UPDATE: see some reactions to this announcement here
From the GWPF
This refers to the CLOUD experiment at CERN.
I’ll have more on this as it develops (updated twice since the original report now), but for the short term, it appears that a non-visible light irradiance effect on Earth’s cloud seeds has been confirmed. The way it is posited to work is that the effect of cosmic rays (modulated by the sun’s magnetic variations which either allow more or deflect more cosmic rays) creates cloud condensation nuclei in the Earth’s atmosphere. With more condensation nuclei, more clouds form and vice-versa. Clouds have significant effects on TSI at the surface.
Even the IPCC has admitted this in their latest (2007) report:
“Cloud feedbacks are the primary source of inter-model differences in equilibrium climate sensitivity, with low cloud being the largest contributor”.
Update: From the Nature article, Kirkby is a bit more muted in his assessment than the GWPF:
Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.
Update: Bizarrely, New Scientist headlines with: Cloud-making: Another human effect on the climate
================================================================
CERN Experiment Confirms Cosmic Rays Influence Climate Change.
by Nigel Calder
Long-anticipated results of the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Geneva appear in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Nature (25 August). The Director General of CERN stirred controversy last month, by saying that the CLOUD team’s report should be politically correct about climate change (see my 17 July post below). The implication was that they should on no account endorse the Danish heresy – Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis that most of the global warming of the 20th Century can be explained by the reduction in cosmic rays due to livelier solar activity, resulting in less low cloud cover and warmer surface temperatures.
Willy-nilly the results speak for themselves, and it’s no wonder the Director General was fretful.
Jasper Kirkby of CERN and his 62 co-authors, from 17 institutes in Europe and the USA, announce big effects of pions from an accelerator, which simulate the cosmic rays and ionize the air in the experimental chamber. The pions strongly promote the formation of clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules – aerosols of the kind that may grow into cloud condensation nuclei on which cloud droplets form. What’s more, there’s a very important clarification of the chemistry involved.
A breach of etiquette
My interest in CLOUD goes back nearly 14 years, to a lecture I gave at CERN about Svensmark’s discovery of the link between cosmic rays and cloudiness. It piqued Kirkby’s curiosity, and both Svensmark and I were among those who helped him to prepare his proposal for CLOUD.
By an unpleasant irony, the only Svensmark contribution acknowledged in theNature report is the 1997 paper (Svensmark and Friis-Christensen) on which I based my CERN lecture. There’s no mention of the successful experiments in ion chemistry and molecular cluster formation by the Danish team in Copenhagen, Boulby and latterly in Aarhus where they beat CLOUD to the first results obtained using a particle beam (instead of gamma rays and natural cosmic rays) to ionize the air in the experimental chamber – see http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/accelerator-results-on-cloud-nucleation-2/
What will historians of science make of this breach of scientific etiquette? That Kirkby was cross because Svensmark, losing patience with the long delay in getting approval and funding for CLOUD, took matters into his own hands? Or because Svensmark’s candour about cosmic rays casting doubt on catastrophic man-made global warming frightened the national funding agencies? Or was Kirkby simply doing his best (despite the results) to obey his Director General by slighting all things Danish?
Personal rivalries aside, the important question is what the new CLOUD paper means for the Svensmark hypothesis. Pick your way through the cautious prose and you’ll find this:
“Ion-induced nucleation [cosmic ray action] will manifest itself as a steady production of new particles [molecular clusters] that is difficult to isolate in atmospheric observations because of other sources of variability but is nevertheless taking place and could be quite large when averaged globally over the troposphere [the lower atmosphere].”
It’s so transparently favourable to what the Danes have said all along that I’m surprised the warmists’ house magazine Nature is able to publish it, even omitting the telltale graph shown at the start of this post. Added to the already favourable Danish experimental findings, the more detailed CERN result is excellent. Thanks a million, Jasper.
Enlightening chemistry
And in friendlier times we’d be sharing champagne for a fine discovery with CLOUD, that traces of ammonia can increase the production of the sulphuric clusters a thousandfold. It’s highlighted in the report’s title: “Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation” and it was made possible by the more elaborate chemical analysis in the big-team set-up in Geneva. In essence, the ammonia helps to stabilize the molecular clusters.
Although not saying it openly, the CLOUD team implies a put-down for the Danes with this result, repeatedly declaring that without ammonia there’d be little cluster production at low altitudes. But although the Aarhus experimenters did indeed assume the simpler reaction (H2SO4 + H2O), differing results in successive experimental runs made them suspect that varying amounts of trace impurities were present in the air cylinders used to fill their chamber. Now it looks as if a key impurity may have been ammonia. But some members of the CLOUD consortium also favoured (H2SO4 + H2O) and early runs in Geneva used no intentional ammonia. So they’ve little reason to scoff.
In any case, whether the basic chemistry is (H2SO4 + H2O) or (H2SO4 + H2O + NH3) is an academic rather than a practical point. There are always traces of ammonia in the real air, and according to the CLOUD report you need only one molecule in 30 billion. If that helps to oil Svensmark’s climatic motor, it’s good to know, but it calls for no apologies and alters the climatic implications not a jot.
The experiment’s logo. The acronym “Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets” always implied strong interest in Svensmark’s hypothesis. And the roles of the Galaxy and the Sun are acknowledged.Technically, CLOUD is a welcome advance on the Danish experiments. Not only is the chemistry wider ranging but molecular clusters as small as 1.7 nanometres in diameter are detectable, compared with 4 nm in Denmark. And the set-up enables the scientists to study the ion chemistry at lower temperatures, corresponding to increasing altitudes in the atmosphere. Cluster production soars as the temperature goes down, until “almost every negative ion gives rise to a new particle” [i.e. molecular cluster]. The lowest temperature reported in the paper is -25 oC. That corresponds to an altitude of 6000 metres, so unless you wish to visualize a rain of cloud-seeding aerosols from on high, it’s not very relevant to Svensmark’s interest in the lowest 3000 metres.
How the warmists built their dam
Shifting from my insider’s perspective on the CLOUD experiment, to see it on the broader canvas of the politicized climate science of the early 21st Century, the chief reaction becomes a weary sigh of relief. Although they never said so, the High Priests of the Inconvenient Truth – in such temples as NASA-GISS, Penn State and the University of East Anglia – always knew that Svensmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis was the principal threat to their sketchy and poorly modelled notions of self-amplifying action of greenhouse gases.
In telling how the obviously large influences of the Sun in previous centuries and millennia could be explained, and in applying the same mechanism to the 20th warming, Svensmark put the alarmist predictions at risk – and with them the billions of dollars flowing from anxious governments into the global warming enterprise.
For the dam that was meant to ward off a growing stream of discoveries coming from the spring in Copenhagen, the foundation was laid on the day after the Danes first announced the link between cosmic rays and clouds at a space conference in Birmingham, England, in 1996. “Scientifically extremely naïve and irresponsible,”Bert Bolin declared, as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
As several journalists misbehaved by reporting the story from Birmingham, the top priority was to tame the media. The first courses of masonry ensured that anything that Svensmark and his colleagues might say would be ignored or, failing that, be promptly rubbished by a warmist scientist. Posh papers like The Times of London and the New York Times, and posh TV channels like the BBC’s, readily fell into line. Enthusiastically warmist magazines like New Scientist and Scientific Americanneeded no coaching.
Similarly the journals Nature and Science, which in my youth prided themselves on reports that challenged prevailing paradigms, gladly provided cement for higher masonry, to hold the wicked hypothesis in check at the scientific level. Starve Svensmark of funding. Reject his scientific papers but give free rein to anyone who criticizes him. Trivialize the findings in the Holy Writ of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. None of this is paranoia on my part, but a matter of close personal observation since 1996.
“It’s the Sun, stupid!” The story isn’t really about a bunch of naughty Danish physicists. They are just spokesmen for the most luminous agent of climate change. As the Sun was what the warmists really wanted to tame with their dam, they couldn’t do it. And coming to the Danes’ aid, by briefly blasting away many cosmic rays with great puffs of gas, the Sun enabled the team to trace in detail the consequent reduction in cloud seeding and liquid water in clouds. See my posthttp://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/do-clouds-disappear/ By the way, that research also disposes of a morsel of doubt in the new CLOUD paper, about whether the small specks made by cosmic rays really grow sufficiently to seed cloud droplets.
As knowledge accumulated behind their dam and threatened to overtop it, the warmists had one last course to lay. Paradoxically it was CLOUD. Long delays with this experiment to explore the microchemical mechanism of the Svensmark effect became the chief excuse for deferring any re-evaluation of the Sun’s role in climate change. When the microchemical mechanism was revealed prematurely by the SKY experiment in Copenhagen and published in 2006, the warmists said, “No particle accelerator? That won’t do! Wait for CLOUD.” When the experiment in Aarhus confirmed the mechanism using a particle accelerator they said, “Oh that’s just the Danes again! Wait for CLOUD.”
Well they’ve waited and their dam has failed them.
Hall of Shame
Retracing those 14 years, what if physics had functioned as it is supposed to do? What if CLOUD, quickly approved and funded, had verified the Svensmark effect with all the authority of CERN, in the early 2000s. What if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had done a responsible job, acknowledging the role of the Sun and curtailing the prophecies of catastrophic warming?
For a start there would have no surprise about the “travesty” that global warming has stopped since the mid-1990s, with the Sun becoming sulky. Vast sums might have been saved on misdirected research and technology, and on climate change fests and wheezes of every kind. The world’s poor and their fragile living environment could have had far more useful help than precautions against warming.
And there would have been less time for so many eminent folk from science, politics, industry, finance, the media and the arts to be taken in by man-made climate catastrophe. (In London, for example, from the Royal Society to the National Theatre.) Sadly for them, in the past ten years they’ve crowded with their warmist badges into a Hall of Shame, like bankers before the crash.
As I reported on May 14th, 2011 in Update on the CERN CLOUD experiment:
From Physics World Head in a CLOUD:
In this special video report for physicsworld.com CLOUD project leader Jasper Kirkby explains what his team is trying to achieve with its experiment. “We’re trying to understand what the connection is between a cosmic ray going through the atmosphere and the creation of so-called aerosol seeds – the seed for a cloud droplet or an ice particle,” Kirkby explains.
The CLOUD experiment recreates these cloud-forming processes by directing the beamline at CERN’s proton synchrotron into a stainless-steel chamber containing very pure air and selected trace gases.
One of the aims of the experiment is to discover details of cloud formation that could feed back into climate models. “Everybody agrees that clouds have a huge effect on the climate. But the understanding of how big that effect is is really very poorly known,” says Kirkby.
Here’s the video, click image below to launch it.
=====================================================
More coverage: Big hat tip to WUWT reader “Andrew20”
Cosmic rays get ahead in CLOUD
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2011/August/24081102.asp
Cloud formation may be linked to cosmic rays
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.504.html
Cloud formation study casts a shadow over certain climate models
======================================================
Update: From Nigel Calder’s blog
A graph they’d prefer you not to notice. Tucked away near the end of online supplementary material, and omitted from the printed CLOUD paper in Nature, it clearly shows how cosmic rays promote the formation of clusters of molecules (“particles”) that in the real atmosphere can grow and seed clouds. In an early-morning experimental run at CERN, starting at 03.45, ultraviolet light began making sulphuric acid molecules in the chamber, while a strong electric field cleansed the air of ions. It also tended to remove molecular clusters made in the neutral environment (n) but some of these accumulated at a low rate. As soon as the electric field was switched off at 04.33, natural cosmic rays (gcr) raining down through the roof of the experimental hall in Geneva helped to build clusters at a higher rate. How do we know they were contributing? Because when, at 04.58, CLOUD simulated stronger cosmic rays with a beam of charged pion particles (ch) from the accelerator, the rate of cluster production became faster still. The various colours are for clusters of different diameters (in nanometres) as recorded by various instruments. The largest (black) took longer to grow than the smallest (blue). This is Fig. S2c from supplementary online material for J. Kirkby et al., Nature, 476, 429-433, © Nature 2011
A headline in the current issue of The Economist (London), 8/28/11, states: “A new experiment with old apparatus reveals a flaw in models of the climate.” This headline appears above a story about CERN’s CLOUD experiment. Imagine — “… a flaw in models of the climate” being reported fairly by a respected BRITISH main-stream media publication having world-wide coverage. You can find it at:
http://www.economist.com/node/21526788
How many angels can sit on the point of a pin ?
Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on the other side? Or have you ever pondered upon the extremely high incidence of irrelevant matter which crops up at committee meetings, and upon the very great rarity of persons capable of acting as chairmen of committees? And when you think of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?
Read this short treatise by Dorothy Sayers:
The Lost Tools of Learning
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
=========
Please let’s have some reframing of the arguments in here so as to avoid unattributable assertions, and the “ping-pong” of hearsay and baseless innuendo. Let us maybe frame the dialogue like this, for example (hypothetically) :
Al Gore wrote @ur momisugly August 28, 2011 at 00:30 am
“The temperature of the centre of the Earth is millions of degrees”
That is an unfounded assertion Mr. Gore, is it not?
What supporting evidence, if any, do you have for that assertion?
My own research suggests that you are wrong, and that it is not at
“millions of degrees” as you have suggested, but in reality it is said
to be around 10-12, 000 degrees Fahrenheit or 5,500-6,500 Celsius.
Please refer to the following PDF document :
Journal of Geophysical Research Vol 102, 10 November 1997
“Composition and Temperature of Earth’s Inner Core”
Lars Stixsrude, Evgeny Wasserman & Ronald E. Cohen
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfbls0/stixrudeetal_97.pdf
QED ❓
=============
it’s just a suggestion …..
Henry@Axel
Surely, Al Gore is a lier and a cheat
I tried confronting him on a number of issues but he never answered any of my questions
I’m not sure why you think you will get any answers
AusieDan says:
August 27, 2011 at 8:22 pm
“While known for a long time, they have now quantified the requirements for the very beginnigs of cloud formation. H2O, SO2 and NH4, plus cosmic rays are sufficient for that purpose.”
One of the interesting new discoveries from CLOUD is that H20, SO2 and NH4, plus cosmic rays are actually INSUFFICIANT to explain cloud formation at the boundary layer.
Izen,
“AGW is not a scientific scam perpetrated by a few ideologically motivated activists, it is the result of well over a century of the accumulation of evidence and understanding by the scientific method.”
On the second point – is AGW over a century of accumulation of evidence and understanding by the scientific method? I presume you must be alluding to the fact that Just over a hundred years ago, a certain Arrhenius made his famous calculation (on two occasions) for the sensivitity due to the doubling of CO2.
And then what? Nothing happened until Calder in the thirties. And then? Keeling began his CO2 measurements in the fifties. However, even at that point, there was very little data on which the scientific method could be based – land based thermometers were not fit for purpose. Satellite monitioring did not begin until the seventies, and even then large gaps were left unfilled, such as the Earth’s radiation budget and atmospheric water vapour – these didn’t appear until decades later. And even then, the only measurements we had for ocean heat content were derived by scooping water from passing ships – a comprehensive deep ocean network did not become operational until 2003. We need another 50 to 100 years of this data to really get to grips with the complexities of climate.
Well over a century of accumulated evidence? Why would you say that?.
As to empirical CO2 Science in modern times,
there can be no greater experts surely than the
IDSO Family, whose website “CO2 Science” is
full of evidence based research.
To quote from their own flyer :
“The debate over the environmental consequences of the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content continues as intensely as ever. With climate alarmists flooding popular media outlets with unrealistic horror stories of what the future will bring, the populace of the planet is getting a warped perspective of the issue. Please help us correct this situation by telling your friends about CO2 Science”
Ok, Friends, why not look in at :
http://www.co2science.org/
🙂
Again no facts to back any of your statements, Leif. You are cloaking your beleif as ” science ” without any basis.
I gave my statements about your models and AGW models based upon the fact that they have not been verified by empirical evidence and have been massive fails. You have consistently failed to address that point and remained evasive wit intent as you have no leg to stand on.
Then I gave a prediction on what will happen in 5 years, stating it clearly as a prediction, not as a fact. I have been honest about that.
That is in contrary to you, who have offered noting verifiable as science to validate your stance on AGW and are basing it on faith and dishonesty. So it is you who are arguing about a faith, dishonestly stating it as science.
Moderator;
You censored part of my post at August 28, 2011 at 7:54 am saying;
“[snip . . please try and keep things civil . . kb]”
I apologise if you were offended, but I strongly dispute that my censored paragraph was not “civil”.
It stated the only two possible interpretations of the answer John Finn had given and, thus, explained why my subsequent (not censored) following paragraph said in full,
“I would be grateful for a clarification of your answer to my question, please.”
When somebody does something it is perfectly “civil” to point out what they did before asking them to correct it. And John Finn may have corrected it if the fact of what he had done had remained apparent, but he has not corrected it.
Richard
Muons might be a better measure of cosmic ray phenomena. They are negatively charged.
“Muon observations are complementary to neutron monitor studies. Neutron mon-
itor observations extend from the lowest energies accessible to ground based ob-
servation up to approximately 50 GeV. Surface muon observations have significant
responses from approximately 10 GeV to several hundred GeV whilst underground
muon observations extend up to slightly above 1000 GeV. At the minimum of
the muon observational range, the dominant modulation processes are similar to
those seen by neutron monitors. With increasing energy, galactic effects are more
prevalent and solar modulation disappears.”
http://cr0.izmiran.rssi.ru/gmdnet/Publication/Muon%20Observations.pdf
Henry@Izen
further in support of Vince Causey’s arguments
I found (recently) that no one even understood the principle of the GH effect correctly so how could they possibly get to any correct answers from all of their “calculations”?
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
anna v says:
August 28, 2011 at 10:07 am
Certainly the hypothesis that cosmic ray cloud formation is the major/only driver of temperature variations cannot be true. But that it may be a component in the build up of the climate variations we have recorded the past one and a half century cannot be excluded without more data.
There are many such components: cosmic rays, TSI, CO2, Land Use, etc. The fallacy comes in when somebody claims that their pet component is the one that counts and all the rest are nonsense.
From the plot in your link that shows 15% variations in cosmic rays during the sun cycles
My plot is a little bit misleading as it shows the flux integrated over all energies that reach the station. Svensmarks claims that only cosmic rays greater than 9 GeV have effect and those are a significantly smaller percentage of the variation, perhaps 2% or so.
pochas says:
August 28, 2011 at 10:16 am
<“However, the cosmic ray hypothesis has already been falsified [in the sense that it is not a major driver] because the long-term cosmic ray variations do not match the temperature.”
The cosmic ray records don’t go back to the Maunder
They don’t have to, the correlation failed for six cycles with good data.
SGW says:
August 28, 2011 at 10:30 am
So what do you think about Spencer’s recend claim that detrended GCR flux matches changes in satellite data of global radiative flux?
I gave my opinion on that thread. Go look for it there. Basically, the record is too short and removing the trend is not correct when the claim is that cosmic rays are responsible for the trend that some people call AGW.
petermue says:
August 28, 2011 at 10:48 am
But what about the different compositions between pions as used in CERN and CR as we know them arriving at Earth (protons, alpha particles, electrons)?
Could this have influenced the result of the experiment?
Possibly a little, but I don’t think it matters much what the particle is as long as it has enough energy. You are equally dead when shot with bullets of lead, uranium, silver, or whatever.
Venter says:
August 28, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Again no facts to back any of your statements, Leif. You are cloaking your beleif as ” science ” without any basis.
Are you saying that my statements that the models have failed are without any basis? Well, you can have your opinion about that, as I can have mine.
Volker Doormann (August 26, 2011 at 2:03 am) wrote:
“[…] the global temperature proxy pattern has a weak correlation with the time/frequency shift of the sunspot phase from the average sun spot frequency of 1/11.196 y^-1.”
You’ve gone off-track with the last part:
“from the average sun spot frequency of 1/11.196 y^-1.”
Remember that the terrestrial year is only 1 year long …and that your claim is about terrestrial climate.
The shifts go far enough for nearest-harmonics with the terrestrial year to take step-jumps. (Same applies for semi-annual & QBO.)
Regards.
Izen and Richard Courtney
Although the high surface temperatures on Venus (465 C) may not be explained by heat conduction through the crust one cannot exclude volcanism as a prime suspect contributing to the high temperature. After all 75% of the Sun’s radiation is reflected off the dense sulfuric acid clouds and only 2% of solar radiation penetrates to the surface. Recent estimates of Venusian visibility are about 3km, about 2 miles on a good day, certainly enough for the Russian Landers to take pictures but alone seems hardly enough to drive the surface temperature to 465 C.
The Venusian atmosphere is about 97% CO2 with N2 making up most of the remainder. Sulfur compounds (SO2) are only a tiny 150-ppm fraction. Curiously the super thick clouds responsible for the high Albedo are almost entirely comprised of H2SO4, raining down continuously but never reaching the hot surface before evaporating back up to start the cloud cover process all over. Radar mapping and surface imaging does seem to suggest volcanism as a prime surface shaper. Venus has no significant magnetic field but then it does not rotate very fast, it takes about 58 Earth days for Venus to spin once on its axis. This slow rotation does not help the interior convective forces to move any molten iron or nickel around so consequently it has a very weak magnetic field. However, the sulfur in the atmosphere has to come from somewhere and many believe that it comes from active volcanism. Eruptions on Earth produce copious amounts of H20, CO2 and SO2 but in varying concentrations with steam usually being the most abundant. Super active volcanoes on Venus should they exist, likely produce similar gases. Venus also suffers from atmospheric stripping in enormous amounts since it is both closer to the sun and is only weakly protected from the solar wind by its puny magnetic field. One could assume that the atmospherics losses from the solar wind stripping process are made up by volcanism spewing out massive amounts of CO2 and some SO2. But can we say positively say that the heat from volcanism is the primary driver for the high surface temperature? Not enough data to go there just yet. But there is interesting data coming forth now that submarine volcanism on Earth may be an underestimated contributor to ocean heating. An analogous situation could exist on Venus. The bottom line is that any heat generated on the surface, be from volcanism, small amounts of heat convection from the interior or the fractional amounts derived from the 2% of solar energy heating the surface are all going to trapped by a thick, super insulating blanket of H2SO4 clouds. The vast amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere also contribute greatly to massive surface heat retention via the much maligned “green house effect”. One also wonders how much H2SO4 cloud nucleation occurs with such high density solar wind pounding the upper atmosphere.
@-aaron says:
August 28, 2011 at 10:46 pm
“Although the high surface temperatures on Venus (465 C) may not be explained by heat conduction through the crust one cannot exclude volcanism as a prime suspect contributing to the high temperature… ”
As is so often the case, this sort of issue has been examined in some detail – scientists are OCD geeks and will hypothesise endlessly if given enough grant….
Here is a paper on the contribution from vulcanism to Venus surface temperatures based on the maximum rate of surface modification by eruptions given the observed cratering –
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987GeoRL..14..538G
If you click on the link to – Find Similar Abstracts – at the top left of this page you will find MANY more papers on every aspect of planetary ‘climate’. Including research into the formation and composition of the atmosphere on Venus and the influence of the solar output and variations on the high cloud layer.
Richard S Courtney says:
August 28, 2011 at 7:54 am
My post at August 28, 2011 at 12:16 am replied to that by providing data which shows
(a) direct measurements of ocean temperature
and
(b) measurements of sea level rise
both indicate a recent significant decline in ocean temperatures in the last 5 years.
Your post at August 28, 2011 at 12:16 am provided 2 links, i.e.
http://oceanmotion.org/html/gatheringdata/satellites-jason.htm
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/nasa-notes-sea-level-is-falling-in-press-release-but-calls-it-a-pothole-on-road-to-higher-seas/
The first is a link which discusses data gathering by Jason (the successor to Topex/Poseidon) . The only data presented is a sea level anomaly map from Jan 12 2006. There are no direct measurements of ocean temperature. Maybe you can see something that I can’t.
The second link shows the recent dip in sea level due to the 2010 La Nina which is completely unrelated to low solar activity/rising GCR count which began in ~2005. According to your link, sea levels are still higher than they were 5 years ago, i.e. there has been no decline (significant or otherwise) in the last 5 years.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2011 at 8:29 pm
“I gave my opinion on that thread. Go look for it there. Basically, the record is too short and removing the trend is not correct when the claim is that cosmic rays are responsible for the trend that some people call AGW. ”
Well, as I understood it there’s no other reliable satellite data available about radiative flux other than the CERES satellite which only began in 2000.
Also, I think Spencer’s claim was not at all what you say. He seems to be getting successfull match between changes in global radiative flux and GCR activity. This would back those studies suggesting there’s strong correlation between cloudiness and cosmic rays.
I think you’re basically claiming that there’s no negative correlation between surface temps and cosmic ray activity. Am I right?
http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/slangley.pdf A scientist.
aaron says:
August 28, 2011 at 10:46 pm
Izen and Richard Courtney
Although the high surface temperatures on Venus (465 C) may not be explained by heat conduction through the crust one cannot exclude volcanism as a prime suspect contributing to the high temperature. After all 75% of the Sun’s radiation is reflected off the dense sulfuric acid clouds and only 2% of solar radiation penetrates to the surface. Recent estimates of Venusian visibility are about 3km, about 2 miles on a good day, certainly enough for the Russian Landers to take pictures but alone seems hardly enough to drive the surface temperature to 465 C.
The Venusian atmosphere is about 97% CO2 with N2 making up most of the remainder. Sulfur compounds (SO2) are only a tiny 150-ppm fraction. Curiously the super thick clouds responsible for the high Albedo are almost entirely comprised of H2SO4, raining down continuously but never reaching the hot surface before evaporating back up to start the cloud cover process all over.
I don’t understand this, are you saying that heat from the Sun, thermal infrared, is being reflected off the clouds?
SGW says:
August 29, 2011 at 2:57 am
Also, I think Spencer’s claim was not at all what you say. He seems to be getting successfull match between changes in global radiative flux and GCR activity. This would back those studies suggesting there’s strong correlation between cloudiness and cosmic rays.
I think you’re basically claiming that there’s no negative correlation between surface temps and cosmic ray activity. Am I right?
If there is a strong correlation between cosmic rays and surface temps then the latter should vary [inversely] like the rays, i.e. as http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic-Rays-Hermanus.png upside-down] and they do not.
bushbunny says:
August 28, 2011 at 4:25 am
No one is arguing against this Finn. Get back to the topic please. The CERN experiment proves
that GHG of which 95% is water vapor and can be controlled by cosmic or galactic sub atomic particles and solar activity….
What do you mean by “controlled”? The presence of water vapour depends, to a large extent, on the temperature of the atmosphere. Since CO2 is highly influential in the higher, colder and DRIER regions of the troposphere and hence determines the average height at which energy is ultimately emitted to space, it would suggest CO2 ‘controls’ water vapour.
Also your 95% of GHG figure for wv is (a) wrong and (b) misleading. If water vapour were removed from the atmosphere while all other GHGs remained ~36% of the greenhouse effect would be lost. If all other GHGs were removed leaving only the current concentration of water vapour (not possible) ~66% of the greenhouse effect would remain plus perhaps a further 10%-20% from clouds.
John Finn:
re; your post at August 29, 2011 at 1:55 am.
You had asserted that if GCRs were responsible for global warming then sea surface temperatures should have fallen in the last 5 years. I pointed out – with two different forms of evidence – that sea surface temperatures HAVE fallen in the last 5 years.
You replied that the fall is an effect of ENSO so I asked what your point was.
I asked what your point was because the evidence you said did not exist does exist but you say it indicates something other than you had claimed it would indicate.
Your response at August 29, 2011 at 1:55 am says;
“The second link shows the recent dip in sea level due to the 2010 La Nina which is completely unrelated to low solar activity/rising GCR count which began in ~2005. According to your link, sea levels are still higher than they were 5 years ago, i.e. there has been no decline (significant or otherwise) in the last 5 years.”
That is a repeat of your assertion about ENSO combined with ‘moving the goal posts’. Of course the recent drop does not overcome the consistent rise (that has existed for 300 years) over the 5 year period, but it is a recent drop.
You said a drop would have happened and it has.
I repeat, what is your point?
It seems that you don’t have a point but you do have an agenda.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
August 29, 2011 at 3:37 pm
John Finn:
re; your post at August 29, 2011 at 1:55 am.
You had asserted that if GCRs were responsible for global warming then sea surface temperatures should have fallen in the last 5 years. I pointed out – with two different forms of evidence – that sea surface temperatures HAVE fallen in the last 5 years.
NO! – you didn’t provide any evidence to show that sea surface temperatues had fallen. You gave 2 links – NEITHER of which provides any SST data.
The second link shows a drop in Sea Level since 2010. However it also shows that sea levels are still higher than they were 5 years ago – so you’ve even failed to provide evidence on this point.
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2011 at 4:49 pm
“… through positive feedback loops involving CO2.”
“Well, here’s how it shakes out. …… Milankovitch is the trigger, CO2 is the thermostat.”
But a thermostat behaves as a NEGATIVE feedback mechanism. Good grief Gates! How can you believe your own BS?
“Re CO2 is the thermostat” – how exactly? I’m no clearer on it after reading this: CO2: The Thermostat that Controls Earth’s Temperature
By Andrew Lacis — October 2010 http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/lacis_01/
I can understand, within my limitations, that the Cern experiment shows a connection to clouds, but how does CO2 regulate clouds?
And how by being in drier higher colder regions without clouds?
>>
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2011 at 8:29 am
The latest models have time increments of 5 minutes.
<<
I was just looking at the GISS model, and they make the following resolution claim:
4×5 (medium resolution) 12 vertical layers
4×5 (medium resolution) 20 vertical layers (up to 0.1mb)
4×5 (medium resolution) 23 vertical layers (incl. stratosphere)
2×2.5 (fine resolution) 12 vertical layers
They also set the time increments to:
2nd order advection scheme (12 layer DT = 450 sec)
4th order advection scheme (12 layer DT = 300 sec)
It looks like I was being too conservative for the time steps. The other spatial resolutions are still rather large, so they haven’t increased the resolutions symmetrically. However, you are right–the faster time step (at least for the GISS model) is 5 minutes.
Jim
Leif Svalgaard,
I just wanted to take the time to thank you for your tireless effort to explain the science on these pages. I really appreciate it and wanted to say so. It must be frustrating to say the same thing over and over again and I’m glad it hasn’t run you off. There are many of us, I assume, who understand what you are saying, understand your position, understand the integrity that 99.999% of scientists have and live by. Your life is your work and to have someone question you or your peers ethics must be annoying. To be a scientist is to understand the observable world around you, not pull the wool over the public, that’s politicians. Anyways, thanks for sharing.