Quick primer:
Beryllium-10 is an isotope that is a proxy for the sun’s activity. Be10 is produced in the atmosphere by cosmic ray collisions with atoms of oxygen and nitrogen. Beryllium 10 concentrations are linked to cosmic ray intensity which can be a proxy for solar strength.
One way to capture earth’s record of that proxy data is to drill deep ice cores. Greenland, due to having a large and relatively stable deep ice sheet is often the target for drilling ice cores.
Isotopic analysis of the ice in the core can be linked to temperature and global sea level variations. Analysis of the air contained in bubbles in the ice can reveal the palaeocomposition of the atmosphere, in particular CO2 variations. Volcanic eruptions leave identifiable ash layers.
While it sounds simple to analyze, there are issues of ice compression, flow, and other factors that must be taken into consideration when doing reconstructions from such data. I attended a talk at ICCC 09 that showed one of the ice core operations had procedures that left significant contamination issues for CO2. But since Beryllium is rather rare, it doesn’t seem to have the same contamination issues attached. – Anthony
Be-10 and Climate
Guest post by David Archibald
A couple of years ago on Climate Audit, I undertook to do battle with Dr Svalgaard’s invariate Sun using Dye 3 Be10 data. And so it has come to pass. Plotted up and annotated, the Dye 3 data shows the strong relationship between solar activity and climate. Instead of wading through hundreds of papers for evidence of the Sun’s influence on terrestrial climate, all you have to do is look at this graph.
All the major climate minima are evident in the Be10 record, and the cold period at the end of the 19th century. This graph alone demonstrates that the warming of the 20th century was solar-driven.
The end of the Little Ice Age corresponded with a dramatic decrease in the rate of production of Be10, due to fewer galactic cosmic rays getting into the inner planets of the solar system. Fewer galactic cosmic rays got into the inner planets because the solar wind got stronger. The solar wind got stronger because the Sun’s magnetic field got stronger, as measured by the aa Index from 1868.
Thus the recent fall of aa Index and Ap Index to lows never seen before in living memory is of considerable interest. This reminds me of a line out of Aliens: “Stay frosty people!” Well, we won’t have any choice – it will get frosty.
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I knew this post would raise the ire of Dr. Svaalgard. What gets me about life (religion, politics, and this is no different) is that many qualified people can look at the exact same data and come to OPPOSITE conclusions. From my Mathematics background, that’s a real problem. (IF A=B and B=C, does A really equal C? Meh, for some, maybe, for others, certainly not!)
My conclusion from such divergence is that one or all sides disagree on SOMETHING, but that SOMETHING is never really brought out and discussed on ITS OWN MERITS. Dr. Svaalgard gets points here because he does offer an itemized list of potential issues with the OP’s methods and omissions. We’ll see what the OP has to say about them.
My greater point is: Why are we allowing politicians to make policy based on “scientific conclusions” for which many scientists DISAGREE? And even if 100% of scientists agreed that Model X is “as good as it gets,” they would still have to agree–ideally, scientifically–on its shortcomings! And those shortcomings should PROHIBIT POLICY BEING MADE!
We have the power (voting), and we use it poorly. Just goes to show how rich we really are…things will have to get much worse before we wake up.
Re: tallbloke (23:45:38) :
“…it looks to me like the AMO ‘lags’ behind the NAO, and also picks up influence from elsewhere.”
The mechanism for linkage here as I understand it is due to the influence of the NAO phase on dense cold water downwelling in the North Atlantic just South of Greenland. Downwelling in this area is a core component of the Thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean and the AMO (basically a measure of sea surface temperatures) is a proxy for the phase of the Thermohaline (strong or weak).
A negative NAO is characterized by a ridge of high pressure (a “block”) over Greenland which is also associated with strong downwelling, whereas a positive NAO is characterized by a trough of low pressure in the same place and relatively weak downwelling. The NAO time series is extremely noisy, but does exhibit a prefferred phase over multi-decades. That oscillation in preffered phase is also an oscillation in the mean pressure regime over and just South of Greenland.
Because the Ocean is more viscous than air, it has more “memory” and it acts like a low-pass filter to the forcing – the daily and monthly “noise” in the NAO gets damped out, whereas the lower frequency decadal preferred mode becomes coupled (much that like described in the “synchronized chaos” article) with the ocean and causes the lagged oscillation in downwelling and the strength of the Thermohaline, which is then reflected in the AMO. I have a couple of references on this mechanism – will look them up and post when I have them…
Re: AMO – NAO linkages.
Couple of articles.
Here http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&issn=1520-0442&volume=013&issue=09&page=1481&ct=1
and here http://www.bsh.de/en/Marine_data/Observations/Climate/Clivar/DecadalChange.jsp
Maybe some are not seeing lgl’s point….the GCR’s could vary themselves, from their original point?
Philip_B: “I puzzled over this for a while and then puzzled over why other people, particularly climate scientists weren’t puzzling over it.”
Maybe there’s no puzzle? Maybe it’s because climate scientists have studied the issue and discounted it as a cause for recent warming? Maybe that’s why the only people who are drawing the conclusion that recent warming is due to solar activity are not climate scientists and are, in fact, not scientists of any kind. This blog being one example.
Also, I thought the main argument of this blog is that there has been no recent warming and it’s all a ‘mistake’ because of a few poorly sited weather stations in the USA? Now there is warming and it’s because of the sun?
Go to climate scientists to learn about climate science otherwise it’s very easy to get flawed information: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/289/5477/270
Have you heard about a 2007 paper.
New Peer Reviewed Study: ‘Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics’ by Gerlich & Tscheuschner.
It was interesting to see Svalgaard go for the jugular again, he has not learned anything from previous complaints, although he may have a few points, his style leaves something to be desired.
I agree with others, DA’s style and communication skills are in a class of their own.
If the cooling that has begun continues during the next 5 to 15 years, and solar activity remains minimal as well, Leif’s position that the Sun does not vary enough to influence climate will be harder to defend.
A major volcanic eruption bolstering the cold would not cancel the experiment, as these, along with greater GCRs and greater low cloud cover, seem to occur in greater numbers during solar minima as well.
In other words, we are about 80 percent through a fascinating novel and unable to turn the pages as fast as we would like.
Does the sun’s activity or inactivity have any affect on volcanic activity? Wasn’t there more volcanic activity during the Maunder Minimum?
MarkW,
No, GCR and sun’s activity can correlate but they don’t have to.
Mary R (05:08:51) :
Does the sun’s activity or inactivity have any affect on volcanic activity? Wasn’t there more volcanic activity during the Maunder Minimum?
Great timing Mary, in Melbourne today we witnessed another 4.6 earthquake. We had something a little stronger 2 weeks ago. Apparently there was another quake in Jan with a 3.3 reading if I remember. These all came from the same epicenter. In 50 years I cannot remember activity like this.
JimK,
That Science abstract is nothing more than another attempt to prop up always-inaccurate climate models, and to support the falsified notion that CO2 causes global warming. Like similar failed attempts, it runs into the brick wall of reality: as CO2 rises, the planet continues to cool.
I subscribed to Science for over twenty years, and was a dues-paying member of the AAAS. Around the late ’90’s I noticed a radical change in their articles and policy, similar to what happened when Scientific American was bought out by a German entity.
Science magazine and the AAAS is rapidly losing credibility. Feel free to take their pronouncements at face value. I do not, having seen the change.
You are honestly better off reading the Best Science blog and making up your mind, rather than being told what to think by a rapidly fading authority.
Geoff Sharp (04:49:35) :
DA’s style and communication skills are in a class of their own.
Right up there with Al Gore’s, I would say.
Hmm, I’ve been trying to look at the influence of the Earth’s mantle on climate change. Surely the mantle doesn’t have a uniform temperature all the way around it because of its convective material circulation. As hot material rises from the Earth’s core, cooler material sinks back down to the centre.
So temperature is changing under our feet all the time due to the mantle’s circulation. Not sure if any of it correlates to climate changes on the surface and atmosphere though (volcanic activity excluded).
crosspatch (00:49:53) :
“Another analogy I came up with … imagine a globe in a cold vacuum with a heat lamp on it. Put two temperature sensors 180 degrees apart at the equator. Shine a heat lamp on it. Rotate the globe. Sample the temperature sensors when they are just about to transition between illumination and shadow, add them and divide by two to obtain an “average” (or use 4 if you wish, at 90 degree intervals). Rotate until the temperatures stabilize. Make the globe solid, maybe full of water to give it some thermal “inertia”.
Now turn down the heat lamp very slightly. What does your “average” temperature do?”
Crosspatch,
It’s obvious that you have performed the experiment.
Just tell us what happens!
I’m very disappointed with Leif’s comments, especially the “more rabidly Anti-AGW”. It is incontestable that the pro-AGWers are far more rabid, assuming rabid in it’s usual context as a raging fury. Continually making the point that solar activity hasn’t changed much, as he does, also ignores the glaring fact that the temperature hasn’t changed much either. If we were to accept the common climate IPCC median sensitivity then we’d have had 5 degrees C of warming since pre-industrial times. But of course we didn’t.
Jumping on statistical correlations is really silly. You can see a correlation there with your eyes. When something doesn’t correlate, like CO2 and temperature for example, it’s also obvious without stats. I don’t accept a single graph either but numerous other correlations of climate to solar activity are available. This is just one more to add to the large pile and there are a lot of clever people who have written numerous papers and books about such correlations. Since those tiny, indirect solar effects are thought to have been important enough to trigger the start and end of ice ages then it’s bleeding obvious that whether Tsi varies a lot is irrelevant because the data forces us to conclude that solar amplifiers must be present. Even the CO2-is-everything side have admitted that one, except that they say that 30% of the amplifier is CO2 (which of course is only half an argument because the presence of CO2 can only explain the heating, not the cooling). Leif then lists 5 points, 4 of which are also irrelevant and the other point (volcanic activity) seems to be a complete guess.
The reason Anti-AGWers are seeking an alternative explanation rather than just stating that it’s all a small, unimportant and entirely natural variation, is because they have been challenged to do so by every scientist who concludes that if they cannot think of anything else to explain a climatic change then it must be CO2. Like it or not this limited anti-AGW research has already yielded important results vis-a-vis climate. And on important points the skeptical side has been proven right many times over.
Philip_B (21:46:19) :
“…
I concluded that there isn’t any science to support one position over another. And the instantaneous effect of forcings is just an assumption. Further, the reason no one wants to talk about it, is because scientists don’t like their assumptions questioned, because it throws doubt on everything they think they know.
Which takes into the realm of epistemology, Kuhn and paradigms. Rather arcane subjects for a blog like this.”
I am a philosopher by training. I agree, but Kuhn overstated the case. Postmodernism, “Critical Theory”, creationism, and other similar nonsense have rushed in to plunder the credibility of science since Kuhn opened this door. A great part of what I worry about concerning AGW theory is that once this paradigm collapses it will do further significant damage to scientific credibility in general, and maybe hasten the looming New Dark Age.
Thanks for the post on Beryllium 10. Fascinating.
Leif Svalgaard (22:14:21) :
If the Ap index graph to the end of 2008 is crooked, why not replace it with a correct one!
Same goes for other data and graphs that need to be corrected.
This would spare us a lot of time and the annoyance of having the same discussions every time such a crooked graph is published in a posting.
Get the data right, throw out the crooked stuff and than start discussions.
Robert,
I don’t know but I would like to know more about the changes in carbon cycling mentioned on wiki:
“In addition to variations in solar activity, the long term trends in carbon-14 production are influenced by changes in the Earth’s geomagnetic field and by changes in carbon cycling within the biosphere (particularly those associated with changes in the extent of vegetation since the last ice age)”
Correction:
I see in one of my earlier posts that it could be construed that i said the AMO had reversed. . It has not, as it its still in its warm phase (unlike its bigger cousin the PDO), and I did not mean that. What i was saying that had appeared to reverse was the persistent ridge off the SE US that has caused prolonged multi-year drought in the same area. These periods of drought can be attributed, at least in part, to the warm phase of the AMO.
The point has been made that correlation is not causation, which is true enough. The interesting aspect of the solar/climate connection is that it is open loop, meaning there are fewer possible explanations for a correlation: causation, coincidence, or the action of some third agent which causes both. The natural reaction is to assume causation because of the apparent high degree of correlation – much too high to suggest coincidence. It seems that the thing to be ironed out is whether the correlation in the proxies is caused by the influence of the climate on the proxies themselves.
Robert Bateman (19:44:34) :
David, if you are about:
Why would Be10 show the solar inactivity and C14 not?
And what happens when the two are combined (not overlayed, but values added and then halved)?
Do we end up with a mess or a better SC proxy?
____________
I believe Dr Svensmark deals with this issue in his book, ‘The Chilling Stars’. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I’ll check the book and post up this evening (unless I have an attack of ‘sometimers’ and forget.)
I for one appreciate Leif’s input and his style. Regardless of our beliefs,views or biases we must be sceptical in order to pass scrutiny by others and to hopefully discover truth. If we are sloppy or blinded by our beliefs others will expose us and discredit us. We should be our own critics.
By US and WE I mean the WUWT community be we warmers or sceptics.Let us hold ourselves up to standards which are higher than those of RC, Gore etc.
We are not in grade school anymore where the teacher spoon feeds us when we are wrong so as not to harm our natural curiosities. I prefer to be told, or at least seriously questioned, that my assumptions, conclusions, thoughts on correlations, etc are wrong, why they are wrong, and just how much they are wrong, then to be ignored. I once questioned Leif if he was curious anymore, as in the complete pleasure gained from investigating something you don’t know. I think his curiosity is fully intact, but I probably jump up and down more than he does when I finally understand something. I also think his presentations and articles, though a struggle to read, offer far greater detail (and in a rather dry, colorless, technical language) and explained mechanisms than what we get from ourselves, me included, and media-tweaked AGW articles.
May I, as a humble ignoramus and an avid follower of WUWT, put a question to this world of scientific luminaries? I note that the oceans today are vast heat sinks and tomorrow switch to being vast yielders of stored heat. If the world was reduced to golf-ball size, the white outer shell of an operative golf ball must roughly correlate to the crust of the planet. If everything under that shell was molten rock, white-hot iron and what-have-you, how come this has no effect, bearing or influence on the surface temperature of said golf ball? Is the planetary crust an unsurpassed insulator, capable of keeping its core molten forever?
Incidentally, where I live on the lower Indian Ocean coast of the African continent, March is usually as sweaty and unpleasant as are our Februaries. Normally it is well into April before we are accorded our first relief. This year we have already enjoyed a week of delightful Autumn weather, brilliant sun and clear blue sky. It has been really pleasant. You could even stand in the sun without frying! That changed yesterday , and we are at present experiencing a bleak cold front. So, right now I peck at this keyboard wrapped in unaccustomed warm stuff.
Geoff Alder