I just finished participating in the press teleconference call in for reporters with NASA and their panel of solar experts today. There was a lot of interesting discussions and questions. Unfortunately even though I put in for a question, I was shut out, and judging from the order of the questions asked and the organizations represented, clearly they played favorites for getting maximum exposure by choosing the larger media outlets first, such as AP’s Seth Borenstein who got the first question. That’s understandable I suppose, still I really wanted to ask what they though about the step function in the Ap Index that occurred in October 2005 and has remained flat since.
I took quite a bit of notes, and I’ll write more later from them, but for now I wanted to give my readers a chance to weigh in.
See the written NASA press release here
The three general things that struck me most from this conference were:
1) We don’t know enough yet to predict solar cycles, we aren’t “in the game”, and “we don’t really know how big next maximum will be”.
2) We don’t see any link between the minimums, cosmic rays (which are increasing now) and earth’s climate. This was downplayed several times. Some quotes were “none of us here are experts on climate, and when asked about Galactic Cosmic Rays and Svensmark’s climate theory is the answer was “speculation”.
3) The minimum we are in now is “unique for the space age”, but “within norms for the last 200 years”, but we are also surprised to learn how much the solar wind has diminished on a truly “entire sun” scale.
Here are a couple of the graphics they provided, note the difference in solar wind pressure between the two measurement periods.
And the fact that the electron density and temperature have decreased about 20%
Anyone who has listened to this teleconference is welcome to weigh in. For those that did not hear it, The RealAudio file would not play on my PC, did anyone record it? If so advise and I’ll post it here.
Oops. I did it again. Ozone deflects UV rays. Cosmic rays destroy ozone. But I disagree that ozone is not a blanket. I believe it is. Ozone acts like a blanket in the lower troposphere atmosphere much like the other greenhouse gases do. The upper stratosphere ozone keeps UV rays from getting to fragile areas here on Earth. Related to this discussion is the idea that atom particles and galactic explosion pieces raining down on Earth may not just be beneficial, as in cloud seeding. There are theories out there that dinosaurs were partially eradicated by galactic explosions and subsequent unprotected cosmic ray bombardment. So many things to think about. It’s like being in a chocolate store.
This was probably the most closely and widely watched NASA space science press conference ever. I sense there was nervousness which led to the denial of possible conclusions that could be drawn. And, of course, we knnow nothing about climate; we study the SUN.
These people wanted to keep their jobs. All they really wanted to do was brag about what their spacecraft had achieved and say: “Can we have another, please”.
For starters, it is much more dangerous to be in space during solar maximum than during solar minimum. In the former, you could get a blast of particles from a CME. In one event, astronauts reported light flashes in their eyes while they had them closed.
I recommend that people try to read between the lines. What if the NASA scientists realise that they are operating in a global warming hell hole and are using hidden messages to communicate with the outside world? In one set of graphs, why did they use the 94 – 95 period and compare it to 2007? Are they trying to communicate a prediction about the likely month of minimum? Verbal statements don’t jell with the visuals. It was said that the solar wind pressure was off 20%, but the graphic shows a fall from an average of about 4 to 2, a 50% decrease. The NASA scientists may be pushing their operational envelope, laying the groundwork for a subsequent press conference in which more will drawn from the data. They also realise that they have to lay a paper trail to protect their careers when global warming blows up and the finger pointing starts about NASA not predicting the next minimum.
The Oulu neutron count is the highest it has been since records began in 1964. We are still nine months off the month of solar minimum and it takes a year for the solar wind to get out to the heliopause, so the peak neutron count may not be until July 2010. I am predicting 6,900 for Oulu.
I was a space science major in the early 90s, and in my Astrophysics textbook (Zelik Greory Smith, IIRC) for senior year, there was mention of the possible corelation between the sunspots (or lack thereof) and climate
Several things:
1) What I surmise is NASA has said “We sure didn’t see this coming…”
B) This blog is now so active, I cannot keep up. 100 posts in jst a few hours? Wow, Anthony, you are a popular guy. Congrats.
iii) If the planet drops ANOTHER degree in temperature over the next year, will someone, anyone finally look at the sun for the answer? The long minima and sudden cooling are NOT coincidental.
“Point 2: Incredibly they are saying the sun plays no role in climate change that they know of!!!”
Uh huh. Try turning it off and see what happens.
The very first question should have been:
“Have you been directed to take no positions on whether this data correlates with Earth climate trends and predictions?”
“Intuitively, this hypothesis makes sense since our world is “solar powered”, but intuition isn’t goode enough. We need some more “causitve” science.”
Yeah, we need that in tree ring data too. How can tree ring data be caused by “global temperature” when it doesn’t even correlate with local temperature. Magic? I guess trees are temporally everywhere they are not on the planets surface. Like some kind of anti-being.
So – I think I’ve finally found a comment that will let me post my question. It’s typically too far off the post for me to ask it.
Earlier commenter pointed out:
“They did mention a current cooling of the upper atmosphere
and when asked, mentioned two factors.
a) Less UV Radiation
b) Less Geomagnetism
They stated that both add heat when they are high.
Both are lower now, leading to the cooler upper atmosphere.”
I’ve been wanting to ask – since I saw the rebuttal to Monckton’s APS paper – how does the expansion and contraction of the upper atmosphere due to the interaction with the solar wind affect lower atmosphere temperatures? Basic physics is that an expanding gas cools; and earth’s gaseous atmosphere expands when put under less pressure from the solar wind (as evidenced by the increased drag on the ISS). Are the effects of this expansion (and eventual contraction) too small to affect the lower troposphere’s temperature?
I’ve never seen this as a factor in the (admittedly few) papers I’ve read – nor have I seen it discounted. But the relation between volume, pressure, and temperature of a gas has been struck into me in every physics class I’ve taken. Is the effect at high altitudes too small to be a measurable factor?
Some of the comments left on this thread reflect an astonishing level of childish petulance and, in my opinion, lack of understanding of what scientists do and how science progresses.
The purpose of the NASA press conference was apparently, by virtue of its naming, a review of the state of the Sun, not a forum to answer questions about how that might relate to theories of global warming, which would be the topic of a different press conference. The Ulysses mission was designed to explore the polar regions of the Sun, which cannot be done from ground based telescopes or spacecraft in near-Earth orbit, and it accomplished that with remarkable success. Before Ulysses flew, much less was known about the poles of the Sun than about its equatorial regions. In fact, in some ways, we still know much less about the Sun than we do about the planets that revolve around it. It will take decades for solar physicists to fully digest the results from the Ulysses mission in their efforts to understand the complex behavior of the solar atmosphere and its interior.
Solar physics is an extremely difficult area of research. It requires the talents of enormously bright people whose knowledge is highly specialized. It takes many years to acquire the training, skills, and knowledge that are needed to work in the field. It is extremely unfair to expect that a person who has spent 20 or even 40 years developing an understanding of solar magnetohydrodynamics will suddenly, Al Gore like, begin to speculate on questions that belong to an entirely different field of research in the physics of the Earth’s atmosphere. No one should expect a scientist to comment on matters outside his field of expertise. Good scientists know the limits of their knowledge.
NASA is a large organization (of which the Goddard Institute where James Hansen works is a miniscule part), its research scientists are world class, and it supports many university scientists who have wide ranging interests and abilities. Some of those people are interested in the Sun, others are interested in various earth sciences such as atmospheric physics. The problems they dedicate their lives to solving are very difficult, and victories in the way of increased knowledge usually come after enormous effort, often after many mistakes. The people who post here need to appreciate how much dedication and effort that work requires.
So, if you are impatient for answers to problems that you feel should be addressed, I suggest you roll up your sleeves, get yourself a PhD after, say, 10 years of study, and then spend the following decade or two trying to fathom the complexity of the universe. But don’t be disheartened if someone then writes a harsh blog comment if you don’t talk about things that he thought were more important than you did. That’s the way some people are. Just do your best.
[…] certainly can ask what this means for the Earth. That doesn’t mean that NASA knows the answer. The former television meteorologist who blogs at Watts Up With That? (and who’s fast […]
I may have figured out why they were so defensive during their press conference.
They’re so wired in to this short term observation / direct cause an effect stuff like CO2 is up so temperature must go up. They sent a probe to measure the sun and then all the sun spots stopped.
They broke the damn sun!!
Anthony, slightly OT, but just looked at Hansen’s bio. It gives his birth date as March 29th 1941. When do we get to see him retire from GISS?
Fearful priesthoods suffer by the disease that they think they are …immortal…
So they try in VAIN to survive GAINING TIME to push us all kill each other, instead of leaving humankind prepare kids for a new ice age.
If we don’t like dieing like fatalists in Pompeii or paniced in Titanic, we should immediately organize children, neighbors and communities until a global truce treaty.
Bald Tires (19:48:15) :
“The purpose of the NASA press conference was apparently, by virtue of its naming, a review of the state of the Sun, not a forum to answer questions about how that might relate to theories of global warming, which would be the topic of a different press conference.”
….
“No one should expect a scientist to comment on matters outside his field of expertise. Good scientists know the limits of their knowledge.”
Comment they did, no limitations working, when the CO2 mantra was needed.
John-X (17:03:17): I wonder if they’re going to use the new LHC (Large Hadron Collider) Doomsday device for GCR cloud nucleation experiments.
An experiment at CERN, known as Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets, or CLOUD, led by Jasper Kirkby, was, according to Nigel Calder, greenlighted for sometime in 2010. Svensmark told me this week that funding and space for this have become problematic. He has had to be patient before, and will no doubt weather the delay well, pun not intended.
The Hadron accelerator itself was not slated to be used but another part of the CERN facility.
JAFAC (19:13:22) :
how does the expansion and contraction of the upper atmosphere due to the interaction with the solar wind affect lower atmosphere temperatures?
It does not.
Basic physics is that an expanding gas cools; and earth’s gaseous atmosphere expands when put under less pressure from the solar wind (as evidenced by the increased drag on the ISS). Are the effects of this expansion (and eventual contraction) too small to affect the lower troposphere’s temperature?
If you heat something it expands. And that is what is happening. The ISS is seeing the atmosphere coming up from below as the upper atmosphere heats. The heat does not propagate down to the troposphere where we are, as hot air rises rather than sinking.
” Svensmark’s lab results have still not yet to be backed up by scientific concensus using real world results, it’s definitely a case of if you want to believe then it carries more weight. ”
At least he’s done lab work, what has the IPCC done?
Leif Svalgaard (21:30:16) :
The ISS is seeing the atmosphere coming up from below as the upper atmosphere heats. The heat does not propagate down to the troposphere where we are, as hot air rises rather than sinking.
Hi Leif. The only place I know to look at upper atmosphere temps is here http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ , which shows the two upper layers of the atmosphere cooling significantly in the past 24 months. Are there measurements taken of layers of the atmosphere above 10 mb and 5 mb?
Harold Ambler (22:00:46) :
which shows the two upper layers of the atmosphere cooling significantly in the past 24 months. Are there measurements taken of layers of the atmosphere above 10 mb and 5 mb?
There must be. Keep on hunting. Perhaps somebody else has a handy reference…
Here is some info on the atmosphere http://san.hufs.ac.kr/~gwlee/session1/layers.html
I would have liked to enquire of them what they thought of all the sunpots since end of May 2008 all coming near the ebb of both Planetary A index and Solar Wind Velocity, and dying at the bottom.
This particular behavior is all that the Sun has to offer right now.
“how does the expansion and contraction of the upper atmosphere due to the interaction with the solar wind affect lower atmosphere temperatures?”
Greenhouse gases (including water vapor) exist in the upper atmosphere and depending on conditions and height, either reflect or trap solar energy. Any change in temperature would have some effect on those processes.
Steven J thanks for the link http://web-app.usc.edu/ws/eo2/calendar/32/event/867043. I went to the lecture by Dr. Keith Lockitch and Dr. Willie Soon. Dr. Lockitch discussed the political side of the global warming and Dr. Soon discussed the technical side of global warming. Dr. Soon expressed that in his 18 years of solar study he did not see that CO2 produced by humans was the driving force in warming or cooling of the planet. Dr. Lockitch expressed that the actions to avert the ‘catastrophe’ of global warming would most certainly be a real catastrophe for humans. During the question and answer Anthony Watts name came up and Dr. Soon spoke very highly of Anthony.
The most troubling commentary came from a professor of Physics in attendance. He said that many professors were afraid to speak out against global warming because of the political repercussions. Much like the NASA people that tow the Hansen line. Mr. Hansen’s name came up as well but I will not report as it may have been something I said, or not. We need more lectures/ presentations like this to let people see that the debate is not over.
Leif Svalgaard (21:30:16) :
“The heat does not propagate down to the troposphere where we are, as hot air rises rather than sinking.”
Oh, oh, oh. What about back radiation, that ingenious quantum mechanical mechanism that induces global warming?
sorry I had “tongue firmly in cheek” as the last line of the above post, but it was with < and it took it for html and ignored it.