Story submitted by Cornelis de Jager
(past president ICSU;past pres. COSPAR)
In a recent publication entitled Terrestrial ground temperature variation in relation to solar magnetic variability, including the present Schwabe cycle, Cornelis (Kees) de Jager and Hans Nieuwenhuijzen, from the Space Research Organisation of the Netherlands have analysed the dependence of the global earth temperature on the polar as well as the equatorial magnetic fields. The new aspect in this research is that all earlier investigations in this field only sought for the dependence of the terrestrial ground temperature on the number of sunspots, which is a “proxy” for the equatorial magnetic fields of the sun. But the sun has two big magnetic areas, the equatorial and the polar one. In this research both are included.
In their analysis the Utrecht scientists restricted to the relatively long-term variation of both fields as well as the temperature, such in order to exclude short-term phenomena such as temperature variations due to volcanoes or processes like El-Nino.
By including the two magnetic field areas in their analysis it could be shown that during the major part of the four centuries investigated, i.e. the period 1610 till around 1900 – 1950 , the average terrestrial ground temperatures depend solely on solar magnetic field variations. After 1900 there is an increasing excess in the temperature which is ascribed to anthropogenic activity. After the impressive Grand Maximum of the 20thb century the sun went through an exceptional, not before observed phase transition that lasted relatively long, i.e. from about 2005 till 2010.
Usually, the transitions between solar variability phases takes no more than one to two years. During that transition period and after that, solar activity was exceptionally low. The consequent small contribution to the terrestrial temperatures is the cause for the standstill in the rise of temperature observed since the middle of the 20th century.
The above can be illustrated in figure 1, the diagram shows three curves. The middle one is the average terrestrial ground temperature (dots) through which a smoothed average curve is drawn .(The LOWESS technique is used for smoothing). The upper line shows the solar contribution and the bottom curve is the difference between the two. It shows a nearly flat variation which demonstrates that the long-term component of terrestrial temperatures is solely due to the variation of the sun’s magnetic fields. The average “zero-line” show a very slow , yet unexplained, increase over the centuries.
The paper is published in Natural Science vol. 5, pp. 1112- 1120, 2013 (open access). It can also be consulted at http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2013-CdeJ-HN-Sun-climate-NS-5-1112.pdf
Related articles
- A link between the solar magnetic field and weather patterns on Earth may explain our lower than normal severe weather in 2013 (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Commentary on the Article about the Interplanetary Magnetic Field influences (wattsupwiththat.com)
Brant Ra says:
October 31, 2013 at 2:14 pm
The funny thing is that in the lab magnetic fields are used to direct particles(not much good for accelerating them) and electric fields are used to accelerate them… why does this change when we get to the sun??
It doesn’t change at all. What is important is that the electric fields on the Sun are generated by changing magnetic fields according to Faraday’s law “Any change in the magnetic environment of a coil of wire will cause a voltage (emf) to be “induced” in the coil.”
Slow but unexplained increase in temperature? Hello! We’re just coming out of the last little ice age, not to mention the last major ice age merely 11,700 odds years ago. You kn ow the one that covered Canada in a two mile thick sheet of ice – yeah that one.
albertalad says:
October 31, 2013 at 2:25 pm
You know the one that covered Canada in a two mile thick sheet of ice – yeah that one.
After ‘that one’ the temperature peaked several thousand years ago and has been decreasing ever since, apart fro small random fluctuations as we now seeing…
albertalad says:
October 31, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Slow but unexplained increase in temperature? Hello! We’re just coming out of the last little ice age, not to mention the last major ice age merely 11,700 odds years ago. You kn ow the one that covered Canada in a two mile thick sheet of ice – yeah that one.
Really? Are you sure you didn’t confuse the Little Ice Age, which is the latest cold period the planet went through, with the Wisconsin glacial epoch that ended about 10,000 years ago and which did cover Canada in ice? If you think trends are important, then the trend since about 8.000 BP is gradual cooling with sharp excursions both warmer and colder.
Leif Svalgaard says:
October 31, 2013 at 12:51 pm
Cherry picking end points is a common thing for people to do when they peddle their view point. You should start with 1859 [max of a cycle] and end with 2012 [also max].
Do you mean in my the graph? to start with 1859 and end with 2012? If you do, I don’t have a problem with doing that, how would it be mistaken for ‘cherry picking’ when there are two identical trends no-matter where the data begins or ends?
Elaborate for me, thanks.
Sparks says:
October 31, 2013 at 2:45 pm
when there are two identical trends no-matter where the data begins or ends?
Elaborate for me, thanks.
Since the two cycles before when you began were large sunspot cycles that changes the trend.
Leif,
Is your wolf corrected Sunspot Number available online somewhere?
Sparks says:
October 31, 2013 at 2:50 pm
Is your wolf corrected Sunspot Number available online somewhere?
A good approximation is simply to multiply all the official values before 1947 by 1.2
lsvalgaard says:
October 31, 2013 at 2:47 pm
Since the two cycles before when you began were large sunspot cycles that changes the trend.
Okay I see, thanks, I’ll correct that.
lsvalgaard says:
October 31, 2013 at 2:53 pm
A good approximation is simply to multiply all the official values before 1947 by 1.2
Does that include the Sunspot area record or just sunspot numbers?
lsvalgaard
I did mention the LIA and the major ice age previous ending approximately 11,700 years ago. The essence of my thought, whether right or wrong, was of course we were warming after these periods. However, even as we experience a less then predicted rate of warming we are still warming – just not at the rate previously predicted. The question is whether it is man made, according to the AGW side, or natural as I like to claim.
Sparks says:
October 31, 2013 at 2:58 pm
Does that include the Sunspot area record or just sunspot numbers?
The sunspot areas are not affected by the Waldmeier inflation but have their own problems.
Timothy Sorenson,
I agree, I believe this is a translation muddle. The “is ascribed to” here I believe means “is said to be caused by”, i.e. the authors do not necessarily agree with that.
albertalad says:
October 31, 2013 at 2:59 pm
lThe essence of my thought, whether right or wrong, was of course we were warming after these periods.
We are not warming. We are slowly cooling inching along to the next glaciation.
This paper is nonsense.
1. The top line shows the “solar contribution”. It has a certain amount of wiggle. The bottom line shows the difference between “solar contribution” and measured. It has just as much wiggle, actually it looks like there’s a bit more wiggle. Ergo- no correlation.
2. The paper has no right to infer anything, because of the lack of correlation, but it has absolutely no right to say that anthro activity caused the recent divergence, because they didn’t even study it. ie, it’s an argument from ignorance. The most they are entitled to say is that they don’t know if it has any meaning and in any case they don’t know what caused it.
The following is a January 1, 2013 review paper that summarizes the research to determine the history of solar activity over the last 10,000. The attached review paper provides multiple peer reviewed studies written by different researchers using different proxies which all support the following assertions:
1) We were living in a grand solar magnetic cycle maximum
2) The modern age grand solar maximum correlates with the warming of the planet
3) The solar magnetic cycle activity in the modern age grand solar maximum is the highest in terms of modulation of cosmic ray flux in 10,000 years.
http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2013-1/download/lrsp-2013-1Color.pdf
A History of Solar Activity over Millennia
The review paper explains the factors involved in analyzing the proxy data and includes results from multiple papers and includes the results from the following multiproxy paper: see review paper page 48, figure 20 which is graphical summary of the results from the following paper:
“9,400 years of cosmic radiation and solar activity from ice cores and tree rings” by
Friedhelm Steinhilber, Jose A. Abreu, Jürg Beer, Irene Brunner, Marcus Christl, Hubertus Fischer, Ulla Heikkilä, Peter W. Kubik, Mathias Mann, Ken G. McCracken, Heinrich Miller, Hiroko Miyahara, Hans Oerter, and Frank Wilhelms, February 14, 2012
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/16/5967.full
William Astley says:
October 31, 2013 at 3:10 pm
1) We were living in a grand solar magnetic cycle maximum
2) The modern age grand solar maximum correlates with the warming of the planet
3) The solar magnetic cycle activity in the modern age grand solar maximum is the highest in terms of modulation of cosmic ray flux in 10,000 years.
In spite of your congratulatory support for this, all three statements are unfortunately not true, as we have discussed many times before.
PS
Meanings of “ascribe to” according references include “chalk up to”, “impute to”, and “put down to.” I.e. the causality is questionable. So the authors are not saying “caused by”, else why didn’t they simply say that? Their science may be flawed, but it unfair to say they agree that human activity caused the divergence.
No records of a million years here and a million years there, soon you got billions of years not in the data set.
The earth most likely does not know, feel or care that humans burn oil and gas, for sure the sun has no reason to care as it burns things we know not of at all ourselves.
We over rate our impact by unknown non existing powers.
These global warming cult people can not even build a web site to over charge humans for health insurance. That they have any knowing the long term effect of the sun seems a bit odd.
The sun is hotter than the moon. Work it out from that.
Mike Jonas says:
October 31, 2013 at 3:08 pm
“This paper is nonsense.”
I agree completely. The correlation between deltaTsun and deltaTearth is 0.43; between deltaTearth and residual, 0.91. (These are ballpark numbers, because the authors provide raw deltaTearth data only, and I used my own smoother…but I don’t think using their smooth would change these correlations by much). If I look at pre-1970 only, the respective numbers are 0.41 and 0.62. My conclusion is that there is nothing here at all.
They do get points for linking to the data 🙂
Dr. Isvalgaard, I don’t know how popular roller coaster rides are there, but I find describing the long temperature decline as a downhill roller coaster ride provides a meaningful description to those who don’t grasp the idea of short-term rises in a long-term decline. Hopefully, though, you don’t have to get down to that basic level with those you interact with.
Jtom says:
October 31, 2013 at 5:03 pm
Hopefully, though, you don’t have to get down to that basic level with those you interact with
Sometimes a graph helps: Slide 18 of http://www.leif.org/research/On-Becoming-a-Scientist.pdf
The little graph labeled 10,000 years
lsvalgaard says:
October 31, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Carla says:
October 31, 2013 at 1:34 pm
Like the hole we call the south atlantic anomaly SAA is been increasing in size, while the field has been declining radially outward from the SAA. allows more of anything in, that the sun throws our way.
Not really. The solar wind sees the Earth’s magnetic field far [like 40,000 miles) from the Earth and at that distance smaller scale anomalies like the SAA are essentially gone as the magnetic field falls of very strongly with distance for structures smaller than the radius of the Earth.
—-
Effects of solar activity and geomagnetic field on noise in
CALIOP profiles above the South Atlantic Anomaly
V. Noel1, H. Chepfer2, C. Hoareau3, M. Reverdy3, and G. Cesana3
© Author(s) 2013
http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/6/8589/2013/amtd-6-8589-2013.pdf
…We find
5 the amount of noisy profiles is influenced by the 11 yr cycle of solar activity, fluctuates
by ±5% between 2006 and 2013, and is anticorrelated with solar activity with a 1 yr lag.
The size of the SAA grows as solar activity decreases, and an overall westward shift
of the SAA region is detectable. We predict SAA noise levels will increase anew after
2014…
..Literature teaches us that the amount of radiation emitted from the SAA, which
impacts the noise in CALIOP observations, is anticorrelated with the 11 yr cycle of solar
activity (with 1 yr lag) (Furst et al., 2009). This anticorrelation is due to heating of the
exo- and thermosphere during maximum solar activity, which leads to a higher neutral
density in the altitudes below affected by the SAA (e.g. Qian et al., 2006). This in
creases the absorption and deflection of trapped particles, resulting in a lower particle
flux compared to when the solar activity is minimum (Dachev et al., 1999). Thus the
flux of energetic particles emitting radiations below CALIOP is smaller than during minimum
solar activity. The 1 yr lag reflects the time needed for the atmosphere to react to
incoming solar energy…
Geomagnetic South Atlantic Anomaly and global sea level rise: A direct connection?
De Santisa,. Qamilia, G. Spadad, P. Gasperinie
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682611002896
…The monotonic increase of the SAA surface area since 1600 may have been associated with an increased inflow of radiation energy through the inner Van Allen belt with a consequent warming of the Earth’s atmosphere…
Changes in the Earth’s magnetic field over the past century: Effects on the ionosphere-thermosphere system and solar quiet (Sq) magnetic variation
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012JA018447/abstract
Ingrid Cnossen1,2,*, Arthur D. Richmond1
7 FEB 2013
The strongest differences occurred between ~40°S–40°N and ~100°W–50°E, which we refer to as the Atlantic region. The height and critical frequency of the F2 layer peak, hmF2 and foF2, changed due to changes in the vertical E × B drift and the vertical components of diffusion and transport by neutral winds along the magnetic field. Changes in electron density resulted in changes in electron temperature of the opposite sign, which in turn produced small corresponding changes in ion temperature. Changes in neutral temperature were not statistically significant. Strong changes in the daily amplitude of the Sq variation occurred at low magnetic latitudes due to the northward movement of the magnetic equator and the westward drift of the magnetic field. The simulated changes in hmF2, foF2, and Sq amplitude translate into typical trends of ±1 km/decade (night) to ±3 km/decade (day), −0.1 to +0.05 MHz/decade, and ±5 to ±10 nT/century, respectively. These are mostly comparable in magnitude to observed trends in the Atlantic region.
The simulated Atlantic region trends in hmF2 and foF2 are ~2.5 times larger than the estimated effect of enhanced greenhouse gases on hmF2 and foF2. The secular variation of the Earth’s magnetic field may therefore be the dominant cause of trends in the Atlantic region ionosphere…..
Trick or Treat Dr. S.
How’s that for cherry picking?
But looking at our little magnetic anomaly (hot spot), its relationship to Earth’s radiation belts (torus or disk), its influx of particles and it looks like a version of planetary accretion..
In reply to:
Lief said October 31, 2013 at 1:26 pm : “de Jager is a distinguished older solar scientist. His paper brings the following to mind:” blah blah blah
William: That comment sounds very much like an ad hominem. Is name calling part of becoming a scientist?
In reply to: lsvalgaard says: October 31, 2013 at 3:13 pm
William Astley says:
October 31, 2013 at 3:10 pm
1) We were living in a grand solar magnetic cycle maximum
2) The modern age grand solar maximum correlates with the warming of the planet
3) The solar magnetic cycle activity in the modern age grand solar maximum is the highest in terms of modulation of cosmic ray flux in 10,000 years.
Lief: In spite of your congratulatory support for this, all three statements are unfortunately not true, as we have discussed many times before.
William: Lief you make statements without links to peer reviewed papers. You make statements that are not supported by peer reviewed papers. There appears to be a very long list of scientists (say 20 specialists) who’s published results in multiple peer reviewed papers support the assertion that the sun was in a grand solar magnetic cycle maximum during the last 70 years based on an analysis of multiple proxies. The last published paper was in January, 2013. The results of that paper supported the previous papers.
The warmists tried to make the medieval warm period go way and then. The warmists tried to make the grand solar magnetic maximum go away. The warmists tried to make the current abrupt change to the solar magnetic cycle go away. I am not sure how the warmists will make global cooling go away that is caused by the current abrupt change to the solar magnetic cycle go away.
A History of Solar Activity over Millennia was written by Ilya G. Usoskin, published in 2013, and is included in the formal review set of papers entitled the “Living Sun”. In it Usoskin explicitly states we were living in a grand solar maximum cycle and provides multiple peer reviewed papers to support that assertion including the most recent paper “9,400 years of cosmic radiation and solar activity from ice cores and tree rings, published 2013” which was written by 15 authors. The results of the 2013 paper supports the 2004 and 1999 published papers.
http://www.eiscat.rl.ac.uk/Members/mike/publications/pdfs/1999/170_Lockwoodetal_nature.pdf
A Doubling of the Sun’s Coronal Magnetic Field during the Last 100 Years by M. Lockwood, R. Stamper, and M.N. Wild
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7012/abs/nature02995.html
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years by S. K. Solanki , I. G. Usoskin, , B. Kromer, , M. Schussler , & J. Beer
“According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/16/5967.full
“9,400 years of cosmic radiation and solar activity from ice cores and tree rings” by
Friedhelm Steinhilber, Jose A. Abreu, Jürg Beer, Irene Brunner, Marcus Christl, Hubertus Fischer, Ulla Heikkilä, Peter W. Kubik, Mathias Mann, Ken G. McCracken, Heinrich Miller, Hiroko Miyahara, Hans Oerter, and Frank Wilhelms, February 14, 2012
This also is an interesting paper see figure 1.
Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: New observational constraints by I.G. Usoskin, S.K. Solanki, and G.A. Kovaltsov http://arxiv.org/pdf/0706.0385v1.pdf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Real-risk-of-a-Maunder-minimum-Little-Ice-Age-says-leading-scientist
“According to Professor Lockwood the late 20th century was a period when the sun was unusually active and a so called ‘grand maximum’ occurred around 1985. Since then the sun has been getting quieter. By looking back at certain isotopes in ice cores, he has been able to determine how active the sun has been over thousands of years. Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years. He found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now – and the present decline is faster than any of those 24.”
http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2013-1/download/lrsp-2013-1Color.pdf
A History of Solar Activity over Millennia