Via Roger Pielke Sr. climatescience blog:
At the December 2008 NRC meeting “Detection and Attribution of Solar Forcing on Climate” [see] there was extensive criticism by Gavin Schmidt and others on the research of Nicola Scafetta with respect to solar climate forcings. He was not, however, invited to that December meeting.
There is now a new paper that he has published that needs to be refuted or supported by other peer reviewed literature (rather than comments in a closed NRC meeting in which the presentors would not share their powerpoint talks).
The new paper is
Scafetta N., R. C. Willson (2009), ACRIM-gap and TSI trend issue resolved using a surface magnetic flux TSI proxy model, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L05701, doi:10.1029/2008GL036307.
The abstract reads
“The ACRIM-gap (1989.5-1991.75) continuity dilemma for satellite TSI observations is resolved by bridging the satellite TSI monitoring gap between ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 results with TSI derived from Krivova et al.’s (2007) proxy model based on variations of the surface distribution of solar magnetic flux. ‘Mixed’ versions of ACRIM and PMOD TSI composites are constructed with their composites’ original values except for the ACRIM gap, where Krivova modeled TSI is used to connect ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 results. Both ‘mixed’ composites demonstrate a significant TSI increase of 0.033%/decade between the solar activity minima of 1986 and 1996, comparable to the 0.037% found in the ACRIM composite. The finding supports the contention of Willson (1997) that the ERBS/ERBE results are flawed by uncorrected degradation during the ACRIM gap and refutes the Nimbus7/ERB ACRIM gap adjustment Fröhlich and Lean (1998) employed in constructing the PMOD.”
A key statement in the conclusion reads
“This finding has evident repercussions for climate change and solar physics. Increasing TSI between 1980 and 2000 could have contributed significantly to global warming during the last three decades [Scafetta and West, 2007, 2008]. Current climate models [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007] have assumed that the TSI did not vary significantly during the last 30 years and have therefore underestimated the solar contribution and overestimated the anthropogenic contribution to global warming.”
Interestingly, TSI has been on a slight downtrend in the past few years as we get closer to solar minimum. The graph below is from the ACRIM project page.
Click for a large image
It remains to be seen if we have hit the minimum yet.
A Glossary of terms would be helpful.
Exactly what is TSI ?
Looked at the TSI data from the ACRIM 1, 2, and 3 instruments which covers 1980 to present. This data if my adjustments were correct (the three instruments vary a lot more among themselves than the solar cycle variations in the data) shows that there as been a slight decrease in TSI of -0.014±0.002 W/m2/yr over that time period and a rise in the average temperature of +0.0127±0.0025°C/yr according to the UAH data. 30 years is to short a time to prove anything but the data does not look overwhelming for the TSI having a major effect on surface temperature at the levels of variation we are seeing now.
See http://web.me.com/wally/Site/Wallys_Climate_Blog/Entries/2009/3/14_Total_Solar_Irradiance.html for my plots and explanations of data adjustments.
TSI = total solar irradiance.
DJ,
Here are some temperature trends for you:
click1
click2
click3
There are your trends. Happy now? Or are you gonna move the goal posts as usual?
Pamela Gray (09:36:20) :
> I seriously doubt there will be a million man march.
I bet you didn’t know that after the original Million Man March, there
was going to be a follow-up called the Million Microbe March. Sadly,
someone made a mistake and autoclaved the wrong Petri dish.
Here’s Bob Tisdale’s graph of temperature trends: click
Notice how the trend line tracks a brightening sun: click
And another trend line from 1980: click
See, DJ? There’s a debate going on. You just don’t like it.
You know, perhaps the thread earlier, about NASA saying cycle 24 was ended was wrong headed.
If you believe there is another Sun speck, go to the SOHO magnetograph. I could arguably say there are two cycle 23 Sun-specks, although not visible in the visible band….or are they just confused, premature, cycle 25 specks???? 🙂
Smokey (16:39:18) :
Here’s Bob Tisdale’s graph of temperature trends: click
Notice how the trend line tracks a brightening sun: click
And another trend line from 1980: click
See, DJ? There’s a debate going on. You just don’t like it.
Even Bob knows that the Lean2000 TSI is obsolete, so DJ cannot ‘see’ that a debate is going on. Perhaps you will also learn that TSI did not behave as in your 2nd ‘click’. Like it or not 🙂
Leif:
I’m reading Micheals/Balling book “Climate of Extremes”. In it they are discussing the difference between the warming of ~1910-1945 and ~1979 – 2000.
They include two charts. About the 1910-1939 of which they say: it “shows very little change in the trend of temperatures from the coldest to the warmest nights”
About the 1979-1997 chart they say “notice how the coldest nights are warming up, much more than any others. This is the way greenhouse warming is supposed to work…..”
“We are not saying that the sun has had no influence on recent temperatures, but rather that the solar influence was clearly much greater during the warming of the early 20th century.”
This seems to contradict what you have been saying.
My thoughts are – is this any type of proof that the sun had an influence in the early part of the 20th century – ie. the different pattern of warming?
I wonder if people see a pattern which agrees with their hypothesis and they don’t bother to think about other mechanisms that might potentially cause a similar pattern.
Sorry I don’t know how to show the charts but could send them to you.
Any thoughts on this? I’m not making any assumptions.
Leif, Stephen, Joel, Nasif, et al,
I appreciate the effort you all appear to put into your research and analyses, but one thing continues to be clear as I read these posts. As I have posted in the past, the vast myriad of variables, many of which are yet unidentified, and the fact that the variability of many or perhaps most that are known has yet to be determined, clearly means THE SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED NOR WILL IT BE ANY TIME SOON!!! But keep working on it folks. You do make this site so very interesting.
I just hate to see politicians trying to make decisions that impact the health, wealth and well being of billions of people based on what many erroneously believe is settled science.
Leif,
I did not know that TSI chart was obsolete. But you da man when it comes to solar knowledge, so I defer to you.
Do you have a similar but more up to date chart that I can add to my collection? Thanks in advance.
Well in my quick look at the ACRIM data up comments a bit, I set the solar cycle minimum of ACRIM 1 and 2 equal to adjust the data. Now that I have read the paper it appears what they are measuring is the change in the TSI at the minimums to get their +0.045 W/m2/yr change in TSI a quantity I set to zero. Having now read the paper It looks OK to me but my lack of knowledge in this area does not make me a fair judge of the arguments.
How much this small change in TSI would effect global temperatures is a good question. The trend within a solar cycle is about 1.5 W/m2 during a half cycle or a rate of about 0.3 W/m2/yr. The surface temperatures do not track well with this larger change in flux I’m not sure that the much smaller trend would have enough effect to be seen over 30 years.
Evidence suggests otherwise. TSI a hundred years ago was no different from what it has been the last decade, but temperatures were, so “where is the beef”?
Leif, my point was that the global mean temperature as compiled by the likes of GISS and Hadley is not primarily a global signal resulting from a global effect whether that be TSI, CO2, GCR or whatever. It is the average of local, regional and global effects, with the first 2 likely predominating.
Therefore any attempt to find a global cause for the (whole of the) land surface temperature record will fail, because one doesn’t exist.
What happened around 1990?
Chinese industrial production took off, followed by India. At the same time Ex-Soviet Union and Eastern Europe industrial production collapsed.
Easily the largest regional effects on temperatures, primarily via aerosols, of the last century. I would be very surprised if significant divergences between TSI and surface temperatures weren’t found following 1990.
Some Comments on Comments I Liked:
anna v (07:09:53) said : OT another cycle twenty three tiny tim has formed.
WHAT? WHERE? DID I MISS IT?? I am starting to post the now-mensual sunspots in my office, and I sure didn’t want to miss one. Really, I can’t find it.
tarpon (07:51:56) said:
With the billions being wasted trying to prove a hoax, why not do the simple science stuff first. It would be interesting to see what the results would be if only surface stations that still could achieve accreditation were used.
I AGREE COMPLETELY. OCCAM’S says look for the simplest fix first.
Parenthetically THIS REMINDS ONE of the DDT Scare of the 1960’s; everybody got frothed up and banned the stuff completely. The chemical companies gleefully cooperated, since DDT was off-patent, and other, less effective, PATENTED pesticides could be substituted for higher profits (ANY idiot could make DDT). Consequently, DDT was banned worldwide and disease (esp. malaria) in Africa skyrocketed. No need to get hyperbolic about the deaths there due to this decision suffice it to say it’s almost always stupid to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
In the AGW case, the oil companies realized that only THEY have the wherewithal to sequester HUGE amounts of CO2 quickly (by injecting it into depleted oil & gas reservoirs; “CO2 flood” is a well characterized but expensive “tertiary” production technique. Look it up), and they calculate that the gains (including increased oil & gas production essentially for FREE) would more than offset the Carbon Taxes.
As we say in Texas, y’all are fixin’ to be had, people. Again.
Joel Shore (10:13:55) :
And technically, no subject in science is settled since science is inductive and can never prove things to absolute certainty. After all, there are still people trying to understand gravity…particularly how to unify what we understand about gravity with quantum mechanics. However, I don’t think many people would argue that we should not base our public policy and other decisions on what we do believe we understand about gravity.”
Joel, I assume that you aren’t an engineer or an “applied” scientist (e.g. industrial chemist, etc). What you are describing is the difference between “pure”or “theoretical” science and “applied” or “engineering” sciences.
The WHOLE problem with AGW is that folks have carried the AGW THEORY, whole cloth, across the divide between theoretical and applied science before it was “ready”, that is, actually proven with a reasonable confidnece interval, predictive, and economically quantifiable.
AGW models remind me of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) models for erosive slurry flows. The vector maps look pretty, but if you ask the CFD folks to predict WHERE a pipe or valve will erode, they can’t tell. If you look at an eroded part next to the model, it becomes obvious what the vectors were trying to tell you, but then the next one isn’t predictive EITHER. We just don’t understand the cumulative effects (things like cushioning effect, angle of incidence, particle “sharpness” & friability, stuff like that). A lot like AGW, I’d say.
When an AGW model actually (a) relies on good data and (b) actually PREDICTS climate within a reasonable confidence interval, THEN we should START talking about the cost-benefit ratio of different policies. In the meantime, suggest you buy coal stocks, they’re really really cheap.
Smokey: You wrote, “Here’s Bob Tisdale’s graph of temperature trends…”
That graph illustrated the insignificant effect that changes in TSI have on Global temperature anomaly. Here’s a gif animation that better illustrates the difference.
http://i42.tinypic.com/k50pd0.jpg
That gif is from my post “Reproducing Global Temperature Anomalies With Natural Variables.”
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/reproducing-global-temperature.html
Regards
Thank you Bob Tisdale, I’ve seen all of your charts and picked the one I used to support my post.
I consider you one of the premier climate analysts, in part because of your use of your unique charts. They greatly help to clarify the subject.
Steve Hempell (16:56:23) :
“We are not saying that the sun has had no influence on recent temperatures, but rather that the solar influence was clearly much greater during the warming of the early 20th century.”
It’s that word ‘clearly’ that is bothersome. why is that so ‘clear’. What quantitative measure is there? difference in correlation coefficient? number of data points? error bars? what?
Smokey (16:57:07) :
Do you have a similar but more up to date chart that I can add to my collection? Thanks in advance.
There is one at the top of this very page…
You can find the numbers here: http://www.leif.org/research entry numbers 770 and 730.
Philip_B (17:21:24) :
Therefore any attempt to find a global cause for the (whole of the) land surface temperature record will fail, because one doesn’t exist.
Tell that to all the people that are convinced that there is strong evidence for global changes.
Leif Svalgaard (16:46:58) :
Even Bob knows that the Lean2000 TSI is obsolete, so DJ cannot ’see’ that a debate is going on. Perhaps you will also learn that TSI did not behave as in your 2nd ‘click’. Like it or not 🙂
That’s why I included your database in my assessment. However, when I considered only amplitudes, there are not substantial differences. The change is 1.32 W/m^2.
Leif,
And if that were the basis for TSI, then TSI for SC13 [a hundred years ago] would also be similar to TSI during the last decade, and if that in turn drives the temperature, then the temperature back then should also be similar to 1996-2008.
I don’t know if I can agree with that comment. You are starting your earlier temperature at a lower baseline than your current cycle so the temperature could never be similar to the temperature of the current cycle. However, the real question is: ‘is the RATE of temperature INCREASE similar for the 2 cycles?’ That would be a better comparison of the 2 cycles than just seeing if the absolute temperatures were similar.
Leif; did the temperature 100 years ago in SC 13 start from the same base? If the starting point was different there would be no reason to expect the end point ot be the same. Just asking.
Yes, -273 degrees Centigrade.
Funny, but a little snarky. I think you know what he meant.
Pete (19:58:31) :
You are starting your earlier temperature at a lower baseline than your current cycle so the temperature could never be similar to the temperature of the current cycle.
The concept of a baseline is not useful here, because TSI and solar activity in general return to the same level at every single minimum ‘forever’, so the ‘baseline’ is simply that minimum value, provided solar activity was the major driver. If on the other hand there are other ‘sources’ or conditions that drive climate then you can have a varying ‘baseline’, but then solar activity is no longer the major driver, so the discussion is moot.
I’d like, with the full awareness, knowledge and consent of Anthony Watts and owners of this blog, to introduce a data that is including in Paleobiology and that apparently has been despised systematically since the 90s in almost all debates related to changes in Earth’s climate. I’m talking on the natural fluctuations of temperature and natural climate changes that we expected for the Holocene Period. Many modern authors have revised the subject, reaching to the same conclusions that our science grandparents, with slight modifications. The last revisions have been based on isotopes and iron stained grains, which reflect the intensity of TSI during specific periods of time:
Bond, Gerard et al. Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene. Science 7 December 2001: Vol. 294. no. 5549, pp. 2130 – 2136.
Jablonski, D., Erwin, D. H. and Lipps, J. H. Evolutionary Paleobiology. 1996. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, Ill.
Broecker, Wallace S. Was the Medieval Warm Period Global? Science. 23 February 2001. Vol. 291. No. 5508, pp. 1497 – 1499.
From those studies, we expect a change of temperature of about 6 °C. Climate changes would be the resultant from this cipher as long as that fluctuation is reached and during the normal increase. Anyway, any climate change would be natural.
Leif
As I understand Michael’s argument it is simply the difference in the warming pattern that is the indication that it is the sun that has the greater influence in the early 20th century.
I have sent you the pages of the book. The second paragraph on page 19 may make the context clearer also.
Now just for the sake of argument, if the sun is causing a greater portion of the warming in the early 20th century, how do we know what pattern it might cause since we don’t have a plausible mechanism for the sun’s influence?
Nasif Nahle (20:59:55) :
The last revisions have been based on isotopes and iron stained grains, which reflect the intensity of TSI during specific periods of time:
The association with TSI is based on what?
I have discussed this with the late Gerard Bond many times [here is a nice picture of one of our discussions [ http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/sns/2003/sns_dec_2003.pdf page 4], and he does not show> that the Sun is respomsible, but instead assumes that it must be [the “what else” argument]:
Bond, Gerard et al. Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene. Science 7 December 2001: Vol. 294. no. 5549, pp. 2130 – 2136.
I thought AGW also relied at least partly on larger fluctuations of TSI in order to account for the portion of the upward temperature trend prior to around the mid twentieth century, so what happens when that gets removed?
Stephen Wilde (13:31:40) :
Basil (11:50:14) :
“Stephen Wilde (11:35:02) :
I agree…. there is a way to find out some of the correlation.
go to radio shack and get a capacitor (electrolytic) value of 1000 or more at 25v -50v
and a bunch of resistors mostly low values.
watts=volts*amps and volts = amps^2 * resistance
now you need a batterie/s and a transformer ( low voltage 1-3v) and a diode.
breadboard is nice but not necessary ,
print out leif’s TSI chart and match his values like tsi 1.635 at its lowest point
then add to the battery voltage with resistors, then add the AC(transformer) resistor bridge on top of the battery resistor/s ( you get close and then use resistor pot’s for more accuracy )
use your volt ohm meter to verify outputs and wattage change on your load resistor.
now after all this is done and checked . get a digital temp. one with a probe like indoor out door etc. glue it to the load resistor. first read it with just the battery only. the add the AC bridge. is it hotter? how much? .1? more?
the AC is what shows up on Leif’s graph. this is what “adds” to any “heating”
Very basic electronic circuits. simple eh?
graph your results thanks
hareynolds (17:30:35) :
It was a real tiny tim, it did not last more than 12 hours and it was not bigger than the pixel . Some people on solarcycle24 also saw it :). Now onlythe magnetic footprint shows. It was from the one on the left, seen at the time I posted anna v (07:09:53yesterday) :