UPDATE: The paper itself is available below.
There is a new paper published yesterday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters from NASA GISS/Columbia University and Brown University titled Hydroclimate of the northeastern United States is highly sensitive to solar forcing
Key Points
- Holocene northeast US hydrological change is consistent with solar forcing
- Small changes in solar forcing are amplified in our region by Arctic Oscillation
- Leaf-wax abundances in peatlands provide high-resolution climate information
This paper looks at hydrogen isotope proxy records over the past 6800 years and finds that the hydroclimate of the Northeastern U.S. is “highly sensitive” to solar activity.
The abstract of the paper says:
“The Sun may be entering a weak phase, analogous to the Maunder minimum, which could lead to more frequent flooding in the northeastern US at this multidecadal timescale.”
It is interesting to see this solar-hydro relationship defined in the USA. Previous similar works include defining a solar-hyrdo relationship to Nile River flow in Africa.
Here’s the paper and abstract:
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L04707, 5 PP., 2012
Hydroclimate of the northeastern United States is highly sensitive to solar forcing
Jonathan E. Nichols
Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Earth Institute at Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA
Yongsong Huang
Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Dramatic hydrological fluctuations strongly impact human society, but the driving mechanisms for these changes are unclear. One suggested driver is solar variability, but supporting paleoclimate evidence is lacking. Therefore, long, continuous, high-resolution records from strategic locations are crucial for resolving the scientific debate regarding sensitivity of climate to solar forcing. We present a 6800–year, decadally-resolved biomarker and multidecadally-resolved hydrogen isotope record of hydroclimate from a coastal Maine peatland, The Great Heath (TGH). Regional moisture balance responds strongly and consistently to solar forcing at centennial to millennial timescales, with solar minima concurrent with wet conditions. We propose that the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO) can amplify small solar fluctuations, producing the reconstructed hydrological variations. The Sun may be entering a weak phase, analogous to the Maunder minimum, which could lead to more frequent flooding in the northeastern US at this multidecadal timescale.
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UPDATE: Here is the full paper (PDF)
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OMG, its the SUN!
And the house of cards around AGW keeps falling!!! Gotta love the irony, AGU drops Gleick and then says: Hey! it’s the Sun Stupid!!!
Landscheidt´s New Little Ice Age Instead of Global Warming?:
Without exception, the outstanding negative extrema coincide with periods of exceptionally weak solar activity and vice versa. So there are good reasons to expect that the coming Gleissberg minimum around 2030 will be a deep one.
http://www.schulphysik.de/klima/landscheidt/iceage.htm
This is why the current minimum should be called the “Landscheidt Minimum”
Oh Lord, what on Earth is happening – excuse the pun, then again don’t! What with this, a Solar-hydro connection with the River Nile, the Wet Office recently finding a connection between winer weather & Solar activity (priceless). Whatever next? A connection between Earth’s climate & Solar activity? Surely not! Sarc off!
The title of this post is just as ridiculous as “global warming is making the planet cooler”. Only thing, it is sadly true.
I’m delighted to see real science poke it’s head out of the pages of AGU publications. Let’s just hope it’s not a premature spring bloom.
What is up with this?
More Americans believe in climate change: poll
(AFP) – 15 hours ago
WASHINGTON — Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that climate change is real — the highest level in two years — as the public trusted its own observations of rising temperatures, a poll said Tuesday.
This isn’t the first paper to find a link between solar activity and hydrology. Mauas et al. (Solar Forcing of the Stream Flow of a Continental Scale South American River, Physical Review Letters, 2008) found very strong links between stream flow of one of the world’s largest rivers and the 11 year solar cycle. Here is the Abstract:
“Solar forcing on climate has been reported in several studies although the evidence so far remains inconclusive. Here, we analyze the stream flow of one of the largest rivers in the world, the Parana ́ in southeastern South America. For the last century, we find a strong correlation with the sunspot number, in multidecadal time scales, and with larger solar activity corresponding to larger stream flow. The correlation coefficient is r = 0:78, significant to a 99% level. In shorter time scales we find a strong correlation with El Nin ̃o. These results are a step toward flood prediction, which might have great social and economic impacts.”
Figs. 2 and 3 are especially interesting, if you can get the article.
Power struggles within GISS?
This is going to leave a mark!
GISS disappoints. – gavin
I wonder what people like the Mad Dhog will say about this bit of heresy?
I have referred to this 2006 paper from NASA before:
Does the Nile reflect solar variability?
Alexander Ruzmaikin, Joan Feynman1 and Yuk Yung2
1Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Tachnology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
emails: Alexander.Ruzmaikin@jpl.nasa.gov, Joan.Feynman@jpl.nasa.gov
2Department of Geology and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
CA 91103, USA
emal: yly@gps.caltech.edu
Abstract. Historical records of the Nile water level provide a unique opportunity to investigate the possibility that solar variability influences the Earth’s climate. Particularly important are the annual records of the water level, which are uninterrupted for the years 622–1470 A.D. These records are non-stationary, so that standard spectral analyses cannot adequately characterize them. Here the Empirical Mode Decomposition technique, which is designed to deal with nonstationary, nonlinear time series, becomes useful. It allows the identification of two characteristic time scales in the water level data that can be linked to solar variability: the 88 year period and a time scale of about 200 years. These time scales are also present in the concurrent aurora data. Auroras are driven by coronal mass ejections and the rate of auroras is an excellent proxy for solar variabiliy. Analysis of auroral data contemporaneous with the Nile data shows peaks at 88 years and about 200 years. This suggests a physical link between solar variability and the lowfrequency variations of the Nile water level. The link involves the influence of solar variability on the North Annual Mode of atmospheric variability and its North Atlantic and Indian Oceans patterns that affect rainfall over Eastren Equatorial Africa where the Nile originates.
Keywords. Sun: activity, Sun: solar-terrestrial relations, methods: statistical
As the AGW scam fails …. along comes new source of funding … the Maunder Minimum scare.
Indeed, the term “global warming” was originally coined in a paper trying to explain why it hadn’t cooled as predicted. (“Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?)
No doubt we shall soon see a new paper along the lines of: “Are we on the brink of a pronounced global cooling? (aka how sunspots have prevented the predicted global warming, and how sunspots now appear to be the future life-blood of all climate “scientists”.
Regional moisture balance responds strongly and consistently to solar forcing at centennial to millennial timescales, with solar minima concurrent with wet conditions.
And therefore solar maxima are consistent with dry periods. When Sol is quiet, wet. When the northeast US is wet, snow. When the ground is covered with snow, lower abledo. With lower albedo, cooling. The reverse when Sol is active. Quiet sun, amplified ==> cooling. Active sun, amplified ==> warming.
Huh.
We propose that the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO) can amplify small solar fluctuations, producing the reconstructed hydrological variations.
What else does the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO) amplification of small solar fluctuations produce in the Northeast US?
In what other regions of the world does the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO) amplification of small solar fluctuations produce these climate effects?
What components of the climate system other than the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO) may amplify small solar fluctuations?
In what regions of the world do those solar amplifying components of the climate system produce climate effects?
What are those climate effects?
How are these newly discovered and remaining to be discovered solar amplifiers and their attendant climate effects reflected in the General Circulation Models?
How happy are you that the science is settled?
FWIW, sunspots have decined substantially over the past 2 months, from a peak of 96.7 in 11/11 to 73.0 in 12/11 and now 58.3 in 1/12.
Double-bump peaks are not at all uncommon, but unless this turns around soon it would be the weakest peak since 1882 (95.8 in April).
(International counts from http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml , at /greenwch/spot_number.txt )
Presumably Gleick knew this was coming. Perhaps it drove him over the edge.
So let’s see, more frequent flooding requires rain. Rain requires clouds. Clouds have a bond albedo in the vicinity of 0.7, compared to a mean albedo of around 0.3 for the Earth in general (including its average cloud cover). If even weak reductions in solar activity increase rainfall (and hence cloud cover), they must also increase albedo. Every 0.01 increase of albedo predicts a drop of roughly 1K in global average temperature. Solar activity is dramatically falling. NASA is directly measuring a corresponding increase in the Earth’s mean bond albedo via studies of Earthlight re-reflected from the moon’s dark face in the last through first quarter. And we haven’t even gotten to where the change can be nonlinearly amplified by modulating e.g. oceanic absorption and the decadal climate oscillations.
There is so much real science to be done here. Too bad there is an entire group of scientists who actively oppose doing it, and who have exercised a horribly disproportionate influence on both the journals and granting agencies. There are signs that the logjam is breaking — this paper is one of them. But we are far, far from being there yet.
rgb
“More Americans believe in climate change: poll
(AFP) – 15 hours ago
WASHINGTON — Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that climate change is real — the highest level in two years — as the public trusted its own observations of rising temperatures, a poll said Tuesday.”
Importance of this depends on what question was asked, and how well the respondants understood the question. 66% of Americans believing that the climate is changing != 66% of Americans believing that the climate is changing as a result of human influence.
These polls are worthless in my opinion, because odds are the pollster isn’t taking the time to make sure the respondant understands the question they are being asked. Plus, let’s not forget the psychology lesson beind most respondants not wanting to confess that they don’t know what the pollster is asking, and will therefore opt to make up an opinion and sound smart instead of admitting they don’t know / don’t have an opinion.
Excuse me, but I don’t think the AGW crowd gets it yet – Almost all of us believe the Earth is in a warming trend although there may be some who reject that too. The question is not “Does the climate change over time?” the question is “What drives climate change and to what degree?”
When I tell people that I question the amount that humans are doing to “warm” the Earth, I find they leap to believing I don’t understand the climate is changing. Off they go into rants about Venus and Flat Earth and etc.
Yup, I’m one of the two-thirds that would say “Yes.” to the question “Do you believe the Earth (planet) has warmed in the last 50 years?” But I would add to that – “I question the role of humankind in that warming.”
Of course that’s not ever asked as a follow-on question is it?
Mike
So they talk about rain and snow but not about temperature? Avoid the CO2 conversation at all costs and try to do some science.
It seems that GISS is compartmentalizing their findings that are contrary to the AGW theory so that, when confronted, they can claim that the given finding was a regional study. They have no qualms, however, with cutting down one tree in Siberia and declaring that it’s tree rings can tell us all we need to know about global climate over the last 1000 years.
/// Humor ///
So they are willing to admit the sun plays a part with climate; maybe the world is coming to an in on December 21, 2012. :-))
NICHOLAS
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hXv72I7nx7ZTg_QuI3Ix1c3i3uXw?docId=CNG.dca855da9e6c393c07dda475a1590504.e41
“Sixty-two percent of Americans agree that there is solid evidence that the Earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past four decades”
Why wasn’t it higher? I have very little doubt that it’s warmer now than 1972 (ice age scare). I have no doubt that climate changes. What I have serious doubts of is the contention that burning fossil fuels adds enough CO2 to the atmosphere to increase the GHE (while simultaneously limiting radiant heat loss to space) enough to cause worldwide cataclysm! I also doubt that was an option on the survey.
Re – “NICHOLAS says: February 29, 2012 at 7:59 am
What is up with this? – More Americans believe in climate change: poll”
Reading the article below, there is no mention of the poll asking questions about “manmade” or “anthropogenic” climate change, just “global warming” and “climate change,” …in other words do you think its a bit warmer now than 40 years ago?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hXv72I7nx7ZTg_QuI3Ix1c3i3uXw?docId=CNG.dca855da9e6c393c07dda475a1590504.e41
“When asked an open-ended question about why they thought the Earth was warming, one-quarter of those surveyed pointed to temperatures they experience and another quarter cited other weather changes. One in 7 mentioned melting glaciers and polar sea ice, and 1 in 8 noted media coverage. Only 8 percent mentioned scientific research.”
http://www.laramieboomerang.com/articles/2012/02/29/ap/science/us_sci_climate_survey.txt
It will be interesting to see if the CAGW crowd starts to “own” this poll, since it supports two things I think nearly everyone can all agree on –
1. Its a bit warmer now than it was 40 years ago; and
2. Climate changes