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
========================
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
Smokey (03:56:03) :
Anu (22:12:26) :
“Sure, they “made up data for a 13 year stretch”.
I guess the Parliament investigation forgot to bring that one up.
—
You look foolish discussing something while being ignorant of the underlying information. Here, let me help you out.
From the Harry_Read_Me.txt file:
Here, the expected 1990 – 2003 period is missing so the correlations aren’t so hot!
Yet the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close).
What the hell is supposed to happen here?
Oh, yeah – there is no ’supposed’, I can make it up. So I have.
1990 – 2003 = 13 years of fabricated CRU data.
——————–
You look foolish discussing almost anything.
I’ve had this file, and all the others, for months.
First of all, Ian (Harry) Harris was working on the legacy CRU TS 2.1 database – trying to construct a single database from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory, sometimes inconsistently formatted, datasets.
The result of all this work can be seen here:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/grid/CRU_TS_2_1.html
Notice Ian (Harry) Harris still has a job, along with Dr. Phil Jones:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/
That shows what CRU, Parliament, and the British courts think of your accusation.
Second, this is not the HadCRUT data used by Hadley in calculating monthly temperature anomalies : that data is here:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
Third, the particular snippit you took out of a 701 KB txt file, which was a four year worklog of a tedious database cleanup job, was talking about a particular weather station in the ex-USSR:
HANTY MANSIJSK EX USSR
HANTY-MANSIJSK RUSSIAN FEDER
Notice that Ian was working in this case with data from a Russian station over which he had no control – he was wondering how to treat the data from this one station which has a big time gap (presumably the fall of the USSR impacted their weather data sharing till they got their act together later as the Russian Federation).
Obviously, Ian should just consult the “Weather Database Programmer Handbook” from O’Reilly to decide how to treat this data. Oh wait, there is no handbook that tells people what to do:
Oh yeah – there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have 🙂
Now, read the rest of your “snippet” from HARRY_READ_ME.txt:
If an update station matches a ‘master’ station by WMO code, but the data is unpalatably inconsistent, the operator is given three choices:
BEGIN QUOTE
You have failed a match despite the WMO codes matching.
This must be resolved!! Please choose one:
1. Match them after all.
2. Leave the existing station alone, and discard the update.
3. Give existing station a false code, and make the update the new WMO station.
Enter 1,2 or 3:
END QUOTE
So, Ian (Harry) Harris decided to flag the situation, and let the operator decide how to handle stations that seemed to be redefined, or moved, or mislabeled by the World Meteorological Organization.
You probably know as much about research, databases, and the WMO as you do about AGW.
Which is somewhere between very little and nothing.
I’m still waiting for all those “consequences” for the supposed “wrongdoing” at CRU you keep going on about…
Re: Pamela Gray (18:45:44)
Defeatist white-flag “can’t do” ads in full-view to the enemy might not be the most constructive response to fatigue, soldier.
–
Re: Leif Svalgaard (20:28:22)
You may as well be demanding a change of the plotting color from black to dark-blue, insisting that bacteria be viewed with the naked eye rather than a microscope, or suggesting that the details of a nebula are best-viewed without a telescope. Your attack is frivolous & without merit.
However, your point about optics is well-taken. I agree that it becomes a problem that some are waaaaaay too eager to misunderstand. Quite funny at times, but not always a laughing matter. I assure you that I am carefully considering your comments about perception, which are clearly based in (appreciated) wisdom & experience.
Paul Vaughan (19:32:13) :
you are both falsely & rudely (with emphasis on the former – I can handle the latter no problem) assigning deceptive motive where none exists.
Then prove to me that no such motive exists and humor me and plot what I ask. If not [and I know you well enough that you likely won’t], then perhaps, I’ll have to do it myself to show where your deception lies. The deception may not be nefarious in any way, just based on ignorance about how the present scientific data [you are in good company, though].
Leif Svalgaard (20:28:22): “The Earth’s magnetic field is the MAJOR influence.”
Shaviv has calculated that the flux varied between 25% to 130% of current levels. If the ‘space’ GCR flux drops to say 50% of current levels, then the flux at TOA, as modulated by the Earth’s field, will drop correspondingly – the change will be significant.
LS: “If the galactic variation was much larger the influence on the climate would be too great.”
You’re possibly assuming a knowledge of the climate system that we don’t possess eg. of negative feedbacks.
LS: “detailed calculations show that the efficiency of this process is many orders of magnitude too small.”
Please cite if possible.
LS: “Observations of Forbush Decreases show that GCRs have no effect.”
I’ve cited two studies finding that they do. Please cite.
LS: “No, if one actually calculates the regression, one finds R^2 = 0.1173 [i.e. not significant] and a slope of 0.1036, that is dT = 0.1036 * dS, so with dS = 1 W/m2, one finds dT = 0.1C.”
No, if it’s no longer significant, then you need to change item 4.
oneuniverse (20:58:42) :
Shaviv has calculated that the flux varied between 25% to 130% of current levels. If the ’space’ GCR flux drops to say 50% of current levels, then the flux at TOA, as modulated by the Earth’s field, will drop correspondingly – the change will be significant.
Yes, but it will not be what you think it is. If that 130% change is cut to 5% or increased to 2000% because of [unknown] changes in the Earth’s field, we will have no idea what the flux would be at cloud levels.
You’re possibly assuming a knowledge of the climate system that we don’t possess eg. of negative feedbacks.
It seems to me that Shaviv is assuming that things were comparable to what they are now, as he also does not posses that knowledge.
Please cite if possible.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL037946.shtml
That I need to underscores my experience that believers only look at papers that confirm their beliefs, but here are some recent citations:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009GL041327.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040961.shtml
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0906/0906.4442v2.pdf
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/21525/2009/acpd-9-21525-2009.pdf
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/7373/2008/acp-8-7373-2008.pdf
etc, etc, etc…
No, if it’s no longer significant, then you need to change item 4.
No, because item 4 does not derive from their analysis. And 0.1C is below the noise in their data and analysis. My own calculations indicate a change of 0.07C, which I round to 0.1C.
Paul Vaughan (20:41:18) :
I assure you that I am carefully considering your comments about perception, which are clearly based in (appreciated) wisdom & experience.
I appreciate this welcome change of tone [from false & rude…]. Perception is king. Nothing else matters. If the graphs become too ‘white’ it simply shows that the signal has been cut down to almost nothing. In that case one can at the very least supply a numerical scale on each graph and strenuously point out that the scales are different [and yet there will be people that don’t notice].
Leif Svalgaard (13:15:59) :
There are such studies [although finding good solar ‘analogs’ has turned out to be harder than thought]. Here is the program from a recent ‘Solar Analog’ meeting: http://www.lowell.edu/workshops/SolarAnalogsII/program.php
‘Solar’ type cycles indeed exist [and with periods around 10 years – these stars must have Jupiters too], but the trouble is we have not observed them for centuries, so don’t know their real long-term variations, if any.
Here are some current thoughts on the ‘Sun in Time’:
http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2007-3/
—————-
Thanks for the links, this is an area I should look into more.
I had hoped somebody had poured over the photographic plates going back to 1879 or so, looking for Sun-like stars and seeing how often, and by how much, their brightness changed:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2004JHA….35..447S
http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/plates/
The sunspot cycles correlate to about 0.1% change in TSI, but being periodic, should have no longterm affect on climate. If there were a serious secular trend to TSI, wouldn’t Milankovitch cycles get screwed up, and we wouldn’t observe the Ice Ages that we have ?
But I suppose periodicities of 100 or 200 years would be too short term to affect the much longer term Milankovitch cycles. It shouldn’t affect the climate much on timescales of 1000 years, but could explain a significant part of current warming. Is that your contention ?
If they can’t even predict the start time or “height” of sunspot cycle 24, would it be fair to say the Sun could jump 0.4% in TSI next year, and it wouldn’t violate anything we know about solar physics ? Or perhaps raise 0.4% in the next sunspot cycle or two…
If CO2 is changing the radiative transfer of infrared in the upper atmosphere (climate forcing), and the Sun increases in TSI also, it would be a double forcing.
Of course, the Sun might go down by 0.4% TSI, too.
That’s why I had hoped looking at a few thousand Sun-like stars could give some indication of how often serious brightenings/dimmings occur.
I guess old photographic plates have no spectroscopy, but once a star is determined to be Sun-like now, they could go back to the archives and look at it for perhaps 120 years.
Paul Vaughan (20:41:18) : “Defeatist white-flag “can’t do” ads in full-view to the enemy might not be the most constructive response to fatigue, soldier.”
Touché.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Paul Vaughan (20:41:18) :
I agree that it becomes a problem that some are waaaaaay too eager to misunderstand
That is usually not a problem. Most people are reasonable. The real problem is the load of information. I have to read 10-20 papers every day to keep up-to-date with my field, so each paper gets only a few minutes initially, and perhaps one every other day gets a fuller study, and one a month I save, because it is potentially important. The initial screening is based on perception only. And I can tell you [no secret now, I guess] that if I came across a paper with your kind of Figure in it, it is rejected out of hand immediately, and I go on to the next.
Re: A C Osborn (Mar 15 11:07),
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.
Yes, and it is called deterministic chaos. In contrast to throwing Tarot cards and hand wave about which solution’s cycles dominate, it develops tools to study the behavior of the solutions of the necessarily coupled differential equations. The chaos and complexity discipline is in the beginning and covers from biology to physics. It takes time for tools to be developed . One such is that referenced in Tsonis et al above.
Maybe you should spend some time contemplating the cornstarch video.
Look at the fingers at the end, and try to think how you could extract the connection from the regularities coming out chaotically to the physical mechanisms producing them.
You would have to think out of the box of coincident cycles and harmonics.
Anu (21:45:56) :
I had hoped somebody had poured over the photographic plates going back to 1879 or so, looking for Sun-like stars and seeing how often, and by how much, their brightness changed
If they are sun-like their TSI would change less than a percent [perhaps 0.1%], so the old plates do not have good enough calibration to detect such a small change.
If there were a serious secular trend to TSI, wouldn’t Milankovitch cycles get screwed up, and we wouldn’t observe the Ice Ages that we have ?
This is a good point. On the other hand our models of the Sun shows that such large changes should not occur.
If they can’t even predict the start time or “height” of sunspot cycle 24, would it be fair to say the Sun could jump 0.4% in TSI next year
‘They’? My prediction of a small cycle seems to work well 🙂 and it would not be fair because from our understanding [and we do have some] of how this works would mean a sunspot number in excess of 400 which has never been observed and which would make the solar modulation of cosmic rays much larger than observed the past 12,000 years.
once a star is determined to be Sun-like now, they could go back to the archives and look at it for perhaps 120 years.
That is what our observing program is aiming for [even longer: 500 years]. Astronomy/Astrophysics has a far horizon.
Leif, I have little experience dealing with physicists, but I am learning what matters to (at least one of) them.
Part of my background is Statistics (more specifically applied data analysis). I know you realize that in that field it is the variation that is studied.
The data-visualization paradigm to which I subscribe is based on relative variation, not absolutes, since the summaries are scale-independent. In careful applied data analysis it is of paramount importance to visualize the relative variation in the data so as to avoid falling victim to ‘black box’ algorithmic output, which so, so, SO many do, without due regard for vital diagnostics.
I am learning from your comments that (at least some) physicists (and undoubtedly others from other fields) operate in a different paradigm. Give me a chance to adapt to the (relatively) new (to me) audience. I have studied the psychology of persuasion and understand the importance of tailoring messages according to audience. I will contemplate ways of balancing competing objectives arising from different paradigms (none of which has a monopoly in interdisciplinary science).
You may expect an update….
Leif Svalgaard (09:50:50) :
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…
It is also a problem when partitioning the “signal’ of agw/natural variation to ascertain the sensitivity coefficient when the signs are inverse ie the forcings are reversed.
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.
Krivova et al are quite succint in the introduction.
The small contribution of the UV part of the spectrum is, however, compensated by the spectral dependence of the transmission of the Earth’s atmosphere. Thus solar radiation below 300 nm is almost completely absorbed in the atmosphere (see, e.g., Haigh, 2007, and references therein) and is important for the chemistry of the stratosphere and overlying layers. In particular, radiation in the Ly- line (121.6 nm) and in the oxygen continuum and bands between 180 and 240 nm controls production and destruction of ozone (e.g., Frederick, 1977; Brasseur and Simon, 1981; Haigh, 1994, 2007; Fleming et al., 1995; Egorova et al., 2004; Langematz et al., 2005). Solar UV radiation at 200–350 nm is the main heat source in the stratosphere and mesosphere (Haigh, 1999, 2007; Rozanov et al., 2006).
Lets examine the findings of the Socal Group and SPARC
1)SUV findings
-Ozone increases by 3% in the upper stratosphere and 2% in the lower stratosphere.
-Warming of 1.2 K in the stratosphere and acceleration of both polar night jets.
-Simulated zonal wind and temperature response reproduces the observed downward and -poleward propagation.
-Response of the surface temperature in December resembles that observed and simulated after the 1991 Pinatubo eruption.
Lets introduce another agent into the market namely Energetic Electron Precipitation (EEP) now here the energies are even less in the 36-600ev range for example .eg Rozanov et al
EEP findings
-The model shows a “surprising” sensitivity to the observed increase in EEP.
-Our preliminary results suggest that the atmosphere is more sensitive to EEP than to SUV.
It was shown by Hood [2004], Rozanov et al. [2004],and Egorova et al. [2004] that the simulated responses of ozone and temperature to solar irradiance variation over the 11-year solar cycle do not agree with the solar signal extracted from the observational data. This discrepancy could be due to insufficient data not allowing the extraction of the solar signal with sufficient accuracy or due to physical and/or chemical mechanisms missing in the Chemistry-Climate models (CCMs). Energetic electron precipitation (EEP) events leading to enhanced NOy (NOy = NO +NO2 + NO3 + HNO3 + ClNO3 + 2*N2O5 + HNO4) is one potential candidate. These events have been shown to substantially alter stratospheric chemistry. The EEP mechanism has been proposed by Callis et al. [1998]. Electrons trapped in the outer radiation belt of the Earth’s magnetosphere,stimulated by the high-speed solar wind, are accelerated and can, after precipitation, penetrate into the atmosphere over the auroral and sub-auroral regions. They ionize neutral components providing a source of reactive nitrogen and hydrogen. During the cold season total reactive nitrogen may descend into the stratosphere destroying ozone and affecting the entire atmosphere. Measurements show that EEP events are more frequent and intense during the declining phase of solar activity, when coronal holes migrate towards the solar equator and the solar wind is more nearly directed toward Earth. This fact is supported by satellite observations [Callis et al., 1998] and by observations of precipitation events measured in the Murmansk region [Bazilevskaya et al., 2002].
From these results we draw the following conclusions.The simulated influence of EEP on the atmosphere consists of reactive nitrogen enhancement, ozone depletion,and cooling almost in the entire stratosphere. Effects are most pronounced over high latitudes and intensify the polar vortices resulting in the SATs increasing over Europe,Russia and the U.S. by up to 2.5 K during boreal winter.
Potentially, EEP effects on ozone and temperature are stronger than the influence of solar irradiance. The intensity of EEP is most pronounced during the declining phase of the solar activity cycle, that is, closer to solar activity minimum, therefore all effects mentioned here should be approximately reversed if we compare solar maximum relative to solar minimum. This means that EEP and UV mechanisms work in phase in the extra-polar stratosphere, but out of phase over the high latitudes and in the troposphere. The polar vortices are more intense for the solar maximum case due to the enhanced solar irradiance, but less intense due to EEP.
The primary mechanisms are not the increase in force,but the symmetry breaking properties of the dissipative functions.
maksimovich (22:49:45) :
Good information here. UV will no doubt become more important in our understanding of the Sun/climate link.
maksimovich (22:49:45) :
It was shown by Hood [2004], etc, that the simulated responses of ozone and temperature to solar irradiance variation over the 11-year solar cycle do not agree with the solar signal extracted from the observational data.
Says it all, doesn’t it. There are so many conflicting studies that none of them have any monopoly of explanation. This is not the signs of a mature science or well-established understanding. Which is what I was saying: “no convincing effect…”. Certainly not convincing to me, and people asked for my personal opinion.
Re: Clive E Burkland (Mar 15 23:43),
Good information here. UV will no doubt become more important in our understanding of the Sun/climate link.
And then, nature may surprise us:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/0702_planktoncloud.html
When there is too much UV:
The plankton try to protect themselves by producing a chemical compound called DMSP, which some scientists believe helps strengthen the plankton’s cell walls. This chemical gets broken down in the water by bacteria, and changes into another substance called DMS.
DMS then filters from the ocean into the air, where it breaks down again to form tiny dust-like particles. These tiny particles are just the right size for water to condense on, which is the beginning of how clouds are formed. So, indirectly, plankton help create more clouds, and more clouds mean that less direct light reaches the ocean surface. This relieves the stress put on plankton by the Sun’s harmful UV rays.
And the oceans are 75% of the surface and albedo is the best candidate for climate control :).
I can hand wave with the best of them: The sun is stronger at mid cycle: plankton raises albedo by x. UV falls 10% at minimum, plankton raises albedo by 0.1x, BUT, here come the cosmic rays at minimum raising albedo by y . That is why the correlation between cosmics and albedo is not so hot.
Sigh, we need a chaotic model.
/end tongue in cheek.
Attention Leif Svalgaard — updated:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/V_Sun_SSB_60a.htm
Now maybe you can direct some of your hostility at the convention of using ‘anomalies’ in climate science?
Maybe you can convince them to plot absolutes – since that is what matters physically – and start the y-axis on all of their graphs at 0 Kelvin.
I’m sure that will be a real crowd-pleaser – terribly practical & convenient.
[ :
—
Re: savethesharks (21:49:52)
Chris, one time you asked me for some basic info on:
“The Quasi-Biennial zonal wind Oscillation (QBO)”:
http://ugamp.nerc.ac.uk/hot/ajh/qbo.htm
Image-sequence:
http://ugamp.nerc.ac.uk/hot/ajh/qboanim.gif
With alternate color-scheme to accentuate the downward propagation:
http://ugamp.nerc.ac.uk/hot/ajh/qbo2.gif
Related note.
Cheers,
Paul.
Leif Svalgaard:
…cranks …pseudoscientists …so Mister Know it all, tell me….
Why would I want to share our developing knowledge with you? It’s progressing nicely without any need for your …contribution.
What I will point out, so that other contributors can easily see how unjustifiable and false your certainty about the sun being in freefall and not subject to any forces is this:
The radius of the Sun’s orbit about he solar system’s centre of mass can change from less than one solar radius to several solar radii in the space of a few years. Because the Sun is not a neat rigid Newtonian billiard ball but a highly fluid plasma, liquid and solid, there is differential effect of the change in angular momentum acrosss it’s diameter during these relatively rapid alterations in orbital parameters which affects it’s surface flows. The Solar System Barycentre is not like a gravitational mass around which planets orbit, but the expression of the sum of the forces external bodies (the planets) exert on the Sun. The differential effect on these across the Sun’s diameter changes as the planets change their configurations.
We already know about energy exchanges betwen some of the planets which have well defined cycles of several thousands of years down to a decade or so. These operate in ways which affects both the orbital velocity and spin rate of the planets involved. There is in principle no reason why the Sun may not be subject to similar effects.
It is also known that the relative speed of belts of solar material at different latitudes speed up and slow down. Current models of the Sun do not have any very convincing explanation for these phenomena. Nor do they have any convincing explanation for the gnerally faster rotation of the Sun’s equatorial regions relative to the higher latitude regions. I asked you before for your explanaion for that and you were unable to supply one. You pointed me to a complex paper which in essence said, “we don’t know, but we’re working on it. here are the problems with the current ideas”.
If there is a transfer of energy from the sun’s orbit to it’s spin which accounts for these differential flows, (and there is no “basic law of physics” which rules it out), the relative amount of energy compared to the total energy of the motion of the solar system is small, and JPL Horizons uses various ad hoc ‘epicycles’ in it’s calculations which could be hiding it.
You won’t admit any of this, because you are more a propagandist for the ‘certainty’ of the correctness of current mainstream NASA backed ‘knowledge’ than you are a scientist. Instead, you attack, denigrate, ridicule and bluster, just like the AGW scientists have for years until finally caught with their pants round their ankles.
So as well as contributing here, I shall concentrate on working towards a better understanding of solar system dynamics on my blog, where we are able to freely exchange ideas without the rudeness, discourtesy and disrespect you use as your stock in trade.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com
anna v (21:57:33) “Look at the fingers at the end, and try to think how you could extract the connection from the regularities coming out chaotically to the physical mechanisms producing them. You would have to think out of the box of coincident cycles and harmonics.”
Are you sure you are correct in the latter assertion? If you are referring to complexities arising in multi-period envelopes due to nonlinearities – and also assuming most readers do not know the difference between randomness & chaos – then I can accept the potential educational value of your chosen emphasis. My concern is that such reasoning plays straight into the hands of dreamy alarmists attempting to pull the computer fantasy algorithmic (“Al Gore rhythmic”) wool over mainstream eyes. However poor our data collection is & however ridiculously inadequate our super-simplified systems of differential equations are at representing multi-scale phenomena, nature is just adding & subtracting frequencies – with no obligations to the untenably assumption-based chaotic Al Gore rhythm.
Leif Svalgaard (00:02:33)
Says it all, doesn’t it
Indeed it does,that one should not use the incorrect ‘observational’ data which in reality was modeled,and uses incorrect coefficients in the extinction rates (Giss) and modeled Uv spectral irriadiances from proxy data which is illusory eg Lilensten et al 2007
We then review present models and discuss how they
account for the variability of the solar spectrum. We show
why the measurement of the full spectrum is difficult, and
why it is illusory to retrieve it from its atmospheric effects.
Moving forward Sinnhuber et al
Abstract. Long-term measurements of polar ozone show
an unexpectedly large decadal scale variability in the midstratosphere
during winter. Negative ozone anomalies are
strongly correlated with the flux of energetic electrons in
the radiation belt, which is modulated by the 11-year solar
cycle. The magnitude of the observed decadal ozone
changes (20%) is much larger than any previously reported
solar cycle effect in the atmosphere up to this altitude. The
early-winter ozone anomalies subsequently propagate downward
into the lower stratosphere and may even influence total
ozone and meteorological conditions during spring. These
findings suggest a previously unrecognized mechanism by
which solar variability impacts on climate through changes
in polar ozone.
Our finding of a large decadal scale variation in stratospheric
ozone during winter suggests that solar variability exerts
a larger influence on polar ozone than previously thought.
Although we cannot give a complete explanation for theobserved decadal scale ozone changes, we propose precipitation
of energetic electrons as a potential mechanism for
the observed ozone changes. The close correlation of the difference
between modeled and observed ozone with the flux
of energetic electrons in the radiation belt supports this idea.
However, it is currently not clear how the electron flux at
geostationary altitude measured by the GOES satellites is related
to the flux of energetic electrons precipitating into the
atmosphere.
A direct effect of solar-UV changes can almost certainly
be rouled out as a mechanism for the observed large decadal
scale changes of polar ozone. There is some possibility
that the high-latitude ozone changes are caused by solar-UV
changes in the low latitude stratosphere through changes in
atmospheric dynamics and transport. However, we did not
find any evidence for such a mechanism.
Finally we note that if there is a direct link between early
winter ozone and mid-winter EP flux, as suggested by the
empirical correlation shown in Fig. 5, then the observed
decadal scale changes in polar ozone could have a significant
effect on polar stratospheric temperatures and climate.
Dynamics now come into play.
Paul Vaughan (01:02:25) :
Attention Leif Svalgaard — updated:
I preferred your first attempt. To appreciate a trend sometimes it needs to be teased out rather than hammered flat. Scafetta did a reasonable job displaying this trend.
Your first graph showing raw solar velocity also picks up a trend I have seen on Geoff Sharp’s site. The velocity experiences a sever disruption around the same time as grand minima.
Paul Vaughan (01:02:25) :
Actually if I were ten years younger and still in control of some research budget I would design an analogue experiment that would show that using anomalies when there are more than one dynamical sources and sinks in the problem is nonsense.
Instead I have a gedanken experiment:
Take an isolated room with a varying heat source and place 10 thermometers at varying distances from the source.
After a few days of readings compute the average for each thermometer . From then on measure the anomaly for each thermometer( its average minus that day’s reading.
Expectation: Each thermometer will be tracking the time variations of the source.
This is the hypothesis on which anomalies are used.
Now take a second moving heat source and repeat the experiment. You will get an average for each thermometer again, and from then on compute the anomalies.
Expectation: anomalies will not be tracking either the fixed or the moving source and will be positive or negative depending on the distance from moving source.
This is the situation of the real world, where hot air moves from the tropics and ends up at the poles, heating as it comes down also and moves cold air from the poles to the lower latitudes. It is what has happened and we are getting: “hot winter” noises from anomalies, while the north hemisphere is freezing.
A -45C air mass was displaced from the arctic towards the south. While the arctic got a 15C anomaly the northern hemisphere got maybe a -2C anomaly because of the mixing and the turbulence and the precipitation .
In my opinion, climate science is a mess: in statistics ( no error propagation in modesl), in thermodynamics and physics in general. I have started to feel like the women weeping by the rivers of Babylon while remembering true scientific methods.
Now using the Celsius scale or the Kelvin scale is not the same as using an anomaly. There are absolute numbers in the Celsius scale, the freezing temperature of water and the boiling point, very well defined and invariant at the same pressure. That 273 difference with Kelvin is important when calculating energy from temperatures, but not for recording variations.
Paul Vaughan (01:02:25) :
“The Quasi-Biennial zonal wind Oscillation (QBO)”:
http://ugamp.nerc.ac.uk/hot/ajh/qbo.htm
Could you make that period 2.1 years 🙂 Then Earth-Mars lineup would be a good candidate. jan93, feb95, mar97 appr. Do you have a longer record?
Paul Vaughan (01:31:35) :
My experience with the level of knowledge of people arguing on the blogs is that they know little physics and mathematics, certainly cannot understand non-linearities. Climatologists who run climate models cannot understand non linearities or error propagation.
Humans being pattern recognition animals latch on to cycles easily and happily find meanings and correlations given two or three disparate cycles. That is why astrology and Tarot cards and what not divinations are so popular with the hoi polloi, it is pattern recognition.
The fact that we see the face of the Madonna on a cloud does not mean that the Madonna impressed it on the cloud.
However poor our data collection is & however ridiculously inadequate our super-simplified systems of differential equations are at representing multi-scale phenomena, nature is just adding & subtracting frequencies – with no obligations to the untenably assumption-based chaotic Al Gore rhythm.
Well, that is where physicists differ. Nature is not adding and subtracting frequencies. It is adding and subtracting small delta x’s in space and forces/potentials acting on the points, that end up in differential equations. It so happens that many of these differential equations give solutions that are harmonic and similar to each other. Many are not. The similarity gives the illusion of correlation is causation, which is Al Gore’s et all ignorant assumption.One should never stop saying that ” correlation is not causation” , nor that correlation can be fortuitous from the inherent similarity in differing dynamics.
I once did an experiment with my middle school students. They were each given the diameter of the solar system bodies, including the Sun, and the distances, on average, they were from the Sun. They were then told to calculate how far a letter would have to travel to get from the Sun to each planet. We then proportionately reduced these measures and mailed letters to random folks around the globe with the tiny planet in the envelope and an explanation of what we were trying to demonstrate. We put the Sun in our classroom as a reference point, and we had to make it a pretty big one so that the planets were bigger than dust mites. Some of the planets were so tiny that we had to put them between layers of tape or else the receiver would not be able to find the little speck.
From this experiment, it was easy to see just how insignificant our planets are compared to the Sun. The gravitational effects, combined, don’t have a chance in hell of pulling out spots on the Sun.
People who run “climate models” are aware as anyone of the propagation of errors and the usually unpredictable effects of parameters that appear in nonlinear equations, Anna.
That is why such techniques as “flux correlation: are employed. It is not possible to prevent small disturbances either from roundoff error or nonlinear magnification from causing “solutions” (the time evolution of the system of conservation laws) from blowing up over extended iterations – so the “models” are stopped and restarted from time to time from new initial and boundary conditions if previous iterations are not reliable as new initial conditions. These are typicall generated from other models, and conditions are matched to preserve continuity of solutions. (flux correlation.)
The errors inherent in this were reasonably well covered in IPCC Third AR, surprisingly; but the end discussion was not consistent with what had been presented in the analysis itself.
Such ambiguity was not highlighted at all in the Fourth AR, and for reasons that are pretty evident.
Surprisingly, I have never seen anyone’s analysis that demonstrated that GCM modeling, taking into account greenhouse gas forcing, is probably correct – and demonstrates that greenhouse gas forcing cannot influence the natural climate in the way described by the IPCC.
The largest discrepancy is the rainfall patterns predicted by GCM modeling, which are nearly completely off. That shows that the heat transfer in the atmosphere could not be accounted for correctly