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
John Finn 17:25:56
Interesting that you ask how such a small deviation in TSI can have large climatic effects. That is the most important question, if, in fact, the sun directs the climate. We don’t know the answer and great prizes await those who figure it out.
Last night I have consulted with my pillow (it means that this issue was going round and round again in my subconscious). Well; this is my “pet” theory as Dr.Leif would put it:
Returning to BASICS It DOES has large climatic effects!
But attenuated and/or increased by:
Volumetric Heat Capacity
Air =0.001297 j cm3/kg
Water=4.186 j cm3/kg
3227 times
Material Thermal conductivity
Air at 0° C 0.024 W/m K 86.24 j/m K
Water at 20°C 0.6 W/m K 2160.00 j/m K
25 times
BOTH MODULATED BY CONVECTION This is where GWrs. are out of the picture
Frank K. (04:50:43) :
Tim Channon (04:12:37) :
From that linked press release:
“Hathaway is an expert forecaster of the solar cycle. He keeps track of sunspot numbers (the best known indicator of solar activity) and predicts years in advance when the next peaks and valleys will come.”
Yup.
And…
“But researchers are making progress. Hathaway and colleague Bob Wilson, both working at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, believe they’ve found a simple way to predict the date of the next solar minimum. “We examined data from the last 8 solar cycles and discovered that Solar Min follows the first spotless day after Solar Max by 34 months,” explains Hathaway.
The most recent solar maximum was in late 2000. The first spotless day after that was Jan 28, 2004. So, using Hathaway and Wilson’s simple rule, solar minimum should arrive in late 2006. That’s about a year earlier than previously thought. ”
Heh.
Frank K and Tim Channon,
Just enter the name Hathaway in the search field of WUWT.
You will know than that you are recycling “old news”
Hathaway here is feeded to the sharks here everytime he opens his mouth.
Sorry forgot to say that data is from march 1958 to july 2008
Almost fell off my chair when I read this on the Daily Telegram website
“The increase in the amount of carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas, may have helped to slow global warming. However as the world cuts pollution it will speed up again.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/5202877/Global-warming-slowed-by-pollution.html
Frank K. (05:06:10) :
No one fully understands the underlying physics of the sunspot cycle.
A statement from NASA that some choose to ignore.
Joel Shore
After many years of apathy I have started looking at these climate change issues. So far I believe that the man made CO2 warming theory is weak and the AGW extremists and AGW driven politicians basically lunatics. I also don’t believe in positive CO2 feedbacks because time has shown that they have never happened. However I agree that the TSI theory doesn’t explain everything. There are other factors and in such a complex system I’d expect that to be so. I’d expect our knowledge on what is really happening to be very small (compared to what some would have us believe) yet acknowledge that much is being discovered. This is mainly due to people challenging the consensus which is patently incorrect and patently far short of enough solid information to initiate anything other than long term startegic planning. To my eyes there is no possible justification for the draconian measures proposed. There are far more important things to spend our money on.
Ron de Haan (07:40:49) :
Frank K and Tim Channon,
Just enter the name Hathaway in the search field of WUWT.
You will know than that you are recycling “old news”
—
Yes, I know it old news, but it is good for all to review these predictions of yesteryear, in light of current events, just to emphasize the point that we don’t understand as much of the physical world as we think we do. This is a very important topic at this time as the US government is about to embark on policies attempting to “control” the climate of the earth based on incomplete evidence, controversial theories, and poorly understood physics (as expressed in the AOGCMs). And the scientists and policy makers advocating these policies are today as sure of themselves as Dr. Hathaway was back in 2004…
As much as I enjoy a technical proof of what I already knew about Al Gore, and this thread is a good example; math is not required to see that the Emperor has no clothes.
Keeping in mind that the IPCC climate models don’t know how to handle clouds, punch up channel 212 on Dish Network to get a live view of the earth from stationary orbit. Visualize the white from the clouds as energy reflected back to space and the dark areas as energy absorbed on Earth. Now if some warm monger tells you that the effect of clouds can be ignored give them all of the respect they deserve.
If indeed fewer sunspots, cause more clouds then read this thread again and to out and buy new sweaters.
Bill -Figure T_est_05 shows this longer wave, with about a 50 year period. This used the FFT to filter & re-contruct the signal.
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/t_est_05-NVRm1.gif
Fig T_est_05 shows a fairly strong amplitude. It also shows that there is a peaking about the year 2000. This peaking around the year 2000 of this and other wave would suggest that the recent warm up could be due to the re-enforcement of several waves such as the 50 and 10 year wave.
The ~50+ year cycle seems to have a stong amplitude on both your sunspot data and east England temp.
Steve:-)
Read through the article three times & it still sounds a complete load of bovine faecal content! Absolute nonsense. Sounds like a softening up process for the doom & gloom sayers who can’t predcit/second-guess/project/have a stab at what is goingto happen, not a clue any of them!
Geoff Sherrington (04:36:50) :
The Discovery channel recently had a piece on putting small mirrors in orbit to reduce the amount of sunlight to counteract AGW from CO2. Of course no one discussed the effects of reduced sunlight on crops and such. Cures in this realm could be much worse than the “disease”. Since they think of a warmer more benign climate as being such “disease”.
An improved version of the comparison between temperature and TSI/CO2
This time there is no averaging of the data.
CO2 x axis is just the sorted PPM figures without regard to dates
SSN/TSI x axis is again just sorted without regard to dates
data date range is still mar 1958 to jul 2009
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/2553/hadcrutvsco2andssn.jpg
Plots show that temperature is increased by
0.00006 deg C per sun spot!
or 0.01 deg C per CO2 ppm
All I know is that something is totally whack with the maple syrup supply. There isn’t any at Trader Joe’s. At Costco a container that used to sell for under $10 is currently $32. Is Spring so late in New England that the maple syrup run has changed?
Leif Svalgaard (23:27:39) :
If that remains true year in year out, then it becomes a constant and would play no part in any long term climate variation. It’s only when the constant deviates in some way would you expect any climate reaction. Having said that, I’m in no way hanging my hat on the current solar conditions having any effect on the recent plateauing of global temps.
I tend to think that the recent changes in the ocean currents would smother any apparently trivial but interesting changes in solar output.
OT, but to bill,
The straightness of your CO2 versus temperature line is just a function of the logarithmic formula and where we are on the CO2 line now.
The line is nearly straight starting in about 1985 (it isn’t before this date, it is exponential) and then it will stay almost linear till about 550 ppm (2070) and then it starts to flatten out.
It is just a characteristic of the logarithmic formulae and the position we are at now on the chart. This is, in part, why the IPCC says the trend should be 0.2C per decade because that is the near-linear trend that occurs for this time period in the theory.
You should convert your CO2 numbers to Ln(CO2) though – it won’t make much difference at this point.
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5721/newhadcrut3warming.png
MartinGAtkins (09:25:52) :
“I guess you missed the point: the variation from January to July is almost 100 times larger than the solar cycle variation of TSI…”
If that remains true year in year out, then it becomes a constant and would play no part in any long term climate variation.
You missed the point again. I must not be very good at making it. The issue was “FEEDBACK!!!!!”. If the feedbacks could amplify a variation a hundred times as small (0.05%), then they would have an enormous effect on the full 7% variation. And the solar cycle variation also happens cycle in and cycle out.
Leif says:
Ahhh, but these “feedbacks” also have a low-pass filter, so they are unable to see the relatively high frequency annual components …
Richard Sharpe (09:45:02) :
Ahhh, but these “feedbacks” also have a low-pass filter, so they are unable to see the relatively high frequency annual components …
I guess one can devise a ‘feedback’ scheme that produces just what one wants to see in the data.
Leif Svalgaard (07:40:23) :
The falling amplitude of TSI should give us a very clear picture of the level of strength of sunspots/faculae. Since the end of 2008, those spots have been visibly weak and greatly diminished in contrast.
Until we get some sort of halfway decent spots, the TSI is going to look like 80 grit sandpaper.
Towards the end of Wolf Minimum in 1340s Black Death (Bubonic plague) that swept through Europe killed millions.
In the middle of Maunder Minimum the Great Plague of London, 1665–1666, was the another major outbreak of the bubonic plague in Europe.
The third Pandemic began in Central Asia. It spread worldwide, killing millions, into the early 20th century (Dalton minimum).
Now Swine Flu is rearing its ugly head. Is it possible that reduction in UV radiation (normally killing the nasty germs) is contributing to the occurrence of these calamities?
Any medics on the forum?
Martin Mason says:
First of all, I wouldn’t call them “CO2 feedbacks” because, unlike the feedbacks that the “skeptics” are proposing to amplify solar variations, these feedbacks are not specific to the mechanism of CO2 causing the warming. They are feedbacks that occur at least roughly the same for any source of warming.
Second of all, those who study paleoclimate generally seem to disagree with you on this point of what the past climate record shows http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;306/5697/821 :
crosspatch (09:15:59) :
My guess is that last year’s production has run out and this year’s hasn’t made far beyond the sugar shack (there’s one small outfit just up the hill from me but I haven’t talked with the owner about the season).
Maple syrup production is extremely weather dependent. A lot of times in New England it evens out – poor production in one area goes with a banner year in another. However, Canada is the biggest producer by far, and Quebec seemed to have a lousy year last year (50 Mlb – million pounds) and will have exceeded the 86 Mlb record with 91-100 Mlb this year. Some of that record may go with expanded tapping.
That from http://www.country-guide.ca/east/issues/ISArticle.asp?id=98804&issue=04152009&story_id=&PC=FBC
Very good report at http://flavorchase.tillinghastmaple.com/2008/12/07/maple-syrup-prices-rocket-up-in-2008-may-head-back-down-in-2009.aspx though it tries to predict 2009 results in 2008.
Could Leif or someone equally knowledgeable please explain why the above chart shows a TSI currently at only 1361.
Previous reconstructions as discussed here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1396&linkbox=true
indicate that during the recent warming we were at about 1366.
The difference is sizeable and a cause for concern.
Leif says
“I guess you missed the point: the variation from January to July is almost 100 times larger than the solar cycle variation of TSI…”
MartinGAtkins says
If that remains true year in year out, then it becomes a constant and would play no part in any long term climate variation.
I think it’s you that is missing the point. I wasn’t questioning that there may be a feed back mechanism. For any feed back to vary the climate then the constant must deviate. Otherwise you end up with equilibrium.
The point I was making is that the current conditions are very unlikely to be due to the any short term drop in solar output such as we have now.
The present change in the ocean SST’s would swamp any signal.
“Climate models and efforts to explain global temperature changes…”
More globaloney based on computer models. That link is a perfect example of speculation by people trolling for grant money. But when real world evidence is taken into account, there doesn’t seem to be much sensitivity at all to CO2: click
So, who are you gonna believe? The planet? Or a couple of jamokes fiddling with a GCM to get the results they want?
I’ll put my trust in the planet, over the rank speculation of these grant seeking taxsuckers. Mother Nature says, “Don’t worry.”
Mother Nature is right.