Dr. Leif Svalgaard on the New Scientist solar max story

Jan P Perlwitz said (September 28, 2012 at 7:02 am)
“…Even if the 11-year solar cycle vanishes altogether and the sun activity stays at the minimum of the solar cycle, I predict global warming due to greenhouse gases will continue over the next decades, since greenhouse gases have become the dominant climate driver in the second half of the 20th century. The warming will just be delayed by a few years (by about 10 years based on mere energy balance considerations)…”
The phrase I’d like to question here is this one: “…since greenhouse gases have become the dominant climate driver in the second half of the 20th century…”
Can you point to a peer-reviewed paper that gives us the day, month and year this “change-over” took place – when the climate went from natural process driven to GHG driven?
This would be helpful, for instance, if we were given a historical extreme weather event – we could attribute the cause based on that “breakpoint” date.
For example, Marble Bar Australia set a world record of most consecutive days of maximum temperatures of 37.8 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) or more, during a period of 160 such days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924. Since this period was BEFORE the second half of the 20th century, then it was BEFORE “greenhouse gases have become the dominant climate driver”.
Same with the most extreme tornado in recorded history (the Tri-State Tornado, which roared through parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana on March 18, 1925). It holds records for longest path length (219 miles, 352 km), longest duration (about 3.5 hours), and fastest forward speed for a significant tornado (73 mph, 117 km/h) anywhere on earth. In addition it is the deadliest single tornado in United States history (695 dead).
Again, since this extreme event took place BEFORE the second half of the 20th century, then it was BEFORE “greenhouse gases have become the dominant climate driver”.
So were those events driven by CO2, or were they just weather? And if weather is supposed to get worse, why do these records still stand?

davidmhoffer wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1093616

You really don’t get it, do you? That this represents perfectly circular reasoning? An iterative calculation done from within the model that adjusts the aerosol parameter is called what?
Adjusting a fudge factor, that’s what.

According to your argument, Nature is fudged and based on circular reasoning. Aerosol concentrations in Nature change with the state of climate, e.g., soil dust emission from desert source region depends on surface wind and its variability (or surface friction velocity), soil moisture, vegetation. The aerosols in the atmosphere change the radiation balance and redistribute energy. Those changes, in turn, have an effect on the climate variables that influence aerosol emission, transport, and deposition, and the aerosol concentration. It’s called feedbacks. “Circular reasoning” everywhere in Nature.

the only possible outcome is for ALL the models to get 2012 right.

This is not possible. It is principally not possible to make predictions of an individual realization beyond a certain time horizon, since the individual realizations diverge exponentially with an arbitrary small perturbation of the initial conditions. That’s the difference between weather forecast and climate projections. Weather forecast is the prediction of an individual realization of all possible realizations in the population, starting from a given initial condition. Such a prediction is not possible beyond a predictability limit. Climate projections are predictions of the change in the statistical properties of the whole population, when the boundary conditions change. We do not predict the weather of Sep 28, 2020, or Sep 28, 2100.

Jan P Perlwitz says:
Well, D Böehm, this is a common talking point used by fake skeptics, but the endless repetition still doesn’t make it scientifically valid.
Rather, it is the scientific validity that makes it a repeated talking point. And it is valid, your statistically and scientifically ignorant caterwauling notwithstanding.
If the fact that finding a time period (15 years, 10 years, 2 weeks, 2 days, whatever) for which the increase in the temperature anomaly wasn’t statistically significant was sufficient to conclude that there was no physical process of global warming ongoing, then this would lead to absurd additional conclusions with necessity.
To the contrary, if there is NO possible time period for which a lack of statistically significant warming would falsify the ‘global warming’ hypothesis, then the ‘global warming’ hypothesis is not a scientific proposition.
It is nice to have someone from NASA GISS finally admitting to that ‘global warming’ is not a scientific position, but instead an unfalsifiable faith commitment. It is sad that this admission comes not as the result of self reflection and honesty, but as the simple by-product of your abject ignorance of both simple statistics as well as the fundamentals of the scientific method being acted upon by your arrogant beligerence. But what they hey, we sceptics are not fussy. We’ll take it.
Thanks.

Tim Walker says:
September 28, 2012 at 4:58 pm
jimmi_the_dalek says:
September 28, 2012 at 2:36 pm
“Dr. Leif Svalgaard, one of the worlds leading solar physicists and WUWT’s resident solar expert ” it says at the top.
I think this statement needs to be qualified. There are many in the field who have written papers that refute Leif’s argument that the solar indices are flat. Some have suggested with solid evidence that his data is erroneous. Google Svalgaard and IHV to find many scientists in the solar arena that do not agree with his statements and data. You will also find the L&P data suffers from the same erroneous methodology.
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/280

D Böehm says:
September 28, 2012 at 7:13 pm
Yep. It’s pretty sad.

Geoff Sharp says:
September 28, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Tim Walker says:
September 28, 2012 at 4:58 pm
jimmi_the_dalek says:
September 28, 2012 at 2:36 pm
“Dr. Leif Svalgaard, one of the worlds leading solar physicists and WUWT’s resident solar expert ” it says at the top.
I think this statement needs to be qualified. There are many in the field who have written papers that refute Leif’s argument that the solar indices are flat. Some have suggested with solid evidence that his data is erroneous. Google Svalgaard and IHV to find many scientists in the solar arena that do not agree with his statements and data. You will also find the L&P data suffers from the same erroneous methodology.
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/280
Tim says:
I really do not know who is right in your debate, Mr. Sharp. I do think we have a better chance of finding out what is right, if less people are concerned with educating others about the facts they know they know, as Leif does and discusss the theories of each other considering and realizing they are just theories. We don’t know and let’s learn. Good luck Geoff.

Johanus says:
September 28, 2012 at 6:34 am
is there any causal evidence to back up the claim that solar hibernation caused the Maunder cooling?
I don’t think so, as the solar variation is much too small.
John Whitman says:
September 28, 2012 at 8:15 am
If the sun’s energy output variation is directly insufficient to cause observed earth global temp changes then that would imply it may be a necessary contributing cause but an insufficiently large enough direct one.
See above
Tony McGough says:
September 28, 2012 at 8:23 am
It would only take a 2% change in cloud cover to change the planet’s temperature by whole degrees centigrade, it seems.
It is very hard to change the cloud cover by that much. And observations show that the low clouds have not varied opposite the solar cycle.
F. Ross says:
September 28, 2012 at 8:53 am
Is the South polar actually a mirror image of the North
It is approximately a mirror image. One is positive, the other negative, and when we see one the best, the other is hidden behind the sun.
Tim Walker says:
September 28, 2012 at 9:59 am
he didn’t provide a graph that showed the differences in the level of symmetry.
You did not take the trouble, apparently, to check slides 18 and 21 of
http://www.leif.org/research/Asymmetric-Solar-Polar-Field-Reversals-talk.pdf
Tim Walker says:
September 28, 2012 at 11:22 am
The problem is he doesn’t consider what others think or have to say.
A lot of that does not bring much worth considering to the table…
Geoff Sharp says:
September 28, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Google Svalgaard and IHV to find many scientists in the solar arena that do not agree with his statements and data.
You are behind the times [again]. It takes time to turn the scientific community around, but when it happens, conversion is swift: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010JA016220.shtml

daybyday says:
And Jan P, who wrote, “Because following is true: For any point in time over all of Earth’s history one can find a time period between another point in time and that point in time, for which the temperature increase wasn’t statistically significant. One only has to choose the time period short enough to find temperature changes that are not statistically significant.”
This is true. So I just don’t get what you are saying.
Because what he is saying contains not only true statements, but also false statements supported by false reasoning.
Of course it is true that one can always pick an arbitrarily short period of time in order to give a statistically insignificant result wrt warming. From that, it does not follow that Jan & Co can turn their nose up at every period of any length that shows no statistically significant warming. For their theory of catastrophic, anthropogenic, ‘global warming’ to be valid, the earth must warm by a significant amount over some period.
And it must warm more quickly over that period than simply a statistically significant amount – enough for the warming to rise above the noise of natural variation. That is not nearly enough. It has to rise a practically significant amount. It has to rise quickly enough that it not only validates their theories’ predictions, it has to rise fast enough that it actually amounts to a real problem that people give a rat’s ass about. Right now, the surface temp records aren’t even showing a warming signal at all for periods of 12-17 years (depending on the record), let alone a statistically significant warming. A practically significant warming isn’t even in the same universe.
The reason that you don’t understand what Jan Perlwitz is saying is that what he is saying is not true. And the reason he is telling lies is that the truth is very inconvenient. Their ‘theories’ don’t make testable predictions that they are willing to document and stand behind as criteria of falsifyability. They are unwilling to make such predictions, because the earth is NOT warming at all. In order for them to rescue ‘global warming’ from the relentlessly static temps, they have to claim that ever longer periods of no warming is consistent with their theories. That requires their theories to predict a tiny little level of warming that is so small that it is drowned out by natural variability and their theories’ own enormous error bands … for increasingly longer and longer periods of time.
The problem with that, for them, is that no one is afraid of a tiny little bit of warming that can’t even be differentiated from the weather and/or error (let alone from natural climate warming) over periods that are already a generation long. And while the ‘death trains’ may run on diesel, the gravy train runs on fear…

If the sun isn’t the source of the extra energy warming the globe then where is it coming from because we all know that no matter how good the insulation is it cannot increase the temperature- it can merely slow the loss of temperature ?
If GHGs trap radiation then the Earth must be radiating less to space if the sun isn’t supplying the extra energy.
Then we have the interesting paradox of global warming while radiating less to space – ie global cooling !!
I don’t buy it – nothing has ever been shown to warm and radiate less – ie cool. There has to be extra energy coming into the system to cause warming. The scenario of trapping energy with the constant of the solar constant still doesn’t explain how something which is warming is supposed to radiate less – or perhaps all radiative physics theory is simply wrong ?

Tom Murphy wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1093684

This is semantics in that the IPCC very much does provide guidance on modeling, review the model outputs, and then interprets/reports on the result in the ARs.

Please elaborate what you mean with “the IPCC very much does provide guidance on modeling, review the model outputs, and then interprets/reports on the result in the ARs.”
There is no dictatorship of “the IPCC”. Who do you mean, anyway, when you say “the IPCC”?. Modeling groups all over the world coordinate the design of the climate simulations among each other, currently in CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project).

Yes, the IPCC does not actually run the models, but I never claimed they did.

Well, you accused “the IPCC” to have “perhaps” committed “fraud” with respect to what should be taken into account when modeling climate.
In http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1093144 you said,

that this… presumption (this may be the wrong term – perhaps “fraud”) by the IPCC has been made with the full knowledge that changes in solar radiation certainly do matter and should be accounted for within the models.

Somehow one has to be at least the one who has the overall responsibility in organizing the research, even if it executed by some “subordinates” to be in the position to decide what is taken into account and what is not in the research.

I fail to see the confusion. The quote references acknowledgement by the IPCC that uncertainties remain in the representation of solar radiation in climate models (i.e., should solar radiation be modeled as a constant or a variable).

Whether the solar radiation, incoming at the top of atmosphere (TOA) is a constant or not, has nothing directly to do with problems regarding the proper modeling of transmission, emission, and absorption of the solar radiation in the system as physical processes. The variability of the incoming solar radiation at TOA is not part of the physical processes in the Earth system model. Instead, it is a boundary condition for the models.

If a starting point is incorrect, it’s likely that dependences on it will also be incorrect

If the input isn’t correct the result likely won’t be correct, either. I agree up to this point. And the likelihood that the results won’t be correct increases with the skill of the model to correctly calculate the radiative transfer processes in the system, because the likelihood of compensating errors is lower. But this is not an issue of modeling processes in the Earth system. The models take what is coming in at the model’s TOA. It would be a sun modeling issue, though. Something solar physicists have to tackle.

Read the section in its entirety and it’s revealed that in spite of research which reports increased variability, the IPCC favored modeling with decreased variability (i.e., a presumed solar constant),

“In spite” of what research published by whom, where, and when, specifically?

No rationale is presented in this section by the IPCC as to why it asserts the decreased variability other than the studies are newer.

Not just that, more important with the reasoning that “most of the recent studies (with the exception of Solanski and Krivova, 2003) come to this conclusion:
Most of the recent studies (with the exception of Solanki and Krivova, 2003) calculate a reduction of only around 0.1% (irradiance change of the order of –1 W m–2, radiative forcing of –0.2 W m–2; section 2.7). Following these results, the magnitude of the radiative forcing used in Chapter 9 for the Maunder Minimum period is relatively small (–0.2 W m–2 relative to today).

There are newer studies that confirm the increased variability detailed in the older TAR studies/models.

So you assert newer studies, which contradict the downward revision in the solar variability have been ignored in the IPCC report 2007. Which ones?

I see that you’re asserting that the solar radiation magnitude and variability are independent of any solar forcing, rendering the discussion of its magnitude irrelevant.

You see wrong. This is not what I said. But the phrasing of my statement was not precise enough either. I give you that.

Unless you’re actually asserting that (which I don’t believe you are), you fail to confirm that the two issues – solar radiation and solar forcing – are linked intimately.

Of course, they are, but you miss my point. The solar forcing is the magnitude of the change in the solar radiation, e.g., from the Little Ice Age to present day. This question concerns the input. But the question of correctly modeling the physical processes of radiative transfer in the Earth system is a different issue.

Your sentence is confusing to follow. Are you asserting that the IPCC does NOT promote (as in reviews all but highlights the more likely or accepted) models that incorporate solar forcings with sufficient variability to address the absence of predicted warming?

Loaded question. I am not going to answer it, since I don’t agree with what is presumed in the question.

“By contrast, models often presume larger fertilisation effects: Sohngen et al. (2001) assumed a 35% NPP increase under a 2 * CO2 scenario. Boisvenue and Running (2006) suggest increasing forest-growth rate due to increasing CO2 since the middle of the 20th century; however, some of this increase may result from other effects, such as land-use change (Caspersen et al., 2000),”

Are you asserting, those things have been presumed, and the assumption have been made in the referenced studies, because “the IPCC” told the researchers to do that? If not, how is this quote supposed to be proof that “the IPCC” presumes something? I only see here that presumptions and assumptions in scientific studies are being described in the IPCC report.

The IPCC, the entity that provides guidance on modeling, reviews the model outputs, and then interprets/reports on the result in the ARs, incorporates model presumptions in its compilation.

Please elaborate what you mean with “the IPCC very much does provide guidance on modeling, review the model outputs, and then interprets/reports on the result in the ARs.”
If you have done this already above you don’t need to do it here again.

Like any accomplished debater, though, the IPCC can emphasize or promote some models and/or studies over others.

Yes, this is true. And it is done, based on expert judgement, the results of some studies are assessed as more sound and relevant than others in the report. And some scientists won’t agree with those judgements of soundness and relevance.

Using the reference I made regarding the treatment of the Soon and Baliunas paper, do you see their work referenced in the FAR – http://tinyurl.com/ch3e3e6 (link to IPCC FAR – References to Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis)…?

Yes, I do. But not in the reference list of Chapter 8. Why should it have been referenced there?
This paper is referenced in Chapter 6, http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-references.html
The ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction of Mann et al. (1999) has been the subject of several critical studies. Soon and Baliunas (2003) challenged the conclusion that the 20th century was the warmest at a hemispheric average scale. They surveyed regionally diverse proxy climate data, noting evidence for relatively warm (or cold), or alternatively dry (or wet) conditions occurring at any time within pre-defined periods assumed to bracket the so-called ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (and ‘Little Ice Age’). Their qualitative approach precluded any quantitative summary of the evidence at precise times, limiting the value of their review as a basis for comparison of the relative magnitude of mean hemispheric 20th-century warmth (Mann and Jones, 2003; Osborn and Briffa, 2006). Box 6.4 provides more information on the ‘Medieval Warm Period’.
(http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-6.html)
Any other study with, what you think are significant results from research, which was ignored in the IPCC report?

I don’t believe I asserted this

You wrote:
in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1093144

What’s troubling and often highlighted by CAGW skeptics is that this… presumption (this may be the wrong term – perhaps “fraud”) by the IPCC has been made with the full knowledge that changes in solar radiation certainly do matter and should be accounted for within the models. This has been asserted for over 15 years.

That looks very much like to me that you write about assertions made by “CAGW skeptics”. BTW: What is a “CAGW skeptic” skeptical of? I know “C” is supposed to stand for “catastrophic”. I just don’t really know what statements are being rejected by “CAGW skeptics”. What is the difference between an “AGW skeptic” and a “CAGW skeptic”?

Please refer to NOAA’s GFDL climate models (CM3 – http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/coupled-physical-model-cm3 ) and its treatment of aerosols compared to NASA’s GISS global climate models – http://tinyurl.com/cunbszb (link to NASA GISS) and incorporations of the aerosols. The models all use different variables for aerosols – a wide range of values – to produce outputs that mimic current observations. There’s nothing sinister about the variable but it is odd that the models seeming “work” yet use a number of different values.

It’s not like that they all exactly matched the observed climate variability, or exactly matched each other:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-10.html
But the spread between the models becomes wider for future projections. I don’t know why that is. One possible explanation for it I could think of is that the representations of different physical processes in the model are developed and tested for present day conditions, but internal feedbacks between the model components make the spread wider with increasing distance from present day.

Please read this regarding the absence of model predicted warming – http://tinyurl.com/c7mmbbg (link to Lindzen 2007 – Taking Greenhouse Warming Seriously). And please don’t assert the ad hominem fallacy in any response to the paper, rather debate the paper’s points and conclusions.

There isn’t really any point in the paper. There is no original research presented in there. I also couldn’t find the evidence in the paper for the “absence of the predicted warming”, which you had asserted. What is supposed to be the evidence in there?

The “observed” temperature record – Pray tell, what actually IS the observed temperature given the frequent homogenization of temperature data? I’m genuinely curious in your response to this question.

I do not believe you that you are “genuinely curious”. You are loading the question with ridicule toward homogenization of data. You poison the well and make clear that any argument that refers to the observation data is in vain, since you already have dismissed it. However, I wonder how you would find out then that your assertion about the alleged “absence of predicted warming” was true, if you don’t have anything to diagnose the alleged absence.

So, you’re asserting the use of a changing variable for solar radiation in the different climate models. Well, as you asked of me, please provide examples for the incorporation of a changing variable in the climate models.

For CMIP3:
ECHO-G: “Natural (solar and volcanic) forcing is implemented through temporally varying solar constant (Crowley, 2000);”
http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/model_documentation/ECHO-G.htm
GFDL-CM2.0 and GFDL-CM2.1: “Solar irradiance variations —–> SOURCE {Lean et al., 1995; Lean, personal communication, 2003; see also IPCC, 2001}. Solar variations implemented as a function of wavelength.”
http://nomads.gfdl.noaa.gov/nomads/forms/deccen/CM2.X/faq/images/solar_constanttimeseries.png
http://nomads.gfdl.noaa.gov/nomads/forms/deccen/CM2.X/faq/question_13.html
http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/model_documentation/GFDL-cm2.htm
GISS-EH and GISS-ER: solar (spectral) (Lean 2002)
http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/model_documentation/GISS-E.htm
But this was not treated uniformly by the different modeling groups. There are also examples where the solar constant was fixed.