Guest post by Alec Rawls
Study of the sun-climate link was energized in 1991 by Friis-Christensen and Lassen, who showed a strong correlation between solar-cycle length and global temperature:
This evidence that much of 20th century warming might be explained by solar activity was a thorn in the side of the newly powerful CO2 alarmists, who blamed recent warming on human burning of fossil fuels. That may be why Lassen and Thejll were quick to offer an update as soon as the 1997-98 El Nino made it look as if temperatures were suddenly skyrocketing:
The rapid temperature rise recently seems to call for a quantitative revisit of the solar activity-air temperature association …
We conclude that since around 1990 the type of Solar forcing that is described by the solar cycle length model no longer dominates the long-term variation of the Northern hemisphere land air temperature.
In other words, there was now too much warming to account for by solar cycle length, so some other factor, such as CO2, had to be driving the most recent warming. Of course everyone knew that the 1998 warming had actually been caused by ocean oscillations. Even lay people knew it. (El Nino storm tracks were all the news for six months here in California.)
When Lassen was writing his update in mid ’99, temperatures had already dropped back to 1990 levels. His 8 year update was outdated before it was published. 12 years later the 2010 El Nino year shows the same average temperature as the ’98 El Nino year, and if post-El Nino temperatures continue to fall off the way they did in 99, we’ll be back to 1990 temperatures by mid-2011. Isn’t it about time Friis-Cristensen, Lassen and Thejll issued another update? Do they still think there has been too much recent warming to be accounted for by solar activity?
The most important update may be the discovery that, where Lassen and his colleagues found a correlation between the length of a solar-cycle and temperatures over that cycle, others have been finding a much stronger correlation to temperatures over the next cycle (reported at WUWT this summer by David Archibald).
This further correlation has the advantage of allowing us make projections. As Archibald deciphers Solheim’s Norwegian:
since the period length of previous cycle (no 23) is at least 3 years longer than for cycle no 22, the temperature is expected to decrease by 0.6 – 1.8 degrees over the following 10-12 years.
Check out this alarming graphic from Stephen Strum of Frontier Weather Inc:
The snowed in Danes might like to see these projections, before they bet the rest of their climate eggs on a dangerous war against CO2.
From sins of omission to sins of commission
In 2007, solar scientist Mike Lockwood told the press about some findings he and Claus Frohlich had just published:
In 1985, the Sun did a U-turn in every respect. It no longer went in the right direction to contribute to global warming. We think it’s almost completely conclusive proof that the Sun does not account for the recent increases in global warming.
Actually, solar cycle 22, which began in 1986, was one of the most intense on record (part of the 20th century “grand maximum” that was the most active sun of the last 11 thousand years), and by almost every measure it was more intense than solar cycle 21. It had about the same sunspot numbers as cycle 21 (Hathaway 2006):
Cycle 22 ran more solar flux than cycle 21 (via Nir Shaviv):
Cycle 22 was shorter than cycle 21 (from Joseph D’Aleo):
Perhaps most important is solar activity as measured (inversely) by the cosmic ray flux (which many think is mechanism by which solar activity drives climate). Here cycle 22 is THE most intense in the 60 year record, stronger even than cycle 19, the sunspot number king. From the Astronomical Society of Australia:
Some “U-turn in every respect.”
If Lockwood and Frohlich simply wanted to argue that the peak of the modern maximum of solar activity was between solar cycles 21 and 22 it would be unobjectionable. What difference does it make exactly when the peak was reached? But this is exactly where their real misdirection comes in. They claim that the peak of solar activity marks the point where any solar-climate effect should move from a warming to a cooling direction. Here is the abstract from their 2007 Royal Society article:
Abstract There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth’s pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century. Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.
In order to assert the need for some other explanation for recent warming (CO2), they are claiming that near peak levels of solar activity cannot have a warming effect once they are past the peak of the trend—that it is not the level of solar activity that causes warming or cooling, but the change in the level—which is absurd.
Ken Gregory has the most precise answer to this foolishness. His “climate smoothing” graphic shows how the temperature of a heat sink actually responds to a fall-off in forcing:
“Note that the temperature continues to rise for several years after the Sun’s forcing starts to decrease.”
Gregory’s numbers here are arbitrary. It could be many years before a fall off in forcing causes temperatures to start rising. In the case of solar cycle 22—where if solar forcing was actually past its peak, it had only fallen off a tiny bit—the only way temperature would not keep rising over the whole solar cycle is if global temperature had already equilibrated to peak solar forcing, which Lockwood and Frohlich make no argument for.
The obvious interpretation of the data is that we never did reach equilibrium temperatures, allowing grand maximum levels of solar activity to continue to warm the planet until the sun suddenly went quiet. Now there’s an update for Lockwood and Frohlich. How about telling the public when solar activity really did do “U” (October 2005).
Usoskin, Benestad, and a host of other solar scientists also mistakenly assume that temperature is driven by trend instead of level
Maybe it is because so much of the evidence for a sun-climate link comes from correlation studies, which look for contemporaneous changes in solar activity and temperature. Surely the scientists who are doing these studies all understand that there is no possible mechanism by which the rate of change in solar activity can itself drive temperature. If temperature changes when solar activity changes, it is because the new LEVEL of solar activity has a warming or cooling effect.
Still, a remarkable number of these scientists say things like this (from Usoskin et al. 2005):
The long term trends in solar data and in northern hemisphere temperatures have a correlation coefficient of about 0.7 — .8 at a 94% — 98% confidence level. …
… Note that the most recent warming, since around 1975, has not been considered in the above correlations. During these last 30 years the total solar irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most warming episode must have another source.
Set aside the other problems with Usoskin’s study. (The temperature record he compared his solar data to is Michael Mann’s “hockey stick.”) How can he claim overwhelming evidence for a sun-climate link, while simultaneously insisting that steady peak levels of solar activity can’t create warming? If steady peak levels coincide with warming, it supposedly means the sun-climate link is now broken, so warming must be due to some other cause, like CO2.
It is hard to believe that scientists could make such a basic mistake, and Usoskin et al. certainly have powerful incentive to play dumb: to pretend that their correlation studies are finding physical mechanisms by which it is changes in the level of solar activity, rather than the levels themselves, that drive temperature. Just elide this important little nuance and presto, modern warming gets misattributed to CO2, allowing these researchers to stay on the good side of the CO2 alarmists who control their funding. Still, the old adage is often right: never attribute to bad motives what can just as well be explained by simple error.
And of course there can be both.
RealClimate exchange on trend vs. level confusion
Finally we arrive at the beginning, for me anyway. I first came across trend-level confusion 5 years ago at RealClimate. Rasmus Benestad was claiming that, because post 1960’s levels of Galactic Cosmic Radiation have not been trending downwards, GCR cannot be the cause of post-60’s warming.
But solar activity has been well above historical norms since the 40’s. It doesn’t matter what the trend is. The solar-wind is up. According to the GCR-cloud theory, that blows away the GCR, which blows away the clouds, creating warming. The solar wind doesn’t have to KEEP going up. It is the LEVEL that matters, not the trend. Holy cow. Benestad was looking at the wrong derivative (one instead of zero).
A few months later I took an opportunity to state my rebuttal as politely as possible, which elicited a response from Gavin Schmidt. Here is our 2005 exchange:
Me: Nice post, but the conclusion: “… solar activity has not increased since the 1950s and is therefore unlikely to be able to explain the recent warming,” would seem to be a non-sequitur.
What matters is not the trend in solar activity but the level. It does not have to KEEP going up to be a possible cause of warming. It just has to be high, and it has been since the forties.
Presumably you are looking at the modest drop in temperature in the fifties and sixties as inconsistent with a simple solar warming explanation, but it doesn’t have to be simple. Earth has heat sinks that could lead to measured effects being delayed, and other forcings may also be involved. The best evidence for causality would seem to be the long term correlations between solar activity and temperature change. Despite the differences between the different proxies for solar activity, isn’t the overall picture one of long term correlation to temperature?
[Response: You are correct in that you would expect a lag, however, the response to an increase to a steady level of forcing is a lagged increase in temperature and then a asymptotic relaxation to the eventual equilibrium. This is not what is seen. In fact, the rate of temperature increase is rising, and that is only compatible with a continuing increase in the forcing, i.e. from greenhouse gases. – gavin]
Gavin admits here that it’s the level of solar activity, not the trend in solar activity, that drives temperature. He’s just assuming that grand maximum levels of solar forcing should have bought the planet close to equilibrium temperature before post-80’s warming hit, but that assumption is completely unwarranted. If solar activity is driving climate (the hypothetical that Schmidt is analyzing), we know that it can push temperatures a lot higher than they are today. Surely Gavin knows about the Viking settlement of Greenland.
The rapid warming in the late 90’s could easily have been caused by the monster solar cycle 22 and there is no reason to think that another big cycle wouldn’t have brought more of the same. Two or three more cycle 22s and we might have been hauling out the longships, which would be great. No one has ever suggested that natural warming is anything but benign. Natural cooling bad, natural warming good. But alas, a longer grand maximum was not to be.
Gavin’s admission that it is level not trend that drives temperature change is important because ALL of the alarmist solar scientists are making the trend-level mistake. If they would admit that the correct framework is to look at the level of forcing and the lapse to equilibrium then they would be forced to look at the actual mechanisms of forcing and equilibration, instead of ignoring key forcings on the pretense that steady peak levels of forcing cannot cause warming.
That’s the big update that all of our solar scientists need to make. They need to stop tolerating this crazy charade that allows the CO2 alarmists to ignore the impact of decades of grand maximum solar activity and misattribute the resulting warming to fossil fuel burning. It is a scientific fraud of the most disastrous proportions, giving the eco-lunatics the excuse they need to unplug the modern world.
They need to stop tolerating this crazy charade that allows the CO2 alarmists to ignore the impact of decades of grand maximum solar activity
There has been no Grand Maximum. http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202010%20SH53B-03.pdf
Yep. Once my spaghetti water has been brought to the boil on burner settings 7-9 (depending how impatient I am) I cut it back to 5 and the spag keeps boiling (as long as it’s partially covered).
Lesson: enough heat input is enough.
ignore the impact of decades of grand maximum solar activity
There were decades of high activity in the 1770-1800s and 1830-1880s and both were followed by cold decades [probably for non-solar reasons anyway], see also http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler07qsr.pdf and http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler05nat_nature04045.pdf
What I have found most interesting is the recently discovered change in spectral distribution of solar energy. This new information that solar UV has greatly decreased even though TSI hasn’t changed much could change everything. If the magnitude of the spectral changes are enough to explain the variation, then I believe it will result in a much better understanding of how the Sun drives our climate. Add to the spectral changes any changes in cloud cover due to increased GCR activity and bingo, there you have it.
This is going to be an interesting couple of years.
We will see what the future will bring.
Since solar activity is down now we should see a drop in global temperature.
This drop should big enough that they can’t hide the decline…
Typo?:
Shouldn’t that be “stop rising”?
crosspatch says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:32 pm
This new information that solar UV has greatly decreased even though TSI hasn’t changed much could change everything.
Maybe not:
“Surface radiative forcing very small, direct surface response < 0.1 K in 11-year" from
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2010ScienceMeeting/doc/Session4/4.04_Cahalan_atmos_model.pdf
The total energy in the UV is very small and is absorbed high up in the atmosphere. If that energy is offset by infrared [to keep TSI constant], then since IR penetrates to the surface the net result [as the calculations showed] is very small [perhaps even the other way around, depending on the details].
Wow. The thought that brings to mind is, “Riding for a fall.”
Rather then look at the so called past minimums and maximums we need to resiolve the annular mode problem.
http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/met/ag/strat/forschung/SOLARIS/Input_data/CMIP5_solar_irradiance.html
Oh dear
ftp://strat50.met.fu-berlin.de/pub/outgoing/_matthes/CMIP5_solardata/TSI_WLS_mon_1882_2008.txt
grienpies says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:38 pm
Since solar activity is down now we should see a drop in global temperature.
This drop should big enough that they can’t hide the decline…
Solar activity has been decreasing for a couple of decades now, and so has global temperature. Am I wrong?
Leif: “…UV is very small….”
So way we get sunburn and skin-cancer?
Mick.
CO2 alarmists will continue to be in denial. Even if the next 20-30 years show a cooling trend and SC 25 is also a dud it won’t change their beliefs. Great article, well done.
Mick says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:56 pm
Leif: “…UV is very small….”
So way we get sunburn and skin-cancer?
The UV in question does not penetrate to the surface, so no worry.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:41 pm
“Maybe not”
I thought it was the possible indirect affects of UV rather than direct contribution to TSI that matters with these new solar spectrum measurements?
On another point Leif your first two replies here suggest to me you believe the long term correlation is poor. Is that the case?
“CO2 alarmists will continue to be in denial. Even if the next 20-30 years show a cooling trend and SC 25 is also a dud it won’t change their beliefs.”
Nah, of course they’ll change. They’ll say there’s a great global-cooling catostrophe, and we need to nationalize, and globalize, some aspect of the economy or other to prevent it, if not adapt to it.
Alec,
This analysis tells us nothing about CO2 forcing so to completely dismiss a role for CO2 seems a little unscientific at this point.
It’s fairly easy to get the email for these scientists from their publications. Why not put this analysis to them (leave off the little rant at the end) and see what they have to say? I can’t see why they wouldn’t also be curious about a further update.
crosspatch says: What I have found most interesting is the recently discovered change in spectral distribution of solar energy. This new information that solar UV has greatly decreased even though TSI hasn’t changed much could change everything. If the magnitude of the spectral changes are enough to explain the variation,
I think you want to read this:
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2010/2010-28.shtml
So those folks seem to agree with you (I’m also sure Leif will want to rake them over some of his coals… 😉
then I believe it will result in a much better understanding of how the Sun drives our climate. Add to the spectral changes any changes in cloud cover due to increased GCR activity and bingo, there you have it.
I speculate that IFF there is a solar driver here ( I *hate* the use of “forcing”) it is working via a UV modulation of atmospheric temperatures, not surface temperatures, and that drives the atmostpheric height that then drives the Polar Vortex and AO / AMO and the southern circumpolar winds (then to the circumpolar current and into ENSO / La Nina – El Nino).
It’s a long, and I again emphasize speculative, chain, but that’s what it looks like when you start running down “The shin bone’s connected to the, leg bone, the leg bones connected to the thigh bone…”
I connect some of the dots (or maybe dashes) here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/the-arctic-shuffle/
with a bit on the potential special role of Drakes Passage here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/drakes-passage/
and there are some French researchers finding the same solar pattern:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/26/french-research-its-the-sun/
So the (tentative) chain of events would be:
Solar shift in UV, upper atmosphere heat / thickness change, (and cosmic ray /cloud shift), AMO / AO and Polar vortex shift (similar shift in souther hemisphere but with more impact via water issues at Drakes Passage) leading to “loopy jet stream” and more cold flowing to lower lattitudes. At the same time, thinner atmosphere gets colder at shallower heights, so mountain tops, even at the Equator, get colder. (Reverse for warming).
Sidebar: Had a call from a friend in Ecuador. Said the locals in Quito are talking about the snow on the mountain tops. More of it, and lower down, than anyone ever remembers. Even at the Equator it’s colder.
Thinner atmosphere matters. And I’d speculate it matters a whole lot. TSI isn’t the issue… and looking at surface temperatures is just the wrong place to look. We’ve got a delta-T of 41 K in the air…
E.M.Smith says:
January 2, 2011 at 11:33 pm
We’ve got a delta-T of 41 K in the air…
In the termosphere where the density is millions of times smaller than at the surface…
and so is the heat content.
UV is what causes sunburn at ground level, and causes the body to make vitamin D.
IR penetration is blocked from reaching the surface by cloud cover.
Surface water causes far more lag time than solids in the timing of the warming effects of solar radiation or cooling effects because of the lack thereof.
Don’t have to be a scientist to know the above.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:41 pm
crosspatch says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:32 pm
This new information that solar UV has greatly decreased even though TSI hasn’t changed much could change everything.
Maybe not:
“Surface radiative forcing very small, direct surface response < 0.1 K in 11-year" from
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2010ScienceMeeting/doc/Session4/4.04_Cahalan_atmos_model.pdf
The total energy in the UV is very small and is absorbed high up in the atmosphere. If that energy is offset by infrared [to keep TSI constant], then since IR penetrates to the surface the net result [as the calculations showed] is very small [perhaps even the other way around, depending on the details].
Its ground hog day again. We are not talking about energy from UV or EUV but more about the atmospheric changes that are in lock step. Plus the variation is much larger that any TSI variation. Think smaller atmosphere.
“I speculate that IFF there is a solar driver here ( I *hate* the use of “forcing”) it is working via a UV modulation of atmospheric temperatures, not surface temperatures, and that drives the atmostpheric height that then drives the Polar Vortex and AO / AMO and the southern circumpolar winds (then to the circumpolar current and into ENSO / La Nina – El Nino).
It’s a long, and I again emphasize speculative, chain, but that’s what it looks like when you start running down “The shin bone’s connected to the, leg bone, the leg bones connected to the thigh bone…”
#######
easy. put some real numbers on the “chain” and calculate.
Well done, “smart Alec.” I mean that in a good way of course.
HR says:
January 2, 2011 at 11:26 pm
On another point Leif your first two replies here suggest to me you believe the long term correlation is poor. Is that the case?
The whole premise for the article is that during the past 60 years [the Modern Grand Maximum] the Sun has been extraordinarily active. I presented analysis [and some links] to show that this is very likely not the case, so the conclusion of the article falls flat.
E.M. Smith – Very, very interesting post! The concept of a variable thickness of our atmosphere never occurred to me before but makes perfect sense. Yet another piece of this complex moving puzzle to consider.
This is so much more fascinating than the simplistic CO2 story that one must almost feel sorry for those trapped inside that boring box.
Look forward to the coming comments.
stevenmosher says:
January 2, 2011 at 11:53 pm
That’s been done before Mosh. Let me demonstrate..
Step 1- We’ve known since Arhenius that CO2 is a GHG
Step 2- GHGs warm the atmosphere
Step 3- We are pumping gigas of the stuff into the air.
Step 4- We put some numbers on this chain and…..
Step 5- We are doomed I tell ya
Now IFF only these folks had o’ speculated a little more before running around waving their “crunched numbers” papers around……
“”ignore the impact of decades of grand maximum solar activity”
There were decades of high activity in the 1770-1800s and 1830-1880s and both were followed by cold decades [probably for non-solar reasons anyway]” LF
….or conversely [probably for solar reasons anyway!]
@Leif
Not a critique, rather a comment.
——————————————–beginquote
..
There were decades of high activity in the 1770-1800s and 1830-1880s and both were followed by cold decades [probably for non-solar reasons anyway], see also
…
———————————————endquote
I briefly leafed through the papers you referred to. Have you looked at the rather interesting mesured temperature data from e.g. Denmark( Copenhagen Rundetårn), Berlin (Tempelhof) , Sweden (Stockholm(GML)), Russia (Moscow) covering these periods? I assume some interesting comparisons could be made?
See e.g. http://www.rimfrost.no/
As far as I have understood, at least the Danish are considered to be of rather good quality (after they moved the measurement outdoors in 1761). They are incorporated into the DMI database.
I do acknowledge that these measurements are NOT global at all, but they should anyway be considered when applying e.g. 1860 as a starting point for trend calculations. The data series seems too long to just be a function of periodic phenomena (NAO) for N Europe like we have seen the later winters.
It can of course be argued that 1860 is an appropriate starting year, because before that decade few globally distributed measurements was available.
On the other hand, considering the few pre- 1860-data we have, quite a few of them indicates that the 1860’ies was close to a temporal minimum.
I would think this could have some implications for the causal relation between CO2w and temperature.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
@Leif
“We can reasonably *correct* sunspot records by applying a scaling factor to old measurements. Ergo, we can rule out a maximum.”
Also, comment: If two quantity, sunspot number and cosmic ray flux do not show proportionality (cycle 19 vs. 22,) then sunspot number alone may be an inadequate proxy to encapsulate all solar factor?
Leif,
Your dismissal of a grand maximum was based up sunspot number adjustments in the past. Do you have a similar analysis of Solanki’s proxy work, which also concluded that the latter part of the 20th century was a solar grand maximum, among the highest sustained levels in the last 7000 years.
You also appear to be doing a simplistic radiative forcing level dismissal of the relevance of much larger variations in UV. UV couples with a different vertical distribution and chemically via production of ozone, much of that ozone is in the stratosphere above the infrared radiative interface of the atmosphere. Similarly, the rest of the solar spectrum is also distributed and coupled to different parts of the climate system. Solar radiation couples far more strongly at the equator and several meters deeper into the ocean, while CO2 radiation penetrates mere microns. Albedo’s are different in different parts of the spectrum, which snow and ice being far more reflective in the visible than the infrared part of the spectrum. In a nonlinear dynamic system how can you just dismiss the solar hypothesis with a simplistic linear argument?
Most climate scientists believe climate models are needed for such a complex system. There is agreement that “high top” models (with a stratosphere) do a better job, and this was when the stratospheric variation was thought to vary less than recent UV measurements indicate. The climate smoothing chart above actually under represents the time to reach equilibrium with a new level of forcing, the climate commitment studies of Wigley, et al, and Meehl, et al, found the greatest response occurred in the first few decades due to the thermal capacity of the mixing layer of the ocean and the total response would take centuries for the deep ocean system. All of the solar variation since 1940 was probably above anything even the mixing layer of the oceans had adjusted to. The mid-century cooling probably requires a different explanation than variation in CO2 or solar forcing. Aerosols and multi-decade internal climate modes are probably the leading candidates.
Alec is right about his summation of the level being more important than the trend. The warmist argument that solar TSI or any other solar measure does not follow climate is a structured ploy to distract the pubic from the truth. Solar outputs by themselves are not enough to explain the world temperature trend, but when mixed with oceanic oscillations the picture becomes very clear. As long as the solar level of output is high when associated with warm ocean cycles the natural warming occurs. The higher level of solar output influences the positive atmospheric oscillations (AO,NAO), I dont think this is about heat, but more about spreading the cold.
SC22 had a high level of F10.7 flux which also means the EUV levels were high. The outer atmosphere would have been high at the same time as the warm PDO cycle.
E.M.Smith says:
January 2, 2011 at 11:33 pm
I speculate that IFF there is a solar driver here ..
It is a possibility.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MF.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC20.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
Commenting myself re Leif.
I wrote
—————————————-beginquote
I would think this could have some implications for the causal relation between CO2w and temperature.
—————————————endquote
I would like to elaborate. I do not claim that CO2 does not have an effect as a contributor to the “greenhouse effect”. My speculation relates to the calculation of trend-lines, and hence some of the inferences for climate sensitivity.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:49 pm
grienpies says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:38 pm
Since solar activity is down now we should see a drop in global temperature.
This drop should big enough that they can’t hide the decline…
————————–
Solar activity has been decreasing for a couple of decades now, and so has global temperature. Am I wrong?
I would say way wrong. Isolating SC24, solar cycles since SC20 have maintained a high level of output. The F10.7 flux figures for SC21,22,23 are high, well in advance of the EUV levels required to maintain a high stable outer atmosphere. Factor in the the positive PDO of the era and all is sweet. Now we have a small atmosphere from low solar output that is coupled with a neg PDO. This is a very different place.
Think level of solar activity as the article explains.
I like this discussion. it’s stuff like this that makes me such a wuwt fan
thanks to all involved
Thanks to the author of this article, a very informative, logic and relevant approach to this important climate discussion!!
Even served in a language that manages to inform difficult scientific issues to a broad audience, perfect.
K.R. Frank
Ian Holton says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:13 am
“There were decades of high activity in the 1770-1800s and 1830-1880s and both were followed by cold decades [probably for non-solar reasons anyway]”
….or conversely [probably for solar reasons anyway!]
You are suggesting the cold caused solar activity…
Cassanders says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:13 am
On the other hand, considering the few pre- 1860-data we have, quite a few of them indicates that the 1860′ies was close to a temporal minimum.
Assuming you mean ‘temperature minimum, I’ll agree, and this happened at the a height of solar activity.
Buffoon says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:15 am
If two quantity, sunspot number and cosmic ray flux do not show proportionality (cycle 19 vs. 22,) then sunspot number alone may be an inadequate proxy to encapsulate all solar factor?
The comic ray flux is a poor proxy for solar activity being a couple of links of a chain away.
Martin Lewitt says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:20 am
Your dismissal of a grand maximum was based up sunspot number adjustments in the past.
I do not ‘dismiss’. I show by careful analysis.
Do you have a similar analysis of Solanki’s proxy work, which also concluded that the latter part of the 20th century was a solar grand maximum, among the highest sustained levels in the last 7000 years.
Yes, we looked at that. See line 77ff of http://www.leif.org/research/Comment%20on%20McCracken.pdf
Most climate scientists believe climate models are needed for such a complex system.
See: http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2010ScienceMeeting/doc/Session4/4.04_Cahalan_atmos_model.pdf
“Surface radiative forcing very small, direct surface response < 0.1 K in 11-year"
The main problem is that the correlations are so poor. If they were good, we would not be discussing them any more. Hiding behind 'complex, non-linear' systems is just admitting that we don't know squat. An assessment based on energy [in this case, lack thereof] is always a good first cut if you don't understand what is going on. A linear treatment is also a good first cut as it involves a minimum of assumptions.
I'm all ears if someone can show me an engineer's 'back-of-the-envelope' estimate that makes sense energetically. I take a dim view of unknown forcings, unknown mechanisms, unknown feedbacks, unknown unknowns, etc.
@EternalOptimist says: January 3, 2011 at 12:41 am
I agree. And this is particularly the case when all the “solar” boys & girls come out to play with their latest theories.
Just reminds me of exactly how “settled” the science really is. And why it is such a good idea to shovel billions into carbon trading and building windmills.
Leif
You say “The whole premise for the article is that during the past 60 years [the Modern Grand Maximum] the Sun has been extraordinarily active. I presented analysis [and some links] to show that this is very likely not the case, so the conclusion of the article falls flat.” I accept that you are very likely correct w.r.t. maxima, flux etc.
But the graphs from Stephen Strum above http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SolarCycleLengthandGlobalTemperatureAnomalies1.pdf look pretty interesting to me.
In looking for a book present to myself, I came across this from Richard Feynman. It seemed highly relevant to the CAGW debate.
http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf
Thank you Andrew and WUWT contributors for such knowledgeable and (generally) objective food for sceptical minds on both sides of the fence.
Graham
The main climate driver is hardly CO2 *OR* solar activity. The climate is complex. To prove the CO2 hypothesis wrong by showing that solar activity explains everything is a path leading nowhere. So is to prove the solar activity hypothesis wrong by showing that CO2 explains everything. To me it seems that either side is trying to prove the other wrong by making the same mistake: to think that there is one simple answer.
Well said . . . simplistic responses to complex problems can only lead further into the mire.
Al Gored says:
E.M. Smith – Very, very interesting post! The concept of a variable thickness of our atmosphere never occurred to me before but makes perfect sense. Yet another piece of this complex moving puzzle to consider.
Glad you liked it. FWIW, I finally got a bit of time (family all asleep at 2 am 😉 to dig around for some hard facts on that Ecuador story. Found ’em. Looks like the “freeze level” is down from about 5-6000 meters in January (1959-1990 era) to 4500-5000 Meters now. Moving the freeze line down 1000 m globally is very likely to have a coldening impact on things, IMHO…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/freezing-level/
Yeah, it’s a first cut and needs a lot of work to turn an observed oddity into an actual defensible thesis. But as a “Dig Here!” I think it’s a very interesting one.
While I believe more in ocean cycles shaping the 20th century record (whatever drives them), truth is that when heating a pot with water you do not have to increase the gas flame to get the water boiling. Steady flame will do just nicely.
@Leif,
..well, what I really meant was temporal temperature minimum. 🙂
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=temporal
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Interesting to note that there’s as much of a no consensus in the field of solar science, and the suns effect on our daily weather and therefore climate, as it is amongst the usual suspects of climate hippies and their constant no consensus on everything from the accuracy of weather balloons to the accuracy of climate models.
But, of course, and essentially, in a climate where everyone, individually, believes they have the right of it, there can only be one consensus which is that there is no consensus.
What would the world look like if the engineers behaved with an equal tenacity of not trusting in what they observed and only make judgment based upon that observation? (My guess is probably bickering about if it is wise to invent the wheel or not. Still.)
Terry says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:33 am
But the graphs from Stephen Strum above http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SolarCycleLengthandGlobalTemperatureAnomalies1.pdf look pretty interesting to me.
Certainly has the potential of been falsified in the next couple of years if temps don’t fall 1C.
I think his argument: “Since net solar radiation is slightly higher during periods of heightened sunspot activity (and lower during periods of little sunspot activity), the combination of long solar cycles and low sunspot numbers results in cumulatively more months on a decadal time scale with below average net solar radiation” is wrong in its implication, namely that we will get less energy. Imagine a cycle of 10 years with sunspot number = 100, now stretch it to 20 years and lower the sunspot number to 50. We still get the same amount, namely 10*100 = 20*50 ‘sunspot-years’.
Cassanders says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:10 am
..well, what I really meant was temporal temperature minimum. 🙂
Everything is ‘temporal’…
@Leif Svalgaard
The least we can say is that Solanki has a very different opinion on solar activity:
http://climatemedia.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/new-reconstruction-of-solar-spectral-irradiance-since-the-maunder-minimum/
1DandyTroll says: What would the world look like if the engineers behaved with an equal tenacity of not trusting in what they observed and only make judgment based upon that observation?
Roughly like it does now. There are regularly spectacular failures of engineered structures (Galloping Girdy? bridge?, Challenger, several dozen dams…). Because of that, most engineering designs for human occupation have about a 50% “fudge factor” put in to cover that “lack of trust”. Few engineers really believe they understand everything perfectly. That’s why you test materials samples constantly (and why sometimes whole sections of concrete are torn out when they fail spec…). And even then there are times when a parking garage collapses…
It’s very much a “trust but verify” business…
Alec Rawls (author of this post) seems to want it both ways. He presents 2 graphs one by Friis-Christensen and Lassen and the other by Stephen Strum. Both show a ‘tight’ correlation between SCL and temperature and both show a fairly immediate temperature response (i.e. little or no lag). However, when the correlation breaks down he appears to be arguing that this is due to a decades long lag.
Also his appeal for a review by Lassen on the SCL-Temerpature correlation isn’t a good idea. The fact that the temperatures for one La Nina year might drop to somehere close to 1990s levels isn’t going to rescue the correlation. According to UAH the mean temperature for the past 10 years (2001-2010) is at least 0.2 deg higher than the mean temperature for the previous ten years (1991-2000).
Edouard says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:46 am
The least we can say is that Solanki has a very different opinion on solar activity
Actually it is not really his ‘opinion’ [we don’t have opinions on these things]. They base their claim [or ‘result’ or ‘finding’] on the main input to their model, namely the Group Sunspot Number [GSN]. So, their model stands or falls with the GSN. It thus comes down to examining if the GSN is correct. By comparison with the effect of UV [assumed to depend on GSN] on the Earth’s ionosphere [a current is generated whose effect we can measure on the ground – even with 18th century instruments] we can check if the calibration of the GSN is correct, and we find it is not.
Personally I think the Lockwood and Frohlich article to be one of the dumbest and at the same time most influential papers in climatology – responsible as it is for playing down the role of the sun. I agree with the author of the piece above in its shortcomings: the difference between the direction of solar activity and the level of solar activity. I always use the anology with a wooden rain barrel with some little holes in it. The level of water in it can still rise if amount of rainfal decreases but still is above average. Gavin is right however that the amount of rise will decrease. But that is in a simple system. Climate is not one of those and we have not enough knowledge of all the cycles in our climate and the lag times induced by them.
At the same time that lack of knowledge applies for both sides of the debate so some toning down would make this a stronger piece
“12 years later the 2010 El Nino year shows the same average temperature as the ’98 El Nino year”
So 2010 did. The difference being the super Niño of 1998 covered the calendar year and the moderate recent Niño tapered off during summer 2010. The fact that 2010 managed to attain almost 1998 levels is hard empirical evidence for global warming.
Alec Rawls wrote in the post: “Ken Gregory has the most precise answer to this foolishness. His ‘climate smoothing’ graphic shows how the temperature of a heat sink actually responds to a fall-off in forcing…”
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/gregory-climate-smoothing-contra-lockwood.gif
Ken Gregory’s explanation of the “climate smoothing” graph you linked does not provide a “precise answer” as you state. He actually admits it is conjecture when he writes in explanation, “Below is a graph showing a hypothetical increase followed by a decrease in the Sun’s forcing, and the resulting temperature change. The graph is only for illustrative purposes to show the climate smoothing and time lag effects on temperature. The units are arbitrary. Here I assume the temperature of a given year is effected by the Sun’s forcing over the previous 24 years such that each prior year has 85% of the weighting of the next year.”
He only presented this conjecture for one cycle, so your assumption that this is “precise” is a stretch.
You wrote in the post, “Check out this alarming graphic from Stephen Strum of Frontier Weather Inc…”
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/lagged-solar-cycle-length-and-temp-stephen-strum-frontier-weather-inc.png
The U.S. temperature data in Stephen Strum’s “alarming” graph ends around 2007, Alec. Did U.S. temperatures drop like the solar cycle graph did? Nope. The correlation fell apart. U.S. temperatures dropped a little, but are nowhere near the solar cycle length data in your graph:
http://i55.tinypic.com/wvo3th.jpg
This is why Stephen Strum qualified the graph you used with the following, “While temperature anomalies will likely not decline as much as might be suggested by the solar cycle length curve, the long solar cycle could at least help to drive North America temperature anomalies back down towards the long‐term average.”
You wrote in the post, “Actually, solar cycle 22, which began in 1986, was one of the most intense on record (part of the 20th century “grand maximum” that was the most active sun of the last 11 thousand years), and by almost every measure it was more intense than solar cycle 21. It had about the same sunspot numbers as cycle 21 (Hathaway 2006):” You wrote that in response to Mike Lockwood’s comment, “In 1985, the Sun did a U-turn in every respect. It no longer went in the right direction to contribute to global warming. We think it’s almost completely conclusive proof that the Sun does not account for the recent increases in global warming.”
If you had smoothed the sunspot data with an 11-year filter, you would have noted what Lockwood was discussing:
http://i52.tinypic.com/xbmut5.jpg
I posted that graph on the thread of your earlier post here at WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/24/lump-of-coal-award-to-ipcc-lead-author-kevin-trenberth-for-hiding-the-decline-or-the-lack-of-increase-in-global-temperatures/#comment-560438
Note that that graph did not the Sunspot numbers before 1945 corrected as suggested by Leif Svalgaard here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/24/lump-of-coal-award-to-ipcc-lead-author-kevin-trenberth-for-hiding-the-decline-or-the-lack-of-increase-in-global-temperatures/#comment-560504
I’m using that graph solely to show you that the sun, in fact, did a U-turn in 1985 based on the 11-year smoothing and has been declining since the 1950s.
Also, you used a sunspot number graph from Hathaway 2006 in your post:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/sunspot-prediction-nasa-2006.jpg
Why? SC24 through 2010 is nowhere near that magnitude. And current projections are for a much lower SC number. That graph, therefore, gives the misleading impression that Sunspots have remained elevated, as temperatures have.
You wrote, “Set aside the other problems with Usoskin’s study. (The temperature record he compared his solar data to is Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick.’)”
This appears to be a 180 degrees spin on your part. In your earlier post here at WUWT…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/24/lump-of-coal-award-to-ipcc-lead-author-kevin-trenberth-for-hiding-the-decline-or-the-lack-of-increase-in-global-temperatures/
… you cited Usoskin et al, agreeing with their use of Mann et al hockey stick data. In fact, in the comments, you wrote, “I don’t disagree with Usoskin and Frolich on the data.”
@Leif:
At least some of the UV is important to processes below the Thermosphere. In the mesophere, the modulation of noctilucent clouds could easilty be the kind of process that ‘makes interesting things happen’. From the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud
So here we have a direct observation of historical rising UV reducing water (implying lower amounts of noctilucent cloud) and now we have a sudden plunge of UV (that would imply more water available) and thus more noctilucent clouds.
I’ve personally noted (as have a couple of other folks) more of a ‘milky hint’ to the sky at night some times, especially when illuminated by the moon.
OK, I have to emphasize that I am not saying this IS causal I’m just showing a line of speculation and how there could be interesting things driven by the UV that could impact temperatures and are outside the thermosphere.
But the bottom line, for me, is there there are a lot of things that UV can influence in the atmosphere (at several levels) and we know that UV is changing a lot during this solar cycle. I think that’s enough to make it worthy of a look-see and more than a casual dismissal on bulk energy grounds or due to TSI variance being small. The details seem to matter.
Leif told us a few days ago that he had reconstructed the sunspot number back to 1835 from magnetic data.
The SIDC sunspot number trends upwards from 42 in 1836 to 73 in 2003
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1835/to:2003/trend
Please could Leif tell us what start and end sunspot numbers he gets for the linear trend on his reconstruction between those dates.
Thanks
Leif: In past comments on prior posts, haven’t you disputed or disproved the arguments presented in Alec Rawl’s post?
A marvelous piece of work Alec. Not many have an understanding as you.
Alec spins
———–
This evidence that much of 20th century warming might be explained by solar activity was a thorn in the side of the newly powerful CO2 alarmists
———–
No it wasn’t.
Alec scoffs
—————
that it is not the level of solar activity that causes warming or cooling, but the change in the level—which is absurd.
—————
I don’ think you understand what they said Alec.
Alec approves
———-
“Note that the temperature continues to rise for several years after the Sun’s forcing starts to decrease.”
———-
Why?
Where exactly was the Sun’s energy stored so that it could be later released as heat?
Remember the Sun’s energy is absorbed and converted into heat immediately by the land and water surface. So how come it disappeared and then reappeared later?
Maybe you should consider the possibility that some some guy blogger is wrong. And that you are not skeptical enough.
Alec makes stuff up
——————-
allowing these researchers to stay on the good side of the CO2 alarmists who control their funding.
——————-
A popular theory as ever but absolutely no evidence.
By the way, when the endpoint effects are handled correctly, the breakdown in Friis-Christensen and Lassen’s correlation occur sooner than they claim. See Figures 3 & 4 (and also 5) in this paper by Laut (which is also useful in looking at other purported correlations): http://atoc.colorado.edu/wxlab/atoc7500/laut2.pdf
I think this last sentence gives you away. This is what I think you are essentially telling us if we correctly read between the lines: “My ideological biases lead me to strongly oppose the policy implications associated with admitting that the rise in temperatures is due to CO2. So, I would prefer to believe there is some sort of correlation between solar activity and the temperature even though I can’t demonstrate such a correlation quantitatively (although I can certainly wave my hands around a lot) and any attempts to demonstrate it quantitatively have failed for the most recent rise. And, in order for such a correlation to exist, I have to rely on some mechanism that would selectively amplify solar effects relative to other effects like greenhouse gases.”
Why are some solar cycles longer than others? Why are there no two or three solar cycles alike? I know similar but not alike. Why why why..
Alec gets breathless
————-
s the big update that all of our solar scientists need to make. They need to stop tolerating this crazy charade that allows the CO2 alarmists to ignore the impact of decades of grand maximum solar activity and misattribute the resulting
————–
I am having second thoughts as far as time delays are concerned. For sea surface heating there will be some transfer of energy to the depths. This will limit the temperature reached at the surface. However I am going to guess that it is a fairly small effect that can be ignored on decadal time scales.
I think/suspect that scientists are not unaware of this and apply it where appropriate. If memory serves the IPCC has a section discussing immediate climate change in comparison to climate change as the earth catches up and approaches equilibrium over longer time scales.
My comments do not seem to be making publication..is there a problem?
[Rescued from the spam folder & posted. ~dbs, mod.]
Leif,
You state: “So, their model stands or falls with the GSN.”, but the Krivova-Solanki model is validated with modern data and instrument measurements and not over the time frame of your Group Sunspot Number corrections. The GSN is only used to reconstruct the solar irradiance from the Maunder Minimum to the present. Applying the model to your sunspot reconstruction instead would not change their 1.25W/m^2 increase since the Maunder minimum, since your results are not relevant to the Maunder Minimum figures. Timing is all that is impacted.
The Solanki work I had in mind for supporting a Solar Grand Maximum was his follow on to his 2004 article in Nature, that he did with Usoskin.
Solanki, S. K., I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schu¨ssler, and J. Beer (2004),
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous
11,000 years, Nature, 431, 1084–1087.
Usoskin, I. G., S. K. Solanki, and G. A. Kovaltsov (2007), Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: new observational constraints, A&A, 471(1), 301
The sunspot number differences would not appear to change the conclusion that the recent solar activity was a grand maximum, nor the statistical results on grand maximum or minima over the last several thousand years, but might give us another grand maximum before the current one, in the time since the Maunder Minimum.
You are correct that we are in need of a mechanism for solar forcing having a more strongly suggestive correlation to temperature over the paleo record than can be explained by radiant energy alone. But we are also in need of model independent evidence for net positive feedback from CO2 forcing in the current climate regime.
You state: “A linear treatment is also a good first cut as it involves a minimum of assumptions.” Actually linear treatments involve more assumptions, such as assumption that the sensitivities to solar, CO2 and aerosol forcings are the same despite the known qualitative and distributional differences in their coupling to the climate system. Every model independent estimate of climate sensitivity in the current regime is based upon solar or aerosols and then translated to sensitivity to CO2 doubling by rote assumption of equivalence.
Citing the nonlinear dynamic nature of the climate system is the basis for skepticism about questionable assumptions, it isn’t “hiding” because we know the system is nonlinear. “Hiding” would be ignoring that fact. We have a lot to learn, may we live in interesting solar times. That may bring insight quicker than the models, which still have errors and correlated biases several times larger than the energy imbalance of interest (about 0.75W/m^2 globally and annually averaged in the 1998 el Nino year per Hansen).
LazyTeenager says: “Remember the Sun’s energy is absorbed and converted into heat immediately by the land and water surface.”
Downward shortwave radiation (visible light) penetrates the oceans to depths of, what?, a hundred meters. Granted the impact decreases greatly with depth, but your comment is flawed. Refer to the following graph of tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content versus NINO3.4 SST anomalies. OHC rose in the mid-1970s in response to the decreased cloud cover and increased downward shortwave radiation associated with the 1973/74/75/76 La Nina. It took almost 20 years for that OHC to be discharged.
http://i36.tinypic.com/eqwdvl.png
The graph is from this post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
So your comment is flawed–I’m not saying the post isn’t–but your comment is as well.
E.M.Smith says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:02 am
That is a very interesting report from Ecuador indeed. Would it be possible to go back to your source and find out when it started, how fast the onset etc? Any news from the rest of Andean Cordillera would also be useful. I have been wondering when sea level rise would stop and reverse. 2011 could be the year.
Alec has hit the nail on the head. Its not the trend, but the level that is important. Solar cycles are part of the equation, oceans are the bigger player (that may be solar influenced). Mix high solar activity with positive PDO and the world will experience warming. The opposite is happening right now
LazyTeenager,
“Where exactly was the Sun’s energy stored so that it could be later released as heat?”
The Sun’s energy is continuously supplied. Nearly all of the heat capacity in the climate system is in the oceans. The temperature can continue to increase after a decrease to a lower level of solar forcing, if the lower level of solar forcing is still high enough to increase the temperature of the oceans. Consider a pot of water on a source of heat, you set the level of forcing to 10 and the temperature starts increasing, but before the water has warmed fully to its new temperature level, set the forcing level to 8. The level of 8 may still be able to raise the water to a higher temperature.
The mixing layer of the ocean takes two to three decades to reach most of its temperature increase, the whole ocean takes millenia. Now consider the puzzle the the mid-century cooling poses for both the solar and CO2 hypotheses. Solar forcing did dip, but that doesn’t seem large enough to explain the pause in warming. The aerosol hypothesis could explain the pause in warming by reflecting more solar energy, and this would impact both the solar and CO2 warming impacts, even if both forcings were staying the same or increasing. A reduction in aerosols could then explain the steep rise in temperature in the 80s and 90s as the solar energy lost to space is reduced and solar is still high and CO2 is still high and increasing. A competing hypothesis for the mid-century cooling is that the multidecadal ocean oscillations such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) were in a cooling pattern. The analysis for this is more complex energetically, since changes in ocean circulation can move huge amounts of heat energy around storing it and releasing it in different locations for different periods of time. They can also impact transport of heat to the poles where it can be more efficiently radiated and can also impact cloud amounts which might influence the amount of heat reflected into space. Just rest assured that the climate system is complex enough to give a rational person pause about any claims not well supported by the evidence.
Bob Tisdale says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:10 am
.
“The U.S. temperature data in Stephen Strum’s “alarming” graph ends around 2007, Alec. Did U.S. temperatures drop like the solar cycle graph did? Nope. The correlation fell apart. U.S. temperatures dropped a little, but are nowhere near the solar cycle length data in your graph:”
They went bloody close in real terms after E.M. added the deleted thermometers back in.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/gistemp-ghcn-selection-bias-measured-0-6-c/
Leif Svalgaard says: January 2, 2011 at 10:41 pm
The total energy in the UV is very small and is absorbed high up in the atmosphere. If that energy is offset by infrared [to keep TSI constant], then since IR penetrates to the surface the net result [as the calculations showed] is very small [perhaps even the other way around, depending on the details].
Except that UV is the only spectrum chlorophyll likes, and that ‘insignificant’ amount of UV drives every living plant on the plant. That’s a lot of transpiration, albedo shift, and temperature regulation that contributes to the climate.
Would someone be willing to update the first graph which is a 1991 Friis-Christensen and Lassen chart showing trends in cycle length versus temperatures anomalies through 1990? I suspect that the strong correlation breaks down after 1990.
yes I agree with Mr Rawls, there could be a profound simplicity to the temperature increase on earth. As I stated earlier on several occassions its just cooking pot theory, you don’t have to keep turning up the temperature to get the pot to keep getting warmer as long as heat gain is greater than heat loss the cooking pot and the earth will warm.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:30 am
I take a dim view of unknown forcings, unknown mechanisms, unknown feedbacks, unknown unknowns, etc.
~
Put this on your “dimmer view” list. lol
Fewer interstellar particle flux reaching 1AU during more active solar cycles, more solar radiative whatevers reaching Earths surface. More interstellar particle flux at 1AU during less active solar cycles, less solar radiative whatevers reaching Earths surface. Kinda like the a dimmer switch those interstellar particle fluxes. And if the very local ISM increases in particle flux..we have a dimmer switch, right outside the heliosphere door.
Good day..
Great article. Very informative.
Ripper says: “They went bloody close in real terms after E.M. added the deleted thermometers back in.”
I didn’t see a long-term graph (since 1880) of U.S. temperature anomalies in Chiefio’s post to contradict what I wrote earlier. Was there one?
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:20 am
Please could Leif tell us what start and end sunspot numbers he gets for the linear trend on his reconstruction between those dates.
1835-2003: 0.09+/-0.07; R^2=0.0095 not significant
The choice of dates often changes such non-significant trends. E.g.
1835-2010: 0.02+/-0.07; R^2=0.0005 even less significant
Bob Tisdale says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:44 am
Leif: In past comments on prior posts, haven’t you disputed or disproved the arguments presented in Alec Rawl’s post?
‘disproved’ is a big word. But in essence: yes.
frozenfuture says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:44 am
A marvelous piece of work Alec. Not many have an understanding as you.
Thank God.
Carla says:
January 3, 2011 at 5:35 am
Why are some solar cycles longer than others? Why are there no two or three solar cycles alike? I know similar but not alike. Why why why..
Because the sun is a messy place
Martin Lewitt says:
January 3, 2011 at 5:58 am
The GSN is only used to reconstruct the solar irradiance from the Maunder Minimum to the present.
The GSN is used to calibrate the model.
Bob Tisdale says:
January 3, 2011 at 6:07 am
An Inquirer says:
January 3, 2011 at 7:00 am
Would someone be willing to update the first graph which is a 1991 Friis-Christensen and Lassen chart showing trends in cycle length versus temperatures anomalies through 1990? I suspect that the strong correlation breaks down after 1990.
http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%20Length%20Temperature%20Correlation.pdf
I’ve never understood why Friis-Christensen and Lassen felt the need to declare that something other than solar had been responsible for late 20th century warming, other than to appease the powers that be that review/publish their work. If you look closely, their graph is never 100% perfect correlation. 1890-1920 is a fine example where they don’t seem to be all that correlated over that particular small time period. 1 decade doesn’t undo over a century of reliable and decently correlated data, that’s absurb. How’s the graph looking now? Pretty darn good….
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:22 am
[Terry says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:33 am
“But the graphs from Stephen Strum above http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SolarCycleLengthandGlobalTemperatureAnomalies1.pdf look pretty interesting to me.
Certainly has the potential of been falsified in the next couple of years if temps don’t fall 1C.”]
“I think his argument: “Since net solar radiation is slightly higher during periods of heightened sunspot activity (and lower during periods of little sunspot activity), the combination of long solar cycles and low sunspot numbers results in cumulatively more months on a decadal time scale with below average net solar radiation” is wrong in its implication, namely that we will get less energy. Imagine a cycle of 10 years with sunspot number = 100, now stretch it to 20 years and lower the sunspot number to 50. We still get the same amount, namely 10*100 = 20*50 ‘sunspot-years’.”
The problem with this Leif, is that because our climate is dynamic system it is the amount of energy at any instant in time which is important, not the average. We also need to know about how other factors like magnetic field/solar wind e.t.c. vary over very short time-scales if we are to start to see the effects on weather/climate.
The suns activity and it’s relationship to our weather has been a headscratcher for quite sometime now. Maybe we need to start looking at this differently
Seems to me folks are trying to correlate/causate sunspot activity with Earths climate. But WHAT IF sunspot activity is not an affect but an effect?
For example, Leif made a statement at 2:22am thus…
That is a perfectly true statement if taken as an ‘affect’. But I’d like folks to consider the following
The above happens in Australia often enough. Long periods of drought may be broken by some inordinately heavy rain in December, though the yearly totals are unexceptional.
So a (with kind regards to E M Smith) “dig here” may well be worthwhile regards solar cycle lengths.
“…they are claiming that near peak levels of solar activity cannot have a warming effect once they are past the peak of the trend—that it is not the level of solar activity that causes warming or cooling, but the change in the level—which is absurd.”
Could be both. Higher solar wind speeds generally correlate to higher surface temperatures on weekly/monthly basis, but the uplifts in SW from through 1998 and 2010 both have absolute levels that are very average, and at first sight disproportional to the amount of surface warming compared to the SW speed and surface temp`s in say 2003.
http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/form/dx1.html
“Leif Svalgaard says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:49 pm
grienpies says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:38 pm
Since solar activity is down now we should see a drop in global temperature.
This drop should big enough that they can’t hide the decline…
Solar activity has been decreasing for a couple of decades now, and so has global temperature. Am I wrong?”
Leif, had you read Leroux, you’d know that atmospheric circulation has been entering a rapid mode since the 1970s. Only the inane temperature fixation by post-modern cephalopod climatologists has forgotten that temperatures are not in themselves a reliable climate indicator.
Tenuc says:
January 3, 2011 at 8:03 am
The problem with this Leif, is that because our climate is dynamic system it is the amount of energy at any instant in time which is important, not the average.
I agree completely. Yet people keep talking about ‘lags’, ‘storage’, ‘levels’ and such. These things are convenient to play with to get correlations to look better. Just add an appropriate [even better: variable] lag.
TomRude says:
January 3, 2011 at 8:35 am
temperatures are not in themselves a reliable climate indicator.
My cold butt claims otherwise. I lived some time in Greenland and got the same message there. Now with global warming, even California [where I now live] has become too cold. Next stop: Tahiti, perhaps.
“Al Gored says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:13 am
E.M. Smith – Very, very interesting post! The concept of a variable thickness of our atmosphere never occurred to me before but makes perfect sense. Yet another piece of this complex moving puzzle to consider.”
It is the various atmospheric heights that matter most for pressure distribution in the troposphere and I have suggested how ALL the heights must vary to achieve the climate changes that we see.
I have been constructing the entire scenario piece by piece for some time. The troposphere and thermosphere must change temperature in the opposite direction to stratosphere and mesosphere whether the sun be more active or less active.
Latest version can be found here:
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/2011/01/how-sun-could-control-earths.html
“How The Sun Could Control Earth’s Temperature”
I have amended it slightly to deal with Leif’s objections which were to the effect that solar protons alone could not produce the required effect. Instead I now propose that it is the entire package of solar reactions with molecules at the top of the atmosphere that produces the observed outcome.
Furthermore it is a matter of atmospheric chemistry and not radiative physics so objections based solely on radiative physics are not valid.
BTW, there are spots very close to the equator today. Possibly left over #23 spots?
@Tenuc says:
January 3, 2011 at 8:03 am
“We also need to know about how other factors like magnetic field/solar wind e.t.c. vary over very short time-scales if we are to start to see the effects on weather/climate.”
Exactly, especially in N.H. winter.
My cold butt claims otherwise. I lived some time in Greenland and got the same message there. Now with global warming, even California [where I now live] has become too cold. Next stop: Tahiti, perhaps.
A new weather index is born! 😉
When temperatures cool due to declining solar activity, the warmes may acknowledge the cooling cycle but say that we now have 20-30 years to prepare for the coming warming and just think how hot it is going to be in 30 years.
Thus, no amount of cooling will convince the warmers that there is any possibility but AGW.
LazyTeenager says:
Alec gets breathless
————-
And LazyTeenager enlessly posts fragments but never manages to make a coherent arugment while frothing….
However I am going to guess that it is a fairly small effect that can be ignored on decadal time scales.
You seem to do this ‘guesing’ thing rather a lot.
While it can be helpful for finding interesting things to explore, it’s terrible as a filter for finding truth. The ocean has hundreds of years cyclicalities in it as the overturning current has to cover the whole planet at a walking pace. Surface waters of the Pacific can take decades to move from the equator to the North Pole. Ignoring the ocean is A Very Bad Thing…
I think/suspect
These are two VERY different processes, best kept very far from each other. Mixing them leads to large errors.
that scientists are not unaware
Double Negative Alert (kind of like an “intruder alert”)… it starts to holler whenever someone is trying to sound over intelligent while mangling the language and hiding what they are actually trying to say. (Exception made for German native speakers at it is a normal construct, partial exception for French native speakers if they use it in the “ne verb pas” format… but LT seems a native English speaker…)
the IPCC has a section
Apeal To Authority Alert And a politically driven non-scientific authority at that. Shows a lack of care in filtering what crawls into the mind and poor evaluation skills.
Rest of emissions flushed, too many contaminants detected in thought stream…
TomRude says:
January 3, 2011 at 9:17 am
“My cold butt claims otherwise.”
A new weather index is born! 😉
Works for me…
MattN says:
January 3, 2011 at 8:55 am
BTW, there are spots very close to the equator today. Possibly left over #23 spots?
No, they have the magnetic signature of SC24. Perhaps leftover SC22 🙂
Geoff says:
January 3, 2011 at 9:22 am
When temperatures cool due to declining solar activity
For all you solar enthusiasts, here is what you get when you add the sunspot to the graph of RSS: http://www.leif.org/research/RSS-and-SSN.png
Perhaps someone would put CO2 on the graph as well 🙂 … Aw, forget it, CO2 lags 800 years behind Temperatures…
David Archibald says:
That is a very interesting report from Ecuador indeed. Would it be possible to go back to your source and find out when it started, how fast the onset etc? Any news from the rest of Andean Cordillera would also be useful. I have been wondering when sea level rise would stop and reverse. 2011 could be the year.
Unfortunately, they are a young couple who don’t have a lot of ‘time on the ground’ so I can ask them to ask an ‘old timer’ but we’re starting to end up in 3 rd hand anecdotal land then. That’s why I dug up that paper on Freezing Level as that is hard data from 1959-1990.
I’d love to find an original record of snow levels on mountains, but it would likely be in Spanish and may not even be ‘on line’ as I doubt that weather reports from, oh, 1930 or 1890 in Ecuador are digitized. (Also my choice of Spanish search terms still gave me way too many Engish pages… I need to sharpen my filter for that approach to work).
What I was told, at any rate, is that it’s THIS winter when things have really gone cold. The last couple of years were cool, but not bad. This last round of snow during the “wet cycle” was the real surprise. So it looks to me like onset was sudden, was ‘this wet cycle’ and was odd enough to set tongues wagging.
So I think someone needs to round up some old folks in Quito, or find a Spanish weather / snowfall data archive. (I’m sure someone must have freeze level and / or snow level data for The Andes. It’s just a new bit of turf for me – snow level – and I’m not tuned up on search terms to find the interesting bits efficiently… yet… )
Per sea level: I thought it was already stopped? Haven’t the last couple of years been a “failure to advance” ? Or maybe I’m just remembering an inflection in the second derivative…
Leif Svalgaard said:
“The whole premise for the article is that during the past 60 years [the Modern Grand Maximum] the Sun has been extraordinarily active. I presented analysis [and some links] to show that this is very likely not the case, so the conclusion of the article falls flat.”
Just a few years ago, we were told that sunspot activity was the highest it’s been in the last 8,000 years:
“The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years”
http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2004/pressRelease20041028/
and
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6591
Bob Tisdale says:
I didn’t see a long-term graph (since 1880) of U.S. temperature anomalies in Chiefio’s post to contradict what I wrote earlier. Was there one?
I have one, and it is fun to look at, but I would not use is as global / authoritative.
The Dt/dt method has a few great advantages for seeing what is actually happening, but is designed first and foremost as a forensics tool. I specifically DO NOTHING to correct for areal bias in the data and depend on application to subsets of the data for that ‘correction’. For example, the dozen thermometers in France make a pretty good ‘areal average’ and you get a ‘grid cell’ the size of France. But the larger the area covered, the more this breaks down.
Further, the data start with ONE thermometer (substantially by definition) then expand to over 7000 globally, then shrink back to 1200. That means that the location and selection bias in the early parts of the curve are very large. That’s why most folks like CRU and GISS start their ‘study’ after what they speculate is enough thermometers show up in the record. (They still must hand wave and data adjust their way out of Nyquist in both time and space, though…)
The most interesting thing I found was just how much “splice artifacts” matter. So you get graphs like Gibraltar where you can’t splice much nor move the thermometer very far that are basically ‘dead flat with wiggles’ over their history:
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/gibralter_hair.png
while nearby, France has a slow decline in temperatures right up until the point where the thermometers are moved to the Airport Tarmac and the processing is changed. Then it gets a bit of a hockey blade grafted on the end:
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/france_hair_seg.png
And my favorite is the Netherlands:
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/netherlands_hair.png
Just dead flat with a wiggle. Nobody screwing around with their instrumentation… Has about 3/4 C rise spread over 300 years as we rise out of the Little Ice Age.
I’ve got graphs for every country of the world here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/dtdt/
Probably the better “entry point” to the country graphs is here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/the-world-in-dtdt-graphs-of-temperature-anomalies/
though I’ve not updated them from last year. It’s a manual process that ought to be automated…
At some point I did make an “all data” graph, but frankly I’ve forgotten what posting it is in. It has a very volatile ‘start of time’ as the one lone cold thermometer in Europe in the early 1700s whips around, then does the rise out of the LIA to a mostly flat present. IIRC, it has a bit of a rise in the 1990 to date as the data location is corrupted.
Final note: I’ve not been able to “put the thermometers back in” as I don’t have data from the missing-but-still-there sites that are reporting-but-not-heard-by-NCDC. Though some Mets in Turkey did for their country. Though GISS says Turkey is warming, when all the thermometers are used, it’s cooling…
This posting looks at the GHCN data:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/lets-talk-turkey/
and finds a very pronounced “hockey blade” right when the thermometer drop happens. In comments, this paper was brought up. It finds cooling continues when you put them back in…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.3370150507/abstract
IMHO, what they did in Turkey is what needs to be done for the whole planet if we are ever going to have a clue about what the temperature really is from land thermometers.
kramer says:
January 3, 2011 at 9:53 am
Just a few years ago, we were told that sunspot activity was the highest it’s been in the last 8,000 years
don’t believe everything you find on the Internet 🙂
For more on this:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler05nat_nature04045.pdf
and
http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202010%20SH53B-03.pdf
Kapow
kramer says:
January 3, 2011 at 9:53 am
Just a few years ago, we were told that sunspot activity was the highest it’s been in the last 8,000 years http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6591
From your link:
“She notes that the current upsurge in sunspots is not enough to account for the approximate 0.5°C rise from pre-industrial temperatures over the last 30 years.”
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 7:59 am
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:20 am
Please could Leif tell us what start and end sunspot numbers he gets for the linear trend on his reconstruction between those dates.
1835-2003: 0.09+/-0.07; R^2=0.0095 not significant
The choice of dates often changes such non-significant trends. E.g.
1835-2010: 0.02+/-0.07; R^2=0.0005 even less significant
Thanks Leif. For the SIDC data, the equivalent values are:
1835-2003: 0.18; R^2=0.004
The choice of dates often changes such non-significant trends. E.g.
1835-2010: 0.11; R^2=0.002
Clearly, there is a big difference between your reconstruction and the sunspot numbers scientists have been working on for the last 150 years. I appreciate end points matter. That’s why I tried to pick dates which were approx half way up the solar cycles, though I now realise 1835 is near the start of the cycle and 2003 is nearer the end.
TSI and sunspot numbers used to correlate well, but they don’t at the moment, with TSI trending lower than sunspot numbers. Yet you said to Geoff Sharp that numbers are currently being undercounted?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1996/to:2010/plot/pmod/from:1996/to:2010/offset:-1365.4/scale:100
Can you explain the disparity for us, which would be even wider if the current sunspot count was higher as you seem to think it should be?
Thanks
@E.M.Smith
‘Roughly like it does now.’
Probably if everything else was equal, however, I note I should have been more clear as to if people would so readily throw money after every engineers whim of could-be-invention as to people and government have done so far towards the climate hippies. (And as was done in the dot com debacle bubble.)
Although geo-engineering would probably have come a lot farther. All they lack is pretty much just money since they already have the support of governments even being ready to screw with the weather to fix the statistical climate back to a colder statistical climate. I wonder though what has the Chinese governments geo-engineering to fix their local weather these last few years had for impact on the global climate?
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 10:48 am
Thanks Leif. For the SIDC data, the equivalent values are:
1835-2003: 0.18; R^2=0.004
The choice of dates often changes such non-significant trends. E.g.
1835-2010: 0.11; R^2=0.002
Clearly those are not significant either.
Clearly, there is a big difference between your reconstruction and the sunspot numbers scientists have been working on for the last 150 years.
That is why it is so important to get the numbers right. You might enjoy Kopecky’s take on the [in]homogeneity http://www.leif.org/EOS/Kopecky-1980.pdf
TSI and sunspot numbers used to correlate well, but they don’t at the moment, with TSI trending lower than sunspot numbers.
TSI is not trending lower than sunspot numbers. You may be biased by the PMOD TSI that Froehlich produces. I have shown that PMOD has a calibration problem and that they do not fully understand the behavior of their instrument:
http://www.leif.org/research/PMOD%20TSI-SOHO%20keyhole%20effect-degradation%20over%20time.pdf
I’m right now working with the parties involved trying to get to the bottom of this and perhaps in a joint paper dispel the notion you [and many others] have about this.
Yet you said to Geoff Sharp that numbers are currently being undercounted?
I have shown very carefully that compared to the rest of the world SIDC is too low from about 2001. They may slowly be climbing back out of that hole [now that they have been made aware of this, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/SIDC-Seminar-14Sept.pdf ]
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:30 am
………………..
Hey Doc
Solanki is good for SSN to 1950, Svalgaard & Cliver for NAP.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AllvsVuk.htm
Happy New Year.
@Baa Humbug says:
‘The suns activity and it’s relationship to our weather has been a headscratcher for quite sometime now. Maybe we need to start looking at this differently’
Yes, for, obviously, our weather, and therefore climate, wouldn’t change one bit if we removed the Sun’s bountiful incoming light and all other radiation.
Although, for some crazy mathematical reason or another, I wouldn’t bet on the weather being the same if we could remove or effectively block out our local stellar hearth.
To Leif Svalgaard and the various proponents of solar cycle / climate links.
I have an idea on the issue of correlating solar activity metrics with climate. I do not have the data or the skills to evaluate this idea and would like to see what your thoughts are on my idea and / or if one of you can actually compile the data.
Here is my idea. Compare average sun spot number (or an average of some other solar activity measure) (which I define as the sum of daily observations over the course of a solar cycle divided by the length of the cycle in days) with the average temperature (averaged over the length of each solar cycle).
Leif,
“The GSN is used to calibrate the model.”
You are right, I didn’t consider all 5 data sets. I assume you weren’t satisfied with Krivova’s separate handling of the pre-1874 data?
“Before 1874 a correlation analysis between sunspot areas and numbers is first carried out in order to compute sunspot areas for that earlier period. Following Krivova et al. [2007], we employ a fixed ratio between umbral and penumbral areas, u/( u + p) = 0.2 [Brandt et al., 1990; Solanki , 2003; 218 Wenzler, 2005].”
I think you are misinterpreting the interest in the solar hypothesis. Since the direct effects of CO2 can only explain about 30% of the recent warming, the rest must be explained somehow. The solar hypothesis is really in competition with the net positive feedback to CO2 hypothesis for some of the rest of the attribution. Despite your concerns about the sunspot record, there is good evidence that solar activity is at high levels. There is no evidence that net feedback to CO2 is positive, and some evidence suggestive that the feedback is actually negative. Aerosols, black carbon and multidecadal internal climate modes will probably also garner some of the attribution for the warming and except for black carbon also help explain the mid-century cooling.
Vuk etc says:
January 3, 2011 at 11:04 am
Solanki is good for SSN to 1950, Svalgaard & Cliver for NAP.
NAP fails completely around 1850, so we write that off as falsified.
The McCracken and Solanki curves are dealt with here:
http://www.leif.org/research/McCracken%20JGR%202.pdf
and here:
http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf
So, no need to keep bringing them up. Even Lockwood [of all people] agrees that the Svalgaard&Clive reconstruction is good.
Matt says:
January 3, 2011 at 11:41 am
I have an idea on the issue of correlating solar activity metrics with climate.
Your idea applied to data [RSS and corresponding SSN] since 1979:
Cycle avg SSN avg dT
SC21: 90 -0.10
SC22: 78 0.01
SC23: 56 0.25
SC24: 10 0.38 [so far]
Clearly: lower SSN => higher dT
So your idea works quite well.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 11:04 am
You might enjoy Kopecky’s take on the [in]homogeneity http://www.leif.org/EOS/Kopecky-1980.pdf
404 – not found
I have shown that PMOD has a calibration problem and that they do not fully understand the behavior of their instrument:
http://www.leif.org/research/PMOD%20TSI-SOHO%20keyhole%20effect-degradation%20over%20time.pdf
I agree PMOD is a mess. Froelich doesn’t understand the behaviour of other peoples instruments he’s been fiddling with the data from either.
Look at this letter from ACRIM’s principle investigator to Nicola Scafetta!
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/acrim.jpg
Ouch!
This is why I have little confidence in the flat TSI scenario.
Dr. Svalgaard,
From your conclusion on pg 18 it appears there is a long cycle harmonic to solar cycle peaks (and troughs, though much less variable) . By eyeball, your chart seems to show 2.5 cycles. Is this just coincidence or is there another mechanism at work here.
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:06 pm
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Kopecky-1980.pdf
404 – not found
Try now.
I agree PMOD is a mess.
Yet you happily quote PMOD if it fits your ideas…
This is why I have little confidence in the flat TSI scenario
PMOD has nothing to do with that. On the contrary, he [Froehlich] advocates a TSI that changes more than it really does. The Krivova paper that you call ‘crucial’ also uses PMOD as their calibration point: “Following Krivova et al. [2007], we also require the computed TSI variations to match the PMOD composite of space‐based measurements since 1978”
You are a good example of Leif’s law: “if the [otherwise crappy, messy] data somehow confirm my own pet theory, they must be good after all” or can, at least, be used in argument, hoping nobody will notice how bad they are.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:04 pm
“There has been no Grand Maximum. http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202010%20SH53B-03.pdf”
Right. It’s the Modern Maximum. The last 50 years is the largest maximum since at least th 1600’s when decent observational records of sunspot number began.
What’s it take to graduate from the most active period in 500 years to a Grand Maximum? Seems like semantic games to me if not actually a moving goalpost.
Stephen Wilde says:
January 3, 2011 at 8:50 am
..I have amended it slightly to deal with Leif’s objections which were to the effect that solar protons alone could not produce the required effect. Instead I now propose that it is the entire package of solar reactions with molecules at the top of the atmosphere that produces the observed outcome..
~
Stephen did you read this,
Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity
and Climate
Brian A. Tinsley and Fangqun Yu
https://utdallas.edu/nsm/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
Leif, just get some long underwear and a bun warmer. Then move up to between 40th+50th lat so you can seeeeee the difference in cloud changes. I’ve been driving for a number of years now, with a prior bias on weather related issues and have noticed that the last few years have been seeing changes in clouds.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:04 pm
“There has been no Grand Maximum. http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202010%20SH53B-03.pdf”
Others disagree and call it a Grand Maximum. Plenty of others by the looks of it.
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/predictions-of-a-cooling-sun/?searchterm=None
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2008/2008GL035442.shtml
What’s it take to graduate from the most active period in 500 years to a Grand Maximum? Seems like semantic games to me if not actually a moving goalpost.
Martin Lewitt says:
January 3, 2011 at 11:56 am
“The GSN is used to calibrate the model.”
You are right
I think you are misinterpreting the interest in the solar hypothesis.
I know people are desperate for this link. Even the AGW-cult needs it to explain variability before CO2 kicked in.
Since the direct effects of CO2 can only explain about 30% of the recent warming, the rest must be explained somehow.
Any complex system [even the Sun] has random fluctuations that look like cycles.
Gino says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:18 pm
From your conclusion on pg 18 it appears there is a long cycle harmonic to solar cycle peaks (and troughs, though much less variable) . By eyeball, your chart seems to show 2.5 cycles. Is this just coincidence or is there another mechanism at work here.
We don’t know what causes the long quasi-cycles, but any complex system has those [Sun, Earth’s Climate, Lemmings, Freeway Traffic, the Economy, …] that seemingly come out of nowhere for no good reason. You live with them.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:19 pm (Edit)
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:06 pm
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Kopecky-1980.pdf
404 – not found
Try now.
Excellent, thanks.
You are a good example of Leif’s law: “if the [otherwise crappy, messy] data somehow confirm my own pet theory, they must be good after all” or can, at least, be used in argument, hoping nobody will notice how bad they are.
No need to throw your toys out of the pram Leif. Why not address the substantive issues raised by the ACRIM P.I. Richard Wilson in the letter rather than attacking the messenger?
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/acrim.jpg
I already know how uncertain the calibration and splicing of the satellite data is. That’s why I use sunspot numbers rather than TSI in my studies.
[Froehlich] advocates a TSI that changes more than it really does.
You seemed happy with Froelich’s TSI and PMOD model while it was confirming your pet theory about a little varying sun. Yet when TSI takes a dive as the sun goes into the funk Geoff and I and several other planetary theorists predicted you suddenly don’t like it any more and ‘the data must surely be wrong’ ?
Where else have we heard that recently?
The current Grand Maximum is either the grandest or tied for the grandest in the past 12,000 years. You have to go back to 9000 B.C. to find a possibly higher maximum.
Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: New observational
constraints
I.G. Usoskin1, S.K. Solanki2, and G.A. Kovaltsov3
1 Sodankyl¨a Geophysical Observatory (Oulu unit), POB 3000, University of Oulu, Finland
e-mail: ilya.usoskin@oulu.fi
2 Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Sonnensystemforschung, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany
3 Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, Politekhnicheskaya 26, RU-194021 St. Petersburg, Russia
Received Month XX, 2007; accepted Month XX, 2007
Figure 3 on page three is the entire Holocene sunspot record. Not sure how good it is as it must be via proxy for most of that period. I bet it needs further study (send money).
Darn. Must have missed something in the href. Link for above paper on Holocene solar activity:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0706/0706.0385v1.pdf
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Why not address the substantive issues raised by the ACRIM P.I. Richard Wilson in the letter rather than attacking the messenger?
Because I think that the ACRIM analysis is not valid either. E.g. they have a large unexplained annual variation. Livingston has measured the temperature of the quiet sun and finds no variation at all [not even with the cycle] over that past ~35 years. The magnetic indicators: F10.7, MgII, CaK, you name it, do not show the erratic variations between minima as ACRIM has.
You seemed happy with Froelich’s TSI and PMOD model while it was confirming your pet theory about a little varying sun.
You get this wrong all the time. I advocate a sun that varies a lot more than what people think. The standard variation of my sunspot numbers is higher than the GSN crew’s. What I dispute is the secular, regular, steady increase that is claimed.
Yet when TSI takes a dive as the sun goes into the funk Geoff and I and several other planetary theorists predicted you suddenly don’t like it any more and ‘the data must surely be wrong’ ?
TSI did not take a dive, it is behaving just as it should getting to the minimum value it always gets to at any solar minimum, so if you predict something else, you are off the mark.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 2, 2011 at 10:41 pm
“The total energy in the UV is very small and is absorbed high up in the atmosphere. If that energy is offset by infrared [to keep TSI constant], then since IR penetrates to the surface the net result [as the calculations showed] is very small [perhaps even the other way around, depending on the details].”
In other words you don’t even know the sign of surface temperature change due to spectral distribution changes.
This is supposed to inspire confidence in your understanding of the phenomenon?
One thing is for sure. You have all your bases covered – it might get warmer or it might get cooler
Hey, my post is up. Cool. (Or cold actually, as my furnace is down, and I’ve spent the morning trying to clean the flame sensor and get the igniter out of “lockout” mode. Fail.)
Leif (at 12:03) is of course correct that if the sun has not been “extraordinarily active” over the past 60 years “the conclusion of the article falls flat.” But Leif’s view that there is no modern grand maximum is far from the only view. He cites Muscheler in support. Solanki and Usoskin say Muscheler is out to lunch.
In any case, Leif’s and Muscheler’s critiques apply only over the last 400 and 1000 years respectively, whereas Solanki and Usoskin’s 11,000 year study (2004) and especially 2007 found the modern maximum to be the grandest since about 7000 BC. Also, Leif’s critique is focused on sunspot numbers, which bear an uncertain relationship to the solar wind and GCR blocking. If GCR turns out to be a climate driver (Svensmark’s GCR-cloud theory), then it is GCR we should be looking at, as Solanki and Usoskin are doing.
At 10:49 Leif says: “Solar activity has been decreasing for a couple of decades now, and so has global temperature. Am I wrong?” In other words (as I read him), he is saying that if climate is driven by the sun, the last couple decades of decreasing solar activity should have caused a couple of decades of global cooling.
Is this view wrong? Yes. My whole post is pointing out the illogic of that position. First, if one takes a close look at cycle 22, it was bigger, not smaller, than cycle 23. But that’s secondary. Wherever one places the smoothed peak of recent solar activity, it is not true that a solar driver has to switch from creating warming to creating cooling as soon as peak solar activity passes. That requires the additional assumption that solar forcing has already driven temperatures to their equilibrium point, which neither Leif, nor Lockwood, nor Frohlich, nor Schmidt, has even attempted to argue.
This is the essence of the trend-level mistake (which Usoskin and Solanki also make in regards to post 1970 temperatures). To say that a steady high level of temperature forcing cannot cause warming (or equivalently that a fall off in forcing must cause cooling) is to assume that equilibrium temperatures have been reached. One could make an argument for that, but none of these folks have, while I did make a counter argument: if the sun is driving climate, we know it can drive temperatures substantially higher than today (citing the Viking settlement of Greenland).
Does Leif have an argument to make for his implicit assumption that solar forcing reached its equilibrium temperature in the late 20th century?
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:05 pm
NAP fails completely around 1850, so we write that off as falsified.
My dear Dr. Svalgaard
1850 -2000 is fine. NAP does not fail, it can’t fail, a square doesn’t fail because is not a circle. What you and your colleagues graph I will not go into, but if it is something generated by the sun, than all of you have failed, or your science has failed you, or both.
NAP (vukcevic) and Heliomagnetic field (Svalgaard & Cliver) according to what you teach can’t be more same than a square and a circle, more same than Californian vine and Eskimo fish oil.
But if it happens that you are correct, and they should be the same, then the NAP signal is one of the major discoveries of the early 21st century.
1DandyTroll says:
January 3, 2011 at 10:59 am
“(And as was done in the dot com debacle bubble.)”
It was no debacle. It followed the path of other revolutionary new technologies. A whole buttload of companies in the beginning followed by consolidation into a few leaders as the technology matured just as it happened in the auto and airline industries in the past century. No early investors in Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Apple, Google, Facebook, Ebay, or Amazon are complaining today.
I would like to add a couple of references and ask a couple of questions to this actually good and intelligent debate. Leif, what is your comment regarding this question of the Wolf study. The Wolf paper essentially is seeking to flatten the data. It is able to do so due to a convenient start point, so that some of the earlier data can be discounted and fudged higher. Hiowever, if we were to carry the study back in time a few years some very apparent technical, mathematical problems would emerge. Specifically, the mathematical model would not work across the Little Ice Age. I would like your comments on that.
Also there are published mathematical studies of sun dynamics versus climate by Scafetta and West which contradict the Wolf study and show a climate time response of about 7.5 years to solat variability. I would like your comments on this. The Wolf study is critical in your argument to refute a grand maxima in solar activity and it looks to be questionable.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:53 pm
The standard variation of my sunspot numbers is higher than the GSN crew’s. What I dispute is the secular, regular, steady increase that is claimed.
I’m not seeing this “secular, regular, steady increase” on this graph, can you point it out?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:124
Your reconstruction may have a larger sd than the GSN, but the issue is the centennial variation, not the difference between adjacent high and low cycles. This is a red herring.
“Carla says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Stephen Wilde says:
January 3, 2011 at 8:50 am
Stephen did you read this,
Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity
and Climate
Brian A. Tinsley and Fangqun Yu
https://utdallas.edu/nsm/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf”
Thanks Carla, I haven’t seen that one before. It seems to be an extension of Svensmark’s GCR idea but I differ from that in a number of respects.
Firstly I think the cloudiness and albedo changes arise from changes in jet stream characteristics (zonality/poleward or meridional/equatorward) rather than cloud seeding by cosmic rays or solar particles.
Secondly I think the mechanism involves variable rates of ozone destruction above 45km arising from chemical processes that vary in line with the mix of wavelengths and particles from the sun as they change over time.
Thirdly it is the vertical temperature profile of the whole atmosphere that is affected so as (inter alia) to affect the height of the tropopause and therby change pressure distributions in the tropopause.
I have constructed the novel aspects of the scenario to fit with all manner of past observations. It should be easy enough to check it out as new data comes in regarding the climate system changes observed in response to the recent quiet sun.
The finding that ozone quantities increased above 45km despite the quiet sun is the first persuasive piece of evidence that supports the requirements of my hypothesis.
The planet is in a cooling mode and a decrease in solar activity very likely a major factor-but due to the recent maximum being a double peak, we were exposed to a longer period of high activity which led to the warmth of recent times. Oceans still cumulitavely contain stored heat which will be released in spurts-el-ninos. It will take a bit of time for the cooling to really manifest itself.
The most confident national temperature records from U.S. and Scandinavia correlate highly with solar activity during past 100 years. Correlation stays there up to this date. If the correlation is not as good with GISTEMP or HadCRUT, then this could merely be indication of problems in those datasets. Actually 1930’s and 2000’s could be also globally more close to each other than HadCRUT or GISTEMP claims. I think that this is the missing piece of climate puzzle.
TonyR says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Oceans still cumulitavely contain stored heat which will be released in spurts-el-ninos. It will take a bit of time for the cooling to really manifest itself.
Excellent, another person who gets it.
Lief,
Thanks. I had no idea which side of the argument that would support, but it seemed to me to be the best choice for numbers that would actually be comparable.
*******
E.M.Smith says:
January 2, 2011 at 11:33 pm
Solar shift in UV, upper atmosphere heat / thickness change, (and cosmic ray /cloud shift), AMO / AO and Polar vortex shift (similar shift in souther hemisphere but with more impact via water issues at Drakes Passage) leading to “loopy jet stream” and more cold flowing to lower lattitudes. At the same time, thinner atmosphere gets colder at shallower heights, so mountain tops, even at the Equator, get colder. (Reverse for warming).
*******
Viewing the earth as a “heat engine”, this seems implausible. Cause and effect would seem reversed . The major energy transfer is in 30 to-30 lat tropics of the troposphere. This tropical “engine” drives many of the important characteristics of the rest of the atmosphere (like lapse rate and Hadley cells) all the way to the poles. Something that contains so little energy/mass & is stratified like the stratosphere is unlikely to drive anything — just the opposite, its characteristics are driven mostly from below.
Dave Springer says:
January 3, 2011 at 12:58 pm
In other words you don’t even know the sign of surface temperature change due to spectral distribution changes.
Not me, the experts who model this. Their models ombodies what man-kind collectively knows about this. [This may not be much or enough].
Alec Rawls says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Leif (at 12:03) is of course correct that if the sun has not been “extraordinarily active” over the past 60 years “the conclusion of the article falls flat.” But Leif’s view that there is no modern grand maximum is far from the only view. He cites Muscheler in support. Solanki and Usoskin say Muscheler is out to lunch.
Additional support. Not the only one.
In any case, Leif’s and Muscheler’s critiques apply only over the last 400 and 1000 years respectively, whereas Solanki and Usoskin’s 11,000 year study (2004) and especially 2007 found the modern maximum to be the grandest since about 7000 BC.
Their study was calibrated on wrong assumptions about solar activity the past 200 years. Another study is Steihilber’s http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009JA014193.pdf especially figure 9 if you don’t want to slug through the whole thing. They get the low values wrong [even infer negative values of the magnetic field] but are likely correct once you are off the bottom. If you look closely at Figure 9(a), you’ll see that the present is not extraordinarily high. The filtered version 9(b) shows that perhaps more clearly. They say: “Figure 9a also shows that there have been several periods with similar high IMF values during the Holocene.”
The issue with the low values [the floor] is of great interest as we discuss in http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf Figure 14 shows the ‘modern’ part of their reconstruction. There is a distinct minimum around 1890. We know from other data that the solar magnetic field did not take a dip then, showing their problem with the low-end of the calibration.
Also, Leif’s critique is focused on sunspot numbers, which bear an uncertain relationship to the solar wind and GCR blocking.
No, there is no ‘uncertain’ relationships. The physics is well-known and we can account in considerable quantitative detail for what is going on.
At 10:49 Leif says: “Solar activity has been decreasing for a couple of decades now, and so has global temperature. Am I wrong?” In other words (as I read him), he is saying that if climate is driven by the sun, the last couple decades of decreasing solar activity should have caused a couple of decades of global cooling.
No, I was rhetorical. You was supposed to say: “what do you mean temps are decreasing, this is the second warmest year ever”. The fact is that solar activity is down but temps are up. I illustrated this here http://www.leif.org/research/RSS-and-SNN.png
That requires the additional assumption that solar forcing has already driven temperatures to their equilibrium point, which neither Leif, nor Lockwood, nor Frohlich, nor Schmidt, has even attempted to argue.
So how long does that take? 100 years? Most researchers of this talk about a time constant of 5-7 years.
while I did make a counter argument: if the sun is driving climate, we know it can drive temperatures substantially higher than today (citing the Viking settlement of Greenland).
During the 11 century [1000 AD-1100AD] solar activity was low [the Oort minimum.
Does Leif have an argument to make for his implicit assumption that solar forcing reached its equilibrium temperature in the late 20th century?
I do not know when that happened [if ever] and I don’t know if anybody else does. What I do know is that solar activity in the latter half of the 20th century probably was not extraordinarily high. The basic argument is what role the ‘background’ solar magnetic field plays [the Ephemeral Regions which is supposed to mirror the ‘open flux’]. Many years ago I suggested that the ‘open flux had doubled during the 20th century. I have since then shown that I was wrong, but unfortunately the notion of a ‘doubling’ has made it into the literature and tainted untold numbers of papers ever since. See http://www.leif.org/research/Reply%20to%20Lockwood%20IDV%20Comment.pdf for a discussion of this. Solanki and company still subscribe to the doubling, even though Lockwood does not any more. What has happened is that the open flux is now down to where it was 108 years ago, so we expect TSI, cosmic rays, temperatures [if there is any solar connection] and all the rest to have reverted to values of a century ago. In particular: has temperatures reverted to the very cold 1900s? You can always get around such inconvenient questions by postulating a lag of such variable length to make things fit. Which lag du jour do you suggest?
Vuk etc says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:18 pm
NAP does not fail, it can’t fail
Yet another idea that cannot be falsified, it seems.
then the NAP signal is one of the major discoveries of the early 21st century.
There are 13 to a dozen of those. But just in case, reserve front seats for me at your Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
GuyG says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:24 pm
I would like to add a couple of references and ask a couple of questions to this actually good and intelligent debate. Leif, what is your comment regarding this question of the Wolf study.
Which Wolf study?
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:26 pm
“The standard variation of my sunspot numbers is higher than the GSN crew’s. What I dispute is the secular, regular, steady increase that is claimed.”
I’m not seeing this “secular, regular, steady increase” on this graph, can you point it out? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:124
typical bait and switch. The Krivova et al paper was based on GSN, and you ask about SIDC. Look at slide 4 of http://www.leif.org/research/Rudolf%20Wolf%20Was%20Right.pdf for GSN. Follow the red arrow.
Your reconstruction may have a larger sd than the GSN, but the issue is the centennial variation, not the difference between adjacent high and low cycles. This is a red herring. The sd over a century takes into account all low and high values so gives a good measure of overall activity.
There is no centennial variation since 1720, see Figure 14 of http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf
The dips in 1700, 1810, and 1985 are most likely due to volcanic activity, either directly via aerosols or indirectly via climate-related circulation. “W. R. Webber et al. (A comparison of new calculations of the yearly 10Be production in the Earth’s polar atmosphere by cosmic rays with yearly 10Be measurements in multiple Greenland ice cores between 1939 and 1994—A troubling lack of concordance, manuscript in preparation, 2010) suggest that “more than 50% of the 10Be flux increase around, e.g., 1700 A.D., 1810 A.D. and 1895 A.D. is due to nonproduction related increases.”
Leone, Yes, its very likely indeed that its the GISS + Hadcrut temperature graphs that are responsible for a significant part of the mismatch between Solar activity and “temperatures”.
This is obvious from an overwhelming variety of sources, for example:
Treeproxies combined with UAH trend:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/lanser_holocene_figure3.png
From Article: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/11/making-holocene-spaghetti-sauce-by-proxy/
(here is a special version of fig2 from the Article:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/gissdivergence.gif )
or
Glaciers: http://hidethedecline.eu/media/OverviewLansner/mar20101.jpg
etcetc.
K.R. Frank
The dips in 1700, 1810, and 1985 are most likely due to volcanic activity
1895, of course.
Alec rawls!
Superbe input to the debate, and then you write:
“To say that a steady high level of temperature forcing cannot cause warming ..”
EXACTLY, i have been saying this obvious point for ages, and someting so simple is hard to understand for many.
There is NO way we can say for shure that a steady HIGH level of solar activity should not be leading to some temperature increase over more decades (!!)
K.R. Frank
PS, I have something more to sho you, coming up…
Dave Springer
‘It was no debacle. It followed the path of other revolutionary new technologies. A whole buttload of companies in the beginning followed by consolidation into a few leaders as the technology matured just as it happened in the auto and airline industries in the past century.’
Of course it was a debacle, serious people was selling, or rather trying to sell, serious hardware, software, and actual working solutions, but they were our paced by more, well, money wise intelligent folks and the get-rich-quick-scheme folks that just were lucky.
There was a lot of awesome tech back then that never saw the light of day because all the money went the way of, preferably, fast return.
‘No early investors in Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Apple, Google, Facebook, Ebay, or Amazon are complaining today.’
Oh, except the ones that bailed before lift off, as per usual, equal that to most who draw the quick conclusion. :p
Alec, This is a sketch (In Danish) what you are suggesting, that the full 100% effect of more very strong solar cycles or more very weak solar cycles is not nessecary achieved already during first cycle: It is neither physically impossible nor unlikely that effect from solar cycles (Strong or weak) ACCUMULATES to some degree over more cycles.
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/fpredict.gif
In fact, if the energy some source of heat cannot be accumulated over decades, then for example the 100% full effect of the 380 ppm CO2 should have been seen in the same decade 380 ppm was reached. The effect of 390 ppm should only be the 10 ppm extra effect etc etc, and this we can all see is nonsence.
K.R. Frank
http://www.hidethedecline.eu/
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:36 pm
The dips in 1700, 1810, and 1985 are most likely due to volcanic activity
1895, of course.
Which one ?
Frank Lansner says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:27 pm
(here is a special version of fig2 from the Article:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/gissdivergence.gif )
Using the Hoyt&Schatten TSI is almost a crime against humanity. [trying to influence people on a highly politicized subject, with potential devastating effects].
beng says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:03 pm
something that contains so little energy/mass & is stratified like the stratosphere is unlikely to drive anything — just the opposite, its characteristics are driven mostly from below.
Finally somebody who gets it.
Leif, i know what you say about hoyt and Schatten, but please notice the point (!) : The solar graph shows rather the same level 1940 and 2000, which is imilar to the other graphs. This – THE – point is in no way changed beacause i use Hoyt and Schatten.
K.R. Frank
Frank Lansner says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:49 pm
There is NO way we can say for sure that a steady HIGH level of solar activity should not be leading to some temperature increase over more decades (!!)
Double the solar output and keep it steady for a few thousand years, then be sure. Unless your double [almost triple] negative fools me.
interesting discussion..
after reading McIntyre, Watts, Chiefio etc for years I don’t trust the temperature data and from what Leif is saying we there are many data sets of solar output that conflict with each other and in the future it is possible he will disprove what he is saying now, yet people continue to plot graphs looking for correlations. 🙂
I live in a condo on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, this is the coldest winter in my six years here, and the ocean is in the exact same place it was when I bought the condo.
something that is ignored in the discussion of forcing and feedback is resonance. The assumption is made that the change in TSI is not a significant forcing factor because the magnitude is small. This totally ignores the effects of resonance.
consider a playground swing. a small change in the center of gravity of the rider has minimal forcing effect when applied at random. However, this small forcing leads to a very large observed effect when applied in phase with the observed effect.
So, if there is a resonance between TSI and climate, the possibility exists for a very large change in temperature to occur as a result of a very small change in TSI. Is there evidence for a resonance between TSI and temperature?
12:30:60 is an obvious resonance between the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn and the PDO, with the angular momentum of the sun around the center of mass of the solar system “stirring up” the sun and driving changes in the TSI.
Frank Lansner says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:10 pm
Leif, i know what you say about hoyt and Schatten, but please notice the point (!) : The solar graph shows rather the same level 1940 and 2000, which is imilar to the other graphs. This – THE – point is in no way changed because i use Hoyt and Schatten.
H&S were also wrong about 1940.
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon.png
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon3.png
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon4.png
and about the dip in the 1960s.
maksimovich says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:59 pm
“The dips in 1700, 1810, and 1985 are most likely due to volcanic activity
1895, of course.”
Which one ?
Probably Krakatoa as the dip starts in 1883: Figure 13 of http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf
Leif, When i write : “There is NO way we can say for sure that a steady HIGH level of solar activity should not be leading to some temperature increase over more decades (!!)”
.. do you agree or not?
K.R. Frank
Hi Again Leif:
Your graph shows more variation in Hoyt and Schatten in for example 1940-70, but as I said, the point we are discussing is the Solar activity on average has not risen since perhaps 1940 unlike some supposed indicators of temperatures. ALL the graphs you show on http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon3.png could be used in that context. Please go for the central points .
K.R. Frank
ferd berple says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:13 pm
This totally ignores the effects of resonance.
Resonance requires a transfer of energy between more than one reservoir, i.e. a coupling that effects such transfer.
Is there evidence for a resonance between TSI and temperature?
TSI comes from the Sun and the question is what the coupling would be. There is certainly no transfer back to TSI, so no resonance.
12:30:60 is an obvious resonance between the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn and the PDO, with the angular momentum of the sun around the center of mass of the solar system “stirring up” the sun and driving changes in the TSI.
There is no transfer of angular momentum to the Sun’s rotational angular momentum, so so coupling, and no two-way transfer required for resonance.
ferd berple says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:13 pm
This totally ignores the effects of resonance.
Resonance requires a transfer of energy between more than one reservoir, i.e. a coupling that effects such transfer.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 9:40 am
Geoff says:
January 3, 2011 at 9:22 am
When temperatures cool due to declining solar activity
For all you solar enthusiasts, here is what you get when you add the sunspot to the graph of RSS: http://www.leif.org/research/RSS-and-SSN.png
Perhaps someone would put CO2 on the graph as well 🙂 … Aw, forget it, CO2 lags 800 years behind Temperatures…
Phil Jones I believe stated there has been no statistically detectable warming since 1995, so the temperature levels off near the end of solar cycle 22, steady high solar activity from around 1960 kept the temperature rising, it then probably reached its peak in 1995 then stabilized.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/irradiance.gif
Why don`t you add CO2 to this graph, don`t bother I`ve already done it.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/leif4.jpg
Leif Svalgaard says:
Alec Rawls says:
while I did make a counter argument: if the sun is driving climate, we know it can drive temperatures substantially higher than today (citing the Viking settlement of Greenland).
During the 11 century [1000 AD-1100AD] solar activity was low [the Oort minimum.
The Oort minimum doesn’t show up very strongly in the Greenland Be10 data (Yes I know there are issues with the Be10 data). But the Sporer does. Maybe that’s what drove the Vikings out of Greenland at the end of the C15th?
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/tim-10be.jpg
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:19 pm
maksimovich says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:59 pm
“The dips in 1700, 1810, and 1985 are most likely due to volcanic activity
1895, of course.”
Which one ?
Probably Krakatoa as the dip starts in 1883:
That does not tell us that there is no solar signal in the historical record,merely that variations are dampened by volcanic forcing with competing temporal amplitudes .
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:24 pm
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 1:26 pm
“The standard variation of my sunspot numbers is higher than the GSN crew’s. What I dispute is the secular, regular, steady increase that is claimed.”
I’m not seeing this “secular, regular, steady increase” on this graph, can you point it out? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:124
typical bait and switch. The Krivova et al paper was based on GSN, and you ask about SIDC. Look at slide 4 of http://www.leif.org/research/Rudolf%20Wolf%20Was%20Right.pdf for GSN. Follow the red arrow.
Apologies, not intentional. I think you are probably right about C18th GSN being too low. I also think ocean heat content takes a long time to build up following the LIA, so I don’t have much of an issue with this. Krivova et al are still on the mark for the rise in activity since Maunder, it’s just that it happened sooner than GSN would indicate.
beng says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:03 pm
something that contains so little energy/mass & is stratified like the stratosphere is unlikely to drive anything — just the opposite, its characteristics are driven mostly from below.
Leif responds
Finally somebody who gets it.
Just as the troposphere is driven from below, i.e. by the ocean, which accumulate solar energy on multi-decadal timescales when the Sun has above average activity levels. Which it did for a lot of the latter C20th, no matter how much you try to flatten it out.
Which is why temps are slow to fall following the cresting of the solar activity in 2003 and the downturn in ocean heat content which is gathering pace since the Sun stayed well below average activity levels. If we go along with the lag du jour you mentioned of 7.5 years, we’d expect the surface to start getting colder about now…. which it is doing.
E.M.Smith says: “I have one, and it is fun to look at, but I would not use is as global / authoritative”
Sorry for the confusion. The point I was trying to make is that the North American Land Surface data graph used by Alec Rawls in the comparison to solar cycle length ends in 2007 or 2008 and that the correlation no longer exists:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/lagged-solar-cycle-length-and-temp-stephen-strum-frontier-weather-inc.png
It is unlikely that you have an unadjusted North American LST dataset that drops to levels that are lower than the early 20th Century, as would be required to maintain the claimed correlation. So I don’t understand why the graph is in the post.
Leif asks: “Which lag du jour do you suggest?”
There are two different “lags” to consider. One is the time it takes for solar warming of the oceans to show up in temperature records. If we had a good direct record of ocean heat temperatures, there should be no lag in seeing the hypothesized solar warming. If, for instance, the GCR-cloud theory is right, and high solar wind blows the clouds away, allowing more solar radiation to sink into the oceans, we should see that warming effect in each year’s ocean heat content.
If we are looking at surface temperatures, then there does seem to be a lag before solar effects show up. On the solar-cycle-length measure of solar activity, the closest correlation seems to be between current temps and the length of the last solar cycle. It’s not a very firm result, since the record isn’t very long, but there is some evidence for it.
Then there is the lag between the onset of a steady level of forcing and the equilibration of planetary temperature in response to that new level of forcing. In the present example, there was a 60 or 80 year period of grand maximum or near grand maximum solar activity. If climate is bring driven by solar activity, then it seems pretty clear that equilibration can take hundreds of years, as seen with the 200+ years of warming coming out of the little ice age, with some dips that roughly correspond to dips in solar activity. (There isn’t just the modern maximum to explain this long temperature rise, but also the climb out of the Maunder Minimum.)
Given the size of the heat sink we are talking about, and how slowly it warms, there is nothing implausible about such long periods of equilibration, and no prima facie reason to think that another 50 years of grand maximum solar activity wouldn’t have continued to pour more heat the oceans than an additional degree of ocean temperature would radiate out.
I should work on these numbers too, and try to figure where ocean warming should equilibrate in response to a given level of forcing. My point here, however, is that none of the authors who are implicitly assuming that temperatures were in equilibrium when the sun peaked in the 1990’s are even acknowledging this assumption, never mind making any argument for it.
Leif answered this critique by asking:
I think Leif must be confusing the lag before a rise in ocean heat content can be seen in surface temperatures with the time it takes planetary temperature to equilibrate in response to a forcing. How could a heat sink the size of the oceans equilibrate to a substantial change in forcing in a mere 5-7 years? Surely there can’t be many people who think that equilibration happens that fast.
Frank Lansner wrote in reply to Leif, “The solar graph shows rather the same level 1940 and 2000, which is imilar to the other graphs. This – THE – point is in no way changed beacause i use Hoyt and Schatten.” And your comment was about this graph:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/gissdivergence.gif
You are once again presenting misleading information in a failed attempt to discredit GISS, Frank. The GISS LOTI data is a global dataset, but none of the other datasets you’re comparing it to are global. The graph is obviously wrong and misleading. A group of people who blog here, and at Lucia’s, and at Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit, have picked apart the GISS data and the GISS code, and do not find these major errors you attempt to portray with your graphs.
Also, I disagree with what you wrote to Leif. In that graph, you are also attempting to use the obsolete Hoyt and Schatten data to show a correlation in the early part of the data and a divergence of the GISS data in the latter part. The point is, since solar minimums are now considered to be relatively flat (not as presented by Hoyt and Schatten), not one of that unusual mix of temperature datasets you present would correlate with solar in the beginning of the data either.
ferd berple says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:13 pm
12:30:60 is an obvious resonance between the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn and the PDO, with the angular momentum of the sun around the center of mass of the solar system “stirring up” the sun and driving changes in the TSI.
Finally someone who gets it.
Although tallbloke, Cheifo, Stephen Wilde and others are very clear and correct on the important points.
Here is a chart that puts together the main temperature drivers, it clearly shows how solar activity rises to a level that will sustain a thicker atmosphere (pos AO & NAO) around every 170 years before declining as we are seeing now. The solar power wave can be broken by grand minima which makes the pattern not show up as regular using a Fourier method etc. Understanding what drives grand minima is the key as it is truly the only variable in the system.
The solar induced PDO wave is in the background, once again not variable but super important.
Frank Lansner says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Leif, When i write : “There is NO way we can say for sure that a steady HIGH level of solar activity should not be leading to some temperature increase over more decades (!!)”
.. do you agree or not?
Too many negatives for me. If you meant: A steady high level of solar activity would lead to some temperature increase, then, of course, I agree and nobody would disagree. But, if this is the case, why not say it positively as I just did?
Frank Lansner says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:26 pm
the point we are discussing is the Solar activity on average has not risen since perhaps 1940 unlike some supposed indicators of temperatures.
If you are saying that solar activity has decreased since the late 1950s, then we have common ground. And since temperatures have increased, it should be clear to even the most rabid solar enthusiast tha the Sun is not a major driver of climate.
Please go for the central points.
You did not express the central point(s). If you are saying that your central point is that the Sun is not a major driver of climate, then just state that up front, clearly, and simply.
Robuk says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Why don`t you add CO2 to this graph, don`t bother I`ve already done it.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/leif4.jpg
So you demonstrate that temperature change is not by the Sun. This is, however, old hat.
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:35 pm
But the Sporer does. Maybe that’s what drove the Vikings out of Greenland at the end of the C15th?
Nope, what drove the Vikings was a steadily deteriorating climate long before the Spoerer, starting already around 1200. http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/end_of_vikings_greenland.html
maksimovich says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:37 pm
That does not tell us that there is no solar signal in the historical record,merely that variations are dampened by volcanic forcing with competing temporal amplitudes .
It tells us that the dip in the record in 1895 was probably not solar, and that casts doubt on the other dips as well.
tallbloke says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Apologies, not intentional.
Accepted, but be more careful before shooting mouth off 🙂
Krivova et al are still on the mark for the rise in activity since Maunder, it’s just that it happened sooner than GSN would indicate.
This is where I beg to differ. They assume that activity essentially went away. I think we were having a full-blown L&P effect which means that the magnetic field was still there [I can line with it being a tad lower – on par with today or what we might see in a couple of years], cosmic ray modulation was still there, TSI was not much lower, BUT the process that concentrates specks and pores to sunspots was not operating efficiently enough to create visible spots, hence the deep [but only apparent] minimum of sunspots.
beng says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:03 pm
when the Sun has above average activity levels. Which it did for a lot of the latter C20th, no matter how much you try to flatten it out.
The Sun in the latter part of the 20th was as active as in the latter part of the 18th.
Bob Tisdale says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Alec Rawls says:
January 3, 2011 at 5:18 pm
there should be no lag in seeing the hypothesized solar warming. […] we should see that warming effect in each year’s ocean heat content.
one would think so.
If we are looking at surface temperatures, then there does seem to be a lag before solar effects show up.
so, lag #2
Then there is the lag between the onset of a steady level of forcing and the equilibration of planetary temperature in response to that new level of forcing.
Lag #3.
With enough lags you can fit anything.
Bob Tisdale says:
January 3, 2011 at 5:25 pm
The point is, since solar minimums are now considered to be relatively flat (not as presented by Hoyt and Schatten), not one of that unusual mix of temperature datasets you present would correlate with solar in the beginning of the data either.
This is what I got out of it too. It would help if people would just be straightforward and say up front what their agenda is, what they are trying to prove [or disprove], and then present whatever ‘evidence’ they think they have.
Alec Rawls: Regarding time lags, the seasonal lag for SST is 2 to 3 months, if memory serves me well. I haven’t plotted it in a while.
You could use the sea level data at the KNMI Climate Explorer to approximate thermal lag of the southern hemisphere (more ocean), but you’d have to consider the seasonal contribution of glacier runoff, etc. That should also approximate the OHC seasonal time lag.
How can we tax the sun and make the people feeling guilty ?
Co2 is much more convenient !
Forget the sun and stick to Co2 !
The monthly Penticton AU adjusted F10.7 flux data is in. December continues the very flat trajectory of this important metric. When compared with SC20, SC24 is looking very weak at present.
Leif states that normal solar activity continues during grand minima but with an absence of spots (L&P, what ever that is?). If the current trend continues this will falsify his argument for all time. EUV values are following the same trend along with their influence on the atmosphere.
Alec Rawls says:
January 3, 2011 at 5:18 pm
“There are two different “lags” to consider.”
I’d guess two hundred different lags not just two. The thing about the ocean is that we know almost nothing about what the bottom half is doing and that portion alone has 500 times the thermal mass of the atmosphere. It’s merely presumed to be constant but if all Trenberth’s missing heat were evenly distributed in it there wouldn’t be enough temperature rise to detect. The surface temperature down to a few hundred meters is all weather related so knowing that down to a tenth of a degree doesn’t tell us anything. The average temperature of the whole ocean top to bottom is 4 degrees C and that tells us something – it tells us that the average surface temperature of the earth over a whole interglacial/glacial period of 120 thousand years is 4 degrees C as that length of time is certainly long enough for the deep water below the thermocline to take on the average temperature of the surface layer.
The 4°C is the densest water. The bottom will always be that temperature unless the whole water column is higher than that.
Brian H says:
January 3, 2011 at 8:18 pm
The 4°C is the densest water. The bottom will always be that temperature unless the whole water column is higher than that.
Actually (sorry to be pedantic) 4C is the density minimum for fresh water but not sea water, where it is close to zero. (Sea ice still floats – it dumps its salt, making surrounding water more salty.) However the deep ocean water asymptotes down to around 2-3 C.
I agree with Dave Springer that the ocean, where almost all climate heat resides, especially the deep ocean and the THC, will always be the spanner in the works for those who claim that direct “forcing” or “driving” from the sun is a complete and sufficient explanation of climate variation. There are nonlinear forced oscillations of the ocean by the sun and orbital factors over a wide range of timescales. These interact with real time solar oscillations to give weather and climate. The atmosphere is a passenger in between the two real players in climate heat, the sun and the ocean.
Something even Leif and I can agree on?
EEEEHAWWWW!!!!!
Stanford just clobbered Virginia Tech.
Sorry Hokies. Great game though.
Geoff Sharp says:
January 3, 2011 at 7:26 pm
When compared with SC20, SC24 is looking very weak at present.
As it should, as it is predicted to be much weaker. The Active Region Count [and the sunspot number is falling below what we would expect from F10.7, confirming the weakening of sunspots as L&P predicts. http://www.leif.org/research/ARC-Updating.png shows this very clearly.
states that normal solar activity continues during grand minima but with an absence of spots (L&P, what ever that is?). If the current trend continues this will falsify his argument for all time.
What trend? F10.7 is holding while sots are getting weaker and weaker, may soon disappear [L&P]. If they do, we have a Grand Minimum; if they don’t, we don’t have a Grand Minimum.
Alec Rawls says:
January 3, 2011 at 9:02 pm
Something even Leif and I can agree on?
EEEEHAWWWW!!!!! Stanford just clobbered Virginia Tech.
Indeed.
Geoff Sharp says:
January 3, 2011 at 7:26 pm
(L&P, what ever that is?).
To remind you what L&P is:
1) measurements of magnetic fields and intensity of sunspot by L&P:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
2) sunspot number is falling increasingly below what we would expect from F10.7 based on the relationship valid 1947-1990:
http://www.leif.org/research/F107-SSN-Yearly-1951-Now.png and
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2010ScienceMeeting/doc/Session6/6.03_Tapping_F10.7.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 9:45 pm
Geoff Sharp says:
January 3, 2011 at 7:26 pm
When compared with SC20, SC24 is looking very weak at present.
———————————-
As it should, as it is predicted to be much weaker. The Active Region Count [and the sunspot number is falling below what we would expect from F10.7, confirming the weakening of sunspots as L&P predicts.
Weaker than you predicted I would suggest. If you count sunspots as they used to the sunspot record is following the F10.7 flux.
states that normal solar activity continues during grand minima but with an absence of spots (L&P, what ever that is?). If the current trend continues this will falsify his argument for all time.
—————————————————-
What trend? F10.7 is holding while sots are getting weaker and weaker, may soon disappear [L&P]. If they do, we have a Grand Minimum; if they don’t, we don’t have a Grand Minimum.
But you said we will not have a grand minimum not long ago?? The F10.7 trend is flat, not rising, not ramping up etc.
Geoff Sharp says:
January 3, 2011 at 10:35 pm
If you count sunspots as they used to the sunspot record is following the F10.7 flux.
They have not done that for 134 years ever since we [Wolfer] discovered that the old way [Wolf’s] was not a good way of counting them as it is not reproducible. And it is evident from your own graph that F10.7 does not follow the sunspot number [the latter just took a dive while F10.7 didn’t as you point out]. Last, the only one who really know how to count sunspots ‘as they used too’ is Hans-Uwe Keller, who has been counting for several years now using Wolf’s original, handheld telescope with 40mm aperture and magnification x40. Keller’s k-factor with that old scope is 1.1 so is very close to what Wolf would have counted [but we are still uncertain because we don’t know where difference between 1.1 and 1.0 comes from – perhaps different Snellen ratios]. Since you have made no comparisons with anything, the LSC is free floating without any ties to reality.
But you said we will not have a grand minimum not long ago??
No, I said that I didn’t think we would have a Grand minimum [although I would love to be wrong], but if L&P are correct [which time will tell] then we might get a Grand Minimum with no spots visible.
The F10.7 trend is flat, not rising, not ramping up etc.
It is certainly on the rise: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
F10.7 consists of two components: gyro-synchrotron radiation [directly over active regions] and a ‘slowly varying background due to bremsstrahlung by free electrons in the corona. The latter is what you see if you follow the ‘bottom’ of the F10.7 graph [I put in a line hugging the bottom], and you can clearly see its steady rising ramp-up.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 11:13 pm
No, I said that I didn’t think we would have a Grand minimum [although I would love to be wrong], but if L&P are correct [which time will tell] then we might get a Grand Minimum with no spots visible.
No , I distinctly remember you saying SC24 will not be a grand minimum. It might be worth tracking if I can be bothered.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 2:24 pm
Yet another idea that cannot be falsified, it seems.
It is not an idea, hypothesis, theory, or reconstruction, it is just simple set of easily verifiable records. Since there are no miracles in science, both can’t be right: your (et al) reconstructions is no good!
Bob T… ALL solar graphs shows pretty much the same activity in 2000 as in 1940, so your focus on the outdated Hoyt and Schatten (which we have already discussed in this debate!!) – is not changing anything. And then I showed an old where I could have plotted in Hadcrut, GISS, NCDC or what ever, the ground based land-graph is there a graf to show that the land graphs certainly normally shows warming! Its not some specific GISS attack or whatever you think.
beng says: January 3, 2011 at 2:03 pm
something that contains so little energy/mass & is stratified like the stratosphere is unlikely to drive anything — just the opposite, its characteristics are driven mostly from below.
Events in the stratosphere are significant onlyduring polar winters, when difference in insolation + Coriolis force generate polar vortex. Sudden stratospheric warming SSW is regular occurrence in the Arctic, while in the last 50 years occurred only once (2002) in the Antarctica.
There reason for this is rising of a plume of warm air, caused by the upwelling of the warm North Atlantic drift current’s waters, mainly in the area of Labrador sea. Dome of warm air rising upwards pushes into lower levels of stratosphere causing SSW. Similar effect is result of the sporadic Kamchatka and Aleutian volcanic eruptions.
As far as climatic changes are concern this matters since the regularity and normal configuration of the Rosby planetary wave is interrupted, mainly affecting higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
Leif, i wrote:“There is NO way we can say for sure that a steady HIGH level of solar activity should not be leading to some temperature increase over more decades (!!) .. do you agree or not?”
And you answer: “Too many negatives for me. If you meant: A steady high level of solar activity would lead to some temperature increase, then, of course, I agree and nobody would disagree. But, if this is the case, why not say it positively as I just did?”
Now THIS is a central part of the discussion. IF the average solar activity was higher 1940-2000 than normal, THEN it is not impossible that we have higher temperatures in 2000 than 1940 due to Solar input.
This may not explain ALL the difference between “flat” Solar activity 1940-2000, but then we must not forget that the “temperatures” are certainly polluted by UHI and warming adjustments. I personnaly think that the best long term temperatures we have are the global ocean temperatures which shows less warming. They have the problem that they are more slowly changing, true, BUT they are rid of UHI and siting problems.
Here I have shown difference in temperature data for NH using pre 1984 (AGW) data averaged from many sources, and extended with average UAH+RSS NH data just and then I compare with Hadcrut NH:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig71.jpg
(NH simply because NH data are much better represented pre 1984).
This is (obviously) not an attempt to be quantitatively accurate as some might think, no its just to show the bigger picture, that temperature data normally used is not really a solid proof of anything, just an indicator with a lower robustness.
***
Then you say, Leif: “If you are saying that solar activity has decreased since the late 1950s, then we have common ground. ”
YEAH YEAH!!
But you continue: “And since temperatures have increased, it should be clear to even the most rabid solar enthusiast tha the Sun is not a major driver of climate.”
nono…
K.R. Frank
– But Leif, i think its more correct to say that Solar activity 1940-2000 is rather flat rather than to define it as “falling”?
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon4.png
K.R. Frank
And Leif, from you graph, its rather clear that the 1940-2000 general level simply is higher than normal:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon4.png
– And therefore its certainly possible (no double negations…) that a longer period with pretty much the same high Solar activity could result in increasing temperatures.
In fact, you have to be a “most rabid” denier to rule this out 🙂
While Leif probably will scathe me for introducing “unknowns” 🙂 I think it is worthwhile to elaborate a bit on Phlogiston’s point with respect to Oceanic Heat Content.
While the Meridional Ocean Circulation is recognized as having great impact on the distribution of carbon, nutrients, heat(sic) and other substances to the deep-water (http://mgg.coas.oregonstate.edu/~andreas/pdf/S/schmittner07agu_intro.pdf),
I am not aware of many who have considered the possibility for “Climate signals” in the upwelling and old MOC water.
But as the turn-over frequency is up to 1600 years, I do not see any plausiuble reasons why not the positive and negative energy balance in previous warm and cold periods should nor have been preserved in MOC.
Except for the part of MOC related to “freezing out” (which always will be close to -1 to -1.5C) the formation of deep water should be relative to the TS characteristics of the surrounding water.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Cassanders says:
January 4, 2011 at 2:44 am
……………
see my post
Vuk etc says:
January 4, 2011 at 1:59 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/02/do-solar-scientists-still-think-that-recent-warming-is-too-large-to-explain-by-solar-activity/#comment-565368
Cassanders says: “But as the turn-over frequency is up to 1600 years, I do not see any plausiuble reasons why not the positive and negative energy balance in previous warm and cold periods should nor have been preserved in MOC.”
This is not a critique, just a question. How and why would a warm or cold “signal” that has been subducted to depth remain intact for 1600 years?
Frank Lansner says: “Bob T… ALL solar graphs shows pretty much the same activity in 2000 as in 1940, so your focus on the outdated Hoyt and Schatten (which we have already discussed in this debate!!) – is not changing anything.”
It’s all in the presentation, Frank. If that’s the only point you were trying to make, then exclude the data in your graph before 1940. Because the Hoyt and Schatten data you’ve used is misleading in the early part of the graph. It catches the eye and makes the viewer believe a correlation existed then, when in reality there was no agreement.
BTW, your posts would be much more believeable if you stopped using the unusual datasets, like National Geographic and your self-assembled proxies–the ones you used in this graph:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/gissdivergence.gif
If you want to be believed, stick to conventional datasets like GISS LOTI, HADCRUT, and NCDC, and present them without the unusual smoothing. Also, the scaling of the different variables that you include on one graph like solar and temperature have to rely on known scaling factors. And again, the other thing that was blatantly misleading in your graph was the comparison of Global data with the other subsets.
Vuk etc says:
January 4, 2011 at 1:59 am
Sudden stratospheric warming SSW is regular occurrence in the Arctic, while in the last 50 years occurred only once (2002) in the Antarctica.
Hi Vuk, there was another one I remember last year around August, it was one of the reasons for the smaller ozone hole last year.
@Bob Tisdale,
You are probably familiar with the essentials, but if not, you will find a “popular” presentation here: http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/ocean_heat_storage_transfer.html
I am sure you are also aware of the thermocline in low and mid-lattidude waters (comprising a large chunk of the global water mass) below which the temperature is “rather stable” and varies within a much smaller range (typically 0 -4 C) than the surface. But this relatively small range does not (as far as I understand) preclude a temporal (Hi Leif! :-)) small change to the temperature of the deep water. (The density could be maintained by a simultaneous change in salinity).
My “mental image” of this can be mapped onto the picture of the conveyor belt (url above) as e.g. 200 year “pulse” of relatively warmer deep water. Hence my “thought” of a stored heat pulse “travelling along MOC ” and surfacing some centuries -a millennium later.
If pushed, I might even try a back of the envelope calculation 🙂 Currently I am confident the amount of energy required to heat the deep MOC water say 0.1-0.2 C has a magnitude that could be relevant to the atmosphere.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Commenting myself:
It is of course the deep water below the thermocline that constitutes a large chunk of the Oceans’ water, not the water in the thermocline itself.
Sorry for the sloppiness.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Hi Bob
I want you to know, that the image i showed Alec s not part of an article published anywere. It is old, and im aware that the Hoyt and schatten is has a lot of critics etc. Likewise, the old graph showed a “national geographic” and other pre-.1984 data I have digged a lot in since then: http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-180.php
No, I used that old graph simply because we here talk about the 1940-2000 with stagnating solar activity accompanied by rising temperatures. But If i write a new article on the subject, i would make a new graph using for example Leifs solar curves in stead etc.
In general, many peoble are comparing smaller areas like USA, The Arctic, Greenland etc with solar acitivity. This is normally done because some thinks that these temperature data are simply better than for example an overall global GISS or the like.
I wont be the judge of that here and now, but i have used full-NH data, Proxy data almost global, Glacier data, Sea level data to finally get the impression that any of the ordinary datasources for global data hadcrut, Giss or their “mother” GHCN etc. is not at all robust anough to be used to dismiss the Solar theory.
K.R. Frank
phlogiston says:
January 3, 2011 at 8:32 pm
Thanks for pointing that out, Phlogiston. Many people make the mistake of assuming that sea water thermal expansion is the same as freshwater. It isn’t. Seawater exhibits thermal expansion through its entire liquid phase and its freezing point is negative 1.8C at its typical salinity of 35 parts per thousand.
The water below the thermocline isn’t at 3.0C because that’s the temperature of maximum density. It’s at 3.0C because that’s the average surface temperature over an entire glacial cycle. It’s physically impossible for it to be at that temperature for any other reason.
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Re-St/Sea-Water-Freezing-of.html
Frank Lansner says: “I wont be the judge of that here and now, but i have used full-NH data, Proxy data almost global, Glacier data, Sea level data to finally get the impression that any of the ordinary datasources for global data hadcrut, Giss or their “mother” GHCN etc. is not at all robust anough to be used to dismiss the Solar theory.”
No dataset–Land Surface Temperature, Sea Surface Temperature, Lower Troposphere Temperature, Combined Land Plus Sea Surface Temperature, Ocean Heat Content, Sea Level–during that satellite era supports the “Solar theory”, and during the satellite era, the data is “robust enough” to detect it. Have you considered that fact that maybe your “Solar theory” is wrong?
Cassanders says: January 4, 2011 at 4:04 am.
I don’t believe you answered my question. How would the pulse remain intact after 1600 years?
Hi Geoff:
Yes , I saw your link any particular, I shall look into it, any articles?
Apparently 2002 SSW was something exceptional, if you google :
Antarctic 2002 Sudden stratospheric warming
there are numerous entries and articles for the event.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Nope, what drove the Vikings was a steadily deteriorating climate long before the Spoerer, starting already around 1200. http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/end_of_vikings_greenland.html
The Wolf minimum is quite strong in Greenland Be10 as well. Much stronger than Oort. The last marriage which took place in Hvalsey church on Greenland was in 1408. They disappeared after 1480.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/tim-10be.jpg
@Bob Tisdale,
I would think inertia. To me the idea is in principle not very different from the scenario the authors argue for at the end of this page.
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/ocean_heat_storage_transfer.html
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Hi Bob!
You write: “No dataset–Land Surface Temperature, Sea Surface Temperature, Lower Troposphere Temperature, Combined Land Plus Sea Surface Temperature, Ocean Heat Content, Sea Level–during that satellite era supports the “Solar theory”, and during the satellite era, the data is “robust enough” to detect it. Have you considered that fact that maybe your “Solar theory” is wrong?”
First of all, im thrilled that we can talk about the essentials finally.
Glacier data:
I analysed Oerlemanns glacier data here:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-warm-glacier-temperature-reconstruction-of-oerlemans-2005-160.php
And I believe this graph tells a story you should not ignore:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/glaciers/Skepticalscience.jpg
summa: Recent data is not showing more heat than 1945-55 data
You have to ignore for example UHI to get the idea that ordinary temperature data is robust.
You should not: http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/urban-heat-island—uhi—a-world-tour-159.php
You have to ignore warming adjustments too to ditch Solar theory using std temperature data.
Sea levels has not accellerated in 2000 compared to 1940:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/0/0f/Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png
Greenland – where UHI and adjustments are limited – shows approx same temperatures in recen decades as in 1925-47.
In general you can come with studies of recent data where results happens to become more in line with AGW points of view, but thats another story. This you can do on practically all parts of the climate debate: Recent studies that comes after changes of viewpoints by IPCC or NASA tends to support these. You can then coose that this is a freak random coincidence.
Then you came with a comment i need to address. You implied that when I dig into and use older data like “national geographic”, then you suggest that peoble wont “believe me”.
Why do you think we had peoble hacking CRU´s office? Why are there a huge pressure on GISS, NIWA, CRU, the university that holds Manns data etc to release ORIGINAL DATA?? Its because its a widely spread out wish to know how much data has been adjusted!
But I just take the easy way: Data is there right in front of us in the old writings. I have summarized ALL relevant original temperature data of recent temperatures here:http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-180.php
Bob, its simply your personal opinion, that it is not relevant to work with original non-adjusted data as I do.
You again and again accept blindly what ever comes from CRU, GISS etc is state of the art useful. So it seems.
Bob, your confidence in CRU and GISS data is your business, but you must stop claiming that we all should have your opinions about what data is in fact solid and what is not!! Your opinions are your opinions, no more no less.
Your concern about who will believe what: This is totally wild guessing from your part. I can tell you this: Normally i think hidethe decline has around 5000 hits a day. But in the days when a new article is on, its normally around 30-60000 hits a day. We had all time record of 149.820 hits in one day 18 March 2010, so someone is reading afterall. This happens even though i often simoutaneously publish at Joanne Nova or WUWT. So we dont cry over lack of readers. But if you say they all read our stuff because they dont believe a word … well thats your belief.
K.R. Frank
Dr. Svalgaard
Your link
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/determining_climate_record.html
should cause you some concern. Data for NAP prior 1650 is scarce, but what there is, it tallies nicely with your link’s temperature graph.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAP11-16.htm
Time to think again.
Vuk, tallbloke, & others:
Cause & effect. Like they say in politics, follow the money to root out cause and effect — in this case, follow the energy. It’s an unbelievable stretch to say that a minor component (energy-wise) of TSI (UV) that only affects an isolated and tiny (mass-wise) part of the atmosphere (the stratosphere) controls the weather/climate. That’s prb’ly worse than saying a minor change in a trace gas like CO2 controls the climate — at least CO2 & other GHGs have a measurable effect on the radiation properties at the surface.
Most of the argument on this subject assumes instantaneous effect. That is, the effect follows the cause immediately. These arguments are spurious. Before one attempts to analyze one must understand the basic physics no matter how big ones computer. The ocean contains many zones that interact with one another and with the surface. Any useful analysis requires one to accept this fact ab initio. Some posters above do realize this.
One such approach might be the one adopted by John Scott Haldane. Haldane sought to develop a procedure for estimating the blood level of nitrogen in deep sea divers. His approach involved dividing the body into many individual “compartments” and determining the time constants for each. Google “Haldanean.” If you don’t care about the math, read the man’s bio. He was a memorable individual.
Looking at graphs that assume instantaneous effect is a waste of time. The one above that treats solar cycle length vs future temperature change is not; it does not assume instantaneous effect. It is a stab in the right direction.
Geoff Sharp says:
January 4, 2011 at 12:31 am
No , I distinctly remember you saying SC24 will not be a grand minimum. It might be worth tracking if I can be bothered.
It probably won’t [although I would like it to]. I might have said that if it becomes like the Dalton, then since the Dalton does not qualify etc. Anyway, it all hinges on L&P, so we’ll have to see if it persists.
Frank Lansner says:
January 4, 2011 at 2:01 am
“THIS is a central part of the discussion. IF the average solar activity was higher 1940-2000 than normal, THEN it is not impossible that we have higher temperatures in 2000 than 1940 due to Solar input.”
There it is again “not impossible”. Be positive if you mean ‘possible’.
The point is that I think 1940-2000 was quite normal. It are the dips [grand minima and smaller ones] that are not ‘normal’
Frank Lansner says:
January 4, 2011 at 2:23 am
And Leif, from you graph, its rather clear that the 1940-2000 general level simply is higher than normal:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon4.png
And you carefully cherry pick the Figure I use to show that all the old reconstructions are too low before 1945. You should have used:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon3.png
Bob Tisdale says:
January 4, 2011 at 3:48 am
It’s all in the presentation, Frank.
Indeed.
tallbloke says:
January 4, 2011 at 5:25 am
The last marriage which took place in Hvalsey church on Greenland was in 1408. They disappeared after 1480.
As I said, the Spoerer didn’t do it.
Vuk etc says:
January 4, 2011 at 6:22
should cause you some concern. Data for NAP prior 1650 is scarce
I don’t waste time on NAP.
Pochas, exactly, too see a problem in the temp vs. solar activity you have to believe that a raise in temperature cannot dring[?] more decades during unusually strong solar activity.
Bob, Rain.
– a funny/interesting finding from E.M.Smith, the rain also just happens to follow temperatures way back rather well… that is except for the 20 ´century where the “rain-temperature-indicator” just stops to confirm the traditional temp records – Very well spotted by E.M. Smith:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/does-rain-call-giss-liars/
Water…. gate 🙂
And if you check out the water content in in atmosphere well surprise, the water-temp relation ship seems confirmed on the shorter scale, but certainly does not support that 2000 should be very much warmer than 1950 and thus that Solar theory should have problems:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/feedback-positive-ndash-rdquowhat-makes-co2-heat-dangerousrdquo-29.php
K.R. Frank
Tree rings fail to support strongly rising temperatures too, thus supports Solar theory:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/climategate/MannDeclineALLsmall.jpg
K.R. Frank
Corals appear to be warm-temperature-lovers:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/corals%20barrier%20reef/nyc9.jpg
In this example, the Coral “temperature signal” actually shows higher signal recently than 1940, though, but even at the SH in the ocean, we here see an example of strong temperature dive after 1940, and that the rise after 1970 is not extremely much larger than the dive 1940-70 indicating a moderate warmer 2000 than 1940.
this little “coral gate” was taken from:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/corals-and-the-great-barrier-reef-43.php
If droughts has anything to do with temps, US does not sopport higher temperatures 2000 than 1940, on the countrary:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/droughts%20usa/h1.jpg
Rain in Australia appears temperature related, but cannot support higher temperatures 2000 than 1940:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/droughts/AuastraliaRain.jpg
Melting from Greenland icecap Boxer 2009 does not show recent flow larger than 1930:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/greenland%20temperatures%20measured%20and%20ice%20cap/c3.jpg
Antarctic UHI free UAH data, same story:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/antarctic%20air%20temperature%20at%20lower/aaf.jpg
Tree rings combined with UAH shows temps 2000 = 1940 too:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/medieval%20warm%20period/d7.jpg
Sea level rise again:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/sea-level-rise-the-ocean-has-risen-constantly-for-150-years-51.php
Sea level added to the “wrong” graphs :-9
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/temperature%20proxies/g5.jpg
Temperatures Europe, Balling 1997 when UHI removed:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/UHIworldtour/EuropeUHIBalling1997.jpg
etcetcetcetcetc…
Finally Check out Scaffetta / Solar theory:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/solar-theory-ndash-temperatures-vs.-solar-activity-27.php
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 4, 2011 at 7:34 am
tallbloke says:
January 4, 2011 at 5:25 am
The last marriage which took place in Hvalsey church on Greenland was in 1408. They disappeared after 1480.
As I said, the Spoerer didn’t do it.
Nor did the Oort. The Wolf was the start of the trouble, then there was a 25 year improvement from 1325 to 1350. Then the descent into the Spoerer was the nail in the coffin.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/tim-10be.jpg
And here some 0,4K warming adjustments of US temperatures after 1940:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/temperature%20corrections/f8.jpg
Global 0,07K warming inserted after just combining records:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/temperature%20corrections%20combined/ADJcombining7006recs.jpg
Is it now we should think that the conventional temperatures are so solid that they coulf be used to dismis Solar teory?
Radiosonde, raobcore: How high are 1940 compared with today?
Ok this is tropical:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/temperatures%20measured%20from%20satelites%20and%20baloons/g4.jpg
Stalagmite: Notice that on this graph, the stalagmite – red- shows decline until it ends!
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/stalagmite.jpg
K.R Frank
and how about a 0,2K difference between CRU and ERA40 GLOBAL over just a few decades…?
Now CRU if ROBUST so i can be used to dismis the whole Solar theory?
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig60.jpg
from
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/part3-the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-184.php
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Robuk says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Why don`t you add CO2 to this graph, don`t bother I`ve already done it.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/leif4.jpg
So you demonstrate that temperature change is not by the Sun. This is, however, old hat.
NO, I am saying that a steady increase in TSI from the early 20th century and remaining at that very high level will for a certain length of time keep the temperature rising. The TSI increase ended around the early 1960`s, that high level continued until the peak of solar cycle 23 around 2001 but the temperature stopped increasing in 1995 near the end of solar cycle 22 even though a warm PDO was dominant throughout and CO2 was still increasing. There are 15 years of level temperatures and the only forcing that has not increased during that time is the sun. The sun is the dominant factor.
It`s a travesty we can’t account for the lack of warming.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/irradiance.gif
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/pdo-1.jpg
Suggestion for
Svalgaard, Cliver, Rouillard, Le Sager, Lockwood and McCracken;
get an e-conference going and find out what is Vukcevic up to.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AllvsVuk.htm
And Bob, finally finally the strongest argument that rocks the robustness of your CRU and GISS data:
“How likely is it that so many data sources should have errors while GHCN based temperature should be correct?”
so-so
And the final blow to CRU + GISS:
How likely is it, that all these data sources just happens to fail in pretty much the same way? – A rather common “error-trend” that happens to take place accross sea-level, Rain, Drought, Glacier, Proxies and much more?
How likely is it that alle these data sources just “fails” in pretty much the same way?
At leastm this problem is big enough for GHCN based data (CRU+GISS) so that these should be handled with care.
K.R. Frank
tallbloke says:
January 4, 2011 at 8:11 am
“As I said, the Spoerer didn’t do it.”
Nor did the Oort.
Now, that we can agree on. None of the solar minima did it. The Earth’s climate did them in, regardless of solar cycles.
Vuk etc says:
January 4, 2011 at 8:32 am
Suggestion for Svalgaard, Cliver, Rouillard, Le Sager, Lockwood and McCracken;
get an e-conference going and find out what is Vukcevic up to.
If you think you have something, publish it.
Robuk says:
January 4, 2011 at 8:32 am
NO, I am saying that a steady increase in TSI from the early 20th century and remaining at that very high level will for a certain length of time keep the temperature rising.
The steady increase in TSI from the early 18th century and remaining at that very high level will for a certain length of time keep the temperature rising during the Dalton Minimum.
Frank Lansner says: “And Bob, finally finally the strongest argument that rocks the robustness of your CRU and GISS data:”
They are not MY data, Frank. They are established and published datasets with known deficiencies. So your argument beyond that point is unfounded.
******
Dave Springer says:
January 4, 2011 at 4:32 am
The water below the thermocline isn’t at 3.0C because that’s the temperature of maximum density. It’s at 3.0C because that’s the average surface temperature over an entire glacial cycle. It’s physically impossible for it to be at that temperature for any other reason.
******
I agree. Oceans are stratified & heat movement considerably limited, so the water stored below is a “relic” of at least the previous thousand yrs, depending on what the cycle-time of the deep water is. Even if it’s only 1000 yrs & doesn’t reflect the previous ice-age, it still shows there’s alot of near-freezing water accumulating in the oceans, enough to fill most of the ocean’s volume! Otherwise the deep water would be around the avg temp of the earth — 15C instead of 4C.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 4, 2011 at 8:50 am (Edit)
tallbloke says:
January 4, 2011 at 8:11 am
“As I said, the Spoerer didn’t do it.”
Nor did the Oort.
Now, that we can agree on. None of the solar minima did it. The Earth’s climate did them in, regardless of solar cycles.
The way it’s looking to me and Vuk (I think) is that the solar magnetic activity plus the roving around of terrestrial magnetic anomalies add up to regionally strong changes in climate on the centennial scale. So, the Oort minimum wasn’t very pronounced in Greenland, and the Medieval warm period reigned long enough that the Greenland Viking colony established. Then the Wolf minimum and Spoerer minimum finished that episode.
You might remember that when you gave us a link a year or so back to a nice animation of the terrestrial magnetic anomalies reconstructed from 1500 (or was it 1600), I commented that the shift of one of the anomalies from Africa to South america seemed to coincide with their climatic shifts which were pronounced, and seperated by the timescale indicated by the anomalous magnetic traversal of the Atlantic.
tallbloke says:
January 4, 2011 at 11:33 am
seemed to coincide with their climatic shifts which were pronounced
‘Coincidence’ is the correct word. The magnetic field of the Earth has no influence on the climate as such [it might have secondary effects, e.g. on cosmic rays observed]. Regional variations even less. Vuk seems to think that the fields are generate near the surface, they are not, they are the results of convection in the liquid core 3500 km down. Spare me the nonsense, please.
Bob, you say about CHCN based data: “They are established and published datasets with known deficiencies. So your argument beyond that point is unfounded.”
You should be a politician 🙂
Beyond what is officially declared is unfounded you say…
1) Known problem: UHI
So how does Jones from CRU deal wit the known problem UHI?
I will tell you how: Jones says that they have skipped around 35 stations due to UHI problems. Besides that CRU does no UHI corrections. So in all the stations (incl cities) they use, they do no UHI corrections.
So yes, Bob that problem is known – but not dealt with.
Good enough for you Bob – ok thats your opinion, but certainly not a defended viewpoint that allows you to comand others to write and think like you do.
2) Known problem: Tree proxies
So how do we deal with the problem that tree proxies (practically all kinds of trees has mad a united front against the temperature data you know) do not match temperatures just like Solar activity, sea levels, glaciers etcetc?
Like maaaagic! They babtize the problem: “The divergence problem” ohooo!
And so they have delt with that.
And what then “causes” the divergence problem??
Ohh, its the sulphur in the air. Who cares that this sulfur in the air does only excist in near urban areas most tree samplea are from remote areas like Yamal etce.
But they have Bob Tisdale on their side still 🙂
Again, its a free world, but please RESPECT that other peoble certainly has other points of views!
3) Known problem: Altitude
Ok, Bob do you have documentation that shows that its a general worlwide trend that these temperature stations has been moved synchronically to higher and higher altitudes during the years 1900-2010 to legalize warming adjustments?
Or do you just accept that “proberbly” temperatures stations are allways moved up in altitude..??
4) Known problem: TOB, Time of Observation:
Ok, Bob do you have documentation that shows that its a general worlwide trend that these times are taken synchronically later and later in the morning etc accross all kind of states during the years 1900-2010 while these measurements were just ment for local wheater purposes?
– etcetc. and then mismatch with sea levels originally published, glaciers, rain, droughts etc etc are… “known problems” you accept. You sound SO like an AGW´er im sorry.
Well I just dont without any sound argumenting.
In my view you are far far from sceptical at many points, and thus I certainly do not think you are a typical sceptic at all. The problem is then, that you come to a SCEPTIC site and – as I see it – you simply want that other peoble write and think like sceptics often dont.
Hope you can answer 1-4) just very few of the known problems, show me that there is a reason why you accept all these known problems. Im a sceptic and need sound arguments. not “Known problems”!
K.R. Frank
And here some 0,4K warming adjustments of US temperatures after 1940:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/temperature%20corrections/f8.jpg
############
those adjustments are absolutely required to get accurate records. If you do not do those adjustments ( The TOBS adjustment) You are combining records that were taken at different times of the day. Changing the TOB creates a KNOWN and MEASURED and VERIFIABLE artifact. Consequently it must be accounted for with an adjustment. The issue is the SE of the adjustment and not the adjustment itself.
tallbloke:
I have elsewhere described how variations in the mix of solar wavelengths and particles could be directed in along the magnetic field lines (as regards charged particles that is) so as to achieve maximum effect at the poles.
As you may know, I propose that variations in the mix then cause variations in chemistry at the top of the atmosphere so as to influence ozone concentrations above 45km. That then affects the vertical temperature profile so as to change tropospheric pressure distributions.
If magnetic anomalies themselves move around then I can envisage the point or points of maximum effect also moving around so as to influence the shape of the polar vortices and jetstream meridionality during periods when the sun is less active. To a lesser extent when the sun is active because more zonality reduces the scope for variations in the shape of the circulation whereas more meridionality increases such scope).
Some regions could therefore be affected more than others for particular configurations.
Does that help?
beng said:
” so the water stored below is a “relic” of at least the previous thousand yrs, depending on what the cycle-time of the deep water is.”
The length of the thermohaline circulation (THC) is said to be in the region of 1000 years or so as is the timespan from MWP to Modern Maximum with a dip in between for the LIA.
Elsewhere I have proposed that changes in the quantity of solar shortwave entering the oceans (due to cloudiness and albedo changes) would set up a discontinuity along the horizontal line of the THC surfacing approximately 1000 years later.
I think that that sort of background cycling above and beyond ENSO and PDO is required to explain multicentennial climate trends and also account for the failure of the solar/climate correlations on timescales of less than 500 years.
The solar/climate correlation is very good over 500 year periods but rather sporadic on lesser timescales.
Update
No need for concern, the sun is doing just fine.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC6.htm
Stephen Wilde says:
January 4, 2011 at 12:04 pm
If magnetic anomalies themselves move around then I can envisage the point or points of maximum effect also moving around so as to influence the shape of the polar vortices and jetstream meridionality
As the herds of caribou migrate around then i can envisage the point or points of maximum effect also moving around so as to influence the shape of the polar vortices and jetstream meridionality
Beyond what is officially declared is unfounded you say…
1) Known problem: UHI
So how does Jones from CRU deal wit the known problem UHI?
I will tell you how: Jones says that they have skipped around 35 stations due to UHI problems. Besides that CRU does no UHI corrections. So in all the stations (incl cities) they use, they do no UHI corrections.
So yes, Bob that problem is known – but not dealt with.
##############
This is utterly misleading Frank. UHI is a “known” effect. That is, there are a variety of studies which show the UHI effect in selected locations. What has never been demonstrated is that this effect BIASES the global record in some measurable way.
There have been several attempts to isolate the UHI effect in the global LAND record.
A. peterson, parker, jones and McKittrick.
The only study to show some significant measureable effect in the global records is mckittrick. He puts the effect at something on the order of 50% of all the warming
ON LAND since 1979. I know of two studies that put the ENTIRE contribution of UHI to ONE STATION at 50% of its warming since 1833. or about .3C over that time span.
Jones, bracketed the effect at 0C to .3C and for his conclusion used .05C as a figure.
It is accounted for in the asymetrical error bars of the CRUtemp series. Finally, by comparing UHA,RSS and the land records we can gain some insight into the UPPER BOUND of UHI contamination in the record. It’s rather small. The point being, contamination of the record has been asserted but never conclusively demonstrated.
Its ‘removal’ has been claimed, but there remain some issues with those claims.
Anyone who wants to correlate solar information with the global record has the following issue: One cannot both accept the record for correlation studies and QUESTION the record in other posts. Consequently, I’d suggest anyone who wants to use the temp record for their studies had best work on the temp record first. Houses built on sand. Or accept the global record and stop posting diversionary things about it.
“2) Known problem: Tree proxies
So how do we deal with the problem that tree proxies (practically all kinds of trees has mad a united front against the temperature data you know) do not match temperatures just like Solar activity, sea levels, glaciers etcetc?
Like maaaagic! They babtize the problem: “The divergence problem” ohooo!
And so they have delt with that.
And what then “causes” the divergence problem??
Ohh, its the sulphur in the air. Who cares that this sulfur in the air does only excist in near urban areas most tree samplea are from remote areas like Yamal etce.
But they have Bob Tisdale on their side still :-)”
########
you utterly mischaracterize the divergence problem and do a great deal of harm to the fine detailed work that McIntyre has done. the divergence problem DOES NOT occur in all trees. I believe steve has pointed this out repeatedly. You have no understanding of this problem. you cannot even get the basic facts correct.
The cause of divergence is under investigation. This why people like steve suggest that it might make sense to look at BOTH trees that are divergent and those that are not. The result would be higher uncertainties about the MWP.
“3) Known problem: Altitude
Ok, Bob do you have documentation that shows that its a general worlwide trend that these temperature stations has been moved synchronically to higher and higher altitudes during the years 1900-2010 to legalize warming adjustments?
Or do you just accept that “proberbly” temperatures stations are allways moved up in altitude..??”
This is not a problem and has been shown repeatedly to not be a problem.
1. The avergae decrease in altitude is a few dozen meters.
2. the anomaly method corrects for this.
3. Methods that dont use anomalies ( jeff id ) ALSO show no bias.
4. You can look at low altitude stations EXCLUSIVELY and get the same answer
5. You can look at over 25000 daily stations and see that the answer is the same.
“4) Known problem: TOB, Time of Observation:
Ok, Bob do you have documentation that shows that its a general worlwide trend that these times are taken synchronically later and later in the morning etc accross all kind of states during the years 1900-2010 while these measurements were just ment for local wheater purposes?”
You do not understand the TOB problem. I suggest you find the thread where we discussed this on CA. When you change the TOB you will change the recorded min/max. This is an observational FACT. Consequently, if a series has several TOB you MUST CORRECT for the change in TOB. if you don’t you will introduce a BIAS. This has been shown and verified on several occasions.
Hi Steven Mosher!
And thanks for input!
I mentioned roughly 0,4K of warming (added from 1940 and foreward).
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/temperature%20corrections/f8.jpg
The left are the adjustments around year 2000 USHCN, and these adjustments are TOBS, UHI, altitude and the lot. Right is the V1 to V2 done around 2007, further adjustments partly argued as chaning UHI corrections. (however, the UHI before was juat around -0,05 K, so the addition of 0,15K is some change of UHI corrections..!)
You then defend the TOBS – part as I read you: “If you do not do those adjustments ( The TOBS adjustment) You are combining records that were taken at different times of the day. Changing the TOB creates a KNOWN and MEASURED and VERIFIABLE artifact. Consequently it must be accounted for with an adjustment. The issue is the SE of the adjustment and not the adjustment itself.”
Steven i totally understand the idea of TOBS and I agree that i can be very relevant. In some cases a measurement is done for example a little later in the morning which lead to a cold-correction, and in some cases its done a litte earlier and needs a warm correction.
But!
The TOBS is a big correction (as I remember around 0,2K worldwide 1940-today or similar). And this TOBS is added very smoothly over the years. So ask yourself, Steven:
1) Howcome the TOBS are not just as often giving a cold correction as a warm correction accros all countries all years?
2) Have you ever seen documented peer rev etc. showing how on Earth all countries synchrically more and more has changed Time of OBServation steadily in one way that just happens to legalize a BIG warming correction world wide?
K.R. Frank
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 4, 2011 at 11:42 am
Vuk seems to think that the fields are generate near the surface, they are not, they are the results of convection in the liquid core 3500 km down.
I don’t think that; I am suggesting it would better explain number of anomalies. I have no idea where field is generated, deep inside, near surface, above surface or whatever. What most of us think (with respect) it is irrelevant, reality matters, and that is continuously reassessed.
Steven, you write: “There have been several attempts to isolate the UHI effect in the global LAND record.
A. peterson, parker, jones and McKittrick.”
Peterson: This is a JOKE that exactly puts the UHI-honesty ino question! Have you not read how hes work has been atomized at climate Audit??
He got 0,05K for UHI as I remember, then Steve mcIntyre finally got hold of data, recalculated the Urban group vs. non Urban and got… + 0,7K from the very same data Peterson used. So we appear to have some sort of calculation error (!!)
Then McIntyre discoveres, that peterson had actually put several rural stations in the urban group and vice versa!! And then McIntyre ended up with a full
+2 K UHI f
or the very data Peterson and com has accepted to use for UHI purpose!
K.R. Frank
Leif,
I said ‘envisage’. I was not presenting it as a fact, just giving tallbloke or vuk some indication as to how it could fit my hypothesis IF they could substantiate it.
Personally I think that the shape of the polar vortex and jetstream meridionality is more likely a function of solar/oceanic interaction combined with the distribution of the continents and some internal system variability but if they can go further then so be it.
Still, if upper atmospheric chemical processes can override purely radiative processes by involving the thermal properties of ozone then positional modification seems feasible and your analogy becomes inapplicable. Unless you think herds of caribou can produce enough methane to create regional disturbances in the greenhouse effect 🙂
jones, UHi, well first i think he did some kind of collaboration on a Chinese study in 1990 to some degree (“wang” was the guy i think) who has been haunted for chosing mostly stations with cut time series. Im pretty sure that this study most certainly has been ditched. Later jones… in 2008?… made a new Chinese study where he got + 0,53 K UHI 1951 to 2004 as i remember.
0,1 K per decade is… A LOT!! compare the globbal warming is supposed to be 0,7 K / 100 years or so…
Parker… is that the wind study?? around 2004? I think it is. Te OBVIOUS thing to do with UHI is to measure urban vs. rural sites, and I will show you later why Parker did not do that. So without explaining whats wrong about just comparing rural vs urban, he makes hes own definition of how temperatures in wind from cities should be and on this groun ditches UHi. I may remember Parker wrong though, forgive me.
Now, Steven i will show you the BEST UHI study EVER made.
I was done by Thomas Karl with data running 1901-1984.
One problem for everyone that tries to study UHI today is that data has been adjusted etc, but the beaty of Thomas karls work is that this was done BEFORE agw agenda hit hard, and before the age of big adjustments.
Thomas Karls study was the best also because its the biggest study i have seen.
here are his results when comparing urban to rural sites 1901-84:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/city%20heat%20IPCC/aau.jpg
Remember that this magnitude of UHI is only for 1901-84, and thus perhaps roughly 70% of the 1900-2010 numbers.
Now, see in the results that for even the smallest category of cities – 2000 inhabitans – karl gets 0,06K for just 1901-84.
Compare this with IPCC typical estimate of 0,05 K in average worldwide.
btw heres the Peterson UHI masakre done on climate Audit:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/04/1859/
The fact that this UHi “study” has slipped through peer rev and intern scrutiny is very telling of problems when it comes to UHI and AGW…
K.R. Frank
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 4, 2011 at 11:42 am
tallbloke says:
January 4, 2011 at 11:33 am
seemed to coincide with their climatic shifts which were pronounced
‘Coincidence’ is the correct word. The magnetic field of the Earth has no influence on the climate as such [it might have secondary effects, e.g. on cosmic rays observed]. Regional variations even less. Vuk seems to think that the fields are generate near the surface, they are not, they are the results of convection in the liquid core 3500 km down. Spare me the nonsense, please.
~
But, but Leif, surface fields are generated “at the surface.” Why cannot they communicate with dipole generated fields? And if surface fields generated are result of solar activity..
Next question, we know that the suns source surface field at this juncture is stronger than its dipole field. Does the earth’s surface generated fields ever reach a level where they could change.. ah..never mind.
Entertain the idea of this for a moment. What happens when let’s say, the interstellar wind changes direction and comes from behind the heliosphere’s direction of orbit instead of meeting it head on? Or any other of the possible variations for that matter.
Steven,
Tree proxies: You write “The cause of divergence is under investigation. ”
Has been for years, not an argument. You cant just claim that trees behave differently today than earlier before you have some valid solid studies and hopefully good arguments in hand!
And yes, im perfectly aware that its not absolutely 100% all trees that behaves “wrong”.
Heres the average from a larger database ALL data, CRU:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/climategate/MannDeclineALLsmall.jpg
An exception is of course the brislte cones :-)) used by Mann!! I think they should rather study why a few tree sorts thrive today. I personally think its because that bristlecones lives often in altitudes and far most plants in altitude lives better in a world with more Co2 because water is limites in altitude and CO2 makes it nessecary to open poors shoorter time and thus loose less water. this is also why you see more growth in desserts during water limitations.
Here is Manns different tree sorts:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/fig11mbhbristlecones.jpg
How many of these shows the strong global warming signature after 1950?
The divergence problem, MORE:
here i show ORIGNAL mostly unadjusted temperatures mostly NH compared with tree ring data NH.
All timeseries cut in 1960 by IPCC even though both original temps and tree rings shows same picture:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig4.jpg
Heres the graphic of “historic temperatures” were IPCC just happens to leave out all temperatures agreeing with tree rings:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig2.jpg
Bravo IPCC.
read more:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/part1-the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-181.php
K.R. Frank
Vuk etc says:
January 4, 2011 at 1:58 pm
I have no idea where field is generated
There was just a few days ago a measurement of where the field was generated…
Steven finally about the siting / altitude issues.
The yellow line shows the corrections due to siting change:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/hammer-graph-2-us-temps1.jpg
There can be other reasons for warm corrections than altitude in the yelow graph, but often it is the altitude that is mentioned when siting issues are in question. (For example NIWA, many of the adjusments they did try to defend before withdrawing was exactly the altitude corrections. It then turned out they could not defend these either).
but altitude or other siting change: WHY do we see a netto big warming correction due to siting change?
You say that the altitude is NOT “a problem”:
”
This is not a problem and has been shown repeatedly to not be a problem.
1. The avergae decrease in altitude is a few dozen meters.
2. the anomaly method corrects for this.
3. Methods that dont use anomalies ( jeff id ) ALSO show no bias.
4. You can look at low altitude stations EXCLUSIVELY and get the same answer
5. You can look at over 25000 daily stations and see that the answer is the same.
”
Ok, so what other siting changes are then making the big yellow correction graph?
And I ask again,
1) why is it that the changes over sp many years over all countries more often gives a warming correction than a cooling correction?
2) Have you seen documented that we have a world wide synchronous change in site (altitude or not) to legalize big siting corrections?
K.R. Frank
Steven, Correction to question 1): In the graph i showed only usa, so for USA specific the question should say “states” and not “countries”.
K.R. Frank
Vuk etc says:
January 4, 2011 at 1:58 pm
I have no idea where field is generated
You have no idea about a lot of things. Here is the discussion of the generation of the Earth’s field:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/17/first-measurement-of-magnetic-field-in-earths-core/
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 4, 2011 at 9:20 am
Robuk says:
January 4, 2011 at 8:32 am
NO, I am saying that a steady increase in TSI from the early 20th century and remaining at that very high level will for a certain length of time keep the temperature rising.
Leif says,
The steady increase in TSI from the early 18th century and remaining at that very high level will for a certain length of time keep the temperature rising during the Dalton Minimum.
=======================================================
NO, The TSI after the Maunda was lower and shorter than the present warming and I am not commenting on the Maunda minimum as you well know.
Was the temperature rising during the relatively strong level TSI from 1730 to 1790, lets see,
The deviations of air temperature for each climatic phase are calculated by using the regression coefficient between mean number of days with precipitation and monthly mean daily maximum temperature, the climatic characteristics are as follows.
1721 to 1740 moderate throughout the year.
1741 to 1780 warm throughout the year.
1781 to 1820 cool in summer.
A level TSI from 1730 to 1790 should according to some have caused the temperature to drop as the TSI was not increasing, yet according to this study the temperature continued to increase up to 1780.
Seems the sun is the driver after all.
http://www.repository.lib.tmu.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10748/3507/1
/20005-18-006.pdf
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/maunda2.jpg
Sorry, here is the link again, if it does not work google it.
http://www.repository.lib.tmu.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10748/3507/1/20005-18-006.pdf
Robuk says:
January 4, 2011 at 3:25 pm
A level TSI from 1730 to 1790 should according to some have caused the temperature to drop as the TSI was not increasing […]
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/maunda2.jpg
Seems that TSI according to your link was increasing significantly from 1730 to 1790…
Carla says:
January 4, 2011 at 2:42 pm
But, but Leif, surface fields are generated “at the surface.”
No, they are observed at the surface. They are generated deep within the Earth, thousands of kilometers deep.
Steven, you write: “There have been several attempts to isolate the UHI effect in the global LAND record.
A. peterson, parker, jones and McKittrick.”
Peterson: This is a JOKE that exactly puts the UHI-honesty ino question! Have you not read how hes work has been atomized at climate Audit??
He got 0,05K for UHI as I remember, then Steve mcIntyre finally got hold of data, recalculated the Urban group vs. non Urban and got… + 0,7K from the very same data Peterson used. So we appear to have some sort of calculation error (!!)
############
Wrong as usual. You seem to forget that I was there with steve looking at the data.
There are of course problems with Peterson’s approach and his selection of data, but nothing like what you state. You neglect also to canvas Parker. We spent quite a bit more time with parker and even submitted questions to Parker which he answered.
You should spend some time with the actual data and read the actual posts and comments before you speak. Steve’s comparison, if you will read the article carefully ( as I did both at the time of it’s writing and subsequently in order to write the book) considered ONLY the raw data prior to the adjustments ( like TOBS and MMTS).
Now, if you knew anything about the MMTS adjustment or the TOBS adjustment you would understand steve’s rather fine point. Which is that prior to adjustments there is a diffference. These adjustments are required. There is no denying that. The question
has always been.
1. The production of the adjustment code ( which we have asked for)
2. Validating the size of the adjustment. ( WRT MMTS, especially. see Quayle’s paper)
3. The SE of both adjustments. ( see the recent update of Karl)
“Then McIntyre discoveres, that peterson had actually put several rural stations in the urban group and vice versa!! And then McIntyre ended up with a full
+2 K UHI f
or the very data Peterson and com has accepted to use for UHI purpose!”
Again, read more carefully. It’s still a comparison with raw data. I will say this Peterson’s study is in the course of being redone from scratch with much better urban/rural data. The results fall in the middle of the pack that Jones noted:
NAMELY, the UHI “signal” is somewhere between 0c and .3C.
Even at the worst case .3C the and is 30% of the total so you have a .1C bias in the
whole record ( land + SST) …WORST CASE
Frank>
“Now, Steven i will show you the BEST UHI study EVER made.
I was done by Thomas Karl with data running 1901-1984.
One problem for everyone that tries to study UHI today is that data has been adjusted etc, but the beaty of Thomas karls work is that this was done BEFORE agw agenda hit hard, and before the age of big adjustments.”
Seriously, you actually need to stop bloviating about adjustments and actually look at the station metadata to understand why a TOBS adjustment is needed. A few of us shared your concern over adjustments years ago and we actually looked at with some care. Start with TOBS. do the work. When you discover the REAL issue with TOBS, hollar back. Until such time you are just causing confusion. Start with Jerry Brennans work. You’ll have to go back to the days of John Daly for that
Frank
Steven finally about the siting / altitude issues.
The yellow line shows the corrections due to siting change:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/hammer-graph-2-us-temps1.jpg
########
Frank, since I was one of the first people at CA years ago to post that graph you really do need to do a bit of reading and due dilegence. Which correction would you like to talk about? have you read all the core science on each of the adjustments. have tou slogged through the master station data list to look at all the metadata? Were do I start? This is old hat. get up to speed.
Again, let me review the important questions. The need for the adjustments is real.
you must do a TOBS adjustment. you must do a equipmrnt adjustment. you must do a SHAP adjustment ( Filnet is not required unless you want to do CAM or RSM) The question is:
1. can we see the code used for these adjustments
2. What happens to out uncertainty structure after adjustment.
But like many others you tend to think you can DIVINE intent from the mere direction of an adjustment. or you niavely think that “raw” is better than adjusted.
If you actually cared to look at something like TOBS you would see the folly of this.
Anyway, lemme know when you catch up to where we were in 2007.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 4, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Vuk etc says:
January 4, 2011 at 1:58 pm
I have no idea where field is generated
L. S. You have no idea about a lot of things.
Absolutely, but still not deprived of sense of humour, so sadly lacking over there.
You finally took my ‘studious’ comment seriously. I whish I didn’t have to spent hours of typing and weeks if not months, of discussion on various threads, trying to point out to you known and documented facts (that you consistently declared as a nonsense) that:
– magnetic dipole is not equivalent to a letter “I” shaped bar magnet
– the North Hemisphere has two poles,
– the North and South magnetic poles change their intensity at different rate
– the Arctic field has negative correlation with the long term solar activity
– the North Hemisphere at the time of Maunder minimum suffered magnetic shock rising and falling back by nearly 10% all in a short space of less than 100 years
– the uncertainty of Dye-3 and GRIP10Be records due to subtracting dipole rather than the local Arctic field
– etc., etc,.
Perhaps we should have stayed ‘stuck’ to the fridge magnet, your favourite analogy of the Earth’s field.
steven, in your January 4, 2011 at 11:23 pm comment you “reflect” over the Thomas karl study that is the biggest study done and so very clear shows SIGNIFICANT UHI.
But you totally ignore to comment on this and we get no further.
Likewise, the Chinese UHI result from Jones giving 0,1 K UHI / decade – i may have missed something (!) but where are your reflections on this??
Then you point out the cdertainly relevant info that you have been part of the process, for examle when McIntyre wrote his article on Peterson. Yes, im impressed 🙂
But when i read it, I certainly just get the picture, that Peterson has calculated UHI totally wrong and that McIntyre gets up to 2 K UHI out of the very same data.
You may call me a fool, but I have never seen anybody interpret this in any other way.
NOW WE QUOTE STEVE McINTYRE, and, Steven, If “you where there” i have to ask if yo where awake?
Steve McIntyre writes about Petersons claim of hardly any UHI:
“I think that it’s incorrect for Peterson to say that there is no observable difference in urban and rural trends in his network. There is a substantial difference in trends in the “raw” data, which should have been reported. He believes that this difference is due to TOBS changes based on De Gaetano adjustments, but it’s possible that there is some other explanation for the difference, including the obvious candidate – UHI.
”
and
”
the notion that Peterson 2003 is a sustainable authority for the IPCC proposition that “rural station trends were almost indistinguishable from series including urban sites” seems increasingly difficult to accept.
”
Please read again on climate audit why the low UHI claims are NOOOOT supported as you claim:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/04/1859/
And Steven, think honest: Why do you think that AFTER Thomas karl made the biggest US UHI study yielding clear UHI using 4-500 rural-urban pairs, THEN comes Peterson with a SMALLER data foundation also from US and claims hardly any UHI?
Why was there a “IPCC-need” for Peterson to make a new (smaller) UHI study after Karls? Was there something in Karls study he did wrong? No, infact no one has ever claimed that karl did something wrong… IPCC used Peterson, ignored Karl.
K.R. Frank
Frank,
To me, this is the most important piece of Steve`s comments.
Assuming nothing, I downloaded raw daily data for 282 out of 289 sites. (The other 7 sites either had id number discrepancies or were not online at GHCND.) From this, I calculated average monthly TMAX and TMIN temperatures for all the sites and then calculated 1961-1990 anomalies. I then calculated simple averages of the “raw” anomalies for the two networks BEFORE any jiggery-pokery. Even if all the subsequent adjustments are terrific, from a statistical point of view, it’s always a good idea to see what your data looks like at the start.
and this,
You would think that this would have been one of the first tests that Peterson would have carried out and his failure to either carry out this test or report such results if the procedure were carried out is noticeable.
I think the word noticeable should have been consideraly stronger.
I believe the New Zealand data now shows no warming since the early 60`s.
Vuk etc says:
January 5, 2011 at 1:51 am
The field is generated in the liquid outer core and is highly disordered and irregular with many ‘poles’ all over the place. As you move away from any such ‘tangle’, it becomes increasingly regular as the intensity of an n-pole decreases with distance to the (n+1) power. [e.g. monopole as square of distance, dipole as cube, etc]. This means that at a large distance every magnetic field becomes dipolar. The field in the core is not influenced by solar activity because of the skin-effect [and also because it is 100,000 times stronger than the solar wind magnetic field]. The variations we see at the surface are just distant resultants of drifts and movements of the field in the core. There are crustal anomalies due to local ores. These can be very large [several times larger than the main field – e.g. at Kursk in Russia and also near Alert in the Arctic]. Of course, the crustal anomalies do not vary with time, nor move, nor change with solar activity.
stevenmosher says:
January 4, 2011 at 11:23 pm
Frank>
“Now, Steven i will show you the BEST UHI study EVER made.
I was done by Thomas Karl with data running 1901-1984.
One problem for everyone that tries to study UHI today is that data has been adjusted etc, but the beaty of Thomas karls work is that this was done BEFORE agw agenda hit hard, and before the age of big adjustments.”
Seriously, you actually need to stop bloviating about adjustments,
=========================================================
Legal Defeat for Global Warming in Kiwigate Scandal
According to the August official statement of the claim from NZCSC, climate scientists cooked the books . This involves subtly imposing a warming bias during what is known as the ‘homogenisation’ process that occurs when climate data needs to be adjusted.
It was shown that the scientist who made the controversial “bold adjustments” is none other than Jim Salinger who is also a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Because very few temperature records exist for the Pacific Ocean, the NIWA record is given extra weight by the UN’s IPCC for determining multi-decadal trends in global average temperatures.
Is it any wonder that these adjustments are questioned,
It should not be to difficult to find 50 rural sites in the US, maybe from Anthony`s http://www.surfacestations project and then compare them with 50 urban sites using only raw data, observe the results.
Then manually check and adjust each of those stations for moves etc and compare those results.
Then compare the raw with the adjusted, there will be no rural mixed with urban, just pristine data sets.
That should give a good indication whether the 0.05C is correct.
Or has it already been done,
http://climategate.tv/2009/12/11/picking-out-the-uhi-in-climatic-temperature-records-%E2%80%93-so-easy-a-6th-grader-can-do-it/
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 5, 2011 at 5:52 am
Vuk etc says:
January 5, 2011 at 1:51 am
~
Thanks Leif, there are other locations also, of surface fields, yes?
axial, rotational and gravitation fields too much for now.
I get to add to the mankind contribution list today, ores. I don’t feel so good.
1) Regarding the flawed paper by Friis-Christensen and Lassen, also look at Damon and Laut analyzing what they did wrong and how it could be done better:
http://www.realclimate.org/damon&laut_2004.pdf
2) A lagged response does not mean that the response is small during the time of maximum forcing, and then suddenly jumps up (temp increase afyter the mid seventies) decades after the forcing stopped (solar leveled off in the fifties). That can not be explained by a lagged response (as can also be seen in your ‘smoothing’ schematic).
3) I assembled some relevant graphs and arguments here:
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/recent-changes-in-the-sun-co2-and-global-average-temperature-little-ice-age-onwards/
The main reasons that disqualify the sun as being a major culprit in recent global warming (past 30-35 years) are:
• No increase in solar output (or decrease in cosmic rays) over the past 50 years
• Nighttime temperatures increased more than daytime (inconsistent with solar forcing; consistent with GHG forcing)
• Stratospheric cooling (inconsistent with solar forcing; consistent with GHG forcing)
Robuk – I agree 100%
McIntyre about Petersons work: “You would think that this would have been one of the first tests that Peterson would have carried out… ”
Exactly. This shows that for some reason this work has had an extremely easy way through the scrutiny and peer rev process.
It also seems that Steven Mosher accepts that all kinds of adjustments just happens to give roughly 0,4K significant warming or more for example fot the US. With this magnitude of corrections we would have a situation where Solar activity has a mismatch with temperature adjustments and not measured temperatures.
So if the Solar theory should be challenged by city/airport temperatures etc, then one should say: “Solar activity does not support temperature adjustments, therefore Solar theory is wrong”.
And to this comes as Alec Rawl wisely mentions, that it is likely that the unusual high rathre steady level of Solar activity 1940-2000 should lead to increasing temperatures in the period. And then finaly comes the UHI that Peterson certainly not has ruled out in any way.
K.R. Frank
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 5, 2011 at 5:52 am
………..
Agree that is state of science currently, but occasionally is desirable to challenge it, even if challenger may be wrong.
What I am basically saying is that idea of a conical vortex within rotating cylinder sphere is more likely than Andy Jackson’s idea off centre cylindrical vortex.
http://www.eri.u-tokyo.ac.jp/kokusai/english/researchers/jackson_a/Jackson_Nature20100506.pdf
Further, I am suggesting that if so than one of those (Hudson Bay) may be closer to the surface than the other two.
Siberian pole can’t be treated as local anomaly, since by now is much larger and stronger than Hudson Bay, and it can be legitimately considered a new location of the NH’s magnetic pole. This makes Earth having a magnetic bulge in the East Hemisphere.
As the iron ore is concerned than Magnitogorsk area is definitely leader in the field.
The rest for some other time.
Robuk again 100% I agree: The total collapse of NIWA who has been FORCED to withdraw 36 of 40 adjustments including siting adjusments is definetely an important writing on the wall. So perhaps its just NIWA that for some reason all by themselves has had a fun time making bizarre adjustments?? right.
And then its a “freak coincidence” again-again that the head of NIWA just happens to appear in many climate-gate mails? Right
Do we also believe in Santa Clause?
K.R. Frank
The main reasons that disqualify the sun as being a major culprit in recent global warming (past 30-35 years) are:
• No increase in solar output (or decrease in cosmic rays) over the past 50 years
Reply: A historically high level can keep adding energy to the system until a new equilibrium has been reached.
• Nighttime temperatures increased more than daytime (inconsistent with solar forcing; consistent with GHG forcing)
Reply: Higher air circulation zonality would have that effect and there is evidence that the level of zonality/meridionality is affected by solar changes.
• Stratospheric cooling (inconsistent with solar forcing; consistent with GHG forcing)
Reply. That is the biggie in my opinion but I have reason to think that stratospheric cooling is a natural consequence of higher solar activity because the cooling ceased as the sun became less active despite increasing CO2
Is that your best shot ?
Steven Mosher you write about the likely UHI signal: “Even at the worst case .3C the and is 30% of the total so you have a .1C bias in the whole record ( land + SST) …WORST CASE”
I have seen this type of reasoning before but I wonder if is really valid? I mean the ocean SST data are notoriously uncertain (worse than surface) when you go back in time. If a 0.3C UHI signal was found and the SAT trend trend reduced accordingly, you would suddenly have a surface warming slower than the ocean. That sounds quite unphysical to me. In that case another serious question mark would have to be put on the SST’s. Assuming SST’s to remain unchallenged if SAT trend was reduced by 0.3C does not sound credible to me. I would appreciate a comment on this.
Vuk etc says:
January 5, 2011 at 8:29 am
but occasionally is desirable to challenge it, even if challenger may be wrong.
The challenger must know something about it. The challenger must be coherent, and quantitative.
Further, I am suggesting that if so than one of those (Hudson Bay) may be closer to the surface than the other two.
Any and all of them are at least 3000 km away from the surface.
Siberian pole can’t be treated as local anomaly
You must distinguish between crustal anomalies [which are local] and main field anomalies [which originate 3000 kms deep and are thus not ‘local’ in any reasonable meaning of the concept]. Crustal anomalies don’t move or change.
Bart Verheggen says:
January 5, 2011 at 7:11 am
Nighttime temperatures increased more than daytime (inconsistent with solar forcing; consistent with GHG forcing)
I understood that the high T min is caused by UHI, remember the old heat storage radiators back in the 60`s, apply heat to an insulated stack of bricks then release this stored heat some time later, Buildings and ashfelt spring to mind.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 5, 2011 at 9:54 am
………………..
You are attributing some trivia, but steadfastly avoiding even to mention Siberia, let alone voice your opinion of emergence of the new location of the strongest magnetic field in the Northern hemisphere.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/data/mag_maps/pdf/F_map_mf_2005.pdf
No pussyfooting with magnetic needle pointing downwards and suchlike nonsense from 17th centaury:
What is your learned opinion of the recent emergence (around 1996/97) of Siberia’ peak?
Is this new magnetic pole?
Hi Stephen wilde
Great input. ( January 5, 2011 at 8:37 am )
To your point:
• Nighttime temperatures increased more than daytime (inconsistent with solar forcing; consistent with GHG forcing)
I would comment:
UHI – is known primarly to cause night temperature rise and certainly appears a likely contributor to this phenomenon. Again a problem with temperature data – not Solar theory.
K.R. Frank
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 5, 2011 at 9:54 am
What is your learned opinion of the recent emergence (around 1996/97) of Siberia’ peak? Is this new magnetic pole?
This is the composite result of convection currents from all over the inner core many thousands of miles away. There is no such thing as ‘the magnetic pole’. What we see is the combined effect of many convection cells. As you move away the details gets smeared out. A cosmic ray coming upon the Earth will not even see these irregularities, but rather a nice dipole [somewhere North of Canada for the moment].
There is no such thing as ‘the magnetic pole’.
Well, well that is a revelation, do I need to say more? For years you tried to convince me that is somewhere around Ellesmere Island. What about one near Antarctica, not a magnetic pole?
somewhere North of Canada for the moment
You are getting dated, North Canada had its day, its finished about 10 years ago. Onwards and forward to Siberian taiga !
Soon we’ll be harmonizing our views on Sun-Earth magnetic link. You got a head start on Mike Lockwood, I will be emailing him this and the others on the list if I can get their email addresses.
I like the idea that even top experts can learn something from an amateur.
I feel sorry for poor Dr. Hathaway, just wouldn’t listen to the obvious.
I am off now to the other solar thread. See you there.
Frank and Robuk,
Thanks for the extra input as regards UHI and I agree.
I wouldn’t ignore increased zonality though. Possibly a combination.
Either way it shows that there is a good explanation other than AGW and that the phenomenon is not a problem for solar based theories.
Leif Svalgaard says, January 3, 2011 at 10:23 am
“don’t believe everything you find on the Internet” 🙂
Understood but Nature.com also had a similar story:
“According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7012/full/nature02995.html#B1
kramer says:
January 5, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Understood but Nature.com also had a similar story
When you cherry pick, be sure to pick all the cherries:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler05nat_nature04045.pdf
kramer says: Understood but Nature.com also had a similar story
Leif Svalgaard says: When you cherry pick, be sure to pick all the cherries
Dr. Svalgaard, I’m disappointed (if no longer surprised) that you’re again promoting Muscheler et al.’s criticism of Solanki et al. without mentioning that Solanki et al.’s reply was printed in the same issue of Nature, and that Solanki et al. showed that the Muscheler et al. analysis was incorrectly based on normalized and detrended data, which, if corrected, resulted in an analysis much in agreement with Solanki et al.’s original paper.
Solanki et al. also noted that “their large values of [the cosmic ray modulation strength] contradict the integrated cosmic-ray flux measured by the abundance of 44Ti (half-life of about 60 years) in meteorites9,10 that have fallen since AD 1766. The 44Ti activity in meteorites is completely independent of transport effects and redistribution in the Earth’s atmosphere, so it provides direct measurements of past cosmic ray flux.”
Muscheler et al. have made no further comment, so the Solanki et al. result remains.
We had much this conversation almost a year ago. Like kramer, I mentioned Solanki et al. , you countered with Muscheler et al.’s critique – I then pointed out the above.
Your casual and wrong accusation of cherry-picking against kramer is, needless to say, also offensive.
oneuniverse says:
January 5, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Solanki et al. also noted that “their large values of [the cosmic ray modulation strength] contradict the integrated cosmic-ray flux measured by the abundance of 44Ti (half-life of about 60 years) in meteorites9,10 that have fallen since AD 1766.
This is based on very few falls with large uncertainties. Even the half-life of Ti44 was not well known.
Steinhilber et al http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009JA014193.pdf Figure 7 shows clearly that the main conclusion of Muscheler stands, namely that the sun has been as active as now several times in the near past. Compare 1730s with 1950s and 1980s on the graph. Several other recent papers e.g. Berggren et al also state that the recent maximum is not extraordinary. Geomagnetic data e.g. slide 5 of http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202010%20SH53B-03.pdf also shows that cycle 4 was on par with cycle 19, etc. Rather than fling around dueling links and references, I prefer to investigate myself the matter carefully. This may disappoint various believers in long-held dogmas.
oneuniverse says:
January 5, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Muscheler et al. have made no further comment, so the Solanki et al. result remains.
Inverse cherry-picking on your part, ignoring e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler07qsr.pdf
“Identification of the causes of past climate change requires detailed knowledge of one of the most important natural factors—solar forcing. Prior to the period of direct solar observations, radionuclide abundances in natural archives provide the best-known proxies for changes in solar activity. Here we present two independent reconstructions of changes in solar activity during the last 1000 yr, which are inferred from 10Be and 14C records. We analyse the tree-ring 14C data (SHCal, IntCal04 from 1000 to 1510 AD and annual data from 1511 to 1950 AD) and four 10Be records from Greenland ice cores (Camp Century, GRIP, Milcent and Dye3) together with two 10Be records from Antarctic ice cores (Dome Concordia and South Pole). In general, the 10Be and 14C records exhibit good agreement that allows us to obtain reliable estimates of past solar magnetic modulation of the radionuclide production rates. Differences between 10Be records from Antarctica and Greenland indicate that climatic changes have influenced the deposition of 10Be during some periods of the last 1000 yr. The radionuclide-based reconstructions of past changes in solar activity do not always agree with the sunspot record, which indicates that the coupling between those proxies is not as close as has been sometimes assumed. The tree-ring 14C record and 10Be from Antarctica indicate that recent solar activity is high but not exceptional with respect to the last 1000 yr.
• Nighttime temperatures increased more than daytime (inconsistent with solar forcing; consistent with GHG forcing)
GHG is not consistent with increased nightime temperatures. In real greenhouses, temperatures are higher during the day and lower during the night as compared to the surroundings.
What is consistent with increased nighttime temperatures is change due to land use. 150 years ago only 4 percent of the earth’s surface was used for agriculture. Now with mechanized farming the figure is 37%, with 3% of the earth’s surface now urbanized.
Leif: Rather than fling around dueling links and references, I prefer to investigate myself the matter carefully.
So, based on your careful investigation, you chose to direct kramer to a single paper, the flawed Muscheler et al. 2005 reply. It’s like recommending MBH98/99 – kind of absurd, no?
oneuniverse says:
January 6, 2011 at 3:02 am
So, based on your careful investigation, you chose to direct kramer to a single paper, the flawed Muscheler et al. 2005 reply.
kramer cited one paper. I cited one for balance. And I wouldn’t call it flawed as it is consistent with several other recent papers.
kramer says:
January 5, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Leif Svalgaard says, January 3, 2011 at 10:23 am
“don’t believe everything you find on the Internet” 🙂
Understood but Nature.com also had a similar story:
“According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.”
Here is the PDF.
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/14/dr-nicolas-scaffeta-summarizes-why-the-anthropogenic-theory-proposed-by-the-ipcc-should-be-questioned/
The warmers could not fault Dr Scafetta`s paper so they tried I beleive, to destroy the proxy data he used 10be and 14C.
ge0050 says:
January 5, 2011 at 10:54 pm
• Nighttime temperatures increased more than daytime (inconsistent with solar forcing; consistent with GHG forcing)
GHG is not consistent with increased nightime temperatures.
What is consistent with increased nighttime temperatures is change due to land use. 150 years ago only 4 percent of the earth’s surface was used for agriculture. Now with mechanized farming the figure is 37%, with 3% of the earth’s surface now urbanized.
And where are the majority of the weather stations situated.
Is there a study using T min only, this measure appears to be the one that shows an increase, it is also the measure that is linked to UHI.
If day time temps are not increasing, the rise in T min can only come from more retained heat from buildings tarmac etc, if T min rural is different to T min urban this would indicate a definite UHI forcing.
Stop using average temperature.
Bob Tisdale says:
January 4, 2011 at 4:53 am
Cassanders says: January 4, 2011 at 4:04 am.
“I don’t believe you answered my question. How would the pulse remain intact after 1600 years?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation
The longest known route for thermohaline circulation upwells in the southern Pacific after 1600 year transit time.
Wind driven warm surface currents make the trip from tropics to pole in just a few years. It’s the cold deep currents that move so slowly.
The Gulf Stream (a warm surface current) flows at 2 meters per second on the southern end and slows as it sinks to a terminal speed of about 0.1 meters per second at the northern end.
Robuk says:
” • Nighttime temperatures increased more than daytime (inconsistent with solar forcing; consistent with GHG forcing)
GHG is not consistent with increased nightime temperatures.”
Yes, Robuk, In addition find it very optimistic indeed that some people can feel so sure how CO2 should work so and so in night time.. when they cant show real data from ICE cores or the like that actually clearly shows a CO2 effect at all.
Leif and others: We DO agree that the solar activity has been larger in the period 1940-2000 than in the last several hundreds years, right? So never mind what we have a Solar activity level high compared to the last many hundred years and thus we shold not at all be surpriced that more decades with a steady high Solar input is accompanied by a temperature increase 1940-2000. So this particular argument against Solar theory appears weak indeed.
K.R. Frank
Frank Lansner says:
January 6, 2011 at 8:46 am
Leif and others: We DO agree that the solar activity has been larger in the period 1940-2000 than in the last several hundreds years, right?
No, that is the point, it has not. Several decades of the 19th and 18th centuries were just as active.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 6, 2011 at 9:06 am
“Leif and others: We DO agree that the solar activity has been larger in the period 1940-2000 than in the last several hundreds years, right?”
No, that is the point, it has not. Several decades of the 19th and 18th centuries were just as active.
I have collected a few graphs to show this: http://www.leif.org/research/Decades%20with%20Equal%20Activity.pdf
“Leif Svalgaard says:
January 6, 2011 at 9:06 am
Frank Lansner says:
January 6, 2011 at 8:46 am
Leif and others: We DO agree that the solar activity has been larger in the period 1940-2000 than in the last several hundreds years, right?
No, that is the point, it has not. Several decades of the 19th and 18th centuries were just as active”
That 60 year period (six decades) taken as a whole was more ‘active’ than any other 60 year period since 1600.
Several individual decades or lesser runs of decades of higher activity may have occurred since 1600 however.
Anyhow since 1600 the sun has become more active overall and over the same period the world has fitfully recovered from the LIA.
Furthermore from 1000 to 1600 it seems that the sun became less active overall and during that period the world descended into the LIA.
Stephen Wilde says:
January 6, 2011 at 10:00 am
That 60 year period (six decades) taken as a whole was more ‘active’ than any other 60 year period since 1600.
Except that it was only a tiny bit more active, and was split by 13 years of low cycle 20.
Anyhow since 1600 the sun has become more active overall and over the same period the world has fitfully recovered from the LIA.
The recovery by the Sun was over by 1730s
Stephen Wilde says:
January 6, 2011 at 10:00 am
That 60 year period (six decades)
is also stretching the period a bit. It was more like from 1945-1996 as cycle 23 was already on the way down, so make it about five decades, rather than six.
Leif and others: We DO agree that the solar activity has been larger in the period 1940-2000 than in the last several hundreds years, right?
Frank, from what I’ve seen, the terrestrial deposition of cosmogenic isotopes mostly record a decrease in concentration from ~1750 to the present (corresponding with increasing IMF, ceteris paribus), preceded by a period relatively higher concentration from ~1400-1750 (encompassing the Maunder and Sporer mimima).
There’s a decrease in concentration around 1790 (preceding the Dalton minimum) which in some data sets is similar to the 20th C. levels (in others it is higher), but it’s of shorter duration.
Leif: kramer cited one paper. I cited one for balance. And I wouldn’t call it flawed as it is consistent with several other recent papers.
The Muscheler et al. analysis is seriously flawed and shouldn’t be relied upon – whether the flawed results are consistent with the results in some other papers is surely irrelevant.
Leif: Steinhilber et al http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009JA014193.pdf Figure 7 shows clearly that the main conclusion of Muscheler stands, namely that the sun has been as active as now several times in the near past.
Why are you relying upon the Steinhilber reconstruction which you’d earlier rejected as using an invalid calibration (in the earlier referenced Scaffeta thread) ? It was rejected by you in the context of their finding against the proposed Svalgaard and Cliver 4.6 nT floor for the solar-wind magnetic field strength, but acceptable to you now when it helps make your point here?
I noticed that Cliver has abandoned the 4.6 nT number, and is now arguing for a ~ 2.8 nT floor. He writes “In both 2008 and 2009, the notion of such a [~ 4.6 nT] floor was undercut by annual B averages of ~ 4 nT. ” (“The Floor in the Solar Wind Magnetic Field Revisited”, Cliver & Ling.) It would be inappropriate to praise Steinhilber et al’s paper for also finding against the 4.6 nT figure, since their analysis was wrong (re: your defense of the incorrect Muscheler et al. analysis).
Leif: Berggren et al also state that the recent maximum is not extraordinary.
I assume you’re referring to Bergrenn et al. 2009, “A 600-year annual 10Be record from the NGRIP ice core, Greenland”, which concludes : “We observe that although recent 10Be flux in NGRIP is low, there is no indication of unusually high recent solar activity in relation to other parts of the investigated period.”
At the same time, in their Fig. 1 , the 10Be flux is lower in latter half of the 20th century than at any other point in their 600 year record.
Leif: Even the half-life of Ti44 was not well known.
Solanki et al. 2003 refer to a 44Ti half-life of about 60 years. In 2006, Ahmad et al. (“Improved measurement of the Ti44 half-life from a 14-year long study”) calculated the half-life to be 58.9 +/- 0.3 years.
Robuk says:
January 6, 2011 at 7:14 am
“Now with mechanized farming the figure is 37%”
That’s environmentalist propaganda and even so there’s detail left out. 11% is actually cultivated and the remainder is used to graze livestock. Virgin forest covers another 37% and the remainder is unsuitable.
If the global warming climate boffins’ claim was actually happening there’d be vast tracts of frozen land being transformed into arable land and lengthening growing seasons everywhere else. Alas, it just ain’t so. But at least production is up and water requirements down substantially due to higher atmospheric CO2 which goes to show that every global climate disrupted cloud has a silver lining.
oneuniverse says:
January 6, 2011 at 12:34 pm
The Muscheler et al. analysis is seriously flawed and shouldn’t be relied upon – whether the flawed results are consistent with the results in some other papers is surely irrelevant.
I don’t think so. And certainly his coauthors of the 2007 paper don’t either.
Why are you relying upon the Steinhilber reconstruction which you’d earlier rejected as using an invalid calibration (in the earlier referenced Scaffeta thread) ?
My problem with Steinhilber is that his calibration is wrong [he even quotes negative numbers of the magnetic field strength] for a very low modulation parameter. The high values are ok.
I noticed that Cliver has abandoned the 4.6 nT number, and is now arguing for a ~ 2.8 nT floor.
What he points out is that the floor of 4 nT has two components to it. A ‘basement’ if you will of 2.8 and a polar field componet making up the rest.
I assume you’re referring to Bergrenn et al. 2009, “A 600-year annual 10Be record from the NGRIP ice core, Greenland”, which concludes : “We observe that although recent 10Be flux in NGRIP is low, there is no indication of unusually high recent solar activity in relation to other parts of the investigated period.”
I think we should let the authors stand by their statement.
In 2006, Ahmad et al. (“Improved measurement of the Ti44 half-life from a 14-year long study”) calculated the half-life to be 58.9 +/- 0.3 years.
Bonino et al on 2006: http://www.springerlink.com/content/f7mh46q822504630/
measure a half-life of 66.6 years.
Leif:
I don’t think so. And certainly his [Muscheller’s] coauthors of the 2007 paper don’t either.
Solanki et al..’s reply to Muscheler currently stands without further reply in the peer-reviewed literature. Their criticism of Muscheler is reasonable and fairly devastating. Most significantly :
Leif:
My problem with Steinhilber is that his calibration is wrong [he even quotes negative numbers of the magnetic field strength] for a very low modulation parameter. The high values are ok.
You wrote earlier of Steinhilber et al. : In Figure 6 they have a dip ~1890. We and our ‘competitors’ [Lockwood, Rouillard, et al.] agree that there is no such dip. This shows that B is greatly underestimated for low values of phi, which is indeed the reason for the sharp dips below the floor.
From Steinhilber’s Fig. 1, phi is a little over 300 at 1890. While this is outside the range of the observational data (lower bound ~400), the differences between your proposed straight line and Steinhilber’s powerlaw curve fits are small at these values, as can be seen at Fig. 2 (using the better fit of linearly varying Phi with solar wind speed). From Fig. 1, most of 1710 onwards remains above 300 (bar ~30 years, which just dip below), and above 400 (bar ~80 years). Therefore at least the last three centuries (almost) can at be considered under your criticism.
Fig. 1 shows phi rising for the last over the last 300 years (although depressed in the 19thC compared to both 18thC and 20thC). A solitary peak in 1740 is of comparable amplitude to the 20th c. peaks, but the latter span a longer period. This would be evidence in support of the hypothesis that 20c has had higher levels of solar activity than the preceding few centuries.
Leif:
What he [Cliver and Ling] points out is that the floor of 4 nT has two components to it. A ‘basement’ if you will of 2.8 and a polar field componet making up the rest.
Not quite, Cliver and Ling wrote: “These correlations suggest that at 11-year minima, B consists of i) a floor of ~2.8 nT, and ii) a component primarily due to the solar polar fields that varies from ~0 nT to ~3 nT. The solar polar fields provide the “seed” for the subsequent sunspot maximum. ”
The polar fields are hypothesised to vary from ~0 to ~ 3nT, so the floor is the basement value ~2.8 nT.
Leif:
I think we should let the authors [Bergrenn et al. 2009] stand by their statement.
They write that “there is no indication of unusually high recent solar activity in relation to other parts of the investigated period”, but they don’t contest the latter half of the 20C has lower 10Be flux, indicating probable higher solar activity, than the rest of the 600 year record, a fact apparent from a visual inspection of their Fig 1.
Leif:
Bonino et al on 2006: http://www.springerlink.com/content/f7mh46q822504630/
measure a half-life of 66.6 years.
The Bonino study uses Ge spectroscopy to measure gamma activity from meteorites that fell in the last three solar cycles. I can’t actually tell if they derive their 66.6 year value or are just quoting it (I only have access to the abstract). A 44Ti half-life of 66.6 happens to be the result of Alburger and Harbottle 1990, so it may be simply a reference to a previous result. (Table 1 of Hashimoto 2000 lists ten different estimates since 1965.)
The Ahmad et al 2006 study is a superior experiment as it uses Ge spectroscopic measurements of pure source 44Ti and 60C, taken over 14 years in two separate laboratories. Their 2006 result of 58.9 +/- 0.3 yrs is an improved version of their 1999 calculation of 59.0 +/- 0.6 yrs, taking advanatage of their accumulated extra years of measurements.
The result of their careful study (with “special efforts to check for systematic errors”) is corroborated by the laboratory experimenta of Hashimoto et al 2000, which reports 59 +/- 2 years. In earlier studies, Norman et al. 1998 reported 62.0 +/- 2.0 yrs, Gorres et al.1998 reported 60.3 +/- 1.3 yrs, Wietfieldt et al. 60.7 +/- 1.2 yrs.
oneuniverse says:
January 6, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Solanki et al..’s reply to Muscheler currently stands without further reply in the peer-reviewed literature.
Nonsense, Muscheler’s 2007 paper is a reply in effect. There is no furyer reply in Nature, because Nature discourages such back-and-forth.
Direct balloon-borne measurements show that the cosmic-ray intensity before AD 1950 had a strong declining trend.
this is the same assumption that McCracken made when he spliced together the ion-chamber and the neutron monitor data, leading to a spurious jump of the inferred HMF B around 1950. A jump we know didn’t happen, so the criticism can be dismissed.
Therefore at least the last three centuries (almost) can at be considered under your criticism.
which would lead to even higher solar activity in the 18th century.
ii) a component primarily due to the solar polar fields that varies from ~0 nT to ~3 nT. The solar polar fields provide the “seed” for the subsequent sunspot maximum. ”
This is under the assumption that there were no polar fields during the Maunder minimum, and I think that assumption is quite wrong as we know that the cosmic ray modulation continued and that the dynamo was still working which it would not do at a polar field of 0 nT.
they don’t contest the latter half of the 20C has lower 10Be flux, indicating probable higher solar activity, than the rest of the 600 year record, a fact apparent from a visual inspection of their Fig 1.
There is good evidence that the climate has a significant influence [perhaps 50%] on the deposition of 10Be, so we cannot be sure that the 20th century climate is not at work here. See http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009JA014532.pdf
As I said the half-life is uncertain.
There are simpler ways of assessing solar activity than cosmic ray radionuclides [which are controlled by poorly understood processes, especially the deposition]. I have collected a few graphs to show this: http://www.leif.org/research/Decades%20with%20Equal%20Activity.pdf
Frank Lansner says:
January 6, 2011 at 8:46 am
Leif and others: We DO agree that the solar activity has been larger in the period 1940-2000 than in the last several hundreds years, right? So never mind what we have a Solar activity level high compared to the last many hundred years and thus we shold not at all be surpriced that more decades with a steady high Solar input is accompanied by a temperature increase 1940-2000. So this particular argument against Solar theory appears weak indeed.
The level of the suns effect is depenant on ground temperatures which are totally flawed.
What I find hard to accept is that the majority of the temperature increase is Urban Tmin, there is little or no increase in trend of urban Tmax, there appears to be little rise in trend in rural Tmin or rural Tmax, that is why there is only a small temperature increase or none shown at rural sites.
The UHI number is obviously the difference in trend between the Urban Tmin compared with Urban Tmax and it`s all linked to population growth.
When you take out the difference between rural and urban Tmin the actual 20th century warming is quite small and easily links directly to the suns influence on climate.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/Tmin3.png
http://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=rjes.2011.1.21&org=10
Leif: Nonsense, Muscheler’s 2007 paper is a reply in effect. There is no furyer reply in Nature, because Nature discourages such back-and-forth.
According to Solanki ea 2005, Muscheler ea 2005 inappropriately used a normalised, detrended dataset (I can’t check this since the reference is in an off-line book ). Solanki et al. note that once appropriate data is used, the Muscheler results become largely consistent with their own. Muscheler ea 2007, a separate analysis for the last 1000 years, doesn’t “fix” the specific problems with Muscheler ea 2005 – the latter remains flawed, so I would suggest not relying on its results.
The presented graphs in Muscheler ea 2007 also suggests increasing solar activity (decreasing GCR flux) since the LIA (say from 1700). The peak in 1790 was followed by the trough of the Dalton minimum, and then further increases.
Solanki ea 2005: Direct balloon-borne measurements show that the cosmic-ray intensity before AD 1950 had a strong declining trend.
Leif: this is the same assumption that McCracken made when he spliced together the ion-chamber and the neutron monitor data, leading to a spurious jump of the inferred HMF B around 1950. A jump we know didn’t happen, so the criticism can be dismissed.
Would you mind being more specific – what assumption? The balloon data of cosmic ray intensity does have a declining trend, but unfortunately it doesn’t significantly overlap with the the Climax data.
Leif: There is good evidence that the climate has a significant influence [perhaps 50%] on the deposition of 10Be, so we cannot be sure that the 20th century climate is not at work here. See http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009JA014532.pdf
We discussed Webber and Higbie 2010 – they assumed a constant GCR LIS. Their conclusions with respect to terrestrial 10Be levels are merely speculative.
Leif: As I said the half-life is uncertain.
Estimates of the 44Ti half-life have steadily improved.
You cited a single meteorite study, mentioning in the abstract a 66.6 yr half-life. The study appears to be citing the 1990 paper mentioned above – it seems unlikely that they achieved a good measure half-life by an analysis of a small set of meteorites (if at all – I suspect they just used the cited figur
I cited Ahmad et al 2006 (amongst others), which tackles the difficult problem of measuring half-lives of 10-100 years (the range falls between the good working ranges of the two main techniques of half-life measurement). They achieve progress on the problem partly by doing a long study, 14 years of measurements in two separate labs from pure 44Ti and 60C sources. Their work seems to be a significant achievement, and the result of 58.9 +/- 0.3 years as the half-life of 44Ti is in good agreement with other studies from 1999 onwards..
If you are aware of a better study than this, please bring it forward.
Just for interest, WolframAlpha gives a half-life of 59.9 yrs for 44Ti, but doesn’t cite a source. Wikipedia gives 60.0 yrs, based it seems on studies mostly from the 90’s.
Leif: There are simpler ways of assessing solar activity than cosmic ray radionuclides [which are controlled by poorly understood processes, especially the deposition]. I have collected a few graphs to show this: http://www.leif.org/research/Decades%20with%20Equal%20Activity.pdf
These are restricted to the instrumental period of the last couple of centuries, though.
oneuniverse says:
January 7, 2011 at 3:28 pm
These are restricted to the instrumental period of the last couple of centuries, though.
They show that the ion chamber/neutron monitor jump which Solanki/McCracken rely on did not happen. All the rest then just becomes straw men. The original issue was whether the recent activity is the highest in 10,000 years. Steinhilber’s record is pretty good most of the time [except for those deep dips which are due to incorrect calibration for small modulation parameters. Here is the Steinhilber record [expressed in equivalent HMF field strength: http://www.leif.org/research/Steinhilber-HMF-B.png see for yourself. If you have any beef with Steinhilber, take it up with him.
Leif: They show that the ion chamber/neutron monitor jump which Solanki/McCracken rely on did not happen.
While the Neher ionisation data doesn’t overlap with the Climax data, it does overlap and agree with the Forbush data, which also overlaps and agrees with the Climax data. (See Fig. 2, left panel, of Mewaldt ea 2005). 10Be and 14C records also show decreasing concentration in the first half of 20thC. What is the inconsistency?
oneuniverse says:
January 8, 2011 at 2:23 pm
What is the inconsistency?
The inconsistency is most clearly seen here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2006JA012117.pdf Figure 7. The big jump ~1950 would result is a 1.7 nT jump in HMF B http://www.leif.org/EOS/2006JA012119.pdf which is not observed. Steinhilber et al and Svalgaard & Cliver and Lockood et al all agree on that, see http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf Figures 11, 13, and 14. So the slicing together of the ion-chamber and neutron monitor data is not correct.
re: Fig. 7 (McCracken & Beer)
It’s a comparison between the sunspot record and neutron monitor counts (as proxies for GCRs). GCRs can vary for reasons other than changes in the HMF, for which sunspots are a limited proxy. The decline before 1950 is not a reason to throw out the data. Remember, in 2009, GCRs broke the space age record (by 19%) since the 50’s. So there’s no reason to rule out that they weren’t also higher before the ’50s.
re: Fig 11,13 & 14 (Svalgaard & Cliver)
Figs. 11-14 (with the exception of one of the 5 recons. in Fig. 14) show increasing HMF B during 1900-1950 , consistent with the ionisation chamber data.
Dr. Svalgaard, I enjoyed reading the discoveries in “Long-term geomagnetic indices and their use in inferring solar wind parameters in the past” (Svalgaard & Cliver 2006).
You refer to an apparent discontinuity in the aa-index around 1957. You note that the discontinuity is not present in the ap-index. Now 1957 happens to be date that the ‘northern’ observatory (of the two observatories used to calculate the aa-index) was relocated to Hartland, so there could be an introduced discontinuity there. I apologise if you’re already aware of this, but I saw no mention of it in the paper.
oneuniverse says:
January 8, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Remember, in 2009, GCRs broke the space age record (by 19%) since the 50′s. So there’s no reason to rule out that they weren’t also higher before the ’50s.
No, they did not. The comparison is flawed as the comparison [for very low energy GCRs] was with the previous minimum, and every other minimum is lower. We know why [has to do with different drift depending on the polarity of the solar polar fields]. An honest comparison would cover the actual data from several stations back to 1952, as in http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic%20Ray%20Count%20for%20Different%20Stations.png
At this point people trot out Oulu as proof of a change, but that is spurious as Oulu does not maintain a constant calibration over time [that is hard to do], as you can see here: http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic%20Ray%20Count%20for%20Different%20Stations-Oulu.png
Figs. 11-14 (with the exception of one of the 5 recons. in Fig. 14) show increasing HMF B during 1900-1950 , consistent with the ionisation chamber data.
No, because the ion chamber data predicts a much large increase, which is not observed.
oneuniverse says:
January 8, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Dr. Svalgaard, I enjoyed reading the discoveries in “Long-term geomagnetic indices and their use in inferring solar wind parameters in the past” (Svalgaard & Cliver 2006).
You refer to an apparent discontinuity in the aa-index around 1957. You note that the discontinuity is not present in the ap-index. Now 1957 happens to be date that the ‘northern’ observatory (of the two observatories used to calculate the aa-index) was relocated to Hartland, so there could be an introduced discontinuity there. I apologise if you’re already aware of this, but I saw no mention of it in the paper.
This is a key point as is part of the reason for the discontinuity as we discovered here:
http://www.leif.org/research/IHV%20-%20a%20new%20long-term%20geomagnetic%20index.pdf
There is a bigger problem with the aa-index, namely that it is also too low before 1938:
http://www.leif.org/research/Analysis%20of%20K=0%20and%201%20for%20aa%20and%20NGK.pdf
The only reliable index is our own IHV [and IDV] described here:
http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf and
http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/The%20IDV%20index%20-%20its%20derivation%20and%20use.pdf
oneuniverse: So there’s no reason to rule out that they weren’t also higher before the ’50s.
Leif: No, they did not. The comparison is flawed as the comparison [for very low energy GCRs] was with the previous minimum, and every other minimum is lower. We know why [has to do with different drift depending on the polarity of the solar polar fields].
I noticed that there was a comparison with solar wind pressure from the last minimum in one of NASA’s related press releases, but I didn’t see it for the CRs. According to Dr. Mewaldt : “In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we’ve seen in the past 50 years.”.
Note that HMF B and solar wind pressure also broke records in 2008-2009:
“In both 2008 and 2009, the notion of such a [~ 4.6 nT] floor was undercut by annual B averages of ~ 4 nT. ” , Cliver & Ling
“Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft show that solar wind pressure is at a 50-year low,” according to Dr. Mewaldt, speaking in 2009.
“This is the weakest it’s been since we began monitoring solar wind almost 50 years ago.”, according to Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute, reported in Sep. 2008
“What we’re seeing is a long term trend, a steady decrease in pressure that began sometime in the mid-1990s. [..] We’ve only been monitoring solar wind since the early years of the Space Age—from the early 60s to the present,” says Posner. “Over that period of time, it’s unique. How the event stands out over centuries or millennia, however, is anybody’s guess. We don’t have data going back that far.”, according to Arik Posner, NASA’s Ulysses Program Scientist, reported in Sep. 2008.
oneuniverse: Figs. 11-14 (with the exception of one of the 5 recons. in Fig. 14) show increasing HMF B during 1900-1950 , consistent with the ionisation chamber data.
Leif: No, because the ion chamber data predicts a much large increase, which is not observed
The ion chamber data itself has a declining trend before the 50’s.
What prediction are you referring to? A prediction of HMF or GCR flux? Either way, you need to have great confidence in a model before you use a disagreement with the model’s predictions to throw out observational data. What specific prediction an d model are you referring to? (Otherwise it’s mostly handwaving..)
Leif: Steinhilber’s record is pretty good most of the time [except for those deep dips which are due to incorrect calibration for small modulation parameters.
Earlier you wrote : “In Figure 6 they have a dip ~1890. We and our ‘competitors’ [Lockwood, Rouillard, et al.] agree that there is no such dip. This shows that B is greatly underestimated for low values of phi, which is indeed the reason for the sharp dips below the floor. ”
The dip in 1890 isn’t neccesarily deep compared to the deep dips.
I wrote earlier: “From Steinhilber’s Fig. 1, phi is a little over 300 at 1890. While this is outside the range of the observational data (lower bound ~400), the differences between your proposed straight line and Steinhilber’s powerlaw curve fits are small at these values, as can be seen at Fig. 2 (using the better fit of linearly varying Phi with solar wind speed).”
Would you mind quantifying what you mean by a) a deep dip , and b) a (too-)low modulation parameter ?
oneuniverse says:
January 9, 2011 at 10:01 am
According to Dr. Mewaldt : “In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we’ve seen in the past 50 years.”
I just showed you the cosmic ray intensity the past 60 years http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic%20Ray%20Count%20for%20Different%20Stations.png
Mewaldt refers to low-energy cosmic rays which show a much larger modulation. We are probably now where we were 100 years ago.
Note that HMF B and solar wind pressure also broke records in 2008-2009
And again were are for those where we were 100 years ago, so the cosmic rays back then should be as they are now.
What prediction are you referring to? A prediction of HMF or GCR flux? Either way, you need to have great confidence in a model before you use a disagreement with the model’s predictions to throw out observational data. What specific prediction an d model are you referring to? (Otherwise it’s mostly handwaving..)
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2006JA012119.pdf
The observational data has poor absolute calibration.
By now, I have forgotten what it is you are arguing. Remind me. My point is that activity now is what it was a century ago [108 yrs], so with the current understanding of cosmic ray modulation the GCRs should also be.
oneuniverse says:
January 9, 2011 at 10:48 am
Would you mind quantifying what you mean by a) a deep dip , and b) a (too-)low modulation parameter ?
A deep dip is certainly one that shows negative HMF Bs. The problem starts with Figure 2 of Steinhilber’s http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009JA014193.pdf paper, that shows that the modulation parameter goes to zero for B going to zero assuming that all modulation is due to the magnitude of B. The red dots also may suggest a linear relationship that would give B = 4 nT for phi = zero. Too low modulation parameter refer to outside of the domain for which we have data. [red dots in Figure 2].
Dave Springer: I don’t believe your January 6, 2011 at 7:47 am reply answers the question of “How would the pulse remain intact after 1600 years?” either.
By now, I have forgotten what it is you are arguing. Remind me.
Well, I started by pointing out that Muscheler ea 2005 you’d directed warren to was a flawed analysis, which you fought for a while. You raised a few concerns eg about the half-life 44Ti, concerns which I showed to be incorrect.
I think at the moment we’re arguing about whether it’s appropriate to reject the pre-‘space age’ ionisation chamber data (as it stands) because a prediction from a some model, using said data, doesn’t match some other observations.
You hadn’t specified which model, which prediction & which contradicting observations, so I asked “What specific prediction and model are you referring to?”. Your reply was
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2006JA012119.pdf
In that paper, it’s your reconstruction (S&C) that disagrees with the other three (Solanki ea, Lockwood ea, McCracken), so at first glance, one would be tempted to place more confidence in the others. Maybe you’re right and the other three are wrong, but where is the technical argument ? At the moment, you’re just pointing out that they disagree with your reconstruction, something they note themselves. And what is the further argument saying that it’s not their model (or your model) that’s wrong, but the data?
The ionisation chamber data agrees with the cosmogenic proxies, (declining in the first half of the 20th C), which is something that one would predict if one considered both to be measuring CR activity, so that’s a point against your argument (which is still rather vague). On the whole, IMO you’re rather isolated in your position on this matter, and have as yet to provide the necessary argument to support it.
Post above, sorry, that shold have been “kramer”. not “warren”.
Leif: Too low modulation parameter refer to outside of the domain for which we have data. [red dots in Figure 2].
Thank you, ok.
Apologies for the proof-reading mistakes in last two posts (“shold”, “a some model”, “concerns..concerns”).
[Nah – Just consider it proof that you wrote it, and then read it, “write” the first time. 8<) Robt]
oneuniverse: where is the technical argument ?
Found it, I think.
Robt , cheers 😛
Leif, in “Comment on ‘The heliomagnetic field near Earth, 1428-2005’ by K. G. McCracken”, by Svalgaard and Cliver, you wrote:
The 10Be and 14C records are produced by the action of cosmic ray particles, and have a declining trend like the 1933-1951 ionisation data.
eg. see the solar modulation potential inferred from multiple 10Be and 14C records (Fig. 9 & 10) in Muscheler et al. 2007 . They show decreasing trends (and the Wolf and group sunspot numbers – Fig. 11, panel a – are increasing) for the period 1900-1950, and I think 1930-1950, although the graphs are a little cramped horizontally to make it easy. Looking for a higher resolution graph, I found this already open in my browser – Beer et al. 1994, Fig. 5, 14C measured (from Stuiver and Braziunas 1993), which shows 1930-1951 having a declining concentration. It’s a little late here though – I’ll have a look tomorrow.
I’ll have a look tomorrow
Along with Beer 1994 and Muscheler ea. 2007, I found Usoskin ea 2002 , Fig. 4 (10Be) and Usoskin ea 2005, Fig. 2 (SN derived from 10Be & 14C).
In disagreement, I found Berggren 2009, NGRIP & Dye 3, Fig. 3 (10Be), which shows a flat trend for 1930-1950. However, Muscheler ea 2007, Fig. 8 brings together the Dye 3, Dome C and Southpole cores (10Be deposition has regional variations, so benefits from an analysis using multiple cores) and shows the declining trend.
Leif, in your reply to McCracken, as part of your reasoning for why the 1933-1951 ionisation chamber data needs to be questioned, you wrote : “For each of these series, the HMF at the 1944 and 1954 minima is essentially constant at ~5 nT (Figure 2).”
Yes, but the maxima are increasing, in the fig. 2 reconstructions.
The sunspot numbers from SIDC also have increasing maxima . Picking years with lowest & highest SSN :
1937.5 — 114.4
1944.5 — 9.6
1947.5 — 151.6
1954.5 — 4.4 ,
1957.5 — 190.2
Picking years either side of the maximum counts also gives a rising maximum.
Leif: The [ionisation chamber] observational data has poor absolute calibration.
As well as agreement with the neutron monitor data and the cosmogenic proxies, the Neher i.chamber data overlaps 1957–1969 with the LPI group’s radiosonde ionisation measurements (longest-running measurements available). Please refer to fig. 4 of “Cosmic Ray Induced Ion Production in the Atmosphere” (Bazilevskaya ea 2007).
Please see fig. 4, where excellent agreement is shown for three different altitudes.
The erronous drift should be visible in the comparison (unless both group’s instruments drifted identically – unlikely as the LPI group use different apparatus and design), but it isn’t. So if, as you assert, there was a calibration problem, it had been solved by 1957. Is there some some flaw in their methods or instruments pre-1957 that you’re aware of?
Sorry, “groups'” , not “group’s” .. it’s late again, so bidding a good night.
[ Are you sure? 8<) Thank you for contributing. Robt]
oneuniverse says:
January 10, 2011 at 3:06 pm
I’ll have a look tomorrow
I’m travelling, so have not had time to look at anything. In the next couple of days I may catch up. Short comment: the solar cycle maxima are not important for this, only the minima.
oneuniverse says:
January 10, 2011 at 3:06 pm
I’ll have a look tomorrow
The calibration of the GCR flux is itself in a flux with conflicting views. My main argument is that since solar activity is back down to the level of 1900s, the GCR flux should be as well. Unless you can come up with viable mechanism that would make it different.
Leif: Short comment: the solar cycle maxima are not important for this, only the minima.
Higher sunspot numbers tend to accompany higher HMF. Since the S&C argument (quoted above) concerns HMF over 1933-51, surely low & high (all) values in the period should be considered. The sunspots predict an increasing HMF in that period, in agreement with the Neher data. Your own HMF reconstruction has increasing maxima during 1930-1950 (with stongest maximum of the series to follow).
Leif: My main argument is that since solar activity is back down to the level of 1900s, the GCR flux should be as well.
A disagreement of McCracken’s reconstruction with your HMF reconstruction from geomagnetic data isn’t evidence that the Neher data is wrong. They’re not even reconstructing the same thing (cosmogenic isotope production in the atmosphere vs HMF).
Leif: Unless you can come up with viable mechanism that would make it different.
Unless you can come up with a reason why the Neher ionisation measurements, which agree with the independent LPI measurements in their 13-year overlap, are not valid, then the Neher data should stand.
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 1:22 pm
A disagreement of McCracken’s reconstruction with your HMF reconstruction from geomagnetic data isn’t evidence that the Neher data is wrong. They’re not even reconstructing the same thing (cosmogenic isotope production in the atmosphere vs HMF).
The Neher data have no meaning in themselves. Only when they are used to extend the modern time series back is the Neher data of value. McCracken saw this clearly and reconstructed HMF. The HMF is a measure of solar activity, so we get a time series of that constructed from 10Be. This is what we are after as the original topic was whether recent activity is at a 10,000 year high. Who cares what the isotope production was if you cannot connect that solar activity.
Leif: The calibration of the GCR flux is itself in a flux with conflicting views.
Measurements from ionisation chambers were being carried out world-wide (and hence by many different experimenters) by 1935, and were used to find the ‘equatiorial dip’. If there were serious calibration problems, I expect that they would’ve been detected.
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 1:22 pm
Unless you can come up with a reason why the Neher ionisation measurements, which agree with the independent LPI measurements in their 13-year overlap, are not valid, then the Neher data should stand.
There are many reasons, all centered on comparison with other solar indices which do not show any discontinuity around 1948. Figure 15 of http://www.leif.org/research/The%20Open%20Flux%20Has%20Been%20Constant%20Since%201840s%20(SHINE2007).pdf illustrates this well. It shows the solar cycle variation of cosmic rays since the 1930s. At all minima the intensity reverts to about the same level [reflecting the lack of solar modulation at minimum], except for the minima 1933 and 1945 where the intensity is about 10-15% higher on par with the solar cycle variation itself. As all other indicators show those two minima not to be abnormal, the suspicion falls of the ion chamber calibration. You are welcome to believe that only the GCRs had this discontinuity and none of the other solar indicators had, but to me that is special pleading and is anyway unexplained. So, my statement is a bit of uniformatism [same laws as now governing the past].
Leif: The HMF is a measure of solar activity, so we get a time series of that constructed from 10Be.
10Be is a primarily, in its role as a space proxy, a record of cosmic ray interactions in the atmosphere.
Leif: Who cares what the isotope production was if you cannot connect that solar activity.
The solar signal is present in the 10Be and 14C records, as a modulator of GCR flux in the local solar environment. At the same time, secular changes of the GCR flux in the LIS cannot be ruled out (nor can secular variations of solar activity) – the cosmogenic record indicates a greater range than experienced in the 20th c. This introduces an uncertainty into historical reconstructions of solar (not GCR) activity derived from these proxies. They are more faithful trackers of GCR activity in the atmosphere.
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 2:44 pm
This introduces an uncertainty into historical reconstructions of solar (not GCR) activity derived from these proxies. They are more faithful trackers of GCR activity in the atmosphere.
For the question of whether recent solar activity is the highest in the past 10,000 years, the GCR activity in the atmosphere [and what 10Be measures is also deposition, i.e. climate dependent] is, I agree, so fraught with uncertainty as tracker of solar activity that we cannot attach much significant to it and, consequently, should not claim that it is in strong support of the ‘highest-ever] claim.
Even so, the 10-15% discontinuity is unexplained and at variance with current understanding [that may be wrong, of course] and hence must stand as an anomaly, invalidating the now anomalous record as a reliable indicator of even GCR activity.
neuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Measurements from ionisation chambers were being carried out world-wide (and hence by many different experimenters) by 1935, and were used to find the ‘equatiorial dip’. If there were serious calibration problems, I expect that they would’ve been detected.
It was well-known at the time that the measurements were not ‘absolute’ measurements, but that each counter had its own [essentially unknown] calibration. Neher’s balloon data were supposed to provide the absolute values on which to base the calibration of all those uncalibrated ion chambers. Clearly, this hope has not been fulfilled.
Leif,: As all other indicators show those two minima not to be abnormal, the suspicion falls of the ion chamber calibration. You are welcome to believe that only the GCRs had this discontinuity and none of the other solar indicators had, but to me that is special pleading and is anyway unexplained.
GCR flux is a measure of GCR flux – it’s not “special pleading” for me to accept the measurements as they have been written up, without you providing a substantial reason why not, which you haven’t so far. There’s evidence that by 1935 these instruments had no serious calibration problems (see the 1936 review in Physical Review) – the global ‘equatorial dip’ result still stands.
You are basing your argument on your S&C reconstructions of HMF (and I think one or two others). Most reconstructions of solar activity eg. Lockwood (see for example 2002), Solanki, Muscheler, Lean, Bard, Hoyt, Fligge and co-authors, all show secular increases during 1931-1955, in agreement with the Neher data.
Agreed, this was a known problem at the time, affecting comparison between groups, which is why relative measurements were considered more reliable (if less useful).
However, the secular change during 1933-1957 (as I should’ve written in last post, not 1931-1955) would have been recorded in the relative Neher record, so your criticism doesn’t find its stated mark.
By the way, absolute measurements were not “essentially unknown”, as you put it (particle beams were available for calibration) , but had uncertainties.
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 3:41 pm
There’s evidence that by 1935 these instruments had no serious calibration problems (see the 1936 review in Physical Review) – the global ‘equatorial dip’ result still stands.
The ion chambers did not measure the absolute flux, thus were not calibrated at all. So in a sense you are correct that there were no calibration problems, because there was no calibration.
Most reconstructions of solar activity eg. Lockwood (see for example 2002), Solanki, Muscheler, Lean, Bard, Hoyt, Fligge and co-authors, all show secular increases during 1931-1955, in agreement with the Neher data.
All of these have been superseded by newer reconstructions. It is only in the last 4 years that the community has finally figured out to do the reconstruction correctly. ‘Secular increase’ over 24 years hardly qualify as ‘secular’. And in any event, there is now general acceptance that the HMF and solar activity now is where they were 107 years ago, so for all we know GCR intensity should also be, and the recent attempts to use Neher’s data would indicate that the it should not be. Solar activity and HMF 1933 and 1945 were higher than now, so GCR intensity should not be 10-15% higher than now as Neher would indicate.
Leif: The ion chambers did not measure the absolute flux, thus were not calibrated at all. So in a sense you are correct that there were no calibration problems, because there was no calibration.
As I said, there was calibration, with uncertainties, but good enough to detect the equatorial gap around South America (which would be undetectable with the zero absolute calibration you’re suggesting).
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 4:10 pm
However, the secular change during 1933-1957 (as I should’ve written in last post, not 1931-1955) would have been recorded in the relative Neher record, so your criticism doesn’t find its stated mark.
There was no secular change at all 1930s-1950s, neither in solar activity nor in GCRs. The minima 1933, 1945, 1954 had very similar HMF, SSN, CaII values. Neher’s data shows a discontinuity around 1949.
By the way, absolute measurements were not “essentially unknown”, as you put it (particle beams were available for calibration) , but had uncertainties.
Which were larger than the variation between minima. ‘essentially’ expressed that.
Leif: All of these have been superseded by newer reconstructions. It is only in the last 4 years that the community has finally figured out to do the reconstruction correctly.
I’ll wait to hear the admission (or at least see its results in the literature).
As it stands, their reconstructions are in disagreement with yours in this regard. For a very recent reconstruction please see Krivova, Vieira and Solank 2010 – the large 1930’s-1950’s secular rise is still present.
Leif: There was no secular change at all 1930s-1950s, neither in solar activity nor in GCRs. The minima 1933, 1945, 1954 had very similar HMF, SSN, CaII values.
By my reckoning above, most records (10Be, 14C, ionisation chamber data, all in good agreement in tracking the increases and decreases) show the secular change.
re: considering the minima only, I wrote earlier :
Higher sunspot numbers tend to accompany higher HMF. Since the S&C argument (quoted above) concerns HMF over 1933-51, surely low & high (all) values in the period should be considered. The sunspots predict an increasing HMF in that period, in agreement with the Neher data. [ and multiple 10Be and 14C etc.]
Leif: Which were larger than the variation between minima. ‘essentially’ expressed that.
Besides the point: the secular trend still is still recordable with good relative calibration – please address this, the relevant, point.
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 4:26 pm
As I said, there was calibration, with uncertainties, but good enough to detect the equatorial gap around South America (which would be undetectable with the zero absolute calibration you’re suggesting).
You don’t need absolute data for this. Example: place several thermometers [using different scales Celsius, Fahrenheit, Reamur, etc] at different places and run them in parallel. You can still detect the seasons by relative comparisons. And I don’t say ‘zero’. just enough that the noise is too high for the trend.
Leif: You can still detect the seasons by relative comparisons.
Yes, and run the observations for long enough and you can detect secular changes.
Leif: And I don’t say ‘zero’. just enough that the noise is too high for the trend.
Johnson 1956, speaking of the Neher series up to that point (which covers the period we’re discussing) : “The accuracy of the intercomparison was quite good, being somewhat better than one percent.” (Johnson calls the absolute calibration “considerably more uncertain”.)
An error of < 1% is good enough for the Neher series to be suitable to detect a secular trend such as the one recorded.
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 4:41 pm
I’ll wait to hear the admission (or at least see its results in the literature).
To be submitted to J. Geophys. Res.
Centennial changes in the heliospheric field and open solar flux: the consensus view from geomagnetic data and cosmogenic isotopes and its implications
M. Lockwood and M.J. Owens
Abstract. Svalgaard and Cliver [2010] recently reported a consensus between the various reconstructions of the heliospheric field over recent centuries. This is a significant development because, individually, each has uncertainties introduced by instrument calibration drifts, limited numbers of observatories, and the strength of the correlations employed. However, taken collectively, a consistent picture is emerging. We here show that this consensus extends to more data sets and methods than they report, including that used by Lockwood et al. (1999), once a misunderstanding about that reconstruction is clarified.
For a very recent reconstruction please see Krivova, Vieira and Solank 2010 – the large 1930′s-1950′s secular rise is still present.
They still use obsolete data and superseded conclusions.
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 4:50 pm
“There was no secular change at all 1930s-1950s, neither in solar activity nor in GCRs. The minima 1933, 1945, 1954 had very similar HMF, SSN, CaII values.”
By my reckoning above, most records (10Be, 14C, ionisation chamber data, all in good agreement in tracking the increases and decreases) show the secular change.
One more time: there is no secular change, but a jump [discontinuity] ~1949 in the Neher data reconstruction.
Besides the point: the secular trend still is still recordable with good relative calibration – please address this, the relevant, point.
The point is that there is no secular change between the minima. The maxima do not count as far as calibration is concerned, and you ignore [or do not grasp] that whatever went up has come down, except the [inverse] GCR flux
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 4:41 pm
I’ll wait to hear the admission (or at least see its results in the literature).
M. Lockwood and M.J. Owens: “Svalgaard and Cliver [2010] recently reported a consensus between the various reconstructions of the heliospheric field over recent centuries. This is a significant development”
The consensus series was reached thus:
http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202008%20SH24A-01.pdf
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 5:14 pm
An error of < 1% is good enough for the Neher series to be suitable to detect a secular trend such as the one recorded.
There is no secular trend: solar indicates at minima 1933, 1945, 1954 are all the same. And the ion chamber data are not even good enough to show the typical solar cycle variation. Look at the last figure [slide 13] of http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202008%20SH24A-01.pdf
The big dots show the Neher data used.
But you are still missing the point: Any upward trends before 1950 have been erased by downwards trends since. so the GCR levels before 1948 should be the same as those after 1948. If they are not [e.g. Neher] they have a problem that you need to understand and explain in order to still believe in the data. You did not provide any such explanation. And I suggest there simply isn’t any as none is needed. That the sole dot before 1948 is 10-15% too high compared to all the other indicators could have any number of explanations.
To be submitted to J. Geophys. Res. [..] M. Lockwood and M.J. Owens
Abstract.[..] We here show that this consensus extends to more data sets and methods than they report, including that used by Lockwood et al. (1999), once a misunderstanding about that reconstruction is clarified.
I’ll have to see what Lockwood and Owen say – the abstract doesn’t indicate whose misunderstanding is clarified, for a start.
The maxima do not count as far as calibration is concerned
I wasn’t calibrating. I was noting that the sunspots (taken as an average) increase over 1930-1955 (the final maximum is the highest in the 300+ yr sunspot record). This is indicative of increasing HMF and decreasing GCR flux over the period, as recorded by Neher (and the 10Be and 14 records – see Fig. 8 Muscheler 2007, showing 10Be concentrations – no possibly errored and certainly uncertainty-introducing mappings to HMF B (and back to GCR for the comparison). Neher is measuring atmospheric GCR flux, like 10Be and 14C concentrations, so this is a good comparison.
HMF 1933 and 1945 were higher than now, so GCR intensity should not be 10-15% higher than now as Neher would indicate.
This doesn’t make sense – 2009-2010 had very weak HMF, possibly weakeast since a 100 yearsm, with GCR record highs, while 1933 and 1945 were increasing HMF, leading to a unsurpassed peak in the 50’s.
See “Record-Setting Cosmic-Ray Intensities In 2009 And 2010”, Mewaldt et al. 2010 : “In the energy interval from ~70 to ~450 MeV nucleon, near the peak in the near-Earth cosmic-ray spectrum, the measured intensities of major species from C to Fe were each 20%-26% greater in late 2009 than in the 1997-1998 minimum and previous solar minima of the space age (1957-1997). ”
You earlier said of Mewaldt’s statement of record-breaking CR’s in 2009-2010 : “Mewaldt refers to low-energy cosmic rays which show a much larger modulation.”.
Yes, they’re lower energy, by at least an order of magnitude, than those measured by earth neutron monitors, but the Neher ionisation chambers appear to be measuring energies at ~340 MeV (Johnston 1956), which is in the range measured in Mewaldt ea 2010, and so the percentage swing can be compared.
Leif: They still [Viera and Solanko 2010] use obsolete data and superseded conclusions.
Which of the data do you consider obselete ? From the paper :
“Following Vieira and Solanki [2010], the modelled total magnetic flux is confronted with the measurements carried out at the Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory (MWO), National Solar Observatory Kitt Peak (KP NSO) and Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) over cycles 20–23 [Arge et al., 2002; Wang et al., 2005]. The calculated open magnetic flux is compared to the reconstruction by Lockwood et al. [2009] since 1904. Following Krivova et al. [2007], we also require the computed TSI variations to match the PMOD composite of space-based measurements since 1978 [Fr¨ohlich, 2005, 2008, version d41 62 0906].
“Here we have also added 2 new records to constrain the model further. These are (i) the facular contribution to the TSI variations over 1978–2003, computed by Wenzler [2005] with the SATIRE-S model from KP NSO magnetograms and continuum images, and (ii) the solar irradiance flux integrated over wavelengths 220–240 nm over the period 1947– 2006 as reconstructed by Krivova et al. [2009a] and Krivova et al. [2010] using solar F10.7 cm radio flux (before 1974) and KP NSO as well as MDI magnetograms and continuum images (after 1974). The two new sets serve, firstly, to provide further constraints on the model and the values of the free parameters. Secondly, they ensure that not only the total (integrated over all wavelengths) irradiance is reproduced correctly but also its spectral distribution.”
One or two items unreplied to, will try to revisit tomorrow, as it’s a bit late here, goodnight.
Leif: Look at the last figure [slide 13] [..] The big dots show the Neher data used. [..] That the sole dot before 1948 is 10-15% too high compared to all the other indicators could have any number of explanations.
Why is there only one dot before 1948 in your plot ?- Neher took measurements since 1933, as visible in other dotted plots of I’ve seen of the Neher data.
Beer et al. 2008, citing Neher 1971, disagrees with you about the existence of calibration problems of the Neher data : “Carefully intercalibrated ionization chambers were flown on balloons between 1933 and 1969 and the long-term changes in sensitivity were estimated to be <1% [1]."
oneuniverse says:
January 13, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Why is there only one dot before 1948 in your plot ?- Neher took measurements since 1933, as visible in other dotted plots of I’ve seen of the Neher data.
The big dots are the values that were actually used in McCracken’s splicing together of the ion chamber and neutron monitor records. This is non-trivial because of the factor of ten in energy. I got this particular plot from Ken McCracken himself. I don’t know if it has been published somewhere.
The issue of long-term trend is complex and must be approached carefully. Here is such a careful analysis:
http://www.srl.utu.fi/AuxDOC/kocharov/ICRC2009/pdf/icrc1554.pdf
“Using this comprehensive set of neutron monitor data we conclude that the alternating peak/plateau behaviour of subsequent cosmic-ray maxima is well-established, and that its different rigidity dependence for the overall modulation can be understood in terms of drift effects. Furthermore, the cosmic-ray levels have returned to nearly the same levels as during the previous two qA<0 solar minima, despite the fact that there are large differences in the heliospheric magnetic field and its tilt angle. We have demonstrated that this can be understood in terms of standard modulation theory”
What this means is that if we know the HMF B and the tilt angle A we can calculate the cosmic ray flux. Both B and A are known since 1926 and since the values of B and A at minima in 1933 and 1945 were similar to the values in 1986 and 1996, the GCR flux cannot have been 10-15% higher for the earlier period.
“They still [Viera and Solanko 2010] use obsolete data and superseded conclusions.”
Which of the data do you consider obsolete ?
The Solanki 2000-2002 model is faulty as we point out in section 2 of http://www.leif.org/research/Comment%20on%20McCracken.pdf
and the newer models are based directly on the Group Sunspot Number that is also at variance with newer analyses.
I’ll have to see what Lockwood and Owen say – the abstract doesn’t indicate whose misunderstanding is clarified, for a start.
I don’t know what ‘for a start’ means. They strongly endorse the consensus and point out that it is even broader than we claim. The misunderstanding is a curious one: in ALL their papers the Lockwood group claim that they regressed the geomagnetic data against the magnitude of the HMF B. This makes sense, because B can be unambiguously determined, while Br depends on the averaging interval and the sampling frequency. They tell us that they misstated this [in ALL the papers] and that they actually regressed against the radial component Br of B, and that they in ‘their mind’ thought that they said that in ALL their published papers, while in fact they did not. [BTW, it makes no big difference which one of Br and B you use]. We had quite a long private discussion about this, until finally Lockwood send us this email:
“my god I did!!!! I apologize unreservedly, wholesomely and totally That’s incredibly stupid of me to have written that in the later papers because it GENUINELY isn’t what we did. We really did do an end to end fit to Br[…] Its not your fault at all it’s mine. I am so sorry”.
This is the misunderstanding that is cleared up. But in the end it doesn’t matter as the results are the same within error bars.
To avoid any more strawman digressions perhaps the issue can be describes this way:
Analysis of the latest GCR data confirms that the theory used to interpret the data is good and that we have a good understanding of this. Therefore we must demand that the data before ~1948 must be consistent with that. Adopting Neher would violate the consistency. It often happens that data [direct observations] reanalyzed with later understanding turn out to require a different calibration.
Leif: The big dots are the values that were actually used in McCracken’s splicing together of the ion chamber and neutron monitor records.
So that’s an argument against McCracken’s use of the Neher data, rather than the data itself.
The Solanki 2000-2002 model is faulty as we point out in section 2 of http://www.leif.org/research/Comment%20on%20McCracken.pdf
and the newer models are based directly on the Group Sunspot Number that is also at variance with newer analyses.
They don’t use the Solanki 2000-2002 model :
“It [the model] is based on the SATIRE-T (Spectral And Total Irradiance REconstructions for the Telescope era) model developed by Krivova et al. [2007], which is modified and updated here to take into account the latest observational data and theoretical results. These include: the new model of the evolution of solar total and open magnetic flux by Vieira and Solanki
[2010], the updated reconstruction of the heliospheric magnetic flux by Lockwood et al. [2009], the reconstructed solar
UV irradiance since 1947 [Krivova et al., 2009a, 2010] and the facular contribution to the TSI variations since 1974 [Wenzler, 2005]. Spectral irradiance below 270 nm is calculated following Krivova et al. [2006] and Krivova et al. [2009a].”
Note that they use an array of modern observational data (as quoted earlier), not just sunspot data.
Leif: They [Lockwood ea] tell us that they misstated this [in ALL the papers] and that they actually regressed against the radial component Br of B” … “[BTW, it makes no big difference which one of Br and B you use].” … “This is the misunderstanding that is cleared up.
You’ve apparently spotted an error in the Lockwood analyses (which apparently makes no big difference). It doesn’t count against the Neher data. I look forward to reading the paper.
Leif:To avoid any more strawman digressions perhaps the issue can be describes this way:
Analysis of the latest GCR data confirms that the theory used to interpret the data is good and that we have a good understanding of this. Therefore we must demand that the data before ~1948 must be consistent with that. Adopting Neher would violate the consistency. It often happens that data [direct observations] reanalyzed with later understanding turn out to require a different calibration.
Strawmen ..? You can stop coming up with them whenever you want.. I certainly haven’t raised any.
For interest and comparison, please point out some examples. It would be interesting to see what kind of evidence has been sufficient to instigate recalibrations.
In general, observations trump models. Neher 1971 (and earlier, Johnston 1956, for the series available at the time) found that for changes in sensitivity were <1%. The series shows both the 1930-1950's increase, and the flattening out after the 1950's. FWIW, the measurements agree, where they overlap, with the Forbrush measurements and the LPI measurements, as well as the 10Be and 14C records.
You are trying to use derivations of HMF to compare with measurements of GCR. You assume that the pre-solar-modulated GCR flux is constant, and you assume that your model is good enough to rule out other unknowns – from this, you "demand" that GCR measurements (Neher) must match your predictions based on geomagnetic data.
The Neher measurements are precisely the kind of measurements one would use to check your assumption that pre-modulated GCR flux is constant (or that GCR's vary only with the solar/terrestrial activity). The measurements appear to disagree with your assumption, providing evidence against your hypothesis, yet you're arguing that the Neher data should be thrown out, because it disagrees with conclusions based on your assumption. I hope you can see the error in your logic.
oneuniverse says:
January 14, 2011 at 7:24 am
So that’s an argument against McCracken’s use of the Neher data, rather than the data itself.
The use of the data is what is important for the issue at hand, not the data themselves.
They don’t use the Solanki 2000-2002 model
Vieira & Solanki [ http://arxiv.org/abs/0911.4396 ], section 2.1:
“The model presented here is an extension of the one presented by Solanki et al. (2002), which is itself an extension of the work of Solanki et al. (2000).”
Note that they use an array of modern observational data (as quoted earlier), not just sunspot data.
Matching the modern data has no bearing on the old trend. The long-term trend is determined by the Group Sunspot Number:
“[14] The flux emergence rates of AR, “act, and ER, “eph, which are the main inputs to the model, are calculated from the historical group sunspot number, Rg [Hoyt and Schatten, 1993]. ”
You’ve apparently spotted an error in the Lockwood analyses (which apparently makes no big difference). It doesn’t count against the Neher data. I look forward to reading the paper.
Neher was used to ‘calibrate’ the 10Be data to show that the modern Sun is much more active than before ~1948. See Figure 5 of http://www.leif.org/EOS/2006JA012119.pdf
The consensus determination of HMF B shows that this is not the case.
For interest and comparison, please point out some examples. It would be interesting to see what kind of evidence has been sufficient to instigate recalibrations.
Science is replete with examples. Consult any book on the history of science. For an obvious example, take Hubble’s determination of the Hubble Expansion Parameter [modern calibration 10 times lower].
In general, observations trump models.
No observation makes sense without a model under which to interpret the observation. To go from the raw 10Be count to anything at all is governed by a set of models, thus making the conclusion dependent on parameters and assumptions of the model.
You assume that the pre-solar-modulated GCR flux is constant
No, the people who try to reconstruct solar activity from the GCR flux are making that assumption. I would be perfectly happy to drop any such assumption and then dropping GCRs altogether as a useful proxy, meaning that there is no support at all for the contention that modern activity is the highest in 10,000 years.
Leif: The use of the data is what is important for the issue at hand, not the data themselves.
You were arguing against the Neher data itself previously.
Leif: “The model presented here is an extension of the one presented by Solanki et al. (2002), which is itself an extension of the work of Solanki et al. (2000).”
Yes, it’s the improved 2007 model (responding in part to critcisms)- it’s not accurate to call it the Solanki ea 2000/2002 model, as you did.
Leif: Matching the modern data has no bearing on the old trend. The long-term trend is determined by the Group Sunspot Number.
According to Hathaway ea 2002, it’s better to use the group number for reconstructions: “We conclude that the Group numbers are most useful for extending the sunspot cycle data further back in time and thereby adding more cycles and improving the statistics. However, the Zürich numbers are slightly more useful for characterizing the on-going levels of solar activity.”
BTW, Krikova ea 2007 use both Group and Zurich sunspot numbers. The use of either gives increasing solar activity since 1700 (of different magnitutde), and they both have matching sustained increases in the first half of the 20thC, followed by a plateau in the 2nd half (see fig. 13a).
Leif: Neher was used to ‘calibrate’ the 10Be data to show that the modern Sun is much more active than before ~1948. See Figure 5 of http://www.leif.org/EOS/2006JA012119.pdf
The consensus determination of HMF B shows that this is not the case.
I refer you to my earlier responses. The Neher data is an independent dataset measuring ionisation activity in the atmposphere. A proxy reconstruction of HMF that is used to predict (assuming a constant GCR flux) a different GCR flux to the measurements doesn’t mean the Neher data is wrong. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that the McCracken reconstruction is correct, either).
Leif: Science is replete with examples. Consult any book on the history of science. For an obvious example, take Hubble’s determination of the Hubble Expansion Parameter [modern calibration 10 times lower].
I was hoping for an analagous example (historical, unrepeatable measurements which are recalibrated later). Never mind, it was just curiousity , each case is decided on its own merits anyway. I’m sure examples exist – I guess I was wondering about the use of the word “often”.
Leif: No observation makes sense without a model under which to interpret the observation. To go from the raw 10Be count to anything at all is governed by a set of models, thus making the conclusion dependent on parameters and assumptions of the model.
The comment was made with respect to the Neher ionisation data, not 10Be. The model of ionisation behaviour inside an ionisation chamber is far better understood and accepted than a model used to describe GCR flux from HMF from geomagnetic measurements.
Leif: No, the people who try to reconstruct solar activity from the GCR flux are making that <assumption [that pre-solar-modulated GCR flux is constant]. I would be perfectly happy to drop any such assumption and then dropping GCRs altogether as a useful proxy, meaning that there is no support at all for the contention that modern activity is the highest in 10,000 years.
Yes you do – you make the assumption when you say eg. “Both B and A are known since 1926 and since the values of B and A at minima in 1933 and 1945 were similar to the values in 1986 and 1996, the GCR flux cannot have been 10-15% higher for the earlier period.”, or when you present
re: no support for the ‘10,000’ years contention
If you changed the conclusion to ‘highest levels of GCR flux in the last 8,000 years’ (or 6,000, according to another study), you would be on firmer ground, as it cuts out some of the uncertainties.
Correction: I wrote “Leif: “The model presented here [….]” , it should be “Leif, quoting Vieira & Solanki 2009 : […]”
What do you think of the following, Leif – a changing floor = secular changes, no?
Lockwood ea 2007: “”McCracken (2007) proposes that the concept of floors in B may indeed be valid, but notes that since 1428 there must have been at least four upward steps in such a floor to reach present-day values, the floor value for 1428–1528 being less than a 10th of today’s value. If the minimum B does change in discrete steps, as opposed to continuously, the reasons for this are not yet understood.”
Lockwood ea 2009, not 2007.
oneuniverse says:
January 14, 2011 at 3:10 pm
You were arguing against the Neher data itself previously.
I was arguing that the Neher data is not an absolute measurement of the flux at the 3GeV typical for the neutron monitors.
Yes, it’s the improved 2007 model (responding in part to critcisms)- it’s not accurate to call it the Solanki ea 2000/2002 model, as you did.
nit picking. The 2007 [and later] is based on the same assumptions and data and is not substantially different. Has the same flaws.
According to Hathaway ea 2002, it’s better to use the group number for reconstructions
This is under the assumption that the GSN is correctly calibrated, which we can show it is not, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Updating%20the%20Historical%20Sunspot%20Record.pdf
BTW, Krikova ea 2007 use both Group and Zurich sunspot numbers. The use of either gives increasing solar activity since 1700 (of different magnitutde), and they both have matching sustained increases in the first half of the 20thC, followed by a plateau in the 2nd half (see fig. 13a).
Since the GSN and the ZSN agree 1880-1945, no wonder they both match the increase in the first half of the 20th C.
A proxy reconstruction of HMF that is used to predict (assuming a constant GCR flux) a different GCR flux to the measurements doesn’t mean the Neher data is wrong. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that the McCracken reconstruction is correct, either).
The HMF is reconstructed using well-understood processes from geomagnetic data [independent of GCRs]. Any reconstruction using GCRs must match the HMF. If it does not, the reconstruction based on GCR is invalid. The GCRs reconstruction of solar activity [of which HMF is a well-understood proxy] is based on four pillars: 1) the 10Be counts themselves, 2) the assumption of constant GCR background, 3) the correctness of the splicing together of two disparate datasets, which 4) relies on a difficult and uncertain Neher calibration extrapolated to 3GeV. Pick any combination of problems you wish, the net result is that the GCR record cannot be used to say anything quantitatively about solar activity on century-millennium time scales.
I was hoping for an analagous example (historical, unrepeatable measurements which are recalibrated later).
I’m amazed that your knowledge of the history of science is so scant that you can’t come up with many examples on your own. Here are a few more: The SSN itself [both GSN and ZSN] has been recalibrated [ZSN 4 times, GSN, 1 time]. TSI changes with each new calibration and comparison. The geological time scale. Meteorological datasets are ‘reanalyzed’, etc, etc.
The comment was made with respect to the Neher ionisation data, not 10Be. The model of ionisation behaviour inside an ionisation chamber is far better understood and accepted than a model used to describe GCR flux from HMF from geomagnetic measurements.
See comment above. The [geomagnetically] reconstructed HMF is well understood and shows that recent solar activity is not extraordinary. You may be correct that trying to construct solar activity from GCR is so uncertain that it is useless as support for long-term changes in solar activity. I can live with that. On the other hand, it is important to try to identify the errors and failed assumptions that make GCRs useless as a proxy for solar activity. An obvious place to look would be at the point where two disparate datasets have been joined, which is what we suggest.
Yes you do
My ‘no’ was directed at the implication that I was the only one making that assumption. Everybody will have to make that assumption at this time. If we do not, we have admitted that GCRs cannot say anything quantitatively about solar activity. I could live with that.
If you changed the conclusion to ‘highest levels of GCR flux in the last 8,000 years’ (or 6,000, according to another study), you would be on firmer ground, as it cuts out some of the uncertainties.
The 10,000 years was just a ‘large number’. It makes no difference to me if you would claim 8000, 6000, or 7835.837 years.
What do you think of the following, Leif – a changing floor = secular changes, no?
No. The ‘change’ from 4.5 to 4.0 was just a better determination of the floor, based on more data. Just changes are normal and desirable and do not signal a shift in concept.
Lockwood ea 2009: “[…]that the concept of floors in B may indeed be valid, but notes that since 1428 there must have been at least four upward steps in such a floor to reach present-day values…
We know that one of those [the biggest one] did not happen at all, so the rest don’t have much credibility.
Leif: nit picking.
Merely a preference for accuracy – they didn’t use the ‘Solanki ea 2000/2002’ model (which is the Solanki 2002 model), they used the Vieira and Solanki 2009 model.
Leif: I’m amazed that your knowledge of the history of science is so scant that you can’t come up with many examples on your own. Here are a few more: The SSN itself [both GSN and ZSN] has been recalibrated [ZSN 4 times, GSN, 1 time]. TSI changes with each new calibration and comparison. The geological time scale. Meteorological datasets are ‘reanalyzed’, etc, etc.
Thanks – as it happens, the only applicable example from your list is TSI, which is probably instructive.
Leif: You may be correct that trying to construct solar activity from GCR is so uncertain that it is useless as support for long-term changes in solar activity.
To “nitpick” once again for accuracy – I never the called HMF reconstructions from GCRs useless, I said there’s an added uncertainty compared to a GCR reconstruction. The GCR recons hint well at the solar activity. The proxies have recorded the minima and maxima reasonably well in the modern and sunspot count period, but we cannot as it stands, use the GCR recons to distinguish between secular changes in the GCR flux (independent of solar activity) and secular changes in solar activity.
I wouldn’t call such a reconstruction “useless”, however, that’s your description.
Leif: No. The ‘change’ from 4.5 to 4.0 was just a better determination of the floor, based on more data. Just changes are normal and desirable and do not signal a shift in concept.
I was referring to the changes mentioned in the Lockwood ea quotation.
Speaking of accuracy, that should be “.. recorded the grand minima and maxima ..”.
Leif: I was arguing that the Neher data is not an absolute measurement of the flux at the 3GeV typical for the neutron monitors.
Do you agree that the instrument is capable of detecting a trend over 20 years ? And do you accept the less than 1% variation to sensitivity for the Neher series reported in the literature ? (Johnston 1956, Neher 1971)
It would be interesting to determine the difficult of calibrating ionisation chambers to neutron monitors.
oneuniverse: For a very recent reconstruction please see Krivova, Vieira and Solank 2010
Leif: They still use obsolete data and superseded conclusions.
Was your one-line reply a fair summary of the work of Krivova, Vieira and Solanki 2010? It does use a corrected aa geomagnetic index (if not your preferred correction).
Must sign off for the evening, ’til tomorrow, good-night.
oneuniverse says:
January 14, 2011 at 7:09 pm
they used the Vieira and Solanki 2009 model.
Would a rose with any other name …
What is important is not what you call their model, as long as the basic method and assumptions stay the same, which they do.
as it happens, the only applicable example from your list is TSI, which is probably instructive.
The adjustments of the ZSN seems to me to be the clearest example. Tell us why you think that is not applicable.
but we cannot as it stands, use the GCR records to distinguish between secular changes in the GCR flux (independent of solar activity) and secular changes in solar activity. I wouldn’t call such a reconstruction “useless”, however, that’s your description.
cannot … use seems to me to fit nicely the definition of ‘useless’ for this purpose.
I was referring to the changes mentioned in the Lockwood ea quotation.
remind me why those were relevant, especially the one we know didn’t happen.
Do you agree that the instrument is capable of detecting a trend over 20 years ? And do you accept the less than 1% variation to sensitivity for the Neher series reported in the literature ? (Johnston 1956, Neher 1971)
I don’t know to what accuracy that carries over to ten times the energy.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler07qst.pdf has a much more thorough discussion of the Neher calibration than we can conduct on this blog. They conclude “If the model of Solanki et al. (2000) is correct around 1950 AD this comparison indicates that the Cheltenham data overestimate and the Neher data underestimate the solar modulation before 1950 AD.”. See also their figure 5.
The whole discussion of Neher is a convenient strawman [and certainly not mine] as my conclusion that [as was the issue] solar activity the past half-century was not extraordinary [within the last three hundred years] does not hinge on the GCR record and its uncertain mix of calibration issues, climate interference, assumption of constancy of flux, disagreement between sites, etc.
Was your one-line reply a fair summary of the work of Krivova, Vieira and Solanki 2010? It does use a corrected aa geomagnetic index (if not your preferred correction).
Yes [and I did point to a further discussion]. The reconstruction of HMF B based on geomagnetic data [not using GCRs at all] is in much firmer hand than any other one out there. That is disagrees strongly with McCracken’s http://www.leif.org/EOS/2006JA012119.pdf (e.g. Figure 5) is a problem for Lockwood [1999, which they have essentially abandoned] and Solanki [2002, which forms the base for even their latest reconstructions].
Leif: The adjustments of the ZSN seems to me to be the clearest example. Tell us why you think that is not applicable.
I consider sunspot counts as semi-instrumental measurements. I was looking for a calibrated ‘classic’ instrument whose results were later recalibrated. I didn’t doubt they existed, I wanted to compare. As I said earlier, never mind – it’s not that relevant, only curiousity.
Leif: What is important is not what you call their model, as long as the basic method and assumptions stay the same, which they do.
Could you be specific in your criticism ?
Leif:cannot … use seems to me to fit nicely the definition of ‘useless’ for this purpose.
It’s not useful for distinguishing between solar and GCR trends (certainly for periods before the 18th C).
Leif: remind me why those were relevant, especially the one we know didn’t happen.
Deposited cosmogenic concentrations on the whole fell over the last few centuries, indicative of decreased GCR flux. While this may be a GCR trend, the 300 yr sunspot record also points to increased solar activity over the same period. (It doesn’t matter which version of the sunspot numbers one uses – the 20th C has higher levels.) . Remind me again how you know with certainty that such an increase didn’t happen?
oneuniverse: Was your one-line reply a fair summary of the work of Krivova, Vieira and Solanki 2010?
Leif: Yes [and I did point to a further discussion].
I’m not sure it was a fair summary. You didn’t point to a further discussion of KVS 2010, or the details and improvements of their study, by the way.
What are the “superseded conclusions” ? You have been criticising Lockwood 1999, or Solanki 2000 or 2002, yet the KVR paper uses more, more recent, and improved results and data.
Leif: The whole discussion of Neher is a convenient strawman
Maybe from your perspective – I was just pointing out that your cricism of the Neher data itself as flawed didn’t hold water.
Leif: The reconstruction of HMF B based on geomagnetic data [not using GCRs at all] is in much firmer hand than any other one out there.
HMF reconstructions from geomagnetic data have their own uncertainties – it seems like a good idea to use as much of our understanding and relevant available data as possible. The KVS 2010 paper makes an effort to do that – that’s why I found your dismissal of the paper rather disappointing. They do use corrected geomagnetic indices, even if not your preferred IDV.
Lockwood ea 2009 : “Lockwood et al. (2009b) show that most of the interval (1868–1968) compiled by the inventor of aa, Father Mayaud, it is remarkably accurate when tested using other range indices: however there are small calibration skips and drifts after 1957. Lockwood et al. (2009b) derived a corrected aa index, aaC, using only the Ap (range) index and the k (range) indices derived by Clilverd et al. (2005) from the long sequences of Sodankyla and Niemegk magnetometer observations. Rouillard et al. (2007) used the aaC index along with the annual index m, which is derived from the median standard deviation of hourly average geomagnetic data for each station-UT, as described by Lockwood et al. (2009b), to evaluate centennial variation in the solar wind speed, the IMF field magnitude and the open solar flux.”
Leif, by the way, if you think that solar activity hasn’t increased, that implies that GCR LIS flux has decreased, according to 10Be and 14C concentrations, which goes against your position (stated on an earlier thread) that the GCR LIS flux must have remained constant in the last few centuries. At least, according to the best understanding of cosmogenic proxies as described in the literature.
oneuniverse says:
January 15, 2011 at 10:52 am
I was looking for a calibrated ‘classic’ instrument whose results were later recalibrated. I didn’t doubt they existed, I wanted to compare. As I said earlier, never mind – it’s not that relevant, only curiousity.
I have no idea what you mean. Most instrumental series are recalibrated with time. The MDI magnetometer on SOHO was recalibrated last year and all measurements recalculated. ‘Global Temperatures’ are constantly adjusted. Old astronomical plates are remeasured, etc, etc.
Could you be specific in your criticism ?
I have been that many times. Getting tedious now. But OK, one more time: there are three basic assumptions:
1) that the group sunspot number is good [which it isn’t]. Here it doesn’t matter that the latest data are used for the modern period.
2) that the running average [over a solar cycle] sunspot number is a good measure of the ‘ephemeral’ background magnetic flux [which it isn’t]
3) that the ‘ephemeral’ background flux is the dominant part of the long-term variation of TSI [and solar activity as such], which it isn’t
It’s not useful for distinguishing between solar and GCR trends (certainly for periods before the 18th C).
As I said, is useless for what you try to use it for.
(It doesn’t matter which version of the sunspot numbers one uses – the 20th C has higher levels.)
The 20th C after 1945 has sunspot numbers that are 20% too high [Waldmeier discontinuity]. In the 18th century, cycle with maximum in 1778 had SSN of 154 [corresponding to 185 on modern scale]
Remind me again how you know with certainty that such an increase didn’t happen?
If the Neher data is correct and the current understanding of how the GCR modulation happen is correct, then there would be a large increase [no secular change, but jump in a given year] in the HMF B of 1.7 nT. We understand how to calculate HMF B from geomagnetic data [we found out in 2003 and every year since, the calculated B has matched the observed B] and there are enough high-quality stations since 1910 to have a good fix on B, so we ‘know’ what B was.
the KVR paper uses more, more recent, and improved results and data.
None of those have any bearing on what happened before the space age.
I was just pointing out that your cricism of the Neher data itself as flawed didn’t hold water.
What I’m saying is that the Neher data introduced an anomaly that is not found in other data.
HMF reconstructions from geomagnetic data have their own uncertainties – it seems like a good idea to use as much of our understanding and relevant available data as possible.
The uncertainties are much smaller than the 1.7 nT jump that Neher predicts.
The KVS 2010 paper makes an effort to do that – that’s why I found your dismissal of the paper rather disappointing. They do use corrected geomagnetic indices, even if not your preferred IDV.
The paper was dismissed on its demerits. I don’t think KVS uses any geomagnetic data. They refer to various other reconstructions, e.g. recent Lockwood stuff [which largely agree with our HMF B], but then ruin the quantitative fits by using PMOD’s recent decrease [which is a calibration problem and not real], and also the MWO magnetic flux data which are wrongly calibrated [e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/MWO%20MPSI%20-%20F107.pdf ]. Figure 2 of KVS shows that Br for the cycle with max in 1940 is on par with that of the cycle with max in 1970. No sign of the 1.7 nT jump that the Neher data would demand.
Lockwood et al. (2009b) derived a corrected aa index, aaC, using only the Ap (range) index and the k (range) indices derived by Clilverd et al. (2005) from the long sequences of Sodankyla and Niemegk magnetometer observations.
Sigh, one cannot use Sodankyla for this, see section A5.1 of http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf
Leif, by the way, if you think that solar activity hasn’t increased, that implies that GCR LIS flux has decreased, according to 10Be and 14C concentrations, which goes against your position (stated on an earlier thread) that the GCR LIS flux must have remained constant in the last few centuries. At least, according to the best understanding of cosmogenic proxies as described in the literature.
It means that we do not have a good understanding of the deposition of those nuclides, of how much is due to climate, to regional changes, even do that the LIS is. The constancy of LIS has to do with the diffusion time and isotropy of the GCRs. We have found no accepted change in LIS on the relevant time scales. So, now you are introducing yet another strawman.
The topic was: is the ‘modern maximum’ the highest in ~10,000 years, and the conclusion still stands that there is no compelling evidence for that.
Leif: If the Neher data is correct and the current understanding of how the GCR modulation happen is correct, then there would be a large increase [no secular change, but jump in a given year] in the HMF B of 1.7 nT.
Going in circles.. from earlier reply:
You are trying to use derivations of HMF to compare with measurements of GCR. You assume that the pre-solar-modulated GCR flux is constant, and you assume that your model is good enough to rule out other unknowns – from this, you “demand” that GCR measurements (Neher) must match your predictions based on geomagnetic data.
The Neher measurements are precisely the kind of measurements one would use to check your assumption that pre-modulated GCR flux is constant (or that GCR’s vary only with the solar/terrestrial activity). The measurements appear to disagree with your assumption, providing evidence against your hypothesis, yet you’re arguing that the Neher data should be thrown out, because it disagrees with conclusions based on your assumption. I hope you can see the error in your logic.
Leif: What I’m saying is that the Neher data introduced an anomaly that is not found in other data.
Contemporary observations of GCR found no problems with the Neher measurements . From McCracken & Heikikila 2003 :
“Neher used a set of calibration chambers for pre-flight calibration throughout the 32 year program and inter-calibration accuracy was stated to be beter than 1%. This accuracy was repeatedly verified by making duplicate flights throughout the 32 year program. The long-term decline in cosmogenic 10Be gives independent verification of the long term decline in GCR, and of the stability of Neher’s calibrations. It is therefore proposed that the Neher data provides the most accurate record of the long term changes in GCR [..]”
Leif: I don’t think KVS uses any geomagnetic data.
The aa_c and m indices are used in Lockwood 2009b (used in KVS) . The aa_c correction of the aa index does use Sodankyla but it agrees well with the m index, which is from hourly geomagnetic data from a global network of stations.
Leif: They refer to various other reconstructions, e.g. recent Lockwood stuff [which largely agree with our HMF B], but then ruin the quantitative fits by using PMOD’s recent decrease [which is a calibration problem and not real], and also the MWO magnetic flux data which are wrongly calibrated [e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/MWO%20MPSI%20-%20F107.pdf ].
Three stations are used, not just MWO – it’d be interesting to see what your proposed alteration would to MWO would make.
re: PMOD, I hope to have time to look into this.
Leif: I have been that many times. Getting tedious now. But OK, one more time: there are three basic assumptions:
Thanks – two of the three assumptions are new though, not repeats. I’ll have to look at these in a day or two. However, your proposed 20% reduction of earlier sunspot counts (prior to 1946, Waldmeier) seems odd, because it’s the post-1946 figures that appear to be in error. Shouldn’t it be the post-1948 numbers that are adjusted?
oneuniverse says:
January 18, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Going in circles..
So cannot progress further on that line. You are stuck where you are.
“It is therefore proposed that the Neher data provides the most accurate record of the long term changes in GCR [..]”
If so, then not of solar activity which is more directly expressed by HMF B. However in Steinhilber et al [McCracken is one of the ‘al’] they don’t have the proposed step functions. I’ll let them slug it out. For me, Neher is a strawman, useful for circular arguments.
The aa_c correction of the aa index does use Sodankyla but it agrees well with the m index, which is from hourly geomagnetic data from a global network of stations.
The m index is badly conceived. Its flaw is that the RMS value includes the secular variation of the base level [not solar related], which is of the same order as the variation related to the solar wind. Here are some [brief] notes on that [we have also calculated the m-index (correctly) even using many more stations that Lockwood et al.]
http://www.leif.org/research/m-index%20-effect%20of%20secular%20variation.doc
http://www.leif.org/research/m-index%201890-1923.doc
http://www.leif.org/research/M-index%20POT%201900-1902.doc
http://www.leif.org/research/M-index-all-stations.png
Their problem with the m-index is particularly bad when the solar wind related part is small [low solar activity]. Because of that they simply removed some stations that ‘didn’t fit’ before the 1920s [e.g. CLH and VQS, see second link], although that alone is not enough. This is the main reason the consensus is not good before [say 1915]. The net effect is that the extrapolation to low solar activity is compromised. It doesn’t matter that Sodankyla agrees [and not ‘well’] with something, it is still wrong for this purpose.
Three stations are used, not just MWO
KPO has very uncertain zero level.
However, your proposed 20% reduction of earlier sunspot counts (prior to 1946, Waldmeier) seems odd, because it’s the post-1946 figures that appear to be in error. Shouldn’t it be the post-1948 numbers that are adjusted?
I usually don’t do ‘odd’ things. There is always a [good] reason. You have something backwards or express yourself poorly. The post-1945 values are too high [20%] relative to the pre-1945 values. Two ways of fixing this:
1) increase the old values
2) decrease the new values
Because the new values are used in operational programs, it is better to opt for fix#1.
The values are not in ‘error’. Just a different way of counting [which actually may be better]. They just destroy the homogeneity of the [already not homogeneous] time series.
It would be useful if you didn’t hide behind your ‘oneuniverse’ avatar.
I wonder why it is’nt mentioned that the perhaps the 2 main drivers of climate in shorter term than grand maximum or minimum, have since 1994 been most positive.Both the Amo and the Pdo have been mostly positive since 1994, and though the Pdo turned negative in 2008 the amo is still more positive.The climate cooled the msot from 1964-1976 when amo and pdo were negative and has warmed the most since they were both positive.