I saw this yesterday, but I decided to wait a day just in case it disappeared. It’s quite the surprise to see the New Scientist dedicate a story, much less an editorial saying that the sun has a role in climate.
Here’s some excerpts:
THE idea that changes in the sun’s activity can influence the climate is making a comeback, after years of scientific vilification, thanks to major advances in our understanding of the atmosphere.
…
So far, three mechanisms have come to light (see diagram). The best understood is what is known as the top-down effect, described by Mike Lockwood, also at the University of Reading, and Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London. Although the sun’s brightness does not change much during solar maxima and minima, the type of radiation it emits does. During maxima the sun emits more ultraviolet radiation, which is absorbed by the stratosphere.This warms up, generating high-altitude winds. Although the exact mechanism is unclear, this appears to have knock-on effects on regional weather: strong stratospheric winds lead to a strong jet stream.
The reverse is true in solar minima, and the effect is particularly evident in Europe, where minima increase the chances of extreme weather. Indeed, this year’s cold winter and the Russian heatwave in July have been linked to the sun’s current lull, which froze weather systems in place for longer than normal.
The second effect is bottom-up, in which additional visible radiation during a solar maximum warms the tropical oceans, causing more evaporation and therefore more rain, especially close to the equator.
…
The third solar influence on climate is extraterrestrial. Earth is bombarded by cosmic rays from exploding stars, which are largely deflected by the solar wind during solar maxima and to a slightly lesser degree in minima.
One theory held that cosmic rays cool the planet by helping to form airborne particles that water vapour condenses onto, increasing cloud cover. However, models suggest the effect is tiny (Nature, vol 460, p 332). Just to be sure, though, the idea is being tested by the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Initial results are expected in the next six months.
A theory that has more traction with climate scientists says the rays may change cloud behaviour rather than formation. Using weather balloon measurements, Harrison has shown that clouds have charged layers at their top and bottom, and he suggests that ions produced by cosmic rays might be responsible (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2010GL043605). “The charge might make it easier for larger water droplets to form,” he says, causing rain to fall sooner during solar minima. “But that’s just one of many possibilities.”
Read the full article here
Deja vu?
We don’t really have much of a clue how “A” works on “B”, but we know “C” overpowers “A”! A sound scientific conlcusion in my view! Not!
BBC2 concluding documentary on the Sun some years ago with pitcure of boiling Sun, “No one can explain exactlly what effects the power of the sun has on our climate, but whatever it is it’s already been overtaken by manmade global warming!” cut to pickie of calving of an ice sheet! What we need to do with these AGW warmists/catastrophist scientists is make them more financially accountable, as private sector business has to be, none of this clinging to nannies apron strings when it doens’t pan out as they claimed it would, cut their finding for every wrong prediction, that’ll make sit up!
“John Finn says:
September 25, 2010 at 1:47 am
Re: earlier post, i.e.
John Finn says: .
September 25, 2010 at 1:35 am
I forgot to mention a key point from the Shindell et al Abstract
In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift toward the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation as solar irradiance decreases.
They even mention the AO and NAO oscillations. To answer Tallbloke’s point
The warmista are circlng their wagons, and dragging the horses behind, as usual.
I think the warmista have had this issue covered for some time.”
John, you need to recognize that the solar influence is sufficiently influential to explain the ENTIRETY of the climate change that we have seen. The Arctic Oscillation index simply measures the change in the distribution of the atmosphere between the Arctic and mid latitudes in the northern hemsiphere. A falling AO represents higher pressure in the Arctic and lower pressure at mid latitudes and at the equator. But these changes in pressure proceed simultaneously in both hemispheres and in a much more dramatic fashion in the southern than the northern hemsiphere. The effect is to increase the differential pressure between mid latitudes in the southern hemisphere and the equator. That differential is responsible for the trade winds. The current La Nina is a response to a greater differential preesure. The speed of the change seems to be unprecedented. The move to a La Nina dominant regime is most obvious after 2007.
We agree that the sun drives cooling/warming via its effect on the distribution of the atmsophere. You need to appreciate that this in turn drives the trades which in turn determine the strength of cooling evaporation from tropical waters and the extent of upwelling of cold waters on the eastern margins of the major oceans, the Pacific being by far the largest.
And because the southern hemsiphere is mainly water rather than land, the effect on global temperature is deterministic.
You may think that “the warmista have had this issue covered for some time”.
I agree, they are aware of the phenomenon, but they have wholly underestimated it’s significance. And they haven’t a clue about the factors driving the changing distribution of the atmosphere, and therefore the Arctic Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation.
If they really knew about these things they would not be talking about AGW.
The following quote is from the abstract cited in your earlier post September 25, 2010 at 1:35 am
“In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift toward the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation as solar irradiance decreases. ”
But I suspect it has nothing whatsoever to do with the very slight change in solar irradiance and a great deal to do with changes in the solar wind.
Did they suggest a mechanism?
I see recent news reports warning that Anthropogenic greenhouse gas CO2 “AGG” can cause cold, snowy, winters. (The mechanism is not explained however the Green news release alleges that the mechanism is related to a warming Arctic.) Perhaps the new warning will be AGG causes AGC.
When there was benign warming it was easy for the AGW cabal to convince themselves and the news media that 100% of the warming was due to atmospheric CO2 increases even though there was a lack of correlation between the temperature rise and CO2 levels (geological past – last 500 MM, past – last 1.2 MM, and current – last 25 years).
I wonder what the lag time will be for the scientific community and the public to change from AGW to AGC. I am curious what propaganda strategy will be used to try to convert opinion from AGW to AGC. Climate change seems to be losing traction. What will be the proposed solution to AGC?
I wonder how long it will take the green lobby group to come to the understand that CO2 is a “green gas” that is beneficial to the biosphere. i.e. Life on this planet is carbon based.
Solar cycle 24 compared to cycle 21, 22, and 23.
http://www.solen.info/solar/cyclcomp.html
Solar cycle (20, 21, 22, and 23) were unusually active (highest in 10,000 years) and GCR based on cosmogenic modulated isotopes (C14 and BE10) unusually low from 1940 on.
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Sola2-PRL_published.pdf
There are a number of paleoclimatic papers that note there is correlation with past C14 and other cosmogenic isotopes changes and abrupt climatic change. For example Gerald Bond’s Persistent Solar Influence on the North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene that discusses the 1470 year cycle. (Bond was able to track roughly 30 abrupt temperature drop cycles through the Holocene interglacial period and into the last glacial cycle – the Wisconsin.)
http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/seminars/spring2006/Mar1/Bond%20et%20al%202001.pdf
There is a mechanism to change the solar magnetic cycle and there is evidence of a cycle of change of the solar magnetic cycle.
Prolonged minima and the 179-yr cycle of the solar inertial motion by R.Fairbridge and J. Shirley
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w57236105034h657/
There is also evidence of larger solar magnetic cycle changes that are also cyclic.
This paper, “Can origin of the 2400-year cycle of solar activity be caused by solar inertial motion?” provides a full explanation of the solar mechanisms and a summary of previous papers concerning solar inertial motion and solar magnetic cycle changes.
http://www.ann-geophys.net/20/115/2002/angeo-20-115-2002.pdf
Lucy Skywalker says:
September 25, 2010 at 2:59 am
“Had this issue covered for some time” – thanks, that’s a classic wagon-circling remark. No:
I repeat (for the 3rd time) Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann et al co-authored a paper around 9 years ago which looked at “Solar Forcing of Regional Climate Change During the Maunder Minimum” Here it is (again)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;294/5549/2149
(a) all the orthodoxy’s emphasis has been on the ACTION we must take WITHOUT DEBATE because THE END IS NIGH due to our CO2 emissions;
I don’t necessarily agree that global warming due to CO2 is going to be catastrophic but the New Scientist article doesn’t change anything as far as AGW is concerned. There is a misunderstanding about the article and about what is generally known. Soalr activity does appear to correlate with shifts in weather patterns. As “the Team” state in their paper “In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift toward the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation as solar irradiance decreases”. This is exactly what we see in the long term temperature records. Regional and seasonal shifts – NOT wall-to-wall cooling.
Global temperature change can only really be achieved through an imbalance in the earth’s (incoming=outgoing) energy budget. TSI variability is not sufficient to explain the *global* temperature changes we have seen. The solar effect on climate may mean Europe and the US get colder winters over the next few years but this probably only means that other regions will be warmer.
Also note that the AO, PDO, NAO and any other ‘O’ are just cycles. They do not result in a long term trend.
(b) note opening sentence: “The idea that changes in the sun’s activity can influence the climate is making a comeback“
The opening remark is nonsense. For crying out aloud, the IPCC in their “attribution and detection” studies cite solar activity as the main cause of the 1910-1940 warming. Thanks to Leif Svalgaard we now suspect that they are probably wrong.
King Kong recently discovered again? Roaming the skies on a daily basis but viewers eyes were clouded by CO2. Will the money return? New studies needed.
Grey Lensman says:
September 25, 2010 at 12:24 am
“If you use a U.V. steriliser, its not the U.V. that kills the bugs but the Ozone generated.”
Got a link to support that?
UV-C is pretty effective at breaking the bonds in nucleic acids which has long been held to be the operative mechanism in germicidal application.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_germicidal_irradiation
I forgot the best bit:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
the rest is
above
John Finn says:
September 25, 2010 at 5:48 am
“Also note that the AO, PDO, NAO and any other ‘O’ are just cycles. They do not result in a long term trend. ”
Nonesense. See: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com
I quote
“The flux in surface pressure appears to be cyclical. However, the cycle is longer than the sixty years of available data. We cannot say for sure what the cycle length may be or how it varies over time. However, there is good evidence that the warming cycle that began in 1978 peaked in 1998. Cooling is underway.
We must acknowledge that the ENSO cycle is not temperature neutral. There are short ENSO cycles of just a few years and long ENSO cycles that are longer than 60 years.’
And the same applies to the Oscillations that you mention.
@Cliff I would imagine that this is referring to the 30 year downtrend due to the downtrend in the AMO. Of course, the AGWH (Anthrogenic Global Warming Hysterics) seem to deny that an uptrend existed from the 1970s till the early 2000s.
tallbloke says:
The atmosphere does not warm the ocean, the sun does. Then the ocean warms the atmosphere.
A bit like a hot water bottle, fill it full of hot air or hot water and feel the difference.
Tim Williams says:
September 25, 2010 at 3:24 am
“[…]So you think the New Scientist editors have only now “triumphantly declared” that the sun has an influence on climate? Perhaps you don’t read the New Scientist very often?”
“Science: Climate change – the solar connection ” (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13217962.900-science-climate-change–the-solar-connection.html) ”
[DirkH]: This is from 1991. It’s possible that the NS was respectable back then.
““Absorbent clouds cast shadow on climate models” (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14519703.100-absorbent-clouds-cast-shadow-on-climate-models.html)”
[DirkH]: This is from 1995. It’s possible that the NS was respectable back then.
“Solar cycles drove medieval markets” (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18024260.600-solar-cycles-drove-medieval-markets.html)
[DirkH]: This is from 2003. It says something about medieval times and is not relevant to the AGW debate.
I’ve been an avid NS reader from ca. 1997 to 2001. I don’t remember them doing a lot of skeptic bashing back then. I lost interest in them when they started to pepper their website with tons of advertisement popups and every second article proposed a different fate for the end or the beginning of the universe.
Their decline to what they are now must have started when i stopped reading them. What i know about their climate-related opinion pieces i know by following links from WUWT over the last 10 months. And yes, they are quite the AGW propaganda rag.
A few times each year, New Superstitionist gives a tiny bit of credence to the sun, as in this article … but they never alter their Gaian doctrine, nay, never a jot or a tittle.
They are never confused by heretical facts, even after they condescend to publish the heretical facts.
In reply to John Finn’s comment and quote of Shindell et al’s paper.
Solar Forcing of Regional Climate Change During the Maunder Minimum
Drew T. Shindell,1 Gavin A. Schmidt,1 Michael E. Mann,2 David Rind,1 Anne Waple3
“We examine the climate response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th-century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. Global average temperature changes are small (about 0.3° to 0.4°C) in both a climate model and empirical reconstructions.”
Shindell et al’s paper assumes the past climate changes were caused by TSI (sun’s output is less) rather than the solar magnetic cycle modulates planetary cloud cover. There are multiple errors in their analysis.
The AGW cabal assume the planet’s response to a forcing change is positive (planet amplifies forcing change) as opposed to negative (planet resists forcing changes by increasing or decreasing planetary cloud cover). The positive feedback amplification is required to amplify AGG forcing. If the planet’s response to a forcing change is negative rather than positive then a larger forcing change is required to explain what is observed.
If one stops pushing an agenda and tries to scientifically explain the observations (All of the observations. Cyclic changes require a cyclic forcing mechanism.) it seems that there is overwhelming evidence that the sun is causing the planetary changes.
There is smoking gun evidence of a solar magnetic cycle mechanism as past planetary temperature change is cyclic (for example the 1470 year cycle) and the past cooling periods and warming periods correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. The cosmogenic isotope changes are known to be cause by solar magnetic cycle changes and by geomagnetic field changes.
The GCR changes are caused changes in the solar heliosphere (Solar heliosphere – bits of the magnetic solar magnetic field that are carried by the solar wind out into the solar system) and affect higher latitudes on the planet where the geomagnetic field is weaker. (A complication in analyzing the paleoclimatic record is that there are concurrent archeomagnetic jerks where the planet’s geomagnetic field abruptly changes inclination by roughly 10 to 15 degrees at the same time as the cooling events. The tilting of the geomagnetic field causes an increase and decrease of GCR intensity at different latitudes as the geomagnetic poles no longer align with the planet’s rotational axis.)
(There is currently no explanation for what causes the cyclic geomagnetic field changes archeomagnetic jerks – periodicity around 200 years and geomagnetic excursions that have a periodicity of around 8000 years to 12,000 years. The geomagnetic excursions correlate with Heinrich events such as the Younger Dryas.)
So, according to solar deniers like John Finn et al, changes in the sun only affect weather, not climate. Got it.
Tim Williams says:
September 25, 2010 at 3:24 am
“[…]the sun has an influence on climate? Perhaps you don’t read the New Scientist very often?
“Blame the volcano trouble on sun and global warming”(http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18794-blame-the-volcano-trouble-on-sun-and-global-warming.html)
”
Well, from 2010… and quite an interesting piece of work there.
“”Solar activity tends to ramp up for 300 to 400 years and then fall again over about 100 years,” says Lockwood. Right now the sun has just begun its downward path from a maximum, suggesting that blocking patterns will become more common over Europe during the next century.
Global warming may compound the problem.
”
In a beautiful, might i say Hegelian spin, they show that the harmful effects brought by AGW get WORSE when the sun winds down its activity. Beautifully crafted really. As it’s based on IPCC climate models with all their known shortcomings it’s of course no better a guess than throwing dice, but we don’t need to tell that to the sheeple, no?
I mean, use the IPCC’s models that have consistently failed for one decade – soothsaying a warming that didn’t happen – and write a paper that predicts, well, that the solar minimum “compounds the problem”; that’s really rich.
NS – we give science it’s bad reputation.
Richard S Courtney says:
September 25, 2010 at 1:19 am
“I am convinced that the priorities now must be
(a) to avoid harmful effects of the dead CAGW scare (e.g. adoption of ETS)
and
(b) to defend against whatever daft scare (e.g. ‘ocean acidification’) ‘greens’ attempt to replace it with.”
I well remember the conflation of the issues of leaded petrol, acid rain and greenhouse effect in the minds of the public. I also remember the emergence of Friends of the Earth as a big promoter of scare at that time (core themes; protecting human and environmental rights, protecting the planet’s disappearing biodiversity, the repayment of ecological debt owed by rich countries to those they have exploited). They and others were pretty effective with promotion of environmental issues but ineffective in defining their separate natures. This goes on still despite, rather like the millenium bug, being demonstrably wrong. I can only conclude that there is an inate desire among a percentage of the population for a hair-shirt aproach to life. In fact, the apparent enthusiasm of what are now termed ‘watermellons’ for the hair-shirt lifestyle is the first metric I use when trying to assess the latest ‘we must’ chant that comes along.
So Mr. Courtney, I agree agree exactly but would place your point b) first.
To John Finn,
It is claimed that Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann et al co-authored a paper around 9 years that would support a significant solar effect on climate.
That paper published in 2001 does not have any value according the same subsequent opinion of its authors. The reason is because that paper was using the TSI reconstructions by Lean [1995] and Hoyt [1993] that presented a much larger secular TSI variability than more recent TSI reconstructions such as Wang and Lean [2005] and Solanki [2007].
Thus, or the most recent TSI reconstructions are wrong and TSI varied much more in the past, or the current models are missing additional important solar-climate mechanisms.
While an anecdote is not data, the comment that Europe is more prone to stagnating weather systems during a solar minimum, is interesting. I remember hitch-hiking through western Europe in the summer of 1976, during a solar minimum. There was an exceptionally hot summer in Western Europe and drought in Britain that year. Swimming in the channel near Calais was like being in the Med Sea. Shades perhaps of the Russian heat wave this minimum. 1976 was also an exceptional year for French wine.
The IPCC claim that a 0.1% change in total solar irradiance was not enough to impact global climate was just one of the super dumb things the IPCC said. It made the idiotic assumption that the only way the sun can impact climate is through changes in the total amount of solar radiation. Everyone new that statement was a fools argument and that the interaction of the sun and the Earth’s atmosphere was much more complicated than that.
It was one of the main reasons that the IPCC was recognized as an advocacy group and not a scientific organization by anyone with a brain (which apparently excludes the media). Even if they manage to cover their butts on this one, they still have to deal with the fact that their main argument is a logical fallacy – “We can not explain it any other way, so it must be true.” The IPCC argument for an AGW crisis is no stronger than the ancient explanation of severe weather: “We made the gods angry! That must be the true because we can not explain it any other way!” It is an argument from ignorance, something they demonstrate continuosly.
John Finn says: “the IPCC in their “attribution and detection” studies cite solar activity as the main cause of the 1910-1940 warming.”
Could you provide a link to that statement? It does not match my memory from my reading of the IPCC FAR — unless it is an implication from the claim that the warming in the last 50 years is due anthropogenic causes.
Sounds more like they’re gonna try and pacify the sceptic and lining up the finishing line (which will no doubt come in the next issue) which spells, essentially, to be able to prove that the good ol’ fart that Sol is we’d just need a tad bit more grant money, say in the multi-million dollar range, mkey.
The New Scientist piece in the “tiny” link in the article drew the following comment from Lord Monckton:
It’s All Down To Cosmic Rays
Sat Jul 05 16:52:56 BST 2008 by Monckton Of Brenchley
This item is inaccurate and misleading. There is, in fact, some 10 million years of evidence for an anti-correlation between cosmic-ray flux and global surface temperature (e.g. Shaviv, 2006). Though correlation (or anti-correlation) does not necessarily imply causation, it is difficult to imagine a common causative agent that might explain this very long and very precise anti-correlation.
THe suggestion that cosmic-ray flux variations cannot explain the warming trend of the last few decades is misleading because it does not allow for the action of other and shorter-term influences on climate, such as the accumulation in and subsequent slow release from the oceans of atmospheric warming caused by the recently-ended Solar Grand Maximum, during which the activity of the Sun was greater and for longer than at almost any previous similar period in at least the past 11,400 years.
It is inappropriate for scientific journalists to talk of the “wild claims” of Svensmark et al., whose thoughtful papers, including a magisterial and very thorough paper (Svensmark & Friis-Christensen, 2007) refuting many of the wild claims repeated here by the New Scientist, are carefully researched and reasoned, and may provide a clue explaining the self-evident amplification of the Sun’s activity in influencing global temperature.
There are, of course, other possible explanations for this amplification. For instance, the oceans – 1100 times denser than the atmosphere at the surface – are a formidable heat-sink, and it is easy to demonstrate a multi-decadal correlation between changes in the two great ocean circulations (the Pacific Decadal and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillations) and surface temperature on the decadal and multidecadal scale. Shorter-term ocean oscillations, notably the El Nino / La Nina oscillations – are particularly strong influences on global surface temperature. The oceans, therefore, may be acting as a buffer, delaying solar influences on atmospheric temperature by perhaps up to half a century (Michaels, 2008).
Also, it is not clear that the IPCC has taken sufficient account of the fact that about half of all incoming solar radiation is already in the infrared. This fraction is not really subject to terrestrial forcings, except to a very small degree.
In short, it would be unwise to dismiss solar changes as a recent cause of climate change; and in the face of the data it is no longer scientifically credible to dismiss it as a cause of longer-term changes in temperature at the Earth’s surface.
=========
Note that the purported refutations of Svensmark and Shaviv depend either on ignoring the specification of powerful particles reaching low tropospheric altitudes, not total top-of-atmosphere CR flux, or on smoothing over periods too long to reflect CR flux and cloud changes over a solar cycle.
“The findings do not suggest – as climate sceptics frequently do – that we can blame the rise of global temperatures since the early 20th century on the sun.”
Ah, the devil is always in the details. A good part (perhaps half or more) of the warming was simply due to things like UHI effect, poorly-sited temperature stations, and station drop-out. And, you gotta love their use of the word “blame”. Because warming, of course is “BAD”. But yeah, the sun gets most of the credit for the very minor, in no way unusual, and very, very much welcomed (except by warmistas, of course) warmup from the LIA. Now, we are in for a cooling period. C02 can’t stop that from happening, because it never had anything to do with the warming to begin with.
Nice to see “New Scientist” beginning to get it, though they clearly have a long way to go.
The computer models are woefully inadequate to make projections of climate. They look only at pulses of ghgs and measure the effects on radiation budgets. What about solar x-ray flares, which alter the upper atmosphere’s chemistry, destroying ozone? What about solar geomagnetic effects altering the the magnetosphere, allowing peneration of galactic cosmic ray flux to cause increasing lower cloud cover and global cooling? What about the historical record and totally predictable influence of the Jovian planets on solar secular Gleissberg (83-year) and semi-secular Landescheidt (391-year) climate cycles? What about the 18-year Lunar Nodal and 1,800-year Lunar Declination Cycles?
If a computer model is only set up to find human CO2 influnce on global temperatures, what possibly could be the projection other than that man causes cc? What would happen to the models, if they included all the natural inputs of: the Earth (underwater volcanoes and hydrothermal vents), the Moon (ocean circulation cycles), the Sun (CMEs, magnetic and solar wind cycles), and the Planets (Earth/Venus/Jupiter Tidal cycles and Jupiter conjunctions with Saturn/Uranus/Neptune climate cycles)? Agw would disappear into the background of natural cc.
I welcome this begrudging recognition of the Sun as a ( if not THE) driver of Weather ( if not climate) .
They will not take it too far however.
Because you can’t tax the Sun.