Nicola Scaffetta sent several people a copy of his latest paper today, which address the various solar TSI reconstructions such as from Lean and Rind 2008 and shows contrasts from that paper. While he suggests that TSI has a role in the temperature record, he also alludes to significant uncertainty in the TSI record since 1980. He writes in email:
…note the last paragraph of the paper. There is a significant difference between this new model and my previous one in Scafetta and West [2007]. In 2007 I was calibrating the model on the paleoclimate temperature records. In this new study I “predict” the paleoclimate records by using the solar records. So, I predict centuries of temperature data, while modern GCMs do not predicts even a few years of data!
Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (2009),
doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2009.07.007 By Nicola Scafetta
Abstract
The solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change is analyzed by using an empirical bi-scale climate model characterized by both fast and slow characteristic time responses to solar forcing: and
or
. Since 1980 the solar contribution to climate change is uncertain because of the severe uncertainty of the total solar irradiance satellite composites. The sun may have caused from a slight cooling, if PMOD TSI composite is used, to a significant warming (up to 65% of the total observed warming) if ACRIM, or other TSI composites are used. The model is calibrated only on the empirical 11-year solar cycle signature on the instrumental global surface temperature since 1980. The model reconstructs the major temperature patterns covering 400 years of solar induced temperature changes, as shown in recent paleoclimate global temperature records.
Excerpts from the Conclusion (from a pre-print provided by the author)
Herein I have analyzed the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change. A comprehensive interpretation of multiple scientific findings indicates that the contribution of solar variability to climate change is significant and that the temperature trend since 1980 can be large and upward. However, to correctly quantify the solar contribution to the recent global warming it is necessary to determine the correct TSI behavior since 1980. Unfortunately, this cannot be done with certainty yet. The PMOD TSI composite, which has been used by the IPCC and most climate modelers, has been found to be based on arbitrary and questionable assumptions [Scafetta and Willson, 2009]. Thus, it cannot be excluded that TSI increased from 1980 to 2000 as claimed by the ACRIM scientific team. The IPCC [2007] claim that the solar contribution to climate change since 1950 is negligible may be based on wrong solar data in addition to the fact that the EBMs and GCMs there used are missing or poorly modeling several climate mechanisms that would significantly amplify the solar effect on climate. When taken into account the entire range of possible TSI satellite composite since 1980, the solar contribution to climate change ranges from a slight cooling to a significant warming, which can be as large as 65% of the total observed global warming.
…
This finding suggests that the climate system is hypersensitive to the climate function h(T) and even small errors in modeling h(T) (for example, in modeling how the albedo, the cloud cover, water vapor feedback, the emissivity, etc. respond to changes of the temperature on a decadal scale) would yield the climate models to fail, even by a large factor, to appropriately determine the solar effect on climate on decadal and secular scale. For similar reasons, the models also present a very large uncertainty in evaluating the climate sensitivity to changes in CO2 atmospheric concentration [Knutti and Hegerl, 2008]. This large sensitivity of the climate equations to physical uncertainty makes the adoption of traditional EBMs and GCMs quite problematic.
About the result depicted in Figure 6, the ESS curve has been evaluated by calibrating the proposed empirical bi-scale model only by using the information deduced: 1) by the instrumental temperature and the solar records since 1980 about the 11-year solar signature on climate; 2) by the findings by Scafetta [2008a] and Schwartz [2008] about the long and short characteristic time responses of the climate as deduced with autoregressive models. The paleoclimate temperature reconstructions were not used to calibrate the model, as done in Scafetta and West [2007]. Thus, the finding shown in Figure 6 referring to the preindustrial era has also a predictive meaning, and implies that climate had a significant preindustrial variability which is incompatible
with a hockey stick temperature graph.
The complete paper is available here:
Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change.
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Correct that to refer to pre 750 AD instead of pre 1000 AD
Leif Svalgaard (08:17:33) : Pleased you pointed that out as I could see no similarity!
This plot derived from the sum of 36 sines and a trend is a much better fit!
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/6135/synthesisedtemperature.jpg
Stephen Wilde you say:
All one needs to start with is a radiative imbalance into and out of the oceans then add time then add the oceanic ability to sometimes accelerate and sometimes decelerate the rate of energy release to the air.
Care to hazard a guess as to what property of the ocean could hold back/control energy for 30 years?
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ does not show 30 year cycles it shows a random? 5 to 20 year oscillation.
vukcevic (09:37:38) :
In time, I will give a full description of the process, until then Sir, patience is advisable
Until you give that now, you have no credibility. In the caption to the Figure you stated: “This is chart recording one of the components of the geomagnetic field (values are changed by a fixed factor) at a specific location”
Which component and which location? I picked another location at random and got the opposite result. And the value at one ‘specific’ location is hardly important on a global scale.
Stephen Wilde (09:48:07) :
Personally I’d go for the solar activity level as being a more accurate reflection of pre 1000 temperatures due to the problems with global proxies for temperature that far back.
They are both uncertain, but Leif’s Law says that you would pick the one that fits your ideas the best [to wit your comment].
I have two points:
1) the ‘reality’ of the correlation is shaky [not even there IMHO]
2) the variation is in any case tiny, and the expected response on time scales of centuries is of the order of 0.05K as I have been saying all along.
steven mosher (10:44:13) :
Relative to Dr. S paper he is calibrating to a temperature record from 1980 to the present. That record doesnt have a constant bias from UHI and microsite bias but an increasing one. The bias is not zero in 1980 and the bias in 2009 is greater than that in 1980.
Scafetta ‘calibrates’ a disputed TSI record against a disputed Temp record and so his conclusion is questionable, at best.
bill (09:57:40) :
This plot derived from the sum of 36 sines and a trend is a much better fit
Throw in plenty more sines and get an even better fit. 🙂
Any function can be fitted arbitrary well with enough sines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_series
Nasif Nahle (09:12:54) :
Again, and for the last time, go on… Say “how”.
You can find a lot of material on this at
http://www.ipcc.ch/
supported by 30,000 scientists, no less.
There is even a Spanish version of the salient points.
Leif Svalgaard (10:21:24) :
“Until you give that now, you have no credibility. In the caption to the Figure you stated: “This is chart recording one of the components of the geomagnetic field (values are changed by a fixed factor) at a specific location”
Which component and which location? I picked another location at random and got the opposite result. And the value at one ’specific’ location is hardly important on a global scale. ”
Why should I publicly disclose to you details before I am ready ?
Forward me an email of a reliable scientist working at NOAA (NGDC), who is willing in confidence, to check data and than confirm it or otherwise. You got my email address (or use SC24 web contact). If you are so keen to question veracity, would you publicly accept that there is a serious causation, if data is of sufficient volume and is verified as accurate.
I suspect, even than you’ll probably moan about coincidence, energy required, mechanism, numerology or something else.
Come on, the ball is in your corner !
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GeoMagField.gif
Leif Svalgaard (10:36:55) :
Nasif Nahle (09:12:54) :
Again, and for the last time, go on… Say “how”.
You can find a lot of material on this at
http://www.ipcc.ch/
supported by 30,000 scientists, no less.
There is even a Spanish version of the salient points.
30000 people (including non scientists) are pronouncing against the second law of thermodynamics? Wow! No matter, nature and all physicists say those 30000 people are wrong and the second law of TD is working in the whole known Universe.
But… You have not described the “how” is it that I’m wrong.
“Stephen Wilde (09:48:07) :
Personally I’d go for the solar activity level as being a more accurate reflection of pre 1000 temperatures due to the problems with global proxies for temperature that far back.”
“Leif Svalgaard:
They are both uncertain, but Leif’s Law says that you would pick the one that fits your ideas the best [to wit your comment].
I have two points:
1) the ‘reality’ of the correlation is shaky [not even there IMHO]
2) the variation is in any case tiny, and the expected response on time scales of centuries is of the order of 0.05K as I have been saying all along.”
That’s fair enough but of course Leif’s Law is a two edged sword so that leaves us all square if both are uncertain.
It boils down to a disbelief on your part that a solar variation so small can provide the observed climate response. The trouble is that you then combine that with an assertion that anything which served to adequately magnify the solar input would have to be so powerful that the whole system would have been destabilised already presumably giving us a very different world. You create a logical impossibility – a Catch 22. The sun cannot do it and there is nothing that can enable the sun to do it. Very helpful.
Then a disbelief on my part that it cannot provide the observed climate response when solar energy is the only available energy source for the climate system (if one excludes geothermal).
For the solar variations not to be at root of it puts us in breach of the Laws of Thermodynamics and firmly in the world of little green men.
For how long do you think that the world can generate it’s own spontaneous variations in climate and energy flow – without the sun’s involvement ?
Is the Earth’s climate system a perpetual motion machine ?
Stephen Wilde (12:43:22) :
Is the Earth’s climate system a perpetual motion machine ?
This a belief system, that round thing above it is just a mirage.
it is CO2 that shines above!
vukcevic (11:16:25) :
Why should I publicly disclose to you details before I am ready ?
If you are not ready, then keep it to yourself until you are.
Come on, the ball is in your corner !
I have already shown that you cherry picked one location and shown you another one with the opposite ‘signal’
Nasif Nahle (11:39:14) :
But… You have not described the “how” is it that I’m wrong.
Don’t need to, it has been hashed and rehashed enough elsewhere. Seek and ye shall find.
Stephen Wilde (12:43:22) :
It boils down to a disbelief on your part that a solar variation so small can provide the observed climate response.
As I have shown http://www.leif.org/research/2000%20Year%20Temp%20and%20TSI.png there is no clear signal, so no ‘observed’ response, so what is there to have disbelief about?
And from the inferred TSI variation of +/- 1 W/m2, the expected response from the laws of physics is 0.05 K which might very well [actually MUST] be there but is visible above the unrelated much larger variations.
You can counter that all the data is so uncertain that nothing can be discerned, but then it is also hard to make the claims you do.
which might very well [actually MUST] be there but is NOT visible above the unrelated much larger variations.
This is relevant to the link between solar variability and climate:
http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspot5.html#historic
Nasif Nahle (11:39:14) :
“Seek and ye shall find.
Anticipating that you could not, I’ve done your homework:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm#molecule
Note that the reality of CO2 being a greenhouse gas [coming from calculations based on fundamental physics] is different from the question whether to rise we see is due to CO2. Don’t let disbelief in the latter cloud your understanding of the former.
Yes, I think the Earth’s climate system is very close to a perpetual motion machine but very complex and chaotic within latitude and longitude areas. However, it can and does breathe out some of the energy the Sun provides (meaning the machine is somewhat leaky) and sends it out to space. But since the Sun is a rather steady source and the leak is rather small, the climate system hardly notices the topping off of the tank.
Stephen Wilde (12:43:22) :
I don’t suppose you’d like to explain why the Laws of Thermodynamics trump little green men in this particular case?
Nobody is suggesting that the Sun isn’t shining on the earth. So long as the sun keeps supplying energy to the earth to offset dissipation, there’s no perpetual motion machine.
Meanwhile, I can keep exciting a double pendulum with steady sinusoidal forcing and, given a certain amount of energy to play with, I can produce lots of “spontaneous” variations.
Leif Svalgaard:
“which might very well [actually MUST] be there but is NOT visible above the unrelated much larger variations.”
Reply:
Another logical bind.
You accept that it MUST be there and that it is NOT visible.
(I agree but consider that it is peeking through and just needs seperating out and, crucially, I have suggested a means whereby the much larger variations are NOT unrelated).
The trouble is that you then combine that with an assertion that anything which served to adequately magnify the solar input would have to be so powerful that the whole system would have been destabilised already presumably giving us a very different world. You create a logical impossibility – a Catch 22. The sun cannot do it and there is nothing that can enable the sun to do it. Very helpful
You close off ALL alternative possibilities and contribute nothing of your own.
And the assertion that the much larger variations are NOT related puts us in the arena with little green men again.
How could they NOT be related when the only energy in the system was originally solar ?
Madness, in my humble opinion.
Stephen Wilde (12:43:22) :
Leif Svalgaard (10:24:25) :
I probably wasn’t clear. having followed your writings ( as best I can ) I would say that the debate over TSI is swinging your way, towards less variability in TSI. Unlike others I don’t think it is your task to explain the variability of the climate. You are following the data where it leads. If that results in people struggling to explain the “observed” variability with accuracy, that’s their problem. I liked Dr. S’s approach, but am merely pointing out the other half of what you point out. He calibrated against a suspect record AND calibrated over a period in which there is, arguably, a trend bias ( al beit small). Personally, I’d like to see his approach done with your model of TSI ( to test the robustness of the method to TSI recon) and would like to see his approach done with other temp records ( RSS or UAH) for example, again to show the sensitivity to the selection of data sources.
PS. you have the patience of Job.
Stephen Wilde (13:47:32) :
This is relevant to the link between solar variability and climate:
http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspot5.html#historic
I would not put much credence in tilmari’s cyclomania.
Leif Svalgaard (13:52:14) :
“Seek and ye shall find.
Anticipating that you could not, I’ve done your homework:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm#molecule
Note that the reality of CO2 being a greenhouse gas [coming from calculations based on fundamental physics] is different from the question whether to rise we see is due to CO2. Don’t let disbelief in the latter cloud your understanding of the former.
Well, time to know if you have got at least a bit of my lessons on thermal science. Do you know what’s the Pp of the CO2 in the atmosphere? What its absorptivity-emissivity is?
If you answer these two easy questions, you’ll see that your homework is wrong and why you got an “F” in TD.
I think I can take another step.
I said above that my climate description does not rely on any particular level of solar variability as long as it is not zero. It matters not whether the observed solar change over 400 years is 0.05K or 0.005K. In fact it might work even at zero but not as dramatically.
If ANY variability is present in the flow of energy from the sun it will be compounded when it interacts with the inevitable variability in a fluid surrounding the bulk of a planet and the more of that fluid the better.
Once an imbalance exists (and of course it always does) then oscillations in the flow of energy will be set up within the receiving fluid.
The issue then is as to how large those oscillations can get. I propose that the size of the oscillations is not significantly dependent on the variability of the sun. Rather it is primarily dictated by the properties of the air and the oceans or more particularly by the circulation systems in each.
One could liken it to the resonance qualities of a tuning fork.
So despite the solar variations of only 0.05K (or whatever it might be) the system adopts whatever scale of oscillation it’s internal characteristics are tuned to produce and we see in the real world just how much larger than the solar variation it can become.
Then there is the tipping point issue which seems to concern you if the effects that magnify the solar variations are to be powerful enough to do their work.
Well, just look at what the air can do. The hydrological cycle is almost infinitely variable in speed and efficiency depending on the latitudinal shifts available to the air circulation systems and the size and speed of upward convection wherever it occurs.
The ocean circulations magnify the solar variability creating oscillations in the process and the air circulations suppress those oscillations to maintain global stability.
Just as I say in one of my articles the oceans create discontinuities in the flow of energy through the system and the air has to neutralise those discontinuities in order to both maintain sea surface and surface air temperature equilibrium AND AT THE SAME TIME ensure that the energy value of radiated longwave to space is the same over time as the energy value of solar radiation reaching the system.
So, we have much larger variations which ARE related to some degree (but not necessarily a lot) to the solar variations.
You helped me a lot by your incorrect assertion that the much larger variations were unrelated to the solar variations. Once I started to consider how they must be related then another brick fell into place.
Now I could be wrong, but……..
Stephen Wilde (15:03:51) :
You accept that it MUST be there and that it is NOT visible.
(I agree but consider that it is peeking through and just needs seperating out and, crucially, I have suggested a means whereby the much larger variations are NOT unrelated).
I contend that the variations shown here http://www.leif.org/research/2000%20Year%20Temp%20and%20TSI.png are not correlated to an extend that there is anything to ferret out. So, all the rest of your argument doesn’t matter. If there is no observed relationship, then there is nothing to explain. It is incumbent on the one claiming a correlation to show [rather than ad nauseam just state so] that the correlation is significant, and IMHO it is not there. So, the small variation that MUST be there does not rise above the background variability.
Nasif Nahle (15:45:17) :
What its absorptivity-emissivity is?
This is a standard technique of yours, but it doesn’t work with me. Since you, obviously, have not carefully studied the documents I linked to, I’ll give you [last time] the skinny here:
From energy balance the absorbed solar radiation [and yes it is absorbed] determines the effective blackbody radiation temperature Tb of the planet. This is not the surface temperature, but the temperature at some [pressure] level in the atmosphere Pb characterising the infrared opacity of the atmosphere, namely the effective altitude from which infrared radiation escapes to space. The pressure Pb is determined by the concentration of the greenhouse gas [with more than two atoms in the molecules], any GHG, be it H2O, CO2, CH4, O3, whatever. The surface temperature Ts can now be found by following the adiabat from Tb down to the surface. Since temperature decreases with altitude, that surface temperature will be higher than Tb. Increasing the concentration of the GHG increases Pb and hence
Ts, because of following the adiabat over a greater pressure range. So, the greenhouse effect works by allowing a planet to radiate at a temperature colder than the surface, and thus relies on decreasing atmospheric temperature with altitude, due to the adiabatic profile established by convection.
This mechanism works in general no matter which planet you are on and no matter which GHG you are talking about, so the answers to your [superfluous] questions are irrelevant.
********************************
Leif Svalgaard (17:04:29) :
From energy balance the absorbed solar radiation [and yes it is absorbed] determines the effective blackbody radiation temperature Tb of the planet. This is not the surface temperature, but the temperature at some [pressure] level in the atmosphere Pb characterising the infrared opacity of the atmosphere, namely the effective altitude from which infrared radiation escapes to space. The pressure Pb is determined by the concentration of the greenhouse gas [with more than two atoms in the molecules], any GHG, be it H2O, CO2, CH4, O3, whatever. The surface temperature Ts can now be found by following the adiabat from Tb down to the surface. Since temperature decreases with altitude, that surface temperature will be higher than Tb. Increasing the concentration of the GHG increases Pb and hence
Ts, because of following the adiabat over a greater pressure range. So, the greenhouse effect works by allowing a planet to radiate at a temperature colder than the surface, and thus relies on decreasing atmospheric temperature with altitude, due to the adiabatic profile established by convection.
This mechanism works in general no matter which planet you are on and no matter which GHG you are talking about, so the answers to your [superfluous] questions are irrelevant.
******************
Hi Leif –
What is the [pressure] level at night?
Leif Svalgaard (17:04:29):
What its absorptivity-emissivity is?
This is a standard technique of yours, but it doesn’t work with me. Since you, obviously, have not carefully studied the documents I linked to, I’ll give you [last time] the skinny here:
I use to study from real scientific texts, not from political propaganda.
From energy balance the absorbed solar radiation [and yes it is absorbed] determines the effective blackbody radiation temperature Tb of the planet. This is not the surface temperature, but the temperature at some [pressure] level in the atmosphere Pb characterising the infrared opacity of the atmosphere, namely the effective altitude from which infrared radiation escapes to space. The pressure Pb is determined by the concentration of the greenhouse gas [with more than two atoms in the molecules], any GHG, be it H2O, CO2, CH4, O3, whatever. The surface temperature Ts can now be found by following the adiabat from Tb down to the surface. Since temperature decreases with altitude, that surface temperature will be higher than Tb. Increasing the concentration of the GHG increases Pb and hence
Ts, because of following the adiabat over a greater pressure range. So, the greenhouse effect works by allowing a planet to radiate at a temperature colder than the surface, and thus relies on decreasing atmospheric temperature with altitude, due to the adiabatic profile established by convection.
This mechanism works in general no matter which planet you are on and no matter which GHG you are talking about, so the answers to your [superfluous] questions are irrelevant.
The things are simple. I am talking about carbon dioxide because it was Jimmy Haigh’s question. The data I have shown in my post to Jimmy Haigh is real, not simple speculation. Read my post again and say “how” it is wrong:
Nasif Nahle (19:57:38)
And, please, a scientific serious “how”.