Guest post by David Archibald
George Orwell said,” He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” Some amongst us have used that as an instruction manual and have attempted to create confusion about the sunspot number record. We can sidestep all that by using the F10.7 flux which can’t be fiddled with and adjusted. The F10.7 instrument record goes back to 1948:
It has been previously derived that the break-over between sea level rising and falling is a sunspot number of 40: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/quantifying-sea-level-fall/ A sunspot number of 40 equates to a F10.7 flux of 100.
WUWT recently alerted us to the existence of Usoskin’s 2010 paper on solar activity during the Holocene, available here: A History of Solar Activity over Millennia
Usoskin’s paper contains a lot of useful information that allows us to backtest the relationship between solar activity and sea level. For example, consider that if the average sunspot number over the Holocene had been above or below 40 over the Holocene, then sea level would have risen or fallen over the Holocene according to my theory. His Figure 18 provides the answer:
Figure 18 shows that the average sunspot number over the Holocene was very near 40. We can also tie sea level events over the Holocene to the detail in Usoskin’s Figure 17:
The figure above is the last six thousand years of sunspot number. It is evident the average sunspot number was higher prior to 0 BC and lower since. Sea level therefore should have been higher prior to 0 BC and lower since. That is confirmed by a 2007 paper on Holocene sea level variability: http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/public/groups/everyone/documents/journal_article/jcuprd_054910.pdf
From the abstract,”the Holocene sea-level highstand of +1.0 – 1.5 m was reached ~ 7000 cal yr BP and fell to its present position after 2000 yr BP.” Low sunspot periods from Usoskin’s Figure 17 are evident in the sea level record. Further from that abstract,”During this ~ 5000 year period of high sea level, growth hiatuses in oyster beds and tubeworms and lower elevations of microatolls are interpreted to represent short-lived oscillations in sea-level of up to 1 m during two intervals, beginning c.4800 and 3000 cal yr BP. The rates of sea-level rise and fall (1-2 mm yr) during these centennial scale oscillations are comparable with current rates of sea-level rise.” On Usoskin’s Figure 17, the 4,800 BP date corresponds to the low sunspot period at 2,800 BC and the 3,000 BP date corresponds to the low sunspot period at 800 BC.
The Usoskin paper contains another instructive figure, his Figure 13 of an example of a reconstruction of the heliospheric magnetic field at Earth orbit for the last 600 years:
The benign period of the second half of the 20th Century is associated with a far more active Sun. The cold periods are associated with a heliospheric magnetic field of under 2 nT. How does that compare with the modern instrument record? The following figure shows that the recent range of the magnetic field equates to that of the first half of the 20th Century:
Now back to the F10.7 flux and sea level. Based on the length of Solar Cycle 24 derived from Altrock’s green corona emissions diagram and Livingston and Penn’s prediction of peak Solar Cycle 25 sunspot amplitude of 7, we can predict the general form of the F10.7 flux to 2040:
I have come to the conclusion that a F10.7 Flux of 100 is the breakover between heating and cooling on Earth. It explains most things to me. My best guess on that at this point is January 2015, following which, two decades of cooling will ensue.
LS says
So, you (Henry) claim that in the past 300 years temperatures have increased 0.03 C…. Henry says
oh dear. You cannot even read a graph? The red line is the long term average change (of temperatures in JUNE in mid England) from the average measured. It has a slope of 0.0001 = 0.0001 degree C change per annum. Over 300 years it was 0.03 degree warmer.
I asked you to supply me with a calibration certficate of a thermometer that is 300 years old?
Tim Walker says:
September 15, 2012 at 10:26 pm
In Science, some words have a more precise meaning than in ordinary speech. ‘Glaciation’ is one of them
As in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/16/onset-of-the-next-glaciation/
Stephen Wilde says
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012JD017719.shtml
Finally we demonstrate that when ozone depletion alone is prescribed in the model, the seasonal cycle of the resultant cooling trends in the lower stratosphere is quite similar to that recently reported in satellite and radiosonde observations: this constitutes strong, new evidence for the key role of ozone depletion on tropical lower-stratospheric temperature trends.
Henry says.
Good quote thanks. It is all coming together now, very neatly. You will recall my initial results that showed that maxima in the SH rose much sharper than those in the NH. This was because the fall in ozone in the SH was much sharper than in the NH. Remember also that a smaller ozone layer / bigger ozone hole meant less high energy <0.5 um being back radiated and this meant more energy in the SH oceans. Water absorbs in the UV, and because there is a lot of mass in the SH oceans, this particular type of energy is converted to heat, mostly.
However, with the recovery of ozone since 1996, this is changing now, all quite naturally. (If there were any human influence on this, I would not expect to see a beautiful curve on the the deceleration of warming, as if somebody had thrown a ball)
How is it that the sunspot number is given for a period of thousands of years? I thought it had only been measured for a couple of hundred years.
REPLY: Proxy reconstruction using C14/Be10 isotopes – Anthony
Thanks, Anthony. Is there any measure of there accuracy vis a vis recent empirical observations?
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 15, 2012 at 9:17 pm
RACookPE1978 says:
September 15, 2012 at 7:41 pm
if (big if there) 10Be ratios relate to solar energy that we believe are related to TSI levels, when did that change in solar energy occur, and when did the changes in fusion that caused the original change in solar energy occur?
99.9% of TSI comes from the fusion in the core [which does not change on time scales for which we have data], the remaining [variable] 0.1% comes from changes to the surface magnetic field.
cut – paste – save.
Thanks Leif. I’ll quote this back to you the next time you use the argument that it’s not possible that the planets are affecting the sun contemporaneously because it takes ever so long for energy to get from the core to the surface.
All systems with feedback oscillate. The solar system is such a system. The longer term oscillations in the suns core might easily exhibit a 0.1% variability over a few hundred years since the nadir of the little ice age and the Maunder Minimum in solar activity.
It is estimated that global average surface temperature may have risen around 1.5C since then. If so, this is around 0.5% of the Earth’s absolute temperature in Kelvin. Prof Nir Shaviv identified an amplification of solar variation of around 5-7 times in the climate system by using the oceans as a calorimeter. This was likely caused by a reduction in cloud albedo, which is empirically found by the new Spanish and Chinese studies to be contemporaneous with the above averagely active sun of the late C20th.
It appears then that the Sun can account for most or all of the climate variation we have observed and reconstructed from proxies, given various lags and leads associated with natural internal variability from, for example, oceanic oscillations.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 15, 2012 at 7:28 pm
P. Solar says:
September 15, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Perhaps that’s what you’re trying to say to Leif. The fact that the temp is still rising (probalby not the case anyway) during a reduction in solar input does not prove solar isn’t a (or the) major driving force.
A time base of a decade or two is not enough to decide this. The FAIL comes from the fact that temperatures have risen significantly the past 200-300 years, but solar activity has not.
No, Leif , the FAIL (failure in English) comes from making a statement and then, when it is shown to be incorrect by referencec to multiple sources of data, you skip timescale by an order of magnitude instead of admitting your statement was wrong.
Have you ever admitted you were wrong. Ever ?
I follow the 10.7 cm flux data as a personal pet project. Lately I’ve been using running means of 584 days (tidal theorists; guess where this comes from). The actual data used is for the period 292 days on each side of the date. Thus the most recent day only has 292 days to average. I notice a pattern for cycles 20 through 23…
the running mean reaches a max, drops down a bit, meanders up and down for a year or two, and then starts downwards to the next minimum.
Cycle 20 hit its first local max at 152 in 1968, dropped down a bit, and got up to around 155 in 1969. Then it started down towards the min at 1975/1976. That was when we were hearing all about the coming ice age.
Cycle 24 hit its first local max at 127 (584 day running mean) this June 30th. It has since dropped to under 123.
If Cycle 24 follows the pattern, the 584 day running mean should max out at approx 130 sometime in the next year or 2. That would be noticeably lower than Cycle 20.
Note that this is 10.7 cm solar flux data. So there’s no LP-effect here.
L.S: So, you claim that in the past 300 years temperatures have increased 0.03 C
If I do bit more of a ‘cherry pick’ , the summer temperatures (J,J,A) in C. England for 290 year long period 1700-1990 have actually fallen, it is the winter temperatures that went up.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETsw.htm
and there is perfectly good explanation for it, if a geomagnetic hypothesis is considered as valid.
P. Solar :…..
There might be two god reasons for tide gages around world would show increment of few mm around 2000:
– with the SST increase, total volume would expand.
– geomagnetic hypothesis predicts tidal oscillations of extra up to 20mm on top of normal luni-solar tides (in the areas of extra-high tides ! ) based on and clearly shown as the irregularities of the tidal annual mean range in the Puget Sound, Seattle, WA, USA; see: illustration from ftp://ftp.flaterco.com/xtide/tidal_datums_and_their_applications.pdf page10
Just to reiterate what this refers to:
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 15, 2012 at 12:39 pm
“The Sun may have shown less activity, but somebody forgot the tell the Earth that, as temperatures since 1995 have increased.”
So you were clearly refering to changes since 1995 and saying Earth had “not been told”.
The data I posted shows that rates of change in atmospheric temp and sea level in that timescale do not contradict the idea the two are related.
Your statement that the Earth was not “told” was unfounded. You made an incorrect statement , your were wrong.
The fact that rather than comment on the data that contradicts you ill-thought out statement you chose to skip timescale to avoid the issue, demonstrates that you realise this.
Since TSI is a “constant” [and the Sun’s Core output is a constant], the changes in Sunspots, magnetic field, ultraviolet, and Flux must all be due to, say, Gremlins!! Now, we can’t see gremlins yet, but I know that they are there. They are the same things that power the El Nino, the AO, the PO, and etcO. Wait we have another name for gremlins -> random [chaotic] variation. Given randomness, I can find a correlation to every and anything thing [the latest multi-universe theory].
/sarcasm yes, no??
Svalgaard quoted my statement:
Tim Walker says:
September 15, 2012 at 10:26 pm
Since when does the Wikipedia provide the precise meaning of anything
He left out the definitions I provided from numerous dictionary sources.
Then Svalgaard said:
In Science, some words have a more precise meaning than in ordinary speech. ‘Glaciation’ is one of them. Another one is ‘theory’. I [and Wikipedia – and the other references which you ignore] gave you the scientific meaning of ‘glaciation’. That you will not learn is your loss.
He failed to provide any dictionary ordinary or dictionary scientific definition of glaciations. Epic failure. He must of been bothered by his failure, because later he then referenced a article on here:
Tim Walker says:
September 15, 2012 at 10:26 pm
In Science, some words have a more precise meaning than in ordinary speech. ‘Glaciation’ is one of them
As in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/16/onset-of-the-next-glaciation/
The problem is I didn’t say any of what Mr. Svalgaard is quoting me as saying in the just previous quote. A failure on your part, but just a small one. Mr. Svalgaard this is an argument. You refuse to try and show definitions as I did. Then you use an example of use of the word glaciation. Are you also a comedian? .
You are trying to say that glaciation only happens during glacial epics and by inference saying that the Maunder Minimum was not during any glacial epic. Which by your meaning; there is no glaciation going on now or during the Maunder Minimum. Oh sir please stop it you have me rolling in the aisle. You are too funny. No glaciation going on in Europe during Maunder Minimum or even right now. Not even in Greenland or dare I say it. Oh, it is just too funny. You sir are such a great comedian. No glaciation going on in… ha ha, he he he… Antarctica?. I guess that is news to glaciologists. You do know what the term glaciologists means? They study on going and past glaciation. You do know that? Oh wait did I say on going glaciation. Oh my that can’t be right. The great and all knowing Mr. Svalgaard says by reference that there is no glaciation going on now or during the Maunder Minimum or maybe it’s just that you don’t think any glaciers are moving outside of the glacial epics? That is quite funny sir.
Mr. Svalgaard says:
That you will not learn is your loss.
I say: but sir, I did learn. I learned how funny you are. Making jokes about no glaciation going on right now, in multiple posts none the less. I learned first hand to what an extent a scientist will go to avoid admitting they are wrong and how obfuscating a scientist can be. It was quite a lesson sir. Again sir, you say that I will not learn. How funny. Another joke of yours. You are … What a joke.
Vukcevic says
If I do bit more of a ‘cherry pick’ , the summer temperatures (J,J,A) in C. England for 290 year long period 1700-1990 have actually fallen, it is the winter temperatures that went up.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETsw.htm
and there is perfectly good explanation for it, if a geomagnetic hypothesis is considered as valid
Henry says
I am inclined to believe that winters in highly populated spaces like central England and Holland (that I also looked at) got somewhat warmer mostly because people remove snow quickly now with salt and heat (on roofs) so there is no more reflection back from snowed-in places when the sun shines again.They all now have a lot more quick access to heat (from gas burning) than a few hundred years ago. But if you can prove a geomagnetic connection, that only works his juice in winter time (?), I would like to know about it.
(don’t let Dr.S intimidate you…he is just a person, you know…..I think….)
Stephen Wilde says
the precise detail of the chemical reactions involved (on the top of the atmosphere) is currently not known but it alters the balance of the ozone creation / destruction process differentially at different levels of the atmosphere.
Henry says
Yes, it seems we are here at the edge of what we really know is happening. I doubt that we have the equipment to measure. Apart from the creation of ozone from high UV + oxygen, I only just learned that there are a few other reactions also going up on top there:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/06/soon-and-briggs-global-warming-fanatics-take-note-sunspots-do-impact-climate/#comment-1076278
tallbloke says:
September 16, 2012 at 1:32 am
“99.9% of TSI comes from the fusion in the core [which does not change on time scales for which we have data], the remaining [variable] 0.1% comes from changes to the surface magnetic field.” next time you use the argument that it’s not possible that the planets are affecting the sun contemporaneously because it takes ever so long for energy to get from the core to the surface.
It seems from your comment that you agree that the 99.9% of TSI does not change [and thus is not changing because of planets].
The longer term oscillations in the suns core might easily exhibit a 0.1% variability over a few hundred years since the nadir of the little ice age and the Maunder Minimum in solar activity.
Even if the core varied a lot we would not see any periodicity because of the long diffusion time for radiation to get out of the core. You could turn off energy generation completely and we wouldn’t know it for thousands of years.
It is estimated that global average surface temperature may have risen around 1.5C since then.
‘may’ ?
It appears then that the Sun can account for most or all of the climate variation we have observed and reconstructed from proxies
Except that the solar variability does not match climate variability.
P. Solar says:
September 16, 2012 at 1:57 am
Have you ever admitted you were wrong. Ever ?
Sure, in a paper in 1978 I thought that the solar magnetic field had doubled since 1900. In a paper in 2002 after a re-analysis of the [since then more extensive data] I concluded I was wrong and that there had been no century-scale doubling of the sun’s magnetic field.
If you present a coherent argument backed up by good data that will go a long way to change my opinion, but you haven’t.
Tim Walker says:
September 16, 2012 at 7:20 am
He left out the definitions I provided from numerous dictionary sources.
“In Science, some words have a more precise meaning than in ordinary speech. ‘Glaciation’ is one of them.” …
there is no glaciation going on now or during the Maunder Minimum.
Some examples:
http://nature.ca/notebooks/english/iceage.htm
“At the peak of the last glaciation, about 20 000 years ago”
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/glaciers-and-glaciation/3/1
“The last glaciation […] about 20,000–18,000 years ago
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ea.06.050178.001225
“…last glaciation. … during the maximum of this glaciation about 18,000 before present”
http://www.paleoanthro.org/journal/content/PA20060116.pdf
“Neanderthals and Modern Humans in the European Landscape During the Last Glaciation … from about 60,000 to 20,000 years ago”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00206818909465906
“THE DATE OF THE LAST GLACIATION IN NORTHERN EAST CHUKOTKA … 39,300 to 40,100 years ago”
http://www.nps.gov/prsf/naturescience/sea-level-rise-since-the-last-glaciation.htm
“Sea Level Rise Since the Last Glaciation … 18,000 years ago”
http://flightline.highline.edu/jloetterle/153F05pdfs/G153_FieldGuide.pdf
“Between 25,000 and 18,000 years ago global sea level was about 420 feet lower than
modern times due to continental ice build up during the last glaciation”
http://epic.awi.de/12608/
“The sedimentary record of the last glaciation in the western Bellingshausen Sea (West Antarctica) … age of 12 ka B.P”
http://email.eva.mpg.de/~paabo/pdf1/HofreitMolMolecularEc200.pdf
“At the end of the last glaciation, some 11 000 years ago”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/288/5472/1815
“Millennial-Scale Instability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet During the Last Glaciation … between 20,000 and 74,000 years ago”
etc
Anyone noticed that Leif is now much more temperate and measured?
There is a reason for debating on WUWT, even if it is only to get the measure of the alternative arguments and the measure of your temperment.
Silver Ralph says:
September 16, 2012 at 11:16 am
Anyone noticed that Leif is now much more temperate and measured?
You mean compared to the hotheads on this blog.
Glaciation – noun – as Leif means it.
Glaciation – verb – the process of glaciating as Tim Walker means it.
Stephen Wilde says:
September 16, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Glaciation – noun – as Leif means it.
Glaciation – verb – the process of glaciating as Tim Walker means it.
Either way, the word ‘glaciation’ in the geophysical sciences refers to the episodes of ice covering extensive land areas intermittently several times during an ice age. As per the several examples I just gave. One of Tim’s quotes reads “‘Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary’ defines glaciation as: the noun of the verb glaciate”, although he is confused about the distinction between noun and verb. But none of this matters: the word ‘glaciation’ is in the geological sciences meant to signify wide-spread ice cover [which happen to be caused by changes in the orbital elements].
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 16, 2012 at 8:05 am
“Except that the solar variability does not match climate variability.”
Leif, there is a correlation between the temperature charts and the 10Be variations which is used as proxy for solar activity.
Is your understanding that there is no such link? 10Be fluctuation are wrongly brought in relation with solar activity and sunspot numbers?
Lars P. says:
September 16, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Leif, there is a correlation between the temperature charts and the 10Be variations which is used as proxy for solar activity.
Here is what that ‘correlation’ looks like: http://www.leif.org/research/2000%20Year%20Temp%20and%TSI.png
The ‘TSI’ is really just derived from 10Be, so essentially the lower plot is of 10Be.
Here is another such ‘correlation’ adding another temperature reconstruction:
http://www.leif.org/research/Global-Temperatures-2000-yrs.png
Are you impressed? I am not.
Lars P. says:
September 16, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Leif, there is a correlation between the temperature charts and the 10Be variations which is used as proxy for solar activity.
Here is what that ‘correlation’ looks like: http://www.leif.org/research/2000%20Year%20Temp%20and%20TSI.png
The ‘TSI’ is really just derived from 10Be, so essentially the lower plot is of 10Be.
Here is another such ‘correlation’ adding another temperature reconstruction:
http://www.leif.org/research/Global-Temperatures-2000-yrs.png
Are you impressed? I am not.
LS says
Except that the solar variability does not match climate variability
Henry says
well, unless you know for sure everything that happens on the top of our atmosphere, and by however small amount of change in EUV or FUV =that we are aware= can cause a number of changes in the chemical chain reactions between oxygen and nitrogen and hydroxide compounds, that subsequently causes variations in climate as pointed to by Stephen Wilde earlier on this thread,
I think you cannot make a statement like that.
unless you are (a) God?
Dr. Svalgaard said this:
there is no glaciation going on now or during the Maunder Minimum.
I say no matter how many times you say the wrong thing it doesn’t make it right. I still stand by all of the definitions I provided. I notice that you didn’t challenge them. Is this how you do scientific debate? Keep saying the same time until someone dies. The one that lives wins. In fact you means of arguing seems really quite similar to how children argue. They do tend to just repeat themselves. How old are you?
Why do you not want to admit that there is glaciation going on right now? Is it because it waxes and wanes. Some papers actually show that the current waxing and waning of ongoing glaciation might have some connection with solar activity. You wouldn’t want to go there, no sir.
There fore you will state that there is no glaciation going on right now. Do you believe in the existence of the continent Antarctica and its glaciers? Do you think that all of the dictionarys ordinary and scientific that I quoted definitions from are wrong? No body on this forum knows these answers, because you just keep repeating the same words. There is no glaciation going on right now.
People are going to doubt your veracity if you continue making strange statements.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 16, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Thank you for the prompt answer, I was having different graphs in memory, looks like big changes in the evaluation of solar activity have been done since then or my memory of it is wrong.
Is the chart weighted in any way or is it directly derived from Be10 (C14?) data readings?
More or only one set of data?
Will be interesting to see what changes the coming years bring in solar activity with lower sunspots to compare.