From the The Washington Times – By Willie Soon and William M. Briggs
Scientists have been studying solar influences on the climate for more than 5,000 years.
Chinese imperial astronomers kept detailed sunspot records. They noticed that more sunspots meant warmer weather. In 1801, the celebrated astronomer William Herschel (discoverer of the planet Uranus) observed that when there were fewer spots, the price of wheat soared. He surmised that less light and heat from the sun resulted in reduced harvests.
Earlier last month, professor Richard Muller of the University of California-Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project announced that in the project’s newly constructed global land temperature record, “no component that matches solar activity” was related to temperature. Instead, Mr. Muller said carbon dioxide controlled temperature.
Could it really be true that solar radiation — which supplies Earth with the energy that drives our climate and which, when it has varied, has caused the climate to shift over the ages — is no longer the principal influence on climate change?
Consider the accompanying chart. It shows some rather surprising relationships between solar radiation and daytime high temperatures taken directly from Berkeley’s BEST project. The remarkable nature of these series is that these tight relationships can be shown to hold from areas as large as the United States.
This new sun-climate relationship picture may be telling us that the way our sun cools and warms the Earth is largely through the penetration of incoming solar radiation in regions with cloudless skies. Recent work by National Center for Atmospheric Research senior scientists Harry van Loon and Gerald Meehl place strong emphasis on this physical point and argue that the use of daytime high temperatures is the most appropriate test of the solar-radiation-surface-temperature connection hypothesis. All previous sun-climate studies have included the complicated nighttime temperature records while the sun is not shining.
Read more: SOON AND BRIGGS: Global-warming fanatics take note – Washington Times
Legatus says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:12 pm
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Come back when you master the English language and read the article.
NeilT says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:01 pm
“Nobody in the climate science fraternity said solar output and sunspots do not impact or affect the climate. What they sad was that CO2,now it is so high again, impacts it more. Something which was quite clearly proven in the last sunspot/flux low.”
If rising CO2 would have an added impact we should see that in temperatures rising more quickly now than during the rise from 1910 to 1940, as CO2 emissions by human civilisation only started to rise significantly after 1950.
BUT the slope from 1910 to 1940 was the same as during the 1980ies and 1990ies, and way higher than now (it is zero now). This means that CO2’s influence must be insifnificant compared to the sun.
(I’m ignoring James Hansen’s revisionist data treatment here. Exploring his fantasy version of Earth would take a whole bunch of fantasy writers.)
Whale oil, beef hooked.
/sarc
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:51 pm
As usual, the curve showing ‘solar radiation’ is wrong. Here is what it should look like [the red curve]: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEIF.png
>>>>>>>>>>
Leif,
The article talks about a correlation with insolation coming through cloud free skies. I read the linked article, but it doesn’t actually say if the graph is of insolation in general, or specific to the area in question, or specific to the area in question during periods of cloud free skies.
I’m assuming the first option as any measurement of peak insolation would have resulted in far lower numbers due to albedo. Still, I thought it odd that they would talk about insolation coupled with cloud free skies and then show a value for insolation that is global and a temperature trend for the US as a whole which obviously cannot be cloud free over either the entire area or the entire timeline.
Does the full paper explain any of these issues? Based on what is in the linked article, I’m more confused that anything else.
Legatus says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Perhaps you should direct your questions to the BEST team themselves?
Richard Patton says:
I got a chuckle out of the lead sentence “Scientists have been studying solar influences on the climate for more than 5,000 years..” Somebody needs to go back and re-write it.
Rather, somebody needs to go back and re-read it.
I know what he means, but what he says is that for more than five thousand years scientists have been studying solar influences on the climate.
He meant what he said. Hence the reference to Chinese astronomers. The earliest surviving record of sunspot activity is from the Chinese Book of Changes, ca 3,000 years ago.
Interesting chart, but because it does not fit their computer model, the data must be rejected. :-))
Mark and two Cats says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:42 pm
“Why is Leif quoting himself”
Because he likes redundant tautologisms.
Nonsense, because he corrected an earlier comment.
davidmhoffer says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:48 pm
The article talks about a correlation with insolation coming through cloud free skies.
The graph shows the radiation from the sun above the atmosphere, reduced to a constant distance to the sun.
Temp seems low compared to relative spots at the start of the graph but high at the end. Does anyone have any idea why that might be?
/sarc
Leif Svalgaard: “The graph shows the radiation from the sun above the atmosphere, reduced to a constant distance to the sun.”
Why adjust the graph to make the earth’s distance from the sun a constant, when the earth’s orbit is elliptical, thus having an impact on the level of radiation reaching the earth?
Legatus says:
I see a serious problem here:
First, BEST tracks only land surface temperatures, thus this chart ignores 71% of the earths surface.
Well, that is a fine complaint against BEST, which made all sorts of alarmist pronouncements based only on the land component of its surface temperature reconstruction.
It is also an excellent critique of ‘global warming science’ which promotes itself based not on the increase global heat content which is the basis of global warming theory, but instead on surface temperature increase. This metric ignores 99.9% of the heat capacity of the Earth’s climate system, and the 0.01% that they use is disproportionately driven by land surface temp.
Given that this is the metric chosen to push ‘global warming’, it is legitimate to use that same metric to push back.
@NeilT
“Nobody in the climate science fraternity said solar output and sunspots do not impact or affect the climate. What they sad [sic] was that CO2,now it is so high again, impacts it more. Something which was quite clearly proven in the last sunspot/flux low.”
+++++++
That CO2 dominance explains why the temperature has been continuing to increase at the same rate from 1995-2012 as it did from 1976-1995, even though the sun has gone quiet now. The continuing temperature increase with CO2 increase should be very convincing.
/credulous
eyesonu – ” Interesting that it took 9 to 13 years to respond.”
Friis-Christensen & Lassen published a related work in 1995, as well as a comment on Laut and Gundermann in 2000 (asserting a solar correlation up till 1970). They did not really address the Laut and Gundermann points regarding late 20th century correlation, and the two later papers presented additional criticisms. 4-5 years is not an unusual interval for responses.
In Lassen et al 1999 (http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/sr99-9.pdf), Lassen himself acknowledged some errors in FC&L 1991/1995 and presented a corrected chart – which (in Fig. 3) shows a divergence between solar cycle length and temperature from roughly 1970.
Soon and Briggs are using old, invalid data.
Putting it all together, we are eerily close to a half-precessional cycle old interglacial. Pegging the Holocene start at the end of the Younger Dryas cold interval, the Holocene is 11,715 years old this year. We are also at the long end of the precession cycle (19-23kyrs) making 11,500 half. Five of the last six interglacials have each lasted about half a precession cycle.
And the sun has gone all quiet on us………………..
Maunder class minimum? The most recent end extreme interglacial typical thermal peak? They normally end with from 1 to 3 thermal maxima right at their ends……..at least over the past nearly million years and all Supposedly we just went through a grand solar maximum, so who is really to say if the Holocene will “go long”, like MIS-11 did (that pesky 6th said interglacial), or if it just wound up to wind down? Let’s review, MIS-19 scored 3 thermal maxima right at it’s very end, MIS–11 one broad one, MIS-5e two sharp ones, right at its very end.
The certifiably greenest amongst us are necessarily left with the queerest of quandaries. Will the Holocene “go long”, like MIS-11 did? I mean it too occurred at an eccentricity minimum….. But MIS-19, two eccentricity minima back, didn’t. And that’s all of the post-MPT eccentricity-minima interglacials that ever have been.
Enter the vaunted Precautionary Principle.
You get to choose. Listen up, passengers on ye old spaceship earth!
1) Strip, quicksmart, to some esteemed concentration (350.org), the “climate security blanket” requisite to assure that the Holocene follows whatever Mother Nature has in store this eccentricity minima (odds are 50/50 on this simplistic anthropogenic slot machine), or
2) Go risque. Betting CO2 is the heathen devil gas it is made out to be, such that you/we might,:in some greenhouse way, be commensurate with:
“The onset of the LEAP occurred within less than two decades, demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416Wm22, which is the 65N July insolation for 118 kyr BP. This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428Wm22. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.” (2005, Sorocko et al, “A late Eemian aridity pulse in central Europe during the last glacial inception”, http://www.particle-analysis.info/LEAP_Nature__Sirocko+Seelos.pdf )
Decisions…..decisions………………………………
Darren Potter says:
September 6, 2012 at 10:12 pm
Why adjust the graph to make the earth’s distance from the sun a constant, when the earth’s orbit is elliptical, thus having an impact on the level of radiation reaching the earth?
If you plot the yearly average the, large, effect due to the elliptical orbit averages out. This variation is some 70 times larger than the solar cycle variation, but washes out when averaged over a year. My main point was not the distance [I was just being overly precise], but the fact that the solar radiation shown is not what the variation has been. Here is our best estimate [blue and pink, from two different reconstructions] overlaid the temperature curve: http://www.leif.org/research/Temp-Track-Sun-Not.png
Soon and Briggs should be ashamed of themselves.
I was looking at some local temperatures the other day and noticed that here, near the US Pacific coast: Night temperatures are very closely tied to the offshore ocean temperature; day time highs to the sunshine. Clouds moderate both ( less heat loss at night, less gain in the daytime) but with more impact on the heat gain.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/september-swing/
Dominant controls on the climate / temperatures are the oceans, clouds, and sun modulation. CO2 not so much (i.e. essentially nil). When every night you return to roughly “local sea temp plus a degree” there isn’t any heat being ‘retained’ in the air or land system… Going further inland we get some cooling (via mountain uplift) and in the desert the total temps are higher (being well away from the oceans); so an added factor is “distance to water”. Still, things are pretty much all controlled by the water cycle (including clouds), not the CO2 cycle.
Leif s forgot?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/10/new-solar-reconstruction-paper-suggests-6x-tsi-change-than-cited-by-the-ipcc/
And figure 3b:
http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_sunclimate.html
E.M.Smith says:
September 6, 2012 at 11:03 pm
things are pretty much all controlled by the water cycle (including clouds), not the CO2 cycle.
Nor the solar cycle: http://www.leif.org/research/Temp-Track-Sun-Not.png
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:58 pm
The graph shows the radiation from the sun above the atmosphere, reduced to a constant distance to the sun.
_________________________________
How do you know? I don’t see it mentioned in the article anywhere.
1. they used out of date solar data.
2. the US is 2% of the globe.
3. If they used the BEST data I think they used, they probably forgot a critical step.
In any case, as always, folks should practice good skepticism and have a look at their code before having kittens.
Temperatures track very accurately interaction between the solar and the Earth’s magnetic fields
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
data here is up to date
pochas said:
When my doctor takes my temperature he looks in my ear with a heat sensing device and ignores the rest of me. According to [Legatus], he hasn’t learned anything about my temperature.
That is not an appropriate analogy to the Earth’s climate.
Your body is a living system that expends energy to maintain homeostasis. In particular, the human body works very hard to maintain a constant temperature of the brain, and it does that very well when it is healthy. And proximity to the brain is why aural, oral, and anal thermometers give valid measurements.
🙂
Science by press release.
Steven Mosher says:
3. If they used the BEST data I think they used, they probably forgot a critical step.
Staring earnestly into the camera and claiming to have been a sceptic?