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
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Paul homewood.
Surely the paper with Mann as an author that you reference is not the same as the one being reviewed here or has it been amended since it was originally written?
Tonyb
[ 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]
I see that you found the word political, well done. Now where does it say that the NERC has a political mission to grab a headline? And what does that even mean?
We know computer-based models are just functions based on the creator that they personally think/guess need to be included. It hides what any science there maybe in a model which we don’t have the faintest idea what is in it. All these are made up assumptions not backed up with scientific observations and cant be reproduced by another scientist. Especially doesn’t even explain the recent decades pause in global warming or global cooling during the 1940s and 1970s.
The suns activity has quietened down and there is less volcanic activity during this period than previous decades, Yet global temperatures fail to warm and if it was mainly CO2 and volcanic activity that was key in climate based on this model, then how can this claim be true? Based on the key assumptions that incorrectly drive climate, CO2 and volcanic activity, there should have been warming recently. This itself falsifies the computer model simulation. Real observations including proxies show during the geological record different scientific evidence to what this model is assuming.
Global cloud levels have declined during the previous warming period, so not to include this correctly in any model will always bring incorrect conclusions. A 4/5 percent decline in global cloud levels (observed by satellite) has a significant affect on global temperatures and to say the sun has no influence on this is nonsense.
Paul Homewood says:
December 23, 2013 at 11:30 am
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
You have linked to a different paper than the one posted by Anthony. Was that by accident or on purpose?
That is just a little ghg paradigm shift the academics in world class institutions are having. Paradigm shifts are so shocking that a whole new language and history is needed. Everything gets re-written. The lips always claim Popper, but the eyes and left hand always say Kuhn.
So all the Warmists claims about warming or cooling due to the level of heat output in the PAST can be scrapped? Any future cooling will NOT be blamed on the Sun’s heat output also. The science is settled, the missing heat has to be in the deep oceans.
Note to self**** bookmark this page.
Paul Pierett I am in total agreement. I saw this years ACE and SSN graphs and saw exactly the same thing you did a few weeks ago, with tornado and hurricane activity tracking well with them.
This is a central point I will be making in the opening minutes of my first weather-climate video out early January, that also will feature an extreme weather events analysis and a WeatherAction 2013 last quarter forecast review. Thanx to you and a growing army of others, this important over-looked point will be revealed.
Which volcanoes prevented modern temperatures from exceeding Medieval Warm Period temperatures ?
“… variations in heat from the sun…” vs “… fluctuations in solar activity.”
The two are not the same, with the former being a subset of the latter.
Solar activity involves not merely how much heat is being produced by the Sun, but also magnetic field changes, solar wind changes in density and speed, spectral shifts of the solar output, cosmic ray flux changes,
No surprises here then! When it looks like AGW theory is going belly up,prop it up with something else. No science in AGW even less science in this pile of tosh. An increase in 8 molecules of a gas per 100,000 molecules of atmosphere will cause an apocalypse, the power of the sun turning 4,000,000 tons of hydrogen to nuclear energy every second, that totally powers our climate and weather has a negligible impact if there is say a 2% drop or increase in output? I don’t think so!
“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.”
So what caused the Climate’s Damascene conversion (after 4½ Billion years) in 1800? The effects of volcanos swamped by CO2 from Napoleon’s armies in their SUVs, perhaps?
Do these dishonest clowns with their dodgy models really expect to be taken seriously?
Paul Pierett – In your research, I think you may be drawing some of your conclusions about storms from data over too short a period. You may like to look at …
http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2008/aug2008/aug2008.pdf
… figure 15 on page 34.
It doesn’t relate to sunspots, but it does relate storms to temperature – and sunspots relate to temperature. It appears to be contrary to your findings, and I suspect the your relatively short time periods may be a factor. [I haven’t studied your document in detail, so apologies if I have misread it].
You are probably well aware of the work of Sir William Herschel, eg.
http://donaitkin.com/herschel-sun-spots-and-the-possibility-of-cooling/
who connected sunspots with agricultural productivity.
If the Royal Society does not take your research seriously, then you are in good company – “Alas, Herschel was not congratulated by his colleagues or the Royal Society for his novel hypothesis. In fact, it was rejected and dismissed.“.
“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.”
Are these the same volcanoes that don’t put out significant amounts of CO2, that all-powerful ‘special’ gas with pixie dust qualities? It is interesting to see volcanoes invoked as a way of trying to minimize the influence of the solar variation on temperatures, while later the same volcanoes are ignored as influences when it is important that CO2 look as if it is so influential. This is hardly the first look at the idea. I predict that as the temperatures continue to decline for the next 15 years, one or another volcano will be blamed for it, even as the sun paints itself featureless for a decade.
My first take on reading the abstract is how stupid the idea is. Volcanoes? But no influence on CO2 from eruptions, but CO2 is the cause of temperatures rising since 1900, when there was almost no CO2 of human origin. The rise in temps in the 20’s and 30’s was now cause by AG CO2 – is that the message? And the cooling that started in the 40’s was not caused by the beginning of the rise of AG CO2? They should get their story straight. The biggest volcanoes in the past 40 years were in the period when the temperature rose. That rise was AG CO2, was it? And the current temperature pause while 1/3 of all AG CO2 emitted to date is cause by what exactly? More no-CO2 volcanoes?
At least in the coming years there will be plenty of useless old scientific papers to burn to keep warm. We can read them, laugh and toss them into the fire.
PS Mosher – you would meet a lot less embarrassment if you simply kept quiet. We are not buying the idea of your intellectual omnipotence. Stop defending the indefensible. It is scaring the cat and it’s bad for science.
@Martin A says: ecember 23, 2013 at 9:54 am
what was it Einstein said?
A wop bop a loom op a lop bam boom?
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Thank you. I was struggling. And Albert was right.
Looks like another one of Leif’s often stated “pet theories” This one no doubt funded by the author’s newly discovered “gravy train”. More bullshite to baffle brains.
“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.”
Are they claiming that this methodology accounts for ALL variables and uncertainties? Is that what they are saying? Well slap my britches, I didn’t know we knew so much about the climate so as to account for all variables and uncertainties. Silly me.
Since we are onto models here is a much earlier one. I guess it’s not as good as the latest, spanking new models like the ones used by the IPCC to project temperature.
” Links between the sun and anomalously cold winters in the UK are still being explored.”
Assumptions don’t influence outcomes and changes in solar irradiation don’t influence climate.
(psarc)
Of course the NERC-Natural Environment Research Council has a political agenda. It, like the US National Science Foundation, are the two named partners who created the Belmont Forum in 2009 and who now manage the Belmont Challenge to “ensure equitable economic and social development.” Here’s the post describing the Belmont Challenge http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/the-belmont-challenge-and-the-death-of-the-individual-via-education/ from June 2012.
Climate change is merely the excuse for what the OECD is now openly calling the Great Transition. Belmont Challenge fits right in with both the OECD and the UN’s transformational plans for all of us. The only way out is widespread knowledge of these intentions before they become a fait accompli.
With regards to my comment about Michael Mann being a co-author.
The paper I linked to “Separating Forced from Chaotic Climate Variability over the Past Millennium”, which Mann contributed to, is the the most recent listed at Edinburgh University, and published in September,.
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
Although this now appears to be a different paper to the one that is the subject of this post, they are inextricably interlinked.
The Sep paper talks of
Variations in solar output and explosive volcanism are found to be the main drivers of climate change from 1400 to 1900, but for the first time a significant contribution from greenhouse gas variations to the cold conditions during 1600–1800 is also detected. The proxy reconstructions tend to show a smaller forced response than is simulated by the models. This discrepancy is shown, at least partly, to be likely associated with the difference in the response to large volcanic eruptions between reconstructions and model simulations.
It is clear that the second paper is connected to the first, not least for the fact that there is such a small interval between the two.
The hand of Mann is all over this.
This study is misleading.
As extensively demonstrated in my papers since 2007 (JGR), the strength of the solar signature on paleoclimatic climatic records strongly depends on the particular paleoclimatic climatic record that is used.
If hockey-stick like temperature reconstructions are used, then the solar signature is very small. However, if other non- hockey-stick temperature reconstructions showing for example a significant MWP and LIA are used, then the solar signature is quite strong.
The result of the paper derive from their usage of a kind of average paleoclimatic temperature reconstructions that however excludes several modern reconstructions showing a large pre-industrial variability. Thus, they compare against an average temperature reconstruction that is biased toward the hockey-stick like temperature reconstructions that imply a low solar effect on climate. Consequently they discovered some “hot water” already known since 2000: that is, if the past did not change much the sun does little to climate changes.
To know more about this issue and about the difference between the two kind of temperature reconstructions (hockey-stick and non-hockey-stick) read two of my recent papers:
Scafetta N., 2013. Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics, 1, 37–57. (open access)
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.html
Scafetta, N. 2013. Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles. Earth-Science Reviews 126, 321-357.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825213001402
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For those interested in something more interesting, I have just updated the temperature of Nov/2013 in my graph showing the temperature against the forecast of my astronomical harmonic model first published in Oct/2011. The forecast worked quite well during these last two year where my model correctly predicted a slight warming.
See the figure below:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
‘ee’s not dead, ‘ee’s jus restin’.
Lame.
Not a single blessed person gets the joke in over the 15 years I explained it thousands upon thousands of times –
” It is a fact not generally known that,owing to the difference between solar and sidereal time,the Earth rotates upon its axis once more often than there are days in the year” NASA /Harvard
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1904PA…..12..649B
Other than saying the Earth is flat I can’t think of anything that would cause people in the 21st century to believe that all the effects within a 24 hour cycle ,including temperature fluctuations, is not due to one rotation of the Earth because that is exactly what that mainstream statement says in creating an imbalance between days and rotations.
It must be wonderful chanting voodoo across at each other and hoping the climate issue will be resolved in a race to the bottom as to who is more vicious but who can imagine that to recover climate research you have to begin with the most basic experience of temperature fluctuations and the daily rotation of our planet.
Amazing,amazing people – the whole lot of you !.
RicHard. says:
December 23, 2013 at 9:58 am
I was about to have a look at this paper below….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
For the curious here is the link Paper finds solar activity explains climate change over past 200,000 years… to the essay at the Hockey Schtick. The paper is from 2002.