There’s an extraordinary admission about solar activity and cold winters in the UK from the Met Office in an article in FT Magazine.
It is as if the blinders have been removed.
The relevant passage is below from the much larger article.
“We now believe that [the solar cycle] accounts for 50 per cent of the variability from year to year,” says Scaife. With solar physicists predicting a long-term reduction in the intensity of the solar cycle – and possibly its complete disappearance for a few decades, as happened during the so-called Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715 – this could be an ominous signal for icy winters ahead, despite global warming.
Read the article – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/35145bee-9d38-11e0-997d-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1RacNghPj
h/t to WUWT reader “Lord Beaverbrook”
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Next time I buy a sleeping bag for use in extra cold conditions, I’ll make sure the fill is 100% CO2. Yup, that should do the trick. I might even consider a ground pad where the microbubbles are filled with 100% CO2 too!
/sarc off
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 9, 2011 at 7:21 am
“And that is clearly nonsense, so they are no better at it invoking solar cycles.”
Have you been on vacation, or what? There has been a lot of this sort of talk recently. Everyone seems so sure, this time, that they have it figured out. As more becomes know about the complexity of the issue, the strength of the convictions grows. Quite amazing.
Global warming continues its inexorable progress but is being masked by solar cooling.
We can count on the British press to swallow this without question.
Lunchtime O’Booze represented British journalism at its zenith, since then it has been downhill all the way and is set fair to continue.
R. Gates says: July 9, 2011 at 9:12 am
…………..
Mr. Gates
There are other (beside CO2) but this time natural events , with the long-term upward trend, capable of affecting climate, and what is more important correlate far better than the CO2 does.
“We now believe that [the solar cycle] accounts for 50 per cent of the variability from year to year,” says Scaife.
Do I detect a bit of a quiver developing in the AGW stiff upper lip of the MET?
R. Gates says:
July 9, 2011 at 9:25 am
Answers:
1) “We” would be everybody–this is supposed to be a global thing, right?
2) Yours is a specious argument, R. Gates. If you can show us (everybody) using independently-verifiable measurable methods the amount of global warming caused by CO2 of the global warming that’s caused naturally, we’re all waiting. Please don’t bother if all you’ve got is model-induced navel gazing.
Gates, your logic (and math) is as good as the Sun worshippers’. Neither suggested driver, anthropogenic CO2 or Sunspot variation, has the energy available to create the sustained weather pattern change (warming vs cooling) both sides have stipulated will happen. You are speaking nonsense at the same level as that of Scaife.
Upon further reflection, the situation for the Met Office is “worse than we thought”. At a grid of 25km, you would want observations at each corner of your grid to confirm your model. Wikipedia gives the land area of Great Britain as 230,000sqkm or a square 492km on a side which subdivides to nineteen 25km segments or 361 (very roughly) 25km grid squares and 400 corners ((n+1)^2). The Met Office has about 123 reporting stations per
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/observations/
I counted by hand so it may be off. So they’re really trying to do surgery with knitting needles while wearing boxing gloves.
R. Gates says: July 9, 2011 at 9:25 am
[…]
2. Why would the Met Office admit to something that is not true?
SOP?
Okay, so its 50% warming and 50% cooling. Got it.
Cassandra King says:
July 9, 2011 at 9:03 am
“Now water vapour could well be described as a blanket, . . . ”
Please! The troposphere is characterized (and named) based on the fact that it naturally “turns” over – the main activity is convection. A blanket accomplishes its function by shutting down convection. There is no CO2 layer, nor a water vapor layer, nor GHG layer that can be considered having the affect of a blanket. Think and speak of convection. The atmosphere near Earth’s surface warms, expands, rises, . . .
M.A.Vukcevic says:
July 9, 2011 at 9:40 am
R. Gates says: July 9, 2011 at 9:12 am
…………..
Mr. Gates
There are other (beside CO2) but this time natural events , with the long-term upward trend, capable of affecting climate, and what is more important correlate far better than the CO2 does.
_____
Mr. Vukcevic,
The chart you referenced seems not to be based on the accepted values of the PDO over the past 111 years, as can be found in this chart:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/pdo_temp.gif
But besides that, the PDO, as part of a natural longer-term measurement of changes of internal variations in ocean temperature does not account for the steady increase in global temperatures during the 20th century. It would take an external forcing for that, exactly as supplied by the steadily increasing amounts of CO2.
BY any measure, this is major news. And yet the NYT’s remains silent. What else can they do? In poker terms, they’re “all in.” Certainly, any fair minded person would assume that a paper so worried about global warming, a topic they’ve “reported” on relentlessly for years now, would also be worried about a possible Maunder MInimum type event.
I wonder what it would take to actually get these guys to admit they might be wrong? A glacier half a mile thick over New York City?
The trouble with analogies is that too frequently their uses and critics take them too literally. Broadly speaking, the blanket slows heat transfer. That’s what CO2 and water vapor in the atmosphere do. Stop HERE, don’t go any further. As soon as you start discussing mechanisms, the analogy falls apart.
Pamela Gray says:
July 9, 2011 at 9:51 am
Gates, your logic (and math) is as good as the Sun worshippers’. Neither suggested driver, anthropogenic CO2 or Sunspot variation, has the energy available to create the sustained weather pattern change (warming vs cooling) both sides have stipulated will happen. You are speaking nonsense at the same level as that of Scaife.
_____
My logic is quite solid, thank you. But to your points:
1) CO2 does not “supply” energy as a driver (i.e. forcing) to the climate, and I never said it did. Rather is serves as a “greenhouse” gas through the absorption and re-transmission of LW radiation, thereby altering earth’s energy budget and effectively keeping more heat in various parts of earths systems. Over the long-term, an increase in CO2 will alter earth’s energy budget and thereby alter the climate.
2) Sunspots are a proxy for the measurement of other factors which influence earth’s weather. From total solar radiation, high energy UV, the solar wind, and levels of galactic cosmic rays, sunspots represent an excellent proxy for these things that do have an effect on weather patterns.
Here is a ‘shocking’ statistic from the Maunder minimum end 1685-1715 (the worst bit) compared to the UK winters of 2009/10 and 2010/11
Out of the 30 winters:
5-6 were colder ~ 20%
2-3 were about the same ~ 10%
22 were warmer ~ 70%
graph and the temperatures data: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/30yCET.htm
Last two UK winters were cold but not a disaster (except for the road maintenance).
Just get more grit and it’ll be fine.
So the recent cooling is caused by 50% solar activity despite global warming??
How can they now believe that the solar cycle accounts for 50% of the variability from year to year, despite being 50% it is still able to over power the other 50%.
So basically using this new form of logic we can now conclude that the suns solar activity causes global cooling but does not cause (“despite”) global warming.
So! Man made “green house gasses” cause global warming but low solar activity can cause global cooling. Hang on, let me get this straight! High solar activity must be 25% and low solar activity must be the other 25% of the variability in warming and cooling the planet but when the earth warms due to 25% high solar activity that is due to the composition of atmospheric gases but the other 25% of low solar activity that has the potential to put us into a new maunder type solar minimum, ice age or just freezing cold winters in the UK but does not appear to be effected by the composition and pressure of atmospheric gases that are hypothetically warming the planet?
I believe the suns solar activity not only affects the the climate’s pressure patterns but it regulates the composition and volume of atmospheric gases and in turn regulates climatic temperatures, that’s about 99.9% despite global warming or global cooling.
R. Gates says: July 9, 2011 at 10:11 am
The chart you referenced seems not to be based on the accepted values of the PDO…
Indeed it is not, if you look more carefully it is marked ‘PDO driver’, it is the North Pacific’s natural event whose gradient (time interval change) correlates well with the PDO index; as you know the PDO is a de-trended variable and as such can not have either positive or negative trend, while for its driver that is not necessarily so. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/A&P.htm
As we are talking about the Met Office, we might as well bring up their failure to predict the last few brutal winters in Europe. To that point, and to the discussion of brutal winters and the effects of a Maunder Minimum in general, here’s a very interesting video graphic showing the breakdown of the polar vortex and outbreak of cold weather over Europe and North America during January of 2009:
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/36000/36972/npole_gmao_200901-02.mov
Now, the video on the left shows is the polar vortex splitting into two lobes, bringing bitterly cold weather over Europe and North America but warmer weather to the north polar regions. The video on the right in this shows a large mass of warm air rising up from the troposphere. As most of you recall, this was a period of time that we were at the bottom of the solar minimum, with a blank sun for months on end. You might also recall, that during this time, the stratosphere was in general contracting (i.e. cooling), which could be related to the lower UV output from the sun (hence why sunspots are a good proxy).
For the Met Office to not acknowledge some relationship between solar activity and variations in short-term weather would be irresponsible, but this does not in any way represent (nor should it) an acknowledgement that the solar variations are 50% of the cause of longer term climate changes, as it takes a much bigger and longer acting forcing agent to do that such as Milankovitch cycles and greenhouse gas concentrations.
All things considered I think this admission shows that even if Mohammed didn’t go to the mountain, the mountain has moved slightly towards him.
This wikipedia chart says that the earth has been cooling for 5 million years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.svg
Does the MET take that into account along with the fact that Sun Spots obviously have an effect on the climate of the Earth? They talk like the long term trend is for warming, when the above chart says the long term trend is cooling.
Why is that never mentioned?
R. Gates says:
July 9, 2011 at 10:11 am
“But besides that, the PDO, as part of a natural longer-term measurement of changes of internal variations in ocean temperature does not account for the steady increase in global temperatures during the 20th century.”
This assumption of natural longer-term measurements of internal variations in ocean temperature has been going the rounds over the years, but it is demonstrately false. It not only ignores the ENSO, but also global cloud albedo that affects the changes in variations of ocean temperatures. It does account for at least most of the steady increase in global temperatures. Even this is also a incorrect statement because the rise has been far from steady, most of the rise has occurred in short jumps, assoiciated by internal changes of the ocean. (especially strong El Nino’s) There is one exception in the early period where global temperatures took off before the oceans seem to respond for a while (long term ENSO), but this was at the time when the solar activty was claimed to have it’s main early 20th century contribution. (between the 1920’s and 1930’s)
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/95/had3vpdovenso.png
NINO 3.4 surface temperatures overall increases during the period and matches global temperatures in a very similar trend.
Mat G
I would appreciate link to the Nino3.4 data fail as shown in your link.
Thanks.
“We now believe that [the solar cycle] accounts for 50 per cent of the variability from year to year,” says Scaife.
Quite.
And the ocean cycles account for the other 50%.
Can I have my Nobel Prize now ?
R.Gates said:
“we were at the bottom of the solar minimum, with a blank sun for months on end. You might also recall, that during this time, the stratosphere was in general contracting (i.e. cooling),”
I have seen data that suggests that the stratosphere has not been cooling since the mid 90’s and that there may now be a slight warming.