An article in the New Scientist says:
But Dr. Leif Svalgaard, one of the worlds leading solar physicists and WUWT’s resident solar expert has this to say:
Solar max is a slippery concept. One can be more precise and *define* solar max for a given hemisphere as the time when the polar fields reverse in the hemisphere. The reversals usually differ by one or two years, so solar max will similarly differ. The North is undergoing reversal right now, so has reached maximum. The South is lagging, but already the polar field is rapidly decreasing, so reversal may be only a year away. Such asymmetry is very common.
Here is a link to the evolution of the polar fields as measured at WSO:
http://www.leif.org/research/WSO-Polar-Fields-since-2003.png
And here’s data all the way back to 1966, note there has not been a crossing of the polar fields yet in 2012, a typical event at solar max:
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Polar-Fields-1966-now.png
Here is a link to a talk on this: http://www.leif.org/research/ click
on paper 1540.
Dr. Svalgaard adds:
Solar max happens at different times for each hemisphere. In the North we are *at* max right now. For the South there is another year to go, but ‘max’ for a small cycle like 24 is a drawn out affair and will last several years. To say that max falls on a given date, e.g. Jan 3rd, 2013, at UT 04:15 is meaningless.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Jeff Alberts says:
September 28, 2012 at 7:31 am
If I may be so bold, I believe Dr. Svaalgaard says that the variability of the sun isn’t enough to account for all the “warming” in places where it has been warming, or to account for historic warming and cooling.
========
There is huge variability in the sun’s magnetic field and solar wind, which influence the earth’s climate at the magnetic poles.
Thus it should be no surprise to find that the area of greatest climate change is at the magnetic poles. While on the other hand CO2 theory predicts that the area of greatest change will be the geographic poles.
Sunspot numbers are a proxy for the sun’s magnetic activity. Solar radiation does not change much in intensity, which has mislead climate science to assume that the sun doesn’t affect climate very much. Thus CO2 must be the cause.
Yet we know from the proxy records that magnetic field changes are associated with climate change. We are in a period of rapid change to the earth’s magnetic field, faster than at any time in history. Are we to believe that CO2 is changing the earth’s magnetic field?
davidmhoffer wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1093865
I didn’t say anything about “adjusting variables in a model to match model output to Nature”. Again, you are making things up, or you just don’t understand what I say. I explained that aerosols are interactively calculated in state-of-the-art climate models, like any other of the model variables.
No, I have tried to explain, obviously in vain, why your assertion about “circular reasoning” is nonsense, or that the same would apply to Nature.
Do you understand the difference between a statistical population and the statistical properties of the population on one hand, and, on the other hand, an individual element from this population, or in our case a single realization from all possible climate realizations?
One can’t match the outcome of an individual realization with known data from Nature beyond a predictability limit. It’s in the nature of chaotic systems like the weather. But one can match the statistical properties of the model simulations with the statistical properties of data from the real world.
You do not understand what climate simulations are, which are boundary condition problems, and what the difference is between climate simulations and predictions of an individual realization as an initial value problems. I said, latter is not possible beyond a certain time horizon. And it’s not decades, it’s rather days or maybe some weeks for some subsystems. But climate simulations can be made over a period of a century. To be accurate here does not refer to an accurate prediction of the chronological succession of weather events, it refers to an accurate prediction of the change in the statistical properties of the climate variables, when the boundary conditions change.
Jan P Perlwitz:
In discussion with davidmhoffer of my post at September 28, 2012 at 1:35 pm you say at September 28, 2012 at 6:42 pm
I assume you are paid to tell such egregious lies.
It is a falsehood that “Climate projections are predictions of the change in the statistical properties of the whole population, when the boundary conditions change.” That could only be true if the boundary conditions were known and specified to defined accuracy and precision. And they are not.
Indeed, the main “boundary condition” varied in the models is the forcing from GHGs, mostly CO2. But, as my post explained, and I again quote Kiehl’s words for the explanation
Richard
JJ wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1094059
I don’t see that you quote any of the alleged “false statements supported by false reasoning”. You only assert that there were some.
Yours is a strawman argument like in your other comment in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1093780
where you said:
Your strawman arguments are based on the presumption that I would say the statement about the presence of global warming was true, even if there wasn’t any statistical significant changes in the climate variables indicative of the process of global warming. I do not say that.
The absence of statistical significance does not allow a positive statement about the absence of global warming. It doesn’t mean that the alternative hypothesis must be true.
The multi-decadal trend in more than one climate variable, indicative
for global warming, has statistically significantly risen over the
noise of natural variation of the 20th century.
This is a political argument, which has nothing to do with the science of global warming. The scientific validity of the statements about global warming as ongoing physical process in the Earth system does not depend on what people think about whether it’s a real problem or not.
You haven’t demonstrated anywhere that what I said wasn’t true. You just asserting that this was the case.
Your assertion is a falsehood. All aspects of the physical theory behind the prediction of global warming due to greenhouse gases are testable. (I do not appreciate if someone accuses me of lying, i.e., of deliberately making factually false statements, without providing evidence for such an accusation.)
Utter rubbish. There is a multi-decadal statistical significant upward trend of the surface and tropospheric temperature, ocean heat content is increasing, the ice both in the Arctic and in the Antarctic is melting, the Arctic sea ice decline is accelerating, even more than previously predicted by the climate models, sea level is rising (and lower stratospheric temperature is decreasing, which belongs also to the physics of global warming.) The assertion, Earth wasn’t warming at all, doesn’t have any scientific substance.
Leif Svalgaard says:
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.
Recent papers from Spain and China show a decrease in cloud cover while the Sun was more than averagely active in the later C20th. So does ISCCP data from weather satellites. So does Earthshine measurements on the Lunar disc.
I’m interested to know which peer reviewed material you are relying on.
Thanks.
Jan P Perlwitz:
At September 29, 2012 at 2:04 am you say
Strewth! Having been shown to be wrong you posit a straw man!
The discussion was about the meaning of statistical significance.
The point is that there has been no discernible global warming for at least a decade. And that fact negates the AGW-hypothesis.
1.
The most recent 10-year period shows no trend in global temperature at 90% confidence.
2.
But the previous 3 periods of 10-years each did show a warming trend at 90% confidence.
3.
Therefore, the confidence with which it can be claimed there has been recent global warming has reduced.
However, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have continued to increase so if the AGW-hypothesis were true then the confidence in observed global warming should be increasing, not reducing.
As D Boehme pointed out to you, the only valid scientific conclusion from these statistical facts is that any putative AGW is so small and insignificant that it is indiscernible because natural variation is much larger.
Richard
Dr. Perlwitz
I would appreciate your comment on the 350 year long differences in the mid-summer and mid-winter trends in the CET data as shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MidSummer-MidWinter.htm
Thanks.
Why in heaven’s name should anyone trust anything Perlwitz writes here or give credit to any of his apocalypse cult’s tenets of faith?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/26/nasa-giss-caught-changing-past-data-again-violates-data-quality-act/
Geoff Sharp says:
September 29, 2012 at 12:25 am
Others have used your faulty IHV data that once corrected shows the modulation of the geomagnetic data to match the corrected aa etc records…..no flat floor.
It is the correct IHV that shows that aa must be corrected. Lockwood concedes that IHV is correct. As simple as that. That he cannot yet stomach the floor just shows that he does not understand how to go back before the 1830s, but Schrijver does: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL046658.pdf
tallbloke says:
September 29, 2012 at 2:57 am
I’m interested to know which peer reviewed material you are relying on.
e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cloud%20Cover%20and%20Cosmic%20Rays.pdf
And what does a long drawn out solar minimum imply for temps, ocean cycles, and global warming. Answer: Absolutely nothing according to the small constant factors employed in climate models. Just move along and let the money grubber faux science consensus collect their economic rent from the scarcity of truth and feast of grants.
Are there any explanations why we have now a cooler South Hemisphere with exceeding ice in Antarctica?
At first sight it would look like the oceans started already to cool in the South with a quiet sun.
If there is an imbalance between NH and SH, the NH losing (always?) more heat then the SH this would explain the current situation with the North still losing heat accumulated in the South some time ago (how long?)?
Heat is slowly transferred to the north (what it always does?) and depending on the time lag there is the difference between the hemispheres.
How fast is heat carried to the poles and is there observed heat transfer between the SH and NH?
Obviously much more heat can be transferred to the North Pole then to the South Pole as water flows up there …
From Rosco on September 29, 2012 at 12:07 am:
Start here, where it is noted:
With constant incoming energy, whether there is cooling or warming is changed by how much of the energy is allowed in, which is controlled by cloud cover. Spencer posited a mere 1-2% variation accounts for most to all of the warming blamed on “anthropogenic” causes, namely increased CO₂. At the linked piece, a peer-reviewed paper examining China reported “Significant decline in cloud cover with trend of −1.6%per decade during 1954–2005 was derived.” The authors also found the decrease wasn’t related to man-made aerosols thus likely a natural phenomenon.
Which leads to this piece: Some confirmation of Spencer’s cloud hypothesis – it is getting less cloudy and warmer at the same time:
So the amount of energy directed towards the Earth can remain the same, and small cloud cover variations can account for the warming (and cooling) that results.
So you are right, there is extra energy coming into the system to cause warming. But it does not have to be more energy coming at the Earth, merely that the Earth is rejecting less of that energy.
You might want to read this short piece by Dr. Spencer, A Primer on Our Claim that Clouds Cause Temperature Change. Very informative.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:30 am
tallbloke says:
September 29, 2012 at 2:57 am
Recent papers from Spain and China show a decrease in cloud cover while the Sun was more than averagely active in the later C20th. So does ISCCP data from weather satellites. So does Earthshine measurements on the Lunar disc.
I’m interested to know which peer reviewed material you are relying on.
e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cloud%20Cover%20and%20Cosmic%20Rays.pdf
From Leif’s link:
“It is noted again that the
ISCCP lower-troposphere cloud data may not be sufficiently
reliable to detect GCR–cloud correlations.”
Leif, you need to consider the full range of literature available on cloud cover, rather than cherry picking a study which suits you purpose, which in fact admits great uncertainty in its findings. ISCCP and Earthshine both show an overall increase in albedo since ~1998.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/cloud-earthshine1.png
Note the left scale is incorrect (SKS shenanigans) The W/m^2 on the inset scale is correct.
Jan Perlwitz,
Sweetie, you have said this:
“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.”
And that statement is absolutely false. Earlier, I explained how. You are recalcitrant, so I shall restate:
IF the catastrophic fearmongering theory of ‘global warming’ is truly a scientific proposition, THEN there exists SOME length of time for which a lack of statistically significant warming would be sufficient to conclude that said theory is false.
Those two statements are mutually exclusive. The one in bold is true. The one in italics, quoting you, is false.
Demonstrating that your statements are false is not a “strawman” argument. You misuse that term, which you apparently do not understand any better than you do Zeno’s Paradox – which fallacy the balance of that post of yours recapitulates.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 29, 2012 at 8:23 am
A new paper just published in the Journal of Climate finds that global cloudiness has decreased over the past 39 years
During which time solar activity has decreased and cosmic rays have increased, further undermining the naive assertion that cosmic rays affect climate.
tallbloke says:
September 29, 2012 at 8:32 am
Leif, you need to consider the full range of literature available on cloud cover,
The ‘full’ literature is contradictory and is full of claims and counterclaims. In general, it is rather simple: solar activity has gone down the past several cycles, cosmic rays have gone up, and in contrast: cloud cover has gone down and temperatures have gone up.
tallbloke says:
September 29, 2012 at 8:32 am
“Leif, you need to consider the full range of literature available on cloud cover”.
The ‘full’ literature is contradictory and is full of claims and counterclaims. In general, it is rather simple: solar activity has gone down the past several cycles, cosmic rays have gone up, and in contrast: cloud cover has gone down and temperatures have gone up.
One way out of that pickle and saving the cosmic ray hypothesis is to assume that AGW has overwhelmed the GCR-effects. Is that what you advocate?
Jan Perlwitz,
Turning to the rest of your rubbish, in turn:
The multi-decadal trend in more than one climate variable, indicative or global warming, has statistically significantly risen over the noise of natural variation of the 20th century.
Well, that isn’t demonstrable. But even if it were, the salient point is that the “multi-decadal trend” in the primary indicative climate variable (spatially average surface temperature) is built upon decades that cannot possibly have been influenced by anthropogenic CO2, and that trend is not holding up for the most recent period of more than a decade – when the effects of anthropogenic CO2 should be increasing.
This is a problem, and you know it. It only remains to be seen how long the lack of warming will continue, and what ad hoc fixes to the ‘global warming’ narrative will have to be made to rescue it from the relentless pounding of the facts.
Santer attempted to stave off the obvious by putting out his “17 years to know” paper last year, but we are rapidly approaching that length of no warming. He will likely have to begin making labored reference to the fact that he said a minimum of 17 years. But that is going to get people wondering just how many decades of low or no warming we will have to experience before you guys are willing to admit that your scary stories are wrong.
JanP;
Your last reply to me was of the form of debate which I have come to call “when you don’t know what you are doing, do it in excrutiating detail”. You make assertions in excessively long paragraphs laboriously composed of words seemingly chosen to showcase your ponderous vocabulary. When called to task for false logic, your rebuttal rests upon some subset of your original assertion and ignores the valid points made against your remarks in their context as a whole. Throw in a few drive by shots about others not understanding the material, and you imagine that you have somehow scored some points in this debate.
Sadly, you’ve done the opposite. You’ve demonsrated that the only way you can debate the various assertions made in this thread is by muddying the waters, avoiding direct discussion of salient points, and shouting that others are not understanding the points you are making. The problem Janp, is that you aren’t making any. You’d rather argue tiny technicalities of the manner in which things have been phrased than engage honsetly on the matters of substance.
You are proof, JanP, of exactly what skeptics complain most about. That you and people like you don’t want to debate the science. As soon as some actual science gets on the table, out comes a 600 word paragraph that says nothing specific and can be construed later as meaning anything convenient that you need it to mean at the time. This thread is loaded with examples of same.
(I have a vision in my head now of JanP counting the words in each paragraph he wrote to see if any of them are 600 words or more, as in his mind demonstrating that none of them are defeats my argument)
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 29, 2012 at 9:07 am
tallbloke says:
September 29, 2012 at 8:32 am
“Leif, you need to consider the full range of literature available on cloud cover”.
The ‘full’ literature is contradictory and is full of claims and counterclaims. In general, it is rather simple: solar activity has gone down the past several cycles, cosmic rays have gone up, and in contrast: cloud cover has gone down and temperatures have gone up.
One way out of that pickle and saving the cosmic ray hypothesis is to assume that AGW has overwhelmed the GCR-effects. Is that what you advocate?
The literature I pointed you to doesn’t even mention GCR’s. This is something you have overlaid on the purpose of my question.
However, I note that:
1) Total albedo has increased since the turn of the millenium according to ISCCP and Earthshine data. Surface temperature has since stabilised and ocean heat content has fallen slightly. This during a period in which the airborne fraction of co2 has increased some 15%.
2) It is entirely possible that there is a GCR-cloud connection but that has been opposed by other factors which affect cloud cover, e.g. meridionality of jet streams, humidity etc.
3) Although the peak amplitudes of the solar cycles fell slightly over the 1960-2003 period, the cycles were historically high and cloud cover did diminish. Since the Sun went quiet after 2003 cloud levels have increased again. Your analysis fu is weak today. Or is it that your pro AGW propaganda fu is strong?
From Leif Svalgaard on September 29, 2012 at 8:46 am:
I was wondering if you’d pounce. I didn’t bring in Svensmark myself, just Dr. Spencer’s work on cloud variation and supporting evidence, so debate that.
I can also see the downward trend in TSI, and note how small it would appear when graphed from y=0.
With the TSI change so small, I argued from a constant solar output basis as such a small variation can be covered within the cloud variation changes.
If TSI would be the greater influence, or at least significant enough compared to the cloud cover variation to merit mention, then enlighten me.
As to Svensmark, which I didn’t mention, you appear to be jumping quickly into “Debunker in Chief” mode when it appears his work may possibly be referenced. From when you promptly made the first comment at that second WUWT piece and Anthony’s reply there, and as gathered from the comments below, you’re doing yourself no favors with out-of-hand dismissals without examining what is actually being said.
vukcevic wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1094393
What is there to comment? The positive trend, which can be calculated for the shown temperature time series, seems to be larger in winter than in summer in magnitude. There is nothing else that can be concluded from the graphics.
Dr. Svalgaard,
Do you have an opinion or conjecture about what does drive climate cycles?
Thank you
tallbloke says:
September 29, 2012 at 9:57 am
1) Total albedo has increased since the turn of the millenium according to ISCCP and Earthshine data.
It seems that when it suits your argument, ISCCP is all the sudden reliable enough. In any case, the graph you show does not exhibit any solar cycle variation as it should.
2) It is entirely possible that there is a GCR-cloud connection but that has been opposed by other factors which affect cloud cover, e.g. meridionality of jet streams, humidity etc.
Special pleading. The issue was whether the recent data support a GCR-cloud connection and they don’t.
3) Although the peak amplitudes of the solar cycles fell slightly over the 1960-2003 period, the cycles were historically high and cloud cover did diminish. Since the Sun went quiet after 2003 cloud levels have increased again.
From http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/20/spencers-cloud-hypothesis-confirmed/ we learn that “A new paper just published in the Journal of Climate finds that global cloudiness has decreased over the past 39 years”
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 29, 2012 at 9:58 am
you’re doing yourself no favors with out-of-hand dismissals without examining what is actually being said.
I’m not seeking favors, just telling how it is. I’ll repeat: During which time solar activity has decreased and cosmic rays have increased, further undermining the naive assertion that cosmic rays affect climate
Steve P says:
September 29, 2012 at 11:10 am
Do you have an opinion or conjecture about what does drive climate cycles?
On the very long time scale [which does not apply to the present situation], climate is driven by variations in solar insolation in combination with drift of the tectonic plates and volcanism.
On human time scales, I don’t think any single cause can be singled out. Any sufficiently complex system can have internal, natural cycles and climate seems to fit that bill.