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
Steven: Good eye !
Remodeled data? Ground source data vs spaceborne source data?
Mother Nature is right. Stepping outside… almost May and there’s yet another cold front moved through with the howling Spring winds leaving behind a perfectly sunny day with a cold bite in the air and ice in the birdbath.
My how the years have chilled.
Haven’t been able to project a Tiny Tim since January. Good thing I looked.
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.
Lief,
In the interest of helping to clarify your meaning… clearly there are significant seasonal variations in climate.
To what mechanism do you ascribe the yearly variations in climate (i.e. winter vs summer) – plain TSI difference, some feedback mechanism, some amplification mechanism, some other mechanism?
Explaining that might help to set the context for your view on multi-year (solar cycle, etc.) differences in climate.
The oceans are selling off its assets and no income from old source of cash!
Smokey:
I’ll put my trust in scientists who actually understand the difference between signal and noise in the data and who understand how to plot things so that don’t produce plots that would only be expected to show temperature (modulo noise) tracking CO2 levels if the climate sensitivity were 5X what the IPCC says it is.
Leif Svalgaard (10:14:22) :
“I guess one can devise a ‘feedback’ scheme that produces just what one wants to see in the data.”
You guess that? Wow, you’re really going out on a limb. LOL.
If it’s not an established fact that people devise feedback schemes produce what they want from the data, then there are no facts. Isn’t this what lies at the very core of the AGW debate?
vukcevic (10:39:34) :
“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?”
I am not a medic.
I know that some bacteria respond to UV but viruses…?
Flu epidemics occur almost every winter.
I think that other factors must be taken into consideration.
What to think of reduced resistance against sickness because of malnutrition or even famine?
This combined with the lack of basic hygienic facilities like toilets, closed disposal water systems, clean drinking water, pest control and the presence of swamps near cities.
The bubonic plaque was caused by rats that carried flees.
I have found an article pointing out that the bubonic plague could have caused the Little Ice Age stating that abandoned farm land was covered by trees, absorbing the CO2, thus causing the Little Ice Age.
I don’t believe this because of the CO2 link and because it is an article from the BBC,
but here you have it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4755328.stm
I have found this other link on the web but it’s about malaria.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol6no1/reiter.htm
There is some attachment to this, but I will be more interested in just the UV portion of the spectrum. I know that typicaly UV goes down 6% durring a minimum (trying to find out what it is for this minimum, but haven’t yet). Anoter thing most of us agree on is that GCR’s go up durring solar minimum. Now a question I have is what are the possibilities that lower UV’s translate to a rise in bacteria and virus’s (UV kills these) and an increse in GCR’s translates to an increse in new strains due to mutation. Could be a double whammy for infectious disease, ala the samonella outbreaks and the new swine flu. I know at this point I have no evedence, but there seems to be a plausable working theory, thought I would share 🙂
Three comments – 1. Just found this blog and I love it!
2. Maple sap production (flow from the tree) is directly related to barometric pressure. 3. And if the oceans are “rising” due to global warming, why isn’t all the waterfront property on sale? After all, if the current owners of the waterfront property actually believed that there was actual global warming with subsequent consequences, they would be voting with their pocketbook and dumping the property now. Don’t you think?
Ron de Haan,
Thanks for your research. Well, well I would never…
You have to forgive my macabre sense of humour, I was trying to put fear of God into some of AGWs (in case they got this global warming lark wrong), but never suspected that someone did attempt to do real science on a possible link.
I have to be more careful in future.
Stephen Wilde (11:17:28) :
Could Leif or someone equally knowledgeable please explain why the above chart shows a TSI currently at only 1361.
The satellite measurements by different satellites [ http://acrim.com/RESULTS/Earth%20Observatory/earth_obs_fig1.jpg ] have varied between 1361 and 1374 simply because it is very difficult to make absolute measurements that accurate. The relative error is much much smaller.
George Gillan (11:41:30) :
To what mechanism do you ascribe the yearly variations in climate (i.e. winter vs summer) – plain TSI difference, some feedback mechanism, some amplification mechanism, some other mechanism?
Summer/winter? northern hemisphere summer? The Earth’s axis is tilted 23 degrees, that gives you summer/winter. Nothing to do with the Sun.
“I’ll put my trust in scientists who actually understand the difference between signal and noise in the data and who understand how to plot things so that don’t produce plots that would only be expected to show temperature (modulo noise) tracking CO2 levels if the climate sensitivity were 5X what the IPCC says it is.”
Who might those scientists be? Jim Hansen? Al Gore?
John Edmondson (01:55:25) :
“If the sun is quiet for a long time, this pattern is broken. I would expect the earth’s cloudiness to increase quite quickly now. Is there anyway of testing this?”
The amount of electricity produced by solar energy panels should be a good proxy for cloudiness. For stations which sell power back to the grid, the records should be complete.
Leif Svalgaard (23:27:39) :
[i]I guess you missed the point: the variation from January to July is almost 100 times larger than the solar cycle variation of TSI…[/i]
I didn’t miss that Leif. So one is 100 times as strong and cycles in a year and the other cycles in maybe a 100 years?
Maybe if the southern hemisphere were the mirror image to the northern hemisphere maybe we could compare the temperature of Moscow North to Moscow South and know what you are talking about.
Joel 12:22:30
We’ve been over this. You seem to trust scientists who find a signal in the CO2/temperature relationship that isn’t there. Get a clue, that’s a big problem.
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George Gillan (11:41:30) :
To what mechanism do you ascribe the yearly variations in climate (i.e. winter vs summer) – plain TSI difference, some feedback mechanism, some amplification mechanism, some other mechanism?
Leif Svalgaard (14:19:44) :
Summer/winter? northern hemisphere summer? The Earth’s axis is tilted 23 degrees, that gives you summer/winter. Nothing to do with the Sun.
Leif, you used my poor wording to dodge the question. So not ‘TSI’ but instead Received Solor Irradiance (I’m unsure of the official term), certainly affected by the Earth’s tilt. Nothing to do with the sun? Everything to do with the sun, of course. 🙂
Is it only the direct effect of the difference in solar radiation received, or is that effect increased by feedback, or amplified (but not by feedback), or some other mechanism?
The point of the question being the summer/winter effect compared and contrasted with the longer term (multi-year) variances in climate. How do the mechanisms at work compare? Of course the longer cycle ocean circulation patterns would not cause the winter/summer difference, but what of the various ‘feedback’ and/or ‘amplification’ mechanisms that people keep throwing around?
I hope I am being more clear this time.
vukcevic (10:39:34) :
Surely the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic was not at a solar minimum and the milder 1957 ‘Asian flu’ pandemic was at the peak of a strong cycle (19)? Pandemics result from the combined action of two things: genetic mutation and recombination (including animal strains which become able to infect humans)
MattB (13:53:55):
UV kills by causing mutations in DNA – too many that the organism can’t repair, or changes in vital genes. I’m no expert but I think the summer/winter variation would have much greater significance than the current solar minimum, which is why flu tends to be seasonal.
Bill Hunter (14:49:47) :
I didn’t miss that Leif. So one is 100 times as strong and cycles in a year and the other cycles in maybe a 100 years?
I’m talking about this:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE.png
The red curve is the TSI actually observed at and by the Earth since 2003. The blue curve is what TSI looks like at 1 AU, but this is not what the climate system sees. It sees the red curve. Now, I do not expect [and cannot explain – perhaps you can] why the red curve has no effect, and the blue has. The feedbacks that produce climate trends out of the blue but no clear signal out of the red elude me. For me, it is not enough that you just state something. Explain and demonstrate quantitatively why that is in terms I [and others] can easily understand.
gloria merritt (14:01:35) : “And if the oceans are “rising” due to global warming, why isn’t all the waterfront property on sale? “
And more importantly, why would Al Gore buy waterfront property?
George Gillan (15:14:59) :
Leif, you used my poor wording to dodge the question. So not ‘TSI’ but instead Received Solar Irradiance (I’m unsure of the official term), certainly affected by the Earth’s tilt. Nothing to do with the sun? Everything to do with the sun, of course. 🙂
I resent strongly the insinuation that I ‘dodged’ anything. The Globally Received Solar Irradiance has nothing to do with the Earth’s tilt, and summer/winter has nothing to do with the Sun. Perhaps this can explain it to you:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/earth/Seasons.shtml
Ellie in Belfast
You have to forgive my macabre sense of humour, I was trying to put fear of God into some of AGWs (in case they got this global warming lark wrong).
I have to be more careful in future.
I am not a scientist but read extensively on many scientific topics and understand statistics pretty well. I do not understand Lief’s explanation of how a 27 day solar radiation affects the amount of energy coming from the sun. Unless the sun preferentially develops sunspots and associated phenomenon in certain locations I would assume they develop randomly around the solar sphere (I understand that they develop nearer the poles and migrate to the center) and over time would develop equally at all spots, cancelling out any particular 27 rotation effect.
http://americanaquariumproducts.com/AquariumUVSterilization.html
UVC radiation triggers the formation of peptide bonds between certain amino acids in the microbe’s DNA molecules. This renders bacteria, viruses and molds harmless by robbing them of the ability to reproduce.
http://www.answers.com/topic/mutation
Cosmic rays from space, for instance, are natural, but they are mutagenic.
Note, I do not doubt other things at play, and this by no means should be even close to a full fledged paper on the subject. Just meant as a place for thought. There is another paper out there talking about the mutinagenic effects on men in space. In their case the effects seem mostly temporary, but then we are multicellular with a higher tolerance for such things.
vukcevic (15:36:18) : I was trying to put fear of God into some of AGWs
Problem is…they believe in a Goddess, GAIA, and their most exalted preaching leader is HIM, the unnamable , that fatty alien who came from nowhere and who will take all their followers to a still unknown planet free of CO2.
Vukevic,
I saw your reply to Ron de Haan when page refreshed after I hit ‘submit’. It made me smile.