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
Bob Tisdale (17:00:08) :
On a multidecadal time frame, the “cycles” I’m talking about are more like long term persistence in a trend, rather than nice sinusoidal cycles. If you look at the image I posted:
http://i39.tinypic.com/10xy0is.jpg
the amplitude of the cycles in the bottom pane are quite variable, but are not random. They show a tendency to move from low values to high values over long periods. But there are times along the way when the values go negative. They are just tending to get less negative over these long periods of time. Now I’m not claiming that this is a representation of PDO. It is a representation of something like what has happened to global temperatures. But there is a lesson here regarding the PDO. Do not expect, during a dominant “phase,” for it to always be positive or negative. It is rather more like during one phase, El Nino’s are more frequent than La Nina’s, and vice versa.
And having said that, don’t presume I’m conceding that PDO is nothing more than a collection of ENSO events. The PDO is related to surface pressure and variations in zonal vs. meridional atmospheric circulation. I still think you put too much emphasis on tropical SST’s. These matter, but most poleward movement of energy is handled by the atmosphere, not ocean currents.
Leif Svalgaard (20:43:55) :
oneuniverse (17:02:47) :
10 Gev cosmic rays can’t get to Climax which has a cut-off rigidity of 3 Gev.
I said this wrong. It is, of course, the other way around. only GCRs with energies larger than the cut-off can get through. Right now equatorial stations [+/-30 degrees latitude] have cut-offs around 15 GeV so 10 GeV can’t get there. If you increase the Earth’s magnetic field you make it even harder for 10 GeV to reach clouds level.
Shea and Smart: http://dpnc.unige.ch/ams/ICRC-03/FILES/PDF/1029.pdf
calculate the Cut-offs for the past 400 years and conclude:
The strength of the earth’s magnetic dipole has decreased significantly between 1600 and the present time. Smart and Shea (2003b) have estimated a globally averaged increase in the cosmic ray flux of 18% over this 400-year period. This should have led to significant cooling since the little ice age.
Leif Svalgaard (20:43:55) “Thanks, you just forgot to say what the units are. km/s? AU/year? ?”
You’ve missed “AU/millennium” (on the plot) (so it would take ~375 years to reach Earth).
I’ll double-check when I have time. When I downloaded the data (months ago) I wasn’t carefully taking notes on units, since at that time I was focused on variations, not absolutes.
Leif Svalgaard (20:51:59) “Very sensible if a phenomenon is only quasi-periodic. It is not sensible to assume that there is a true periodicity from the outset.
Complex wavelet would be more sensible in this case. (It makes no assumption of “true periodicity.)
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html
Bob Tisdale (17:00:08) :
If you look the above reference, I think you will find that the best PDO reconstructions (i.e. those that are are taken from temperature sensitive
proxies) do not show a 60 year pattern.
Most people working in this field have never claimed that there is a pure 60 year pattern in the PDO. Indeed, wavelet anaysis shows a multitude of frequencies, dominated by a bi-decadal (~ 20 years) pattern mixed in with a 50 – 70 year year pattern. As soon as you start mixing more than one frequency, it starts to become meaningless to look at the temporal seperation between features in the PDO (unless of course you are trying to
prove that there is not a pure 60 year pattern in the PDO).
A climatic feature that could vary with a 60 year pattern is the speed of the trade wind sin the tropics. Please look at the the following enttry on my blog.
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com/2010/03/60-year-periodicity-in-earths-trade.html
Here is my prediction for changes in the PDO over the coming years.
It is currently in its negative phase.
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com/2010/03/can-we-predict-when-pdo-will-turn.html
Smokey (07:10:18) :
Phil Clarke (06:19:09),
There are people still trying to discredit the Oregon Petition? Wow! That’s so five years ago.
NickB. (13:19:16) :
Bob Tisdale (06:30:16)
Would be curious to get your thoughts, or anyone else’s for that matter, in regards to what is responsible for the warming between 1911-1945.
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I have one—normal variation.
E.M.Smith (17:43:18) :
Does this mean we can now say “Barycenter” and not get jumped on? Just wondering….
………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
I’ll stay down in the fox hole and let you find out first…….. 😉
Paul Vaughan (02:26:33) :
You’ve missed “AU/millennium” (on the plot) (so it would take ~375 years to reach Earth).
Yes, I did miss it. A better measure would be one that gives a feeling for the physics by being more comparable to units we are used to. The AU/millennium is about 4.7 meter/second, so the black curve sits at about 12.7 m/s, which shows how slow the movement is [bicycle speed]. And now the variation on that becomes important, because that was the ‘signal’. It is plain that the variation is tiny. You have the numbers, but it looks like 1 m/s or less. Of interest is also to calculate the acceleration [change of speed with time]. Since the rotation and random convection are of the order of 1000 m/s, is does not seem credible that the 1 m/s can have much effect. If you calculate the acceleration of the 20-yr curve [which, after all determines the force], you’ll find that it is ridiculously small compared to the accelerations of the ordinary motions that takes place on the order of hours.
Paul Vaughan (02:31:30) :
Complex wavelet would be more sensible in this case. (It makes no assumption of “true periodicity.)
And before wavelets were invented not so long ago, there would be no sensible way of doing this? The wavelets [try it] would give you the same ranges as Bob’s eyeballing. What Bob did was to determine how long the sequences of positive and negative phases were, and that is perfectly sensible.
Leif Svalgaard (20:43:55): you say that the effective ones are of so high energy that they are not modulated by anything.
Please don’t exaggerate what I said to make it cartoonishly absurd – it’s an effective but and unworthy rhetorical technique, with no logical merit. I said the (>)10GeV particles “are not strongly affected by the Earth’s magnetic field.”. And above 15GeV, the modulation effects are apparently very small for current field strengths.
My point is that the very existence of recent failures to confirm the correlation by independent studies shows that the cosmic ray hypothesis cannot be said to be established.
Strictly speaking, that’s not logical consequence – the studies that fail to find an effect may be flawed, for example. I agree though, that the hypothesis won’t be on sound footing unless the mechanism is determined. Atmospheric ionisation & formation of (cloud) condensation nuclei by CR’s is the main candidate under investigation at the moment.
The striking proxy evidence for a GCR-climate link is encouragement for research into the incompletely-understood cloud-formation process. The modern satellite findings of Svensmark and others are important too – correlation across the entire multi-decadal observation period, if one undoes the questionable 1994 recalibration.
Leif Svalgaard (20:43:55) : Svensmark’s original work compared cloud cover with cosmic ray intensity at the Climax Station in Colorado. 10 Gev cosmic rays can’t get to Climax which has a cut-off rigidity of 3 Gev.
Leif Svalgaard (22:09:16): I said this wrong. It is, of course, the other way around. only GCRs with energies larger than the cut-off can get through.
Therefore there’s no inconsistency with Svensmark’s original work.
“Right now equatorial stations [+/-30 degrees latitude] have cut-offs around 15 GeV so 10 GeV can’t get there. If you increase the Earth’s magnetic field you make it even harder for 10 GeV to reach clouds level.”
Particles at 15 GeV particles also cause ionization in the lower atmosphere.
The strength of the earth’s magnetic dipole has decreased significantly between 1600 and the present time. Smart and Shea (2003b) have estimated a globally averaged increase in the cosmic ray flux [for Earth] of 18% over this 400-year period. This should have led to significant cooling since the little ice age.
As mentioned already, the Earth’s magnetic field has little effect on the relevant high-energy particles capable of ionising the lower atmosphere.
Also, Shea’s work also assumes a constant solar modulation since 1600, and the 18% figure is a global average – the regional fluxes variations range from -63% to +215%, so the 18% tells us very little, since the GCR-cloud effect is not globally uniform (or globally manifest).
“All indicates are that it [GCR flux at Earth] has [remained constant], as the energy spectrum has not changed shape and the lower energies [which are most prone to changes] have not changed. See page 6-8 in
http://www.leif.org/research/Historical%20Solar%20Cycle%20Context.pdf page 8
The highest energy particles on page 8 are 9.2 GeV, below the 10 GeV threshold for lower atmospheric ionisation, and the data is only since the mid 1970’s. The following monitors cover 1951-2006, both with a 13 GeV cut-off, I believe, although I did saw a reference to the Huancayo site having a 15 GeV cut-off.
http://cr0.izmiran.rssi.ru/huan/main.htm (1951-1992)
http://cr0.izmiran.rssi.ru/hle1/main.htm (1990-2006)
I may have misunderstood, but you seem to be determining constancy by seeing if the peak flux has remained roughly constant.
Given that the GCR-climate hypothesis would make the GCR flux a proxy for cloud cover, and so for a cloud-induced radiative climate forcing (W/m2), what is more important than the peak flux is the time-integrated value (corresponding to J/m2) over the considered periods.
To wheel out the old analogy, it’s not the peak intensity of the flame under the boiling pan that determines how many joules are delivered to the water, but the flame intensity over time, peak and non-peak.
oneuniverse (06:47:09) :
you say that the effective ones are of so high energy that they are not modulated by anything.
Please don’t exaggerate what I said
I do not. If you look at the Figures here: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/27162151/2D-stochastic-simulation-model-of-cosmic-ray-modulation-
you’ll see that from 10 Gev and up [or the 10,000 MeV used in the Figures] there is almost no modulation by the solar cycle [and it was the cycle that was supposed to modulate the GCR at Earth to explain the changes in clouds].
My Figure was intended to show you how the modulation gets smaller and smaller the higher the cut-off is.
the studies that fail to find an effect may be flawed
When several other scientists try to replicate an effect and fail to see any, it is usually a good sign that the original claim is flawed.
Therefore there’s no inconsistency with Svensmark’s original work.
The solar cycle variation seen at Climax is almost exclusively due to GCRs well below 10 GeV [the ones that were not supposed to have any effect]. There is very little [if any] modulation above that, so that in itself invalidates the work. The variation seen at Climax is due to GCRs from 3 GeV and up. The spectrum is very steep, and higher energies rapidly become less abundant.
18% figure is a global average
So is global cloud cover…
It should be clear that the GCR hypothesis has not been established as causing the recent warming [or any other temperature changes]. The pilot-project for CLOUD didn’t find anything, except as they note: “improvements are needed in controlling the experimental variables and in the reproducibility of the experiments. Finally, concerning technical aspects, the most important lessons for the CLOUD design include the stringent requirement of internal cleanliness of the aerosol chamber”. All excuses for why the expected result didn’t materialize.
I may have misunderstood, but you seem to be determining constancy by seeing if the peak flux has remained roughly constant.
The peaks are near solar minimum where the solar modulation is the weakest so we are close to the galactic flux. Since the 10 GeV and higher GCRs are not modulated significantly, the peaks should scale with the 10 GeV and up. Since the peaks have not changed, the 10 GeVs have not changed, hence cannot explain climate change.
Me (06:47:09): “The highest energy particles on page 8 are 9.2 GeV, below the 10 GeV threshold for lower atmospheric ionisation, and the data is only since the mid 1970’s.”
Leif, I made the same mistake – please discard the first half of the sentence.
Correction to my post at 17:02:47 : “[..] decreased 1940-1970’s and increased [..]”. Please swap “decreased” & “increased”.
oneuniverse (07:41:32) :
please discard the first half of the sentence.
And what else 🙂
Svensmark and Shaviv have painted themselves into a corner:
1) to get around the problem of the changing magnetic field of the Earth [and to get down to the low clouds], they have to postulate a very high energy of GCRs [10 GeV and up] of which there is a very low flux compared to lower energies
2) but the solar modulation is only effective well below that high energy so recent changes in solar activity are not significant for the GCRs that should be effective
One way out of this is by what is known as a ‘special pleading’: that the energy needed is so finely tuned that it just squeaks by the contradiction of 1) and 2) by being on the tails of both.
Me: Please don’t exaggerate what I said
Leif: I do not.
Your paraphrase of what I said: “[N]ot modulated by anything”
What I actually said : “not strongly affected by the Earth’s magnetic field.”
“There is very little [if any] modulation above that [10 GeV], so that in itself invalidates the work.”
The high-energy particles, both on your chart & the higher 13 GeV cut-off ones which I linked, show swings of 10% or more over the decades of instrumental data. A 10% swing isn’t “very little if any”.
Me: 18% figure is a global average
You: So is global cloud cover…
GCR-LCC correlation is not so good for global cover, which I’d mentioned earlier. I’m not quite sure what point you’re making here.
The pilot-project for CLOUD didn’t find anything, except as they note: “improvements are needed in controlling the experimental variables and in the reproducibility of the experiments. Finally, concerning technical aspects, the most important lessons for the CLOUD design include the stringent requirement of internal cleanliness of the aerosol chamber”. All excuses for why the expected result didn’t materialize.
Another big mischaracterisation.
They didn’t come away empty-handed, firstly. From the same abstract, the preceding sentence to your quotation is :
“”Overall, the exploratory measurements provide suggestive evidence for ion-induced nucleation or ion-ion recombination as sources of aerosol particles.”
There’s more in the abstract (full PDF also availble at link) : http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/1635/2010/acp-10-1635-2010.html
You accuse them of making excuses by mentioning the technical aspects of the experiment, but there seems to be a real explanation for their comment:
“The experimentally-measured formation rates and H2sO4 concentrations are comparable to those found in the atmosphere, supporting the idea that sulphuric acid is involved in the nucleation of atmospheric aerosols. However, sulphuric acid alone is not able to explain the observed rapid growth rates, which suggests the presence of additional trace vapours in the aerosol chamber, whose identity is unknown.”
The CLOUD chamber is a new design, I believe – it has to be able to act as a cloud chamber, a ‘CR chamber’, and also simultaneously as a chamber to study how the global electrical circuit might affect ionisation / cloud formation. These are not bad results for the pilot run involving new tech.
1) to get around the problem of the changing magnetic field of the Earth [and to get down to the low clouds], they have to postulate a very high energy of GCRs [10 GeV and up] of which there is a very low flux compared to lower energies
2) but the solar modulation is only effective well below that high energy so recent changes in solar activity are not significant for the GCRs that should be effective
We know independently that only the high-energy CR’s are capable of ionising the lower atmosphere, so it makes sense to focus on them.
These same high-energy CR’s do vary over time (>10% on the instrumental record), whether by HMF modulation or otherwise, so your point 2 is wrong. So they’re not ‘painted into a corner’.
oneuniverse (09:13:52) :
These same high-energy CR’s do vary over time (>10% on the instrumental record), whether by HMF modulation or otherwise,
From:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/47/1/017/pdf/jpconf6_47_017.pdf?ejredirect=migration
bottom of page 3:
“Above Z·10 GeV, the modulation due to the magnetic field of the heliosphere is negligible”
Z =1 for protons.
From:
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/20689/1/98-1743.pdf
page 4: “The solar cycle modulation decreases with energy and
vanishes for energies as high as 10 GeV.”
“E
page 9: “difference between the proton flux incident on the magnetosphere at solar minimum and that incident at recent solar maxima is estimated to be a factor of 10 [for low-energy GCRs], whereas at 10 GeV no change is expected.”
Paul Vaughan (14:14:32) :
Thanks Paul. I could agree if not for these, which seems to indicate a shorter period at higher latitudes.
http://www.nwra.com/resumes/baldwin/pubs/Baldwin_Dunkerton_JGR1998.pdf
http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/cirmount/meetings/mtnclim/2008/talks/pdf/Johnstone_Poster2008.pdf
San Joaquin 2.16 , Ea-Ma 2.14 hm…
Leif Svalgaard (09:46:57)
Whatever the reason, MF modulation or otherwise, the counts at the 9.3 GeV and 13 Gev cut-off monitors have variations of over 10%.
The solar cycle does appear to still be modulating the >13 GeV flux, although not as strongly as for the 3 Gev :
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4ruQ7t4zrFA/RqMJW5qAP5I/AAAAAAAAAE4/FicjTA9TC-E/s1600-h/nir2-small.jpg
Ninderthana,
Suggestion regarding:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tG8JCC_Tnp0/S6DO1qTtMzI/AAAAAAAAADw/PYAvbJGz9Dc/s1600-h/Predicting_the_PDO.JPG
Take a look at -Integral(PDO).
Re: Leif Svalgaard (06:33:07)
Characters like Tamino might focus on the use of a 7 year filter to assess ~60ish year claims.
I chose AU/millennium because it puts things in perspective for a lay person – i.e. it would take ~375 years for the sun to reach Earth’s orbit if it traveled straight out — other choices of units would make it easier to see other things intuitively (as you have demonstrated). But this purely-stylistic matter must not take another minute of my time.
oneuniverse (11:08:56) :
Whatever the reason, MF modulation or otherwise, the counts at the 9.3 GeV and 13 Gev cut-off monitors have variations of over 10%.
Looks more like 5% on your plot.
But, the real issue is that 5% variation gives a 2% [or whatever number Svensmark claims] variation of low clouds, then since the aerosol formation is proportional to the GCR flux [since one aerosol particle formed on on nucleus doesn’t know about other ones formed from others], the remaining 95% of the >13 GeV must be responsible for as 95/5*5% = 38% of cloud formation, which I don’t think anybody believes.
The GCR hypothesis makes the special pleading that the energy is just where there is yet a tiny bit of solar modulation left that just manages to avoid being modulated by the Earth. If you go too high, no solar modulation, if you go too low, the Earth modulation messes up the record.
oneuniverse (11:08:56) :
Whatever the reason, MF modulation or otherwise, the counts at the 9.3 GeV and 13 Gev cut-off monitors have variations of over 10%.
In 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference Pune (2005) 2, 135-138 Solar modulation of cosmic rays in the energy range from 10 to 20 GeV, I. Braun et al. looked into the modulation very carefully. Here is their Figure 1: http://www.leif.org/research/GCR-dependence-on-SSN.png
You can see how fast the solar modulation falls to zero. Some number like 0.02 or less seems to cover the range above 10 GeV. So 2% GCR variation means 2% cloud cover, which means that the background GCR flux above 10 GeV accounts for all low clouds altogether.
The number just don’t work out right. Now, I have not looked carefully at that number ’10 GeV’ that you quoted Shaviv on. Perhaps one should go there.
Finally, the reduction of the Forbush Decreases by GCRs takes place overwhelmingly at energies less that 10 GeV, so using FDs may not even be a good idea in support of the notion that only high-energy GCRs have any effect.
Paul Vaughan (11:34:53) :
But this purely-stylistic matter must not take another minute of my time.
When it comes to the physics [not the style] AU/millennium is not a very useful metric, m/s would be. And the change in v [proportional to the force] would be even more. But, as you say, the layman may not care or understand anything anyway. I just thought we help him along a bit, but I can understand your reluctance.
Leif I’ve been out of town, but here’s my score:
10
Throughout 23 years of education, I never had an “F” ascribed to my name and refuse to begin now. ;~)