Guest post by David Archibald
When I started out in climate science in 2005, the climate people ignored the solar physics community. A casual perusal of the literature though indicated that the difference in climate outcome from Dikpati’s (NASA) estimate for Solar Cycle 24 amplitude of 190 and Clilverd’s (British Antarctic Survey) estimate of 42 amounted to 2.0°C for the mid-latitudes.
Since then, the prognostications of astute scientists with respect to Solar Cycle 24 amplitude have come to pass. Some commentators though are over-reaching and predicting a recurrence of the Maunder Minimum. We now have the tools to predict climate out to the mid-21st Century with a fair degree of confidence, and a repeat of the Maunder Minimum is unlikely. A de Vries Cycle repeat of the Dalton Minimum is what is in prospect up to the early 2030s and then a return to normal conditions of solar activity, and normal climate.
The three tools we have to predict climate on a multi-decadal basis are the solar cycle length – temperature relationship, the logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide and Ed Fix’s solar cycle prediction. Let’s start with the solar cycle length – temperature relationship, first proposed by Friis-Christensen and Lassen in 1991. This is the relationship for Hanover, New Hampshire:
The relationship established for Hanover is a 0.7°C change in temperature for each year of solar cycle length. Solar Cycle 23 was three years longer than Solar Cycle 22, and thus the average annual temperature for Hanover, New Hampshire will be 2.1°C lower over Solar Cycle 24 than it had been over Solar Cycle 23. Why did I pick Hanover? Governor Lynch recently vetoed New Hampshire leaving the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Professor Jan-Erik Solheim of Oslo University replicated this methodology for ten Norwegian temperature records, and thus this methodology is confirmed as valid:
These ten Norwegian temperature records all confirm a solar cycle length – temperature relationship, and predict that temperatures of these stations will be about 1.5°C colder over the next ten years than they have been over the last ten years.
The second tool to use is the logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide. The pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was approximately 290 ppm. It is currently 390 ppm. The first 20 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provides half the heating effect to date. By the time we get to the current concentration, each additional 100 ppm provides a further 0.1°C of heating. We are currently adding 2 ppm to the atmosphere each year so carbon dioxide will provide further heating of 0.1°C every 50 years. That said, the temperature fall over the next 22 years should result in a higher rate of carbon dioxide uptake by the oceans. The logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide is shown by this graph, using data derived from the Modtran site at the University of Chicago:
Lastly, to put a multi-decadal climate forecast together, we need a prediction of solar cycle length that comes with a very good hindcast match. This is provided by Ed Fix’s long ephemeris simulation. This simulation is described in Ed Fix’s paper which is included in an Elsevier volume edited by Don Easterbrook, “Evidence-Based Climate Science”, due out in September. You can put advance orders in for it now:
This is a window of Ed Fix’s simulation:
The green line is the solar cycle record from 1914 to 2010, with alternate cycles reversed. Solar Cycles 19 to 23 are annotated. The red lines is the model output, from which the lengths of individual solar cycles in the mid-21st Century can be calculated.
Combining all the above tools, this is the climate forecast for Hanover, New Hampshire, which is a good proxy for what is going to happen along the US-Canadian border:
Solar Cycles 24 to 27 are annotated. For the next thirty years odd, temperatures will be at mid-19th Century levels. With the two year decrease in the length of Solar Cycle 26 from 25, temperatures will rise by 1.4°C by mid-century to late 20th Century levels.
By then, anthropogenic carbon dioxide will be providing a very welcome 0.2°C to the temperature.
The graph shows that quantified solar effects dwarf the quantified anthropogenic carbon dioxide effect.
David Archibald
12th July 2011
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@David Archibald says:
“Fix’s beautiful, beautiful model gives us confidence about the Sun for decades in advance…”
Like SC25 being only 7yrs long ?
typo 8yrs long
Unless there is more heating in the future Logan Pass just might not open during coming summers: http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/glaciers_going_to_the_sun_road_finally_open/C41/L41/
stevo:
At July 13, 2011 at 3:16 pm you quote Davis Archibald saying in his above article;
“The logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide is shown by this graph, using data derived from the Modtran site at the University of Chicago”
And you comment saying to him:
“This is a little bit dishonest, isn’t it? Modtran gives you radiative forcings, in W/m2. It doesn’t give you temperatures. To get those, you need to multiply the forcings by a climate sensitivity. And if you were being truthful, you’d have stated that you’d multiplied the forcings by a climate sensitivity that you’ve chosen, arbitrarily. You’ve used a value that is much smaller than any value found in the scientific literature. As a result, your graph is not meaningful.”
If there is any dishonesty it is your comment.
Firstly, multiplying radiative forcing by a climate sensitivity merely alters the labeling on the y-axis of the graph. It does not change the shape of the graph in any way.
And he was “truthful” when he used a value of climate sensitivity that – like the IPCC – he chose and he truthfully stated the value he had chosen.
But so what? Use any value of climate sensitivity and that merely alters the labeling on the y-axis of the graph. It does not change the shape of the graph in any way.
Furthermore, since you are calling Archibald “dishonest” and not “truthful” for no just reason, it is reasonable to point out that you have stated a simple falsehood when you said he “used a value that is much smaller than any value found in the scientific literature”. In fact, Archibald used a value larger than some in the literature and larger than several obtained by empirical methods instead of model ‘fudges’. For example, the eight independent ‘natural experiments’ conducted by Idso each provides a value smaller than that used by Archibald. See
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/Idso_CO2_induced_Global_Warming.htm
for a summary of the experiments’ findings and a link to Idso’s full paper which is
Idso SB, ‘CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic’s view of potential climate change’, Climate Research v10 69-82 (1998).
Simply, your assertion that Archibald’s graph “is not meaningful” is plain wrong because each of the statements in your postis plain wrong and you present your points in abusive, untrue and offensive language.
In summation, ‘troll’ hardly seems adequate to describe your post.
Richard
rbateman says:
July 13, 2011 at 10:02 am
Apart from Clilverd’s model, no other models are based in physical reality. They are simply exercises in arm-waving. Friends of mine have been promoters of Landscheidt for example, but Landscheidt’s minimum started with Solar Cycle 25 instead of 24. Science isn’t based on consensus. There are a number of people saying that we are entering a grand minimum but they have nothing more to base their predictions on than a feeling in their waters.
Back in 2005, I concluded that if you could predict solar activity, you could predict climate. Until Ed Fix came along, I was going to try to do that myself. Ed saved me a lot of trouble in taking on something that I was incapable of in the first place. I will have more time for the medical research I should be doing.
Climate science is just about all sorted now. I have one remaining research project in climate and that is to predict the onset conditions of the next glaciation.
Following is the recommendation I wrote in trying to get Ed’s paper into a particular journal which ended up rejecting it on that the basis that it was too mathematical. A forbidden word on WUWT is replaced in the text:
“This is a very important paper because it provides a physical explanation for solar cycle behaviour. Many of the existing observation-derived rules for explaining the fundamental properties of the sunspot cycle have not, until this paper, been quantified. To a large extent, existing solar science is based on non-mathematical observation. This paper’s treatment of the sunspot cycle as an ideal spring driven by (force that dare not speak its name) changes in radial acceleration will spark a re-assessment of solar science in the terms of this new paradigm. At the same time, this new model is consistent with the solar dynamo theory.
In terms of some of the existing empirically-derived properties of solar cycle behaviour, this model shows that the Schwabe cycle is not important in itself and should be considered to be half a Hale cycle.
From this paper, it can be derived that the Hale cycle is the natural resonance of the Sun to (force that dare not speak its name) forcing. This model explains why, for extended periods, a successive increase in solar cycle amplitude is seen before the system gets out of phase and phase destruction occurs. This paper explains why individual Hale cycles are not discrete magnetic events. The quantum of flux preserved in the system is the basis for the amplitude of the following cycle. Thus the sunspot cycle memory effect is explained.
It also explains the Waldemeir effect – that strong cycles reach a maximum of amplitude in the shortest period of time. It also explains the amplitude-period effect (the anti-correlation between the peak amplitude of a cycle and the length of the preceding cycle) and the amplitude-minimum effect (the correlation between cycle amplitude and the activity level at the previous minimum).
That said, this is a simple paper based on a simple concept. There have been a number of other papers demonstrating a correlation between (force that dare not speak its name) effects on the Sun driven by the gas giant planets, but none have provided the resolution that this model provides. This model hindcasts almost perfectly and that very close match, despite the model’s simplicity, suggests that it predicts very well.
As a physical explanation for the periodicity seen in the solar dynamo, I expect this model to fill the vacuum currently there. While there are other (force that dare not speak its name) models that explain the timing of solar cycles, none does so through a physical mechanism within the Sun itself. Further, I expect most of the existing science on solar cycle behaviour to be re-expressed in the frame of reference provided by this model. That in turn will result in refining and extension of this model.”
Geoff Sharp says:
July 13, 2011 at 10:16 am
The system hits the reset button through phase destruction.
I fear DA is setting himself up for a fall here. It pays to do your homework which in this case does not look to have occurred and unfortunately reminds me of a smoke and mirror show.
A lot of credibility at stake here.
In reply to Dikran Marsupial’s comment:
It is interesting that the solar cycle length hypothesis of Friis-Christensen and Lassen (1991) is still being used, given that Laut (2003) demonstrated that the analysis in Friis-Christensen and Lassen (1991) had serious data handling errors, and that Lassen himself co-authored a paper in 2000 that updated and re-analysed the data and concluded that “since around 1990 the type of Solar forcing that is described by the solar cycle length model no longer dominates the long-term variation of the Northern hemisphere land air temperature. “. The flaws in Friis-Christensen and Lassen (1991) have been identified and discussed in the litterature, it really isn’t science to base an argument (even partially) on such a paper without mentioning the known flaws.
Hi Dikran,
I can defend the solar modulation of planetary cloud hypothesis. There are multiple mechanisms. The late 20th century warming has caused by an increase in solar wind bursts. The solar wind burst create a space charge differential in the ionosphere which removes cloud forming ions. Prior to 1994 there is close correlation to GCR levels which are modulated by the solar heliosphere strength and extent which changes depending on the strength and duration of the solar magnetic cycle.
Please read Tinsley’s attached review paper on the mechanisms.
Do you have any questions concerning the solar modulation of cloud mechanisms?
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/faculty/tinsley/Role%20of%20Global%20Circuit.pdf
The role of the global electric circuit in solar and internal forcing of clouds and climate
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MSAIt760405/PDF/2005MmSAI..76..969G.pdf
Once again about global warming and solar activity K. Georgieva, C. Bianchi, and B. Kirov
We show that the index commonly used for quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity and using this index leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity in the global warming in the recent decades. A more suitable index is the geomagnetic activity which reflects all solar activity, and it is highly correlated to global temperature variations in the whole period for which we have data.
In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied.It could therefore be concluded that both the decreasing correlation between sunspot number and geomagnetic activity, and the deviation of the global temperature long-term trend from solar activity as expressed by sunspot index are due to the increased number of high-speed streams of solar wind on the declining phase and in the minimum of sunspot cycle in the last decades.
See section 5a) Modulation of the global circuit in this review paper, by solar wind burst and the process electroscavenging where by increases in the global electric circuit remove cloud forming ions. The same review paper summarizes the data that does show correlation between low level clouds and GCR.
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
= = = = = =
Smokey,
I appreciate the link to the graph with reconstruction of atm CO2 for geological timescales (>500 million yrs).
Do have links to a similar timescale graph with reconstruction of earth temps for the same period superimposed on top of atm CO2? If you recommend one then I would appreciate a link.
Thanks.
John
M.A.Vukcevic wrote (July 13, 2011 at 9:12 am)
“Why the Atlantic is special
The Atlantic is the only ocean where heat is transported north across the equator.
[…] conveyor […]”
Respected WUWT commenter & oceanographer “sky” disagrees and convincingly paints a VERY different (& much simpler) picture. Please consider what sky has to say.
Tom in Florida says:
July 13, 2011 at 3:20 pm
“Got to hand it to you, you always put in the disclaimer about “if models are correct”. However I do not recall you ever establishing you views on whether this modeled temperature increase is good or bad and whether we should try to remedy this, just in case the models are correct. Perhaps you could enlighten me?”
______
Let’s put it this way, if someone told me we could keep CO2 in the range it’s been during the time our civilizations came into being because the climate was conducive to grain plants which allowed us to even have civilization, or we could allow CO2 to go to levels when human ancestors were tree-shrews and the world was covered with steaming jungles and there were no grains at all…I’ll take the range in which our civilization has come into being. Letting CO2 continually rise, is conducting a huge experiment (rather like rolling the dice) on the future of the planet. Last time I checked, we haven’t got a spare in case we bet wrong.
John Whitman,
I’m not certain what you’re looking for, but here are a few CO2/T links:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
click6
click7
click8
click9
click10
click11
click12
“Climate science is just about all sorted now.”
Utter nonsense. This guy is either a phoney, a supreme egoist or very callow. No more comments.
Jbird
R. Gates says:
July 13, 2011 at 7:27 pm
“Let’s put it this way, if someone told me we could keep CO2 in the range it’s been during the time our civilizations came into being because the climate was conducive to grain plants which allowed us to even have civilization, or we could allow CO2 to go to levels when human ancestors were tree-shrews and the world was covered with steaming jungles and there were no grains at all…I’ll take the range in which our civilization has come into being. Letting CO2 continually rise, is conducting a huge experiment (rather like rolling the dice) on the future of the planet. Last time I checked, we haven’t got a spare in case we bet wrong.”
Disagreement #1: Your assumption that CO2 is the controlling element of climate.
Disagreement #2: Your reliance on climate models as gospel
Disagreement #3: Your assumption that the future will be like the past with no credit for evolution or adaptation.
Disagreement #4: Your assumption that rises in CO2 are all caused by humans and that we are capable of controlling it.
Disagreement #5: Your preference for a colder world. (My preference is for a toasty warm world)
Disagreement #6: That a toasty warm world is harmful to humans. (We thrive in warm climates)
Disagreement #7: That we should be guided by the precautionary principle and embark on the destruction of current civilization “in case we bet wrong”. It makes no sense to me to definitely destroy our way of life now to stop the possible destruction of our way of life in the future. It would be like the police killing a man to prevent him from committing suicide (that actually happened in Sarasota FL).
“”””” George Steiner says:
July 13, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Mr. George E. Smith, are you the one who used to work at Bell Laboratories, co-invented the charge coupled device and received the Nobel prize in Physics in 2009? “””””
George, I have several times issued the legal disclaimer, that NO ! I am NOT the George E. Smith who was the 2009 Nobel Physics Prize Winner for his invention of the Charge Coupled Device (CCD), while he was at Bell Telephone Laboratories. But our separate careers, have crossed paths for some 35-40 years. When he was prominent at Bell Labs, I happened to be the VP of R&D at a small start-up LED company named Litronix. We started the company literally on a shoestring; $350,000 business plan, which we funded out of our own pockets, with relatives and friends. We started literally on the President’s kitchen table, and with very little later equity funding, and mostly bank borrowing, we built the company till it was at one time the largest LED company in the world (in just LEDs) In the same time frame (1970s-80s) the Director of Research at Beckman Instruements was also a George E. Smith.
My own personal George E. Smith hero, I can only aspire to half equal, was an enlisted sailor on board the Battleship Oklahoma in Pearl Harbor. When the ship rolled over from its torpedo wounds, George went over the side, into the water, and burning fuel. He managed to swim, sometimes submerged under the fire; but not always, till he reached safety; but was badly burned. He survived the war, and has (or had) his own web site. He is counted among Oklahoma’s notable citizens.
Emphasis added.
While I enjoyed reading your post and agree with much of it, I believe you are far, far off in the above assessment of climate science.
“”””” Sorry, but I fail to understand this argument so I cannot comment.
Again, thankyou for your response to my post. I hope this answer is sufficient to demonstrate that I genuinely appreciate your dispute of the explanation I gave Richard111, and I hope your arguments and my responses to them have both helped him in his ‘quest for knowledge’.
Richard “””””
Well Richard, the last thing on my mind was to try and refute your explanation; perhaps to build on it.
As for the ln (1+x) = x for small x; the whole point is that a logarithmic curve for small changes of the argument, is virtually indistinguishable from linear, and no yet observed earth measurments, are even close to resolving the difference.
As for Beer’s Law being a theoretical argument for the existence of a logarithmic relationship, classical optical absorption calculations do indeed predict, an exponential decay of the transmission; but the Beer’s law model assumes that the absorbed energy is simply that; absorbed. Beer’s law takes no account of the subsequent radiation of some of the absorbed energy at some other wavelength, so experimental measurements of the transmission of energy at any and all wavelengths do not support the simple model.
A classic example is the optical absorption for short wavelength sharp cut Schott Optical filter glasses. These glasses come in a variety of cutoff wavelengths, such as OG 590, or RG645, and the like; usually specified by the wavelength for 50% transmission (internal) for a 3.0 mm thickness sample. Accurate transmission curves taken; often in a double monochromator measurment, do indeed show attenuations of 10^5 and more for wavelengths not much shorter, than the cutoff wavelength, and near complete internal transmission for slightly longer wavelengths.
However, a photomultiplier measurement of the total transmission for a significantly sub cutoff wavelength source, will show orders of magnitude higher energy transmission, and a spectral analysis, quickly shows that the absorbed energy is simply down shifted to a longer wavelength emission from the glass. No matter how many of those filters you stack up, the net transmission of the input energy is orders of magnitude higher than predicted from Beers law, which takes no account whatsoever of re-emission.
I didn’t specify by what mechanism, the absorption of solar energy by H2O or even CO2 warms the atmosphere; but it seems we agree that it does warm the atmosphere. Is it not Ozone absorption of incoming solar spectrum energy that accounts for the higher temperatures in the Ozone belt.
And the whole point of the line broadening shift, was simply to point out that downward propagating LWIR, from the upper layers, is much more likely to be re-absorbed before reaching the surface, than is the upward radiation, which encounters an ever less dense and cooler layer of air, and its included GHGs. So the net downward radiation would be expected to always less than 50%.
I submit, that if atmospheric GHGs such as H2O, O3, and CO2 capture (partial blockage) some portion of the incoming solar spectrum energy (which therefore does not reach the surface as solar spectrum energy), and then less than half of the atmospheric emitted LWIR energy propagates downwards, then the overall result is still a net loss of solar energy to the earth’s energy storage tanks; the deep oceans. The roughly 50% of the atmospheric LWIR emission that radiates spaceward, as a result of original solar energy capture, is a guaranteed net loss of energy to the surface, and must result in a cooler surface.
Ultimately, it is the stored solar energy that accounts for earth’s equilibrium Temperature range, and anything which ALWAYS reduces the amount of solar energy that reaches the surface must ultimately lead to a lower surface Temperature; regardless of what GHG absorption of surface emitted LWIR radiation.
Tom in Florida says:
July 13, 2011 at 8:15 pm
To R. Gates:
Disagreement #1: Your assumption that CO2 is the controlling element of climate.
Disagreement #2: Your reliance on climate models as gospel
Disagreement #3: Your assumption that the future will be like the past with no credit for evolution or adaptation.
Disagreement #4: Your assumption that rises in CO2 are all caused by humans and that we are capable of controlling it.
Disagreement #5: Your preference for a colder world. (My preference is for a toasty warm world)
Disagreement #6: That a toasty warm world is harmful to humans. (We thrive in warm climates)
Disagreement #7: That we should be guided by the precautionary principle and embark on the destruction of current civilization “in case we bet wrong”. It makes no sense to me to definitely destroy our way of life now to stop the possible destruction of our way of life in the future. It would be like the police killing a man to prevent him from committing suicide (that actually happened in Sarasota FL).
_________
Re: Disagreement #1: I assume nothing. I read everything from professional journals I can find on the subject. So far, nothing seems as plausible as the science behind anthropogenic climate change initiated by the rapid build up of CO2 over the past few centuries.
Re: Disagreement #2: Global Climate Models are the best way to do testing (forward and backward) on different scenarios. They are not gospel, but tools. Like all tools, they are not perfect, but can and are being improved over time. Every single global climate model (created by different organizations all over the world) give the same result when looking at the rapid build-up of CO2 over the past few centuries…they all show global warming, seen first and strongest in the Arctic, secondarily in Antarctic and Greenland, and then throughout the world. Because the Arctic has been shown to be the earliest and where warming will be the most severe, it has always been the focus of my interest.
Re: Disagreement #3: I do not think the future will exactly like the past as time’s arrow demands the continual evolution and change of the universe. But when it comes to the laws of physics behind the greenhouse effects of various gases in our atmosphere, how the earth responds to it, and has been shown to respond, I do think there is consistency over time in that.
Re: Disagreement #4: I’ve never said that all rises in CO2 were all caused by humans. CO2 has risen and fallen in near perfect unison with Milankovitch cycles over hundreds of thousands of years (usually following the initial warming of Milankovitch changes in solar insolation which initiates a positive feedback loop with outgassing of CO2 from the oceans that releases even more CO2, etc). The current rise in CO2 (since about 1750 or so) is out of phase with the Milankovitch cycle however, and can be conclusively shown to be caused by humans. I do think that humans, if they wanted to, could control the amount of CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere.
Re: Disagreement #5: Now you’re just being silly. It would nice to see the climate remain in this nice zone we’ve seen during the Holocene (the period our human civilization has flowered) but one way or another, we’re probably coming to the end of that time.
Re: Disagreement #6: We’ve thrived in a moderate climate, not too cold and not too hot. Again, the Holocene has been good to us, and warmer is not necessarily better.
Re: Disagreement #7: Yes, I think an ounce of prevention is often worth a ton of cure, and some things get so messed up they can’t be cured. I currently do not favor any radical solutions to control climate change, however, I think the alarm bells are begin to sound a bit louder with each passing year, and within 10 years (at the very most) either they will be silent because they will be proven to be “false” alarms, or they will be pretty much the only thing that we will be hearing. We are indeed at a critical juncture for this issue, and the next few years will prove either the end of debating the issue, as some new data will come forth to show all the climate models were wrong, or all of our lives will begin to change in very significant ways as adjusting to climate change will become the focus of humanity. Either way, the time for debating this issue will be over soon enough, one way or another.
Dikran Marsupial at July 13, 2011 at 7:38 am
Dikran – there is a very easy proof of the pSCL-temperature negative correlation. Take the full HadCRUTv3 dataset, graph against pSCL. Then take the CET full dataset and also graph against pSCL. The regression lines are quite consistent with F-C&L and the other similar papers in that field.
Its simple to do, takes a morning with a spreadsheet. All three datasets are readily available. That you cannot explain why a correlation exists does not mean it does not exist. We are on the way to an explanation. That Kepler didn’t know about gravity did not stop him calculating the orbits of the planets. I’d also point out that while Mr Archibald’s values for SC25 and following require extrapolation using Ed Fix’s model, the value for SC24 is a simple interpolation of the data in the first graph.
that ‘black carbon is responsible for 50% or almost 1degreeC increased Arctic warming from 1890 to 2007’, and that ‘the climate-warming effects of these short-lived pollutants have largely been ignored by scientists and regulators focusing on climate policy’ —-that ‘decreasing concentrations of sulfate aerosols and increasing concentrations of black carbon have substantially contributed to rapid Arctic warming during the past three decades?
Hiram Levy of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said , ‘We found that these short-lived pollutants have a greater influence on the earth’s climate throughout the 21st century than people thought.’
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/04/drew-shindell-greg-faluvegi-black.html
David Archibald says:
July 13, 2011 at 7:27 am
Ed’s paper is in an Elsevier publication. It therefore follows that all that has been taken care of.
So far I have found a poor reproduction of Ed’s graph and one paragraph of general description in Easterbrook’s Book. This is hardly peer review.
Bamftiger: [ sorry, something went wrong with my previous post—here is the whole thing]
Dr Drew shindell of NASA and a number of other researchers testified to Congress on this.
Shindell’s research found that ‘black carbon is responsible for 50% or almost 1degreeC increased Arctic warming from 1890 to 2007’, and that ‘the climate-warming effects of these short-lived pollutants have largely been ignored by scientists and regulators focusing on climate policy’ —-that ‘decreasing concentrations of sulfate aerosols and increasing concentrations of black carbon have substantially contributed to rapid Arctic warming during the past three decades?
Hiram Levy of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said , ‘We found that these short-lived pollutants have a greater influence on the earth’s climate throughout the 21st century than people thought.’
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/04/drew-shindell-greg-faluvegi-black.html
Shindell’s advice —
[ “We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we’re just looking at carbon dioxide,” Shindell said. “If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we’re much better off looking at aerosols and ozone.”] “
There is evidence in the paleoclimatic record of gradual and rapid climate change events that coincide with peculiar solar changes. Svensmark and others have made progress working out the details as to how solar magnetic cycle changes affect the earth’s climate.
How solar cycle 24 will affect the planet’s climate will depend on both solar physics and the mechanisms by which solar changes affect the earth’s climate.
The possible connection between ionization in the atmosphere by cosmic rays and low level clouds
E. Palle´, C.J. Butler K. O’Brien
The second process, considered by Tinsley and Yu (2003), namely electroscavenging, depends on the action of the global electrical circuit (see review by Rycroft et al. (2000)). The transport of charge by rapidly rising convective currents in the tropics and over continental land masses leads to a 200 kV positive charge of the ionosphere compared to Earth. This large voltage difference, in turn, necessitates a return current which must pass through the regions of the atmosphere where clouds are formed. As cosmic rays are the principal agent of ionization in the atmosphere above 1 km altitude, any modulation of the GCR flux due to solar activity is likely to affect the transport of charge to complete the global electrical circuit. Tinsley and Yu (2003) discuss how the build up of electrostatic charge at the tops and bottoms of clouds could affect the scavenging of ice forming nuclei (IFN) and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) by droplets, and how this can lead to greater rates of precipitation and a reduction in cloud cover. They find that the electroscavenging process is likely to be more important over oceanic rather than continental regions and that it leads to a positive correlation between clouds and cosmic rays at higher latitudes and a negative correlation at low latitudes.
Thus the electroscavenging process can explain several of the most striking features of Fig. 5, namely: (1) the peak in significant positive correlations at latitudes around 50 degrees North and South (Fig. 5a); (2) the tendency for a less significant but nonetheless evident trend to negative correlation coefficients at low latitudes (Fig. 5a); and (3) the location of the peak in correlation over one of the principal oceans, namely over the North and South Atlantic (Fig. 5c). Although these aspects of our results are consistent with the predictions of the IMN and electroscavenging processes, it is too early to say that they provide real confirmation, particularly in view of the lack of field significance. Other mechanisms which rely on coupling between the upper and lower atmosphere as proposed by Kristjansson et al. (2002) and Haigh (1996) in which solar irradiance changes are the drivers of circulation changes and cloud cover variations remain a possibility.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0612/0612145v1.pdf
The Antarctic climate anomaly and galactic cosmic rays
Henrik Svensmark
Borehole temperatures in the ice sheets spanning the past 6000 years show Antarctica repeatedly warming when Greenland cooled, and vice versa (Fig. 1) [13, 14]. North-south oscillations of greater amplitude associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events are evident in oxygenisotope data from the Wurm-Wisconsin glaciation[15]. The phenomenon has been called the polar see-saw[15, 16], but that implies a north-south symmetry that is absent. Greenland is better coupled to global temperatures than Antarctica is, and the fulcrum of the temperature swings is near the Antarctic Circle. A more apt term for the effect is the Antarctic climate anomaly.
The cooling effect is not evenly distributed. As shown in Fig. (2 a) it is minimal around the Equator and increases
towards the mid-latitudes. In polar regions the clouds can have a warming effect if their re-radiation of long-wave energy downwards dominates over the loss of short-wave solar energy blocked by the clouds. This warming has been well recorded on the surface in both the Arctic and Antarctic [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
Figure (3) also predicts that a reduction in cloud cover of about 8 % is sufficient to warm most of the globe by almost 2◦C, which is in line with other estimates of cloud forcing during the 20th Century[1]. The effect is seen in the upper curve of Fig. (4a) (NASA-GISS data[20]). In a cloud interpretation the hesitations and advances in cloud reduction since 1900 follow the well-known changes in solar activity[1, 21]. The lower curve in Fig. (4a) shows the corresponding changes in Antarctica, and the operation of the Antarctic climate anomaly is plain to see. Note especially the fall in Antarctic temperatures in the 1920s contrasting with a surge in global temperatures, and the marked rise 1950–70 when global temperatures fell.
Meanwhile, a chain of evidence appears to be complete, which links low-level clouds to the well-known modulation
of galactic cosmic-ray intensity by solar magnetic activity, to the detected influence of galactic cosmic rays on cloudiness[1, 2, 3], and also to experimental evidence that electrons set free by passing muons help to make
aerosols the pre-curser to cloud condensation nuclei at low altitudes[4]. The roles of cosmic rays and clouds as
active players in climate change therefore merit closer attention in general climate modeling and in solar and heliospheric physics, with special regard to the high-energy galactic cosmic rays that ionize the lower atmosphere.
Physics history comes full circle. More than 100 years …
David Archibald says:
Sorry Vuk, Ed Fix’s model has won the race to model solar behaviour. It has a lot of fine detail. That good hindcast match you see in the window above goes on for centuries.
It fails at the Maunder minimum. The only model which successfully replicates that is this one on my blog.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/tallbloke-and-tim-channon-a-cycles-analysis-approach-to-predicting-solar-activity/
R. Gates says:
July 13, 2011 at 7:27 pm
“Let’s put it this way, if someone told me we could keep CO2 in the range it’s been during the time our civilizations came into being because the climate was conducive to grain plants which allowed us to even have civilization, or we could allow CO2 to go to levels when human ancestors were tree-shrews and the world was covered with steaming jungles and there were no grains at all…I’ll take the range in which our civilization has come into being. Letting CO2 continually rise, is conducting a huge experiment (rather like rolling the dice) on the future of the planet. Last time I checked, we haven’t got a spare in case we bet wrong”
Those would be the same CO2 levels that allowed the formation of glaciers a mile thick over everything north of Virginia for 100,000 years with 10,000 year interglacial periods. The current interglacial began over 10,000 years ago.
The level of ignorance in your blitherings, Gates, never ceases to amaze me.
David Archibald says:
July 13, 2011 at 5:08 pm
That said, this is a simple paper based on a simple concept. There have been a number of other papers demonstrating a correlation between (force that dare not speak its name) effects on the Sun driven by the gas giant planets, but none have provided the resolution that this model provides. This model hindcasts almost perfectly and that very close match, despite the model’s simplicity, suggests that it predicts very well.
Have you read my paper?
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1005/1005.5303.pdf
As stated the theory can hindcast the 400 years of sunspot counts and then the Holocene through proxy records and so far remains unchallenged (or understood for that matter). There is also no need to reset the model when the correlations stop happening, this is the huge downside of Ed’s model.