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
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Jim (06:09:17) :
Phil. (20:44:32) : You are very skillful at dodging the point.
No I keep on point it’s you who keep trying to change the subject.
You might treat the surface of the Earth as a black body.
Indeed I did in response to a comment about the heat loss from the surface.
But there is more to the climate system than the Earth. Clouds are also present.
Yes but that wasn’t what was being discussed!
So while you might be able to treat the surface as a black body, you can’t treat the Earth plus atmosphere as a black body. That is what you are going to great lengths to ignore,
It wasn’t the subject of the discussion, but you had to pitch in with your irrelevancies.
Joel Shore
“….Basically, your whole thesis amounts to a claim that scientists are doing the radiative calculations incorrectly with absolutely no evidence presented that this is in fact the case.”
Why do I think the sun’s IR over powers the earth’s? Take a look at the graph on page 14 of “Computer Processing of Remotely Sensed Images”. The thermal Infrared spectrum of the sun is given as 5900K and that of earth as 290K. A look at NASA graph shows how the scale was changed on the earth IR without notation so as to miss lead (as noted by Gerlich & Tscheuschner ) The order of Sun to air to earth is logical because energy from the sun hits miles of atmosphere before it ever reaches the earth. A spectrum of the energy at the earths surface shows all those dips in the IR curve where water and CO2 have absorbed a significant portion of the energy. Take away the sun and the earth will not radiate any IR at all. This train of thought is just as logical as IR radiation from the earth is captured by CO2 and then bounced back to the earth HEATING it further contrary to the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. If warmists get to count the energy heating the earth twice, I get to say the sun had first dibs on activating CO2 to a higher energy state and the graphs certainly show it happening. (links at bottom)
And while everyone is yelling about CO2 no one sees a word in the press about irrigation increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases even though it is reported by IPCC.
According to IPCC “…Knowledge about changes in water vapour at upper tropospheric and lower stratospheric levels is of great importance because strong alterations in radiative forcing can result from small absolute changes in water vapour at these levels…Specific humidity trends over the United States were overwhelmingly positive for the period 1961 to 1995, with magnitudes of several per cent per decade”
“SEVERAL PER CENT PER DECADE!!!” yet it is completely left out of the IPCC “Warming Potentials of Halocarbons and Greenhouses Gases”
“the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov”
Why is water is left out of the news? Because it swamps the effects of CO2 and because the World Bank, IMF, Monsanto (85% controlled by financial interests) Cargill, Andre, Bunge et al are all making money hand over fist as they consolidate control of food into the hands of private corporations and banks. Thanks to the “green Revolution”. “Global Warming” is set to do the same thing. It consolidates control of energy into the hands of a few multi-billionaires.
As was noted on Watts Up elsewhere:
Al Gore proclaimed, “I bring you good news from the U.S….Just two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill…very much a step in the right direction….“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.”
But David Rockefeller puts it even more bluntly
“The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.” David Rockefeller speaking at the Bilderberger meeting in June 1991 in Baden Baden
The move to completely wreck/take over the USA is a foot and progressing by leaps and bounds thanks to those blind socialists who can not understand it is NOT socialism it is Feudalism with the bankers and private corporations as the new aristocracy.
In Sept. 14, 1994 David Rockefeller, speaking at the UN Business Council.
“This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long – We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
“Computer Processing of Remotely Sensed Images”. http://books.google.com/books?id=x0aHc4zxv74C&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=%22infrared+spectrum+sun&source=bl&ots=XiDjhdIbmt&sig=350Z-iyZ2ZPbdTENnPC9Wsv3PgM&hl=en&ei=sf1qSr3RCdTktgfL76nHBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1
NASA graph http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page2.php
spectrum at the earths surface http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/Outreach/Edu/Windows/irwindows.html
IPCC on Irrigation http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/079.htm
Shaidurov’s paper “Atmospheric hypotheses of Earth’s global warming” is under consideration for publication in the journal “Science First Hand,” Published by Russian Academy of Sciences (Editor-in-Chief, Acad. Dobretsov, Vice-President Russian Academy of Sciences, President of Siberian Branch RAS). A preprint is available online at http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510042
which was published originally as University of Leicester Technical Report No. MA-05-15.
Phil
The argument by Joel Shore seemed to indicate that heat transfer from the earth was ALL due to IR long wave radiation. I was pointing out that convection and conduction can not be ignored. Try the closed black box with a plate of NaCl salt closing the top. It still gets hot even though salt is transparent to IR radiation. Lack of convection and NOT long wave radiation causes the car to be hot.
Leif Svalgaard (17:19:51) :
It is a total mystery [or maybe not] that climate researchers still use those ten+ years old invalid reconstructions [the maybe not bit: if they used modern TSI-reconstructions they wouldn’t find any effect]
While the calibration and other ‘adjustment’ issues are still in play, it’s quite reasonable to have people working on different data interpretations. Not everyone believes in the historically re-adjusted on the level, sober and steady sun.
Maybe your client has hoodwinked you into abetting an attempt to hide his wayward hooligan tendencies from the court.
Gail Combs,
Quite frankly, your latest post is incorrect start to finish. I’ll try to point out the major errors that you make although I won’t claim to be complete.
So yes, the SURFACE of a body at 5900 K will emit more IR in W/m^2 than the SURFACE of a body at 290 K. However, we are not at the surface of the sun. We are 93 million miles away, which is, if I recall, on the order of 100 radii…meaning that the W/m^2 at the orbital radius of the earth is down by a factor of order 10000 from what it is at the sun’s surface. And, then there is a factor of 4 to account for the fact that the cross-sectional area that the earth presents to the sun is only pi*r^2 whereas the surface area is 4*pi*r^2.
Yes, but my point is simply that we are talking about a continuous process, not a short pulse of light being emitted by the sun. Hence, your argument about priority is nonsense. I also think the excitation / saturation issue that you worry about is likely irrelevant although I haven’t tried to do the calculations to prove it.
Boy this gets frustrating! It is not contrary to any of the Laws of Thermodynamics. G&T don’t understand what they heck they are talking about (or they do but are purposely deceiving their readers). As I have noted above multiple times, the net flow of energy is from heat to cold. The atmosphere is simply acting as a heat shield that effectively reduces the outward flow of heat from the earth. It is not difficutl to come up with exactly-solvable problems simple enough to give to freshman physics students that demonstrates this.
Yes, I am sure the the IMF and Monsanto etc. have bought off all of the scientists in the world and it is all one huge conspiracy. (I have to go check the mailbox for my check!)
Now let’s take off our tinfoil hats and get back to the real world: Irrigation may cause some local effects but has only a very small effect on the global water vapor concentrations. As for your IPCC quotes, they are explaining the importance of water vapor, but not direct manmade additions of water vapor. The reason that this is the case is that because of its large concentration in the atmosphere, its short residence time (it rains out within about a week…at least in the troposphere), and the predigious natural sources for water vapor, water vapor concentrations are not determined by the relatively small direct human sources but instead by the temperature. This is summarized by the statement that water vapor is a feedback not a forcing. As a feedback, water vapor plays a very important role and it is not ignored at all.
First of all, heat transfer from the earth + atmosphere to space is in fact completely by radiation because there is no significant convection or conduction in space. However, some of the transfer from the earth’s surface up in the atmosphere is due to convection and evapotranspiration as is shown in Trenberth’s diagram: http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/Atmosphere/images/radiation_budget_kiehl_trenberth_2008_big.jpg . Radiation still plays a larger role though.
Gail Combs:
Just as an FYI, I was off by about a factor of 2 on the sun’s radius…So, in fact, the irradiance of the sun at the distance of the earth’s orbit turns out to be down by a factor of ~46000 from the radiant exitance at the surface of the sun. (And, then there is still that additional geometrical factor of 4 to get the average irradiance over the surface area of the earth.)
There is, of course, another way of seeing that the NASA plot is a lot more practical than the plot in that remote sensing book for comparing the relative radiative powers at the earth (and that G&T are thus wrong to claim that scaling them to show them to be equal is misleading): The total power radiated by the earth and the total radiative power received from the sun must be pretty close to balanced; otherwise the earth would be heating up or cooling down at a ridiculous rate. Of course, they are not quite in balance now, which is why global warming is occurring, but the imbalance is less than 1% percent.
In fact, looking at that NASA diagram again…and also at an absorption spectrum for CO2, I am beginning to think that your argument involving CO2 absorbing any significant amount of sunlight is worse than I thought. I think most of the sunlight absorbed by the atmosphere is in wavelengths where CO2 does not significantly absorb…So, in fact, to a very good approximation, CO2 is transparent to sunlight and the absorption of ~23% of sunlight by the atmosphere that does occur (according to Trenberth’s diagram) is almost entirely due to absorption in the UV, visible, and near-IR parts of the spectrum by components other than CO2.
So your argument seems to be wrong for multiple reasons.
Funny how these threads get high-jacked these days…
Lief,
Do you know of any TSI reconstructions which show that solar irradiance finished it’s ramp up, not in 1960, but in 1945? Other than generated from models to match temp trends?
Any info would be much appreciated,
Ed
Phil. (23:11:05) : ” Jim (06:09:17) :
Phil. (20:44:32) : You are very skillful at dodging the point.
No I keep on point it’s you who keep trying to change the subject.
You might treat the surface of the Earth as a black body.
Indeed I did in response to a comment about the heat loss from the surface.
But there is more to the climate system than the Earth. Clouds are also present.
Yes but that wasn’t what was being discussed!
So while you might be able to treat the surface as a black body, you can’t treat the Earth plus atmosphere as a black body. That is what you are going to great lengths to ignore,
It wasn’t the subject of the discussion, but you had to pitch in with your irrelevancies.”
Phil, you are thick headed. The topic is “solar trends and global warming”, not “treat the Earth’s surface as a black body.” You may believe clouds have nothing to do with global warming, but your are wrong.
Ed (07:59:22) :
Do you know of any TSI reconstructions which show that solar irradiance finished it’s ramp up, not in 1960, but in 1945? Other than generated from models to match temp trends?
There was no ‘ramp up’ in the beginning of the 20th Century. TSI reaches the same value at every minimum.
tallbloke (08:14:22) :
Not everyone believes in the historically re-adjusted on the level, sober and steady sun.
Only solar physicists do. Other people with agendas have the Sun vary to fit.
To use a NSW (natural solar warming) tactic, meanwhile, the more robust statistical LIM model used to forecast oceanic ENSO events indicates that the PDO will remain neutral and then turn slightly negative but still in the neutral range this winter. I predict average amounts of snow, rain, cold, warmth, and drought, in their usual PDO neutral places, as the jet stream will be in a somewhat northern track (but not extremely so) and will be a bit less loopy compared to the previous two winters.
Lief:
“There was no ‘ramp up’ in the beginning of the 20th Century. TSI reaches the same value at every minimum”.
But doesn’t the TSI level at maximum increase, and when considering subsequent increasing maximum levels, there would be an increase in the average over subsequent cycles?
Ed