From the “science is still settling” department, the question still seems up in the air to me.
On one hand we have Dr. Jasper Kirkby, Head of the CLOUD Experiment, CERN Geneva giving a thorough review showing strong correlations between cosmic rays, solar cycles and earth’s climate. He projects a possible mini ice age by 2015 similar to the Dalton or Maunder minimum.
On the other hand, we have RealClimate fanboy Rasmus Benestad with a new paper that says “no, absolutely not, except maybe Northern Europe, but I don’t know why, more study is needed”.
First Jasper Kirkby:
Then we have Rasmus:
An analysis of more than 50 years’ worth of climate data has found scant evidence for a controversial theory that attempts to link cosmic rays and global warming. The theory suggests that solar variations can affect the number of cosmic rays reaching the Earth, which in turn influences climate by impacting on cloud formation. The latest study was done by Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and he concludes that changes to the Sun cannot explain global warming.
Benestad compared variations in the 1951–2006 annual mean galactic cosmic-ray-flux data with annual variations in temperature, mean sea-level barometric pressure and precipitation. The cosmic-ray data were obtained using a high-altitude neutron monitor located in Climax, Colorado.
He looked for meteorological responses to cosmic rays over timescales of more than a year, and for “fingerprint” patterns in both time and space. He also checked for responses to greenhouse-gas concentrations and the El Niño Southern Oscillation.
Little evidence
“The significance of the findings was that the results were negative – I found little evidence of the cosmic rays having a discernible affect on a range of common meteorological elements: temperature, the barometric pressure or precipitation,” says Benestad. “Not for the global mean at least. One possible exception may have been for parts of Europe, however.”
The galactic cosmic-ray flux was associated with lower temperatures in parts of Eastern Europe. Benestad is intrigued whether these results were a coincidence or do indeed show a connection between cosmic rays and both temperature and sea-level pressure. He plans to investigate further. “Why would a solar effect be seen only in a limited region?” he wonders. “This region is affected by the North Atlantic Oscillation, and this phenomenon is a bit special – a variation in the sea-level pressure over timescales of up to several years. The persistence in these variations may match the variations in the Sun by accident, but it could also be sensitive to variations in the Sun.” If there is a real connection between changes to the Sun and the North Atlantic Oscillation, Benestad believes that this knowledge could benefit decadal predictions.
On a larger scale, the analysis indicated that the weak global mean-temperature response associated with cosmic-ray flux could easily be down to chance. What is more, there has been no long-term trend in cosmic-ray flux. “Hence, there is little empirical evidence that links galactic cosmic-ray flux to recent global warming,” wrote Benestad in Environmental Research Letters.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/nov/05/comprehensive-study-shows-cosmic-rays-are-not-causing-global-warming
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It is unfortunate that this was published by Rasmus Benestad, I’d give more credence to sombody not joined at the hip with James Hansen, Mick Mann, and Gavin Schmidt.
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The thermal lag of the climate is somewhere on the order of 5 to 10 years, with some changes taking decades to make themselves fully felt.
This might be of interest.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=975f250d-ca5d-4f40-b687-a1672ed1f684
Nice title Antony! I see what you did there- a little homage to the Great Dane of cosmic rays.
Right there is Benestad’s problem – the high altitude neutron monitor. It is my understanding that the high energy cosmic rays that penetrate to low altitudes are the ones of interest as it is the low altitude clouds that cause cooling. IIRC Mike Lockwood made the same “mistake”. You can get any result you want if you carefully choose the experiment, especially if you choose the wrong one.
In discussing the cosmic ray – temperature connection in a recent guest post 10/29 on WUWT
and originally at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
I said
“Furthermore Fig 8 shows that the cosmic ray intensity time series derived from the 10Be data is the most useful proxy relating solar activity to temperature and climate. – see Fig 3 CD from Steinhilber
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/30/1118965109.full.pdf
NOTE !! the connection between solar “activity” and climate is poorly understood and highly controversial. Solar ” activity” encompasses changes in solar magnetic field strength, IMF, CRF, TSI ,EUV,solar wind density and velocity, CMEs, proton events etc. The idea of using the neutron count as a useful proxy for changing solar activity and temperature forecasting is agnostic as to the physical mechanisms involved.”
I think the connection is very clear in the Steinhilber paper.
A quick look at Benestad suggests that he took no account of the possible lag 12 year lag between the Cosmic ray count and the temperatures, Thus the cosmic ray minimum at about 1991 (Solar Max}{[ equates quite nicely with the recent temperature trend peak at about 2003.
Kirkby’s analysis would fit in well with my approach and cooling forecast.
4/02/13 ( Global)
1 Significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
5 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and help maintain crop yields .
9 Warning !! There are some signs in the Livingston and Penn Solar data that a sudden drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures could be imminent – with a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.
An effect in Europe only would fit the evidence as well as a global effect.
Herschel linked sunspots to trends in the wheat price. But the market wasn’t so globalised in those days.
More work is clearly needed but it shouldn’t be discarded on the author’s playmates.
Headline:
Lack of Certainty in CO2 “unsettling” say Enironmentalists
Recent reports that appear to show doubt in the certainty expressed in the recently published 5th report of the IPCC have Dr. James Hansen and others worried. “Previously,” he said in an interview with Bill McKibben, “we were very certain that the world was going to burn up before 2100. Now that certainty looks less definite than we thought. This “unsettled” science is unsettling. Now we know we know almost nothing about almost everything. How can we fix something if we don’t even know if it is broken? Yes,” he said, “disturbing, very disturbing.”
The baseline, the baseline, why did he choose the baseline?
I was wondering if there were any diurnal and/or seasonal fluctuations in GCR intensity and then I found this: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927650511000636
Thoughts?
Are we observing or even coming to realize that there is an analog to “dark matter” , called “dark energy” that hides in the atmosphere and the oceans. clearly it suffers from a Heisenbergian style observation problem such that thermometers cannot see it but just as in climate science its there but we need more money to find it.
The ‘maybe it is correlated by coincidence’ detail needs to be explored more often. In many paleoclimate papers, they see what months or even smaller periods have temperatures that correlate well with tree rings, and declare that this is a reconstruction of those months.
Doug Proctor, 2:00 p.m.
Do you have a citation for the Hansen quote?
M Courtney The effect of a cooling trend is in general more marked in the NH.
See http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2013/01/global-cooling-timing-and-amountnh.html
Here is a quote.
The key working hypothesis is that the solar cycle from 1000- 2000 may repeat and we may see a pattern of temperatures from 2000 – 3000 which is similar to that from 1000 – 2000. Fig.5 from the Christiansen paper is shown above. The solid lines are the 50 year moving averages and the dashed red lines are the upper and lower quantiles.
Inspection of Figure 5 – both the moving average and the annual data suggests the following.
1) The millennial peak is sharp – perhaps 18 years +/-. We have now had 16 years since 1997 with no net warming – and so might expect a sharp drop in a year or two – 2014/16 -with a net cooling by 2035 of about 0.35.Within that time frame however there could well be some exceptional years with NH temperatures +/- 0.25 degrees colder than that.
2) The cooling gradient might be fairly steep down to the Oort minimum equivalent which would occur about 2100. (about 1100 on Fig 5) with a total cooling in 2100 from the present estimated at about 1.2 +/-
3) From 2100 on through the Wolf and Sporer minima equivalents with intervening highs to the Maunder Minimum equivalent which could occur from about 2600 – 2700 a further net cooling of about 0.7 degrees could occur for a total drop of 1.9 +/- degrees
4)The time frame for the significant cooling in 2014 – 16 is strengthened by recent developments already seen in solar activity. With a time lag of about 12 years between the solar driver proxy and climate -see:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005ESASP.560…19U we should see the effects of the sharp drop in the Ap Index which took place in 2004/5 in 2016-17. This estimate is quite independent from the estimate made from Fig5.”
Compare these forecasts with the global forecasts at 1:56 pm above.
The error made by Benestad is all included in this sentence of his paper
“A multiple general linear regression was used to detect links between GCR and meteorological parameters, and it was assumed that a potential response to GCR could be approximated as linear”.
He fits the period 1951–2000.
The fact is that in a 50 year period non-linear effects associated to solar-climate interactions are dominant.
This thing is clearly explained in at least two of my papers
1) Scafetta N., 2009. Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 71, 1916-1923.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682609002089
2) Scafetta N., 2013. Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics, 1, 37–57. (open access)
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.html
In Ref. 1, it is shown what happens when non linear effects are taken into account.
In Ref. 2 (which is open access), I discuss in detail the severe errors emerging from linear regression analysis as used by Benestad who simply tries to interpret the temperature as a linear combination of “forcings”.
To correct the error and avoid multi-collinearity among the regression constructors one needs to use a far longer time sequence (e.g 1000 years) for properly estimate the secular trending and simultaneously focus on the 10-12 year scale of the 11-year solar cycle to test the right amplification mechanisms.
See Ref. 1 and 2 for details
Doug Proctor says:
November 6, 2013 at 2:00 pm
“Headline:
Lack of Certainty in CO2 “unsettling” say Enironmentalists
Recent reports that appear to show doubt in the certainty expressed in the recently published 5th report of the IPCC have Dr. James Hansen and others worried. “Previously,” he said in an interview with Bill McKibben, “we were very certain that the world was going to burn up before 2100. Now that certainty looks less definite than we thought.”
Very interesting. McKibben and Hansen are as bought and paid for as they come. Meaning, CFR, UN, and CoR are slowly shifting gears.
They wouldn’t let their puppets talk like that otherwise.
I have had a long term concern about trying to generalize from the recent satellite era to phenomena which may take decades to manifest.
If we have been in any sort of anomalous period with the Sun during the last few decades (which there is some evidence is the case) then drawing conclusions from it might be the correct approach.
Little addition
Benestad also makes the mistake of using a regression model where the ENSO signal is considered an independent physical constructor from solar forcing. It is evident that part of the solar signal could also be hidden in the ENSO signal as properly taken into account in
1) Scafetta N., 2009. Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 71, 1916-1923.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682609002089
In fact, note that in his figure 2 the 11-year solar cycle signature is estimated to be just 0.02 C (from max to min) . This is smaller by 40% than what the climate models predict using only the solar irradiance record. While empirical analysis of the 11-year solar signature give values 3-4 time greater than the climate models. See section 3 in
2) Scafetta N., 2013. Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics, 1, 37–57. (open access)
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.html
“From the “science is still settling” department,’
Settling to form a rather iciky layer of sludge on the bottom?
“by impacting on cloud formation. ”
With a barely audible thud.
Very interesting. What if you read the following?:
Why can’t he also say this? Is this last statement not true also? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and all that.
Cosmic Rays intensity sourced from our Galaxy and outside our Galaxy is completely unpredictable. When does our sun cross the Galactic plane ?
“… and it was assumed that a potential response to GCR could be approximated as linear”” — Benestad
Ok, so Benestad refuted the idea of a linear relation. But then almost none of physics has a linear relation, so I’m not terribly sure what he thought he was doing. This paper is useless to me. And I say this from a point of personal intuition that cosmic-ray effects range between bupkiss and nothing in practice.
Sun Spot GCR incidence with the atmosphere is not unpredictable it varies approximately inversely with the sunspot cycle and the solar magnetic field strength.
I’m pretty certain it’s a facetious spoof.
Dr Norman Page says:
November 6, 2013 at 1:56 pm
“A quick look at Benestad suggests that he took no account of the possible lag 12 year lag between the Cosmic ray count and the temperatures.”
Typical. They already know the answer they want, so they assume the minimal level of complexity needed to get that answer. A similar unfounded assumption of instantaneous response was used by Dessler and others to diagnose positive feedback between temperature forcing and water vapor. In fact, there is a clearly discernible lag of several years in the data which flips the sign from positive to negative.
The slipshod level of analysis being used to sell AGW is a travesty.
“Hence, there is little empirical evidence that links galactic cosmic-ray flux to recent global warming,” wrote Benestad…
Recent global warming? Is that the global warming of the last 15 years or so?
Oh wait…