From the University of Edinburgh , another one-paper syndrome in the making funded by an NGO research council with a political mission to grab a headline. And, another poorly written press release where they don’t even cite the name of paper. Sigh.
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Climate change has not been strongly influenced by variations in heat from the sun, a new scientific study shows
Climate change has not been strongly influenced by variations in heat from the sun, a new scientific study shows.
The findings overturn a widely held scientific view that lengthy periods of warm and cold weather in the past might have been caused by periodic fluctuations in solar activity.
Research examining the causes of climate change in the northern hemisphere over the past 1000 years has shown that until the year 1800, the key driver of periodic changes in climate was volcanic eruptions. These tend to prevent sunlight reaching the Earth, causing cool, drier weather. Since 1900, greenhouse gases have been the primary cause of climate change.
The findings show that periods of low sun activity should not be expected to have a large impact on temperatures on Earth, and are expected to improve scientists’ understanding and help climate forecasting.
Scientists at the University of Edinburgh carried out the study using records of past temperatures constructed with data from tree rings and other historical sources. They compared this data record with computer-based models of past climate, featuring both significant and minor changes in the sun.
They found that their model of weak changes in the sun gave the best correlation with temperature records, indicating that solar activity has had a minimal impact on temperature in the past millennium.
The study, published in Nature GeoScience, was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council.
Dr Andrew Schurer, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, said: “Until now, the influence of the sun on past climate has been poorly understood. We hope that our new discoveries will help improve our understanding of how temperatures have changed over the past few centuries, and improve predictions for how they might develop in future. Links between the sun and anomalously cold winters in the UK are still being explored.”
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I’m not so sure this fellow is fully versed on climatology. His papers up to 2011 were all about cosmology, then all of the sudden he starts publishing on climatology issues. One wonders if his previous funding dried up to make such a dramatic shift in study. Then there is: “…climatic fingerprints of high and low solar forcing derived from model simulations…”. IPCC Models haven’t been able to reproduce the last ten years; what makes them think they are worth anything 100-200 years ago?
Here is the abstract: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2040.html
Small influence of solar variability on climate over the past millennium
- Nature Geoscience (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo2040
- Received 02 August 2013 Accepted 14 November 2013 Published online 22 December 2013
The climate of the past millennium was marked by substantial decadal and centennial scale variability in the Northern Hemisphere1. Low solar activity has been linked to cooling during the Little Ice Age (AD 1450–1850; ref. 1) and there may have been solar forcing of regional warmth during the Medieval Climate Anomaly2, 3, 4, 5 (AD 950–1250; ref. 1). The amplitude of the associated changes is, however, poorly constrained5, 6, with estimates of solar forcing spanning almost an order of magnitude7, 8, 9. Numerical simulations tentatively indicate that a small amplitude best agrees with available temperature reconstructions10, 11, 12, 13. Here we compare the climatic fingerprints of high and low solar forcing derived from model simulations with an ensemble of surface air temperature reconstructions14 for the past millennium. Our methodology15 also accounts for internal climate variability and other external drivers such as volcanic eruptions, as well as uncertainties in the proxy reconstructions and model output. We find that neither a high magnitude of solar forcing nor a strong climate effect of that forcing agree with the temperature reconstructions. We instead conclude that solar forcing probably had a minor effect on Northern Hemisphere climate over the past 1,000 years, while, volcanic eruptions and changes in greenhouse gas concentrations seem to be the most important influence over this period.
Figure 1: Simulations and temperature reconstructions.
a, Simulations with all forcings (red and green) compared with a reconstruction ensemble14 (blue), and instrumental HadCRUT4 (ref. 24) time series (centred on the average reconstruction over time of overlap, black).
The SI is here: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/ngeo2040-s1.pdf
h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
As far as I can see the model does not include interactive ozone (i.e. ozone will vary with temperature, atmospheric dynamics and chemistry). Funny enough, although the SI has a section on ozone, the section actually does not say a single thing about ozone. In all honesty, if your model does not have interactive ozone and thus no coupling between changes in ozone and dynamics, I would have a hard time buying that you can say much about the influence of solar variability. Most climate models don’t have interactive ozone, in particular those use for the Paleoclimate Model Intercomparison Project, which is where the results of this study are used for; simulations are generally too long to include complex stratospheric chemistry.
Steven Mosher says:
December 23, 2013 at 9:48 am
I’m not so sure this fellow is fully versed on climatology.?
hmm. are you talking about Ross mcKittrick? Steve McIntyre?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I don’t recall either claiming to be versed in climatology. Their claims have been entirely about the mishandling of data analysis and statistics in climate papers. I don’t need a degree in physics to point out that if a paper is predicated on 2+2=5.39 that it is wrong.
You have a great deal of knowledge to share. It is too bad that you choose instead condescension and misdirection.
Looking at the graphs in the Supplementary Information, one sees large decreases in temperature at the time of the Dalton minimum in so many of them. That was a time of low solar activity, right ?
Hockey Schlick,
I was only joking.
“Scientists [sic] at the University of Edinburgh carried out the study using records of past temperatures constructed with data from tree rings and other historical sources.”
Aha! New frontiers in dildoclimatology.
Necessary assumptions:
1. The overall energy from the Sun is a constant.
2. Variations in Solar Magnetic Fields do not affect the Earth’s climate in any significant way.
3. Solar storms and other solar physical phenomena do not affect the Earth’s climate in any significant way.
4. Pre-industrial global temperature had a constant maximum.
5. After a volcanic eruption-caused temperature drop, global temperature would, over time, return to that constant.
How could this account for Hot House and Ice Age periods in the paleoclimate?
The NREC is a perfectly respectable uk organisation who funds a wide range of environment related science research including the paper under review.
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/
Are they being confused With another organisation?
Tonyb
Tony B, you are correct, I got the acronyms conflated. Correction made – I removed the incorrect comparison.
A fact for every occasion?
‘Scientists at the University of Edinburgh carried out the study using records of past temperatures constructed with data from tree rings and other historical sources’
yesterday we were being told that the heat is missing because it goes straight into the deep oceans. Today we are being told that it stays in the atmosphere and affects tree growth.
Which is it ?
I apologize if I am misunderstanding the study — I am just an economist with training in econometrics and statistics. It appears they took output from models (curve fitting exercises) that exclude solar as a forcing, correlated that output with estimated temperatures, and find there is no or minimal correlation between the model outputs and the estimated temperatures. Why is that a surprise? The curve fitting probably took care of all the external forcing, leaving no room for additional variables.
Some nice hockey sticks there from Dr. Schurer.
Is he going into business?
What is wrong with these people ? Have they lost all common sense ?
Ok then, shut the Sun down and observe how the climate changes…
Idiots !
Edinburgh – town and gown – has a lot to be ashamed about in the climate arena. They gave a civic award to James Hansen. They have many academics well ensconsed on the irresponsible, odious bandwagon of climate scaremongering. There is a Royal Society of Edinburgh which is not much better than the one in London where it comes to swallowing, promoting, and eating out on the same sorry platform.
[snip problem has been corrected see upthread -mod]
The most obvious problem is that they used Mann’s tree-ring based hockey stick as their temperature target. Even if they had hit the bulls-eye, it was the wrong target.
“funded by an NGO research council with a political mission to grab a headline.”
Which is just Anthony’s opinion which is not backed up by any facts…
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/work/policy/openness.asp
[ See this: “NERC’s Science Impacts Database Link to external site includes more than 200 examples of where NERC science has made, or has the potential to make, a political, economic, social or practical impact.” -mod]
Perhaps the current down tick in solar activity, is causing some fear in academia.
Models all the way down, using tree thermometers ?
Might have been easier to just MSU as normal for Climatology.
I never expected a so called science would make scientology look respectable.
I had to write a thesis on Einstein for my MSc and on Newton for my BSc. Of the two, eistein was the most humble but still suffered from bouts of irrationality. Newton was at times a nasty political animal but a brilliant engineer and scientist. Of the two, my vote goes to Eistein.
Isn’t this uni one of Bouldon’s / Boulton’s of CRU/UEA fame.?
The problem for the alarmists with this paper is that we have non-rising temperatures for 17 years and no prominent volcano eruptions. So, the volcano-temperature link does nothing to restore the broken CO2-temperature correlation.
Martin says:
December 23, 2013 at 11:17 am
Your fully baggaged mind did not allow you to see the nuance in AW’s writing.
Martin says:
December 23, 2013 at 11:17 am
““funded by an NGO research council with a political mission to grab a headline.”
Which is just Anthony’s opinion which is not backed up by any facts…
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/work/policy/openness.asp
”
Thanks for the link. A de facto government body:
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/otherfunding.asp
According to the Edinburgh website, there are two other authors listed:
SJ Phipps
And…………….
ME Mann!
Now who would have guessed that?
http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/separating-forced-from-chaotic-climate-variability-over-the-past-millennium%28482bf0e4-c430-4858-830d-ddcb233b1be3%29.html
“Climate change has not been strongly influenced by variations in heat from the sun, a new scientific study shows.”
Well then, I guess that there’s nothing to fear as the sun becomes a red giant!
This article is not worthy , but then again we must keep Leif happy.
Anthony will not and can’t oppose Leif, even though he does not see things the same way.
This site is not balanced and censors so much. Shame on Anthony, who has a good handle on the climate but yields and gives so much longitude to the likes the likes of Leif and others. UGH.
I know you will not post it,(who cares) but I know you got it.
On to the Layman sunspot site, much more balanced.
First those seeking justice must come with clean hands.
So, it seems those who claim solar activity has nothing to do with climate and or climate change should do their research out side, with no air conditioning, and say in Southwestern New Mexico or Southeastern Az. in say August each year for the study of say three years.
Sounds simple, yet what if it in fact is just that simple?