This is interesting. A quick cooling in Europe together with an increase in humidity and particularly in windiness was found to coincide with a long-term reduction in solar activity 2800 years ago during something called the “Homeric minimum”.
The paper published in Nature Geoscience suggests that solar grand minima was the trigger for cooling of the climate in Europe. Approximately 2800 years ago, one of these Grand Solar Minima, the Homeric Minimum, caused a distinct climatic change in less than a decade in Western Europe. While they talk about UV, the forcing mechanisms still are unclear but the evidence in this paper suggests that solar effects are significant. Dr. Leif Svalgaard sent me the notice of the paper, and included this graph which he says:
Attached is one of the better reconstruction of solar activity.
There are, of course, several other excursions not mentioned, e.g. the more severe one around 650 AD
Here’s the abstract, bold mine:
Regional atmospheric circulation shifts induced by a grand solar minimum
by Celia Martin-Puertas, Katja Matthes, Achim Brauer, Raimund Muscheler, Felicitas Hansen, Christof Petrick, Ala Aldahan, Göran Possnert & Bas van Geel
Nature Geoscience (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1460
Large changes in solar ultraviolet radiation can indirectly affect climate1 by inducing atmospheric changes. Specifically, it has been suggested that centennial-scale climate variability during the Holocene epoch was controlled by the Sun2, 3. However, the amplitude of solar forcing is small when compared with the climatic effects and, without reliable data sets, it is unclear which feedback mechanisms could have amplified the forcing. Here we analyse annually laminated sediments of Lake Meerfelder Maar, Germany, to derive variations in wind strength and the rate of 10Be accumulation, a proxy for solar activity, from 3,300 to 2,000 years before present. We find a sharp increase in windiness and cosmogenic 10Be deposition 2,759 ± 39 varve years before present and a reduction in both entities 199 ± 9 annual layers later. We infer that the atmospheric circulation reacted abruptly and in phase with the solar minimum. A shift in atmospheric circulation in response to changes in solar activity is broadly consistent with atmospheric circulation patterns in long-term climate model simulations, and in reanalysis data that assimilate observations from recent solar minima into a climate model. We conclude that changes in atmospheric circulation amplified the solar signal and caused abrupt climate change about 2,800 years ago, coincident with a grand solar minimum.
UPDATE: Here’s the press release from the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.
Climatic effects of a solar minimum
A grand solar minimum and the climate response recorded for the first time in the same climate archive highlights the need for a more differentiated approach to solar radiation
An abrupt cooling in Europe together with an increase in humidity and particularly in windiness coincided with a sustained reduction in solar activity 2800 years ago. Scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in collaboration with Swedish and Dutch colleagues provide evidence for a direct solar-climate linkage on centennial timescales. Using the most modern methodological approach, they analysed sediments from Lake Meerfelder Maar, a maar lake in the Eifel/Germany, to determine annual variations in climate proxies and solar activity.
The study published online this week in Nature Geosience (06/05/2012) reports the climatic change that occurred at the beginning of the pre-Roman Iron Age and demonstrates that especially the so-called Grand Minima of solar activity can affect climate conditions in western Europe through changes in regional atmospheric circulation pattern. Around 2800 years ago, one of these Grand Solar Minima, the Homeric Minimum, caused a distinct climatic change in less than a decade in Western Europe.
The exceptional seasonally laminated sediments from the studied maar lake allow a precise dating even of short-term climate changes. The results show for a 200 year long period strongly increased springtime winds during a period of cool and wet climate in Europe. In combination with model studies they suggest a mechanism that can explain the relation between a weak sun and climate change. “The change and strengthening of the tropospheric wind systems likely is related to stratospheric processes which in turn are affected by the ultraviolet radiation” explains Achim Brauer (GFZ), the initiator of the study. “This complex chain of processes thus acts as a positive feedback mechanism that could explain why assumingly too small variations in solar activity have caused regional climate changes.”
Albeit those findings cannot be directly transferred to future projections because the current climate is additionally affected by anthropogenic forcing, they provide clear evidence for still poorly understood aspects of the climate system, emphasizes Achim Brauer. In particular, further investigations are required with a focus on the climatic consequences of changes in different wavelengths of the solar spectrum. Only when the mechanisms of solar-climate links are better understood a reliable estimate of the potential effects of the next Grand solar minimum in a world of anthropogenic climate change will be possible. In this respect, well-dated annually laminated lake sediments are also in future of crucial importance for these studies.
Therefore, scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) and other institutions search for such archives around the world in order to to obtain a more accurate approach to the solar-climate relationship and the different regional responses.
Celia Martin-Puertas, Katja Matthes, Achim Brauer, Raimund Muscheler, Felicitas Hansen, Christof Petrick, Ala Aldahan, Göran Possnert and Bas van Geel: “Regional atmospheric circulation shifts induced by a grand solar minimum”, Nature Geoscience, DOI 10.1038/NGEO1460
Pictures of Eifel maar lakes and drilling can be found here:
http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/portal/gfz/Public+Relations/M40-Bildarchiv/Bildergalerie+Klimaforschung
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Jan Perlwitz says
More information can be found here:
http://rtweb.aer.com/
Henry says
It does not give me the right dimensions:like
cooling/warming in
in W /m3 / [0.03%- 0.06%]CO2/m2/24hours
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
i.e. show me a balance sheet of SW (cooling) and LW (warming) in those dimensions?
RACookPE1978 at May 8, 2012 at 10:41 am:
I just have given the website, where this information about how the radiative transfer codes are tested against measurements from the real world can be found. Still, the opposite is being claimed. I guess we have a nice example here for the phenomenon that is called cognitive dissonance. It’s not my job to get people educated who have chosen for themselves to stay in a state of ignorance.
Mosher writes:
They sure as hell do. Just look at the RF table from any of the IPCC reports. AR4 lists total solar forcing as 0.12 W/m^2, vs. 1.66 for CO2. This us how they have parameterized their model. They don’t use all their gigaflops of computing power to find that CO2 has 14 times the warming effect of the sun. The warming ratio is fixed at the outset. Garbage in, garbage out.
If Sevnsmark is right that solar-modulated GCR is affecting cloud formation, the albedo effects should be included in the sun’s RF effect. Similarly for Stephen Wilde’s theory about the UV shift having ozone effects that affect cloud formation by driving the polar jet northward. The IPCC assumes all such mechanisms away, and they are perfectly explicit about it, judging the evidence for GCR-cloud and other particular mechanisms to be too weak to include in their models.
I’d have no qualm with that if they still took accountof the overwhelming evidence that there is SOME such mechanism by which solar activity is driving climate far more powerfully than can be accounted by the slight change in TSI. If they don’t understand the mechanism, they still need to include the explanatory power of the data in their prediction scheme. Just do a statistical projection, as is done with solar activity projections. Hathaway et al. don’t understand what drives solar variation, but they have observed statistical regularities that they project.
But the “consensus” does not try to account the data. Just the opposite, they use their negative judgment about competing theories as an excuse to literally leave the evidence out of the IPCC reports. In the first draft of AR5, vast evidence for solar climate driver rates one oblique sentence.
This is an inversion of the scientific method. The “consensus” is using theory (their discontent with GCR-cloud in particular) as an excuse to dismiss evidence, while science is defined by the precedence of evidence over theory. These people are anti-scientists. But Mosher thinks it is “religion” to adhere to the data. That “religion” is called “science.” Mosher should join.
Steven Mosher says: May 8, 2012 at 9:25 am
… blather…. grunt…. speculation… worship… religion…
Hi Steven
Only equation you need is:
Energy input into equatorial region = energy radiation back to space + energy absorbed and transported pole-ward by the oceanic currents
Left hand side is more or less constant, while balance between two factors on the right hand side is continuously changing.
Steven, CO2 doesn’t do much if anything, the geomagnetic field doesn’t do much if anything, but since the gmf can’t be changed by temperature, can’t be affected by mankind, and most likely it can’t change temperature, it is the ideal proxy to tell you what is going on under your feet, or more precisely under you feet while you are sailing out of Half Moon bay.
p.s. I had to google ‘blather’ = to talk nonsensically.
HenryP, don’t bother. You won’t get a straight answer.
. . .
“It’s not my job to get people educated who have chosen for themselves to stay in a state of ignorance.” …says a fake scientist who didn’t know what the null hypothesis was as recently as last week.
Speaking of a job, wouldn’t it be nice if we could all have taxpayer-funded make-work jobs that allowed us to comment on blogs throughout the workday? Now I’m beginning to understand the excitement in the Climategate emails, which constantly discussed their endless paid trips to Rio, Bali, Hawaii, Copenhagen, etc., etc. Add blogging during working hours, and there you have the perfect job!
But in the end, all the red faced, spittle flecked, wild-eyed predictions of planetary doom come down to this.
Jan P Perlwitz
says
who have chosen for themselves to stay in a state of ignorance
Henry says
Myself and Stephen and Geoff and Vukcevicand RaCook1978 and others
have given you a lot to think about
if you’d really cared to go back all over their comments?
In fact I have shown that earth is cooling since 1994
http://letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
which confirms that Orssengo’s graph seems to be right
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/orssengo3.png
Now, on the above graph, who do you say is right, the IPCC green line (positive/incline)
or Orssengo’s
which predicts/shows that earth is cooling since after 1994 (negative/decline)
(Remember always: there are none so blind as those who do not want to see)
From several pages on that website J Perlwitz cited above:
“Atmospheric and Environmental Research scientists and engineers help governments and businesses solve the world’s biggest climate issues. We prepare agencies like NOAA, NASA and the Department of Defense, along with large insurance, investment and energy companies to anticipate, manage, react to and profit from weather and climate related risk.”
Therefore, ALL (government-paid) money made to date by this (government-paid) group DEPENDS SOLELY on their CAGW-precepts and this group’s continuing success (and his/her paychecks ?) depends directly and immediately on their continuing CAGW-favorable propaganda/output back to geo-government-funded sponsors. No CAGW-“risk” -> No CAGW-funds.
Regardless of their funding biases and theoretical biases and prejudices, the referenced group might be correct in their science.
So, what is the ONLY “evidence” actually found on ANY page in that entire website? I found only a couple of graphs of specific transmission parameters of IR radiation against IR wavelengths in perfect gasses . I will assume that these graphs are actually based on laboratory measurements.
The rest?
All models. From top to bottom, all models.
For example:
LBLRTM attributes provide spectral radiance calculations with accuracies consistent with the measurements against which they are validated and with computational times that greatly facilitate the application of the line-by-line approach to current radiative transfer applications. LBLRTM’s heritage is in FASCODE [Clough et al., 1981, 1992].
Some important LBLRTM attributes are as follows:
– the Voigt line shape is used at all atmospheric levels with an algorithm based on a linear combination of approximating functions;
– extensively validated against atmospheric radiance spectra from the ultra-violet to the sub-millimeter
– the self- and foreign-broadened water vapor continuum model, MT_CKD, as well as continua for carbon dioxide; among the other continua included in MT_CKD are the collision induced bands of oxygen at 1600 cm-1 and nitrogen at 2350 cm-1
– HITRAN line database parameters are used including the pressure shift coefficient, the halfwidth temperature dependence and the coefficient for the self-broadening of water vapor
– a Total Internal Partition Function (TIPS) program is used for the temperature dependence of the line intensities
– CO2 line coupling is treated as first order with the coefficients for carbon dioxide generated from the code of Niro et al. (2005) and Lamouroux et al. (2010); CH4 line parameters include line coupling parameters for the v3 (3000 cm-1) and v4 (1300 cm-1) bands of the main isotopologue
– temperature dependent cross section data such as those available with the HITRAN database may be used to treat the absorption due to heavy molecules, e.g. the halocarbons
– an algorithm is implemented for the treatment of the variation of the Planck function within a vertically inhomogeneous layer as discussed in Clough et al. (1992)
– algorithmic accuracy of LBLRTM is approximately 0.5% and the errors associated with the computational procedures are of the order of five times less than those associated with the line parameters so that the limiting error is that attributable to the line parameters and the line shape
– computational efficiency mitigates the computational burden of the line-by-line flux and cooling rate calculation [Clough et al., 1992], for example linear algebraic operations are used extensively in the computationally intensive parts of LBLRTM so that vectorization is particularly effective with a typical vectorized acceleration of 20
– FFT instrument function with a choice of 9 apodization functions
– includes a realistic spectral sea surface emissivity model in the infrared [Masuda, et. al., 1988, Wu and Smith, 1997]
– input atmospheric profiles in either altitude or pressure coordinates
– interfaces with other radiative transfer models (like RRTM), and as the forward model for inversion algorithms (e.g. Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) and Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI))
Conclusion: The taxpayer-funded CAGW “research” community MUST CONTINUE TO SELL its government-funded CAGW programs and CAGW-rewarding programming experience to their government-paid funding sources to get future government-funded program monies. Follow the money. Those who who most loudly claim “big-oil-money corrupts science” must have some evidence for their claims, and since the funding sources they are most familiar with ARE government-funded money coming from government-favorable-sources, …..
Steven Mosher,
We have had this same discussion several times. You say, “Our best physics says the slope will be positive.” That is not the question regarding the climate null, which states that what has been happening will continue to happen, within the same parameters. [“The null hypothesis is the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data.”] In order to falsify the Null Hypothesis, past climate parameters must be exceeded. They are not. Nor is the global temperature accelerating. Quite the opposite.
The long term trend line from the LIA shows mildly rising temperatures. If the ≈40% rise in CO2 caused any more than minuscule warming, then recent temperatures would be accelerating upward. They are not.
The rise in temperature from the 1970’s until the late ’90’s has happened before. Thus, the Null Hypothesis remains un-falsified. It tells us that the warming since the LIA is natural, not anthropogenic.
Further, going back to the beginning of the Holocene, we see that current temperatures are very ordinary. There is no scientific basis for alarm. The true reason that the [false] alarm is being sounded is due to $billions of grant dollars paid out every year. And no scientist gets those federal grant dollars for telling the truth: “There is nothing unusual occurring. What we are observing is normal weather. It has all happened before, when CO2 remained very low.”
Thus, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. More is better.
Smokey says: May 8, 2012 at 11:59 am
The rise in temperature from the 1970′s until the late ’90′s has happened before.
Not only happen before, but even at higher rate:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
and here is detailed comparison
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET1690-1960.htm
‘For the short term climate change look above you head, for the long term change causes search under your feet.’
Steven Mosher says: May 8, 2012 at 11:33 am
……………..
Hi again Steven
I occasionally post on the Gavin’s RC, and true to himself he sends 99% of my posts to the ‘bore hole’, currently very good and reliable repository of my graphs. Since someone from the United States Geological Survey (136.177.20.32) Arvada, Colorado, looked at this
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TMC.htm
earlier this afternoon, there have been 4-5 other hits from academic places ranging from Oxford to Nanning, China, never happened before, usually get 1 or 2 hits a week originating from the ‘bore hole’.
Steven Mosher – thanks for replying, but I regret to have to tell you that you are in some kind of fantasy land. You say “Here is what the models do. The models use accepted and experimentally validated physical theory of radiative transfer. Those theories, the same theories used to design radars and to process satellite imagery, calculate the effect that increasing C02 and other gases has on the radiative balance. No factor is “minimized” You simply did not know what you are talking about. you read the IPCC report. That is a review of the science not the science itself.
When you get to the core, when you push through the secondary review literature and get
down to the actual science, you will have a better understanding. I welcome that day“.
That statement is refuted right up front in the IPCC report. In the Technical summary, it says “A number of methods for providing probabilistic climate change projections, both for global means and geographical depictions, have emerged since the TAR and are a focus of this report. These include methods based on results of AOGCM ensembles without formal application of observational constraints as well as methods based on detection algorithms and on large model ensembles that provide projections consistent with observations of climate change and their uncertainties. Some methods now explicitly account for key uncertainty sources such as climate feedbacks, ocean heat uptake, radiative forcing and the carbon cycle. Short-term projections are similarly constrained by observations of recent trends.“.
They are stating explicitly that the models are tuned to match “recent trends“. That means they fiddled the CO2 effect to match recent temperature trends, and I think it is very reasonable for me to assume that by that they mean the late 20thC, or perhaps the whole 20thC.
Why should I read all 32 (?) models when the IPCC tell me in plain language up front that they are fiddled? How can I possibly read all 32 models? Why are there so many models anyway? If the science was truly settled, there would be only one. OK, maybe a finer model for short term and a coarser model for long term.
Do you still want to deny that they have fiddled? “Although the large-scale dynamics of these models are comprehensive, parametrizations are still used to represent unresolved physical processes such as the formation of clouds and precipitation, ocean mixing due to wave processes and the formation of water masses, etc. Uncertainty in parametrizations is the primary reason why climate projections differ between diff erent AOGCMs.“. That means that the things they don’t understand, like clouds, are modelled using fiddle factors. That’s what “parametrizations” are.
And why should I read all of the models when they can’t agree among themselves on the crucial parts of the science? On cloud feedback, the IPCC report says “the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback .. but strongly disagree on its magnitude.“. There is no mechanism for the cloud feedback, it is explicitly stated to be an artifact of the models not real science, and no-one has a clue how it operates or how large it is. This isn’t “accepted and experimentally validated physical theory“, it’s a con. Measurements of the tropical troposphere temperature show they got it wrong. Dessler (http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/dessler10b.pdf) tried to prove otherwise and had to admit that cloud feedback, if it existed at all, could be negative.
I’m tired of all this shonky pseudo-science. The day I will welcome is when science prevails over the charlatans.
Mosher writes:
Actually, it is normal for studies that find a statistical correlation between solar activity and climate to formally refute the null hypothesis: that the observed correlation is merely coincidental and not indicative of a causal relation (which if it is real can only go one way).
A typical statement is this one from Usoskin et at., 2005:
If the sun is not actually responsible for the observed fluctuations in temperature, the true correlation would be zero. That is the null hypothesis. The study refutes refute this hypothesis with a significant amount of confidence.
There are plenty of things to criticize about this study. They use Mann’s hockey stick as their temperature reconstruction, so their error bars are not actually capturing all of the error in the analysis. But no one can say that they have not tested their null hypothesis and, conditional on the validity of their analysis, refuted it.
Another example is a rather amusing study I came across the other day. Some researchers decided to replicate Hershel’s 1801 study of the correlation between sunspot numbers and wheat prices. They backed him up 99.8%:
Many many solar-climate studies refute with substantial confidence the null hypothesis that the observed solar-climate correlations are a product of random chance.
Alec Rawls says:
May 8, 2012 at 5:34 pm
Mosher writes:
There is colossal hypocrisy and double standards in this AGW argument used against skeptics that “correlation is not causation”.
Correlation of sunspots with temperature or wheat prices does not prove causation.
Fine. Then correlation of late 20th century warming with late 20th century CO2 increase also proves NOTHING.
Correlation of palaeo records of cosmic rays and supernovae with global temperatures and number of marine species does not prove causation.
Fine. Then correlation of late 20th century warming with late 20th century CO2 increase also proves NOTHING.
Correlation of the rate of change of the solar cycle length with global temperatures does not prove causation.
Fine. Then correlation of late 20th century warming with late 20th century CO2 increase also proves NOTHING.
The correlation of orbit of the solar BARYCENTER (gotta love that word, OOOO yesssss!!) around the sub-Jupiter point with the PDO cycle does not mean causation.
“Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah, Barycenter, Barycenter, Barycenter!!”
Fine. Then correlation of late 20th century warming with late 20th century CO2 increase also proves NOTHING.
The correlation of the rate of change of the length of day with global temperature is not causation.
Fine. Then correlation of late 20th century warming with late 20th century CO2 increase also proves NOTHING.
The correlation of the width of the inter-tropical convergence zone with cloudiness and (inversely) temperatures proves nothing.
Fine. Then correlation of late 20th century warming with late 20th century CO2 increase also proves NOTHING.
Can’t have it both ways. No, really, you can’t. Sorry.
Phlogiston says:
Then correlation of late 20th century warming with late 20th century CO2 increase also proves NOTHING.
Henry says
but I do hope that you (and Jan and Mosher) understand why there is some correlation between increasing warmth
(as witnessed by us on earth first and foremost by increasing maxima which NOBODY but me seems to be plotting)
and increasing CO2, namely
(extra) heat + HCO3- (dissolved in massive quantities in the oceans) => CO2 (g) + OH-
this reaction is similar to boiling water to remove dissolved carbon dioxide and HCO3-.
This is not bad as more carbon dioxide in the air is required for those like me who want more greening on earth.
Unfortunately the reaction does go the other way when it gets colder…….
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Water vapor also falls out of the atmosphere as it gets colder, and since the heat trapping effect of a unit of water vapor diminishes as water vapor increases, it also increases as water vapor diminishes, making the loss of water vapor with cooling have an ever increasing cooling effect. Same with atmospheric CO2. And these is not the only mechanisms by which cooling feedbacks are much more dangerous than warming feedbacks, increasing rather than decreasing in strength as they progress. Another is albedo. As snow and ice descend to lower latitudes, each successive degree of latitude covers a rapidly increasing amount surface area, and in particular, land surface area (especially in the northern hemisphere).
Alec Rawls said
….as water vapor diminishes, making the loss of water vapor with cooling have an ever increasing cooling effect…
Henry says
thx, I hadn’t even thought of that yet. And it is happening already.
namely, I reported
global humidity decreasing at -0.02% RH/annum over the last 37 years;
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
others have reported around -0.01% /annum at local places (USA), but negative, nonetheless.
In the light of my latest findings
http://letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
-which confirms the Orssengo graph-
i.e. global cooling having started “officially” sometime during 1994,
I should perhaps re-calculate those RH figures and rather evaluate from 1975-1994 and then from 1994 to present….
Scary. I am already worried about what I will find…