From the GWPF and Dr. Benny Peiser
“Weakest Solar Cycle In Almost 200 Years”
The sun is acting bizarrely and scientists have no idea why. Solar activity is in gradual decline, a change from the norm which in the past triggered a 300-year-long mini ice age. We are supposed to be at a peak of activity, at solar maximum. The current situation, however, is outside the norm and the number of sunspots seems in steady decline. The sun was undergoing “bizarre behaviour” said Dr Craig DeForest of the society. “It is the smallest solar maximum we have seen in 100 years,” said Dr David Hathaway of Nasa. –Dick Ahlstrom, The Irish Times, 12 July 2013
The fall-off in sunspot activity still has the potential to affect our weather for the worse, Dr Elliott said. “It all points to perhaps another little ice age,” he said. “It seems likely we are going to enter a period of very low solar activity and could mean we are in for very cold winters.” And while the researchers in the US said the data showed a decline in activity, they had no way to predict what that might mean for the future. –Dick Ahlstrom, The Irish Times, 12 July 2013
“We’re in a new age of solar physics,” says David Hathaway of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, who analysed the same data and came to the same conclusion. “We don’t know why the Gleissberg cycle takes place but understanding it is now a focus.” As for when the next Maunder minimum may happen, DeToma will not even hazard a guess. “We still do not know how or why the Maunder minimum started, so we cannot predict the next one.” –Stuart Clark, New Scientist, 12 July 2013
Those hoping that the sun could save us from climate change look set for disappointment. The recent lapse in solar activity is not the beginning of a decades-long absence of sunspots – a dip that might have cooled the climate. Instead, it represents a shorter, less pronounced downturn that happens every century or so. –Stuart Clark, New Scientist, 12 July 2013
A number of authors think it is probable that the sun is headed for a grand minimum similar to the Maunder-Minimums of 1649-1715. That may already manifest itself in 2020. There have been studies that attempt to project the impacts on global temperatures. Included here is a study by Meehl et al. 2013. The authors look at an approximately 0.25% reduction in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) between 2020 and 2070: They fed this into a climate model. Result: global temperatures could drop around 0.2-0.3 degrees Celsius with local peak values of up to 0.8°C, especially in the middle and upper latitudes of the northern hemispheres. –Frank Bosse, NoTricksZone, 14 July 2013
When the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road. Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about “extreme weather”. Those who made their living from alarm, and by then there were lots, switched tactics and began to jump on any unusual weather event, whether it was a storm, a drought, a blizzard or a flood, and blame it on man-made carbon dioxide emissions. –Matt Ridley, The Australian, 10 July 2013
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Dust in the wind..
All the talk about “cloud” relationship to climate..
Yet, no one mentions the role of dust..
I’ll get it in..
Pricilla Frisch said at the news conference:
“gas and DUST are blowing into the heliosphere at 50,000mph.”
She has been involved with the studies of dust in and around the heliosphere.
Richard M says:
July 17, 2013 at 5:34 am: “Not all CMEs cause a rise in Earth’s temperature but rises always correspond to a CME.”
A good obvious observation! It would be interesting to see if CMEs increase in number and intesnity relative to planetary movement and position.
Stephen Wilde says:
July 17, 2013 at 1:23 am
It became more active in cycles 21 to 23 when there was a noted poleward shift.
Now you say that the Sun became more active and there was a poleward shift,
but here:
Stephen Wilde says:
July 16, 2013 at 11:21 pm
When the sun became less active in the late 20th century the global air circulation shifted towards the poles.
you said that the Sun became less active and there was a poleward shift.
Which is it? And who is muddled?
tumetuestumefaisdubien1 says:
July 17, 2013 at 2:24 am
Nice try, but not quite real – it would definitely not work like that:
1. SSN 38.97 per 100000 years trend means SSN 0.03897 per century trend which with my SSN/TSI/temperature ratio corresponds to 0.000684 W/m^2 per century and the warming result for the 100000 years would be basically identical.
However your calculation predicts 630K:
2. Now, how much 0.694 W/m^2/100,000 years trend warms open ocean surface layer (the strip at latitudes ~0-65°, 200m deep)?
Waveless ocean average reflectivity from Fresnel equations at 0-65° is 0.03 (and wavy ocean reflectivity is even up to half lower at high angles than what comes out from Fresnel equations…)
(0.694/3.63 [0-65° Earth strip/6371km radius circle surface ratio]) x (1-0.03[open ocean 0-65° average reflectivity]) x 3.1536×10^12 [number of seconds in 100,000 years] x 0.9 [0-65° strip surface/whole Earth surface] = 5.27×10^12 J/m^2 surplus heat which would warm the 200m of water below: 5.27×10^12 / 4.1813[heat capacity of 1cm3 water] / 2×10^8[number of cm3 in 200 m thick 1m^2 surface column of water] = 630 K … that is real global warming…
The only thing that changed is duration which became 1000 times longer and your calculation then gives a warming 1000 times larger. Deal with that error first.
tumetuestumefaisdubien1 says:
July 17, 2013 at 4:32 am
“The trend from 1957 to 2013 was -54 sunspots, which with your numbers gives a SST change of -0.64 °C. So has SST cooled by more than 0.6 °C since the mid-20th century?”
Let’s look at the issue a bit differently for a period we can compare with another period
You were not responsive to my question, so I will repeat it.
So we have achieved such total mastery of the inner workings of our sun that we can confidently predict future cycles? I have my doubts. From our POV future activity on the sun is capricious, following dynamics we can only faintly glimpse. We can’t even predict next year’s economy– a subject about which the state of our knowledge is vastly more detailed.
So it’s anyone’s guess. But we do know what’s happening right now. And I would venture to say we can see the effects of this minimal extent of solar activity in our own weather. I.e. one might expect to see increasingly hotter summer melts at both poles, and that’s not been the case this year… at least so far.
How to balance the effects of a weaker sun against the effects of other climate drivers? I would begin with an index compiled by Scafetta and West (2006) on the amount of total warming attributable to solar activity. The box can be found on page 181 of Donald Rapp’s Assessing Climate Change.
They give total observed warming for the period 1950-2000 as being 0.45 degrees C, and the amount attributable to increases in solar activity (TSI) as being 0.14 degrees.
That is, the sun was found to be responsible for 31% of total heat increase.
Extrapolating that out, if we’re now in the midst of a temporary downturn in TSI, one would expect to see the theoretical increase due to atmospheric climate drivers (CO2, CH4, etc) to be attenuated– cooler than expected by something like one-third.
And that’s very much like what we’re seeing at the poles this year. Tally-ho.
Leif.
There was a typo in my initial post but it wasn’t the one you thought it was.
The correct version is:
“The sun became slightly less active in cycle 20 and we saw a small equatorward shift.
It became more active in cycles 21 to 23 when there was a noted poleward shift.
Cycle 24 is less active and we see an equatorward shift.
Note that the timings are not exactly coincident with solar variations due to oceanic lag times.”
Stephen Wilde says:
July 17, 2013 at 7:05 am
There was a typo in my initial post but it wasn’t the one you thought it was.
Since the post was muddled and didn’t make any sense it is hard to figure out what you meant.
tumetuestumefaisdubien1 says:
July 17, 2013 at 4:32 am
in reply to Leif July 17, 2013 at 12:13 am
“…anomaly in 20th century which can’t be attributed nor to the GHG, nor sun – the after mid 1940s cooling”
Well, here I must correct myself.
In fact I’m able to explain by sun even the after mid 1940s cooling, but usually nobody wants to listen…
The point is that although SC19 looks optically way higher than SC18, in fact the trend slope from SC18 beginning to the SC19 end is nevertheless clearly a downward slope (and it would be even steeper if the pre1947 +20% correction applied) – so is the corresponding SST trend slope. The SSN trend SC18-20[end] is even much more steeply downward, yet the SC20-22 trends are again steeply upward – so is the corresponding SST trend.)
(see here – note especially the 1944-1964 and 1944-1976 solar minima SSN and corresponding SST trends and also note that the directions of all the SSN trends matches all the corresponding SST trends – although the SSN trends beginning before 1947 would have slightly different slopes if the data would be corrected with your 20% correction)
This agreeing trend directions we can see for most of the SSN/SST correspondence – see for example the second charthere. This solar minima-to-maxima and maxima-to-minima SST trends at least strongly suggest the the SST is almost always chiefly driven by the sun. But mind also the last SST trend (the SC24) which is the only one in the chart which direction doesn’t correspond to the SSN rise – which is could be co-caused by two factors – the 2010 El Nino and too low SC24 when compared to previous solar cycles – in fact the solar activity measured by SSN rose since the 1964 minima well to the mid 2000s and then declined sharply – ass you can see on my “wiggle graph”).
tumetuestumefaisdubien1 says:
July 17, 2013 at 7:19 am
Well, here I must correct myself.
2. Now, how much 0.694 W/m^2/100,000 years trend warms open ocean surface layer (the strip at latitudes ~0-65°, 200m deep)?
Waveless ocean average reflectivity from Fresnel equations at 0-65° is 0.03 (and wavy ocean reflectivity is even up to half lower at high angles than what comes out from Fresnel equations…)
(0.694/3.63 [0-65° Earth strip/6371km radius circle surface ratio]) x (1-0.03[open ocean 0-65° average reflectivity]) x 3.1536×10^12 [number of seconds in 100,000 years] x 0.9 [0-65° strip surface/whole Earth surface] = 5.27×10^12 J/m^2 surplus heat which would warm the 200m of water below: 5.27×10^12 / 4.1813[heat capacity of 1cm3 water] / 2×10^8[number of cm3 in 200 m thick 1m^2 surface column of water] = 630 K … that is real global warming…
There is cosiderable discussion here of the SSN/SST relationships.I think the best proxy for solar effects on climate is the neutron count because this reflects both SST and possible cosmic ray /cloud connections. Here is a quote from the post linked in an earlier comment.referring to the Oulu data from 1954 -present.
“These forecasts and trends are generally consistent with the broad trends in the Oulu neutron count since 1964 Fig4 which I suggest may well be considerd as a key Solar Activity Proxy — SAP. It seems that there is a +/- 12 year lag between the SAP and the temperature. see Fig3 in Usoskin et al
http://www.clim-past.net/8/765/2012/cp-8-765-2012.pdf
The decline in the count minima from solar cycles 20-22 ie from 1969 – 1991 corresponds roughly to the temperature rise from the early 1980s to the 2003-5 temperature peak . It also matches well with the increase in the count of hours of sunshine during the same period dicussed by Wang et al
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/9581/2012/acp-12-9581-2012.pdf
which may well represent an open phase of the iris effect.
The relatively higher counts at the cycle 23 and especially the cycle 24 neutron minima troughs (solar cycle SSN peaks) suggest a continuing downtrend in temperatures to at least 2024.
There was a secular change in the related Ap index in 2004-5 which could presage a sharp temperature drop in about 2016-17 and the Oulu data show an increase in the neutron count also in 2004- 5 which might indicate the same thing and which is already built in to the system”
Leif,
How do think it is plausible that predictive modeling can be done when the temperature driver is atmospheric (clouds + atmosphere) and everything affects cloud cover? A 1% change in atmospherc albedo is going to be about 0.75 W/m^2 change in overall absorbed TSI. Anything that increases this albedo will reduce the absorbed power. It’s not only the fraction of cloud cover but also the reflectivity or scattering of the light from the clouds and that is affected by the cloud nucleation particle sizes. Any event, Earth based, Sun based, cosmic ray source based, …, which affects the cloud cover or cloud reflectivity will impact the system and that includes a bunch of truly random factors (or random noise) in the system.
Typo in above post in third line should be SSN not SST
Also should be Oulu data from 1964 not 54. Sorry
Try this WUWT-article from 2008 for an explanation: Livingston and Penn paper: “Sunspots may vanish by 2015″.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2013 at 6:38 am
However your calculation predicts 630K…
No it doesn’t.
My calculation is quite simplified and deals with 100 years, not 100 thousand years.
The calculation more or less works for 100 years and the TSI rise -> temperature rise correspondence in arbitrary, usually ~same temperature ocean layer using actual physical dependencies which is documented in it quite well and hardly can be much objected by anything else than the cloud albedo, which anyway wouldn’t change the result more than 25%. ( on the other hand the 200m depth is quite arbitrary “official” upper margin of the epipelagic zone depth and the solar radiation extinction anyway considerably diminishes with rising depth – as you can see for example on this chart -In fact most of it for solar spectrum happens up to 10m depth, not 200m depth – there the heat resulting from extinction is already almost only conducted, because not even the subsurface turbulences working significantly up to ~100m depth much vertically mix it there.)
The calculation is very simplified and for reasons stated quite clearly in the 2. and especially 3. – again reasons of purely physical nature – couldn’t work for 100 thousand years (even if the “number of seconds” problem wouldn’t be there) and temperature changes for which the heat direct radiation dissipation rate change [by radiation and conduction – which works differently for the liquid water in the downward direction, because the warmer water has lower density than the cold water for most of the ocean surface and mostly to depths over 1000m, so it is constantly driven by gravity in opposite direction than the thermal gradient and thus also the radiation flux density determines, which is further complicated with the water dilatometric anomaly, viscosity, different salinity…so the thermal conductivity in ocean really is not a trivial problem we can solve with usual formulas for thermal conductivity devleoped for small amounts of material] can’t be omitted (which still more or less can be for the 100 years calculation and couple of tenths of K temperature change – if we go at the epipelagic zone very bottom, compensating so for the heat dissipation) and that’s the reason why the calculation doesn’t work for your 100 thousand years – because for you to calculate the problem correctly for the 100 thousand years you clearly would need to introduce the radiation change and the thermal conductivity into the problem.
I’m in fact well aware the simplified calculation gives different results for different period lengths (first I used a different variant – which doesn’t use fixed layer depth – for the different periods with same 30 years lengths relative comparison, which works well) and I’m trying to find out way how to solve the length of the period problem, but as I try it, it more and more looks to me it is really not a trivial problem to solve it with elegance enough for the results be easily understandable also to somebody else than me sitting on this problem already several months.
But it anyway doesn’t mean the 100 years result for the arbitrary 200m ocean layer (~ten times thicker than the layer where 90% of all solar spectra extinction is going on) is completely incorrect at this level of simplification when used for well defined period, layer thickness and purpose. -for example here for purpose to show your 0.005 C/0.1 W/m^2 TSI ratio too low. From what I found so far it so far looks to me like the heat which comes to existence immediately after the solar photon extinction mostly somewhere between surface and 10m depth then travels from the surface to the 200m depth and deeper ~several years to several decades as quite slow S-waves. I still don’t know exactly how fast they’re in average, because it depends on the suface-200m depth temperature gradient – in average quite very small (and for example for surface-100m depth often even slightly negative due to wind&turbulences&surface evaporation, further complicating the thermal conduction problem) – but which could be quite different in different parts of world, moreover changes much faster both due to diurnal&seasonal&cloudiness inducted insolation changes as well as due to surface currents and it is quite difficult to model it to get some average value I could use for global simplified model.
Leif can’t underatand what Stephen Wilde has so sclearly stated.
Stephen is saying when the sun is quiet the ozone concentrations change that cause the polar vortex to weaken and expand shifting all the climatic zones southward toward the equator while when solar activity is high the polar vortex shrinks and becomes more intense causing all the climatic zones to shift polewad.
As always LAG times are involved.
The evidience for this is very strong and it is happening again with this latest prolonged solar minimum which got going in year 2005 in earnest.
I am going to try to post a great article on the latest solar research that will refute everything that Leif is trying to convey.
Leif is obsolete in his thinking and has no clue about climate/solar relationships.
NOTE- OCEAN HEAT CONTENT IS CORRELATED TO THE STRENGH OF SOLAR VISIBLE LIGHT(.5 MICRONS) WHICH PENETRATES THE OCEAN TO A DEPTH OF 100 METERS NOT CO2 AND THE INFRARED LIGHT IT ABSORBS WHICH PENETRATE THE OCEAN TO A DEPTH OF 1 MILLERMETER!
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2013 at 7:57 am
I think the repeating of your 100 thousand years calculation after I clearly stated the most cogent reasons why it is impossible to use the simplified calculation (omiting the heat dissipation rates changes) for 100 thousand years and continue to imply even something to the meaning I’m imlying 630 K SST change, while I already explained, why it hardly could be much more than 33K, starts to look like a strawman argument…
Again, my formula is not useful neither for 100 thousand years during which you would heat whole the ocean top to bottom several times and so the defined 200m layer figure would anyway become completely superfluous, nor Big (even just couple of C global temperature anomaly change are Big) temperature changes (-even quite slight radiation intensity change given by the sea surface temperature change – and that’s what counts if we speak about measurable surface temperature anomalies – would be during such a long time enough to dissipate all the heat back to atmosphere and space, because the radiation flux rises with fourth power of temperature.
Just btw: consider that the Stefan-Boltzman law now implies the ocean in average radiates sigma T^4 = 401 W/m^2 -if the figure 290K average SST is true. And if the average TSI is indeed the 1361.25 W/m^2 (SORCE-TIM average for last decade) then even if I use the 3.63 coeficient instead of 4 the ocean still radiates 401 – 1361.25 / 3.63 = 26! W per square meter more than the 0-65° strip in average received from the sun at TOA last decade – and the average ocean surface temperature in fact would need to be in average almost 5 K! lower than is the official 290K figure for the ocean to radiate same radiation flux per square meter as the Earth now at TOA in average receives at the 0-65° latitudes where the ocean mostly is. Or you have a different opinion?
[PDF]
Av Monthly EUV .1-50 nm Flux Emissions – International Actuarial …
http://www.actuaries.org/HongKong2012/Papers/WBR9_Walker.pdf
You +1’d this publicly. Undo
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
Feb 29, 2012 – The US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been providing data
That research paper I just sent is the latest solar/climate relationship study , and it refutes everything Leif is trying to convey. Enough said.
LEIF give us your solar flux predictions for the rest of this year and year 2014 and 2015. Let us see how correct or not you are.This is your field.
My prediction is it will not exceed 150 for the rest of this year(average 115) and likely will average around 100 for year 2014 andsub 100 the year after that.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
July 17, 2013 at 11:26 am
NOTE- OCEAN HEAT CONTENT IS CORRELATED TO THE STRENGH OF SOLAR VISIBLE LIGHT(.5 MICRONS) WHICH PENETRATES THE OCEAN TO A DEPTH OF 100 METERS NOT CO2 AND THE INFRARED LIGHT IT ABSORBS WHICH PENETRATE THE OCEAN TO A DEPTH OF 1 MILLERMETER!
Yes! And moreover the mid-IR there in the ocean surface skin contributes mainly not to heating the ocean epipelagic surface layer (because it cannot penetrate it significantly), but to surface evaporation – which in fact transports then latent heat way up to the atmosphere (the water vapor is lighter than air) where it condenses, releasing the latent heat, transporting so something in order of 2 GigaJoules per square meter per year (which is a figure at the same order of magnitude like the average ocean solar irradiance per square meter per year) not the ~50 times lower number which is allegedly the CO2 forcing.
Nice! A compendium of quotes by ‘experts’ that can be summed up as:
We……Just………Don’t………Know……..What…….Will……….Happen.
A Grand Experiment is in progress, involving mysterious changes to primary performance variables for Old Sol. We have no sure knowledge of what the root cause(s) of those changes are…. or what the extended effects will be on our resident planet and solar system. Soooooooo, get comfortable. Lay in a 60 year supply of popcorn (w/extra butter) and appropriate beverages, enjoy the currently unsupported conjectures, and watch the unpredictable events as they unfold. It’s a life time spanning mystery, a real ‘whodunnit’, because……
We……Just………Don’t………Know…….
MtK
I think climate changes do NOT take place gradual unless the climate is in the same climatic regime. However once thresholds are met , I think the climate shifts to a different climate regime which is very abrupt .
The question is what does it take to get climate thresholds to be met?
For example is it a sun with a solar flux reading of sub 90 for many years, or does it have to be sub 75.
Probably the geomagnetic field of the earth has to be taken into account.Then seondary effects have to kick in.
Also I imagine the beginning state of the climate when all of this starts to take place, has much to do with the end resulting climate.. What state is the climate in to begin with.
I bet that one can have the same solar conditions but get a different climate result if the beginning state of the climate is different when the solar conditions kick in.
Again the article I sent earlier today is a must read to get the latest solar /climate relationship theories.
Leif Svalgaard: considering that climate is defined over a 30-yr span, the next 5 years will not tell us anything. Perhaps 1/2 of the 30 years – i.e. 15 years – might provide a hint of where the climate is going. But not 5 years.
You wrote a lot of good posts today, and linked to pdfs of yours that I had not previously downloaded. Many thanks. fwiw, I endorse the lines I quoted above. The interchanges with your interlocutors have been informative. Except for their CAPS! and ad homs, I thank them as well. For someone who follows many (if not all) links to papers and data, this has been a good read.
Leif does not have a clue, when it comes to solar/climate relationships. If you believe in him, it is the blind leading the blind.
Same goes to those who believe in the AGW theory.
Matthew you like so many don’t understand thresholds and that the climate wil change abruptly when they are met,otherwise it changes slowly when in the same climatic regime.
Therefore you can’t put time limits ,it depends on when/if thresholds will be reached.
Leif should stick strictly to astronomy,he is clueless when it comes to climate.