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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Roger Carr (04:19:41) :
Ron de Haan (03:22:07) wrote regarding the Jennifer Marohasy site article: “It is a very interesting study because it completely destroys the AGW/CO2 doctrine…”
“I fear the alarmists have long gone beyond rational doctrine, Ron, and destroying this particular one would be as pointless as all the destruction by true scientists of hockey sticks and hokey sticks and the like has been. Perhaps it never ever was about “science” right from the beginning? It sounds trite to call AGW alarm “religion”, but perhaps it is also correct to call it that… a debased religion, anyway; and the fire is in their eyes.
Seems to me the global financial collapse is riding with the angels insofar as throwing rocks under the wheels of the AGW juggernaut; but simply “proving them wrong” is not going to quench either their fire or their thirst. They have both a tiger by the tail and a mission, and logic is not going to even impinge on either those with the madness or those with the money.
However; I do believe it will burn itself out, and on the positive side also believe it has given us a lot of real science we may otherwise have taken years to harvest”.
Roger,
I know all about the politicized aspects of teh AGW/Climate Change Doctrine but
this report is a Peer Reviewed Study that completely destroys the entire basis of the IPCC/Gore doctrine. It kills it.
If this study is correct we can scrap any discussion of CO2 influencing temperatures permanently. In this regard it’s a key that could simplefy any future discussions and block any Government action on the reduction of CO2
“Thus it is illegitimate to deduce predictions which provide a consulting solution for economics and intergovernmental policy”.
That is why it is important to discuss this study.
In regard to your remark that the the Climate Issue in time will burn itself out I nust say that I disagree very strongly.
It is five minutes to twelve before most damaging CO2 mitigation legislation is upon us and we should fight it with all our power. Not tomorrow but today.
“It’s still the sun, but not directly.”
We are splitting hairs, the relation is direct, mathematically.
Consistent with Anthony’s CRF post, DA’s Sept. ’07 prediction for June ’09 minimum is coming into play as the smoothed SS min continues forward, off of Oct. ’08.
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?
Geoff Sharp (05:17:30) :
Great timing Mary, in Melbourne today we witnessed another 4.6 earthquake. We had something a little stronger 2 weeks ago. ……..
For those who may be interested in the earthquake daily occurrences here are some useful links.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/
Usually weekly score, as calculated for this site is somewhere 170-190.
For more details:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_big.php
To put things in perspective here http://www.leif.org/research/DavidA18.png is a plot of the 10Be (red) and 14C (blue) proxies and of the HMF (thin pink). 11-year means [actually 10 for 14C] are shown. The 14C record stops in the 1950s because it is contaminated by nuclear weapons testing after that. One should note that the HMF now is down [‘up’ on the graph] to where it was ~1900. The 10Be and HMF scales are inverted and 10Be is expressed in ‘equivalent’ HMF values following McCracken and Beer.
realitycheck:
“The mechanism for linkage here as I understand it…”
Thank you for the nutshell explanation.
Bruckner8:
I’ll have to watch for this call sign in the future. Sane, articulate and well-mannered!
igl is being very misleading.
Yes Be10 is a proxy for cosmic rays. But there is a very clear 11 year cycle in the Be10 record, which also shows the Maunder minimum.
So Be10 is a proxy for solar magnetic activity. The mechanism for this is well understood, as briefly explained by David A above – see various papers by Beer or Raisbeck.
Off topic, but the British Arctic team who set off recently to measure ice depth and observe arctic ice melting is fighting for their lives – almost no food, icy storms, -40°C temps and one got frostbite. Air evacuation not possible because of terrible weather.
REPLY: See the thread a couple of stories down
for Ron, re Crosspatch’s experiment:
I can think of a much easier analagous experiment to perform and measure, one that almost anyone can do if they wish. (easier because most people without labs don’t have thermometers sensitive enough to measure small changes, also it would be difficult to build a truly closed system – ambient temperature would have a strong, stabilizing effect on that particular experiment)
Heat is often compared to a reservoir – it can be stored, raised, or lowered. So an easy to measure analogue would be an actual closed fluid reservoir of some type. Give it one input, and one output. Fill the reservoir halfway and then balance the input with the output so that the level remains stable – ie, equilibrium. Now, raise the input slightly – what does the level do? Drop the input slightly, while output remains constant – measure.
Responding to Aron’s comment, I don’t believe that the mantle (except in rare cases of volcanic and geothermic activity, such as Yellowstone) imparts much heat to the atmosphere. In most of the world, underground near surface temperatures are more influenced by the atmosphere than the deep mantle. For example, Alaska, Canada, and other arctic regions have year round permafrost near the surface, wheras temperate zones will have ground temperatures very close to the average yearly atmospheric temperature for that location.
Of course, volcanoes are a huge exception to this, but it would be interesting to see whether there is actually enough volcanic activity at any time to make an impact on global temperature. I suspect that this would take volcanic activity at least an order of magnitude (or two!) greater than anything humans have ever seen.
crosspatch (00:49:53) : “Now turn down the heat lamp very slightly. What does your “average” temperature do?”
Would changing the distance from the lamp to the globe also make a difference? Would making the globe more Earthlike (land in the NH and seas in the SH) then tilting the vertical axis between 22.5 and 24.5 degrees make any difference? What about throwing in some wobble to change the equinoxi? Would a combination of all these things make a difference?
I’m new to discussions on climate change but am trying to find the truth that lies somewhere beween what I have always believed to be irrational falsehoods being used to scare the general population. It has been a real pleasure to read information and discussions from this site and I’m so glad that you do not use the rude tactics generally used by the pro-AGW camp. I am glad though to see people from that camp on here putting their own views across.
I’m an engineer so I understand the concepts and my view so far is that based on everything that I have seen the deniers are dancing rings around the believers. One thing that there certainly isn’t is theory and observed data that proves we are on the verge of climate catastrophe or on the verge of anything. How can we as normal people stop the juggernaut?
The sunspot cycle has a corresponding TSI amplitude of variation of approximately 1 w/m2 about an ambient level of 1366 w/m2. Some claim that the Sun’s variation is not sufficient to drive climate changes. Wht data is available to show that the ambient level of solar output does not change significantly over longer solar cycles with periods of hundreds of years? The ambient level seems to be changing significantly in the recent cycles as measured by satellite. Could it be that long term solar cycles are accompanied by significant ambient drift that subsequently addects the short term sunspot cycle?
Ron de Haan (05:46:03) :
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.
Let me quote Stephen Schneider [as quoted by Roy Spencer]:
“we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. […] Se we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. […] Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest […]”
And Al Gore is quoted as saying that it is OK to lie to save the planet.
Bottom line: If it serves someone’s agenda to show faulty graphs, they will be shown [again and again].
As informed readers we can all recognize the penguins cosing up to the polar bear for what it is.
I am a mere layman interested in the role the sun plays in the current climate debate, so most of this is Greek to me. I sent an email to a professor of atmospheric science who claimed in a Discovery Channel article that “Cooling events since then (1950’s) had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas . This current cooling doesn’t have one.” I asked him why he did not consider the current reduction in solar activity. Here is his response. Can you guys decipher it?
“My policy in general is not to comment at length on my work unless I know the questioner, as such things end up on the internet as quotes taken out of context, etc. That much said, the amplitude of the solar cycle is about 2 W/m^2, which when you take into account the geometry of the Earth (reducing that by a factor of 0.25) as well as albedo effect (a further factor of 0.7), alters the net planetary solar flux by at most 0.35 W/m^2. The effect we are seeing with the recent cooling is similar in magnitude to a major volcanic eruption, which is on the order of 1-2 W/m^2 sustained for 2-3 years.”
I really don’t like this one statement ” This graph alone demonstrates that the warming of the 20th century was solar-driven.” It does not demonstrate any such thing. It suggests that it is possible that this might be the case any more than that is not indicated and is if nothing else a claim that correlation means cause and effect.
Estimated annual production of carbon 14.
7.5 kg.
C [14] + O2 >>>>>> C [14] O2
Incorporated into the biological cycle. (Instant?)
Incorporated into the core of ice. (instant?)
Leif: I do not know another word to say “I love you.” Naturally:
Leif’s wife understands me
What I don’t understand is how you can get ice core data from Greenland when all I read in the media tells me the ice has all melted there. Are you all living in a cave and have not heard of this little thing called Global Warming?
The only local heat source of significance is the sun. The atmosphere and oceans do not provide heat, they can absorb, store and redistribute what they recieve from the sun, but there is no extra heat unless the sun provides more. This, IMO, means like Arctic ice being limited by shore lines, there is an upper limit to the temperature of climate. However, various mitigations can inhibit heat available to earth. Give an obliquity to the ecliptic, and you get ice caps. Increase cloud cover and it cools. If GCRs do increase clouds and albedo, perhaps events beyond our little solar system cause fluctuations in GCR density, providing random events, at least from the perspective of our solar system, coolings that don’t correlate to anything. When cooling ‘forcings’ aren’t going on, the earth heats back up to its natural temperature. Perhaps the whole model for climate has been looked at backwards, the earth is always trying to recover from cooling events, not being ‘forced’ to warmer climate. Just trying to think outside the solar system, er, box.
I know everyone zeros in on the 11 year Schwab Cycle, but has anyone attempted to study long term climate variations to the 205 year DeVries Cycle? Has anyone attempted to coorelate the variations of Be10 to the DeVries, Hales, or Gleissberg Cycles?
A little humility goes a long way. I suspect we know a lot less about everything than we think we do. Climate, like life itself, is extremely complex. A little knowledge is dangerous, as IMHO, it leads us to think we know more than we do. I am back from days in Death Valley, where the days were warm, and the nights cool. To deny the Sun drives our climate seems absurd. I do not need to know exactly how. The older i get, the more i realize how little i know. Theories about everything come and go.
Thanks WWS,
Regarding volcanic activity, I’m also checking what happened to world temperature and GHG levels when Santorini exploded 3625 years ago and also Krakatoa in the 6th century. Compare them to the temperature reconstruction, historical accounts, ice core data, tree ring data, solar activity, etc
Bruckner8 wrote:
“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!)”
Here’s Robert Anton Wilson’s First Law of Politics:
“If A>B and B>C, then A>C, except where prohibited by law.”
Philip_B, I believe that the rationale behind ignoring pipeline forcings in the atmosphere at least is that the temperature swing is too high on a daily basis. The atmosphere warms and cools extremely quickly, reaching a new equilibrium within hours. The land surface also warms and cools quickly. While there is a drag in ocean temperatures, the ocean temperature should not significantly affect the equilibrium temperature over land far from the ocean. The oceans also cycle significantly in temperature annuall.
In short, large sections of the atmosphere reach their equilibrium every day and the ocean reaches equilibrium every year months. A step change in forcing should manifest within 12 hours for inland areas and within 6 months for oceans (the maximum amount of time needed to get to a new max or min).
Yes there is a pipeline, but the pipeline is extremely short.
Overall, I can see where Lief is coming from, that if there are many things we don’t know about how and why our planet works, and a few things that obviously don’t fit, it is best to say we are unsure.
Unfortunately, the human world does not work on reason or logic, it works by belief, so we often make a mess of things!
I long ago got bored with the bizarre elements of the AGW atmospheric Co2 forcing debate, the Alarmists are welcome to it!. I don’t care!
The Sun is much more fascinating.
Leif Svalgaard (22:14:21) :
It is a common human frailty that when one believes strongly in a cause [AGW or more rabidly Anti-AGW] a certain blindness or perhaps expressed better – selective vision, sets in and drives people to less than candid use of Figures and Data. So it is with this post.
Speaking of selective vision, don’t forget the rabidly Anti-Solar cause.