Dr. Nicola Scafetta has written an extensive summary of the state of climate science today. He’s done some very extensive analysis of the solar contribution that bears examination. Pay particular attention to this graph from page 49:
WUWT readers may remember him from some previous papers and comments he’s written that have been covered here:
Scafetta: New paper on TSI, surface temperature, and modeling
Scafetta: Benestad and Schmidt’s calculations are “robustly” flawed.
He writes to me with this introduction:
On February 26, 2009 I was invited by the Environmental Protection Agency Office of the Science Advisor (OSA) and National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) to present a talk about my research on climate change. I thought that the best way to address this issue was to present an overview of all topics involved about the issue and their interconnections.
So, I prepared a kind of holistic presentation with the title “Climate Change and Its Causes, A Discussion about Some Key Issues”. Then, a colleague from Italy who watched my EPA presentation suggested me to write a paper in Italian and submit it to an Italian science journal which was recently published.
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Download the report here (PDF -warning over 10 MB – long download time on slow connections)
This work covers most topics presented by Scafetta at a seminar at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, DC USA, February 26, 2009. A video of the seminar is here:
The Italian version of the original paper can be downloaded (with possible journal restrictions) from here
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Here is the table of contents, there’s something in this report for everyone:
Climate Change and Its Causes: A Discussion About Some Key Issues
Introduction … 4
The IPCC’s pro-anthropogenic warming bias … 6
The climate sensitivity uncertainty to CO2 increase … 8
The climatic meaning of Mann’s Hockey Stick temperature graph … 10
The climatic meaning of recent paleoclimatic temperature reconstructions … 12
The phenomenological solar signature since 1600 … 14
The ACRIM vs. PMOD satellite total solar irradiance controversy … 16
Problems with the global surface temperature record … 18
A large 60 year cycle in the temperature record … 19
Astronomical origin of the climate oscillations … 22
Conclusion … 26
Bibliography … 27
Appendix…29-54
A: The IPCC’s anthropogenic global warming theory … 29
B: Chemical vs. Ice-Core CO2 atmospheric concentration estimates … 30
C: Milky Way’s spiral arms, Cosmic Rays and the Phanerozoic temperature cycles … 31
D: The Holocene cooling trend and the millennial-scale temperature cycles … 32
E: The last 1000 years of global temperature, solar and ice cover data … 33
F: The solar dynamics fits 5000 years of human history … 34
G: The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age – A global phenomenon … 35
H: Compatibility between the AGWT climate models and the Hockey Stick … 36
I: The 11-year solar cycle in the global surface temperature record … 37
J: The climate models underestimate the 11-year solar cycle signature … 38
K: The ACRIM-PMOD total solar irradiance satellite composite controversy … 39
L: Willson and Hoyt’s statements about the ACRIM and Nimbus7 TSI published data .. 40
M: Cosmic ray flux, solar activity and low cloud cover positive feedback … 41
N: Possible mechanisms linking cosmic ray flux and cloud cover formation … 42
O: A warming bias in the surface temperature records? … 43
P: A underestimated Urban Heat Island effect? … 44
Q: A 60 year cycle in multisecular climate records … 45
R: A 60 year cycle in solar, geological, climate and fishery records … 46
S: The 11-year solar cycle and the V-E-J planet alignment … 47
T: The 60 and 20 year cycles in the wobbling of the Sun around the CMSS … 48
U: The 60 and 20 year cycles in global surface temperature and in the CMSS … 49
V: A 60 year cycle in multisecular solar records … 50
W: The bi-secular solar cycle: Is a 2010-2050 little ice age imminent? … 51
X: Temperature records do not correlate to CO2 records … 52
Y: The CO2 fingerprint: Climate model predictions and observations disagree … 53
Z: The 2007 IPCC climate model projections. Can we trust them? … 54
DirkH (21:09:54) :
“anthropogenic CO2 emissions, since another GHG, water vapor, is available in a practically infinite reservoir, in the surface of the oceans.”
Perhaps even more in the depth of the oceans 🙂 , but, seriously, this is well known. Any three-atomic [or more like Methane] molecule is a greenhouse gas. In our atmosphere the major GHGs are H20, O3, and CO2.
wayne (21:10:05) :
Careful Leif, sometimes you jump too fast
Have you ever written an ephemeris software system? Try it, they are challenging!
Yes, many years ago for fun and not to any high degree of accuracy. But that aside, we had an extensive discussion of this some time ago on this very blog. I am involved with the accurate calculation of the Sun-Earth distance for the purpose of reducing TSI [from SORCE-TIM] to one AU., so do know something about this. In a paper that from time to time is dredged up, Alexander et al. had this image of the change in TSI based on the assumption that the distance to the Sun has to be corrected for the SSB distance: http://www.leif.org/research/DavidA10.png for a time in the early 1990s, and indeed the variation in distance would be significant [much larger than the solar cycle changes]. Actually plotting the observedTSI for that period produces this graph: http://www.leif.org/research/DavidA11.png
showing that the purported effect is not there. This is, of course, also seen if you use Horizon [or just elementary physics].
Your statement is almost like the other planets gravitation fields do not also affect the Earths orbit.
I didn’t say that, in fact they do. Jupiter’s eccentric orbit is the main reason for one of the Milankovich cycles, but the time scale is millennia.
But please don’t jump on my attempts to teach people here, just make a comment that its effect is so small it can be ignored. Let’s build on each other, not tear each other apart. OK?
Goes the other way too, doesn’t it? But, the effect would not be small [it would be HUGE compared to the solar cycle effects], but it isn’t there.
No need to go to fancy calculations. Back-of-envelope calculations work just fine. Let us assume that the mean distance is 150 [million km], and see what difference a SSB correction of 1 [million km] would give:
1361 * 150^2 / (150+1)^2 = 1343 W/m2
1361 * 150^2 / (150-1)^2 = 1379 W/m2
for a difference of 36 W/m2 compared to the 1.5 W/m2 due to the solar cycle. No such difference is detected.
You also ignored my example with a companion star say 1000 AU distanced. That would put the SSB somewhere about halfway between the two stars. Would the Earth orbit that SSB or the Sun? You see the SSB is rather arbitrary depending on what we consider to be part of the solar system.
Jay (20:11:02) :
Having found this tidbit on wikipedia, I would venture to say that ANYONE should be able to see that small TSI changes are only PART of the evidence of the large changes that the sun causes here on earth.
There is no evidence of such large changes. If there were, this would not be so hotly debated.
kim (21:37:47) :
his thesis is highly controversial, embraced by skeptics and trashed by alarmists.
Both camps would do that to ANY argument that goes against their belief, especially if the argument is beyond them.
rbateman (21:07:20) :
If anyone knows where to find daily station data or more complete summaries of the Weather Bureau, I’m all ears.
For Canadian data look here.
http://www.climate.weather.gc.ca/prods_servs/index_e.html#cdcd
A ~ 205 Mb download that expands to >800 Mb archive of Canadian weather ststions.
Comes with a dorky DOS program that organizes the data in many ways.
tallbloke (21:22:27) :
“People asked for my opinion… not for ‘balanced account’.”
you present your opinion as definite fact sufficient to diss other people with when that isn’t warranted.
Again, this was clearly understood as ‘my opinion’ only.
JPL Horizons presupposes that the solar system’s angular momentum sums to zero between the sun and planets, so you wouldn’t expect to find the energy of a spin-orbit coupling there.
It is this kind of statement that brands you as a crank. JPL presupposes the known laws of physics. The non-changing angular momentum follows from those [and from the calculations based on them].
No Leif, you insult people with discourtesy and disrespect (Astrologer, pseudoscientist), which should have no place on this (or any other) blog.
I show you to be a pseudo-scientist [to with the JPL bit above] and people were not banned for their opinions [exception: evolution, chemtrails] but for their bad behavior.
dr.bill (05:35:40) :
What isn’t possible, in any meaningful way for Planet Earth, is to “measure the average temperature” by “averaging a bunch of temperatures“
Because the variation of the absolute temperatures is slight it can be approximated by a linear function of radiation within its range. Thus averaging temperatures is meaningful. If you had a thermometer on every square km the average of that ‘bunch’ of temperatures would be meaningful. The problem with the current temperature averaging is that we do not a uniform distribution, which makes it harder to do the average. Not, that it is not possible.
Ernest Campbell (05:14:01) :
5) What is “Long Term Variation”. Do you mean “No TSI Variation other than Annual (from its elliptical orbit)”?
Long-term is solar cycle and longer
10) Would you please provide a pointer to info on the Solar Polar Fields as predictor?
http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/Predicting%20the%20Solar%20Cycle.pdf pages 34-37
11) Yes, I see that current Climate Models are not very successful. No, I don’t see how Climate Models can work even in principle due to the nature of chaotic systems.
The climate is not strongly chaotic as it seems to oscillation around a rather stable mean [+/-10 degrees] over billions of years. Much of the chaos is small-scale and tends to average out over long periods. So, predicting the weather next week is actually harder than predicting the climate 10 years from now.
Don’t forget that I was asked what my personal opinion was.
————
Apologies to the people I have not addressed specifically. There is just too much dumped on me to keep up with it all.
AlanG (01:18:01) :
Creating an unknown force of unknown strength with unknown effects can explain anything, right? Well it might be good for a research grant…
Al Gore [I believe] said it best: “If you don’t know anything, everything is possible”.
Dear Dr. Svalgaard, thank you for your patient & informative replies.
You wrote :
“14) The cosmic rays vary too little to have any effect and the mechanism proposed does not seem to work [you can always extend your belief a bit by claiming that more data is needed]”
I thought that there is ample paleoclimatic evidence to support the notion that cosmic rays affect terrestrial climate.
Jasper Kirkby : “Numerous palaeoclimatic observations, covering a wide range of time scales, suggest that galactic cosmic ray variability is associated with climate change. The quality and diversity of the observations make it difficult to dismiss them merely as chance associations.”
Above quotation from “Cosmic Rays and Climate” (J.Kirkby)
doi: 10.1007/s10712-008-9030-6 (2007)
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
Abstract:
“Among the most puzzling questions in climate change is that of solar-climate variability, which has attracted the attention of scientists for more than two centuries. Until recently, even the existence of solar-climate variability has been controversial—perhaps because the observations had largely involved correlations between climate and the sunspot cycle that had persisted for only a few decades. Over the last few years, however, diverse reconstructions of past climate change have revealed clear associations with cosmic ray variations recorded in cosmogenic isotope archives, providing persuasive evidence for solar or cosmic ray forcing of the climate. However, despite the increasing evidence of its importance, solar-climate variability is likely to remain controversial until a physical mechanism is established. Although this remains a mystery, observations suggest that cloud cover may be influenced by cosmic rays, which are modulated by the solar wind and, on longer time scales, by the geomagnetic field and by the galactic environment of Earth. Two different classes of microphysical mechanisms have been proposed to connect
cosmic rays with clouds: firstly, an influence of cosmic rays on the production of cloud condensation nuclei and, secondly, an influence of cosmic rays on the global electrical circuit in the atmosphere and, in turn, on ice nucleation and other cloud microphysical processes. Considerable progress on understanding ion-aerosol-cloud processes has been
made in recent years, and the results are suggestive of a physically-plausible link between cosmic rays, clouds and climate. However, a concerted effort is now required to carry out definitive laboratory measurements of the fundamental physical and chemical processes involved, and to evaluate their climatic significance with dedicated field observations and modelling studies.”
maksimovich (22:18:34) :
The problem is the overall change is 0.1,however the spectral irriadiance is inverse to the solar cycle ie the absorption bands of interest in H2o an co2 are of opposite sign to the solar cycle,eo Krivova et al
Would seem to a problem for people claiming that the Sun is responsible for climate changes…
the UV irradiance varies by 1 to 3 orders of magnitude more
This is brought up again and again. What people forget is that the energy involved is minute. It is like claiming that a Bill Gates’ wealth fluctuates by a large amount based on the fluctuation of the number of coins in his pockets.
And the near UV [where most of the energy is] seems to vary opposite to the solar cycle: http://www.leif.org/research/Erl70.png [third panel, purple line]
If you go to extreme UV [fourth panel] there is a variation in phase with the cycle, but the changes are of the order of 0.1 W/m2 or less.
But to give you the chance to rebut, please post all the names, right here, that you claim are phony.
Straw man. I am not arguing that the names are phony; my point is that the petition spreads the net so wide – including medical doctors, vetinarians and so forth that 30K is a drop in the ocean compared to the millions who could have signed and choose not to.
Who knows how many signatories were misled by the faux PNAS paper that was sent out alongside, that ‘followed the identical style and format of a contribution to Proceedings of the National Academy of Science?’. The NAS themselves were concerned enough to issue a rebuttal: “The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal”
No reputable polling organisation would behave this way.
Scientific American contacted a sample of signatories who work in climate science and found that over 10% had no recollection of the petition. More than half of those who have signed in the ten years it has been running are in fact Engineers- whereas in just four days and in the UK only, over 1,700 actual scientists signed up to a statement that began ‘We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. ‘
But no scientific issue was ever decided by who has the longest list of scientists, perhaps a better measure would the number of relevant professional organisations that have not issued statements endorsing the consensus, shouldn’t take long to count them – there aren’t any.
“Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.” —Sir Arthur Eddington .
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=ah63dzac
I’m surprised that no one has pointed out that a decimal “Leif score” is nonsense. If you agree with only the first point the value will be over 16,000. If you don’t agree with the first point the value will be less by definition. A “Leif sum” would make more sense in demonstrating the number of items in agreement.
Henry (17:49:05) :
you may attack me all you want,
but I know how to dig out dirt.
I will find it.
love
Well dig away Henry. Let me know what you find especially since it will destroy your preconceived nonsense.
*******
Leif Svalgaard (16:35:08) :
Leif Svalgaard (16:12:55) :
For the record […]
Here is an interesting exercise: consider the 14 points and give yourself a score of +1 if you agree with a point, of -1 if you disagree and of 0 if you are neutral. Your ‘Leif Score’ would then be the sum of those 14 scores. Mine is obviously +14. Alternatively give a 1 if you agree or a 0 otherwise, your ‘Leif Number’ would be the decimal number that is formed by the sequence of 1s and 0s. Mine is obviously 11111111111111 = decimal 16383.
*******
You loaded the deck. By default, nobody can ever beat your score. 🙂
rbateman (21:07:20) :
If anyone knows where to find daily station data or more complete summaries of the Weather Bureau, I’m all ears.
It may be possiblt to get some “decent” world wide data from the CRU post 2001 data dumps that Warwick Hughes has found.
There are various datasets from 1994 to 1999.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/crudata.htm
Dr. Svalgaard: “4) There is a 0.1% change of TSI between solar min and solar max, resulting ~0.1C temperature variation”
Tung and Camp (2008) found a ~0.2C variation over the cycle.
oneuniverse (09:46:52) :
I thought that there is ample paleoclimatic evidence to support the notion that cosmic rays affect terrestrial climate.
Apart from the difficulties of determining the paleo-data [especially the cosmic ray intensity], there is little evidence from modern data to suggest the notion, so little reason to suspect it in the deep past. The real determinant of cosmic rays reaching the atmosphere is not anything external to the Earth, like solar activity or galactic conditions, but the Earth’s own magnetic field: http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
The big ‘swing’ is due to the changing magnitude of the Earth’s dipole field [shown by the other curve with the dots and crosses]. Solar modulation are the tiny wiggles. Since we don’t know how the Earth magnetic field varied hundreds of millions of years ago we can hardly say anything about the cosmic ray flux back then. On a time scale of millions of years we do have some data on the Earth’s magnetic field. We know it changes polarity every so often [we may be due for one in perhaps a thousand years], but on longer time scales we don’t know [at least I don’t know].
Phil Clarke:
“whereas in just four days and in the UK only, over 1,700 actual scientists signed up to a statement that began ‘We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. ‘…”
And all of these “climate scientists” who signed received the 80 billion in bribes (er, their OWN research money) to do that “painstaking and meticulous research” —- that gave us that very IPCC reports with grpahs from Wikipedia, the WWF, and their own favorite hockey stick fraud……
Richard M (10:06:53) :
I’m surprised that no one has pointed out that a decimal “Leif score” is nonsense. If you agree with only the first point the value will be over 16,000. If you don’t agree with the first point the value will be less by definition. A “Leif sum” would make more sense in demonstrating the number of items in agreement.
Read it carefully [a rare thing on this blog 🙂 ]. The ‘score’ is indeed a ‘sum’. The 16000 etc is the ‘number’ and does not by its magnitude mean anything, but its distribution of 1s and 0s shows details of agreements/disagreements. A better way of expressing that [as I suggested] would be using the hexadecimal notion, e.g. 1FC40, not inducing people to make numerical comparisons [except when you are a computer geek – like me].
beng (10:15:32) :
You loaded the deck. By default, nobody can ever beat your score. 🙂
See reply just above. But you are evading an issue: what is your Leif number?
OceanTwo (06:50:16) :
Implying that only scientists are allowed to do ’scientific’ work
Experience shows that non-scientists don’t do much scientific work, because it is hard to do correctly.
And, I think only engineers are allowed to build bridges, surgeons allowed to operate on you, etc.
oneuniverse (10:34:24) :
Tung and Camp (2008) found a ~0.2C variation over the cycle.
Other people find less [than the 0.18C claimed by T&C], e.g. even Scafetta [see graph at top of page 🙂 ].
The problem is one of having god temperature records [and do you advocate that the ones used are of outstanding quality] and of accounting for other phenomena that louse up the record, e.g. ENSO, volcanoes, etc]. In any event the variation is small and I could even live with it.
Note that Tung concludes: “The finding adds to the evidence that mainstream climate models are right about the likely extent of future human-generated warming. It also effectively rules out some lower estimates in those models.”
Well, before doing a “Leif score”, we need to know if question 1 is the least significant bit or most significant bit. Plus the hexadecimal equivalent of complete agreement with Leif would be 0x3FFF, and not 0x2FFF.
Dr. S : “Note that Tung concludes: “The finding adds to the evidence that mainstream climate models are right about the likely extent of future human-generated warming. It also effectively rules out some lower estimates in those models.” ”
Only if their suggested reason for the the temperature change turns out to be correct ie. that it comes from the TSI variation augmented by a “climate gain factor” of 2-3, caused by terrestrial feedbacks.
As usual Leif and the other “real Scientists” are being dismissive of other Scientists work on this Post, but are at the same time quite happy to accept their own “selective” items.
The classic example is fitting Cycles to Climate is not acceptable and then Leif goes on to quote his favourite “Milankovich cycles” as being OK and anna v States “
It is evident that there are cycles. Who is disputing that? It is the random correlations of cycles with other cycles that have no physical meaning that is being disputed.
Lets put it this way: If one postulates a physical mechanism that generates cycles of climate from cycles of sunspots it is necessary that a correlation is established unequivocally. If it is not found the postulated theory falls on its face.
This is stated as a Fact, as Leif does all the time, when it is obviously not so, as an example just suppose that some other “Cycle”, Modulation, whatever, coincided with when the Sunspots “Should” have created a climate change, but stopped it from happening or reduced it’s effect. Does that then invalidate the original theory?
Shouldn’t all the possibilities have been considered.
The Report on this Post has proposed a lot of “coincidences”, as Lief dismissively says in his first comment “Yes, Scafetta throws in everything plus the Kitchen sink”, but has it ever occurred to the Scientists on here that just maybe it is not only the Individual Cycles that contribute to out Climate changes, but some of them do and more importantly Combinations of some of them do as well.
It does at least show the complexity of the things that could be contributing, however small the contribution, to our climate.
Ron Dean (10:54:15) :
Well, before doing a “Leif score”, we need to know if question 1 is the least significant bit or most significant bit. Plus the hexadecimal equivalent of complete agreement with Leif would be 0×3FFF, and not 0×2FFF.
Let’s call it the Leif Code instead of Leif Number. The Score is the sum and has a meaningful numerical interpretation, the Code is not a number, so its ‘value’ should not be compared numerically. Point 1 is the left-most bit, point 14 the right-most bit. And mine is indeed 3FFF: I have since moved my keyboard a bit to avoid that error 🙂
oneuniverse (11:04:25) :
Only if their suggested reason for the the temperature change turns out to be correct ie. that it comes from the TSI variation augmented by a “climate gain factor” of 2-3, caused by terrestrial feedbacks.
Goes to show how uncertain the various interpretations are.
Leif Svalgaard (10:45:57) :
“Experience shows that non-scientists don’t do much scientific work, because it is hard to do correctly”
But the history of science shows that it is often an intruder’s fresh ideas that eventually trigger the biggest advances. Dr. Bernard Newgrosh calls such intruders “eminent outsiders.” His favorite example is none other than the astronomer William Herschel (1738-1822), “who was born in Hanover, joined a regimental band at 14, went to England at 21 and worked as a musician and composer. He also instructed himself in mathematics and astronomy and constructing his own reflecting telescopes.” Another was Michael Faraday (1791-1867), who “was born in Surrey, apprenticed to a book-binder and was largely self-educated.”
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=ah63dzac
Leif Svalgaard (11:11:36) :
oneuniverse (11:04:25) :
me: Goes to show how uncertain the various interpretations are.
Look at their Figure 2. Now extend the graph to today. dT is the highest since 1957 [covered by their graph] and solar activity the lowest, so their suggested correlation did not hold up. This is typical for this kind of claims.
They end the paper: “We will argue in a separate paper that the observed warming is caused mostly by the radiative heating (TSI minus the 15% absorbed by ozone in the stratosphere), when taking into account the positive climate feedbacks (a factor of 2–3) also expected for the greenhouse warming problem.”
They apparently did not take into account the much touted orders of magnitude changes in UV. [and they shouldn’t]. There are people that put together bits and pieces from papers they don’t understand and hardly read to jump to conclusions that ‘support’ their beliefs. So, you can find people saying “T&C show solar cycle changes and UV varies 6%” or some such.
That is why much of the stuff on some blogs does not qualify as ‘science’.