Guest post by Guillermo Gonzalez
I recently happened upon the SORCE/TIM website and decided to look up the plot of the full total solar irradiance (TSI) dataset (http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm#plots)
The SORCE mission began collecting TSI data in February 2003.
I was curious to see if the variations in the TSI had begun to rise yet, perhaps indicating a start to cycle 24. Visual inspection of the SORCE TSI plot showed just the opposite – variations continue to decline in amplitude. If cycle 24 has started, there are no signs of it in these data.
We can be a bit more quantitative if we examine, instead, a plot of TSI variance with time. I produced such a plot using the daily average TSI data provided on the SORCE web site.
The red data are variance values calculated at two-week intervals. The blue curve is the smoothed data calculated in the same way as smoothed sunspot numbers (basically a 12-month running average). Note, the vertical axis is plotted on a logarithmic scale.
To compare the recent TSI variance trend with the previous sunspot minimum, I looked up the ACRIM2 daily average TSI data at: http://www.acrim.com/Data%20Products.htm
These data are plotted on the same scale as the SORCE data. The smoothed data show a minimum TSI variance near the beginning of 1996, some months before sunspot minimum (October 1996). Notice that the minimum value for the variance during the 1996 minimum was about an order of magnitude larger than the present TSI variance.
The SORCE web site quotes long-term 1-sigma precision (relative accuracy) of their TSI measurements to be 0.001%/yr. This corresponds to a variance of 2 ´ 10-4 W2 m-4. However, the precision should be considerably better than this on the 2-week timescale that I selected for calculating the variance. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate a quote for the estimated precision of the ACRIM2 measurements. It would be worthwhile to know if the minimum TSI variance of the previous sunspot minimum measured by ACRIM2needs to be corrected for the instrumental precision.
Guillermo Gonzalez writes on his background:
I’m an astronomer, though my present title is associate professor of physics at Grove City College, PA. I wrote a paper (in Solar Physics) with Ken Schatten back in 1987 on predicting the next solar maximum with geomagnetic indices. That was my only contribution on anything having to do with the Sun-Earth connection, but I also got a letter published in Physics Today in 1997 wherein I urged readers to takethe Sun-Earth climate connection more seriously.
These days most of my research is on extrasolar planets.
UPDATE: I received a suggestion for an overlay via email from Terry Dunleavy and I’ve worked one up below. This was done graphically. I took great care to get the two lined up correctly. Note however that the datasets span different lengths of time, as you can note on the two timescales I’ve included on the combined graph. The vertical scale matches exactly between graphs though. – Anthony
UPDATE2: Here is another graphical comparison of the two TSI variance graphs, scaled to have a matching X-axis and appropriately aligned side by side. – Anthony
anna v 21:34:44
Oh, it’s gonna be clouds, alright, kim asserts confidently. But will it be cosmic rays or a mechanism like Erl is working on, or heh heh, both or neither. It is so marvelous to wonder. Especially so when one is not constrained by physical realities. Leif doesn’t know what he’s missing.
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John Finn (17:25:56) :
I think I must be missing something. TSI appears to be about 0.05% lower than it was 5 years ago – and this is supposed to cool the climate. How exactly?
FEEDBACK!!!!!
anna v (21:34:44) :
Have a look on the recent measured albedo curve.
kim (21:51:31) :
But will it be cosmic rays
The measured albedo curve does not follow the solar cycle or the cosmic rays count.
Bill Hunter (21:53:29) :
“I think I must be missing something. TSI appears to be about 0.05% lower than it was 5 years ago – and this is supposed to cool the climate. How exactly?”
FEEDBACK!!!!!
That is not explaining anything ‘exactly’. There is a 7% variation each year from July to January, which is two orders of magnitude larger than the 0.05%. Perhaps the FEEDBACK knows to leave that variation alone…
kim (21:45:48) :
why the flux curve is rising but not the TSI curve.
But it is: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
So, will there be a clue in the rising(eventually) of the rotational component curve as to whether the spots will disappear or not? Or is that presently unknown?
probably unknown, but my guess is that the rotational component will not be much changed if the spots became invisible.
Some folks seem to be still trying to say TSI isn’t important because the change is so small. But the argument isn’t that this is a direct cause but that something is going on, as yet not understood, such that what the Sun does or does not do interacts with Earth and the Cosmos. There seem to be several ideas but none yet have pushed all the others aside.
The only thing that doesn’t seem to work is a direct CO2 forcing. One only has to consider any period before or after 1976-1998. How many years does an idea have to fail before you toss it away and move on?
Justin Sane (21:39:34) :
Why does the 12 month running average not go to the end of the data? Shouldn’t the 12 month running average be the current month and the last 11 months rather than the 12 months ending roughly 11-12 months earlier?
No, that is not a good way of running the average. The running average should be plotted at the time of the midpoint.
“Pat (21:45:26) : New South Wales, Australia. Earliest snow in a decade…”
I thought they said Australia is burning?
Leif Svalgaard (21:27:50) :
That was awesome; thanks for the link too. With the arctic sea ice recovering so dramatically, it looks like something other than CO2 is the key. I’m struggling to understand it all but you have helped a lot.
Us amateurs are lucky that the pros are willing to take the time to post here.
I still think that we are dealing with a chaotic system. The beats of the system will not have much to do with the individual rhythms, there will be hills and troughs, that is the only prediction that can be made without running some sort of chaotic model ala Tsonis et al, taking in everything, from the the 7% seasonal change in the heating of the sun on the oceans to the evaporation rates,the ocean fluidity, the cosmic rays, plankton, etc. etc. It is not a simple harmonic oscillator solution. In such systems it is possible for small changes to induce large effects, but one cannot say offhand : “cause: effect”.
“Just Want Truth… (22:18:55) :
“Pat (21:45:26) : New South Wales, Australia. Earliest snow in a decade…”
I thought they said Australia is burning?”
Australia usually burns during summer naturally and normally but more so when people start fires.
[I]Perhaps the FEEDBACK knows to leave that variation alone…[/I]
Maybe not . . . .only one pole was getting hotter.
Leif is probably right. Min probably was around Nov08 going from his data
BUT… we`ll see over the next 3 months. If things dont start picking up RIGHT NOW, then the upturns he has in his data are just minor anomolies, and we are probably in a genuine grand minimum type event. The only part of his data that is unambiguously increasing is the 10.7 flux, and that fell last month and this month will also be lower than the Jan-Feb peak.
What we call a “Grand Minimum” is nothing more than a SC where the SSN doesnt get above 10 or so. Maybe we passed the minimum in Nov08 as Leif has said, but nothing much more will happen for the next decade. I hope not
Fuelmaker (18:54:58) :
Robert Wood (16:17:13) :
I agree with Jim. Temperature is surely most sensitive to the Earth’s albedo….. even in the Global Climate Models used by the warmenists.
How do they expalin this remains static?
Maybe one of the Team can put me really to rights on this question.
Perhaps, albedo magnitude, as it is measured nowadays, doesn’t include drag transfer coefficient and/or photon streams from the unexposed materials below the surface after the energy has been transferred by conduction from the subsurface to the surface.
It is a plausible explanation to your question because heat transfer in the subsurface has been often dismissed in measurements of the outgoing radiation. Until now, it has not been computed adequately, or its adequate measurement doesn’t fit into a focal idea. Kiehl and Trenberth only refer to it as “other sources”; however, the value included in their scheme related to the energy balance seems to have been deduced by simple subtraction, not from real measurements.
Kiehl and Trenberth estimates that “thermals” upwelling energy is 24 W/m^2, but that magnitude is highly speculative.
“Various parameters appear more important than CO2, like fluctuations of the intensity of the solar radiation on annual and century scale, which seem better correlated with heating effects than the variations of CO2 content.”
–Claude Allegre
-Institute of Geophysics, Paris
from Lubos Motl’s :
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/04/polish-nas-joined-climate-skeptics.html
Wroclaw-Warsaw, 12 February 2009, the Polish NAS joins climate skeptics
“1. The climate of the Earth depends on the interaction between the surface and the atmosphere, both of which are heated by solar radiation characterized by a cyclical, variable intensity. The climate is influenced by the Earth’s yearly revolution around the Sun, thermics, changes in ocean waters flow, air mass movement, mountain massif position, their uplift and erosion in time perspective as well as changes in the continents’ position as a result of their permanent wandering…. ”
English translation at Benny Peiser’s web site :
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/PAS.htm
In original Polish :
http://www.kngeol.pan.pl/images/stories/pliki/2.Stanowisko%20KNG%20w%20sprawie%20zmian%20klimatu.pdf
Perhaps the ratio of low versus high cloud albedo is the important factor. If I understand the cosmic ray cloud seeding theory, more low clouds should form in times of reduced magnetic activity as indicated by times of sun spot minima.
There is but too little C02 in Earth’s atmosphere, and it doesn’t force , it follows warming & cooling. It’s greenhouse signature is logarhyrhmic, not linear.
As for TSI, GCR influencing albedo, those are real drivers, though they currently seem not the whole picture.
However little they seem, their presence or abscence is postive or negative.
Don’t forget the shrunken outer atmosphere. Surprise, surprise.
The Earth is cooling.
So, how do you want to describe the how & why?
Would you say that the oceans are the biggest heat sink, but forget to mention that they too are subject to heating & cooling? Or should we treat them as if they cool or heat themselves?
How about underwater volcanoes flipping the cold water to the surface in synch to solar languish? Are there changes to tidal forces on Earth not in sympathy to sun & moon? Gravity itself, does it play a part?
If the solution to this mystery resides in unifying all 4 forces, it’s likely to elude at present.
Which leaves the Sun languishing and the Earth cooling.
G’night.
Heres one I did earlier
HADCRUT3V vs CO2 (1 year average)
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/3634/tempvsco2.jpg
Quite a nice straight line really (it shouldn’t be of course)
And of course it does not say which came first.
“Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.”
–Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin
-Merited Scientist of Russia
-fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences
-staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute
GK (22:34:30) :
The only part of his data that is unambiguously increasing is the 10.7 flux, and that fell last month and this month will also be lower than the Jan-Feb peak.
No, no, no, no. How many times must I say this? You should look at the ‘adjusted to 1AU’ flux, not the ‘observed’ flux. The latter mainly shows that the Earth since January has increased its distance to the Sun. A constant [at the Sun] F10.7 flux will decrease 7 % from January to July. F10.7 is going UP. Here are the monthly means:
2008 Dec 66.99
2009 Jan 67.60
2009 Feb 68.33
2009 Mar 68.55
2009 Apr 70.33 (until right now)
And to return to the topic of the posting. Here is the standard deviation over 27-day solar rotations (over 2 weeks is too short) since 1976. I plot the standard deviation rather than its square [the variance]:
http://www.leif.org/research/Standard%20Deviation%20of%2027-Day-Rotations%20of%20TSI.png
This outs the current data a bit in perspective.
Bill Hunter (22:34:13) :
“Perhaps the FEEDBACK knows to leave that variation alone…” Maybe not . . . .only one pole was getting hotter.
I guess you missed the point: the variation from January to July is almost 100 times larger than the solar cycle variation of TSI…
“…..a supercenturial solar minimum will be occurring during the next few decades…. It will be similar in magnitude to the Dalton minimum, but probably longer as the last one.”
–Boris Komitov, Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
&
–Vladimir Kaftan, Central Research Institute of Geodesy, Aerial Surveying and Cartography, Federal Agency of Geodesy and Cartography, Moscow, Russia
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=288314
and
http://www.astro.bas.bg/AIJ/issues/n9/BKomitov.pdf
From the website where the TSI data is found:
“Research and Applications
Measurements of total solar irradiance (TSI) are known to be linked to Earth climate and temperature. Proxies of the TSI based on sunspot observations, tree ring records, ice cores, and cosmogenic isotopes have given estimates of the solar influence on the Earth that extend back thousands of years, and correlate with major climatic events on the Earth. These estimates extrapolate many recent detailed observations to long-term observations of fewer (or even one) measurement. For example, accurate TSI measurements from the last 25 years are correlated with solar measurements of sunspots and faculae; these correlations can then be used to extrapolate the TSI to time periods prior to accurate space-borne measurements, since the solar records extend back 100 years for faculae and 400 years for sunspots. Over this extended time range, the extrapolated TSI record can be compared with longer term records, such as tree rings or ice cores, and correlation with these allows extension of the estimated TSI to more distant times, albeit with decreasing certainty. This extrapolation is important for understanding the relationship between TSI and the Earth’s climate; yet the extrapolation begins with the comparison of solar surface features to accurate TSI measurements, a record which is currently only 25 years long.”
So nice of them to put it in the fine print.
John Finn (17:25:56) :
“I think I must be missing something. TSI appears to be about 0.05% lower than it was 5 years ago – and this is supposed to cool the climate. How exactly?”
I think I must be missing something too. The CO2 content of the atmosphere has gone up by about 100ppm, which by my reckoning is about 0.01% (I may have the math wrong). And how exactly is that supposed to warm the climate enough to need to spend trillions to cure it?