Study sheds new light on how the sun affects the Earth's climate

S0 . . . , a short study (3 yrs out of 12+ yer solar cycle), with little or no statistical significance, appears to support the AGW religious dogma.
I expect we’ll hear the “conclusions” minus the caveats for the next 8 months while fall and winter engulfs the northern hemisphere in drizzle and snow.

Hi.
As far as I understand a lot of people seem to think that all science that lessens the importance of CO2 in the global warming models are blocked from being published.
Indeed, politics play a great deal in todays science. But doesn’t this research, among others, show that this claim might be exaggerated?
Cheers

“During maxima the sun emits more ultraviolet radiation, which is absorbed by the stratosphere.This warms up.”
Anthony, the earlier thread said the above. Only now is it clear that an active sun has a net cooling effect hence the cooling of the stratosphere which we saw throughout the late 20th century warming period until about 1996 when it stopped cooling and now there is a slight stratospheric warming just as the sun entered it’s downswing in activity.
As I previously said, a reversal of the sign of the net solar effect on the atmosphere is critical to my New Climate Model and here we have it confirmed.
Did anyone else ever propose such a thing ?
It appears that the mesosphere also cooled when the sun was more active:
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/Australian-Scientists-Probe-Distant-Clouds-With-Giant-Antarctic-Laser-103849314.html

Is this the same thing as when you have a fever, you get the chills? Inverse metabolic reaction?

enough says:
October 6, 2010 at 5:11 pm
“Great, so all of a sudden an increasing sun has mask global warming by cooling earth”
In a sense, yes but that warming was from the oceans and not from more CO2.
Those late 20th century El Ninos were large and persistent. Given the vast energy carrying ability of water as opposed to air they could well have warmed the troposphere much more during a time of a quiet sun.
As it is the active sun then ameliorated the ocean warming just as the quiet sun now will ameliorate the developing ocean cooling.
The mid latitudes may get severe winters but the poles should be a little warmer with the oceans not yet especially cold after the current strong La Nina has dissipated. The ocean setup is well short of LIA conditions as yet.

“today’s study improves our understanding of how the Sun influences our climate”
Really?

Our results, simulated with a radiative-photochemical model, are consistent with contemporaneous measurements of ozone from the Aura-MLS satellite, although the short time period makes attribution to solar effects difficult. We also show that solar radiative forcing of surface climate – based on the SIM data – is out of phase with solar activity. Although there is currently insufficient observational evidence to establish that the spectral variations observed by SIM are characteristic of other solar cycles, our findings raise the possibility that the effects of solar variability on temperature throughout the atmosphere may be contrary to current expectations.

->Bin … next!

This climate model is overweight.
Sure she has shapely curves, a little top heavy maybe, but her ankles are thin.
I know she wobbles a lot on the walk, and amongst her Peers she’s often lusted after,
but seldom loved, except by her stalkers.
True the youth of the world do like to emulate her, and she has powerful friends,
but surely the writing is on the wall, She must know her career is over.
When she says things like:
“The Sun has nothing to do with my career”
And next week,
“The Sun has been hiding what’s really going on with my career”
I have to scratch my head and wonder, has the peroxide started to get to her?
It seems to have affected her fans.

“Also please please pay attention to the bolded (mine) caveat by professor Haigh below about the duration of the study. “……………………….sure, thanks, you’ve once again rendered me speechless. I hadn’t realized they put any weight into the sun’s warming effect to begin with. Are they asserting the sun has a cooling effect on the earth? That’s….wt? You know, I missed that on the first go around. 😐

AGWeird says:
October 6, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Hi.
As far as I understand a lot of people seem to think that all science that lessens the importance of CO2 in the global warming models are blocked from being published.
Indeed, politics play a great deal in todays science. But doesn’t this research, among others, show that this claim might be exaggerated?
Cheers
Sorry AGWeird – you got your reasoning backwards.
If a more active sun has been cooling the Earth, and yet we have seen warming during an active sun phase (late 20th Century) – then the role of CO2 and other GHGs is enhanced.
This notion neatly supports the AGW dogma… and is at no risk of being blocked from publication or from grant solicitation.

Didn’t a paper mentioned here last month confirm a 1-2 year lag time before the sun’s warming/cooling effect was noticed? I think that would explain the problem with the (cherry picked?) dates of 2004-2007.

I’m sure many posed the question before but I missed the answer.
What would be the temp. of the earth if there was no Sun?
If we take the CO2 hypotheses at face value, would we need only a minimal input from the Sun to maintain our climate provided we keep producing more and more CO2?
I read many of the posts and linked PDFs etc. but I still come back to this basic question.
What if the Sun would reduce its output by half?
I’m not trying to be funny.
Thanks

And right on cue over at the Guardian …
Sun’s role in warming the planet may be overestimated, study finds

Pamela Gray says:
October 6, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Except that the oceans are the storage battery, the trade winds are the wiring, but it is ultimately the Sun + tidal forces that is the alternator (strong nuclear/gravity). How it gets here and is distributed is another story.

AJB says:
October 6, 2010 at 8:28 pm
There they go again: Without sunlight generated by fusion in the Sun to ostensibly provide the energy that is held by combined elements formed in stellar cores which is released by ignition of biomass from ancient photosynthesis in turn energized by the Sun…
What was it that the Sun is overestimated to have caused???
Whoop, there it is: The Sun is nothing more than a stellar show off, always hogging the limelight.

In the early 1990s, the NSF published a pamphlet of about 100 pages relating the sun’s activity to temperatures as known then (and now as well, unless you are on the hockey team).
The paper showed that two ions whose abundance are affected by the amount of solar radiation — 10Be and 14C — were correlated with the higher temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period and the colder temperatures of the Little Ice Age. That is to say, the levels of each rose and fell with the temperatures. (I forget which was correlated and which was anti-correlated, but both moved in concert with temperatures.)
This study, which admittedly is only 3 years long, goes against that earlier study, which covered over 1,000 years.
I haven’t been able to access the paper itself, so this may be in error — but if there is more energy from the sun reaching the earth when the sun is sending less energy to the earth, then doesn’t that speak to reasons other than the sun’s activity for the increase in energy from the sun reaching the earth?

They are going to have to get Winston Smith from the Department of Truth to destroy all the previous papers, and for Squeeler to change the rules and issue an ‘adjustment’ from Comrade Napolean.

The short duration of the MODELING in this study is suspicious as well as the timing of the “sun affects the Earth’s climate” study release, sounds like desperation to me!
Have you notices the rash, onslaught/flood of remodelled, regurgitated doom and gloom climate disasters and end time scenarios on every media outlet of late?
They are priming the uninformed up for the Cancun climate disruption conference, the bad news the hand wringing and phoney tears of the pampered delegates.
There is a choking desperation in the warmist rehashed end time releases and articles, the pitiful cries of foul and how nasty those rotten cheating oil rich sceptics are.
The warmist are in panic mode, so for them were no amount of distortion is to much, as evidenced in every foolish thing they say and every idiotic move they make!
On a bright note the US midterm elections are going to drop a huge brick on this whole global warming or climate change or climate disruption crowd and the greedy power hungry politicos who desperately want maximum control and money from the taxpayers of the west.
Watch out the climate crazy governments of the UK, New Zealand and Australia, the climate jig is almost up for you too without the USA, China, India and a host of others country’s just starting to realize the real cost of this whole CO2 rush off the cliff madness.
For example see:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,691194,00.html
Merkel Abandons Aim of Binding Climate Agreement
A big change is coming and it’s not just the weather.

I would be upset to have my name associated with this abortion of scientific malfeasance.
just wow…. round file basket ball anyone?

All this wonderful information on global warming baffles me as to why the normal condition for this planet is ice ages. How come they get all that warming information from ice cores tens of thousands of years old?

So when the sun turns into a red giant I need to buy some furs to keep warm. This makes sense to me and the man in the white coat agreed.

D. Patterson says:
October 6, 2010 at 10:30 pm…..
Another terrific comment.
This mushroom has now been exposed to the light. “Nature” loves it.
So this is a truly well fertilized cave offering that may attract future NASSA $’s, but I suspect that it will likely wilt before long. Afterall, it now carries the “no problem” slogan, and people will be looking for the button. And papers like this carry the theme of the button holders. Talk about a backfire with collateral damage.

“twawki says:
October 6, 2010 at 8:27 pm
What about how the previous solar maximum caused greater heat storage in the oceans which takes time to be released. As the sun cools of course there will be a delayed response by the oceans and thus the atmosphere. As the oceans cool (which they are doing) whilst the sun goes on with low activity – then we will see some serious cooling of the atmosphere (based on raw figures of properly calibrated records of course).”
Exactly, because the solar induced cooling of the atmosphere when the sun is more active allows the jets to shift poleward along with their associated cloud bands to reduce the angle of incidence of solar energy onto the clouds thereby decreasing global albedo for more energy entering the oceans.
The oceans are always in control as Pamela said but the level of solar activity modulates the oceanic effects from above by varying the upward energy flux to space.

“… Models predict lags of 0–20 years due to the thermal inertia of the climate system [Rind et al., 1999; Schwartz, 2007]. Indeed, comparisons between Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature and solar activity reconstructions revealed lags of 10–30 and 6–12 years for the time periods 1650–1850 and 1610 – 2000, respectively [Waple et al., 2002; Scafetta and West, 2007]. However, sun-climate relationships become weaker over the last millenium. This is due to the fact that in many proxy records influences of other forcings and internal variability (e.g., North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), El Nin ̃o Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and monsoon) become at least temporarily dominant. In addition…”
Source: http://lch.web.psi.ch/files/Publikationen/analytic/Eichleretal_GRL2009.pdf

“Energy will only escape faster if there’s more energy available to begin with. I did read the formula somewhere that it takes some 4x the energy to maintain a heat of double? Correct me if I’m wrong.”
That only applies to simple radiative transfers.
What we have here is a solar induced change in the speed of the hydrological cycle as the level of solar variability alters the temperature of the stratosphere and thus the intensity of the inversion at the tropopause.
That results in changes of upward energy flux from surface to stratosphere partly independent of radiative processes but of course the faster upward flux from surface to tropopause does place more energy at the tropopause so that from there upward the radiative flux has more energy to play with as per your comment.
As per my hypothesis the relevant other warming is the oceans surface temperatures and not CO2. The entire climate change phenomenon is a result of interplay between bottom up oceanic forcing and top down solar forcing and if CO2 has any effect at all then it will only be an unmeasurable miniscule change to the speed of the hydrological cycle with a miniscule shift of the jets due to faster evaporation at the surface from more downward directed IR.
That is why the poleward shift of the jets during a period of active sun was always inconsistent with AGW theory. AGW theory in requiring a slowdown of energy transfer from troposphere to stratosphere would require more equatorward jets and a slower hydrological cycle which does not happen. The models reflect that poleward shift but have no means of recognising it as a sign of change in the speed of upward energy transfer because they do not accurately model clouds, convection and the effect of the phase changes of water on a global basis. A critical omission as it now turns out because logic then leads to a change in the sign of the solar effect on the atmosphere being necessary. Just as Dr. Haigh has now discovered with actual measurements.

According to the eurekalert article you quote:
“Overall solar activity has been increasing over the past century, so the researchers believe it is possible that during this period, the Sun has been contributing a small cooling effect, rather than a small warming effect as had previously been thought.”
Perhaps I missed an update along the way, but I thought that the latest results had demonstrated that for SW at least, smoothed solar activity had been *constant* over the 20th century (and hence SW is unlikely to have caused observed temperature changes during the first half of that century). Can anyone set me right?

rbateman says:

AJB says:
October 6, 2010 at 8:28 pm

There they go again: Without sunlight generated by fusion in the Sun to ostensibly provide the energy that is held by combined elements formed in stellar cores which is released by ignition of biomass from ancient photosynthesis in turn energized by the Sun…
What was it that the Sun is overestimated to have caused???

You messed it up so badly! The new research shows that the variations of the Sun output that contribute to the 11-year cycle do not have such a significant effect to explain the changes in the climate.
Instead of picking this up, you twist and say “Oh, the Sun, we need the Sun otherwise there would be no life on this planet”. Read up again: the new research says that the Sun variations in the output (11-year output) do not have a significant effect on the climate.

“Adrian Mann says:
October 7, 2010 at 12:58 am
From the infographic: “Visible light filters through the atmosphere and warms the oceans.”
Visible light? Sorry, I thought that it was infrared that did the thing…”
Visible light and solar shortwave goes in up to 200 metres. Infra red gets converted instantly to latent heat via enhanced evaporation for no significant warming effect and possibly a net cooling effect due to evaporation being a net cooling process.

Tune in next week to see if they get a grant to study the other 8(+) years of a solar cycle.

Stephen Wilde says: October 7, 2010 at 12:18 am
“What we have here is a solar induced change in the speed of the hydrological cycle as the level of solar variability alters the temperature of the stratosphere and thus the intensity of the inversion at the tropopause.”
Excellent response. It’s a very chaotic system but several pointers can lead to projection, at least on short time scales of maximum 60 year ocean cycles coupled with 11 year solar cycles. The oceans are definitely a damper with atmosphere having little long-term effect on climate, as differences in ocean temperature will influence weather all the way to the jet stream causing blocking anomalies and such.
I’d put my money on :
Milankovitch Cycles (very long term ~ 100Kya) -> Solar activity -> Oceanic oscillations -> Atmospheric climate (weather and climate variability)
I think they’re correctly ranked in importance, even though they play on each other and at times one or more will outforce the other

The Grantham Institute has benefitted from extraordinary funding for a marvelous new scientific apparatus. They are now examining climate science through the Looking Glass.
=====================

Well at least someone main stream (Sorry Antony you know what i mean i hope) has picked this up.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1318425/Suns-impact-climate-change-overestimated-new-study-claims.html

Graeme says:
October 6, 2010 at 7:32 pm
AGWeird says:
October 6, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Hi.
As far as I understand a lot of people seem to think that all science that lessens the importance of CO2 in the global warming models are blocked from being published.
Indeed, politics play a great deal in todays science. But doesn’t this research, among others, show that this claim might be exaggerated?
Cheers
Sorry AGWeird – you got your reasoning backwards.
If a more active sun has been cooling the Earth, and yet we have seen warming during an active sun phase (late 20th Century) – then the role of CO2 and other GHGs is enhanced.
This notion neatly supports the AGW dogma… and is at no risk of being blocked from publication or from grant solicitation.
And that is what this study is all about, CO2 being the driver.

The problem with existing climate models:
Guest post by Stephen Wilde: ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/06/a-new-and-effective-climate-model )
“If the power input from the sun changes then the effect is simply to speed up or slow down the hydrological cycle.”
YES! Finally, somebody understands that more energy increases circulation – and climate uncertainty:
The oceans are an atmosphere and climate system all their own, with energy transfers from ocean floor temps all the way to the surface (our) atmosphere. This “thermohaline” system as we call it, has been little understood. Much like the jet stream above our heads, it has supreme relevance, albeit somewhat slower influence, but its power can’t be negated, for 70% of the planet’s surface is ocean. That’s a massive influence.

Thanks Philip Bratby (Oct 6 11.47pm).
Further to Oct6th 9.28pm, I should also make clear of course there is Al-Gore-INCONVENIENT-TRUTH-correlation between solar activity and CO2 on time scales of millennia but that shows that Temperatures DRIVE CO2 – the reverse of the warmers’ claim.
When I was a student and doing research in Imperial evidenced-based science WAS at the fore; now however it appears spin rules.
Re Stephen Wilde all talk of Ocean feedbacks etc is important but they are NOT the cause of climate change. They ARE climate change. Our task is to identify the drivers – and that is NOT CO2 but, evidence shows, solar activity modulated by lunar effects.
Forget about if one knows or doesn’t know how it all works. Many things – like eggs (but not oval shaped stones) turn into chickens (mostly) even if we don’t know why or how. LOOK at the evidence:- We predicted that solar activity would drive last gasps and then the termination of the West Russian Heat wave and the Pakistan super-deluges and you can SEE the chain of events from double-sunspot flares to the events we predicted from a long time ahead where and when we said:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6165
And for discussion with Stephen Wilde please see COMMENTS in
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3307&linkbox=true&position=5
Cheers Piers

“How would the CFC theory fit into all this? (see my 12.40 am that you have already referenced)
tonyb”
Hi Tony,
It suggests that the entire process is entirely natural with the CFC and CO2 propositions being red herrings at best.

Stephen Wilde says:
October 7, 2010 at 6:59 am
Japanese philosophers advice: “Cold heads, warm feet”, however these guys follow the contrary principle: “Hot heads, cold feet”. It is not only a matter of teaching them your “Hot Water Bottle Effect”(HWBE) but also teach them where to put the hot water bottle on.

Cool, flamboyant, nice, beautiful, intellectual, gays, free thinkers, artist, poets, nature lovers, charming atheists, Gaia lovers, haters of those nasty and decadent people who work for a living, sons and daughters of Mommy and Daddy, equally qualified and selected people; summarizing: “They”

This has been picked up by today’s Daily Express “SOLAR PROBE WARMS HOPES OF CLIMATE CHANGE SCEPTICS”
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/203989/Solar-probe-warms-hopes-of-climate-change-sceptics
An interesting and common sense comment is my by Lord Monckton:-
“You really have to look at a much bigger time-scale, not just three years. But we know there’s a very close correlation between changes in temperature of the earth’s surface and solar activity.”
Lord Monckton added: “The conclusion this report comes to is consistent with the growing movement among solar physicists that the sun has a much greater effect on climate change than the straight-forward measurable changes in its output would lead us to suspect.”
The sun drives climate by many different energy transfer processes, which are inextricably to the Earth/Moon and the rest of the solar system. Climate is simply the long term average (200y) of our (poorly) observed weather and out comes depend on the inherent deterministic chaos which drives this complex, interlinked, turbulent system.

All you folks are thinking yourselves into a puddle of mush. The earth heats up when people get fat. Fat people absorb more solar energy than skinny people. The effect is multiplied when fat people wear dark clothing (typically black) which tends to camouflage their girth. Al Gore should be required to wear a white sheet during daylight hours.
Claude Harvey

Anthony,
Where you normally place things very well in perspective, to my knowledge, you make a mistake here in the intro. The article in New Scientist talks about the ways in which the sun’s activity affects the earth’s temperature. More activity gives higher temperatures. The new article in Nature is exactly the opposite. More activity gives lower temperatures on earth. The only thing that is the same in both articles is that prof Joanna D. Haigh is one of the authors. The new article will fuel the thoughts that the sun has played no role in the warming at the end of the last century and it is going around the globe now at record speed.
To me it is counter intuitive but it is quite a piece of independent thinking and as such worth more study.

I am awaiting , probably still this month just before the us mid-term elections the continuation of this study , more a political pamphlet that the sun is cooling earth , even as a joke it is making you cry , that all warming is due to increasing carbondioxide levels . Yeah , the sun would only help us freeze to death . So carbondioxide is so powerful that a new ice-age would be out of the question . Would not everybody be happy to hear this . The proven scientific discussion is starting to get real interesting nowadays .

vukcevic says:
October 7, 2010 at 11:32 am
Did you see this?:
Heliospheric magnetic field Vs earthquake
http://daltonsminima.altervista.org/?p=11690 🙂

Some contributors seem not to realise that the effect described is limited initially to the stratosphere and mesosphere.
The temperature of the entire climate system including the oceans and troposphere is not immediately affected and initially, if ocean cycles are favourable, the temperature of the troposphere may indeed move in the opposite direction to that of the stratosphere.
The real effect follows on some time later as the changed temperature at the tropopause changes air circulation positioning to shift the rest of the globe fitfully with many stops and starts between net warming and net cooling.
Because the oceans are so powerful the short term effects are small and chaotic. It takes a century or more for solar induced changes to become significant. Say 0.7C per century or whatever it is we have observed and even the bulk of that would be ocean induced. The ocean cycles seem to take 1000 to 1500 years as energy moves along the horizontal track of the thermohaline circulation.

Piers Corbyn was a very active Imperial College Students Union President when I was there 1969-71. I am quite disgusted to find that Imperial College now has a Climate Change research unit that seems to be a propaganda arm of the UK government. Now independent of London University, it used to be a world-renowned institution. Incidentally Brian Hoskins was mentioned quite freqently in Clinategate emails.

What a load of tosh. It is a sign of desperation

Read this a few hours ago but was busy on other things, (communicating with R. North, & NotoO2.org, some other stuff too,) but my immediate thought was, ‘Oh NO, it’s worse than we thought!
DaveE.

“The lag between solar variations and ocean lag is approximately 3 months. It’s visible in the seasonal cycle of SST”.
Apples and pears, Bob. You’ll be asking me to consider diurnal variations next.
I call the seasonal changes small compared to the changes from MWP to LIA to date.
I regard the changes caused by individual solar events within a single year as chaotic and even smaller. Only on a multidecadal basis does the underlying signal start to emerge and on a multicentennial basis it becomes clear enough to anyone prepared to see what is in front of their noses.
It is the major long term background trends and the timing of changes in those trends that I am concerned with. I have tried to get you to look at the broader long term picture several times already but you told me you have no interest in that and I accept your decision.

Sounds to me like this paper is actually setting the stage for hedging their bets in preparation for the possibility of an up and coming cooling phase… ie: the next solar cycle is expected to be a strong one, so hence they’ll be able to say that the “temporary” cooling glitch is “explained” via the sun.
The exact same way they’ve hedged their bets with : drought/rain, more storms/less storms, more snow/less snow, extreme heat/extreme cold, etc etc.
The IPCC credits ONLY solar irradiance in the AR4… meanwhile solar physicists understand there’s a hell of a lot more to solar output than just that. These guys are just simply trying to now slip the physics in under the radar in baby steps.
Watch and see how some of these solar physics will be accounted for in the IPCC’s AR5 (in the ‘uncertainties’ section)… I don’t know about you guys, but I’ll be laughing my butt off watching the IPCC try to play catch up with real science – otherwise known as, physics.
Pass the popcorn.

I must stop right now and clear up some statements I made here on WUWT way back in last winter. On some story of the sun’s influence on the climate I stated that this minimum if real would likely last to 209x something and even made some remarks about the likely repeat near mid 2390’s.
MVB just placed some links to some very interesting articles and papers and one by Willie Soon, physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Steven H. Yaskell, Ericsson Radio Systems in Sweden titled “Year with out a Summer” (https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/GoldbergMay05-d/Summer_of_1816.pdf) rather startled me. Within the text I came across the same dates and at first thought they might just have read my statements here. Silly me. It was written in 2003 so I must tell everyone that my research pointing to those dates did not come form their paper and had nothing to do with the center of mass inertia as they were questionably mentioning of all possibilities. It is curious though how those dates fall so very close to each other. That is interesting and deserves some deeper peering.
My study has been more on solar harmonics. Since my major was physiology I have study an incredible number of wave or harmonic functions from most areas of any living creature. Why do these processes exist? It’s physics at the lowest level. This is one area I can say a rather firm ‘belief’ in. I don’t care if you are speaking of the universe, a galaxy, solar system, or the bodies that form them, there is always many harmonic processes in play. Many are like clockwork, the tides, the seasons, the diurnal cycle, on larger to the Milankovitch cycles.
These are all real with real physics reasons for their cyclic nature and that is the only one’s I will even consider real. Cycles have gotten a bad rap due to the millions of different cycles you can create, especially now with a computer on your desk, that have no proven effect and no physics behind the cause. Those are out of my realm and the one I’m about to describe might fall right in that basket.
Some cycles, as volcano’s eruptions or tropical storms that though we know the physics behind the cause, there are too many unknown or poorly measured parameters to ever get an remotely real answer let alone predict them. Others are accurate to a very fine factor as the tides.
But it seems real to know that our sun, inherently simple in principle, being a ball of gases with a fusion reactor at it’s core has some internal cyclic processes in play. Everyone knows of the 11 year cycle. But there are deeper cycles and overlying harmonics that vary from about two years to four hundred years to take one beat or cycle best I can tell. Overlay this with the fact that the internal heat takes a long, long time to reach the surface which smoothes any sharp divisions you would see if deep within and near the fusion core.
I’m going to throw some results I have come up with and any solar physicist that want to delve deeper or just keep in the back of your mind to help me see if this is real or not, have at it. Seems there is a sub-harmonic or beat of some 2.776 years the best I can compute it beginning in September 1699. This beat is not always in phase with the realized cycle we see in the sunspot counts as a proxy to the magnetic activity. This misalignment might have something to do with these periods of extreme suppression (grand minimums) or enhancement (super maximums) in the magnetic or thermal activity. And if you have not multiplied, four of these beats are 11.1 years or the established 11 year cycle.
One thing I have noticed though is these beats tend to fall nearly exactly on the edges (mid of last maximum and next minimum) between all major transition as out of Maunder, into and out of the Dalton period or in mid-1936 that began the grand maximum period we just exited from or January 2008 when the sun went quiet. If you average all 28 past 11 year cycles since 1700 that puts an average length at 11.107 years. It also places one of these divisions at the end of September 2010, could be extra active, totally quite, or anything in between. I simply don’t know. Need some physics and observation help.
Well, there it is, there have been 112 of these beats between September 1699 and September 2010 and I simply don’t know why they seem to be there with some possible physics behind them. If not, they are just another curiosity. BTW, within these beat’s harmonics there seems to be major ones falling within months of 1711, 1811, 1911, 201? which prompted my extension to 209? and the perk-up of the sun again and if the 400 years is cyclical holds, 239?. Of course, this is if the sun does actually have deep regular cycles in it’s convection layer and/or the core.
So Drs Soon and Yaskell, I didn’t mean to appear that I was merely taking your numbers from your paper and merely posting here as mine.
If any real science could emerge from WUWT, that would be so fantastic! (but it has to be real, and proper)

vukcevic says:
October 7, 2010 at 4:45 am
Hi Tony
Mr Wild is welcome to it. I don’t mind occasionally being shot at, but facing whole firing squad, no thanks.
giggling..
Where is the interstellar background in all this.. well Carla it isn’t mentioned. But.. why not? They keep talking about cosmic rays like some how these cosmic rays are evenly distrubted in the interstellar regions around the solar system. Must be there is no interstellar background.. what are you talking about?
An even distribution of cosmic rays on all time scales modulated by solar cycles..hahahhahahhaha
Are you happy now? .. yes thank you. And a Happy Friday to all.

Bob,
The solar effect is slow and gradual over a 1000 year cycle or more with much variability along the way. The issue of short term lagging effects is not relevant on such timescales and in any event I have already often proposed a high degree of independence in the long term ocean cycles that overrides the issue of lags.
The only multicentennial lag that I have proposed is that a period of high solar activity moves the jets poleward to allow more energy into the oceans and then that pulse travels the length of the thermohaline circulation to emerge 1000 to 1500 years later when it’s climate effects are themselves modified by the state of the sun at that time
The total temperature swing over the period is not as large as you say the seasonal swing is but it is far larger in terms of accumulation and dissipation of total ocean heat content. The main effect on climate is not from a large change in the temperature of the entire system but lies in the latitudinal position of the jets relative to the regions below them. The system works to smooth out variability in total system energy content and is very effective at doing so.
We are not discussing comparable phenomena. Apples and Pears.

It seems the inverse sign problem is indeed one of Houston proportions as Gavin admits
What is a surprise is that for the visible wavelengths, SIM seems to suggest that the irradiance changes are opposite in sign to the changes in the TSI. To be clear, while the TSI has decreased since 2003 (as part of the descent into the current solar minimum), SIM seems to indicate that the UV decreases are much larger than expected, while irradiance in visible bands has actually increased! This is counter to any current understanding of what controls irradiance on solar cycle timescales.
What are the implications of such a phenomena? Well, since the UV portion of the solar input is mostly absorbed in stratosphere, it is the visible and near-IR portions of the irradiance change that directly influence the lower atmosphere. Bigger changes in the UV also imply bigger changes in stratospheric ozone and temperature, and this influences the tropospheric radiative forcing too. Indeed, according to Haigh’s calculations, the combination of the two effects means that the net radiative forcing at the tropopause is opposite in sign to the TSI change. So during a solar minimum you would expect a warmer surface!
Much of the longer term variance in solar output has been hypothesised to follow what happens over the solar cycle and so if verified, this result would imply that all current attributions to solar variability of temperature changes in the lower atmosphere and surface ocean would be of the wrong sign. Mechanisms elucidated in multiple models from multiple groups would no longer have any validity. It would be shocking stuff indeed.
Conceivably, there might be another missing element (such as a cosmic-ray/cloud connection) that would counteract this physics and restore the expected sign of the change, but no-one has succeeded in finding any mechanism that would quantitatively give anything close the size of effect that would now be required

The issue of the correct sign for the solar effect on stratospheric temperatures is now gaining some momentum so let me try to share my reasoning in terms that are as simple as possible because I’m not currently aware of anyone else who figured it out before Joanna’s findings came to light.
i) I noted the poleward drift of the jets throughout the late 20th Century warming spell and on the face of it that was consistent with a warming troposphere. Clearly a warmer troposphere would invigorate the hydrological cycle and push the jets poleward and AGW theory recognised that with the models supporting just such a poleward shift. Indeed that poleward shift was supposed to be accompanied by a tropospheric hot spot as the enhanced upward energy flux was then constrained by extra GHGs so that the ‘surplus’ energy was retained in the troposphere and thereby denied to the stratosphere which then cooled as per observations and despite the ‘normal’ warming of the stratosphere that would otherwise have been expected from the highly active sun at the time. So far so good.
ii) But then around 2000 I noted that the jets had started moving equatorward again and no one said anything about it. To my mind that broke the expected (AGW) pattern and I was puzzled so I watched and thought and read but no one ever picked up on the point and not being a climate professional and being otherwise occupied in earning a living I did not raise the issue with anyone.
iii) Then the AGW thing reached a crescendo with Al Gore’s film and I felt that something was not right and started participating on the blogs.
iv) It soon became clear to me that the essential point was being missed by everyone, AGW proponents and sceptics alike. That is, if the poleward jets represent a faster hydrological cycle with energy being propelled upward faster yet no tropospheric hotspot where the energy is being backed up then how the hell can anyone assert that the energy being supplied to the stratosphere from below has been reduced by the presence of more CO2 in the troposphere. If anything the poleward shift of the jets inevitably implies that more CO2 results in energy being propelled upward faster not slower and of course that would be consistent with the observation that more downward IR from any additional CO2 gets converted instantly into latent heat by enhanced evaporation to be released higher up when condensation occurs. So for AGW theory to have been correct we would have to have seen that hot spot at the top of the troposphere and the presence of that hotspot would have prevented the jets moving poleward, indeed it should have sent them equatorward instead because it would have had the same effect as a reduction of the height of the tropopause and an enhancement of the intensity of the tropopause.
v) So if the stratosphere was not being cooled by a dearth of energy from below it must be cooling from an even greater increase of energy flowing upward.
vi) Joanna Haigh’s observations, if verified, prove that to be the case. Thus AGW theory collapses totally and we have to dump all existing climate models and theories except mine which is the only hypothesis that anticipated those observations and accommodates them in the overall narrative.
At the base of all this is the simple failure of anyone to note the start of the equatorward shift in the jets around 2000. Everything I say is a simple logical extrapolation from what should have been the obvious implications of that change in trend as regards jetstream behaviour . The climate establishment clearly took it’s eye off the ball and has led us a merry dance for at least ten years.
It is for others to decide whether there has been fraud or simply gross negligence.

The issue of the correct sign for the solar effect on stratospheric temperatures is now gaining some momentum so let me try to share my reasoning in terms that are as simple as possible because I’m not currently aware of anyone else who figured it out before Joanna’s findings came to light.
i) I noted the poleward drift of the jets throughout the late 20th Century warming spell and on the face of it that was consistent with a warming troposphere. Clearly a warmer troposphere would invigorate the hydrological cycle and push the jets poleward and AGW theory recognised that with the models supporting just such a poleward shift. Indeed that poleward shift was supposed to be accompanied by a tropospheric hot spot as the enhanced upward energy flux was then constrained by extra GHGs so that the ‘surplus’ energy was retained in the troposphere and thereby denied to the stratosphere which then cooled as per observations and despite the ‘normal’ warming of the stratosphere that would otherwise have been expected from the highly active sun at the time. So far so good.
ii) But then around 2000 I noted that the jets had started moving equatorward again and no one said anything about it. To my mind that broke the expected (AGW) pattern and I was puzzled so I watched and thought and read but no one ever picked up on the point and not being a climate professional and being otherwise occupied in earning a living I did not raise the issue with anyone.
iii) Then the AGW thing reached a crescendo with Al Gore’s film and I felt that something was not right and started participating on the blogs.
iv) It soon became clear to me that the essential point was being missed by everyone, AGW proponents and sceptics alike. That is, if the poleward jets represent a faster hydrological cycle with energy being propelled upward faster yet no tropospheric hotspot where the energy is being backed up then how the hell can anyone assert that the energy being supplied to the stratosphere from below has been reduced by the presence of more CO2 in the troposphere. If anything the poleward shift of the jets inevitably implies that more CO2 results in energy being propelled upward faster not slower and of course that would be consistent with the observation that more downward IR from any additional CO2 gets converted instantly into latent heat by enhanced evaporation to be released higher up when condensation occurs. So for AGW theory to have been correct we would have to have seen that hot spot at the top of the troposphere and the presence of that hotspot would have prevented the jets moving poleward, indeed it should have sent them equatorward instead because it would have had the same effect as a reduction of the height of the tropopause and an enhancement of the intensity of the tropopause.
v) So if the stratosphere was not being cooled by a dearth of energy from below it must be cooling from an even greater increase of energy flowing upward.
vi) Joanna Haigh’s observations, if verified, prove that to be the case. Thus AGW theory collapses totally and we have to dump all existing climate models and theories except mine which is the only hypothesis that anticipated those observations and accommodates them in the overall narrative.
At the base of all this is the simple failure of anyone to note the start of the equatorward shift in the jets around 2000. Everything I say is a simple logical extrapolation from what should have been the obvious implications of that change in trend as regards jetstream behaviour . The climate establishment clearly took it’s eye off the ball and has led us a merry dance for at least ten years.
It is for others to decide whether there has been fraud or simply gross negligence.

Bill H
You’ve got the basic essentials but I’m not sure that it is necessary to invoke a shift in magnetic fields though such shifts may occur.
The observed effects seem to be adequately explained by differential heating effects and a combination of fluid dynamics with radiative characteristics.
Still, I’m open to suggestions and some are very keen on magnetic explanations. Generally though I share Leif Svalgaards view that the effects would be too small.