This is a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters by C. J. Schrijver, W. C. Livingston, T. N. Woods, and R. A. Mewaldt. WUWT readers may recognize Livingston as the creator of one of the datasets we regularly follow graphically on our Solar Data and Images reference page.
They reconstruct total solar flux all the way back to 1650, as seen below:
The implication is that in August-September 2009, when we saw such a dearth of solar activity, the sun dipped to a level similar to periods of the Maunder Minimum. Now that the sun is starting to rev up a bit, the question is: will it last? And, if it doesn’t will we see a cooler period on Earth as some suggest, or as the authors suggest, “drivers other than TSI dominate Earth’s long‐term climate change” dominate? Nature (not the journal) will eventually provide the final answer, all we can do is watch and wait.
The abstract:
Variations in the total solar irradiance (TSI) associated with solar activity have been argued to influence the Earth’s climate system, in particular when solar activity deviates from the average for a substantial period. One such example is the 17th Century Maunder Minimum during which sunspot numbers were extremely low, as Earth experienced the Little Ice Age. Estimation of the TSI during that period has relied on extrapolations of correlations with sunspot numbers or even more indirectly with modulations of galactic cosmic rays. We argue that there is a minimum state of solar magnetic activity associated with a population of relatively small magnetic bipoles which persists even when sunspots are absent, and that consequently estimates of TSI for the Little Ice Age that are based on scalings with sunspot numbers are generally too low. The minimal solar activity, which measurements show to be frequently observable between active‐region decay products regardless of the phase of the sunspot cycle, was approached globally after an unusually long lull in sunspot activity in 2008–2009. Therefore, the best estimate of magnetic activity, and presumably TSI, for the least‐active Maunder Minimum phases appears to be
provided by direct measurement in 2008–2009. The implied marginally significant decrease in TSI during the least active phases of the Maunder Minimum by 140 to 360 ppm relative to 1996 suggests that drivers other than TSI dominate Earth’s long‐term climate change.
I asked Dr. Leif Svalgaard about this paper, in particular this paragraph:
“Therefore, we argue that the best estimate of the magnetic flux threading the solar surface during the deepest Maunder Minimum phases appears to be provided by direct measurement in 2008–2009. If surface magnetic variability is the principal driver of TSI changes, then that same period yields a direct estimate of the TSI in that era, yielding values 140 to 360 ppmlower than in 1996 [Fröhlich, 2009; Gray et al., 2010].”
His response was:
Magnetic variability drives the variations of TSI on top of what the nuclear furnace in the core puts out. They are basically saying that there is no long-term background variations. There is a slight problem with the ~200 ppm lower TSI in 2008-2009 compared to 1996. I have shown that the lower estimates of TSI by Fröhlich in 2008 are likely due to uncorrected degradation of the instrument on which PMOD is based.
See:
that shows the difference between PMOD and the best calibrated instrument we have [TIM of SORCE]. All indications are that TSI at the past minimum was not significantly lower than in 1996 and that that level probably also was typical of the Maunder Minimum, in other words this
is as low as the Sun can go.
See also http://www.leif.org/research/PMOD%20TSI-SOHO%20keyhole%20effect-degradation%20over%20time.pdf
You can read the full Schrijver et al paper here (PDF)
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RGates: “But that isn’t the issue at hand.”
I was responding to your question: “what “driver, other than TSI” could possible be controlling long-term climate?”
I answered.
You ran for the hills.
Pathetic.
R. Gates :”more into the studies of the differences between condensing versus non-condensing GH gases,…”
_______
It is the phase change of water that dominates climate and energy transfer and energy circulation, that makes water the over powering influence on climate. Water eats CO2 for breakfast lunch and dinner, as do we all.
R. Gates says:
March 19, 2011 at 12:39 pm
…….. but one of the effects that we can be sure of, and are already seeing, is the acceleration of the hydrological cycle. This, without fail, is the earth’s natural response to higher CO2 levels.
———————————————————
Would you care to provide the quantitation behind those dogmatic statements.
Even at a general level, i.e. are we getting more floods or more drought; more snow or less snow.
You certainly talk as if you’re an authority on these things.
@r. gates
> Without that little non-condensing trace gas CO2, all the water vapor in the
> atmosphere would condense out and we’d return to the snowball earth of 700
> million years ago.
What about Mars?
It’s a perfect “laboratory” to test the so-called “CO2 warming” hypothesis. Mars’ atmosphere is 95% CO2. Though much thinner, it contains almost 30 times as much CO2 per surface area unit, than Earth. Yet, it has virtually no greenhouse warming effect: the mean surface temperature is very close to the theoretical black body temperature of 210 Kelvins.
Mars Facts http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
Visual geometric albedo 0.170 (Earth 0.367)
Solar irradiance (W/m2) 589.2 (Earth 1367.6)
Black-body temperature 210.1 K (Earth 254.3 K)
Average temperature: ~210 K (Earth 287 K)
You (and your fellow warmistas) say all we need is a “trace” of CO2, so why doesn’t 950,000 ppm on Mars seem to have any significant warming effect?
BillyBob says:
March 19, 2011 at 1:13 pm
RGates: “But that isn’t the issue at hand.”
I was responding to your question: “what “driver, other than TSI” could possible be controlling long-term climate?”
I answered.
You ran for the hills.
Pathetic.
____
Milankovitch cycles are pretty much taken as a background “given” in terms of discussing long-term climate forcings. I assumed you knew this. My mistake.
Henry@RGates
Sorry Bob. After completely ignoring me about my comment about your wonderful Nasa studies now you say:
“The notion is the dose makes the poison. CO2 in your body, within a range is good, beyond that range, high or low, is bad for the health of the body. CO2, in the atmosphere, within a range is good, but go higher or lower, and it gets to be a bad thing”.
Again you are wrong. Look at the end of my studies:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
They did labstudies with animals and they basically found that even if they went up to as high as 65% with the CO2, the animals would still not die, provided they were given enough oxygen. From this they concluded that CO2 is not a poison. People trying to use CO2 (in exhaust gas) to kill themselves all died because of the CO and/or a lack of oxygen (acc. to the death certifcates). Like O2, CO2 is not a poison in any concentration. Its positive properties are being wrongfully ignored.
Co2 is a natural good gas just like oxygen. More of it is better. There are specific reasons for that and some basic research by yourself as suggested by others can verify these facts….
Nobody has proven to me that CO2 is indeed a GHG, i.e. that it causes more warming than what it causes cooling (both in terms of radiative cooling and cooling caused by taking part in photo synthesis)
If you really want to explore this isue in more detail, you can start here:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Come back to me if there is anything not clear to you.
Billy Bob, sunshine hours is proportional to albedo, I should think. I see albedo variations to be the most significant cause of “climate change”, although any theory should be tested with a thousand years of observation; so ffar, we have had thirty.
Apart from the Earthglow project, monitoring the Earth’s reflected light off the moon, are there any satellite programs of observation of albedo?
Anything is possible says:
March 19, 2011 at 12:32 pm
it’s not just about how high or low can the Sun go, it’s also about how long Solar activity can persist at elevated or reduced levels.
The issue is what the difference between the elevated or reduced levels is. clearly if the difference was 0.000,000,000,000,000,001 w/m2 it would not have any effect. If that difference is 0.5 W/m2 [as it seems to be], or 0.04% then we would expect a temperature difference of 0.01% or some 0.03 degrees. Even if you multiply that by 10 [for the unknown ‘feedback’ that people might invoke], you still get only 0.3 degrees. Barely measurable.
Richard G says:
March 19, 2011 at 1:18 pm
R. Gates :”more into the studies of the differences between condensing versus non-condensing GH gases,…”
_______
It is the phase change of water that dominates climate and energy transfer and energy circulation, that makes water the over powering influence on climate. Water eats CO2 for breakfast lunch and dinner, as do we all.
____
Tell me how much phase change to water there is going on in the middle of Antarctica? When the earth turns to a Snowball Earth, there’s very little phase change going on, and very little weather going on. Your assertion that water is the overpowering influence on climate (i.e. driver of climate) is not supported by any science. Or perhaps, you’re confusing weather and climate…
Leif Svalgaard, what I don’t understand is that even the 11-year cycle has a TSI variation near 1 W/m2, so how can they be saying that the Maunder Minimum had a smaller effect on TSI than a typical sunspot cycle?
Henry P.,
It seems your desire to suggest that CO2 is good in all ranges and for all purposes has blinded you to reality. To start with, elevated or decreased CO2 in the blood can be a very bad thing, so you may want to start here to re-educate yourself about the true effects of CO2, and how indeed, the dose does make the poison:
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/carbon-dioxide-in-blood.html
CO2 (in the proper range) is essential for basic life support in our bodies and in our atmosphere. Our body and our planet have developed natural feedback systems to keep CO2 in those proper ranges. However, sudden shocks to those systems can overwhelm those natural feedback systems.
I have something a little off topic but definitely related to the Global Warming subject.
[snip – always check the main page of WUWT first, story already covered, thanks – Anthony]
Jim D says:
March 19, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Leif Svalgaard, what I don’t understand is that even the 11-year cycle has a TSI variation near 1 W/m2, so how can they be saying that the Maunder Minimum had a smaller effect on TSI than a typical sunspot cycle?
they are not quite saying that. What they are saying is that during the Maunder minimum the TSI [and solar activity in general] was no lower than it was just a couple of years ago. The 1 W/m2 in a typical solar cycle translates into a difference in temperature of 0.05 degrees. If during the Maunder minimum we were always sitting at the minimum value the difference difference would half of the 1 W/m2 corresponding to a temperature difference of 0.03 degrees from the average [over the solar cycle] temperature during modern times. 0.03 is smaller than 0.05.
The real issue is that of the background variation. 20 years ago that was thought to be large: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon.png
With time, that variation has dwindled: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEIF.png and now it seems that even mainstream solar physics is embracing the notion that perhaps there is no such background variation. This removes the obvious reason for believing that there would be a causal relationship between lack of solar activity and the Little Ice Age. When Jack eddy originally proposed that there was such a relation, it was though that a 1% variation of TSI was possible. It now seems that direct observations have cut that by a factor of ten, so people took their hope to a large background variation [of unknown origin] happening before the direct measurements began. It now seems that there likely is no such background variation [as some of us have been saying for several years now] so we can hardly ascribe the LIA to the Sun and must look elsewhere for a cause.
Robert of Ottawa says:
March 19, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Billy Bob,
“. . . sunshine hours is proportional to albedo, . . . ”
Sorry, that doesn’t compute. Try again, please.
I do understand Leif’s “Barely measurable.”, though, and I’ll back that horse until proven otherwise.
Smokey says:
March 19, 2011 at 11:46 am
Gates says:
“Without that little non-condensing trace gas CO2, all the water vapor in the atmosphere would condense out and we’d return to the snowball earth of 700 million years ago.”
Let’s try a gedanken experiment: Put CO2-free water in a sealed container, along with air that contains zero CO2. According to Gates, the air would have no humidity and the water would freeze. But add a little CO2, and suddenly there’s humidity and the water warms up.
I don’t have to do an actual experiment like that, because the premise is ridiculous. So is the absurd belief that CO2 is the dominant controller of the climate. That’s religion, not science.
Smokey ,
Your beliefs are nonsense. The science which indicates that CO2 is important is well established and has been understood for 111 years.
It is clear that you don’t understand what John Tyndall discovered in 1859, the role greenhouse gases, and their radiation absorption spectra, have in controlling the earth’s temperature. John Tyndall demonstrated the absorption spectra of GHG’s in 1859, and explained how they reduced the loss of heat, especially in the night time.
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory%201850-1899.htm#1859:%20John%20Tyndall%20conducts%20experiments%20on%20the%20radiative%20properties%20of%20various%20gasses
This is what the scientists have been saying about how GHG’s control the earths climate for over 150 years, when
Combining this with the Clausius Claperon relationship, discovered in 1834, which governs the relationship between temperature and the vapor pressure of water, the incoming radiation of the sun, the relationship between the atmospheric concentration of CO2, which does not condense, the temperature of the water surface and the radiation balance in clear air can be derived assuming constant relative humidity. This is how Arrhenius determined what happened in the ice ages and what the result of doubling CO2 would bring.
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory%201850-1899.htm#1895:%20Arrhenius%20suggests%20that%20CO2%20may%20trigger%20glacial%20advances%20and%20retreats
The temperature of the water surface will control the concentration of water vapor above it. The lower the temperature of the surface, the lower the vapor pressure. The role of CO2 is that slows the radiational cooling of the earth at night, which keeps the water vapor pressure higher than it would otherwise be. The higher vapor pressure of water makes the radiational cooling even slower than the simple presence of the CO2.
Although Arrhenius was forced to make some simplifying assumptions in order to complete his calculation, the magnitude of the effect he predicted is close to what scientists are predicting today with the aid of supercomputers.
In the light of this knowledge and its extensive history, it is you who needs to justify your denial of the basic principles of climate science. Your objections are really unbelievable.
R. Gates said:
“but one of the effects that we can be sure of, and are already seeing, is the acceleration of the hydrological cycle. This, without fail, is the earth’s natural response to higher CO2 levels.”
As it happens I agree with that but it fuels my scepticism about human effects on the climate.
The evidence for it is the obvious fact that more energy in the air increases evaporation by heating the ocean skin and the ocean skin is the engine roon for the hydro cycle.
However a faster hydro cycle must always be a negative feedback because it speeds up the transfer of energy from surface to stratospere and thereby increases the speed of radiative energy loss to space when the water vapour condenses out at a higher level.
So the hydro cycle actually supplements radiative processes, speeding them up to negate the warming effect from more CO2. Indeed the warming effect of any temperature forcing agent in the air is dealt with in the same fashion.
The real world manifestation of a faster hydro cycle is a shift in the air circulation systems but we must put that in context.
From MWP to LIA to date the air circulation systems shifted large distances from natural causes alone. Probably 1000 miles or so latitudinally.
There is no evidence that CO2 has had a measurable effect at all.
Up to about 2000 it was proposed that CO2 had caused the poleward shifts up to that date. However around 2000 the poleward shift stopped and we are now seeing increasing periods of time with the jets more equatorward than they were during the late 20th century warming spell.
So all the climate changes we have seen are most likely natural with CO2 being an unmeasurably small contributor.
Leif Svalgaard said:
“so we can hardly ascribe the LIA to the Sun and must look elsewhere for a cause.”
Agreed in terms of radiative processes alone but I am being forced by real world observations to conclude that the sun’s variability in terms of wavelengths and particle types has a profound effect on atmospheric chemistry.
The chemical processes appear to have a far greater effect on the net energy budget by altering the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere and so the speed of the hydrological cycle. It is only once the speed of the hydrological cycle has been set that the radiative characteristics of the system come into play. Depending on what the hydro cycle does the atmospheric heights change to bring incoming and outgoing radiation back to equilibrium with little or no effect on surface air temperatures.
That is the ‘elsewhere’ that we must look.
RGates said:
To think it does and to be unable to prove it is equally presumptuous, is it not? In either case all that is missing is proof and all that is available is faith.
There is an interesting comparison (for CET region) between sunspot number, monthly sunshine hours (averaged over 11 year period) and CET temperature anomaly.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETsst.htm
Could an AGW spoksmen confirm that rise in the CET area sunshine hours is due to rise in the CO2 level ?
OT: Super-moon is having some effect, however no major EQ as yet.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
Stephen Wilde says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:29 pm
So all the climate changes we have seen are most likely natural with CO2 being an unmeasurably small contributor.
Just as unmeasurable as the solar influence.
R. Gates appears to actually believe that simulations take precedence over measured data. How an otherwise (apparently) intelligent can ignore the ice core evidence, from both Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the clear evidence that peanut buttering data over a 1200 km diameter circle flies in the face of any coherent principle of physics is simply mind blowing.
It’s as if Goebbels has been giving classes to the Warmists. A big lie repeated often enough comes to be believed. 75/25 my [snip].
Stephen Wilde says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Agreed in terms of radiative processes alone but I am being forced by real world observations to conclude that the sun’s variability in terms of wavelengths and particle types has a profound effect on atmospheric chemistry.
Not forced, as that would work upon other people too. So, this is just your bias or idea or view. The point is that there is growing acceptance that these variations do not show any long-term changes, e.g. that the situation right now is similar to what it was a century ago and likely back during the Maunder minimum, while the climate certainly is not.
I am sorry, I never seem to be able to find a temp graph similar in time scale to the sunspot charts above. But it seems quite obvious that there are long term cycles that bottomed around 1800 and 1900, peaking much lower around 1850 than the one around 1970. These cycles quite nicely fit the temp curves averaged over similar time periods with a bit of lead time. Obviously, vulcanism, el nino, etc all play their parts, but it really does seem quite obvious. Sorry to not be able to lay the charts out myself.
vukcevic says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:42 pm
OT: Super-moon is having some effect, however no major EQ as yet.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
And there won’t, just as solar and geomagnetic storms don’t have any influence either.
I submitted this article to Anthony 4 days ago, and he mulled it over a while, before posting it. We had an email exchange, when I asked why the hesitation. Here is his answer:
“Because the conclusions are at odds with certain skeptical views related to Maunder Minimum and climate then. But the science is the science, and while I’ve always felt that there was a relationship between the MM and climate then, it may prove to be mostly coincidental.”
This shows a man of strong integrity (as we always knew).