From a new paper by Dr. Greg Kopp and Dr. Judith Lean, new finding on the solar minimum TSI in 2008:
The most probable value of total solar irradiance representative of solar minimum is 1360.8 ± 0.5 W m−2, lower than the canonical value of 1365.4 ± 1.3 W m−2 recommended a decade ago. This new value, measured by SORCE/TIM, is validated by irradiance comparisons to a NIST‐calibrated cryogenic radiometer in the new TSI Radiometer Facility. Uncorrected scattering and diffraction are shown to cause erroneously high readings in non‐TIM instruments.
That’s lower by 4.6 watts per square meter. This may mean that many climate models will have to be reinitialized if it is decided that this value they derive from SORCE is more accurate than the value established previously.
By way of a forcing comparison to this suggested revision, according to NOAA ESRL:
The total effective climate forcing for all GHGs including CO2 and ozone (O3) from the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1750 to the year 2000 is 2.63 watts per square meter.
So a change of 4.6 watts per square meter to the old baseline TSI is more than double the total GHG forcings. (Averaged over the earth’s curvature, it works out to about 0.85 watts per meter*) That’s still not chump change. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out in models. It is important to note this caveat from their abstract:
TIM’s lower solar irradiance value is not a change in the Sun’s output, whose variations it detects with stability comparable or superior to prior measurements; instead, its significance is in advancing the capability of monitoring solar irradiance variations.
Improved measurements of sun to advance understanding of climate change
From Eurekalert: WASHINGTON—Scientists have taken a major step toward accurately determining the amount of energy that the sun provides to Earth, and how variations in that energy may contribute to climate change.
In a new study of laboratory and satellite data, researchers report a lower value of that energy, known as total solar irradiance, than previously measured and demonstrate that the satellite instrument that made the measurement—which has a new optical design and was calibrated in a new way—has significantly improved the accuracy and consistency of such measurements.
The new findings give confidence, the researchers say, that other, newer satellites expected to launch starting early this year will measure total solar irradiance with adequate repeatability – and with little enough uncertainty – to help resolve the long-standing question of how significant a contributor solar fluctuations are to the rising average global temperature of the planet.
“Improved accuracies and stabilities in the long-term total solar irradiance record mean improved estimates of the sun’s influence on Earth’s climate,” said Greg Kopp of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) of the University of Colorado Boulder.
Kopp, who led the study, and Judith Lean of the Naval Research Laboratory, in Washington, D.C., published their findings today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
The new work will help advance scientists’ ability to understand the contribution of natural versus anthropogenic causes of climate change, the scientists said. That’s because the research improves the accuracy of the continuous, 32-year record of total solar irradiance, or TSI. Energy from the sun is the primary energy input driving Earth’s climate, which scientific consensus indicates has been warming since the Industrial Revolution.
Lean specializes in the effects of the sun on climate and space weather. She said, “Scientists estimating Earth’s climate sensitivities need accurate and stable solar irradiance records to know exactly how much warming to attribute to changes in the sun’s output, versus anthropogenic or other natural forcings.”
The new, lower TSI value was measured by the LASP-built Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) instrument on the NASA Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) spacecraft. Tests at a new calibration facility at LASP verify the lower TSI value. The ground-based calibration facility enables scientists to validate their instruments under on-orbit conditions against a reference standard calibrated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Before the development of the calibration facility, solar irradiance instruments would frequently return different measurements from each other, depending on their calibration. To maintain a long-term record of the sun’s output through time, scientists had to rely on overlapping measurements that allowed them to intercalibrate among instruments.
Kopp said, “The calibration facility indicates that the TIM is producing the most accurate total solar irradiance results to date, providing a baseline value that allows us to make the entire 32-year record more accurate. This baseline value will also help ensure that we can maintain this important climate data record for years into the future, reducing the risks from a potential gap in spacecraft measurements.”
Lean said, “We are eager to see how this lower irradiance value affects global climate models, which use various parameters to reproduce current climate: incoming solar radiation is a decisive factor. An improved and extended solar data record will make it easier for us to understand how fluctuations in the sun’s energy output over time affect temperatures, and how Earth’s climate responds to radiative forcing.”
Lean’s model, which is now adjusted to the new lower absolute TSI values, reproduces with high fidelity the TSI variations that TIM observes and indicates that solar irradiance levels during the recent prolonged solar minimum period were likely comparable to levels in past solar minima. Using this model, Lean estimates that solar variability produces about 0.1o Celsius (0.18o Fahrenheit) global warming during the 11-year solar cycle, but is likely not the main cause of global warming in the past three decades.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L01706, 7 PP., 2011
doi:10.1029/2010GL045777
A new, lower value of total solar irradiance: Evidence and climate significance
Greg Kopp
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Judith L. Lean
Space Science Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D. C., USA
The most accurate value of total solar irradiance during the 2008 solar minimum period is 1360.8 ± 0.5 W m-2 according to measurements from the Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) on NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) and a series of new radiometric laboratory tests. This value is significantly lower than the canonical value of
1365.4 ± 1.3 W m-2 established in the 1990s, which energy balance calculations and climate models currently use. Scattered light is a primary cause of the higher irradiance values measured by the earlier generation of solar radiometers in which the precision aperture defining the measured solar beam is located behind a larger, view-limiting aperture. In the TIM, the opposite order of these apertures precludes this spurious signal by limiting the light entering the instrument. We assess the accuracy and stability of irradiance measurements made since 1978 and the implications of instrument uncertainties and instabilities for climate research in comparison with the new TIM data. TIM’s lower solar irradiance value is not a change in the Sun’s output, whose variations it detects with stability comparable or superior to prior measurements; instead, its
significance is in advancing the capability of monitoring solar irradiance variations on climate-relevant time scales and in improving estimates of Earth energy balance, which the Sun initiates.
Received 7 October 2010; accepted 30 November 2010; published 14 January 2011.
Citation: Kopp, G., and J. L. Lean (2011), A new, lower value of total
solar irradiance: Evidence and climate significance, Geophys. Res.
Lett., 38, L01706, doi:10.1029/2010GL045777.
See the paper here (PDF)
big h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
* UPDATE: from ClimateWatcher in comments:
The TSI averaged over the earth’s surface area and the amount not reflected to space:
1/4 ( 1 – a ) * S
1/4 – the ratio of circle through which radiation passes to the surface are of sphere.
a – albedo ( let’s use 0.3 even though nobody knows for sure)
So the comparison should be
0.25 * 0.7 * 4.6 W/m^2
or about 0.85 W/m^2
That’s still not negligible but not a doubler.
Interesting to note that 0.85 W/m^2 was the amount the earth was supposedly
out of balance by per Hansen and Trenberth.
Given the uncertainty in Solar constant, albedo and mostly thermal emission,
there’s no way anyone really knows if the earth is out of balance or not.
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Anthony – I second Lucy’s request for a Solar Page, like your Sea Ice Page (which I think is great). Is there any chance you could make that happen? Thanks for all your excellent work keeping WUWT going!
That does it; after years and years of procrastinating, I am going to buy a snowblower when they go on sale in a couple of months.
The revision of total solar irradiance by 4.5 W/m2 (actually, 1.25 W/m2 on a whole-earth area average) goes to the bogus basis of certainty in the IPCC and CO2 claims of certainty.
Let’s use Trenbeth as an example. Trenbeth worries about a “missing” 0.85 +/- 0.12 W/m2: what IS the actual uncertainty? Annual orbital eccentricity and seasonal variation in albedo of +/- 7.7 W/m2 and 8.9 W/m2 at a planetary scale. Albedo variation at a local or climatic zone basis, considering monsoons, hurricanes and such, must be as great. Absorption due to variations in aerosols (themselves a function of preciptitation or humidit) is another factor. The end result is an annual variation of > 16.6 W/m2.
The calculation of an “average”, mean, median or mode is not time dependent, but as insolation and albedo (and others) are time-dependent, whatever shakes out over time is NOT and CANNOT be a simple, constant number. When Trenbeth and others look for or blame events on such things as a “missing” 0.85 +/- 0.12 W/m2 you must shake your head. The Earth’s climate is dynamic, not static in the moment or linearly changing in time.
The “noise” of the system is far greater than the claimed precision with which the climate scientists measure the parts. There is momentum and feedback going on to give us the stability we see. Anyone who exists outside his ivory condo knows this: at night it is cold, and during the day, warm, and warmer without clouds than with, except (often) at night. Feedback is huge. But is the feedback perfect to < 1 W/m2? And if it is, at what time level?
The averaged insolation now is calculated at 340.2 W/m2. It remains a mathematical construct of planetary variations by place and time. A 1.0 W/m2 amount is 0.29% difference. Measurement error is said to be 0.125 W/m2. Albedo measurements must be no better per measurement, but because the albedo changes often (estimated at 15-20% annually, with no multi-year component known to my understanding) , it cannot be said to be a constant, but a variation within limits (+/- 8.8 W/m2). The error of what is "missing", when viewed as part of a larger calculation, has to be much larger than +/- 0.85 W/m2.
Our desire for accuracy and precision is beyond what the natural world is giving us. We are looking for – and funding, and making legislation for – a signal much smaller than the noise because we assume that all the natural variations average out over short periods of time into a static constant.
Here we have an example of how poor our are: the insolation value changes by 1.15 W/m2, but climate change models have an effect of global proportions at the "missing" 0.85 W/m2 level. A long-term albedo change of 1% is 1.0 W/m2. The annual albedo change is (max-min) 17.7 W/m2 (+/- 4.4 W/m2, a rough estimate of range). What IS the long-term albedo? Unknown, as pointed out in a post above. 0.296 or 0.3 are two common numbers, separated by 1.4 W/m2. Trenbeth (and others) plants his flag in shifting sand.
We are quibbling over, as I wrote in a longer post elsewhere, the type of boots on the feet of gnats on the head of a pin. The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle applies at a macro-scale here. We can know what the climate is (a snapshot of weather, really) but not where it is going (except in general sense). Or we can know where it is going today precisely (momentary trends) but not where it is precisely (due to its wide variation). But not, to the level of precision and accuracy portrayed, both at the same time.
The temperature record, as well as that of precipitation, is the same. To those who feel that variations average out, consider why we have weather and not climate: local and time differences matter. There is nothing to say that the differences average out over one year, two years or 60. A dynamic system has its own rythmns: if we want to see evidence of CAGW, what we measure and claim as "the anthropogenic footprint" must be a significant part of the rolling variation not just measurement error.
rusmike check amsu satellite temps way down BELOW anomaly hmmmm plesae stop lying you have been caught out for the record LOL
Latest from Dr. Hathaway
SSN 24 = 60
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif
rbatemen.
‘The GCM’s are not radically altered by the lower TSI baseline, to the extent that they will still spit out the same bad climate forecasts, as long as they are fed with tampered surface station data.”
The input files for GCMs do not include surface station data.
This paper is interesting, but there are some points that need to be clarified.
1) What it is done is to recalibrate the TSI satellite composite record on TIM measurements. This gives a 4-5 W/m^2 lower level for the solar constant. If this is correct, it is further evidence that the current climate model are extremely uncertain and that the apparent agreement with the temperature data is due to an ad hoc calibration of the models.
2) The hypothesis made on the paper is that TIM record is accurate. However, there may be the possibility that TIM sensors are less sensitive than the other satellite measurements. For example, even after a correction on ACRIM3 record acknowledged in the paper, ACRIM3 is still above TIM.
3) It is not just the level of TIM that it is lower. TIM record is also smoother than the other records (ACRIM3 and VIRGO). This would suggest that TIM is less sensitive and it has its own sensitivity problems.
The above analysis of TIM is essentially the work of Dr. Greg Kopp, it is very interesting and addresses some major solar activity measure problems people are having. Now, let us see the contribution of Lean to this paper. Here it is where I have some problem.
4) Lean is not an expert in satellite measurement; she has made a TSI proxy model that is plotted in the figure. The TSI proxy model by Lean seriously diverges from all TSI satellite measurements, as evident in Fig 3b of the paper. Lean proxy model does not show any trend at all during the last 30 years, which appears quite unphysical. The reason why this model does not show any trend is that it uses faculae and sunspot assuming that the solar background irradiance is constant. Evidently, in this way all solar minima, when no significant sunspots nor faculae are observed, appear all equally leveled by construction!
5) Lean is very careful in ignoring other papers (including mine) on the solar irradiance records and solar effect on climate. My papers are quite fair in acknowledging the existence of a still unsolved controversy about the trend of TSI. This controversy refers mostly to the NIMBUS7 record during the ACRIM gap (1989-1992) that has been severely altered downward by the VIRGO group to get their composite, which does not show any significant trend during the last 30 years.
6) The reason why people have believed in the VIRGO satellite composite which is made of significant alteration of the published satellite records is because VIRGO composite (once the published TSI records are appropriately altered) appears to better agree with Lean TSI model (Frohlich C. and J. Lean, GRL). This makes a circular reasoning argument.
7) However, Lean model still fails to reproduce even the latest satellite records. In particular, there is a wide agreement among the TSI experimentalist that the minimum in 2008 is significantly lower than the minimum in 1996. This behavior is not seen in Lean’s model, as the figure of above shows.
8) Lean appears to ignore that, as published in my paper (Scafetta and Willson, 2009), the experimental team of Nimbus7 have rejected the Virgo presumed corrections as incompatible with the physics of the instruments and that Nimbus7 is compatible with other TSI proxy models.
9) Consequently, it cannot be ruled out that TSI increased from 1980 to 2000 and decreased afterward. I discuss these issues in my own papers (for example Scafetta 2009, 2010 J. Atm. and Solar.-Terr. Phys) that would imply that the sun contributed significantly to the current warm period between 1970 and 2000.
10) Lean’s climate model is just a regression of the forcings against the temperature. This model in unphysical because the climate system processes the forcings, such as the TSI. Lean’s model simply ignores the heat capacity of the climate system, which would induce a gradual change. In the case of the Sun this would imply a slow response of the climate to solar increase, as seen since the LIA and the 1900. Thus, the solar effect signature on climate may present trends even when it is constant if previously it was rising. These things are elementary physics and are extensively explained in my papers and in all climate model papers.
11) Thus, the conclusion that the sun did not contribute the warming from 1980 to 2000, as concluded in the paper, is questionable. It is based on the assumption that solar activity is constant during the last 30 year and that climate responds with zero heat capacity to radiative forcing.
References about papers are found in
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/
and here at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/18/scafetta-on-tsi-and-surface-temperature/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/14/dr-nicolas-scaffeta-summarizes-why-the-anthropogenic-theory-proposed-by-the-ipcc-should-be-questioned/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/04/new-scafetta-paper-his-celestial-model-outperforms-giss/
I’m a little confused (nothing new). I keep seeing people trying to manipulate this calculation of things like:
This doesn’t seem correct to me at all. I don’t profess to know much about this particular problem, however, I can say that I do distance calculations for GeoIP addresses problems, and the formula’s that I use for this are nothing so simplistic as they account for the curvature of the earth. One such common (simple) formula is d=sqrt((x2-x1)2 + (y2-y1)2), while other, more accurate get much more complex. I am not understanding this “divide by 4” approach. Seems to me, that the calculation in question here is even more complex than even my simple distance calculations. I picture a light bulb illuminating a large ball bearing. Just take a look at the reflection. That doesn’t appear to me to be a such a simple calculation.
Perhaps I am missing something important here (wouldn’t be the first time).
Other common calculation formula
Law of Cosines (spherical) | cos(b) = sin(a)*sin(c) + cos(a)*cos(c)*cos(B)
Law of Sines (spherical) | sin (B)/sin(b) = sin(A)/sin(a) = sin(C)/sin(c)
ARCCOS[ SIN(LAT1)*SIN(LAT2) + COS(LAT1)*COS(LAT2)*COS(LONG2-LONG1) ]
Or what I typically use:
distance = ( Earth Radius ) * arccos ( cos (90 – lat2) * cos (90 – lat1) + sin (90 – lat2) * sin (90 – lat1) * cos (lon2 – lon1) )
Am looking for my more fancy dandy earth formula (as earth is not a perfect sphere), but I can’t seem to find it, I don’t profess to be a mathematician by any means, just your typical dingbat programmer (I don’t do GCM’s, but I can tell you a whole lot about GCM’s that the GCM worshipers would rather you didn’t hear). 😉
Dr. Scafetta, I look forward to seeing you criticism published so we can heed a more balanced conclusion to this paper.
Little question for climate gurus here. I have read everywhere that sun could not be responsible for temperature increase we experienced, because sun irradiance does not change enough. It is between 1360 and 1363 w.m-2
It gives a 0.22% variation. Assuming the temperature of earth is not so far away from a black body law…it is Tearth=constant*radiation^0.25
So if the radiation changes 0.22% then Tearth should change 0.05%
0.05% of 288K is 0.15 degrees. For me it is not negligible as the global warming measured is often around 0.3degrees.
I do not understand why sun radiation change is not at all included in the “models”. How can they remove this input while it could be responsible for half the warming observed?
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 14, 2011 at 5:08 pm
..Quote: “Disagreement among overlapping observations, as apparent in Figure 3, indicates undetected drifts that suggest the TSI record is not sufficiently stable to discern solar changes on decadal time scales.“
PMOD TSI: SOHO keyhole effect, and possible degradation over time
http://www.leif.org/research/PMOD%20TSI-SOHO%20keyhole%20effect-degradation%20over%20time.pdf
nicola scafetta says:
January 15, 2011 at 6:27 pm
..3) It is not just the level of TIM that it is lower. TIM record is also smoother than the other records (ACRIM3 and VIRGO). This would suggest that TIM is less sensitive and it has its own sensitivity problems.
~
Thank you for the comments.
Hue Stun we have a problem.
All this data seems a little ‘cloudy,’ to me. Huh obscurred by clouds.
Another one bites the dust, and another ones gone..
Time to get back on this.
“Direct evidence for prolonged magnetic reconnection at a continuous
x-line within the heliospheric current sheet”
HCS reconnection occuring along the gravity cone .. sounds like a winner. The reconnection events providing the booster to the gravitational aspect.
“Lean’s model, which is now adjusted to the new lower absolute TSI values, reproduces with high fidelity the TSI variations that TIM observes and indicates that solar irradiance levels during the recent prolonged solar minimum period were likely comparable to levels in past solar minima.”
Given how unusual the latest solar minimum was, I find this statement astounding.
Mike
Mike Ramsey says:
January 17, 2011 at 6:42 am
Given how unusual the latest solar minimum was, I find this statement astounding.
I don’t think the latest solar minimum was all that unusual:
http://www.leif.org/research/Historical%20Solar%20Cycle%20Context.pdf
So that means the 1353 W/m^2 value that we used to use in the late 1950s and early 60s was not so far out of whack.
What is irritating about this new value; is that we still don’t know anything about how far out of whack the old 1353 number was.
If this was measured outside the earth’s atmosphere; then what is this talk about scattered light all about. Are they saying that their instrument scatters light or used to; and now they have fixed that; or is their scattering by material between the sun and the earth.
In any case what matters is what is seen by one square metre of the earth’s surface (outside the atmosphere) since that is the amount that is operated on by the atmospheric processes.
“”””” Squidly says:
January 15, 2011 at 11:12 pm
I’m a little confused (nothing new). I keep seeing people trying to manipulate this calculation of things like: “””””
Squidly. What it is that you are missing is simply that the area of a circle is pi.r^2, while the area of a sphere is 4.pi.r^2.
So the sun illuminates a circular area, which total is spread over one hemisphere, and the other hemisphere receives nothing; wso the average receipt for the whole earth surface is simply 1/4 of the amount that falls on the circular intercept area. Unfortunatel the earth responds in real time to the instantaneous solar flux; and not to the average, since earth does not have infinited thermal conductivity. And since the Temperature-Energy relationship is highly non-linear; then working with averages gives the wrong result. The illuminated part of the earth surface gets very much hotter than it would if it received 1/4 of that amount continuously; and if it gets much hotter, it also radiates much more LWIR radiant energy, and so it cools faster than their average rate says. The earth’s hottest dryest deserts are it principal thermal cooling mechanisms. The polar regions do very little cooling of the earth.