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
Re: R Shearer (11:13:40) :
“Wait a minute, how could we possibly influence the center of mass of the solar system?”
Simple: Girth.
Al Girth’s movement has been shown to affect climate. If you move a mass that large it’s going to have a dramatic effect.
(To the Mod, If this post doesn’t make it, no harm no foul… it’s clearly OT)
Baa Humbag (21:00:27) :
Re: Anu (Mar 14 13:28),
Gee thanks for that contribution ANU.
You have also made a mistake in your post. You left out the ‘S’ at the end of your screen name.
—–
It started, before any comments had yet been posted, as a comical riff on the small errors which are used in the media to discredit entire thousand page reports by the IPCC.
I was then interrupted by my young daughter for two hours or so…
Later, uninspired, I finished up lamely and posted it.
It would have been dangerously, coffee-spitting funny if I had been able to finish it as originally envisioned.
No, really.
Leif Svalgaard (20:45:56) :
The energy in the EUV is minute compared to all of TSI, and the observed variation during the cycle is of the order of 0.1K or less. Just look at Scafetta’s graph at the top of the page and find an 11-year variation that is larger. Ain’t there.
Its not about the energy, its about the measured quantity of EUV and how it fluctuates over the solar cycle. When comparing the EUV levels of this minimum compared to 1996 during the last minimum there is a 6% difference. Compare the EUV figures of the last minimum and the height of SC19 and the variation is many times larger.
The question we’re all not paying attention to is: “Why are all the world leaders pushing for carbon trading?”
[snip – this user has been banned for changing handles several times]
Smokey (18:23:49) :
You have the gall to quote CRU temperature data??
You do understand that rather than “actual data,” what we’re been given by CRU has been made up as they went along – in one case, for a 13 year stretch.
———-
Sure, they “made up data for a 13 year stretch”.
I guess the Parliament investigation forgot to bring that one up. Which high schooler MySpace page did you find this out on ? I’d like to take a look at her evidence.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, let’s look at that same data from NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies, since they estimate polar temperatures left out by HadCrut and the satellite datasets (UAH, RSS):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
So, was there any warming in 15 years ?
Dec 1994 global temp. anomaly 0.25
Dec 2009 global temp. anomaly 0.58
Yup, the planet warmed 0.33 deg C.
These anomalies are with respect to the average for 1951-1980.
If your stock goes up by $3.30/share, it doesn’t matter how “statistically significant” this is. If you have 10,000 shares, you just made $33K.
Profited.
Warmed.
Get it ?
wayne (20:38:09) :
No, I think no errors.
The centre of the Sun moves to a max of about 2.18 of a solar radius. (about 1.5 million km)
Fred Bailey made the same error as yours regarding what he thought was a fluctuating Sun/Earth distance due to the solar motion about the barycenter in a paper he co wrote with Alexander and others. This is easily tested via JPL which shows a 15000 km variance per year due to planet perturbations.
Scafetta’s argument has nothing to do with a varying Sun/Earth distance.
u.k.(us) (19:18:59) :
Henry (17:48:05) :
No worries folks, it will be out eventually, and all the skeletons in the closets of the posters here wiil eventually be out.
==========
God forbid, if all the skeletons of all the posters on this site wiil be out.
I prefer to think of them as “an eclectic series of unfortunate Life Experiences”…
: 4) There is a 0.1% change of TSI between solar min and solar max, resulting ~0.1C temperature variation
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
The role of the solar UV radiation for the Earth’s climate is boosted
further by the fact that variations of solar irradiance are also strongly wavelength
dependent. Whereas the total (integrated over all wavelengths) solar
irradiance varies by only about 0.1% over the solar cycle, the UV irradiance
varies by 1 to 3 orders of magnitude more (e.g., Floyd et al., 2003).
Solar near-IR radiation absorbed by water vapour and carbon dioxide is
an important source of heating in the lower atmosphere (Haigh, 2007). Solar
variability in the IR is comparable to or lower than the TSI variations and
in the range between about 1500 and 2500 nm it is reversed with respect to
the solar cycle (Harder et al., 2009; Krivova et al., 2009b).
A non trivial problem,
Well, Pooh Bear has an interesting poem:
The more it snows
the more it snows
the more it goes on
snowing.
I checked, and there are no chaotic dynamics considered in the review, and to me this is an important enough lack to dissuade me from reading it carefully.
I agree with Leif that barycenter influences are on the same level as ghost manifestations and should not be discussed seriously in realistic physics blogs ( one can have fun with higher dimensions etc. but those are different kinds of blogs). In real life physics the barycenter is a noetic construct, has no mass, and cannot affect matter with its convoluted motions, in the same way that epicycles, though real and still there if one plots a geocentric system, have no relationship to physical forces governing orbits. Fancy what those epicycles would do to the sun if their motion had a meaning. Galilean relativity holds in the macrocosm, and so any coordinate system is equally valid as any other. The heliocentric dominates because of the physical forces, and the barycenter has a meaning because it is needed to describe the center of mass of the solar system within the galaxy, no more.
Only through the tiny, mm, tides is the sun affected by the planets, and no mechanism is proposed for the amplification of these.
Back to deterministic chaos. Similar coupled differential equations give solutions that have similar characteristics. It was/is the basic principle behind analogue computers designed to solve specific differential equations : the elements solve the differential equations of electricity and magnetism in circuits and one makes analogues of the equations one wants to solve, by controlling the constants and the couplings.
The equations one wants to solve may be the planetary ones, does this mean that the analogue circuits which generate the planetary orbits, which will be completely in step by construction, create the planetary orbits?
Leif should add
15) correlation is not causation
Chaotic systems emerging from similar coupled differential equations will have similar solutions and could be correlated though completely a-causal.
Already somebody pointed up that just the Moon Sun Earth calendar gives similar correlations. That is all what any planetary clock can provide, a time scale against which changes in whatever can be measured. Climate, being chaotic, can, with shifts harmonics and whatnots, be brought to dance to any tune with similar frequencies.
I have linked here before how dynamical chaos can produce beats and order.
It is worth contemplating the cornstarch experiment.
If one were observing the fingers, could one guess that the physics behind it is a constant shaking frequency, the viscosity/elasticity of cornstarch and a small perturbation by a stick, by studying the numerology of the order of the fingers?
Anthony,
Seems I may have innocently wandered into an area I should have heeded. I reviewed your policy and noticed the word “barycenterism”. The science I have studied of late is the solar system and gravity and the barycenter is part of that, it didn’t even cross my mind people would take me so wrong and tie the two together. Wow! Kind of like stirring up a bee hive! I’ll be more careful. No barycenter and no <!
REPLY: No worries, I poked it first by posting this article. – A
wayne: “Now if you are saying this small amount does not amount to much, I agree, but the fact that scientifically the difference exists and since it exists it must affect the TSI however tiny. Get my drift?”
Good post and good quote. I get your drift.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Brilliant and many thanks for posting this
I have taken the liberty of referencing it in my blog today:
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/03/much-ado-about.html
“Anu (22:12:26) :
[…]
Meanwhile, back in the real world, let’s look at that same data from NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies, since they estimate polar temperatures left out by HadCrut and the satellite datasets (UAH, RSS):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
”
You have the “estimate” right there.
Unfortunately we can’t say “measure” because they have nothing up there that measures anything. So much for your pompous “Meanwhile, back in the real world,”; i suggest a “Meanwhile, back in the brain of James Hansen”.
wayne (22:40:30) :
Seems I may have innocently wandered into an area
Yes and unfortunately with incorrect information which may mislead. I appreciate your attempts to educate but when confronted it is better to produce evidence to support your case or at least double check your sources before venturing further.
JPL is the only source and the evidence is clear. Please post your JPL results to support your claim.
pat (14:10:02) :
read all….
But the level of natural year-to-year variability in the temperature record shows that a decade is too short a time to establish a change in the long-term trend…
I keep reading this, but then I happen to remember that the apprent warming thru the Period from the late 70’s to the late 80’s was sufficient to cause the creation of the IPCC.
Nuff said.
kim (21:42:11) :
Wayne, @ur momisugly 20:38:09
Is there enough difference in the variable TSI by your mechanism to account for the wide variation in climate?
First, it’s not my mechanism. If you get knee deep in solar system mechanics you will find it is more Newton’s mechanism. 🙂
I just calculated an estimate, we are only talking of ~0.0005% and that is only when all major gas planets in conjunction or opposition to the earth at the same time and all on the same side to boot. So no, too small to discern in the solar noise to measure or affect the climate. (I learned something today, had never stopped to calculate that!)
ANU @ur momisugly 21:51:25
You might find it informative to look at Richard Tol’s takedown of the reliability of all of the IPCC reports. There aren’t just a few small errors, rather the reports are rife with bad science. I also note that many of the most fearful messages in the Summary for Policymakers have been found to be exaggerated. The reports are rubbish.
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I thought Bary Centre was banned here… Don’t mention the L word!
I haven’t read the booklet yet but climate is basically weather over time. If there is a link between barycentre changes and the PDO and AMO then climate is much more sensitive to the sun than is implied by the 0.1% changes in TSI. The cause is unknown yet. Possible candidates are cumulative TSI, magnetic effects on the ionosphere, or increased downwelling radiation from the stratosphere driven by changes of UV. UV changes much more than TSI and the stratosphere absorbs UV.
R. Gates (17:00:22) : writes:
“Just wondering, how does this graphic, showing the high temps we saw in January 2010 fit in with Dr. Scafetta’s model [should’t the planet be cooling?]”
As with everything that comes from Climategaters, they chose to make the data ambiguous and multiply so. They do not give a temperature reading for each day. Instead, they give an average of a daylight reading and a moonlight reading for each day. Of course, the causes of changes in the two temperatures might be altogether unrelated. UHI could have a powerful impact at night but little during the day. There is no reason to create this ambiguity in temperature readings. We have computers, for goodness sake, and we can record both. Good old Climategater procedure, corrupt the data from the very start and irretrievably so. Corrupt data never limits the imagination and imagination is the Climategater strong point.
Anu (22:12:26) :
Math games. You posit two numbers above 1. This is not consistent with your warming scenario. No cookies for you. In fact, you are extending the subconscious forward with this exaggeration. 10,000*3.3=33,000. Well, in reality, since warming is on a decimal level, you have to correct both sides of your equation to relate to reality. See, we are talking about the Earth, of which there is one. So our dividend is more like 1 share = $.00033. Hardly significant. Perhaps angels should watch over your calculations? Snark intended. 😐
In fact, given the fraction of a degree we can measure Earth’s temperature to on a surface basis, I find it odd that we can not simply study patterns of temperature flow to arrive at a meaningful weather prediction system. What do you think about this? And please answer the important question this time instead of running off into distractions.
kim (21:37:47) :
To the best of my research on him, he assumed in his calculations that the atmosphere orbited the Earth somehow? I could be wrong, since I am not the one to make wither claim, and am too busy to successfully research either.
Leif,
My Leif score is 3FFFF.
I always look forward to your comments especially when the topic has anything to do with that big yellow ball in the sky.
You seem to strike a reasonable balance of stating your opinions and sighting the evidence to back them up.
You sometimes throw in a little humor and sarcasm to spice it up, usually with enough good natured self-deprecation to take the sting off of your slightly blunt remarks.
Maybe I’ve been swayed by your evil “the sun didn’t do it” opinions, but I also note that Lindzen largely agrees with you on this topic and discounts the solar theories as explaining any recent warming.
I sometimes worry that people will piss you off and you will march off, but you seem pretty thick-skinned.
I’m glad because I think you add a much needed scientific perspective to this site. I like the other perspectives but we need more scientists to contribute to this blog.
I see ‘Anu’ is making free with the fog machine of cherry picked statistics?
Yes the earth has warmed very slightly though how a wholly artificial global average construct can be measured with any accuracy when the margin of error is larger than the supposed warming is beyond me.
We know that the very slight warming trend has been augmented by statisical machinations as measured by the ground stations and we also know the unreliable nature of space based measurement of global temperatures.
The nature of the uncertainty and the margins of error involved and the contamination of collected and collated data combined with the obvious vested political interests strongly suggests a full and thorough re examination of all the data.
The tiny variation in temperature over a very short period of time when combined with the known margins of error in measurements makes the supposed causes of that warming open to debate
It is almost a waste of time to calculate unknown and uncertain variables by applying adjustments based on theoretical models and then arrive at conclusions that actually mean anything.
We still do not know exactly how much warming has occured over what time frame.
We still do not know exactly how much warming is natural and how much is antropogenic.
We still do not know exactly what effects solar activity or lack of it has on the warming trend.
We still cannot account fully and exactly for the relative contribution of atmospheric gasses to the greenhouse effect.
We still cannot accurately model future climate states when the models are programmed with so many uncertainties and variables.
What our chronic lack of accurate knowledge does tell us very clearly is that untill we obtain a far more accurate picture of the planets state we are doing nothing more than dancing in the dark. The best course of action when faced with such uncertainty is obvious isnt it?
wayne (21:10:05) “I have different versions using nine or ten different ODE integrators to boot.”
Many will see clearly where you are going here.