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.
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.
Neanderthals were certainly pushed further into western and south western Europe at the time, but then you also had Homo Sapiens moving in at the same time too.
Personally I go with the theory that the Ice Age reduced the Neanderthals habitat and that pushed them to extinction. They were forest dwellers who ambushed their prey, unlike us who lived on plains and by rivers and could attack prey on open land.
There is much evidence that Neanderthals were not good at adapting their lifestyles, were not good at planning far ahead, and lived in small patriarchal families with one male domineering over several females. When a family had too many males then either babies were eaten or teenage boys were forced to leave and start their own family elsewhere.
That meant they were never able to build up larger settlements, only small ones that vanished if all the males left or died. As the Ice Age diminished Europe’s forest cover Neanderthals were left with less places to live and either starved to death or killed each other for space.
There’s no evidence as yet that modern humans killed them off. There is more evidence of mutual exchange than violent clashes, although it is possible that we gave them fevers and colds that could have been fatal.
Radun:
And this only a partial listing. The notions of radiative balance, effective temperature, radiation budget, equilibrium temperature, etc., are all inappropriately applied. Also inapt are analogies with black bodies, non-physical implementations of Kirchoff’s and Beer’s Laws, on and on.
Following G&T it is difficult to find an heuristic Atmospheric Science gets right with their AGW mythology.
gary gulrud (11:19:40) :
“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.
Dear Gary… How is it? I don’t know Nobwainer’s hypothesis.
gary gulrud (11:15:13) :
“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.
Do we know what effect the geomagnetic field has on the deposition of 10Be?
Robert Bateman (08:46:03) :
How can anyone justify holding back critical information that has potential consequences really frosts me
Like the critical information that the SWPC Ap values are wrong and that it is not true that Ap has dropped to values not seen in ‘living memory’ unless, of course, that memory does not extend further back than December, 1997
Ron de Haan (11:05:49) :
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.
What I this time complained about is using the SWPC data that are simply plain wrong lately. The drop in October 2005 is a somewhat different matter. My issue with that is that its significance is overrated, because of
1) It was mostly due to a very large sporadic storm in September, made larger by being on the peak of the semiannual variation [makes a 25% difference]
2) Such decreases are common, there was another one in January 2007 [a bit smaller because of the semiannual variation, but about the smae if corrected for that]
Anyway, it seems to be accepted practice now to use faulty graphs to drive a point home, in this case the WARNING we must all heed.
“I don’t know Nobwainer’s hypothesis.”
Nasif, I don’t know that Geoff Sharp’s work will be of interest to you, only that your reference should interest him. His stuff is at some site of his and at auditblogs. Google his name and you should find links.
“Do we know what effect the geomagnetic field has on the deposition of 10Be?”
That is the subject of the associated post. 10Be is a cosmogenic isotope created by GCRs. SCRs have insufficient energy to cause this effect but can nucleate cloud formation in the Stratosphere.
“Beryllium 10 concentrations are linked to cosmic ray intensity which can be a proxy for solar strength.”
It is not.
It is the climate change causing the Be-10 consentration to fluctuate:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005JD006410.shtml
edcon (11:57:23) :
Do we know what effect the geomagnetic field has on the deposition of 10Be?
Not on the deposition, but on the production as a weaker geomagnetic field allows more cosmic rays in. The field has decreased 10% over the past 150 years. Here is a plot of this effect [not for 10Be but for 14C, however the effect should be similar]: http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg . This is a large effect, not a minor wrinkle. Most of the variation with time of the CRs is due to changes in the Earth’s field, with the solar changes being an order of magnitude smaller. Finally, the climate itself has an influence, and this time on the deposition [how much 10Be reaches the poles].
TL (12:13:41) :
“Beryllium 10 concentrations are linked to cosmic ray intensity which can be a proxy for solar strength.”
It is not. It is the climate change causing the Be-10 consentration to fluctuate
It is both.
I have to admit that much of the technical material of this debate is above my understanding, although I get the general arguments from each side. I would say a few things just from looking:
1. This world is complex; therefore, unlike the AGWers, we cannot afford to be in a rush to prove this or that point as “the” cause, only to have it weakened or disproven by subsequent analysis (from friend or foe). If we are to wage an equal war against the Warmist propaganda, the one point that we must always emphasize is that the debate is far, far from over (even amongst ourselves on many points) and that there is much more research to be done. If that message is not gotten out to the public, and not kept consistently on this blog too, then we might as well just sign up as ‘good transnationalists/socialists’ and resign research not in support of the AGW hypothesis to oblivion. So far our strongest and most consistent arguments are: 1) there is no consesus; and the debate is not over, 2) CO2 is not enough to explain the climate variations over the past 10, 100, and 10,000 years. Those are probably the only two points that I have seen (though others might exist) that we can all state with a high degree of certainty.
2. Because the world is complex a single explanation or proxy will not do. Like any machine, there are a number of moving parts which interact with each other, and are affected by principles (such as Newtons Laws of Thermodynamics, for instance) belonging to their physical make-up.
3. Consensus, like debate, is not necessarily a bad thing because it usually means the data has stood up to scrutiny. I mean real consesus, not the manufactured consesus of the IPCC, whose only goal there is to advance political agenda. But we must be patient as well as dogged at developing one, and it may take far longer than any of us have on this Earth to develop because of the technical complexity of the processes in question and our (still) limited understanding of the way things work.
4. Ultimately it does not matter who wins the battle between AGW and the opponents. There are plenty of consequences for living in contradiction to scientific truths (like jumping off a cliff while ignoring gravity), but it is not as if the truth needs us to proclaim it. It will be self-evident to those who wish to see it. And to those who do not no amount of anything will change their minds. So let us be strategic and tactical in this regard.
“but then you also had Homo Sapiens moving in at the same time too.”
There is some evidence that Homo Sapiens were wiped out for a couple of millennia. Habitation is seen, then disappears for a couple thousand years and begins to return. The eruption is also the boundary between the middle and upper Paleolithic cultural change. When settlement returned, the culture was a lot different. The eruption would have absolutely hammered the migration path of Homo Sapien into Europe. Most of them probably died or were cut off. The Neanderthal would have experienced a “double wammy” being pushed South during the period of just about maximum glacial advance just when that volcano erupted which would have forced them into the area where the last evidence of their survival has been found. Homo Sapiens in Europe would have also been forced into the same region and both populations would have been having an extremely difficult time surviving.
Homo Sapiens might have done better with innovation and finding ways to survive. But in any case, the habitations that are found after the event show completely different culture than before the event.
Only in WUWT:
Gavin A. Schmidt article supports David Archibald’s post:
……..”solar activity modulation parameter ( ),”…….??????????????
hockey stick is broken…
“”Over the Holocene our results suggest that the 10Be response to climate change should not be neglected when inferring production changes.””
Beer
hi, the data seems good ,a good article
this is one on recent antarctic data. where there seem to be potentially less discrepencies and which also has a less volatile stratosphere?
secondly snow fall in the are tends to be a yearly constant or more constant than in some places ( eg potentially some of the greenland sites) allows dating more accurately.
Ice core record of 10Be over the past millennium from Dome Fuji, Antarctica: A new proxy record of past solar activity and a powerful tool for stratigraphic dating
TL (12:13:41) The abstract you link to says: “In the climate experiments the 10Be deposition changes simulated over ice sheets in both hemispheres are comparable to those seen in the production experiments.” Are these climate ‘experiments’ computer models by chance? If they are, that makes it harder to believe. There would be no way to seperate the alleged climatic fluctuations from fluctuations in incoming GCRs.
Doesn’t the use of GCRs as a solar activity proxy assume that the number of GCRs outside the heliopause are constant? Do we really know that to be the case? One might expect cosmic radiation to be greater, for example, when we cross the Galactic Plane. And even when we are not in the plane, how do we know that the number of rays is constant over periods of thousands of years and not itself widely variable?
I for one would like to thank Leif for his ongoing contributions to the discussions on this site. Some of the commenter’s on this and other posts have taken issue with his commentary style (yes, a bit abrasive, perhaps) or the fact that he often provides informed, dissenting criticism of the various posts, or that he dismisses any influence of the sun on climate cycles here on earth.
The first two might be true, but so what? If you don’t like his commentary style, ignore it and concentrate on the content of the posted comment. Not everyone with something worthwhile to say will say it in a manner that pleases you. That’s particularly true in the fields of science and engineering.
If you dislike the fact that he often either disagrees with the post’s contents (facts or opinions) or the post’s conclusions, remember that on this site we’re supposed to be seeking the real basis of climate change and the real drivers of climate, that we might come closer to the real science. That end is not served well by silencing opinions you disagree with. If you think Leif is wrong, say so, then trot out your references and other data supporting your position.
As for the third charge, that Leif dismisses any influence of the sun on climate cycles here on earth, I don’t believe that’s true. I believe his true position is roughly “The data does not seem to support that conclusion at this time.” (At least, that’s my interpretation of his position.) Simply based upon what the AGW crowd has done to science, we should all be more skeptical of any claims being made on either side of the climate debate. Let’s acknowledge that the fact that the AGW crowd is wrong doesn’t make us right, but does make it incumbent upon us to be more careful in any counter claims we make.
It seems to me that Leif has been playing the role of the “honest skeptic”, which I regard as one of the hallmarks of a real scientist. IMO, a real scientist is always questioning so called “facts”, always checking assumptions and always seeking to peer behind the curtain of the “science”, to get to the truth (small “t” truth). I will continue to place great weight on his posts and comments, and I sincerely thank him for his contributions to this site.
And my thanks to David Archibald as well. Very interesting post.
gary gulrud (12:10:38):
Thank you, Gary… I think I’ve found it, here the link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/11/finally-a-sunspot-but-it-is-a-cycle-23-spot/
There is some evidence that Homo Sapiens were wiped out for a couple of millennia.
Homo Sapiens covered a very wide area (from Europe all the way to Australia, and just starting to migrate towards the Americas) by then so I doubt there was anything close to being wiped out. We were very adaptable with a very varied diet compared to our Neanderthal cousin.
On monday here in South Africa we had 33 degree celcius temperatures, tuesday the first true cold front appeared signalling what forecasters said was the official (early) start of winter and temps plumetted to 13 degrees. today it is the same. Winter was rough up north and it looks like it will be the same for us!!
Btw I read that there was snow in Victoria Australia barely two weeks after the fires… very interesting times!
The sun is still blank yes but these plagues are appearing more and more often so maybe it is picking up.
TL (12:13:41) :
“Beryllium 10 concentrations are linked to cosmic ray intensity which can be a proxy for solar strength.”
It is not. It is the climate change causing the Be-10 consentration to fluctuate
Climate fluctuation is small
eg Modeling cosmogenic radionuclides 10Be and 7Be during the Maunder Minimum using the ECHAM5-HAM General Circulation Model
U. Heikkil¨a, J. Beer, and J. Feichter
Abstract. All existing 10Be records from Greenland and Antarctica show increasing concentrations during the Maunder Minimum period (MM), 1645–1715, when solar activity was very low and the climate was colder (little ice age). In detail, however, the 10Be records deviate from each other.We investigate to what extent climatic changes influence the 10Be measured in ice by modeling this period using the ECHAM5-HAM general circulation model. Production calculations show that during the MM the mean global 10Be production was higher by 32% than at present due to lower solar activity. Our modeling shows that the zonally averaged modeled 10Be deposition flux deviates by only 8% from the average increase of 32%, indicating that climatic effects are much smaller than the production change. Due to increased stratospheric production, the 10Be content in the downward fluxes is larger during MM, leading to larger 10Be deposition fluxes in the subtropics, where stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE) is strongest. In polar regions the effect is small. In Greenland the deposition change depends on latitude and altitude. In Antarctica the change is larger in the east than in the west. We use the 10Be/7Be ratio to study changes in STE.We find larger change between 20 N–40 N during spring, pointing to a stronger STE in the Northern Hemisphere duringMM. In the Southern Hemisphere the change is small.
These findings indicate that climate changes do influence the 10Be deposition fluxes, but not enough to significantly disturb the production signal. Climate-induced changes remainsmall, especially in polar regions.
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 8, 2797–2809, 2008
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/2797/2008/
To Ron de Haan (03:22:07) and Klockarman (07:36:27) regarding the article by Gerlich and Tscheuschner, “Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics”:
One of the reasons you’re not hearing much about this article is that the original 2007 version was vetted by both sides of the AGW debate in early 2008. The kind folks at RealClimate responded in their usual way, but I can’t find any reference to the article on RC’s web site today. I did find Eli Rabett’s blog post about the article at: http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/03/formal-reply-to-gerlich-and-tscheuner.html
Rabett’s post includes a link to a technical paper by Arthur Smith purporting to refute Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s work. Maybe Smith did refute it. I don’t know, it was way over my head. Dr. Gerlich’s rebuttal is preserved at:
//www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/DEFINITIVE_DEATHKNELL_to_CLIMATE_ALARMISM.pdf
What is new is that the latest version of Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s paper has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. (The original 2007 version was not peer reviewed and was viciously maligned because of that.) Maybe that will reignite the controversy??
I apologize for this post being slightly off topic, but I think us skeptics should be very cautious about trumpeting Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s paper until the purported refutation of their work is addressed.
Steve Keohane (13:11:05)
Are these climate ‘experiments’ computer models by chance?
Some might think more of chance and necessity eg Jaques Monod
“Chance and Necessity begins with a philosophical consideration of topics such as the natural/artificial distinction, reproduction, teleonomy and invariance. Here Monod highlights the apparent epistemological contradiction between the teleonomy of living organisms and the principle of objectivity. This is followed by a scathing analysis of various kinds of vitalist obscurantism (including modern “scientific” vitalisms which go by other names) and of animist approaches to evolution (from dialectical materialism to Teilhard de Chardin). Monod concludes:
We would like to think ourselves necessary, inevitable, ordained from all eternity. All religions, nearly all philosophies, and even a part of science testify to the unwearying, heroic effort of mankind desperately denying its own contingency. ”
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Chance_and_Necessity.html
“Homo Sapiens covered a very wide area (from Europe all the way to Australia, and just starting to migrate towards the Americas) by then so I doubt there was anything close to being wiped out. We were very adaptable with a very varied diet compared to our Neanderthal cousin.”
Well, pretty much everything was wiped out from about Naples Italy to the Don river in Russia as a result of that eruption which is directly across the migration path of Homo Sapien.
Homo Sapien migration into Europe would have been starting in earnest at about the time of the eruption. There is evidence of Homo Sapien settlement in what is now Hungary, for example, then a layer of ash from the eruption, then 2000 years of nothing, and then evidence of human activity again.
A rather huge area was laid waste by that eruption. Homo Sapien that had already migrated to a point West of the worst of the destruction would have missed being buried under several feet of ash, but would not have escaped the climactic consequences. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of Homo Sapiens living in Europe died in that eruption and it was a barrier for further migration until plant species recovered enough to support hunting/gathering again. A migrant attempting the trek immediately after the event would have had to cross several hundred miles of desolation which was probably impossible.
Look at any map of Homo Sapien migration and the “trunk” of the European migration path lies directly across the area practically sterilized by that eruption at about the same time the migration was happening. It would have sucked to be them.
Leif Svalgaard (06:09:34) :
The HMF and the Be10 record correlate so well, showing the 1970s cooling period. The absolute low in Be10 corresponds to the peak of Solar Cycle 21, which is also the point at which Schatten’s SODA index starts declining.
This graphic reminds me of a graphic I will be using in a public lecture next Monday. At a graph showing the difference between solar minima in the second half of the 19th century and the second half of the 20th century, I will say” Are there any Generation Y people in the room? Anybody? This graph is for you. We baby boomers have had fun with the planet you will be inheriting. We have burnt most of the oil, there are now shortages of basic commodities like coking coal, we had the best music, and we had the best weather too – caused by a run of short solar cycles. My generation has known a warm, giving Sun, but yours will suffer a Sun that is less giving, and the Earth will be less fruitful.”
Geoff Alder (06:03:45)
If you look at the NOAA sst anomalies, there is a big, persistent patch of cold water to the south of you.
Leif Svalgaard (22:14:21) :
In case anybody is in any doubt, the volcanoes that Dr Svalgaard has invoked to explain away the Be10 record are just a figment of his imagination. Sad, really.
John Egan (20:03:14) :
Drill, baby, drill. I just wanted to say that. The good thing about the Be10 record is that it can’t be fiddled with using calibration issues as an excuse, unlike the aa Index and the sunspot record.
Robert Bateman (08:46:03) :
There are reports that Spring in some parts of the US is two weeks later than normal. Two weeks at both ends of the growing season and you have a significant effect. My calculations are that a full blown Dalton Minimum rerun will reduce US agricultural production by 20%, taking the US out of the export food market. In turn, for some people on the planet, this will mean that eating animal protein will be a fond memory.
The Be10 – climate correlation is proof of Svensmark’s theory, but the theory that has real life consequences (and commercial application) is that of Friis-Christenson and Lassen. The warning is not in the stars plural, it is in our star. Each day’s delay in the onset of Solar Cycle 24 means that it will be 0.002 degrees colder. The days are adding up. We are talking about real suffering coming.
So here is an odd question, since the heliosphere is huge (the voyagers only went past a couple years ago) and is effectively like a baloon that is being pressurized from the center and blown on one side by the galactic wind (for lack of a better term). Now since it is so huge, one could likely assume that it takes some time before solar wind changes would truly make a difference to the heliopause (the actual boundry). The question is, would the heliopause boundry likely rapidly change position if the pressure (when it finally got there) decreased, or would it be more of an ebb/flow reaction in your opinion.
I ask because if the heliopause were to suddenly colapse in, say to 75% of where it is now, there would likely be a dramatic swing in GCR’s which would have the effect of a rapid effect on the climate. It would likely take quite a while to rebuild the pressure inside the heliosphere.
Offering this up as an altenate theory for rapid climate change.