Vaughan says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:23 am
…………
Paul, thanks for the links.
Re: sign-switches you note be related to spatial pressure & circulation patterns? (e.g. eddies on opposite sides of a jet…)
Would not be able to comment with any degree of confidence on that particular aspect.
The abstract contains one important mis-statement:
Not by a country mile. The GCR-climate relationship has already been firmly established by the many statistical studies that find a .5 to .8 degree of correlation between solar-magnetic activity and global temperature change over thousands and millions of years. The only thing lacking has been clear evidence of the mechanism involved (although some of Svensmark’s previous evidence was pretty clear). THIS is what the current study provides: perhaps the most compelling evidence presented thus far that it is Svensmark’s hypothesized GCR-cloud mechanism that explains the already well established GCR-climate relationship.
Quotes from two of the many studies that have already firmly established that relationship:
In other words, GCR (and the solar activity that modulates it) “explains” in the statistical sense, 50-80% of past temperature change, making it THE dominant climate driver.
Such a high degree of correlation over such long periods of time can only be causal, and since it is certainly not global temperature that is causing solar activity, we know that it is solar activity that is driving global temperature. Thus the GCR-climate relationship has already been well established.
Jim D says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:55 am
“when we look at the 11-year cycle, at a stretch we only see 0.2 C oscillations in global temperature. So, I suspect that while these short-term fluctuations are interesting, they are not saying anything about climate even at the decadal scale”.
I’m no scientist, so my view may be wrong, but I think that thermal delay is the answer. How do temperature change in a kitchen owen it’s switched on and off, e g when the thermostat switches it on and off?
The 0.2 C variation in a sunspot cycle is a great signal, too large to explain by variation in solar irradiance. GCR-low level cloud cover co-variation is shown by e g Palle et al, in the Earthshine Project.
If this mechanism affects low level cloud cover over decades it should also, I think, have an effect over decades.
The GCR change I think is larger than 1-2 percent. Solar irradiance variation I think is about 0.1 percent, and GCR seems to change more like …10-15 percent?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/oulu-neutron-graph-123108.png?w=520&h=323
vukcevic, the sign of temperature-precipitation relations flips near the freezing point of water. Could it be that during a warm period, when heavy rains melt sea ice, the sign of the correlation discussed by you & ninderthana reverses? I base this question in part on many years spent working & travelling on frozen rivers and snowy mountain slopes. When the warm rains come, the change is discrete, not continous. Once the ice is gone, the clouds reflect more than the surface… (Note for those trying to follow my earlier comments: I work with absolutes, not anomalies.)
Using Harrison Ford’s voice:
“Robust… why did it have to be the word ROBUST?!?”
If this gets out they will lose their funding and any posts at real research units like UEA.
Keep it up. James
My first language is not English , but I am still able to notice that several people, whose first language it seems to be, are mixing up the meanings of “effect” and “affect” both in nominal and verbal positions. See Gail Combs, timetochooseagain, and SWAG, in their comments.
Paul Vaughan says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:53 am
………………
It certainly makes lot of sense, the Arctic winters are strait forward: ice or snow, high albedo, but not much insulation, so the extent of the cloud blanket ‘must’ be the main factor.
The summer months are far more complicated:
– vegetation/soil
– water (ice free surface)
– ice surface
3 different variables to be considered, with the relative ratios continuously changing, certainly complicates the issue, but albedo is possibly more relevant.
So you are correct, certain conditions could make whole system flip from negative to positive correlation.
Not that I would like to draw direct comparison (but I can think of a good reason) while similar flip in correlation happens here, where correlation is not necessarily causation.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
But in the Arctic case the flip may happen, even if there is a causation, which would makes Dr. Svalgaard’s statement :
Now, Vuk says that the correlation is negative except at times when it is positive. In my book that means ‘no correlation’.
very questionable !
Interesting note:
-Earth’s magnetic field is fading. Today it is about 10 percent weaker than it was when German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss started keeping tabs on it in 1845, scientists say:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0909_040909_earthmagfield.html
This looks like a clue (or clew) to what is happening in the atmosphere, but doesn’t put the cuffs (or darbies) on the perpetrator (or villain.) More research is definitely warranted in this particular area, and there are other significant, solar-cycle-related variables of this magnitude or greater that should be looked at, in my opinion. We still don’t know everything about climate. The more complicated the model, the greater the likelihood that it’s wrong.
Congratulations to Drs. Laken, Kniveton, and Frogley.
Ben – I should have appended a smiley face behind my comment for you took my comment verbatim. It was just a jab at the colsed minds.
Enjoyed reading of your work. See if you can also find the tie through some real observations and data for I feel you will find some there. Look at cloud formation variances over the inner-continental land masses away from large bodies of water as the oceans. That seems where GCM/cloud signiture should maximize, and as you seemed to show, in the temperate bands.
Oh, it’s Wayne, not Wane.
How about “closed”, not “colsed”. Seems the last moment changes always get you.
Gamma rays are emitted by some rocks. These can travel 10s to thousands of meters through air. I assume that gamma radiation over the ocean should be a good bit less. Does this influence the relative occurrence of clouds over land vs. ocean?
In reply to Magnus A:
November 25, 2010 at 10:51 am
The effect they are measuring is caused by high-frequency GCR changes that are 1-2% (their GU units) of the solar cycle amplitude. That is where my number came from. I am sure it contributes something along with water vapor to the positive feedback to the solar cycle because irradiance changes alone can only account for 0.05 C. But the point was that the solar cycle amplitude that has 100 GU units by definition causes 0.2 C at most, so this process seems self-limiting in some way when you get to longer time scales.
vukcevic says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:27 am
Vuk: I guess everything will fit and correlate if the Moon is included. As
Piers Corbyn says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:00 am
… but that these are modulated by lunar effects to give the observed 60 year cycle
http://climaterealists.com/attachments/database/World%20cooling%20has%20set-in%20warns%20astrophysicist.pdf
Relative to their eccentricity, the Moon has a negative EM field: -3.78 Nm at 0.03 eccentricity and -6.17 Nm at 0.08 eccentricity.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/43332150/Unified-Field-Explained-9
@Duckster
“Duckster says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:15 am
Er… they said the model doesn’t work??!?
These results provide perhaps the most compelling evidence presented thus far of a GCR-climate relationship.
But you are happy to believe them because it fits your theory?
Anyone see a contradiction here?”
At least there is real observations that seems to support that there is some kind of link. With global warming there is not one shred of data that supports it besides their fancy computer models.
Sloan says: November 25, 2010 at 11:39 am
Earth’s magnetic field is fading.
Earth’s magnetic field (GMF) is all the time in state of a ‘flux’ . In part of South America field has lost nearly 50% of its strength (400 year period) , but in the Central Siberia it is gaining strength. Here you can get an idea of what is going on around the globe.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC23.htm
steven mosher says:
“November 25, 2010 at 9:18 am
tallbloke
NCEP reanalyses: I guess the point I would make to WUWT readers is this. If you read here for a while ( or write here) you will find several persistent themes among “some” commenters:
1. the observation record is junk,biased,tampered with,not accurate…[choose one]
2. Models have to get things perfectly or they are junk
3. You cannot model the climate.
4. Raw observations are better than adjusted data
5. etc
Now I happen to disagree with all of these statements (especially #5). So, it was
interesting to see people applaud a study that uses Reanalysis data.”
The IPCC directly contradict your 3 (Chapter 14, 14.2.2.2, Working Group 1, The Scientific Basis) Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Why do you think you are right and they are wrong in this instance?
Tonyb
The changes to the climate over millions of years as shown in our geological record are proof that only three things can give us catastrophic climate change. Collision with a hard object, our position in the galaxy and the main warmth giver old Sol.
The striking regularity of the ice ages over our recent past proves that our late history is controlled by the last two, any suggestion that CO2 or indeed any other minor forcing can cause anything measurable is laughable.
History will look back on this period of science as a dark age, the rennaisance has started and not just in the field of climate. The heat of change is in the air for many fields.
RR Kampen says:
November 25, 2010 at 12:29 am
“Hm, it’s just a model. We don’t trust models”.
And why is that?
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/what-causes-changes-in-oceanic-heat-content/
This is about cloud cover.
IMO the final nail in the coffin of the CO2 driven AGW scam.
Tommy:
“At least there is real observations that seems to support that there is some kind of link. With global warming there is not one shred of data that supports it besides their fancy computer models.”
lets start with the “data”
first the cloud “data”
http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/newalg.html
Do you see that box titled “clear sky radiance model”? do you know what that is?
That is a model that lies at the HEART of AGW theory. Its a radiative transfer model. That model assumes that C02 blocks radiation. The effect that warms the planet
“Once each pixel is classified as clear or cloudy, the measured radiances can be compared to radiative transfer model calculations that include the effects of the atmosphere, surface and clouds. The attributes of the atmosphere, surface and clouds are represented in the model by a large number of physical properties; but the availability of correlative datasets and restriction of the satellite radiances to two wavelengths limit the number of parameters that can be determined from the observations. The analysis strategy used exploits the correlative data to isolate the cloud effects and attributes all remaining radiance variation to changes in two cloud properties; other parameters are assigned climatological average values.”
I suggest everyone who thinks these cloud osbervations are real observations should have a look at the flow diagram for the ANALYSIS and MODELLING done on the raw sensor data. That data is adjusted and manipulated by algorithms and assumptions. full stop. Nothing wrong with that, but if you have every complained about adjustements to raw data, you need to be consisten. Further, if you ever questioned the fact that C02 has an effect on IR you need to recognize that this data is massaged by the very core of AGW science. You accept this data, you accpet that part of AGW theory.
Now lelts go on to NCAR/NCEP reanalysis “observations”
They are not observations. Simply, various datasets of various quality are
used inconjunction with a weather model, a junior GCM, to model observations:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0477%281996%29077%3C0437%3ATNYRP%3E2.0.CO%3B2
have a look at the PDF.
NCEP has 4 classes of variables.
To illustrate a class C variable is created entirely by the model with no input from observation: a class B variable like surface temp has some observational input but is strongly determined by the model, Ben used SLAT which I belive is a class B output.
Class A is strongly influenced by actual measures, but here too the model adjusts the data.
bottomline: you like the data? its not observation. its observations that have been “adjusted” by models.
Robuk says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:00 am
eadler says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:43 am
There is no overall increasing trend in Cosmic Rays to match the trend of increasing temperatures.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/TheChillingStars.jpg
Probably the blue line on the graph is due to the UHI effect.
Can’t find this graph in my copy of Chilling Stars
Cosmic ray is a fancy word for “charged particles in motion”, otherwise known as “eelectricity”.
Increased electrical current density (more amps) increases a magnetic field’s strength, and less reduces it, everything else being equal.
Hence if the magnetic field becomes stronger, more amps are coming into the system, and as we know from our own home electric heaters, things get warmer.
Conversely if the magnetic field becomes weaker, less amps are coming into the system, and as we know, again, from our own home electrical heaters. things get cooler.
But if we continue to call electricity cosmic rays, then we remain in comic book science land. The solar magnetic field isn’t powered by something internal to the sun, but an external source – A nuclear furnaced sun just cannot produce the effects we routinely observe from it. But assume an external source and things become a tad easier to explain.
Tonyb
“The IPCC directly contradict your 3 (Chapter 14, 14.2.2.2, Working Group 1, The Scientific Basis) Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Why do you think you are right and they are wrong in this instance?
Huh: I would agree with them that long term prediction is “not possible”
well actually it is possible, its just not likely to be very correct.
here’s a long term prediction. the long term outlook is absolute zero.
When I say that you can model the climate I mean exactly that. You can model it. The forecasts and predictions that come out of those models are not perfect, will never be perfect. “long” term of course we end up with no sun and no heat. Over the next 100 years (absent massive volcanos, comets hitting us etc) we have a much smaller range of forecast. So, depending how you want to interpret what the IPCC means by “not possible” and by long term, there is agreement between my position and theirs. or disagreement if you take “not possible” to me logically impossible.
step up your game
Viv Evans
I do not suggest that NCEP reanalysis is “bad”
First and foremost I am calling people to account. People who complain about the surface record should know that these observations are fed into the Reanalysis model.
People fond of saying GIGO should acknowledge their inconsistency
Second, people criticize models. reanalysis is the output of a model. a model of the weather. Third the numbers are not “bad” they have uncertainty. If they are class B or class C outputs the uncertinty is greater. That uncertainty needs to be carried forward in any analysis. So, I have no issuing using the data (Ryan may have in his domain ) but thyey are not observations. they are derived from observations.
This whole subject has become overcomplicated.
The sun became less active from the late 90s. The jets started moving towards the equator (or at least started looping about a lot more between equator and poles).
Earthshine project shows that at the same time total cloudiness began to increase and global albedo also increased.
So less energy got into the oceans and La Nina has started to dominate over El Nino.
Cooler ocean surfaces have started to cool the air above but our attention has been distracted for the past year by a short temperature blip in the troposphere as a result of the fact that an El Nino occurred near the top of a 30 year long (possibly 500 year long since the LIA) solar induced warming cycle.
That’s over. It’s gone. From now on it’s downward for 30 years and maybe longer unless we suddenly get another highly active solar cycle.
The evidence is accumulating that the horizontal extent of the polar vortices at the tropopause and the latitudinal position of the jets and thus total cloudiness and albedo are all far more sensitive to solar variability than we ever thought possible.
I nominate the downward NOx flux from various solar energy reactions above 100km which depletes (or allows to recover) ozone quantities above 45km (as per J. Haigh) and thereby more than offsets the effect of more (or less) UV which alters ozone quantities and therefore warms (or cools) the stratosphere below 45km.
That gives us the observed cooling of the stratosphere and mesosphere during the time of active sun and the recent slight warming at a time of quiet sun without requiring any input from human CO2 or CFCs.
That is my considered diagnosis on the basis of evidence currently available.
Let’s see who is right when we have another 5 years observations (possibly less) in the bag.
Pat Frank says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:39 am
Ben Laken, “If we discarded any dataset with issues there would be nothing left to use! As scientist, we can only work with best guess and attempt to minimise uncertainty.”
If this is really true, then a “statistical robust relationship” between the model and NCEP reanalysis data only means significance with respect to the mean of an estimated trend.
That in turn means the uncertainty of the relationship must be convolved with the uncertainty in the trend to get the true total uncertainty in the result.
How certain does the relationship look when one does that?
Looking at Figure 4 of the paper, I note that the 95% confidence interval bands vary with the value of the data, becoming zero when the data pass through zero. This shows that the 95% confidence interval was calculated as a percent relative to some reference, which was then scaled by the relative magnitude of each data point.
################
thanks pat, I was just going to look into those details, but got busy trying to explain the “data” sources to folks
Mosh at 2.04
Are you training to be a politician or something? That was an incredibly obscure answer.
“So, depending how you want to interpret what the IPCC means by “not possible” and by long term, there is agreement between my position and theirs. or disagreement if you take “not possible” to me logically impossible.”
Not possible means just that no matter that you seem to want to stand on your head and play with words. Instead of telling me to step up my game how about if we both play the same one in the real world not some virtual reality one?
tonyb
I wonder if, absent last year’s November surprise, a study like this could even have been published? Here’s a big thank you to whoever leaked the climate-gate files. You may have saved science.
@
P Gosselin says:
November 25, 2010 at 6:08 am
Speaking at the 3rd International Climate Cobnference in Berlin, Dec. 3-4, 2010:
Prof. Dr. Henrik Svensmark, Denmark, Atmospheric Sciences
Prof. Dr. Nir Shaviv, Israel, Astrophysicist
Prof. Dr. Jan Veizer, Canada, Paleo-geologist
I’m attending, and I’m now really really looking forward to it!
———————–
Don’t spend too much money in advance. They’ll all probably be dis-invited.
Riskaverse says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Yes, but is the trend in temperature real? When I see the kind of tricks Hansen is playing with the data, I wonder. I don’t think he should have to play those kinds of tricks if there was a significant trend.
@wayne
‘How about “closed”, not “colsed”. Seems the last moment changes always get you.’
Seems your manic obsessive compulsion gets you though, what with you missed it in your original post but still just had to post it before you even stopped to consider that maybe the person suffers from dyslexia, or poor batteries in his wireless keyboard, or what ever, right, but you on the other hand did have the time so why didn’t you take it?
Brent Hargreaves says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:17 am
My phrase “all this nonsense about CO2″ was shorthand for “the dumb assertation that burning fossil fuels takes us closer to a tipping point beyond which a positive feedback will be triggered, leading to Thermageddon, when in fact the climate is an imperfectly-understood complex adaptive system with a multi-billion year track record of supporting life.”
—————–
Excellent. Contender for “Quote of the Week” maybe ??
If you don’t mind, I’m going to be forwarding that quote to people on a regular basis.
Seems a no-brainer that if “The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming”, that this still remains a significant factor now and in the future; and given “anthropogenic warming” is the conclusion of an analysis that factored out exactly this significant factor (and others), the odds do not bode well for AGW.
Mike G,
“Don’t spend too much money in advance. They’ll all probably be dis-invited.”
Why would they be dis-invited? It is a conference ONLY for skeptics…..
Louis Hissink says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Cosmic ray is a fancy word for “charged particles in motion”, otherwise known as “electricity. […] A nuclear furnaced sun just cannot produce the effects we routinely observe from it. But assume an external source and things become a tad easier to explain.
Total nonsense.
Regarding the NCEP Reanalysis data,
I have more faith in a weather model which uses real observations to say this is what we thinking WAS happening in the atmosphere at the time given the observations: …
… Versus the results of a CO2-based climate model which uses theory to predict what they think WILL happen. (with no subsequent reanalysis to find out why the CO2-based models consistently can’t predict anything).
Effectively, we know that the NCEP Reanalysis humidity and temperature data is close to reasonably correct because we had people doing actual observations all over the world in 1980 and we know the climate was not doing anything out of the ordinary at the time. It rained in some places, it was sunny in some places, the humidity in Phoenix was 30% in the morning and 15% in the afternoon, it was warm in Africa, it was cold in the Arctic and there was glaciers in Antarctica.
Arun says:
November 25, 2010 at 2:01 am
>>“The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records”
Such a totally unsupported and self-castrating statement was necessary to include in order to get published in the sick, corrupt field of climate science. LOL.<<
================================
Exactly what I was thinking. Bang on target. One has to refer to AGW to get published.
Jesper Kirkby uses the same 'trick' IMHO, so that he could get through hungrey lions guarding the holy temple. See the following: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073
It's a lecture on the same lines and the CLOUD experiment that CERN had in their plans for the end of this current year.
IMHO, for CERN to express itself on the matter of AGW, and proposing a link between solar activity/intergalactic radiation and climate variations. they must be pretty damn sure of what they are talking about. They cannot afford to be wrong.
A Wikipedia page ends: He (jasper Kirkby) describes cloud nucleation mechanisms which appear energetically favorable and depend on GCRs.
To me, people have been bolding the wrong statement:
“…The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records…”
So they’re saying that the signal was there in the past, and that this solar – terrestrial link may have been a main driver in the past.
If the signal existed then, it should still be there now.
That line is attempting to say that this NATURAL variation is being swamped by CAGW.
To see that, remove it from the statement:
“…The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate…accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records…”
Trying to run an experiment now, with the current CO2 levels, cannot be verified without a comparable experiment being run at a previous lower CO2 level.
By National Post February 23, 2007
Jasper Kirkby is a superb scientist, but he has been a lousy politician. In 1998, anticipating he’d be leading a path-breaking experiment into the sun’s role in global warming, he made the mistake of stating that the sun and cosmic rays “will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century.” Global warming, he theorized, may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.
Dr. Kirkby was immediately condemned by climate scientists for minimizing the role of human beings in global warming. Stories in the media disparaged Dr. Kirkby by citing scientists who feared oil-industry lobbyists would use his statements to discredit the greenhouse effect. And the funding approval for Dr. Kirkby’s path-breaking experiment — seemingly a sure thing when he first announced his proposal– was put on ice.
Dr. Kirkby was stunned, and not just because the experiment he was about to run had support within his scientific institute, and was widely expected to have profound significance. Dr. Kirkby was also stunned because his institute is CERN, and science performed at CERN had never before seemed so vulnerable to whims of government funders.
CERN is no fringe laboratory pursuing crackpot theories at some remote backwater. CERN, based in Geneva, is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a 50-yearold institution, originally founded by 12 countries and now counting 20 country-members. It services 6,500 particle physicists — half of the world’s total — in 500 institutes and universities around the world. It is building the $2.4-billion Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. And it is home to Jasper Kirkby’s long-languished CLOUD project, among the most significant scientific experiments to be proposed in our time. Finally, almost a decade after Dr. Kirkby’s proposal first saw the light of day, the funding is in place and the work has begun in earnest.
The CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) laboratory experiment, CERN believes, will show the mechanisms through which the sun and cosmic rays can influence the formation of clouds and thus the climate. The CLOUD project will use a high-energy particle beam from an accelerator to closely duplicate cosmic rays found in the atmosphere. This will be the first time this technology will be brought to bear on global warming, the most controversial scientific question of the day.
Also for the first time, very basic answers about the drivers of climate change may surface to dispel the general paucity of data on the subject. “By studying the micro-physical processes at work when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, we can begin to understand more fully the connection between cosmic rays and cloud cover,” CERN explains. “Clouds exert a strong influence on the Earth’s energy balance, and changes of only a few per cent have an important effect on the climate.”
To accomplish all this, Dr. Kirkby has assembled a dream team of atmospheric physicists, solar physicists, and cosmic ray and particle physicists from 18 institutes around the world, including the California Institute of Technology and Germany’s Max-Planck Institutes, with preliminary data expected to arrive this coming summer. The world of particle physics is awaiting these results with much anticipation because they promise to unlock mysteries that can tell us much about climate change, as well as other phenomena. The world of climate science, in contrast, is all but ignoring the breakthroughs in climate knowledge that CERN is about to reveal.
In May, just months before the first CERN results are in, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the agency organizing most of the world’s climate-change studies, will be releasing its much-anticipated report on the state of climate science. Oddly, the IPCC report — now circulating in draft form — has in effect decided not to wait for CERN’s findings.
The IPCC draft report ranks the sun as an all-but-irrelevant factor in climate change. More oddly, it has come to this conclusion although it states that there is no consensus among solar scientists, meaning the IPCC admits it has no hard evidence to go on. Even more oddly, given the excitement and the anticipation that the CLOUD experiment is generating among the 6,500 particle physicists in CERN’s community, the IPCC has decided to diminish the sun’s estimated contribution to climate change by more than half, from its previously small contribution to one that is yet smaller.
Meanwhile, scientists who tout the manmade theory of global warming to the exclusion of others continue to disparage the CLOUD experiment. “This link is not properly established for the moment,” said Dr. Urs Neu of the Swiss Forum for Climate and Global Change, a prominent critic. “The cosmic ray theory has been used by people who want to deny human influence on global warming.”
Dr. Kirkby, in contrast, now 10 years older and wiser, has changed. In the past, he would unguardedly say: “There is certainly a greenhouse effect. The question is whether it is responsible for all the 0.6C warming in the past century, or two-thirds or a fifth — or what?” Now, to head off attacks, and controversies that might once again derail the CLOUD product, he hides his hopes and downplays the significance of what CLOUD may find: “If there really is an effect, then it would simply be part of the climate-change cocktail,” a perhaps less naive, more politic Dr. Kirkby now states.
Lawrence Solomon@nextcity.com
– Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.
steven mosher-Actually NCEP does not use the surface data, I believe you are thinking of ERA. Nevertheless, you are right that NCEP, and all reanalyses, use uncertain and sometimes problematic data (in this case mostly radiosondes, as I understand it) as inputs to models of weather that are themselves imperfect. So one should not be un-skeptical of the data, but one should not reject it out of hand without good reason. Ryan seems to think there are good reasons to reject the reanalysis out of hand, you don’t. I would like to see him explain his particular issues with the reanalysis data, it would be enlightening.
Following Pat Frank’s observation (missed it seems by the two reviewers that submitted referee comments) that the 95% confidence interval bands in Fig. 4 become zero when the data is zero (similarly for Fig. 5), I hope that the authors, in support of this potentially important result, will review all their statistical work, perhaps in consultation with other colleagues.
Figures 1 & 2 illustrate the main result of the paper (if correct) , the connection between GCRs and cloud-cover. The result, unlike Figs. 4 & 5, is not based on use of a GCM or the NCEP reanalysis SLAT data.
@vukcevic says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:04 am
“There is a strong correlation between the Arctic temperature and the Earth magnetic field. However the correlation is negative, weaker field higher temperature. If the Svensmark’s effect is at work it is in reverse; weaker magnetic field, more GCR, more clouds above the Arctic, higher temperature. More clouds in the Arctic (for 6 months of the year) acting as a ‘GH’ gas prevent excessive cooling, a well known effect in the middle and northern latitudes during winter months.”
And the opposite of that in summer months, except it is the summer temperature drop that is increasing cloud cover, and not the increase in GCR`s.
In winter, higher temperatures increase cloud cover and precipitation.
So what is driving the temperature changes and the changes in cloud cover, is the inverse proxy for the GCR`s, that can only be one thing.
This is why WUWT is so valuable. A full and frank exchange of views, Scientific enquiry, scepticism, arguement and even an additional contribution from one of the original authors. Top stuff!
To Bob of Castlemane and Ralph and the others who by their ignorant comments only show that a little intelligence is dangerous (try reading the whole thing before popping off, why don’t you) as Anthony also points out. You people who only read what you want
are half the problem of AGW!
Alex the skeptic says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:21 pm
CERN is no fringe laboratory pursuing crackpot theories at some remote backwater. CERN, based in Geneva, is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a 50-yearold institution, originally founded by 12 countries and now counting 20 country-members.
CERN is not running the CLOUD project. They only lend some unused facility to the project which is funded and run by non-CERN agencies.
Very interesting….. I love stuff that makes the establishment think….. If they are willing or able to. Of course.
Ben Laken says
“we speculate that little (0.088 C/decade) systematic change in temperature at mid-latitudes has occurred over the last 50 years”
Ben can you just clarify this point, please? IPCC’s AR4 says the warming trend since 1950 has been 0.13°C/decade. You’re suggesting to me that GCR may be responsible for 0.088°C/decade. That would be 67% of the total warming trend, which in my book is far from ‘little.’ Is there some mistake here with what I’m saying?
Ben says:
“it should not be interpreted to cast doubt on recent anthropogenic warming.”
I think many reasonable people here would just like to see this aspect of the climate system taken seriously by the IPCC. The criticism is often that the IPCC document is better descirbed as a document about CO2 rather than climate. The acid test may be if the next IPCC document goes some way to acknowledge the work of you, Harrison and others.
Finally to those arguing over correlations, I think the author acknowledges that this correlation is a product of their new methodology. I think a discussion of the merits of the methodology might help to shed light.
eadler says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:43 am
There is no overall increasing trend in Cosmic Rays to match the trend of increasing temperatures.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/TheChillingStars.jpg
Could the non-trending GCR just be at some overall low non-equilibrium level, effecting a relatively low albedo, a surplus incoming SW at, say, 0.85 Wm-2 🙂 and thus the warming?
Riskaverse says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:57 pm
“Robuk says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:00 am
“eadler says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:43 am
“There is no overall increasing trend in Cosmic Rays to match the trend of increasing temperatures.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/TheChillingStars.jpg”
Probably the blue line on the graph is due to the UHI effect.”
Can’t find this graph in my copy of Chilling Stars”
I was joking about the chilling starsThe . The url is from RealClimate as the url indicates. The Neutron Data originates from here:
http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/Misc/neutron2.html
There is no real upward trend in neutron flux between 1950 and 2006. Of course “The Chilling Stars” wouldn’t contain that information.
Brent Hargreaves says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:17 am
“LazyTeenager says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:19 am
So every time we find some new thing that affects climate that somehow it proves everything else is excluded; like CO2. Errr no.
Just for you, Lazy, the argument is: Nobody doubts that the atmosphere, including its CO2, keeps us warm. Some of us doubt that variations in CO2 PPM, undeniably rising steadily for many decades, was the main driver of the 1975-1998 uptick.(Had that uptick continued to 2010 we’d have become less sceptical about Carbon Monomania.)
My phrase “all this nonsense about CO2″ was shorthand for “the dumb assertation that burning fossil fuels takes us closer to a tipping point beyond which a positive feedback will be triggered, leading to Thermageddon, when in fact the climate is an imperfectly-understood complex adaptive system with a multi-billion year track record of supporting life.””
In fact we know that El Nino also affects the annual global temperature, and 1998 had one of the most powerful El Nino’s on record.
In fact the last 12 months have been the warmest on the temperature record, despite the fact that solar output is at a low point.
So maybe you should be less skeptical this year.
Bill Illis says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:02 pm (Edit)
Regarding the NCEP Reanalysis data.
The issue is logical consistency. If you are willing to accept that observations are good enough to drive the models, then we have no argument. But one cannot on one hand claim the observations are junk and on the other hand accept the outputs of NCEP.
Logical consistency is my main point.
Also dont forget that the cloud observations depend upon RTE. So, one cannot logically deny that C02 has a warming effect (as RTE predict) and simultaneously accept as fact cloud observations that rely on RTE. Again, logical consistency.
timetochooseagain says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:25 pm (Edit)
steven mosher-Actually NCEP does not use the surface data, I believe you are thinking of ERA.
Radiosones for certain, which is why upper air temperature is a class A variable. And as we know many criticized this data source in discussing Santer’s paper. Looking more closely at the data sources in NCEP ( working from memory), I could of course make the observation that if you accept SLAT from NCEP and surface temps from surface stations are inline with SLAT then SLAT confirms the reliability of surface stations. either way, I’m saying that people have to be logically consistent.
I’m just starting looking at NCEP winds so will have more definitive comments in due course. Maybe Ryan will chime in
tonyb
Not possible means just that no matter that you seem to want to stand on your head and play with words. Instead of telling me to step up my game how about if we both play the same one in the real world not some virtual reality one?
Well, given my training when I say not possible I mean, logically impossible.
If the IPCC means hat it is logically impossible to predict the climate over the long term then they are wrong. “I predict the temperature will never change” there I just made a prediction. What I think they mean, however, is that the predictions over the long term ( how long is long) are not very reliable. So, we can model the climate, those models have a measurable reliability, that reliablity or skill is lower than the skill we see in other physics. So, depending upon how you interpret their words (the word possible) I either disagree with them or not. Since, I don’t think they meant logically impossible ( as opposed to physically highly improbable) I think we agree.
psst: no politician would talk about logical impossibility
Logical consistency is indeed very important. For my part I am neither one of those who criticized radiosondes during the discussion of Santer’s paper, nor someone who uncritically believes or disbelieves in any particular dataset, without good reasons. NCEP is one I am agnostic on. But I could easily be persuaded one way or the other by arguments.
Pamela Gray says: at 6:42 am
Oops. Sorry folks I don’t know how to add italics and my egg nog coffee has addled my brain.
As it has been blistering cold in the PNW, I understand the egg nog coffee.
It will warm up this weekend and when you have thawed a bit – try this:
Scroll to the top of the WUWT page. Look on the right hand side. Next scroll down until you see a blue rectangle with Ric Werme’s guide to WUWT. Go there. Scroll down to a grey area below a long green region. The grey area is titled “Formatting in comments” and the second explanation will show how to do italics.
Happy Thanksgiving!
eadler :
http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/Misc/neutron2.html
There is no real upward trend in neutron flux between 1950 and 2006. Of course “The Chilling Stars” wouldn’t contain that information.
Hold your horses. It is not the peak trends that will produce clouds or not. It is the integrated area below the curves in the link, assuming the observation from this paper establishes that condensation is proportional to the impinging radiation .
So seems to me there is a sequence of fat, lean, fat, lean plots. Between 1980 and 1990 there is half the area than between 1990 and 2000, and in addition the minimum is smaller, thus the area larger. The observation that from 1995 there is stasis in temperature would agree with the integral being larger since then.
Looking at backward times the ice age scare fell in a fat region.
I do not believe that there is one to one correspondence with any factor entering in producing the weather and climate we observe. It is a dynamical system with many inputs and most probably chaotic, but one can observe threads of influences, and this GCR seems to me valid as a contributor, and certainly cannot be thrown out by looking cursorily at peak trends.
I’m trying to understand what they did. The paper states “Thus, the units of GCR changes used here are given as “GU”, defined as a change of 1% of the 11-year solar cycle amplitude in four days.”. At Thule the GCR solar cycle amplitude in neutron monitor counts per hour is ~600 out of a total of ~4300. The change happens over 5 years = 5*365 = 1825 days. In four days the GCRs change thus 600/1825*4 = 1.3 counts. 1% of that is 0.013 count. This sounds silly on its face as there is a regular daily variation of 10 counts or 770 times as large. So, I need some clarification on this.
Anyway, Knieveton and Tinsley analysed the Wilcox effect [ http://www.utdallas.edu/nsm/physics/pdf/tin_dcgcc.pdf ] using superposed epoch analysis around ‘sector boundaries’ [crossings of the Heliospheric Current Sheet]. I have just done an analysis of the hourly GCR flux at Thule for the 1470 crossings during 1957-2010. The result is here: http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic-Rays-Thule-SB.png
The right-hand side shows the variation for every hour within 40 days on either side of the Sector Boundaries [which were nominally always taken to pass at 0:00h UT]. You see several things:
1) the 10 count daily variation [we know why: we are overtaking GCRs during half of the day and running into them during the other half due to Earth’s rotation]
2) A clear enhancement [larger than the daily variation] right at the boundary [and the day before and after]
3) The enhancements sjow up 27 days before and 27 days after, because the sector boundaries often recur every 27 days. This proves the reality of the effect as noise would not this behavior.
The power spectrum to the left shows the daily peak and the 27-day peak (“1”) and several of its harmonics [“2″,”3”, etc].
It is one thing that clouds are formed from humidity and no doubt GCR play a role in this. The other factor is that clouds and water droplets usually have a charges – hence we have so much lightning here in South Africa. So there must be an influence from magnetism that may push the clouds (once they exist) more towards the equator or more towards the poles, depending how the sun’s magnetic field influences that of earth’s. Obviously if they move more towards the equator a larger surface area is covered leading to a higher albedo….
Let me know if somebody figured that one out.
BTW
it’s never been entirely clear to me as to why clouds do get charged – is it the friction when they move against air?
anna v says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Hold your horses. It is not the peak trends that will produce clouds or not. It is the integrated area below the curves in the link, assuming the observation from this paper establishes that condensation is proportional to the impinging radiation.
So one should integrate all the way down to the zero-count line: http://www.leif.org/research/Neutron-Monitor-Thule-Newark.png
Between 1980 and 1990 there is half the area than between 1990 and 2000, and in addition the minimum is smaller, thus the area larger.
This is clearly not the case. The areas are almost the same.
HenryP says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:05 pm
it’s never been entirely clear to me as to why clouds do get charged – is it the friction when they move against air?
Falling raindrops rubbing against each other…
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:08 pm
and in addition the minimum is smaller, thus the area larger.
Dyslectic in my old age 🙁 . Of course I meant larger.
I was not going down to 0 but to an imaginary x line through the lowest values. OK call it an anomaly, though I hate the concept.
The point is that one cannot be talking of trends for the peaks when discussing integrated luminosity phenomena.
Mosh 9.44
I think you see yourself as Camus sitting at a the Cafe de Flore wearing a beret, sipping an anise whilst earnestly discussing Philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus
“Camus’s first significant contribution to philosophy was his idea of the absurd. He saw it as the result of our desire for clarity and meaning within a world and condition that offers neither, which he expressed in The Myth of Sisyphus and incorporated into many of his other works, such as The Stranger and The Plague. Despite his split from his “study partner”, Sartre, some still argue that Camus falls into the existentialist camp.”
Clearly you are also a fan of Alice in Wonderland where down is up and up is down. Kevin Trenberth has great need of your skills. 🙂
All the best
Tonyb
anna v says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:59 pm
I was not going down to 0 but to an imaginary x line through the lowest values.
But you must if “the observation from this paper establishes that condensation is proportional to the impinging radiation.”
tonyb
unfortunately I prefer Quine to Camus.
But you tell me what does the IPCC quote mean to you.
do you think its impossible to predict the climate. this maybe instructive.
who knows we might agree
I’m trying to understand what they did. The paper states “Thus, the units of GCR changes used here are given as “GU”, defined as a change of 1% of the 11-year solar cycle amplitude in four days.”. At Thule the GCR solar cycle amplitude in neutron monitor counts per hour is ~600 out of a total of ~4300. The change happens over 5 years = 5*365 = 1825 days. In four days the GCRs change thus 600/1825*4 = 1.3 counts. 1% of that is 0.013 count. This sounds silly on its face as there is a regular daily variation of 10 counts or 770 times as large. So, I need some clarification on this.
Dr. S, the phrase 1% of the 11 year cycle amplitude in 4 days seems ambiguous to me.
too much turkey..
Steven Mosher says:
November 26, 2010 at 12:51 am
Dr. S, the phrase 1% of the 11 year cycle amplitude in 4 days seems ambiguous to me.
Mosh, my problem is that the phrase is too precise 🙂
I am hoping that Ben Laken would explain.
timetochooseagain says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:56 pm (Edit)
Logical consistency is indeed very important. For my part I am neither one of those who criticized radiosondes during the discussion of Santer’s paper, nor someone who uncritically believes or disbelieves in any particular dataset, without good reasons. NCEP is one I am agnostic on. But I could easily be persuaded one way or the other by arguments.
That’s fine, but if you accept it, then it drives conclusions you may want to draw about surface observations.
http://dss.ucar.edu/datasets/common/ecmwf/ERA40/docs/jgr2004_24115.pdf
Basically, if people want to accept NCEP estimates of SLAC to press the case for cosmic rays, then they cannot be critical of CRU which matches SLAC nicely.
if SLAC if right CRU is right. And SLAC, as you note, is not serived from surface stations, (ERA-40 does use station data)
simply: if cosmic rays explains the warming, then you must accept the warming it explains.
HenryP said:
“Obviously if they (clouds) move more towards the equator a larger surface area is covered leading to a higher albedo….
Let me know if somebody figured that one out.”
I’ve mentioned it a few times recently, Henry, but getting anyone to accept such a result from shifting the jets is an uphill task.
Then if the solar changes can shift the jets by altering the vertical temperature gradients in the atmosphere as I have proposed elsewhere by involving the reverse sign ozone effect from an increased downward NOx flux when the sun is more active then, voila, the solar mechanism is clear.
I guess it isn’t so obvious to everyone.
Check this out for weird in the following link. Average daily sunspot coverage per decade begins in 1880 at 12%. It has incremented exactly one percent each sunspot cycle to 23% coverage in the most recent cycle.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
A fraction of a percent long term change in albedo could easily account for observed warming since 1880. One percent lower albedo is about 13 fewer watts/meter of forcing at the surface. Compare that to 2 watts/meter for all anthropogenic greenhouse gases since 1750.
This is actually climate research that deserves more funding.
Ocean acidification is the going to be the last item on the manmade catastrophe agenda to fall by the wayside. At least that’s marine biology and we could stand to learn more about that.
Once all the CO2 nonsense is cleared off the table we can actually start a conversation about how to get cheap, abundant energy everywhere anyone needs it. That will do an enormous amount towards raising living standards for everyone.
Steven Mosher says:
November 26, 2010 at 1:03 am
“simply: if cosmic rays explains the warming, then you must accept the warming it explains.”
It’s not an all or nothing proposition. The reported warming may be exagerated and solar magnetic activity may play a major, minor, or no role at all in whatever actual warming really took place. I’d rather not be so vague but the science is very unsettled at this point.
Steven Mosher says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:44 pm
“psst: no politician would talk about logical impossibility”
Impossibilities often mean practical impossibilities.
In this case what was meant is it is practically impossible to make reliable climate forecasts. The plethora of factors that determine climate are not all well understood, exceedingly complex, interdependent, subject to constant change, and for things like volcanic eruptions, comet impacts, and CMEs are quite unpredictable. Taken together that means it’s practically impossible to make long term forecasts.
eadler says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:23 pm
“There is no real upward trend in neutron flux between 1950 and 2006. Of course “The Chilling Stars” wouldn’t contain that information.”
Well there is certainly a real upward trend in sunspots since 1880.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
Sunspot coverage has nearly doubled since 1880 with a curiously constant increment of an additional one percent coverage on each subsequent sunspot cycle.
November 25, 2010 at 9:13 am
vukcevic says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:04 am
I thought I was, by default, the master of confounding statements, but I take my hat off, sir.
Leif Svalgaard says:
Not confounding, just wrong.
This is expected from Ninderthana’s Law: “If a statement disagrees with Leif’s view of the Universe, then it must be wrong.”
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 26, 2010 at 12:12 am
But you must if “the observation from this paper establishes that condensation is proportional to the impinging radiation.”
Are you serious? OK here is a gedanken situation:
Suppose that the only factor entering the problem is “condensation is proportional to impinging radiation” . This would mean that all the cloud cover is due to radiation. As in your plot the base radiation is something like 4000 counts, and the average is , eyeballing,4300 ( I am taking the left hand scale for the argument), the run of the mill cloud cover would be proportional to this 4300. Variations over this average would be the variations introduced by the changes seen in your plot, +/- 300 , something like 7%. On this 7% maybe 30 to 50%, i.e. 2 or 3 total percentage of more putative cloud cover from 2000 on than from 1990 to 2000. This is enough change in albedo to affect the incoming temperatures by enough watts to stabilize any increases or even start cooling. Which is the GCR hypothesis.
Now a multiplicity of factors enters the real world and this is a simplified argument from one of the factors but it cannot be excluded on principle..
alan says:
November 25, 2010 at 7:51 am
“Reminds me of something my daughter, who works for a big architectural firm told me recently. All architects working on large projects where any government funding might be involved have to insert stereotypical “green language” and green modifications to even have their proposals considered. Not surprisingly, most in the field are committed to AGW.”
Same thing happens in biology. A gratuitous mention of “evolution” without regard to relevance drastically increases the chance of a paper getting published.
I call such things “the secret handshake” due that being a classic mechanism by which members of organizations can recognize each other without explicitely mentioning the organization by name.
Leif wrote:
“Cosmic ray is a fancy word for “charged particles in motion”, otherwise known as “electricity. […] A nuclear furnaced sun just cannot produce the effects we routinely observe from it. But assume an external source and things become a tad easier to explain.
Total nonsense”
Leif,
Thanks for the reply – but what evidence is there that the energy source of the sun is as proposed?
By rhetorical inference or in situ examination?
And please excuse me if I don’t reply quickly as I will be away in the field supervising 3 drilling machines “testing” scientific hypotheses pertaining to the presence of mineral deposits inferred from remote geophysical data recently collected, for the next two weeks; I just have no internet connection.
As changes in surface temperatures follow the very large changes in the solar wind velocity, it would make sense that these would cause changes in cloud cover.
The much smaller changes in GCR`s are obviously driven by changes in the solar wind speed, but the tail does not wag the dog. Its paramount to saying that GCR`s drive temperature change.
I would also expect to see any short term correlation between GCR`s and cloud cover completely reverse from summer to winter, as we see in the temperature~precipitation relationship from summer to winter.
In winter, precipitation increases on the temperature uplifts.
In summer, precipitation increases on the temperature drops.
Henry@ Stephen Wilde
Sorry Stephen, I cannot help you much, I hope you or somebody here will find that proof just like they now did with the H.Svensmark theory.
You are aware that suncycle activity can influence the UV output from the sun significantly and that this difference in UV affects the manufacture of ozone from oxygen?
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
(referring to the last part, i.e. the factors identified by me so far that I think can cause global warming or global cooling.
Ulric Lyons says:
November 26, 2010 at 4:07 am
In winter, precipitation increases on the temperature uplifts.
In summer, precipitation increases on the temperature drops.
precipitation vs. temperature
Clear example of positive correlation followed by negative correlation
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:04 am
Now, Vuk says that the correlation is negative except at times when it is positive. In my book that means ‘no correlation’.
This is far more amusing than I expected.
Looking at the long term (with help from Leif`s graph)
http://www.leif.org/research/Neutron-Monitor-Thule-Newark.png
correlating GCR levels through each solar cycle, to cloud cover changes, is like comparing surface temperatures to the roller coaster ride of the sunspot cycle through each min and max.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:46 pm
I’m trying to understand what they did..
..Anyway, Knieveton and Tinsley analysed the Wilcox effect [ http://www.utdallas.edu/nsm/physics/pdf/tin_dcgcc.pdf ] using superposed epoch analysis around ‘sector boundaries’ [crossings of the Heliospheric Current Sheet]. I have just done an analysis of the hourly GCR flux at Thule for the 1470 crossings during 1957-2010. The result is here: http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic-Rays-Thule-SB.png
The right-hand side shows the variation for every hour within 40 days on either side of the Sector Boundaries [which were nominally always taken to pass at 0:00h UT]. You see several things:
1) the 10 count daily variation [we know why: we are overtaking GCRs during half of the day and running into them during the other half due to Earth’s rotation]
2) A clear enhancement [larger than the daily variation] right at the boundary [and the day before and after]
3) The enhancements sjow up 27 days before and 27 days after, because the sector boundaries often recur every 27 days. This proves the reality of the effect as noise would not this behavior.
The power spectrum to the left shows the daily peak and the 27-day peak (“1″) and several of its harmonics [“2″,”3”, etc].
~
You’re trying to understand WHAT they did.. I’m trying to understand WHEN..
But thanks for steering us around to some of the HOW some GCR penetrate.
All this discussion, geez.
Decrease in solar output over the last couple years, the whole heliosphere contracts, Earth’s atmosphere lowers, and the cosmic radiation belt bloats a whopping 20%. 20% increase and let me say these clouds are cold as all get up and low. Not much trapping of heat beneath them where I live.
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 4:25 am
Ulric Lyons says:
November 26, 2010 at 4:07 am
In winter, precipitation increases on the temperature uplifts.
In summer, precipitation increases on the temperature drops.
precipitation vs. temperature
Clear example of positive correlation followed by negative correlation
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:04 am
Now, Vuk says that the correlation is negative except at times when it is positive. In my book that means ‘no correlation’.
This is far more amusing than I expected.
~
Not so amusing as confusing, if cycle stays low and lower GCR will be the new talk of the town.
How to add electrons to the upper atmosphere..through ‘diffuse aruora,’ not to be confused with the ever popular, ‘discrete aurora.’
~
New research provides insights into space weather, could benefit satellites, aircraft
By UCLA Newsroom October 20, 2010
Settling decades of scientific debate, researchers from UCLA and the British Antarctic Survey have discovered the final link between electrons trapped in space and the glow of light from the upper atmosphere known as the diffuse aurora.
Their research appears Oct. 21 in the journal Nature.
Scientists have long known that the diffuse aurora is caused by electrons striking the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The question has long been how these electrons reach the atmosphere, since electrons are normally trapped much higher up in the Earth’s magnetic field through a long chain of events starting with the sun.
Since the 1970s, scientists have debated whether very low-frequency (VLF) radio waves could be responsible for scattering the trapped electrons into the atmosphere. Two types of VLF waves were identified in space as the possible cause of the diffuse aurora, but despite years of argument and research, no conclusive result had been reached.
The new research shows, “without doubt, that VLF waves known as ‘chorus’ are responsible, so-called since the signals detected by ground-based recording equipment sound like the bird’s dawn chorus when played back through a loud speaker,” said the Nature paper’s lead author, Richard Thorne, a UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
Chorus waves are very low-frequency radio waves that come from space and are first detected on the ground.
..Through detailed analysis of satellite data, Thorne and his colleagues were able to calculate the effects on the trapped electrons and identify which radio waves were causing the scattering.
“The breakthrough came when we realized that the electrons being lost from space to the Earth’s atmosphere were leaving a signature, effectively telling a story about how they were being scattered,” Thorne said. “We could then analyze our satellite data on the two types of VLF waves, and by running calculations on them — including the rate at which the electrons were being lost to the Earth’s atmosphere — we could clearly see that chorus waves were the cause of the scattering.”
“Our finding is an important one because it will help scientists to understand how the diffuse aurora leads to changes in the chemistry of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, including effects on ozone at high altitude, which may affect temperature right through the atmosphere,” said co-author Professor Richard Horne of the British Antarctic Survey. “We are also including the VLF waves in computer models to help predict ‘space weather,’ which affects not only satellites and power grids, but also the accuracy of GPS navigation and high-frequency radio communications with aircraft on polar routes.”
The diffuse aurora is not the same as the discrete aurora, also known as the northern and southern lights. The discrete aurora looks like fiery moving curtains of colorful light and can be seen by the unaided eye, while the diffuse aurora is much fainter but more extensive. The diffuse aurora, which typically accounts for three-quarters of the energy input into the upper atmosphere at night, varies according to the season and the 11-year solar cycle.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/new-research-provides-insights-176822.aspx
Diffuse aurora .. fainter but more extensive..accounts for three-quarters of the energy input into the upper atmosphere.. good stuff.. Happy Friday..
interesting but…
2 weeks data = no where near enough
1 years data = more like it.
hopefully the analysis is preliminary.
it’s never been entirely clear to me as to why clouds do get charged – is it the friction when they move against air?
Leif Svalgaard says: it’s “Falling raindrops rubbing against each other…”
I know I am at risk of sounding stupid, but I honestly don’t know. Why would you think that droplets rubbing each other can cause a charge of thousands and thousands of volts? I have never seen anything like that happening during my shower…?
anna v says:
November 26, 2010 at 3:09 am
Variations over this average would be the variations introduced by the changes seen in your plot, +/- 300 , something like 7%. On this 7% maybe 30 to 50%, i.e. 2 or 3 total percentage of more putative cloud cover from 2000 on than from 1990 to 2000.
The integral over from 1990.0 to 2000.0 is 4284 and from 2000.0 to 2010.7 is 4288. So, yes, I’m serious.
Ninderthana says:
November 26, 2010 at 2:53 am
This is expected from Ninderthana’s Law: “If a statement disagrees with Leif’s view of the Universe, then it must be wrong.”
Live by your own law, then.
Louis Hissink says:
November 26, 2010 at 3:39 am
but what evidence is there that the energy source of the sun is as proposed? By rhetorical inference or in situ examination?
What evidence is there that Jupiter is round or that Sirius is a double star or that the Sun’s surface temperature is 5777K or that the Sun contains Sodium? In situ examination?
The method is called ‘observation’. You simply see those things. From the properties of the radiation received you know things about the object you are watching. E.g. the color of the Sun tells us its temperature. Sometimes you need a telescope because your direct eyesight is not up to the task [e.g. to see that Jupiter is round]. To see into the core of the Sun we use a neutrino telescope. From the properties of the neutrinos observed we can say something about the interior of the Sun. What we see, we can compare with what we see with the same telescope when we use it to look at Terrestrial sources of neutrinos [that we make ourselves] and so gain confidence in the veracity of our observations, just like we can know that the surface temperature of the Sun is 5777K from comparison with the radiation we observe from bodies in the lab that we heat ourselves. When light passes through a medium containing Sodium, electrons in Sodium atoms change their energy. We observe that energy change as a line in the solar spectrum [the so-called ‘D’ line]. This is how we know that the electrons change and how much and only Sodium reacts in that precise way. So, we see that the Sun contains Sodium [‘if it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck etc’]. The nuclear reactions in the Sun emitneutrinos with specific energies. We observe neutrinos with just those energies and so [like with Sodium] can conclude that those reactions are present.
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 4:25 am
“Now, Vuk says that the correlation is negative except at times when it is positive. In my book that means ‘no correlation’.”
This is far more amusing than I expected.
You are right, your claims border on the edge of ridiculous rather than just amusing.
anna v says:
November 26, 2010 at 3:09 am
Variations over this average would be the variations introduced by the changes seen in your plot, +/- 300 , something like 7%. On this 7% maybe 30 to 50%, i.e. 2 or 3 total percentage of more putative cloud cover from 2000 on than from 1990 to 2000.
We can do some more integrals:
1957-70: 4281
1971-80: 4424
1981-90: 4155
1991-00: 4307
2000-10: 4315
Carla says:
November 26, 2010 at 5:54 am
You’re trying to understand WHAT they did.. I’m trying to understand WHEN..
They state very clearly in the paper when it was done:
Received: 7 June 2010 – Published in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss.: 2 August 2010
Revised: 16 November 2010 – Accepted: 18 November 2010 – Published: 24 November 2010
Leif, your comment reminds me of the old gas spectrometers. Amazing how those machines could tell you what chemicals and compounds were in something as simple as water, to something as complex as a chemo plant-derived drug. All you needed to do was develop a new language for reading bumps along a spectrum.
HenryP says:
November 26, 2010 at 7:37 am
Why would you think that droplets rubbing each other can cause a charge of thousands and thousands of volts?
Walking across a carpet in dry weather can build up several thousand volts. Enough to trigger a spark when you touch the doorknob [requires 3000 Volt].
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:17 am
The heliospheric magnetic field impends GCR entry into heliosphere. The Earth’s magnetic field does the same for the magnetosphere. When the GCR count is calculated it is first adjusted for variation for the strength of the Earth’s dipole
If the GCRs have any effect it would be with the GCRs actually reaching the atmosphere, so they should not be corrected when correlated with temperatures. Here is a graph of the uncorrected GCRs [represented by their proxy 14C] and the Earth’s [or the Arctic’s – it doesn’t make much difference which one] magnetic field strength [dots]. You can clearly see that they are strongly anti-correlated [as they should be according to our understanding of how this works]. The tiny wiggles are solar activity related changes. It should be clear that the variation of the main field is by far the dominant, so if climate follows the GCR flux, it should follow the 14C curve. I don’t think it does. You can get around this problem by claiming that we do not know anything about past climate anyway.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:18 am
Here is a graph of the uncorrected GCRs
Forgot the graph: http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
Leif, that graphic appears closely associated with an ~11,000 year orbital cycle (and ice ages, etc., etc., etc.).
Are you promoting cyclomania? ;~P
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 26, 2010 at 7:46 am
You are right, your claims border on the edge of ridiculous rather than just amusing.
Hey, no offence,
to a man of limited vision
‘ borders on the edge of ridiculous ’
to a man with foresight is germ of an idea.
Vaughan Ronald Pratt Professor Emeritus at Stanford University:
November 25, 2010 @ vukcevic (elsewhere)
“Right, that’s what I find so appealing about your graphs.”
“Our finding is an important one because it will help scientists to understand how the diffuse aurora leads to changes in the chemistry of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, including effects on ozone at high altitude, which may affect temperature right through the atmosphere,” said co-author Professor Richard Horne of the British Antarctic Survey”
Such as contributing to variability in the downward NOx flux which depletes ozone for a cooling effect in the regions above 45km when the sun is more active ?
And which allows recovery of ozone for a warming effect above 45km when the sun is quiet as per the recent Haigh data ?
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 26, 2010 at 7:54 am
We can do some more integrals:
1957-70: 4281
1971-80: 4424 this includes the ice scare
1981-90: 4155 this started the warming scare
1991-00: 4307 maybe one should start at ’93 or so
2000-10: 4315 the last two decades are consistent with higher albedo of Palle et al
I am not saying that there is really a fool proof correlation. But, within the multitude of factors entering into cloud making this could be one more contribution and since ’95 there are cumulatively more cosmics and the albedo is rising since ’97 .
Mr. Clark
Here is a graph going further back
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/VADM.htm
Tim Clark says:
November 26, 2010 at 8:28 am
Are you promoting cyclomania? ;~P
There are definitely cycles [Milankovich etc].
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 8:29 am
“Right, that’s what I find so appealing about your graphs.”
I think you mean ‘appalling’, check again.
anna v says:
November 26, 2010 at 8:51 am
I am not saying that there is really a fool proof correlation. But, within the multitude of factors entering into cloud making this could be one more contribution and since ’95 there are cumulatively more cosmics and the albedo is rising since ’97 .
The point is that the cosmic variations are so minute that if their effects are proportional to the whole count it will unobservable. There has been very large variations in cosmic ray intensity in the past because the Earth main field varies a lot. These cosmic ray variations do not show up as matching temperature variations.
anna v says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:32 pm
“eadler :
http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/Misc/neutron2.html
There is no real upward trend in neutron flux between 1950 and 2006. Of course “The Chilling Stars” wouldn’t contain that information.
Hold your horses. It is not the peak trends that will produce clouds or not. It is the integrated area below the curves in the link, assuming the observation from this paper establishes that condensation is proportional to the impinging radiation .
So seems to me there is a sequence of fat, lean, fat, lean plots. Between 1980 and 1990 there is half the area than between 1990 and 2000, and in addition the minimum is smaller, thus the area larger. The observation that from 1995 there is stasis in temperature would agree with the integral being larger since then.
Looking at backward times the ice age scare fell in a fat region.
I do not believe that there is one to one correspondence with any factor entering in producing the weather and climate we observe. It is a dynamical system with many inputs and most probably chaotic, but one can observe threads of influences, and this GCR seems to me valid as a contributor, and certainly cannot be thrown out by looking cursorily at peak trends.”
Fair enough. Eyeballing is not necessarily going to be accurate.
This begs the question: “Is there an 11 year moving average plot which shows a trend in Cosmic rays, which has been plotted by the proponents of the Cosmic Ray Theory, which shows that Cosmic Rays could be a factor?”.
Could you, or any of the “skeptics” reading this, who believe in the Cosmic Ray influence, help out here? If there is no evidence that Cosmic Rays could be driving the current Temperature increase, why all the fuss?
Sorry Leif
the light bulb in my head has not lightened up yet
You say: Walking across a carpet in dry weather can build up several thousand volts. Enough to trigger a spark when you touch the doorknob [requires 3000 Volt].
The key word is “dry”! and the key idea is “friction”!
So is the enormous speed of clouds moving in a thunderstorm against the prevailing air in the atmosphere not causing that friction that is enough to cause lightning?
Note that until it actually rains the clouds should be seen as “dry” – just very high water vapor content.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 26, 2010 at 9:23 am
I think you mean ‘appalling’, check again.
Thanks god ‘mean-minded’ and ‘mean-spirited’ are a tiny minority, some would not even help an old lady across the road.
Dr. V.P. “I strongly encourage you to complete your analysis . And as a native speaker of English I may be of more than merely technical assistance.”
Dear all, this story has generated a thoughtful and useful discussion which I am grateful for. As a point of some clarification, I have added an open letter to my website. http://benlaken.com/index.html
All the best,
–Ben
HenryP says:
November 26, 2010 at 9:44 am
The key word is “dry”! and the key idea is “friction”!
So is the enormous speed of clouds moving in a thunderstorm against the prevailing air in the atmosphere not causing that friction that is enough to cause lightning?
Note that until it actually rains the clouds should be seen as “dry” – just very high water vapor content.
No, it is not the clouds moving. And, actually, the ‘rain drops’ are dry, namely ice crystals. I should have been more precise on that.
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 10:11 am
Dr. V.P. “I strongly encourage you to complete your analysis.
I think I have urged you to do that many times. You always refuse on the grounds that “others would steal your ideas that could be of enormous importance to mankind”.
HenryP says:
November 26, 2010 at 9:44 am
……………..
Cloud electricity is not there because of rain. It is there because of diffusion of ions, due to the Brownian motion.
Ben Laken says:
November 26, 2010 at 10:17 am
As a point of some clarification, I have added an open letter to my website.
Except that the letter is devoid of actual information 🙁 . I had hoped that there would have been some clarification of:
“I’m trying to understand what they did. The paper states “Thus, the units of GCR changes used here are given as “GU”, defined as a change of 1% of the 11-year solar cycle amplitude in four days.”. At Thule the GCR solar cycle amplitude in neutron monitor counts per hour is ~600 out of a total of ~4300. The change happens over 5 years = 5*365 = 1825 days. In four days the GCRs change thus 600/1825*4 = 1.3 counts. 1% of that is 0.013 count. This sounds silly on its face as there is a regular daily variation of 10 counts or 770 times as large. So, I need some clarification on this.”
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 10:30 am
Cloud electricity is not there because of rain. It is there because of diffusion of ions, due to the Brownian motion.
Actually, there are several proposed mechanisms. “The two processes generally acknowledged to be the most likely candidates are the process by which ice particles, growing at different diffusional rates, collide and share charges such that the particle growing fastest charges positively, and the inductive mechanism that relies on the pre-existing electric field to produce induced charges in uncharged particles that may be transferred during collisions.”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w54350750g275214/
Annav
Skeptical Science web site has a graph of the 11 year average of Cosmic Rays versus temperature. After 1970 there are oscillations but no trend to match the temperature trend.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/cosmic-rays-and-global-warming.htm
Remember that the correlations between cloudiness and cosmic ray increases were hard for the researchers to find. The correlation occurs at the mid latitudes and only for some particular atmospheric conditions. In their discussion section,m the authors state:
It should be noted that although the GCM experiment corroborates
the observed link between changes in cloudiness
and SLAT, it does not provide any further information on the suggested link between GCR and cloud cover.
Based on the
relationships observed in this study, and assuming that there
is no linear trend in the short-term GCR change, we speculate
that little (0.088 C/decade) systematic change in temperature
at mid-latitudes has occurred over the last 50 years.
However, at shorter time-scales this phenomenon may contribute
to natural variability, potentially reducing detectability
of an anthropogenic signal.
Water molecules H-O-H are dielectric. Ions & Brownian motions (which we discussed on number of occasions); so ions diffusion works fine for me, and hey, no ‘magnetic field’ frozen or otherwise required. Think about it.
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 11:06 am
Water molecules H-O-H are dielectric. Ions & Brownian motions (which we discussed on number of occasions); so ions diffusion works fine for me, and hey, no ‘magnetic field’ frozen or otherwise required. Think about it.
You miss the essential ingredient: how do you separate the charges, once you have got them onto the ice crystals or rain drops? The point here is that the crystals generally fall down and take the charges with them, thus building up a difference between the top and the bottom of the clouds.
I am more confused now then before about where the actual electrical charge in clouds comes from – and I think it is an important lead. I think that there are always charges in the clouds, but it is usually not big enough to cause a lightning strike. That leaves my idea that the directional movement of these (charged) clouds may well be influenced by earth’s magnetic field, which in its turn may be influenced by that of the sun’s, still open?
I agree with Leif about Ben
Unfortunately, unlike many of us here, in the end, it’s all about the money and who pays what and why…
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
To respond to the post by Leif (left at Nov 26th, 2010, 10:17am)
Hi Leif, I am sorry that you were dissatisfied with the content of the open letter; it was not intended to be a compendium to the manuscript but a general insight to give some insight into the meaning of the work for non-academics who may be interested. So I will attempt to answer some of your questions regarding our calculation of changes in the Cosmic ray flux.
I will give a worked example with the real data, but values will deviate, as I am not using all neutron monitor sites, and all values for brevity and these are back of the envelope calculations.
Instead of considering neutron monitor variations from a single site (such as Climax) we aimed to give a more globally comprehensive view of neutron monitor changes, as the work concerned an effect that was widespread. So we combined neutron monitor variations from many sites, which were all normalised against the individual neutron monitor changes experienced over the course of an 11 year solar cycle.
For the raw neutron monitor counts from 3 sites we have the following (from days -3 to +3)
day -3 day -2 day -1 day 0 day 1 day2 day3
Climax: 407959.1 407896.6 408134.9 407744.2 407614.7 408117 4083883.3
Moscow: 556742.2 556559.1 556483.5 556178.0 556480.2 556809.2 556723.5
MtWelling: 392036.2 391693.0 391669.0 391668.4 392175.2 392474.3 392293.1
So if we look at the average of those three sites (with key day value normalised to 0 for easy viewing)
Day -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3
Average (counts): 382.3 186.0 232.2 0.0 226.5 603.3 604.7
At this point we can already clearly see a statistical correlation between GCR decreases and the key dates (in the actual paper we had many more neutron monitor sites contributing to the values to increase the robustness of the measurements). So we have a positive correlation between dates of rapid middle latitude zone cloud decreases, and decreases in the Cosmic Ray flux.
Now back to the way we presented the CR flux: as counts are somewhat meaningless to a wider audience, we converted the CR change to a percentage of the change experienced over an 11-year solar cycle, using values from each neutron monitor site.
E.g. Climax (44495.71 counts) , Moscow (54630.13 counts) , Mt Wellington (48190.31 counts)
Finally, we then calculated the CR variation as a change that was relative to preceding days, by subtracting the average CR value (now in percent relative to solar cycle changes) from the average counts of a three day period beginning 5 days earlier. This averaging period approach is similar to that used in other studies (such as Kniveton and Todd, 2001; 2004 JASTP).
So to do that calculation briefly for the average of those three sites for day +2 would give +0.69 units. Where we have defined the units as GU in our paper. Again, I realise this value deviates from the day +1 value presented in the paper, but this calculation was done using only a fraction of the neutron monitor sites from that work to give you further clarification of the method.
I hope this helps,
–Ben Laken
HenryP you can pick and choose.
Ordinary particles without charge in Brownian motion move in random directions, charge particles do not, there is a critical distance regulated by forces of attraction and repulsion. Collisions of charged particles are quite different from normal neutral particle collisions. Neutral particles move independently along straight-line trajectories between distinct collision events, which are typically strong, inelastic events that cause the neutral particle to be scattered in approximately random direction. In contrast, a charged particle moving simultaneously experiences (and is deflected by) the weak Coulomb electric field forces around all the nearby charged particles as it passes by each of them. Since the electric fields around the individual charged particles are quite weak and Coulomb collisions are elastic (energy-conserving), they individually lead to typically only very small deflections in the direction of motion Thus, the trajectory of a charged particle is influenced by many simultaneous, small angle deflections in its direction of motion.
As vapour rises through the air Brownian motion and the Coulomb field separates charges into different polarity layers, building electric potential. So by the time vapour has become cloud it is already charged and highly polarised.
Rubbing of ice crystals is a bit a doubtful physics.
I suggest: take two ice cubes from you drink glass and as an experiment rub them together. No starter.
eadler says:
November 26, 2010 at 9:42 am
I do not want to repeat what we have been exchanging with Leif, if you are interested you can have a look at the posts above starting from
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/25/something-to-be-thankful-for-at-last-cosmic-rays-linked-to-rapid-mid-latitude-cloud-changes/#comment-537508
The interest in the cosmic ray hypothesis rises from the desire to correlate the sun cycles to the weather/climate cycles. As the total energy variations coming from the sun output are very small, amplification factors are sought: One of these is the correlation of cosmic rays with the sun cycles and the hypothesis that the cloud cover increases and thus albedo increases and generate temperature changes.
Α 3% change in albedo can make all the difference in the energy budget to reverse temperature trends.
Dave Springer says:
November 26, 2010 at 1:47 am (Edit)
Steven Mosher says:
November 26, 2010 at 1:03 am
“simply: if cosmic rays explains the warming, then you must accept the warming it explains.”
It’s not an all or nothing proposition. The reported warming may be exagerated and solar magnetic activity may play a major, minor, or no role at all in whatever actual warming really took place. I’d rather not be so vague but the science is very unsettled at this point.
#######
very simply, you change the “observed” warming you change the statistics.
In any case. NCEP surface temp is derived from the temperature aloft. Consequently it has none of the problems we see in surface stations. If the surface stations had significant bias then we could expect the results of NCEP to differ from the surface stations. NCEP does not differ substantially from CRU. that is temperatures for the surface derived from atmospheric temperatures agree with temperatures taking on the ground.
Thanks Ben,
That’s clearer now.
Dave Springer says:
November 26, 2010 at 2:07 am (Edit)
Steven Mosher says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:44 pm
“psst: no politician would talk about logical impossibility”
Impossibilities often mean practical impossibilities.
In this case what was meant is it is practically impossible to make reliable climate forecasts. The plethora of factors that determine climate are not all well understood, exceedingly complex, interdependent, subject to constant change, and for things like volcanic eruptions, comet impacts, and CMEs are quite unpredictable. Taken together that means it’s practically impossible to make long term forecasts.
##### that’s more like it, but still there are issues.
As I stated we can model the climate. the question is how reliable are the predictions?
Well the first problem we have is that we cannot run controlled experiments. we cannot hold independent variables constant and vary them in a factorial fashion.
Consequently we can only make conditional predictions:
1. Assuming no volcanic eruptions ( especially huge ones like Yellowstone caldera)
2. Assuming no comet impacts
3. Assuming no CMEs
4. Assuming the laws of physics dont change
5. Assuming no peak oil or peak coal
6. Assuming no mass extinctions via unknown viruses
7. assuming no breakthroughs in energy generation
8 assuming certain emmission pathways
9. assuming certain population changes
Lots of assumptions. So practically speaking we can make these predictions subject to these assumptions. Practically speaking we can. practically speaking we do.so it’s not practically impossible either. The issue is how much weight should we ascribe to these conditional predictions when making public policy. Should the assumptions hold the predictions could be very reliable ( say within .5c)
What you want to argue is this. We can and do model the climate. The predictions of those models are subject to various assumptions, assumptions that can dramatically change the results. Further, even if those assumptions hold, the predictions still have uncertainties. we cannot ascertain their reliability until after the fact.
Ben Laken says:
November 26, 2010 at 11:56 am
Finally, we then calculated the CR variation as a change that was relative to preceding days, by subtracting the average CR value (now in percent relative to solar cycle changes) from the average counts of a three day period beginning 5 days earlier.
Subtracting a percent value fro an average count doesn’t make sense, so
I hope this helps
It was of no help. what would be of help, would be pointing out where my little calculation goes wrong.
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 11:59 am
So by the time vapour has become cloud it is already charged and highly polarised.
Rubbing of ice crystals is a bit a doubtful physics.
You are still missing the essential point, that collisions [“rubbing”] lead to removal of some mass from the larger particle, fast growing ice surfaces charge positively and sublimating surfaces charge negatively. The impact of the collision [“rubbing”] melts a local volume on each particle, with the warmer particle supplying more mass than the colder one. The exchange of mass and charge during the collision results in the falling larger crystal becoming negatively charged.
I suggest: take two ice cubes from you drink glass and as an experiment rub them together. No starter.
This is just an example of your simplistic view of things, ignoring [or not knowing] what really goes on.
Ben Laken says:
November 26, 2010 at 11:56 am
Finally, we then calculated the CR variation as a change that was relative to preceding days, by subtracting the average CR value (now in percent relative to solar cycle changes) from the average counts of a three day period beginning 5 days earlier.
Subtracting a percent value from an average count doesn’t make sense, so
I hope this helps was of no help. What would be of help, would be pointing out where my little calculation goes wrong.
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 11:59 am
So by the time vapour has become cloud it is already charged and highly polarised.
Rubbing of ice crystals is a bit a doubtful physics.
You are still missing the essential point, that collisions [“rubbing”] lead to removal of some mass from the larger particle, fast growing ice surfaces charge positively and sublimating surfaces charge negatively. The impact of the collision [“rubbing”] melts a local volume on each particle, with the warmer particle supplying more mass than the colder one. The exchange of mass and charge during the collision results in the falling larger crystal becoming negatively charged. This is clearly explained in the link I gave.
I suggest: take two ice cubes from you drink glass and as an experiment rub them together. No starter.
This is just an example of your simplistic view of things, ignoring [or not knowing] what really goes on.
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 11:59 am
I suggest: take two ice cubes from you drink glass and as an experiment rub them together. No starter.
Perhaps you should just and watch your drink glass and let it all evaporate and see that how by then “it is already charged and highly polarised”.
Looks like you dug yourself into a hole.
Have you heard of lightning with no falling rain, cloud to cloud, have you heard ‘bolt from the blue’, sprites …
Read about Brownian motions, the first significant work by Albert Einstein.
…simplistic view ? Your rubbing ice crystals are not only simplistic view, but a bit of a joke. Just put couple of electrodes in the falling snow (ice crystals) and you got yourself a free electricity supply!
vukcevic says:
November 26, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Have you heard of lightning with no falling rain, cloud to cloud, have you heard ‘bolt from the blue’, sprites …
It would do you good to actually read Clive Saunders ‘Charge Separation Mechanisms in clouds” that I linked to: http://www.springerlink.com/content/w54350750g275214/
“The generally accepted concept for the development of the thunderstorm charge dipole is the physical separation of oppositely charged particles within the cloud. Larger cloud particles fall under gravity while smaller particles are transported in the updraught; if these particles carry negative and positive charges respectively then the normal charge dipole will result. […] Observations in thunderstorms have shown that strong electrification follows the development of ice particles. Most mechanisms considered today involve cloud ice in the charging process. […] Latham and Mason (1961), working in the laboratory, studied charge transfer during impacts of ice crystals on an ice sphere representing a falling graupel pellet. They noted that a temperature difference between the particles led to charge transfer, such that the warmer ice particle lost positive charge. […] Despite graupel usually being charged negatively in the lower charge region of thunderstorm dipoles, rainfall measured below cloud is often positively charged. Dinger and Gunn (1946) proposed a charge transfer process associated with melting. Drake (1968) noted that convection in a melting ice sphere produced negatively charged droplets ejected from bursting air bubbles at the surface. […] Ice splintering has had a long history of possible involvement in charging. Latham and Mason (1961) noted that ice splinters created during the freezing of supercooled droplets (riming) on a larger ice surface were charged. […] They did note that in the presence of liquid cloud, the ice crystals grew rapidly and when these larger crystals collided with a riming ice surface, then substantial charges were transferred […] Charge transfer associated with surface growth or sublimation has been noted by everyone who has worked in the area of collisional ice charging in clouds. […] In a series of multiple aircraft penetrations through thunderstorms in Montana, Dye et al. (1986) reported on simultaneous measurements of cloud parameters and electrical properties. They noted that increases in electric field strength occurred in regions containing a mix of liquid water and of ice particles. Ice crystals and graupel pellets were identified by airborne laser probes carried on aircraft flying in regions of strong electric field. They also reported that electrification appeared to be occurring at the interface between the updraught and downdraught regions of the clouds. These observations point strongly to a precipitation based charging process of thunderstorm electrification and they strengthened the growing conviction that ice crystals rebounding from riming graupel in the presence of supercooled liquid water is a requirement of the charge transfer process leading to electric field development and lightning. [..] A thunderstorm charging mechanism based on vapour deposition rate, first proposed by Baker et al. (1987), has been successful in helping to account for differences between the results from various laboratory studies. The concept follows on from the result described earlier that, during collisions leading to the removal of some surface mass from the larger particle, fast growing ice surfaces charge positively and conversely, sublimating surfaces charge negatively. Baker et al., suggested that an additional variable comes into play when two ice surfaces having different vapour diffusional growth rates come into brief contact, namely the surface state of the smaller particle in the collision process. They suggested that the relative diffusional growth rates of the interacting ice particle surfaces was the factor that controls the sign of charge transfer. The charge transfer follows the rule that the ice surface that grows faster by vapour diffusion charges positively during ice crystal/graupel rebounding collisions. This concept has stood the test of time, and has been shown to be consistent with the results obtained in various laboratories. […] Given that ice particles grow in supersaturated conditions, such as in cirrus clouds experiencing an updraught, charge transfer will occur during collisions between non-riming ice particles growing at different rates. The relative growth rate hypothesis predicts that the faster growing ice surface will charge positively. Laboratory measurements have confirmed substantial charge transfer in ice/ice collisions in the absence of supercooled droplets.”
Don’t forget that this is really my field [solar physics is just a sideshow].
Just put couple of electrodes in the falling snow (ice crystals) and you got yourself a free electricity supply!
Actually, putting a couple of electrodes in a thundercloud would give you a very nice free electricity supply.
Response to Leif post on November 26, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Apologies Leif, for the typo – that passage should have read “subtracting the average CR value (now in percentage relative to solar cycle changes) from the average percentage of a three day period beginning 5 days earlier.”
Back to your calculation of the change relative cosmic ray change; it would not be fractions of a count (you quote 0.013 counts). The neutron count variations experienced over the peak-to-peak changes of a solar cycle would surely be far larger than your quoted value of ~600 counts for Thule as you state. I do not have Thule data to hand, but for example, at Climax the average daily counts over the monitoring period are approximately 395,020 while the peak-to-peak solar cycle amplitude change is approximately 44,496 counts, which equates to a change in neutron counts of approximately 11 % of the total Cosmic Ray flux over the course an average 11-year solar cycle.
Best,
–Ben
Ben Laken says:
November 26, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Back to your calculation of the change relative cosmic ray change; it would not be fractions of a count (you quote 0.013 counts). The neutron count variations experienced over the peak-to-peak changes of a solar cycle would surely be far larger than your quoted value of ~600 counts for Thule as you state. I do not have Thule data to hand, but for example, at Climax the average daily counts over the monitoring period are approximately 395,020 while the peak-to-peak solar cycle amplitude change is approximately 44,496 counts, which equates to a change in neutron counts of approximately 11 % of the total Cosmic Ray flux over the course an average 11-year solar cycle.
As I said, my counts are per hour [yours are per day]. This makes no difference, of course, as everything just scales with a factor of 24. I.e. 600 out of 4300 is 14%. now you said 1% of the amplitude which [with my numbers] come to 6 counts [per hour]. It takes 5 years = 1825 days to go from min to max, so the rate per day is 6/1825. Now your state that you use the rate over four days, so 4*6/1825 = 0.013 counts would be 1 CU on your scale for one hour counts [since I do my superposed epoch with 1 hour resolution]. The daily variation has an amplitude 770 times larger, namely 10 counts.
One of the reasons I like this blog is that I get to see real scientists going back and forth. Compare and contrast that with Real Climate where everything is suppressed. Thanks to Svalgaard, Laken and moderators and Watts for the lively forum.
1DandyTroll says:
November 25, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Dude, he was correcting himself…
Sorry, I just woke up now. Am I correct in understanding that clouds do not get charged at all simply by their friction against air caused by differences in pressure?
That leaves my idea that the directional movement of these clouds may well be influenced by earth’s magnetic field, which in its turn may be influenced by that of the sun’s, improbable?
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 26, 2010 at 3:59 pm
As I said, my counts are per hour [yours are per day]. This makes no difference, of course, as everything just scales with a factor of 24.
It would help in clarity if there were errors accompanying these arguments. If one is using 24 hours and one is using 1 hour the error also scales by the square root of 24. Whether a measure is significant or not depends on the error accompanying it.
What is the conceptual difficulty in accumulating statistics to increase significance?
anna v says:
November 27, 2010 at 2:09 am
If one is using 24 hours and one is using 1 hour the error also scales by the square root of 24. Whether a measure is significant or not depends on the error accompanying it.
The cosmic ray intensity is a count and has no error. It is like counting the number of people entering a doorway during a given period. The error in a superposed epoch analysis scales with the square root of the number of key dates. In my case I have so many [1470] that the [statistical] error is negligible. But I would like to know how many key dates Ben et al. have. It is a defect of the paper not to give that number.
HenryP says:
November 26, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Am I correct in understanding that clouds do not get charged at all simply by their friction against air caused by differences in pressure?
I don’t think that is implicated in the charging process.
Four blind brothers sent to describe the elephant. One touches the trunk and tusks, the other the tail, the other the four legs,a nd the last brother touches the belly of the beast, they all get together and the four brothers argue for a good long time, and the “seeing” father has a good long laugh.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 27, 2010 at 3:33 am
“anna v says:
November 27, 2010 at 2:09 am
If one is using 24 hours and one is using 1 hour the error also scales by the square root of 24. Whether a measure is significant or not depends on the error accompanying it.”
The cosmic ray intensity is a count and has no error. It is like counting the number of people entering a doorway during a given period.
The error would be the square root of the number of people coming through the door, and it reflects the statistics that is expected to hold with a random sample.
With all due respect Leif, in particle physics experiments, counts come with error the square root of the count ( plus a systematic if one exists). When we search for interactions and publish a cross section for the interaction, the error is the statistical error of the counts found (plus any systematic one). That is why we try to accumulate statistics.
HenryP says:
November 26, 2010 at 10:18 pm
That leaves my idea that the directional movement of these clouds may well be influenced by earth’s magnetic field, which in its turn may be influenced by that of the sun’s, improbable?
Not at all, I think there is lot of sense in what you are suggesting, but of course you should always read Dr.L.S (Dr. No).
Atmosphere contains positive charge in a way of space particles (free protons, etc). As the air heats up, updraft lifts water vapour to higher altitudes where these particles are more abundant. Positive particles by their presence initiate process of ionisation (‘charging’ of both polarities), but do not form compounds. From then on process is the self-sustaining one, depending on the amount of heat in the atmosphere. Warmer the air, more energy to Brownian motion, stronger the final polarisation.
This explains why thunderstorms are more frequent in the second part of the day than in the early morning (precipitations are not choosy), thunderstorms are more frequent in the summer than in winter.
Some meteorologists link thunderstorms to the velocity and intensity of the solar wind, which is a constant source of the charged particles in the upper atmosphere, initiating the ionisation process.
You could also look at this:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/space_weather_link.html
but if you wander about the magnetic field, you are right it should not be ignored, here is my take on it:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC20.htm
anna v says:
November 26, 2010 at 12:00 pm
“The interest in the cosmic ray hypothesis rises from the desire to correlate the sun cycles to the weather/climate cycles. As the total energy variations coming from the sun output are very small….”
The massive changes in solar wind speed do correlate to large changes in surface temperatures, maybe its that changing the cloud cover and not the GCR`s.
@HenryP:
Static charge tends to concentrate at a point. Just before a raindrop breaks up due to air friction, free electrons migrate to the point of the teardrop which becomes the smaller droplet after breakup. The thunderstorm updraft carries the smaller droplets upward and the larger droplets fall as rain, yielding the charge separation which eventually results in lightning. This phenomena results in the “global electric circuit”, with the upper atmosphere negative with respect to ground. The authors of this paper refer to this as the GEC “Global Electric Circuit” and describe the means by which this phenomena might mediate the GCR – temperature connection. They say
“The GEC is made up of the ionosphere (which is maintained at a potential of 250 kV by upward current from thunderstorms and other electrified clouds) and the vertical current density, which flows downwards from the ionosphere to the Earth’s surface (at 1–6 pAm−2) over all fair-weather regions. The GCR flux maintains the atmosphere as a weakly conducting plasma, as a result variations in the GCR flux modulate the vertical current density.”
anna v says:
November 27, 2010 at 3:56 am
With all due respect Leif, in particle physics experiments, counts come with error the square root of the count ( plus a systematic if one exists).
This would be the case if there were an underlying single [constant] number that we were trying to measure [e.g. half-life], but is not the case when there is a variable number. Then the actual count is the number we are after, and it has no error [ignoring coincidence counting – two people trying to get through the door at the same time]. Same with sunspots. If I see four spots on the disk, four spots it is, not 4+/-2. If in an election [except in Florida, of course], there are 100 votes for candidate A and 91 for B, A wins.
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2010 at 4:50 am
You could also look at this:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/space_weather_link.html
Goes the other way: thunderstorms influence the ionosphere. You should really stop spreading misinformation.
Dave Springer says:
November 26, 2010 at 2:07 am
“In this case what was meant is it is practically impossible to make reliable climate forecasts. The plethora of factors that determine climate are not all well understood, exceedingly complex, interdependent, subject to constant change, and for things like volcanic eruptions, comet impacts, and CMEs are quite unpredictable. Taken together that means it’s practically impossible to make long term forecasts.”
An increase in volcanic activity predicted for Indonesia this Autumn
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/something-is-brewing/#comment-1095
A peak in flare activity predicted for around November 5th.
(WUWT)
Next stronger peak around 27th December 2010.
By using the appropriate look-back, we can see a series of cold to very cold N.H. winters from 2014 to the early 2020`s.
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2010 at 4:50 am
HenryP says:
Water molecules in clouds, obviously, are differently arranged than in liquid water, this is why when, after loosing its charge (lightning storms happen before raining, they fall down, only then subjected to “gravity”.
In clouds water it is as hydrogen hydroxide ( a solid metal hydroxide- hydrogen is a silvery colored metal close to zero degrees kelvin-).We all can reproduce a similar phenomenon in a glass or beaker, using instead a metal´s salt, as zinc or aluminum sulfate or chloride, and neutralizing it with an alkali solution: We will see how it appear “clouds” of the metal hydroxide (Al(OH)3 or Zn(OH)2).
This, BTW, explains how so many thousand tons of water hang over our heads, openly violating the “Holy Law of Gravitation”(while we do not even ask for it)
You see, the problem is, that, we humans like so much to give names and put tags (be it self-adhesive or not) and because of this we have divided science, “constants”, units, etc. in water tight compartments, where it is “forbidden” any communication among them:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38598073/Unified-Field_1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/42482741/Unified-Field-Explained-9
Does anyone see a potential connection between variations in the solar wind / magnetic field / Global Electric Circuit and the downward NOx flux caused as a result of solar particles reacting with the highest levels of the atmosphere ?
The effect seems to be concentrated at the poles with ozone above about 45km being depleted (or not) at variable rates with a consequent effect on the vertical temperature profile and thus the various atmospheric heights (including the tropopause) with an influence on the size and intensity of the polar vortices.
Recent climate events lead me to think that the level of sensitivity to such variations within the climate system might be rather higher than I previously thought.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 6:29 am
The effect seems to be concentrated at the poles with ozone above about 45km being depleted (or not) at variable rates with a consequent effect on the vertical temperature profile and thus the various atmospheric heights (including the tropopause) with an influence on the size and intensity of the polar vortices.
The effects go the other way. It is the polar vortex that controls the downward flux of NOx.
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2010 at 4:50 am
You could also look at this:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/space_weather_link.html
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 27, 2010 at 5:17 am
Goes the other way: thunderstorms influence the ionosphere.
– Because that way it suits the CONSTANT SUN hypothesis
You should really stop spreading misinformation.
-Agree.
– All climate science should be strictly censored; people of this kind are danger to neo-Stalinist approach to the climate science!
anna v says:
November 26, 2010 at 12:00 pm
“Α 3% change in albedo can make all the difference in the energy budget to reverse temperature trends.”
A 3% change in albedo is over 10 watts/m^2 of forcing. Compare to total forcing from all man-made greenhouse gases at 2 watts/m^2.
That’s enough to cause an ice age if it’s a deficit or an Eocene climatic optimum if it’s a surplus. 0.3% increase would be enough to reverse whatever warming was caused by anthropogenic GHGs. Given the earth has been in an ice age for the past 3 million years it seems like only the clinically insane would be worried about a few additional watts of forcing. What we should really fear, perched as we are on the old side of an interglacial, is a few watts less forcing. We’re at a tipping point alright – the tipping point that triggers global glaciation.
Leif Svalgaard says: (November 27, 2010 at 5:11 am)
“If in an election [except in Florida, of course], there are 100 votes for candidate A and 91 for B, A wins.”
That only applies to areas where the average age is over 80, such as Naples & West Palm Beach. It is caused by having an additional 10 ballots where no one can tell who the hell they were actually voting for in the first place.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 27, 2010 at 5:11 am
When we are measuring cross sections, for example proton proton scattering, we measure the number of particles in the beam and the square root of that gives us the error in the incoming flux, and we measure the number of interactions, and the error is the square root of that number.
I do not see a difference in the neutron counts, it is measuring the number of particles in the beam, and the cloud tracking is measuring the number of interactions. Square root of the number is the error that should be used for the incoming beam.
btw people doing polls give errors according to the number of people checked.
Leif Svalgaard said:
“The effects go the other way. It is the polar vortex that controls the downward flux of NOx.”
Maybe so,Leif.
But the amount of NOx available to be drawn downward varies with the level of solar activity.
So the polar vortex may be initially driven by seasonal insolation and temperature variability but the intensity it can attain would be influenced by the quantity of ozone present would it not ?
That ozone quantity would be affected by the amount of NOx available for drawdown.
The more NOx available for drawdown (more is available when the sun is active) the more the ozone is depleted, the colder and more intense (positive) the vortex can become and the more cooling of the atmospheric layers (including the stratosphere) there is and the higher the tropopause rises and the more poleward the jets can shift.
So when the sun is less active there is less NOx available for drawdown, ozone quantities increase with a warming effect, the vortex cannot become so intense and it adopts a flabbier form with a larger horizontal extent at tropopause and surface with more equatorward jets.
Have I missed something ?
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 6:29 am
The most evident reaction at the famous “Ozone Hole” on antarctica is that of protons (hydrogen nucleii) reducing O3 to Water, but it is also possible the reduction of NO2 to NO (nitric to nitrous oxide), even to N° by protons.
Balanced half-reaction Eo / V
2NO2(g) + 8H+ + 8e- N2(g) + 4H2O 1.363
NO2- + 2H+ + e- NO(g) + H2O 1.202
There are other possibilities, however as the potentials are positive its reduction is easier.
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2010 at 7:14 am
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2010 at 4:50 am
“Goes the other way: thunderstorms influence the ionosphere.”
– Because that way it suits the CONSTANT SUN hypothesis
No, because that is what the data shows: “Researchers discovered that tides of air generated by intense thunderstorm activity over South America, Africa and Southeast Asia were altering the structure of the ionosphere.”
anna v says:
November 27, 2010 at 7:43 am
I do not see a difference in the neutron counts, it is measuring the number of particles in the beam, and the cloud tracking is measuring the number of interactions. Square root of the number is the error that should be used for the incoming beam.
The difference is that in ordinary counting [cross-section, pools] the assumption is that there is constant, real quantity that we are sampling randomly. In that case the error is indeed the square root. But we are not doing that here. The count is the value we want, and it has no error. I gave you a simple example of counting sunspots. If there are four spots at a given time, it is meaningless to say that there are 4+/-sqrt(4) spots. There are just four spots [ignoring, of course that different people may see different spots – but that spread is not equal to the square root of the number of spots].
Perhaps this will help: The count given is the average count over a hour. But the instrument actually does not count for an hour before giving a rate. It counts every, say, 10 seconds. Let us say that the 10-second count is 18. Now, I would say that there is no error on that, but will humor you and assume that the error is sqrt(18) = 4.24. This would be the standard deviation of many such 10-second counts. The total count for an hour [assuming constant flux for that hour] would then be about 3600/10 = 360 times larger, namely 360*18 = 6480. The error on this average is only 4.24/sqrt(359) = 0.22, because the errors on an average of N values is only the error on each value divided by the square root of the number of value [minus 1].
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_error_(statistics)
You would claim that the error on the hourly value would be 80.
Just another thought. Water vapor molecules have a dipole moment which would cause them to orient to an electric field such as the one that appears across clouds and is modulated by cosmic rays. This would likely affect the condensation process.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 7:49 am
You have to take into account there are two distinct seasons: SH summertime where the influence of UV is expected to be higher and wintertime where it is expected, the reduction of ozone.
As I have said, please do not consider water tight compartments among phenomena: There it happens all kinds of CHARGES´phenomena, whether if considered almost inmaterial “magical” light radiation, chemical, physico-chemical and all sizes (wavelength) of waves, ondulating like an alternate current, crossing, mixing, reacting among them, and We running after them to stick each one of them with a different Name, owned exclusively by a branch of science…or even by some institutions (like IPCC exclusivity on CO2 🙂 )
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 7:49 am
Have I missed something ?
Yes, the looooong discussion on another thread [even though you were a participant]. NOx is produced by very large [and rare] solar proton events [there has not been any the past 4 or 5 years].
pochas says:
November 27, 2010 at 8:28 am
It rains AFTER lightning (visible or not, after clouds´s discharge): See my post above:
Enneagram says:
November 27, 2010 at 5:38 am
Anna, the error in the poll count has to do with incorrect recording of the opinion, people fibbing, or later changing their minds, not the count of people polled.
Water vapor (humidity) does a powerful job of keeping us warm when there are few clouds due to a lack of volcanic plumes. CO2, not.
Lack humidity and the overnight temps will drop in proportion to the dryness.
There could be some reaction with a few volcanic gases (trace or not so trace) with GCR’s, that’s all I’m going to say.
About 89% of incoming cosmic ray particles are simple protons (hydrogen nuclei), nearly 10% are helium nuclei (alpha particles), and slightly under 1% of cosmic ray nuclei are those of the heavier elements. Solitary electrons (much like beta particles, although their ultimate source is unknown) constitute about 1% of the particles that make up galactic cosmic rays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 27, 2010 at 5:17 am
You should really stop spreading misinformation.
Yet another esteemed colleague of yours, this time Dr. Judith Curry does have a different opinion:
curryja | November 27, 2010 at 12:00
Thank you, this is a very interesting analysis and it will be discussed further when I get to the series on arctic climate.
( http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm )
“Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 7:49 am
Have I missed something ?
Yes, the looooong discussion on another thread [even though you were a participant]. NOx is produced by very large [and rare] solar proton events [there has not been any the past 4 or 5 years].”
No Leif, the NOx production is from a range of solar induced reactions. You said this previously:
The NOx flux is due to rare solar proton events down below 80 km, AND rare energetic relativistic electron precipitation [at 60-80 km] AND ALSO 1-10 keV electron precipitation [aurorae at 120 km].
and elsewhere I found this:
“Our finding is an important one because it will help scientists to understand how the DIFFUSE aurora (i.e. not the normal visible aurora) leads to changes in the chemistry of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, including effects on ozone at high altitude, which may affect temperature right through the atmosphere,” said co-author Professor Richard Horne of the British Antarctic Survey”
from here:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/new-research-provides-insights-176822.aspx
on which I commented as follows:
Such as contributing to variability in the downward NOx flux which depletes ozone for a cooling effect in the regions above 45km when the sun is more active ?
And which allows recovery of ozone for a warming effect above 45km when the sun is quiet as per the recent Haigh data ?
So we have a wide range of reactions that are dependent on solar activity levels all of which affect the downward flux of NOx.
It matters not that the reactive events do not penetrate deeply. The product is NOx which then drifts downward into the polar vortices.
“The diffuse aurora is not the same as the discrete aurora, also known as the northern and southern lights. The discrete aurora looks like fiery moving curtains of colorful light and can be seen by the unaided eye, while the diffuse aurora is much fainter but more extensive. The diffuse aurora, which typically accounts for THREE-QUARTERS of the energy input into the upper atmosphere at night, varies according to the season and the 11-year solar cycle.
You also said:
” The RELATIVE IMPORTANCE of the rare events and the low-energy auroral contribution IS UNKNOWN.”
So your comments omit important information do they not ?
I put it to you that taking all these types of reactions as a whole the downward NOx flux is closely dependent on the level of solar activity, tightly controls the amount of NOx available for drawdown and thereby directly influences the polar vortices by altering ozone quantities above 45km and indirectly affects the entire vertical temperature gradient down to the tropopause.
Ed Murphy says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:17 am
Water vapor (humidity) does a powerful job of keeping us warm when there are few clouds due to a lack of volcanic plumes. CO2, not.
Lack humidity and the overnight temps will drop in proportion to the dryness.
Where I live we usually have more than 80%, and when we have, say 16 degrees celsius we feel cold but if we use a dehumidifier we feel it warmer, why?…..because if we do not stick names to things, these behave like reason says: Where do you feel it colder: In a TUB filled with water at 16 degrees or out of it?. You see? , where is it better energy (charge) conduction?
@Juraj V. says:
November 25, 2010 at 12:52 am
http://climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.gif
“There are some trends, but not in direct relation with sun cycles. But obviously changes in cloudiness has serious effect on climate.”
In the cooler years of 1985/6/7 and 1992/3, there is an increase in low level clouds and a decrease in mid level clouds. Solar driven temperature variations may have a serious effect on cloud clover.
Stephen, you really hang your hat on these very small Solar perturbations affecting climate. Yet you can’t bring yourself to see CO2 as having at least similar capacity even though the two sides of the argument, yours and that of AGW’ers, seem to be suggesting that the Earth is highly sensitive to very, very, very small changes in outside influences (I consider both Solar and anthropogenic CO2 influences as being extrinsic to Earth’s natural atmosphere).
My case is that the capacity of our Earth’s oceans and atmosphere have intrinsic energy flow/exchange/oscillation strong enough to overwhelm, limit, and bury these tiny outside changing influences to within the range of its variability. In other words, if every dotted “i” and crossed “t” in both CO2 and solar influences were known to be unchanging and stable, we would still get the incredible variety of weather pattern variability we now experience.
Pamela Gray says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:01 am
Anna, the error in the poll count has to do with incorrect recording of the opinion, people fibbing, or later changing their minds, not the count of people polled.
I’ll agree with Anna on this. The errors quoted by the pollsters is indeed [as it should be] just the square root. This is the ‘sampling error’. The real error [because of fibbing etc] is unknown and not quotable.
Now, my worked example was not correct, BTW. The correct analysis is to assume no errors. What is reported is the number of ‘clicks’ from the counter. There are no errors on that, you hear 18 clicks, so 18 clicks it is. Or you see 4 sunspots, so 4 it is. If several 10-second intervals give clicks of 15, 18, 20, 19, 18 , 16, … it means that the cosmic ray intensity [going through your counter] varies [not that there are errors]. If you on several days see 4, 3, 7, 2, 0, 6, … spots, it means that there were a different number of spots on the sun, not that there are errors in your count.
Perhaps a real example: the first 48 hours of 2004, the McMurdo counter recorded an average count per hour of 8929. The square root of that is 94. Is that the ‘error’? The 48 individual counts varied a lot less. The standard variation was 27. The average change from hour to hour was 14. The cosmic ray intensity was seemingly rather steady [variations at other stations were similar, so whatever changes there were, were not random counting errors, but simply small changes in the actual cosmic ray intensity].
I stand corrected. So the error doesn’t have a thing to do with changed answers. However, I always wondered what kind of person would fib on a poll and how many would do it just to screw with the results (especially with exit polls). I have been known to change my mind later but not fib.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:28 am
You said this previously:
The NOx flux is due to rare solar proton events down below 80 km, AND rare energetic relativistic electron precipitation [at 60-80 km] AND ALSO 1-10 keV electron precipitation [aurorae at 120 km].
The production at 120 km is 1000 times smaller simply because the density of the air is 1000 times smaller, so plays a role a 1000 times less.
The diffuse aurora, which typically accounts for THREE-QUARTERS of the energy input into the upper atmosphere at night, varies according to the season and the 11-year solar cycle.
That energy is in the form of joule heating and does not produce NOx
Annika Seppala’s thesis has a good discussion of ‘Observations of Production and Transport of NOx formed by Energetic Particle Precipitation in the Polar Night Atmosphere’: http://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/12013/observat.pdf
directly influences the polar vortices
The polar vortices are extremely stable and are not influenced from above. You see, it is not that NOx does not have an effect. It is the specific mechanism you propose that doesn’t work.
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:28 am
Yet another esteemed colleague of yours, this time Dr. Judith Curry does have a different opinion […] it will be discussed further when I get to the series on arctic climate.
She was being nice to you. Didn’t say that your stuff was any good. I say it is junk.
@Pamela Gray says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:51 am
“..these very small Solar perturbations affecting climate.”
“..these tiny outside changing influences…”
“..solar influences were known to be unchanging and stable, we would still get the incredible variety of weather pattern variability we now experience.”
One could at least see if the very very large short term changes in the solar wind speed velocity/density correlate to surface temperature anomalies.
Hi Pamela.
I don’t think I would equate (in terms of influence) the changes in CO2 with changes in the energy flux in from the sun and out to space.
CO2 only has an effect in slowing energy loss to space but since CO2 works primarily by increasing downward IR it can have little or no effect overall because the extra downward IR just accelerates evaporation at the sea surface, speeds up the hydrological cycle and gets ejected to space faster so the net effect is at or near zero.
On the other hand even small changes in the net global energy balance from the sun will have large effects over time because that will involve changes to ocean heat content and that is what controls air temperatures most effectively though the oceans do seem to vary (for reasons related to their internal behaviour) in the rate at which they release energy absorbed from the sun back to the air.
As regards the oceans generally however I accept what you say. They have the power to supplement or offset solar influences for long periods of time. I have dealt with that in my broader hypothesis which suggests that the phasing of the oceanic / solar interplay is the key to pretty much all climate change including the switches from ice ages to interglacials.
The thing that is most exercising my mind at prersent is the speed with which we have shifted from an active sun and positive polar vortices to a quiet sun and negative polar vortices.
That has been a real surprise to me and requires an explanation because it seems to make a huge difference to mid latitude temperatures with relatively little effect at the poles or in the tropics.
The answer must lie in the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere. That profile appears to be highly sensitive to solar variability but the mechanism is missing.
By the application of logic based on observations and the laws of physics I am narrowing it down to the effects of solar induced ozone chemistry in the region above 45km.
I am seeking falsification of that proposition. So far Leif’s comments are, to me , unconvincing. Can you do better ?
But are you not basing your hypothesis on what has been measured and demonstrated to be temporary ozone affects that you think are cumulative? It is here that I ask you to provide the physical mechanism for a cumulative affect.
In addition, it is the scientist proposing a theory who must go about falisifying their hypothesis, and leave no stone unturned in doing so.
Leif, did you not read this bit ?
“The above results already show that the effects of energetic particle precipitation
on the atmosphere can be of significant importance for the Earth’s atmosphere, perhaps even for the climate. Recent satellite observations have also shown that energetic particle precipitation, combined with atmospheric dynamics, is an important NOx source in the polar winter middle atmosphere. Chemistry-climate models have systematically under-predicted NOx in the polar winter stratosphere, probably because they do not include the downwards transport from the mesosphere. Using the latest information provided for example by the atmospheric chemistry instruments on the Envisat satellitem the results on the energetic particle precipitation impact on the global climate system could be further defined. After all, whatever the effect will turn out to be, it is important for us to be aware of it EVEN IF IT IS NATURAL,NOT MANMADE VARIABILITY.
It would seem that my hypothesis is pretty damned close even if adjustments do have to be made to the precise mechanism.
The step forward that I claim to have made is a description of the atmospheric and climate response to whatever the process is in the upper atmosphere that has yet to be nailed.
If the Haigh data is verified by a confirmation of ozone increases above 45km when the sun is less active then in terms of the climate response I will be home and dry even if I have not precisely identified the upper atmosphere mechanism.
After all. what matters for climate, is the response of the polar vortices (and the consequent latitudinal jetstream positioning) to the solar forcing however induced.
Ulric, that’s an easy one. The amount of variation in any part of the solar wind has no chance of affecting surface temperatures enough to rise above what we know to be the intrinsic variability. In other words, if it does have an affect, its affects is so little you can’t observe it.
For your suggestion to have merit, those changing solar winds have to affect the soup we call our atmosphere from its own magnetic shield all the way to the surface and into the Oceans. Not enough energy to do so in terms of heating it up to the extent we have experienced on the surface. Once again, it is our own oceans and our own atmosphere creating their own changes that are up to the task.
Svalgaard says:
November 27, 2010 at 10:37 am
[…] it will be discussed further when I get to the series on arctic climate.
She was being nice to you. Didn’t say that your stuff was any good. I say it is junk.
Hey, are you cherry picking quote ? here is the bit you didn’t like:
Thank you, this is a very interesting analysis and it will be discussed further when I get to the series on arctic climate.
You think thanksgiving generosity? , here what she said a month ago re:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be.htm
curryja | October 31, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I’ll flag this to look at later, I’m not all that familiar with this issue but it looks important.
Could it be she found out that that ‘orible’ Dr. S. is being nasty to ‘little vukcevic’, so she’s trying to cheer’im up a bit ?
Both prof. Dr. Curry and prof. Dr. Pratt are ardent supporters of AGW, and I certainly do not hide fact that I do not believe in the CO2 case.
Funny that !
An opposing but plausible mechanized theory for any event is a falsification, as well as opposing maths that leave your theory with many holes or no-affect results. At best, you can come to a stalemate in your proposal. However, if stalemate, then the null hypothesis must remain.
Pamela Gray said:
“But are you not basing your hypothesis on what has been measured and demonstrated to be temporary ozone affects that you think are cumulative? It is here that I ask you to provide the physical mechanism for a cumulative affect.”
The stratosphere and mesosphere both appear to have cooled increasingly over time whilst the sun was more active. Now that the sun is less active they appear to have ceased cooling and may have warmed slightly.
That is measured and demonstrated is it not?
The mechanism is another issue and I am debating with Leif on that aspect. For some reason the stratospheric and mesospheric temperature trends move in the opposite direction to the thermospheric and tropospheric temperature trends both when the sun is active and when it is inactive.
The Haigh data clearly implicates ozone chemistry because it reveals a reversal of sign at about 45km. Below that level a quiet sun provokes ozone depletion, above that level a quiet sun provokes an ozone increase.
That fits my hypothesis (that there must be a reverse sign solar effect somewhere in the climate system) perfectly and was first anticipated by me in November 2009.
I have made certain speculations as to the mechanism. At present Leif does not accept them so in view of Leif’s expertise I accept that some adjustment may be necessary.
Nonetheless I still think that my description of the climate effect of whatever the mechanism is remains correct.
However one cuts it the polar vortices respond very sensitively to solar variability. If you do not agree please feel free to provide an alternative explanation to recent observations.
Why is the polar vortex so negative with a quiet sun when it was very much more positive with an active sun ?
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 11:01 am
Leif, did you not read this bit ?
Of course I did. All that is well and good.
After all. what matters for climate, is the response of the polar vortices (and the consequent latitudinal jetstream positioning) to the solar forcing however induced.
That is the part that is bad [and that is not in her thesis.
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2010 at 11:12 am
Could it be she found out that that ‘orible’ Dr. S. is being nasty to ‘little vukcevic’, so she’s trying to cheer’im up a bit ?
Looks more like you had pestered her again, or that she just went through her ‘flagged stuff’ list. I think she said earlier that she [too] really didn’t know enough to evaluate your stuff, so it will be interesting to see what she comes up with.
Both prof. Dr. Curry and prof. Dr. Pratt are ardent supporters of AGW, and I certainly do not hide fact that I do not believe in the CO2 case.
What you don’t believe in has no bearing on that your stuff is junk. It is that on its face, regardless of your beliefs.
“An opposing but plausible mechanized theory for any event is a falsification”
Such as ?
Why were the polar vortices positive when the sun was active and now negative with the sun less active ?
I’m a seeker of truth just as you are.
Vukcevic, I’m a woman. Dr. Curry’s response feels like woman-speak to me. I know it well. I think she was in her “open communication in all things science” mode. Doesn’t mean she does not shake her head in disbelief in private. I don’t think you can bank on your interpretation that she agrees with you or that she thinks your thesis is very plausible.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:52 am
The correct analysis is to assume no errors. What is reported is the number of ‘clicks’ from the counter. There are no errors on that, you hear 18 clicks, so 18 clicks it is. Or you see 4 sunspots, so 4 it is. If several 10-second intervals give clicks of 15, 18, 20, 19, 18 , 16, … it means that the cosmic ray intensity [going through your counter] varies [not that there are errors]. If you on several days see 4, 3, 7, 2, 0, 6, … spots, it means that there were a different number of spots on the sun, not that there are errors in your count.
Perhaps a real example: the first 48 hours of 2004, the McMurdo counter recorded an average count per hour of 8929. The square root of that is 94. Is that the ‘error’? The 48 individual counts varied a lot less. The standard variation was 27. The average change from hour to hour was 14. The cosmic ray intensity was seemingly rather steady [variations at other stations were similar, so whatever changes there were, were not random counting errors, but simply small changes in the actual cosmic ray intensity].
Well, all I can say is that we do not do it that way in my field. Whatever we count, or is countable, we assume there is an error of the square root of N. Maybe it is the “error” terminology that is the misunderstanding, error in this case means the probability that the distribution sampled by the count might have given a different count than it gave by 1 sigma. The assumption is of Gaussian distributions. Once distributions are not Gaussian, systematic errors have to be estimated/calculated usually using monte carlo simulations.
So yes, the counter counts 18 clicks and this is the probable path reality came up with. But the probability distribution says it might have come out 18+/-4.2 . This gives the significance of the measure, how many sigma it is different than 0, and the “error” band around the measurement.
Now with sunspots of course you have the count that has come up and you are not probing the probability distribution from which sunspots come. It is a different problem.
Going back to the paper under discussion, the neutrons coming in are the beam, they have a distribution which is time dependent but the objective is to see if this distribution is the generator of clouds . The more statistics accumulated the smaller the error in the distribution estimate (bar systematics).
“After all. what matters for climate, is the response of the polar vortices (and the consequent latitudinal jetstream positioning) to the solar forcing however induced.”
That is the part that is bad and that is not in her thesis.”
Please clarify. One liners are not helpful.
Hi Ms. Gray
Thanks for your perspective, it’s always useful to here lady’s point of view.
No I don’t, if you look at the link no resolution is proposed. Actually I was a bit rude about her blog; I probably need to apologise to her.
vukcevic:
I am Sceptical about ‘Skeptics: make your best case’.
It sounds like carefully set up ‘bear trap’ for bunch of so called ‘loonies’, whose ideas, right or wrong, can be quickly deconstructed by the academia’s climate establishment. Reminiscent of the methods (I have experienced) used in some totalitarian regimes: ‘There is a freedom of speech here, tell us what do you think we should or should not be doing’. There was always one ‘foolhardy’ volunteer, later to be ignored forever (if lucky), or often worse.
j.c.
Ok, but this thread is about the science….Well I’m sorry you view it this way. And I would have viewed this as a good opportunity for you to lay out your arguments for serious consideration.
vukcevic:
Dr Curry, Not whishing to be a complete spoil sport (since I am guest in your open house), here is a small token of my visit. . .Contribution by a part-time sceptic
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
j.c.
Thank you, this is a very interesting analysis and it will be discussed further when i get to the series on arctic climate.
What do you think, she was overly polite?
A traditional Babylon´s confusion this of different words, speaking through walls, each in its own water tight compartment, talking to a mirror.
Everything is energy which transforms itself and manifests itself in different wavelegths (sizes=dimensions), frequencies, as the simple photocell effect shows it, if correctly interpreted: It is not light that “excites” zinc it is light energy which transforms itself into electricity. At an electric power plant, gravity is transformed into electricity and we use it to obtain, again, work=gravity, in our homes. That “soup of words” is confusing us.
anna v says:
November 27, 2010 at 11:54 am
Now with sunspots of course you have the count that has come up and you are not probing the probability distribution from which sunspots come. It is a different problem.
Going back to the paper under discussion, the neutrons coming in are the beam, they have a distribution which is time dependent but the objective is to see if this distribution is the generator of clouds . The more statistics accumulated the smaller the error in the distribution estimate (bar systematics).
The neutron count is like the sunspot count . It is not drawn from a distribution. The error bar in the problem [and there is an error bar] is within the superposed epoch analysis. In this you have a number of ‘key times’. Each such selects a value [neutron count] that includes both a signal sought and a variable background [or ‘noise’] which can be [and usually is] much larger than your signal. By having enough key times and hence enough samples and assuming that the background is unrelated to the signal, the average background settles down to a constant level and the signal can be extracted. We can model this. Let the observable be a time series Y(t) = B(t) + S(t,i), with unknown background B(t) and a signal S(t,i) that extends over several time steps, ‘i’ from -n through zero to +n. Example: n=3. For a given key time, tk, Y(tk-3) = B(tk-3) + S(-3), … Y(tk) = B(tk) + S(0), …Y(tk+3) = B(tk+3) + S(+3) where the signal is constant in time, i.e. not depending on t, then S(tk1,i) = S(tk2,i) etc, so we can drop reference to tk. Now, you have many tk’s and you sum over them: SUM(Y(tk,i)) = SUM(B(tk,i)) + SUM(S(tk,i)), and compute the averages AVG(Y(tk,i) = AVG(B(tk,i) + AVG(S(tk,i). Under our assumption that B does not depend on i, but only on t, AVG(B(tk,i)) will also not depend on i and be constant [or linear in t which we can get rid of by detrending], and thus AVG(S(i)) = AVG(Y(tk,i)) – const. Since S was assumed not to depend on t, we have extracted the signal S(i) = AVG(Y(tk,i)) – const. The error-bar now depends on the error-bar of AVG(Y(tk,i)) which depends on the number of key dates and the error in the Y-values [if any]. By having enough key times we can make the error-bar as small as we want, or rather, there exists a number, N, of key times for which the combined error is smaller than any number, e, chosen beforehand, since the error in the AVG decreases as 1/SQRT(N). So, the error bar [with enough key times] depends on the number of key times and not on the intrinsic counting or measurement error, and not on the value of the background ‘const’, and hence does not scale with the square root of Y.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 11:58 am
“After all. what matters for climate, is the response of the polar vortices (and the consequent latitudinal jetstream positioning) to the solar forcing however induced.”
“That is the part that is bad and that is not in her thesis”
Please clarify. One liners are not helpful.
She explains that In the winter polar middle atmosphere transport is largely determined by the polar vortex. In the winter pole, near the polar night terminator, strong temperature gradients lead to formation of the Polar Night Jet. As shown in Figure 2.4, the Polar Night Jet is a strong eastward (westerly) wind in the upper stratosphere-lower mesosphere near 60◦ N/S latitude, formed due to the thermal wind balance [Solomon, 1999; Holton, 2004]. The winds in the Polar Night Jet, which reach their peak of about 80 m/s near 60 km altitude, act as a transport barrier between polar and mid-latitude air, blocking meridional transport and isolating the air in the polar stratosphere and thus forming the polar vortex. The edge of the vortex is usually near 60◦ N/S and it extends from approximately 16 km to the mesosphere. The isolation is greater, and the polar vortex more stable, in the Antarctic where there is less wave activity affecting the vortex than in the Arctic. In the Arctic, the atmospheric wave activity disturbs the vortex, leading to greater mixing and faster downward motion, compared with those in the Antarctic vortex [Solomon, 1999].”
It is upwards-traveling wave activity from below that controls the polar vortices, not solar activity from above.
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2010 at 12:11 pm
j.c.: Ok, but this thread is about the science….Well I’m sorry you view it this way. And I would have viewed this as a good opportunity for you to lay out your arguments for serious consideration.
This is what I have urging you to do many times, but with me as with her, you missed [or refused] the opportunity to lay out your arguments [over at solarcycle24.com you even said “I will not answer questions about my ideas”]. As you say: “somebody could steal your important work”.
“Leif Svalgaard said:
Stephen Wilde said:
The diffuse aurora, which typically accounts for THREE-QUARTERS of the energy input into the upper atmosphere at night, varies according to the season and the 11-year solar cycle.
Leif said:
That energy is in the form of joule heating and does not produce NOx”
Okaaaay.
Forgive me for asking ,Leif, but if that is so why would Richard Horne propose:
“effects on ozone at high altitude, which may affect temperature right through the atmosphere”
Part of my purpose is to try to resolve the conflicting statements from so called ‘experts’.
“Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 11:58 am
“After all. what matters for climate, is the response of the polar vortices (and the consequent latitudinal jetstream positioning) to the solar forcing however induced.”
“That is the part that is bad and that is not in her thesis”
Please clarify. One liners are not helpful.
She explains that In the winter polar middle atmosphere transport is largely determined by the polar vortex. In the winter pole, near the polar night terminator, strong temperature gradients lead to formation of the Polar Night Jet. As shown in Figure 2.4, the Polar Night Jet is a strong eastward (westerly) wind in the upper stratosphere-lower mesosphere near 60◦ N/S latitude, formed due to the thermal wind balance [Solomon, 1999; Holton, 2004]. The winds in the Polar Night Jet, which reach their peak of about 80 m/s near 60 km altitude, act as a transport barrier between polar and mid-latitude air, blocking meridional transport and isolating the air in the polar stratosphere and thus forming the polar vortex. The edge of the vortex is usually near 60◦ N/S and it extends from approximately 16 km to the mesosphere. The isolation is greater, and the polar vortex more stable, in the Antarctic where there is less wave activity affecting the vortex than in the Arctic. In the Arctic, the atmospheric wave activity disturbs the vortex, leading to greater mixing and faster downward motion, compared with those in the Antarctic vortex [Solomon, 1999].”
It is upwards-traveling wave activity from below that controls the polar vortices, not solar activity from above.”
Right, Leif, I’m with you on that but you haven’t addressed my earlier point.
If more NOx is available for drawdown at a time of more active sun then that must have an effect on the net outcome.
If an active sun creates more NOx (as it must) then as soon as the polar vortex starts to draw NOx down in the winter season it will encounter a more concentrated reservoir of NOx and the ozone in the polar vortex will be depleted according to the concentration of NOx encountered.
More active sun, more NOx, more ozone depletion above 45km, cooler mesosphere and stratosphere, higher tropopause, more poleward jets. Voila.
Less active sun, less NOx, less ozone depletion above 45km, warmer mesosphere and stratosphere, lower tropopause, more equatorward jets, Voila.
@Pamela Gray says:
November 27, 2010 at 11:07 am
“Ulric, that’s an easy one. The amount of variation in any part of the solar wind has no chance of affecting surface temperatures enough to rise above what we know to be the intrinsic variability. In other words, if it does have an affect, its affects is so little you can’t observe it.”
The ” intrinsic variability” is caused by the gross solar variations, that is the effect. Eyeball some peak values and see what they did for surface temp` deviations from normals at the time :-
http://www.solen.info/solar/coronal_holes.html
The correlation is sound, the mechanism may be to do with increased Infra Red driven surface heating.
The more important issue is as to what is driving these solar changes, which is what I work with as a long range weather forecaster.
“For your suggestion to have merit, those changing solar winds have to affect the soup we call our atmosphere from its own magnetic shield all the way to the surface and into the Oceans. Not enough energy to do so in terms of heating it up to the extent we have experienced on the surface. Once again, it is our own oceans and our own atmosphere creating their own changes that are up to the task.”
Internal variation cannot create heating, that makes no sense.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Forgive me for asking ,Leif, but if that is so why would Richard Thorne propose:
“effects on ozone at high altitude, which may affect temperature right through the atmosphere”
“In the mesosphere and upper stratosphere, ozone loss is caused by H and OH produced as th result of ion-molecule reactions associated with particle induced ionization” From: http://www.leif.org/EOS/1999JD900752.pdf
Part of my purpose is to try to resolve the conflicting statements from so called ‘experts’.
The problem comes from you only reading the part of a paper or report that you want and don’t get the whole picture. Granted, that some papers are hard to penetrate for non-specialists, but that what we have the blog for [“ask away” but don’t fight it then].
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 2:03 pm
More active sun, more NOx, more ozone depletion above 45km, cooler mesosphere and stratosphere, higher tropopause, more poleward jets. Voila.
Less active sun, less NOx, less ozone depletion above 45km, warmer mesosphere and stratosphere, lower tropopause, more equatorward jets, Voila.
What the mesosphere does [cools or heats] has little effect on the stratosphere as far as ozone is concerned. To change anything you need to change the ozone in the stratosphere: higher solar UV [more active sun] creates more ozone and a warmer stratosphere. This is the basic mechanism, both in the mesosphere and in the stratosphere [interrupted by rare proton events]. From 1979 until about ten years ago there has been a clear decline [~12%] of ozone near 40 km altitude. In the last 10 years there has been no decline, at some stations even an increase, consistent with the decline of stratospheric chlorine. Solar activity has had little [if anything] to do with this.
Mr. Wilde
For some time now I’ve been following polar jet-stream S shape over Canada – North Atlantic
http://squall.sfsu.edu/gif/jetstream_atl_h12_00.gif
and the SST temperature anomaly
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
Note the yellow collared spot of Labrador (marked H)
It appears that two are following each other. H spot is point where surfaces the warm North Atlantic drift current , releasing latent heat into atmosphere, which rises to create Ferrel cell,
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream//global/images/jetstream3.jpg
moving the jet stream further to the south or north. It moves all the time, depending on the temperature differential between the East Greenland and NA drift currents, forming together Subpolar gyre.
Few weeks ago when UK had a bit or warm spell, the H spot was much further north at the tip of Iceland.
I think it could be useful if you look into these events too.
I wish you success with your research. You can always put it forward to Dr. Judith Curry, on her blog she is inviting sceptic’s contributions.
Thank you for your attention Leif. Two queries as follows:
i) “In the mesosphere and upper stratosphere, ozone loss is caused by H and OH produced as th result of ion-molecule reactions associated with particle induced ionization” From: http://www.leif.org/EOS/1999JD900752.pdf”
The precise reason for ozone loss doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is whether ozone loss is greater when the sun is more active. I take it from you and Richard Horne that that is indeed the case.
ii) “What the mesosphere does [cools or heats] has little effect on the stratosphere as far as ozone is concerned. To change anything you need to change the ozone in the stratosphere: higher solar UV [more active sun] creates more ozone and a warmer stratosphere. This is the basic mechanism, both in the mesosphere and in the stratosphere [interrupted by rare proton events]. From 1979 until about ten years ago there has been a clear decline [~12%] of ozone near 40 km altitude. In the last 10 years there has been no decline, at some stations even an increase, consistent with the decline of stratospheric chlorine. Solar activity has had little [if anything] to do with this.”
I’m aware of the basic mechanism and the proposed chlorine effect but it doesn’t seem to accord with observations. I think the temperature of the mesosphere is relevant in the same way as an increase in downward inclination along part of a river bed will increase the speed of the downward flow all the way from the source.A cooler mesosphere will increase upward energy flux from the stratosphere.
From 1979 to about ten years ago there was indeed a decline in stratospheric temperatures linked to the decline in ozone above 40km. I propose that the decline in ozone was solar induced and not chlorine induced because a more active sun creates a stronger downward NOx flux which causes the mesosphere to cool due to reduced ozone and the stratosphere follows . Also you have said that an enhanced NOx flux affects the stratosphere.
From ten years ago the sun started to decline in activity which resulted in less NOx available to be drawn down into the polar vortex with a consequent ozone recovery.
So I have to decide, as you do, whether the observations fit best the chlorine scenario or the solar scenario.
I elect for the solar scenario because:
i) The jets moved poleward as they must if the stratosphere cools and the tropopause rises. That happened in the MWP when agriculture became possible in Greenland so it cannot be anything to do with CO2 or CFCs.
ii) The observed range of latitudinal jetstream shifting is far greater than the models can reproduce on the basis of the standard mechanism. There has to be another process supplementing the standard mechanism by expanding and shrinking the polar vortex in line with varying levels of solar activity.
iii) No one has ever suggested that the chlorine emissions alone can shift the jetstreams. CO2 is no longer a contender if one accepts that the jets are now moving back equatorward because CO2 continues to rise so the jets should be moving further poleward but they are clearly not.
iv) The Haigh data indicates increasing ozone above 45km between 2004 and 2007 despite (or in my view because of) the less active sun. Such an increase is contrary to expectations.
So for various reasons I cannot accept your bald statement that solar activity has little (if anything) to do with it.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 4:07 pm
The precise reason for ozone loss doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is whether ozone loss is greater when the sun is more active. I take it from you and Richard <b<Thorne that that is indeed the case.
I think ozone production is greater with an active sun. More UV etc. Some of that could be lost by particles. What matter must be the net, and as far as I know that is positive.
“From 1979 until about ten years ago there has been a clear decline [~12%] of ozone near 40 km altitude. In the last 10 years there has been no decline, at some stations even an increase, consistent with the decline of stratospheric chlorine.”
Was actually a quote from a recent paper. And also matches my recollection.
From 1979 to about ten years ago there was indeed a decline in stratospheric temperatures linked to the decline in ozone above 40km.
The chlorine only began to decline recently. so some disconnect here.
Also you have said that an enhanced NOx flux affects the stratosphere.
only when the polar vortex sucks it down, so the vortex has already changed.
From ten years ago the sun started to decline in activity which resulted in less NOx available to be drawn down into the polar vortex with a consequent ozone recovery.
solar activity declines to almost zero every eleven years.
The jets moved poleward as they must if the stratosphere cools and the tropopause rises.
I think it is the other way around: the jets control the tropopause, etc. Educate me otherwise with links, refs, etc.
The Haigh data indicates increasing ozone above 45km between 2004 and 2007 despite (or in my view because of) the less active sun. Such an increase is contrary to expectations.
It is Harder’s data, not Haighs. And the current thinking [guess] is that that happens in every solar cycle, but that we only now have discovered it.
So for various reasons I cannot accept your bald statement that solar activity has little (if anything) to do with it.
“bald”?. I am under the [perhaps mistaken] impression that it is a well-considered and reasoned statement…
I think I now have enough information to state an opinion.
Leif, you and others have provided me with a variety of mechanisms whereby a more active sun depletes ozone at the higher levels of the atmosphere for a net cooling effect.
It is well established that in the lower levels of the atmosphere a more active sun increases ozone and UV acts on the ozone present for a net warming effect.
Now we know that the temperature of the stratosphere increases with height up to about 50km due to that warming ozone effect.
However from 50km upwards the temperature of the atmosphere decreases with height due (at least in part) to that ozone depleting cooling effect.
So at or around 50km (the stratopause) one effect segues into the other so that below the stratopause the ozone creation and UV warming effect is dominant but above the stratopause the ozone depletion cooling effect is dominant.
Thus any change in the balance between the two opposing processes will result in a change in the height of the stratopause.
In fact a change in that balance from a change in the level of solar activity will actually result in a change of height at the mesopause, stratopause AND tropopause.
A more active sun appears to deplete ozone and cool the higher layers more than it creates ozone and warms the lower layers for a net cooling of both stratosphere and mesosphere exactly as observed during the late 20th century period of active sun.
Change the height of the tropopause and one changes the pressure distribution below the tropopause with the climate consequences that are becoming obvious.
A more active sun raises the height of the tropopause to deepen the polar vortex but reduce its horizontal extent with more poleward jets.
A less active sun appears to reduce the height of the tropopause for a shallower but more extensive polar vortex with more equatorward jets.
So via that mechanism a change in solar activity from above can alter the global climate below.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 4:07 pm
The Haigh data indicates increasing ozone above 45km between 2004 and 2007 despite (or in my view because of) the less active sun. Such an increase is contrary to expectations.
It is Harder’s data, not Haighs. And the current thinking [guess] is that that happens in every solar cycle, but that we only now have discovered it.
In fact, I pointed out some time ago [before Harder and Haigh] that the near UV varies opposite to the solar cycle: http://www.leif.org/research/Erl70.png so perhaps it was not all that unexpected [perhaps just not appreciated].
From Haigh’s SORCE 2010 presentation:
“• SIM data would suggest that solar radiative forcing of climate produced a warming from 2004 to 2007, despite declining TSI.”
This should then happen in every cycle. I do not think [but it is conjecture at this point] that this cycle was special in that respect [no physical mechanism].
“What matter must be the net, and as far as I know that is positive.”
Exactly, but from observations I think it is negative hence the cooling stratosphere and mesosphere when the sun was more active and a cessation of such cooling and possible start of warming now that the sun is less active.
The temperature trend in the mesosphere and stratosphere from 2007 onward should resolve the issue but for the period 2004 to 2007 my view prevails.
“I think it is the other way around: the jets control the tropopause, etc. Educate me otherwise with links, refs, etc.”
Have a look at sudden stratospheric warmings. They depress the tropopause and send the jets equatorward imitating a negative polar vortex. Warmer stratosphere gives lower tropopause and cooler stratosphere gives higher tropopause.
“only when the polar vortex sucks it down, so the vortex has already changed.”
But the amount of NOx available for drawdown limits the intensity that the vortex can attain.
The height of the tropopause controls the latitudinal position of the jets. The information is readily available.
“It is Harder’s data, not Haighs. And the current thinking [guess] is that that happens in every solar cycle, but that we only now have discovered it.”
Noted but my hypothesis anticipated it.
“solar activity declines to almost zero every eleven years.”
Not relevant. It is total activity over time that matters. Even with zero activity there is a basic level of ozone destruction in the upper atmosphere and creation in the lower atmosphere. What shifts the jets is variations over and above the basic level.
vukcevic says:
November 27, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Very interesting on the 23rd :-
http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/nhemjetstream_model.html
http://www.pa.op.dlr.de/arctic/index.html
Stephen Wilde says:
November 27, 2010 at 5:13 pm
However from 50km upwards the temperature of the atmosphere decreases with height due (at least in part) to that ozone depleting cooling effect.
No, that is peanuts. The dominant reason is that there is simply a lot less ozone to begin with as the density is up to 1000 times lower.
“What matter must be the net, and as far as I know that is positive.”
Exactly, but from observations I think it is negative hence the cooling stratosphere and mesosphere when the sun was more active and a cessation of such cooling and possible start of warming now that the sun is less active.
What observations? The net is always positive as the UV is by far the dominant source
but for the period 2004 to 2007 my view prevails.
Any ‘climate’ view should hold over decades.
Have a look at sudden stratospheric warmings. They depress the tropopause and send the jets equatorward imitating a negative polar vortex. Warmer stratosphere gives lower tropopause and cooler stratosphere gives higher tropopause.
Other way around, stratospheric warming moves upwards initiated by the jet.
“only when the polar vortex sucks it down, so the vortex has already changed.”
But the amount of NOx available for drawdown limits the intensity that the vortex can attain.
The vortex is controlled from below.
The height of the tropopause controls the latitudinal position of the jets. The information is readily available.
The position of the jets controls the height of the tropopause.
“It is Harder’s data, not Haighs. And the current thinking [guess] is that that happens in every solar cycle, but that we only now have discovered it.”
Noted but my hypothesis anticipated it.
For every solar cycle?
“solar activity declines to almost zero every eleven years.”
Not relevant. It is total activity over time that matters.
No, the chemistry [with the exception of chlorine] changes over time scale much shorter than a solar cycle.
Even with zero activity there is a basic level of ozone destruction in the upper atmosphere
No, there are no solar proton events.
Stephen Wilde
Consider this quote delivered at Leif Svalgaard says:
November 27, 2010 at 1:01 pm
“The winds in the Polar Night Jet, which reach their peak of about 80 m/s near 60 km altitude, act as a transport barrier between polar and mid-latitude air, blocking meridional transport and isolating the air in the polar stratosphere and thus forming the polar vortex. The edge of the vortex is usually near 60◦ N/S and it extends from approximately 16 km to the mesosphere. The isolation is greater, and the polar vortex more stable, in the Antarctic where there is less wave activity affecting the vortex than in the Arctic. In the Arctic, the atmospheric wave activity disturbs the vortex, leading to greater mixing and faster downward motion, compared with those in the Antarctic vortex [Solomon, 1999].”
Forget about Solomon. He has it wrong. The wave is a result, a ripple in the atmosphere, not a cause. Ripples are caused by atmospheric movement, we call it ‘wind’ and it is driven by pressure differences between two places. Air moves to low pressure zones from high pressure zones. Vortex activity in the Antarctic changes less because it is always massive, driven by massive atmospheric pressure at the south pole (highest on the planet in winter, below average in summer) and grossly deficient atmospheric pressure (lowest on the planet) at about 60-70°S.The relationship is much more stable than in the northern hemisphere where there is a higher pressure at 60-70N than at the north pole in the middle of winter when pressure over the Arctic is highest. This is a situation set up for instability. The flux in climate that it brings is monitored as the Arctic oscillation. The cooling of 1940-1978 is associated with high pressure at the pole and deficient ozone. The warming between 1978 was due to a flux of ozone as the AO went positive. The cooling after 2007 (a run of La Ninas) is associated with a recovery of Arctic Pressure.
The vortex circulation referred to has a very different morphology in the southern and the northern hemisphere. And what is meant by the word ‘vortex’ is not always clear. Are we referring to the margin of the cold polar air as it forces against the south westerlies at the surface where polar cyclones are formed? The right description of that area is the Polar Front. Or are we referring to the ozone deficient core of the vortex in the stratosphere, with a core area that is very much smaller, as little as a fe hundred square kilometres (a guess). And, given that Siberia is the strongest area for downdraft activity in the northern hemisphere competing directly with the Arctic and Eastern Canada/Greenland and these areas are frequently the locations where the change in geopotential heights first occur, can we speak of vortex activity moving about from place to place.
Get this. It is a key observation: Stratospheric geopotential heights always increase as surface atmospheric pressure below the vortex increases. In terms of the AO index, pressure increases as the AO index falls. Transport through the stratospheric vortex depends directly upon the supply of air. The supply of air can be monitored in terms of the change in surface pressure. Why do heights increase as pressure increases? Heights depend directly upon ozone supply. Ozone absorbs OLR from the Earth and warms the surrounding nitrogen and oxygen. During the immediately preceding period when both geopotential heights and atmospheric pressure was low, the supply of mesospheric air to the stratospheric vortex i diminished with a consequent increase in ozone in the upper stratosphere. As pressure is restored, the vortex recovers and this ozone is transported down from the interaction area of the upper stratosphere/lower mesosphere. So geopotential heights increase. The location of enhanced geopotential heights allows you to trace the flow of ozone into the mixing zones that extend into the entire stratosphere.
It follows that the flux in ozone levels to the middle and lower stratosphere and upper troposphere (where it governs 200hpa temperature and ice cloud density and is related to SST change in mid latitudes) depend upon a dynamical mechanism that governs the supply of NOX to the vortex from the mesosphere. That dynamical mechanism is the thing that changes the distribution of the mass of the atmosphere causing the change in atmospheric pressure.
Ulric knows the agent of change in the mass of the atmosphere. He is always talking about it.
What is required is a direct link between Ulrics solar wind and the change in the distribution of the mass of the atmosphere. Change surface pressure anywhere and you change the winds and with it climate.
Yes, geomagnetic activity is related to an increase in the NOX concentration in the mesosphere but there is always plenty there anyway. What determines the climate effect is the dynamical mechanism that governs the interaction of the mesosphere with the polar stratosphere.
Document the link between the solar wind and the change in surface pressure and the prize is yours.
Ulric Lyons says:
November 27, 2010 at 5:37 pm
…..
Hi Ulric
I’ve been looking at this for only few weeks, what is your longer term perception ?
Do you have any historical data on the coronal holes?
Thanks.
This discussion here has been really fascinating and my thanks to all of you who made a contribution! I also think that it went a bit above my head here and there and perhaps also above the head of a few others that I had invited here.
All I ask to know is what each of your final yes or nay is to my 2 questions,
i.e.
1) can solar activity be correlated to cloud formation? (more clouds mean cooling and less clouds mean warming)
2) can solar activity be correlated, directly or indirectly, to the movement of the major tropic cloudbanks, either more towards the poles (=warming- smaller square area covered) or more to the equator (=cooling – bigger square area of earth covered)?
Henry:
Yes and Yes.
Leif:
A couple of your latest points will be useful in helping me refine things but are not fatal.
Other points I think you are wrong about especially the issue of tropopause heights and the reasons for changes. It is true that warming for SSW events starts in the troposphere and while the energy is below the tropopause then the tropopause rises but once the energy transfers to the stratosphere the tropopause is pushed downward. The latter phase of maturity and dissipation is the longer and more pronounced.
I await news in due course as to whether the mesosphere and stratosphere continue their warming trends whilst the sun remains less active than pre 2000. If they do then the jets will remain equatorward, the polar vortices will stay more negative than they were in the late 20th century, cloudiness will remain higher than it was as will albedo, less energy will enter the oceans, ocean heat content will continue to decline and La Nina will continue to be more dominant than El Nino with a net cooling effect on the system as a whole
All that will only go into reverse at such future time as the sun becomes more active for a long enough period of time.
I agree with you that the mechanisms in the upper atmosphere are unclear but that must be where the answer lies. I simply do not share your negativity about every possible scenario. Whatever the cause is it must operate by altering the vertical temperature profile in the ways that I illustrated elsewhere.
Erl Happ said:
“Yes, geomagnetic activity is related to an increase in the NOX concentration in the mesosphere but there is always plenty there anyway. What determines the climate effect is the dynamical mechanism that governs the interaction of the mesosphere with the polar stratosphere.”
Thanks Erl. A lot to be digested there.
As regards the above portion I think the mechanism is the ebb and flow of ozone quantities which appear to go one way below 45km and the other way above 45km.
The net effect appears to be dominated by the temperature changes above 45km because both mesosphere and stratosphere cooled during the period of active sun and now seem to be warming slightly with a less active sun. That stratospheric cooling occurred despite the expected warming effect of more UV and ozone creation below 45km. Now we have a slight stratospheric warming despite the expected cooling effect of less UV and less ozone creation below 45km.
At present it is fair enough for Leif to express doubts about the significance of the recent findings above 45km but in my opinion so many other climate events then fall into place that I think it is very significant.
Erl Happ said:
“Document the link between the solar wind and the change in surface pressure and the prize is yours.”
Not sure I have the resources to fully document it but in any event I think modern sensing technology is going to make it pretty clear before long.
In the meantime I can offer my best guess which is implicit in my recent work.
Since charged particles are involved in the ozone quantity changes above 45km they are directed in at the poles so their effect is focused there. The speed and / or density of the solar wind controls to some degree the quantities of incoming material.
If the incoming material increases then there is more ozone depletion above 45km for a cooling effect which the affects the stratosphere to more than offset the UV ozone warming in the low and middle stratosphere.
The opposite process applies if the incoming material decreases.
So a more active sun cools the stratosphere, raises the tropopause and deepens the polar vortex (however defined) which contracts towards the poles pulling the jets poleward.
A less active sun warms the stratosphere, lowers the tropopause causing a shallower polar vortex which expands equatorward pushing the jets before it.
That is what we have actually observed since the solar cycles started ramping up with cycle 17 with a slight pause during cycle 20 and a serious change downward for cycle 24.
The solar activity levels started ramping up with cycle 17 but the full effect on tropospheric temperatures was not experienced until the ocean phases came into line around the mid 70s and then fror 25 years we had both positive ocean cycles pushing the jets poleward and an active sun cooling the stratosphere and pulling the jets poleward.
We now have seriously reduced solar activity with jets well equatorward from where they were and a negative ocean phase just beginning.
Notwithstanding all that there is also room for other proposals such as yours and Ulric’s because if verified they would have the power to modulate the effects of the processes that I have been describing.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 28, 2010 at 4:33 am
That is what we have actually observed since the solar cycles started ramping up with cycle 17 with a slight pause during cycle 20 and a serious change downward for cycle 24.
You also need to consider SC19, on which many a hypotheses stumbled.
Here is the current thinking about polar vortex, stratospheric ozone, temperatures and what causes what: angeo-28-2133-2010.pdf
Here is a quote to wet your appetite: ” the variations in the polar vortex and in temperature-dependent polar ozone depletion, which are induced by tropospheric forcing mechanisms, may have a substantial feedback on the tropospheric and stratospheric wave propagation. Note here that Randel and Wu (1999) found an overall similarity in the coherent space-time structure of ozone loss and cooling patterns for the Arctic and Antarctic. These variations are driven by the different buildup of tropospheric wave energy.”
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 28, 2010 at 7:57 am
Here is the current thinking about polar vortex, stratospheric ozone, temperatures and what causes what: http:/www.leif.org/EOS/angeo-28-2133-2010.pdf
It cites the classic Schoebel paper: http:/www.leif.org/EOS/RG016i004p00521.pdf that is still a good overview.
Leif Svalgaard says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
November 28, 2010 at 8:15 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 28, 2010 at 7:57 am
Here is the current thinking about polar vortex, stratospheric ozone, temperatures and what causes what: http://www.leif.org/EOS/angeo-28-2133-2010.pdf
It cites the classic Schoebel paper: http://www.leif.org/EOS/RG016i004p00521.pdf that is still a good overview.
vukcevic says:
November 28, 2010 at 1:01 am
Hi Vuk,
That CH list just gives peak values, better to use daily/hourly data:
http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Dr. Svalgaard
Has any hypothesis managed (to your knowledge) to reconcile SC19 output with the global temperature fall?
vukcevic says:
November 28, 2010 at 9:06 am
Has any hypothesis managed (to your knowledge) to reconcile SC19 output with the global temperature fall?
The standard explanation is that increased aerosols from polluting industry [and cars] is responsible for the drop in temperatures. What truth there is to that is doubtful, but it is no worse than so many other untenable claims peddled.
To stay on topic [cosmic rays] I can comment on McCracken’s claim that the cosmic ray intensity suffered a large drop about 1950 [based on his dubious splicing of ion chamber counters and neutron monitor counts]. This would according to the cosmic ray hypothesis lead to a warming after 1950 [fewer cosmic rays – less clouds – warming] which may or may not have happened [assuming a 20-30 year lag might improve the correlation]. But, again, people find, defend, reveling in their own brilliance, all sorts of weirds things.
On the face of it, cycle 19 shows the folly of all of this. “reconcile SC19 output” should be replaced by “seeing that it just ain’t what they so badly want”. We have the same problem in prediction of solar cycles, where cycle 19 often is an outlier, so people just declare it to be an ‘outlier’ and continue as if S19 never happened.
Stephen Wilde says:
November 28, 2010 at 4:33 am
“Document the link between the solar wind and the change in surface pressure and the prize is yours.”
Not sure I have the resources to fully document it but in any event I think modern sensing technology is going to make it pretty clear before long.
We have excellent surface pressure and solar wind data for at least the past 40 years and with reasonable accuracy for a century, so ‘before long’ must be slow in coming to improve on that. The data is there already.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 28, 2010 at 7:57 am
So, if I understand correctly, it is variations in solar wind, not TSI, that affects the polar vortex, thereby affecting earth’s climate?
Stephen, see what information you can glean from this:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/824263/Kolstad2010.pdf
David Ball says:
November 28, 2010 at 10:00 am
So, if I understand correctly, it is variations in solar wind, not TSI, that affects the polar vortex, thereby affecting earth’s climate?
I don’t think that was the conclusion of that paper. Rather, it the troposphere that sends waves up into the stratosphere. These waves originate at lower latitudes [even subtropical] where the solar wind hardly precipitate anything. E.g. from their conclusion: “1. Two subtropical wave trains occurred before the warming event, one starting behind the other, and the first over the eastern Indian Ocean and the second over the eastern Pacific Ocean.”
I would agree with Leif on tropospheric forcings. It might be well worth your time Stephen to consider the intrinsic mechanisms of the tropopause, and in particular Rossby waves in the northern hemisphere.
Pamela Gray says:
November 28, 2010 at 10:21 am
I would agree with Leif on tropospheric forcings.
I can hardly take credit for what are the generally accepted [heavily documented with observations and solid theoretical [and modeling] understanding] 🙂
Thank you. Very interesting lines of thought. Is it possible that both are in play?
David Ball says:
November 28, 2010 at 10:52 am
Thank you. Very interesting lines of thought. Is it possible that both are in play?
The real question would be what their relative importance would be. Say that mechanism A is responsible for 99.999% of an effect ad mechanism B is responsible for 0.0005% [while all other unknown mechanisms make for the remaining 0.0005%], one might claim that they ‘both are in play’, but that would be rather silly [but, hey, people do silly things].
There is very little hard evidence [I don’t know of any, but shall allow for some ignorance on my part] that the solar wind controls the polar vortex to any significant degree.
Dr. Svalgaard I am sceptical about conclusions of your reference paper:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/angeo-28-2133-2010.pdf
It states:
“Six sudden stratospheric warming events, including the major warming event with a splitting of the polar vortex in mid-January 2003, have been identified. ”
Then there is map on the page 3/16, showing this event over Bering Strait and nearby Kamchatka peninsula.
At the time there was very active Sheveluch volcano
“The number of these explosions observed and detected seismically varied from as many as 25 per week in early January 2003 to several per week in June. By the end of June, the number of explosions had diminished and seismicity remained at or just above background levels through the end of the year.”
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1310/of2005-1310.pdf page 32
There is strong possibility that these events are linked, and this should be taken into account.
vukcevic says:
November 28, 2010 at 11:15 am
There is strong possibility that these events are linked, and this should be taken into account.
What is the difference between a ‘strong’ possibility and an ordinary possibility? And why would there even be a possibility? Other than coincidence in time or wishful, sloppy thinking. The mechanisms discussed in the paper have been documented over many decades.
Dr. Svalgaard, thank you for your candid reply. I suspect that when (if ever) we can say with certainty how this all works, we will say, “oh yeah, that makes sense”.
David Ball says:
November 28, 2010 at 11:28 am
Dr. Svalgaard, thank you for your candid reply. I suspect that when (if ever) we can say with certainty how this all works, we will say, “oh yeah, that makes sense”.
I think that what we know now already makes sense, as it even did 32 years ago: http://www.leif.org/EOS/RG016i004p00521.pdf
I was making list of volcanic eruptions in the last 10 years that may affect the Arctic climate (Iceland, Kamchatka and Aleuts), and these show clearly in the temperatures data files.
Six sudden stratospheric warming events above Kamchatka in mid-January 2003
25 explosions per week in January 2003 from Sheveluch volcano in northern Kamchatka.
Not related; I call it dodgy science.
Documented by whom ? Dr. Hathaway.
vukcevic says:
November 28, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Not related; I call it dodgy science.
Documented by whom ? Dr. Hathaway.
StratWarms are caused by planetary waves propagating from the troposphere from lower latitudes. How about actually reading some of the papers I referred you to.
The apparent reverse sign ozone effect above 45km if verified puts everything back in play. Any past theorising that does not account for it will need to be reviewed.
I don’t doubt that, but the paper you selected to prove your case is DODGY!
http://www.leif.org/EOS/angeo-28-2133-2010.pdf
Six sudden stratospheric warming events above Kamchatka in mid-January 2003
25 explosions per week in January 2003 from Sheveluch volcano in northern Kamchatka.
Not related; I call it dodgy science.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ds.htm
@Erl Happ says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:38 pm
“Change surface pressure anywhere and you change the winds and with it climate.”
I am more focused on the immediate surface temperature as a global signal. Such as during the super high solar wind speeds of the summer of 2003
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/temp/archive.jsp?colour=colour&map=maxanom&period=month&area=nat&year=2003&month=9&day=30
vukcevic says:
November 28, 2010 at 2:19 pm
I don’t doubt that, but the paper you selected to prove your case is DODGY!
That paper was not intended to prove the case. This is textbook science and has been for thirty years. Ir was just a recent example. And there is no evidence that the events are related. My car had a flat tire that winter. Was that related too? Do the authors DODGE that event too?
@vukcevic says:
November 28, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Ah SSW`s, temperature and QBO dependent.
http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/met/ag/strat/produkte/northpole/index.html
Thanks Ulric
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 28, 2010 at 3:15 pm
…………….
I am not convinced by your silly flat tyre example.
Some Arctic winters are much colder then others . Observational data indicate that significant ozone loss in the Arctic occurs only in cold winters. Volcanoes can substantially increase this loss by enhancing the area over which ozone molecules can get destroyed in the stratosphere. Currently there is lot of volcanic activity in Kamchatka: Kljuchevskaya sopka and Sheveluch.
What are other effects ?
Very relevant, this might be a clue.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ds.htm
vukcevic says:
November 29, 2010 at 1:14 am
Currently there is lot of volcanic activity in Kamchatka: Kljuchevskaya sopka and Sheveluch.
So, that would predict a strong stratospheric warming this winter. We shall see.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 29, 2010 at 3:34 am
…..
Absolutely no idea, probably worth keeping an eye on. Don’t now much, if anything about stratospheric warming, I am not challenging your statement with the knowledge of these events, except that there is a chance that could be a link.
In the Arctic region I found that 10 different volcanoes erupted during 2008/2009 (obviously number of individual eruptions could be much greater), 5 in Kamchatka and 5 in the Aleutian archipelago.
Tallbloke just provided this link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIXfYTSmBg0
You are scientist, if you decide to ignore my comments, that is fine, my contribution on this ends here, but I am as always eager to read what you have to say.
vukcevic says:
November 29, 2010 at 4:51 am
Don’t know much, if anything about stratospheric warming
But seemingly enough to call that careful study DODGY…
And it is, if authors have not bothered to consider all significant events in the area at the relevant dates. According to the reference I provided, the volcanic explosions are well documented, plumes went to altitude above 6km.
If an amateur (like myself) or an undergraduate fails to do so, it is forgivable, but for a scientist from the Leibniz Institute for Atmospheric Physics, it is not.
Don’t blame the messenger, stop nit-picking, use your expertise and find what was going on, if anything, that is.
“The Devil is in the details”….So, the Devil causes nearsightedness. 🙂
Erl Happ says:
Document the link between the solar wind and the change in surface pressure and the prize is yours.
Solar link is still there though.
Compare the faint cyan dotted contours in shape of figure of 8 :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ds.htm
and the magnetic field of the Arctic area (top graph, polar map)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
then you got work of this little mischievous little imp demonstrated and documented.
vukcevic says:
November 29, 2010 at 5:30 am
And it is, if authors have not bothered to consider all significant events in the area at the relevant dates.
“Not bothered”, “dodgy”. Have you considered that the authors have not included the events because these were not viewed as significant for the case at hand? What you are accusing them of is not warranted. Now, there is an accepted mechanism to deal with this: submit a Comment to the journal.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 29, 2010 at 3:34 am
vukcevic says:
November 29, 2010 at 1:14 am
Currently there is lot of volcanic activity in Kamchatka: Kljuchevskaya sopka and Sheveluch.
So, that would predict a strong stratospheric warming this winter. We shall see.
__________________________________________
Kamchatka Peninsula VEI 4+ eruptions: 1956 Mar 30, 1964 Nov 12, 1990 Jan 30, and SSW`s :-
http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/met/ag/strat/produkte/northpole/index.html
No correlation.
Ulric Lyons says:
November 29, 2010 at 9:18 am
No correlation.
As expected.
@Leif Svalgaard says:
November 29, 2010 at 9:21 am
“As expected.”
As eruptions are on temperature uplifts, I would expect anti-correlation.
I am not certain how either ‘stratospheric warming’ or the ‘ozone depletion’ may affect the Arctic temperature. I have looked in all major volcanic eruptions in Iceland, Kamchatka and the Aleutian archipelago, and there is no significant correlation to the Arctic temperature beyond a year or so in very few cases. Considering that these areas are outside polar circle, I would expect any high altitude aerosols to be taken by jet-stream to lower latitudes, and correspondingly I found there is a much stronger ‘negative’ correlation with CETs particularly from Iceland, and not so much from the other two areas. There shows in the 10Be records, they correlate far stronger with CETs rather than with the Greenland or Arctic temperatures.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be.htm
Ulric
I just looked into your link, if you had in mind the stratospheric temperatures, I have no idea why they would go up or down, volcano or no volcano, but events that the relevant paper refers to, lasted only few days, so either these events if related to the volcano, are of very limited duration, or they depend on type of material ejected during eruptions. I am far more interested in the shape of the other set of contours (figure of 8), which I assume is interaction between ‘true’ solar wind and gmf.
Dr. Svalgaard
You are scientist, I am engineer, if I do a test and it shows something unusual, and I do not know cause of it, then I use process of elimination of all possible factors.
I do as I whish, but if you, or on behalf of the authors, feel offended by my remarks, well it was not personal, but refers to part of their conclusion.
If the authors mentioned these volcanic eruptions, and said they do not consider them relevant for x,y&z, then I would not have a case.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ds.htm
Hence, their conclusion is dodgy (iffy, dubious, risky), but not illegal, criminal or crooked, since it appears they were not aware of the volcanic eruptions. If they were I assume they (or reviewers) would have mentioned the fact, and if it was irrelevant said so. This way there is a big ? regarding this part of their study.
vukcevic says:
November 29, 2010 at 11:11 am
You are scientist, I am engineer, if I do a test and it shows something unusual, and I do not know cause of it, then I use process of elimination of all possible factors.
Except there was nothing unusual [unexpected, contrary to theory] here, rather a nice confirmation.
If the authors mentioned these volcanic eruptions, and said they do not consider them relevant for x,y&z, then I would not have a case.
They also did not mention a zillion other things that are not relevant.
it appears they were not aware of the volcanic eruptions.
You can assume that they were aware of all the factors that could be of relevance.
The usual [British] meaning of dudgy is ‘evasive’, i.e. a willful act to evade something. So, to be ‘dodgy’, the authors would have had to have known that volcanoes were important, but they willfully omitted that to deceive or mislead.
Dr. S. you are wrong on all three points.
My car’s starter motor is a bit dodgy. Should I call police or a car mechanic?
I got more important things to do, than carry on this time wasting exchange, you obviously have not.
vukcevic says:
November 29, 2010 at 12:02 pm
I got more important things to do, than carry on this time wasting exchange, you obviously have not.
Now you are dodgy.
Dr. S. Thanks again. You solved my ‘Arctic Conundrum’
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
You could do with an update on the stratosphere.
@vukcevic says:
November 29, 2010 at 11:11 am
Ulric
I just looked into your link, if you had in mind the stratospheric temperatures, I have no idea why they would go up or down, volcano or no volcano, but events that the relevant paper refers to, lasted only few days, so either these events if related to the volcano, are of very limited duration…”
I`m more interested in surface temperature/pressure differentials starting them off, and then the resultant incursions of Arctic air into the mid latitudes.
The stratospheric temperature rise is fast and large:-
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/10mb9065.gif
surface:-
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
vukcevic says:
November 29, 2010 at 1:12 pm
You could do with an update on the stratosphere.
I’m all ears. Provide one.
Hi Ulric.
Thanks for the link. What do you think is the cause of the two sudden sharp January’s peaks?
vukcevic says:
November 30, 2010 at 1:04 am
.. What do you think is the cause of the two sudden sharp January’s peaks?
~
According to one of the links Dr. S. provided on the subject, the timing for the events is mostly Jan., Feb., and some March. http://www.leif.org/EOS/RG016i004p00521.pdf
Table 1 pg. 5
That time of year of Earth’s orbit puts Earth in the suns gravitational focusing cone, downwind and on the backside of the Heliosphere’s bubble.
The article suggests as a first cause some sudden down draft wave of sorts, and multiplying of Rossby waves. Perhaps it has something to do with Earth pulling out of the suns gravitational focusing cone.
Animation of Earth’s orbit thru the focusing cone.
http://www-ssg.sr.unh.edu/ism/isg_pileup.swf
Some earlier observations from SOHO indicate a variable gravitational focusing cone..due to solar activity..
The Helium Focusing Cone of the Local Interstellar Medium Close to the Sun
Michels et al.
Received 2001 August 3; accepted 2001 November 19
ABSTRACT
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer is used to observe the interplanetary He focusing cone within 1 AU. Taken over 2 yr and from differing orbit positions, the series of observations includes measurements of He I 584 Å and Ly intensities. The cone itself is spatially well defined, and the He I intensity within the cone was 45 R in 1996 December, compared with 1 R for lines of sight outward from 1 AU. Between 1996 December and 1998 June, the focusing cone dimmed by a factor of 3.3 as the level of solar activity rose. This is the first time that interstellar helium is observed so near the Sun. .
http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/568/1/385/54578.text.html
Sudden strat warmings occur whilst were located in the gravitational focusing cone of the Sun and the size and density of the cone, is dependent on solar output. Hmmm….. a factor to be considered.
Leif says:
We have excellent surface pressure and solar wind data for at least the past 40 years and with reasonable accuracy for a century, so ‘before long’ must be slow in coming to improve on that. The data is there already.
Exactly.
I cannot for the life of me understand why people are still talking about waves coming up from the troposphere warming the stratosphere.
Consider this diagram: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.aao.shtml
The periodic increase in geopotential heights relate to the flux in ozone from above. Ozone is an absorber of radiation from the Earth. Ozone is created above 10hPa and drifts downwards, eventually succumbing to water, in which it is soluble. There is enough even as low as 200 hPa to cause local warming. That warming is due to absorption of long wave radiation from the Earth, nothing to do with absorption of radiation from the sun because it’s all used up above 30hPa. And this increase in geopotential heights occurs every time the AAO moves in a negative direction from whatever level it happens to be at. The increase in heights starts at the top and moves down.
The poles are special. In the winter there is a ‘night jet’ of descending air in the Arctic. It is present all year in the Antarctic.
A drop in the AAO and the AO signifies rising sea level pressure at the poles. This invigorates the stratospheric vortex. It draws down air from the upper stratosphere/lower mesosphere. Its like turning the tap on again after you have turned it off.
But what sort of air will come down? When you open your garden hose in summer the water is first warm then it cools. When the stratospheric hose is opened up down comes ozone. Why?
The stratospheric vortex connects the troposphere with the mesosphere. At its core there is absolutely no ozone. The core has high levels of nitrogen ions from the mesosphere that are hungry for oxygen ions.
When sea level pressure falls at the pole the vortex stalls, the supply of nitrogen from the mesosphere is cut off. Ozone mixing ratios in the upper stratosphere rapidly increase.
When sea level pressure rises what is the nature of the air that descends from the upper stratosphere via the stratospheric vortex?
It’s a very simple dynamic that should be familiar to anyone who has ever sat in a bathtub watching water disappear down the plug hole.
And it is very well documented. But some people just don’t want to know about it. Why?
Pictures: http://www.jhu.edu/~dwaugh1/gallery_stratosphere.html
Erl Happ and Carla thanks.
That was helpful and interesting from two different points of view.