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.
============================================================
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.”
=============================================================
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
In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
December 23, 2013 at 5:14 pm
William: The AGU conference solar update noted solar UV had declined 20%. Are you asserting that TSI has not dropped 1.5 watts/meter^2?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:1971
The same panel (of which you were a member) noted solar heliosphere pressure had dropped 40%. Solar large scale magnetic field strength has dropped 50% (solar cycle 22 to solar cycle 24).
http://www.solen.info/solar/polarfields/polar.html
Antarctic sea ice is now above 2 sigma higher than the forty year average for every month of the year, which is unprecedented in 40 years of observations. Arctic sea has made the fastest recover in 40 years. The planet has started to cool.
CRF (cosmic ray flux, mostly high speed protons) is the highest ever observed with instrumentation for this period in the solar cycle. There are at dozens of paleoclimatic observations and current observations that logically support the assertion that the majority the warming (70% to 90%) in the last 70 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes. Shaviv’s estimate is conservative at 0.3C to 0.7C.
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/uploads/media/Shaviv.pdf
On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget
“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 ± 0.19C, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes.”
William: For example: As CO2 is more or less evenly distributed in the atmosphere the potential for CO2 warming is the same for all latitudes. The actual warming due to CO2 is linearly dependent on the amount of long wave radiation at the latitude in question before the increase in CO2. As most amount of long wave radiation that is emitted to space is in the tropics the most amount of warming due to the CO2 increase should have occurred in the tropics. That is not what is observed as shown in Bob Tisdale graph. The following is a peer reviewed paper that supports the above assertions.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/figure-72.png
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf
“These effects do not have the signature associated with CO2 climate forcing. (William: This observation indicates something is fundamental incorrect with the IPCC models, likely negative feedback in the tropics due to increased or decreased planetary cloud cover to resist forcing). However, the data show a small underlying positive trend that is consistent with CO2 climate forcing with no-feedback. (William: This indicates a significant portion of the 20th century warming has due to something rather than CO2 forcing.)” “These conclusions are contrary to the IPCC [2007] statement: “[M]ost of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
Coming in late….”poorly-written press release” doesn’t cover it. GIGO. This has got to be one of the most brilliant bit of junk science for 2013, hasn’t it? “See? It’s not the sun. Poopy buml nya nya nya.”
There has been no refutation of my original point: that if you want to diss a model, you need to diss the model – not some other models that may or may not be like it, and not models in general.
William Astley says:
December 23, 2013 at 5:35 pm
The abrupt reduction in TSI supports the assertion that solar magnetic cycle 24 is an abrupt change to the solar magnetic cycle.
There has not been a abrupt reduction in TSI and SC24 is not an abrupt change, just a replay of cycle 14.
Earth to climateace: As Reg Nelson says, we’re only dissing bad models here, not models in general. As 97% of the predictions / projections made by the climate models used by the IPCC fail to conform to reality, they deserve dissing. They’re utter garbage.
Figure S7 of this paper has the MWP about completely deleted, also practically deleting the pre-1790 portion of the LIA, in an absurd hockey stick. This paper’s temperature history and model verification is way wrong.
GIGO applies: Fit something to match garbage, and garbage is the result.
The paper includes for figure S1 a partial albedo history in which ice cover, natural vegetation change, and cloud cover change going into the Little Ice Age is not depicted but yet human influence on cropland versus forest is depicted, classic for CAGW-movement authors for whom natural influences are to be understated compared to manmade ones.
And more could be listed wrong with it, including the classic superfluous model tactic to avoid showing all work in the paper itself, to hide more BS where readers don’t see it.
Of a little side interest despite the junk in other sections, their volcanic reconstruction has times of exceptional volcanic activity at each of the four solar Grand Minimum points they mark with arrows in Figure S6, quite like people of a very, very different perspective who argue for a magnetic coupling mechanism. However, trying to explain the history including at the decadal scale and later in http://img250.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=45311_expanded_overview2_122_15lo.jpg with volcanic eruptions rather than the solar-cosmic-ray forcing illustrated there many times over would be an exercise in ludicrousness (or in lack of honesty which is practically a filter for whether an educated individual may like and be inclined to support the CAGW movement).
As Dergachev et al 2004 noted (full-text online copy of paper at location noted within previous link), known data proves that, primarily solar-modulated, “cosmic rays were the main factor” changing the climate over thousands of years. As Shaviv 2005 noted, the natural contribution from such “comes out to be 0.5 +/- 0.2K out of the observed 0.6 +/- 0.2K global warming” over the past century.
Louis Hooffstetter says:
December 23, 2013 at 9:39 pm
‘Earth to climateace: As Reg Nelson says, we’re only dissing bad models here, not models in general. As 97% of the predictions / projections made by the climate models used by the IPCC fail to conform to reality, they deserve dissing. They’re utter garbage.’
My point stands.
The authors used a single model – not a lot of models. No-one on this string has actually had a close look at the model. Yet all relevant posters have had no hesitation in dissing it.
My point stands. Until someone unpicks the model used, then no-one is in a position to diss it.
climateace says “There has been no refutation of my original point: that if you want to diss a model, you need to diss the model – not some other models that may or may not be like it, and not models in general.“.
climatace, your point has been ably refuted by four commenters, SteveB, Reg Nelson, Mark Bofill, Gail Combs.
It is remarkable that the solar expert here who brings such luminary articles to the forefront and eats CO2 for breakfast can’t explain what process that CO2 is influencing weather through, especially during a season, for instance boreal winter, that will see variations bringing hemispheric cold waves for about two weeks and then a reprieve and then again gripping cold etc… At least, one should be able to identify the physical mechanism that controls these weather “pulsations” and since climate is the sum of weathers and it is according to him controlled by GHGs, let’s see how CO2 does it. Unless there is of course a correlation with long week-end traffic jam or jet setting COP delegates…
Their reference point is a model.
Isnt is wonderful to live in such a fantasy world, where reality is defined first by how one wants to define it, and then the cause of this invented reality can be deduced. If that is how these people really think, there is little hope for them.
As Seinfeld would say, thats how people think in the bizarro world, not the real one.
Did they actually go to the trouble of WRITING that paper? Can we
be sure they didn’t just copy and paste from a few older ones?
I’d like to see just what their literature search, if they did one, turned up.
Louis Hooffstetter
Nice one, my point entirely!
Louis Hofffstetter, Sorry I did not make myself clear, I was talking about the picture of the Solar System you submitted.
TomRude (December 23, 2013 at 10:18 pm) “It is remarkable that the solar expert here who brings such luminary articles to the forefront and eats CO2 for breakfast can’t explain what process that CO2 is influencing weather through, especially during a season, for instance boreal winter, that will see variations bringing hemispheric cold waves for about two weeks and then a reprieve and then again gripping cold etc… ”
I don’t think anyone here claims CO2 influences weather. There is a diffuse effect from CO2 with only a small seasonal variation, no diurnal variation and no variation over regions or two week intervals. If anything, CO2 should have a moderating effect on weather.
UK was hit by again by a storm last night, and another is threatening Scotland later today.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=0.00,54.00,3000
Click on your location to get wind velocity.
In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
December 23, 2013 at 9:36 pm
William Astley says:
December 23, 2013 at 5:35 pm
The abrupt reduction in TSI supports the assertion that solar magnetic cycle 24 is an abrupt change to the solar magnetic cycle.
There has not been a abrupt reduction in TSI and SC24 is not an abrupt change, just a replay of cycle 14.
William:
It is an observational fact that there has be an abrupt reduction in total solar irradiation of roughly 1.5 Watts/meter^2 (solar UV radiation has dropped by 20%), that solar heliosphere pressure has dropped by 40%, that the solar large scale magnetic field has dropped by 50% (cycle 22 to 23), that cosmic ray flux is the highest ever directly measured, and the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots continues to drop.
The questions to answer are: 1) What is happening observational to the sun now, 2) Why it is happening?, and 3) What are the implication s of what is happening to the sun for solar cycle 25?, and 3) How will solar cycle 25 affect the climate of the earth?
You cling to one solar observation – the sunspot count – (solar cycle 24 is not the same as solar cycle 14, as solar cycle 15 was not a Maunder minimum and solar cycle 25 will be a peculiar once in 8000 to 10,000 year flat line solar magnetic cycle minimum.) ignoring the fact that the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots is decaying linearly and the observations the support the assertion the reduction in the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots has profound implications for the solar magnetic cycle and for the climate of the earth.
The key solar observation (if one is interested in understanding what is happening to the sun now, why it is happening, and what will happen next) is the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots is decaying linearly. This has never been observed and there is no explanation as to why the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots could and would suddenly (I repeat suddenly) start to decay linearly.
The standard solar dynamo model has the magnetic flux tubes (the magnetic flux tubes are buoyant) that rise to form sunspot groups on the surface of the sun formed at the solar tachocline which is the narrow calm region which is the interface between the solar convection zone and solar radiative zone. As the magnetic flux tubes are buoyant they require a calm place that has mechanism to hold them while they are growing in strength and then to release the magnetic flux tubes.
The magnetic field strength of the flux tubes that rise up from the tachocline to form sunspots on the surface of the sun require a magnetic field strength of roughly 20,000 to 30,000 Gauss (Eugene Parker’s calculation) to avoid being torn apart by turbulent forces in the convection zone.
As the magnetic field strength of the flux tubes weakens the turbulent forces in the convection zone which the magnetic flux tubes must face as they rise up to the surface of the sun start to tear the flux tubes apart. At the point in time when the flux tubes are just starting to be torn apart the sunspot group that forms on the surface of the sun is made up of many small sunspots with increased occurrence of mixed polarities in the sunspot group. The third stage in the solar magnetic cycle interruption process is no sunspot group (the dark areas which are called sunspots are no longer observed) and only a region of magnetic flux.
The fourth stage (not final stage, a mechanism is required to restart the solar magnetic cycle, note this is a once in 8000 to 10,000 year event, an interruption to the solar magnetic cycle not a Maunder minimum ) is the complete cancelling of magnetic flux created.
The tachocline dynamo model requires the residue magnetic field old sunspots from past sunspot cycles to form new magnetic flux tubes to create new sunspots. The residue sunspots are dragged down to the tachocline, form the poles of the sun by the circulation system in the convection zone. That mechanism explains the butterfly pattern of the solar magnetic cycle.
http://iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205/757/1/L8/pdf/2041-8205_757_1_L8.pdf
DECREASING SUNSPOT MAGNETIC FIELDS EXPLAIN UNIQUE 10.7 cm RADIO FLUX
“By extrapolating our sunspot formation fraction to the predicted peak of Cycle 24 (in mid-2013) the sunspot formation fraction would be approaching 0.5. This suggests a rather small SSN for this cycle, in agreement with some recent Cycle 24 predictions (Svalgaard et al. 2005; Hathaway 2012). And while there is no physical mechanism which suggests that we should extrapolate further, it is fascinating to see that the sunspot formation
fraction would drop below 0.2 by 2020. This would suggest that although magnetic flux would be erupting at the solar surface during Cycle 25, only a small fraction of it would be strong enough to form visible sunspots or pores. Such behavior would be highly unusual, since such a small solar maximum has not been observed since the Maunder Minimum. During that period from roughly 1645 to 1715, few sunspots were ….”
The following is a visual picture of the surface of the sun and a picture of the surface of the sun that is called a ‘Magnetogram’ (A magnetogram is created by using the Zeeman affect which is the fact that the line emission spectrum of ions is split in a strong magnetic field. A filter is used to observe only the split frequency of a specific element to create a picture of the regions of the sun that have a magnetic field.)
As can be seen there are no visual sunspots in the solar Northern hemisphere only regions with magnetic fields. The solar Northern hemisphere is roughly 14 months ahead of the solar Southern hemisphere in the dynamo interruption process. There are still visible sunspots groups in the solar Southern hemisphere. Based on what has happened in the solar Northern hemisphere there will be no visible sunspots in the solar Southern hemisphere by roughly quarter 4 of 2014.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/solar/
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_HMIB.jpg
I thought that this is a impressive paper and that cosmology is quite appropriate as a discipline to study the effect of the Sun. I found interesting the inclusion of volcanic activity during the 19th century which I have not seen in earlier models.
Unfortunately I do not have the time to search for the reported claim that CO2 has been the dominating factor since 1900.
I did not find such a claim, but I do agree that any such claim would be a serious short-coming in a paper. My own research indicates that in the period 1900 to 1920 industrial activity was insufficient to make much impact on global atmospheric CO2 and the research of others has indicated that the use of fossil fuel did not begin to impact much the level of atmospheric CO2 until after 1950.
The paper claims that the model incorporated internal climate variations. But I did not see discussions of the ENSO, PDO, AMO in the SI.
It’s difficult for the public to know whether or not public funds have been wisely spent when the product is kept behind a pay wall. But on balance I think this is an interesting paper even though I personally lean to Svensmark’s theory.
My own research indicates that in the period 1900 to 1920 industrial activity was insufficient to make much impact on global atmospheric CO2 and the research of others has indicated that the use of fossil fuel did not begin to impact much the level of atmospheric CO2 until after 1950.
Based on what evidence ? and puleeze don’t say models.
“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. ”
Well that has been the trivial assumption and is the immediate impact. The rise in stratospheric temperature is a result of the incoming solar energy getting blocked at high altitude where much of it gets radiated back to space.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=750
What has not been recognised in this trivial view of is what happens in climate once the dust has settled.
Here we see a definitive drop in TLS of about 0.5K after each of the major events in the record. That means that the long term (decadal) effect is an INCREASE of energy entering the troposphere.
An exaggerated estimation of the cooling effect of volcanoes is what lead to the over estimation of positive feedbacks adding to the real effect of CO2 . That works fine while you have both but as we’ve seen in the last ten years, becomes obviously wrong once on of those elements is not longer present.
Nik Lewis says: “4. The paper suffers, so far as I can tell, from the usual climate science defect of failure to archive the data and computer code used, making it difficult, probably impossible, to verify the results.”
Which makes the study about as credible as Piers Corbyn’s work.
climateace says:
December 23, 2013 at 3:18 pm
How to damn a study without actually examining it using hard science:
—————————————————————————————–
With respect that is not actually true is it. To verify if the model is any good it is compared with scientific observations to back up the claims. This can and has already been commented on and how can anybody on this forum by just looking at the link verify what the model contains. People can only comment on what is available and the details of this model are not available.
I will reiterate what has already been observed before.
1) The key claims for this one model is that CO2 and volcanic activity is what only matters, anything else is minor or insignificant.
2) To back this up we can look at how this fits into just the past century to see if this claim is any good.
3) Verify model claims with scientific observations.
Over the past decades CO2 levels have increased throughout the period below. (have increased before then too, but no data available before shown on graph)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1957
Despite CO2 levels rising all that time the planet has had two major periods where global temperatures didn’t rise. This duration is a lot longer than the short warming period where all this AGW madness came from.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:1998/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1934/to:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1934/to:1980/trend
Why has the global temperatures not risen for most of the period despite CO2 levels rising increasingly all the time?
Well according to this model it must have been to do with volcanic activity because it doesn’t recognize anything else that can make these modest changes highlighted before.
SAOT levels detect aerosols in the stratosphere from volcanoes at the only atmospheric level that can affect global temperatures.
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7766/saot.png
Above, the data shows volcanic activity that affects the stratosphere has declined since 1979 and recently has been at its lowest levels recorded. Notice how global temperatures have failed to warm since the SAOT levels have actually significantly declined after the last major volcanic eruption (Pinatubo) back in 1992. Therefore the conclusion here is that despite higher CO2 levels and failed warming, volcanic activity doesn’t explain the non-warming period. Hence, do observations back the model, NO.
Yet global temperatures are still higher than 20 years ago. Perhaps the Edinburgh paper may have a point after all.
John Finn: “Yet global temperatures are still higher than 20 years ago. Perhaps the Edinburgh paper may have a point after all.”
PDO; AMO
“Yet global temperatures are still higher than 20 years ago. Perhaps the Edinburgh paper may have a point after all.”
!) Since when do oceans lose or gain energy immediately?
2) Since when global albedo (snow,ice clouds) change to same levels immediately?
20 years ago global temperatures would have been warmer if it had not been for Pinatubo back in 1992.
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5816/had3vsaotadj1979.png