This offers renewed hope for Svensmark’s theory of cosmic ray modulation of earth’s cloud cover. Here is an interesting correlation published just yesterday in GRL.
Cosmic rays detected deep underground reveal secrets of the upper atmosphere
Watch the video animation here (MPEG video will play in your media player)
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and led by scientists from the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), this remarkable study shows how the number of high-energy cosmic-rays reaching a detector deep underground, closely matches temperature measurements in the upper atmosphere (known as the stratosphere). For the first time, scientists have shown how this relationship can be used to identify weather events that occur very suddenly in the stratosphere during the Northern Hemisphere winter. These events can have a significant effect on the severity of winters we experience, and also on the amount of ozone over the poles – being able to identify them and understand their frequency is crucial for informing our current climate and weather-forecasting models to improve predictions.
Working in collaboration with a major U.S.-led particle physics experiment called MINOS (managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), the scientists analysed a four-year record of cosmic-ray data detected in a disused iron-mine in the U.S. state of Minnesota. What they observed was a strikingly close relationship between the cosmic-rays and stratospheric temperature – this they could understand: the cosmic-rays, known as muons are produced following the decay of other cosmic rays, known as mesons. Increasing the temperature of the atmosphere expands the atmosphere so that fewer mesons are destroyed on impact with air, leaving more to decay naturally to muons. Consequently, if temperature increases so does the number of muons detected.
What did surprise the scientists, however, were the intermittent and sudden increases observed in the levels of muons during the winter months. These jumps in the data occurred over just a few days. On investigation, they found these changes coincided with very sudden increases in the temperature of the stratosphere (by up to 40 oC in places!). Looking more closely at supporting meteorological data, they realised they were observing a major weather event, known as a Sudden Stratospheric Warming. On average, these occur every other year and are notoriously unpredictable. This study has shown, for the first time, that cosmic-ray data can be used effectively to identify these events.
Lead scientist for the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Dr Scott Osprey said: “Up until now we have relied on weather balloons and satellite data to provide information about these major weather events. Now we can potentially use records of cosmic-ray data dating back 50 years to give us a pretty accurate idea of what was happening to the temperature in the stratosphere over this time. Looking forward, data being collected by other large underground detectors around the world, can also be used to study this phenomenon.”
Dr Giles Barr, co-author of the study from the University of Oxford added: “It’s fun sitting half a mile underground doing particle physics. It’s even better to know that from down there, we can also monitor a part of the atmosphere that is otherwise quite tricky to measure”.
Interestingly, the muon cosmic-ray dataset used in this study was collected as a by-product of the MINOS experiment, which is designed to investigate properties of neutrinos, but which also measures muons originating high up in the atmosphere, as background noise in the detector. Having access to these data has led to the production of a valuable dataset of benefit to climate researchers.
Professor Jenny Thomas, deputy spokesperson for MINOS from University College London said “The question we set out to answer at MINOS is to do with the basic properties of fundamental particles called neutrinos which is a crucial ingredient in our current model of the Universe, but as is often the way, by keeping an open mind about the data collected, the science team has been able to find another, unanticipated benefit that aids our understanding of weather and climate phenomena.”
Dr Osprey commented: “This study is a great example of what can be done through international partnerships and cross-disciplinary research. One can only guess what other secrets are waiting to be revealed.”
h/t to Ron de Haan
“Thus greenhouse gasses intercept LWIR that would otherwise escape to space, and either re-irradiate this (to be “captured” by other LWIR-absorbing molecules largely) or pass on the energy to other molecules in the atmosphere via molecular collisions.”
Technically accurate, however “re-irradiate”(sic) is of no importance between OLR capture and addition of this thermal energy to the kinetic energy of the atmosphere surrounding the GHG molecule.
40% of solar TSI is IR, 1% of which reaches the ground. Of the energy transferred by conduction from the atmosphere most results in evaporation where the change of state removes 70 calories per gram of H20. Now there’s your thermal transfer.
Be nice to Nasif, he appears to be your audience.
Nasif Nahle (09:00:23) :
No they don’t. Again you’re misinterpreting the paper. The fact that the muon flux detected underground increases has got nothing to do with the size of the flux of CR in the context of the experimental data described. The detectable muon flux increases as a result of an increase in the temperature of the stratosphere. Why not read the paper carefully? Here’s a relevant excerpt:
There are two mechanisms by which the condition of the atmosphere affects the muon rate. Firstly, an increase in temperature causes the atmosphere to expand so muons are produced higher up and therefore have a larger probability to decay before being detected. Secondly, the mesons may interact (and thereby be lost) as well as decay. As the temperature increases, the probability of interaction becomes smaller because the local atmospheric density decreases, so more mesons decay, causing an increase in the muon rate. In deep underground detectors where muons with a high surface energy are measured, the second effect dominates and this causes a positive correlation between temperature and muon rate
Foinavon… You said “it’s not about ‘the thermal properties of CO2’.” Absorptivity, emissivity, absorbency, emittancy, etc., are not thermal properties of CO2?
Regarding your first request, I’ll give you three examples. The emissivity of CO2 at its current Pp is 0.001, not 0.75. The CO2 Total Emittancy (α) is 0.423 W/m^2, not 5.35 W/m^2. The capability of CO2 for absorbing LWIR is 34 %, not 100 %. The formula to obtain ∆T includes the environmental standard temperature, which is 300.15 K, not the BB temperature (255 K).
gary gulrud (07:14:40)/09:52:41
An audience of at least two surely gary. Else why do you keep responding to my posts?
Yes “technically true” as in “true”. Of course the re-radiation of “captured” OLR (Outgoing Longwave Radiation) is a component of atmospheric radiative physics. The IR must eventually be emitted to space (in order for radiative equilibrium to be maintained). Since IR emitted from the Earth to the atmosphere is largely in the direction of space, whereas the emission of captured OLR by CO2 (or water vapour or methane or ozone) is directionally isotropic, the energy is retained more efficiently in the atmosphere. Thus for any height in the atmosphere less IR is being emitted into space, and as the greenhouse gas concentration increases, the radiation to space occurs progressively at higher and colder regions of the atmosphere on average, and is thus less efficient. The layers of the atmosphere right down to the surface must therefore warm up to radiate sufficiently that radiative equilibrium is recovered.
It’s not obvious what the point of that is. A proportion of TSI reaches the ground/oceans. The surface and oceans are warmed as a result of the forcing which, of course, is supplemented by the greenhouse effect (else there wouldn’t be any liquid water on the earth’s surface). Some water evaporates from the surface and is transferred into the atmosphere (this is a means by which significant amounts of thermal energy is transferred from the equator to the higher latitudes, for example). In general if the solar output is constant (constant TSI), and the greenhouse gas concentrations also constant, the earth’s surface will equilibrate at a steady temperature (with some fluctuations around the equilibrium due to stochastic and cyclic variations in the climate system).
Now enhance the greenhouse effect by enhancing the concentration of greenhouse gases. The net forcing is increased. The surface eventually settles at a new (warmer) equilibrium temperature.
It’s not “ambiguous” if the thing under consideration is indeed well-understood. The fact that you might not understanding something very well doesn’t mean it’s not “well-understood”!
Nasif Nahle (10:10:03) :
One has to be a little bit careful in considering individual molecules like CO2. One can’t really consider that they have “thermal properties”. The don’t have a temperature, for example, which is a collective property of atoms/molecules in a substance or a medium.
What a CO2 molecule has is an atomic and electronic structure, and molecular orbitals within which reside the bonding electrons in either ground or electronically excited states. These define the spectral absorption properties of CO2. It’s helpful to consider the greenhouse effect in this manner, since it then becomes very clear what is occurring, and why CO2 absorbs long wave IR emitted from the earth’s surface and O2 and N2 don’t for example, how vibrationally excited states are achieved and their energies, the energies of the emissions of IR and the transfer of vibrational energies to other molecules in the atmosphere by molecular collisions..
I’ve no idea what those numbers refer to. Who used them “incorrectly” and where are the “correct” definitions defined?! It’s not obvious to me that “emissivity” and certainly not “emittancy” (doesn’t that refer to radiation from a surface?) are particularly relevant to the greenhouse properties of atmospheric gasses. There’s also the possibility that you might be confusing the values of these parameters in a context that is not relevant to the context of isolated molecules in a predominantly N2/O2 atmosphere whose temperature and pressure varies with altitude and so on.
Can you refer me to an authoritative review/text on this subject?
Foinavon… Question eluded: Are those not thermal properties of CO2?
“The [IR] must eventually be emitted to space (in order for radiative equilibrium to be maintained). ”
The ‘energy’ must be emitted, and nearer the edge of space in the thermosphere, at an entirely different temperature where CO2 is even less representative and all gas emissivities have risen.
H2O evaporation transports heat fronm the surface and condensation deposits it high in the troposphere.
Re-radiation, as opposed to partial transmission? Perhaps you have empirical measurements not relying on spectroscopy?
Nasif Nahle (11:52:53)
Not really Nasif. I explained why in [foinavon (11:23:24)], so you can hardly say I eluded your question! The point is that single molecules don’t really have “thermal properties”. A single molecule can’t have a temperature and most properties that can be described as “thermal” similarly apply to collections of molecules.
The problem with the lax use of language is that it can lead to the inappropriate application of properties (like emittancy) that are only really relevant to collections of molecules (or collections of molecules under specific circumstances as in a surface). In the case of greenhouse gases, we are dealing with isolated molecules under quite specific circumstances (predominant N2/O2 atmosphere, specific vertical temperature and pressure profiles, and so on). It’s not obvious to me that properties like emittancy are relevant under these circumstances, and if they are, that the values of these properties obtained under one set of circumstances are applicable to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
That’s why I would like to see some specific examples of where you consider the properties you describe (emittancy, emissivity, “capability of CO2 for absorbing LWIR”) are incorrectly, and correctly, applied as you suggest in [Nasif Nahle (10:10:03)]. Since I’ve never come across the application of these properties to greenhouse gases under atmospheric conditions, I’d also like to see an authoritative paper/review/text on the subject.
foinavon :
I’m sure Nasif would agree we respect your knowledge of ‘Atmospheric Science’ but have grave reservations about the ‘science’ itself, having parted company with orthodox physics some 50 years past.
I’d like to just outline our position a bit, for clarity’s sake, not pretention:
‘Emittance’ and ‘absorptance’ follow from Beer’s Law originating in 1798 and reaching its present form in the late 1850s, before Maxwell, Planck, Bohr, Pauli, et al. Astronomer’s in particular made use of it to correct the apparent magnitude of a star for signal attenuation on its path through the atmosphere to the observer. The algorithm is accurate enough for the logrithmic scale of magnitude.
Beer’s models the interaction of light with matter as Newton’s corpuscles being absorbed or diffused by atoms in fluids. As Feynman details in “QED”, Princeton, 1985, this heuristic is out of date. He develops a new one using lights transmission through glass.
The electromagnetic field of a light wave causes any number of electrons in its path to oscillate, occasionally resulting in the exchange of a photon. Beginning with a pane of glass a few molecules thick and repeatedly adding this thickness to the pane we find the light transmitted moves by steps from 4% up to 16% and back down, oscillating in magnitude. Lights interaction with matter is probabalistic and results in various materials and configurations must be empirically derived.
Now turn Beer’s around, rather than merely seeking an effect on signal strength and ask what does it tell us about the interactions of a 15u signal on its route to the ground or otherwise?
Does it tell us how much of the signal was scattered or absorbed or transmitted or re-radiated, and at another wavelength? Emittance is taken as basically ( 1 – absorptance ) which is clearly wrong in this application.
A second issue regards Kirchoff’s Law(“improved” by Stewart, Priebe, Planck, even Hilbert had a go before ending with Einstein). His law is supported by a logical proof, “In the case of a body in thermal equilibrium the energy absorbed equals the energy emitted”, ’emissivity’ equals ‘absorptivity’. The proof employs a plane solid cavity as an illustration for empirical verification as if one were needed for this tautology.
The problem comes when this law is assumed to be a property of matter, as though absorption of a quantum must be followed by emission of that same quantum at a subsequent point. If the body is to remain in equilibrium the exchange must be simultaneous.
If we describe a box in the air above, a meter on a side, we understand that a thermal, IR, flux constantly passes thru it. We can stipulate that the contents are ‘in thermal equilibrium’ meaning the IR flux entering from below is matched by that exiting above.
Now measure the temperature and observe that is has changed, say risen. What just happened? Absorptivity exceeded emissivity. Is this a violation of Kirchoff’s law? On the contrary, we would need to describe a sphere 20,000 km on a side enclosing the Earth to reasonably avoid this risk.
Moving on, Einstein’s black body is an ideal whose pattern of emission is a curve graphing its temperature against the wavelength emitted. All real materials have a curve(of more or less the same shape) displaced above and to the right of the black body. They begin emitting at a higher temperature and at higher wavelength.
The material’s experimentally derived ’emissivity’ is a dimensionless constant expressing this relationship. Asphalt, at 0.99 or so has a similar curve on the same page depending on scale. Green leaves, at 0.94, probably starts on the same page. Water, at 0.58, begins and ends on following pages.
Now we come to compressible fluids. They possess a distinct curve at every pressure of interest. CO2’s emissivity at 300ppm and STP is 9.3*10^-4. Its graph begins in the parking lot. Whereas at 600 degrees C it has risen to 0.07.
Now the emissivity is directly related to the strength of interaction, the time required for it to occur, for an oscillation of an electron to begin and a photon delivered. Asphalt emits a quantum ‘almost’ as quickly as receiving it.
Moreover, the oceans have 1000 times the heat capacity of our atmosphere and 500 times the emissivity. Were we to momentarily forget Carnot, it’s still impossible to seriously believe, especially as a scientist schooled in the physics, that the atmosphere can heat the surface by back-radiation.
Finally, regarding the ‘sciences’ last resort, retarding the release of energy to space MSU results are not promising. The tropical tropopause is not the required 1.2 times the surface temp, or climbing to meet that value, nor is the stratosphere cooling as a result.
If I ever find Hansen’s transfer function derivations we’ll add them to our list.
Errata: “higher wavelength”, real materials begin emitting at high temps and shorter wavelengths.
gary gulrud (08:27:41) :
foinavon :
I’m sure Nasif would agree we respect your knowledge of ‘Atmospheric Science’ but have grave reservations about the ’science’ itself, having parted company with orthodox physics some 50 years past.
Time to go back to school and learn some physics of gases, if our atmosphere was glass some of your points might have merit.
The material’s experimentally derived ‘emissivity’ is a dimensionless constant expressing this relationship. Asphalt, at 0.99 or so has a similar curve on the same page depending on scale. Green leaves, at 0.94, probably starts on the same page. Water, at 0.58, begins and ends on following pages.
The earth emits in the IR, water has an emissivity of 0.94-0.99 in the appropriate wavelength range.
“Time to go back to school and learn some physics of gases”
Actually my EM Fields, Optics and Thermal all date from the early 90s. That was a pure science approach with Maxwell equations and vector calculus. Most of the applied stuff like Wave Guides, Power Transmission, etc. were late 80s. The Nuclear, Spectroscopy, and Mechanics are dated, it’s true.
” if our atmosphere was glass some of your points might have merit”
Never heard of Richard Feynman, he of the eponymous particle diagram, of the Challenger Investigation Panel, lover of Siberian throat music? The book is a classic treatment, short and accessible to the intellectually curious.
“The earth emits in the IR”
Never denied it, do you mean ‘exclusively’.
“water has an emissivity of 0.94-0.99 in the appropriate wavelength range”
My values are easily Googled, one reason for using them so the suspicious may verify for themselves. Hottel 1942 has an extensive list which has been repeatedly verified over the years. ‘Experimental’ measurement means with plane-solid cavity and calorimeter, not spectroscopy with known sample comparison. The CO2 0.07 at 600 degrees C listed above came from a DOD confirmation of Hottel’s work and gave H2O as 0.14.
One can go look at a major U site and peruse programs in Climate Science, for example Dr. Wegman’s George Mason. One of three programs provides a Physics concentration. The required courses are not as impressive as my preparation, thank you.
Now could I teach, can I derive freely? Not to save my life. But I ask you, why would the pre-eminent climate scientist in the world go to a second-tier school, remain at that school for his PhD, jump straight to NASA rather than get a post-doc with a top PI, and not fight for an assistant professorship?
Yeah his career choices are turning out pretty lucrative but I find a likely explanation in: There just isn’t any talent in your field. You need to get out of the echo chamber.
David Porter (15:01:42) : If you don’t see it the way I have observed then I accept that. I will mind my tongue in future.
I think it was more a ‘tone’ issue than a ‘content’ issue. I’ve been hanging out here for a while and you get to know the ‘regulars’. Even the ‘regulars’ from ‘the team’. There are clear behavioural traits that stand out. A psych ‘mind print’ that you identified. It’s more the imagery used to describe it that was a bit, er, edgy.
Are they paid or are they just vigorous True Believers from the echo chamber at RC? There is no way to know without tracking back their IP’s or phishing them a bit. But the fact is it doesn’t really matter. They are who they are.
You get used to them after a while and it’s kind of like having a SPAM filter. Oh, the Nigerian Prince again… Sometimes it’s worth it to see what their newest argument is, sometimes it tightens up your own understanding of your own points by having a pitching machine to bat against.
About the only thing that I find bothersome anymore is the constant pointing at the same old RC ‘computer models prove’ papers as though they meant something and the incessant appeals to authority. The credential waving is just mindless. (It doesn’t matter what credential you wave: was the work any good?!) That and the complete inability to go ‘off script’. There are a dozen flat out stellar problems with AGW that they have no answer for. What happens? Not a peep. Not a sound. Dead air.
So just learn how to read the ‘negative space’ of what they say. Watch the questions put to them that are scrupulously ignored, not even acknowledged as existing. Thats the ‘tell’. Those are the nuggets that makes their presence worth it. Their noise and volume can be a bother, but what they don’t say speaks even louder to the truth…
An example? On 2 or 3 threads I’ve put it to ‘The Team’ that GISStemp has a critical flaw. NOTHING. Not a heartbeat of a sound. The flaw is that the last few years – up to ten; are used to create an ‘offset’ that measures the difference between two data sets. GHCN and USHCN – two thermometer series. This ‘offset’ is then subtracted from ALL history of the data. So if a thermometer was changed at Reno in the last 10 years and was found to ‘read high’, that offset would be subtracted from all data going back to 1880 (via an indirect means).
So now I know. They have no answer. It’s golden confirmation to me.
Now I could fantasize that somewhere there’s a dozen folks in a meeting trying to come up with an answer; but most likey it’s just that RC has no talking point in their guide book. But in both cases the answer is still the same: They have confirmed that this is an important flaw in their AGW game.
My suggestion is to learn to read that ‘tell’, then they become an asset to you.
foinavon (11:47:52) :
gary gulrud (07:21:31) The Silurian was the opening of the last super-continent tectonic formation which recurrently gives rise to high global temps.
The point is that the putative cosmic ray flux (CRF)-climate link suggested by Shaviv and Veizer that Greg Goodnight brough to our attention[***] requires that the period under consideration (443-423MYA) was cold. The putative CRF reconstruction resulting from the passage of the solar system through the spiral arms of the galaxy is around its peak in the early Silurian (according to […]Shaviv and Veizer).
Well, at Shaviv’s web site: http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
as I read the graph of spiral arms and ice ages figure 4; that 423-443 MYA is right in the middle of a bottom of the CRF and 1/2 way between two spiral arms.
No need to thank me; glad I could bring it to your attention…
I’ve been watching ozone at:
http://exp-studies.tor.ec.gc.ca/e/ozone/Curr_allmap_g.htm
and it is down all over the globe -10% to -20% except the N. pole that has lit up like it has an electric current making ozone up there.
So does anyone know the geographic map of the stratospheric warming event? Does it map onto the ozone pattern in any way?
Ozone seems to bounce around rather more than I’d expected day to day. Far more than could be explained by slow diffusion or related. It looks a lot like it’s an external driver with a chaotic modulation tossed in.
Is there somewhere to get an aurora map to see if there is some correlation of it to ozone? This thing is just buggin’ me…
“David Porter (15:01:42) : If you don’t see it the way I have observed then I accept that. I will mind my tongue in future.”
Don’t mind it on my account, tho I was eager to kill the ‘chicken little tone’, I apologized on an adjacent thread(Vista is cramping my look ups).
We are not worthy of the ‘big guns’.
Foinavon… You wrote: “The point is that single molecules don’t really have “thermal properties”. A single molecule can’t have a temperature and most properties that can be described as “thermal” similarly apply to collections of molecules.”
Perhaps you’re dismissing statistical thermodynamics. The laws of thermodynamics apply to single molecules as well as to massive collections of molecules. The point is that statistical thermodynamics doesn’t consider macroscopic variables, like P, V, T, etc., but microscopic dimensions. If you wish to understand macroscopic thermodynamics, you must to understand first statistical thermodynamics.
One thing is to say that thermodynamics is easier to apply and understood in macroscopic systems than in microscopic systems, and another very different thing is to think that single molecules have not thermal properties. For example, one single molecule of carbon dioxide absorbs and emits energy. The path between the initial state and the final state of that single molecule absorbing or emitting energy is thermodynamics. The difference is that you have to adjust your observations to the micro-canonical sets. Set provides a concept by which the microscopic properties of the matter can be related to the corresponding macroscopic thermodynamic properties of the complex system.
One of the main confusions that I have detected in your posts is that it seems you think that heat is a substance. Heat is not a substance but energy which flows through the limits between the system and the surroundings . Molecules collide and exchange energy, and every exchange of energy implies a thermal process. I don’t know how you got the conclusion that single molecules have not thermal properties.
With this commentary I give for finished my interventions in this theme, given that we are absolutely out of topic and I won’t waste my time discussing quantum mechanics. There are many books on statistical thermodynamics which clarify the concepts which I have managed in my interventions.
“N. pole that has lit up like it has an electric current making ozone up there.”
Interesting, its certainly not UV, or visible light levels. Could the compacted Ionosphere be a possible cause? I’m making no concessions to Optical Depth.
Nasif Nahle (08:13:36) :
No they don’t Nasif. And how can one possibly apply statistical thermodynamics to a single molecule? That’s exactly the case where one assuredly cannot apply statistical therodynamics. The “statistical” element of “statistical thermodynamics” or “statistical mechanics” relates explicitly to populations of particles.
I don’t think so Nasif. Please point out where I have stated, inferred or hinted that weird notion.
No it’s not thermodynamics. Thermodynamics, like statistical mechanics applies to collections of molecules or particles. When a molecule absorbs a photon (say having the energy in the UV region of the EM spectrum equivalent to that of an electronic transition in the molecule) the molecule shifts to an excited state. That’s quantum mechanics, not thermodynamics. If the molecular transition is a vibrational one, the molecule may re-emit a photon that can be captured by another molecule with appropriate molecular characteristics…more quantum mechanics…or it might lose some of its vibrational energy by molecular collisions with other molecules in its surrounds increasing the kinetic energy of these molecules and thus raising the temperature of that local region of the atmosphere. Of course if we were to analyze the distribution of kinetic energy amongst the population of molecules in a region of the atmosphere we can certainly apply principles of statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamics….
Foinavon… It seems that as you go on your explanation, you become more and more confused. Statistical Thermodynamics is the solution for molecular systems. Point.
Nasif Nahle (11:37:21
Statistical thermodynamics can be applied to a collection of molecules. I don’t think anyone can disagree with that obvious point. But we should also agree that that it is meaningless in relation to single molecules. Otherwise how can one deal with the “statistical” element of “statistical thermodynamics”? Answer me that Nasif….
so your assertion:
The laws of thermodynamics apply to single molecules as well as to massive collections of molecules. is clearly wrong.
Anyway, perhaps at some point you might explain what you consider the relevance of your “argument” is in relation to the subject of this thread!
E.M.Smith (03:13:46)
The putative CRF reconstruction published by Shaviv and Veizer indicates that the CRF flux is at its peak close to 440 MYA (million years ago).
see Figure 2 of:
N.J. Shaviv and J. Veizer (2003) Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate? GSA Today 13, 4-10.
In fact if you look on Shaviv’s web site that you linked to, that’s pretty clearly illustrated in Figure 5 there. Since the point of Shaviv’s model is to infer a link between CRF and global temperature, and since Veizer himself has reassesed the very temperature data use to show a correlation, and now finds that it doesn’t correlate at all during this part of the Silurian, clearly there’s a problem with the hypothesis. Veizer himself now considers that CO2 is a dominant driver of temperature changes in the deep past:
R.E. Carne, J.M. Eiler, J. Veizer et al (2007) “Coupling of surface temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the Palaeozoic era” Nature 449, 198-202
Foinavon:
“Veizer himself has reassesed the very temperature data use to show a correlation, and now finds that it doesn’t correlate at all during this part of the Silurian, clearly there’s a problem with the hypothesis. Veizer himself now considers that CO2 is a dominant driver of temperature changes in the deep past:”
Really? Maybe we should let Veizer speak for himself:
http://blogs.nature.com/nature/journalclub/2007/10/francis_albarede.html
http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20070913.html
Niels A Nielsen (04:26:24)
Well yes. As you Nature journalclub link shows, Veizer considers that CO2 has a strong contribution to paleotemperature variation. He could hardly say otherwise since that’s what his paper shows. Nobody publishes a paper that makes conclusions that one doesn’t actually believe in! I’m not sure why you might think your link suggest otherwise.
If the CRF hypothesis of Shaviv and Veizer requires a correlation between recosnstructed putative CRF and temperature, and a reassessment of the temperature by one of the proposers himself destroys the correlation during a significant part of the period under study, then one might question the reliability of the “correlation”, let alone the hypothesis! Of course no-one would suggest that these are “all-or-nothing” situations. Obviously all of the contributions to temperature variation always apply. Perhaps the putative CRF-temperature does make some contribution. However Veizer has shown that during a major part of the period studied the temperature change is in entirely in the wrong direction for a significant CRF contribution, and seems to match the CO2 levels. Veizer proposes that there is a “Coupling of surface temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the Palaeozoic era”
Is a blog entitled “JunkScience” of any interest whatsoever to science, scientists or policymakers?
Hope you had time to read the link, foinavon. Jan Veizer does not “consider CO2 as the dominant driver of temperature changes in the deep past.” Jan Veizer writes in October 2007: “Momentarily, the “ground truth” geological data 7 argue for a four-fold greenhouse/icehouse climate pattern during the Phanerozoic, as do the 18O-based 6, 8 reconstructions, both consistent more with the alternative scenarios (e.g. celestial 8, 9) than with the two-fold GEOCARB-type 5 causality.”