From the The Washington Times – By Willie Soon and William M. Briggs
Scientists have been studying solar influences on the climate for more than 5,000 years.
Chinese imperial astronomers kept detailed sunspot records. They noticed that more sunspots meant warmer weather. In 1801, the celebrated astronomer William Herschel (discoverer of the planet Uranus) observed that when there were fewer spots, the price of wheat soared. He surmised that less light and heat from the sun resulted in reduced harvests.
Earlier last month, professor Richard Muller of the University of California-Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project announced that in the project’s newly constructed global land temperature record, “no component that matches solar activity” was related to temperature. Instead, Mr. Muller said carbon dioxide controlled temperature.
Could it really be true that solar radiation — which supplies Earth with the energy that drives our climate and which, when it has varied, has caused the climate to shift over the ages — is no longer the principal influence on climate change?
Consider the accompanying chart. It shows some rather surprising relationships between solar radiation and daytime high temperatures taken directly from Berkeley’s BEST project. The remarkable nature of these series is that these tight relationships can be shown to hold from areas as large as the United States.
This new sun-climate relationship picture may be telling us that the way our sun cools and warms the Earth is largely through the penetration of incoming solar radiation in regions with cloudless skies. Recent work by National Center for Atmospheric Research senior scientists Harry van Loon and Gerald Meehl place strong emphasis on this physical point and argue that the use of daytime high temperatures is the most appropriate test of the solar-radiation-surface-temperature connection hypothesis. All previous sun-climate studies have included the complicated nighttime temperature records while the sun is not shining.
Read more: SOON AND BRIGGS: Global-warming fanatics take note – Washington Times
Sunspots impact climate! Wow! I thought they might affect it, but it seems they impact it as well.
“This new sun-climate relationship picture may be telling us that the way our sun cools and warms the Earth is largely through the penetration of incoming solar radiation in regions with cloudless skies.”
Heat from the sun warms the earth? Who’d have thought it?
I got a chuckle out of the lead sentence “Scientists have been studying solar influences on the climate for more than 5,000 years..” Somebody needs to go back and re-write it. I know what he means, but what he says is that for more than five thousand years scientists have been studying solar influences on the climate.
The classic line ” It’s the sun stupid ” seems to fit best.
“All previous sun-climate studies have included the complicated nighttime temperature records while the sun is not shining.”
Wait wut? That this surprised me at all means only that I’m not yet jaded enough.
“The sun has no impact on the climate.”
“The big ball of fire in the sky? How did you possibly show that it has nothing to do with it?”
“We only looked for it when the planet was facing the wrong way.”
I see a serious problem here:
First, BEST tracks only land surface temperatures, thus this chart ignores 71% of the earths surface.
Second, it tracks only US temperatures, which pretty much ignores most of the land surface of the earth asd well.
Thus this graph to “proove” this idea ignores most of the surface of the earht, and “prooves” it with only a fraction of the data available.
All it “prooves” is that solar irradianece, in the BEST graphs only (which have problems with UHI effects) seem to track with max land surface temperatures only over the continental US.
Come back when you add the rest of the planet.
http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_sunclimate.html
Figure 3 b says the same thing going back 150 years. Why is this never discussed?
Steve M. from TN says:”Why is this never discussed?”
Well, if the link you provide didn’t devolve into “Did sunspots sink the Titanic?” it would probably be an easier sell.
in which they reported on the most comprehensive model simulations to date of the climate of the 20th century. Their study looked at both “natural forcing agents” (solar variations and volcanic emissions) as well as “anthropogenic forcing” (greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols). They found that “solar effects may have contributed significantly to the warming in the first half of the century although this result is dependent on the reconstruction of total solar irradiance that is used. In the latter half of the century, we find that anthropogenic increases in greenhouses gases are largely responsible for the observed warming, balanced by some cooling due to anthropogenic sulphate aerosols, with no evidence for significant solar effects.” Stott’s team found that combining all of these factors enabled them to closely simulate global temperature changes throughout the 20th century. They predicted that continued greenhouse gas emissions would cause additional future temperature increases “at a rate similar to that observed in recent decades”. It should be noted that their solar forcing included “spectrally resolved changes in solar irradiance” but not indirect effects mediated through cosmic rays (discussed above and in the following section); these ideas are still being fleshed out.
As usual, the curve showing ‘solar radiation’ is wrong. Here is what it should look like [the red curve]: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEIF.png with justification here: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEIF.png
This means that there is no justification for the sunspot-climate relation claimed.
WOW! I guess that the Sun needs money, but only when it is shinning on the Earth. The rest of the time, it wants the “global warming people to worship it”…
/sever sarcasm
Legatus, if you checked the linked article, you’ll find that it’s not only the contiguous 48 states that have this behaviour. They report they also found it in China and the Arctic, to name two other locations. Yes, it’s only the land, but the BEST data is only available for the land – it’s not available for the oceans yet.
Yet another nothing story.
Nobody in the climate science fraternity said solar output and sunspots do not impact or affect the climate. What they sad was that CO2,now it is so high again, impacts it more. Something which was quite clearly proven in the last sunspot/flux low.
But let’s not let a little truth or reality spoil a good story… Where’s the fun in that?
Legatus says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:12 pm
“I see a serious problem here:
First, BEST tracks only land surface temperatures, thus this chart ignores 71% of the earths surface.”
When my doctor takes my temperature he looks in my ear with a heat sensing device and ignores the rest of me. According to you, he hasn’t learned anything about my temperature.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:51 pm
As usual, the curve showing ‘solar radiation’ is wrong. Here is what it should look like [the red curve]: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEIF.png with justification here: http://www.leif.org/research/The%20long-term%20variation%20of%20solar%20activity.pdf
The data and the chart appear to be derived from Friis‐Christensen and Lassen, 1991. This particular work has issues noted in multiple publications:
Laut & Gundermann (2000) (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2000ESASP.463..189L): “Our conclusion is that the impression, created by the articles of Friss-Christensen and Lassen, that the recent global warming has been caused predominantly by changes in solar activity, is not supported by the physical data they have used.”
Damon & Laut (2004) (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1999/1999GL900578.shtml): “Using the pre‐industrial record as a boundary condition, the SCL (solar cycle length) temperature correlation corresponds to an estimated 25% of global warming to 1980 and 15% to 1997.”
Laut (2003) (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2004EO390005.shtml): “Analysis of a number of published graphs that have played a major role in these debates and that have been claimed to support solar hypotheses […] shows that the apparent strong correlations displayed on these graphs have been obtained by incorrect handling of the physical data.”
Soon and Briggs should be aware of these works, which really invalidate Friss-Christensen 1991 – and the article they have just published. They have certainly not addressed the criticisms of the FC&L data handling.
How about looking at the entire sunspot as a whole. It has been increasing at one percent per year for the last 300 years.
Jim Goodridge says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:09 pm
How about looking at the entire sunspot as a whole. It has been increasing at one percent per year for the last 300 years.
No, it has not. See slide 31 of http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction%20of%20Sunspot%20Number.pdf
Steve M. from TN says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:16 pm
http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_sunclimate.html
Figure 3 b says the same thing going back 150 years. Why is this never discussed?
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Steve, the link you provided is to an article that had a published date (?) of March 2001. That was a time when real science was conducted. Now post-normal science is the buzz, except in a few cases. Soon and Briggs are rattling the cages of the post-normal club and Anthony Watts brings it to us “live”.
Why is Leif quoting himself?
“All previous sun-climate studies have included the complicated nighttime temperature records while the sun is not shining”.
pochas said:
September 6, 2012 at 9:01 pm
When my doctor takes my temperature he looks in my ear with a heat sensing device and ignores the rest of me. According to [Legatus], he hasn’t learned anything about my temperature.
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Your doctor obviously needs to take your temperature by shoving a heat sensing device where the sun don’t shine 😉
KR says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:06 pm
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I noticed the referenced articles in your comment were dated 2000, 2003, and 2004.
These were critical of a publication dated 1991. Interesting that it took 9 to 13 years to respond. Could that be that a gravy train started rolling and the Friss-Christensen 1991 publication would derail it?
Reblogged this on Is it 2012 in Nevada County Yet? and commented:
It is the sun stupid! Even the simplest animals know that the sun warms and the shade cools. Shady days are cooler than sunny days, an one does not have to be climatologist to figure that out.
RockyRoad said:
September 6, 2012 at 9:24 pm
Why is Leif quoting himself?
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Because he likes redundant tautologisms.