I really wish Gavin would put as much effort into getting the oddities with the GISTEMP dataset fixed rather than writing coffee table books and trying new models to show the sun has little impact.
This paper gets extra points for using the word “robust”. – Anthony
Solar trends and global warming (PDF here)
R. E. Benestad
Climate Division, Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway
G. A. Schmidt
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA
We use a suite of global climate model simulations for the 20th century to assess the contribution of solar forcing to the past trends in the global mean temperature. In particular, we examine how robust different published methodologies are at detecting and attributing solar-related climate change in the presence of intrinsic climate variability and multiple forcings.
We demonstrate that naive application of linear analytical methods such as regression gives nonrobust results. We also demonstrate that the methodologies used by Scafetta and West (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2008) are not robust to
these same factors and that their error bars are significantly larger than reported. Our analysis shows that the most likely contribution from solar forcing a global warming is 7 ± 1% for the 20th century and is negligible for warming since 1980.
Received 17 December 2008; accepted 13 May 2009; published 21 July 2009.
Citation: Benestad, R. E., and G. A. Schmidt (2009), Solar trends and
global warming, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D14101,
doi:10.1029/2008JD011639.
hat tip to Leif Svalgaard
In the past 10,000 years TSI [averaged over 40 years] has not varied more than [and mostly a lot less] than 1 W/m2 from its present value:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/Claus/TSI_longterm/reconstr_TSI_grl_rev_submitted.pdf
Consistent with what I have been saying the past several years. It seems that researchers are finally converging on a common view on this.
I have asked two questions very consistently over the past few days, and received a response from no one. Any takers?
1) Why is the climate sensitivity figure static? It was determined by Hansen using figures he derived from the last glacial maximum (@0.75°C). What reason is there to think our climate would act the same as the climate then? To visualize, why would it be X=0.75? There could be many different things that affected climate that looks like XY=0.75. If you are solving a million year old problem, and leave out one thing, you have a Y in your equation, and it must be accounted for.
2) What is the forcing (in Celsius) CO2 can provide without feedback (dependent on #1, of course)? I do mean the asymptote it approaches. It saturates and can no longer add to temperature after a point. What point, and what is the concentration needed to provide this point?
I will notice that everyone tries to explain the current warming, but what explanations are there for the cooling that led to the Ice Age scare?
Joel Shore (10:47:07) :
” Patagon has very incorrectly summarized this as saying: “It’s not in the model therefore it does not matter.” What it actually says is something like, “If this assumption were wrong, we would expect to find the forcing coefficient determined by regression for solar in the real data to be much larger than that for the forcing coefficient for GHGs. However, in actual fact, the regression coefficients for solar and GHGs forcings were similar to each other in both the ‘model data’ and the real data. This suggests that the real world is behaving like the model world…i.e., that there doesn’t appear to be any mysterious mechanism in the real world that is amplifying the effect of TSI variations (or depends on some other aspect of the solar irradiance such as just the UV component).” ”
Which is a flawed approach, since a similarity of effect does not imply a certainty of cause (equifinality).
Besides I am unconvinced by models which make a good job at fitting one variable, the temperature, but a very poor job at simulating other variables, such as humidity, precipitation, low latitude mid troposphere temperature, ocean heat, etc.
(See here just a few of the biases)
Bill Illis (22:03:07) :
Kevin Cave 20:37
2) Does any climate scientist take into account how much heat is supplied to the atmosphere from heat which is contained within the planet itself?
This effect is supposed to be very, very little – much less than 1.0C.
I came across an interesting paper recently that suggests the climate models have been underestimating the geothermal contribution to the oceanic heat balance
http://www.ocean-sci.net/5/203/2009/os-5-203-2009.pdf
I don’t know that I believe it any more than any of the other dubious efforts I’ve encountered in my rummaging about in this climate farce, but the authors do seem to generally use conservative assumptions and still arrive at the conclusion that the geothermal component is not negligible as the models have assumed it to be, but may in fact be comparable to downward mixing globally and regionally, particularly in the Northern Pacific, even more significant.
Leif Svalgaard (22:44:25) :
In the past 10,000 years TSI [averaged over 40 years] has not varied more than [and mostly a lot less] than 1 W/m2 from its present value:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/Claus/TSI_longterm/reconstr_TSI_grl_rev_submitted.pdf
Consistent with what I have been saying the past several years. It seems that researchers are finally converging on a common view on this.
I note that the paper is written by someone who stands accused of making ad hoc ‘adjustments’ to the ACRIM/NEPTUNE data when he never worked with the original project scientists or consulted them, and is submitted to a journal which returned Craig Loehle’s multiproxy reconstruction of the medieval warm period unread.
Leif Svalgaard (22:28:11) :
Researchers are [slowly] moving their estimates of the long-term trend closer and closer to what I have been saying for quite some time now [that there is very little, if any, long-term trend]:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/Claus/IAMAS-2009/iamas-poster_SABF.pdf
Note the red curve in the last Figure [lower right, how flat it is.
I note this is the same author’s document repository. I can’t download either at the moment because my mobile phone co prohibits ftp, damn their eyes.
Allan M (14:33:40) :
Phil:
Since when did CO2 have more than a limited (~15 microns) absorption,
For ever.
which is covered already by water vapour and other gases.
It isn’t
Even the IPCC couldn’t characterise CO2 as a “very strong absorber.”
They should.
——
That last remark is “noticable.” Fellows, we have a HERETIC in our midst, who dares to say that the IPCC, the climate gods, are not dealing out enough apocalyse and damnation.
As for the rest, I now know you are speaking from the wrong orifice. Just pray they DON’T tax toilet paper.
Thank you and goodnight.
Leif (11:13:18) claims that “the evidence [for GCR as a driver of global temperature] is very poor and doesn’t hold up very well when looked at in detail,” but it is his justifications for this statement that do not hold up:
“Cosmic ray intensity returns to the same level at each solar minimum, while temps do not.”
Of course they don’t. If you turn the flame up under a pot of water for ten minutes, then turn it down for one minute, and repeat over and over, then the temperature fluctuations should stabilize, so that the pot keeps returning to the same minimum temperature, but ONLY so long as you keep turning the flame up to the same level. Turn the flame up high one time and low the next and the bottom temperature will be low or high respectively.
Isn’t this obvious? If high solar-magnetic activity creates warming, then an especially active solar cycle will deliver a warmer planet to the next minimum than a less active cycle does.
More Leif:
The solar cycle is clear in GCRs [although only a few percent] but very weak in temps [0.1C], so the few percent variation of GCRs cause a tenth of a degree of [cyclical] temperature variation. Hardly something to write home about.
We all know that surface temperature variations on the time scale of the solar cycle are dominated by ocean oscillations, so the last thing anyone would expect is that the solar cycle would be clear in temps. Imagine a steady series of identical solar cycles. If magnetic effects are driving temperature then the smoothed temperature would remain constant while the ocean oscillations take the warming and cooling of average ocean temperature and spread it into irregular surface temperature fluctuations over multiple solar cycles. There wouldn’t have to be a clear variation over the solar cycle, even if GCR was doing a lot of work.
The exception would be if we were able to follow the average ocean temperature. That would allow us to see directly how much heat was being dumped into and taken out of the oceans over the solar cycle (making sea surface temperature oscillations irrelevant for measurement purposes). I’m not sure where Leif’s 0.1C figure comes from. If it is a fluctuation in average ocean temperature then it is actually a huge number, very much something to write home about. It would mean that the oceans were absorbing gigantic amounts of heat when the sun was active, and releasing gigantic amounts when the sun was quiet.
Since we don’t yet have much of a record for ocean average temperature, this is presumably not what Leif is talking about. His 0.1C is presumably a surface or atmospheric number, but the implications are not all that different.
Raise and lower the average temperature of the oceans by 0.1C over the solar cycle and the surface temperature oscillations will on average rise and fall by the same amount. It will be a noisy signal, but with large numbers the expected signal would equal the fluctuation in average ocean temperature, or at least the average for the part of the ocean that oscillates. If we can distinguish that signal at all, it is big, not small.
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) :
So you’re saying step back and look at a bigger picture ?
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) : noisy signal
This Richard Feynman video makes a good point. The aerosols formed from cosmic rays are real. But to think we can, at this point, have all factors sorted out in such a new finding, and how it exactly affects climate and temperatures, is like the insect in the pool knowing exactly why and how each wave is like it is.
Is there any warming coming from the core of the earth? Like a cycle ? Or is it completely stable forever?
He’s using “global climate model simulations for the 20th century to assess the contribution of solar forcing”. At least he’s admitting what he’s doing. Does he think that checking the models is how you find out about the real world?
Rather than analysing the models, so he can pretend it’s reality, why doesn’t he just ask the programmers what assumptions they used. His argument seems totally circular: Modellers, linked to the IPCC, program assumptions into their models; lets analyse the models to find their assumptions; we then draw conclusions about the real world.
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) :
Isn’t this obvious? If high solar-magnetic activity creates warming, then an especially active solar cycle will deliver a warmer planet to the next minimum than a less active cycle does.
Nice nail-head-hammer interface there Alex.
The oceans start gaining net heat at around 42-44 sunspots/month
Work out the differences + and – and add them cumulatively, add a dash of PDO and AMO to taste, calibrate to sea level rise and OHC, et voila, c’est pret a manger:
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ssnc-pdo-amo-2043-1.gif
Maybe I’m missing something, but to me “heat”, “work” and “radiation” are all forms of energy that can be inter-converted, provided the Laws of Thermodynamics are obeyed. This is how I see the problem:
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is only possible to transfer heat from a cold medium to a hot medium by supplying external work to the system. If the cold upper atmosphere could heat the warmer ground without some input of external work, then the Second Law would be violated. To avoid this, the argument is that
“outgoing LR radiation is absorbed and re-emitted by the GHG and some of this re-emitted radiation will come back down to the ground and have a warming effect.”
In the end, isn’t this warming effect of the ground a transfer of heat from a cold source to a hot source? Or because it is radiation it can be moved around and converted to heat without paying something for it?
Some will say that the required work to run this “refrigerator machine” comes from the Sun’s energy. Then, the total energy for warming would have to be subtracted from the energy that has already been used as work to run the “engine”. Is this done? If not, then this un-subtracted energy would be counted twice: to drive the “engine” and to warm the system.
Perhaps climatic modelers forgot this, and that is why atmospheric models predict the un-observed “hot spot” in the upper atmosphere, because they have that “free” energy to do it (The Hidden Heat?).
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) :
The exception would be if we were able to follow the average ocean temperature. That would allow us to see directly how much heat was being dumped into and taken out of the oceans over the solar cycle (making sea surface temperature oscillations irrelevant for measurement purposes). I’m not sure where Leif’s 0.1C figure comes from. If it is a fluctuation in average ocean temperature then it is actually a huge number, very much something to write home about. It would mean that the oceans were absorbing gigantic amounts of heat when the sun was active, and releasing gigantic amounts when the sun was quiet.
I calculated that the oceans absorbed and retained an additional 14×10^22J between 1993 and 2003. The official estimates put it much less, to stay in line with the 1.7W/m^2 of co2’s alleged forcing.
Leif checked and verified my calculations.
That’s equivalent to a 4W/m^2 forcing. Since mid 2000, the surface outgoing longwave radiation increased by 4W/m^2 – the oceans went into heat release mode, and are still emitting strongly now, because a new solar cycle hasn’t started up properly. That’s why we get el nino at or shortly after solar minimum. And el nino reduces the overall solar signal when the temperatures are averaged, because it mitigates the rise in ocean temp at cycle max.
Leif knows all this, I’ve explained it to him several times, but he still plays the ‘reset to 0’ card.
The satellite altimetry of sea level shows the oceans retain and release heat both on solar cycle length scales, and multidecadal scales during runs of high amplitude cycles. This is what my graph is based on, the accumulation and diminution of solar heat in the oceans. That’s what drives earth’s temperature, there’s your global warming.
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ssnc-pdo-amo-2043-1.gif
The curve from now to 2043 is what will happen to temperature if the next three cycles resemble the Dalton minimum.
jmc (03:52:47) :
Perhaps climatic modelers forgot this, and that is why atmospheric models predict the un-observed “hot spot” in the upper atmosphere, because they have that “free” energy to do it (The Hidden Heat?).
Congratulations, you have won a free NASA/IPCC oven.
http://1.2.3.10/bmi/cache.backpackinglight.com/backpackinglight/user_uploads/1225544577_08198.png
Try that link again
http://cache.backpackinglight.com/backpackinglight/user_uploads/1225544577_08198.png
Leif Svalgaard,
I think there are two reasons to question the weight you are placing on the Steinhilber paper. Their TSI calculation has limited range, since the solar open magnetic field can’t go below zero. Note this quote:
“Assuming the extreme case, namely that the open magnetic field is zero, from this equation follows that the lowest possible value of TSI lies 0.93Wm−2 below the PMOD composite in the year 1986.”
This looks a lot like a singularity for their method. All cases where the open magnetic field is near zero (such as at the Maunder Minimum) at the radius of the earth’s orbit may not correspond to the same TSI. In some cases, it may barely be zero at Earth’s orbit and others may be zero at Venus orbit or less. For example, just because you have a thermometer that can’t read below 96 degrees F, doesn’t mean there can’t be temperature’s below that.
Note also this quote:
“We made the rough estimate that the cycle amplitude in TSI scales linearly with the cycle average of the minima values of Br. With a scaling of 0.42Wm−2 nT−1 this assumption reproduces the amplitudes of the three observed cycles within ±11%, which is acceptable for the present reconstruction [for details about the cycle amplitudes see Fr¨ohlich, 2009].”
These three modern cycles are all from a period of high solar activity. It would really help to have data on cycles when the Sun is in it’s minimal mode, say a Dalton type minimum, so we could know if this scaling factor they calculate is valid for other solar activity modes. The authors’ even note, based upon their results that “the behaviour of solar activity during the grand minima is not just a lack of sunspots, but more complex.” In any case, we are not justified in extrapolating from just the three similar cycles that we have observed to other solar modes.
Yes!
Abstract The long-term fluctuation of the Schwabe period (LSP) of sunspots number (SSN) has been found to have high correlation with the variation of the length-of-day (LOD) in low frequency by using the data of smoothed monthly mean SSN during 1818–1999 and the method of wavelet transform. Analyses indicate that the maximum correlation coefficient between the series of LSP and LOD during 1892–1997 is about 0.9, with a time lag of about 5 years for the LOD related to the LSP. Though the maximum correlation coefficients between the LSP and the other two LOD series (1818–1997) reduce to about 0.4, they remain over the thresholds of 95% confidence level. This suggests new evidence for possible impact of solar activity on the long-term fluctuation of the earth rotation.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/d71wm65u6v162348/
Bill Illis (22:03:07) : Once the atomosphere is initially compressed it would get hot. But after it reaches equilibrium, the heat would dissiapate.
Allan M (01:42:41) : Phil is like the guy with a hammer – everything looks like a nail. Phil has a spectrometer – every problem looks like radiation.
Dave Wendt (00:36:36) :
Thanks for the link.
I was looking for such a report.
Every contribution to ocean heat content undermines the Anthropogenic Warming Doctrine.
This is a serious report and it must be listed with all other reports that debunk the AGW semi science.
tallbloke (01:25:47) :
I note that the paper is written by someone who stands accused of making ad hoc ‘adjustments’ to the ACRIM/NEPTUNE data
I know Claus Froehlich very well. He is a world authority on TSI, and does good work and his adjustments are argued not just made ad hoc. One can disagree with his assessment, that is another matter.
On PMOD dropping off the chart: I have posted on this before, it is due to a calibration error of PMOD [how to compensate for degradation].
One thing from the laymans paper which struck me was when you said Wolf got it right in 1848 (high cycle). Why would a careful man like Wolf get it right in 1848 [you had ‘1858’?] but get it wrong at other times? It looks like 1875 was correctly counted too, so why would the intervening low cycle be under counted?
Who knows. Sunspot areas measured by Warren De La Rue in the 1860s from photographs of the Sun also show a high cycle.
Leif, so generally we should assume the Sun itself is varying by a very small amount over recent time-scales.
But the Milankovitch cycles are still in operation resulting in a changing level of the TSI received by the Earth (at least on a seasonal scale).
For instance, during the Holocene Optimum period from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, the axial tilt receached its highest point in the cycle (24.5 degrees) and, during the summer months for both hemispheres, the solar radiation received would have been enough to melt more snow and ice at high latititudes and thus, lower the albedo.
The axial tilt is moving back to the minimum now and will reach that low level of 22.1 or 22.4 degrees in about 8,000 years.
Before the last five or six 100,000 year ice age cycles, the ice ages followed the axial tilt cycle of 41,000 years.
There is another small change in the axial tilt called nutation which has a period of 18.6 years which could thus be affecting the high latititude seasonal solar insolation.
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) :
We all know that surface temperature variations on the time scale of the solar cycle are dominated by ocean oscillations, so the last thing anyone would expect is that the solar cycle would be clear in temps.
This is what I’m saying: the empirical evidence is not there. One can believe in the mechanism and try to justify why the evidence is hidden in the deep ocean and all that may be correct, but that is different from saying that there are clear correlations with temps. Remember that the mantra goes that the observations show a direct and immediate link [what Svensmark claims].