By Dr. Roy Spencer, PhD (reprinted from his blog with permission)
UPDATE (12:35 p.m. CDT 19 May 2011): revised corrections of CERES data for El Nino/La Nina effects.
While I have been skeptical of Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory up until now, it looks like the evidence is becoming too strong for me to ignore. The following results will surely be controversial, and the reader should remember that what follows is not peer reviewed, and is only a preliminary estimate.
I’ve made calculations based upon satellite observations of how the global radiative energy balance has varied over the last 10 years (between Solar Max and Solar Min) as a result of variations in cosmic ray activity. The results suggest that the total (direct + indirect) solar forcing is at least 3.5 times stronger than that due to changing solar irradiance alone.
If this is anywhere close to being correct, it supports the claim that the sun has a much larger potential role (and therefore humans a smaller role) in climate change than what the “scientific consensus” states.
BACKGROUND
The single most frequently asked question I get after I give my talks is, “Why didn’t you mention the sun?” I usually answer that I’m skeptical of the “cosmic ray gun” theory of cloud changes controlling climate. But I point out that Svensmark’s theory of natural cloud variations causing climate change is actually pretty close to what I preach — only the mechanism causing the cloud change is different.
Then, I found last year’s paper by Laken et al. which was especially interesting since it showed satellite-observed cloud changes following changes in cosmic ray activity. Even though the ISCCP satellite data they used are not exactly state of the art, the study was limited to the mid-latitudes, and the time scales involved were days rather than years, the results gave compelling quantitative evidence of a cosmic ray effect on cloud cover.
With the rapid-fire stream of publications and reports now coming out on the subject, I decided to go back and spend some time analyzing ground-based galactic cosmic ray (GCR) data to see whether there is a connection between GCR variations and variations in the global radiative energy balance between absorbed sunlight and emitted infrared energy, taken from the NASA CERES radiative budget instruments on the Terra satellite, available since March 2000.
After all, that is ultimately what we are interested in: How do various forcings affect the radiative energy budget of the Earth? The results, I must admit, are enough for me to now place at least one foot solidly in the cosmic ray theory camp.
THE DATA
The nice thing about using CERES Earth radiative budget data is that we can get a quantitative estimate in Watts per sq. meter for the radiative forcing due to cosmic ray changes. This is the language the climate modelers speak, since these radiative forcings (externally imposed global energy imbalances) can be used to help calculate global temperature changes in the ocean & atmosphere based upon simple energy conservation. They can then also be compared to the estimates of forcing from increasing carbon dioxide, currently the most fashionable cause of climate change.
From the global radiative budget measurements we also get to see if there is a change in high clouds (inferred from the outgoing infrared measurements) as well as low clouds (inferred from reflected shortwave [visible sunlight] measurements) associated with cosmic ray activity.
I will use only the ground-based cosmic ray data from Moscow, since it is the first station I found which includes a complete monthly archive for the same period we have global radiative energy budget data from CERES (March 2000 through June 2010). I’m sure there are other stations, too…all of this is preliminary anyway. Me sifting through the myriad solar-terrestrial datasets is just as confusing to me as most of you sifting through the various climate datasets that I’m reasonably comfortable with.
THE RESULTS
The following plot (black curve) shows the monthly GCR data from Moscow for this period, as well as a detrended version with 1-2-1 averaging (red curve) to match the smoothing I will use in the CERES measurements to reduce noise.
Detrending the data isolates the month-to-month and year-to-year variability as the signal to match, since trends (or a lack of trends) in the global radiative budget data can be caused by a combination of many things. (Linear trends are worthless for statistically inferring cause-and-effect; but getting a match between wiggles in two datasets is much less likely to be due to random chance.)
The monthly cosmic ray data at Moscow will be compared to global monthly anomalies the NASA Terra satellite CERES (SSF 2.5 dataset) radiative flux data,
which shows the variations in global average reflected sunlight (SW), emitted infrared (LW), and Net (which is the estimated imbalances in total absorbed energy by the climate system, after adjustment for variations in total solar irradiance, TSI). Note I have plotted the variations in the negative of Net, which is approximately equal to variations in (LW+SW)
Then, since the primary source of variability in the CERES data is associated with El Nino and La Nina (ENSO) activity, I subtracted out an estimate of the average ENSO influence using running regressions between running 5-month averages of the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) and the CERES fluxes. I used the MEI index along with those regression coefficients in each month to correct the CERES fluxes 4 months later, since that time lag had the strongest correlation.
Finally, I performed regressions at various leads and lags between the GCR time series and the LW, SW, and -Net radiative flux time series, the results of which are shown next.
The yearly average relationships noted in the previous plot come from this relationship in the reflected solar (SW) data,
while the -Net flux (Net is absorbed solar minus emitted infrared, corrected for the change in solar irradiance during the period) results look like this:
It is that last plot that gives us the final estimate of how a change in cosmic ray flux at Moscow is related to changes in Earth’s radiative energy balance.
SUMMARY
What the above three plots show is that for a 1,000 count increase in GCR activity as measured at Moscow (which is somewhat less than the increase between Solar Max and Solar Min), there appears to be:
(1) an increase in reflected sunlight (SW) of 0.64 Watts per sq. meter, probably mostly due to an increase in low cloud cover;
(2) virtually no change in emitted infrared (LW) of +0.02 Watts per sq. meter;
(3) a Net (reflected sunlight plus emitted infrared) effect of 0.55 Watts per sq. meter loss in radiant energy by the global climate system.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR CLIMATE CHANGE?
Assuming these signatures are anywhere close to being real, what do they mean quantitatively in terms of the potential effect of cosmic ray activity on climate?
Well, just like any other forcing, a resulting temperature change depends not only upon the size of the forcing, but also the sensitivity of the climate system to forcing. But we CAN compare the cosmic ray forcing to OTHER “known” forcings, which could have a huge influence on our understanding of the role of humans in climate change.
For example, if warming observed in the last century is (say) 50% natural and 50% anthropogenic, then this implies the climate system is only one-half as sensitive to our greenhouse gas emissions (or aerosol pollution) than if the warming was 100% anthropogenic in origin (which is pretty close to what we are told the supposed “scientific consensus” is).
First, let’s compare the cosmic ray forcing to the change in total solar irradiance (TSI) during 2000-2010. The orange curve in following plot is the change in direct solar (TSI) forcing between 2000 and 2010, which with the help of Danny Braswell’s analytical skills I backed out from the CERES Net, LW, and SW data. It is the only kind of solar forcing the IPCC (apparently) believes exists, and it is quite weak:
Also shown is the estimated cosmic ray forcing resulting from the month-to-month changes in the original Moscow cosmic ray time series, computed by multiplying those monthly changes by 0.55 Watts per sq. meter per 1,000 cosmic ray counts change.
Finally, I fitted the trend lines to get an estimate of the relative magnitudes of these two sources of forcing: the cosmic ray (indirect) forcing is about 2.8 times that of the solar irradiance (direct) forcing. This means the total (direct + indirect) solar forcing on climate associated with the solar cycle could be 3.8 times that most mainstream climate scientists believe.
One obvious question this begs is whether the lack of recent warming, since about 2004 for the 0-700 meter layer of the ocean, is due to the cosmic ray effect on cloud cover canceling out the warming from increasing carbon dioxide.
If the situation really was that simple (which I doubt it is), this would mean that with Solar Max rapidly approaching, warming should resume in the coming months. Of course, other natural cycles could be in play (my favorite is the Pacific Decadal oscillation), so predicting what will happen next is (in my view) more of an exercise in faith than in science.
In the bigger picture, this is just one more piece of evidence that the IPCC scientists should be investigating, one which suggests a much larger role for Mother Nature in climate change than the IPCC has been willing to admit. And, again I emphasize, the greater the role of Nature in causing past climate change, the smaller the role humans must have had, which could then have a profound impact on future projections of human-caused global warming.
You should have a look at Piers Corbyn’s work.
I decided to go back and spend some time analyzing ground-based galactic cosmic ray (GCR) data to see whether there is a connection between GCR variations and variations in the global radiative energy balance …
Are GCR emissions relative uniform over an area the size of the Earth ? .. or are the effects of GCR global or could GCR have a relatively localized effect ?
Many thanks to you, Dr. Spencer, for all the work you do to keep us ‘deniers’ informed.
For those who want to know about the theory of Henrik Svensmark – please read the excellent and compelling book by Nigel Calder – “The Chilling Stars”.
If this latest chapter on unraveling our understanding of climate change turns out to be valid, Jasper Kirby and Svensmark will go down in history and deserve the Nobel Prize a lot more than the con artists that got the last Climate Change related Nobel Award.
However, on second thoughts, since the Nobel prize may have lost all credibility, perhaps Jasper and Henrik don’t deserve such an ignominious prize. And besides, I expect these gentlemen are not of the sort to even desire such recognition. They do real science because they are passionate about it not for some agenda.
…of course, the jury is still out and the GCR theory is yet unproven so perhaps I am a little hasty in my suggested praise. Nevertheless, if you have been procrastinating buying “The Chilling Stars”, now would be a good time to order it.
So why is it that factors like this aren’t considered more? I understand the political bias in the AGW dynamics, but why don’t more “mainstream” people look at these things?
Nice pictures, funny. =)
It seems from all reports including this one, that there are several things that contribute to earth’s climate. PDO, Vukcevic’s magnetism charts and explanations, co2, aerosols, the ending glacial age , earth and solar orbits, Mr Wilde’s jet stream information and numerous other theories are just a few. All said-co2 and man seems to me to have only an extremely small role in causing a change if any in the Earth’s climate. Other forcings are much larger I think.
ej writes “So why is it that factors like this aren’t considered more? I understand the political bias in the AGW dynamics, but why don’t more “mainstream” people look at these things?”
That is the 64 trillion dollar question. I am at a loss to understand why organizations like the Royal Society and the American Physical Society can continue to ignore the evidence that is pouring in, supporting Henrik Svensmark’s theory. In 2 or 3 months we are supposed to get a report on Project CLOUD. How much longer can these ostriches keep their heads buried in the sand?
The effects of cosmic rays on Earth’s climate might explain certain anomalies of past climates… like snowball earth and the out-of-nowhere ice ages that don’t fit the orbital theory. Maybe our solar system pass through galactic particle clouds, dense enough to counteract the solar winds and amplified if the sun was in a low activity cycle.
If enough articles such as this one in Physics World keep showing up, surely the media will notice, won’t they?
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/45982
Which do you think is more cruel?
To take all these new papers that are coming out and storm the warmist bunker at Wikipedia
or … to do nothing at all …. and see how long they can stand the ridicule before they eat humble pie and change it themselves?
One obvious question this begs is whether the lack of recent warming, since about 2004 for the 0-700 meter layer of the ocean, is due to the cosmic ray effect on cloud cover canceling out the warming from increasing carbon dioxide.
If the situation really was that simple (which I doubt it is), this would mean that with Solar Max rapidly approaching, warming should resume in the coming months. Of course, other natural cycles could be in play (my favorite is the Pacific Decadal oscillation), so predicting what will happen next is (in my view) more of an exercise in faith than in science
______
I think your analysis is getting close to the truth. In particular, I do feel that the deep solar minimum with the resultant increase in GCR’s and increase in global cloud cover during the 2008-2009 period did have a bigger impact on climate than perhaps some were willing to admit. Also, as you’ve pointed out, we can’t factor out the role of the cool phase of the PDO and other ocean cycles. But that leads to a follow-up question, how might the modulation of cloud cover by GCR’s affect the longer-term ocean cycles?
I think with the GCR/Cloud cover connect becoming more quantified, we’ll indeed see this connnection incorporated into global climate models in the years to come.
On the larger point however, of the role of antropogenic factors in causing global climate change, I think even at the extreme end of the role of GCR’s and cloud cover, you are still giving far too little credit for the 40% increase in CO2 and other GHG’s since the 1750’s. Even with the deep solar minimum of 2008-2009, we saw no appreciable recovery of the arctic sea ice to previoius longer-term levels. As the Arctic is the place to look for the early signs of AGW, the the fact that the Arctic continues warmer than it’s long term average and the sea ice is still in a long-term downtrend all corraborate the fact that generally the global climate models are correct about the influence of anthropogenic GHG’s, and the addition of the GCR/cloud connect will add only a minor modulation of the general trend to higher global temps over the coming decades due to anthropogenic GHG’s.
Can you trust the relationship between annual SW inbalance and cosmic ray count when 2003 is such an influential observation? If this point is omitted, is the relationship still statistically significant?
And how can cosmic be important when there is no trend since the 1950s?
ej says: May 20, 2011 at 10:48 am
Remember the Climategate emails? The “team” was working to control what was published in the journals. Only those who were “team” members get to publish. All other work, regardless of how worthy, are peer reviewed out of the process. And even if non-“team” work did get published, they worked to get the accepting editors sacked.
Also, most scientists don’t work for free. It usually takes funding in order to generate a publishable paper. Funding from sourced which at the time (and now) that assume AGW is a problem. It you aren’t working to “solve” the problem, you get no funding.
Looks like the hockey team and the IPCC may need to get knee pads and a few crow recipes.
I , like Dr. Spencer, was a bit reluctant at first to attach too much to the Svensmark GCR/Cloud mechanism. I Thought he was on to something, but that his link was weakly proven. I was also thinking that it was just too simple and obvious for so many to have missed it.
I think there may be a few more scientific hurdles to overcome, but I suspect these will be trivial compared to fight we can expect from the IPCC “consensus”.
BTW, thanks Dr. Spencer for doing the back of the envelope work here. I hope the CLOUDS group can supply us a more refined estimate of the numbers.
Ray says:
May 20, 2011 at 11:23 am
The effects of cosmic rays on Earth’s climate might explain certain anomalies of past climates… like snowball earth and the out-of-nowhere ice ages that don’t fit the orbital theory. Maybe our solar system pass through galactic particle clouds, dense enough to counteract the solar winds and amplified if the sun was in a low activity cycle.
_____________________
Yes, the 10Be data from the Greenland ice cores seem to show a very strong signal through the ice age and another peak for the Younger Dryas that are far larger than the wiggles in 10Be seen during the Little Ice Age. This very large difference suggests that there are rather large changes in GCR flux that cannot be accounted for by solar activity. The Antarctic ice cores do not show a similar Younger Dryas peak, but GCRs are known to be anisotropic, and not showing a comparable 10Be peak on the opposite side of the Earth should not be surprising. It seems these large changes in 10Be level are far too large to be accounted for by changing snowfall amounts.
I will use only the ground-based cosmic ray data from Moscow
Which is unfortunate because Moscow does not have very good control of the absolute values. They have numerous ‘glitches’ and ‘jumps’ which are instrumental. Hermanus is better, or Kiel, or just about any other station.
Thank you, Dr. Spencer.
At first the alarmists will simply deny this and vituperously attack every scientist who confirms this, no matter how overwhelming and obvious the science is. It’s exactly what they’ve done up until now… they don’t change direction easily. I expect them to attack CERN and every researcher associated with it when the CLOUD papers are published, even as they have Dr. Spencer. Post-normal science is all about “Saving the planet”, creating an eco-marxist “utopia”, and being in the “smart crowd”; not a search for truth. Their cause is so noble that every sacrifice born by others is worth it: Bio-fuel induced bouts of starvation in the third world, the poor who die of cold because of artificially expensive fuel, and those jobless because global warming policies have so damaged industries. Let us not foget the research papers blocked, good scientists driven from their positions, and the data modified to fit CAGW theories.
Alarmist reputations will be lost or badly damaged in the months to come. It’s deserved and long overdue.
All that aside, I have a question: How long does the increase in cloud cover last? Once water vapor has coalesced into mist, how long does the mist linger?
R. Gates says:
May 20, 2011 at 11:41 am
“As the Arctic is the place to look for the early signs of AGW, the the fact that the Arctic continues warmer than it’s long term average and the sea ice is still in a long-term downtrend all corraborate the fact that generally the global climate models are correct about the influence of anthropogenic GHG’s”
The sea ice is just a lagging indicator of global temperature. It takes a long time for warmer water from the past warm period to circulate to the poles. It will take a while before the arctic ice recovers because that warmer water will be melting ice or preventing ice formation. The sea ice is not a good indicator of current energy budget.
Now, how to combine oceanic cycles with the Sun. Looks like theory of relativity and quantum theory.
Jim Cripwell says:
May 20, 2011 at 11:16 am
How much longer can these ostriches keep their heads buried in the sand?
_________________________________________________________
As long as the gravy train funding keeps rolling in.
Scottish Sceptic says:
May 20, 2011 at 11:28 am
“Which do you think is more cruel?
To take all these new papers that are coming out and storm the warmist bunker at Wikipedia…”
Speaking as one, honest academics must tell their students that Wikipedia is useful for fun only. It has no credibility for serious research.
R Gates
To refer to increasing co2 levels since 1750 is a little misleading in as much the amounts are so trivial that IF they make a difference at so low a concentration it effectively means that man can’t live on this planet without fundamentally altering its atmosphere. Are you suggesting that?
Perhaps you-or someone else- can confirm if this cosmic ray effect can be regional and sporadic, because it seems clear that we can date a general warming from 1700 ( I would date it to 1607) but on the other hand approximately 30% of stations show a cooling trend. How can this be?
tonyb
Thanks so much for your preliminary results. They are very interesting. The fact that you are interested in Svensmark’s hypotheses is interesting in itself. I hope that part of your interest is that Svensmark’s work provides us all with an impeccable example of scientific method.
Sincerely, “Thank You!” Dr. Spencer! Your preliminary analysis provides a first glimpse of independent correlation of atmospheric impingement of cosmic rays with earthly warming and cooling. Curiouser and curiouser……..
Thanks a bunch!
Is it only air / water temperature that causes reduced Arctic ice extent?
Have you considered soot?
I have not seen any correlation data for GCR and the global temperatures.
On the other hand there is 280 years long R^2 >0.7 correlation between CET (the world’s longest available temperature record) and the rate of change of the geomagnetic field in the North Atlantic.
Correlation of R^2 >0.7 for any climatic set of data (for a even much shorter period) is unprecedented. More details will be in a forthcoming article (email request will be considered) .
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/dBz.htm
Worth a visit to Nigel Calder’s blog, (former editor of New Scientist, co-author with Svensmark of ‘Chilling Stars’), and associated comments, for tracking the latest on this topic.
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/accelerator-results-on-cloud-nucleation-2/
The temperature and OHC records have large variations away from the general rise, while the IPCC “projections”, for all their complexity and needing Brainiac computation, are fairly smooth. If this work gives the variations that observation finds, then the correlation to sun and cosmic rays will be better than to the linear, very smooth rise of CO2.
Good work. Looking forward to incorporation of other stations and their data. So NASA hasn’t done this? Hmmmmmm.
Dr. Spencer
A very interesting and suggestive attempt, but I would note one fairly glaring omission. You forgot to include the mandatory final paragraph where you point out the urgent need for more research funding to cover further explorations of this topic. I know you’ve been at this a lot longer than many of our current crop climate geniuses, but you really do need to bring yourself up to date with the evolved goals of modern climatology i.e. “Show me the money!”
R=0.6 and R=0.64 is quoted in the graphs above. I would expect Dr. Spencer to quote more customary R^2, but this for above values would give much lower and disappointing R^2 =0.36 and R^0.41, which would be considered ‘not worth the bother’.
Dave Wendt says:
May 20, 2011 at 3:03 pm
“[…]but you really do need to bring yourself up to date with the evolved goals of modern climatology i.e. “Show me the money!”
He also needs to smuggle in a “worse than we thought”…
richard telford says:
May 20, 2011 at 11:49 am
“And how can cosmic be important when there is no trend since the 1950s?”
The Beast sequals; Es kann nicht sein, was nicht sein darf! We only now enter a prolonged solar minimum. The knowledge of the sun’s influence MUST be suppressed!
So I just went to Amazon to download a copy of Chilling Stars for my iPad, because hey, we live in Panama and don’t need to ship dead trees to add yet more to GW. But not so! Not available on Kindle! Nigel, tell your publisher to get with the program or get a new publisher! Sheesh – even my friend Nick who self-published a book about his sorry-a**ed childhood has it on Kindle and has sold at least ten copies.
Maybe if everyone on this blog sends a nastygram to the publisher we can get more distribution (worldwide) for this important book.
Total planetary cloud cover closely tracks GCR up until 1994. Post 1994 there is an increase in solar wind bursts that create a space charge differential in the ionosphere and which removes cloud forming ions.
See this review paper by Eric Palle.
(See figure 2. Note low level clouds are reduced by minus 0.065% per year, starting in about 1994.)
http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1264.pdf
The second process, considered by Tinsley and Yu (2003), namely electroscavenging, depends on the action of the global electrical circuit (see review by Rycroft et al. (2000)). The transport of charge by rapidly rising convective currents in the tropics and over continental land masses leads to a 200 kV positive charge of the ionosphere compared to Earth. This large voltage difference, in turn, necessitates a return current which must pass through the regions of the atmosphere where clouds are formed. As cosmic rays are the principal agent of ionization in the atmosphere above 1 km altitude, any modulation of the GCR flux due to solar activity is likely to affect the transport of charge to complete the global electrical circuit. Tinsley and Yu (2003) discuss how the build up of electrostatic charge at the tops and bottoms of clouds could affect the scavenging of ice forming nuclei (IFN) and cloud The solar wind bursts have abated and GCR is high however there is a third mechanism that is removing cloud forming ions.
..condensation nuclei (CCN) by droplets, and how this can lead to greater rates of precipitation and a reduction in cloud cover. They find that the electroscavenging process is likely to be more important over oceanic rather than continental regions and that it leads to a positive correlation between clouds and cosmic rays at higher latitudes and a negative correlation at low latitudes. Thus the electroscavenging process can explain several of the most striking features of Fig. 5, namely: (1) the peak in significant positive correlations at latitudes around 50 degrees North and South (Fig. 5a); (2) the tendency for a less significant but nonetheless evident trend to negative correlation coefficients at low latitudes (Fig. 5a); and (3) the location of the peak in correlation over one of the principal oceans, namely over the North and South Atlantic (Fig. 5c).
Once again about global warming and solar activity
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MSAIt760405/PDF/2005MmSAI..76..969G.pdf
Once again about global warming and solar activity K. Georgieva, C. Bianchi, and B. Kirov
We show that the index commonly used for quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity and using this index leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity in the global warming in the recent decades. A more suitable index is the geomagnetic activity which reflects all solar activity, and it is highly correlated to global temperature variations in the whole period for which we have data.
In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied. It could therefore be concluded that both the decreasing correlation between sunspot number and geomagnetic activity, and the deviation of the global temperature long-term trend from solar activity as expressed by sunspot index are due to the increased number of high-speed streams of solar wind on the declining phase and in the minimum of sunspot cycle in the last decades.
Dr. Spencer: I will use only the ground-based cosmic ray data from Moscow
Dr. Svalgaard: Which is unfortunate because Moscow does not have very good control of the absolute values. They have numerous ‘glitches’ and ‘jumps’ which are instrumental. Hermanus is better, or Kiel, or just about any other station.
A comparison of the Moscow data with that from the Hermanus and Haleakala neutron monitors doesn’t reveal any ‘glitches’ or ‘jumps’ – plots of the three datasets show a remarkably similar profile.
Anyone who is interested can verify for himself :
Moscow Neutron Monitor (Russia)
Haleakala Neutron Monitor
Hermanus Neutron Monitor
For all three plots, please select “27-days” for the resolution, to match the Dr. Spencer’s monthly plot, and the “Corrected for Pressure” option from the “Type of Data” drop-down menu. For the date ranges, please select 2000-Jan-01 to 2007-Jan-01 (since the Haleakala and Moscow data only goes to the start of 2007 for some reason at this website).
You’ll see that the plots are almost identical in shape. The y-axis on the Haleakala plot shows that the % swings are smaller than for Moscow and Hermanus – the Haleakala monitor has a 13.4 GeV cut-off, compared to Moscow’s 2.43 GeV, and 4.6 GeV for Hermanus, and therefore the bulk of the cosmis rays it is recording are of higher energy.
The Hermanus data at the Izmiran website above does extend to the full range considered by Dr. Spencer, and it matches the Moscow plot presented here very well.
Dr. Svalgaard also suggests comparing to the Kiel neutron monitor.
This can be done at the NMDB website.
Please choose the MOSC and KIEL stations (and I suggest one other eg. OULU, otherwise the 2 plots don’t all fit on the graph, and the ‘zoom out’ option doesn’t seem to work). The date range can be the full 2000-Jan-01 to 2007-Aug-01 used by Dr. Spencer.
Again, it can be seen that the two plots are in excellent agreement.
The Moscow monitor does appear to exhibit a jump in 2010 August, but this is outside the period used by Dr. Spencer. So Dr. Svalgaard is correct about the presence of glitches (and not just for the Moscow monitor), but he is wrong to dismiss Dr. Spencer’s analysis since no glitches or jumps appear to be present in the data used by Dr. Spencer.
[One more try to post this]
Dr. Spencer: I will use only the ground-based cosmic ray data from Moscow
Dr. Svalgaard: Which is unfortunate because Moscow does not have very good control of the absolute values. They have numerous ‘glitches’ and ‘jumps’ which are instrumental. Hermanus is better, or Kiel, or just about any other station.
A comparison of the Moscow data with that from the Hermanus and Haleakala neutron monitors doesn’t reveal any ‘glitches’ or ‘jumps’ – plots of the three datasets show a remarkably similar profile.
Anyone who is interested can verify for himself :
Moscow Neutron Monitor (Russia)
Haleakala Neutron Monitor
Hermanus Neutron Monitor
For all three plots, please select “27-days” for the resolution, to match the Dr. Spencer’s monthly plot, and the “Corrected for Pressure” option from the “Type of Data” drop-down menu. For the date ranges, please select 2000-Jan-01 to 2007-Jan-01 (since the Haleakala and Moscow data only goes to the start of 2007 for some reason at this website).
You’ll see that the plots are almost identical in shape. The y-axis on the Haleakala plot shows that the % swings are smaller than for Moscow and Hermanus – the Haleakala monitor has a 13.4 GeV cut-off, compared to Moscow’s 2.43 GeV, and 4.6 GeV for Hermanus, and therefore the bulk of the cosmis rays it is recording are of higher energy.
The Hermanus data at the Izmiran website above does extend to the full range considered by Dr. Spencer, and it matches the Moscow plot presented here very well.
Dr. Svalgaard also suggests comparing to the Kiel neutron monitor. This can be done at the NMDB website :
Please choose the MOSC and KIEL stations (and I suggest one other eg. OULU, otherwise the 2 plots don’t all fit on the graph, and the ‘zoom out’ option doesn’t seem to work). The date range can be the full 2000-Jan-01 to 2007-Aug-01 used by Dr. Spencer.
Again, it can be seen that the two plots are in excellent agreement.
The Moscow monitor does appear to exhibit a jump in 2010 August, but this is outside the period used by Dr. Spencer. So Dr. Svalgaard is correct about the presence of glitches (and not just for the Moscow monitor), but he is wrong to dismiss Dr. Spencer’s analysis since no glitches or jumps appear to be present in the data used by Dr. Spencer.
My post seems to be disappearing, not even going into moderation. I’ll try a shorter one:
Dr. Spencer: I will use only the ground-based cosmic ray data from Moscow
Dr. Svalgaard: Which is unfortunate because Moscow does not have very good control of the absolute values. They have numerous ‘glitches’ and ‘jumps’ which are instrumental. Hermanus is better, or Kiel, or just about any other station.
The Moscow, Hermanus and Kiel data can be plotted at izmirran dot rssi dot ru website (for the first two), and at the NMDB dot eu website for Moscow and Kiel.
There don’t appear to be any glitches or jumps – all three stations are in good agreement for the period considered by Dr. Spencer (although the % swings vary due to the different cut-off rigidities). The Moscow station does appear to exhibit a jump just after the period, in August 2010.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 20, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Moscow’s Monitor seems to be a bit ahead of the others, timewise.
I don’t know why this is, but thier data preceeds the rest of the stations.
Dr. Spencer: I will use only the ground-based cosmic ray data from Moscow
Dr. Svalgaard: Which is unfortunate because Moscow does not have very good control of the absolute values. They have numerous ‘glitches’ and ‘jumps’ which are instrumental. Hermanus is better, or Kiel, or just about any other station.
A comparison of the Moscow data with that from the Hermanus and Haleakala neutron monitors doesn’t reveal any ‘glitches’ or ‘jumps’ – plots of the three datasets show a remarkably similar profile.
Anyone who is interested can verify for himself :
Moscow Neutron Monitor (Russia)
Haleakala Neutron Monitor
Hermanus Neutron Monitor
For all three plots, please select “27-days” for the resolution, to match the Dr. Spencer’s monthly plot, and the “Corrected for Pressure” option from the “Type of Data” drop-down menu. For the date ranges, please select 2000-Jan-01 to 2007-Jan-01 (since the Haleakala and Moscow data only goes to the start of 2007 for some reason at this website).
You’ll see that the plots are almost identical in shape. The y-axis on the Haleakala plot shows that the % swings are smaller than for Moscow and Hermanus – the Haleakala monitor has a 13.4 GeV cut-off, compared to Moscow’s 2.43 GeV, and 4.6 GeV for Hermanus, and therefore the bulk of the cosmis rays it is recording are of higher energy.
The Hermanus data at the Izmiran website above does extend to the full range considered by Dr. Spencer, and it matches the Moscow plot presented here very well.
Dr. Svalgaard also suggests comparing to the Kiel neutron monitor. This can be done at the NMDB website :
Please choose the MOSC and KIEL stations (and I suggest one other eg. OULU, otherwise the 2 plots don’t all fit on the graph, and the ‘zoom out’ option doesn’t seem to work). The date range can be the full 2000-Jan-01 to 2007-Aug-01 used by Dr. Spencer.
Again, it can be seen that the two plots are in excellent agreement.
The Moscow monitor does appear to exhibit a jump in 2010 August, but this is outside the period used by Dr. Spencer. So Dr. Svalgaard is correct about the presence of glitches (and not just for the Moscow monitor), but he is too hasty to dismiss Dr. Spencer’s analysis, since no glitches or jumps appear to be present in the data used by Dr. Spencer.
Nice analysis Dr Spencer. I might add this is consistent with the correlation of previous solar cycle length and long term temperature (eg. see Butler & Johnston 1996).
TonyB.,
Of course we can’t live on earth without altering the atmosphere as that is what plants and amimals do. Now certainly if there were only a few million humans living in some primitive or low energy usage our impact would be far less.
The real divide comes down to those who are convinced that the science is robust enough to strongly suggest that the 40% increase in co2 and large increases in other GH gases since about 1750 is large enough to change the climate in a significant way
Sorry, a correction to my comment @ May 20, 2011 at 4:25 pm:
The date range can be the full 2000-Jan-01 to 2007-Aug-01 used by Dr. Spencer.
That should’ve been “to 2010-Aug-01”.
Don B says:
May 20, 2011 at 11:24 am
“If enough articles such as this one in Physics World keep showing up, surely the media will notice, won’t they?”
All imortant news-media has editorial staff-meetings where they decide to ignore it.
The BBC for example. They notice, but they have decided to ignore it.
It is just like with Israel. All positive news from Israel, the only democracy in the middle east, is ignored. All negative news are enhanced. WUWT?
Gates says:
“…the 40% increase in co2 and large increases in other GH gases since about 1750 is large enough to change the climate in a significant way.”
There is no evidence to support that statement.
@R Gates
“The real divide comes down to those who are convinced that the science is robust enough to strongly suggest that the 40% increase in co2 and large increases in other GH gases since about 1750 is large enough to change the climate in a significant way”
++++++
There is no published or blogged science strongly suggesting that a 40% increase in co2 and large increases in other GH gases since about 1750 is large enough to change the climate in a significant way. The vastly dominant GHG is water vapour and there is no indication that the level of it has increased at all. The article above clearly shows that not even cloud cover is changed by water vapour, it is mediated by the prevalence of cloud condensation nuclei even as the water vapour level stays the same.
In your first post above you mention that the Arctic is melting, or has not recovered. NASA says the ice loss was due to it blowing out of the Arctic Ocean and provides a photographic animation to prove it. It was not caused by GHG’s nor was the ice melted in the Arctic.
The GCR theory goes a long way to explaining climate change on this planet at all time scales and now has experimental evidence to support it. Combined with other natural factors, like ocean cycles, we seem to have a pretty good working model of the Earth’s climate throughout history!
The CO2 theory of climate change, consisting largely of positive feedbacks, has no such supporting experimental evidence and only seems to fit the last 50 years or so, and only then if you ignore all other natural factors outside of volcanoes and the tiny changes in solar insolation.
The cognitive dissidence the warmest’s must live with seems overwhelming to me.
I have never met a climate change skeptic. Those of us who did not buy into the man-made climate change theory have always recognized that climate changes, but believed it was mostly natural and that the human impact was small, and certainly not a crisis! We have taken a more holistic view of climate change, believing that there are many factors to consider, and humanity is only a small part of the equation. The evidence is now overwhelming that this is the more accurate view of climate change (and actually, always has been).
The warmest’s are the only true ‘denialists’ in the debate. They are denying natural climate change exists. They hold the untenable argument that CO2 is the primary driver of climate change and, therefore, all evidence of climate change before the mid-20th century is invalid. That is a lot of denial-ism, right there! I would put it right up there with the idea that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.
I guess my point is that I want to shout this GCR news from the roof tops. I want CNN to do non-stop coverage. I want cities across the planet to plan ‘Natural Climate Change Days’ and celebrate our freedom from impending doom! I want Roy Spencer to be a bit more excited and not so darn cautious and qualifying. But that is not going to happen, is it.
The climate crisis is going to die a slow and agonizing death. Remnants of the ‘crisis that never was’ will linger for many, many decades, just like the tax we Americans still pay to finance the Spanish/American war! Only this time, the bureaucratic damage is on a global scale. We will never know the true cost of this climate change debacle, but there is a chance that we may learn from it. At least, we can hope.
R. Gates has the irritating behaviour of generally not initially revealing his references.
Smokey says:
Well spotted. And even when he produces such ‘evidence’ it may come up for debate. R. Gates, please back up all your claims. Even the IPCC avoids claiming statistically significant man-made AGW before 1950. Get a grip!
Smokey says:
May 20, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Gates says:
“…the 40% increase in co2 and large increases in other GH gases since about 1750 is large enough to change the climate in a significant way.”
There is no evidence to support that statement.
———-
Then about any time now the arctic sea ice should be returning to it’s long-term average…something it has not seen since 2004, and the permafrost should begin to freeze up again. The dramatic changes being seen across the arctic would say that you are quite wrong, and that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the GCM’s are correct in showing that anthrogenic GHG’s are affecting climate.
R. Gates says:
May 20, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Quantify what you are talking about:
The real divide comes down to those who are convinced that the science is robust enough to strongly suggest that the 40% increase in co2 and large increases in other GH gases since about 1750 is large enough to change the climate in a significant way
A 40% increase in a trace gas measured in a few hundreds of parts per million is still a trace gas as far as Earth’s atmosphere goes.
Let me know when we are talking about significant amounts of CO2, like 10,000 parts per million or more. At present, the change from .025% to .04% is still trace amounts.
Further, CO2 is known in industry to directly displace oxygen, so if you had a 21% O2 content previously, that O2 content is now 20.85%.
Gates,
GCMs are not evidence, and there is no empirical evidence that anthrogenic (sic) emissions are causing Arctic ice cover to decline. If CO2 was the cause the exact same thing would be happening in the Antarctic.
The natural, cyclical decline in Arctic ice has happened before, and it will happen again. It is coincidental with the rise of a very minor trace gas. Every other CO2=CAGW prediction has failed.
Arctic ice is currently declining, and you believe it is due to CO2, which comprises only 0.00039 of the atmosphere. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that only a small handful of humanity are not going straight to hell. I’m not going to change their minds, nor yours.
Marcoinpanama said @ May 20, 2011 at 3:53 pm
“So I just went to Amazon to download a copy of Chilling Stars for my iPad, because hey, we live in Panama and don’t need to ship dead trees to add yet more to GW.”
So purchase a 2nd hand copy. I managed that in Tasmania and we are even further away from “civilisation” than Panama 🙂
ATTN: R. Gates
RE: Cyroconite
See the article “Melt Zone” in June issue of Nat Geo which explains how the mineral dust cryoconite greatly accelerates the melting the ice in Greenland and the Arctic.
Dr. Spencer,
You have here back-of-envelope science …. but it is pretty compelling. Like you, I was a GCR skeptic, but certainly there appears to be more and more EXPERIMENTAL and OBSERVATIONAL data to support a strong GCR amplification of TSI upon the Earth’s “temperature”.
Enter Leif??????
What will be the AGWers’ reply? Probably denial of publication, denialof funding, denial of results.
Who, pray tell, are the deniers here?
vukcevic wrote (May 20, 2011 at 3:05 pm):
“R=0.6 and R=0.64 is quoted in the graphs above. I would expect Dr. Spencer to quote more customary R^2, but this for above values would give much lower and disappointing R^2 =0.36 and R^0.41, which would be considered ‘not worth the bother’.”
According to conventional mainstream wisdom, significance is assessed not by r^2 but rather by the p-value. Say you get p<.05, then you would conclude that 36% or 41% of the variation is associated with (some might try to say caused by) whatever. That's a LOT — certainly not something you'd want to ignore. Of course the problem is that the assumptions underpinning the models are so often patently untenable for the variables we usually discuss at WUWT (which brings p-values & confidence intervals into question).
Since the 11 year pattern is semi-annual and Earth is N-S asymmetrical, a whole-globe approach doesn’t seem to be the best way to go, but it can probably be a place to start a needed discussion. Also, I certainly wouldn’t assume multidecadal terrestrial variations to be independent of solar cycle acceleration.
a.m.r. says:
May 20, 2011 at 4:25 pm
So Dr. Svalgaard is correct about the presence of glitches (and not just for the Moscow monitor), but he is too hasty to dismiss Dr. Spencer’s analysis, since no glitches or jumps appear to be present in the data used by Dr. Spencer.
I’m not dismissing anything, just pointing out that Moscow in general is not so good. Neither is Oulu, BTW. If I have some criticism then it would be that the cosmic ray data should not be detrended as Svensmark’s hypothesis works with the actual count of the particles. Twice as many, gives twice as many ions, etc.
R. Gates says:
May 20, 2011 at 11:41 am
As the Arctic is the place to look for the early signs of AGW, the the fact that the Arctic continues warmer than it’s long term average and the sea ice is still in a long-term downtrend all corraborate the fact that generally the global climate models are correct about the influence of anthropogenic GHG’s, and the addition of the GCR/cloud connect will add only a minor modulation of the general trend to higher global temps over the coming decades due to anthropogenic GHG’s.
=============================
Blah blah blah.
Anybody can make their **** not have a stink by couching it with the right words.
And if you look at R’s comments on the “global climate models”….you would see that his pronouncement of the same just a year ago….was the “AGW models.”
Disqualified!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I’m wondering how the pro-AGW scientists such as Gavin Schmidt will view these findings ? Will comprehensive research, supported by real world evidence be met with denial ?
If so, how would one descibe such a person ?
R. Gates says:
Then about any time now the arctic sea ice should be returning to it’s long-term average…something it has not seen since 2004, and the permafrost should begin to freeze up again. The dramatic changes being seen across the arctic would say that you are quite wrong, and that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the GCM’s are correct in showing that anthrogenic GHG’s are affecting climate.
===================
What “long-term average”?
And re: “since 2004″….based upon what goalposts???
Beginning 1979????
OMG….the LONG TERM AVERAGE since the 1970s.
OK so let me rephrase this question: In any semblance of a geological time scale, WHAT “long term average”???
Thought so.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
R. Gates says:
May 20, 2011 at 4:36 pm
The real divide comes down to those who are convinced that the science is robust enough to strongly suggest that the 40% increase in co2 and large increases in other GH gases since about 1750 is large enough to change the climate in a significant way.
===========================
No.
The real divide comes down to those who are delusional either from junk science or cognitive dissonance…as opposed to those who work at no cost, to find the truth.
You can’t have it both ways….and the truth hurts.
Don’t create any fake or false divides, R.
Those divides only exist in your (and others like you) catastrophically inflexible and hardwired CAGW brain…nowhere else.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Smokey
“If CO2 was the cause the exact same thing would be happening in the Antarctic.”
there is one nice difference between the arctic and antarctic. What’s underneath the ice in the arctic?
In a warming world ( WHATEVER THE CAUSE) you would not suspect the EXACT same thing to happen in at both poles.
Smokey
“Arctic ice is currently declining, and you believe it is due to CO2, which comprises only 0.00039 of the atmosphere.”
ask what percentage of the atmosphere is GCRs.. really really tiny.
how could the change in the really really tiny pcentage of GCR have any effect.
Please stop with the trace gas argument, ESPECIALLY if you believe in the trace GCR argument
The link with GCR quantities looks increasingly tempting but we need to be sure that it is a direct causative factor and not a mere proxy for the level of solar activity generally with in another solar linked process being the causative factor.
As I said in another thread:
“A change in cloud quantities can occur in more than one way.
My main problem with the Svensmark hypothesis is that there is no shortage of the necessary aerosols in the first place so more of them does not necessarily result in more clouds.
The Svansmark idea suggests that the extra aerosols being added would have a pretty even effect on cloudiness across the globe with perhaps a slight bias towards the polar regions where some charged particles are directed in along the magnetic field lines.
However we don’t see changes in cloudiness occurring in a pattern which would comply with that proposition.
Instead we see changes in the surface pressure distribution affecting the size and positions of the various blocks of polar and equatorial air masses as they ebb and flow and interact with one another around the world all the time.
Where those air masses interact we see more clouds and the solar effect seems to work by causing more (or less) meridional jets, more (or less) air mass mixing and therefore longer (or shorter) lines of air mass interaction across the globe resulting in more (or less) clouds.
So generally we see zonal jets and less clouds (warming) when the sun is active and meridional jets and more clouds (cooling) when the sun is less active.
The recent combination of a very quiet sun and a record negative Arctic Oscillation with increasing global albedo in contrast to the late 20th century active sun with a weak Arctic Oscillation and decreasing global albedo is an example in point.
Also the Svensmark idea would require the creation of more clouds first then some sort of reorganisation process over time as the additional clouds became incorporated into the background weather patterns. The clouds would have to come first and then the weather patterns would change.
In reality we see the weather patterns change first by way of a change in the meridionality/zzonality of the jets then the cloud quantity changes follow.
To get that change in meridionality/zonality we first need a change in the atmospheric heights and as far as I know Svensmark’s idea does not deal with that.
Thus we are back to solar induced ozone linked chemical reactions in the atmospheric column altering the heights in line with the level of solar activity.”
I don’t pretend to actually know the answer for certain and at this point I can offer no proof but from real world observations over more than half a century I suspect the GCR quantities to be merely a proxy.
Some time ago I published a paper in Energy & Environment showing a remarkable correlation between the drift of the magnetic poles and global temperatures, but I struggled to find a cause. I looked for a connection between space weather and terrestrial weather but couldn’t find it. If the drift of the poles does cause a shift in cosmic radiation to more or less temperature sensitive areas of the Earth, would this have any bearing?
http://www.akk.me.uk
R. Gates says:
May 20, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Then about any time now the arctic sea ice should be returning to it’s long-term average…something it has not seen since 2004, and the permafrost should begin to freeze up again. ………..
===========================================
Patience…..its getting there. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/minimum-ice-extent/
Couple more years or so……..
“For example, if warming observed in the last century is (say) 50% natural and 50% anthropogenic, then this implies the climate system is only one-half as sensitive to our greenhouse gas emissions (or aerosol pollution) than if the warming was 100% anthropogenic in origin (which is pretty close to what we are told the supposed “scientific consensus” is).”
My own statistical analysis of a number of stations around the world suggest that the mean temperature on earth is pushed up by heat coming from outside, not from the inside. Not even a share comes from the heat from earth , unless perhaps volcanic (like I found on on Hawaii).
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
Love to hear some comments!
(you don’t want to know how much work this little compilation was)
Stephen Wilde says:
May 20, 2011 at 11:46 pm
….
I don’t pretend to actually know the answer for certain and at this point I can offer no proof but from real world observations over more than half a century I suspect the GCR quantities to be merely a proxy.
Quite. There is a strong possibility that this is the case. There is also a strong possibility that the solar activity (GCRs or whatever) is simply having a slight moderating effect. It doesn’t look to be the dominant driver otherwise temperatures would much lower than they currently are. UAH temperatures during the recent La Nina have been as high as those during the 1986/87 El Nino.
Steven Mosher: there is one nice difference between the arctic and antarctic. What’s underneath the ice in the arctic? In a warming world ( WHATEVER THE CAUSE) you would not suspect the EXACT same thing to happen in at both poles.
ask what percentage of the atmosphere is GCRs.. really really tiny.
how could the change in the really really tiny pcentage of GCR have any effect.
Steven, you usually talk a lot of sense, but neither of your two comments above made much sense to me.
The Antarctic: yes, there is land below it, but the ice cap extends vast distances from the land. The Antarctic continent can affect the circulation of the Southern Ocean, but it is still ocean. It seems that that ocean cannot be warming significantly, when it continues to allow similar or increasing areas of ice to form there in the australis winter.
As for GCRs, Galctic Cosmic Rays, these are not a constituent of the atmosphere, they are hitting it from outer space. So what does a “tiny percentage of GCR” mean? Perhaps I have misunderstood you.
Rich.
‘Solar input seems to have more influence on climate than humans’. Or words to that effect Dr Spencer.
What caused the climate changes before we arrived on the scene then?
Climate Change has been a fact of life for this planet for the last 4.6 Bya. The only source of sufficient heat to drive the climate is the sun and previous changes in climate have been more sudden than anything we have experienced in the past 500 years. The evidence is in the geological record!
Dr. Spencer is still paying too much attention to human input and that discredited theory of GHG’s. Hopefully Svensmarks theory will become scientific fact because it fits with observation, though not the models.
Mr. Gates
Talks about rise of CO2 since 1700, global and the Arctic temperatures.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-dBz.htm
Mr. Gates is an intelligent man, but either has a very strange of humour or is rattling well known AGW nonsense for a reason known to him but not to the rest of us.
John Marshall says: May 21, 2011 at 2:02 am
Hopefully Svensmarks theory will become scientific fact…
Svensmark’s theory is scientific fact, so is CO2 positive feedback, but effect of either is not as large or important as many have suggested.
Just put “The Cloud Mystery 1/6” into your search engine and click go.!
Then watch the videos –and you’ll know what it is all about. You need not be able to speak Danish as where Danish is spoken there are also “Sub Titles”
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 20, 2011 at 10:28 pm
If I have some criticism then it would be that the cosmic ray data should not be detrended as Svensmark’s hypothesis works with the actual count of the particles. Twice as many, gives twice as many ions, etc.
As I understand it, Roy de-trends the GCR data to enable the comparison with the CERES data, then ‘re-trends it’ using the following technique:
“the estimated cosmic ray forcing resulting from the month-to-month changes in the original Moscow cosmic ray time series, computed by multiplying those monthly changes by 0.55 Watts per sq. meter per 1,000 cosmic ray counts change.”
So as far as I can tell, he is taking account of the absolute values, but modelling them by multiplying up the detranded data using the factor he determined.
If you take Roy’s summary graph and invert it, and compare it to the raw Moscow data, it matches after appropriately scaling the ‘y’ axis.
So I don’t think your criticism amounts to anything devastating for Roy’s analysis.
John Finn says:
May 21, 2011 at 1:12 am
It doesn’t look to be the dominant driver otherwise temperatures would much lower than they currently are. UAH temperatures during the recent La Nina have been as high as those during the 1986/87 El Nino.
Still banging the same old drum John?
You are not considering how the climatic effect of the Svensmark Hypothesis works. By reducing cloud cover during the high solar cycles of the later C20th, more sunlight gets absorbed into the ocean. This warms the ocean. A couple of decades later, the run of big el ninos starts, creating the step changes in surface temp so neatly demonstrated by Bob Tisdale.
Given the obviously large thermal inertia of the ocean, why would you expect the temps to drop as soon as the sun goes quiet? If it took a couple of decades after the high solar cycle of the late 1950’s for the warming to get going, it’ll probably take a couple of decades after the end of the run of high solar cycles before the cooling ocean finishes burping out accumulated heat and lowers surface temps too.
Stephen Wilde wrote (May 20, 2011 at 11:46 pm):
“Where those air masses interact we see more clouds and the solar effect seems to work by causing more (or less) meridional jets, more (or less) air mass mixing and therefore longer (or shorter) lines of air mass interaction across the globe resulting in more (or less) clouds.”
Can Bill Illis, Dr. Spencer, or someone else suggest a time series that quantifies this length-to-surface-area ratio or fractal dimension that Stephen often writes about?
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 6:55 am
So as far as I can tell, he is taking account of the absolute values, but modelling them by multiplying up the detrended data using the factor he determined.
This is where it is wrong. Why should the forcing be calculated using the detrended data?
Stephen Wilde wrote (May 20, 2011 at 11:46 pm):
“To get that change in meridionality/zonality we first need a change in the atmospheric heights and as far as I know Svensmark’s idea does not deal with that.”
I suggest that someone (colleague or journalist conducting interview to be publicized) ask Svensmark directly about this.
—
Where Stephen’s exposition can improve dramatically:
Emphasize that the variation is semi-annual. The decadal-scale changes are in the amplitude of the semi-annual wave. See Leroux (1993) for some helpful pictures and Sidorenkov (2005) for words that fit on a single page to go with Leroux’s pictures. North-south terrestrial asymmetry canNOT be dismissed as irrelevant.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 7:41 am
Why should the forcing be calculated using the detrended data?
Because climate is complicated and the Earth is a noisy laboratory.
Roy Spencer says:
Detrending the data isolates the month-to-month and year-to-year variability as the signal to match, since trends (or a lack of trends) in the global radiative budget data can be caused by a combination of many things. (Linear trends are worthless for statistically inferring cause-and-effect; but getting a match between wiggles in two datasets is much less likely to be due to random chance.)
tallbloke wrote (May 21, 2011 at 7:18 am):
“Given the obviously large thermal inertia of the ocean, why would you expect the temps to drop as soon as the sun goes quiet? If it took a couple of decades after the high solar cycle of the late 1950′s for the warming to get going, it’ll probably take a couple of decades after the end of the run of high solar cycles before the cooling ocean finishes burping out accumulated heat and lowers surface temps too.”
The dynamics occur at the semi-annual timescale. There’s no multidecadal lag. The multidecadal variations come from north-south terrestrial asymmetry.
Tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:07 am
Because climate is complicated and the Earth is a noisy laboratory.
Whole generally true, the claim is that the solar [GCR] influence is the MAJOR [SOLE – ONE AND ONLY] driver in which case the noise is the signal. Now if you concede that the solar [GCR] influence is minor, hard-to-detect, almost drowning in the noise, you might use the ‘noisy laboratory’ excuse.
In any event, one might expect that Spencer did a correct analysis. However, trying to reproduce his graph shows that the wiggles do not match, especially after 2006 [where the amplitudes of his wiggles are too large – leading to artificially enhanced forcing]. Here is following his recipe: http://www.leif.org/research/Moscow-2000-2011.png.
This is also directly visible by eye-balling his graphs.
The mechanisms of ice decline are fully explained each and every yearly cycle by atmospheric and oceanic circulation pattern variations. Therefore, a warmer’s only recourse is to then explain how the increasing anthropogenic CO2, and only just that portion, has had enough energy potential to change the atmospheric and oceanic circulation pattern variations that have led to the recent decline.
I have certainly not yet seen a mathematical proof of this anthropogenic CO2-atmospheric/oceanic pattern connection mechanism, nor have I seen a plausible mechanism without a maths proof.
Gates, you are stating nothing more than speculative conjecture.
Leif Svalgaard wrote (May 21, 2011 at 7:41 am)
“Why should the forcing be calculated using the detrended data?”
tallbloke replied (May 21, 2011 at 8:07 am)
“Because climate is complicated and the Earth is a noisy laboratory.
Roy Spencer says: Detrending the data isolates the month-to-month and year-to-year variability as the signal to match, since trends (or a lack of trends) in the global radiative budget data can be caused by a combination of many things. (Linear trends are worthless for statistically inferring cause-and-effect; but getting a match between wiggles in two datasets is much less likely to be due to random chance.)”
It’ll become more interesting when Dr. Spencer finds time to step beyond the linear approach (or maybe money to pay a grad student or postdoc to do it). Cross-correlation, while informative, is patently insufficient for unearthing the full nature of complex [as in complex numbers, not as in complicated] relations.
This one sentence;
“While I have been skeptical of Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory up until now, it looks like the evidence is becoming too strong for me to ignore.”
tells me more about Dr Spencer’s honesty and integrity than any other source. Is it not the statement of a true scientist ?
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:28 am
Tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:07 am
Because climate is complicated and the Earth is a noisy laboratory.
Whole generally true, the claim is that the solar [GCR] influence is the MAJOR [SOLE – ONE AND ONLY] driver in which case the noise is the signal.
You are assuming wiggles are only caused by drivers. What about rebounding oscillations within the terrestrial system?
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:30 am
It’ll become more interesting when Dr. Spencer finds time to step beyond the linear approach (or maybe money to pay a grad student or postdoc to do it). Cross-correlation, while informative, is patently insufficient for unearthing the full nature of complex [as in complex numbers, not as in complicated] relations.
Roy Spencer says:
May 20, 2011 at 5:25 AM
No one really knows what causes natural cycles in the climate system like the PDO. It could be natural oscillations in the thermohaline circulation of the ocean. Your question is a little like asking, “what causes chaos?”. There are nonlinearities in the climate system on a wide variety of timescales that are too complex for us to predict, let alone understand.
And as he drily noted in response to a critic on his blog:
Roy Spencer says:
May 13, 2011 at 5:26 AM
So, when IPCC-related studies assume linear feedbacks, it’s ok, but when I do, it’s not OK? Hmmm.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:30 am
Cross-correlation, while informative, is patently insufficient for unearthing the full nature of complex [as in complex numbers, not as in complicated] relations.
But is often patently sufficient for deluding statisticians into seeing things that aren’t there.
Leif Svalgaard wrote (May 20, 2011 at 10:28 pm):
“If I have some criticism then it would be that the cosmic ray data should not be detrended as Svensmark’s hypothesis works with the actual count of the particles. Twice as many, gives twice as many ions, etc.”
The atmosphere is FLUID. If something external DRUMS on it, it changes spatially in SHAPE (not in absolute size). If one thrusts a rod of semi-infinite length into a pool, the moment of greatest change for the pool is the initial contact of the blunt finite end.
It doesn’t matter if Svensmark is right or wrong or if it’s GCR or something confounded with GCR or if one correlated station is better than another; what matters is the coherence THAT IS OBSERVED. Suggestion: Physicists can best help out via efforts to explain what is observed.
Schwing, F.B.; Jiang, J.; & Mendelssohn, R. (2003). Coherency of multi-scale abrupt changes between the NAO, NPI, and PDO. Geophysical Research Letters 30(7), 1406. doi:10.1029/2002GL016535.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:37 am
You are assuming wiggles are only caused by drivers. What about rebounding oscillations within the terrestrial system?
Spencer is assuming that [‘forcings’]. But, what about your oscillations? But a number on them, a theory, and a mechanism, and come back for a discussion about the science.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:10 am
The dynamics occur at the semi-annual timescale. There’s no multidecadal lag. The multidecadal variations come from north-south terrestrial asymmetry.
And that asymmetry (and LOD changes on the multi-decadal scale) causes the oceans to shift large amounts of energy around. And up and down. Leading to longish lags between solar input and climate response.
tallbloke addressing Svalgaard (May 21, 2011 at 8:37 am):
“You are assuming wiggles are only caused by drivers. What about rebounding oscillations within the terrestrial system?”
Excellent question. The level of discussion has elevated.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:53 am
It doesn’t matter if Svensmark is right or wrong or if it’s GCR or something confounded with GCR or if one correlated station is better than another; what matters is the coherence THAT IS OBSERVED.
Coherency of multi-scale abrupt changes between the NAO, NPI, and PDO.
Everybody claiming a correlation [no matter which] claims it is OBSERVED. In any event your examples are just climate vs. climate. No external forcings. So, not relevant for the topic at hand.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 9:01 am
“What about rebounding oscillations within the terrestrial system?”
Excellent question. The level of discussion has elevated.
The wiggles were taken as evidence for external direct driven forcing, so the level has dropped considerably.
tallbloke, there’s no lag looking at solar cycle deceleration (instead of TSI or sunspot numbers or whatever else someone might have in mind). Excessive reliance on “anomalies” has blinded some to higher frequency oscillations. The ocean can lose heat in 3 months. It doesn’t need decades. The highest variance is OVERWHELMINGLY at high frequencies; there is no escaping this observation.
You are getting there chaps.
Solar forcings from above (external) modulated over time by oceanic forcings (internal) from below.
The outcome of that struggle at any given moment being reflected in the surface pressure distribution (especially the position and behaviour of the midlatitude jets) which has an effect on the size and position of the various climate zones.
The regions that see most in the way of climate changes are those situated at or near a climate zone boundary so that as the surface pressure changes vary those regions cross from one side to another of those boundaries for variable lengths of time.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 9:08 am
tallbloke, there’s no lag
Paul, I think you missing an important element of the lags. Invoking unknown [even variable] lags of several decades are an efficient shield against falsification.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:55 am
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:37 am
You are assuming wiggles are only caused by drivers. What about rebounding oscillations within the terrestrial system?
Spencer is assuming that [‘forcings’]. But, what about your oscillations? But a number on them, a theory, and a mechanism, and come back for a discussion about the science.
See the quote from Roy above about chaos. The fact that he has managed to tease out some signal from the noise is great, and note that he states it is a preliminary finding, and the accuracy is not well constrained due exactly to the noise problems we are discussing.
It’s still progress though, and at least he’s willing to work on the problem because he can no longer ignore the evidence. Unlike some who are still in denial.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 9:16 am
and the accuracy is not well constrained due exactly to the noise problems we are discussing.
Even more to his deficient analysis. What he plots is not what he says he plotted as I just showed.
It’s still progress though, and at least he’s willing to work on the problem because he can no longer ignore the evidence. Unlike some who are still in denial.
Unlike some who have looked at this in detail [not preliminary and not with deficient data analysis] and found it wanting and the evidence unconvincing.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 9:08 am
tallbloke, there’s no lag looking at solar cycle deceleration (instead of TSI or sunspot numbers or whatever else someone might have in mind). Excessive reliance on “anomalies” has blinded some to higher frequency oscillations. The ocean can lose heat in 3 months. It doesn’t need decades. The highest variance is OVERWHELMINGLY at high frequencies; there is no escaping this observation.
I’m not sure what you mean by solar cycle deceleration. Cycle lengths getting longer? If so, Archibald posted about a scandinavian whose study showed an approx one cycle lag between solar activity change and surface temp change.
“The ocean can lose heat in 3 months. It doesn’t need decades. ”
The top 30m of the ocean can lose heat in 3 months, but that is a small proportion of the thermal mass of the ocean. The shifting of the courses of large undersea rivers of water mixes down energy due to the coriolis effect and tidal action. The stored energy can be held or released over long timescales, and the variation is much greater than the higher frequency annual variation. The shallow ocean was several degrees warmer all the way to the bottom some millions of years ago.
tallbloke wrote (May 21, 2011 at 9:25 am) “the variation is much greater than the higher frequency annual variation.”
This can’t be right.
Stephen Wilde wrote (May 21, 2011 at 9:12 am):
“The outcome of that struggle at any given moment being reflected in the surface pressure distribution (especially the position and behaviour of the midlatitude jets) which has an effect on the size and position of the various climate zones.
The regions that see most in the way of climate changes are those situated at or near a climate zone boundary so that as the surface pressure changes vary those regions cross from one side to another of those boundaries for variable lengths of time.”
The level of discussion is elevating.
[Next, if we could just get people to stop ignoring seasons…]
Leif Svalgaard said:
“Paul, I think you missing an important element of the lags. Invoking unknown [even variable] lags of several decades are an efficient shield against falsification.”
No, they do however make verification more difficult.
Is it denied that variable lags exist ?
Leif is a proponent of the idea that ALL climate variability is internally generated.
Does he really propose such an all powerful internal system variability as that AND deny the existence of variable lags despite the fluid nature of the oceans with their complex internal structure ?
Lets see what Leif is proposing:
i) Solar effects limited to 0.1C from cycle to cycle and no significant solar effect from changes in the level of solar activity over centuries such as from LIA to date.
ii) No significant variable internal system lags despite deep oceans with a complex and largely unknown internal thermal structure and behaviour.
Effectively Leif is excluding both sun AND oceans as potential climate forcing agents over multidecadal periods of time.
Very helpful to the AGW lobby but not to anyone else.
Leif, if the sun doesn’t do it and there are no multidecadal variable lags generated internally then what would be your next logical step in explaining multidecadal climate variability ?
Haven’t you painted yourself into a corner ?
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 9:23 am
What he plots is not what he says he plotted as I just showed.
We can see in Roy’s excellent graphs what he plotted. We don’t need your mischaracterisation of what they show.
Unlike some who have looked at this in detail [not preliminary and not with deficient data analysis] and found it wanting and the evidence unconvincing.
Hah! We’ll see. CLOUD will have more results soon, and the Aahus results are looking very good too.
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/accelerator-results-on-cloud-nucleation/
The days of your pooh-poohing Svensmark are numbered. Enjoy them while you can.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 9:35 am
tallbloke wrote (May 21, 2011 at 9:25 am) “the variation is much greater than the higher frequency annual variation.”
This can’t be right.
I mean the variation in ocean heat content (to, say, 700m), not surface temperature.
“[Next, if we could just get people to stop ignoring seasons…]”
I had assumed that everyone knew that I was referring to shifts beyond normal seasonal variation.
Such as :
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24228037/
and more recently:
http://poleshift.ning.com/profiles/blogs/earth-wobble-jet-stream
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 9:46 am
We can see in Roy’s excellent graphs what he plotted. We don’t need your mischaracterisation of what they show.
But unless you redo what he said he did, you won’t see that what he plotted is not what he said he plotted. Here is an overlay: http://www.leif.org/research/Moscow-2000-2011-compare.png to help you over your denial.
I really wish that there was a link between solar activity and climate. That would make my field all that more relevant [help improve funding too], but, alas, 400 years [almost 150,000 days] of claims have not gotten us any closer. One may hope that the number of days until my field becomes the foundation of climate science is indeed small.
tallbloke, LINEAR cross-correlation UNDERestimates (SEVERELY) the strength of relations among interannual terrestrial oscillations …and it also invites nonsensical MISinterpretations of lags [including interannual & multidecadal ones].
Additionally, basing LINEAR decompositions on ENSO causes related estimation problems ….for one truly simple example, even the interannual component of AMO LINEARLY correlates more strongly with global surface T than does ENSO – should be a nobrainer to climate discussion enthusiasts who understand the role of high-amplitude regional variance in global summaries, but we see clearly in these discussions that it is not.
Upshot: Complex numbers are needed in the study of phase relations.
As regards my post of 9.58 a m I do not share the idea that there is an Earth ‘wobble’ or a pending pole shift. The link is merely to demonstrate the extent of the recent jetstream shifting whilst solar activity was low.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 9:39 am
[Next, if we could just get people to stop ignoring seasons…]
The seasonal changes in insolation and the resulting north-south differentials are a vital aspect of the heat pump which drives the mixing of solar energy in the oceans.
tallbloke wrote (May 21, 2011 at 9:56 am) “I mean the variation in ocean heat content (to, say, 700m), not surface temperature.”
Still can’t be right. Let’s just efficiently call it a “misunderstanding” and move on to more productive pursuits than protracted exchanges (that no sensible person bothers to read under normal circumstances).
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:00 am
Here is an overlay: http://www.leif.org/research/Moscow-2000-2011-compare.png to help you over your denial.
Looks pretty similar to your green curve.
I really wish that there was a link between solar activity and climate. That would make my field all that more relevant [help improve funding too], but, alas, 400 years [almost 150,000 days] of claims have not gotten us any closer.
Dear Leif, I hope you are still around when our theory is fully developed and accepted. Even though your own efforts are aimed at preventing this happening.
One may hope that the number of days until my field becomes the foundation of climate science is indeed small.
Hurrah! 🙂
Stephen Wilde says:
May 21, 2011 at 9:40 am
Leif, if the sun doesn’t do it and there are no multidecadal variable lags generated internally then what would be your next logical step in explaining multidecadal climate variability ?
I don’t know about any internal lags, just fluctuations. I don’t think there are any lags, but none are needed. There are large internal fluctuations [and by internal I include volcanoes – I don’t see the effect of Pinatubo showing up twenty years down the road]. So, you propose that there is some change in the ocean heat content and that as a result the climate changes several decades later.
‘Lags’ are but a convenient rug to shove things under.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:17 am
Looks pretty similar to your green curve.
Is not the point. In this business there must be an exact match. I take the same data, detrend, smooth the prescribed way 1-2-1, and get a different result. So what is he not telling?
Dear Leif, I hope you are still around when our theory is fully developed and accepted.
It has failed so far for more than 150 years, so perhaps none of us will be around.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:18 am
So, you propose that there is some change in the ocean heat content and that as a result the climate changes several decades later.
About one decade later. As you and I discussed on Climate Audit nearly 3 years ago.
“I don’t know about any internal lags, just fluctuations.”
Then we are agreed because to my mind internal system fluctuations must result in a lagged system response to solar input.
The climate doesn’t just ‘change several decades later’. One fluctuation segues into the next in a constant process and the solar and oceanic fluctuations modulate each other.
At the surface and in the short term random chaotic variability does the rest.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:25 am
About one decade later.
So, the ocean heat content changes [that is: the oceans have already heated up] and then ten years later the atmosphere [the ‘climate’] changes? apart from ‘climate’ being a 30-yr thing [but let that slide].
tallbloke wrote (May 21, 2011 at 10:08 am):
“The seasonal changes in insolation and the resulting north-south differentials are a vital aspect of the heat pump which drives the mixing of solar energy in the oceans.”
Explicit acknowledgement that the oceans don’t produce their own heat. This is progress.
Mention of “insolation” in the same sentence as “oceans”. A welcome development.
(Neither sarcasm nor disrespect intended.)
Stephen Wilde wrote (May 21, 2011 at 9:58 am):
“I had assumed that everyone knew that I was referring to shifts beyond normal seasonal variation.”
This is what I’m getting at – and it’s FUNDAMENTALLY important:
a) Exposition of p. 433 [pdf p.10]:
Sidorenkov, N.S. (2005). Physics of the Earth’s rotation instabilities. Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions 24(5), 425-439.
http://images.astronet.ru/pubd/2008/09/28/0001230882/425-439.pdf
b) Figures 8, 11, 13, & 15:
Leroux, Marcel (1993). The Mobile Polar High: a new concept explaining present mechanisms of meridional air-mass and energy exchanges and global propagation of palaeoclimatic changes. Global and Planetary Change 7, 69-93.
http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/2/32/25/79/Leroux-Global-and-Planetary-Change-1993.pdf
–
Until people take the time to conceptually understand (a) & (b) in concert with north-south continental-maritime asymmetry, they’ll likely not understand the following:
1) http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/vaughn_lod_fig1a.png
2) http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/vaughn_lod_fig1b.png
3) http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/vaughn_lod_amo_sc.png
4) http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/scl_northpacificsst.png
5) http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/scl_0-90n.png
…where SCL’ = rate of change of solar cycle length = solar cycle deceleration ….not to be confused with solar cycle length, which has a correlation of almost zero with SCL’ (…which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who understands complex [as in complex numbers, not as in complicated] phase relations).
I tend towards Leif’s view of fluctuations being the rule, rather than the exception. Trade winds have a near immediate affect on sea surface temperature. The sea surface temperature has a near immediate affect on incoming weather systems. Weather pressure systems have a near immediate affect on temperature variations, humidity, and so on.
Overriding these day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year variations are oscillations one sees in oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns. I can only guess that the “lags” people talk about are somehow involved in these oscillations as they switch from one mode to the other. It would take a powerful driver to do that, if what you seek is an external driver.
However, it seems to me that instead of “flipping” or being driven from one mode to the other, I see more a petering out of the energy needed to sustain one mode as it fades into the alternate mode.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 7:18 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:31 am
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:25 am
About one decade later.
So, the ocean heat content changes [that is: the oceans have already heated up] and then ten years later the atmosphere [the ‘climate’] changes? apart from ‘climate’ being a 30-yr thing [but let that slide].
What happens is when the sun gets active, the oceans go into ‘mixing down’ mode. Ten years later when the solar cycle is just past minimum, the oceans go into ‘heat release’ mode and that’s when big el nino’s occur that cause upward step changes in surface temperature which persist during positive phases of oceanic cycles. Then after the oceanic cycle peaks and the solar cycles are getting smaller the reverse happens. The big la nina we have just been through hasn’t caused a big downshift in surface temperature, because it followed on the heels of a big El nino, but the next one will. 2013 onwards will see things getting chillier. A decade after the sun started getting quiet in 2003.
Wait and see if I’m wrong.
Ignoring all the oscilliations I simply did a linear regression of the temperatures recorded on a mumner of weather stations from all over the world since 1974. Here are my results:
MAXIMA: rising at a speed of 0.04 degrees C per annum
MEANS : increasing at a speed of 0.02 degrees C per annum
MINIMA: no change at 0.00 degrees C per annum
HUMIDITY: decreasing at a rate of -0.02% per annum
PRECIPITATION: decreasing at a rate of -0.11 mm /month /year
This means that, on my pool table, the global warming that is observed on earth is simply coming from outside and is not caused by an increase in greenhouse gases or any human influences.
Not so?
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:25 am
About one decade later.
As so clearly seen here: http://www.leif.org/research/Temp-Solar-Lag.png ?
Stephen Wilde asked (May 21, 2011 at 9:40 am):
“Is it denied that variable lags exist ?”
No, it’s just not a concept with practical utility for sensibly assessing phase relations (worse than that, it invites naive nonsensical misinterpretation). Linear methods are patently insufficient. If one switches one’s conceptualization of phase relations to the eminently more equipped complex plane then (a) lags vanish and (b) correlations go up dramatically. Additionally, everything becomes simple instead of complicated.
John Finn says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:45 am
Ok – so I assume, since the late 1700s had high solar activity, the Dalton Minimun period (1790-1820) was warm – or perhaps the Svensmark effect only affects the late 20th century climate?
Your dating of the Dalton minimum is in error.
We know there were some cold winters in Northern Europe after 1804 We don’t know much about the rest of the world at that time. Multidecadal north-south oscillations play a part too. We’ll have to go on periods for which we have sufficiently useful data.
Having said that, Jasper’s comparison of north atlantic surface temps and Be10 deposition in Greenland is pretty convincing. I won’t bother trying to convince you though.
Leif Svalgaard says: May 21, 2011 at 10:00 am
I really wish that there was a link between solar activity and climate. That would make my field all that more relevant [help improve funding too], but, alas, 400 years [almost 150,000 days] of claims have not gotten us any closer.
O yes, there is, but it is not TSI (including UV) or GCR or any of the feeble kind.
Here is a short graphic summary for you.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CD2.htm
“Ok – so I assume, since the late 1700s had high solar activity, the Dalton Minimun period (1790-1820) was warm – or perhaps the Svensmark effect only affects the late 20th century climate?”
The warmth of the high solar activity from cycles 4 and 5 (which peaked about 1790) provided the starting point for the decline into the Dalton Minimum which lasted until 1830. A ten year or so lag is entirely consistent with those dates. There was a gradual decline in tropospheric temperatures as the ocean heat content from cycles 4 and 5 was vented to space over the subsequent 40 year period.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:02 am
Having said that, Jasper’s comparison of north atlantic surface temps and Be10 deposition in Greenland is pretty convincing. I won’t bother trying to convince you though.
Perhaps reading these might educate you a bit: http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+webber+higbie/0/1/0/all/0/1
but “I won’t bother trying to convince you though”.
vukcevic says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:03 am
:I really wish that there was a link between solar activity and climate. ”
O yes, there is
Unfortunately, that will not convince anybody.
Stephen Wilde says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:06 am
The warmth of the high solar activity from cycles 4 and 5
cycle 5 was one of the smallest cycles ‘measured’…
Leif Svalgaard asked (May 21, 2011 at 10:24 am):
“I take the same data, detrend, smooth the prescribed way 1-2-1, and get a different result. So what is he not telling?”
Better questions would be:
1) What are you falsely assuming or misinterpreting?
2) What practical value is there in protracted hairsplitting?
Practical suggestion:
Move on to more productive (& less frivolously disruptive) pursuits than wasting informal volunteers’ limited time on the difference between the green curve and the red curve in this plot [ http://www.leif.org/research/Moscow-2000-2011-compare.png ]. Leave such hairsplitting to paid gravy train riders and show some respect for the limited time of informal volunteers.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:07 am
Perhaps reading these might educate you a bit: http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+webber+higbie/0/1/0/all/0/1
Thanks Leif, I have already acquainted myself with various papers on the subject. There is without a doubt a variance introduced by multi-decadal oceanic cycles. However, on the longer timescale (thousands of years) and with appropriate data handling the problem is not so severe as you might think.
The correlation Jasper found between 10Be and the proxy he used for atlantic sst is excellent, and there will be a reason for that.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:12 am
Unfortunately, that will not convince anybody.
‘That’ as a scientist you need to be far more specific for your opinion to have any weight.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:29 am
Thanks Leif, I have already acquainted myself with various papers on the subject.
It doesn’t show at all. You should then be aware that “this implies 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 non-production related increases!”
The correlation Jasper found between 10Be and the proxy he used for atlantic sst is excellent, and there will be a reason for that.
It is called ‘confirmation bias’
ej says:
May 20, 2011 at 10:48 am
So why is it that factors like this aren’t considered more? I understand the political bias in the AGW dynamics, but why don’t more “mainstream” people look at these things?
Politicians cannot tax their constituents on galactic cosmic rays. They _can_ tax them on the basis of the energy they use – glibly converted to a ‘carbon’ tax.
Politicians fund the researchers who provide the answers the politicians want and defund the researchers that provide information that is contrary to what the politicians want.
The days of the altruistic researcher working in a lonely garret are long gone. Research is a big multi-million dollar industry. It is what gets masters grads their PhDs and their professors tenure. This leads to an entirely venal approach to research and particularly research results. Research grants now quite often specify the result of the research to be delivered – if the research does not provide the results the funding politicians want and then funding ceases.
Unfortunately, academia has risen to the bait; so factors like GCR effects aren’t considered more because that is not what the funding politicians want to hear. Research at universities is no longer about finding the truth – it is about securing next year’s research funding.
I see some discussion of this:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1003/1003.4989.pdf
These guys are using linear methods where complex methods are needed. The variation is semi-annual. This means the decadal correlations can flip sign. How on Earth are people missing this? It’s so simple.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:37 am
‘confirmation bias’
Yeah Leif. “Whatever”.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:19 am
2) What practical value is there in protracted hairsplitting?
The disruption and derailment of fruitful conversation regarding discoveries about the natural world which imperil the consensus view.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:55 am
I see some discussion of this:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1003/1003.4989.pdf
These guys are using linear methods where complex methods are needed. The variation is semi-annual. This means the decadal correlations can flip sign. How on Earth are people missing this? It’s so simple.
Thanks Paul. Have you demonstrated that graphically?
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:02 am
Your dating of the Dalton minimum is in error.
That doesn’t help your argument.
We know there were some cold winters in Northern Europe after 1804 We don’t know much about the rest of the world at that time. Multidecadal north-south oscillations play a part too. We’ll have to go on periods for which we have sufficiently useful data.
Such as?
“Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:16 am
Stephen Wilde says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:06 am
The warmth of the high solar activity from cycles 4 and 5
cycle 5 was one of the smallest cycles ‘measured’…”
With respect I think that is merely a cynical diversionary strategy. Someone of your experience and knowledge should see immediately why that is so. We already agree that cycle ‘size’ is not the issue. What matters is the effect on the atmosphere of the changes in wavelength and particle quantities in relation to preceding and subsequent cycles in order to induce a warming or a cooling trend for the system as a whole.
Thus cycle 5 was about the median size (out of 23 measured, not one of the smallest so that is a subtle deceit) because it was near the beginning of a multicentury trend towards larger cycles culminating in those of the late 20th century.
However cycles 4 and 5 were larger than cycles 1,2 and 3 which appears to have been enough to speed up the recovery from the LIA for a while.
Then cycles 6,7 and 8 were smaller than 4 and 5 which was enough to induce the Dalton Minimum.
And so it went, right up to today when again there has been a tropospheric temperature effect (cessation of warming and possible commencement of cooling) during the ten years or so following the peak of cycle 23 and a deep and extended minimum at the start of cycle 24.
During the period of years after the sun started to fall from the peak of cycle 23 the AO collapsed to a record negative, the stratosphere stopped cooling, the troposphere stopped warming, ocean heat content stopped rising, the jets became more meridional, cloudiness increased and so did global albedo.
And contrary to expectations Jo Haigh has admitted that despite the quieter sun the atmosphere above 45km gained in ozone (thus warming) which led her to suggest that the consensus might have got the sign wrong for the solar effect on at least part of the atmosphere.
vukcevic says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:32 am
‘That’ as a scientist you need to be far more specific for your opinion to have any weight.
All I need to do is the submit your opinion to the funding agencies and ask them to supply me with the necessary funds to build on your work, alas, I don’t think it would do me any good. Perhaps you could do that yourself.
tallbloke wrote (May 21, 2011 at 12:09 pm):
“The disruption and derailment of fruitful conversation regarding discoveries about the natural world which imperil the consensus view.”
In the future I would like to see a blog policy addressing harassment of informal volunteers by gravy train riders. Impractical frivolity & volunteer-hour robbery need not be tolerated indefinitely. An organized response is merited.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:19 am
wasting informal volunteers’ limited time on the difference between the green curve and the red curve in this plot
You are hereby invited to stop wasting your time.
The importance of the difference between the curves is that the red curve is used to calibrate the forcing and if a red wiggle is twice as big as a green wiggle, the calibration is off by a factor of two.
Paul
tallbloke
10Be Greenland’s ice core records, as a proxy for anything solar, are the walk down the blind alley (cul-de-sac) of science.
John Finn says:
May 21, 2011 at 12:18 pm
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:02 am
Your dating of the Dalton minimum is in error.
That doesn’t help your argument.
I don’t need or want an argument.
Leif Svalgaard wrote (May 21, 2011 at 12:28 pm):
“The importance of the difference between the curves is that the red curve is used to calibrate the forcing and if a red wiggle is twice as big as a green wiggle, the calibration is off by a factor of two.”
This is a moot point since assumptions underpinning linear calibration are patently untenable.
Vuk:
Solar activity modulation, geomagnetic variation, ocean oscillations, are all phenomena with a common underlying causation. That’s why Greenland 10Be correlates well with proxies for North Atlantic SST. Seen from that perspective, the difficulty in disentangling the relative effects is less important than understanding the bigger picture.
vukcevic wrote (May 21, 2011 at 12:29 pm):
“10Be Greenland’s ice core records, as a proxy for anything solar, are the walk down the blind alley (cul-de-sac) of science.”
vukcevic, rather than continue beating a dead horse on the theme of what 10Be doesn’t represent, I can suggest more focus on identifying what it does represent. If you have insights to share on that front, please do.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 12:28 pm
if a red wiggle is twice as big as a green wiggle, the calibration is off by a factor of two.
Your graph doesn’t show any red wiggles bigger than green wiggles.
http://www.leif.org/research/Moscow-2000-2011-compare.png
You need your windows wiping.
And you owe Roy Spencer an apology.
tallbloke says: May 21, 2011 at 12:46 pm
……….
10Be are some sort of a proxy for precipitations in Greenland, and not much else. Once instrument records came in 1960s onward, the existing correlation disappeared.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be-2.htm
Here’s Jasper Kirby’s correlation between ice rafted debris (proxy for SST) and 10Be (proxy for galactic cosmic rays) that Leif wants to dismiss as confirmation bias.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/jasper-10be-ice.jpg
Vuk:
As you can see, although there are periods in Jaspers graph where the correlation isn’t so good for quite a time, the long term correlation is excellent. So it doesn’t worry me that the modern instrumental record shows a breakdown in the link between CET and 10Be.
Try to take an overall perspective rather than being put off by short term anomalies.
Shaviv comes to similar conclusions:
Shaviv, N. J. (2005), On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget, J. Geophys. Res., 110, A08105, doi:10.1029/2004JA010866.
Note the ratio total to luminosity alone is about 2.9, similar to Spencer’s 3.5 above.
vukcevic wrote (May 21, 2011 at 1:04 pm):
“Once instrument records came in 1960s onward, the existing correlation disappeared. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be-2.htm “
No, the phase relations changed. (Are you using insufficient linear methods to assess relations? If you take a phase-aware view in the complex plane your correlations will go up and your imagined lags [& any notions of variable lags] will vanish.)
There are accepted simple reasons for such changes (what Tomas Milanovic calls “spatiotemporal chaos” at Dr. Judith Curry’s blog Climate Etc.)
Tangible example:
NPI temporarily reversed its interannual phase relations with AO & NAO in the late 1980s. Something similar happened around 1970.
See here for a “simplified layman’s view”:
1902-1954: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/vaughn_npp_image6.png
1954-2006: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/vaughn_npp_image7.png
On a multiscale complex correlation color-contour plot based on empirical wavelet embeddings, ~’70 & ~late ’80s show up as yellow (fire) on a blue (ice) background, objectively indicating a reversal in phase relations (based on RAW data, since the algorithm doesn’t have the data visualization & perception issues some human minds have with raw data).
Dr. Svalgaard, I have respected your scientific work for years, and recommended your work to others. I’d love to read your peer-reviewed publications regarding the relationship (or lack of it) between charged particles and clouds. Especially if you have anything debunking Dr. Kirkby’s past papers.
The reputations of every researcher associated with the CERN CLOUD project is on the line, Leif, not just Dr. Kirkby. You’re mocking them in advance of full publication. Doesn’t that weaken your position?
Stephen Wilde says:
May 21, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Thus cycle 5 was about the median size (out of 23 measured, not one of the smallest so that is a subtle deceit)
1 May 1755 Jun 1761 Aug 1766 6,8 90,4 73 62 135
2 Aug 1766 Oct 1769 Jun 1775 9,6 125,3 38 68 106
3 Jun 1775 May 1778 May 1784 7,0 161,8 35 72 107
4 May 1784 Nov 1787 Jun 1798 9,1 143,4 42 127 169
5 Jun 1798 Dec 1804 Jul 1810 2,8 52,5 78 67 145
6 Jul 1810 Mar 1816 Apr 1823 0,0 50,8 68 85 153
7 Apr 1823 Jun 1829 Aug 1833 0,1 71,5 74 50 124
8 Aug 1833 Feb 1837 Jul 1843 7,4 152,8 42 77 119
9 Jul 1843 Nov 1847 Jan 1856 10,7 131,3 52 98 150
10 Jan 1856 Jul 1860 Apr 1867 3,3 98,5 54 81 135
11 Apr 1867 Jul 1870 Dec 1878 4,3 144,8 39 101 140
12 Dec 1878 Jan 1884 Feb 1890 2,0 78,1 61 73 134
13 Feb 1890 Aug 1893 Sep 1901 4,0 89,5 42 97 139
14 Sep 1901 Oct 1905 Jun 1913 2,8 63,9 49 92 141
15 Jun 1913 Aug 1917 Apr 1923 1,1 112,1 50 68 118
16 Apr 1923 Jun 1928 Sep 1933 5,6 82,0 62 63 125
17 Sep 1933 May 1937 Apr 1944 2,9 119,8 44 83 127
18 Apr 1944 Jul 1947 Apr 1954 6,5 161,2 39 81 120
19 Apr 1954 Nov 1957 Aug 1964 3,2 208,4 43 81 124
20 Aug 1964 Feb 1969 Mar 1976 8,5 111,6 54 85 139
21 Mar 1976 Nov 1979 Sep 1986 12,4 167,1 44 82 126
22 Sep 1986 Oct 1989 May 1996 12,8 162,1 37 79 116
23 May 1996 Jun 2000 Dec 2008 7,9 125,6 49 102 151
24 Dec 2008 – – 1,7
Only cycle 6 was a tiny bit smaller….
However cycles 4 and 5 were larger than cycles 1,2 and 3 which appears to have been enough to speed up the recovery from the LIA for a while.
see above table.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Your graph doesn’t show any red wiggles bigger than green wiggles.
http://www.leif.org/research/Moscow-2000-2011-wiggle.png for one
David Corcoran says:
May 21, 2011 at 2:04 pm
I’d love to read your peer-reviewed publications regarding the relationship (or lack of it) between charged particles and clouds. Especially if you have anything debunking Dr. Kirkby’s past papers.
Solar activity [as measured by the sun’s magnetic field in the heliosphere, which most people think controls the entry of cosmic rays into the solar system] in the past 50 years has not been markedly higher than 150-years ago, e.g. Figure 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf The climate has been rather different though. This is to me a simple refutation that the GCR flux cannot be a major player in the climate debate.
You’re mocking them in advance of full publication. Doesn’t that weaken your position?
The above point stands regardless of what they publish. If there are anybody to mock it are the wild-eyed ‘enthusiasts’ that have here tried to defend the link even while disagreeing amongst themselves.
tallbloke wrote (May 21, 2011 at 12:15 pm):
“Thanks Paul. Have you demonstrated that graphically?”
Not labeled as such, but see the links I provided above (on SCL’ etc.)
Current investigations:
1) Role of north-south continental-maritime terrestrial asymmetry & decadally-varying semi-annual amplitude in multidecadal terrestrial oscillations (in the context of synchronized interannual terrestrial oscillations with spatiotemporally variable phase relations, which throw off linear methods).
2) Rate of change of solar rotation (as perceived from Earth).
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 12:45 pm
This is a moot point since assumptions underpinning linear calibration are patently untenable.
Those were Spencer’s and you have to demonstrate that in this particular instance they are patently untenable. They are not ALWAYS untenable; many, if not most, times they are quite adequate.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Your graph doesn’t show any red wiggles bigger than green wiggles.
http://www.leif.org/research/Moscow-2000-2011-compare.png
Several, in fact, here are some:
http://www.leif.org/research/Moscow-2000-2011-wiggle.png
David Corcoran says:
May 21, 2011 at 2:04 pm
I’d love to read your peer-reviewed publications regarding the relationship (or lack of it) between charged particles and clouds.
In http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf we demonstrate [see e.g. Figure 10] that solar activity [as measured by the heliospheric magnetic field that most people agree control the flux of GCRs] the past 50 years was not markedly different from what it was 150 years earlier. This conclusion was once controversial, but no longer: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011JGRA..11604109L . The climate 150 years ago was not similar to today’s, showing that the GCR intensity is not a major player.
The reputations of every researcher associated with the CERN CLOUD project is on the line, Leif, not just Dr. Kirkby.
Not at all, they are just reporting on the fact that ions cause clouds, something Wilson got the Nobel Prize for in 1927. My point above stands regardless of what they publish.
You’re mocking them in advance of full publication.
If there are someone to mock it is the wild-eyed enthusiasts here that can’t even agree among themselves, and ignore the evidence [see point above] before them.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Current investigations:
1) Role of north-south continental-maritime terrestrial asymmetry & decadally-varying semi-annual amplitude in multidecadal terrestrial oscillations (in the context of synchronized interannual terrestrial oscillations with spatiotemporally variable phase relations, which throw off linear methods).
===================
Hi Paul….would you mind please translating that one for me? Not being sarcastic…I am serious.
Many thanks,
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
David Corcoran says:
May 21, 2011 at 2:04 pm
The reputations of every researcher associated with the CERN CLOUD project is on the line, Leif, not just Dr. Kirkby. You’re mocking them in advance of full publication. Doesn’t that weaken your position?
============================
It certainly does.
Especially in light of the fact that the published response [TWICE now] is some sort of red herring, a real live royal bloody subject-changer about WHOM just to mock:
You know, those ‘wild-eyed “enthusiasts” who don’t even agree amongst themselves.’
Hmmm….I thought disagreement [and sometimes heated], was the essence of scientific induction?
Would the mocker rather have a bunch of bland ‘yes men’ nodding and blindly agreeing on everything??
Regardless, such ‘mocking’…is obstreperous sandbox child play…and has no place in science…and is an attempt to wrest control by the APPEAL TO FORCE logical fallacy.
Whatever happened to induction??
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I like to follow Nir Shaviv’s blog on the cosmic ray issue as well… very interesting data on cosmic ray influences on geological time scales.
http://www.sciencebits.com/
I remember looking through some of the cosmic ray data way back when. As I recall, there are different types of cosmic ray detectors, some that detect both lower energy and high energy cosmic rays (I think these would most commonly be neutron monitors), and some that detect predominantly only the very high energy cosmic rays (e.g. ion chambers that detect particles > 10 GeV). Shaviv says it should be only these high energy > 10 GeV particles that have the energy to penetrate into the lower atmosphere while still being able to seed clouds at those altitudes, the lower altitude clouds being the clouds that more likely to have an overall cooling effect.
Is the Moscow cosmic ray detector an ion chamber detector or some other type of detector? What energies of particles does it detect?
I have thought about this issue. It seems to me there may be more complexity to assessing the climate effects of cosmic rays. The current theory, is that in long periods of high solar wind, high energy cosmic rays are blocked from forming cloud condensation nuclei in lower atmosphere, and therefore there are fewer / less dense low altitude clouds, resulting in warming.
However, in addition to this effect, reduced low altitude cloud cover and high albedo could have the effect of increasing the diffusion of water vapor into upper parts of the atmosphere over the oceans (because the water never condenses at low altitudes), thereby actually possibly enhancing the greenhouse effect of increased atmospheric water vapor, and increasing the greenhouse effect of high altitude cloud cover (because the water vapor is able to reach higher elevations before condensing on cloud condensation nuclei formed by the lower energy cosmic rays).
Conversely, I would think it possible that the effects of increased high energy cosmic may be two-fold:
(1) Increased low-altitude cloud coverage, resulting in cooling.
(2) Decreased high-altitude cloud coverage and decreased overall atmospheric water vapor, resulting in cooling.
I am curious if anyone has been able to compare long term changes in high energy cosmic ray flux with long term changes in high altitude cloud cover and / or water vapor. Is there an inverse relationship, opposite to the effect of high energy cosmic rays on low altitude cloud coverage?
savethesharks says:
May 21, 2011 at 7:25 pm
Hmmm….I thought disagreement [and sometimes heated], was the essence of scientific induction?
Induction? Scientific disagreements when well founded are the lifeblood of progress, but that is not what is displayed here.
My ‘position’ can only be strengthened or weakened by data, not by opinion. Corcoran is the one that brought down the discussion to the plane of mocking. You seem to be comfortable down there. But nobody is mocking the CERN people, and their reputation is not on the line, because all they are talking about is the almost century-old knowledge that ions can create clouds. Finally even if they are wrong that would not hurt their reputation. Scientists are wrong all the time. You do an experiment and let the data speak.
Julian Droms says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Is the Moscow cosmic ray detector an ion chamber detector or some other type of detector? What energies of particles does it detect?
It detect neutrons generated in the atmosphere by protons with energy larger than 2.42 GeV. About neutron monitors: http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu//listen/main.html
Julian Droms says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Shaviv says it should be only these high energy > 10 GeV particles that have the energy to penetrate into the lower atmosphere while still being able to seed clouds at those altitudes
At such high energies, the solar modulation of GCRs is actually very small. Look at the lower right-hand curves on Figure 1 of http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC/DATA/bibliography/ICRC2005/usa-wiedenbeck-M-abs3-sh34-poster.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 8:22 pm
savethesharks says:
May 21, 2011 at 7:25 pm
Induction? Scientific disagreements when well founded are the lifeblood of progress, but that is not what is displayed here.
=======================
Using your ‘against the man’ and also [continued] ‘appeal to force’ techniques in the following paragraph following your quote above…
…I would concur that your part of the the ‘disagreement’ is not a ‘scientific disagreement when well founded in the lifeblood of progress’.
It is not a scientific disagreement at all. It is an emotional one.
Meanwhile….Svensmark and others like him sail along, a little less agitated.
Clouds have a cooling effect. Ahhhh…..that feels good. Enjoy it.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
savethesharks says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:11 pm
It is not a scientific disagreement at all. It is an emotional one.
You certainly sound very emotional about it.
Ahhhh…..that feels good. Enjoy it.
Some more emotion…
There are three strikes against the cosmic ray theory [which, BTW, did not originate with Svensmark].
1) the sun’s magnetic field that controls the amount of cosmic rays arriving at Earth is the same now as 150 years ago. Climate is not.
2) the amount of nucleation derived from GCRs is two orders of magnitude too small to have any affect. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009GeoRL..3609820P
3) the cosmic ray intensity has varied the past several years much more than the solar modulation and the climate has not varied with it, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
This is science, your denial of this is emotion.
http://www.michaelmandeville.com/earthmonitor/cosmos/solarwind/Sunspot%20Cycles%20&%20Human%20History.pdf
There seems to be some discrepancy between Leif’s report of the relative sizes of individual sunspot cycles and other sources.
Leif, I’d like to know from you…please
It appears from my own statistical analyses that it is the increasing maximum temperature that drove up the mean temperature on earth. (over the past 35 years)
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
So do you agree with me that global warming is due to natural causes rather than human influences?
Note that in the above link I am referring only to the sunspot cycle chart. I do not go along with all the interpretations set out in the narrative.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 21, 2011 at 10:26 pm
There are three strikes against the cosmic ray theory [which, BTW, did not originate with Svensmark].
1) the sun’s magnetic field that controls the amount of cosmic rays arriving at Earth is the same now as 150 years ago. Climate is not.
Very deceptive. The sun’s activity has suddenly dropped in the last few years from very high to very low levels. The implied assumption that climate should immediately follow suit if the sun is the main driver is part of the climate lie endlessly repeated by co2 driven theorists.
2) the amount of nucleation derived from GCRs is two orders of magnitude too small to have any affect. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009GeoRL..3609820P
From the abstract:
“In this paper, we present the first calculations of the magnitude of the ion-aerosol clear-air mechanism using a general circulation model with online aerosol microphysics. In our simulations, changes in CCN from changes in cosmic rays during a solar cycle are two orders of magnitude too small to account for the observed changes in cloud properties; consequently, we conclude that the hypothesized effect is too small to play a significant role in current climate change.”
Aerosol microphysics is an area of knowledge being developed further by the people whose theory you are trying to demolish among others. To pretend that it is already sufficiently well understood to be used as a disproof of the Svensmark effect on the basis of a GCM and inadequate aerosol microphysics theory is laughable.
3) the cosmic ray intensity has varied the past several years much more than the solar modulation and the climate has not varied with it, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
Graybill tree rings? Blimey Leif you are getting desperate.
As Jasper Kirkby’s graph of ice rafted debris vs Be10 I linked above shows, there can be longish periods (decades) where the relationship isn’t as tight, but over thousands of years, the correlation is firm. Your dismissal of that graph as “confirmation bias” demonstrates your unbalanced, lopsided and unscientific approach to the Svensmark hypothesis and the CLOUD experiment nicely. It is a reflection of the unbalanced, lopsided and unscientific approach to the study of climate of the institution you reside at.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/jasper-10be-ice.jpg
wild-eyed ‘enthusiasts’
Reactionary old goat.
Furthermore I seem to recall Leif previously telling me that the sun was as active in the 1780s as it was in the late 20th Century yet the atmospheric temperatures were not the same.
Now he says that cycle 5 peaking in 1790 was one of the smallest !!!
HenryP says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:22 pm
It appears from my own statistical analyses that it is the increasing maximum temperature that drove up the mean temperature on earth. (over the past 35 years)
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
So do you agree with me that global warming is due to natural causes rather than human influences?
Nice work and a fair question.
Stephen Wilde says:
May 22, 2011 at 12:09 am
Furthermore I seem to recall Leif previously telling me that the sun was as active in the 1780s as it was in the late 20th Century yet the atmospheric temperatures were not the same.
Stephen, it’s just more of the same old guff that the ocean will within months lose all the heat it gains from the sun. It’s the biggest lie in climatology, propagated by those who are desperate to maintain the illusion that the atmosphere is the driver of surface temperature. It’s easily disproved by observation of the lag of atmospheric temperature several months behind sea surface tempreature, but hey, theory trumps observation in this looking glass world of co2 driven anti-science.
Leif Svalgaard says: May 21, 2011 at 12:23 pm
All I need to do is the submit your opinion to the funding agencies and ask them to supply me with the necessary funds to build on your work, alas, I don’t think it would do me any good. Perhaps you could do that yourself.
Now back to sanity:
Sun-Oceans-ocean currents.
Yes sir.
Here are some quotes from my article, now half finished.
Deep cold ocean waters upwell in the high latitudes of North Pacific, and as surface currents moving across equatorial regions of the world oceans, absorb large amount of energy. Due to water’s high heat capacity, world oceans contain huge amount of stored latent heat. The energy is carried by the great oceans conveyor belt spanning the globe. Some of the energy stored is released into atmosphere in the North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas.
N. hemisphere’s winter temperatures show rising trend approaching 0.4C/century while summer’ of only 0.05C/century (last 300 years trends).
Obvious implication is that if the natural sources are causing the climate change, than the ‘winter effect’ is likely to be the most important one.
Dominant features of the North Hemisphere’s winter weather patterns are two sub-polar semi-permanent low pressure systems.
Aleutian Low is a semi-permanent area of low pressure most active during winter months. During the summer, it is considerably weaker becoming often almost nonexistent.
Icelandic Low is strongest during winter and early spring, when is located over Iceland and southern Greenland. In the summer months it is less intense, when the ‘Azores High’ becomes the weather driver in the North Atlantic.
Both Icelandic and Aleutian lows are at geographic latitudes ( 50 – 60 deg N) with direct effect on the air circulation in the ‘polar cell’ of the polar jet-stream, consequently having critical influence on the weather systems of the Northern Hemisphere.
Subpolar gyre circulates anticlockwise between 50° and 65°N and contains strong boundary currents, it is a critical in formation of the Icelandic low. The warm water current branching of the North Atlantic Current is source of the heat energy release. In combination with the Arctic cold currents it creates Labrador Sea current; this tightly governs the strength of the subpolar gyre’s circulation, which is the engine of the heat transport across the North Atlantic Ocean. It is a region of intense interaction between ocean and atmosphere: the winter’s cold winds remove heat at rates of several hundred watts per square meter, resulting in deep sea convection reaching as far as 2500 m below the surface.
“Observations of sea surface height reveal that substantial changes have occurred during 1990’s in the mid- to high-latitude North Atlantic Ocean. TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter data show that the geostrophic velocity derived from altimeter data exhibits declining subpolar gyre circulation. Combining the data from earlier satellites, we find that the subpolar circulation may have been weaker in the late 1990s than in the late 1970s and 1980s.”
Etc. etc….
CO2 and GCR are only minor players in this Nordic Saga of the natural climate change story.
Stephen Wilde says:
May 22, 2011 at 12:09 am
Furthermore I seem to recall Leif previously telling me that the sun was as active in the 1780s as it was in the late 20th Century yet the atmospheric temperatures were not the same.
Now he says that cycle 5 peaking in 1790 was one of the smallest !!
SC 5 didn’t begin until ~1798.
For TonyB.
Data before 1650 are sporadic, difficult to make any definitive conclusions.
However Loehle reconstruction indeed shows that the early years of 17th century (1600-1615) were the coldest on record.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
Your supposition that the coolest point in the LIA was 1607 appear to be correct.
Clearly ENSO has not been adjusted for sufficiently. 2007-2010 there is no correlation between GCR and reflected SW.
Vuk:
The ocean currents and gyres are the primary energy transportation mechanism for the Terrestrial heat engine. That heat engine is driven by the Sun’s energy, and the amount of solar energy entering the ocean is modulated by changing amounts of cloud cover.
Roy Spencer and Nir Shaviv find from empirical observation that the Sun’s TSI variation is amplified at Earth’s surface. The ISCCP and earthshine folks find from empirical observation that cloud cover was lower in the warming period, and increased after the 1998 el nino, since which event, warming has been negligible.
Leif Svalgaard can twitter about GCM’s and aerosol theory if that is what floats his boat, but I’ll go with observed reality every time.
Correction:
It should be Loehle reconstruction
tallbloke says: May 22, 2011 at 2:48 am
…………………
Ocean conveyor belt has large thermal inertia and hysteresis.
In a system with hysteresis, is not possible to predict the system’s output at an instant in time given only its input at that instant in time.
The output depends in part on the internal state of system and not only on its input. There is no way to predict the system’s output without looking at the history of the input, i.e. to determine the path that the input followed before it reached its current state or knowing accurately the internal state of the system.
Hence TSI and cloud variability which should produce an immediate heating/cooling effect, are averaged during long periods. Ocean conveyor belt collects heat for decades and even centuries in the equatorial areas before it reaches Nordic seas; it takes more than 1500 years to complete a single cycle, for that purpose, the short term variability of the solar output is smoothed out to a degree where idea of constancy is a plausible starting point.
David L. Hagen says:
May 21, 2011 at 1:39 pm (Edit)
Shaviv comes to similar conclusions:
Subject to the above caveats and those described in the text, the
CRF/climate link therefore implies that the increased solar luminosity and reduced
CRF over the previous century should have contributed a warming of 0.47 ± 0.19 K, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes. Without any effect of cosmic rays, the increase in solar luminosity would correspond to an increased temperature of 0.16 ± 0.04 K.
Shaviv, N. J. (2005), On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget, J. Geophys. Res., 110, A08105, doi:10.1029/2004JA010866.
Note the ratio total to luminosity alone is about 2.9, similar to Spencer’s 3.5 above.
Thanks David. That paper is an interesting read. Particularly for the clear laying out of uncertainties and assumptions involved in estimating climate sensitivity.
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 3:16 am
Ocean conveyor belt collects heat for decades and even centuries in the equatorial areas before it reaches Nordic seas; it takes more than 1500 years to complete a single cycle, for that purpose, the short term variability of the solar output is smoothed out to a degree where idea of constancy is a plausible starting point.
It is the short term variability which introduces the hiccups and lumps in the long term flows and cycles, e.g. the changes in the sub-polar gyre you mentioned.
Oceanic heat retention and release is happening at all timescales from days to geological timescales. Within that spread of timescales it is possible to identify and postulate causes (or at least the underlying cause of several confounded mechanisms) through correlated periodicities because of the long timescales on which the ocean maintains thermal boundaries in layers and flows.
lgl says:
May 22, 2011 at 2:39 am (Edit)
Clearly ENSO has not been adjusted for sufficiently. 2007-2010 there is no correlation between GCR and reflected SW.
Correct. Nir Shaviv explicitly states in the paper David Hagen linked that ENSO is assumed to average out. Given what Bob Tisdale has discovered, this means we shouldn’t expect good correlations on periods less than 60 years or so.
John Finn says:
May 22, 2011 at 2:27 am
SC 5 didn’t begin until ~1798.
Yet you asserted that the Dalton Minimum started in 1790, at the peak of a high cycle?
BTW Stephen, a small confusion has arisen because the cycle ending in 1755 is numbered zero not one.
tallbloke says: May 22, 2011 at 5:11 am
It is the short term variability which introduces the hiccups and lumps in the long term flows and cycles, e.g. the changes in the sub-polar gyre you mentioned.
Wouldn’t think so, subpolar gyre is far too strong for any of those, btw. it takes more than 20 years to complete one cycle. It controls atmospheric low above it, which in turn diverts polar jet-stream, controlling short and long term weather patterns in the north Atlantic. Similar with Aleutian low in North Pacific. All recent talk of Atlantic-Pacific teleconnection is another climate change blind alley.
Anyone using a decade or so to determine long term change in the climate patters is starting from a wrong premise, there were number of those 1750-1900, 150 years of decadal oscillations, but no long term change on the century scale.
Nigel Calder takes an upbeat view on Spencers article:
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/roll-up-roll-up-for-the-paradigm-shift/
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 5:51 am
Wouldn’t think so, subpolar gyre is far too strong for any of those, btw. it takes more than 20 years to complete one cycle.
Maybe were talking at cross purposes. As I understand it, gyres are a product of the coriolis effect acting on the poleward motion of ocean currents. The principle forces involved are planetary rotation and solar radiation absorbed mostly in the equatorial region.
Do we agree so far?
Partially. The spg is specific, its strength is determined by ratio of cold currents across the Greenland-Scotland ridge, and the branch of the NA drift current.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/accp/ma97/fig1_mike.jpg
I’m off line now.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:46 pm
Very deceptive. The sun’s activity has suddenly dropped in the last few years from very high to very low levels.
See my reply to Corcoran:
David Corcoran says:
May 21, 2011 at 2:04 pm
“I’d love to read your peer-reviewed publications regarding the relationship (or lack of it) between charged particles and clouds. ”
Solar activity [as measured by the sun’s magnetic field in the heliosphere, which most people think controls the entry of cosmic rays into the solar system] in the past 50 years has not been markedly higher than 150-years ago, e.g. Figure 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf The climate has been rather different though. This is to me a simple refutation that the GCR flux cannot be a major player in the climate debate.
To pretend that it is already sufficiently well understood to be used as a disproof of the Svensmark effect on the basis of a GCM and inadequate aerosol microphysics theory is laughable.
It is not about aerosol microphysics, but about how cloud microphysics. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFM.A11H..02L
Graybill tree rings?
Carbon 14 is used to assess the cosmic ray intensity in the past. Here is how it works: http://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/embed.php?File=calibration.html
Go educate yourself
Stephen Wilde says:
May 22, 2011 at 12:09 am
Now he says that cycle 5 peaking in 1790 was one of the smallest !!!
Solar cycle 5 started in June 1798 and ended in July 1810 having a maximum of SSN=52.5, the second smallest on record.
HenryP says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:22 pm
So do you agree with me that global warming is due to natural causes rather than human influences?
You are very likely correct. Climate changes all the time. There is no single cause on short time scales. Over thousands of year orbital changes, over millions of years distribution of land and sea, and over billions of years solar luminosity become dominant causes.
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 1:29 am
Here are some quotes from my article, now half finished.
None of this has any bearing on solar activity
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 7:08 am
Solar activity [as measured by the sun’s magnetic field in the heliosphere, which most people think controls the entry of cosmic rays into the solar system] in the past 50 years has not been markedly higher than 150-years ago, e.g. Figure 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf The climate has been rather different though.
I don’t think we have sufficiently good data to say much about global climate in 1860, apart from to say it was near the peak of a upswing (like now), along the course of a general recovery from the little ice age (a function of OHC accumulation).
David Hagen linked a good paper by Nir Shaviv which quantifies possible GCR effects at different time periods and time scales :
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/2004JA010866.pdf
“Go educate yourself”, yourself.
The GHG models all predict a tropical hot spot. This has never been observed. In any other branch of science this would constitute falsification of the greenhouse theory.
People want to believe that humans are responsible for climate change, because then something can be done. Sacrifices can be made. Dances can be danced.
The idea that climate change is natural and there is nothing we can do about it. That is something that people don’t want to believe. It means there is nothing we can do.
Someone comes along and say “do as I say and I will fix the weather”. People WANT to believe and there are plenty of people that will take advantage of this.
Convince a healthy person they have cancer and they will pay you every penny they have to “cure” them. Give us your money and you will be saved. Sound familiar?
IPCC = snake oil salesman to the world.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 7:28 am
I don’t think we have sufficiently good data to say much about global climate in 1860
If the data doesn’t fit, you declare the data no good. Fair enough, one can always do that.
http://www.leif.org/research/Loehle-Temps-and-TSI.png shows Loehle’s reconstruction of temperatures.
The Nir Shaviv paper which quantifies possible GCR […] is based on obsolete data such as Solanki and Fligge [1998], Hoyt and Schatten [1993], and Lean et al. [1995].
But, of course, if the [obsolete] data fits, you declare the data good.
“Solar activity [as measured by the sun’s magnetic field in the heliosphere, which most people think controls the entry of cosmic rays into the solar system] ”
the conclusion I read is:
proxy (GCR) climate
proxy(magnetic fields) climate
therefore
proxy(magnetic fields) proxy(GCR)
this would not be the first time that “which most people think” turns out to be wrong.
aargh. html
proxy (GCR) –correlate– climate
proxy(magnetic fields) –not correlate– climate
therefore
proxy(magnetic fields) –not– proxy(GCR)
“is based on obsolete data”
the age of the data is irrelevant. the question is:
1. Was the data collected using appropriate controls to prevent experimenter contamination?
2. Has the data been independently recreated and validated?
By that criteria a lot of recent climate data is worthless. It was collected in such a fashion that the experimenter was in a position to influence the results and the results have not been independently confirmed.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 7:44 am
The Nir Shaviv paper which quantifies possible GCR […] is based on obsolete data such as Solanki and Fligge [1998], Hoyt and Schatten [1993], and Lean et al. [1995].
But, of course, if the [obsolete] data fits, you declare the data good.
I know those values are bracketed by estimates which are higher and lower, such as those from Shapiro and yourself. As such, I regard them as averagely plausible, though as always, I keep an eye on developments, and maintain a healthy skepticism regarding those who stridently claim they are right and everyone else is wrong.
Tall bloke says:
HenryP says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:22 pm
It appears from my own statistical analyses that it is the increasing maximum temperature that drove up the mean temperature on earth. (over the past 35 years)
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
So do you agree with me that global warming is due to natural causes rather than human influences?
Nice work and a fair question.
HenryP
thanks
Leif Svalgaard says:
HenryP says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:22 pm
So do you agree with me that global warming is due to natural causes rather than human influences?
You are very likely correct. Climate changes all the time. There is no single cause on short time scales. Over thousands of year orbital changes, over millions of years distribution of land and sea, and over billions of years solar luminosity become dominant causes.
HenryP
Thanks Leif. I could not look at longer timescales going back because I don’t trust the data. In fact I suspect that even since the time that I peeked (from 1974), equipment could have already improved which may have had an affect on the results. Never mind all of that, even if a large % of the observed increases is simply due to error (which would probably affect higher temps. more than lower temps.), the fact would then still remain that it is maximum temperatures that have driven up the average global temperatures during the past 35 years…
The work I did was relatively simple. Anyone who did Statistics 1 can do it. And he/she should be able to repeat it, if you take your samples randomly. The point I want to make is that the largest increase in CO2 was exactlty during these past 35 years. So should we not be reading in the newspapers soon that modern warming was and is not caused by an increase in GHG’s?
You tall guys have to fight it out between you as to what did cause warming or what is still causing it. All I am saying that it was not the increase in carbon dioxide that did it.
Are you with me?
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:17 am
I keep an eye on developments, and maintain a healthy skepticism regarding those who stridently claim they are right and everyone else is wrong.
then you should welcome a development where everyone now begin to agree:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011JGRA..11604109L
“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 reported by Svalgaard and Cliver, including that used by Lockwood et al. (1999), when their algorithm is used to predict the heliospheric field rather than the open solar flux…”
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:24 am
then you should welcome a development where everyone now begin to agree:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011JGRA..11604109L
Everyone?
Everyone you think matters obviously. 😉
Being the sceptic I am, I’m not convinced by a consensus of the limited subset of funded scientists who agree. Especially when they are funded by an establishment hell bent on removing the sun from the playing field of significant climate drivers for non scientific reasons. But in any case, my methodology can cope with pretty much any reconstruction no matter how much it squashes solar variability, just so long as you don’t manage to build a consensus which reduces it to zero.
HenryP says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:18 am
Are you with me?
http://www.leif.org/research/CETandCO2.pdf
ferd berple says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:12 am
“is based on obsolete data”
the age of the data is irrelevant. the question is…
‘obsolete’ did not mean ‘old’, but that new data has invalidated the older data.
ferd berple says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:06 am
proxy(magnetic fields) –not– proxy(GCR)
You misunderstand the nature of a ‘proxy’. A measurement is normally not considered a proxy. If you read a thermometer, the number you get is not considered a ‘proxy’ for the temperature. We measure the magnetic field in space using the Earth as the instrument. The sun’s magnetic field impacts the Earth’s magnetosphere and generates an electric current in direct proportion to the field. An electric current has a magnetic field of its own. We usually measure a current by its magnetic field [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammeter ]. The magnetic field of the current in space can be measured on the Earth [the Earth is an Ammeter]. We have such measurements [not proxies] going back almost two hundred years.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:39 am
Everyone you think matters obviously.
Everyone who have seriously studied this and know what they are talking about.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:44 am
We measure the magnetic field in space using the Earth as the instrument. The sun’s magnetic field impacts the Earth’s magnetosphere and generates an electric current in direct proportion to the field.
That would rest on the assumption that the Earth’s magnetic field is constant.
It isn’t.
So ‘corrections’ are applied using heuristic algorithms which we hope accurately model what has gone on in the past.
The ‘Ammeter’ is constantly being recalibrated using models.
This is where ‘confirmation bias’ has crept in, and is the reason past solar variability has been repeatedly squashed during the age of co2 driven climate science.
“He who pays the piper calls the tune.”
But the Sun itself is now proving the models wrong. Which is why Leif’s ‘floor threshold’ of 4nT is now out of the window.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:39 am
I’m not convinced by a consensus
The derivation of the Heliospheric Magnetic Field is so straightforward that it can be followed and understood by persons who are not specialists [and only average faculties required]:
http://www.leif.org/research/The%20IDV%20index%20-%20its%20derivation%20and%20use.pdf and its follow up http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 9:03 am
So ‘corrections’ are applied using heuristic algorithms which we hope accurately model what has gone on in the past.
The ‘Ammeter’ is constantly being recalibrated using models.
Just shows that you have not even read the papers. There is no constant recalibration or ‘corrections’. We even say explicitly “(We expect only a very weak influence in the basic response of the Ring Current (see section 2.1.5) to the change of the Earth’s magnetic dipole moment (as per Glassmeier et al. [2004]) over the interval in question, and so have not attempted to correct for this.)”
OK, I have read the papers again now.
So the ‘model’ is that changes in the Earth’s magnetic dipole over the last 200 years are assumed to have negligible effect on the inference of the IMF from IDV, which also filters out solar magnetic storms.
However, it is fluctuations caused by these storms which rapidly, and non-linearly increase the reconnection rate. I’m not convinced that disregarding the possible effects of that on GCR modulation is such a good idea.
Plus the shifting of the relative strength of the magnetic north poles situated in northern Canada and Northern Russia may have affected 10Be deposition in Greenland?
Leif Svalgaard says:
None of this has any bearing on solar activity.
Correct but solar activity has bearing on it.
L.S @ tb
then you should welcome a development where everyone now begin to agree:
Even my calculations derived from the North Atlantic currents show similar results
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AllvsVuk.htm
a bit closer to Svalgaard & Cliver than Lockwood.
tb. Take note, this is consensus of science, not science of consensus!
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 9:03 am
So ‘corrections’ are applied using heuristic algorithms which we hope accurately model what has gone on in the past.
No such ‘corrections’ need be applied [and we don’t]. We don’t expect any to be needed: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004AnGeo..22.3669G [Glassmeier]
“we find that ring current perturbations do not increase with decreasing dipole moment”
These perturbations form the basis for assessing the Heliospheric Magnetic Field.
Leif Svalgaard asserted (May 21, 2011 at 4:52 pm):
“[…] you have to demonstrate that in this particular instance they are patently untenable.”
I’m a volunteer Leif. I don’t “have” to do anything, including take orders from gravy train riders. I volunteer what genuinely interests me when I have time for it. What others choose to do with it is their choice, not yours. You don’t have any authority whatsoever to set the terms of volunteer engagement.
http://www.leif.org/research/CETandCO2.pdf
AGU type cherry picking
HIDE THE DECLINE !
1950-1980 negative correlation not included!
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 10:05 am
OK, I have read the papers again now.
So the ‘model’ is that changes in the Earth’s magnetic dipole over the last 200 years are assumed to have negligible effect on the inference of the IMF from IDV, which also filters out solar magnetic storms.
It should be stated thus: there is no evidence [theoretical or observational] that the changes in the dipole have any effect, so we don’t apply any corrections. The ‘filter out’ I don’t understand. IDV measures the strength of solar magnetic storms.
However, it is fluctuations caused by these storms which rapidly, and non-linearly increase the reconnection rate.
You have this a bit backwards. It is the reconnection that causes the storm and the size of the storm is linear with the magnetic field. Physically, the electric field is speed times magnetic field [E = – V x B], so the currents etc scales with the field.
I’m not convinced that disregarding the possible effects of that on GCR modulation is such a good idea.
The modulation of GCR is caused by GCRs scattered by the irregularities in the field, which scale with the field. To be convinced or not, requires some knowledge of the subject. Now, the modulation is not just a simple relationship and is not well understood, but unless you can show that the modulation 150 years ago was not governed by the same rules as today, you have to go with the null-hypothesis that it was.
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 10:11 am
Correct but solar activity has bearing on it.
That you didn’t show.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 22, 2011 at 10:22 am
I don’t “have” to do anything
In normal human discourse there are several things one ‘has’ to do: be civil [your gravy-train thing is inappropriate], not waste people’s time with unsupported claims, not waste bandwidth, not be overly opaque, etc.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 10:05 am
Plus the shifting of the relative strength of the magnetic north poles situated in northern Canada and Northern Russia may have affected 10Be deposition in Greenland?
The cosmic rays coming from afar do not ‘see’ the local anomalies of the field. Only the dipole component. The 10Be in Greenland was not generated in Greenland, but all over the Earth. During the more than one year residence time of 10Be it is moved around by atmospheric circulation. In fact, climate itself is a significant factor in determining the 10Be deposition, so to some extent [perhaps more than 50%] there is a circular argument here.
savethesharks requested (May 21, 2011 at 6:57 pm) a “translation”.
Hi Chris,
Please see my upthread response (May 21, 2011 at 10:37 am) to tallbloke & Stephen Wilde in conjunction with Appendix C here [ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/15/interannual-terrestrial-oscillations/ ]. There’s no soundbite explanation and there never will be, but those who invest in developing conceptual understanding (via Leroux & Sidorenkov in particular) will easily see that Morner’s conceptualization is fundamentally flawed.
Leif Svalgaard wrote (May 21, 2011 at 10:26 pm)
“There are three strikes against the cosmic ray theory [which, BTW, did not originate with Svensmark].
1) the sun’s magnetic field that controls the amount of cosmic rays arriving at Earth is the same now as 150 years ago. Climate is not.
2) the amount of nucleation derived from GCRs is two orders of magnitude too small to have any affect. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009GeoRL..3609820P
3) the cosmic ray intensity has varied the past several years much more than the solar modulation and the climate has not varied with it, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg “
(1) & (3) are based on fundamentally flawed conceptualization. The ~11 year pattern is in the amplitude of semi-annual variations. The discussion cannot advance until people make the effort needed to wrap their heads around this.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 10:28 am
The ‘filter out’ I don’t understand. IDV measures the strength of solar magnetic storms.
I was referring to this passage in the first paper (1.5)
“[5] Van Dijk [1935] criticized the u measure because it
failed to register the very high activity in 1930, resulting
from extensive recurrent storms and clearly shown in the
daily character figure, the Ci
index [see Feynman, 1980].
This problem was so severe that Bartels (after some
struggle [Bartels, 1950]) abandoned the u measure and
went on to invent the very successful K index [Bartels et
al., 1939] that we use to this day. As we shall see, the lack
of sensitivity of the u index to recurrent activity caused by
high-speed streams (also noted by Nevanlinna [2004])
from coronal holes [e.g., Neupert and Pizzo, 1974; see
also Crooker and Cliver, 1994] is an unexpected advantage of the index.”
But the only ‘advantage’ I see being referred to is that your IDV index also fails to register the storms and so correlates well with Bartels u index. Or did I miss something? (always possible).
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 10:35 am
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 10:11 am
Correct but solar activity has bearing on it.
That you didn’t show.
I offered it to you some time ago as a go-between to the Stanford climate department. You declined. Since I found exactly same effect in the Pacific currents, this time modulating PDO & ENSO.
Now you have to wait for the article. I am not in any hurry, once completed then I have to find another ‘a no go area correlation’ to irritate pompous world of academia.
vukcevic, Consider acknowledging wind’s role driving ocean currents.
lgl wrote (May 22, 2011 at 2:39 am)
“Clearly ENSO has not been adjusted for sufficiently.”
The mistake (a fundamentally serious one) is assuming that interannual variations in global surface T are just ENSO. ENSO sometimes goes 180 degrees out of phase with interannual global surface T. Cross-correlation is linear; it seriously misleads people.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 11:06 am
I was referring to this passage in the first paper (1.5)
“[5] Van Dijk [1935] criticized the u measure because it failed to register the very high activity in 1930
This failure is the critical element that makes IDV so useful. There are two sets of currents generated in the magnetosphere: 1) the ring-current and 2) the auroral zone electrojets. The perturbations seen on the ground are a mixture of the two and it has taken a long time for researchers to realize that fact [there is a third set of currents which is generated by UV from the sun – just to make it extra hard; and a fourth set controlling the convection of plasma across the polar caps, see below].
The electrojets are controlled by reconnection and depends on the product of IMF magnetic field B and solar wind speed V: Activity ~ BV^2 and can be measured by the aa, Kp, and IHV indices. The ring current is a measure of the particle energy in the Van Allan radiation belts and is influenced by B only. Indices like Dst and u and IDV pick out the radiation belt energy, so IDV ~B. So, having two indices that respond differently to B and V allows us to determine both B and V. This is the breakthrough that Ed Cliver and myself realized about 10 years ago, and which is now generally accepted, providing a way forward, rather than getting stuck in nit picking. It took 10 years of fight to make people see this [there are deniers everywhere :-), you know the tune: ‘I’m not convinced etc…”], but that is behind us [and ‘everybody’ else] now. The polar cap current [ http://www.leif.org/research/No%20Increase%20VxB%20Since%201926.pdf ] depends on B times V, so if we can determine B from IDV, V from IHV, we can form the product B times V and see if it matches what the polar cap current gives. And it does, see Figure 12 of http://www.leif.org/research/IAGA2008LS-final.pdf
This gives us confidence in the reconstruction.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 11:06 am
But the only ‘advantage’ I see being referred to is that your IDV index also fails to register the storms and so correlates well with Bartels u index. Or did I miss something? (always possible).
Is the ‘advantage’ that by being insensitive to high speed streams from coronal holes, the IDV and u indices are capable of being extrapolated to provide a reconstruction of sunspot numbers?
If so, how well is that working at the moment, with the sun in a quiet state?
Paul Vaughan says: May 22, 2011 at 11:15 am
vukcevic, Consider acknowledging wind’s role driving ocean currents.
Energy- temperature gradient – atmospheric circulation (wind) – temperature gradient- atmospheric pressure gradient etc, until energy runs out, which of course never does.
Source of energy is the controlling factor; quote from my post:
(Subpolar gyre) “It is a region of intense interaction between ocean and atmosphere: the winter’s cold winds remove heat at rates of several hundred watts per square meter, resulting in deep sea convection reaching as far as 2500 m below the surface.”
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 11:35 am
This failure is the critical element that makes IDV so useful. There are two sets of currents generated in the magnetosphere: 1) the ring-current and 2) the auroral zone electrojets. The perturbations seen on the ground are a mixture of the two and it has taken a long time for researchers to realize that fact [there is a third set of currents which is generated by UV from the sun – just to make it extra hard; and a fourth set controlling the convection of plasma across the polar caps, see below]…
Good stuff, and all very interesting. So does this mean you can also reconstruct Earthward solar wind speed and density back to 1835 and by subtracting out the activity due to sunspots, get a residual which shows us what was emanating from coronal holes and flares?
Useful:
Leif Svalgaard wrote (May 22, 2011 at 10:28 am)
“The modulation of GCR is caused by GCRs scattered by the irregularities in the field, which scale with the field […] the modulation is not just a simple relationship and is not well understood […]”
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 10:28 am
1950-1980 negative correlation not included!
The link was intended to show that the increases in temperature happen without CO2 being included. That there are negative correlations, even makes my point stronger. Thanks for supporting me fully on this.
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 11:07 am
I offered it to you some time ago as a go-between to the Stanford climate department. You declined.
Declined because it did not satisfy even elementary demands on quality.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 11:38 am
Is the ‘advantage’ that by being insensitive to high speed streams from coronal holes, the IDV and u indices are capable of being extrapolated to provide a reconstruction of sunspot numbers?
u and IDV allows reconstruction of the Heliospheric Magnetic Field. We expect that the HMF should depend on the square root of the sunspot number and find that it does:
“The main sources of the equatorial components of the Sun’s large scale magnetic field are large active regions. If these active regions emerge at random longitudes, their net equatorial dipole moment will scale as the square root of their number. Thus their contribution to the average IMF strength will tend to increase as RZ^1/2 (for a detailed discussion, see Wang and Sheeley [2003] and Wang et al. [2005]). We find, indeed, that there is a linear relation between B and the square root of the RZ as shown in Figure 8.”
If so, how well is that working at the moment, with the sun in a quiet state?
Since it is based on sound physics and understanding of the mechanism we would expect it to hold at all times. Naturally, we find that this has been borne out by all data since our 2005 paper up to the present time, including the recent solar minimum. http://www.leif.org/research/HMF-B-1963-now.png
As we said in http://www.leif.org/research/Reply%20to%20Lockwood%20IDV%20Comment.pdf Our debate with Lockwood and colleagues on the long-term evolution of the coronal magnetic field and the solar wind may be resolved within the next few years if our prediction [Svalgaard et al., 2005] of a solar maximum with peak sunspot number comparable to that of cycle 14 bears out. If so, direct measurements of solar wind properties during conditions similar to those during the previous minimum of the Gleissberg cycle would take the estimates of IMF B out of the realm of extrapolation. It is noteworthy that the IDV index (and thus B, regardless of regression method) for 2006 (based on the first 7 months only, but expected to fall further as we approach solar minimum) is already the lowest in the last 94 years.”
This has, indeed, happened. We do the ‘quiet’ sun quite well.
vukcevic, on interannual timescales your “hysteresis” is what Milanovic calls “spatiotemporal chaos”, but I don’t see you acknowledging the dominant lagless role of external factors on ocean currents via wind.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 11:50 am
So does this mean you can also reconstruct Earthward solar wind speed and density back to 1835
In essence, yes. The details depend on finding and digitizing the early 19th century data [this is ongoing].
and by subtracting out the activity due to sunspots, get a residual which shows us what was emanating from coronal holes and flares?
Flares are generally part of ‘activity due to sunspots’, but we can separate what is due to solar UV and what is due to solar wind [coronal holes]. This is an active area of research. The main hurdle [the “I’m not convinced’ syndrome] is past us now and we can begin to make progress. A workshop is scheduled for next year about this. One of the remaining issues is what happened prior to the 19th century as far as the floor in B is concerned. The recent solar minimum B-value of 3.93 nT nicely fits our floor value of ~4 nT. Steinhilber’s suggestion that HMF B was substantially lower around 1900 is not substantiated by the geomagnetic data.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 22, 2011 at 12:17 pm
vukcevic, …
I would think you’ll both be pretty interested by this article, fresh out a couple of days ago.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10013.html
Interannual atmospheric variability forced by the deep equatorial Atlantic Ocean
Peter Brandt, Andreas Funk, Verena Hormann, Marcus Dengler, Richard J. Greatbatch & John M. Toole
Climate variability in the tropical Atlantic Ocean is determined by large-scale ocean–atmosphere interactions, which particularly affect deep atmospheric convection over the ocean and surrounding continents1. Apart from influences from the Pacific El Niño/Southern Oscillation2 and the North Atlantic Oscillation3, the tropical Atlantic variability is thought to be dominated by two distinct ocean–atmosphere coupled modes of variability that are characterized by meridional4, 5 and zonal6, 7 sea-surface-temperature gradients and are mainly active on decadal and interannual timescales, respectively8, 9. Here we report evidence that the intrinsic ocean dynamics of the deep equatorial Atlantic can also affect sea surface temperature, wind and rainfall in the tropical Atlantic region and constitutes a 4.5-yr climate cycle. Specifically, vertically alternating deep zonal jets of short vertical wavelength with a period of about 4.5 yr and amplitudes of more than 10 cm s−1 are observed, in the deep Atlantic, to propagate their energy upwards, towards the surface10, 11. They are linked, at the sea surface, to equatorial zonal current anomalies and eastern Atlantic temperature anomalies that have amplitudes of about 6 cm s−1 and 0.4 °C, respectively, and are associated with distinct wind and rainfall patterns. Although deep jets are also observed in the Pacific12 and Indian13 oceans, only the Atlantic deep jets seem to oscillate on interannual timescales. Our knowledge of the persistence and regularity of these jets is limited by the availability of high-quality data. Despite this caveat, the oscillatory behaviour can still be used to improve predictions of sea surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic. Deep-jet generation and upward energy transmission through the Equatorial Undercurrent warrant further theoretical study.
Leif Svalgaard says: May 22, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Declined because it did not satisfy even elementary demands on quality.
That is nonsense.
You only saw the graph, no data file, no source of data, and even more importantly what the data represents.
Only a ‘pompous academic’ could glance at graph and say:
“ did not satisfy even elementary demands on quality”
Well have another look
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CD2.htm
and specify which elementary QUALITY you are talking about, you often make demands of other posters, so follow your own form.
North Atlantic precursor has no dimension (it is just a number = ratio of two values expressed in same units) and normalised to scale of other relevant variables.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 22, 2011 at 11:59 am
Useful: “the modulation is not just a simple relationship and is not well understood […]”
But that doesn’t mean it is not understood at all. Just that it is not understood as well as we would like. We do understand that [and how] the modulation is controlled by the latitudinal extent of the coronal streamer belt, that [and how] the modulation is influenced by the cosmic rays drifting in the large scale structure of the HMF, that [and how] the modulation arises from scattering from turbulent corotating interaction regions, and several other details [e.g. the dependence on particle energy]. A comprehensive, quantitative theory is still elusive, although some people claim their pet theories fit the bill.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 12:18 pm
The details depend on finding and digitizing the early 19th century data [this is ongoing]…
One of the remaining issues is what happened prior to the 19th century as far as the floor in B is concerned.
What are the earliest usefully calibrate-able reading you are aware of? Is there still a massive amount of paper records in danger of being lost?
Useful:
Leif Svalgaard wrote (May 22, 2011 at 10:28 am)
“The modulation of GCR is caused by GCRs scattered by the irregularities in the field, which scale with the field […] the modulation is not just a simple relationship and is not well understood […]”
–
To clarify: The most useful part is this part:
Leif Svalgaard wrote (May 22, 2011 at 10:28 am)
“The modulation of GCR is caused by GCRs scattered by the irregularities in the field, which scale with the field […]”
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 12:38 pm
You only saw the graph, no data file, no source of data, and even more importantly what the data represents.
Undocumented stuff automatically goes in the circular bin.
But as I recall, you were plotting things upside down for periods when the phase was wrong to make it fit anyway. You could submit what you have on your own anywhere and at any time.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 1:00 pm
What are the earliest usefully calibrate-able reading you are aware of? Is there still a massive amount of paper records in danger of being lost?
Gauss’s data from ~1833 for IDV and IHV. For the UV, the 1740s. And yes, there is a massive amount of data in danger of being lost. We are attempting to halt that loss, but it is harder than one might think it should be.
Stephen Wilde wrote (May 20, 2011 at 11:46 pm):
“My main problem with the Svensmark hypothesis is that there is no shortage of the necessary aerosols in the first place so more of them does not necessarily result in more clouds.”
Kirkby points out that aerosol concentration affects droplet size in a manner that fundamentally alters reflection.
I’ve been hoping someone might be able to point to the article from which he got the right-hand graph-panel displayed from 35:40 to 35:50:
Anyone?
This immediately struck me as a key missing link (regardless of whether GCRs, something confounded, or whatever).
Paul,
if you mean the CCN origination slide, the legend below the graphs reads
Merikanto et al, ACP, 2009
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 1:09 pm
yes, there is a massive amount of data in danger of being lost. We are attempting to halt that loss, but it is harder than one might think it should be.
I suppose some of the data has shifted around over the years, from closed down measuring stations, to libraries, to university faculty offices etc. Must be hard to track down. Sounds like it needs someone with some travel funding to do some dedicated running around.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 5:17 am
Yet you asserted that the Dalton Minimum started in 1790, at the peak of a high cycle?
And as I pointed out it does not help your argument. On the contrary, it considerably weakens it. Could you now identify when the Dalton Minimum cooling began? If indeed there was such a thing.
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 12:38 pm
and specify which elementary QUALITY you are talking about, you often make demands of other posters, so follow your own form.
For one, an 11-yr moving average should end 5.5 years from the limits of the data.
> Leif Svalgaard says:
> May 21, 2011 at 9:00 pm
>> Julian Droms says:
>> May 21, 2011 at 8:14 pm
>> Shaviv says it should be only these high energy > 10 GeV particles
>> that have the energy to penetrate into the lower atmosphere while
>> still being able to seed clouds at those altitudes At such high
>> energies, the solar modulation of GCRs is actually very small. Look
>> at the lower right-hand curves on Figure 1 of
>> http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC/DATA/bibliography/ICRC2005
>> /usa-wiedenbeck-M-abs3-sh34-poster.pdf
It looks to me like this paper looks at particles only from Li through Zn, and it has no actual data points above 1 GeV, much less 10 GeV (from the Advanced Composition Explorer) comparing different modulations, just extrapolations from lower energies. Also, I’m not sure how measurements on particle energies in orbit should correlate with energies in ground measurements, or whether that matters. It appears to be a poster and not a peer-reviewed article, which shouldn’t matter, if there were someone to explain in details how it relates to the current debate…
John Finn says:
May 22, 2011 at 1:50 pm
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 5:17 am
John Finn says:
May 22, 2011 at 2:27 am
SC 5 didn’t begin until ~1798.
Yet you asserted that the Dalton Minimum started in 1790, at the peak of a high cycle?
And as I pointed out it does not help your argument. On the contrary, it considerably weakens it. Could you now identify when the Dalton Minimum cooling began? If indeed there was such a thing.
Yes, you immediately tried to shift attention away from your falsehood, and I obligingly said some colder winters were recorded after 1804. But this doesn’t change the fact that you won’t/can’t admit to falsely stating that the Dalton Minimum commenced in 1790. Perhaps at this second prompting, you will agree you are wrong about that?
Leif Svalgaard says: May 22, 2011 at 1:09 pm
But as I recall, you were plotting things upside down for periods when the phase was wrong to make it fit anyway.
Another nonsense from your ‘make it up’ milling machine.
1.First nothing was plotted upside down.
2.North Atlantic precursor as:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CD2.htm
is nothing to do with Leohle reconstruction as:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
with negative correlation for a fraction of time, which is just an (useful) exercise in pointing towards link of global temperature to the arctic magnetic field which may or may not have some role in climatic events.
3. I was not to disclose details directly to you (well known as a person who ridicules anything that may knot know much about or have no experience of) but was more than happy to give complete documentation to a conscientious climate scientist who would take an unbiased view.
Your above comment emphasise precisely why it is not advisable for anyone to take your opinion as a defining evaluation of a new and possibly controversial finding.
You could submit what you have on your own anywhere and at any time.
That I shall do; but what a chance for a ‘lamb’ in a den full of jackals.
Julian Droms says:
May 22, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Also, I’m not sure how measurements on particle energies in orbit should correlate with energies in ground measurements, or whether that matters. It appears to be a poster and not a peer-reviewed article,
The paper was not intended to show any new result. It was just an example showing what has been known for decades for all sorts of particles. The energy outside the Earth determines if the cosmic ray even get to the ground.
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 2:36 pm
with negative correlation for a fraction of time, which is just an (useful) exercise in pointing towards link of global temperature to the arctic magnetic field which may or may not have some role in climatic events […]
Perhaps part of your problem is not being upfront with what you claim. The drips that you occasionally let fly do not tell a coherent story. Based on the low quality of those, the chance that the secret paper is any better is slim.
Leif Svalgaard says: May 22, 2011 at 2:10 pm
For one, an 11-yr moving average should end 5.5 years from the limits of the data.
Nothing wrong with my graph
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CD2.htm
In this case it is shown as a cumulative process along 11 years
Y (n+11) = { Sum [(X(n) +X(n+1) +…. X(n+11)] }/11
rather than
Y (n+6) = { Sum [(X(n) +X(n+1) +…. X(n+11)] }/11
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 2:36 pm
more than happy to give complete documentation to a conscientious climate scientist who would take an unbiased view.
A good vehicle for this would have been to present it here on WUWT for a free review by all the unbiased people with completely open and receptive minds
vukcevic says:
May 22, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Nothing wrong with my graph
an 11-yr moving average should end 5.5 years from the limits of the data.
tallbloke wrote (May 22, 2011 at 1:37 pm)
“[…] the legend below the graphs reads Merikanto et al, ACP, 2009”
Yes, thanks tallbloke. Looks like Figure 9B (with a slightly different color scale) from:
Merikanto, J.; Spracklen, D.V.; Mann, G.W.; Pickering, S.J.; & Carslaw, K.S. (2009). Impact of nucleation on global CCN. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 9, 8601-8616.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/9/8601/2009/acp-9-8601-2009.pdf
Also resembles Figure 8B.
Leif Svalgaard hing vukcevic (May 22, 2011 at 3:02 pm):
“Perhaps part of your problem is not being upfront with what you claim.”
Leif’s predictable misinterpretation of 2 curves on any 1 graph:
“Claim”
Leif Svalgaard says:
There are three strikes against the cosmic ray theory [which, BTW, did not originate with Svensmark].
1) the sun’s magnetic field that controls the amount of cosmic rays arriving at Earth is the same now as 150 years ago. Climate is not.
2) the amount of nucleation derived from GCRs is two orders of magnitude too small to have any affect. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009GeoRL..3609820P
3) the cosmic ray intensity has varied the past several years much more than the solar modulation and the climate has not varied with it, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
====================
Is this the best that you can do?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Julian Droms says:
>>>> Shaviv says it should be only these high energy > 10 GeV particles
>>>> that have the energy to penetrate into the lower atmosphere while
>>>> still being able to seed clouds at those altitudes
Leif Svalgaard says:
>>> At such high energies, the solar modulation of GCRs is actually very
>>> small. Look at the lower right-hand curves on Figure 1 of
>>> http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC/DATA/bibliography/ICRC2005
>>> /usa-wiedenbeck-M-abs3-sh34-poster.pdf
Julian Droms says:
>> It looks to me like this paper looks at particles only from Li through Zn,
>> and it has no actual data points above 1 GeV, much less 10 GeV (from the
>> Advanced Composition Explorer) comparing different modulations, just
>> extrapolations from lower energies.
Leif Svalgaard says:
> The paper was not intended to show any new result. It was just an
> example showing what has been known for decades for all sorts of
> particles. The energy outside the Earth determines if the cosmic ray
> even get to the ground.
Still, it looks to me like this poster looks at particles only from Li through Zn. If you read Wikipedia, it says that only about 1 % of cosmic rays are comprised of heavier elements, Li and above. About 99% are protons and helium nuclei. These have a much higher charge-to-mass ratio than the heavier particles and therefore I would think would be more strongly influenced by the solar wind and by the earth’s magnetosphere. Still, I don’t necessarily equate measuring 10 GeV in a satellite orbiting earth, with measuring 10 GeV at the Earth’s surface, which is what an ion chamber does. Then, there is the issue of the Earth’s magnetosphere deflecting high energy particles, which may occur at latitudes lower than the satellite in question. Doesn’t the solar wind affect the strength of currents in the Earth’s magnetosphere? I don’t know the physics really, I’m just asking….
Well, maybe after these experiments (like SKY and the Danish one here) someone will pipe up and talk about what kind of energies and particles we are talking about here that are necessary to set up cloud nucleation so the appropriate data can be accessed of collected. I’ve never seen where Shaviv talks about or references how he comes up with this 10 GeV threshold though it may be on his website. Interesting, the current study is apparently using neutron monitors which as you say detect 2.4 GeV and above. There is only about a 20 % change in cosmic ray flux detected at Moscow over the time period analyzed, yet this seems to produce the correlations shown in the original post. Strange to me though, why one would need to detrend the cosmic ray flux data unless there was something wrong with the calibration of the instrument over time. I can see why you would detrend the radiation flux data to remove the ENSO signals and so forth. It’s not clear to me why you would need to detrend the Moscow cosmic ray flux data, but maybe I’m wrong on that. For > 10 GeV data Shaviv uses uses as cited from Ahluwalia (1997) here http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar though I have no idea if this is the best source. Would be interested to see how this or similar data comes out in a analysis like above in the original post.
Leif Svalgaard!
Bust open a bottle of Champagne
Here’s the deal Dr. Roy Spencer, PhD has given you credit on all of your hard work!
You are not on the fringe, any longer, you are main stream!!!
BTW ..What an incredible hostile consensus driven field you hang out in, but hay just keep whacking them with the facts…
★ ★ Excellent Job ★★
Julian Droms says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:36 pm
….I don’t know the physics really, I’m just asking….
Looks like you are asking some very smart questions to me Julian.
Over to Leif for some answers. Or maybe Prof Shaviv is the man to ask. Mind you, he’s never found the time to reply to the emails I’ve sent him. At least Leif is generous with his time, and forgiving of argumentative interlocutors.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 22, 2011 at 3:26 pm
an 11-yr moving average should end 5.5 years from the limits of the data.
Not necessarily, moving average is a numerical abstraction.
AMO is a cumulative hystresis loop driven event (the system’s output at an instant in time is not only related to its input at that instant in time). In such case referencing to the centre value is misleading (because of its forward bias), while the end referencing is more relevant. If you disagree, have a think about it.
“BTW Stephen, a small confusion has arisen because the cycle ending in 1755 is numbered zero not one.”
Thanks tallbloke, that resolves the issue between me and Leif.
I would have thought that Leif would have noticed but he is a busy man.
tallbloke says:
May 22, 2011 at 2:18 pm
…
Yes, you immediately tried to shift attention away from your falsehood, and I obligingly said some colder winters were recorded after 1804. But this doesn’t change the fact that you won’t/can’t admit to falsely stating that the Dalton Minimum commenced in 1790. Perhaps at this second prompting, you will agree you are wrong about that?
I took the dates from memory of this Wiki article, i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum
However, this was to allow you as much leeway as possible in which to explain your “decades lag” which now seems to have been reduced to a decade. Your evidence for this lag appears to be that there were “some colder winters were recorded after 1804”. Really? Colder winters where? colder than what? According to the CET record there were many colc d winters before 1804. If you look closely at this CET graph you might notice that there is a drop in temperatures in ~1780 – nearly 20 years before the Dalton minimum began. Temperatures in the early 1780s are not appreciably different to the lowest temperatures during the Dalton Minimum.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Right. I’ll admit I was wrong about the DM years – now you admit that you have no evidence for a decadal, mulit-decadal or any other timescale lag between solar activity and temperature.
savethesharks says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Is this the best that you can do?
What more is needed?
Julian Droms says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Still, it looks to me like this poster looks at particles only from Li through Zn.
As I said, the Figure was only to illustrate that there is very little modulation at 10 GeV and above. This is true no matter what the particle is. Here is the energy-dependent modulation for a range of atoms from Hydrogen and up: http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic-Ray-Modulation-energy.png The curves split into low [upper curve], medium, and high solar activity [lower curve]. At high energy [e.g. 10 GeV] there is very little modulation.
Still, I don’t necessarily equate measuring 10 GeV in a satellite orbiting earth, with measuring 10 GeV at the Earth’s surface, which is what an ion chamber does.
The 10 GeV is the energy of the cosmic ray particle. We don’t measure the cosmic ray at the surface: the particle is long dead and what we see is the debris created by its demise [by slamming into the atmosphere].
Then, there is the issue of the Earth’s magnetosphere deflecting high energy particles, which may occur at latitudes lower than the satellite in question.
The magnetic field of the Earth prevent the low energy particles from reaching us. At Moscow that is particles below an energy of 2.42 GeV. We see those above.
Doesn’t the solar wind affect the strength of currents in the Earth’s magnetosphere?
Yes, but is not those currents that deflect the cosmic rays. Here is a good introduction [the Figure I showed was lifted from that link]: http://www.sotere.uni-osnabrueck.de/pubs/paper/summerschool-gaks.pdf
vukcevic says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:37 am
Not necessarily, moving average is a numerical abstraction.
Any reviewer would ask for the moving average to be centered. That Excel doesn’t do it is a bug in Excel [‘feature’ they would call it]. If you want to show a cumulative effect, it should be labeled as such and reasons should be given for the choice of time window.
Stephen Wilde says:
May 23, 2011 at 2:03 am
I would have thought that Leif would have noticed but he is a busy man.
I did notice, and kept telling you, but you are a stubborn man who won’t listen 🙂
[reply] Heh, you didn’t go out of your way to make it explicit. 🙂 RT-mod
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 2:42 am
savethesharks says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Is this the best that you can do?
What more is needed?
Using nothing more than faulty logic, a broken GCM, an obsolete cloud condensation nucleii formation paper and armed only with a cudgel made from Graybeards favourite foxtail pine, the brave Svalgaard confronts the massed forces of the dark lord Svensmark and his wild eyed minions.
Lolz
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 2:52 am
[reply] Heh, you didn’t go out of your way to make it explicit. 🙂 RT-mod
Once should be enough. I told him thrice, but it was taken as:
“Stephen Wilde says: May 21, 2011 at 12:22 pm merely a cynical diversionary strategy. ”
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 3:07 am
the brave Svalgaard confronts the massed forces of the dark lord Svensmark and his wild eyed minions.
And it seems I have them in full retreat descending to the low level displayed in your post…
John Finn says:
May 23, 2011 at 2:23 am
Right. I’ll admit I was wrong about the DM years – now you admit that you have no evidence for a decadal, mulit-decadal or any other timescale lag between solar activity and temperature.
Good man, well done!
Now, I’ve looked at CET many times in different ways, and came to the conclusion that a maritime climate is not the best place to try to resolve solar effects on climate as a whole. This is because when the sun goes into a minimum, you will get a big El Nino soon afterwards, and the warm oceanic air will affect your thermometers strongly. The cold decembers around the early 1790’s reflect back to back la ninas which often occur around solar max, in response to the big el ninos which tend to occur a year or so after solar min.
It’s confusing and apparently counterintuitive until you understand the dynamics of what must be happening in terms of solar energy being mixed down into the ocean. That’s a process which goes on as long as the sun is averaging higher activity than that indicated by around 40SSN. When the sun goes quiet, the process goes into reverse and energy is released from the ocean into the atmosphere. Good job too or we’d all freeze.
The point is that when there has been a run of several short, high amplitude, short minima solar cycles, like the late C20th, the ssn can average over 70 for a long period of time. Lots of energy accumulates in the ocean, as evidenced by the steric component of sea level rise, and rising SST’s. When the sun goes quiet, the atmosphere cools, which enables the ocean to get rid of more heat quicker to space, due to the higher differential. This happens in burps called el nino, but unlike the el ninos Bob Tisdale has been watching for years, where the heated surface water slosh around and re-accumulates in the pacific warm pool, these el ninos will deplete ocean heat content, and over the course of a decade or more, the SST will fall in descending oscillations and the surface air temp will follow suit some months later.
There’s your lag.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 3:20 am
And it seems I have them in full retreat descending to the low level displayed in your post…
Aww Leif, c’mon, it was just a bit of fun. You should be able to take back what you dish out in good humour. Lighten up, Svensmark may yet fulfill your wish to see your field at the centre of climate science.
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 3:58 am
Aww Leif, c’mon, it was just a bit of fun.
Didn’t look much different from your usual stuff…
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 4:04 am
Didn’t look much different from your usual stuff…
Seems like we’re both well adjusted in our normal attitudes then. 😉
Leif Svalgaard says: May 23, 2011 at 2:42 am
………….
If that is only objection you have retreated a long way from:
Declined because it did not satisfy even elementary demands on quality.
You are making a wrong assumption again, I calculate all data, when integrated, averaged or differentiate. I often look at nature of the process and decide what is appropriate. I only use Excel facility only for simple linear trend lines.
Ehat I do, I do it for my own enjoyment and contentment ( and of course for the benefit of all of the humanity 🙂 ) and couldn’t care less what a reviewer would say, but for the benefit and respect towards other readers I have added (cumulative) to the graph.
vukcevic says:
May 23, 2011 at 5:23 am
I have added (cumulative) to the graph.
Let’s hope Leif doesn’t feel the need to hit F5 350 times to verify this change Vuk. 😉
vukcevic says:
May 23, 2011 at 5:23 am
couldn’t care less what a reviewer would say
You would have to if you try to publish.
The quality issue goes deeper, of course. [snip] …you have to quantify that [calculate how big the effect would be] and overcome the obstacle that any such effect is vanishingly small. This I explained to you, but you would [could?] not consider that. Without this, there is no meat on the paper, hence not publishable.
Now, you can get a free review of NAP right here at WUWT. Try that.
[reply]Apologies for the snip, but publishers will not publish work previously exposed on the net. Please take the discussion of specifics to email. – Thanks, RT-mod
I may be being over-cautious, so feel free to correct me, but I’m erring on the side of caution, because I don’t want to see Vuk’s chances of publication being jeopardised.
Thanks
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 7:15 am
Now, you can get a free review of NAP right here at WUWT. Try that.
[reply]Apologies for the snip, but publishers will not publish work previously exposed on the net.
Yes they will. The discussion of ideas and preliminary works are perfectly admissible. Scientists do that all the time, at conferences, seminars, arXiv.org. Discussing these things here will not be a problem. See for example: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/06/new-svalgaard-paper-reconstructing-the-heliospheric-magnetic-field-since-1835-with-insight-into-the-peer-review-process/
A real obstacle to publication is Vuk’s attitude of “I couldn’t care less what a reviewer would say”.
REPLY: I agree, “Vuk has a sure to fail attitude, which is why he’ll probably never publish a paper. If I took the same tact, I would have never published a paper. A first step towards honest and open science is putting your name on your work – Anthony
Leif may well be right, butI think Vuk also has a genuine concern that others may take his concepts and publish before he gets the opportunity. I really think it would be proper courtesy to await his view on revealing how his proposed mechanism works, and respect his wishes.
Vukcevic is Vukcevic’s real name, so I don’t understand Anthony’s comment regarding that. In the part of the world he hails from, it is common to address people by their surname.
So lower level cloud cover increased in 1985-7 and 1991-4:
http://1.2.3.9/bmi/www.climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.gif
As there is such a good match between the colder months in these periods with lower solar wind speeds, I would go with temperature deviations driving cloud cover, rather than cloud cover driving temperatures.
http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/tmp/images/ret_29345.gif
http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/tmp/images/ret_28889.gif
http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/tmp/images/ret_29057.gif
http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/tmp/images/ret_28335.gif
http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/tmp/images/ret_28602.gif
Hi Ulric,
I suspect Svensmark would reached the opposite conclusion, for broadly similar reasons.
To return to science:
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Here’s Jasper Kirby’s correlation between ice rafted debris …
Of much better quality are the graphs from Jasper’s arXiv preprint:
http://aps.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
Let us concentrate for a moment on Figure 3 of that paper:
“This pattern has been extended over the last two millennia by a reconstruction of Alpine temperatures with a speleothem from Spannagel Cave in Austria (Fig. 3) [40]. Temperature maxima in this region of central Europe during the Medieval Warm Period were about 1.7 C higher than the minima in the Little Ice Age, and similar to present-day values. The high correlation of the temperature variations to the 14 C record (Fig. 3) suggests that solar/cosmic ray forcing was a major driver of climate over this period.”
A common mistake is to assume that the solar modulation of cosmic rays determine their flux at Earth. This is not the case. The Earth’s magnetic field has an order of magnitude larger degree of control. So the cosmic ray flux in the atmosphere is primarily determined by the Earth’s magnetic field and not by solar activity. For Svensmark’s hypothesis it doesn’t matter what controls the flux. It is enough that the actual flux varies.
The Earth’s magnetic field changes very slowly compared to the solar cycle, so we can filter out the effect of the Earth’s magnetic field by removing [‘filtering out’] all variations on a time scale of, say, 200 years and longer, or we can directly try to remove the [known] effect of the changing magnetic fields. This is routinely done by people who produce the graphs of GCR modulation, e.g. the blue curve in Jasper’s Figure 3 or the 10Be series. But that does not show the variation of the GCR flux at the Earth, which is assumed to be the agent in Svensmark’s mechanism.
Here I compare Jasper’s Figure 3 with the actual flux of GCRs as represented by the 14C deviations: http://www.leif.org/research/INTCAL-Jasper.png
On top is Figure 3. The bottom panel shows the internationally agreed upon GCR flux determined from 14C [ http://www.radiocarbon.org/Journal/v40n3/editorial.html ] as the red curve. The blue curve is the flux after filtering out the overwhelming effect of the Earth’s magnetic field. You can see that the two blue curves are identical, so Jasper compares not with the real flux but with the residual flux after the major influence of the Earth’s magnetic field has been removed. This is, of course, nonsense if the mechanism relies on the actual flux of GCRs. Slide 18 of http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf shows how the real flux [red curve] has varied the past 11,000 years.
To compare with the filtered flux [a proxy for solar activity] rather than the real flux makes the GCR hypothesis false. If there are correlations with the filtered flux, then that means that other aspects of the Sun [e.g. TSI, UV, or a host of other things all correlated with GCRs] are responsible. I pointed out that this deathblow to the GCRs was my ‘third’ strike. One could, of course, invoke various forms of Special Pleading: e.g. that the GCRs that are modulated by the Sun are somehow special and different from the ones modulated by the Earth, but that does not carry much weight in my book.
Leif:
What other methods of reconstructing changes in the Earth’s magnetic field exist apart from measuring the C14 in semi fossilised trees?
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 10:35 am
What other methods of reconstructing changes in the Earth’s magnetic field exist apart from measuring the C14 in semi fossilised trees?
The ‘semi fossilised’ bit is inappropriate slant.
Anyway, the C14 record is not used for that at all [otherwise we would sort of a circular argument – which is perhaps what you are trying to hint at]
There are several ways of measuring the paleointensity, e.g.
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/earth/eesweb/brachfeld/Brachfeld_JGR.pdf
or http://www.rockmagnetism.ru/articles/550.pdf
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 10:35 am
What other methods of reconstructing changes in the Earth’s magnetic field exist apart from measuring the C14 in semi fossilised trees?
and for Jasper’s sorry Figure 3, no paleointensity is needed. He [or whom he got the data from] just filtered the C14 to remove [the large] variations on a time scale longer than 200 years.
tallbloke says:
May 21, 2011 at 11:46 pm
“3) the cosmic ray intensity has varied the past several thousand years much more than the solar modulation and the climate has not varied with it, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg ”
Graybill tree rings? Blimey Leif you are getting desperate.
[…] It is a reflection of the unbalanced, lopsided and unscientific approach to the study of climate of the institution you reside at.
The knowledge that the Earth’s magnetic field is the really big modulator of GCRs is not new. To wit, the 25-yr old plot I showed. You may consider a suitable moderation of your utterances. Unless, you only said it ‘for fun’.
Leif:
No, it was a simple mistake, I meant GCR flux but was thinking about geomag and my fingers wandered on the keyboard. You know how it happens. I’ll take a read at your links anyway.
Weren’t you saying upthread that it’s not the ring current which modulates GCR’s as they enter Earth’s magnetosphere? What aspect is it, and how strong is that field compared to the current induced by the solar wind buffeting the magnetosphere?
Doesn’t the sun have a large modulating effect on GCR’s before they get anywhere near Earth anyway? That would mean the curve would be biased towards the blue curve Jasper uses regardless of relatively small changes in Earth’s field strength, No?
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:04 am
No, it was a simple mistake, I meant GCR flux but was thinking about geomag and my fingers wandered on the keyboard.
Darn, not even leaning on F5 would have told me that 🙂
Weren’t you saying upthread that it’s not the ring current which modulates GCR’s as they enter Earth’s magnetosphere? What aspect is it, and how strong is that field compared to the current induced by the solar wind buffeting the magnetosphere?
It is not the ring current. It is simply that the Earth’s magnetic field acts as a sort of mass-spectrometer [ http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/magnetic/maspec.html ]
The solar wind has nothing to do with this. Beer has a good description of what happens: http://www.scostep.ucar.edu/archives/scostep11_lectures/Beer.pdf and how they correct for it. To repeat: the various graphs that people [e.g. Jasper] trot out do not show the GCR intensity in the atmosphere, but the solar modulation that we infer after subtracting the much larger variation of the real flux. Presumably the real flux is what counts in the GCR hypothesis. There was talk about reputation of scientists at CERN. Perhaps their use of something else than the actual flux will not do much to enhance said reputation.
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:14 am
Doesn’t the sun have a large modulating effect on GCR’s before they get anywhere near Earth anyway?
No, the solar modulation of the 10 GeV GCRs is very small, only a few percent.
That would mean the curve would be biased towards the blue curve Jasper uses regardless of relatively small changes in Earth’s field strength, No?
No, the red curve is the actual observed cosmic ray flux in the atmosphere. And the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field are not ‘relatively small’. They are large, much larger than the small wiggles caused by the Sun. Look again at the old plot: http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:35 am
Well, I won’t rise to that stinky bait until you’ve answered my previous point:
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:14 am
Doesn’t the sun have a large modulating effect on GCR’s before they get anywhere near Earth anyway?
No, the solar modulation of the 10 GeV GCRs is very small, only a few percent.
That would mean the curve would be biased towards the blue curve Jasper uses regardless of relatively small changes in Earth’s field strength, No?
No, the red curve is the actual observed cosmic ray flux in the atmosphere. And the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field are not ‘relatively small’. They are large, much larger than the small wiggles caused by the Sun. Look again at the old plot: http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
Repeating this as you didn’t get it. Can you estimate how many more times I need to say it?
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:14 am
Doesn’t the sun have a large modulating effect on GCR’s before they get anywhere near Earth anyway?
No, the solar modulation of the 10 GeV GCRs is very small, only a few percent.
That would mean the curve would be biased towards the blue curve Jasper uses regardless of relatively small changes in Earth’s field strength, No?
No, the red curve is the actual observed cosmic ray flux in the atmosphere. And the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field are not ‘relatively small’. They are large, much larger than the small wiggles caused by the Sun. Look again at the old plot: http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:21 am
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:14 am
Doesn’t the sun have a large modulating effect on GCR’s before they get anywhere near Earth anyway?
No, the solar modulation of the 10 GeV GCRs is very small, only a few percent.
The amount of change in cloud cover required to make the difference between ‘little ace age’ and ‘global! warming!’ is very small, only a few percent, too.
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:38 am
Ah, I see you have. Well, I’m not satisfied with your answer because we’re not talking about the relative size of the wiggles the sun makes on the Earth’s magnetosphere when It comes to the modulation of GCR’s by the Sun before they get anywhere near Earth.
I have said several times that the solar wind and its interaction with the magnetosphere have nothing at all to do with the solar modulation of cosmic rays.
So quit monkeying around and let’s talk straight about this.
I suggest you do.
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:42 am
The amount of change in cloud cover required to make the difference between ‘little ace age’ and ‘global! warming!’ is very small, only a few percent, too.
You don’t get it. The actual observed GCRs in the Earth’s atmosphere is not what people [incl. Jasper] plot and compare with climate. So it doesn’t matter what the change in cloud cover is. It is not caused by the GCRs.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 10:55 am
“It is a reflection of the unbalanced, lopsided and unscientific approach to the study of climate of the institution you reside at.”
You may consider a suitable moderation of your utterances. Unless, you only said it ‘for fun’.
I thought I chose my words regarding Stanford ‘global warming central’ University with precision. But I won’t go into detail, unless you force me. Anyway, it was in retaliation for ‘Svensmarks wild eyed supporters’ so if you moderate your utterances, I’ll follow suit.
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:59 am
Anyway, it was in retaliation for ‘Svensmarks wild eyed supporters’
It would be good if you could stick to the science rather than focusing on retaliation.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:21 am
No, the red curve is the actual observed cosmic ray flux in the atmosphere.
Look again at the old plot:
http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
Yeah? so who was doing the actual observing in 6000BC Leif? Ugg the caveman?
I know you’ve been digging up old geomagnetic records, but this is stretching credulity a bit far.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:08 pm
It would be good if you could stick to the science rather than focusing on retaliation.
It would be good if you could stick to the science, rather than wandering off to drag up old comments.
Now the Solar Magnetic Flux at around earth distance can change by a factor of what? Three? Four? Whereas the Earth’s magnetic field has varied by what in the last 10,000 years according to your proxy?
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Yeah? so who was doing the actual observing in 6000BC Leif? Ugg the caveman?
The Earth [via trees and ice cores] was doing the observing. We are carefully looking at her recordings. The number of 14C atoms in a tree ring 6000 BC is a precise measure of the GCR intensity at that time. You should read some of the material I linked you to. Here is Beer again: http://www.scostep.ucar.edu/archives/scostep11_lectures/Beer.pdf
Apparently Jasper [and you when referring to him] consider the cosmogenic record to be good. Just too bad he doesn’t show the true record.
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Now the Solar Magnetic Flux at around earth distance can change by a factor of what? Three? Four? Whereas the Earth’s magnetic field has varied by what in the last 10,000 years according to your proxy?
The solar magnetic flux at Earth distance is not what modulates the GCRs [the modulation takes place way further out in the Heliosphere]. The modulation of the GCRs is a few percent. The change in the Earth’s magnetic field is a factor of two. Read Beer, will you: http://www.scostep.ucar.edu/archives/scostep11_lectures/Beer.pdf
The Earth and not the Sun is the primary modulator of GCRs.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:47 am
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:42 am
The amount of change in cloud cover required to make the difference between ‘little ace age’ and ‘global! warming!’ is very small, only a few percent, too.
You don’t get it. The actual observed GCRs in the Earth’s atmosphere is not what people [incl. Jasper] plot and compare with climate. So it doesn’t matter what the change in cloud cover is. It is not caused by the GCRs.
It’s you who doesn’t get it. The Sun has already modulated the GCR’s before they get to Earth to be modulated a second time (to whatever extent they are).
What voltage energies are the GCR’s represented by your red curve and Graybeards trees Leif? The answer to that will likely have a bearing on why Jasper chose the curve he did. If the amount that Earth’s magnetic field varies by doesn’t matter to 10GeV rays, then your point is moot.
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 3:22 am
Good man, well done!
Now, I’ve looked at CET many times in different ways, and came to the conclusion that a maritime climate is not the best place to try to resolve solar effects on climate as a whole. This is because when the sun goes into a minimum, you will get a big El Nino soon afterwards, and the warm oceanic air will affect your thermometers strongly.
That’s what you reckon is it? It doesn’t bother you that the Central England region is largely unaffected by ENSO events.
The cold decembers around the early 1790′s reflect back to back la ninas which often occur around solar max, in response to the big el ninos which tend to occur a year or so after solar min.
Hmm.
It’s confusing and apparently counterintuitive until you understand the dynamics of what must be happening in terms of solar energy being mixed down into the ocean. That’s a process which goes on as long as the sun is averaging higher activity than that indicated by around 40SSN. When the sun goes quiet, the process goes into reverse and energy is released from the ocean into the atmosphere. Good job too or we’d all freeze.
The point is that when there has been a run of several short, high amplitude, short minima solar cycles, like the late C20th, the ssn can average over 70 for a long period of time. Lots of energy accumulates in the ocean, as evidenced by the steric component of sea level rise, and rising SST’s. When the sun goes quiet, the atmosphere cools, which enables the ocean to get rid of more heat quicker to space, due to the higher differential. This happens in burps called el nino, but unlike the el ninos Bob Tisdale has been watching for years, where the heated surface water slosh around and re-accumulates in the pacific warm pool, these el ninos will deplete ocean heat content, and over the course of a decade or more, the SST will fall in descending oscillations and the surface air temp will follow suit some months later.
There’s your lag.
Ok – so you have no evidence whatsoever – Thanks.
tallbloke says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:37 pm
It’s you who doesn’t get it. The Sun has already modulated the GCR’s before they get to Earth to be modulated a second time (to whatever extent they are).
The solar modulation of the GCRs at the energies required to reach the lower atmosphere [several GeV] at latitudes other than the polar regions is small [a few percent]. The Earth’s modulation is large, a factor of two [see Beer].
What voltage energies are the GCR’s represented by your red curve and Graybeards trees Leif?
Since the red curve reflects the actual number of 14C atoms created by GCRs and hence energetic enough to penetrate the atmosphere it is the integral over all energies. The average energy [over the Earth] required is of the order of 5 GeV. Varying from 14 GeV at the equator to 1 GeV at 50 degrees latitude.
The answer to that will likely have a bearing on why Jasper chose the curve he did. If the amount that Earth’s magnetic field varies by doesn’t matter to 10GeV rays, then your point is moot.
As you can see it does matter very much.
John Finn says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Ok – so you have no evidence whatsoever
Lol. well, apart from the steric component of sea level rise which only solar energy accounts for, the same thing happening in 1890-1915, the empirical determination of the ocean equilibrium value…. lots.
It was such a pleasure as always, John.
HAND
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:57 pm
The solar modulation of the GCRs at the energies required to reach the lower atmosphere [several GeV] at latitudes other than the polar regions is small [a few percent]. The Earth’s modulation is large, a factor of two [see Beer].
But slowly evolving, during which time, other linked factors may be in play which compensate.
Since the red curve reflects the actual number of 14C atoms created by GCRs and hence energetic enough to penetrate the atmosphere it is the integral over all energies. The average energy [over the Earth] required is of the order of 5 GeV. Varying from 14 GeV at the equator to 1 GeV at 50 degrees latitude.
Informative, thanks.
As you can see it does matter very much.
Well, perhaps we’ll know more about how much it matters as the experiments continue and report. Once we know more how the small aerosols already being generated at CERN become big enough to make cloud condensation nuclei, we’ll be better able to judge. Thanks for your links and time as always. I’ll take some time out to do more reading.
This entire issue can be resolved if ozone quantities above 45km continue to increase at a time of quiet sun thus reversing the sign of the expected solar effect on the middle layers of the atmosphere and resulting in both warming of the mesosphere and stratosphere leading to more negative polar vortices, more meridional/equatorward jets more clouds and a higher global albedo.
Jo Haigh has produced figures up to 2007. What has happened since ?
Stephen Wilde says:
May 23, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Jo Haigh has produced figures up to 2007. What has happened since ?
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/10/14583/2010/acpd-10-14583-2010.pdf
Leif, how is this data obtained?
http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic-Ray-Modulation-Energy.png
Oh I see. It’s the same graph from the manuscript… They say about 15 – 20 % modulation by the solar cycle at 4 GeV. Interesting manuscript.
They also notably say that “up to about 10 GeV galactic electrons show a spectrum similar to that of the proton, [sic] modulation of galactic electrons is observed between 0.1 and 1 GeV.” I was wondering about galactic electrons, the other day. The modulation they say being between only 0.1 – 1 GeV to me is surprising, since it has a mass I think of 5 x 10^-4 x that of the proton, but the same charge. Seems like it should be modulated much more heavily than protons, unless there is something about negative vs. positive charge. But I’m not sure, galactic electrons may not be able to penetrate to atmosphere unless probably at very high energies (unlike for example muons).
Interesting manuscript though.
Still, according to the manuscript, Huancayo with a “rigidity” of 13 GeV has a modulation of about 10 % over solar cycles 21 – 22, and Tsumeb with a “rigidity” of 9.3 GeV has a modulation of about 15 % over the same… will read.
Actually, maybe I have that whole business about the charge-to-mass ration wrong now that I think about it… at the same energy a lighter particle would have to be hauling along at a faster clip… don’t recall enough of my physics, much less the relativistic calculations on this if applicable.
Julian Droms says:
May 23, 2011 at 5:04 pm
They say about 15 – 20 % modulation by the solar cycle at 4 GeV.
And a lot less at the crucial 10 GeV and above.
Seems like it should be modulated much more heavily than protons
It is the energy that counts. For an electron to have the same energy as a proton it must be going much closer to the speed of light [its mass increases].
But I’m not sure, galactic electrons may not be able to penetrate to atmosphere unless probably at very high energies (unlike for example muons).
Doesn’t matter much as there are 100 protons for each electron.
Just for the little guys here who have been trying to follow all of this:: can anyone of you tall guys just give a summary as to what he/she personally believes is the reason for the additional heat that has been coming from outside on earth during past 4 decades and that has pushed up up the average temperature on earth?
My own results so far show that it is not an increase in GHG’s that did it, http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
–not even a portion, especially not as much as 50%.
HenryP says:
May 23, 2011 at 10:44 pm
just give a summary as to what he/she personally believes is the reason for the additional heat that has been coming from outside on earth during past 4 decades and that has pushed up up the average temperature on earth?
It may have pushed up the temperature in other parts of the solar system too.
Basically, the sun has been more active in the latter half of the C20th than it has been for thousands of years according to Sami Solanki, chief solar physicist at the Max Planck Institute.
Leif doesn’t think it makes much difference to Earth, but I disagree, for several reasons.
1) The solar signal in the surface temperature record is small, but this is for two main reasons:
(i) The Biggest el Nino’s occur near solar minimum, and la Nina’s often occur near solar max. This ‘squashes’ the signal over the solar cycle, but the energy for the el Nino events has to be solar derived, so needs adding to rather then subtracting from the solar signal, which is in effect what happens due to it’s timing.
(ii) When the sun is more than averagely active, the ocean squirrels away extra incoming energy well below the surface where the measurement takes place, and not all of it re-emerges in el Nino’s within a few years. This is evidenced by the rise in sea level due to thermal expansion since the 1950’s, empirically measured by satellite altimetry (TOPEX, JASON), and the extra heat by bathythermographs,(XBT’s) and latterly ARGO. So a big proportion of the extra energy is retained by the ocean for a longer period. Now the sun has gone quiet and remained below average activity levels for 5 years, that energy is slowly re-emerging, and sure enough, ocean heat content is starting to slowly fall since 2005. (Loehle 2010 ARGO data).
2) Although the increase in solar output (TSI) is small over the latter C20th, the amount of extra insolation at Earth’s surface is proportionally larger, i.e. There is a terrestrial amplification of the solar signal. This is most likely due to reduced cloud cover 1980-1998 letting extra sunshine in. This has been measured empirically by ISCCP (weather satellite cloud project), and deduced by the effect on sea level. (Shaviv 2008 http://sciencebits.com/calorimeter )
The decrease in cloud cover *may* be linked to the increase in solar output by the hypothesised Svensmark effect this thread is concerned with. The theory that increased solar activity reduces the amount of cloud seeding galactic cosmic rays getting into earth’s lower atmosphere. Leif may be right that the Earth modulates GCR’s more than the sun does, but because the evolution of the geomagnetic field in the northern hemisphere resembles the solar heliomagnetic evolution (Vukcevic’ research), this point may be moot, because if my theory (which is not allowed to be discussed here) is correct, there is an underlying causation for both.
Hope that helps.
Thanks! I get (most of) it. I am sure this blog must be rated highest in the level of scientific discussion available anywhere in the world on this subject.
1) It may have pushed up the temperature in other parts of the solar system too
Is there no other place in the solar system where we could actually measure this to get another opinion (confirmation or non-confirmation)? Did we perhaps not leave some temp. measuring equipment on the moon?
2) reduced clouds letting more sunlight in, is definitely in line with my own observations, i.e. maximum temps. rising versus humidity and precipitation falling.
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 12:18 am
Basically, the sun has been more active in the latter half of the C20th than it has been for thousands of years according to Sami Solanki, chief solar physicist at the Max Planck Institute.
I believe that Solanki [et al.] are wrong on this. Some of the arguments for why he is wrong are here: http://www.leif.org/research/Eddy-Symp-Poster-1.pdf or here: http://www.leif.org/research/Rudolf%20Wolf%20Was%20Right.pdf
Muscheler et al. discuss some of these issues here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler07qsr.pdf as does Berggreen et al here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038004.pdf
This is such a fundamental question that a workshop is scheduled for next year [if approved] to resolve this. It has become clear that there were long term changes in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) as a consequence of magneto-hydrodynamic processes on the Sun. After a decade of vigorous research, reasonable agreement has been achieved between IMF strength (and open flux) estimates based on geomagnetic data and the inversion of the paleo-cosmic radiation data for the last ~100 years. Fundamental questions have been raised on topics such as the existence of a floor in the IMF strength (B), the character of the solar wind during grand minima, the possible disappearance of the solar wind within historical times, and the evolution of future solar change. The purpose of the workshop is four-fold: (a) to extend/substantiate the geomagnetic-based reconstruction of solar wind parameters from ~1840-2010 and to resolve the remaining discrepancies among the geomagnetic-, cosmic-ray-, and sunspot-based reconstructions, (b) to explore the open questions regarding the technical issues that need to be addressed to make this possible; (c) to use the foregoing work and the long-term cosmogenic radionuclide record to improve existing estimates of heliospheric properties for the last 104 years, and (d) to address by numerical modelling the outstanding physical questions that have been raised thus far. Expected output of this effort: (1) A definitive/consensus time series, with uncertainties, of the IMF strength from ~1840-2010 that can be used as a key to calibrate/interpret the cosmogenic nuclide data for the last 10^4 years. Such a record will have implications on topics ranging from the solar dynamo to cosmic ray modulation to climate change. (2) Technical papers focused on such topics as the effect of Earth’s changing dipole on the geomagnetic and cosmic ray record, inter-calibration of neutron monitor, 10Be data, and sunspot data with spacecraft measurements of the solar wind magnetic field (B), and long-term calibration/homogeneity of the sunspot number. (3) Scientific papers focused on such topics as the disconnect between solar wind B and cosmic ray modulation in solar cycle 20, the amplitude of solar activity from ~1940-1990 relative to the last ~10^4 years, the possible existence of a floor in B, and the nature of the solar wind during the Maunder Minimum.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 24, 2011 at 4:01 am
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 12:18 am
Basically, the sun has been more active in the latter half of the C20th than it has been for thousands of years according to Sami Solanki, chief solar physicist at the Max Planck Institute.
I believe that Solanki [et al.] are wrong on this.
Yeah, so do I. From the way I’m correlating my data, I think the truth is somewhere between Solanki’s position and yours.
Just picking up one aspect of your proposed changes to the sunspot record. In your poster you say:
“in order to remove the 1945 discontinuity [and be consistent with modern
counts] we must increase the pre-1945 Rz by ~20%:”
Which sounds innocuous enough. But when you look closely at the graph following this reasonably bland statement you see that the ‘adjustments’ are not 20% across the board, but get bigger as you go back further in time. This is so pronounced that, for example, solar cycle 3 doesn’t increase by 20%, but by 120%. And the increases aren’t just in the peak amplitudes but also in the areas under the curves. This is particularly noticable with the Dalton Minimum cycles, which also more than double in total spot counts.
I never reject anything out of hand without giving someone the chance to explain their position, so please tell me how this “increase the pre-1945 Rz by ~20% but double the much older cycles” thing works from your angle.
Hi folks, I find that the entry of Henrik Svensmark on Wikipedia is very much outdated, and I am trying to update the relevant information. Who would like to join hands with me?
TODO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Svensmark
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 5:55 am
I never reject anything out of hand without giving someone the chance to explain their position, so please tell me how this “increase the pre-1945 Rz by ~20% but double the much older cycles” thing works from your angle.
But you seem not to read very well. Immediately after that Figure I say: “This, of course, just makes the discrepancy with the Group Spot Number worse”. What is plotted is the adjusted SSN [red] and the Group SN [black]. The whole point was that the GSN is not calibrated correctly and that the 20% adjustment just makes the GSN even less. BTW, Solanki uses the GSN to calibrate the 14C and 10Be values and therefor automatically gets the wrong result that solar activity in the latter part of the 20th century is the highest ever.
How is it possible that you could not be aware of this? Boggles the mind, actually.
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 5:55 am
I never reject anything out of hand without giving someone the chance to explain their position, so please tell me how this “increase the pre-1945 Rz by ~20% but double the much older cycles” thing works from your angle.
Realizing that we have to take small steps, I’ll try to help you along. You start by opening http://www.leif.org/research/Rudolf%20Wolf%20Was%20Right.pdf
Slide 2 shows the definition of the Wolf [Zurich] SN and of the Group SN. The idea of counting groups only sounds good on the surface as everyone should be able to count the big groups without worrying about the small spots on the limit of detectability.
Slide 3 shows that the Group idea doesn’t really work as different observers report very different group counts, so you need to calibrate using a ‘personal’ constant for each observer, anyway.
Slide 4 shows that the result of the inter-observer calibration produces [solid curve] values that are much smaller than the wolf numbers [dotted curve]. This gives rise to the perception of a steady rise [red arrow], or for some people [e.g. Solanki] a step change around 1900 [green lines]
Slide 5 shows how the Wolf numbers themselves evolved. Wolf doubled his original values before 1800, almost halved solar cycle 5, and later adjusted everything before 1849 up by 25%. How did he justify this?
Slide 6 shows Wolf’s wonderful discovery: that the size of the daily variation of the compass needle was simply related to the sunspot number [due to (but he didn’t know that) a current in the atmosphere generated by UV from the Sun].
Slide 7 shows what that daily variation looks like
Slide 8 gives more detail about the daily variation
Slide 9 shows the variation since the 1880s of the size of the daily variation derived from French observatories, but all observatories actually report the same size
Slide 10 shows that the F10.7 microwave flux is well-determined by measurements by Canadian and independent Japanese observers
Slide 11 shows that there is a very tight relationship between the daily variation and F10.7 as there should be, because F10.7 is a very good proxy for the UV. this means that Wolf’s idea of using the daily variation to calibrate the sunspot number is physically sound. Actually what he really does is to calibrate the SSN to match F10.7 [which we today consider a ‘true’ indicator of solar activity].
Slide 12 just extends that with yet another example.
So the purpose of the paper was to show that Wolf’s procedure to calibrate the sunspot number gives a number that is an F10.7 [or just solar activity] proxy. F10.7 is a measure of the magnetic field in the lower corona.
Now open the other link: http://www.leif.org/research/Eddy-Symp-Poster-1.pdf
Slide 2 shows a statement by Waldmeier which I shall show is incorrect
Slide 3 shows his description of a change of how he counts sunspots, where 1 big spot is counted as 5 spots.
Slide 4 shows how that weighting works at Locarno [SIDCs SSN is calibrated to Locarno]. On 2010-8-27 spot number 83 is counted as three spots, on 2010-9-13 spot number 93 is counted as 2 spots, and on 2010-4-22 spot number 26 is counted as 1 spot. this overcounting of large spots naturally inflates the sunspot number
Slide 5 just reminds you of Wolf’s discovery [which is actually his most important one] and that he realized that the relationship forded a way of relating the subjective sunspot number to an objective physical quantity
Slide 6 shows again the variation of the daily range since the 1880s. And how it looks very much like a solar cycle.
Slide 7 quantifies the relation and shows that 98% of the variation of F10.7 matches that of the daily range rY
Slide 8 shows again how this looks for Helsinki and its replacement station Nurmijarvi. Note that activity in the 1840-1870s is the same as that for the 1970-2000s
Slide 9 begins a series of slides to show the effect of Waldmeier’s overcounting. First that for the same value of rY, Waldmeier’s SSN is 22% higher that before he took over
Slide 10 shows that compared to the sunspot areas, Waldmeier’s overcounting produces 17.5% more ‘spots’ for the same sunspot area
Slide 11 shows the ratio of the Group SN and the Zurich [Wolf] SN and how there is a discontuity when Waldmeier took over [pink and blue dots]
Slide 12 shows that the Waldmeier’s SN is 20% higher than that derived from Calcium spectral lines
Slide 13 reminds the reader that the Ionospheric Critical Frequency [which depends strongly on solar activity] also had a discontinuity when Waldmeier took over
Slide 14 shows the result of adjusting the Zurich number Rz up by 20% [red curve] and how that makes the discrepancy with the Group SN [black curve] even worse
Slide 15 shows [again] how Wolf himself adjusted his counts to match the geomagnetic data [and as we now know: F10.7]
Slide 16 just documents [believe it or not there are deniers out there that will not believe that Wolf adjusted anything] that adjustments were made
Slide 17 shows the Group and Official Wolf [Zurich] sunspot numbers and how they disagree
Slide 18 quantifies that disagreement [yellow vs. pink dots] to be about 40%
Slide 19 lists geomagnetic observatories operating before and after that 40% jump
Slide 20 shows [upper plot] that the Rz [blue] and Group number Rg [pink] after 1880 are related to rY in the same way. But as shown in the lower plot, the Rg values [filled red diamonds] from years before 1850 fall way short of the relationship valid for years after 1880. Adjusting the pre-1850 values up by 40% [factor of 1.4] brings them into line with the newer data.
The rest of the slides have to do with the Livingston and Penn effect and SISC’s recent undercounting of spots and are not directly relevant, excpet
Slide 27 that notes that there is ‘No Modern Grand Maximum’
Now, all this is upsetting to a lot of people, and we are organizing [another] workshop in September to clear all this up and get [hopefully] everybody on the same plane. The community cannot accept that there are two sunspot series [Wolf and Group] and that people can just cherry pick which one fits their pet theory.
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 5:55 am
I never reject anything out of hand
If you have followed along the steps in my previous comment you must come to the same conclusion as I, unless you specifically can show which steps do not hold.
More details about the Waldmeier overcounting here: http://www.leif.org/research/SIDC-Seminar-12Jan.pdf
Hi Leif,
I’m sure you’re right about Waldmeier overcounting. My own data correlations tell me that as well. And I’m sure you’re right about early group sunspot numbers ending up as under-represented alongside Wolf’s later magnetic methods too. I think you might have gone a bit too far with the adjustments though. We have to remember there were real people looking through real telescopes at the actual sun back then. And they were trying pretty hard to do a diligent job. Some people who prefer actual observations to nice neat results which fit pet theories might take exception to the idea that those observers managed to miss half the spots they were trying to count. OK, I know the situation is more complex than that and you are bumping up the early numbers to fit Waldmeier, and that accounts for part of the discrepancy. However, I think you might be better off presenting your own pet theory in terms of your IDV metric and a back extrapolation of it, rather than trying to ram wholesale mega adjustments to the sunspot number down the throats of people who prefer actual empirical observations.
I think for your conference you should consider letting other peoples ideas and data speak too. Otherwise it just looks like a party line being defined and an ultimatum being declared: “Join us or be cast out of the main stream.” We all know where that leads.
I realised something about the Svensmark hypothesis this morning which will (I hope) make some sense to you. I’ll share it later. Right now it”s a very beautiful May evening here after several squally days, and I’m taking my lady for a walk over the hill to see some music played at a nice country pub.
More later.
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 11:35 am
rather than trying to ram wholesale mega adjustments to the sunspot number down the throats of people who prefer actual empirical observations.
You are missing the point completely [and you did not step for step argue if there is a problem with them]. Everything I presented is the results of actual empirical observation; of sunspots, of microwave emission, of geomagnetic data. The Waldmeier adjustment is the smaller part [20%]. The real gorilla in the room is the group sunspot number [40%]. Even Ken Schatten, one of the originators of the GSN, agrees with my analysis. Unless you specifically argue each step, my analysis stands. Now, it is common practice to chicken out rather than to address the issue, so your reluctance is understandable and human. The easy way out is just to accept my analysis.
I fell the sun shining..
But not today again..
Well, bottom line, more studies needed, but what this data empirically suggests, is “total (direct + indirect) solar forcing on climate associated with the solar cycle could be 3.8 times that most mainstream climate scientists believe.”
My guess though, is this is before you factor in any feedback mechanisms additionally contributing to a warming (or cooling), since the study looks at fairly short term variations in cosmic ray flux, unlike studies on monotonic increases in atmospheric CO2.
I would also note, that cosmic ray influences on cloud nucleation also have the potential to directly affect atmospheric water vapor concentrations (e.g. condensation, precipitation) in a manner over and above what the general temperature-related (“feedback”) effects it may have in common with CO2, for example. Given the short time frames of GCR modulation in this study. these effects may not be apparent / included. Not sure how you would address that though (empirically, without resorting to some shitty modeling methods)…
Julian Droms says:
May 24, 2011 at 1:49 pm
I would also note, that cosmic ray influences on cloud nucleation also have the potential to directly affect atmospheric water vapor concentrations (e.g. condensation, precipitation) in a manner over and above what the general temperature-related (“feedback”) effects it may have in common with CO2, for example. Given the short time frames of GCR modulation in this study. these effects may not be apparent / included. Not sure how you would address that though (empirically, without resorting to some shitty modeling methods)…
We already have some useful empirical data for this issue of humidity. The CO2 fanatics like to play it down, as it doesn’t gel with their agenda, but the NCEP re-analysis of the radiosonde data is pretty good in my opinion.
Here’s an interesting comparison of specific humidity near the tropopause and the sunspot number averaged over 8 years:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/shumidity-ssn96.png
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 24, 2011 at 11:46 am
The easy way out is just to accept my analysis.
This rebel isn’t ready to be assimilated. I have my own internally consistent pet theory with data to back it up, just like you.
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 4:08 pm
This rebel isn’t ready to be assimilated. I have my own internally consistent pet theory with data to back it up, just like you.
As you said: “I think you should consider letting other peoples ideas and data speak too”,
but I take it then that you would rather continue with blinkers on, instead of seriously looking at the “actual empirical observations”. This was, of course, predictable, although deplorable.
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 4:08 pm
I have my own internally consistent pet theory with data to back it up
Presumably that data involves solar activity in some form [otherwise it is of no interest]. Most likely the sunspot number is part of your data. So, the question is: “which sunspot number?” The group sunspot number or the ‘official’ SIDC (Wolf, Zurich) number?
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 24, 2011 at 7:42 pm
“which sunspot number?” The group sunspot number or the ‘official’ SIDC (Wolf, Zurich) number?
Greenwich/Hathaway for the sunspot areas from 1874.5. I use this dataset for my studies on the hemispheric asymmetry of sunspot production. You said two years ago that I was wasting my time, because no-one had ever found any way of making sense of it:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/barycentre-sunspots.gif
SIDC for the full sunspot time series from 1749. This graph shows the relationship of solar activity with the motion of other solar system masses above and below the solar equatorial plane. It also shows why I agree with you that Waldmeier overcounted:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/ssn-ssbz.jpg
That second graph also lends a lot of independent support to your idea that the GSN is way too low in the early part of the record, and shows that the sun’s recovery from the Maunder and Dalton Minima was quite sudden and complete, rather than gradual, as the GSN followers seem to think. Thus we are also in agreement that there is no ‘modern grand maximum’ although due to the short minima and high amplitude of cycles of the late C20th, the average sunspot number taken over a multi-decadal period was undoubtedly higher than average in terms of the last 300 years. So, a ‘modern maximum’, if not a ‘grand’ one.
I would be very interested in hearing your presentation at the proposed workshop, and also in getting a chance to have my own findings discussed by an expert panel. It would show great maturity and an open minded attitude to the science if you could extend an invitation so that I could have that opportunity.
On a personal note, I’d very much like to meet you, and discuss your work, which I hold in high regard. It’s always easier to learn from people and appreciate those aspects of their knowledge which conflict with your own, when a friendly, free flowing discussion takes place in a face to face situation.
tallbloke says:
May 25, 2011 at 12:25 am
Greenwich/Hathaway for the sunspot areas from 1874.5.
That record is a composite of Greenwich and SOON areas. The SOON data from 1977 on are 40% too low [different calibration], and Hathaway increases those data by 40% in one of his composites. But he has both the raw and adjusted data on his website, so you have to be careful which one you use. It looks like you use the unadjusted [wrong] one, but check.
SIDC for the full sunspot time series from 1749.
Yet you quote Solanki [who uses the GSN] on the ‘greatest in 10000 year’ nonsense. You shouldn’t mix and match use of disparate data like that.
That second graph also lends a lot of independent support to your idea that the GSN is way too low in the early part of the record
I dislike using the match to a theory as support for adjustment of the data. What happened to ‘most people prefer actual empirical observations’? My analysis uses only the data as it must be. No ‘pet theory’ involved.
the average sunspot number taken over a multi-decadal period was undoubtedly higher than average in terms of the last 300 years. So, a ‘modern maximum’, if not a ‘grand’ one.
If you reduce the modern values by 20%, the difference is much smaller and not really different from the mid 19th century or late 18th. There is a time in each century with elevated solar activity [some people call this the Gleissberg cycle].
I would be very interested in hearing your presentation at the proposed workshop, and also in getting a chance to have my own findings discussed by an expert panel.
Th workshop is concerned with discussion of the actual data, so if you have something on that it might be useful.
It would show great maturity and an open minded attitude to the science if you could extend an invitation so that I could have that opportunity.
IMHO Science should not be done with an ‘open minded attitude’. The only thing that counts at the end of the day is the data and one cannot be open minded about the data. The workshop will take place at Sunspot, NM, where we have limited logistic facilities [can accommodate ~12 people only], but our work and presentations there will certainly be open to everyone.
On a personal note, I’d very much like to meet you, and discuss your work, which I hold in high regard. It’s always easier to learn from people and appreciate those aspects of their knowledge which conflict with your own, when a friendly, free flowing discussion takes place in a face to face situation.
I’m in Petaluma, CA, and everyone is welcome. As the National Solar Observatory at Sunspot is open to the public you are also welcome there in September.
Hi Leif,
Thanks for the tip on the Hathaway dataset, I’ll check that out when I revisit my sunspot asymmetry work. It’s genuinely nice to know a welcome awaits me in sunny California when I get there. I’m hoping to do a good stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail sometime in the next couple of years, and a trip out to the coast is a must too. I guess the world can wait a little longer for my cosmically important discoveries. 🙂
Perhaps one day the empirical planetary data will be regarded as important to the study of the sun in the same way geomagnetic data is now, thanks to the efforts of Wolf, and a line of people stretching from before him to you and your colleagues.
tallbloke says:
May 25, 2011 at 11:49 am
Perhaps one day the empirical planetary data will be regarded as important to the study of the sun in the same way geomagnetic data is now, thanks to the efforts of Wolf, and a line of people stretching from before him to you and your colleagues.
When Wolf discovered that the geomagnetic data could be used to calibrate the sunspot number, nobody really believed him. It took until the 1930s for that to be accepted and even then there were important doubters [e.g. Sidney Chapman]. The stumbling block was the lack of a viable mechanism [as usual]. There is no shortage of weird correlations, but without a mechanism that is energetically plausible, no progress can be made.
[from: http://www.leif.org/research/Greenland-Magnetic-Observatory-Support.pdf ]
“The discovery of the sunspot cycle and the first results of the ‘Magnetic Crusade’ together made it clear that solar and geomagnetic activity are intimately related and that observing one is learning about the other [both ways]. Understanding of this magnificent relationship had to await more than a century of progress in both physics and observations, and only in the last few decades have we achieved the elucidation that in the middle of the 19th Century was so fervently hoped for: The lack of rapid progress so frustrated the observers [and their funding agencies] that many observatories were shut down or had operations severely curtailed, because as von Humboldt remarked in vol. 4 of his Cosmos: ‘they have yielded so little return in proportion to the labor that had gone into collecting the material’ “
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 25, 2011 at 3:35 pm
When Wolf discovered that the geomagnetic data could be used to calibrate the sunspot number, nobody really believed him. It took until the 1930s for that to be accepted and even then there were important doubters [e.g. Sidney Chapman].
Yes, I can see it might be a long haul for the planetary theory. Wolf started that one too, and the progress is continuing through another strand of investigators stretching from him.
The stumbling block was the lack of a viable mechanism [as usual]. There is no shortage of weird correlations, but without a mechanism that is energetically plausible, no progress can be made.
There is no shortage of mechanisms. Understanding how these apparently small energies have the effect they evidently do is the stumbling block. Once an oscillation has built up in a semi rigid body (high solar gravity and internal magnetism), it only requires relatively small energies to maintain it. Especially as the solar pulse engine bounces along working on the same frequencies as the orbital period of it’s biggest planet and the beat between that planet and Earth much of the time. Cycle lengths cluster around 10.4 and 12 years. Anyway, once the numerical relationships between the correlations are teased out, a critical mass will be reached where the correct mechanisms become apparent through logical inference and modeling confirmed by experimental observations.
…solar and geomagnetic activity are intimately related and … observing one is learning about the other [both ways].
Yes, I want to learn more from you about that. Specifically, what effect has the secular decrease in the strength of the geomagnetic field had on the magnetometer readings measuring the solar perturbations of it? Presumably, the differences of the magnitude of the changes in the geomagnetic field between northern and southern hemisphere stations enable you to calibrate in some way to adjust for this when reconstructing past solar activity?
By the way,
all the links on
http://vds-sonne.de/gem/res/results.html
are broken.
tallbloke says:
May 25, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Understanding how these apparently small energies have the effect they evidently do is the stumbling block.
The important word is ‘apparently’. These energies are not apparently small, they are in reality small.
Once an oscillation has built up in a semi rigid body
The sun is a gas and does not pulsate. There are stars that do, but their pulsations are constantly driven by changes in opacity. This is a big [but well-understood subject]. The Sun does not fall in that category. “The accepted explanation for the pulsation of Cepheids is called the Eddington valve, or κ-mechanism, where the Greek letter κ (kappa) denotes gas opacity. Helium is the gas thought to be most active in the process. Doubly ionized helium (helium whose atoms are missing two electrons) is more opaque than singly ionized helium. The more helium is heated, the more ionized it becomes. At the dimmest part of a Cepheid’s cycle, the ionized gas in the outer layers of the star is opaque, and so is heated by the star’s radiation, and due to the increased temperature, begins to expand. As it expands, it cools, and so becomes less ionized and therefore more transparent, allowing the radiation to escape. Then the expansion stops, and reverses due to the star’s gravitational attraction. The process then repeats.”
what effect has the secular decrease in the strength of the geomagnetic field had on the magnetometer readings measuring the solar perturbations of it?
The effect(s) is small and we do not correct for it. We should [and could] though, but since the effect goes in the direction of [artificially] increasing the solar influence with time, it meets with resistance from deniers if we try to correct for it [which will decrease the solar activity inferred from the compass needle]. It goes like this: the daily variation of the compass needle is caused by a dynamo effect where the ionosphere moves across the geomagnetic field lines thus inducing an electric field which then drives a current whose magnetic effect we measure on the ground. The electric field is determined [chiefly] by the magnitude of the geomagnetic field and the ions generated by solar UV, but the electric current also depends on the conductivity [inverse resistivity] of the medium: electric current = conductivity x electric field. The conductivity is determined by the ‘mobility’ of the electrons. The electrons like to spiral around a magnetic field, so a strong magnetic field acts as a hindrance to the free movements along the electric field, so a decrease of the geomagnetic field actually increases the conductivity and hence the current and the magnetic effect of solar activity, making the Sun look more active than it really is. You can now see why some people don’t want to correct for the decrease of the geomagnetic field. Then on the other hand, th electric field also decreases with the geomagnetic field, so the net effect is a kind of ‘tug of war’ between the increase and the decrease and it is not clear what the net effect is [except that it is small]. For our purposes that really doesn’t matter because the changes in the calibration of the sunspot number are discontinuous so we only we only require the geomagnetic field to not change too much for a few years before and after each ‘jump’ which is readily satisfied. For the IDV index the effect of the geomagnetic field is too small to measure, but for the IHV index the situation is a bit more complex: the size of the magnetosphere is determined as a balance between the inward push of the solar wind [kinetic energy of the particles moving at 400 km/s – called the ‘dynamic pressure’] and the outward push of the geomagnetic field. For constant solar wind [=constant solar activity] a smaller geomagnetic field results in a smaller magnetosphere. So the question is ‘will a smaller magnetosphere mean smaller geomagnetic activity or larger geomagnetic activity as measured on the ground?’. We don’t know. There are some that argue that a smaller magnetosphere means a shorter ‘reconnection line’ and hence weaker activity. There are others [including me] that argue that a smaller magnetosphere means that all gradients [change of field with distance] are larger which results in stronger activity. The questions is unresolved and is one of the topics to be discussed at the workshop. As support for the smaller magnetosphere resulting in larger activity we have the famous semiannual-Universal Time variation of geomagnetic activity: activity is strongest when the solar wind hits the geomagnetic field when it is weakest [at the sub-solar point]. The field around a dipole is twice as strong over the poles than over the equator, so as the geomagnetic field wobbles [annually and daily] because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis [annual] and of the additional tilt of the magnetic axis [daily], the solar wind will meet a changing magnetic field. Observations show that geomagnetic activity rather precisely follows that variation of the geomagnetic field at the ‘nose’ of the magnetosphere, being largest when the field is the smallest. But this is still an active area of research. So, as you can see, the arguments are complex and many people [even scientists – especially when addicted to their own pet theories] have a hard time following an argument with several links in the logical chain.
tallbloke says:
May 26, 2011 at 3:57 am
http://vds-sonne.de/gem/res/results.html are broken.
They moved their stuff around. Here is the new place:
http://www.vds-sonne.de/index.php?page=gem/res/results.html#renetz
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 26, 2011 at 7:30 am
tallbloke says:
May 25, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Understanding how these apparently small energies have the effect they evidently do is the stumbling block.
The important word is ‘apparently’. These energies are not apparently small, they are in reality small.
Apologies for my imprecision. I should have said ‘apparently insufficient’. And before you say “they are also insufficient” I just say ‘I know that’s what you think’ 🙂
The sun is a gas and does not pulsate.
When I said oscillation, a meant more a reverberation than a pulsation. The ‘pulse engine’ was just simile. The sun does reverberate I think, otherwise those scientists doing solar-acoustic experiments wouldn’t be getting any results. So although the sun is a gas, it doesn’t behave like a puff of smoke, due to the strong gravity and magnetic fields.
It goes like this :..
Great discussion and very informative, thanks.
tallbloke says:
May 26, 2011 at 8:52 am
Apologies for my imprecision. I should have said ‘apparently insufficient’. And before you say “they are also insufficient” I just say ‘I know that’s what you think’ 🙂
Precision is everything in this game. Several people [e.g. DeJager] have shown that they are indeed insufficient, but you have to understand the physics to see this.
When I said oscillation, a meant more a reverberation than a pulsation. The ‘pulse engine’ was just simile. The sun does reverberate I think
The waves are just ordinary sound waves created by overturning convection cells [‘sunquakes’] and like earthquakes only last a short time before dying out due to friction. The sun has several million such random sunquakes going off at any given time. Nothing lives long enough for any large scale effects or coherence, being clobbered all the time by new quakes.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 26, 2011 at 9:20 am
Several people [e.g. DeJager] have shown that they are indeed insufficient, but you have to understand the physics to see this.
I don’t know all the specific physics involved with solar theory, not being a solar physicist, but I do understand the mechanics of Newton, and Wolf and Patrone’s mechanism, because I qualified in mechanical science, and no-one has refuted them in a formal way. Also, I don’t think anyone has thought through the argument about tides very well. Although the vertical tides are small, the horizontal tides are not. But in any case, as I said earlier,as the correlations improve and the studies deepen, so will understanding concerning mechanisms.
The waves are just ordinary sound waves created by overturning convection cells [‘sunquakes’] and like earthquakes only last a short time before dying out due to friction. The sun has several million such random sunquakes going off at any given time. Nothing lives long enough for any large scale effects or coherence, being clobbered all the time by new quakes.
I think you’d probably have a queue of helioseismologists wanting to pick arguments with you if you said that on the floor of a conference hall.
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/00/pr0015.htm
“At the edge of the convective layer, Howe and her colleagues used GONG data to determine that the rotation rate varies periodically, completing a cycle about every 15-16 months. The team used data from the NASA and European Space Agency’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft to confirm the pattern of these variations.”
“At first we were skeptical of the pattern. Knowing the complexity of models used to explain the solar magnetic field and its connection to observed solar activity, we were expecting nothing, or chaos, in our observations at that location,” said Howe.
And at your own institution too.
http://soi.stanford.edu/results/heliowhat.html
“Each oscillation mode is sampling different parts of the solar interior. The spectrum of the detected oscillations arises from modes with periods ranging from about 1.5 minutes to about 20 minutes and with horizontal wavelengths of between less then a few thousand kilometers to the length of the solar globe [Gough and Toomre, p. 627, 1991]”
tallbloke says:
May 26, 2011 at 1:55 pm
I do understand the mechanics of Newton, and Wolf and Patrone’s mechanism, because I qualified in mechanical science, and no-one has refuted them in a formal way.
Newton has nothing to do with it, and Wolf and Patrone have no mechanism for transferring potential energy into actual kinetic energy. If I carry a suitcase up the stairs it gains potential energy because their is a coupling [I’m dragging at the handle]. What their ‘mechanism’ lags is a coupling.
Although the vertical tides are small, the horizontal tides are not.
Tides depends on the distance between the ‘end points’, i.e. are proportional to the diameter of the Sun. I can tell you precisely how to calculate the vertical tides, now you tell me precisely how to calculate the horizontal tides. Without such a calculation you cannot make any statement comparing the magnitude of the two.
But in any case, as I said earlier, as the correlations improve and the studies deepen, so will understanding concerning mechanisms
Spurious correlations degrade with time. Wolf thought in the beginning that the planetary influences were first order effects [i.e. that they directly cause solar activity]. After almost 50 years of observing sunspots he realized that they not could be and abandoned his hypothesis. With Hale’s discovery of sunspot magnetism and the polarity changes, the planetary theory was further discredited as a first cause. At best it was relegated to second order [as a small modulation of something created and maintain by other processes], and falls victim to Occam’s razor [expressed by Newton as: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances”]. The dynamo theory [the first cause] also explains and accommodate what modulations are found, and no further causes are needed.
I think you’d probably have a queue of helioseismologists wanting to pick arguments with you if you said that on the floor of a conference hall.
Not at all, the examples you cite are not about the waves, but about what we have learned using the waves, such as flows inside the sun, the rotation rates in the interior, circulations driven by thermal differences, etc. The Howe observations are old and didn’t hold up with later data.
The second example: “The spectrum of the detected oscillations arises from modes with periods ranging from about 1.5 minutes to about 20 minutes and with horizontal wavelengths of between less then a few thousand kilometers to the length of the solar globe” just affirms what I said about the oscillations being short lived [minutes].
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 26, 2011 at 6:39 pm
Wolf and Patrone have no mechanism for transferring potential energy into actual kinetic energy. If I carry a suitcase up the stairs it gains potential energy because their is a coupling [I’m dragging at the handle]. What their ‘mechanism’ lags is a coupling.
Feel free to set your suitcase example into a formal rebuttal in the journal. Meantime I’ll trust Wolff and Patrone, their reviewers, and my own knowledge of mechanical science.
I can tell you precisely how to calculate the vertical tides, now you tell me precisely how to calculate the horizontal tides. Without such a calculation you cannot make any statement comparing the magnitude of the two.
Even the vertical tides on Earth are imperfectly understood. Wikipedia tore down nearly all their entry on tides a year or so back, and replaced it with some very basic stuff. The equations we use are heuristic and do not have a proper physical basis. So far as horizontal tides are concerned, we can be sure that due to much higher gravity, the surface flows on the sun are going to be much bigger proportionally to the vertical tides than they are on Earth. More work needed, and not just by me.
Spurious correlations degrade with time. Wolf thought in the beginning that the planetary influences were first order effects [i.e. that they directly cause solar activity]. After almost 50 years of observing sunspots he realized that they not could be and abandoned his hypothesis. At best it was relegated to second order [as a small modulation of something created and maintain by other processes], and falls victim to Occam’s razor. The dynamo theory [the first cause] also explains and accommodate what modulations are found, and no further causes are needed.
The dynamo theory has almost no predictive power. The correlation discovered between the motions of Jupiter, Earth and Venus by Jean-Pierre Desmoulins and confirmed by NASA scientist Ching Cheh Hung do not degrade with time, and can be used to accurately predict solar cycle timings and approximate amplitudes. The alignment cycles never go completely out of phase and never ‘overtake’ or ‘slip behind’ solar activity by a complete cycle during the entire sunspot record.
With Hale’s discovery of sunspot magnetism and the polarity changes, the planetary theory was further discredited as a first cause.
I made the discovery that Desmoulins and Roy Martin’s findings are further improved and enhanced by additionally considering the alignments of JEV along the curve of the interplanetary magnetic field, allowing for the change in curvature caused by changes in solar windspeed. This addresses your objection that the alignments are not relevant to the electromagnetic nature of solar activity, in terms of the timing of solar cycles at least. I think that further work on the Wolff-Patrone mechanism will be worthwhile, because it may help improve solar cycle amplitude predictions. There may well be several mechanisms at work, as indicated by the complexity of solar variation.
Here’s my graph of the alignments along the IMF, solar windspeed adjusted:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/rotation-solar-windspeed-adjusted.png
“The spectrum of the detected oscillations arises from modes with periods ranging from about 1.5 minutes to about 20 minutes and with horizontal wavelengths of between less then a few thousand kilometers to the length of the solar globe” just affirms what I said about the oscillations being short lived [minutes].
I bow to your superior knowledge on helioseismology.
I’m away to the mountains for a backpacking trip, so I’m leaving it there for now. Thanks for your knowledge and conversation, I’ll check back to see you’ve replied when I return. I really hope we can keep productive and rational dialogue going.
zzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz
tallbloke says:
May 27, 2011 at 1:36 am
Feel free to set your suitcase example into a formal rebuttal in the journal. Meantime I’ll trust Wolff and Patrone, their reviewers, and my own knowledge of mechanical science.
since what is lacking is a mechanism or a coupling to turn that potential energy into kinetic energy no rebuttal is needed. Their direct test using sunspot distribution is not statistically significant as they admit, so no rebuttal needed there either. Of course none of my arguments will convince you, just as no arguments can rock people’s belief in rupture and young earth.
Even the vertical tides on Earth are imperfectly understood. Wikipedia tore down nearly all their entry on tides a year or so back, and replaced it with some very basic stuff. The equations we use are heuristic and do not have a proper physical basis.
The vertical tides have been well understood for centuries. On the Earth matters are complicated by the presence of land masses dividing the oceans into basins of different depth. This cannot [or rather is not worth the trouble] be addressed analytically when it is sufficient to least-square fit actual measurements of the tides at a given location to the astronomical tidal potential. But why get hung up on tides, the mechanism you are peddling does not involve tides.
So far as horizontal tides are concerned, we can be sure that due to much higher gravity
There are no ‘horizontal tides’, but if you can show there are and what their effect is, you need to to that in order ‘to be sure’ of anything.
The dynamo theory has almost no predictive power.
It is doing pretty well, I would say. We predicted a small cycle and here it is. the detailed numerical modeling needs data about the internal circulation of the Sun. Helioseismology from SDO will provide that this cycle.
The correlation discovered between the motions of Jupiter, Earth and Venus by Jean-Pierre Desmoulins and confirmed by NASA scientist Ching Cheh Hung do not degrade with time, and can be used to accurately predict solar cycle timings and approximate amplitudes.
Curve fitting always works on the past, but usually fails in the future. Hung has never predicted anything. Where are the predictions for the flares that have occurred in SC24? When will the next one be? I thought that people ‘in the know’ claim that Uranus and Neptune are the important planets for the 172-yr ‘cycles’, but never mind [those people are fast asleep, see below].
The alignment cycles never go completely out of phase and never ‘overtake’ or ‘slip behind’ solar activity by a complete cycle during the entire sunspot record.If theuy slipped a whole cycle you couldn’t tell the difference. And there are people that think a sunspot cycle is ‘missing’, between the excessively long cycle 4 and the very small cycle 5.
I made the discovery that Desmoulins and Roy Martin’s findings are further improved and enhanced by additionally considering the alignments of JEV along the curve of the interplanetary magnetic field, allowing for the change in curvature caused by changes in solar windspeed.
The solar wind speed seen from any planet undergoes several very large variations [factor of two] every 25-27 days, and besides magnetic influences cannot travel upstream.
Geoff Sharp says:
May 28, 2011 at 7:18 am
zzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz
Sleep on. Sweet dreams.
tallbloke says:
May 27, 2011 at 1:36 am
The alignment cycles never go completely out of phase and never ‘overtake’ or ‘slip behind’ solar activity by a complete cycle during the entire sunspot record.
The idea that the sun is a ‘High-Q’ oscillator is an old one. You might enjoy Robert Dicke’s take on it: http://www.leif.org/EOS/1982SoPh78-3Dicke.pdf
Dicke’s ideas were inspired by his belief that Einstein was wrong and the some of the non-Newtonian perihelion advance of Mercury was due to oblateness of the Sun caused by a rapidly rotating, strongly magnetic inner core. We know now that Einstein was right as the Sun is not oblate enough to upset Einstein [and may other things, as recently discussed on WUWT].
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 8:23 am
The idea that the sun is a ‘High-Q’ oscillator is an old one.
Dicke elaborated more on his ideas here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/1988SoPh115-171Dicke.pdf
Today, his ideas are pretty much dead.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 8:46 am
The idea that the sun is a ‘High-Q’ oscillator is an old one.
Dicke elaborated more on his ideas here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/1988SoPh115-171Dicke.pdf Today, his ideas are pretty much dead.
And also not necessary [Occam’s razor again], e.g.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/kq55h3314h037321/
“Dicke (1978) has argued that the phase of the solar cycle appears to be coupled to an internal clock: shorter cycles are usually followed by longer ones, as if the Sun remembers the correct phase. The data set is really too short to demonstrate the presence of a phase memory, but phase and amplitude of the cycle are strongly correlated for 300 yr or more. It is shown that this memory effect can be explained by mean field theory in terms of fluctuations in alpha, which induce coherent changes in the frequency and amplitude of a dynamo wave. It is concluded that there is neither a strong observational indication nor a theoretical need for an extra timing device, in addition to the one provided by dynamo wave physics.”
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 8:57 am
The idea that the sun is a ‘High-Q’ oscillator is an old one.
Dicke elaborated more on his ideas here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/1988SoPh115-171Dicke.pdf Today, his ideas are pretty much dead.
And also not necessary [Occam’s razor again]…
On the other hand, oscillations could be generated by a radiative instability at the tachocline as advocated e.g. by Kuhn: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Kuhn-Solar-Cycles.pdf
The main point is that the oscillation must be directly driven at all times [like for the pulsating stars]. P.S. one may be a bit weary of the correlation shown in his Figure 7 🙂
Kuhn’s Figure 4 is of interest. He says: “We compute the Hilbert phase phi(t) by using Fourier transform techniques to fit the sunspot record s(t) to a function A(t) exp (i phi(t)). We call phi(t) the ‘‘unwrapped’’ Hilbert phase function. Fig. 4 shows the computed Hilbert phase for the 256 point yearly average sunspot record”
You may try to compute the Hilbert phase for the planetary influences [whatever they be and if you can even quantify them] and see if it matches Figure 4.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 7:59 am
Wolff and Patrone:
Of course none of my arguments will convince you, just as no arguments can rock people’s belief in rupture and young earth.
My departure to the mountains is delayed, so I’m delighted to be able to continue our conversation.
As far as I can see your argument is that since you can’t see any mechanism described in their paper, there isn’t one, and therefore there is no need for a rebuttal. Since Wolff and Patrone, and their reviewers, and I don’t have a problem seeing and understanding the mechanism described in their paper, I guess we are at impasse on this one. I freely admit I don’t yet know if the W&P mechanism is sufficient, or if it will turn out that the planetary cycles really drive solar variation, or whether they are just a very good (and useful) proxy. I still think it’s worth trying to find out though.
The rupture and young earth stuff is just gratuitous, unprofessional, and unworthy of your intellect, as well as an insult to mine. Knock it off.
But why get hung up on tides, the mechanism you are peddling does not involve tides.
My position is that tides are insufficiently understood to enable them to be ruled out as a contributory mechanism. Your disagreement is noted. As is your use of the word ‘peddling’.
(tallbloke) The dynamo theory has almost no predictive power.
(Leif) It is doing pretty well, I would say. We predicted a small cycle and here it is. the detailed numerical modeling needs data about the internal circulation of the Sun. Helioseismology from SDO will provide that this cycle.
I predicted a small cycle of 35-50SSN on climate audit three years ago. You predicted a medium sized cycle of 65-70SSN. Proponents of other flavours of the dynamo theory predicted cycles of anything up to ~180SSN (Dikpati).
I agree with you that the prospect of detailed knowledge of the internal circulation of the sun is an exciting prospect, and I look forward to discussing it with you as it emerges.
Curve fitting always works on the past, but usually fails in the future. Hung has never predicted anything. Where are the predictions for the flares that have occurred in SC24? When will the next one be?
People can see for themselves the successful predictions Hung made in his paper, and we beat this one to death a while back so I’ll leave this one be.
(tallbloke) The alignment cycles never go completely out of phase and never ‘overtake’ or ‘slip behind’ solar activity by a complete cycle during the entire sunspot record.
(Leif) If theuy slipped a whole cycle you couldn’t tell the difference.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here. How could they slip a whole cycle in the space of a cycle? The planets orbital rates are pretty constant, and the solar cycle is never of zero length, or double length.
And there are people that think a sunspot cycle is ‘missing’, between the excessively long cycle 4 and the very small cycle 5.
What does this have to do with anything we are discussing? I’m not ‘people’ and you are talking to me, not ‘people’. The studies you linked form Dicke, Kuhn, (very interesting by the way, thanks for those), and the planetary cycle studies by Desmoulins and others all show there was something anomalous going on prior to the onset of the Dalton minimum. But even then the planetary cycles never slipped completely out of phase with the solar cycle. They did get more out of phase than at other times though, and I regard that as an important clue.
The solar wind speed seen from any planet undergoes several very large variations [factor of two] every 25-27 days, and besides magnetic influences cannot travel upstream.
Yes, the planets are subjected to an oscillating stream of magnetised flux. This doesn’t invalidate my finding however, and if anything, strengthens the case for dynamic interaction via the resulting reconnections between the solar flux and planetary magnetospheres. Especially those of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, which all display auroral activity.
You may try to compute the Hilbert phase for the planetary influences [whatever they be and if you can even quantify them] and see if it matches Figure 4.
We’ve already done something similar, and there is good agreement. If you consider Timo Niroma’s study of the distribution of solar cycle lengths, he found they cluster around 10.3 and 11.9 years. A 19.86 year signal in solar data has also recently been discovered. These periods correspond to the JEV cycle, the Jovian orbital period and the Jupiter-Saturn synodic period. This is why the JEV cycles correspond closely with the phase of the solar cycle across three centuries of observations. Wolf gave up in the late 1800’s because he didn’t quite get the JEV cycle right. If he had known what we know now, he would have continued his planetary-solar investigations to the end of his days.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/rudolf-wolf-solar-planetary-theorist-who-knew/
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 11:18 am
I still think it’s worth trying to find out though.
Let me know when you find out what their coupling mechanism is.
My position is that tides are insufficiently understood to enable them to be ruled out as a contributory mechanism. Your disagreement is noted. As is your use of the word ‘peddling’.
Tides are very important for astrophysics and lots of effort has gone into understand them. Tidal effects range from understanding rotation of planets and moons, creation of planetary rings, interaction and tidal eruptions of galaxies, creation of type Ia supernovae, and on and on. All this is very well understood. ‘Peddling’ is appropriate when pushing something based on conviction rather than facts.
I predicted a small cycle of 35-50SSN on climate audit three years ago. You predicted a medium sized cycle of 65-70SSN. Proponents of other flavours of the dynamo theory predicted cycles of anything up to ~180SSN (Dikpati).
Your prediction seems already to be invalid. Mine [of six years ago] is right on track. Dikpati et al. were high because they assumed [we don’t really know what it is] a wrong meridional circulation. Choudhuri et al. using the [almost] identical theory as Dikpati, but with input from the observed polar fields to compensate for the unknown circulation predicted a cycle around 75. Dynamo theory is doing a very good job.
People can see for themselves the successful predictions Hung made in his paper, and we beat this one to death a while back so I’ll leave this one be.
Apparently he has stopped making predictions or NASA was not impressed and are not using his method. Prediction of flares is the holy grail, so that this field seems to be dead tells something.
How could they slip a whole cycle in the space of a cycle? The planets orbital rates are pretty constant, and the solar cycle is never of zero length, or double length.
They only need to slip half a cycle before you assign the slipped cycle to the next cycle. Being off by 5 years happened e.g. around 1800. And, according to your graph of planetary index [which is what? BTW], will happen again in 2020.
But even then the planetary cycles never slipped completely out of phase with the solar cycle. They did get more out of phase than at other times though, and I regard that as an important clue.
With only 300 years of data we cannot tell what the slippage is. Kuhn’s analysis shows an average length of 10.89781 yr, Dicke claimed 11.13933 yr. It is not clear what yours is [perhaps you would give a number now]. Dicke and Kuhn get out of phase after 45 cycles or 500 years. If you can provide a number, then we can calculate when the observed and your planetary cycle will have slipped a complete cycle.
The solar wind speed seen from any planet undergoes several very large variations [factor of two] every 25-27 days, and besides magnetic influences cannot travel upstream.
anything, strengthens the case for dynamic interaction via the resulting reconnections between the solar flux and planetary magnetospheres. Especially those of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, which all display auroral activity.
That is a one-way street. Of course there are interactions but they don’t travel upstream, just like the effect of a rifle bullet shattering a melon does not influence the rifle.
We’ve already done something similar, and there is good agreement.
show a graph of that.
If you consider Timo Niroma’s study of the distribution of solar cycle lengths, he found they cluster around 10.3 and 11.9 years.
I have seen his ‘study’ and it is rather worthless.
Wolf gave up in the late 1800′s because he was considering Jupiter only.
No, Wolf considered all the planets and suggested, tentatively and with all due caution, that the overall shape of the sunspot curve was set by Jupiter, variations in its peak and minimal amplitudes were due to Saturn, and irregularities on time scales less than a year were due to combined effects of Venus and Earth. It is sad that you often make categorical statements that are false on their face.
If he had known what we know now, he would have continued his planetary-solar investigations to the end of his days.
Wolf was a very reasonable scientist and would have dropped [as he did, and everybody else since: http://www.leif.org/research/Rise-and-Fall.pdf ] the planetary investigations had he had all the data up to now and knowledge of modern physics.
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 11:18 am
The rupture and young earth stuff is just gratuitous, unprofessional, and unworthy of your intellect, as well as an insult to mine. Knock it off.
One of my best friends [whom I value very much] is a firm believer of both. He is extremely smart [possibly even more than you and I] and nevertheless is impossible to argue with in this respect. He demonstrates the power of conviction carried by someone of superior intellect.
If you consider Timo Niroma’s study of the distribution of solar cycle lengths, he found they cluster around 10.3 and 11.9 years.
Any cyclical signal when modulated by a longer cycle will exhibit two period lengths. Here are two cycles, the red one is a modulation of the blue [simple] one with a modulation period of 10 times the blue period. This is a good approximation to the solar cycle modulated by a 100-yr cycle. The power spectrum of the blue curve shows a single peak as it should. The power spectrum of the red modulated red curve shows that the peak is split into two peaks: http://www.leif.org/research/Splitting-of-Peak.png
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 11:18 am
If you consider Timo Niroma’s study of the distribution of solar cycle lengths, he found they cluster around 10.3 and 11.9 years.
There is no such clustering: http://www.leif.org/research/Distribution-Cycle-Lengths.png
‘Peddling’ is appropriate when pushing something based on conviction rather than facts.
fact1: Jupiter orbits the Sun AND the Inner Planets, Sun and IPs together are the ‘orbited object’.
fact2: The orbited object counters Jupiters motion around the barycenter.
fact3: Jupiter accelerates parts of the orbited object, the IPs.
fact4: When parts of the orbited object accelerates the rest, the Sun, must also accelerate because the object as a whole can not move closer to Jupiter.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 12:10 pm
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 11:18 am
I still think it’s worth trying to find out though.
Let me know when you find out what their coupling mechanism is.
You have quoted me out of context and I find this unworthy of reply.
‘Peddling’ is appropriate when pushing something based on conviction rather than facts.
You are slipping back into old habits. This is unfortunate.
(TB) I predicted a small cycle of 35-50SSN on climate audit three years ago. You predicted a medium sized cycle of 65-70SSN. Proponents of other flavours of the dynamo theory predicted cycles of anything up to ~180SSN (Dikpati).
(LS) Your prediction seems already to be invalid. Mine [of six years ago] is right on track.
Only in the fantasy land of pore counting.
Prediction of flares is the holy grail, so that this field seems to be dead tells something.
It tells me you may have successfully killed it.
They only need to slip half a cycle before you assign the slipped cycle to the next cycle. Being off by 5 years happened e.g. around 1800. And, according to your graph of planetary index [which is what? BTW], will happen again in 2020.
Anyone who takes a close look at Desmoulin’s graph will see through your argument.
The planetary index is derived from the closeness of the conjunction and opposition relationships of Jupiter, Earth and Venus. These can be calculated in direct straight lines or along the curve of the IMF. Every other cycle exhibits the same basic relationships. At or near maximum on even cycles, there is a superior conjunction of E and V opposite J. At or near maximum on odd cycles, there is a conjunction of J and E opposite V. This matches your observation that odd and even cycles tend to be peaky and twin topped, and also recapitulates the Hale cycle. The closeness of the relationships wanders back and forth over a longer cycle which relates to Gleissberg and the occurrence of ~12 year vs ~10.4 year cycles. Ian Wilson wrote a paper which lays out the basics well: http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/4425_wilson1.pdf
With only 300 years of data … we can calculate when the observed and your planetary cycle will have slipped a complete cycle.
No you can’t. We have 300 years of data which gives an average cycle length around 11.07 years. However, the planetary cycles vary in length, never repeating exactly, and (apart from anomalous periods when solar activity plummets, as at Dalton and now when phase coherence slips a little, though never completely) continue to track the solar cycles closely.
That is a one-way street. Of course there are interactions but they don’t travel upstream, just like the effect of a rifle bullet shattering a melon does not influence the rifle.
The effect of firing a projectile sufficiently strong to shatter the melon is to induce recoil in the rifle, affecting it’s orientation. Thanks for the supporting example.
I have seen [Timo Niroma’s] ‘study’ and it is rather worthless.
You find it worthless. I find it valuable. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that solar cycle lengths cluster around 10.4 and 11.9 years.
Wolf considered all the planets and suggested, tentatively and with all due caution, that the overall shape of the sunspot curve was set by Jupiter, variations in its peak and minimal amplitudes were due to Saturn, and irregularities on time scales less than a year were due to combined effects of Venus and Earth. It is sad that you often make categorical statements that are false on their face.
I checked what Wolf said and corrected my error before you posted, but after you copied my comment.
Wolf was a very reasonable scientist and would have dropped [as he did, and everybody else since: http://www.leif.org/research/Rise-and-Fall.pdf ] the planetary investigations had he had all the data up to now and knowledge of modern physics.
I am as interested in modern solar physics as I am in trying to find out why planetary motion correlates with solar activity so closely. I wish Wolf were here to help me, as I’m sure he would.
lgl says:
May 28, 2011 at 1:19 pm
fact4: When parts of the orbited object accelerates the rest, the Sun, must also accelerate because the object as a whole can not move closer to Jupiter.
Fact 0: all the objects are in free fall in their combined gravitational field and do not feel any accelerations at all.
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 1:35 pm
You have quoted me out of context and I find this unworthy of reply.
I found it worthy to comment, but so we are different.
Only in the fantasy land of pore counting.
Precisely to counter that it is a good idea only to count Active Regions [not spots or pores]. Here is the Active Region count for the past several cycles, and the predicted run: http://www.leif.org/research/Active%20Region%20Count.png
It tells me you may have successfully killed it.
I’m not paid by NASA to kill something they find useful.
The planetary index is derived from the closeness of the conjunction and opposition relationships of Jupiter, Earth and Venus.
What happened to Saturn or the all important [according to Geoff] Uranus and Neptune [or the even more important -according to Ulrich] asteriods, e.g. Ceres?
and also recapitulates the Hale cycle.
too much astrology for me and no connection to the Hale cycle.
However, the planetary cycles vary in length, never repeating exactly, and (apart from anomalous periods when solar activity plummets, as at Dalton and now) continue to track the solar cycles closely.
Yet you see periods of 10.4 [was 10.3] and 11.9 [which BTW are not there, see below.
The effect of firing a projectile sufficiently strong to shatter the melon is to induce recoil in the rifle, affecting it’s orientation. Thanks for the supporting example.
that you can say this shows how little your understanding is. The recoil is the same whether or not you hit the melon.
Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that solar cycle lengths cluster around 10.4 and 11.9 years.
One more time, there is no such clustering: There is no such clustering: http://www.leif.org/research/Distribution-Cycle-Lengths-2.png
corrected my error before you posted, but after you copied my comment.
Does not keep you from posting errors when it suits you. You also say on your website that I never told you about Wolf. This is, again, being economical with the truth. I have lost track of how many times I have referred you to http://www.leif.org/research/Rise-and-Fall.pdf but perhaps you don’t bother reading stuff that does not support your contentions.
I am as interested in modern solar physics as I am in trying to find out why planetary motion correlates with solar activity so closely.
If there were such a close correlation modern solar physicists would be interested too, but the evidence is just too weak to consider.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Here is the Active Region count for the past several cycles, and the predicted run: http://www.leif.org/research/Active%20Region%20Count.png
Very cool, you’ve been busy! Show me again in 300 years 😉
Seriously though, that’s interesting data. Do you have it differentiated for latitude as well? Can I have a copy of the data?
What happened to Saturn or the all important [according to Geoff] Uranus and Neptune [or the even more important -according to Ulrich] asteriods, e.g. Ceres?
I’ll let them speak for their own ideas. My discussion with you has been about the timing of the solar cycle. I think the gas giants may have more to do with cycle amplitude.
and also recapitulates the Hale cycle.
too much astrology for me and no connection to the Hale cycle.
None so blind as those who refuse to see.
(TB) The effect of firing a projectile sufficiently strong to shatter the melon is to induce recoil in the rifle, affecting it’s orientation. Thanks for the supporting example.
(LS) that you can say this shows how little your understanding is. The recoil is the same whether or not you hit the melon.
Suppose the rifle is mounted on a revolving gymbal with a flux variance detector connected to the trigger which picks up melons as they come into view and fires the rifle at closest approach to the muzzle of the gun. This is analogous to Hung’s finding.
there is no such clustering: There is no such clustering: http://www.leif.org/research/Distribution-Cycle-Lengths-2.png
Easy Leif, don’t blow a fuse. You have your count and Niroma had his. To satisfy myself, I’ll have to do one as well.
I have lost track of how many times I have referred you to http://www.leif.org/research/Rise-and-Fall.pdf but perhaps you don’t bother reading stuff that does not support your contentions.
I linked that paper in the comments on my website, after I read it. Check the date.
(TB) I am as interested in modern solar physics as I am in trying to find out why planetary motion correlates with solar activity so closely.
(LS) If there were such a close correlation modern solar physicists would be interested too, but the evidence is just too weak to consider.
Fair enough, you are busy guys, and I rely on you to tell me stuff about the latest findings and data. I’ll just keep coming up with correlations and successful predictions which will hopefully, eventually, make you all sit up and take notice.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 2:06 pm
lgl says:
May 28, 2011 at 1:19 pm
fact4: When parts of the orbited object accelerates the rest, the Sun, must also accelerate because the object as a whole can not move closer to Jupiter.
Fact 0: all the objects are in free fall in their combined gravitational field and do not feel any accelerations at all.
Fact 101. Planets and stars don’t have feelings.
Their parts are however differentially accelerated by gravitational interactions, because they are not inert amorphous objects in some a priori Newtonian mind experiment. Stars particularly, have matter and energy radiating from their cores outwards, which may be differentially affected by the orbiters, as Wolf and Patrone have discovered.
By the way, thanks lgl for that interesting argument. It deserves some careful thought.
“I have seen [Timo Niroma’s] ‘study’ and it is rather worthless.”
I’ve just checked Timo’s methodology and it is considerably more statistically sophisticated than yours.
http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspots.html#tleng
“In the next table I have drawn lengths of the cycles so that the “official” value gets four points, the nearest value three points, the tenths of years whose distance is 0.2 years get two points and finally one point is given at the distance of 0.3 years. This should compensate for the inaccuracy of the values. For the years 5 and 6 I have used the calibrated values, for the cycle 22 the traditional value. The tentative cycle 0 (10.2 years) is added with a “o” notation.”
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Seriously though, that’s interesting data. Do you have it differentiated for latitude as well? Can I have a copy of the data?
Actually, yes, I do have it by latitude [Hathaway’s tabulation of regions on his website], that is how I know which cycle the region belong to. I don’t split it by latitude. You can have my final count [give me little while to make it presentable].
I’ll let them speak for their own ideas. My discussion with you has been about the timing of the solar cycle. I think the gas giants may have more to do with cycle amplitude.
What makes science such a successful endeavor is when people can build on each other’s work and it all fits together. That is not the case with the planetary ‘theories’ which is partly the reason that they are not accepted.
None so blind as those who refuse to see.
One cannot see what is not there, or rather: many people see things that are not there.
Suppose the rifle is mounted on a revolving gymbal with a flux variance detector connected to the trigger which picks up melons as they come into view and fires the rifle at closest approach to the muzzle of the gun. This is analogous to Hung’s finding.
The precise analogy would then be Jupiter shine [coming into view enabled by light]. But the Sun cannot see the Jupiter shine and tidal effects are way too small and magnetic effects cannot travel upstream, so the analogy is dead.
You have your count and Niroma had his. To satisfy myself, I’ll have to do one as well.
I think one should alwasy take a look first oneself, rather than just picking what other’s analyses if the fit.
I linked that paper in the comments on my website, after I read it. Check the date.
But you still say “Leif Svalgaard has never mentioned it either, until I asked…” with all the innuendo that “…” implies. You should say: “As Leif has been saying again and again, even Rudolf Wolf initially believed in planetary influences. A view he soon abandoned.”
Fair enough, you are busy guys, and I rely on you to tell me stuff about the latest findings and data. I’ll just keep coming up with correlations and successful predictions which will hopefully, eventually, make you all sit up and take notice.
People only take notice if you predict something spectacularly’ different from what everybody else is predicting. Only in that case is the ‘prediction’ crucial in discriminating among theories. That was why the Dikpati prediction attracted so much attention. You might find it useful to read my referee’s report on their paper: http://www.leif.org/research/Dikpati%20Referee%20Report.pdf
As I say in the report: “As a definite prediction, the paper is potentially important. Especially since the prediction is discordant from several other recent predications that point to a very small cycle. The measure of understanding is always a successful prediction, so their model would be put to a stringent test”
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Fact 101. Planets and stars don’t have feelings.
Dumb response. To feel a force means to change in response to the force.
Their parts are however differentially accelerated by gravitational interactions
These are tidal effects and there are no other gravitational effects [until you get into the almost unmeasurable General Relativity effects like frame-dragging, gravitational waves, and the like.
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 3:14 pm
I’ve just checked Timo’s methodology and it is considerably more statistically sophisticated than yours.
“This should compensate for the inaccuracy of the values.”
You cannot make up data by ad-hoc adjustments. There is nothing sophisticated about his attempt to construct data out of thin air. And you missed the point that you get a split peak when you have amplitude modulation of a quasi-cyclical variation.
I simply show the values as they are. One cannot do better. It is possible to investigate the phase stability, e.g. by plotting the phase of the Hilbert Transform. For that you need to make a time series of the planetary ‘solar’ cycles. Perhaps you have. If so, provide a link to the yearly [or better: monthly values – to see the influence of Venus and Earth].
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Seriously though, that’s interesting data. […] Can I have a copy of the data?
http://www.leif.org/research/Active-Region-Count.xls
The series was made as part of the work for the Sunspot Prediction Panel and I kept it up to data since as it has many nice properties [e.g. does not depend on little pores or variable seeing]. The procedure is a follows: For all groups that have a NOAA number [or a Mt. Wilson number, or in other ways ‘officially’ was recognized as a ‘real’ active region and not just a speck or group of small pores – generally that means an area at least 10 millionth of the disk] a daily count is made if the region is within 70 degrees of central meridian. This latter requirement is because a region is often only numbered a day or two after it has come around the Eastern limb, but keeps it number until it is completely over the Western limb. This introduces an asymmetry which I minimize by the above requirement. Then the count for each day is added up for each month, divided by the number of days in the month and multiplied by 30.5 to normalize to an equal length months. The dashed lines are ‘predictions’ of the cycles made by Hathaway’s procedure [which is very good] by fitting the observed variation to a three-parameter formula as he describes on his website. Note, that this is not [as many people mistakenly believe] a prediction from a ‘theory’, but simply a smoothed description of the observed current cycle. It therefore changes from month to month, just your local weather forecast does from day to day – and you want the forecast to be always based on the latest data available. Hathaway’s latest is 69 for Rmax. The scale factor between the sunspot number and the Active Region count is 2.26.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 7:49 pm
The series was made as part of the work for the Sunspot Prediction Panel and I kept it up to data since as it has many nice properties
It is possible to take the data back to about 1917 and with less accuracy to 1874. It is very labor intensive because for each region a choice must be made which cycle it belongs to from its magnetic polarity [not digitized for older data] and/or latitude and/or development [e.g. rotating such as to seem to be of the ‘wrong polarity]. This was made with extreme care as some prediction schemes work with when the first group of the new cycle occurs and/or when the last one of the old cycle dies, so this has to be correct.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 7:19 pm
What makes science such a successful endeavor is when people can build on each other’s work and it all fits together. That is not the case with the planetary ‘theories’ which is partly the reason that they are not accepted.
A lot of the details we have worked out individually do fit together. There are also aspects of interpretation where we differ. This is true of the mainstream. as well.
TB Suppose the rifle is mounted on a revolving gymbal with a flux variance detector connected to the trigger which picks up melons as they come into view and fires the rifle at closest approach to the muzzle of the gun. This is analogous to Hung’s finding.
LS The precise analogy would then be Jupiter shine [coming into view enabled by light]. But the Sun cannot see the Jupiter shine and tidal effects are way too small and magnetic effects cannot travel upstream, so the analogy is dead.
How does a Van der Graaf generator “see” the finger it preferentially jumps a spark to Leif?
“As Leif has been saying again and again, even Rudolf Wolf initially believed in planetary influences. A view he soon abandoned.”
“Soon abandoned” after several orbits of Jupiter. How many years before his death did he “abandon” it? Please present your evidence.
You might find it useful to read my referee’s report on their paper: http://www.leif.org/research/Dikpati%20Referee%20Report.pdf
As I say in the report: “As a definite prediction, the paper is potentially important. Especially since the prediction is discordant from several other recent predications that point to a very small cycle. The measure of understanding is always a successful prediction, so their model would be put to a stringent test”
It’s a pity you are not prepared to apply the same standards to Ching Cheh Hung, whose flare predictions based on planetary data were a lot more successful than Dikpati’s version of the dynamo theory.
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Fact 101. Planets and stars don’t have feelings.
Dumb response. To feel a force means to change in response to the force.
Earth’s orbital eccentricity changes in response to the force applied by (predominantly) Jupiter and Venus. It’s a ~100,000 year cycle. Discovered in the 1820’s I think.
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 3:14 pm
I’ve just checked Timo’s methodology and it is considerably more statistically sophisticated than yours.
“This should compensate for the inaccuracy of the values.”
You cannot make up data by ad-hoc adjustments. There is nothing sophisticated about his attempt to construct data out of thin air.
He’s not attempting to create data out of thin air, he very sensibly created a probability distribution for data with uncertainty attached to it. And he labeled it as such too.
And you missed the point that you get a split peak when you have amplitude modulation of a quasi-cyclical variation.
Dicke’s ideas were not lost on me. However, my ideas (developed by building on the work of others in my field) don’t require a theory built on stuff which hasn’t been observed, because the planetary data matches the ~10.3 year and ~11.9 year solar cycle length data anyway.
I simply show the values as they are. One cannot do better.
There is uncertainty in the older data about just when solar minimum occurs. There are still long debates on the modern data. Your false precision makes your graph a lot less useful than Timo’s probability distribution graph in my opinion.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 7:49 pm (Edit)
tallbloke says:
May 28, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Seriously though, that’s interesting data. […] Can I have a copy of the data?
http://www.leif.org/research/Active-Region-Count.xls
Thank you very much. This has gone into my ‘svalgaard-data’ folder, along with a text file with the accompanying notes. 🙂
Fact 0: all the objects are in free fall in their combined gravitational field and do not feel any accelerations at all.
Q1: Does Jupiter accelerate the IPs, lifting them, moving them closer to Jupiter?
Yes.
Q2: Will the Sun move as a result of this?
Yes, the orbited object can not move closer to Jupiter so the Sun has to move.
Q3: Is this solar motion a free fall motion?
No, the Sun moves as a result of interaction between other objects (Ju and IP), not because it’s in the gravitational field of other objects.
tallbloke says:
May 29, 2011 at 1:10 am
A lot of the details we have worked out individually do fit together.
The only detail I can see is that Jupiter is somehow involved, so there is nothing to fit with.
How does a Van der Graaf generator “see” the finger it preferentially jumps a spark to Leif?
It doesn’t. After an initial jump there are still charges left in the ‘channel’ with will guide the next jump [lightening does the same]. BTW you couldn’t operate a Van der Graaf generator in a plasma with near infinite conductivity, it would short immediately. If there were no solar wind, a planet’s magnetic field could influence the Sun [although the effect would be vanishingly small owing to the magnetic force falling off with the cube of the distance]. The solar wind that brings the sun’s magnetic field out to the planets also prevents the planets’ magnetic field to get to the Sun.
“Soon abandoned” after several orbits of Jupiter. How many years before his death did he “abandon” it? Please present your evidence.
This can be turned around. What is your evidence that it was not ‘soon’? Perhaps I should have said ‘he later abandoned the idea’ to forestall silly debate over when [I shall not object if you substitute ‘soon’ by ‘later’ on your website, but you should show the maturity to change the text to what I otherwise suggested]. Wolf clearly did struggle over the years with the problem, never finding a good correlation when new data became available. It is clear that his initial optimism didn’t stay with him. His real discovery of the relationship between the variation of the compass needle and sunspots held up and he every year [when he published the sunspot numbers] never failed to point out that the relationship still held. He never [after his initial announcement] again mentioned his planetary formula [which he would have if the agreement persisted – as he did with the magnetic needle], except finally admitting in 1893 that it didn’t really work to his satisfaction.
It’s a pity you are not prepared to apply the same standards to Ching Cheh Hung, whose flare predictions based on planetary data were a lot more successful than Dikpati’s version of the dynamo theory.
Hung has not made any predictions. How many ‘successful’ predictions of flares has he made after his technical report [not even a peer-reviewed paper] was submitted to NASA? With Dikpati, you don’t understand that there may not anything wrong with the theory [Choudhuri using the same theory came to a much better result]. Her problem was incomplete knowledge of the meridional circulation, so her failure is actually a successful demonstration of the importance of said circulation.
Earth’s orbital eccentricity changes in response to the force applied by (predominantly) Jupiter and Venus. It’s a ~100,000 year cycle. Discovered in the 1820′s I think.
There is no gravitational forces. Masses warp spacetime around them and all objects are in free fall in that curved space. When in an elevator with a broken cable falling freely towards the ground, you, a hammer, and feather all fall together and are not accelerated relative to each other. It is sad that almost 100 years after that realization it still needs to be said to people who profess they know something about science.
He’s not attempting to create data out of thin air, he very sensibly created a probability distribution for data with uncertainty attached to it. And he labeled it as such too.
That is lost on people that just quote his numbers. The uncertainty should be presented at two periods 10.4+/-1.0 and 11.9+/-2.0 or whatever the uncertainties are. As i said, his analysis is rather worthless.
planetary data matches the ~10.3 year and ~11.9 year solar cycle length data anyway.
No, you have not shown that. Present a time series of the planetary data and show that whenever a solar cycle has a period of, say, 10.4 years, the planetary series for that same cycle also has a period of 10.4 years. Do this for each of the 23 cycles we have and present here a table of the results [with 23 entries]. If you fail to do this, we can cross out your claim that the planetary data matches.
Your false precision makes your graph a lot less useful than Timo’s probability distribution graph in my opinion.
The way to deal with uncertainty is to smooth the raw data or fit them to an assumed distribution and show that the fit is significant. I agree that actual data might be less useful than suitably made-up data.
lgl says:
May 29, 2011 at 2:19 am
No, the Sun moves as a result of interaction between other objects (Ju and IP), not because it’s in the gravitational field of other objects.
See up-thread.
Some points that need to be discussed:
I think we need to acknowledge that Wolf’s contribution to planetary theory are probably irrelevant.
Dynamo theory can exist and dovetail with planetary theory.
The “z” axis theory (tallbloke) needs to provide some meaningful data.
Geoff Sharp says:
May 30, 2011 at 7:20 am
I think we need to acknowledge that Wolf’s contribution to planetary theory are probably irrelevant.
Having just brought his sunspot series back to ~1750, Wolf realized in the early 1860s that his 1859 formula didn’t work outside of the interval 1836-1858 on which it was curve fitted to the sunspot number and effectively abandoned it and stopped comparing the sunspot number with the formula. Here is a comparison of the formula [red] and the observations [blue]: http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-Planetary-Formula-Mismatch.png
The green box shows the curve fit. Note that the Wolf numbers before 1849 have been decreased by 25% in order to match Wolf’s list at the time when the formula was proposed. This is to compensate for the wholesale increase by 25% of the Wolf number that he made around 1875.
The “z” axis theory (tallbloke) needs to provide some meaningful data.
All proponents of planetary theory need to provide meaningful data. E.g. a list of ‘planetary’ sunspot numbers for each year since 1600 until today with an explanation of how the list was derived.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 30, 2011 at 8:02 am
Note that the Wolf numbers before 1849 have been decreased by 25% in order to match Wolf’s list at the time when the formula was proposed. This is to compensate for the wholesale increase by 25% of the Wolf number that he made around 1875.
Actually, the whole series [as now available from SIDC] has to be creased by 25%. In addition, the Waldmeier jump of 20% has to be removed after 1945 [done]. Only in this way can be compare with Wolf’s formula. Of course, Wolf didn’t have those adjustment problems at the time [1859] when he proposed the formula.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 30, 2011 at 8:02 am
Wolf’s formula is another example of two cycles that occur with similar frequencies that can never stay in sync because they are not related. We are still seeing that today by some proponents who make the same mistake. Wolf’s formula also does come close to predicting modulation of the solar cycle. The only work that may have some credibility in relation to cycle length is Desmoulins, but this needs further testing over the next 20 years. The secret of solar cycle length is probably hidden in Dr. Howe’s work where the rough 17 year cycle of differential rotation flows lay the foundation for the solar cycle. A lot of the dynamo observations still function with the dynamo being powered or modulated by an outside force which could also mesh with the length and timing of the differential flows.
All proponents of planetary theory need to provide meaningful data. E.g. a list of ‘planetary’ sunspot numbers for each year since 1600 until today with an explanation of how the list was derived.
This just shows that you still dont have an understanding of the theory and are not competent to comment on it. Your challenge is still waiting for you on my blog. I have also written an article that may assist you with the 2 basic forces.
Once you understand the basic principles you will see that the theory can predict solar modulation and grand minima out to 3000AD, as well as hindcast the last 400 years (sunspot record) with accuracy along with the entire Holocene in respect to overall strength.
Geoff Sharp says:
May 30, 2011 at 4:46 pm
The secret of solar cycle length is probably hidden in Dr. Howe’s work where the rough 17 year cycle of differential rotation flows lay the foundation for the solar cycle.
The torsional oscillation is generally viewed as a consequence of the cycle rather than a cause.
the theory can predict solar modulation and grand minima out to 3000AD, as well as hindcast the last 400 years (sunspot record) with accuracy along with the entire Holocene in respect to overall strength.
If the theory can predict solar modulation then it should be easy to provide a list of said prediction of the sunspot number year for year. You see, I’m on this panel that has to provide the government with a NUMBER, so for your theory to be useful it must provide me with a number for every year. If not, I cannot tell the government that it is too bad they don’t understand the theory. They want a number, pure and simple. They even balked a bit when we gave them two numbers a while back.
Geoff Sharp says:
May 30, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Wolf’s formula also does come close to predicting modulation of the solar cycle.
It is clear that it does not, both phase and amplitudes are wrong outside his curve-fitting window: http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-Planetary-Formula-Mismatch.png
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 30, 2011 at 5:19 pm
If the theory can predict solar modulation then it should be easy to provide a list of said prediction of the sunspot number year for year.
The theory can ballpark a figure out to 3000AD which all other theories cannot, SC24/25 is expected to be sub 50SSN (LSC) and future cycles are available via this graph. The theory excludes any prediction on cycle length. The panel probably have no understanding of your short term theory which will be tested over the next two cycles.
SC24 is a real world test of angular momentum theory which if successful will encourage others to learn the basic theory of the modulating and disruptive forces. It might also mean there will be new members from a so far ignored group of science on the future panel.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 30, 2011 at 5:23 pm
Geoff Sharp says:
May 30, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Wolf’s formula also does come close to predicting modulation of the solar cycle.
—————————
It is clear that it does not, both phase and amplitudes are wrong outside his curve-fitting window: http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-Planetary-Formula-Mismatch.png
Apologies, I meant to say” does NOT come close”. The Wolf formula has no basis for understanding solar modulation, solar cycle length or grand minima.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 30, 2011 at 5:19 pm
The torsional oscillation is generally viewed as a consequence of the cycle rather than a cause.
Howe is pretty clear in her paper that the oscillations are emanating from the tachocline. Her studies also suggest the radiative zone acts as a solid object with perhaps a different spin rate. Its too early to make a statement such as yours.
Geoff Sharp says:
May 30, 2011 at 7:23 pm
“The torsional oscillation is generally viewed as a consequence of the cycle rather than a cause.”
Howe is pretty clear in her paper that the oscillations are emanating from the tachocline.
In her recent review http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2009-1/ she says: “modelers have generally seen it rather as a side-effect of the magnetic fields”
Her studies also suggest the radiative zone acts as a solid object with perhaps a different spin rate.
That was discovered back in 1998 by Schou et al. and the spin rate is different [about a day longer than at the equatorial surface]. The radiative zone is [as the name implies] stable and is not thought to play any part of the generating the solar cycle, so your remark in not relevant.
Its too early to make a statement such as yours.
It is then perhaps also too early to assume that the flow is driving the cycle. As I said, the folks trying to understand the dynamics generally consider the flow to be a consequence of the cycle rather than a driver.
Geoff Sharp says:
May 30, 2011 at 7:11 pm
The theory can ballpark a figure out to 3000AD which all other theories cannot
The challenge to you is to provide a list, year by year, of predicted sunspot number. anything else is of no use in prediction.
SC24 is a real world test of angular momentum theory which if successful…
No, it would only be a test if your theory predicts something different from what everybody else [by now] are predicting. As we have discussed at length, the LSC in uncalibrated and thus of no use.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 28, 2011 at 2:06 pm
“What happened to Saturn or the all important [according to Geoff] Uranus and Neptune [or the even more important -according to Ulrich] asteriods, e.g. Ceres?”
I have never made any mention of Ceres being “more important”, or anything to do with the sunspot cycle length/frequency.
Ulric Lyons says:
May 30, 2011 at 8:49 pm
I have never made any mention of Ceres being “more important”, or anything to do with the sunspot cycle length/frequency.
Then what did you claim about Ceres? Or is my memory faulty and you never mentioned Ceres?
@Leif Svalgaard says:
May 30, 2011 at 9:07 pm
You took my comment about Ceres (from months back) so completely out of context, that either your memory is bad, or typical of your manner, it is just cheap mockery. My observation regarding Ceres has nothing to do with the subject Tallbloke was addressing up thread, namely Venus/Earth/Jupiter syzyzgies and the sunspot cycle, so I see no need to discuss it here.
Ulric Lyons says:
May 31, 2011 at 12:47 pm
My observation regarding Ceres has nothing to do with the subject Tallbloke was addressing up thread, namely Venus/Earth/Jupiter syzyzgies and the sunspot cycle, so I see no need to discuss it here.
I included you as one of the people who believe in planetary [and asteroid] influence on solar activity in a general sense [realizing that all planetary enthusiasts have completely different ideas that have nothing to do with what the others believe]. If you now tell us that you don’t believe that anymore, please accept my apology. So you do not need to discuss it any further.
@Leif Svalgaard says:
May 31, 2011 at 1:03 pm
I am thoroughly convinced that Venus/Earth/Jupiter syzyzgies are central to the nature of the sunspot cycle.
Ulric Lyons says:
May 31, 2011 at 2:33 pm
I am thoroughly convinced that Venus/Earth/Jupiter syzyzgies are central to the nature of the sunspot cycle
What about Ceres? does Ceres affect solar activity? What is its influence per pound of mass compared to other bodies? Tiny or Huge?
@Leif Svalgaard says:
May 31, 2011 at 2:40 pm
As your memory has failed you, and you are not willing to drop the issue till an appropriate and relevant discussion arises, I will remind you what I said:
“The Sun seems to be highly sensitive to Ceres when in close heliocentric syzygy or stellium with other inner Planets”. At no point did I say that Ceres directly affects solar activity, the only way it could do that is gravitationally, which is ridiculous for a dwarf Planet of some 580miles diameter that far away from the Sun to have any such “influence”.
Ulric Lyons says:
May 31, 2011 at 4:27 pm
you are not willing to drop the issue till an appropriate and relevant discussion arises, I will remind you what I said:
It is always proper to respond positively to reasonable requests indicating a willingness to earn [or be reminded].
“The Sun seems to be highly sensitive to Ceres when in close heliocentric syzygy or stellium with other inner Planets”. At no point did I say that Ceres directly affects solar activity, the only way it could do that is gravitationally, which is ridiculous for a dwarf Planet of some 580miles diameter that far away from the Sun to have any such “influence”.
How can the Sun be highly sensitive to a dwarf planet that has no influence?
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 31, 2011 at 6:10 pm
It is always proper to respond positively to reasonable requests indicating a willingness to learn [or be reminded].
Geoff Sharp says:
May 30, 2011 at 7:20 am
Some points that need to be discussed:
I think we need to acknowledge that Wolf’s contribution to planetary theory are probably irrelevant.
Wolf’s contribution is of historical importance, even if it is not of immediate numerical relevance.
Dynamo theory can exist and dovetail with planetary theory.
Agreed, and I’ve been saying the same thing to Leif for a long time now.
The “z” axis theory (tallbloke) needs to provide some meaningful data.
The correlation I have discovered between ‘z-axis’ motion and hemispheric sunspot production asymmetry should be telling you not to ignore it. In my view, both ‘z-axis’ and ‘x-y-planar’ motion is effective in modulating solar activity. If changes in solar angular momentum are important, so are reversals in the direction of the Sun’s motion up and downwards. QED.
The correlation I have discovered between ‘z-axis’ motion and changes in the Earth’s length of day are telling us that lgl has a good point. The fact that Ian WIlson independently discovered a (weaker) correlation between LOD and x-y planar motion should be telling you something too. Leif may have retreated from Newtonian thought experiment to Einsteinian incalculable catchall, but this correlation indicates forces acting between the Sun, the Earth, and (predominantly) the outer planets.
Cheers, and may good fortune aid your persistent endeavour. Thanks also for your work on sunspot counts, keep it up.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 29, 2011 at 8:33 am
After an initial jump there are still charges left in the ‘channel’ with will guide the next jump [lightening does the same]. BTW you couldn’t operate a Van der Graaf generator in a plasma with near infinite conductivity, it would short immediately. If there were no solar wind, a planet’s magnetic field could influence the Sun [although the effect would be vanishingly small owing to the magnetic force falling off with the cube of the distance]. The solar wind that brings the sun’s magnetic field out to the planets also prevents the planets’ magnetic field to get to the Sun.
Flux tubes are analogous to ‘the channel’. Electron flows of equal magnitudes go both ways down wires simultaneaously according to some recent reading I’ve done.
Perhaps I should have said ‘he later abandoned the idea’ to forestall silly debate over when [I shall not object if you substitute ‘soon’ by ‘later’ on your website, but you should show the maturity to change the text to what I otherwise suggested]. Wolf clearly did struggle over the years with the problem, never finding a good correlation when new data became available. It is clear that his initial optimism didn’t stay with him. His real discovery of the relationship between the variation of the compass needle and sunspots held up and he every year [when he published the sunspot numbers] never failed to point out that the relationship still held. He never [after his initial announcement] again mentioned his planetary formula [which he would have if the agreement persisted – as he did with the magnetic needle], except finally admitting in 1893 that it didn’t really work to his satisfaction.
I will add your extra statements and graph to the article as I find time. Fair’s fair.
Rudolf Wolf (7 July 1816 – 6 December 1893)
Was this a deathbed recantation Leif? 🙂
Hung has not made any predictions. How many ‘successful’ predictions of flares has he made after his technical report [not even a peer-reviewed paper] was submitted to NASA?
You are now saying both that he didn’t and he did. This is progress. 😉
When in an elevator with a broken cable falling freely towards the ground, you, a hammer, and feather all fall together and are not accelerated relative to each other. It is sad that almost 100 years after that realization it still needs to be said to people who profess they know something about science.
But they are accelerated towards each other Leif. That’s what Newton told us. And if you want to tell me there is no gravitational force and my body is warping time andspace around me, I’ll ask you to do the calcs to show us. 😉
Present a time series of the planetary data and show that whenever a solar cycle has a period of, say, 10.4 years, the planetary series for that same cycle also has a period of 10.4 years. Do this for each of the 23 cycles we have and present here a table of the results [with 23 entries]. If you fail to do this, we can cross out your claim that the planetary data matches.
The graph I linked upthread shows that when corrected for solar windspeed, the match improves. This is what indicates to me that we are looking at an electromagnetic influence on cycle timings. Cycle amplitudes are more likely to be influenced mostly by the angular momentum changes related to barycentric motion releasing energy in the sun’s convective cells, as Wolff and Patrone describe. (Not release of gravitational potential energy as you persist in saying)
Your false precision makes your graph a lot less useful than Timo’s probability distribution graph in my opinion.
The way to deal with uncertainty is to smooth the raw data or fit them to an assumed distribution and show that the fit is significant. I agree that actual data might be less useful than suitably made-up data.
Timo Niroma used unconventional methods, but they are fully described, and the raw data is smoothed by his technique (creating an approximation of a normal ditribution around the uncertain value). The resulting graph is clearly and unambiguously labeled as a probability distribution. Where are the error bars on your graph Leif?
By the way Leif, is there any way of reconstructing solar wind dynamic pressure (proton density).
Thanks.
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 1:48 am
The correlation I have discovered between ‘z-axis’ motion and hemispheric sunspot production asymmetry should be telling you not to ignore it
I wasn’t ignoring, but asking for more detail.
Can we see data for the planetary mass above and below the solar equator (blue line) going back 3000-4000 years. I suspect the pattern may break down due to planetary precession, but I could be wrong. It would be good to see the unsmoothed data as well.
Hi Geoff,
The pattern is consistent, assuming the jpl ephemeris is correct and the angle planets orbit at doesn’t change much over several thousand years. I would guess the direction of tilt of the Sun will precess over very long periods (galactic orbit) and that the angle of tilt would probably change as we go above and below the galactic plane. Those changing orientation parameters aren’t important on the timescale we are discussing however, and anyway, the plane of the planetary orbits probably tilts along with the sun.
That said, the question of why it should be that the planets occupy a fairly narrow band of orbital planes which is tilted at quite a big angle to solar axial rotation is an interesting one, which we shouldn’t ignore. It speaks to me of a torque reaction to back-EMF.
When you look at the unsmoothed data, you see patterns very similar to the x-y planar situation. I’ll dig out and post a couple of graphs on a blog post when I get the chance.
@Leif Svalgaard says:
May 31, 2011 at 6:10 pm
“It is always proper to respond positively to reasonable requests indicating a willingness to learn [or be reminded].”
You mean a willingness to teach.
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 3:50 am
Hi Geoff,
The pattern is consistent, assuming the jpl ephemeris is correct
Thanks Rog, I would like to see that. My interest is more in the relationship between the planetary mass and the solar cycle modulation, rather than the hemispheric relationship.
Hi Geoff,
Me too. I mentioned the hemispheric asymmetry because it demonstrates a direct statistical relationship with the z-axis motion. Of course, it will be synchronised with the x-y planar motion too, and disentangling the relative size of the effects is a part of the puzzle.
A thing to note is that hemispheric asymmetry is greater when the Sun is more active overall. This is a clue.
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 1:48 am
Dynamo theory can exist and dovetail with planetary theory.
Agreed, and I’ve been saying the same thing to Leif for a long time now.
So, you are both saying that the solar dynamo creates and maintains the solar cycle, this is progress.
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 2:16 am
Flux tubes are analogous to ‘the channel’. Electron flows of equal magnitudes go both ways down wires simultaneously according to some recent reading I’ve done.
Very energetic particles [both from the Sun and also GCRs] can overcome the solar wind tsunami, but they are tenuous and don’t play any role in the overall energetics.
Was this a deathbed recantation Leif? 🙂
No, he knew he was wrong already in the 1860s, so was just setting the record straight. Already in VIII [1859] he said that he would follow up his work on his planetary formula [ and show the result ‘in later communications’]. He never did.
You are now saying both that he didn’t and he did.
No, I was asking you how many successful [real] predictions he has made after submitting his report. As far as I know: zero. So, no real predictions at all, successful or not.
if you want to tell me there is no gravitational force and my body is warping time and space around me, I’ll ask you to do the calcs to show us.
Einstein showed us all that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity
Wolff and Patrone describe. (Not release of gravitational potential energy as you persist in saying)
Wolff and Patrone claim that
Where are the error bars on your graph Leif?
A count does not have error bars. If I count the loose change in my pocket, the number is exact. What he does [inadmissibly] is to vastly increase the number of cases to create the illusion of false significance. In usual counting statistics the chance that the exact count could have occurred by chance involves the square root of the count. So if two bins have, say, a count of 4 and of 2, are they significantly different? The square roots of 4 and 2 are 2 and 1.4, so the counts with ‘error bars’ are 4+-2 and 2+-1.4, which means that the difference between 4 and 2 is not significant. Timo inflates the number of cases to about 20 and so creates the false impression of good statistics on made-up data.
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 2:31 am
By the way Leif, is there any way of reconstructing solar wind dynamic pressure (proton density).
Yes, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Wind-Density-Reconstruction.png
Ulric Lyons says:
June 1, 2011 at 4:34 am
“It is always proper to respond positively to reasonable requests indicating a willingness to learn [or be reminded].”
You mean a willingness to teach.
You are avoiding the question.
Geoff Sharp says:
June 1, 2011 at 4:39 am
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 3:50 am
Both of you are failing to provide the year by year list of predicted sunspot number, so your ideas are useless as a predictive tool, as well as useless as a means to verification.
Leif says:
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 2:31 am
By the way Leif, is there any way of reconstructing solar wind dynamic pressure (proton density).
Yes, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Wind-Density-Reconstruction.png
How cool is that!
Thanks Leif, I should be able to reconstruct a data set from my solar wind velocity and sunspot number data which is good enough for my purposes.
Leif says:
Both of you are failing to provide the year by year list of predicted sunspot number, so your ideas are useless as a predictive tool, as well as useless as a means to verification.
I’ve been working on cycle timing rather than amplitude, so I don’t have a dataset to offer. Sorry.
Cycle amplitude is next on my list though, and once I have a method I am personally confident in, you can be sure I will provide you with a prediction time series, for your eyes only until I’m ready to publish.
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 8:07 am
Thanks Leif, I should be able to reconstruct a data set from my solar wind velocity and sunspot number data which is good enough for my purposes.
You need the magnetic field too: density [protons per cm^3) = B^2/(Vo^2(0.00195 Rz + 0.186)) where B is HMF in nT, Vo is solar wind speed in units of 100 km/sec and Rz is the sunspot number. For long-term reconstructions you must consider the possibility that Rz may not be correct.
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 8:14 am
you can be sure I will provide you with a prediction time series
for all enthusiasts: unless a time series [year by year] can be produced you cannot claim ‘excellent agreements’. Such claims would have to wait for production of said series. If you are only predicting amplitudes you can construct a year-by-year time series by using an average timing and by scaling the average shape of a cycle by the predicted amplitude [as Dikpati did]. If you are only predicting timing, you can use an average shape and amplitude of the cycle.
All attempts of verification fail on the lack of a well-defined comparison time series.
for your eyes only until I’m ready to publish
No need. Publish first, then there is a firm basis for discussion.
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 8:07 am
Thanks Leif, I should be able to reconstruct a data set from my solar wind velocity and sunspot number data which is good enough for my purposes.
The theory behind it is that we expect ‘equipartition’ between the various forms of energy: the kinetic energy has to be strong enough to drag the magnetic field out from the Sun, so the stronger the magnetic field [B] is, the stronger the solar wind has to blow [kinetic energy ~mass x speed squared]. Mass goes with the density [n], and the magnetic energy goes with the square of the field, so mag energy/kinetic energy should be roughly constant: Quasi-Invariant Q ~ B^2/(nV^2). However, CMEs also helps blast magnetic fields into space, to Q should increase with the number of CMEs which follows the sunspot number. As you can see http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Wind-Quasi-Invariant.png that is indeed the case, so we need to correct for that [which is the Rz dependent divisor]. So, here you have a mechanism and a physical explanation and good quantitative relations. Until you get the planetary theory on the same level, it will continue to be fringe-physics.
Aye aye cap’n
Thanks for the useful equation for proton density. How well is the CME-sunspot number relationship holding up at the moment?
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 12:35 pm
How well is the CME-sunspot number relationship holding up at the moment?
Nobody has remarked on a breakdown of that relationship, so I expect it to be still valid. I could bring it up to date, but then there is the question: how well did it hold up before 1965? Once there is a good physical reason for a relationship that game doesn’t need to be played all the time.
Just thought it might help validate the Waldmeier correction factor by another method.
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Just thought it might help validate the Waldmeier correction factor by another method.
Will not do, as the spread is too large and there could be other reasons, e.g. L&P effect or Gleissberg ‘cycles’.
But since it is easy to verify, here is the up-to-date version http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Wind-Quasi-Invariant.png
It has not changed significantly. The formula now becomes [protons per cm^3) = B^2/(Vo^2(0.001905 Rz + 0.191)) which within the errors is not different from the previously given.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 1, 2011 at 2:15 pm
The formula now becomes [protons per cm^3) = B^2/(Vo^2(0.001905 Rz + 0.191))
which can be written in the simpler form:
n = 5.25 (B/Vo)^2/(1+Rz/100)
Near deep solar minima where B~4, V~400 hence Vo~4, and Rz~0 you simply get n~5.25 as a sort of baseline value.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 1, 2011 at 7:35 am
“You are avoiding the question.”
Your guess could be as good as mine, I have though looked at enough past examples to be able to apply it very successfully in forecasting short term terrestrial surface temperature deviations.
Ulric Lyons says:
June 1, 2011 at 2:58 pm
I have though looked at enough past examples to be able to apply it very successfully in forecasting short term terrestrial surface temperature deviations.
so in your opinion, Ceres is very important. Enough that its influence can be seen [‘looked through’] directly, rising over all the other things that affect the weather.
Is it possible ceres is the orphan moon of the planet which is now the asteroid belt?
tallbloke says:
June 1, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Is it possible ceres is the orphan moon of the planet which is now the asteroid belt?
There is not enough mass in the asteroid belt to form a decent size planet. More likely, several smaller planets formed and later collided and disintegrated in the process.
@Leif Svalgaard says:
June 1, 2011 at 4:17 pm
“so in your opinion, Ceres is very important. Enough that its influence can be seen [‘looked through’] directly, rising over all the other things that affect the weather.”
No, inferior planet configurations involving Ceres are not responsible for the largest changes in solar activity, but are still important.
Other configurations of different bodies result in far larger changes in solar activity, AND hence the weather.
“density [protons per cm^3) = B^2/(Vo^2(0.00195 Rz + 0.186)) where B is HMF in nT, ”
Gezundheit 😉
Ulric Lyons says:
June 1, 2011 at 6:39 pm
No, inferior planet configurations involving Ceres are not responsible for the largest changes in solar activity, but are still important. Other configurations of different bodies result in far larger changes in solar activity, AND hence the weather.
So, how do you know that a tiny change is due to Ceres and not to something else? If Ceres changes the weather [and the other planets much more], then these changes must be happening all over the World at the same time.
Jeff Alberts says:
June 1, 2011 at 6:54 pm
“density [protons per cm^3) = B^2/(Vo^2(0.00195 Rz + 0.186)) where B is HMF in nT, ” Gezundheit 😉
??????? 🙁
I have plotted the gravity effect or angular momentum potential change on the Sun for all solar system planets separately along with Ceres, Juno, Vesta, Pallas, Eugenia, Siwa and Chiron. The smaller bodies make no difference to solar angular momentum. A typical fig for Ceres is 7.02E+36 compared with Jupiter at 1.93E+43 (values calc using the Sun as axis point.)
Geoff Sharp says:
June 1, 2011 at 9:09 pm
I have plotted the gravity effect or angular momentum potential change on the Sun for all solar system planets separately along with Ceres, Juno, Vesta, Pallas, Eugenia, Siwa and Chiron. The smaller bodies make no difference to solar angular momentum.
So, according to Ulrich that disproves your theory.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 1, 2011 at 9:23 pm
So, according to Ulrich that disproves your theory.
It only proves that Ceres has minimal input into overall solar angular momentum. The outer 4 planets contribute about 99% to solar AM.
Geoff Sharp says:
June 1, 2011 at 10:54 pm
It only proves that Ceres has minimal input into overall solar angular momentum. The outer 4 planets contribute about 99% to solar AM.
But, according to Ulrich, Ceres has an important effect on the weather [and hence on climate]. Now, I could have this wrong, but I understood that the sun was the intermediary here, that Ceres influences [as the other planets, according to Ulrich] the sun, which then in turn influences the weather. So now you need yet another mechanism to explain that. According to Ulrich, Ceres and the other planets control the weather. If they do that via the Sun, then your theory is falsified.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 1, 2011 at 11:12 pm
At least you have a sense of humour. Yes the Ceres theory is embarrassing, along with many other planetary theories that I try to distance from. But if you bother to look deeper (which you haven’t), there are some that have serious merit.
Your challenge is still waiting.
@Leif Svalgaard says:
June 1, 2011 at 7:03 pm
“So, how do you know that a tiny change is due to Ceres and not to something else? If Ceres changes the weather [and the other planets much more], then these changes must be happening all over the World at the same time.”
Where did I say that it is “tiny”, Lief ?
Geoff Sharp says:
June 2, 2011 at 2:25 am
Yes the Ceres theory is embarrassing, along with many other planetary theories that I try to distance from. But if you bother to look deeper (which you haven’t), there are some that have serious merit.
I’m sure the others say just the same.
Your challenge is still waiting.
And so is yours.
Ulric Lyons says:
June 2, 2011 at 2:37 am
@Leif Svalgaard says:
Where did I say that it is “tiny”?
Ulric Lyons says:
June 1, 2011 at 6:39 pm
“Other configurations of different bodies result in far larger changes in solar activity, AND hence the weather.”
‘Tiny’ as compared to ‘far larger’
This is what happens when you refuse to explain yourself clearly.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 2, 2011 at 5:37 am
Your challenge is still waiting.
————————–
And so is yours.
You display a knowledge of the two “forces” here, and I will provide a yearly SSN prediction out to the end of SC25 for the panel.
Geoff Sharp says:
June 2, 2011 at 4:08 pm
I will provide a yearly SSN prediction out to the end of SC25 for the panel
And a formula or procedure by which the list is made. Otherwise it is just a guess.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 2, 2011 at 6:21 pm
And a formula or procedure by which the list is made. Otherwise it is just a guess.
Can do….ball is in your court.
Geoff Sharp says:
June 2, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Can do….ball is in your court.
Haven’t seen it yet, so vaporware so far.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 2, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Haven’t seen it yet, so vaporware so far.
No point showing you anything before you have an understanding of the basics. For once in your life swallow your pride and learn the meaning of compromise.
Geoff Sharp says:
June 3, 2011 at 2:08 am
learn the meaning of compromise.
In science there can be no compromise. You either have something or you don’t.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 3, 2011 at 3:52 am
In science there can be no compromise. You either have something or you don’t.
A typical response from the old guard trying to protect their ivory castle. This graph tells me I have something.
Geoff Sharp says:
June 5, 2011 at 6:47 am
This graph tells me I have something.
All it tells us is that you adjust the LSC to fit your agenda.
Geoff Sharp says:
June 5, 2011 at 6:47 am
This graph tells me I have something.
All it tells us is that you adjust the LSC to fit your agenda.
BTW, you are so concerned that ‘Wolf’s sunspot series is under attack’ and wish to desperately to revert to the original Wolf Series. Here is what Wolf had to say about SC5:
http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-SSB-for-SC5.png
Interestingly enough his Rmax = 73 is very close to my prediction of 72 for SC24. If you want to emulate Rudolf Wolf, this is the number you have to shoot for for the LSC.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 5, 2011 at 8:58 am
Here is what Wolf had to say about SC5:
http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-SSN-for-SC5.png