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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Realitycheck, thanks for the links, I’ll read up and think.
Robert Bateman, same yourself, we need to provide fresh ideas for thought and analysis. David Archibald is forging ahead with ideas, others need to mop up some details and go lateral with some of this stuff.
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.
And you can divine all this from looking at bones?
Wow!
Re giant volcanic eruptions of the past, only a couple of months ago there was a bit of press alarmism over the possibility of the Yellowstone ‘super volcano’ exploding, which (it was said) could lay waste an area a thousand kilometers wide and destroy the agriculture and economy of the United States, perhaps even the entire world with a volcanic ‘winter’. See here:
http://www.unmuseum.org/supervol.htm
It would probably blow out a lot of CO2, too. Maybe we could set the professional AGW alarmists to work figuring out how to stop this one, instead of worrying about a few coal plants.
/Mr Lynn
David Archibald (14:47:43) :
The HMF and the Be10 record correlate so well, showing the 1970s cooling period.
First, neither the HMF nor 10Be show any ‘cooling’ period. To connect them with cooling is your imaginative idea.
Second, you state without any justification that the correlate well. Show it. McCracken and Beer have calculated HMF from Beer’s 10Be record and the results is very different from the HMF actually was. So, show where McC and Beer went wrong.
David Archibald:
My perception
Crowley, T. J.
Abstract:
“A moderately healthy debate continues as to the relative importance of volcanism and solar variability for climate change over the last millennium. A new reconstruction of volcanism has now enabled that debate to be extended to the last two millennia. Preliminary results – which will be finalized by the time of AGU – indicate that there is a first-order shift in the intensity and frequency of global volcanism that began in the mid-13th century, almost at the same time as cooling events found in annual-scale reconstructions of temperature. The most puzzling aspect of a comparison of the bimillennial volcano and solar time series involves an almost eerie similarity in the timing of pulses of volcanism and C-14 and Be-10 inferred changes in ‘solar’ variability (note that C. Amman has independently discovered this phenomenon). Since there is little physical reason to expect co- variation of these two physical processes, it seems most likely that there is an unexpected contamination of one of these processes on the proxy representative of the other process. For example, pulses of volcanism could: (1) cause more changes in ocean and atmospheric C-14 variability than previously assumed; (2) change ice core Be-10 accumulation rates through effects on climate (e.g.,NAO); and/or (3) potentially change Be-10 deposition rates by increasing the number of stratospheric aerosols that are nucleation sites for cosmogenic Be-10. These results raise some questions about the reliability of ‘solar’ proxies as evidence of solar variability”
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AGUFMPP21D..02C
Dave: You always bring a pleasant reading.
David Archibald (14:47:43) :
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.
Worse than Hansen or Gore [just with the sign reversed – polar ice gone in five years vs. Hell freezes over]. This is pure nonsense. If SC24 doesn’t show up for the next 50 years [another Maunder minimum] we’ll be 37C colder; suffering indeed. F&L is just bad science, there is no correlation between solar cycle length and global temperature: http://www.leif.org/Cycle%20Lengths%20and%20Temperatures.png
Why does the 10Be have so much less structure than the 14C?
David, please don’t use cute sayings in a lecture on scientific subjects as serious as this one is. It will NOT help! Based on your reference to warm weather and an active Sun, you will be using the goddess in the cave analogy and appealing to the baser levels of human understanding of complex phenomena. The correlation is striking, but dead wrong.
Fernando (16:44:54) :
Dave: You always bring a pleasant reading.
I agree, there is great entertainment value in his posts.
Leif Svalgaard (12:24:46)
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 …
Thank you!
Ditto Leif
“The HMF and the Be10 record correlate so well, showing the 1970s cooling period.”
Like Lief, I grow rather weary of David’s claims. Post the data, post your code or go get behind Dr Mann in line for your junk science award.
Leif.
I have been wondering about the energetic aspects of greater solar activies influence on the upper atmosphere and polar weather.
Is it possible that the expansion of the upper atmosphere/ionosphere that is associated with an energetic sun could result in a 1-2 or 3 watt/meter reduction in heat loss? This would be consistent with the forcing that is being attributed to the CO2 hypothesis.
So even though TSI varies little, CME’s, proton storms, X-ray flares, and the EM flux at higher photon energies would have a greater impact than would be attributed due to thermal absorption.
Even if these don’t negate the CO2 forcing completely, they could conceivably reduce the amount of CO2 forcing and thereby relegating the AGW component to something that is inconsequential.
As a volcanologist, we use Be 10 in modern eruptions as a proxy for sediment incorporation into the magmas produced during subduction.
One thing I can tell you with great certainty is the science is NOT settled on Be 10. As with most proxies, there are many, many uncertainties.
Ben
P.S. To those wondering about the heat-flow from the mantle and its effect on the temperature of the surface of the earth, rock is a very, very, very, good insulator and the convective rates of the solid mantle are very, very, very, slow.
Pamela Gray (17:15:51):
“The correlation is striking, but dead wrong.”
Dear Pamela,
Could you be more explicit?
Leif,
David Archibald claims in his posting (at 14:47:43) that the volcanic eruptions you claim “scrubbed” Be10 out of the atmosphere, thus contributing to its deposition in ice cores, is completely imaginative. Being that you hold such a high standard for his claim of Be10 as a fairly accurate solar proxy, from what do you derive your conclusion that volcanic eruptions are responsible for Be10 deposition? Not that your claim seems unreasonable, but fair is fair after all.
Maybe Anthony can let you do a competing guest posting on this if you have the time?
Jim G (17:37:55) :
Is it possible that the …
These things can be calculated and I sure some people have [and we have heard about if it is in fact possible]. If one counters that these calculations are wrong or the models don’t work, etc, then the question cannot be answered.
So even though TSI varies little, CME’s, proton storms, X-ray flares, and the EM flux at higher photon energies would have a greater impact than would be attributed due to thermal absorption.
People [e.g. Lean and Rind, but many others – on both sides of the debate, Scaffetta etc] have tried to disentangle the contributions using multivariate correlation analysis and cannot agree as to what does what, so again, I’ll say we don’t know. My personal opinion is that the claims for a good correlation are too flimsy to take seriously, and I don’t adhere to the precautionary principle that just because something can be hypothesized one should guard against it at all costs.
David Archibald (14:47:43) :
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.
We are already seeing that in our locale. The spring was late, the greening was slow and pale, and the fall found plants stopping ripening even when the weather was still quite warm.
A wine grape harvest failed, many gardens had soured vegetables and fruit trees failed to ripen.
Nightime temps did not reach the 40’s until June. I did not know about the decreased upper atmosphere, but I did know about what happens to crops when the solar cycle fails to ramp. We got more in than most people because we planted cooler weather varieties and root crops.
Those whom I was able to warn did ok.
I cannot warn a state, much less a whole nation, out of my reach.
Eli Rabett (17:04:45) :
Why does the 10Be have so much less structure than the 14C?
Some of the smoothness is a data processing artifacts. The 14C data are 10-year values [e.g. one point every 10 years]. 10Be on my plot is an 11-year running mean of single year values. I don’t like to do correlations on running means, but chose to do it this way to match Archibald’s curve, which is a running mean apparently because it matches mine. The rest of the smoothness is related to the fact that the Carbon cycle is longer than the Beryllium cycle and the storage time is longer; this tends to smooth out rapid variations.
Pamela Gray (17:15:51) :
reference to warm weather and an active Sun, you will be using the goddess in the cave analogy and appealing to the baser levels of human understanding of complex phenomena. The correlation is striking, but dead wrong.
If there is any correlation at all, it goes the other way:
http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%20Length%20Temperature%20Correlation.pdf
Longer cycles are warmer, but with very low statistical significance.
I like the saying, treat the first encountered pathology. Do simple science first. What is it around us that is big enough to cause weather pattern variations within climate zones? There are several really big things that vary a LOT. If you have lived near an ocean, that would be a clue. The oceans of the Earth have fairly large swings in temperatures. The NH jet stream is another one. Large swings. Sometimes it is tight around the Arctic. Sometimes it loops southward. Trade winds. You can see them in action over the equator when viewing swirling westward infrared cloud patterns that then turn north or south and come swirling back in an eastward direction – very cool. These are HUGE sources of weather pattern variations within climate zones. Yet we just can’t seem to take them as seriously as the tiny minute metals and gasses we find in ice cores.
It goes back to the proctology exam of a gnat’s ass. Some of our posters here are looking for minute changes in the colon track of a gnat’s ass in order to explain the variation in elephant poop. The heat from the Sun, in whatever way it heats, does not vary enough to explain the weather pattern swings we experience. Is that explicit? I don’t know how more explicit I can be. The galactic or Sun’s “stuff” that reach us have mathematical equations (not models, equations) to explain the heat we get (in whatever way we get it) from them. It amounts to very littlechange, even when the cyclic changes in this stuff go up or down. To change this outcome, WE HAVE TO MOVE CLOSER TO THE SUN! Or the Sun has to move closer to us. Lots closer. Or, for those of you who think the Sun is cooling us, we would have to move VERY FAR AWAY!
Here is my advice before posting on the contents of a gnat’s lower digestive system. If you folks are anything like me, you are slogging through books on the Sun, Leif’s calculations, and discovering lots of things about a very groovy, and dependable, Sun. Tiny bit by tiny bit. Not easily disgested but with time it becomes clearer. Sorry Leif but some of your stuff is far more difficult to decipher than my college level masters course in statistics. I can do an ANOVA, even an analysis of covariance, by hand. But your calculations are another thing altogether. But I am getting there.
OT: Doesn’t look like the Glossary page is open for comments any more, but it could use ‘HMF’ =?= ‘heliospheric magnetic field’ (I had to search for it).
/Mr Lynn
Reply: Done ~ ctm
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.
[Anti-AGW or more rabidly AGW]
Leif how do you like it?
Bobby Lane (18:03:48) :
from what do you derive your conclusion that volcanic eruptions are responsible for Be10 deposition? Not that your claim seems unreasonable, but fair is fair after all.
Scientists know that when we said that something is, that there is a long list of caveats that we simply do not bother to recite every time, like “in my opinion”, “within the error bar [which may be large]”, “as far as the data goes to such and such level of significance”, etc. Same thing with the volcanic eruption hypothesis. What is clear is that the large peak in 10Be in the 1880-90s is not due to a very low HMF calculated by McCracken and Beer or other solar wind parameters, because in recent years we have discovered reliable ways of inferring the HMF back to 1836. The coincidence [and that is all it may be at this point] with the Krakatoa event [which was a sulfur rich explosion] is a point of departure for checking for other such events. There were, it turns out, very significant events at the previous 10Be peak near 1815 [Tambora, Mayon, and others], and also significant events near the 1700 peak. So, the hypothesis does have some legs. A problem is that the residence time of 10Be in the atmosphere is thought to be short [~2 years], but it is not clear how firm that is, or if the climate response to the explosion may have lasted longer, and several other uncertainties. What is much more certain is that the calculated very low HMF for the peak does not match the reliable values we have for the 1870-1900 period. Geomagnetic activity [which scales linearly with the HMF] during that time was not markedly lower than today, so we can be confident in asserting that the HMF wasn’t either.
Tim L (18:52:16) :
[AGW or more rabidly Anti-AGW] vs.
[Anti-AGW or more rabidly AGW]
I have noticed [empirical, anecdotal evidence only, so beware] that the AGW majority crowd is generally more laid-back, more secure [the science is settled after all so why get hot under the collar], and less combative than the Anti-AGW crowd, who is more desperate [being a minority], more combative, more hostile, and more prone to flights of fancy [not having a settled science to lean on], hence my wording.
David Archibald (14:47:43) : 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.
the winter here was 4 weeks early….. spring is two weeks late.
Leif is like most that are not connected to the reality of what is going on at natures level…. cognitive disconnect.
we need to get more “proof” and in a hurry.
1) earths magnetic field 2) geo-thermal heating 3) RH ( clouds)
God help us all.
Leif, from my college days, I would suggest there is another explanation for laid back behavior on the part of the “save-the-planet-from-natural-fertilizer” folks. However, I am told that most did not inhale.