The diagram above is central to the paper’s examination of the “spiral” nature of the earth to sun distance relationship, which affects noit only seasons, but longer term climate cycles.
Every once in awhile some thing comes along that really “clicks” with a lot of people in the science community.
A new paper from New Zealand titled: Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development is one of those that has “clicked” with a lot of people recently. It is the first scientific paper I’ve ever seen that pulls all the interdisciplinary fields of solar physics, astronomy, meteorology, hydrology, and climatology together to prove that in fact the sun is the major driver, even with its “small” fluctuations often ignored by climate scientists as being too small to matter.
It does matter, I’ve written about it many times, and this paper really has strong evidence supporting it. This is not just another paper talking about sunspots and the maunder minimum, no this one has some strong empirical evidence that directly links climate changes on earth to a myriad of changes in the sun-earth relationship.
What’s even better, this paper is readable. It’s not written in techno-speak with accents on using words 99% of the general population doesn’t use. It’s refreshing. Read it here (Adobe PDF)
The abstract reads: “This study is based on the numerical analysis of the properties of routinely observed
hydrometeorological data which in South Africa alone is collected at a rate of more than
half a million station days per year, with some records approaching 100 continuous years
in length. The analysis of this data demonstrates an unequivocal synchronous linkage
between these processes in South Africa and elsewhere, and solar activity. This confirms
observations and reports by others in many countries during the past 150 years.
It is also shown with a high degree of assurance that there is a synchronous linkage
between the statistically significant, 21-year periodicity in these processes and the
acceleration and deceleration of the sun as it moves through galactic space. Despite a
diligent search, no evidence could be found of trends in the data that could be attributed
to human activities.”
My hat’s off to these scientists: W J R Alexander, F Bailey, D B Bredenkamp, A van der Merwe and N Willemse
The study finds a strong correlation between water levels and sunspot numbers. But the correlation is a short term correlation – there is little to no correlation in the long term trends.
For example, there is no long term trend in Lake Victoria’s levels from 1900 to 1940 when solar activity showed long term increase. Any short or long term correlation breaks down between 1930 to 1970. Next, to obtain correlation over 1968 to 2005, they filter out a 29mm per year trend. They don’t explain why there’s been a long term trend of falling water levels over the last 37 years while there’s been no long term solar trend.
In fact, all the case studies show short term correlation with solar cycles but no long term correlation with decadal solar trends. There’s so much noise due to tributary inflows, outflows, sluicing, rainfall and evaporation that while short term correlations with the solar cycle are useful, determining or finding meaning in long term trends is problematic. In short, measuring water levels is a roundabout way of determing the sun’s effect on long term global warming.
A more direct method would be to observe the correlation between solar activity and global temperatures. In 2005, Sami Solanki at the Max Planck Insitute compared solar activity & temperatures over the past 1150 years and found temperatures closely correlate to solar activity. When sunspot activity was low during the Maunder Minimum in the 1600’s or the Dalton Minimum in the 1800’s, the earth went through ‘small ice ages’. The sun has been unusually hot in the last century – solar output rose dramatically in the early 20th century accompanied by a sharp rise in global temperatures.
However, Solanki also found the correlation between solar activity and global temperatures ended around 1975. At that point, temperatures started rising while solar activity stayed level. This led him to conclude “during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source.”
Which is why this will be ignored by the media, and ridiculed by alarmists without any contradictory evidence.
W J R Alexander is a crank – have a read of some of his other work.
That latest comment is the logical error of argumentum ad hominem. You’ll see ad hominem everywhere because the alarmists have no data to cite except flawed data like the Mann ‘hockey stick’ or ice core data which does not show the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age. The ‘Inconvenient Truth’ is there is no science under the alarming stories. CO2 is plant food; plants are animal food. Monkey with these basics at your peril. Condemn the developing world to endless poverty by bringing the most prosperous period of time in history to an end. It is alarming to watch the politicians dancing Al Gore’s silly shallow tune.
Most people know the truth – Relax, the Planet is fine.