NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming
Report indicates solar cycle has been impacting Earth since the Industrial Revolution
From the Daily Tech, Michael Andrews. (h/t to Joe D’Aleo)
Some researchers believe that the solar cycle influences global climate changes. They attribute recent warming trends to cyclic variation. Skeptics, though, argue that there’s little hard evidence of a solar hand in recent climate changes.
[NOTE: there is evidence of solar impact on the surface temperature record, as Basil Copeland and I discovered in this report published here on WUWT titled Evidence of a Lunisolar Influence on Decadal and Bidecadal Oscillations In Globally Averaged Temperature Trends – Anthony]
Solar activity has shown a major spike in the twentieth century, corresponding to global warming. This cyclic variation was acknowledged by a recent NASA
study, which reviewed a great deal of past climate data. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Now, a new research report from a surprising source may help to lay this skepticism to rest. A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth’s climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.
Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles. At the cycle’s peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat. According to Robert Cahalan, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center,
“Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene.”
Thomas Woods, solar scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder concludes,
“The fluctuations in the solar cycle impacts Earth’s global temperature by about 0.1 degree Celsius, slightly hotter during solar maximum and cooler during solar minimum. The sun is currently at its minimum, and the next solar maximum is expected in 2012.”
According to the study, during periods of solar quiet, 1,361 watts per square meter of solar energy reaches Earth’s outermost atmosphere. Periods of more intense activity brought 1.3 watts per square meter (0.1 percent) more energy.
While the NASA study acknowledged the sun’s influence on warming and cooling patterns, it then went badly off the tracks. Ignoring its own evidence, it returned to an argument that man had replaced the sun as the cause current warming patterns. Like many studies, this conclusion was based less on hard data and more on questionable correlations and inaccurate modeling techniques.
The inconvertible fact, here is that even NASA’s own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past. And even the study’s members, mostly ardent supports of AGW theory, acknowledge that the sun may play a significant role in future climate changes.
NOTE: for those that wish to see the original NASA Goddard article which sparked both the Daily Tech and Science Daily news stories referenced above, you can read it here:
http://erc.ivv.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solar_variability.html
– Anthony
@Leif and other colleagues… I’ll be absent during the next hours until 11 pm. Before I quit, I want to thank you for your patience on reading my posts, and especially for questioning my assertions. I hope you all have taken some advantage from what I’m doing. I’ll be back at night. 🙂
Leif Svalgaard (13:24:50) :
Nasif Nahle (13:09:06) :
I don’t accept it is the best portion of the Sun, and still thinking 71% of Hydrogen is almost all the stuff composing the Sun.
Be careful that your bank does not adopt the same attitude towards the money you deposit in your account and will only allow you to take 71% out again, saying you have got almost all your money…
that something is space, void, false vacuum, true vacuum, whatever it could be. I don’t believe in miracles (singularities).
The total energy content of the Universe may be zero, so no miracle necessary…
Hi, got back to my office few hours before the expected hour.
Leif… Neither astrophysics nor I need of a BB for explaining the origin of the Universe:
http://www.biocab.org/Symmetry_Asymmetry.html#anchor_29
Leif Svalgaard (13:27:29) :
Nasif Nahle (13:16:33) :
At least, I’ve demonstrated that HSG are correlated to TSI, which was the primary objective of our dialogue.
You cannot make any conclusion based on six data points [with large scatter].
Of course I could make a conclusion based on six data points, particularly if there are thousands of years among the scatters and the correlation persists after those thousands of years and other proxies allows me to find the same solution. The correlation exists for those “six” data points. Nevertheless, I’ve not still got a definite conclusion. Just be patient.
Nasif Nahle (18:37:08) :
Leif… Neither astrophysics nor I need of a BB for explaining the origin of the Universe
This is not the place to discuss this, but what you describe sounds to me like the bigger miracle…
Of course, there is the even bigger one: “let there be light; and there was light…”
Leif Svalgaard (19:18:40) :
Nasif Nahle (18:37:08) :
Leif… Neither astrophysics nor I need of a BB for explaining the origin of the Universe
This is not the place to discuss this, but what you describe sounds to me like the bigger miracle…
Of course, there is the even bigger one: “let there be light; and there was light…”
Well… I agree with you on that this is not the place to discuss the origin of the Universe without a BB. I have to point out that there is no place in the theory for a miracle because the Universe could has been percolated into another wider Universe. It’s a matter of our scope shortness on this issue. The solution is going further from our sight after each light second.
BTW, I’m not adhered to ID philosophy. Are you? 🙂
Nasif Nahle (19:42:25) :
BTW, I’m not adhered to ID philosophy. Are you?
Of course not. No reasonable person could be. But then there are so many that are not so reasonable…
Reply: Talk of ID, pro or con stops now. Other moderators take note ~ charles the moderator
What does a BB gun and the id have to do with the price of tomatoes??????
This seems too simple for the Sun:
From the Shirley quote…
“In rotation, the constituent particles of a subject body move in concentric trajectories with velocities that depend upon their position in relation to the axis of rotation (equation 1). In revolution, the particles of the body move in parallel trajectories with identical velocities (aside from small differences produced by the gradients that give rise to the tides).”
Maybe you can make these assumptions when it’s a white dwarf but considring convection, gravity waves, differing rotation rates at different lattitudes (even diameter changes over time), I just can’t see how one can ignore the fact that the Sun is not a solid but treat it as a solid for the purposes of using simple equations.
If we drove a stake into the Earth, it would follow these assumptions. If we placed a buoy on the ocean we better be able to track it because it’ll be on the move. If we have balloon that can float in the atmosphere, it’s going on a trip too. Similarly, the little solar particles are not behaving perfectly either. (I could have used a Jupiter analogy as well)
Pamela Gray (20:23:40) :
What does a BB gun and the id have to do with the price of tomatoes??????
BB is narrowly linked to the price of tomatoes because the latter gets “boom” at an exponential rate but deflates at a linear pace, like the BB… Another coincidence between the BB and the price of tomatoes is that they follow the mainstream, i.e. consensus among experts; same as on the current state of climatology. 🙂
alphajuno (21:01:00) :
If we placed a buoy on the ocean we better be able to track it because it’ll be on the move.
The considerations do not in any way depend on the Sun being solid. The tides that the Moon produces are raised [follow the laws of gravity] precisely because the ocean is a fluid [although there are also – smaller – tides in the solid Earth]. Whenever we talk about gravitational effects we really assume that the particles are free to move [as in a gas or thin fluid]. By contrast, in a solid, they are not, because electromagnetism is so much stronger than gravity that the particles cannot move, which is why I’m sitting comfortably in my char right now confounding the effect of gravity that would have my butt on the ground had the chair not been there. So, the Sun being a gas is fundamental to the assumption that gravity has the effects we calculate.
Your post espouses a standard false argument in this discussion, along with another popular one: that the laws of gravity only applies to bodies that are ‘gravitationally bound’ to the Sun.
Leif Svalgaard (21:57:41) :
The considerations do not in any way depend on the Sun being solid. The tides that the Moon produces are raised [follow the laws of gravity] precisely because the ocean is a fluid [although there are also – smaller – tides in the solid Earth]. [i]Whenever we talk about gravitational effects we really assume that the particles are free to move [as in a gas or thin fluid].[/i] By contrast, in a solid, they are not, because electromagnetism is so much stronger than gravity that the particles cannot move, which is why I’m sitting comfortably in my char right now confounding the effect of gravity that would have my butt on the ground had the chair not been there. [b]So, the Sun being a gas is fundamental to the assumption that gravity has the effects we calculate.[/b]
—
Right – But that’s my fundamental disagreement with your conclusion that the planets could NOT have an influence on the sun because their tidal effect (the movement of the sun) is so small.
Start with a static sun, no planets. No rotation. Simple fusion reactor = Overall, the energy released by each fusion in the center is balanced by the force inwardly by gravity. The particles forcing their way out must oppose the movement of new atoms inward under gravity, and the whole may get a “boiling” movement, but nothing steady. (No steady currents or magnetic forces.)
OK, fine. Now, rotate this model of the sun about its axis. Steady,consistant rotational movement around the sun’s centerline creates the steady magnetic loops and conter emf electric currents I see in the big electric power station generators. But the situation is “stable” after many billion years: loops of plasma conduct electric currents which rotate themselves and create magnetic fields that twist the rising plasma “bubbles” into streams and predictable, if chaotic, circulating loops.
Add to that model the different rotation rates of the sun at the equator and poles. More complex patterns, but they could be “stable”. Streams rise “up” in elevation from the center of the sun, get twisted and bent as they loop towards and away from the equator, fall back “down” in towards the center. Fusion still is stablely balanced (overall) by the (overall, average) weight the upper sun. But is it exactly the same all the time? Or does the fusion rate change based on the amount of “looping” and inward pressure? If the fusion rate changes with time (based on the changing loops) what would be the time delay from the fusion region “up” and to the surface where it can radiate away?
But …. Unlike my nice stable fixed-axis power plant generators, comfortably rotating as a single solid mass around a single straight axis with a convenient center of gravity on the same axis as the rotating fields and currents … the real sun is that rotating plasma (so it (the sun, the fusion center, and the rising gas streams ARE moved by gravity and all of them RESPOND to nearby magnetic fields and moving electric currents.
Therefore, as the sun rotates every few days around an axis that is “bent” and “warped” by the net CG of the entire solar center, the currents/magnetic fields try to to follow their new path back around the new center. (They have to change: the magnetic fields are trying to “loop” but their rotation and distance from the “zero point” has moved each hour, each day, each year.) So the interior fusion center and all the rising twisting gas (plasma) streams that make the circulating currents get slowly CHANGED over time. They have to: the sun is rotating rapidly, but the axis of the overall generator it represents is moving slowly, so the net axis is “bent” from pole to equator to pole (or near-pole). The CG (some years) is near the center. Three, four (eleven ??) years later the CG is much further away and the then later still, the CG is outside the rotating mass entirely.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (13:12:43) :
Leif Svalgaard (09:55:35) :
Geoff Sharp (08:08:47) :
This is not about AM transfer, more about how AM is generated outside of the normal l=mvr.
The l=mvr is the definition of AM, so there is no AM outside of that [calculated correctly as Carsten does, as a vector quantity; the number plotted is the length of the vector]. This is my point all along that you are not doing physics.
Indeed, AM has a very clear definition, so there is no room for confusion on how to calculate it.
…
Right: But the radius (distance to center of rotation of the plasma ball) is changing with time, and the circulating currents are getting deflected by their ever-changing distance from the theorectical “neutral” axis of the entire sun’s “generator” – but then that neutral axis is itself not straight (it is warped or bent) and the amount of the bend is also changing with time.