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
Nicola Scafetta (16:06:52) :
Wrong: you do not read carefully my paper. I used Solanki 2007. Steinhilber reconstruction came later I wrote my papers. Solanki and Steinhilber show approximately the same secular variation. Moreover, Steinhilber’s reconstruction shows an increase of TSI since 1900 contrary to what you have claimed above. And there exist a clear up ward trend since 1500.
This is an important point, both sets of data which are totally independent show a very close match, especially when the Steinhilber data is re plotted (the flat graph hiding some of the detail). Both sets of data are showing a significant rise in TSI from 1500. The proxy data raises serious doubt about the 0.1 % TSI variance claimed by the AGW crowd.
“Hoisted on his own petard.” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet
suricat
FFTs can transform from time to frequency domain hence a time plot can be changed to periodic plot.
If the TSI effect is small and hidden by other effects then is it not insignificant?
Here’s another way of doing it
Get HADCRUT3V global temp record
Average over 6 months to remove some of the “noise”
Create a series of narrow band filters on the resultant temperature plot.
Tune each filter manually to isolate peaks in the output.
These SHOULD show peaks wherever there is a signal of, say, Scarfetta’s 60 years.
Take the output of each narrow band filter and generate a cosine wave that is as near as possible the same amplitude and phase as the filtered signal.
Do this a number of times isolating each frequency.
Add together the generated cosines. Multiply the result by a factor (approx 3 in the plot below). If there is a suitable long period – low frequency – signal isolated the resultant should match the original signal. IT DID NOT so a trend was added.
y = 2.44231E-07x^3 – 1.36387E-03x^2 + 2.53884E+00x – 1.57576E+03 (not good as it deviates before 1850.
This is what I got :
http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/905/temperaturesynthesis.png
Note
No 60 year signal
No massive TSI signal (there is some!)
The significant signals are all around 2 to 6 years
The plot shows prediction for the next few years!!!!
Get HADCRUT from CRU website
Get Excel from microsoft
Get bandpass filter from
http://www.web-reg.de/index.html
in general set the bandwidth to months/150 (e.g. period start 21.19 end 21.29 months ie. months/200 in this case)
\harry
Nicola Scafetta (16:06:52) :
The time lag depend on the frequency you are considering, this is basic math. Again you do not know how thermal inertia works.
Of course I do. For the solar cycle effect [which we agreed on] there is no time lag. for longer periods, e.g for the 100-yr Gleissberg cycle we do not know what the time lag is [curve fitting is not enough as we do not know what fraction of the temperature variation is solar related].
You mentioned yourself that the oceans are now cooling. So, no thermal positive pulse warming the oceans from long-term variations, or are the oceans both cooling and warming at the same time?
Wrong: you do not read carefully my paper. I used Solanki 2007
Perhaps you would be so kind to turn to slide 72 of your Feb/26/2009 paper and tell us what reconstruction it said you used.
Steinhilber’s reconstruction shows an increase of TSI since 1900 contrary to what you have claimed above. And there exist a clear up ward trend since 1500.
What is important is the magnitude of the trend. The Steinhilber trend since 1900 is very small, ~0.25 W/m2 until about 10 years ago. The reconstruction you used had a trend three times as large, to the point where TSI at solar max a century ago was larger than at solar min today. Size matters.
James F. Evans (16:08:28) :
Is so full of ad-homs that it is not worth commenting on.
jinki (17:55:30) :
Both sets of data are showing a significant rise in TSI from 1500. The proxy data raises serious doubt about the 0.1 % TSI variance claimed by the AGW crowd.
Steinhilber et al. claims that the increase since the Maunder Minimum is 0.9 W/m2. For your information that is 0.9/1361*100 = 0.066%, only about half the 0.1% variance…
Nicola Scafetta (16:06:52) :
my paper. I used Solanki 2007
And BTW the Solanki 2007 paper was still based on the supposed ‘more than doubling’ of the Sun’s open flux during the 20th century first postulated by myself in 1977 and later popularized by Lockwood et al. in 1999. Lately Lockwood et al. [and I] have seen the light and recognized that this doubling did not happen. Instead the solar flux climbed until mid-century and has now declined to the level of 1901. So Solanki 2007 is not a good reconstruction to use as it is based on a false premise.
Suricat
Global FFTs
http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/84/hadcrutnhshlsgiscetssna.jpg
\harry
The F10.7 radio flux is believed to be a better proxy of solar activity than the venerable sunspot number. Careful analysis of independent measurements since 1951 from Canada and Japan show that the two series agree very well and that F10.7 at every sunspot minimum since the beginning of the measurements [1954, 1965, 1976, 1986, 1996, 2008] returns to the same value, i.e. that there are no measurable differences between the minima.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1003/1003.4281v1.pdf
In case you do not know Hugh Hudson: he collaborated with Dick Willson in showing [using early ACRIM data] that the ‘solar constant’ varied the infamous 0.1%.
Leif Svalgaard (19:23:53) on Evans (16:08:28):
“Is so full of ad-homs that it is not worth commenting on.”
What ad hominems?
Unanswerable, maybe — ad hominems, no.
oneuniverse (16:58:59) wrote:
“Dr. Svalgaard to Dr. Scafetta: ‘Irrelevant, because you were referring to a load of references by ‘oneuniverse’ mostly from the 1990s.’
Over 50% of the 33 papers referenced in support of Dr. Scafetta’s statement were written in the 21st century. Most of the rest are from the 90’s, a few from earlier. Later research has confirmed and built on earlier results.
Dr. Svalgaard to Dr. Scafetta: ‘Adroitly avoiding the issue that ACRIM and PMOD disagree strongly for the three minima. What I’m saying is that the data is shaky and not a sound foundation to build on.’
You use such data in your own papers, so whatever caveats you feel you should apply in those papers, perhaps also apply in this discussion.
In an earlier post, you repeatedly refused to consider the cosmogenic 10Be and 14C CR paleo studies I referenced, saying they didn’t reliably carry a signal, even for the recent millenia. Yet in Svalgaard and Cliver 2007, for example, you use 10Be and 14C proxies – what’s more, you use the CR-determined production rate signal from the proxies to assume something about the solar wind strength – a further stretch than just using them as CR-flux proxies, which you’d rejected.”
Seems that Dr. Svalgaard hasn’t responded to any of those points.
“In an earlier post, you repeatedly refused to consider the cosmogenic 10Be and 14C CR paleo studies I referenced, saying they didn’t reliably carry a signal, even for the recent millenia. Yet in Svalgaard and Cliver 2007, for example, you use 10Be and 14C proxies – what’s more, you use the CR-determined production rate signal from the proxies to assume something about the solar wind strength – a further stretch than just using them as CR-flux proxies, which you’d rejected.”
I’m particularly interested in an answer to the above passage.
Leif Svalgaard (19:23:53) :
Steinhilber et al. claims that the increase since the Maunder Minimum is 0.9 W/m2. For your information that is 0.9/1361*100 = 0.066%, only about half the 0.1% variance…
But if we read closer (which seems to be mandatory requirement for your references) Steinhilber states 0.9 W/m2 as an average with a error range of 0.4 W/m2. The MM figure is compared to the mean value of SC22 (1365.9 W/m2), if compared with solar max figures of say SC19 (1366.9 approx) the results would be very different. Your reconstruction shows about 1 W/m2 variance from the bottom of MM to the peaks of today. Steinhilbers results have the scope to be at least twice that figure. His study casts more doubt on your figures.
Also Steinhilber does not seem to be aware of the reported UV variances between 1996 and 2009. This graph might enlighten him and others.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/space_science/sem_data/SEM%20Data%20Graphs/SEM_1996-2009.jpg
Nicola Scafetta (14:24:25) :
In any case, you said that you wanted to discuss the RR’s paper, did you forget it already?
Let me try to analyze and paraphrase the R&R paper [and S&W’s] as I have understood it [and it is admittedly a bit exotic]. First some prelimary concepts:
1: the solar atmosphere and the terrestrial atmosphere are both very complex systems. Even a very weak transfer of energy from one system to the other [presumably from sol->terra] could regulate the statistical properties to make them similar, and if such similarity is found that is evidence of a coupling.
2: If there is such a coupling it could be a sign that terrestrial climate is much more sensitive to solar activity than the solar cycle variation indicates.
3: The concept of random walk [independent steps with no memory] leads to Brownian Motions [in position or time as one prefers; it is in one dimension so it doesn’t matter which].
4: The probability distribution function [PDF] of the 1D position at a given instant is the same at all instances [if suitably scaled] and looks like Figure 1 of http://www.leif.org/research/Rypdal-Levy-Paper.png .
5: One can construct a so-called Fractional Brownian Motion process [FBM] by introducing memory into the system determined by the self-similarity exponent h, according to x(t) = L^h x(Lt). For h = 0.5 the system is just the no-memory Brownian Motion [BM]. For h < 0.5, we get anti-persistent BM [APBM], that varies ‘more’ than randomly, for example the sequence of heads and tails HTHTHTHTHTH… For h > 0.5, we get persistent BM [PBM] that varies ‘less’ than randomly, for example HHHHHTTTTTHHHHTTTT…
6: The standard deviation s(t) = SQRT(AVERAGE(x^2)) = D t^H can then be described by the fractional dimension D and the self-similarity diffusion exponent H = h.
7: A Levy-flight [LF] makes very small steps most of the time, but now and then [i.e. rarely] makes a very large step [‘flies far away’], with no upper limit on the step size. The same equation applies: x(t) = L^h x(Lt), so the PDF is determined by h, but s(t) is unbounded [‘infinite’], because there is no limit on the step size.
8: The PDF of Levy-flights [again suitably scaled] looks like Figure 2 of http://www.leif.org/research/Rypdal-Levy-Paper.png .
9: A Levy-walk [LW] has a distribution of waiting times [between making a step] determined by P(u,t)~t^(-u) and is completely determined by the waiting-time exponent u.
10: But Levy-walks are not self-similar, and the PDF changes as time goes by as shown in Figure 3 of http://www.leif.org/research/Rypdal-Levy-Paper.png . Note the ‘spikes’. These occur because a Levy-Walk is not a self-similar random process.
11: To summarize the differences:
a. FBMs are self-similar, Both the self-similarity exponent h and the diffusion exponent H are defined, with h = H.
b. LFs are self-similar, with self-similarity exponent h, but with undefined H
c. LWs are not self-similar, i.e. h is undefined, but H is well-defined: H = 1 – u/2
Now, on to S&W. They postulate that
12: On time scales much shorter that the 11-yr solar cycle, the solar flare Index [SFI] and the Global Temperature Anomaly [GTA] have the same statistical properties
13: Both series are random porocesses that are Levy-walks with the same waiting-time exponent u = 2.1, which means H = 1-u/2 = 0.95
14: This coincidence is evidence that there are subtle couplings between solar activity and terrestrial climate.
R&R notes
15: that there is a clear trend in GTA, but no similar trend in SFI. This is shown by the red line in the plot of GTA. They describe GTA as a persistent Brownian Motion [random walk] with exponents h = H = 0.65 on top of a slowly rising non-random trend [h is greate than 0.5]. The PDF of the random part of the process is shown in R&R’s Figure 1(c) and looks indeed like the PDF described in our point 4 [above].
16: The SFI is a Levy-flight random process on top of a periodic variation. Removing the latter yields the PDF, with h = 1.0, in R&R’s Figure 1(d) which looks indeed like the PDF described in our point 8 [above].
17: so, the S&W postulate 13 is falsified. This is the result of the R&R paper.
18: R&R goes on the experiment with detrended and non-detrended signals using synthetic data, where they know its statistical properties, and find:
19: A synthetic [i.e. made up random data] FBM random walk with h = 0.65 placed on top of the observed trend gives precisely the same distribution as the observed GTA analyzed using S&Ws procedure. And so conclude that there is no evidence of coupling.
Now, in replying to this. you can conveniently refer to the specific numbered points above, so the discussion can be kept on track.
James F. Evans (16:08:28)
Interesting background info. So Leifs posts generally translate as:
“who’s that walking over my bridge?!”
phlogiston (22:44:26) :
“who’s that walking over my bridge?!”
I think it would be more appropriate to stick to the topic [e.g. my analysis of the R&R paper just before your post], rather than making silly comments about my person.
jinki (20:55:21) :
Steinhilber states 0.9 W/m2 as an average with a error range of 0.4 W/m2.
so it could be as low as 0.5 W/m2…
The MM figure is compared to the mean value of SC22 (1365.9 W/m2), if compared with solar max figures of say SC19 (1366.9 approx) the results would be very different.
You cannot compare a mean value to a max value, and expect to be taken seriously.
Your reconstruction shows about 1 W/m2 variance from the bottom of MM to the peaks of today. Steinhilbers results have the scope to be at least twice that figure. His study casts more doubt on your figures.
Or the scope to be half that figure. The 0.9+/-0.4 overlaps with my figures so they confirm Steinhilber’s result nicely.
Also Steinhilber does not seem to be aware of the reported UV variances between 1996 and 2009. This graph might enlighten him and others.
Of course, he and all the rest of us in this business are fully aware of this. The EUV [to be exact – reading things closely helps] depends on the sunspot number which during 1996 was 8.6 and in 2008 was 2.9, so three times lower. We would therefore expect [as observed] a slightly smaller EUV flux in 2008. The EUV [down around 30 nm that your plot refers to] is a vanishing small part of TSI, so makes no measurable contribution.
James F. Evans (20:44:25) :
“In an earlier post, you repeatedly refused to consider the cosmogenic 10Be and 14C CR paleo studies I referenced, saying they didn’t reliably carry a signal, even for the recent millenia.
What nonsense is that? There is a nice signal and the studies are beginning to agree more and more as I showed repeatedly in the lower panels of http://www.leif.org/research/Loehle-Temps-and-TSI.png
Earlier studies were somewhat erratic, but later data is getting better and better. For the topic at hand, the issue is how those CR variations relate to TSI, and that is much less certain, but we’ll eventually get there too and be able to construct reliable TSI. We are just not there yet.
Leif Svalgaard (15:03:40)
“Perhaps we should clear up the fundamental position first. Does the temperature control the expansion or the expansion control the temperature?”
Obviously the rise in temperature occurs first then the expansion.
However the expansion then seems to facilitate an increased upward flow of energy from below. That increase in energy coming up from below adds to the solar warming effect in the upper layers which become warmer than they would have done just from the solar changes.
The extra warming of the upper layers is at the expense of cooling in the lowest layer, the stratosphere, so the stratosphere will cool when the upper layers warm and vice versa as per observations.
The effect cannot have any significant impact below the tropopause because below the tropopause the heat transfers are dominated by convective and conductive processes rather than radiative processes.
The stratosphere is thus a varying buffer between the conductive and convective processes in the troposphere and the radiative processes from tropopause to space.
The changes in the stratosphere then feed back to variability in the intensity and size of the Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations.
That is the only concept that I can think of that could explain the observed differential warming and cooling of the layers in the atmosphere.
Leif Svalgaard (23:30:02) :
You cannot compare a mean value to a max value, and expect to be taken seriously.
A mean TSI value over the year is very different to a mean TSI figure for the cycle. Your own figures are higher than the 1365.9 adopted by Steinhilber. The Steinhilber derived TSI values are based on an incorrect premise, it is obvious the end result is severely discounted.
Of course, he and all the rest of us in this business are fully aware of this. The EUV [to be exact – reading things closely helps] depends on the sunspot number which during 1996 was 8.6 and in 2008 was 2.9, so three times lower. We would therefore expect [as observed] a slightly smaller EUV flux in 2008. The EUV [down around 30 nm that your plot refers to] is a vanishing small part of TSI, so makes no measurable contribution.
Of course, a lower figure is a result of lower activity which is also observed in TSI over the same time frames, that’s the point, the minimums are different. EUV is considered important by recent studies dealing with climate drivers, your “no measurable contribution” statement is behind the times.
Leif Svalgaard (23:39:11) : “What nonsense is that? There is a nice signal [..] Earlier studies were somewhat erratic, but later data is getting better and better. ”
What nonsense? You refused to consider the 10Be and 14C proxies when I was using them, but you deem them acceptable for use in your own work. That’s nonsense, Leif.
I’ve excerpted the thread of conversation pertaining to using proxies for CR below, so readers can judge for themselves. At no point did you admit that there’s a useful production signal derivable from the proxies – on the contrary, you strenuously argued against it.
From http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/14/dr-nicolas-scaffeta-summarizes-why-the-anthropogenic-theory-proposed-by-the-ipcc-should-be-questioned/ :
oneuniverse (09:46:52) :
I thought that there is ample paleoclimatic evidence to support the notion that cosmic rays affect terrestrial climate.
[Quoting] Jasper Kirkby : “Numerous palaeoclimatic observations, covering a wide range of time scales, suggest that galactic cosmic ray variability is associated with climate change. The quality and diversity of the observations make it difficult to dismiss them merely as chance associations.”
Leif Svalgaard (10:35:16):
Apart from the difficulties of determining the paleo-data [especially the cosmic ray intensity], there is little evidence from modern data to suggest the notion, so little reason to suspect it in the deep past.
oneuniverse (15:35:41):
The first part of this statement is in contrast to Kirkby’s, concerning the quality and diversity of the paleo-observations. You yourself kindly pointed me to a reconstruction on your site from proxy records . Not to dismiss the difficulties with proxy reconstructions, but not to dismiss the proxies altogether either.
Leif Svalgaard (20:23:43) :
Using 10Be for climate studies is a bit dangerous as the 10Be deposition depends somewhat on the climate as well.
[[ I was trying to use them as proxies for CR, not climate btw ]]
oneuniverse (21:03:58):
In “Information on past solar activity and geomagnetism from 10Be in the Camp Century ice core” (1988), Beer et al. find “strong evidence that the isotope variations [in the 10Be and 14C records] have a common cause, namely changes in production rate”.
Ice-core 10Be and tree-ring 14C are closely correlated over the last 5,000 years once the low-pass filtering effect of the 14C sequestration process is accounted for, so changes in deposition rates must have been small over the period.
Leif Svalgaard (21:54:17):
From a 2010 paper co-authored by Beer [he has learned something since 1988]: “[20] The radionuclide concentration data contains two components: (1) a production signal induced by solar magnetic activity and long-term changes in the geomagnetic field intensity and (2) a (atmospheric) system signal related to the geochemical properties of cosmogenic radionuclides and climate effects.”
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009JA014193.pdf
oneuniverse (07:00:20):
If you’d bothered including the very next sentence, readers would immediately realise that the findings support Beer et al.’s 1988 results :
“The observed changes in radionuclide concentrations between grand solar minima and grand solar maxima are mainly due to production rate changes as shown by McCracken [2004] and Heikkila¨ et al. [2008]. While the climate-induced system effects on the transport and the deposition of 10Be are comparatively small, they are not negligible.”
So the main signal is from the production rate, and the climate effects are not negligable, but comparatively small, findings in support of the results from their 1988 paper.
What Beer has reconsidered is the role of the geomagnetic field in modulating the production rate. Whatever the role, it’s just one more factor affecting the GCR flux, the relevant quantity under study.
Leif Svalgaard (21:54:17):
From: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038004.pdf comparing different ice cores:
“The good long-term agreement between 10Be variations in both cores reflects a regional response to production and climate changes, but the disagreements in the earlier parts of the two records suggest that 10Be should be measured in ice cores from locations with non-complex ice flow regimes.”
So, there is a growing realization that climate has an influence as well.
oneuniverse (06:58:34) :
From the same paper: “It is also clear that it is preferable to have 10Be records from sites with non-complex ice flow regimes, and no or infrequent summer melt, such as NGRIP and South Pole.”
So let’s use South Pole ice-core 10Be data – it’s clear from Kirkby’s Fig. 2b that for the last 1000 years it closely matches different 14C records and Greenland 10Be data. Furthermore, Beer et al. 1998 find the same relationship is present for over 5,000 years (a slight divergence between 10Be and 14C is noted for >10k years).
The ‘orthodox’ scientific understanding is that a good GCR flux signal can be extracted, carefully, from the 10Be records, particularly for the past millenia.
Leif Svalgaard (10:31:48):
Over short periods of time the production rate dominates. Over longer period the gromagnetic field and the climate are dominant.
oneuniverse (15:03:47):
According to the Usoskin et al. 2009, the climate is thought to be dominant only over short time-scales (which makes sense, given that we haven’t found a 10Be sink).
[..]
You’ll notice that over the longer timescales (>100 years) the solar and geomagnetic field are considered to be important. Since these affect the CR flux and so the production rate, not the deposition rate, this means that the data from the last 10k years can be used as a CR flux proxy.
Leif Svalgaard (15:45:15):
[Climate induced system effects] have been relatively small lately when climate has not varied much, but go back in time and much larger variations were present.
[..]
Imagine we have a ’snowball’ Earth, or a glaciation. That greatly interferes with atmospheric circulation that is instrumental in transporting 10Be to the poles. And on short time-scales you quote him saying that climate is dominant, e.g. for the sharp dips…
oneuniverse (06:56:29):
There haven’t been any snowball Earth or glaciation episodes during the last 10,000 years, the period in which the 10Be and 14C CR-proxy data is considered to be most reliable.
Leif Svalgaard (10:09:51):
Again, being selective. Your assumption is that the ‘evidence’ of paleo-stuff hundreds of million years ago is representative of today or can be used to draw conclusions about today. This assumes that the climate has not changed.
oneuniverse (16:22:34):
The hundreds of millions of year old data comes from meteorites, unaffected by the climate. The <10k yr statement comes from an analysis of data from the last 10k years.
Why not look at the CR-proxy data from the last 2000 years? We know climate hasn't changed that much over the period.
Monthly surface temperatures (most locations) at these larger solar flares; http://www.solarstorms.org/SRefStorms.html
are mostly above normals.
Temperatures at weeks/months of significant new sunspot activity can be higher or lower than normals. I do have a theory to explain this, and will be sharing this at some point.
Regarding the 11yr cycle itself and temperatures, as a general rule, a larger cycle
will have higher temperatures overall, but the relationship is not directly proportional.
Colder winters are more likely to be found at solar maximum rather than at minimum. There are more solar minimums with long spotless periods that have above average rather than below average temperatures. This suggests that the solar wind is a more important factor in producing temperature deviations from normals, than flares or sunspots.
Unfortunately today I will be very busy, so I will not be able to comment and disprove Leif word by word. Only a few points
Ulric Lyons (03:25:08) : thank you for the web site showing that solar weather effects the Earth system. This indirectly suggest the physical plausibility of our conclusions.
Leif Svalgaard (19:23:53) :
you need to read the paper printed in the journals. It is a bad habit to criticize works without reading them!
Now let us move to R&R and to
Leif Svalgaard (22:32:02) :
“10: But Levy-walks are not self-similar, and the PDF changes as time goes by as shown in Figure 3 of http://www.leif.org/research/Rypdal-Levy-Paper.png . Note the ’spikes’. These occur because a Levy-Walk is not a self-similar random process.”
What are those strange spikes? What are you representing in the distribution #3? You have no clue of what a Levy-Walk is!
“11: To summarize the differences:
a. FBMs are self-similar, Both the self-similarity exponent h and the diffusion exponent H are defined, with h = H.
b. LFs are self-similar, with self-similarity exponent h, but with undefined H.
”
fine!
“c. LWs are not self-similar, i.e. h is undefined, but H is well-defined: H = 1 – u/2”
false, read my papers, h is defined and related to H!
Now, on to S&W. They postulate that
12: On time scales much shorter that the 11-yr solar cycle, the solar flare Index [SFI] and the Global Temperature Anomaly [GTA] have the same statistical properties.
false! We use the waiting time distribution between “large” flares not the SFI which has a completely different meaning! This is the major error of R&R. They take apples for oranges! We explicitly excluded indexes such as the SFI from the analysis.
By confusing apples for oranges R&R believed that the low frequency component of the temperature signal could be removed without problems. However, because we were talking about the time structure of the signal, the smooth part of the temperature is where the signal is and cannot be removed without alter the physical properties of the signal that we wanted to detect.
In conclusion: R&R took apples for oranges and inverted the physical meaning of the low and high frequency component of the signal!
Stephen Wilde (01:25:26) :
Obviously the rise in temperature occurs first then the expansion.
However the expansion then seems to facilitate an increased upward flow of energy from below. That increase in energy coming up from below adds to the solar warming effect in the upper layers which become warmer than they would have done just from the solar changes.
You describe a strong positive feedback loop: temperature increase => expansion =&=; more increase => more expansion => warmer => more expansion … runaway…
Anyway, your model starts with expansion, perhaps you should modify it to start with [as you now say] temperature rise. That exposes the circular argument. And you do not give numbers. I asked you specifically about that, and all you can say is that you do not know of anything else that might explain the climate, ergo …
jinki (02:18:53) :
A mean TSI value over the year is very different to a mean TSI figure for the cycle.
Yeah, by typically 0.05%. Very different indeed.
Your own figures are higher than the 1365.9 adopted by Steinhilber. The Steinhilber derived TSI values are based on an incorrect premise, it is obvious the end result is severely discounted.
The only thing that makes sense in the relative values, as we do not know the absolute value better than 4 Wm2. Different reconstructions are thus arbitrarily aligned with a fiducial average, e.g. the 1365.57 used by Steinhilber and taken from the PMOD composite. SORCE TIM measure values 4.43 W/m2 lower than PMOD. You cannot therefore compare absolute values. My reconstruction is also arbitrarily shifted to 1366.0 Wm-2 for 1980-2000.
EUV is considered important by recent studies dealing with climate drivers, your “no measurable contribution” statement is behind the times.
You are confusing possible effects with the plain measurements of TSI. The latest values for the wattage of EUV is 0.0005 W/m2 which is below the stated precision of 0.007 W/m2 for TSI.
oneuniverse (03:19:26) :
Why not look at the CR-proxy data from the last 2000 years? We know climate hasn’t changed that much over the period.
You are confusing the record itself with what it is being presumed to represent. Imagine that the CR-proxies WERE heavily contaminated by climate, then the proxies could still agree nicely with each other and yet not be reliable for extraction of any solar activity signal. And you were pushing the argument back hundreds of millions of years and I’ll maintain that the ‘data’ on that are dubious, both as regards climate and CRs. On short time-scales there is no good evidence for a GCR influence on ion-nucleation; people trying to measure that directly find no signal, e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/acpd-9-21525-2009-print.pdf
When people compare different proxy records they find regional differences, remember the discussion in http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038004.pdf related to climate and ice-flow. A larger number of cores might in time help to extract the true solar signal.
So, there is a signal, the ‘nonsense’ part was your claim that I refused to consider something. I consider everything that comes my way.
Now, S&W claim that the climate link is through TSI. You et al. claim it is cosmic rays. It seems that the discussion should be between you and S&W to stay a bit on topic.
Ulric Lyons (03:25:08) :
these larger solar flares: http://www.solarstorms.org/SRefStorms.html
Thanks for sharing this nice list. Too bad the site has not been updated lately.
Zoom a picture until you see just pixels, there you´ll find a lot of “that Levy walks”, however if you zoom it back you´ll see the picture of, say, a beautiful woman. What I try to say is that all that is to show there is but randomness and God plays dice, which is not the case. Zoom out the picture and forget all that numerology!
Leif Svalgaard
One of the problems I have is that the sun cannot cause warming,but it is used as explanation for an absence of warming,and cooling in the past eg Lean 2010 and Lockwood et al 2010.
Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity?
Abstract. Solar activity during the current sunspot minimum has fallen to levels unknown since the start of the 20th century. The Maunder minimum (about 1650–1700) was a prolonged episode of low solar activity which coincided with more severe winters in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Motivated by recent relatively cold winters in the UK, we investigate the possible connection with solar activity. We identify regionally anomalous cold winters by detrending the Central England temperature (CET) record using reconstructions of the northern hemisphere mean temperature. We show that cold winter excursions from the hemispheric trend occur more commonly in the UK during low solar activity, consistent with the solar influence on the occurrence of persistent blocking events in the eastern Atlantic. We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect. Average solar activity has declined rapidly since 1985 and cosmogenic isotopes suggest an 8% chance of a return to Maunder minimum conditions within the next 50 years (Lockwood 2010 Proc. R. Soc. A 466 303–29): the results presented here indicate that, despite hemispheric warming, the UK and Europe could experience more cold winters than during recent decades.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/2/024001/fulltext
The paper must be rigorous and robust as per said comment,
Michael Mann of Penn State University in the US says the research “appears to be a very solid analysis”, which “provides further support” for the idea that the Sun was behind Europe’s cold winters 300 years ago. He adds that he and other researchers have shown that fluctuations in solar activity can also explain the relatively warm winters that occurred in Europe about 1000 years ago’
Leif Svalgaard (07:56:03):
So, there is a signal, the ‘nonsense’ part was your claim that I refused to consider something.
Now you’re agreeing that there is a retrievable production signal, but previously you were arguing against it, which if accepted would have reduced the credibility of the 10Be and 14C CR proxy studies I was referring to at that time.
If you doubt this, please re-read our comments in that the thread. I cited various studies involving these proxies, and your only response was to question whether the proxies could be used to derive the CR production signal because, you repeatedly said, of the effects of changing climate on the depostion rate.
eg. Leif Svalgaard (10:31:48) (earlier Scafetta/IPCC thread) :
Over short periods of time the production rate dominates. Over longer period the geomagnetic field and the climate are dominant.
The geomagnetic field is causatively ‘upstream’ of the atmospheric CR flux variable that was being calculated in that discussion, so unless the magnetic field has an effect on the deposition rate, it is not relevant here.
The production rate, and not the climate-affected deposition rate, is dominant for timescales >100 years (shorter if there is a grand solar minima). 10Be depostion times in particular don’t vary much (~1-2 years), in any case.
“On the common solar signal in different cosmogenic isotope data sets”
Usoskin et al. 2009 :
“Interplanetary magnetic field during the past 9300 years inferred from cosmogenic radionuclides”, Steinhilber et al. 2010 :
“So far, the cosmogenic radionuclide data (e.g.10Be, 14C) are the only reliable source of information regarding the IMF prior to 1610. These data are proxies for the cosmic ray intensity at Earth, which is largely determined by the strength of the IMF. The cosmogenic records extend over more than ten thousands years, with an appropriate time resolution of a few years.”
oneuniverse (12:53:58) :
Now you’re agreeing that there is a retrievable production signal, but previously you were arguing against it, which if accepted would have reduced the credibility of the 10Be and 14C CR proxy studies I was referring to at that time.
Sigh. There is no doubt a retrievable production signal and we are getting better at it. There is also no doubt contamination by other factors: climate, volcanics, geomagnetic field. With only one or a few records it is hard, if not impossible, to disentangle those effects. with more an more records becoming available, and also more information about the other factors [e.g. better models for the dipole changes], it is becoming easier to extract the solar signal, and as we do that we discover that the correlations get worse and worse.