Guest post by Alec Rawls
When he argues that a reduction in forcing will cause cooling Dana Nuccitelli is not actually talking about drinking. He is talking about the solar forcing of global temperature, but the drinking analogy is a handy way to understand where his argument goes off the rails.
Mr. Nuccitelli, who blogs for the consensus-approved Skeptical Science website, was writing about Henrik Svensmark’s GCR-cloud theory of indirect solar forcing, where Galactic Cosmic Rays are hypothesized to seed cloud formation. If Svensmark is right then a strong solar wind, by deflecting some GCR from reaching the earth, in-effect blows some of the clouds away, letting more sunlight through to warm the planet’s surface.
That can’t possibly explain late 20th century warming says Nuccitelli, because GCR deflection has been estimated (see the Krivova-Solanki graph above) to have peaked by 1980. The raw data suggests the actual GCR minimum was ten years later, but set that aside. Nuccitelli thinks it is the change in the level of forcing, not the level of forcing, that determines whether the climate system warms or cools:
So, if GCRs really do amplify the solar influence on global temperatures, since 1980 they are amplifying a cooling effect.
Cooling begins when a forcing passes its peak? Fail. Daily temperatures don’t start falling at noon. They continue rising until mid-afternoon. The hottest time of the year isn’t the first day of summer (the summer solstice, after which the days start getting shorter), the hottest time is mid-summer. To think cooling should start when forcing passes its peak is like thinking you can sober up by drinking just a little more slowly.
Here’s a tip for Dana to keep in mind on New Year’s eve: it is the level of alcohol forcing that matters. If you are drinking alcohol faster than you body is excreting it (not exactly the way the earth excretes heat, but similar enough), then your blood alcohol is rising. You are getting drunker, even if you have lowered the rate of your drinking! That’s right, putting a little less rum in your egg nog will not sober you up! Your increasing inebriation will just be a little less rapid, and it is the same for solar forcing.
When the peak level of forcing appears in the rearview mirror, the downward trend in the forcing that begins at that point does not cause cooling. It just causes warming to be a little less rapid. Only when the energy pouring into the climate system falls to the level of the energy escaping back out does the system stop warming. Empirically, that turns out to be mid-afternoon, mid-summer, and approximately the first decade of the 21st century.
Three blind mice
Dana Nuccitelli produced one of three widely cited rebuttals to my suggestion that a new sentence that was added to the Second Order Draft of AR5, a sentence that admits strong evidence for some substantial mechanism of solar amplification, is a “game changer.” That admission is on page 7-43 of the SOD:
Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system … The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.
That’s a game changer because the only solar forcing included in the IPCC computer models is the very slight variance in solar irradiance (also known as TSI, or “the solar constant”). If there are other solar forcings in play, working through variables that actually vary substantially as solar activity ramps up and down, that kills the report’s key finding (on page 8-4) that we can have “very high confidence that natural forcing is a small fraction of the anthropogenic forcing.”
The two most widely cited rebuttals, which I answered last week, were both by lead authors from the IPCC. Steven Sherwood, one of 15 lead authors of chapter 7, pretended that the admission of evidence for “an amplifying mechanism” was only about GCR-cloud. He then proceeded to claim that the evidence for GCR-cloud points to a weak mechanism, and used that as a grounds for dismissing the idea that any substantial solar forcing beyond TSI could be at work.
Doesn’t follow. The evidence for “an amplifying mechanism” (emphasis added) is entirely separate from the evidence for the GCR-cloud mechanism. The former is paleo evidence, where numerous studies of the geologic record have found strong correlations between solar activity and climate going back many thousands of years. The evidence for the GCR-cloud mechanism is from cloud-chamber experiments and ongoing observations of cloud micro-physics.
It doesn’t matter how unconvinced Sherwood is by the evidence for the GCR-cloud mechanism. That evidence does nothing to counter the paleo evidence, cited in the draft report, that some mechanism of enhanced solar forcing must be at work. By using his discontent with the GCR-cloud theory as an excuse to dismiss the paleo evidence, Sherwood is inverting the scientific method, and he is lying to the public about what the report says, making him a seriously bad guy.
Apparently weak minds think alike because Nuccitelli did the same thing Sherwood did, only a day earlier. Dana’s post only looks at the GCR-cloud mechanism and completely ignores the draft report’s admission of strong evidence for some mechanism of solar amplification. It is in the context of that more fundamental mistake that Nuccitelli goes on to completely misinterpret the evidence for the GCR-cloud mechanism itself, claiming that anything less than peak forcing causes cooling, arguing in-effect that he can sober up by drinking a little slower. Just tell that to the officer Dana. He won’t even need to give you a breathalyzer.
More evidence that weak minds think alike is the second semi-official rebuttal to my “game change” claim, issued by Joanna Haigh, a lead author of the IPCC’s third report. Haigh proceeds on the same dishonest pretence as Sherwood, telling NewScientist magazine that the new sentence in the draft report is only about GCR-cloud, which she then dismisses with the same drinking-game mistake that Dana makes, claiming that if climate were being driven by solar activity then the planet would have started cooling when solar activity was at its peak:
Haigh points out that the sun actually began dimming slightly in the mid-1980s, if we take an average over its 11-year cycle, so fewer GCRs should have been deflected from Earth and more Earth-cooling clouds should have formed. “If there were some way cosmic rays could be causing global climate change, it should have started getting colder after 1985.”
Sober up Joanna. Have a single shot instead of a double. Works every time.
Which theory has more trouble with flat 21st century temperatures?
It is amusing how Dana Nuccitelli, through sheer incompetence, was able to prefigure the highly credentialed malfeasance of both of these IPCC fraudsters. Still, Nuccitelli has to be credited with at least a bit of misfeasance of his own because he wasn’t satisfied with just assuring his gullible readers that cooling commences when forcing is at its peak. That only supplied an excuse for dismissing a solar explanation for late 20th century warming, leaving the conspicuous lack of 21st century warming still to be dealt with. Dana’s solution? Pretend that the flat 21st century temperature record militates against a solar driver of climate:
In fact, GCRs reaching Earth recently hit record high levels (Figure 4), yet temperatures are still way up.
Temperatures have merely flattened out, they haven’t gone down yet, and no Skeptical Science reader will ever learn that this is just what the discovered correlations between solar activity and climate predict. The strongest temperature response to a change in solar forcing is seen with a lag of about ten years (Usoskin et al. 2005), or one solar cycle (Solheim et al. 2012). The theory that is discomfited by flat 21st century temperatures is the CO2-warming theory, which predicts ever more rapidly increasing temperatures.
Dana might actually think that the flat 21st century temperature record causes trouble for the solar-warming theory but there is no way he can think it causes less trouble for the CO2-warming theory. For him to pretend that 21st century temperatures favor the CO2-warming theory is inexcusably dishonest, but as usual, the professionals are even worse. Note this little gem from the SOD (p. 7-44):
The lack of trend in the cosmic ray intensity over the last 50 years (Agee et al., 2012; McCracken and Beer, 2007) provides another strong argument against the hypothesis of a major contribution of cosmic rays to ongoing climate change.
That’s 15 IPCC lead authors all accepting the crackpot idea that you can only get drunk if your rate of drinking is going up. Steady exposure to the high 1950’s level of solar activity will keep you from warming, just as steady swilling of a high level of booze will keep you stone-cold sober. But where Dana only said that “temperatures are still way up” (implicitly acknowledging that they are no longer going up), the draft report here claims that temperatures are still going up (“ongoing climate change”).
Must be a Steven Sherwood sentence. He needs to look at page 10-3 of the SOD (emphasis added):
While the trend in global mean temperature since 1998 is not significantly different from zero, it is also consistent with natural variability superposed on the long-term anthropogenic warming trends projected by climate models.
Note that the “consistent with natural variability” part is a near call, after NOAA admitted in 2008 that 15 years of no warming would falsify current models. But yeah, let’s pretend it is the solar theory that has trouble with the lack of recent warming.
The Guardian, Andrew Sullivan, DeSmog, Romm etcetera, all pwned by Dana Nuccitelli’s error-filled AR5 post
The ensuing Skeptical Science newsletter bragged about how many eco-propagandists picked up on nutty Nuccitelli’s non-stop nonsense and the list is indeed impressive, a glaring testament to the total absence of due diligence on the part of these “journalists,” none of whom thought to question Dana’s advice on how to sober up quick. Here is the SkS tally of eco-scalps:
This was a very big week for SkS in the news. Dana’s IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun was re-posted and/or linked to by The Guardian, New York Times Green, New York Times Dot Earth, Huffington Post, Climate Progress, Mother Jones, Climate Crocks, Carbon Brief, Grist, Daily Beast, DeSmogBlog, Graham Readfearn, Der Spiegel, Maribo, Learn from Nature, Alternative Energy in the 21st Century, and Motherboard. It was also Tweeted by Michael Mann and Chris Mooney, among many others.
The only “consensus” journalist on this list who showed any integrity was Andrew Revkin, who had already written a post on my leak of the draft report. After updating that post with a link to Nuccitelli, Revkin updated again later with a link to the rebuttal that Jo Nova and I wrote about Seven Sherwood. Thanks Andrew, for being an actual journalist.
To put their “big week” in perspective the folks at Credulous Science reached high for sufficient words:
Winston Churchill once said: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Not this time; we got the truth’s pants on in record time and nipped this myth in the bud before the contrarians were able to misinform the public.
The “truth” in their rendering is whatever patent falsehoods can be used to fool the ignorant into thinking they should fear CO2. No, nutty ones. You did not forge an exception to Churchill’s dictum. You provided a textbook example of it.
Dana is a poster child for those who feel a moral imperative to “believe the scientists”
For the last two years I have had a lot of fun exposing the large number of top climate scientists who claim that it is not the level of forcing that causes warming, but the trend in the forcing. They are all looking at the wrong derivative (one instead of zero).
Given the enormous pressure on the eco-left to accept what these government-funded climatologists are saying it is not surprising that someone like Dana Nuccitelli would swallow the idea that temperature really is driven by the trend in the forcing, and one super-wacky segment in Dana’s post indicates that he really is accepting that this is how physics works. If you leave a pot of water on a steady flame it won’t heat. If you want to heat the water you have to keep turning the flame up. The segment is titled, “Physical Reality Intrudes on Rawls”:
Rawls has argued to the contrary by claiming that the climate is still responding to the increase in solar activity from the early 20th century, and that GCRs are amplifying that solar warming from over 60 years ago. This argument is simply physically wrong. As Figure 2 illustrates, when solar activity rises, temperatures follow suit very soon thereafter. In fact, during the mid-20th century, solar activity and global surface temperatures both flattened out. Are we to believe that the planet suddenly began responding to the pre-1950 solar activity increase in 1975—2012, after not warming 1940—1975? The argument makes no physical sense.
Obviously I never said that late 20th century warming was caused by solar activity from the early 20th century and Dana does not give a citation for what argument of mine he is referring to but its easy to figure out. I have argued many times that if one combines the strong paleo correlations between solar activity and climate with the fact that solar activity was at what Ilya Usoskin calls “grand maximum” levels from 1920 to 2000 then it is certainly plausible that much of 20th century warming, including late 20th century warming, could have been caused by the sun. 80 years of a high level of enhanced solar forcing just might warm the place up a bit (and it only did warm a bit, about 0.8 °C over the century).
If I am attributing late 20th century warming to the high solar activity that persisted through 2000, why does Dana think I am attributing it to solar forcings from 60 years earlier? He must be fixed on the idea that only a change in the level of solar forcing can cause warming. That’s what all of these top scientists have been telling everyone and there was no rise in solar activity after 1950, hence any solar-caused warming would have to stem from the pre-1950 rise in solar activity.
But come on Dana. That is not what I am saying. That is what they are saying, and I have been trying my darnedest to expose it as a blatant misrepresentation. I’m not attributing late 20th century warming to the pre-1950 rise in solar activity. I’m attributing it to the fact that solar activity remained at close to the same high 1950’s level until 2000 (or 2003). It is the level of the forcing that causes warming, not the trend in the forcing.
I have to feel bad for Dana on this point. It isn’t his fault. He has been systematically duped by this parade of so-called scientists all telling him that a persistent high level of forcing can’t cause continued warming. Makes me want to put him on a milk carton. The poor guy isn’t just lost, he was kidnapped. Want a piece of candy little boy? Credulous Science indeed.
lsvalgaard said:
“You mean you don’t want to discuss the failures of your claims. Fair enough.”
They didn’t fail, there is a relationship between low Ap and low temperatures, as there is with Aurora:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/10/aurora-borealis-and-surface-temperature-cycles-linked/#comment-796829
“My own take is that the solar dynamo was still going strong and the heliosphere and solar wind was not much different from today.”
With such a lack of Aurora Borealis through Maunder, I don’t think so.
Ulric Lyons says:
December 31, 2012 at 11:56 pm
With such a lack of Aurora Borealis through Maunder, I don’t think so.
Think again: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1990MNRAS.247…67S
vukcevic says
Does solar magnetic cycle drive the oceans SST ?
henry says
I think the relationship is co-incidental, but could be related
proposed explanation of the 90-100 year weather cycle:
1) from 1951, ozone has been found decreasing exactly when global warming started , if we look at the maxima. Contrary to popular belief, I am convinced the decrease in ozone was not due to CFC ‘s at all.
2) we have entered a cooling period, which looking at energy in (maxima), started in 1995 and will last ca. 44 years. Ozone is increasing, exactly from 1995 as well, meaning some shift in UV has taken place that causes more production of ozone.
(more) UV (certain type) + O2 => (more) O3
Same argument applies for HxOx and NxOx compounds TOA which are increasing as well.
The higher concentration of these chemicals TOA causes more back radiation of a certain other type of UV band that would otherwise be absorbed by the oceans and immediately converted to heat. This is because water absorbs strongly at same wavelengths. Due to its high energy content a small shift can cause a considerable loss of energy. This is the amplification effect.
(less) UV (certain type) + H2O => less heat into the oceans.
taken over the whole 80-100 year the net effect of the Gleisberg cycle is of course zero, seeing as the relationship follows an a-c curve.
as shown before, all warming observed from 1927-2012 can be explained by this cycle. The cooling noted from 2002
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend
will continue until 2035-2045.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 1, 2013 at 1:35 am
Ulric Lyons says:
December 31, 2012 at 11:56 pm
With such a lack of Aurora Borealis through Maunder, I don’t think so.
Think again: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1990MNRAS.247…67S
Wordpress mangles the URL, try this ome:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1990MNRAS.247…67S&defaultprint=YES&filetype=.pdf
lsvalgaard says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
January 1, 2013 at 1:39 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 1, 2013 at 1:35 am
Ulric Lyons says:
December 31, 2012 at 11:56 pm
With such a lack of Aurora Borealis through Maunder, I don’t think so.
Think again: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1990MNRAS.247…67S
WordPress mangles the URL, try this ome:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1990MNRAS.247…67S&defaultprint=YES&filetype=.pdf
still does it, maybe this one will work:
try me
I give up for now. WordPress is just to heavy to dance with. Happy New Year.
Leif writes “My reasoning [at least as far as SIM and UV are concerned] is as just described.”
…and is faulty otherwise we would have had much a better model of spectral variance than we did until our understanding changed recently. When UV goes down, visible tends to go up. And nobody noticed this correlation prior to the SIM data? I find that very hard to believe.
Leif writes “That the sun causes small [of the order of a tenth of a degree] fluctuations is clear from the outset [as TSI varies enough to cause that”
Yes but its the variations within the TSI that could be the difference. UV goes down cooling the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere and visible goes up warming the surface and meanwhile TSI doesn’t seem to change enough to cause those effects.
Well until we know more, I’d say the jury was out on your beliefs of small TSI change = “not the reason”
Hi doc
Did you mean this
http://www.leif.org/EOS/1990MNRAS247.pdf
?
Leif
Your power/energy thing is misleading
No, you are misleading people to believe, using the following case, the ocean will have the same temperature i year 5 as ‘now’, year 25, because the peak values are the same. Everybody, except you and climate scientists will know that is nonsense. Peak power does not determine the temperature of water, energy does, basic.
http://virakkraft.com/running-sum.png
Dr.S.
Henrik Pedersen – from Denmark says
Iøvrigt er der en forbløffende god sammenhæng mellem den magnetiske middelfeltstyrke og temperaturen i Arktis fra 1850 og frem til i dag.
Forfatteren har desværre været i skænderier med autoriteterne (= CO2-evangelisterne). Det fører ingen vegne.
Men man må også sige, at der endnu manger en underliggende fysisk teori. Og forholdene i atmosfæren mm. er særdeles komplicerede.
Svante (Arrhenius) kunne jo for en menneskealder siden påvise en sammenhæng mellem CO2 og temperaturstigningen i drivhuset og forklare det fysisk.
Man kan helt sikkert påvise en statistisk sammenhæng mellem temperaturstigningen og det globale antal af svigermødre (hvorfor altid dem ?), men her mangler der en fysisk teori.
Alt i alt håber jeg, at Vukcevik kan finde nogle gode fysiske forklaringer.
lgl says:
December 31, 2012 at 12:07 pm
HenryP
Yes, I’m using mean temp and I see no reason why means and maxima should have different cycle times, do you?
There is a comment over at Climate Audit that may apply.
If this is correct then Tmin is going to be a poor choice and because Tmean includes Tmin, so is Tmean. Therefore the use of Tmax should give results without as much UHI effect (or TOB) confounding. (Steve did not swat the guy down and neither did anyone else)
More on the issue of Min Max and recording temperature: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/a-cooling-bias-due-to-mmts/
My take home is there is no way in heck you can accurately determine the historic ‘global’ temperature to within 0.1C much less 0.01C See: link
So we average TSI then average temps . Then we compare an average to an average. You will find error theory is complicated but in essence multiple A+B is averaged out after all known factors are taken into consideration. You cannot average A then average B it is mathematical nonsense. The achieving people in the world laugh at the irrelevant garbage put forward by the mathematically inept IPCC. Ask any surveyor.
vukcevic says:
January 1, 2013 at 5:28 am
Did you mean this http://www.leif.org/EOS/1990MNRAS247.pdf
Yes, thanks
TimTheToolMan says:
January 1, 2013 at 4:15 am
When UV goes down, visible tends to go up. And nobody noticed this correlation prior to the SIM data? I find that very hard to believe.
Belief is one thing, knowing is another [and usually better].
vukcevic says:
January 1, 2013 at 6:31 am
Henrik Pedersen – from Denmark says
Iøvrigt er der en forbløffende god sammenhæng mellem den magnetiske middelfeltstyrke og temperaturen i Arktis fra 1850 og frem til i dag.
My usual comment: we have very few [and scattered] measurements from the Arctic before the 1920s
Gail says
Therefore the use of Tmax should give results without as much UHI effect (or TOB) confounding.
Henry says
Also true. But that again is just in addition….
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/28/dana-nuccitellis-holiday-trick-for-sobering-up-quick-put-a-little-less-rum-in-your-egg-nog/#comment-1186823
Generally speaking means and minima give much greater noise than maxima.
Ask me. I know. I have seen thousands of data. That is why I decided to switch to maxima only.
GCR …..paramagnetism of water vapor (magnetic density=less resonance=water vapor accumulation=clouds) and methane ….covalent bond disruption (molar mass questions with answers probably exhibited in the ionosphere)???
Leif writes in a non-reply “Belief is one thing, knowing is another [and usually better].”
Whereas over at Real Climate they said
“What is a surprise is that for the visible wavelengths, SIM seems to suggest that the irradiance changes are opposite in sign to the changes in the TSI. To be clear, while the TSI has decreased since 2003 (as part of the descent into the current solar minimum), SIM seems to indicate that the UV decreases are much larger than expected, while irradiance in visible bands has actually increased! This is counter to any current understanding of what controls irradiance on solar cycle timescales.”
So you see the correlation really is new. Unless you have an older paper that shows otherwise that the guys at RC weren’t aware of.
Roughly 75% of the 20th century warming was due to solar magnetic cycle changes. As the period of warming due to solar magnetic cycle change is coming to an end, I have selected this period to start to the defense of the solar magnetic cycle modulation of planetary climate.
There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleoclimatic record that correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. There is hence smoking gun evidence that sun is a serial climate changer. The question is not does solar magnetic cycle changes cause planetary temperature changes but rather how does the solar magnetic cycle changes cause planetary temperature changes.
It possible to explain in detail how the solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary temperature using mechanism explained in peer reviewed papers. It is also possible using observational data in peer review papers and logic to support the assertion that 75% of the 20th century warming was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.
The late 20th century warming was caused by solar wind bursts, that create a space charge differential in the ionosphere. The solar wind bursts remove cloud forming ions which cause a reduction of low level clouds in 40 to 60 degree latitudes both hemisphere and an increase in high level clouds in the Northern high latitude and a reduction in high level clouds in the Southern high latitude regions which creates what is called the polar see saw. The polar see-saw is the name climatologist have the observations that the proxy (O16/O18 isotope ratio) Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet records show cycles where the Greenland Ice warms and the Antarctic ice cools and visa versa. Ice bore temperature proxy data indicates that see-saw warming and cooling is simultaneous and cyclic.
I will in the next comment provide links to a paper that notes the 20th century warming correlates with a reduction in planetary cloud cover. The must be physical cause, an explanation as to why planetary cloud cover was reduced in the 20th century. As noted in the next comment there was an increase in solar wind bursts during the declining phase of the last two solar magnetic cycles.
The following paper by Georgieva, Bianchi, & Kirov “Once again about global warming and solar activity” shows there is correlation of the Ak parameter which changes in response to solar wind burst and planetary temperature changes.
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MSAIt760405/PDF/2005MmSAI..76..969G.pdf
Solar activity, together with human activity, is considered a possible factor for the global warming observed in the last century. However, in the last decades solar activity has remained more or less constant while surface air temperature has continued to increase, which is interpreted as an evidence that in this period human activity is the main factor for
global warming. We show that the index commonly used for quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity and using this index leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity in the global warming in the recent decades. A more suitable index is the geomagnetic activity which reflects all solar activity, and it is highly correlated to global temperature variations in the whole period for which we have data.
In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied. It could therefore be concluded that both the decreasing correlation between sunspot number and geomagnetic activity, and the deviation of the global temperature long-term trend from solar activity as expressed by sunspot index are due to the increased number of high-speed streams of solar wind on the declining phase and in the minimum of sunspot cycle in the last decades.
We will now compare the properties and geoeffectiveness of the two types of solar drivers – Hight Speed Streams (HSSs) from coronal holes, and CMEs, additionally dividing the CMEs into two types – MCs and non-MC CMEs (which we will further denote as simply CMEs). Our study covers 11 years, from 1992 to 2002. In this period we have 92 MCs (Georgieva et al. 2005) and 128 CMEs from the list of Cane and Richardson (2003) from which all events identified as MCs have been removed and 126 CHs identified in the OMNI database (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ omniweb). Figure 2 presents a comparison of the mean solar wind speed for the three types of solar drivers while Figure 3 shows the solar cycle variation of their speed.
Figure 2 demonstrates that the speed of the solar wind originating from CHs is much higher than of the solar wind associated with CMEs and MCs. The yearly averaged speed of solar wind from CHs and MCs are comparable around sunspot maximum, and higher than the speed of CMEs, and everywhere outside sunspot maximum the fastest solar wind originates from CHs (Figure 3). Similarly, the average geoeffectiveness of solar wind from CHs is highest outside sunspot maximum (Figure 4) while around sunspot maximum the most geoeffective solar driver are MCs.
The following is a review paper by Brian A. Tinsley, G.B. Burns, and Limin Zhou “The role of the global electric circuit in solar and internal forcing of clouds and climate” provides observational data and a link to previous peer reviewed papers to support the assertion that solar windbursts create a space charge differential in the ionosphere and that which removes cloud forming ions. In addition the charge movement affects precipitation and cloud lifetimes and the movements of the jet stream.
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/faculty/tinsley/Role%20of%20Global%20Circuit.pdf
As will be reviewed in Section 3, the onset times and durations of the meteorological responses agree with those of the space weather forcing agents.
The results will demonstrate that Jz by itself forces cloud and weather changes. On the centennial and millennial timescales the proxies for CGR flux and the associated Jz show larger changes than on the decadal timescale. The persistence of the changes for periods of many decades through centuries means that the integrated effects of the GCR and Jz changes could dominate over shorter-term variations due to aerosol and weather and climate noise.
The observations showing clear correlations on the day to-day timescale have been published by Schuurmans and Oort (1969), Wilcox et al. (1973), Mansurov et al. (1974), Olson et al. (1975), Larsen and Kelley (1977), Misumi (1983), Tinsley and Deen (1991), Pudovkin and Veretenenko (1995), Kirkland et al. (1996), Todd and Kniveton (2001), Veretenenko and Thejll (2004), Kniveton and Tinsley(2004) and Roldugin and Tinsley (2004). Also new results by Burns et al. (2007) show high latitude surface pressure changes in response to Jz changes, on the day-today timescale, that are of the same nature as responses to Jz changes caused by the solar wind; however, in this case they are due to Jz changes resulting from ionospheric potential changes due to variations in the low latitude highly electrified convective cloud generators of the global circuit.
The modeled results for the droplet charges p are consistent with the aircraft measurements over Lake Michigan of Beard et al. (2004) who found charges of about 80 e near cloud tops on droplets of radii about 8 lm, and charges of about _70 e near cloud base on droplet radii of about 6 lm, where e is the elementary charge. The differing signs of the charges at the two boundaries are consistent with the flow of Jz through the cloud, and the magnitudes are sufficient to affect scavenging rates (Tinsley et al., 2001, 2006). The charges on IFN and CCN depend on their radii, and information is needed on the concentrations and size distributions of these in order to calculate scavenging rates.
The following is a link to paper that was published in a book along with other papers that explains how solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary cloud cover. This paper notes two mechanisms by which solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary temperature.
The solar magnetic cycle modulates the intensity and magnitude of galactic cosmic rays (old term for high speed particles mostly protons) that strike the earth's atmosphere creating muons (heavy electrons). The muons in turn create ions in the atmosphere. The ions by ion mediate nucleation increase the formation rate of clouds, increase the lifetime of clouds, and increase the albedo of clouds.
Heinrich's book "The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change" provides a good review of the GCR mechanism. GCR also changes as the solar system rotates about the Milky way increasing by a factor of 5 to 10 as the solar system passes through the galactic arms. The period of high GCR correlate with the ice house epochs on the earth.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Chilling-Stars-Theory-Climate/dp/1840468157
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity and Climate
Observations of changes in cloud properties that correlate with the 11-year cycles in space particle fluxes are reviewed. The correlations can be understood in terms of one or both of two microphysical processes; ion mediated nucleation (IMN) and electroscavenging. IMN relies on the presence of ions to provide the condensation sites for sulfuric acid and water vapors to produce new aerosol particles, which, under certain conditions, might grow into sizes that can be activated as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Electroscavenging depends on the buildup of space charge at the tops and bottoms of clouds as the vertical current density (Jz) in the global electric circuit encounters the increased electrical resistivity of the clouds. Space charge is electrostatic charge density due to a difference between the concentrations of positive and negative ions. Calculations indicate that this electrostatic charge on aerosol particles can enhance the rate at which they are scavenged by cloud droplets. The aerosol particles for which scavenging is important are those that act as in situ ice forming nuclei (IFN) and CCN. Both IMN and electroscavenging depend on the presence of atmospheric ions that are generated, in regions of the atmosphere relevant for effects on clouds, by galactic cosmic rays (GCR). The space charge depends, in addition, on the magnitude of Jz. The magnitude of Jz depends not only on the GCR flux, but also on the fluxes of MeV electrons from the radiation belts, and the ionospheric potentials generated by the solar wind, that can vary independently of the GCR flux. The roles of GCR and Jz in cloud processes are the speculative links in a series connecting solar activity, the solar wind, GCR, clouds and climate. This article reviews the correlated cloud variations and the two mechanisms proposed as possible explanations for these links.
TimTheToolMan says:
January 1, 2013 at 7:35 pm
So you see the correlation really is new.
Which you had a hard time believing. But it is not yet sure that the [correlation] is real: these [are difficult] measurements and need to be confirmed first.
William says:
January 1, 2013 at 7:58 pm
the assertion that 75% of the 20th century warming was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.
This is your assertion and not established fact. So no long, dubious explanation is needed.
lgl says:
January 1, 2013 at 5:31 am
Everybody, except you and climate scientists will know that is nonsense. Peak power does not determine the temperature of water, energy does, basic.
Here is the basics:
At the end of the first 156 years [since 1700 AD] the average sunspot number over that period was 53 [the running sum at that time then 156*53]. At the end of the next 156 years the average sunspot number was 60 over that interval [the running sum at that time was 156*60].
TSI for those two values were 1361 and 1361.442, an increase of 0.0055% resulting in a temperature increase of 0.004 degrees. THAT is basic.
William says:
January 1, 2013 at 7:58 pm
The observations showing clear correlations on the day to-day timescale have been published by Schuurmans and Oort (1969), Wilcox et al. (1973)
I was a coauthor on the Wilcox 1973 paper and we know today that our ‘finding’ was spurious [many of the other ones mentioned are variations on our ‘finding’ and thus spurious as well] and does not describe reality.
[my fingers were cold. Here is what I meant to say:]
lgl says:
January 1, 2013 at 5:31 am
Everybody, except you and climate scientists will know that is nonsense. Peak power does not determine the temperature of water, energy does, basic.
Here is the basics:
At the end of the first 156 years [since 1700 AD] the average sunspot number over that period was 53 [the running sum at that time then 156*53]. At the end of the next 156 years the average sunspot number was 60 over that interval [the running sum at that time was 156*60].
TSI for those two sunspot values were 1361.367 and 1361.442, an increase of 0.0055% resulting in a temperature increase of 0.004 degrees. THAT is basic.
Leif,
I presented a paper that shows planetary temperature correlates with variations of Ak. (Ak is a proxy measurement of how solar wind changes affect the planet.) What does your above comment have to do with the observation that planetary temperature varies with Ak?
In reply to Leif’s
William says:
January 1, 2013 at 7:58 pm
the assertion that 75% of the 20th century warming was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.
This is your assertion and not established fact. So no long, dubious explanation is needed.
I can if you wish provide observational evidence from additional papers to support the assertion that 75% of the 20th century warming was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004JA010866.shtml
On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget by Nir J. Shaviv
Subject to the above caveats and those described in the text, the CRF/climate link therefore implies that the increased solar luminosity and reduced CRF over the previous century should have contributed a warming of 0.47 ± 0.19K, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes. Without any effect of cosmic rays, the increase in solar luminosity would correspond to an increased temperature of 0.16 ± 0.04K.
As this paper notes, planetary cloud cover has reduced during the period of warming.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/5/1721/2005/acp-5-1721-2005.html
Analysis of the decrease in the tropical mean outgoing shortwave radiation at the top of atmosphere for the period 1984–2000. All cloud types show a linearly decreasing trend over the study period, with the low-level clouds having the largest trend, equal to −3.9±0.3% in absolute values or −9.9±0.8% per decade in relative terms. Of course, there are still some uncertainties, since the changes in low-level clouds derived from the ISCCP-D2 data, are not necessarily consistent with changes derived from the second Stratospheric Aerosols and Gas Experiment (SAGE II, Wang et al., 2002) and synoptic observations (Norris, 1999). Nevertheless, note that SAGE II tropical clouds refer to uppermost opaque clouds (with vertical optical depth greater than 0.025 at 1.02μm), while the aforementioned synoptic cloud observations are taken over oceans only.
The midlevel clouds decreased by 1.4±0.2% in absolute values or by 6.6±0.8% per decade in relative terms, while the high-level ones also decreased by 1.2±0.4% or 3±0.9% per decade in relative terms, i.e. less than low and middle clouds. Thus, the VIS/IR mean tropical (30_ S–30_ N) low-level clouds are found to have undergone the greatest decrease during the period 1984–2000, in agreement with the findings of Chen et al. (2002) and Lin et al. (2004).
As this paper notes there were increased solar wind bursts during the last solar minimum. The increased solar wind bursts remove cloud forming ions. Therefore even though GCR was high there was not an increase in planetary cloud cover.
The graph at the top of the thread compares GCR to planetary temperature. The claim is the solar magnetic cycle does not modulate planetary temperature, as GCR is high for the end of solar cycle 23 and planetary temperature does not decrease. The explanation for the lack of cooling is the increase in solar wind bursts which remove cloud forming ions.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JA014342.shtml
If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth ringing? A comparison of two solar minimum intervals.
Observations from the recent Whole Heliosphere Interval (WHI) solar minimum campaign are compared to last cycle’s Whole Sun Month (WSM) to demonstrate that sunspot numbers, while providing a good measure of solar activity, do not provide sufficient information to gauge solar and heliospheric magnetic complexity and its effect at the Earth. The present solar minimum is exceptionally quiet, with sunspot numbers at their lowest in 75 years and solar wind magnetic field strength lower than ever observed. Despite, or perhaps because of, a global weakness in the heliospheric magnetic field, large near-equatorial coronal holes lingered even as the sunspots disappeared. Consequently, for the months surrounding the WHI campaign, strong, long, and recurring high-speed streams in the solar wind intercepted the Earth in contrast to the weaker and more sporadic streams that occurred around the time of last cycle’s WSM campaign.
The following is a link to the full paper.
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/sensitivity.pdf
On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget
We examine the results linking cosmic ray flux (CRF) variations to global climate change. We then proceed to study various periods over which there are estimates for the radiative forcing, temperature change and CRF variations relative to today. These include the Phanerozoic as a whole, the Cretaceous, the Eocene, the Last Glacial Maximum, the 20th century, as well as the 11-yr solar cycle. This enables us to place quantitative limits on climate sensitivity to both changes in the CRF, and the radiative budget, F, under equilibrium. Under the assumption that the CRF is indeed a climate driver, the sensitivity to variations in the globally averaged relative change in the tropospheric ionization I is consistently fitted with m _ _ (dTglobal/dI) _ 7.5 ± 2_K. Additionally, the sensitivity to radiative forcing changes is l _ dTglobal/dF = 0.35 ± 0.09_KW_1m2, at the current temperature, while its temperature derivative is undetectable with (dl/dT)0 = _0.01 ± 0.04 m2W_1. If the observed CRF/climate link is ignored, the best sensitivity obtained is l = 0.54 ± 0.12_KW_1m2 and (dl/dT)0 = _0.02 ±0.05 m2W_1.
Subject to the above caveats and those described in the text, the CRF/climate link therefore implies that the increased solar luminosity and reduced CRF over the previous century should have contributed a warming of 0.47 ± 0.19_K, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes. Without any effect of cosmic rays, the increase in solar luminosity would correspond to an increased temperature of 0.16 ± 0.04_K.
The second paper by Shaviv provides data from examining iron meteoroids to determine the long term changes in GCR as the solar system moved in an out of the galactic arms. Shaviv makes a case that the ice epochs, correlate with GCR changes, and that the ice epochs were caused by changes in GCR.
Paper:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1384107602001938
Preprint:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0209252
The Spiral Structure of the Milky Way, Cosmic Rays, and Ice Age Epochs on Earth
The short term variability of the Galactic cosmic ray flux (CRF) reaching Earth has been previously associated with variations in the global low altitude cloud cover. This CRF variability arises from changes in the solar wind strength. However, cosmic ray variability also arises intrinsically from variable activity of and motion through the Milky Way. Thus, if indeed the CRF climate connection is real, the increased CRF witnessed while crossing the spiral arms could be responsible for a larger global cloud cover and a reduced temperature, thereby facilitating the occurrences of ice ages. This picture has been recently shown to be supported by various data [87]. In particular, the variable CRF recorded in Iron meteorites appears to vary synchronously with the appearance ice ages.
William says:
January 1, 2013 at 9:36 pm
What does your above comment have to do with the observation that planetary temperature varies with Ak?
You asserted that 75% was due to solar cycles.
I can if you wish provide observational evidence from additional papers to support the assertion that 75% of the 20th century warming was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.
There are lots of such papers, as well as there are lots of papers claining that CO2 is the cause
As this paper notes, planetary cloud cover has reduced during the period of warming.
Here is how cloud cover has varied: http://www.leif.org/research/Cloud-Cover-GCR-Disconnect.png
If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth ringing?
It does that at every solar minimum: http://www.leif.org/research/Historical%20Solar%20Cycle%20Context.pdf
In reply to Leif’s comment:
lsvalgaard says:
January 1, 2013 at 10:00 pm
William says:
January 1, 2013 at 9:36 pm
What does your above comment have to do with the observation that planetary temperature varies with Ak?
You asserted that 75% was due to solar cycles.
I can if you wish provide observational evidence from additional papers to support the assertion that 75% of the 20th century warming was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.
There are lots of such papers, as well as there are lots of papers claining that CO2 is the cause
William:
I provided a link to a paper that asserts 75% of the 20th century warming has caused by solar magnetic cycle changes. The author of that paper provides data and analysis to support that assertion. As I stated, I have decided to defend the solar magnetic cycle modulation of planetary temperature, as I believe the planet will cool. The cooling has started and is in the locations predicted by the mechanisms.
I provided a second paper that notes planetary cloud cover decreased during the period of warming. A reduction in planetary cloud cover will result in less sunlight being reflected off into space. Your link also shows a reduction on planetary cloud cover which supports the hypothesis that 75% of the 20th century warming has caused by solar magnetic cycle changes. (If that hypothesis is correct, then the planet will now cool, the question is only when it will cool.)
I provided a link to a paper that provides a mechanism that explains how solar wind bursts modulate planetary clouds. Yes there are solar wind bursts at the end of solar cycles. I provided a link to a paper that noted there were an exception number of solar wind bursts at the end of solar cycle 23 and that the solar wind burst where higher intensity when compared to solar cycle 22.
The observations appear to support the hypothesis that 75% of the 20th century warming has caused by solar magnetic cycle changes. Significant planetary cooling is only possible if 75% of the 20th century warming has due to the solar magnetic cycle.
Solar cycle 24 is not a normal solar cycle. I am truly interested in your comments as it unfolds.
Tim the Toolman says
Yes but its the variations within the TSI that could be the difference. UV goes down cooling the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere and visible goes up warming the surface and meanwhile TSI doesn’t seem to change enough to cause those effects
and
To be clear, while the TSI has decreased since 2003 (as part of the descent into the current solar minimum), SIM seems to indicate that the UV decreases are much larger than expected, while irradiance in visible bands has actually increased!
Henry says
Excellent comments. We are getting closer to what I already figured out, by looking at my own results and the results for ozone, which I checked both on the Sh and the Nh.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/28/dana-nuccitellis-holiday-trick-for-sobering-up-quick-put-a-little-less-rum-in-your-egg-nog/#comment-1187099
don’t need papers that I know don’t exist because nobody has figured it out right yet.
Henry asks
What is SIM? If anyone can tell me: Is TSI measured on TOA or is at measured at sea level, below the atmosphere, (on a cloudless day?)
How is TSI measured? if on TOA, how do they prevent deterioration of the sensor?