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Has solar activity influence on the Earth’s global warming?
A recent study demonstrates the existence of significant resonance cycles and high correlations between solar activity and the Earth’s averaged surface temperature during centuries. This provides a new clue to reveal the phenomenon of global warming in recent years.
Their work, entitled “Periodicities of solar activity and the surface temperature variation of the Earth and their correlations” was published in CHINESE SCIENCE BULLETIN (In Chinese) 2014 No.14.
The co-corresponding authors are Dr. Zhao Xinhua and Dr. Feng Xueshang from State key laboratory of space weather, CSSAR/NSSC, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It adopts the wavelet analysis technique and cross correlation method to investigate the periodicities of solar activity and the Earth’s temperature as well as their correlations during the past centuries.
Global warming is one of the hottest and most debatable issues at present. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed that the release of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases contributed to 90% or even higher of the observed increase in the global average temperature in the past 50 years. However, the debate on the causes of the global warming never stops. Research shows that the current warming does not exceed the natural fluctuations of climate. The climate models of IPCC seem to underestimate the impact of natural factors on the climate change, while overstate that of human activities. Solar activity is an important ingredient of natural driving forces of climate. Therefore, it is valuable to investigate the influence of solar variability on the Earth’s climate change on long time scales.
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This study also implies that the “modern maximum” of solar activity agrees well with the recent global warming of the Earth. A significant correlation between them can be found (Figure 2).
As pointed out by a peer reviewer, “this work provides a possible explanation for the global warming”.
See the article:
ZHAO X H, FENG X S. Periodicities of solar activity and the surface temperature variation of the Earth and their correlations (in Chinese). Chin Sci Bull (Chin Ver), 2014, 59: 1284, doi: 10.1360/972013-1089 http://csb.scichina.com:8080/kxtb/CN/abstract/abstract514043.shtml
Science China Press Co., Ltd. (SCP) is a scientific journal publishing company of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). For 60 years, SCP takes its mission to present to the world the best achievements by Chinese scientists on various fields of natural sciences researches.
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lsvalgaard
Thanks for those links. I will look at them in detail later. My initial skimming of the first link seemed to confirm what I was saying. I will look at them deeper to avoid ‘confirmation bias’ on my part. I have to go have dinner now (as I tell my students). I will definitely look at this stuff and maybe discuss with you later. The thread will probably close soon anyway. I may cross swords with you later. I hope I have something intelligent to say.
lsvalgaard says:
” There is a local maximum in the 20th century, and in the 19th, and in the 18th, …
None of them ‘Grand’.
Again, are you sharing the raw data? And, of course there was a solar maximum and a temperature maximum in the 20th century, and in the 19th, and in the 18th, …
Wow the Sun affects climate ? Thanks. As if we needed yet another [yawn] ‘study’, paid by taxpayers to state the obvious. The entire climate-scam and its gov’t teated funding needs to be stopped. Now.
If the science is settled it is time to stop funding academics in ivory towers to study climate. Rather, the climate money should be going to engineers to design solutions.
The current “proposed” solutions have been designed by politicians, bankers and academics. Would you trust an airplane or a bridge designed by any of these? So why should we trust that they are any better at designing climate solutions?
The problem is very simple. We need X units of energy generation, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, for similar cost to current coal plants, with zero emissions and zero harmful effects on the environment. And we need it to be able to scale worldwide.
This is not a climate science problem. It is an engineering problem. It is high time the academics, politicians and bankers got out of the way and let the engineers design the solution.
If we took the 100 billion we have spent of climate science and instead offered this as a prize to the company that solves the problem, we would have companies worldwide falling all over themselves, investing their own time and money trying to solve the problem, and it would not cost the taxpayers a dime until a solution was found!
And in return for the 100 billion, we the taxpayers would get a solution that could be licensed worldwide, and the license fees used to repay the100 billion prize money. Instead the US and EU are proposing to set up a 100 billion dollar fund at taxpayer expense to bribe the third world leaders to keep their people in poverty, in perhaps the biggest crime against humanity ever imagined.
Alex says:
June 6, 2014 at 2:52 am
Thanks for those links. I will look at them in detail later. My initial skimming of the first link seemed to confirm what I was saying.
quite the contrary. “As magnetic activity varies through the 11-year solar cycle, this periodicity shows prominently in TSI giving ~0.08% increases during solar maximum”.
I may cross swords with you later
The purpose of this exchange is not to cross swords, but to provide education.
John West says:
June 6, 2014 at 4:30 am
lsvalgaard says:
John West says:
June 5, 2014 at 12:35 pm
Again, are you sharing the raw data?
The detailed data set is still in the works. A preliminary set you can make yourself by simply decreasing the official SIDC values since 1947 by the 20% that was artificially introduced at that time.
lsvalgaard
Your links haven’t shown to me that the TSI doesn’t vary. In fact they have confirmed the opposite. TSI is variable The solar constant is not a constant. Touche
Alex says:
June 6, 2014 at 7:06 am
Your links haven’t shown to me that the TSI doesn’t vary.
TSI varies by 0.08% over a solar cycle [about 1 W/m2]. The much larger variations [5-10 W/m2] that you think you see are due to different calibrations between spacecraft. Those differences are now understood and can be reliably corrected for.
lsvalgaard
Please have the courtesy to look at the link I showed you (it is in fact in the links you showed me). The 10 watts is between various satellites. The 4-5 watts is for specific satellites individually. Calibration will only effect the offset, not the span. I don’t really see that a few watts should make that much difference, but apparently many people will argue about the significance of 0.5 watt.
Alex says:
June 6, 2014 at 7:29 am
Please have the courtesy to look at the link I showed you (it is in fact in the links you showed me). The 10 watts is between various satellites. The 4-5 watts is for specific satellites individually. Calibration will only effect the offset, not the span.
The span is irrelevant because the dips caused by very large sunspots are rare and short-lived and therefore not of interest for climate. The important number is how much TSI varies on, say, a yearly time scale, and that is about 1 W/m2 resulting in a 0.1 degree temperature change.
lsvalgaard
OK. If you say so. You win.
Alex says:
June 6, 2014 at 7:40 am
OK. If you say so.
You should be able to figure that out for yourself…
Belief trumps data. Every time. Blind faith is the hope of every sale and the person behind it. It is the stuff advertising is made of. God could present the it’s-about-time corrected SSN data yet those who will not see because of faith in the old data will continue to hold onto their beliefs as if life itself depended on it. They will stick their fingers in their collective ears, complete with lalalalalalalala, to any discussion of satellite or weighting artifact present in the old data sets, clinging to them with iron-fisted grip.
It is why science is so hard to teach to adults, not so much to teens. Adults have wrapped themselves round with a thick sticky blanket of faith. Teens question everything and have been known to argue with a stop sign. One of the tricks I have used to get teens to grapple with math proofs is to argue with the answer to a mathematical problem as if their parents had just said, “No you can’t go out with your friends.” It works every time in group discussions and nearly always leads to the discovery of at least part of the proof.
Leif, you are up against the sticky blanket of faith.
Pamela Gray says:
June 6, 2014 at 7:44 am
Leif, you are up against the sticky blanket of faith.
In addition to that there are powerful research groups whose funding depends on the old data. Rocking that boat is vigorously resisted…
Pamela Gray
If you are referring to me as some sort of believer then you are wrong. I believe nothing. I backed away from Leif because because I don’t get into a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
Alex says:
June 6, 2014 at 7:54 am
I don’t get into a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
Wits have nothing to do with anything. Data rules, regardless of wits, arms, or other silly things.
Good morning, Leif. Have you written a blog post for WUWT about the grand solar maximum…or lack thereof?
lsvalgaard says:
June 6, 2014 at 1:19 am
“Since about 1947 the sunspot number measured in Zurich [and Locarno which all other sunspot counts are normalized to] has been artificially inflated by about 20% by counting larger spots more than once..”
…”A preliminary set you can make yourself by simply decreasing the official SIDC values since 1947 by the 20% that was artificially introduced at that time.”
Would a 20% decrease in SSN after 1947 reduce the Mean peak in this graph to about 58?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:1008
1. Alex shows Leif a graph that shows TSI (satellite data) of over 4 watts variation.
2. Leif tells Alex that it is irrelevant and it is only 1 watt.
3. Therefore Alex is an idiot
4. Alex does a facepalm and tries to walk away but there are zombies grabbing at his shirt
Bob Tisdale says:
June 6, 2014 at 8:02 am
Good morning, Leif. Have you written a blog post for WUWT about the grand solar maximum…or lack thereof?
No, not specifically. But many of my recent papers and talks touch on that, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Activity-Past-Present-and-Future-Notes.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/Confronting-Models-with-Reconstructions-and-Data.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/The%20long-term%20variation%20of%20solar%20activity.pdf
Alex says:
June 6, 2014 at 8:07 am
3. Therefore Alex is an idiot
Or just a slow learner…
Bob Tisdale
You are truly evil
Sparks says:
June 6, 2014 at 8:06 am
Would a 20% decrease in SSN after 1947 reduce the Mean peak in this graph to about 58?
What do you think? Slide 8 of http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Petaluma–How%20Well%20Do%20We%20Know%20the%20SSN.pdf shows the effect of removal of weighting [here I have increased values before 1947 by 20%]. We now believe it is better to reduce the values after 1947.
Alex, those are “facts”, not zombies tugging at your shirt.
To see why your 10-watt TSI spread is bogus, just need to look at the third chart on Greg Kopp’s TSI page (Greg is the principal investigator for the TIM (Total Invariance Monitor) mission on several of these TSI missions)
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/
This “Total Solar Invariance Data Record” neatly displays the results of 34 years of research in measuring TSI from outer space. Each cluster of points represents a different mission.
Each mission presents a fairly consistent set of TSI measurements, which tend to sag in the middle, reflecting a strong correlation to solar sunspot activity (plotted at the bottom of the chart). But the total sag amounts to only a watt or so of TSI change induced by solar activity change. So roughly about 0.1% change. (Not very big, IMHO).
But each mission seems to have produced a different average TSI value. Does this mean the TSI actually varied that much over this 34 year period? No, it’s simply a matter of calibration, and learning the correct biases to apply to account for all the solar radiation impinging on the instrument (which BTW is the _total_ EMR spectrum, accounting for _all_ of the electromagnetic energy at all frequencies generated by the SUN).
Up to a few years ago (and still prevalent in many reference books) the value of 1366 was considered the best nominal value for TSI. But more recent research (learning about new calibration issues) has caused that estimate to be lowered to 1362 watts per sq meter, which is currently our ‘best guess’ at average TSI.
Does that help your understanding of what Leif told you? (He can be ornery at times, but is mostly trying to educate us).
Thanks for commenting Dr. S. Always a pleasure to get your take on things.
daymite
I said about 4 watts change up and down per satellite, and 10 watt spread over several satellittes. The new figure you referred me to shows about 1-2 watt. At no point did I refer to sunspots or some personal theory about TSI or its absolute value. I just remarked to someone else on the thread who said 0.5 watt that the figure was different according to NOAA. Then Leif is jumping on my back and answering questions that I didn’t ask. Maybe he is a grumpy old man who can’t tolerate fools. I happen to be a grumpy old man too, and don’t like to be treated like a fool, especially when I am staring at a graph from a reputable source that tells me something different.
I gave the link I was referring to.
I’m not upset but I have lost respect for Leif. Not that that will bother him.