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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ron de Haan (03:22:07) :
Here is a link to the 115 page study I posted about on my blog (and Ron de Haan mentioned) for those that are interested. It’s titled, “Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics”
Authors: Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
Like Ron, I believe that this study is worthy of discussion. I’d fully expected every AGW skeptic blog in the world to link to this article as I did, and yet there seems to be a collective shrugging of the shoulders. I am as mystified as Ron is.
JimK wrote:
“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?”
You’ve been given too brief a nutshell description of this site. The longer version is that participants here accept that there’s been a warming trend over the period 1970-2000, (and 1900-1940), but (as I posted yesterday on one of these threads) that it’s due mostly to:
1. A rebound from the Little Ice Age. (See the paper by the University of Alaska professor on this topic, linked to below.)
2. Oceanic oscillation cycles that were mostly set to Warm for the latter third of the 20th century. (See Roy Spencer’s paper.)
3. Urban Heat Island effects, which increased the slope of the apparent warming in the 20th century in the industrialized world beyond the reality of what actually occurred.
4. Bias, largely unconscious, in collecting, adjusting, and correcting temperature data by the data’s guardians. (For instance, mistakes on the warm side might not get “corrected” as readily as mistakes on the cold side, because the former sort of mistakes wouldn’t seem suspicious.)
Here’s more information on that Univ. of Alaska paper, “The Recovery from the Little Ice Age”:
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/recovery_little_ice_age.pdf
Here is its Abstract, to tempt others to dip into it:
“Two natural components of the presently progressing climate change are identified.
The first one is an almost linear global temperature increase of about 0.5°C/100 years (~1°F/100 years), which seems to have started at least one hundred years before 1946 when manmade CO2 in the atmosphere began to increase rapidly. This value of 0.5°C/100 years may be compared with what the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists consider to be the manmade greenhouse effect of 0.6°C/100 years. This 100-year long linear warming trend is likely to be a natural change. One possible cause of this linear increase may be Earth’s continuing recovery from the Little Ice Age (1400-1800). This trend (0.5°C/100 years) should be subtracted from the temperature data during the last 100 years when estimating the manmade contribution to the present global warming trend. As a result, there is a possibility that only a small fraction of the present warming trend is attributable to the greenhouse effect resulting from human activities. Note that both glaciers in many places in the world and sea ice in the Arctic Ocean that had developed during the Little Ice Age began to recede after 1800 and are still receding; their recession is thus not a recent phenomenon.
The second one is the multi-decadal oscillation, which is superposed on the linear change. One of them is the “multi-decadal oscillation,” which is a natural change. This particular change has a positive rate of change of about 0.15°C/10 years from about 1975, and is thought to be a sure sign of the greenhouse effect by the IPCC. But, this positive trend stopped after 2000 and now has a negative slope. As a result, the global warming trend stopped in about 2000-2001.
Therefore, it appears that the two natural changes have a greater effect on temperature changes than the greenhouse effects of CO2. These facts are contrary to the IPCC Report (2007, p.10), which states that “most” of the present warming is due “very likely” to be the manmade greenhouse effect. They predict that the warming trend continues after 2000. Contrary to their prediction, the warming halted after 2000.
There is an urgent need to correctly identify natural changes and remove them from the present global warming/cooling trend, in order to accurately identify the contribution of the manmade greenhouse effect. Only then can the contribution of CO2 be studied quantitatively.”
Bruce Cobb (07:33:08) :
Speaking of selective vision, don’t forget the rabidly Anti-Solar cause.
I’m not. I wish [really do] that the solar activity – climate connection were true [it is] and strong [it isn’t]. That would do wonders for the relevance of my work [and funding].
Re: Bruckner8 (04:23:23) :
“My greater point is: Why are we allowing politicians to make policy based on “scientific conclusions” for which many scientists DISAGREE?”
1) The lobbying power of people like Al Gore, Hansen and Environmental Fundamentalism/Fear Mongering in general
2) The Media, who can sell more newspapers with “The end is Nigh” than they can with “There is nothing to report”
3) “The Precautionary Principal” – which states that if an action might avoid severe or irreversible harm to the public in the absence of scientific consensus, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action”
However, along the lines of (3), why then aren’t we spending more money on particulate pollution, water quality, 3rd world poverty, near-Earth objects, Super-Volcanoes and Large Earthquakes?
Since this blog has been in existence since only 2007, I don’t know if any other “battle lines” have been drawn before. I regret the concept of battle here; all-out debate, no-intellectual-(honest)-holds barred is what the evolution of science requires. Battles mean lives, and perhaps survival, are in danger — even metaphorically speaking. I think we need to be careful if we are to continue this extraordinary community as Anthony, et al, have developed it.
I am grateful for David Archibald’s post, and I am grateful for those who expand on his ideas and for those who critique them, especially when the critiques have data and sources attached. I believe that if Leif’s critiques could be answered, we might have a better understanding of what past research and charts we can trust, and which ones we must agree to disagree about. We are all in this together.
Re: Geoff Sharp (04:38:20) :
“Maybe some are not seeing lgl’s point….the GCR’s could vary themselves, from their original point?”
Absolutely.
What we think we know is that 1) GCRs influence climate through cloud formation and that 2) the GCR flux received at Earth is strongly modulated by the Solar Magnetic Field. However, this does not rule out…3) that the GCR flux entering the solar system is itself variable.
Since GCRs are thought to be generated in Super-Nova, Black-Holes and other high energy processes within the Galaxy that we still do not understand fully, it seems likely that the GCR flux through the Solar system is not constant at Climatic time scales. I guess the question is – what causes the most variance in GCR flux at Earth on Climatic time-scales – the background variance or the Solar modulation?
Given the proximity of the Sun to us and the fact that the GCR flux appears to be fairly uniform in all directions in the sky (presumably, because it is sampling/averaging from many many locations deep in the Galaxy), I think physics would say that the Solar induced variance could be orders of magnitude stronger than any background variance, but I haven’t seen much research in this area. Anyone else?
realitycheck (08:11:22) :
However, this does not rule out…3) that the GCR flux entering the solar system is itself variable.
There is, in fact, some evidence of that:
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/reprints/2007bieber.pdf
Re: Geoff Sharp (04:38:20) :
“Maybe some are not seeing lgl’s point….the GCR’s could vary themselves, from their original point?”
As our solar system moves around the galaxy the GCR’s could very well vary as the magnitude of the sources change.
For anyone who has doubts about GCR affecting weather, I wish you had spent July & August 2008 in No. California. The smoke from the fires lay close to the ground for almost the entire time, grounding the aircraft except where a few light winds came up, which wasn’t often enough. When the Fire Information Officer was queried, she responded that they knew about the GCR’s increase and the immediate effects, and that NASA kept them briefed on the subject.
The smoke lay down so hard and for so long that it was choking people in Sacramento 150 miles away.
Dear David Archibald,
Your first graph coincides with data based on hematite stained grains, Aragonite and Calcite. A plot of that database through geologic timescale indicates that the current period of climate change corresponds to a natural lowstand point which will shift to a minor colder phase, a bit warmer than the tipping lowest point at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary.
Lee R. Kump. Tipping Pointedly Colder. Science. Vol. 323, No. 5918, pp. 1175-1176. 27 February 2009:
“For much of Earth history, the climate has been considerably warmer than it is today.”
Perhaps Earth is trapped again in an icehouse state? Indeed, when one evaluate the plot, one gets persuaded that Earth is cooling, not warming.
Leif Svalgaard (06:09:34) :
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.
And there is even some controversy over the details of the 14C curve, like the relative heights of the peaks. Here http://www.leif.org/research/14C-flipped.png is another 14C curve [bottom panel], flipped over and rotated to match. This one is Mueschler’s. The one I compared to 10Be is from Stuiver [his INTCAL98 clalibration – beware that in his work ‘BP’ means ‘Before Present’, but ‘present’ is 1950 – this obviates the need for shifting the curve every time a new year rolls around]. Note the differences after 1900 and just before 1800.
Reality,
I think it is ‘relatively uniform’ over small time scales. The amount of GCR can vary considerably as the Solar system performs its slow orbit around the Galactic center (or barycenter if you prefer) and during the times when the solar system ‘dolphins’ thru the Galactic plane.
Svensmark and Nir Shaviv treat this subject extensively
As John Langdon Davies said: There is a “Will to believe” and a “Will to disbelieve”, neither is science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Langdon-Davies
How do know that the atmospheric mixing of 10Be is such that we can say that polar concentrations reflect the concentrations at other latitudes through time?
Geoff Sharp (04:49:35) :
DA’s style and communication skills are in a class of their own.
David is not trying to scare anyone, he’s trying to warn them. Not even the management of a major grain supplier knew about the delays in the Solar Cycle, but the USFS, CDF and BLM know about it as they are Federal Agencies.
When the manager was contacted, he immediately grasped the significance.
It’s his business to be prepared for all eventualities and phenomenon that might impact his sourcing. How can anyone justify holding back critical information that has potential consequences really frosts me. Just because it is not proven yet does not mean that solar forcing of climate should be hidden.
David,
Thanks, once again, for a terrific illustration – literally and figuratively – of the evidence for the sun as the major climate driver. I wonder if Lief will weigh in to contest this and, if so, what he would say in response. It is increasingly obvious that TSI, isolated from other measures, is a red herring convenient to produce the required results to maintain the status quo ante in “climate science.” Some science.
Oops, I see that Leif did already weigh in. I posted before a complete read.
Robert Bateman (08:46:03):
It’s his business to be prepared for all eventualities and phenomenon that might impact his sourcing.
Dear Robert,
I agree…
I think is not fair including my own articles on this blog, but this article is quite illustrative on what’s actually happening nowadays:
http://www.biocab.org/Climate_Geologic_Timescale.html
but didn’t Obama say “YES WE CAN”?
“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.”
We are always one volcanic eruption away from pretty much global calamity. A failed grain harvest in the US and the Eastern European steppes would result in a major global famine from both a lack of enough food for the population and the increase in food prices pushing it out of the reach of people who otherwise might have access to it.
Eruptions on the scale of the Campanian eruption about 40,000 years ago that wiped out human habitation of Eastern Europe for a couple of thousand years and probably caused the demise of the Neanderthal are not fully appreciated. The Krakatoa eruption of 535 resulted in the start of the Dark Ages and collapse of the Roman Empire.
It seems less likely that the steady background volcanism we see all the time is responsible for major climate changes than are cataclysmic caldera forming super eruptions. And as humans are pretty much tied to “this year’s harvest” globally, anything that disrupts one or two growing seasons is going to end up killing a significant portion of the human population on the planet. Directly through famine and indirectly through upheaval caused by billions of starving people.
Our existence as we know it is actually quite fragile.
This is an interesting contribution to the debate.
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
Authors: Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
(Submitted on 8 Jul 2007 (v1), last revised 4 Mar 2009 (this version, v4))
Abstract:
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified.
By showing that
(a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects,
(b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet,
(c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly,
(d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately,
(e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical,
(f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161
Leif Svalgaard (06:51:15) :
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.
18 03 2009
Leif,
I’ve made the suggestion for reasons of efficiency and integrity.
I think I have seen over six postings at WUWT where you made clear that the sudden drop of the magnetic index in October 2005 was not real.
Therefore I keep up my argument and propose to throw this graph in the garbage can and replace it by a graph that shows factual data.
That’s all, no agenda’s, no bla bla for the sake of the argument, just proper science..
One of the main differences between 14C and 10Be, although both caused by GCRs, is that 14C is involved in several carbon cycles, especially in the atmosphere – vegetation cycle and to a lesser extent with the upper level oceans. This smoothes the 14C level changes, compared to the 10Be levels, as part of the uptake of 14C by vegetation (and upper oceans) is coming back in the following year(s).
Further the 14C level is also disturbed by the use of fossil fuels, which is completely 14C depleted (much too old, 14C is decayed to below detection limits after about 60,000 years in the millions of years old fossil fuels). That needed correction tables for radio carbon dating after about 1870, until the atmospheric nuclear tests of the 1950s made radio carbon testing near impossible…
“How do know that the atmospheric mixing of 10Be…”
Uncertainties regarding mixing is precisely the problem with 14C and CO2 that we avoid with 10Be. The metal rapidly precipitates out of the atmosphere at the poles where formed in oxides of Al, Mg, etc. Inotherwords, mixing as an issue does not pertain.
“A plot of that database through geologic timescale indicates that the current period of climate change corresponds to a natural lowstand point which will shift to a minor colder phase,”
Nobwainer’s confirmation, in part.