Scientists find errors in hypothesis linking solar flares to global temperature
From Physorg.com. h/t to Leif Svalgaard who offers this PDF with this diagram that makes it all clear.
In contrast to a previous analysis, a new study has shown that the distributions of (a) the global temperature anomaly by month since 1880 and (b) the solar flare index by day over a few solar cycles are fundamentally different. One feature the detrended data do have in common is self-similarity: the probability density functions are the same on different time scales, which means that neither can be described as Lévy walks. Image credit: Rypdal and Rypdal.
(PhysOrg.com) — The field of climate science is nothing if not complex, where a host of variables interact with each other in intricate ways to produce various changes. Just like any other area of science, climate science is far from being fully understood. As an example, a new study has discredited a previous hypothesis suggesting the existence of a link between solar flares and changes in the earth’s global temperature. The new study points out a few errors in the previous analysis, and concludes that the solar and climate records have very different properties that do not support the hypothesis of a sun-climate complexity linking.
In a handful of studies published in Physical Review Letters between 2003 and 2008, a team from Duke University and the Army Research Office including Nicola Scafetta and Bruce West analyzed data that appeared to show that solar flares have a significant influence on global temperature. Solar flares, which are large explosions in the sun’s atmosphere that are powered by magnetic energy, vary in time from a few per month to several per day. Although solar flares occur near sunspots, their frequency variation occurs on a much shorter time scale than the 11-year sunspot cycle. In their studies, the researchers’ results seemed to show that data from solar flare activity correlates with changes in the global temperature on a short time scale. Specifically, their analysis showed that the two time records can both be characterized by the same Lévy walk process.
However, in the new study, which is also published in Physical Review Letters, Martin Rypdal and Kristoffer Rypdal of the University of Tromso in Norway have reexamined the data and the previous analysis and noticed some shortcomings. One of the biggest causes of concern is that the previous analysis did not account for larger trends in factors that affect solar flares and global temperature. For instance, the solar cycle has its 11-year periodic trend, where periods of lots of sunspots cause larger numbers of solar flares. Likewise, the global temperature anomaly has numerous other factors (a “multi-decadal, polynomial trend”) that impacts global temperature fluctuations. By not detrending this data, the analysis resulted in abnormally high values of certain variables that pointed to Lévy walk processes. By estimating the untrended data, Rypdal and Rypdal hypothesized that the solar flare records might be described by a Lévy flight, while the global temperature anomaly might obey a distribution called persistent fractional Brownian motion.
Read the entire article here at Physorg.com
A preprint of the paper is available here
Practice making your own Levy walks here
…Can i inquire if you fit into the Hot Model mold or, with manipulation, even the hotter one?
Leif Svalgaard (16:11:52) :
It was thought just a few years ago that TSI had two components: one that was simply proportional to the sunspot number plus one that was a long term variation, e.g. from the Maunder minimum to today. The latter component being the largest [simply because there is no clear and large 11-yr cycle in climate]. The pendulum is swinging towards abandoning the long-term component. Even Lean is doubting that long-term variations exist. See the last line of the green text in the lower right corner of http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEAN2008.png [from a talk in 2008 by Lean].
Wow – interesting! In the B&R post I was the one who kept bringing up that the data might be crap (which necessarily invalidates anything built on top of it). At the time I was thinking more about the surface temps than solar input, but the same rule would apply. I couldn’t get behind the paywall to see what they had actually used, but I am curious… this implies that the party line story here: http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/2009/articles/climate-change-incoming-sunlight might be overstated for natural variability. It would also imply that the TSI records used for both B&R and Lean and Rind are crap.
Is there anything definitive we can say about TSI over the last hundred or so years, what about 1978-on (when satellites came onto the scene)? It seems like we’ve gone from solar constant to highly variable sun to slightly variable sun back to solar constant.
I’m not a Scafetta proponent (i.e. thinking that solar variability directly correlates and explains more or less all things) although I do like his first name. I had, however, given a certain amount of reliance on the TSI chart from NOAA being a reasonable representation for the last 50-100 years. Don’t take it personally, consider this a rhetorical gripe of mine, but it’s more than a little frustrating to try and contemplate the workings of the climate when the story around the baseline input keeps changing 🙂
As always appreciate the replies and conversation. Best Regards.
Do we really need astudy to tell us the obvious that Solar is regular cyclic and global temp is not, as it varies according to many inputs, solar, ocean, gases, volcanic, albedo, etc!!! Waste of money and time imo!!!
NickB. (17:40:47) :
Is there anything definitive we can say about TSI over the last hundred or so years
Evidence is mounting that TSI returns to the very same value at every solar minimum [once one gets the calibration and compensation for degradation right]. This would indicate no long-term variation. Bill Livingston has carefully over the past four decades measured the solar temperature at disk center when there was no magnetic region there and states that to observational accuracy [1 degree or] the temperature does not vary with time, so the Sun is constant as far as we can tell, except when magnetically active.
NickB. (17:40:47) :
it’s more than a little frustrating to try and contemplate the workings of the climate when the story around the baseline input keeps changing 🙂
It’s called progress, and is good.
Basil (15:17:18) :
NickB. (13:17:43) :
If insolation did match temps we would see measurable fluctuations every 11-or-so years, and on longer cycles, that correlate with solar input.
We do see measurable fluctuations, in the rate of change, that correlate with solar input, over 11-or-so year cycles. But only within the range of temperature change that can be explained by the 11 -or-so-year cycles in TSI. These are “wiggles” in the longer ~0.6C/century rise in global temperatures; they cannot explain the long term trend itself.
How can the portion of the system (atmosphere) that contains 1/1000 of another (oceans) – note: that’s without even including net energy stored in the land surface – control all of it?
Of the energy received from the sun at the equator, most of it is transported poleward through atmospheric circulation, not ocean circulation. Winds are far more important than you given them credit for. What we see as 30-60 year climate cycles may be the result of shifts in the jet stream. When the jet stream moves poleward, winds become more zonal, with maritime winds providing more moderate (warmer) climes for the continents. When it moves back to the south, the jet stream becomes more loopy, with meridional flows bringing more continental/polar air masses to dominate continental climates. Thus atmospheric circulation can have a lot to do with climate cycles.
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Basil there are changes in the meridional flow patterns that change in sync with the 27.32 day patterns of the Lunar declinational tides in the atmosphere, and also in it’s 18.6 year long Mn periods. These patterns work much the same in pumping the equatorial air into the mid-latitudes where they become mostly zonal in nature, it is my hypothesis that these effects are helping to drive the pulses in circulation that modulate the Thermostatic effects that Willis Eschenbach subscribes to, in short term pulses of forcings off center, that then average back, to keep it more stable in the long run.
Just a few comments on this new paper by Rypdal and Rypdal.
I suspect that it is another case similar to Benestad and Schmidt’s case. This authors have mistaken Levy-flights for Levy-walks. We are talking about Levy-walks not Levy-flights. Moreover, we have explicitly excluded in our papers a direct connection between the “increments” contrary to what Rypdal and Rypdal claim in their paper.
Levy-Walks are a property of the smooth component of a signal which emerge from a microscopic intermittency. Because of this, detrending the data in any way can destroy any memory associated with any statistics the data might have that develops in the time-frame dimension. Moreover, processed Levy-Walk signal may present increments that may indeed look like fractal Brownian motion.
The issue is why, when the data are analyzed without improper manipulation such as detrending, they suggest a link between solar activity and climate. Can somebody explain the mystery? 🙂
Moreover, the link between solar activity and climate at multiple time scales is proven in numerous and more recent papers of mine using numerous other records at multiple time scales.
Apparently, Rypdal and Rypdal have not read any of them: they stopped at a paper in 2003. Finally, the “put them to silence” it is quite psychological reveling. Who knows what will happen. We will see. 🙂
About the first comment by Leif Svalgaard, “My own criticism of Scafetta and West is that they used flare counts [as they lamely note are ‘a proxy for the sunspot number’] when they could have used sunspot numbers directly.”
I believe that Leif does not know what we intend for Levy-Walk and why we use a specific solar flare record. (very few people know what Levy-Walk is). The figure he suggested above refers to Levy-Flights in the space dimension, we talk about Levy-walk in the time-dimension. Moreover, we also used sunspot number in another paper and found similar results. So, the result is very general.
Sun and climate are quite linked!
Leif: I’ll not mention photons again. Don’t tell Pam but my knowledge of this stuff is not rock star….more roadie…or lower….Catering maybe. If you ever recall that thread, i’d love to read that thread you had with Arnold as I see he was a co-author of that linked document you posted here. You had a discussion with him about ‘that’ New Scientist article in 2006 we discussed. If it ever comes back to you let me know. I’ll keep looking now. I’m done for a while.
70 shots at Leif and not a single goal! Though I think NickB might have got one close but you let it in!
NickB-Your goal doesn’t count.
Nicola Scafetta (19:52:00) :
Moreover, the link between solar activity and climate at multiple time scales is proven in numerous and more recent papers of mine using numerous other records at multiple time scales.
‘Proven’ is a very BIG word.
Nicola Scarfetta: Welcome to WUWT. Great to see you here. You’ve asked a interesting question i’ve never heard of:
‘…….The issue is why, when the data are analyzed without improper manipulation such as detrending, they suggest a link between solar activity and climate. Can somebody explain the mystery? : ) ……….’
But as you are 100 miles ahead of us, what would be your explanation?
I’ll take the answer off the air.
Leif Svalgaard (20:03:53) :
Ok, instead of “proven” let us use the word “strongly suggested”.
Have you any other serious explanation of why the solar patterns appear quite correlated to several climate patterns at multiple time scales?
Nicola Scafetta (20:15:54) :
Ok, instead of “proven” let us use the word “strongly suggested”.
Have you any other serious explanation of why the solar patterns appear quite correlated to several climate patterns at multiple time scales?
There is definitely a solar activity – climate link. We would expect a solar cycle effect of the order of 0.1 K [and some people claim to find something like that, e.g. Lean GRL 2009]. So we do agree that there is a link.
Ok, Leif Svalgaard (20:23:40) :
There is a 11-year solar cycle effect of the order of 0.1 K. This agrees with my studies too in 2005, not just with Lean’s one.
What about the longer and shorter scales?
For example what caused the bi-secular little ice ages and the millenarian temperature cycles with maxima during the Minoan, Roman, Medieval and Modern periods?
The amplitude of these oscillations are much larger than 0.1K and may be as large as 1K!
[quote johnythelowery (14:48:48) :]
Can the cosmic rays perhaps change the Solar Radiance photon/wave itself. There appears to be a collision, and during high sunspots, the cosmic sourced radiation doesn’t come through. So, what is the physics going on there?
[/quote]
This video should explain how the physics works. In a word, it’s electromagnetism.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUUvqtwL8hY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]
Could you be a little more precise? 😉
Nicola Scafetta (20:49:44) :
What about the longer and shorter scales? […]
The amplitude of these oscillations are much larger than 0.1K and may be as large as 1K!
Those are the ones that have not been shown to exist. Not that there are any lack of claims [yours included]. But I can turn the question around: if solar activity only produces 0.1 K changes, then what causes these much bigger changes?
That Levy chart looks like a web made by a spider on acid.
Rypdal and Rypdal hypothesized
Not a theory yet.
That link to the PDF of random walk/flight Leif provided left me spitting out my beverage! Kinda reminds me of the local farmers and welders that talk machinery. If you listen to the conversation long enough (like hours and hours) you might get a statement with actual words in it. The rest is all measurements, models and serial numbers. But it is hilarious to listen to.
Nicola Scafetta (19:52:00) :
Thank you for the comments. I appreciate seeing them. And I appreciate more that you are congenial.
Sun and climate are quite linked!
Since the earth is in the atmosphere of the sun it seems completely feasible.
Richard, Basil,
First off my apologies if I came off as some sort of jeststream/atmospheric circulation denier 😛 it wasn’t intended.
My train of thought in this area is admittedly reductionist, possibly to the point of fault, but consider that the “sunlit” ocean zone goes down as far as 600 feet, and that the twilight zone (no not that twilight zone) goes down to 3,000 feet… you’re talking about a very significant potential for energy to accumulate over time outside the layer that can be expected to interact with the atmosphere (which is essentially the skin if the water is calm). An interesting view to be gained, for me at least, by looking at this as a relatively static situation is that the heating should be expected to be depth stable. The lower you go the less light gets in to heat the water so no convection.
Of course there are massive currents in the ocean, the surface is rarely calm due to winds, the atmospheric circulations (AO for example) by themselves can be very powerful, and that the combination between ocean phenomenon (AMO, PDO, etc) and atmospheric phenomenon (ENSO – which I should have pointed out was a combination punch) can result in, from a climate standpoint at least, a quite spectacular release of energy.
I guess for me the main point of consideration (the light, again, turned on by Wilde’s recent post) is that the ocean currents (thermohaline in particular) contain water that has been in it for hundreds of years. Atmospheric energy cycles run much more quickly. If there is significant variation in long term solar behavior, the oceans could explain an offset of this expression of energy back into the system (possibly through cyclical releases like ENSO, or possibly through random noise due to dispersed upwelling).
The Greenhouse Effect-centric view (where GHGs control the system) is, IMHO, necessarilly disproven by the last 10 years where we have seen continued increases in CO2, other anthropogenic-foced GHGs, *and* water vapor alongside temperatures exhibiting a slight downward trend. This is especially broken for the last 3-4 years with OHC also flatlined or on a slight down trend of late. If their explanation for 1980-2000 holds, then there are massive amounts of energy disappearing somewhere.
I think instead, the more likely explanation, is that they are not just off the mark by a bit… but way off. Something really big, and really powerful has been at play. It doesn’t appear to be solar variation (pending, of course, the conversation that just started up here), so what else could it be than the ocean? If there were a decrease in clouds from 1980-2000 with an increase since that could explain it too… but I think we may have spent too much time looking up for all our answers.
Leif Svalgaard
On average, overall, energy is not propagated downwards . It does however penetrate the atmosphere and the ocean surface via direct solar insolation before commencing it’s journey back upwards.
You know perfectly well what I meant. You have said it yourself previously.
Leif Svalgaard,
“My own criticism of Scafetta and West is that they used flare counts [as they lamely note are ‘a proxy for the sunspot number’] when they could have used sunspot numbers directly.”
Very uncool. Some respect please.
Stephen Wilde (01:54:10) :
You know perfectly well what I meant. You have said it yourself previously.
You didn’t answer my question: “What is rate of upwards energy transfer?” and perhaps give some numbers for what you think the various layers receive.
jinki (02:32:40) :
Very uncool. Some respect please.
When people stop claiming they have proven something, they regain and deserve respect.