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.”
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John Finn says: September 25, 2010 at 1:35 am
I think Vukcevic has posted on the Dalton minimum effect on the CET record. I can’t remember exactly what he wrote but it wassomething to the effect that the last decade of the DM had colder than average winters but very little change in summer. He can correct me on this if I’ve got it wrong.
If you assume Dalton minimum was 1800-1830 than CETs for
1800-1805 = average1750-1850
1805-1817 average1750-1850
Here are seasonal and annual anomaly values for each year 1660-2010
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-D.htm
Sorry, previous post was incomplete so here it is again
John Finn says: September 25, 2010 at 1:35 am
I think Vukcevic has posted on the Dalton minimum effect on the CET record. I can’t remember exactly what he wrote but it wassomething to the effect that the last decade of the DM had colder than average winters but very little change in summer. He can correct me on this if I’ve got it wrong.
If you assume Dalton minimum was 1800-1830 than CETs for
1800-1805 = average1750-1850
1805-1817 average1750-1850
Here are seasonal and annual anomaly values for each year 1660-2010
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-D.htm
For some reason it is omitting this important line:
1817-1829 > average1750-1850 !
These guys have no shame. Like the meeting in Exeter to discuss overhauling the surface temps of the globe:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/23/more-dirty-pool-by-ncdcs-karl-menne-and-peterson/
the NewScientist is belatedly beginning its own rehabilitation. The first rehab (surface temps) was ordered by (Senate Committee?) government or they would still be fighting a rearguard action and saying ‘yeah there are some bad sitings but our studies show they have minimal effect’ (they are still going to say that when they have finished their whitewash of the global temp system and homogenizations). They both are relying on “new” discoveries by their own disgraced scientists and both feel the need to disparage “climate skeptics” whom they treat as monolithic naysayers instead of giving credit to the bright and brave who originally presented these “new” discoveries. I hope the next counter-conference on climate presents a program of findings and theories with proper attribution that were developed by those sceptical of the consensus before its all been rediscovered. If I may suggest a theme: a summing up of key contributions to climate science made outside the consensus that are now being accepted by the mainstream of climate science. The two examples above are excellent examples. I detect in this article a nibbling at the edges of Willis’s tropical thermostat theory too. Don’t let the besteds steal it all.
I must AndrewW
please explain the lack of any significant warming of the planet in the past decade while CO2 increased?
“”Where solar effects may play a role is in influencing regional weather patterns over the coming decades”
Now, I am becoming confused. I thought insolation was a Global phenomenon. How does a global phenomenon affect only regional areas. Perhaps they mean, all regional areas, to varying degrees. Can someone clarify? GK
Anthony – “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 and editorial saying that the sun has a role in climate ”
GeoFlynx – Now that statement is just a bit too cynical to be left unchallenged. The Sun’s energy is what powers AGW and has been taken into account in painstaking detail in so much of the IPCC work. What this article is attempting to address is the small, 11-22 year, periodic effects the Sun has on the Earth’s climate. Many who have taken a course in Fourier analysis will recognize this solar cycle climate connection as one of the early classic exercises and realize that its effects seldom rise above noise. The suggestion that somehow these solar changes are responsible for the current spate of warming may be titillating but are in no way supportable.
Hey Cliff
“the 30 year cooling cycle we are in.” (CO2fan)
Can someone point me to the data that shows cooling, thanks.
See this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/25/new-paper-in-nature-on-ocean-cycles-finally-causes-recognition-in-media/
So the science is not settled. Unlike the song in the musical Oklahoma we evidently have not gone as far as we can go. But then that was fiction.
Why is global warming theory hard to believe. Some things just need proof.
Even if we knew all there is to know about climate could we do anything about it. The congress thinks so and their solution is regulation, laws and taxes. Hey you do what you know.
John Finn said:
” Lower solar activity is not going to lower the energy received by the earth by an appreciable amount so it’s not likely to have a significant effect on global temperatures. ”
I disagree. We are rather belatedly finding that even the alarmists once reognised that the jets were more equatorward when the sun was less active but they then made several mistakes, inter alia:
i) They assumed that the observed effect was not global but only regional.
ii) They failed to consider the energy budget implications of global latitudinal jet stream shifts.
iii)They failed to realise that simply shifting the main cloud bands latitudinally affects global albedo and the amount of solar shortwave entering the oceans for a resulting net global cooling effect. It is now clear that global albedo steadily fell whilst the jets moved poleward and is now rising with the jets moving equatorward. The oceans are indeed cooling.
iv) They abandoned all attempts at a proper scientific interpretation of what they observed in favour of their favoured CO2 forcing scenario and climatology has been on the wrong track ever since.
Dave Springer says: September 25, 2010 at 6:15 am
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.
Dave, I worked in photolithography, ie defining circuitry in photosensitive plastics. One process was designed around the incising power of UV light on poly-methyl-methyl-acrilate, PMMA, basically plexiglass. PMMA can be formed in very long chains, and UV incises the long chains to shorter chains, causing a differential in solubility in a solvent material. My understanding is that most organic molecules are incised by UV, and that is why they break down in sunlight, if not consumed by organisms.
True, TSI variability on its own is not sufficient to explain the temperature changes that we have seen.
However, the Sun may well have a series of influences other than simple TSI variability – TSI variability is associated with a series of other varying influences including solar magnetic field, solar wind and associated cosmic ray flux. When all taken together, all these factors may well have a considerable influence on the Earth’s climate system.
There are hints that the Sun has a much larger influence on the Earth’s climate – but there is a need to understand the mechanisms involved, with nothing very convincing published as yet.
As for the PDO, etc, just being cycles, that may be true, but who is to say whether there are cycles on much longer timescales. There are some indications of this in paleoclimate studies.
As for cycles being unable to change global temperatures, that is simply incorrect – for example, changes in cloud coverage could well influence global temperatures since clouds are one of the major aspects relating to the Earth’s energy balance (they are a negative feedback in the overall greenhouse effect).
Don’t believe it.
German chief climate advisor Schellnhuber has told us that the nature makes it very easy to understand: “CO2 and global temperature are linked in a linear relationship.”
Minor players like the sun or the oceans can’t simply override this massive anthropogenic CO2 influence in the atmosphere. I mean, no … no way.
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.
This has been brewing much longer than the article would imply. I have reported the “stuck in Lodi” weather patterns over the Pacific Northwest for over 2 years. The sequence starts in the West and migrates over the next couple of years to the East.
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).
However, models that suggest the input to the Global Climate Models (infinite loop) are akin to the blind leading the blind.
Steve Keohane
http://ohioline.osu.edu/fse-fact/0005.html
From the above comments it looks even better, a double whammy so to speak.
Somebody on one of the posts here gave an excellent description of how the natural process occurs. Due to the inclination of the earth, in winter it gets no light and in summer less than the north in summer. Thus the “hole”. Thats putting it very simply but the main result is “ozone hole” is a myth, an artifical construct sold to protect an expiring patent.
In the same issue they have a piece about how the snow on Kilimanjaro has gone because the air is drier after all the trees were cut down around the mountain. ( I am sure I heard this explanation some years back) So that is two admissions in one issue.
The sickening thing is that after they have reversed their positions they will still not admit the sceptics were right all along, they will make out that new evidence came along and the sceptics had nothing to do with their new understanding: the sceptics will be remembered as a fringe minority of nutcases that just happened by lucky chance to be right.
William says:
September 25, 2010 at 6:52 am
..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.)
~
This is all very interesting.
William says:
“..affect higher latitudes on the planet where the geomagnetic field is weaker..”
Now if we could tie this into the South Atlantic Anomaly, being a huge, gaping, weak spot in earths magnetic field..
“..The low altitude trapped particle population is also influenced by secular changes in the geomagnetic field (8): the location of the centre of the geomagnetic dipole field drifts away from the centre of the Earth at a rate of about 2.5 km/year (the separation currently exceeds 500 km), and the magnetic moment decreases with time. The combined effect is a slow inward drift of the innermost regions of the radiation belts. The separation of the dipole centre from the Earth’s centre and the inclination of the magnetic axis with respect to the rotation axis produce a local depression in the low altitude magnetic field distribution at constant altitude. As the trapped particle population is tied to the magnetic field, the lowest altitude radiation environment (below about 1,000 km) peaks in the region where the magnetic field is depressed (1). This region is located to the south east of Brasil, and is called the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). Figures 4 and 5 represent a world map at 500 km altitude of the trapped proton (>10 MeV) and trapped electron (>1 MeV) distributions, respectively..”
http://www.oma.be/BIRA-IASB/Scientific/Topics/SpacePhysics/RadiationEnvironment3.html#2.4.2
Figure 4
http://www.spenvis.oma.be/help/background/traprad/psaa.gif
Figure5
http://www.oma.be/BIRA-IASB/Scientific/Images/Figure5.gif
William says: “.. 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..”
I have a deluded theory about that, dealing with such things as changing Interstellar Magnetic Field strengths as well as changes in the vector at which the Heliosphere during its orbit encounters them. Also a varying background around said fields. (Changing Interstellar vectors and changing magnetic fields)
The background has deluded us for years into thinking that it was all warm and ionized. We were unable to distinguish between the inside of the heliospheres edges and the outside medium. (the warm ionized mostly from within and not from with out.)
Thanks to Leif..
Try again before i get roasted for incompetence.
Due to the inclination of the earth, the South Pole in winter it gets no light and in summer less light than the north pole in summer.
I think that corrects it.
Great to see Nature feeling it has to give publicity to the solar/Earth climate link – must have been much gritting of teeth!
I suspect that if our climate had continued to warm over the last 15 years instead of going into a funk, the paper would never have seen the light of day. However, the truth will always out.
Henry@Stephen Fisher Wilder
I agree with your thinking.
But I still think that the reason why clouds are influenced to travel either more to the poles or more towards the equator has to do with earth’s electromagetic field and how this is affected by that of the sun’s.
Note my quote from the above:
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.”
So, as I suspected, the clouds do have electrical charges.
RobW says:
September 25, 2010 at 8:01 am
please explain the lack of any significant warming of the planet in the past decade while CO2 increased?
variations around a trend, this is also a possibility:
http://www.canada.com/technology/First+global+warming+global+dimming/1382084/story.html
Andrew30, the IPCC doesn’t claim that AGW is proven, germ theory likewise cannot be “proven”, some people believe that AIDS is not caused by a virus, others claim that AGW is not caused by elevated levels of GHG’s. Damn it, neither of the view points advanced by these groups can be dis-proven, so idiots think they must be right.
“so idiots think they must be right.”
Should have said: “based on this, some idiots think they must be right.”
Carla says: September 25, 2010 at 10:46 am
………..
And one should forget that all those magnetic giants and one or two minnows, found in the inner reaches of heliosphere, are not isolated islands, they are family of solar magnetic shield, led by their big ‘daddy’ engaged in constant defence of their heliospheric bubble from the galactic intruders.
For it we should be forever grateful, despite all the warmth from the sun, without the magnetic shield there would be no life on this little blue planet.