Archibald on stellar to climate linkage

What did the temps do between cycle 1 and 2? 2 and 3? 3 and 4? As for the other graphs, what is the significance? How does C14 and other measures relate to temperature? Finally what were the climate mechanisms operative at the time? I mean all the mechanisms, not just solar mechanisms.

Ten miles from Armagh Observatory and its cold tonight.

Leif Svalgaard, a noted solar physicist, has written a lot about the Sun. But he does not seem to believe the Sun-climate link theory. Can someone provide a link to Leif’s paper why this is so? Leif also does not seem to believe that SC 24 will behave like SC 5 (start of Dalton Minimum). Thanks.

These guys are nothing but Deniers! Quick, have Mann talk to editors of the journal and make sure they never get published again!

What a novel concept? Check and see what the furnace is up to instead of just yelling at the kids for jumping on the sofa!

It’s a pretty interesting article.
It does seem like it’s hard to be conclusive about the solar insolation any time before 1978. Each approach gives a quite different result. Once you go back before observation of the sun with telescopes in the 1600s it’s even less certain. There are a few reconstructions with explanations in:
Here Comes the Sun.
In fact even picking up what might be significant changes after 1978 aren’t so clear as the changes are similar in magnitude to the errors in the on-board instruments!
But before 1978 the solar reconstruction really depends on the theory that’s applied. Like sunspots for example. So we have very detailed daily observations of sunspots and faculae (“bright spots”) back to 1870. People like Solanski & Fligge have worked out correlations between satellite measurements and observations – then applied these backwards. But as they note, the reconstruction is dependent on the assumption that the measured relationships have been the same for more than a century. Is that assumption correct?
Other measurements like Be10 seem to offer more – and have the advantage that we can measure back more than a millenium – but still there is more uncertainty than certainty.

Discontinuity vs. continuity, agnosticism vs.gnosticism, it seems a Dan Brown´s novel.

How many comments will be posted before we see Archibald and those who believe him get into a boxing match with Leif?
Anyway regarding current happenings about the weather here and whether it’s been getting colder, we’ve had a generally below average January and February in Wichita at least, though it seems that lows above freezing and Spring arriving is just around the corner (the songbirds are returning and the daffodils are growing)

The disjunction between the views of David Archibald and Leif Svalgaard has been exercising me for some time.
Leif’s points about the smallness in the absolute level of variations in solar output are persuasive but I find it difficult to accept his complete dismissal of any correlation between cool spells and periods of reduced solar activity and also his complete dismissal of the possibility that other aspects of solar variability apart from raw power output could have a disproportionate effect on climate.
David’s work takes due note of the apparent correlations and interprets them persuasively but fails to propose mechanisms to explain weaknesses in the correlation or exactly how such proportionately small solar changes could have what seem to be large climate responses.
I have tried to square the circle by proposing that oceanic variations in the rate of energy release are the most direct climate driver with solar changes providing the longer term background trend with both oceanic and solar influences varying independently and capable of moving in and out of phase over millennia.
That provides a mechanism to explain the failures of correlation from time to time and also accounts for the size of climate shifts in the face of small solar variability. Additionally it can explain why the size and speed of climate shifts seems to vary greatly between periods of glaciation and interglacials.
As regards the scale of solar effects I have proposed that counterintuitively a more active sun increases the rate of energy loss to space more than the additional power output provided by the extra activity adds energy to the Earth system. When the active sun causes an expansion of the upper atmosphere we see an increased surface area of atmosphere exposed to space with a faster transfer of energy outward. An active sun also creates a more turbulent upper atmosphere which also increases total surface area at the interfaces between each layer of the upper atmosphere for a similar effect.
That proposition helps to explain why climate shifts are smaller during interglacials than they are during glacial epochs because during interglacials the solar effects offset oceanic influences reducing climate variability but during glaciations the solar effects compound oceanic influences giving much larger climate variability.
I am open to sensible arguement rebutting such propositions convincingly but I have yet to hear it.

The sun/climate issue is fraught with baggage.
On the one hand, the sun obviously determines Earth’s climate. Why else would the Aztes have been carving out people’s beating hearts as to it offerings during droughts?
On the other hand, the sun can’t possibly influence Earth’s climate because it’s too far away.
In between those two views are other views.
Be10 is useful because it stands out, but it is only a proxy for other atomic nuclei that we can’t measure because they’re ubiquitous, so it’s an imperfect measure of the state of the cosmic ray flux in a given era.
What is very useful is that the sun has finally changed modes in an era when we have the instrumentation to actually measure what’s going on. I think the next decade will be pivotal in examine the link between the sun and climate.

Leif,
The “Flock” as you say would like for you to produce a graph of your heating bill, or the BTU’s needed to heat your home, or some “real” world representation of your home needs to heat in the winter. Better yet over the last 25 years.
If you can’t produce this then maybe you can produce a graph of the worlds “grain” production over the last 40 years.
Maybe you can show us in some way how all this climate is a random walk?
Maybe you can tell us why the “Russians” and the “Chineese” are taking stronger global positions in energy production?
How about giving the “Flock” some guidance on the elevated level of earthquake activity in the last 2 years.
Hey Leif!, it took a “flock” to get to the moon.
Who would best fit the “Flock” mentality? “Chaimberlain” or “Churchill”?
When the gas runs low or the grain runs low it won’t be theory that saves your ass it’ll be the “Flock” that’s got sense enough to save the masses. Will the “Flock” be standing flat footed when the world is faced with trouble?
It won’t be the Chaimberlains, it’ll be the Churchills.
I bet that in the event someone has to dig you out of a snowbound disaster, it’ll be a “Flocker” 10-1 odds.

len, it’s simple. There is a technical writing standard for hypothesis literature review, research proposal, methodology, results, and discussion. Archibald failed to follow it. I wonder why.

Jason (19:03:02) :
Go read for a couple of hours on Bob Tisdale’s pages:
Perhaps start here and follow the links and/or ask Bob for an ordered list:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of.html

Some of you, I think, mistake watchful waiting for mean-spiritedness. Mother said if the shoes don’t fit it’s best to do without. Good advice then. Good advice now.

This looks mighty weak to me. Better explanation than CO2 driving climate perhaps; but better than totally baloney isn’t the same thing as good.

Leif Svalgaard (17:42:44) :
David has his loyal flock, so stay tuned to hear the hymn from them.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
One can always be certain of kindness from you, can’t they Leif.
And, are you certain that it is David Archibald that has a loyal flock? That is not what I have observed.

”””’Pamela Gray (20:07:25) : len, it’s simple. There is a technical writing standard for hypothesis literature review, research proposal, methodology, results, and discussion. Archibald failed to follow it. I wonder why.”””’
Pamela Gray,
I did my “John Whitman (20:30:13)” comment before seeing yours.
Your point is similar to what I was trying to say. Why isn’t Archibald more clear?
John

Pamela Gray (18:13:31) :
Spare me the appeal to authority fallacy.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

The Sun of late has been doing quite well producing a lot more white light faculae than sunspot by area.
One has only to keep an eye on the SOHO MDI Continuum to see this.
And over time, that relationship of sunspot area to white light facular area has not stood still.
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/SC24/GrDebSfoSnUPF.PNG
And that makes for a complication.
Nobody was paying attention to how much sunspot area vs facular area prior to Greenwich Photoheliogram program.
So we don’t really know for certain what was going on during the Maunder or the Dalton, by absence of aknowledgement, other than the lack of sunspots, as to visible activity.
I don’t know of any proxy that can relate to lack of faculae.
If facular factor is what is making the correlation hazy or erratic, we’ll have to wait until the next time the sun does that for an extended time period.

””””’George Turner (21:33:54) : . . . . I can’t imagine what the more active researchers are having to deal with at home. Probably shivering hippopotamuses and frostbitten giraffes.”””””
George,
Thanks for lightening things up here.
That was subtle . . . I had to do a mental reboot to get it. That was good.
John

When one is dealing with dynamical chaos, and climate has been one of the first examples of dynamical chaos, the variations of amplitude against the variables of the problem, though not random, are unpredictable by ordinary methods. Mathematical methods are being developed for chaotic systems, but they are not of the type:” this correlates, maybe it causes” .
Unless a direct physical model calculation exists, all correlations, and particularly ones that need phases dragged in, may be called interesting but not explanatory.
The Armagh plot is interesting, but I would not say there is a theory behind it. I will wait and see what has happened in ten years time.

John Whitman,
Thanks! I’m trying to keep this thread from breaking out in a religious war over whose is the true sun god. 🙂
As for solar math, I would like to point out that our records are not quite adequate. We have sunspot numbers going back a few centuries, but obviously sunspots would be a symptom of solar variations, not a direct climate driver.
I would liken our earlier solar data to a mix of tree rings (Be10) and records of when certain rivers froze over. If there is a solar measurement that would better correlate to climate cycles, we haven’t been measuring it long enough to produce an overwhelmingly compelling curve. What we have are side effects seen on the sun and other side effects seen on Earth. If there is a more directly demonstrable link then hopefully it will pop out at us in the coming decade, or if not then at least having the solar activity go rapidly down while CO2 goes up should let us better parameterize solar influence versus man-made effects.
Instead of trying to convert people to a theory before its time, I would suggest that we describe what this new cycle might tell us, approximately when it will tell us, and describe the uncertainties in reading the sun’s message.
Historically, this cycle is a bit like the first opportunity to time the transit of Venus. We know it will give us significant information and we know when it will tell us, but there’s no way to make it tell us sooner than the physics dictates. Until then we’re just placing bets.

Does it bother anybody that the recent solar minimum coincided with some of the warmest temps on record?

Lief – variation in solar radiation is not the issue.
Items worth debating include:
1. variation in cloud cover & cycles in the same.
2. variations in magnetic activity in the sun and between sun & earth plus
trends & cycles in the same.
3. variations in cosmic rays hitting the lower atmosphere.
4. multi correlations between the above.
5. Theoretical relationships between these factors.
6. Progress in the CERN “Cloud” experiment.
7. Trends and cycles in the global temperature.
8. Errors in measurement (Manipulation?) in both the ground based
and satelite based global temperature.

Leif Svalgaard (17:42:44) :
ya the first graph is a hoot.

Pamela Gray (18:13:31) :
yes this is a pathetic piece. I really get annoyed at people’s lack of consistency. If this were an AGW paper people would ask for the data and the code and the full statistical report. they would point out that ON SIGHT the first chart is a falsification of the claims. they would argue that correlation is not causation.. , situational skepticism.
Hint: just because some climate scientists do some things wrong is no license to do bad science yourself.

Yet every year in the last three was one of the ten warmest on record.
On falsified record, Darius.

The main article here is very good as it seems to provide a rational explanation for the fine structure of climate variation. Other than the Milankovitch cycles, I know of no other accepted explanations for externally forced climate change.
While solar influence by cosmic ray intensity modulation may seem far-fetched, this seems to be the only theory left on the field that explains the observed phenomena since all direct effects appear to be ruled out.

Physics Major (16:57:30) :
“OT, but has anyone else noticed the irony of the Google ads that appear here?
They all seem to be for hyper-green organizations.
I am all for conservation, but not for those who make wild, unscientific exaggerations to advance an anti-capitalist agenda. I know that I have never been tempted to click on one of these ads so thy are wasting their money.”
Physics Major
Ever heard of the “pay per click” policy from Google? Google will make them pay the moment you click. So if you want to help them waste their money…click!

Leif Svalgaard in a previous comment pointed out the poor correlation between solar minima and c14/Ice Raft debris which I see as well – but then he spoiled it by showing his blinkered perspective by dismissing all other comments because they come from “David’s loyal flock”.
As one of David’s loyal flock I come for scientific discussion here rather than the mud slinging and almost pure dogma that seem to emanate from elsewhere.

It’s always the sun. It’s always the sun. Always, always, always the sun. [Stranglers 1986]
(reserving judgement… the Butler&Johnson grafic looks intriguing…)

“a prediction that the average annual temperature at Armagh over Solar Cycle 24 will be 1.4C cooler than over Solar Cycle 23. This is twice the assumed temperature rise of the 20th Century of 0.7 C, but in the opposite direction.”
Predictions are good. Let’s see if it turns out to be as accurate as the famous prediction of the UAH temperature in May 2009. The second sentence I’ve quoted makes no sense; no temperature rise is “assumed”, and a comparison between global observations and a prediction for Armagh is completely meaningless. You might as well compare the global upward temperature trend with the temperature trend in my house when the heating goes off.

“As the authors say, “Previous analysis of the glacial record showed a 200- year rhythm to glacial activity in Alaska and its possible link to the de Vries 208-year solar (Wiles et al., 2004).”
Its a fallacy to think that the Sun follows a regular pattern. There are no straight lines in nature, but there is an underlying trend that wont go away. These patterns are not good for the solar experts amongst us?

For some inexplicable reason the article and comments force me to ask:
What parts (wavelengths) of “solar radiation” heat the Water World (Earth) more than any other?
We all know that a microwave oven does a great job of heating a cup of water quickly. When we open the door only the water and -to a very minimum degree- the cup are hot (I don’t wait for the cup to get hot). Sunlight, to most of us, is “white light”. Sunlight to a scientist, is a jumble of lots of waves.
During a Solar Century (say 1901-2001) what happens to the Water World that causes progressive warming? Is it Solar Microwaves? Some other, better, water heating ‘wave’ or frequency range? Somethings doing it?
To say, “It’s not the Sun!” doesn’t answer the mail.

What is the radiative forcing associated with these changes in solar activity?
From what I’ve read, even a Maunder Minimum represents only about 0.3 – 0.4W/m² compared to current anthropogenic forcing of around 1.6W/m².
Whilst it is certainly true that the sun is by far the largest source of heat for the climate system (geothermal is tiny by comparison), other forcings such as aerosols and greenhouse gases can have a much larger influence on climate in the short term.
We know that the substantial increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases is changing the Earth’s radiative balance because of the observed decrease in longwave radiation to space at the wavelengths absorbed by those gases (mostly CO2 and CH4) (Harries 2001) and the observed increase in downward longwave radiation (Philipona 2004).
Current solar activity should be producing a slight decline in global average temperatures if that was the only change in forcings, so on the face of it solar activity can’t account for the current warming of ~0.2C per decade, regardless of how much influence it may have had in other periods.

I hope that when climate “science” clears its act, the vocabulary of “forcing” should go the way of the phlogiston.
Back to simple thermodynamics is the way, and clean energy balances.

Pamela Gray (20:07:25) : …and, last but not least, “Peer-review” by the superiors of the order of the agnostic church..:-)

Darius (22:51:15) :
We are at the end of an unusually long and deep solar minimum. Yet every year in the last three was one of the ten warmest on record.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Your science is sloppy.
There has been cooling since 2005.
It was much warmer on earth 1000 years ago than it is now.

Icarus (06:16:51) :
How are you holding up under the deceitfulness found in the scientists involved in ClimateGate?

Pascvaks (06:14:23) :
I’d like to know that, too.

Icarus, care to show a graph of OLR through end of November 2009 in order to verify your statement?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.interp_OLR.html
You could also go to climate4you.com and see a graph already done.

magicjava, Dr. Svalgaard, Pam,
One slight point of contention in regards to warmer sun /= warmer earth.
If you go out to http://www.climate.gov (what I consider to be a reliable IPCC “consensus” resource) and check their solar output/irradiance information there appears to be a slight long term upward trend. According to them (NOAA runs the site) that change in solar output accounts for “less than 10%” of observed warming – it does not say no relationship whatsoever.
I think a big part of the problem we’re seeing here in this thread, and the debate on many other technical issues around “global warming” is that there is a big difference between not a major factor or can’t explain all of it, and has no bearing whatsoever.
Just as with the assertion that UHI has no effect whatsoever on the surface temperature record, the idea that more solar output will not affect temperatures is, IMO, at its core illogical (not saying it’s not possible but I would categorize either as an extraordinary claim).
Maybe I’m misreading here, but I believe the core of the disagreement here is around the choice and quality of proxies, and the assertion that the sun is highly variable with a high correlation to historical temperatures vs. a sun that is mostly constant with little correlation. Please correct me if I’m wrong on this.
The one thing I might want to add to the conversation, is that when you look at the core issue (global warming trend expressed through the surface temperature records), and the complexity of the climate system you have to be careful not to fall into the trap of picking a favorite explanation. There are many contributory causes, and one thing is unlikely to explain everything. In no particular order: manipulation of the temperature records (homogenization, adjustments, etc), land use, UHI, cloud behavior, solar variations, cosmic rays, particulates, makeup of the air (water vapor, GHG’s, etc), just to name a few and I’m probably mising a bunch. The whole CAGW scare was, IMO, caused by an overemphasis on a single variable to the point where Lacis (co-author to Hansen) posits that it is the control knob for the climate. We cannot allow ourselves to fall into the same trap.
Just my 2 cents, feel free to shoot holes in it!

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES (07:19:41) :
Darius (22:51:15) :
We are at the end of an unusually long and deep solar minimum. Yet every year in the last three was one of the ten warmest on record.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Your science is sloppy.
There has been cooling since 2005.
You think a 5-year trend tells us anything about the climate? Let’s have a look at, say, the last 15 5-year trends:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from/to/plot/rss/from:2005/to:2010/trend/plot/rss/from:2004/to:2009/trend/plot/rss/from:2003/to:2008/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2007/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2006/trend/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:1999/to:2004/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2003/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1996/to:2001/trend/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2000/trend/plot/rss/from:1994/to:1999/trend/plot/rss/from:1993/to:1998/trend/plot/rss/from:1992/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:1991/to:1996/trend
What do you notice? The trends are all over the place – from -0.4C to nearly +1C per decade (look at the ‘raw data’ link). Which of those do you think is the ‘correct’ long-term trend? Obviously, you cannot tell. The solar cycle alone gives you an 11-year fluctuation, so it’s clearly nonsense to use 5-year trends to argue anything about long-term global climate change.
How about 10-year trends? –
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from/to/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2010/trend/plot/rss/from:1999/to:2009/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2008/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2007/trend/plot/rss/from:1996/to:2006/trend/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:1994/to:2004/trend/plot/rss/from:1993/to:2003/trend/plot/rss/from:1992/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1991/to:2001/trend/plot/rss/from:1990/to:2000/trend/plot/rss/from:1989/to:1999/trend/plot/rss/from:1988/to:1998/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:1986/to:1996/trend
Less variability than 5-year trends, but still a lot – from about 0 to +0.4C per decade. Do you think that gives us a handle on the longer term trend? Still not very well, but it’s clearly greater than zero.
How about 15-year trends? –
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from/to/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2010/trend/plot/rss/from:1994/to:2009/trend/plot/rss/from:1993/to:2008/trend/plot/rss/from:1992/to:2007/trend/plot/rss/from:1991/to:2006/trend/plot/rss/from:1990/to:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:1989/to:2004/trend/plot/rss/from:1988/to:2003/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1986/to:2001/trend/plot/rss/from:1985/to:2000/trend/plot/rss/from:1984/to:1999/trend/plot/rss/from:1983/to:1998/trend/plot/rss/from:1982/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:1981/to:1996/trend
Now we’re beginning to see more consistency. Clearly there is no cooling. The lowest of these trendlines gives warming of about 0.1C per decade, but it should be obvious that you can’t just choose the smallest (or largest) trend out of this bunch and say that that is representative of long-term change.
Using 22-year trends smooths out most of the variability from the solar cycle –
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from/to/plot/rss/from:1988/to:2010/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2009/trend/plot/rss/from:1986/to:2008/trend/plot/rss/from:1985/to:2007/trend/plot/rss/from:1984/to:2006/trend/plot/rss/from:1983/to:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:1982/to:2004/trend/plot/rss/from:1981/to:2003/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2001/trend
Now we can finally see that the warming trend is around 0.18C per decade, just as the climate scientists have been saying for many years.

David, I too would like to see more (all) data upon which you are basing your hypothesis. I think we need to be open to all considerations, since we don’t know what the hell is going on. I suspect it will boil down to the effect of a sum of variables, not anyone’s pet theory
Darius (22:52:42) : Does it bother anybody that the recent solar minimum coincided with some of the warmest temps on record?
You left out the qualifier, “warmest” adjusted“temps on record”.

The first graph does appear to invalidate the claims of the author at first glance. However, complex systems with complex damping and forcing can have different modes. It is possible that in our present mode this correlation works. In another mode it does not. The author should have addressed this issue. However, one should not throw the baby out with the bath water. It is important to listen and strive to understand and perhaps learn, even from an incorrect hypothesis.
Unfortunately science often degenerates into a contest of who is right rather than a search for understanding. I get a bit sick of the childish my brain is bigger than your brain drama. Frankly none of us including the “climate scientists” fully understand what is going on. The only people in this debate who know EXACTLY what they are doing are the politicians and the carbon traders.
Monty

Gawd! I wish you guys and gals would get this right, it is Dark Matter that controls the amount of energy reaching the earth! More dark matter betwixt us and the sun, more rays bent out of the earth’s path. Less dark matter, more rays directly hitting the earth.
Jeez, that is so simple to understand!

So Leif, what you’re saying is that the parts of the earth that get less solar energy are cooler, and the parts that get more are warmer? OK, that makes sense. But then you want me to believe that variations in solar output, which reduce/increase the amount of solar energy recieved over every square foot of the planet, have no effect on our climate. Sorry, that just does does not compute.

Leif Svalgaard (17:42:44) “The red curve is supposed to be solar activity [inverse 14C] and the gray bands solar minima.”
Incorrect on the latter point.
From Wiles et al. (2008):
“Shaded intervals are times of general glacier advance.”

Leif Svalgaard (10:06:47) :
Tenuc (08:23:51) :
1410-1500 cold – Low Solar Activity(LSA?)-(Sporer minimum)
1510-1600 warm – High Solar Activity(HSA?)
1610-1700 cold – (LSA) (Maunder minimum)
1710-1800 warm – (HSA)
1810-1900 cold – (LSA) (Dalton minimum)
1910-2000 warm – (HSA)
2010-2100 (cold???) – (LSA???)
Your timings are incorrect, e.g. Maunder minimum 1645-1700, Spoerer [until 1530], etc. By shifting the times some decades abck and forth you can make anything fit.”
These are quasi-cycles, Leif, and are the result of the deterministic chaos which drives our climate system.
As I stated in my original a broad brush picture and timings within a few decades is the best you are going to get. Just like solar cycles, they do not have precise timings or magnitude, but just like solar quasi-cycles they are real nevertheless.
BTW, the Sporer period was 1420 – 1530, which was quite a long cool spell. Be interesting to see how the 21st century pans out – cooler than the 20th I think.

Re: A C Osborn (Feb 28 10:34),
The following is a video of how metronomes get synchronized without any extra energy input, just because of momentum conservation .
It is instructive as an analogue on how cycles like la Nina and el Nino might happen when the “metronome” of the seasons hits the oceans, (and not only).

The following is instructive on how chaotic “order” can appear again with a constant energy input and small perturbations from outside. Particularly the fingers are amazing.

Lief,
I agree with you to lie about your data is inexcusable.
Are you saying that the C14 numbers are incorrect? Personally I do not like the inversion of the data, but that is not the issue. Are the C14 data wrong and if so why? Or are you saying he moved the dates of the solar events around? That would be a misrepresentation to say the least.
Monty

Not sure if you have seen this, but here’s a link to a video on the status of the CLOUD experiment at CERN:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/
No one….outside of the CO2 camp….would argue that any one factor is the primary driver of this complex system we call our climate.
The mere potential that the results of this experiment could explain one of the climate drivers and it’s effect over geologic timescales is exciting.

I believe the main value of this article is as an introduction to an interesting theory of solar influence on the Earth’s climate. There may be, as some have suggested here, something to be lacking in the technical completeness of the article.
The interesting charts presented do appear to show our past climate going through a very definite series of warming and cooling episodes.

Archibald: “let’s paraphrase Dante: The darkest recesses of Hell are reserved for those who deny the solar control of climate.”
We have two extreme positions staked out, Dr Svalgaard instinctively rubbishing any claim of an effect of the sun on climate, while Dr Archibald consigns to the depths of Hades any who doubt “control” of climate by the sun.
Dr Svalgaard’s knowledge of things solar is of course profound and his logical exactness impressive. However his apparent demand for rigid correlation of two factors in order to argue some sort of causal linkage, would seem inappropriately stringent for a system such as climate of high complexity and chaotic-nonlinear behaviour (as pointed out by posters conversant in chaotic dynamics e.g. Anna v, Tenuc). In Dr Svalgaard’s statistical scheme, an R^2 of less than 1.000 seems to be evidence of total independence of two variables. In regard to climate, I’m not sure we can afford the luxury of demanding such exactness.
Chaotic and harmonic systems can have intermittent corellation and shift in and out of phase as nicely shown by Anna v. in the pendulum videos.
It seems there is too much circumstantial evidence of correlations between solar cyclical behaviour and various historic climate proxies, for solar variability to be ruled out as a climate driver.
However I would have to number myself among the denizens of the depths of Hell and question Archibald’s use of the word “control”. The incompleteness of the solar-climate correlations would suggest a word like “influence” to be more apt. Archibald himself points out that the MWP was “supposed” to have been cold according to the de Vries 208-year solar cycle. (Ironic that AGW skeptics use the MWP as a major argument – correctly – but also sometimes argue for a dominant solar role.)
BTW is there any statistical significance to a C14 production / ice-rafted debris correlation from the first figure – the variability of the former and smoothness of the latter would make this seem doubtful. The solar minima effect on the Great Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland in the following figure, seems more convincing.

Have to ask:
If the Sun is pumping out the same level of energy at a near constant rate, what’s the significance of Sun Spots?
If the Sun is pumping out the same level of energy at a near constant rate, what’s the significance of CMEs?
If the Sun is pumping out the same level of energy at a near constant rate, what’s the significance of Chronal Holes?
If the Sun is pumping out the same level of energy at a near constant rate, what’s the significance of Solar Winds?
If the Sun is pumping out the same level of energy at a near constant rate, what’s the significance of Solar Magnetic Pulse?
There has to be something “significant” about something relative to climate, and not just electronics and radio waves and radiation vis a vis humans in orbit or jumping around on the Moon or Mars.
Leif? Anybody?
PS: Where do 110K-120K glacial cycles come from? Where do glacial and non-glacial periods in our orbit of the galaxy come from?
PPS: Is there really a Santa Claus? How about the Easter Bunny?

anna v (13:04:15) :
here is one with more metronomes
I want to see this triple double pendulum on a metronome-like tripod set on the board over the coke cans, WITH the metronomes.

Better yet let’s balance the board on some large raw goose eggs instead of empty cylinders. Or half fill the cylinders with wet corn starch. 🙂

anna v.
“Particularly the fingers are amazing.” [comment on cornstarch video]
The “fingers” remind me of souls writhing in the lake of fire – i.e. (according to Archibald) the fate of those of us infidels who dont believe the sun “controls” climate.

Leif, I have something I want you to try. Howz about it? It goes like this.
From the second graphic above:
The same periodicity over the last 1,000 years is also evident in this graphic of the advance/retreat of the Great Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Archibald2sun.JPG
Open the image and zoom. Close your eyes and think the heliosphere in time. Heliosphere embedded in Local Cavity (chiminey) with tunnels, filaments, clouds, cellualar structures like a sponge surround you. Now open your eyes and look at the image. Given that the terrestrial timez will lag behind the heliospheric timez, are we seeing a re-construct of the inside of the interstellar local cavity in timez? eh just an exercise or thought. Sunday good day to relax and let your imagination go.
Oh yeah, the new 3D Mapping project of the Local Interstellar Cavity affirms Linsky and Redfield on the heliosphere being in the transition zone between the warm local interstellar cloud LIC and the cooler denser G cloud. lol They did have to toss a Linsky, Redfield eh but not the GGGGGGG cloud. lol

Maybe it is just me but the calibrated eyeball MK III mod A4 does not detect a correlation.
I hope that is not a Mannian inversion. Perhaps it was done for compactness?
I generally have a profound distaste for inversions and an earnest desire to keep the polarity correct. But maybe that is just me.

Oh my. Some of those questions. Back in the day when I was sure the Sun could drive Earth’s temperature trends, I made the same assumptions. “Gee I feel hot when the Sun is beating straight down on my skin but get immediately cool when the Sun is about to set. It must be the Sun.” Then Leif suggested a few books and journal articles. Needless to say I sheepishly read all that was suggested and thought, “call me a dumbass”. It really does help to read a few books on this Sun.
By the way, 5 years ago I had some of my lip removed. Why? The Sun caused my lip cancer, but the recent re-appearance of another suspicious spot on my lip in the same area, that was biopsied last week (ouch), turned out to be nothing but strange scaring from the initial removal of squamous cell carcinoma. I get to keep my lip.
Moral: Though the Sun, IMO, does not cause the long-term trends we see in GISS or short term fluctuations we see in raw data, it can indeed cause skin cancer. But not this time.

Lief – “just as easy as to understand that a candle does not give light, but rather sucks up the dark. Just look at the wick.”
Funny Lief, that was a koan that my guru gave to me some 20 years ago. Thanks for solving it for me! 🙂

””’Pamela Gray (17:04:30) : . . . removal of squamous cell carcinoma. I get to keep my lip.”””
Congratulations on your successful medical procedure.
Maybe I need to reconsider my retirement idea of becoming a pagan sun worshiper? But I suspect it is too late for me to avoid consequences of sun damage to my skin given both my farming youth and also given decades of standing in the High Sierra sun flailing the rivers with my fly line. No regrets, whatever my skin does in the future.
John

””””Leif Svalgaard (18:24:19) : [responding to Carla (16:32:36)]
The heliosphere is dominated by the supersonic solar wind that just blows all interstellar stuff away, unless it is neutral [dust] or highly energetic [cosmic rays], so there is very little [if any] influence inwards. It is like you exhale into a hurricane: that does not do much to the hurricane.””””
Leif,
Enjoy threads with you posting. Thanks for participating in what is sometimes a wild rodeo.
Question:
What do you think would be the general effect on the earth’s atmosphere if the earth was removed from the heliosphere.? In other words, as a thought experiment, what would be the basic atmospheric changes expected from removal of the earth from the existing heliosphere? Keeping everything else constant at what it is now.
John

Whoa, just 0.05K??? Then how come the temperature variation between summer and winter where I live is around 20C?? When the key difference between the two seasons is the amount of solar energy recieved per square foot per day? If the changes in recieved solar energy between the seasons can alter land/atmospheric temperature that much in the space of 6 months then surely it follows that any other factors causing a change in recieved solar energy, whether it is the Sun’s own internal mechanisms/cycles, orbital changes in Earths distance from the sun and/or variations in the earths tilt must have a much more significant impact on global temperature than a fraction of 1 farenheit?

Carla (19:15:47) :
Leif Svalgaard (18:24:19) :
Carla (16:32:36) :
Oh yeah, the new 3D Mapping project of the Local Interstellar Cavity affirms Linsky and Redfield on the heliosphere being in the transition zone between the warm local interstellar cloud LIC and the cooler denser G cloud. lol They did have to toss a Linsky, Redfield eh but not the GGGGGGG cloud. lol
OOOOH I love it! Don’t stop now!
A rapidly spinning, weirdly tilted, ballish semi crusty thing with a seriously magnetic liquid center, screaming at unthinkable speeds around a massive largely unknown liquid/gaseous ball that explodes magnetic gases and flips magnetic poles in somewhat predictable cycles.
Orbiting elliptically, with a fantastic but slowly (?) retreating, solid moon sloshing all the water, making new life in the mangroves, with random comet tails dumping unknown amounts of water into the atmosphere , massive chunks of limestone crust being subsumed into the dynamic liquid core quite randomly, oceans sloshing madly trying to catch up.
Other massive gravitational bodies aligning themselves with the hot ball of gas yanking it into an unpredictable, chaotic orbit around the constant axis it would love to have but can’t quite. The Man Who Would be king.:)
But the sun is screaming through an orbit of it’s own, a small player, locked in place within a tiny galaxy where the only thing a human can possibly ever hope to see outside of with naked eye is the faint Andromeda galaxy? Deep in the desert on a very dark night.
Aw, c’mon. Have a bunch of little ones while you play with the math and physics. It’s all so chaotic and just so incredibly beautiful to behold in its complexity. The mystery is SO GREAT and life is so short. Never before have humans been able to expect their progeny would live to see even five years of age.
If all the two year old humans on earth vanished, the world would just stop turning and life would come to a sudden and dismal end.
Make hay while the sun still shines.

Ignoring amplitude & other-timescale trends/oscillations, my interpretation of Piers Corbyn’s “60 year cycle”:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/100228.png

Paul Vaughan (16:31:52) : Corbyn´s SLAM coincides perfectly with:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf, related to LOD and ACI

phlogiston (15:58:38)
I don’t think we have enough past data to assess my ideas so I’ve been waiting to see how well or not ongoing climate events fit the proposed scenario and it’s going pretty well so far.
I’d love to have an incentive to put together a shopping list of the data I’d need and to supervise a professional team in collating and interpreting it. I have made suggestions as to what would be necessary elsewhere.
The basic idea is set out here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4433
but one can see how it developed over time and how it fits into the wider climate scenario by browsing others of my articles at the same site.
My presence here and elsewhere is part of an ongoing process of refining it and seeking out whether there is a simple rebuttal that has been missed.
Interestingly it seems to provide a skeleton mechanism on which one can hang the findings of quite a few others.

Re: phlogiston (16:12:16)
They’ve overlooked higher derivatives:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/fh.png

Alexander – “I don’t know, how exactly to explain this. Maybe Dr. Svensmark is right. Maybe there are other factors and feed-backs at play.”
The way I take Dr. Lief’s criticism of solar control of our climate, is exactly what you stated, “I don’t know”. There has not, as yet, been a proven causation of the sun being the “driver” of climate. So we can argue all day long about how many angels dance on a pin head, but this does not move the science forward. If a paper arrives that links some factor of the sun’s energy to the earth’s climate variability, then I think that the solar scientists, not only Dr. Lief, will be happy to tear into it.

Are they willing to do anything other than sit comfortably & complacently, dreaming of ever more elaborate computer fantasies?
A WII version would be funny ☺

Leif Svalgaard (11:05:04)
I constantly consider that possibility but am inclined to dismiss it until there is a sound rebuttal in the first place.
I’m surprised that you raised that point since I have accepted and incorporated your solar work in preference to that of David.
However, above I indicated why I had reservations about certain aspects of the work of both of you and those reservations have been picked up by other contributors to this thread.
By the way, do you ever follow your own advice ?

Re: Tony B (number 2) (Mar 1 13:35),
We have to isolate the influence of the sun as a constant energy input to the planet, call it W, and the small changes in it dW/dt. Nobody refuses that W is responsible for everything on the planet, including climate. The question is whether the small dW/dt observed over historical times with the changing solar cycle has a direct effect on the climate.
Leif excludes direct effects because of the small magnitude of the change and is skeptical of other solutions offered before they prove themselves.
The cloud you quote is a secondary effect, and yes, cloud cover changes albedo and a change in albedo of 3% changes temperatures by 2 degrees in simple models of energy in and out as can be tested in http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Earth_temp.html . So a mechanism exists here and now, and the connection to the sun is searched by various proposals that would help amplify the sun cycle changes into cloud cover changes and thus climate changes.
I tend to favor the chaotic models, i.e. many inputs contributing to the observed cycles in climate, not direct one to one correspondence.
Take a pot with water over a constant range source, say 2kw. The water boils at 100C. If you put a cover, the currents in the pot and the atmoshere above it behave differently. If it is a pressure cooker, temperatures go much higher. The change of the material and the distribution of the material changes the microcosm in the pot even though the source is constant.

Leif Svalgaard (16:09:32)
It’s not yet complete enough or well enough verified to submit to a journal and I’d need experienced help to present it properly anyway.
It will be verified or not by the passage of time and if verified in that way it will be so obvious that a paper would be unnecessary.

Leif Svalgaard (03:55:29)
Thank you Leif, that’s a very kind offer and I may take you up on it when I’ve filled in more detail and compared the predictive ability of my ideas with more ongoing climate events. It might need to await my retirement when more time will be available.
As you say, expressing the ideas concisely is the hard part and I’m only about half way there in view of the difficulties of explaining the various real world climate events that do not initially appear to fit the pattern that the underlying principles would predict.
The Oort Minimum during the MWP is one such but given that solar and ocean cycles seem to vary independently I don’t see it as insuperable especially if as I suspect the rate of energy loss to space is reduced when the solar surface is less active. Thus the Oort minimum would simply have partly offset the attempts of the more active sun either side of it to offset the warming effect of a longer term positive oceanic phase. That won’t make sense unless one has read my work elsewhere but this is not the place to reprise it all.
You haven’t actually commented on that issue of changing rates of energy loss to space other than to assert that the changes in the upper atmosphere do not transmit downward. I agree with that assertion but do not require transmission downward, merely the facilitating of a faster or slower upward flow of energy.

Mods,
In my post of (10:53:14)
could you make the two links clickable please, thanks.
REPLY: Done. Don’t use tags, just paste URL’s directly into the comment form. WordPress will recognize it and automatically make a link from it. – Anthony

Vukcevic (05:14:52) :
Two papers of indian geologists, who successfully forecasted the December 2004 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami:
http://www.esc-web.org/papers/potsdam_2004/sce_venkatanathan.pdf
http://igu.in/9-4/5venkat.pdf

Vukcevic (12:58:37) During Santiago earthquake light flashes were seen in the sky. (shown at the national TV station there). Btw, I have witnessed those earthquake lights in another earthquake.

Leif Svalgaard (12:45:56)
Well you accept that the sun’s output varies but you don’t have a definitive physical reason and cannot predict it’s level of activity or the length of the solar cycles to any useful degree. You seem happy to do your work without a physical reason so you should not be demanding such of me.
Likewise we see that the ocean surface temperatures vary yet ENSO on it’s own nor the PDO explain the longer term cycling from MWP to LIA and the Modern Warm Period and the obvious earlier cycling during the current interglacial for the past 10,000 years.
So from simple observations of sun and ocean we see that there is cycling on multiple timescales.
Now all I do is observe what happens and assert the obvious namely that there is a climate response to the interaction between those separate and independent solar and oceanic cycles. That climate response differs according to which is dominant and the absolute level of each component.
I don’t need to sort out the physical reasons and indeed at present I cannot just as you cannot give a definitive explanation of solar variability.
However the fact is that the climate at any given moment is a consequence of the sun/ocean interaction whatever the cause of the cycling in each or the timing of the cycling in each and every climate change ever recorded is adequately explicable in terms of that interaction with no need for CO2 ‘forcing’.
Furthermore climate is nothing to do with actual temperature. Climate is simply the way the equilibrium process in the troposphere is distributed geographically by the positioning of the air circulation systems and the speed of the hydrological cycle.
The patterns of air circulation in the troposphere will always remain broadly the same whatever the actual temperature. One just sees a shift in the positioning of the different air circulation systems and the speed of the hydrological cycle whether the dominating effect is sun, oceans, cosmic rays, CO2 or little green men.
And at all times the equilibrium towards which the system will always move is set by the warming effect of the sun (however achieved – not just raw power output), the length of time it takes solar energy in the oceans to be released back to the air and the rate at which solar energy is released from the atmosphere to space.
Of those factors by far the most influential in terms of the creation of internal system variability must be the length of time it takes solar energy in the oceans to be released back to the air.
Nothing else comes close.

Carla (16:57:21) :
Alice’s Restaurant?
That was so sixties.
I know this is hackneyed, but if you remembered that aspect of the sixties then you weren’t really there.
John

Leif Svalgaard (17:36:20)
You keep missing the point.
1) I am not suggesting that the solar and oceanic cycles are necessarily connected in any way. Hence my point that they seem to cycle independently. They probably are connected at some level but it does not appear clearly in the observed climate.
2) I am not using the climate to make any determination. I am saying that observing the interaction of both solar and oceanic cycles gives us the climate. Other variables are involved but at a lower order of influence.
3) My comments are relevant here because solar behaviour is and must always be involved in climate changes albeit heavily modulated by other internal system variables such as what seems to be an overwhelming oceanic variability.
I appreciate your position and that of David and I see some merit in both. You have the edge because the observed variability in solar power is so small as a proportion of total solar output. David’s position has merit because solar variability does appear to affect the rate of energy flow to space as we see from the SABER observations.
As to how the solar effect works your point is that the topmost layers of the atmosphere are so thin that they ‘cannot’ in your view have any effect at all or any effect is so small as to be negligible.
However you seem to be evading the point about the possible effect of changing surface areas at the top of the atmosphere and at each layer interface within the atmosphere caused by variations in solar turbulence. It is intrinsically unlikely there should be such a strong effect in the thermosphere but a zero effect lower down.
You point out that the variations in the sun are miniscule in terms of power output. Then how does the thermosphere temperature vary so much ? Apparently it can go from 500C to 1500C and back again. A miniscule variation in solar power seems unlikely to be responsible for all that.
I’m inclined to think that the thermosphere temperature could just as well vary as a result of changes in the rate of energy flow from below as from solar changes above.
You say that the thermosphere cannot affect the lower layers because it is so thin. That would be fine if we were considering a downward energy flow.
However we are considering here an upward energy flow and so the lower layers would be in control of the thermosphere temperatures and being so much more dense they would have a powerful effect on the small number of molecules in the thermosphere above.