The Warning in the Stars
By David Archibald
If climate is not a random walk, then we can predict climate if we understand what drives it. The energy that stops the Earth from looking like Pluto comes from the Sun, and the level and type of that energy does change. So the Sun is a good place to start if we want to be able to predict climate. To put that into context, let’s look at what the Sun has done recently. This is a figure from “Century to millenial-scale temperature variations for the last two thousand years indicated from glacial geologic records of Southern Alaska” G.C.Wiles, D.J.Barclay, P.E.Calkin and T.V.Lowell 2007:
The red line is the C14 production rate, inverted. C14 production is inversely related to solar activity, so we see more C14 production during solar minima. The black line is the percentage of ice-rafted debris in seabed cores of the North Atlantic, also plotted inversely. The higher the black line, the warmer the North Atlantic was. The grey vertical stripes are solar minima.
As the authors say, “Previous analyses 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). Similarly, high-resolution analyses of lake sediments in southwestern Alaska suggests that century-scale shifts in Holocene climate were modulated by solar activity (Hu et al., 2003). It seems that the only period in the last two thousand years that missed a de Vries cycle cooling was the Medieval Warm Period.”
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:
The solar control over climate is also shown in this graphic of Be10 in the Dye 3 ice core from central Greenland:
The modern retreat of the world’s glaciers, which started in 1860, correlates with a decrease in Be10, indicating a more active Sun that is pushing galactic cosmic rays out from the inner planets of the solar system.
The above graphs show a correlation between solar activity and climate in the broad, but we can achieve much finer detail, as shown in this graphic from a 1996 paper by Butler and Johnson (below enlarged here)::
Butler and Johnson applied Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory to one temperature record – the three hundred years of data from Armagh in Northern Ireland. There isn’t much scatter around their line of best fit, so it can be used as a fairly accurate predictive tool. The Solar Cycle 22/23 transition happened in the year of that paper’s publication, so I have added the lengths of Solar Cycles 22 and 23 to the figure to update it. The result is 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.
To sum up, let’s paraphrase Dante: The darkest recesses of Hell are reserved for those who deny the solar control of climate.
This essay is also available in PDF form: TheWarningintheStars
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
kim (05:20:07) :
Phlogiston 2:26:40
“It’s a bit of quibbling but the cycle of the PDO is over 60 years, each phase is around 30.
I don’t think it’s necessary for the purported short cycles to forever stay locked; it’s easy to imagine a slippage, a cog missed. The cog is missed, but the clock ticks on.
I’ve long been intrigued by the idea that there are around 6 solar cycles to each cycle of the PDO, and I even have a mechanism in which an alternating phenomenon in the solar cycle produces the cycle of the PDO by placing two solar cycles of one type and one of the other in each phase of the PDO, but Leif pooh-poohs it as a second order effect. It even involves cosmic rays.”
Thanks for the correction, the time correlations (solar-PDO) you mention are interesting. I agree that it seems highly likely that the solar cycles via indirect effects (upper atmosphere ice, cosmic rays etc.) entrains oceanic cycles. I guess all the ocean cycles have different resonant frequencies thus the complexity. As I’ve mentioned before there are potentially so many resonant and harmonic effects influencing climate that some input from a sound engineer might be helpful.
My own favorite perspective for climatic and oceanic oscillations is that of chaos and non-linear/nonequilibrium pattern formation. From the chaos-nonlinearity perspective positive feedbacks can be expected to act to impose regular monotonic oscillations while negative feedback (dissipation /friction / damping) would act to create emergent complex fractal like pattern. With both negative and positive feedbacks operating you have the resultant mess that the climate presents – intermittent and partial predictable oscillation mixed with chaotic pattern displaying fractal log-log power law fluctuations.
Tiggering is what tiggers do best – Pooh-poohing is what Lief does best (adapted from A.A. Milne).
Hi Carla
This may be of some interest
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/431060main_dragons-map-full.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/gamma-ray-dragons.html
phlogiston (02:01:26) :
Pooh-poohing is what Leif does best
Pooh should be poohed…
Vuk etc. (04:50:59) :
Hi Carla
This may be of some interest
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/431060main_dragons-map-full.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/gamma-ray-dragons.html
Leif Svalgaard (06:03:41) :
phlogiston (02:01:26) :
Pooh-poohing is what Leif does best
Pooh should be poohed…
~
Thanks Vuk, will take a lookey see. Pics are enlarged and we are now ready for a re-read of “New 3D gas density maps of NaI and CaII interstellar absorption within 300 pc,”
B. Y. Welsh1, R. Lallement2, J.-L. Vergely3, and S. Raimond2
Full pdf available at link:
http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/aa/pdf/2010/02/aa13202-09.pdf
Of particular interest are the Ca11 site line images (figures 15,16,17) around the solarsystem.
Vuks, just do a browse of the Ca11 images, you will find it’s a little messier than previously thought. How many little? cloudlettes of high density have passed over and thru our solar system while we have been riding around in this warm low density cavity?
I know, it’s my thing. cloudlettes, cloudlettes, cloudlettes there I said it. err
…
Have a good day Leif, me thinks you’re pretty good at teaching the Layperson. Might even be that there are a number of things you are good at.
…
Saw two Harleys on the road yesterday, that makes it official for me that Spring is around the corner for North, central WI. Temps in 40’s today is the unofficial confirmation.
Vuk etc. (04:50:59) : Really amazing, like a gift for the Holoscience guys.
Hello again, Leif.
The points you have been making are helpful to me so let’s just follow the logic where it leads.
i) You have successfully dealt with my supposition that the large variations in temperature in the thermosphere could not be solar induced because the absolute variations in solar output are so small. You explained that there is a disproportionate change in the more active components of the solar signal which in turn have a disproportionate effect on the temperature of the thermosphere because there are so few molecules to share out the available extra solar energy.
ii) It seems that that effect must travel down through the atmosphere until the atmospheric density increases to a point where that particular solar effect becomes insignificant. Let’s call that point the Solar Effect Boundary (SEB).
iii) At every point around the Earth above the SEB the solar effect on temperature would be significant so that those upper regions would warm up and expand.
iv) The area of atmosphere above the SEB would increase via expansion (so the surface area of the boundary with space would increase) and also from turbulence effects whenever the sun is more active. Remember, though that you also said that the upper atmosphere becomes more transparent to upward travelling IR as the density becomes lower.
v) Thus, all of the atmosphere above the SEB would become larger in volume, less dense and so more transparent to outgoing IR whenever the activity level of the solar surface increases. At the same time the increased solar activity would cause the height of the SEB to fall.
vi) That is an exact parallel to the tropopause but inverted. When oceanic effects alter the speed of the hydrological cycle the tropopause rises and falls,becomes more or less turbulent, changing it’s surface area so that the rate of energy flow into the stratosphere also changes. When solar effects alter the amount of energy reaching the upper atmosphere the SEB rises and falls, becomes more or less turbulent, changing the surface area of the atmosphere exposed to space so that the rate of energy flow out to space also changes.
vii) Both processes operate in the same way but oppose one another and are independently generated. Exactly as required by my general climate description. The climate effects observed in the troposphere are the geographical distribution of the equilibrium process between those two opposing solar and oceanic influences on the rate of energy flow through the Earth system. The rate of energy flow into the stratosphere being a function of the speed of the hydrological cycle. The rate of energy flow upwards and out of the stratosphere being a function of the level of solar surface activity. Restrictions in the rate of outward energy flow at a time of quiet sun being a cause of an enhanced Arctic and Antarctic Oscillation as energy that cannot escape to space is redirected back downwards in tropospheric high pressure cells.
viii) As I said before, counter intuitively an active sun leads to a faster flow of energy to space and an overall net cooling effect because the effect of the SEB on the rate of energy flow is greater than the absolute increase in solar power output.
ix) Thus an active sun at a time of a positive oceanic cycle and a less active sun at a time of a negative ocean cycle means that they are offsetting each others net thermal effects to stabilise the interglacial climate. The recent winter shows the effect of a short period when a positive ocean cycle combined with a less active sun to reinforce each other’s effects giving us a warmer troposphere overall but an enhanced Arctic and Antarctic Oscillation.
Who was it who said that a test of a sound theory is that it can be seen to explain phenomena that were not in one’s mind when it was formulated ?
Stephen Wilde (00:31:26) :
v) Thus, all of the atmosphere above the SEB would become larger in volume, less dense and so more transparent to outgoing IR
I think this link in your chain is wrong. The transparency depends on the number of molecules encountered which would be constant. Consider a volume V with N molecules, therefore density D = N/V, or N = D*V. Now spread the N molecules to a new volume W = 2V; that halves the density to E = D/2, but N = E*W is still N.
Dr.Svalgaard
Have you any data on AA index (or derivative) pre 1850 ?
Thanks.
vukcevic (07:47:31) :
Dr.Svalgaard
Have you any data on AA index (or derivative) pre 1850 ?
Yes
Leif Svalgaard (07:51:45) :
Dr. S. I have copy of your Ap Index (png graph) 1844- and numerical file for AA (1868-), if there is anything earlier available on the web, I would appreciate a download link. Thanks.
vukcevic (08:58:43) :
Dr. S. I have copy of your Ap Index (png graph) 1844- and numerical file for AA (1868-), if there is anything earlier available on the web, I would appreciate a download link.
There are various indices floating around. Some time ago I was asked by the modelers of space weather to estimate geomagnetic activity as far back a possible. ‘Harmonizing’ [fudging] the various data set [IHV, ap, aa (Mayaud), aa (Nevalinna), and am] I produced my best estimate [guess] of what Ap would have been since 1844. An Excel file with monthly values [updated until today] of my estimate of Ap [since the modelers were using Ap] can be found on my website http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-2010.xls I do not want any flak or complaints of any kind on this file. You are welcome to use [but try not to misuse] it for reasonable purposes.
Leif Svalgaard (06:34:17)
Yes, fair point. Would that preclude ANY solar induced change in the rate of energy loss to space from levels below the thermosphere though ?
You accept that solar variability affects the temperature of the few molecules in the thermosphere a great deal. It must also affect the molecules in lower layers albeit to a lesser extent.
Perhaps ‘transparency’ is not the right determinant ?
How about the size of the surface area exposed to space ?
Or ‘ripples’ induced by the sun in the boundaries between different layers of the atmosphere operating to increase upward energy transfer in a similar way to wind on water causing ripples that allow more evaporation and a faster upward energy transfer ?
Would the effects of the sun on the thermosphere ALWAYS be cancelled out immediately without any consequential effect elsewhere ?
One problem we have is that if the effect of irregularity in the flow of energy from the sun on the rate of energy flow coming up from the lower layers of the atmosphere above the tropopause is zero as you suggest then warming and cooling of the stratosphere and the ebb and flow of the Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations have to be fully explained without any influence from above.
Leif Svalgaard (09:23:35) :
Absolutely.
Thank you very much.
Stephen Wilde (09:36:02) :
You accept that solar variability affects the temperature of the few molecules in the thermosphere a great deal. It must also affect the molecules in lower layers albeit to a lesser extent.
It does. Solar variability induces a 0.07K solar cycle variation in temperature.
I don’t know if you saw it, but there is an interesting comparison:
If you look up towards the heavens, erect a column with cross-section, say, of 1 square meter from you to the edge of the observable universe [EOU], then in that column from you to the top of the Earth’s atmosphere [TOA] there is more gas than from the TOA to the EOU.
Stephen Wilde (09:36:02) :
then warming and cooling of the stratosphere and the ebb and flow of the Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations have to be fully explained without any influence from above.
The stratosphere is warmed and cooled by UV from the Sun, but that does not propagate downwards in any large measure, again because the amount of heat involved is so small. The stratosphere where the absorption takes place is from 100 to 1000 times thinner than the troposphere.
Leif Svalgaard (06:34:17)
“Stephen Wilde (00:31:26) :
v) Thus, all of the atmosphere above the SEB would become larger in volume, less dense and so more transparent to outgoing IR
I think this link in your chain is wrong. The transparency depends on the number of molecules encountered which would be constant. Consider a volume V with N molecules, therefore density D = N/V, or N = D*V. Now spread the N molecules to a new volume W = 2V; that halves the density to E = D/2, but N = E*W is still N.”
Actually. Leif, on reflection I think you might be wrong there.
You are working in only two dimensions such as extending the length of a tube with parallel sides so that the source area and the target area remain the same size.
As soon as one introduces a third dimension such that the area of the target expands whilst the source stays the same size your calculation no longer holds. Instead the molecules become more widely scattered in open space which reduces the number of times the outgoing IR photons will encounter a molecule so the speed of the outward flow will increase.
As a reducto ad absurdum if one were to spread the molecules of the thermosphere throughout a sphere the size of the solar system then IR photons from the Earth would hardly ever encounter one and the rate of energy loss from Earth to space would be faster than if those molecules were concentrated closer to the Earth.
Stephen Wilde (09:36:02) :
then warming and cooling of the stratosphere and the ebb and flow of the Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations have to be fully explained without any influence from above.
Leif Svalgaard (10:22:00)
The stratosphere is warmed and cooled by UV from the Sun, but that does not propagate downwards in any large measure, again because the amount of heat involved is so small. The stratosphere where the absorption takes place is from 100 to 1000 times thinner than the troposphere.
Reply:
The temperature inversion at the tropopause restricts upward convection.
The cooler the stratosphere the higher the tropopause and the faster energy will flow upwards.
A cooler stratosphere seems to accompany a more active sun as witness the period 1975 to 1995 or thereabouts. I have seen reports that with the less active sun the stratosphere has been warming.
A cooler stratosphere with a more active sun supports my proposition that a more active sun increases the rate of energy flow upwards from the stratosphere.
I have never proposed propagation downward. Only an alteration in the rate of propagation upward.
Stephen Wilde (10:39:44) :
As soon as one introduces a third dimension such that the area of the target expands whilst the source stays the same size your calculation no longer holds.
The expansion is so minute in relation to the area that the third dimension doesn’t matter. The difference in area of the bottom of a layer 100 km thick and the top is only 3%. And the photons can’t zip between the molecules as their wavelength is larger than the distance between the molecules.
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/5/0/53/_pdf
“The evidence for the cooling trend in the stratosphere may need to be
revisited. This study presents evidence that the stratosphere has been
slightly warming since 1996.”
Leif Svalgaard (10:52:54)
Well it seems to be enough to alter the Earth’s energy balance over multidecadal periods of time.
The photons don’t need to zip between the molecules, just encounter less of them on average.
And remember that I said the oceans are by far the larger influence but it just tips the balance as to whether the solar effect is working with or against the oceanic effect.
When they work together we get wild climate swings and glacial epochs. When they oppose one another we get the relative stability of an interglacial.
The length of glaciations relative to interglacials being a function of the current land mass distribution.
At least I’ve got you to accept the principle 🙂
Stephen Wilde (10:46:39) :
The cooler the stratosphere the higher the tropopause and the faster energy will flow upwards.
Too imprecise. Radiation flows at the speed of light. Convection flows are determined by the amount to energy to be transported and that does not depend on the height of the tropopause, but on the surface temperature.
As the report you referred to points out, the chemical composition [ozone destruction] is an important parameter, actually more important than variations of solar UV.
I have never proposed propagation downward. Only an alteration in the rate of propagation upward.
The Earth is heated by the Sun. The Earth needs to get rid of that energy, lest we all boil. Mother Nature provides for that: you heat something, it radiates. You heat it more, it radiates more. The radiation [upwards propagation of energy] takes place at an effective altitude of 5 km where the temperature is -19C. If you have a greenhouse effect heating the surface then the -19C level will move to a higher altitude [perhaps 5.1 km], but the amount radiated would be the same. If you have an increase of solar TSI, the level will no longer be at -19C, but at, say -18.93C and the effective altitude will move down [perhaps to 4.99 km] and the now higher energy radiated from there [higher because more comes in, so more will have to go out]. The thermosphere and stratosphere have nothing to do with this.
Stephen Wilde (11:18:49) :
The photons don’t need to zip between the molecules, just encounter less of them on average.
They cannot encounter less because there is the same number of molecules.
At least I’ve got you to accept the principle 🙂
No, you are dead wrong on that.
Leif Svalgaard:
“They cannot encounter less because there is the same number of molecules.”
Reply:
Of course they can because there is more space between the molecules if the target area increases three dimensionally. We’ve dealt with that already.
Leif Svalgaard:
“Convection flows are determined by the amount to energy to be transported and that does not depend on the height of the tropopause, but on the surface temperature.”
Reply:
The amount of energy to be transported from surface to stratosphere depends on the temperature differential. A cooler stratosphere will increase that differential for the same surface temperature. A warmer stratosphere will reduce it.
Leif Svalgaard:
“As the report you referred to points out, the chemical composition [ozone destruction] is an important parameter, actually more important than variations of solar UV.”
Reply:
Quite so but the ozone destruction is a direct consequence of the solar variability in the UV wavelength which you admit is greater than in other wavelengths as a proportion of total variability. Yet you then deny any adequate amplification effect.
Leif Svalgaard:
“The Earth is heated by the Sun. The Earth needs to get rid of that energy, lest we all boil. Mother Nature provides for that: you heat something, it radiates. You heat it more, it radiates more.”
Reply:
Quite so but that applies to every level of the Earth system which includes multiple layers in oceans and atmosphere.
The sun heats the thermosphere which appears then to expand and the rate of energy flow outward increases until the expansion stops. The more active sun seems to reduce the temperature of the stratosphere and not increase it so something is happening higher up to achieve that result. A cooling stratosphere encourages more convection and a warming stratosphere encourages less convection or rather it redirects excess convection back downward in the polar high pressure cells.
You have accepted that an expansion of the upper atmosphere can increase the rate of energy loss but you have said that the effect of such expansion is miniscule. In support of that you refer to a 3% difference between the difference in area between the top and bottom of a layer 100km thick. I think that is disingenuous because within that 3% occurs 100% of the energy flow that we are concerned about. The 3% is merely a function of the size of the planet around which the 100km deep layer is wrapped. What matters is how much the atmosphere expands as a proportion of the existing depth of the atmosphere and that is not miniscule.
Stephen Wilde (14:55:43) :
[…]
I have to admit that I cannot follow any one of the points in your pot. None of them make any sense, so I’ll have to admit complete defeat.
“You heat it more, it radiates more.”
Obviously true overall but not necessarily in the short term if layering in the oceans and atmosphere introduces discontinuities in the rate of energy flow.
Each of the layers seems to warm and cool at different rates over time.
At it’s simplest the oceans warm up by increasing ocean heat content whilst the troposphere cools (La Nina etc.) and vice versa.
The troposphere warms whilst the stratosphere cools and vice versa as witness the period of recent tropospheric warming.
The warming of the thermosphere from a more active solar surface seems to occur whilst the stratosphere is cooling and vice versa. Again as witness the period of recent tropospheric warming and now while the sun is less active the thermosphere has cooled but the stratosphere is warming.
Those features can only be explained by changes in the rate of energy flow through each layer. One layer warms or cools at the expense of another.