Sun said to be “bi-modal”
While many, including the IPCC, suggest the modern Grand Maximum of solar activity from 1950-2009 has nothing to do with the 0.4C global warming measured over that time frame, it does seem to be unique in the last three millennia.
from CO2 Science: A 3,000-Year Record of Solar Activity
What was done
According to Usoskin et al. (2014), the Sun “shows strong variability in its magnetic activity, from Grand minima to Grand maxima, but the nature of the variability is not fully understood, mostly because of the insufficient length of the directly observed solar activity records and of uncertainties related to long-term reconstructions.” Now, however, in an attempt to overcome such uncertainties, in a Letter to the Editor published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Usoskin et al. “present the first fully adjustment-free physical reconstruction of solar activity” covering the past 3,000 years, which record allowed them “to study different modes of solar activity at an unprecedented level of detail.”
What was learned
As illustrated in the figure below, the authors report there is “remarkable agreement” among the overlapping years of their reconstruction (solid black line) and the number of sunspots recorded from direct observations since 1610 (red line). Their reconstruction of solar activity also displays several “distinct features,” including several “well-defined Grand minima of solar activity, ca. 770 BC, 350 BC, 680 AD, 1050 AD, 1310 AD, 1470 AD, and 1680 AD,” as well as “the modern Grand maximum (which occurred during solar cycles 19-23, i.e., 1950-2009),” which they describe as “a rare or even unique event, in both magnitude and duration, in the past three millennia.”
Further statistical analysis of their reconstruction revealed the Sun operates in three distinct modes of activity – (1) a regular mode that “corresponds to moderate activity that varies in a relatively narrow band between sunspot numbers 20 and 67,” (2) a Grand minimum mode of reduced solar activity that “cannot be explained by random fluctuations of the regular mode” and which “is confirmed at a high confidence level,” and (3), a possible Grand maximum mode, but they say that “the low statistic does not allow us to firmly conclude on this, yet.”
What it means
Usoskin et al. (2014) write their results “provide important constraints for both dynamo models of Sun-like stars and investigations of possible solar influence on Earth’s climate.” They also illustrate the importance of improving the quality of such reconstructions, in light of the fact that previous reconstructions of this nature “did not reveal any clear signature of distinct modes” in solar activity.
Unfortunately, it was beyond the scope of this paper to address the potential impact of solar activity on climate. Yet the reconstruction leaves a very big question unanswered — What effect did the Grand maximum of solar activity that occurred between 1950 and 2009 have on Earth’s climate? As a “unique” and “rare” event in terms of both magnitude and duration, one would think a lot more time and effort would be spent by the IPCC and others in answering that question. Instead, IPCC scientists have conducted relatively few studies of the Sun’s influence on modern warming, assuming that the temperature influence of this rare and unique Grand maximum of solar activity, which has occurred only once in the past 3,000 years, is far inferior to the radiative power provided by the rising CO2 concentration of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Reference
Usoskin, I.G., Hulot, G., Gallet, Y., Roth, R., Licht, A., Joos, F., Kovaltsov, G.A., Thebault, E. and Khokhlov, A. 2014. Evidence for distinct modes of solar activity. Astronomy and Astrophysics 562: L10, doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201423391.
Abstract
Aims. The Sun shows strong variability in its magnetic activity, from Grand minima to Grand maxima, but the nature of the variability is not fully understood, mostly because of the insufficient length of the directly observed solar activity records and of uncertainties related to long-term reconstructions. Here we present a new adjustment-free reconstruction of solar activity over three millennia and study its different modes.
Methods. We present a new adjustment-free, physical reconstruction of solar activity over the past three millennia, using the latest verified carbon cycle, 14C production, and archeomagnetic field models. This great improvement allowed us to study different modes of solar activity at an unprecedented level of details.
Results. The distribution of solar activity is clearly bi-modal, implying the existence of distinct modes of activity. The main regular activity mode corresponds to moderate activity that varies in a relatively narrow band between sunspot numbers 20 and 67. The existence of a separate Grand minimum mode with reduced solar activity, which cannot be explained by random fluctuations of the regular mode, is confirmed at a high confidence level. The possible existence of a separate Grand maximum mode is also suggested, but the statistics is too low to reach a confident conclusion.
Conclusions. The Sun is shown to operate in distinct modes – a main general mode, a Grand minimum mode corresponding to an inactive Sun, and a possible Grand maximum mode corresponding to an unusually active Sun. These results provide important constraints for both dynamo models of Sun-like stars and investigations of possible solar influence on Earth’s climate.
anxiously awaiting Dr. Svalgaard’s comments.
Actually not trolling here. I really wish to see the debates with regard to solar activity and how it affects our planet.
How does this graph correlate with proxies for global temperature over this time span?
“anxiously awaiting Dr. Svalgaard’s comments.”
there is no modern maximum.
Steven Mosher says (August 6, 2014 at 9:00 pm): “there is no modern maximum.”
Thank you, Dr. Svalgaard. 🙂
(Actually, that response by Dr. Svalgaard would be my first guess, too.)
Steven Mosher says:
“there is no modern maximum.”
Sounds like denial to me. So just what should we call it? A hockey stick?
Sorry I forgot the science was settled. Just that this, and other papers conclude otherwise.
Looks like a hockeystick. Reg flag. Problems with methodology likely.
The MWP doesn’t show up either, but the LIA does.
I don’t suppose highest activity in 3000 years could have anything to do with warming since 1950 though, if you are an IPCC scientist.
More information needed regarding Methodology. Which method was used to find correct input-values for period before 1980? How has the analyse program been constructed and so on…..
noaaprogrammer says:
“How does this graph correlate with proxies for global temperature over this time span?”
Quite well, it seems, from a quick look.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/2000-years-of-global-temperatures1.jpg
The Solar Sunspot Number Workshop group came out with their paper:
http://www.leif.org/research/Revisiting-the-Sunspot-Number.pdf
“Grand Maximum” gets reduced, if not eliminated.
The possible existence of a separate Grand maximum mode is also suggested, but the statistics is too low to reach a confident conclusion.
says it all. there is no modern grand maximum.
Leif maybe right for the wrong reasons, put all this aside. I’ve been studying the speed and movement of the suns polar-field. I know when it travels faster from either geographical pole, it produces more sunspots (according to its rate of rotation), it also produces exactly what Leif says. which is “dynamo” this “dynamo” that. which is in fact produced by the suns polar field.
I’m sick of Leif’s refusal to acknowledge that I’m correct.
Perfect example of how assuming the “science is settled” on the impact of C02 on climate stifles much needed scientific research. I still think that the theories and work done by Svenmark and others (see http://www.thecloudmystery.com/The_Cloud_Mystery/The_Documentary.html )and others on sunspot correlation to climate change seem to hold much more weight and predictive value then the C02 being the dominant driver.. I am impressed (and surprised!) that “C02 science” was so straightforward in bringing to our attention that there is much more research needed in this area. (And that IPCC clearly lacks studies in this area).
This was covered in Feb: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/22/usoskin-et-al-discover-a-new-class-of-sunspots/ where a lively discussion by Willis, Leif, Greg, and many others panned the paper based on technicalities, although Willis said “They may be correct, anything’s possible … but their analysis doesn’t even come near to establishing that claim of distinct solar “modes”.”
I don’t know who is correct but it’s still interesting. The solar mode today is that SSN=93.
“Adjustment free” needs to be defined. All proxies are by nature “adjustments”. And which SSN data set did the author use to draw that red line? Call me unimpressed by the use of the loaded phrase: “adjustment free”.
Simultaneously with the increase in solar activity until 2000 in the last 500 years can be seen weakening Earth’s magnetic field and an increase in cosmic rays. This means a strong increase in the GCR in the case of low solar activity. It will be a lot of clouds over the oceans …
http://oi62.tinypic.com/2hy52s.jpg
Right, no grand maximum. And cycle 24 doesn’t have two peaks either. Stop looking at the data, there are not two peaks. And Picard didn’t see 5 lights, only four, right?
What ever I have said or disagreed with or contested wrt Dr. Svalgaard shall be set aside for a one minute recognition of his and the other peoples involved MONUMENTAL task of reconstructing the sunspot number series. It will be seen through the ages as an historic scientific acheivement. Congratulations Dr. Svalgaard et al.
I noticed five references to Usoskin, I.G in http://www.leif.org/research/Revisiting-the-Sunspot-Number.pdf , so I.G.U. can’t be all bad!
Of course, a number of years ago, a Very Serious Climate Scientist informed me, with absolutely zero doubt, that “insolation is a constant.”
Clearly the paper is untrustworthy as it is using made-up numbers. Figure 1 X-axis purports to show BC/AD yet has Year 0.
Or did they solve the graphing problem by interpolating across the 1BC to 1AD gap?
The distribution of solar activity is clearly bi-modal, implying the existence of distinct modes of activity.
and
The Sun is shown to operate in distinct modes – a main general mode, a Grand minimum mode corresponding to an inactive Sun, and a possible Grand maximum mode corresponding to an unusually active Sun.
The Sun is clearly bi-modal, as it is shown to possibly have three modes.
This appears to be as how a cat is bi-modal, as it can be sleeping, awake, and possibly very awake.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 6, 2014 at 9:26 pm
“The possible existence of a separate Grand maximum mode is also suggested, but the statistics is too low to reach a confident conclusion.”
“says it all. there is no modern grand maximum.”
That quote is taken from the abstract referring to a part of the paper [section 3] discussing whether or not solar activity is bimodal, a separate issue from the confidence in the reconstruction of relative levels of solar activity shown in Fig. 2 above. The full paper is here and states with 95% confidence levels that the modern Grand minimum was a rare or even unique event.
http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2014/02/aa23391-14.pdf
“Figure 2 shows the resulting mean series together with the
corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI). This reconstructed
solar activity displays a number of distinct features, in particular
well-defined Grand minima of solar activity, ca. 770 BC,
350 BC, 680 AD, 1050 AD, 1310 AD, 1470 AD, and 1680 AD
(cf. Table 1 in Usoskin et al. 2007). Despite uncertainties in
the directly observed sunspot numbers before 1848 (Svalgaard
2012; Leussu et al. 2013), remarkable agreement is found with
the decadal group sunspot numbers (Hoyt & Schatten 1998) that
were directly observed since 1610 AD (also shown), and indicates
that the modern Grand maximum (which occurred during
solar cycles 19–23, i.e., 1950–2009) was a rare or even unique
event, in both magnitude and duration, in the past three millennia.
Except for these extreme cases, our reconstruction otherwise
reveals that solar activity is well confined within a relatively narrow
range.”
Thus, whether or not the Sun is “bimodal” is beside the point. The paper states based upon the reconstruction shown in Fig 2 with 95% confidence levels that there was indeed a “rare or even unique” modern Grand Maximum.
“The possible existence of a separate Grand maximum mode is also suggested, but the statistics is too low to reach a confident conclusion“.
Meaning: The data don’t support it, but since this is our hypothesis, we must include it in the paper’s results anyway.
Kind of like in AR5: medium confidence that the ECS is likely [read “possibly”] between 1.5°C and 4.5°C [or almost any value].
Error in comment I just posted: Obviously meant to write “The full paper is here and states with 95% confidence levels that the modern Grand Maximum was a rare or even unique event.”
What bothers me is that the very end of the black line diverges significantly from the red line. While I believe there is evidence of two modes — a normal and a quiet mode — I don’t believe we have evidence for a “grand maximum” mode of the scale they describe. It is likely they used the older sunspot counts. That said, we DO seem to be in a rather quiet cycle.
The error Usoskin et al. commit is two-fold:
1) splicing the ‘instrumental’ record on to the end of the cosmic ray record, a la Mann’s hockey stick
2) assuming that the group sunspot number is correct, when it is not. There is a serious discontinuity of about 50% around 1885.
Here is what the curves should look like http://www.leif.org/research/Decadal-Directly-Observed-Sunspot-Numbers.png
The green curve shows the revised values. Also note the problem shown by the blue double-arrow.
Hockey Schtick says:
August 6, 2014 at 10:15 pm
“remarkable agreement is found with the decadal group sunspot numbers (Hoyt & Schatten 1998)”
It is the Hoyt & Schatten series [1998] that is incorrect.
When I look at where the Ap geomagnetic index is today and where the historical proxies have reconstructed it as being in the last 300 years, all I can say is…
Buy coal mining stocks!! Once people start freezing in 5 years, and the McKibben’s of the world chased off as fools, COAL is going to be so needed to save our butts.
What about the “blue Sun” of the late 500s? I recall that it was widely debated some years ago. It was commented on by various ancient historians from Europe to China: Flavius Cassiodorus wrote”The Sun…seems to have lost its wonted light, and appears of a bluish colour. We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigour of the Sun’s heat wasted into feebleness, and the phenomena which accompany an eclipse prolonged through almost a whole year. We have had a summer without heat. The crops have been chilled by north winds, [and] the rain is denied.”
errata to last: 3,000 years, not 300 years.
Hockey Schtick says: August 6, 2014 at 10:17 pm
“Obviously meant to write “The full paper is here and states with 95% confidence levels that the modern Grand Maximum was a rare or even unique event.””
Well, that version is certainly wrong. They didn’t attach 95% confidence to that statement.
Sadly, it looks like a hockey stick 🙁
Waiting to hear what Steve McIntyre says…
“Very High Energy Cosmic Rays: When high energy cosmic rays undergo collisions with atoms of the upper atmosphere, they produce a cascade of “secondary” particles that shower down through the atmosphere to the Earth’s surface. Secondary cosmic rays include pions (which quickly decay to produce muons, neutrinos and gamma rays), as well as electrons and positrons produced by muon decay and gamma ray interactions with atmospheric atoms. The number of particles reaching the Earth’s surface is related to the energy of the cosmic ray that struck the upper atmosphere. Cosmic rays with energies beyond 10^14 eV are studied with large “air shower” arrays of detectors distributed over many square kilometers that sample the particles produced. The frequency of air showers ranges from about 100 per m2 per year for energies >10^15 eV to only about 1 per km2 per century for energies beyond 10^20 eV. Cosmic ray interaction products such as neutrinos are also studied by large detectors placed deep in underground mines or under water.
Most secondary cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s surface are muons, with an average intensity of about 100 per m2 per second. Although thousands of cosmic rays pass through our bodies every minute, the resulting radiation levels are relatively low, corresponding, at sea level, to only a few percent of the natural background radiation. However, the greater intensity of cosmic rays in outer space is a potential radiation hazard for astronauts, especially when the Sun is active, and interplanetary space may suddenly be filled with solar energetic particles. Cosmic rays are also a hazard to electronic instrumentation in space; impacts of heavily-ionizing cosmic ray nuclei can cause computer memory bits to “flip” or small microcircuits to fail.”
The increase of neutrons (part of secondary radiation) since 1992.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=01&startmonth=01&startyear=1990&starttime=00%3A00&endday=05&endmonth=08&endyear=2014&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/personnel/dick/cos_encyc.html
Us see with their own eyes the state of cloud cover over the oceans.
http://www.sat24.com/image2.ashx?region=world&time=false&index=1
The current solar activity.
http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/img/hot-farside/gong_calib_farside.jpg
Looks like a hockey stick
OT, but :
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/18864-lawless-billionaire-club-behind-green-scam-senate-study-finds?utm_source=Newsletter&
Population control freak Bill Gates front & centre.
$360 billion + pa taxpayers money involved in “Green” scare.
Nick Stokes says:
August 6, 2014 at 10:32 pm
“Well, that version is certainly wrong. They didn’t attach 95% confidence to that statement.”
I am clarifying that Leif’s quote about inadequate confidence on whether the Sun is “bimodal” or not was not relating to the reconstruction in Fig. 2, which is shown with 95% confidence levels and supports the statements made by the authors in the same paragraph relating to Fig 2 that there was a “rare or even unique” modern Grand Maximum. Do you seriously believe the authors would make that claim without caveats of statistical confidence based upon a reconstruction with 95% confidence levels, while also pointing out that their claim that a Grand Maximum “mode” of “bimodal” behavior is not statistically significant? To do so IMHO would border upon academic fraud.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 6, 2014 at 10:21 pm
“The error Usoskin et al. commit is two-fold:…
2) assuming that the group sunspot number is correct, when it is not. There is a serious discontinuity of about 50% around 1885.”
Well, although he’s not here to defend his paper, apparently Dr. Usoskin disagrees that Hoyt & Schatten has been falsified, otherwise why would he compare his reconstruction to a paper you say was previously falsified? Fig 2 does show a remarkable correspondence between Hoyt & Schatten’s group sunspot numbers and the reconstructed values where they overlap, thus the two disparate data sources appear to corroborate each other. Upon what scientific basis do you claim that sunspot observations, with all the uncertainties inherent in human observations over the past 400 years are necessarily a better proxy for solar activity than a radiocarbon proxy?
From David Thomas Bronzich on August 6, 2014 at 10:28 pm:
Here is linked a 1999 San Jose Mercury News piece from 1999 for which the text is copied there. Even NASA gives the newspaper link here which is going 404. Checking the Wayback Machine, the earliest saves are going 302 (redirect) to an unwanted site. So you will have to accept the first link is the true original text, or not.
In Earth Battered Through History by Comets published Tuesday, August 17, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News, it talks of how an upcoming book “…describes a two-year-long winter that began in AD
535.” That’s when Flavius Cassiodorus wrote that, given elsewhere as specifically 536 AD.
But as noted elsewhere, Mount Vesuvius had an eruption in 536 AD. As these things go, there may have been venting beforehand or the exact year may be slightly off, etc.
Or there really could have been a double, comet impact and middling volcano eruption.
Either case, the description fits an aerosol event of some kind. The key is the mention of a lack of shadows at noon (midday high point), indicating diffuse light. Even if the Sun had gone briefly wonky, it’s still basically a point source of light, there still would have been shadows.
This is O/T but I would like someone from California to comment on this video or transcript from ABC 4 corners program. (Australia)
This is all about renewable energy but mostly about new solar technology and according to them everything is just wonderful in Brown’s California. I hope Anthony may have a chance to watch it and could someone tell us how sound your economy is at the moment and what is your comparative cost of electricity?
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2014/07/07/4038488.htm
Sun modes of operation are bi-modal all right.
To illustrated this take a closer look at this illustration
first image – sun changes its frequency of oscillations in blocs of about 100 years, periods change from about 10,5 to 11 years in each block alternatively.
middle image – sunspot number SSN usually presented as a dimensionless value, and that is fine as long as one doesn’t care what it is suppose to represent. It represents solar magnetic activity with a distinct and opposite magnetic polarity in each hemisphere, two do not cancel each other. Two distinct open flux magnetic entities are separated by the heliospheric current sheet (HCS), all the way from corona to the far reaches of the solar system.
An arbitrary polarity can be assigned, but it can not be ignored, this is particularly important if one considers solar activity on the earth’s weather and climate events.
Based on the observational evidence, NASA has come to recognise some distinct properties of even and odd cycles (see second part of this video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nVqWH5Qlg8Y#t=0
This is vehemently disputed by the ‘old school’ with intentions of freezing solar science to decade(s) old ‘theories’, now proved, as the NASA spokesman admitted, to be incorrect.
Richard Feynman had something to say about relationship of assumed ‘theory’ and observational evidence.
Without clear understanding of the sunspot cycles polarity in relation to the polarity of the Earth’s magnetic field, I doubt that science will be able at any time soon to disentangle the solar impact on our climate, but many may not accept this.
last image – This is a new concept, and may or may not be relevant. It is sunspot cycle polarity, i.e. even and odd cycle external phase relationship with/in the intrinsic ‘stable heliospheric magnetic field’, as distinct from the variable heliospheric magnetic field emanating from the sun.
This might be highly controversial, but I found direct evidence of it in the phase relationship between high latitudes (where two magnetic fields are the strongest) atmospheric pressure and surface temperatures.
Finally: I am of the view that it is pointless to try to explain solar behaviour or influence on the climate, unless science can understand basics (at least) of what has been observed and recorded during last 300 or so years.
Thank you for your attention, the comment is far longer than my usual contributions.
Who has has the right to define what is Grand Maximum ?? Has it ever been done ?? Where is the definition of what Grand maximum is ?? Just make it first , and discus this matter after that !! It will bee very interesting to see who will take right to define the fenomen 🙂
Have we ever seen Grand Minimum ?? Should we wait for another 10000 years to recognice : May bee this was the Grand maximum anyway 🙂 Pity that nobody of us , will ever know if this was it or not ! Seems that all are talking about Grand maximum or Minimum without knowing the real definition. Should that bee agreed first ?
You can read it here , but thats just one definition .
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/aa7704-07.pdf
Martin
Leif Svalgaard says: (August 6, 2014 at 10:21 pm) “The error Usoskin et al. commit is two-fold:
1) splicing the ‘instrumental’ record on to the end of the cosmic ray record, a la Mann’s hockey stick“.
Thanks, Leif, but I think there’s a bit more to be said:
(a) In Mann’s hockey stick it wasn’t made clear that the instrumental record had been spliced in, and it wasn’t made clear that two segments of proxy data that didn’t agree with the instrumental record had been removed. In this graph, the instrumental record is clearly identified, and while no proxy record has been removed (presumably), there is a clear divergence towards the end of the proxy record [crosspatch August 6, 2014 at 10:18 pm].
(b) But more importantly, the granularity of the proxy record is necessarily larger than that of the instrumental record. By ‘granularity’ I mean the individual time periods that can be satisfactorily distinguished within the record. So it is still not legitimate to show the two records together without a proper explanation that like is not being compared with like.
“What effect did the Grand maximum of solar activity that occurred between 1950 and 2009 have on Earth’s climate? ”
It’s difficult to see from thier overlayed graph exactly how far their reconstruction runs in date.
However, this idea of a “grand max” running as far a 2009 seems very odd. Peaks in SSN have been dropping since 1960 Claiming it ran to the belated solar minimum on 2009 does not seem justified. If 2009 was part of the “max” so was 1915 !!
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=1001
1950-1990 might pass.
Svalgaard’s attempts to redefine the record have not been accepted offically and he will surely pop by to say “there is no grand maximum” at some stage.
However, even with his corrections there is a striking resemblance between SST and SSN:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=981
I agree with Bob Weber that Svalgaard and many colleagues deserve a lot of credit for all the work they did in the past few years on reconstructing the sunspot record.
Now in their most recent paper http://www.leif.org/research/Revisiting-the-Sunspot-Number.pdf
we read on page 66/67 (my bold):
Now, except for the highest recorded cycle (19), the maxima of highest cycles of the past
centuries are essentially the same as the recent maxima of the late 20th century. We note that recent independent reconstructions of the Sun’s open magnetic field, based on the geomagnetic record, also show a very limited difference of the highest peak 11-year amplitudes occurring in the 19th and 20th centuries over the available 1840-2010 interval (see Figure 30 in Lockwood 2013). Therefore, the upward trend in solar activity levels between the 18th and 20th that was adopted in many past interpretations and models is now questioned, as well as the associated concept of an abnormally high “Grand Maximum” occurring in the second half of the 20th century.
However, although recent cycles do not reach unprecedented amplitudes anymore, the
repetition of five strong cycles over the last 60 years (cycles 17 to 22, with the exception of cycle 20) still marks a unique episode in the whole 400-year record. This unique character is also
illustrated when considering another sunspot byproduct, i.e. the number of spotless days over each
sunspot cycle minimum. As can be seen in Figure 64, this number is strongly anti-correlated with
the amplitude of the adjoining cycles (given by the reversed green curve).
Usoskin in his new paper wrote (from CO2 Science):
“the modern Grand maximum (which occurred during solar cycles 19-23, i.e., 1950-2009),” which they describe as “a rare or even unique event, in both magnitude and duration, in the past three millennia.”
So although Usoskin’s graph may be wrong according to Svalgaard, I think their views are closer than you might conclude from Svalgaard’s comments here.
Svalgaard in his paper talks about “a unique episode in the whole 400-year record” while Usoskin calls it “a rare or even unique event, in both magnitude and duration, in the past three millennia.”
Thanks Leif for showing Usoskin’s “corrected figure” (http://www.leif.org/research/Decadal-Directly-Observed-Sunspot-Numbers.png)
Dear good old Hockey Schtick”!
I know its a little silly, but thank you for doing a brilliant job in these comments! Keep it up!!
K.R. Frank
So one expert says we had a grand maxima, and one says we did not. But I would like to see Dr. Svalgaard discuss the above observation more. Whatever they want to call it, is the contention that the recent cycles not “normal” true or not. Let’s first establish what happened and at least try to agree on that. Then we can worry about nomenclature and effects.
No, no, the sun is too weak to affect climate. The GCMs tell us so, and they’ve never been wrong.
Bob Weber says “This was covered in Feb: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/22/usoskin-et-al-discover-a-new-class-of-sunspots/ .”
Willis’s post pretty much showed that the paper is junk science. It’s junk science whether or not we like the conclusions.
“the repetition of five strong cycles over the last 60 years (cycles 17 to 22, with the exception of cycle 20) still marks a unique episode in the whole 400-year record. This unique character is also illustrated when considering another sunspot byproduct, i.e. the number of spotless days over each sunspot cycle minimum.”
Indeed, and there’s another ‘sunspot byproduct’ with the unique character in this period – cycle frequency (cycles/century) or cycle length (years). Starting with the SC 15 (started in 1915):
——–SCL—f
SC15 10.0 10.0
SC16 10.1 9.9
SC17 10.4 9.6
SC18 10.2 9.8
SC19 10.5 9.5
SC20 11.7 8.5
SC21 10.3 9.7
SC22 9.7 10.3
Now, even without the exception of the longer (weaker) cycle 20, the average cycle frequency for cycles 15 to 22 is exceptionally high (9.7 cycles/century) and the average cycle length exceptionally low (10.4 years). With the exception of cycle 20 it’s even more exceptional – in average 9.8 cycles/century and 10.2 years. The average for cycles 1 to 23 is 9.2 cycles/century and 11.1 years.
@Kada,
[Mods: this is way off topic. If you feel the need to snip I’ll understand]
The links you had were fascinating reading; especially the regular collapses of
urban societies around the globe.
Unfortunately, Isaac Asimov beat them to that theory by almost 60 years in his short story Nightfall (full text: http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/TEXTS/Nightfall.htm).
Edited from the Wikipedia summary:
On Lagash, a planet with six suns which keep the whole planet continuously illuminated, total darkness is unknown. A group of scientists from a University begin to make a series of related discoveries: a psychologist researches the effects of prolonged exposure to darkness; an archaeologist finds evidence of multiple cyclical collapses of civilization which have occurred regularly about every 2000 years, and an astronomer has discovered irregularities in the orbit of Lagash around its primary sun.
vukcevic says:
August 7, 2014 at 2:13 am
Based on the observational evidence, NASA has come to recognise some distinct properties of even and odd cycles (see second part of this video link
There is no such difference between even and odd cycles. There is a difference in geomagnetic activity between cycles from maximum to maximum. This is a purely geometrical effect and is an effect felt by the Earth, not a property of the Sun, see the discussion in section 9 of http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf
In addition, it is wrong to say that ‘NASA’ has recognized something.
philjourdan says:
August 7, 2014 at 4:11 am
“the repetition of five strong cycles over the last 60 years (cycles 17 to 22, with the exception of cycle 20) still marks a unique episode in the whole 400-year record.”
So one expert says we had a grand maxima, and one says we did not. But I would like to see Dr. Svalgaard discuss the above observation more.
Every sequence of cycles is unique. The low cycle 20 divides the cycles from 17 to 23 into two pieces [17-19 and 21-23] none of which is particularly special: http://www.leif.org/reseach/New-Group-Numbers.png and the phrase ‘the repetition of five strong cycles’ is simply wrong as there are six cycles in that period [I have co-authors who have a hard time giving up some ingrained ideas].
@Leif Svalgaard – I appreciate the response.
http://www.leif.org/research/New-Group-Numbers.png
Isn’t the importance of this paper in the “bimodal” nature of the sun? Whether there is a grand maximum or not cannot be ruled out by this paper, but it cannot be supported either.
However, a “bimodal” sun is significant because all sorts of statistical analysis gives spurious results when applied to a bimodal distribution. The bimodal sun tells us that we should reject statistical conclusions about the sun that do not account for a bimodal distribution. Which likely means that many past papers about the sun are now in question.
vukcevic says:
August 7, 2014 at 2:13 am
Based on the observational evidence, NASA has come to recognise some distinct properties of even and odd cycles (see second part of this video link
More on their misunderstanding:
section 5 of http://www.leif.org/research/Semiannual-Comment.pdf and section 6.2 of http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimodal_distribution
Summary statistics
Bimodal distributions are a commonly used example of how summary statistics such as the mean, median, and standard deviation can be deceptive when used on an arbitrary distribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimodal_distribution
Occurrences in nature
Examples of variables with bimodal distributions include the time between eruptions of certain geysers, the color of galaxies, the size of worker weaver ants, the age of incidence of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the speed of inactivation of the drug isoniazid in US adults, the absolute magnitude of novae, and the circadian activity patterns of those crepuscular animals that are active both in morning and evening twilight. In fishery science multimodal length distributions reflect the different year classes and can thus be used for age distribution- and growth estimates of the fish population.[4] Sediments are usually distributed in a bimodal fashion.
ferdberple says:
August 7, 2014 at 6:40 am
However, a “bimodal” sun is significant because all sorts of statistical analysis gives spurious results when applied to a bimodal distribution.
In addition, it seems to me that the notion of a bimodal sun is not supported by the data. There is a continuum of cycle sizes from small to large. What Usoskin et al. probably mean is simply that Grand Minima are special, somehow. And we slide smoothly into and crawl smoothly out of a Grand Minimum, not abruptly [Vaquero et al.].
How is ozone sensitive to ionizing radiation? Sufficient seen a huge increase in 14CO2 in the 60’s. Nuclear Explosion in the stratosphere can destroy a tremendous amount of ozone by producing 14C with nitrogen. This isotope is very active and immediately react with oxygen.
http://oi60.tinypic.com/33vf57p.jpg
http://epic.awi.de/20620/1/Lev2009b.pdf
Again, Greg Goodman’s comments seem apropos. To amplify:
* There seems to be little disagreement that the sun is at least bimodal, with a phase/state where surface sunspots are heavily suppressed, solar magnetic activity in general is greatly reduced, and the length of the solar cycle extended, exemplified by e.g the Maunder minimum. It seem harmless, if a bit grandiose, to label these low activity periods “grand minima”. There is also at the very least a “normal” phase of solar activity, with moderate numbers of sunspots, a shorter solar cycle, and substantial solar magnetic activity.
* What is at double issue is whether or not there is sufficient organization to consider the peak regions of solar activity, which might be characterized in several ways, as a third “mode”, and to recognize the distinct organization of that activity and its “unusually high” level of large numbers of sunspots, the shortest observed cycles, and very substantial solar magnetic activity as “grand maxima”. After all, if we assume that solar activity is distributed in almost any way you like between “grand” minima and some maximum level and varies completely randomly/chaotically without the slightest hint of actual internal reorganization beyond that associated with chaotic dynamics at some level, we can always draw lines at corresponding to the top 10% and bottom 10%, call anything that falls into this 10% “unusual” (which by definition it is!) and label them “grand” maxima and minima. By the same token rolling double sixes or a six and a five on a pair of dice could be labelled a “grand maximum” and snake eyes or an acey-deucey could be labelled a “grand minimum”.
* As I understand it, there is some reason to think that unusually low solar maxima are in some way internally structurally distinct from its normal operation, although I could of course be wrong, not really my field. Hence the assertion of bimodality, although I’ve never heard an explicit detailing of the differences in structure associated with internal dynamics sufficiently compelling to be called a separate “mode”. The greatest evidence lacking this is autocorrelation — unusually low solar maxima appear to come in packs. I think Lief would even agree, here, since he has been predicting lowered solar activity over an extended series of cycles, presumably on the basis of an understanding of internal organization with greater temporal persistence than a single cycle.
* Ushokin’s work (as well as some evidence, e.g. length of solar cycle) strongly suggests that “unusually high” solar maxima (note the lack of the term “grand”) also come in “packs”. If I understand Lief’s objections to applying the term “grand” to these collections of maxima, they are twofold: first, and most important, there is nothing that differentiates the solar state structurally during these periods from the “normal” operation of the sun where there are always a mix of slightly stronger and slightly weaker cycles, with a limited (say 1-2 cycle) autocorrelation and more or less random trends. (Again, I wonder to what extent the same is true of “grand” minima, but…); second, the relative magnitude of the 20 century peaks is exaggerated compared to the overall record and, while “high”, is high only in the sense of rolling a few sets of double sixes in a row, not high in the sense of rolling double sevens on normally six-sided dice (where Maunder-type minima could be characterized as rolling double zeros on six-sided dice, perhaps — having the dice land perfectly on a corner and refuse to fall).
Put this way, there might be some possibility of coming to agreement. The late 20th century was a period of high solar activity compared to our best guess of a “mean level” of normal solar activity. The peaks were not necessarily the highest in the record, but there was a stretch of several cycles in a temporally correlated group of higher than mean activity. Such stretches are to be expected even if the sun literally rolls dice to determine the strength and length of the next cycle, so this is insufficient evidence that this stretch was a “mode”, and reasonable scientists can agree to disagree about whether or not the evidence suggests that their magnitude per se was extraordinary, or merely statistically unlikely but not unexpected in a “random” (chaotic) system. Over time, perhaps they’ll come to a consensus. Or not. Given that they are trying to reconstruct and repair past data — a process fraught with error and opportunities for bias to subtly enter the result — at the very least, the reconstruction should have greatly amplified error bars that probably (should!) leave substantial room for doubt and disagreement. There is less room for formal disagreement on the interpretation of proxy results, provided that they are uniformly and correctly presented across the entire record without high frequency/low frequency mixing, and provided (as always) that they are openly and frankly obtained and subjected to proper scientific doubt and error analysis.
If we do this, we can stop worrying about whether or not a “grand” maxima caused 20th century warming, whether a series of comparatively high (but not that unusual individually) maxima caused 20th century warming, whether or not the Maunder minimum caused the LIA, etc, and simply sit here, with popcorn, and wait and see what happens if the Sun decides to — as several people I have no reason to doubt (or particularly strongly believe) have asserted it will — pop out a series of extremely low/long solar cycles. We don’t even need to wonder whether or not this series should be called a “grand” minimum — it is what it is. We don’t need to assert that this will definitely affect climate because we have no modern, trustworthy, observational evidence to prove the argument one way or the other. We lack working models for the climate even when we use enormous computers to try to build them. Do people really think that you can outguess these computers when the computers are failing? Your guesses are all built on the linearization fallacy — that in a complex, chaotic, nonlinear system you can examine an apparent linear correlation (even one with a physical argument to support it!) and extrapolate it.
If the climate had any simple linear correlate that worked to explain things like the MWP, the LIA, the modern warm period, the “pause”, etc, we would long ago have found it, to the extent that we can even trust the high-error-bar proxy-based assessments of probable past climate outside of the modern (post satellite) instrumental record. It doesn’t. Anybody who asserts that they “know” what the climate is going to do because (fill in the blank with your favorite linearized fantasy) is full of ca-ca. Cool? Maybe. Warm? Quite possibly. Stay the same (for at least a while)? Sure, why not.
We can’t even predict the local time evolution of a single supposed El Nino six months in advance after it has apparently started (as the ENSO meter sits pegged on zero once again). ENSO empirically affects the climate — or at least, the autocorrelated weather for an extended period. How can we predict the climate when we lack a theory that can predict ENSO, do not properly understand the factors that govern it, and even if we did do not have the data needed, at the spatiotemporal granularity required, to predict it given a perfect model?
rgb
Could it be that Gleissberg’s work on the supposed 100 year cycle is underpinning this tenacious refusal to address the issues with solar data, even in the face of well documented reasons for the issues and reasonable corrections? Belief trumps data. And sometimes especially so in scientific circles. It is hard to say no to the “fathers” of any particular scientific field of study.
Pamela Gray says:
August 7, 2014 at 7:37 am
even in the face of well documented reasons for the issues and reasonable corrections? Belief trumps data.
I think that clinging to the Modern Grand Maximum is motivated by an attempt to explain ‘global warming’ as a solar effect. It is inconvenient if the Grand Modern Maximum turns out not to be all that Grand.
rgb, you said, “If we do this, we can stop worrying about whether or not a “grand” maxima caused 20th century warming, whether a series of comparatively high (but not that unusual individually) maxima caused 20th century warming, whether or not the Maunder minimum caused the LIA, etc, and simply sit here, with popcorn, and wait and see what happens if the Sun decides to…”
I disagree. We can use equatorial band SST data to test this. We can put the change in TSI to a calculation (already done) for solar insolation (already done), and can calculate any change in SST heating from this energy difference under clear sky conditions (already done) into the only place on Earth it can be stored (oceans), and then determine whether or not this change in SST shows up (or indeed can show up) in the noisy data.
Here is the null hypothesis: The SST of the critical volume (top few hundred meters, see link) of equatorial band ocean, impacted by the change in insolation under clear sky conditions due to a lack of sunspots causing a change in TSI, will not change.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDMQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Foptics.marine.usf.edu%2Freferences%2FLee_UV_penetration_JGR2013.pdf&ei=vZLjU4PiFMz5yQT7yoKIAg&usg=AFQjCNGwHlKUxsinyOQu3aQUf7JvBUndQg&bvm=bv.72676100,d.aWw
This commentary below makes so much sense . Nevertheless all of the data clearly shows solar activity and especially magnetic activity was very strong and increasing through out the last century.
The data post 2005 shows clearly the sun has changed from a very active state to a very quiet state. AP index a very good measure of this.
Now we have to see how deep this prolonged solar minimum gets and what impacts it has on the climate.
I expect a deep prolonged solar minimum will continue and it will have significant climatic effects.
Past history supports my thoughts. Look at the Dalton and Maunder Minimum and global temperature response.
If we do this, we can stop worrying about whether or not a “grand” maxima caused 20th century warming, whether a series of comparatively high (but not that unusual individually) maxima caused 20th century warming, whether or not the Maunder minimum caused the LIA, etc, and simply sit here, with popcorn, and wait and see what happens if the Sun decides to — as several people I have no reason to doubt (or particularly strongly believe) have asserted it will — pop out a series of extremely low/long solar cycles. We don’t even need to wonder whether or not this series should be called a “grand” minimum — it is what it is.
rgbatduke says:
August 7, 2014 at 7:23 am
because we have no modern, trustworthy, observational evidence to prove the argument one way or the other
When it comes to the Sun we actually do have trustworthy evidence, namely that provided by that great measuring device: the Earth itself: http://www.leif.org/research/What-Geomagnetism-can-Tell-Us-about-the-Solar-Cycle.pdf
Leif, do you then also think the present author is so inclined to believe in a grand maximum causing global warming?
For clarification, we can calculate the change in SST, but under present measuring systems, we would not see the change in the data set as it is currently obtained.
As one can see by looking objectively at the historical climate data all increasing global temperature trends have been associated with prolonged maximum solar activity . While all decreasing global temperature trends have been associated with prolonged quiet solar activity.
This is due not only to primary solar effects but secondary solar effects.
I go by the data and nothing else and the data clearly supports what I have been posting.
Pamela Gray says:
August 7, 2014 at 7:59 am
Leif, do you then also think the present author is so inclined to believe in a grand maximum causing global warming?
It is good for funding if you can tie your research to the climate debate…
When it comes to the Sun we actually do have trustworthy evidence, namely that provided by that great measuring device: the Earth itself.
My commentary
And the data from the earth shows that it is clearly linked to solar activity. Again look at the historical global temperature data versus solar data.
This current prolonged solar minimum will prove this fact once and for all. We will know before this decade is out.
THE CRITERIA
Solar Flux avg. sub 90
Solar Wind avg. sub 350 km/sec
AP index avg. sub 5.0
Cosmic ray counts north of 6500 counts per minute
Total Solar Irradiance off .15% or more
EUV light average 0-105 nm sub 100 units (or off 100% or more) and longer UV light emissions around 300 nm off by several percent.
IMF around 4.0 nt or lower.
The above solar parameter averages following several years of sub solar activity in general which commenced in year 2005..
IF , these average solar parameters are the rule going forward for the remainder of this decade expect global average temperatures to fall by -.5C, with the largest global temperature declines occurring over the high latitudes of N.H. land areas.
The decline in temperatures should begin to take place within six months after the ending of the maximum of solar cycle 24.
NOTE 1- What mainstream science is missing in my opinion is two fold, in that solar variability is greater than thought, and that the climate system of the earth is more sensitive to that solar variability.
NOTE 2
This criteria was reached during the brief but sever lull form 2008-2010 for the most part.
The duration wiLl be longer the next time around.
That the 20th century was the time of a long term solar maximum is further demonstrated by Lockwood et al 2014. Fig 6 at
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JA019973/pdf )
Lockwood et al 2014 in press say in their abstract: http://www.eiscat.rl.ac.uk/Members/mike/publications/pdfs/2009/Lockwood_ApJ_openflux_F1.pdf
“Cosmogenic isotope data reveal that this constitutes a grand maximum of solar
activity which began in 1920, using the definition that such grand maxima are when
25-year averages of the heliospheric modulation potential exceeds 600 MV.
Extrapolating the linear declines seen in all three parameters since 1985, yields
predictions that the grand maximum will end in the years 2013, 2014, or 2027 using VSW, FS, or B respectively”.
My own view ,based on the Ap index Fig 13 (see link below0 and the Oulu neutron count – Fig 14( Link below) is that the solar activity long term maximum peaked in about 1991.with the sharp decline beginning about 2005 – 6.
For further references and discussion on all this, with particular regard to the 970 year quasi- periodicity in the temperature record as a result of changes in solar activity see the latest post
at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com.
Forecasts of the coming cooling based on this millennial quasi-periodicity are also presented there.
To forestall useless discussion I’m quite happy to agree to differ with Leif in this matter and defer to Lockwood and Usoskin.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/abs/399437a0.html
When solar activity is still low, the amount of ozone will be significantly reduced due to a decrease of UV radiation and increase of galactic radiation.
Simultaneously will increase significantly Cloudiness and increase pressure over the polar circles. Climate change will be drastic.
The above paper just like this article provides more conclusive evidence of the strength of solar activity last century which correlates to a global temperature increase.
Solar activity remaining strong until year 2005.
Ren and this is what is happening as we speak. Look at the atmospheric circulation changes post 2005.
According to Usoskin et al. (2014), the Sun “shows strong variability in its magnetic activity, from Grand minima to Grand maxima, but the nature of the variability is not fully understood, mostly because of the insufficient length of the directly observed solar activity records and of uncertainties
related to long-term reconstructions.” Now, however, in an attempt to overcome such uncertainties, in a Letter to the Editor published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Usoskin et al. “present the first fully adjustment-free physical reconstruction of solar activity” covering the past 3,000 years, which record allowed them “to study different modes of solar activity at an unprecedented level of detail.”
MY COMMNETARY
Exactly and this is from the article just posted today.
What effect did the Grand maximum of solar activity that occurred between 1950 and 2009 have on Earth’s climate? As a “unique” and “rare” event in terms of both magnitude and duration, one would think a lot more time and effort would be spent by the IPCC and others in answering that question. Instead, IPCC scientists have conducted relatively few studies of the Sun’s influence on modern warming, assuming that the temperature influence of this rare and unique Grand maximum of solar activity, which has occurred only once in the past 3,000 years, is far inferior to the radiative power provided by the rising CO2 concentration of the Earth’s atmosphere.
So maximum solar activity and maximum CO2 concentration approximately coincide, and neither one of them seems to be associated with past epochs of warming: does anyone see the Minoan warm period, Roman warm period or Medieval warm period in that graph? How about the post RWP, “Wasteland” epoch?
Dr. Brown
Thanks for the comments and a new perspective.
Prompted by your comment referring inconsistency of obvious internal organisation I had another look at the sunspots polarity diagram (my earlier comment related to sunspot polarity considerations), it looks as some internal organisation does exist but only in the odd numbered cycles, as shown in the
modified illustration
while no such pattern is obvious among even cycles.
‘Organisation’ of groups of 4 rising cycles persisted since 1700 all the way to 1960, but appears to reverse after cycle19 into group of falling cycles.
If above is taken as valid then:
– SC19 was a pivotal cycle if ‘bi-modal’ activity existed
– The odd cycles are (possibly, very speculative this) result of an external, say astronomic synchronisation, while the even cycles are under influence of the internal ‘more chaotic’ solar cycling process.
The above ‘internal organisation’ would also imply:
– SC25 (odd cycle, with presumed max around yr 2025), would be indeed low
– SC26 (even cycle, max ~ yr 2035), uncertain
– SC27 (odd cycle, max mid 2040s) with high Rmax ~150.
How drastic Ren? I’m sitting here waiting out the rain again. It just rains and rains and rains and rains. And the mobi-ticks just get bigger and bigger and bigger…
Ever once in a while you hear a crack, creak and thump as a 2012 drought killed tree falls onto the ground.
rgb says “We don’t need to assert that this will definitely affect climate because we have no modern, trustworthy, observational evidence to prove the argument one way or the other. We lack working models for the climate even when we use enormous computers to try to build them.”
Just this once I have to differ with rgb: we do have the evidence for solar influence over climate.
Here’s a clue: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/1957-extreme-heat-drought-melt-thunderstorms-at-the-north-pole/ when, during the highest solar cycle ever recorded, the sun’s energy roasted the northern polar region.
The secret to understanding the sun’s influence on climate and it’s cause of global warming is hidden in this graph: http://climate4you.com/images/SunspotsMonthlySIDC%20and%20HadSST3%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1960%20WithSunspotPeriodNumber.gif
The answer to this mystery is being written up and will be posted as soon as I can finish writing it, and the sunspot reconstruction isn’t involved, and whether there was or wasn’t a “grand” solar maximum isn’t involved either, as the word “grand” adds nothing to ‘just the facts’.
I do agree with rgb in that there really is nothing to worry about. He’s right, it is what it is. It has just not been properly understood in the context of solar energy accumulation in the world ocean.
What was done
Without the whole paper, this is impossible to evaluate.
Matthew R Marler says:
August 7, 2014 at 8:47 am
I do. Nothing in the SSN chart is against those warm & cold phases. SSN isn’t the only parameter. The UV component of TSI also counts, as do a variety of modulating factors.
The cold periods show up more starkly as Minima & Grand Minima in the SSN graph than the warm periods, which aren’t necessarily associated with Grand Maxima, just Maxima & prolonged intervals of elevated numbers.
Dr Norman Page says:
August 7, 2014 at 8:12 am
Lockwood et al 2014 in press say in their abstract: http://www.eiscat.rl.ac.uk/Members/mike/publications/pdfs/2009/Lockwood_ApJ_openflux_F1.pdf
From 2009 and not 2014…
And your post is a good example of confirmation bias.
Leif Svalgaard: In addition, it seems to me that the notion of a bimodal sun is not supported by the data. There is a continuum of cycle sizes from small to large. What Usoskin et al. probably mean is simply that Grand Minima are special, somehow. And we slide smoothly into and crawl smoothly out of a Grand Minimum, not abruptly [Vaquero et al.].
Yes.
Sometimes the solar activity is way above average, sometimes its below average, and mostly it’s within a standard deviation of average. You can’t tell anything from the graph, but perhaps the random variation has heavier tails than a Gaussian distribution.
Another possibly fruitful field of climate studies derailed by the CO2 Express is the question of tides on the sun raised by the planets & the possible effect thereof on SSN:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1927PASP…39..228L
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1968.tb00381.x/pdf
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11207-013-0288-6#page-1
Leif Svalgaard: http://www.leif.org/research/What-Geomagnetism-can-Tell-Us-about-the-Solar-Cycle.pdf
Thank you for the link.
vukcevic says:
August 7, 2014 at 8:48 am
Prompted by your comment referring inconsistency of obvious internal organisation I had another look at the sunspots polarity diagram (my earlier comment related to sunspot polarity considerations), it looks as some internal organisation does exist but only in the odd numbered cycles
There is no evidence or reason for this. As usual, you are peddling pseudo-science.
Ilya responds to Leif on Finnish neutron monitor on WUWT:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/ilya-usoskin-vs-leif-svalgaard-oulu-neutron-monitor-data-quality/
Milo, solar tides have been discussed on this blog in the past. Its magnitude is known as well as its affects on Earth.
Went looking for a graph showing the large annual TSI variance that was mentioned somewhat recently, searched for “leif annual TSI variability” and found:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/30/svalgaard-solar-theory/
Last two paragraphs (some odd non-displaying characters showed up and were replaced with hopefully-correct punctuation, I’m sure the author will correct me):
Nearly seven years later, still true and still on track. Thus doing much better than the climate models.
Pamela Gray says:
August 7, 2014 at 9:32 am
I know they have, but my point is that it offers an explanation for the observed minima & maxima. No doubt internal solar fluctuations are also important.
On whatever climatic time scale you chose, from tens to billions of years, solar system & galactic factors influence change here on earth & the other planets, which in turn affect the sun.
milodonharlani says:
August 7, 2014 at 9:30 am
Ilya responds to Leif on Finnish neutron monitor on WUWT:
Yes, he is very sensitive about that. The fact is that at some stations [e.g. his at Oulu] the cosmic ray flux has been increasing, at some [e.g. at Thule, Greenland] there has been no long-term trend, and at some [e.g. South Pole] the flux has been decreasing. This IMHO means that we cannot simply blame the sun for all of these contradictory results. Some instrumental, atmospheric, or otherwise not-understood effect is at play.
Leif Svalgaard says: August 7, 2014 at 9:27 am
vukcevic says:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/06/recent-paper-finds-recent-solar-grand-maximum-was-a-rare-or-even-unique-event-in-3000-years/#comment-1703735
(it looks as some internal organisation does exist but only in the odd numbered cycles)
There is no evidence or reason for this. As usual, you are peddling pseudo-science.
……….
Evidence of ‘internal organisation’ (using term introduced by Dr. Brown) plainly does exist within odd numbered cycle as shown in the link (my comment above)
A correct and more informative statement would have been:
There is no reason for this, that I (i.e. Dr. Svalgaard solar scientist) know of, therefore until such reason is found it can’t be accepted as a valid science.
Milo, you are walking way out into unsupported random speculation. So what is your point? How does Earth and other planets affect the sun? And does this speculation have anything at all to do with Earth’s temperature trends?
Dr Norman Page: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JA019973/pdf )
There does not seem to be any association with Earth climate: the state estimates for the Early 20th and early 21st centuries are similar.
“Steven Mosher says:
“there is no modern maximum.”
Sounds like denial to me. So just what should we call it? A hockey stick?
###################################
1. I have read everything that Leif has posted on his research
2. he went back to the ‘raw’ observer reports.
3. He reworked the sunspot series using a clear open methodology.
4. He TESTED his approach by doing a blind study.
5. He validated his reconstruction by comparing other measures.
6. He is working openly with others in the field.
So I am faced with this choice.
A) DO HIS WORK OVER and find his error
B) Accept his conclusions as the best explanation.
I choose B.
Now, I could attack him personally. I could accuse him of “changing the past”. I could refuse to look at his work because it destroys my cherished notions. I dont do those things.
I read his work. I asked the question? do I see any place where he might have made a mistake?
No. Am I willing to REDO the work in the hopes that I might find something? no.
I look at the work of those he challenges. His work is more open, more comprehensive.
I think I am justified in accepting his work as the best. Could it be wrong? sure.
But as it stands its the best work on the problem I have seen.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) :
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/30/svalgaard-solar-theory/
good find.
Pamela Gray says:
August 7, 2014 at 9:48 am
It’s not speculation. It’s scientific investigation, dating back at least to the 1920s, as shown by my links from three decades in two centuries.
To answer your other question, yes, solar & cosmic influences are strongly correlated with climatic change & well supported explanatory mechanisms have been proposed & are being investigated further by real scientists, not CACA spewing charlatans.
vukcevic says:
August 7, 2014 at 9:46 am
A correct and more informative statement would have been:
There is no reason for this, that I (i.e. Dr. Svalgaard solar scientist) know of,
More importantly, there is no evidence for it.
milodonharlani says:
August 7, 2014 at 10:05 am
………..
Hi don harlani
Not knowing what word ‘CACA’ meant, I entered it in the ‘google translate’ and since it was already preset for French it came with:
Definitions of caca : noun Excrément
Translations of caca : noun pooh
Is it what you actually meant ?
Steven Mosher says:
August 7, 2014 at 9:53 am
______________
Well said and I agree.
The Warmists have told us it is only a coincidence that the warming in the last 50 years correlates with the most intensity series of solar magnetic cycles in the last 3000 years. We have been told by some that the solar magnetic cycle was not highly active in the last 50 years, we have been told that past warming and cooling planetary cycles did not happen and/or did not correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes, we have been told that the solar magnetic cycle is not heading into a weird Maunder minimum, and regardless of what is currently happening to the sun, we have been told that the weird Maunder minimum will not affect planetary cloud cover and will not affect planetary temperature.
It appears we will by observations have a chance to determine if planetary cloud cover is directly and indirectly modulate by solar magnetic cycle changes and by changes to the orientation and intensity of the geomagnetic field.
It will be interesting to see what the public and general scientific community reaction will be to significant and rapid planetary cooling. How quickly will the scientific community and the politicians abandon the Warmists and the Warmists’ ideology?
P.S. The geomagnetic field intensity for some unexplained reason suddenly starting in 1990s started to decline at 5% per decade and the geomagnetic north magnetic pole drift velocity suddenly increased by a factor of 10.
William: Swarm is the name of a set of three specialized satellites that were designed and launched by the European space agency, November, 2013 to try to understand why the geomagnetic field is abruptly changing. The following is a news release that discusses the first Swarm data. The Swarm data indicates as noted the geomagnetic field intensity is for unexplained reasons declining ten time faster at 5%/decade.
http://news.yahoo.com/earths-magnetic-field-weakening-10-times-faster-now-121247349.html
While changes in magnetic field strength are part of this normal flipping cycle, data from Swarm) have shown the field is starting to weaken faster than in the past. Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner.
What Caused Recent Acceleration of the North Magnetic Pole Drift?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010EO510001/pdf
The north magnetic pole (NMP) is the point at the Earth’s surface where the geomagnetic field is directed vertically downward. It drifts in time as a result of core convection, which sustains the Earth’s main magnetic field through the geodynamo process. During the 1990s the NMP drift speed suddenly increased from 15 kilometers per year at the start of the decade to 55 kilometers per year by the decade’s end. This acceleration was all the more surprising given that the NMP drift speed had remained less than 15 kilometers per year over the previous 150 years of observation. Why did NMP drift accelerate in the 1990s? (William: Interesting question. )
The ‘no Grand Modern Maximum’ of course also invalidates Evans’ ‘theory’
http://www.leif.org/resarch/SSN-HMF-TSI-Evans.png
Steven Mosher says:
August 7, 2014 at 9:53 am
…….
Agree, if a correction is required ( I have no reason to believe one way or the other) Dr. Svalgaard has methodically approached and pursued it, and probably is the best what anyone will get.
The corrections are not particularly radical, but leaving that aside, as far as the climate factor is concerned, if there is a link, than (IMO or better IMHO?) the phase of cycles in relation to the decadal changes of the Earth magnetic field is the decisive factor.
William Astley says:
August 7, 2014 at 10:28 am
The north magnetic pole (NMP) is the point at the Earth’s surface where the geomagnetic field is directed vertically downward. It drifts in time as a result of …
Where the northern magnetic pole [it is actually a south magnetic pole] is is pretty much irrelevant as its precise location at the surface is determined by rapidly changing multipoles. What is relevant is where the pole is seen from the solar wind and that is quite a different matter as basically only the dipole remains at great distances, see e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/eost11139-magnetic-poles.pdf
vukcevic says:
August 7, 2014 at 10:38 am
if there is a link, than (IMO or better IMHO?) the phase of cycles in relation to the decadal changes of the Earth magnetic field is the decisive factor.
There is no evidence for that.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 10:30 am
The ‘no Grand Modern Maximum’ of course also invalidates Evans’ ‘theory’
http://www.leif.org/research/SSN-HMF-TSI-Evans.png
@ vukcevic on August 7, 2014 at 10:19 am:
“CACA” at other threads came to mean “Catastrophic Alarming Climate Activity” or somesuch.
“To answer your other question, yes, solar & cosmic influences are strongly correlated with climatic change ”
nope.
vukcevic says:
August 7, 2014 at 10:19 am
It’s a play on the Spanish word for excrement, commonly used in US English.
It stands for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism. Same first two words in CAGW or three in CACC.
re: the Glessberg Cycle
In another thread we were discussing the Gleissberg Cycle. I don’t consider it a cycle in the same since as the 11 and 22 year cycles. Leif, now that a corrected reconstruction has been proposed in the literature, what does that reconstruction have to say about the Gleissberg observation?
Pamela Gray says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:12 am
now that a corrected reconstruction has been proposed in the literature, what does that reconstruction have to say about the Gleissberg observation?
There has been a ~100 yr variation of the size of sunspot cycles for the past 300 years, but it is doubtful that that represents a real and true ‘cycle’. Probably not. The ‘standard’ Gleissberg cycle is 80 years, or 88, or 90, or…
Ed Martin sorry.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/08/08/1500Z/wind/isobaric/850hPa/overlay=total_cloud_water/orthographic=-95.39,33.65,1925
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:17 am
Pamela Gray says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:12 am
Joan Feynman (sister of Mosher’s bête noire Richard) just published on the Gleissberg Cycle. She’s OK with 90-100 years:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JA019478/abstract
The Centennial Gleissberg Cycle and its Association with Extended Minima†
J. Feynman* and A. Ruzmaikin
Abstract
The recent extended minimum of solar and geomagnetic variability (XSM) mirrors the XSMs in the 19th and 20th centuries: 1810–1830 and 1900–1910. Such extended minima also were evident in aurorae reported from 450 AD to 1450 AD. This paper argues that these minima are consistent with minima of the Centennial Gleissberg Cycles (CGC), a 90–100 year variation observed on the Sun, in the solar wind, at the Earth and throughout the Heliosphere. The occurrence of the recent XSM is consistent with the existence of the CGC as a quasi-periodic variation of the solar dynamo. Evidence of CGC’s is provided by the multi-century sunspot record, by the almost 150-year record of indexes of geomagnetic activity (1868-present), by 1,000 years of observations of aurorae (from 450 to 1450 AD) and millennial records of radionuclides in ice cores. The aa index of geomagnetic activity carries information about the two components of the solar magnetic field (toroidal and poloidal), one driven by flares and CMEs (related to the toroidal field) the other driven by co-rotating interaction regions in the solar wind (related to the poloidal field). These two components systematically vary in their intensity and relative phase giving us information about centennial changes of the sources of solar dynamo during the recent CGC over the last century. The dipole and quadrupole modes of the solar magnetic field changed in relative amplitude and phase; the quadrupole mode became more important as the XSM was approached. Some implications for the solar dynamo theory are discussed.
How dare Feynman rely on history books for data from AD 450 to 1450!
“Steven Mosher says:
August 6, 2014 at 9:00 pm
“anxiously awaiting Dr. Svalgaard’s comments.”
there is no modern maximum.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 6, 2014 at 9:26 pm
The possible existence of a separate Grand maximum mode is also suggested, but the statistics is too low to reach a confident conclusion.
says it all. there is no modern grand maximum. ”
Tell me, which way do I kneel? Do I kneel to the east, west, south, north from sw US? Really, I need to know where you are since only God can say “there is no modern grand maximum” since only God has infinite knowledge. REAL scientists would say “I see no evidence that supports a modern grand maximum in this,” But you two flatly deny the possibility completely, thus raising yourselves to deity. The only thing I know for a certainty is that 1+1=2, well, most of the time but depending on circumstances, 1+1 can equal 3, 4, 5, or even 10 if they create octuplets, perhaps even more!
IMO, Gleissberg Cycles approximate 99 years = (22 x 4) + 11. But solar cycles only average about 11 & 22 years. The variation is enough to get up around 90 without adding another half cycle.
sturgishooper says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:31 am
Joan Feynman (sister of Mosher’s bête noire Richard) just published on the Gleissberg Cycle. She’s OK with 90-100 years:
“The recent extended minimum of solar and geomagnetic variability (XSM) mirrors the XSMs in the 19th and 20th centuries: 1810–1830 and 1900–1910. “
She is stretching it a bit. Earlier she had argued for a strict 88-yr cycle, so she tries to go low. The Dalton Minimum was not 1810-1830, but rather 1800-1820 and from 1810 to ~2025 is 2*108 years which she would not be so OK with.
Tom O says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:34 am
only God can say “there is no modern grand maximum” since only God has infinite knowledge.
For most things one does not need infinite knowledge. E.g. I know that there were no big earthquake in San Francisco yesterday.
The CO2 Science site’s article on Usoskin et al. (2014) published in the journal ‘Astronomy and Astrophysics’ said,
{all bold emphasis mine – JMW}
= = = = = = =
I do not think it is unfortunate at all. One piece of applied reasoning at a time is acceptable and actually makes the dialog intellectually digestible. The dialog on the climate impact of solar will surely follow with other papers after this solar focus only effort by Usoskin et al. (2014) published in the journal ‘Astronomy and Astrophysics’.
It looks tom me like Solar Science has a strong and viable dialog going here that I think it is the best way trust in science is achieved in our modern culture.
John
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 10:10 am and August 7, 2014 at 10:41 am
There is no evidence for that. and There is no evidence for that.
There is no evidence that you looked at the evidence.
Both of us could learn from what an erudite American on one occasion said:
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
“REAL scientists would say “I see no evidence that supports a modern grand maximum in this,” But you two flatly deny the possibility completely, thus raising yourselves to deity. The only thing I know for a certainty is that 1+1=2, well, most of the time but depending on circumstances, 1+1 can equal 3, 4, 5, or even 10 if they create octuplets, perhaps even more!”
Question: do you know for a certainty that “REAL scientists would say “I see no evidence that supports a modern grand maximum in this,”
To answer your question. there is no modern maximum. if you ask me what I mean by that i will explain that the best evidence we have suggests that there is no maximum.
rgbatduke: Your guesses are all built on the linearization fallacy — that in a complex, chaotic, nonlinear system you can examine an apparent linear correlation (even one with a physical argument to support it!) and extrapolate it.”
This obsession with fitting linear “trends” to everything that is not at all linear in its behaviour is one of the fundamental problems of climatology.
To a large extent it seems have it’s origin in an undeclared assumption that there is an underlying “global warming” trend in everything and the rest is just climatic “noise” that can be averaged out.
There is barely a graph ever published that does not have straight line driven through it.
TLS is a good example.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=902
Just look at the data end it is clear that there are two step changes and no slope. However, just a few days ago there was a new paper which fitted two trends, one for the above period, and concluded accellerated AGW.
It seems much of climate science is a one trick pony, based on clicking the “fit trend” button in Excel.
John Whitman says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:49 am
As a “unique” and “rare” event in terms of both magnitude and duration, one would think a lot more time and effort would be spent by the IPCC and others in answering that question.
As there very likely wasn’t any Grand Maximum, it would seem to me that no more time and effort need be expended.
Solar Science has a strong and viable dialog going here
More like a desperate rearguard action, by a dwindling [but vocal] minority trying to protect their funding.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:42 am
Different workers come up with different dates for the Dalton. Recent estimates are1790-1830 and 1796-1820. The troughs come in around 1808-10, as per you.
But why use AD 2025? She and her co-author think it’s happening again right now, about 100 years after 1910 and 200 after 1810. The solar cycles might also be lengthening a bit during the Modern Warm Period, getting closer to 23 years than 22. No doubt these variations (eg nine to almost 14 years for the “11-year” cycle) are old hat to you:
http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/2/3/7
Anyway, there’s no reason IMO to be wedded to a precisely 88-year Gleissberg. As you say, it used to be around 100 years and obviously can change and range a bit.
sturgishooper says:
August 7, 2014 at 12:00 pm
But why use AD 2025? She and her co-author think it’s happening again right now, about 100 years after 1910 and 200 after 1810.
I don’t think this cycle is the bottom of the Gleissberg ‘through’, possibly the next cycle, that is why. But since it is not a ‘real’ cycle, it doesn’t matter much.
@Leif – trough.
Matt Marler. The Lockwood paper:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JA019973/pdf )
was not designed to discus the sun – climate connection but to show the OSF peak in the late 20th century – (solar maximum) However the climate implications of Fig 6 are very clear. Compare the low OSF during the Maunder LIA versus the late 20th Century. Also look at the sharp drop off in solar activity -especially the sharp decline in the cycle minima since the cycle 21/22 minimum.
The really sharp secular break ( which strengthens my belief in a coming cooling ) took place in about 2005-6.See the Ap index in Fig 13 and the historic high neutron count in 2009 in Fig 14 at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 12:06 pm
Your colleagues disagree with your assessment of its reality, but that’s science. Absolute certainty except in certain well established cases (such as the earth going around the sun) however isn’t scientific, IMO.
Thanks for your answer, though.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:46 am
Tom O says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:34 am
only God can say “there is no modern grand maximum” since only God has infinite knowledge.
For most things one does not need infinite knowledge. Eg I know that there were no big earthquake in San Francisco yesterday.
You know probably also what it was 100 years ago?
This pattern works best.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PF-latest.gif
vukcevic says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:50 am
There is no evidence that you looked at the evidence.
The video is muddled, but why don’t you tell us in clear, easy to understand words what you think the evidence is. Or better: point us to a paper that lays out the evidence.
Dr Norman Page says:
August 7, 2014 at 12:11 pm
but to show the OSF peak in the late 20th century – (solar maximum)
Lockwood agrees that activity [OSF] in the 19th century was on par with that in the 20th.
The really sharp secular break ( which strengthens my belief in a coming cooling ) took place in about 2005-6.See the Ap index in Fig 13
This is Ap since 1844 http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png nothing secular about 2005.
and the historic high neutron count in 2009
Oulu shows an increasing count, Thule [Greenland] shows no trend, and South Pole shows a decrease:
ST12-05-D3-PM2-CD-004 (ST12-05-A011) AOGS 2014 Sapporo, Japan, July 30, 2014
Long Term Decline of South Pole Neutron Monitor Counting Rate – A Possible Magnetospheric Interpretation
Paul EVENSON#+, John CLEM
University of Delaware, United States
#Corresponding author: evenson@udel.edu +Presenter
“The neutron monitor at the Amundsen Scott Station, located at the geographic South Pole, has operated with some interruptions since 1964. The neutron counting rate follows an 11-year cycle with maxima at times of low solar activity, but over the entire interval exhibited a steady decline, totaling approximately 10% by 2013…”
If you think the ‘Grand Maximum’ supports your 1000-yr cycle, then you have a problem as Usoskin claims it was a unique event, thus not repeating every 1000 yrs. You can’t have it both ways.
sturgishooper says:
August 7, 2014 at 12:12 pm
Your colleagues disagree with your assessment of its reality, but that’s science. Absolute certainty except in certain well established cases (such as the earth going around the sun) however isn’t scientific, IMO.
You are too hung up on the ‘absolute certainty’ thing. When things are compelling enough [5 sigma, 6 sigma, or some other high threshold] they are accepted as facts. And it is not that ‘my colleagues’ disagree. A few people have still not caught up, is all. It usually takes a solar cycle for the slow ones to see the light.
From Bob Weber on August 7, 2014 at 8:56 am:
It is indeed well hidden, as SSN is showing half of an about 100yr possible cycle peaking around 1985 while HadSST3 is showing a trough-to-peak transition point of a different long possible cycle.
HadSST3 from 1960 with 15-yr trends starting every 5 years.
International SSN from 1960 with same trend pattern.
Well, that’s definitely a SSN peak circa 1985 matched to a SST transition between about 1985 and 1990, but SSN could be something other than 100yr.
So what was hidden, a very slow negative feedback where greater solar activity yielded a gradual deceleration of the warming rate?
ren says:
August 7, 2014 at 12:33 pm
This pattern works best. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PF-latest.gif
The lower graph has already failed and will fail even more for the polar fields in the next cycle.
Thanks Ren, the rain stopped for now, the company I work for calls wanting to know when/if I’m coming back. Just have to tell them that house preparation for an ice age takes a lot of work and it doesn’t help when it rains so much. Should have been done already. Ran around this morning in my skivies putting stuff up and a few odds and ends things I painted yesterday still hadn’t dried.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 12:34 pm
That’s pretty funny, but who would have thought that there are so many slow physicists?
To quote Lord Rutherford, “If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment”.
I’m not hung up on absolute certainty, but appreciate the limitations of computing confidence levels. (The earth going around the sun is no longer an hypothesis but an observation, so is absolutely certain.) Based upon the greater precision of Ptolemaic tables over Copernican c. 1600, had statistical analysis existed then, the geocentric model would have been favored at a high sigma threshold.
sturgishooper says:
August 7, 2014 at 12:48 pm
That’s pretty funny, but who would have thought that there are so many slow physicists?
Not funny, as there are actually few of them.
I’m not hung up on absolute certainty, but appreciate the limitations of computing confidence levels. (The earth going around the sun is no longer an hypothesis but an observation, so is absolutely certain.)
The Earth does not go ‘around the Sun’ in an absolute way as the orbit is not quite closed. To a high approximation it can be said to go around the Sun. And solar activity is also an observational fact. What is not an observational fact is the splicing of the two records that Usoskin did. That is based on an assumption [and some fiddling]. With any observation there is always an error bar.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 1:23 pm
Variations in earth’s orbit don’t change the fact that the sun doesn’t go around the earth, as in the geocentric model. The actual observation now is that the sun is at one focus of the elliptical, slightly variable orbit around the sun of the barycenter of the earth-moon system.
sturgishooper says:
August 7, 2014 at 1:34 pm
Variations in earth’s orbit don’t change the fact that the sun doesn’t go around the earth, as in the geocentric model.
That was not the issue, which was whether the Earth ‘goes around the Sun’, which it only does to some [albeit high] approximation. Any observation has an error bar [perhaps with the exception of a straight count, as of the amount of loose change in my pocket or of the number of spots on the sun]
The reality is the tide is turning toward solar variability and that variability causing climate change.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/08/new-paper-argues-current-lull-in-solar.html
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Solar_Changes_and_the_Climate.pdf
The papers and studies go on and on that support my claims. I could easily post many more studies but I think I am making my point.
Yeah, I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when you gave that talk…;-)
This fits very well over basically the last 50 years of modern data. This too permits us to reconstuct solar activity — consistently with the first measure — again, back to roughly 1850.
, so when combined with the previous measure one can infer 
(here’s where the talk would have been useful, as I have no idea what “
” is in this context:-).
Without the talk part of the talk, I will have to try to interpret the transparencies as best as I can:
* We have been able to measure, and record, the transverse shift in Earth-surface-local magnetic field due to the Sun’s magnetic field, since roughly the middle of the 19th century.
* This accurately measured and recorded field can be shown to be consistent with many other measures of solar activity taken with modern instrumentation, in particular sunspot number and F10.7 flux.
* Another measure, basically the short term variability of the geomagnetic field, can be shown to be related to solar heliospheric magnetic field B strength. (A connection via fluctuation-dissipation?) The correlation is very high,
* Computing the interhourly variation of the geomagnetic field (again, a connection via fluctuation-dissipation?) one can once again obtain a measure of solar activity, this time with the solar wind, which is in turn a measure of power input from the sun into the ionosphere. However, it yields the product of B and a second measure,
* “Near polar” observatories, manned for at least 80 years, provide evidence for the sun’s polarity reversals (?) and can be fairly accurately connected back to the actual patterns of solar magnetic whorls (including sunspots) on the sun. This is proof that solar polar reversals have been going on well into the past.
* Presuming that they have been going well into the past and that they are correlated then as they are now with 10Be atoms produced by cosmic rays, we obtain a radiogenic measure of solar activity into the more remote past (but probably at a lower time resolution?) .
* The flow of solar wind through the ionosphere over the polar caps induces a Hall potential due to the magnetic field coming up/down there. Electric fields being comparatively easy to measure, they form yet another way to observe a variable from which solar activity can be inferred. This has apparently been measured back to the late 19th century? This gives us three different ways of determining only two variables (B and V), which is overdetermined but doesn’t matter much since they all three give very much the same answers.
* From all of this information, we can compute the radial magnetic flux, with very reasonable confidence, all the way back to the early 19th century — at least 1850, maybe 1830. The linear trend is basically perfectly flat, and the variation is strictly bounded from above and below.
* It is true that the 20th century had two periods — three cycles from 1935 to 1965 (ish) and 1975 to 2005 (ish) where the radial field was consistently above the long term mean, only barely dipping back to or just over the mean. In between these intervals, the activity was flat at the mean, which is unusual across the record. In all of the rest of the record, the radial field is fairly consistently oscillatory. Although there is no trend, there are definite highs and lows, and (for example) the recent solar minimum was as low as it has ever been in the entire record, although there was a very similar pattern observed back in 1890 to 1900.
* This pattern almost precisely matches the pattern observed in sunspots across the same interval, the inferred Ap Geomagnetic index, and the heliospheric magnetic field at the Earth. All of these show that the 20th century was more active across the board (on average) than the 19th century, but they also show that the early 19th century was nearly as active as parts of the 20th.
* I don’t understand the point of the space climate slide, sorry.
* The next few slides are also very confusing. It appears to be relating (cosmic ray?) neutron counts to year all the way back to 1350 or so, but of course I don’t think that they had neutron detectors back then so I’m guessing that this is inferred by means of a radiogenic proxy. It does, however, clearly show the Sporer, Maunder and Dalton minima reflected in the neutron count, and also appears to be rather inconsistent with the pattern in the indices discussed above in overlapping regions. For example, it seems that neutron counts were, indeed, very low in the latter half of the 20th century (compared to the 600 year mean) and very high in the 15th century, but there is a lot of structure with rather variable autocorrelation. I don’t know what to make of it.
* The final transparency offers evidence that there was significant solar magnetic activity even when there were observationally very few sunspots during e.g. the Maunder minimum. This seems to confound in both directions — one cannot consider sunspot counts to be a completely reliable proxy of solar magnetic activity, and one cannot consider inferred solar magnetic activity to be a completely reliable proxy of sunspot counts? I’m not sure what to make of this.
* The conclusions:
1) We know B, V and n (whatever they are:-) back to maybe the 1830s (presumably with larger errors the further back we go).
2) None of the measures reveal a historically unprecedented period of high solar activity in the late 20th century, i.e. a “Grand Solar Maximum”. And there are quite a few, independent measure. If nothing else, the preponderance of evidence, while allowing for the 20th century to be a period of relatively high solar activity (compared to the entire interval, or even back to the 14th century), does not suggest (as Ushokin has on several occasions) that it is as high as it has been since e.g. 9000 BCE, or that there is anything like a third “mode” for the Sun. (To be honest, speaking for myself, there isn’t much reason in the data to consider the sun to be honestly bimodal. Variable, yes, but I can see little evidence in the data to suggest any sort of “phase transition” in its internal dynamics — I think this is all simple variability, “multimodal” if you like but with so many modes that there are none.)
3) FUV varies with sunspot number. I’m not sure what to make of this.
4) Solar cycle variations can be tracked over at least the last few centuries with geomagnetic observations and proxies. Hey, I’m convinced. Some of what the figures show is no-brainer, nearly perfect tracking and of course makes sense — one is nearly directly measuring the fields, presuming only that the Earth’s field is sufficiently slowly varying over the entire interval and not just the recent end of things where we can measure things more accurately.
5) Which is the final point Lief makes — the results do assume that the geomagnetic field’s direct variation (as best we know it now) can be extracted from the data and that it doesn’t “bend” the answers over the extrapolated regions. A very honest disclaimer.
Seems pretty convincing to me. At the very least, for Ushokin’s recent paper to be taken seriously, this all needs to be discussed and directly confronted. In the end, inconsistency might increase doubt in all asserted results, but when there is one result not in alignment with many other, quite independent ones, one has to be very careful about overstepping the bounds of the assertions.
Call me unconvinced at this point that there is either a “grand” minimum or a “grand” maximum in solar activity in the known record. For either term to be apropos, one would (in my opinion) have to show/know something concrete about the internal dynamics of the sun during the proposed “phases” sufficient to support the proposition that they deserve, in fact, to be called phases, in particular some commonality of organization, at least a dynamical phase transition or persistent degree of self-organization. At this point we are at best inferring the possibility of such things from external macroscopic measurements of solar state from far away and long ago. Not much to go on, really.
rgb
(Feel free to correct/enlighten me if I’ve misread anything in the talk, Lief, allowing for the fact that you don’t explain the meaning of all of the variables and I never heard the actual talk and am trying to make sense of the graphs and slides themselves, so any errors are not malicious on my part but merely ignorant.)
The data shows that post 2005 that solar activity has gone from a very active state to a very inactive state.
Until or if this changes this supports those of us who believe solar variability is much greater then what mainstream keeps trying to convey.
I base my thoughts on the data and the data shows me a dramatic change in solar activity post 2005.
rgbatduke says:
August 7, 2014 at 2:16 pm
* We have been able to measure, and record, the transverse shift in Earth-surface-local magnetic field due to the Sun’s magnetic field, since roughly the middle of the 19th century.
Correct, since the 1720s actually [although not mentioned in the talk]
* This accurately measured and recorded field can be shown to be consistent with many other measures of solar activity taken with modern instrumentation, in particular sunspot number and F10.7 flux.
Correct
* Another measure, basically the short term variability of the geomagnetic field, can be shown to be related to solar heliospheric magnetic field B strength. (A connection via fluctuation-dissipation?)
via the Ring Current [Van Allen Belts]
The correlation is very high, R^2 \sim 0.9 This fits very well over basically the last 50 years of modern data. This too permits us to reconstruct solar activity — consistently with the first measure — again, back to roughly 1850.
Correct
* Computing the interhourly variation of the geomagnetic field (again, a connection via fluctuation-dissipation?)
Via the magnetic field of the currents that cause the aurorae
one can once again obtain a measure of solar activity, this time with the solar wind, which is in turn a measure of power input from the sun into the ionosphere. However, it yields the product of B and a second measure, V^2, so when combined with the previous measure one can infer V (here’s where the talk would have been useful, as I have no idea what “V” is in this context:-).
V is the solar wind speed.
* “Near polar” observatories, manned for at least 80 years, provide evidence for the sun’s polarity reversals (?) and can be fairly accurately connected back to the actual patterns of solar magnetic whorls (including sunspots) on the sun. This is proof that solar polar reversals have been going on well into the past.
This actually holds all the way back to the 1840s
* Presuming that they have been going well into the past and that they are correlated then as they are now with 10Be atoms produced by cosmic rays, we obtain a radiogenic measure of solar activity into the more remote past (but probably at a lower time resolution?) .
Yes, correct, if we calibrate correctly [and there are some problems with that]
* The flow of solar wind through the ionosphere over the polar caps induces a Hall potential due to the magnetic field coming up/down there. Electric fields being comparatively easy to measure, they form yet another way to observe a variable from which solar activity can be inferred. This has apparently been measured back to the late 19th century?
What is measured is the magnetic effect of those currents.
This gives us three different ways of determining only two variables (B and V), which is overdetermined but doesn’t matter much since they all three give very much the same answers.
It is important that the system is overdetermined as that allows us to check the results. [3 eqs with 2 unknowns]
* From all of this information, we can compute the radial magnetic flux, with very reasonable confidence, all the way back to the early 19th century — at least 1850, maybe 1830. The linear trend is basically perfectly flat, and the variation is strictly bounded from above and below.
Correct
* It is true that the 20th century had two periods — three cycles from 1935 to 1965 (ish) and 1975 to 2005 (ish) where the radial field was consistently above the long term mean, only barely dipping back to or just over the mean. In between these intervals, the activity was flat at the mean, which is unusual across the record. In all of the rest of the record, the radial field is fairly consistently oscillatory. Although there is no trend, there are definite highs and lows, and (for example) the recent solar minimum was as low as it has ever been in the entire record, although there was a very similar pattern observed back in 1890 to 1900.
We can find those patterns all over the place, no period is particularly special
* This pattern almost precisely matches the pattern observed in sunspots across the same interval, the inferred Ap Geomagnetic index, and the heliospheric magnetic field at the Earth. All of these show that the 20th century was more active across the board (on average) than the 19th century, but they also show that the early 19th century was nearly as active as parts of the 20th.
The difference is not significant and the 18th century may have been more active than the 20th.
* I don’t understand the point of the space climate slide, sorry.
The point is that we find the same sort of variation in every solar cycle, e.g. that the density is high at solar minimum.
* The next few slides are also very confusing. It appears to be relating (cosmic ray?) neutron counts to year all the way back to 1350 or so, but of course I don’t think that they had neutron detectors back then so I’m guessing that this is inferred by means of a radiogenic proxy. It does, however, clearly show the Sporer, Maunder and Dalton minima reflected in the neutron count, and also appears to be rather inconsistent with the pattern in the indices discussed above in overlapping regions. For example, it seems that neutron counts were, indeed, very low in the latter half of the 20th century (compared to the 600 year mean) and very high in the 15th century, but there is a lot of structure with rather variable autocorrelation. I don’t know what to make of it.
A lot of discussion is needed here. The bottom line is that we can find some of the solar variations in the cosmic ray data, but also that there are problems with the data, e.g. it turns out that the climate plays a role as the deposition of the isotopes also depends on atmospheric circulation and not only on solar activity.
* The final transparency offers evidence that there was significant solar magnetic activity even when there were observationally very few sunspots during e.g. the Maunder minimum. This seems to confound in both directions — one cannot consider sunspot counts to be a completely reliable proxy of solar magnetic activity, and one cannot consider inferred solar magnetic activity to be a completely reliable proxy of sunspot counts? I’m not sure what to make of this.
There is a mystery here. It is very likely that at times [during Grand Minima] the magnetic cycle [and cosmic ray modulation] continues, but for some unknown reason, the magnetic field does not assemble into visible spots.
* The conclusions:
1) We know B, V and n (whatever they are:-)
[B=magnetic field, V=solar wind speed, n=solar wind density]
back to maybe the 1830s (presumably with larger errors the further back we go).
2) None of the measures reveal a historically unprecedented period of high solar activity in the late 20th century, i.e. a “Grand Solar Maximum”. And there are quite a few, independent measure. If nothing else, the preponderance of evidence, while allowing for the 20th century to be a period of relatively high solar activity (compared to the entire interval, or even back to the 14th century), does not suggest (as Ushokin has on several occasions) that it is as high as it has been since e.g. 9000 BCE, or that there is anything like a third “mode” for the Sun.
That is my conclusion too.
(To be honest, speaking for myself, there isn’t much reason in the data to consider the sun to be honestly bimodal. Variable, yes, but I can see little evidence in the data to suggest any sort of “phase transition” in its internal dynamics — I think this is all simple variability, “multimodal” if you like but with so many modes that there are none.)
Agree
3) FUV varies with sunspot number. I’m not sure what to make of this.
The Far UltraViotet [FUV] varies as the sunspot number, so is known as far back as the SSN.
4) Solar cycle variations can be tracked over at least the last few centuries with geomagnetic observations and proxies. Hey, I’m convinced. Some of what the figures show is no-brainer, nearly perfect tracking and of course makes sense — one is nearly directly measuring the fields, presuming only that the Earth’s field is sufficiently slowly varying over the entire interval and not just the recent end of things where we can measure things more accurately.
That is the point of the talk
5) Which is the final point Lief makes — the results do assume that the geomagnetic field’s direct variation (as best we know it now) can be extracted from the data and that it doesn’t “bend” the answers over the extrapolated regions. A very honest disclaimer.
We have theoretical reasons to believe this to be true, but…
Seems pretty convincing to me. At the very least, for Ushokin’s recent paper to be taken seriously, this all needs to be discussed and directly confronted. In the end, inconsistency might increase doubt in all asserted results, but when there is one result not in alignment with many other, quite independent ones, one has to be very careful about overstepping the bounds of the assertions.
As in my view EVERYTHING must fit together, when something doesn’t fit we can learn something. The famous astronomer Le Verrier [co-discoverer of Neptune] once said: “Tout ecart decele une cause inconnue, et peut devenir la source d’une decouverte”
Call me unconvinced at this point that there is either a “grand” minimum or a “grand” maximum in solar activity in the known record. For either term to be apropos, one would (in my opinion) have to show/know something concrete about the internal dynamics of the sun during the proposed “phases” sufficient to support the proposition that they deserve, in fact, to be called phases, in particular some commonality of organization, at least a dynamical phase transition or persistent degree of self-organization. At this point we are at best inferring the possibility of such things from external macroscopic measurements of solar state from far away and long ago. Not much to go on, really.
Agree, but a lot of progress has taken place the last decade, and we’ll learn a lot the next.
so any errors are not malicious on my part but merely ignorant
My default assumption is that folks are not malicious [until they show they are]. Thanks for slugging through the talk.
rgbatduke says:
August 7, 2014 at 2:16 pm
…………….
There is a problem in trying to ascertain solar activity from the geomagnetic signal. Data used by JPL-NASA and the ‘Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris’ (another solar institution) show that the annual variability in the Earth’s outer liquid core generated magnetic field has a clear and strong 21.3 year spectral component equaling 2x average sunspot period.
Spectrum is shown here
Either way, coming from the Earth’s core or a solar induced these geomagnetic oscillations are far stronger then the the heliospheric magnetic field at the Earth’s orbit.
I have collected my points into a more coherent whole as follows:
Recent advances in reconstructions of solar activity can be described thus [I’ll number them for easy reference. Papers and analyses can be given for each point, but are better presented if and when a point is up for discussion]:
1) Variations of TSI are the result of variations of the Sun’s magnetic field.
2) The sunspot number is a very good measure of solar magnetic fields.
3) Variation of the UV flux is due to variations of the Sun’s magnetic field.
4) The F10.7 microwave flux is a very good proxy for the UV flux and it is at the same level at every solar minimum.
5) The variation of the diurnal variation of the geomagnetic field is caused by the UV and is a very good proxy for said UV since 1781 [and with some gaps back to 1722].
6) The solar magnetic field is dragged out into the heliosphere and can be measured directly by spacecraft or almost as accurately by its effect on the Earth’s ring current (Van Allen Belts) whose magnetic effect can be measured on the ground, since 1830s.
7) The magnetic effects caused by the solar wind can also be monitored at auroral latitudes, allowing determination of both the solar wind magnetic field and the solar wind speed. Different research groups agree on these determinations.
8) Cosmic Rays modulation depends [inversely] largely on the heliospheric magnetic field.
9) These various determinations [by several researchers] of the solar magnetic field agree, so we know with good accuracy the solar magnetic field back to at least the 1830s, and hence also TSI.
10) The sunspot number has recently been revised and the result is that solar activity in each of the centuries 18 to 20 is very similar: a minimum about every 100 years near the turn of the centuries and a local maximum in mid-century.
11) There is therefore no Modern Grand Maximum.
12) A result of all of the above is that solar activity reaches almost the same low level at every solar minimum.
13) Early reconstructions of TSI assumed that the solar cycle variation was riding on a varying background level which itself varied as a function of solar activity
14) This background was assumed to be caused by a solar-cycle dependent emergence of small magnetic [so-called] ephemeral regions. Modern measurements show that this assumption is false and that the emergence rate of ephemeral regions is almost constant in time and thus does not vary with solar activity.
15) Thus, reconstructions that show varying background level [e.g. Lean, Krivova, Wang, and others] are not correct, and conclusions based on them are similarly suspect.
16) All our determinations show that solar activity recently is very much the same as a century ago.
17) This means that the decrease of solar activity from the 1870s to the 1910s is very much similar to the decrease from 1980 to now. In particular, TSI now is very likely the same as it was 100 years ago
18) If our climate depends strongly on solar activity [be it TSI, magnetic field, UV, cosmic rays, what-have-you] then our climate the last 30-40 years would be very similar to that a century before [even allowing lags of several solar cycles], and it is not.
I’ll take issue only with this conclusion, which I do not think is strictly justified. If the climate were Markovian (or nearly so), one might expect a strong dependence on solar activity to lead to similar climates at times of similar solar state. But we know that this is not true. The climate depends on an integral over past states of both the earth (and, possibly the sun even if there is a strong dependence) that extends at least centuries into the past, perhaps longer. However, we also know that the climate is almost certainly highly multivariate, and thus far we do not have any convincing model that can explain even meso-scale data from the past — the last 2000 years of climate, for example. In a highly nonlinear, multivariate model, the effect of solar state on the climate might be different one century to the next just because the rest of the Earth’s climate system is very different because of the integrated changes in the meantime.
I would suggest softening it to the more reasonable:
If our climate depends on solar activity [be it TSI, magnetic field, UV, cosmic rays, what-have-you] in a linear response model with no other dynamical influences with longer (or just different) timescales, then our climate the last 30-40 years would be very similar to that a century before [even allowing lags of several solar cycles], and it is not.
This makes the point clear — one cannot just look at solar state locally in time (or integrated as you say over several cycles) and predict what the climate will do with any confidence. Solar state then can take its place in the long line of variables that similarly have turned out, or are turning out, to not be linearizable climate drivers. So far the internal nonlinear dynamics of the climate appear to overwhelm any simple variation in its drivers, making it nearly impossible to extract any sort of linearized response “signal” that can be cleanly associated with a single knob.
Personally, I think we could do much better if we really used the fluctuation-dissipation theorem to analyze the data, but the quality of the data probably still cannot support this, at least not convincingly. But as you say, we are learning more all the time and another decade or three of data taken with modern instrumentation at adequate sampling density might eventually give us a clue from this and other analytic methods.
rgb
Dr Norman Page: However the climate implications of Fig 6 are very clear. Compare the low OSF during the Maunder LIA versus the late 20th Century.
I don’t find them to be clear at all if you look at the complete data.
Steven Mosher: I think I am justified in accepting his work as the best. Could it be wrong? sure.
But as it stands its the best work on the problem I have seen.
I agree, and that was a good post.
After reading his comments, criticisms of his comments, links by Leif Svalgaard and his critics and supporters, I think he is the best informed and most reliable of the commenters on this topic.
vukcevic says:
August 7, 2014 at 3:34 pm
There is a problem in trying to ascertain solar activity from the geomagnetic signal.
Since we can extract solar activity with success, there is no such problem. And external variations cannot penetrate to the core anyway.
rgbatduke says:
August 7, 2014 at 4:24 pm
I would suggest softening it to the more reasonable:
If our climate depends on solar activity [be it TSI, magnetic field, UV, cosmic rays, what-have-you] in a linear response model with no other dynamical influences with longer (or just different) timescales, then our climate the last 30-40 years would be very similar to that a century before [even allowing lags of several solar cycles], and it is not.
People who claim solar influences rarely [if ever] make that qualification [with any precision] when they present correlations so I’ll go with them to the extent that such correlations simply cannot be made as we lack both the data and the theory for making them. A conclusion must be that no correlation presented so far is evidence for any causal connection.
rgbatduke: “Personally, I think we could do much better if we really used the fluctuation-dissipation theorem to analyze the data.”
Oh, man, yet another buzzword (or buzzphrase, if there be such a thing) about whose relevance to the task we’re left to speculate:-)
Seriously, I appreciate references to techniques with which not all of us are familiar; it’s always nice to learn something new. But maybe you could give us non-scientists a little more of a hint about how what Wikipedia says about it might be applied in this context?
Matthew R Marler says:
August 7, 2014 at 4:48 pm
“Compare the low OSF during the Maunder LIA versus the late 20th Century.”
and it is not at all a given that OSF was all that low during the Maunder Minimum: http://www.leif.org/research/Confronting-Models-with-Reconstructions-and-Data.ppt or a pdf-version with no movie http://www.leif.org/research/Confronting-Models-with-Reconstructions-and-Data.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 5:05 pm
rgbatduke says:
August 7, 2014 at 4:24 pm
The climate wouldn’t need to be identical to that of a century ago or 150 or 300 years ago, since climatic conditions existing for hundreds of years previously had been colder. However, you might expect to see similar rates of change from the initially lower temperatures and associated phenomena.
That is what indeed has been observed. The early 18th century warming up from the depths of the LIA was warmer and more sustained than during the late 20th century. Similarly, the warming spells in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Don’t know how well these temperature rises correspond to solar cycles as now reconstructed, but I hope you see my point.
It appears to me that an important, if not the most important, parameter in climate change on at least a lot of time scales is tropical insolation, which is a function not only of changes in TSI and solar magnetism, but in terrestrial and other extraterrestrial modulators of solar irradiance (and spectral variance therein) and magnetism. The modulators which seem most important in glacial and interglacial transitions are the orbital and rotational mechanics in the Milankovitch Cycle. For millennial and centennial scale fluctuations, an important factor could be geomagnetism, as discussed recently in comments on this blog.
Here’s a recent paper on the geodynamo bearing on that suggestion, with climatic implications since a ~1350 year cycle coincides will with some observations, such as Bond Cycles:
http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=12683&postid=2345020
Where would earth science be without its Nordic contingent? But also hard to beat the aptly named Ian Snowball.
sturgishooper says:
August 7, 2014 at 5:35 pm
Here’s a recent paper on the geodynamo bearing on that suggestion, with climatic implications since a ~1350 year cycle coincides will with some observations, such as Bond Cycles
There is no evidence of the geodynamo having any influence on climate. The Bond cycles may have a quite natural explanation http://www.leif.org/EOS/palo20005-D-O-Explanation.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 7, 2014 at 5:49 pm
There are correlations between the position of the north magnetic and geomagnetic poles, and both Northern Hemisphere and global temperatures, some say strong, others not statistically significant. Usual disclaimer about correlation and causation.
The ice shelf mechanism suggestion has been around for quite a while and probably actually happens during glacial phases. This sort of amplification is just one reason why D/O Cycles are much more pronounced than Bond Cycles, which nevertheless are globally detectable in the Holocene and previous interglacials. In both glacial and interglacial cycles, the same part of the world may be critical, the North Atlantic.
The fluctuation-dissipation theorem basically says that a non-equilibrium/open system responds in the same way to a (small) applied force as it does to a spontaneous fluctuation. In context, it means that when the Earth, as an open climate system with an irregular but reasonably predictable external driver (the sun, plus a smattering of energy from e.g. tides and geothermal sources) experiences a “sudden” fluctuation in its forcing, we should be able to learn a lot about the internal dynamics of its energy dissipation mechanisms — minimally the most important timescales of dissipation, quite probably a lot more about the actual mechanisms. This works both ways — observing the relaxation mechanisms and timescales of spontaneous fluctuations in e.g. temperature, humidity, etc. can provide information on how the system should respond to related variations in forcing.
That’s why I was asking about some of what Lief had slides on and the connections between the phenomena, when I couldn’t see the mechanisms in questions from what was there. One of the slides, for example, displays a very regular pattern of variations around a mean value of the magnetic field — except when a solar event occurs, when the fluctuation gets bigger. I didn’t know if the fluctuation itself was a solar thing or how the larger fluctuation was coupled back to solar behavior, so I asked basically if the mechanism was known via fluctuation-dissipation from looking at the regular fluctuations and hence available to infer the associated behavior of the Sun in the larger bumps. I should probably have been clearer, sorry.
rgb
rgbatduke says:
August 7, 2014 at 7:07 pm
One of the slides, for example, displays a very regular pattern of variations around a mean value of the magnetic field — except when a solar event occurs, when the fluctuation gets bigger. I didn’t know if the fluctuation itself was a solar thing or how the larger fluctuation was coupled back to solar behavior
The answer is that the two fluctuations have very different causes, the regular one is due to rotation of the Earth into sunlight [which contains the UV giving rise to the electric currents causing the variation]. The larger, irregular ones are due to plasma blobs from the sun hitting the Earth’s magnetic field. Two utterly different beasts having nothing to due with ‘fluctuation-dissipation’. Nature is often much more ‘innovative’ than our feeble attempts of pigeon-holing effects into tidy classes under the pretext that we understand what is going on. [it took us a hundred years to figure this out]
Who the hell uses BC/AD in a scientific paper?
@Juice – Anyone older than 40.
rgb at duke, I found this for the fluctuation-dissipation theorem at wikipedia. It explicitly refers to a slight purturbaation from equilibriium, not a relevant concept for a non-equilibrium system like the Earth. Do you have more information.
Matthew R Marler says:
August 7, 2014 at 8:59 pm
rgb at duke, I found this for the fluctuation-dissipation theorem at wikipedia. It explicitly refers to a slight perturbation from equilibrium
And not applicable to the solar phenomena I discussed in my talk. These are directly driven, like hammer blows.
Leif
Do you believe the Maunder Minimum was just like any solar minima of 20th century? Cassini, Picard et al didn’t know how to count sunspots? Or lowest sunspot count ever had no effect on solar magnetic field and TSI?
“McCracken (2007) proposes that the concept of floors in B may indeed be valid, but notes that since 1428 there must have been at least 4 upward steps in such a floor to reach present day values, the floor value for 1428-1528 being less than a tenth of today’s value.”
You don’t believe this too?
Dr. Strangelove says:
August 7, 2014 at 11:16 pm
>i>Do you believe the Maunder Minimum was just like any solar minima of 20th century? Cassini, Picard et al didn’t know how to count sunspots? Or lowest sunspot count ever had no effect on solar magnetic field and TSI?
The solar magnetic field and TSI were more or less as today. The puzzle is why the magnetic field did not assemble into sunspots: http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Svalgaard12.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/Confronting-Models-with-Reconstructions-and-Data.pdf
“McCracken (2007) proposes that the concept of floors in B may indeed be valid, but notes that since 1428 there must have been at least 4 upward steps in such a floor to reach present day values, the floor value for 1428-1528 being less than a tenth of today’s value.”
Not even McCracken believes that today. http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf
You don’t believe this too?
Why do you believe this? McCracken doesn’t anymore.
The paper does not cite McCraken agreeing with you. It seems to be still an open question. In Figure 2, McCraken (2007) put minimum B at 1 nT while you put it at 6 nT. Between curve fitting of proxy data and eyewitness accounts of astronomers, I trust the latter more. (Remember von Neumann and the elephant)
“The Maunder Minimum was not a serious deficit of magnetic flux, but a lessening of the efficiency of the process that compacts magnetic fields into visible spots. This may now be happening again soon. If so, there is new solar physics to be learned”
To quote Carl Sagan, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
rgbatduke: “That’s why I was asking about some of what Lief had slides on and the connections between the phenomena”
Thanks for connecting that up.
Dr. Strangelove says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:32 am
The paper does not cite McCraken agreeing with you.
…………
Anyone who doesn’t agree with Dr.S and co is a crank.
Dr. McCracken has gone ‘crackers’ and for the good measure joined cyclomaniacs:
Evidence for Planetary Forcing of the Cosmic Ray Intensity and Solar Activity Throughout the Past 9400 Years K.G. McCracken et al
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11207-014-0510-1#page-2
And that’s why I asked, to learn precisely things like this (which were not clear, of course, from the slides themselves:-).
But I agree totally and absolutely with this:
I think that we (scientists in general) are still figuring this out in far too many cases. It’s partly because of our educational process, that starts by focussing on linearizable causes if only because they can be understood by rules. It leaves one with the implicit belief that we can always find rules. But in chaotic nonlinear multivariate systems of high dimensionality (like nature) even if basic physics is nice and linear, “more is different” as my friend Richard Palmer used to say, and complex systems have different rules if they have “rules” at all.
rgb
Leif Svalgaard says:
17) This means that the decrease of solar activity from the 1870s to the 1910s is very much similar to the decrease from 1980 to now. In particular, TSI now is very likely the same as it was 100 years ago.
1980 ?
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_similar_cycles.png
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/Zurich_Color_Small.jpg
Dr. Strangelove says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:32 am
The paper does not cite McCraken agreeing with you. It seems to be still an open question. In Figure 2, McCraken (2007) put minimum B at 1 nT while you put it at 6 nT. Between curve fitting of proxy data and eyewitness accounts of astronomers, I trust the latter more. (Remember von Neumann and the elephant)
The whole issue is an active research area and things change rapidly. In McCracken 2007 most of the decrease in B [about 2 nT] takes place in modern times [~1950]. McCracken’s latest [preliminary] assessment is that that decrease did not happen. You can see the latest here: http://www.leif.org/research/HMF-B-since-1815.png
The pink curve labeled ’10Be Ice Cores’ is his latest values, while the purple dashed curve shows his 2007 values that he does not believe anymore. The blue curve is my [and Lockwood’s – as we agree on this] assessment from the geomagnetic record. BTW, my minimum is not 6 nT, but 4 nT.
To quote Carl Sagan, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
To my mind, the extraordinary claim is that the solar magnetic field during the Maunder Minimum almost vanished…There is some evidence that it didn’t, e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/Eddy/2007SP_prairie.pdf
“The historical eclipse observations described here seem to require the presence of even the bright network structures, and thus of substantial solar photospheric magnetism during at least the last decade of the Maunder Minimum.”
More of the same and solar is not any where near my criteria for cooling effect, although overall solar activity has been quite low post 2005 despite this recent maximum of solar cycle 24 which is now in the process of ending. Once it ends solar conditions should approach my criteria over a long duration of time which should start global temperatures on the decline.
What has taken place in year 2005 is a complete change from active to inactive solar activity.
This change in my opinion will be more then enough to have another climatic impact just as is the case when one reviews historical climatic data.
My challenge remains- Which is to show me the data which shows a prolonged solar minimum period being associated with a rising temperature trend or a prolonged maximum solar period being associated with a falling temperature trend.
I find no such data and the same result is going to happen as this decade proceeds.
Already solar activity is falling off and we are no where near the bottom of the solar cycle 24-solar cycle 25 minimum.
I think the data (especially post 2005/prior to 2005 ) supports the view that the sun can be quite variable and this variability can happen over a short period of time as is the case in the first decade of this current century.
Expect climate implications if this prolonged solar minimum keeps advancing going forward.
The problem with so many postings is there is a lack of understanding of noise in the climate system, thresholds in the climate system ,lag times in the climate system and that the climate system is non linear and never in the same state.
Therefore my point (which I have made many time previously) is DO NOT EXPECT an x change in the climate from given x changes in items that control the climate. This I have preached but with little fanfare.
Why- look read below.
The initial state of the global climate.
a. how close or far away is the global climate to glacial conditions if in inter- glacial, or how close is the earth to inter- glacial conditions if in a glacial condition.
b. climate was closer to the threshold level between glacial and inter- glacial 20,000 -10,000 years ago. This is why the climate was more unstable then. Example solar variability and all items would be able to pull the climate EASIER from one regime to another when the state of the climate was closer to the inter glacial/glacial dividing line, or threshold.
The upshot being GIVEN solar variability IS NOT going to have the same given climatic impact.
Solar variability and the associated primary and secondary effects. Lag times, degree of magnitude change and duration of those changes must be taken into account.
Upshot being a given grand solar minimum period is not always going to have the same climatic impact.
This is why solar/climate correlations are hard to come by UNLESS the state of solar activity goes from a very active state to a very prolonged quiet state which is what has happened during year 2005.
So the nonsense that post Dalton no definitive solar /climate correlations exist just supports my notions of what I just expressed.
Meanwhile, a quiet sun is correlated with a stronger more meridional jet stream pattern which should cause a greater persistence in Wx. patterns which I think is evident post 2005 for the most part.
This is what those who deny a solar /climate connection fail to understand. They do not know how the climate system of the earth responds to stimuli.
http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~vy902033/Papers_PDFs/2014%20Lockwood%20and%20Owens,%20ApJL%202041-8205_781_1_L7.pdf
I along with countless others subscribe to this point of view.
Another great source for good solar information/climate connections is the recent climate summit that took place in Las Vegas during July of this year.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:57 am
http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~vy902033/Papers_PDFs/2014%20Lockwood%20and%20Owens,%20ApJL%202041-8205_781_1_L7.pdf
I along with countless others subscribe to this point of view.
Unfortunately, that view is not quite correct
http://www.leif.org/research/Confronting-Models-with-Reconstructions-and-Data.pdf
but who cares about that when looking for confirmation of a belief subscribed to.
As they say to each his own. Many like myself subscribe to that point of view. Some don’t .
Neither side is going to convince the other.
The recent solar lull(2008-2010) gives much credence to what Professor Lockwood is saying. The
data supports his point of view.
Leif Svalgaard decrease in solar activity since 1980? At most, after the 2000. So who denies the facts? F 10.7 certainly has a fixed minimum?
http://www.climate4you.com/images/SIDC%20DailySunspotNumberSince1900.gif
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/Ap.gif
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/f10.gif
Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 8, 2014 at 8:32 am
The recent solar lull(2008-2010) gives much credence to what Professor Lockwood is saying. The data supports his point of view.
As I said: “After a Decade of Struggle, Lockwood et al. (2014) are Fast Approaching the Svalgaard et al. Reconstructions of 2003… This is a healthy development and LEA should be congratulated for their achievement, although their model, based on a flawed Sunspot Number series, is not doing too well”
ren says:
August 8, 2014 at 8:54 am
Leif Svalgaard decrease in solar activity since 1980? At most, after the 2000. So who denies the facts?
Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother with you, but let me make an exception for now:
http://www.leif.org/research/Ren-Denial.png
Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 8, 2014 at 8:27 am
As they say to each his own.
Then you could keep it as your own instead of trying to ram it down everybody else’s throat.
Whether you do not see cooling in the Atlantic? The surplus heat in the north quickly disappear.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
“Whether you do not see cooling in the Atlantic? The surplus heat in the north quickly disappear.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif”
The colormap (key) palette is very suspicious to me. Why is it not a continuous gradient rather than a repeating pattern? The repeating pattern means the information may not be conveyed properly.
Compare a maximum of 1980 of a maximum in 11, 12, 13 cycle.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_similar_cycles.png
philjourdan says:
August 8, 2014 at 9:31 am
@Leif – trough.
Good to have online spellcheckers 🙂
@Leif – beats having to get an add on. 😉
rgbatduke says: August 7, 2014 at 2:16 pm
* The final transparency offers evidence that there was significant solar magnetic activity even when there were observationally very few sunspots during e.g. the Maunder minimum.
Leif Svalgaard says: August 8, 2014 at 6:49 am
To my mind, the extraordinary claim is that the solar magnetic field during the Maunder Minimum almost vanished…
It was not solar, but it was the Earth’s magnetic field modulating GCRs . during the Maunder minimum
Hiroko Miyahara (University of Tokyo ) for cosmic rays during Maunder minimum stats that modulation was only present at negative polarity and at a 28 year long periods.
This is more likely to be modulation by the Earth’s magnetic field (see spectrum link in my earlier comment) with two strong components at 5 and 21.3 years, these give cross-modulation at 16 (as shown in the spectrum above) and 26.3 years which is close enough to the Miyahara’s estimate of 28 years.
Unidirectional modulation can come only from a strong DC-type magnetic source with a significant superimposed ripple, which is an accurate description of the Earth’s and not solar magnetic property.
looncraz
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-28.63,-4.11,418
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/700hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-26.62,27.47,418
vukcevic says:
August 8, 2014 at 9:46 am
It was not solar, but it was the Earth’s magnetic field modulating GCRs . during the Maunder minimum
You are out of your depths, again.
Ed Martin: View the jet stream forecast on August 12.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/08/12/1500Z/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=-72.98,51.58,836
waa
“I along with countless others subscribe to this point of view.”
Dont trust someone who cant count his supporters, to count the spots.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:31 am
vukcevic says:
> August 8, 2014 at 9:46 am </a
It was not solar, but it was the Earth’s magnetic field modulating GCRs . during the Maunder minimum
…………
You are out of your depths, again
That doesn’t sound like very convincing hypothesis rebuttal.
On the other hand, you might be a bit short of a convincing contra-argument, so what else one is to do?
Well, one can always result to rubbishing the messenger, as it is widely practiced by warmites.
vukcevic says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:14 am
That doesn’t sound like very convincing hypothesis rebuttal.
There are things worthy of rebuttal and there is rubbish.
You could LOOK at the evidence in his talk, for example, before making an assertion like this. The reason that he — and others — think that there was a substantial magnetic field during the Maunder minimum is (if I understand it correctly) because there were solar eclipses that occurred late in the sunspot-free period and phenomena were observed in the corona that are only associated with reasonably strong magnetic fields. This obviously has nothing to do with geomagnetic effects, and suggests (not proves, which is why he is careful not to assert proof) that at least late in the Maunder minimum, the sun had a substantial magnetic field.
IIRC there is secondary corroboratory evidence for this in radioisotope data, but I’m not certain of that as this isn’t my field and I’m operating on memory of other postings and discussions.
The point is that the Maunder minimum may or may not be “the cause” of the LIA. The timing isn’t exactly right. There is certainly nothing like a smoking gun of linear correlation. However, there is some correspondence. The big question is whether or not the lack (mostly) of apparent sunspots was, in fact, accompanied by a minimum in solar magnetic field and increase in atmospheric neutron level that might support e.g. Svenmark. But neutron/radioisotope data tends to be blurred out historically because of transport processes and confounding causes.
Personally, I’m inclined to think that the LIA had multiple “causes”. Perhaps solar variation was one of them, but there were probably at least some others to explain the imprecise alignment of the timing, and in a multivariate model, trying to project any evidence back into a broad region of potential covariance is an open invitation to confirmation bias. The best one can really say is perhaps it isn’t INconsistent, not that it is proven, and then only if there are multiple causes.
rgb
Personally, I’m inclined to think that the LIA had multiple “causes”. Perhaps solar variation was one of them.
Yes, and when one looks at the data one will see the global temperature trend in down with out exception when prolonged minimum solar conditions are present, and vice versa.
Professor Lockwood is right on in his assessment of how the solar magnetic field has changed from the Maunder Minimum to the Modern Maximum. It was a drastic change and now post 2005 the solar parameters are heading down once again.
The data speaks for itself and supports solar variability to a much grater degree then what some posters would like you to believe.
They are in denial of the data which is common place when it comes to the climate and why it changes.
I am growing more confident as studies such as Lockwood’s keep coming out and show through data that solar variability is much greater then what mainstream tries to convey and that it indeed impacts the climate through primary and secondary means.
This will be proven more as this decade proceeds and the current prolonged solar minimum continues and becomes deeper.
The AP index is a great indicator of how the state of the sun has gone from an active state to an inactive state post 2005.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
Look at how each solar cycle is declining from the modern maximum to the now solar minimum.
Solar Cycle 25 will likely be weaker yet.
The data shows that the sun is quite variable.
The LIA was a period of tremendous volcanic activity, some of which were catastrophic eruptions in the equatorial band. This is known because signatures are seen in both polar ice cores, indicative of ejecta into the stratosphere. My speculation is that while the stratospheric sulfur gas and ash do not last beyond a couple of years, the aerosol veil and triggered El Nino conditions are enough to substantially shut down solar recharge of equatorial oceanic waters such that when these waters ride the currents beyond the equatorial band, this much cooler water brings chilling weather on a global basis for many years, if not decades.
It is of interest to the science community regarding volcanic eruptions and the overturning circulation. Was that process stalled during the LIA? I think the overturning continued but the oceans didn’t have anything in their tanks that brings warmth to places beyond the equator. And it took a tremendous amount of time to bring that tank back to full. This is how I think catastrophic equatorial eruptions can affect global temperatures for years and decades, even after the veil has cleared. The eruption didn’t stall the overturning circulation, it stalled the equatorial discharge/recharge process by just triggering discharge. That disrupted process would have the ability to eventually negatively affect the entire globe.
Since the scientists have high confidence in Solar grand minimum data, why not look at the correlation to temperature and CO2 in ice columns relative to solar grand minimums?
It should show a decrease in temperature if magnetic effects and high energy particles significantly effect climate.
If any of these are pre-industrial ages then those that are within the industrial age to present will be different than the ones prior.
For CO2 the the cause in effect will be reversed for the % of the most recent being caused by human activity. CO2 would go down with a drop in temperature in pre-industrialized times vs during and after the industrial age. A differential between these when normalised over the data sets could show up supporting or to the detriment to Global Warming and Global Extremes.
Dr. Brown,
Thanks for the attention, I am always willing to listen to a good advise, in following it may not be as responsive.
a) Let’s get the LIA out of the way, it is coincidental with the back end of the Maunder minimum, but not necessarily caused by it.
I’ll rather put my money on the Arctic submarine volcanoes, not on the account of the heat contribution or lack there of (which may not be negligible), but on the account of interference with the North Icelandic Jet, deep cold water current. It has been noted that this current is very ‘temperamental’. The Arctic’s deep cold water overflow is a precondition for the warm Atlantic surface inflow (which sinks below surface further north). No cold overflow, no warm inflow, result icing up of the Arctic ocean and onset of the LIA.
Ok, you disagree, but just as well you could take a look at this:
b) on the Earth magnetic field spectrum see above my
comment 1
and comment 2 .
I agree with Dr. S that solar Hale cycle magnetic field does not penetrate to the Earth’s core, but according to data from distinguished scientist and used by the JPL-NASA, the Earth’s magnetic field contains 2 x sunspot period and the core 65 year periodicity with 4th harmonic (i.e. ~16 year component) in the core’s angular momentum.
65 year (the AMO like) periodicity emanating from the Earth core is just about OK, but Hale type magnetic periodicity (by n orders of magnitude stronger than the heliospheric magnetic field at the earth’s orbit) is a scientific ‘madness’.
The same scientists who produced the date, have calculated the change in the core angular momentum and converted it to the an equivalent contribution to the LOD change.
Using high-pass filter I eliminated low end of the spectrum from their data and what I have left is shown
here
Despite the fact that I read and consider your comments as possibly the best thought out (although many parts, relating to statistics more often than not, are well beyond my grasp), not for one moment I expect of you to give even a second thought to what I write.
The idea that both solar and the Earth magnetic field display the exactly same magnetic periodicity over period the data is available for both it is the stuff pursued by ‘cranks and astrologers’, it is not something that a sane (solar) scientist would contemplate.
And finally, if I may, for understanding general trends in natural variability pursue the Arctic atmospheric pressure and the N. Atlantic SST relationship.
To understand the ENSO (I am told that it may be long term neutral) forget about Darwin and Tahiti, go to Port Moresby.
If you got as this far, I’ll say, thanks again.
Sorry I missed a link:
……….you could take a look at this :
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:20 pm
The LIA was not clearly more volcanic than the Modern Warm Period so far, despite Mann, et al’s attempt to paint it as such. Number of VEI 6 or 7 eruptions:
Medieval Warm Period, AD c. 800-1400: six in 600 years (1/100 years on average, although one was a VEI 7, or two, rating the unrated 750 ybp event a 7, & some may be missing)
LIA, AD c. 1400-1850: nine in 450 years (1/50 years, although Tambora was a VEI 7)
Modern Warm Period, AD c. 1850-2014: four in 164 years (1/41 years, but no VEI 7 yet)
An earlier onset for the Medieval WP nets more VEI 6s.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CGMQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tetontectonics.org%2FClimate%2FWard2009TableS1.pdf&ei=cTzlU8iELsb5oATXsIHwDA&usg=AFQjCNHtXofou-_3osa_BYFDvL6k6uX2jw&sig2=HD5PFo7b2Qzl0RQT0L95wA&bvm=bv.72676100,d.cGU
But in any case, evidence suggests that the longer term effect of large volcanic eruptions is winter warming over most regions, not the bitter cooling of the LIA.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS,
VOL. 12, NUMBER 24, PAGES 2405-2408, DECEMBER 24, 1992
WINTER WARMING FROM LARGE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS
Alan Robock and Jianping Mao
Department of Meteorology, University of Maryland, College Park
Abstract
“An examination of the Northern Hemisphere winter surface temperature patterns after the 12
largest volcanic eruptions from 1883-1992 shows warming over Eurasia and North America and cooling over the Middle East which are significant at the 95% level. This pattern is found in the first winter after tropical eruptions in, the first or second winter after midlatitude eruptions, and
in the second winter after high latitude eruptions. The effects are independent of the hemisphere of the volcanoes.
“An enhanced zonal wind driven by heating of the tropical stratosphere by the volcanic aerosols is responsible for the regions of warming, while the cooling is caused by blocking of incoming sunlight.”
There is no evidence supporting your contention that an increase in subaerial volcanism could produce the LIA. There is however overwhelming evidence that the LIA was a natural fluctuation in cyclic climate change during the Holocene, as also observed on comparable time scales in prior interglacials and for that matter during glacials. Single volcanic eruptions affect weather for a few years, not climate for hundreds of years. Long periods of nearly continuous submarine volcanism can however affect climate, as happened during parts of the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods when seafloor spreading was more active as Pangaea broke up. It’s also possible that seismic activity could play a role in the weather events of the ENSO.
sturgishooper says: August 8, 2014 at 2:23 pm
But in any case, evidence suggests that the longer term effect of large volcanic eruptions is winter warming over most regions,
Exactly what I found in the relation to the CET , you are also correct on the ENSO , here correlation is negative.
Sturgis, you are right. Models demonstrate an initial warming pattern, likely caused by the triggered El Nino. However, following that warming there is ample evidence in the literature of a subsequent plunge into cold weather patterns. That cold pattern stays around for a long time and has puzzled scientists. They commonly point to a slow down/disruption in the overturning circulation.
As for the number of volcanic events, I prefer using the ice core data. Why? Because I know that the type of explosion resulted in stratospheric ejecta sufficient to migrate to the poles. The following link is just one of many the explores this data obtained from ice cores around the world. You can clearly see that the LIA had quite a number of events throughout the period. The biggest one has been identified just last year.
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/IVI2/
The following is a very good description of the larger events and subsequent chill. It mentions the odd warming affects as well, which is again, a well-known phenomenon that has a likely cause. I speculate that they are missing the discharge/recharge process Bob Tisdale has been working on.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1845/2073.full
Typing too fast makes grammar suck ast.
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:18 pm
Please present such evidence if you imagine it exists, and how this can happen when it hasn’t been observed.
Teh El Chichon eruption was followed by a super El Nino and Pinatubo by a moderate one, but no such eruption immediately preceded the super El Nino of 1997. In any case, El Ninos and La Ninas are weather events, not climate. El Ninos are slightly more common during warm phases of the climate phenomenon PDO, and La Ninas somewhat more common during the cool phases. It can’t be shown that volcanic eruptions trigger the Ninas or Nadas, although there is a correlation with submarine seismic activity in the SE Pacific.
Krakatoa was followed by the Modern Warm Period, not prolonged cooling. Pinatubo was followed by the warming of the 1990s, not cooling.
Your link was assembled by Robock, author of the study I linked. Did you actually look at his data? It shows a spike in sulfate aerosols during the Medieval Warm Period, from the 12th to the 14th century, not the Little Ice Age, during which the biggest spike is early on, during the 15th century, then at the end, during the 19th, with lesser levels during depths of the LIA, ie the Maunder Minimum or the 17th and 18th centuries and practically nothing during the cold 16th century.
Robock’s aerosol data undercut your unsupported assertion. I wonder why you linked it. Maybe his Version 2 makes your case better, but if so please show the revisions graphically, too. Thanks.
Brand new temperature reconstruction of the Little Ice Age. Notice the ups and downs of temperature swings.
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/8/639/2014/tc-8-639-2014.html
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:29 pm
Why on earth would you link to a paper on super-eruptions, the last of which occurred 26,000 years ago, during the previous glaciation, not an interglacial, and which shows that the effects even of these rare events, caused by meteor impacts, still only last for years, thus are not climatic forces?
Do you have any evidence that actually supports your baseless assertion, or only “evidence” which totally guts it?
Just an abstract. I will try to find the paper re: Volcanic Explosion El Nino Trigger. There has been a plethora of papers on this in recent years.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v426/n6964/full/nature02101.html
found it
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CFMQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.meteo.psu.edu%2Fholocene%2Fpublic_html%2Fshared%2Farticles%2FAdamsetal-Nature03.pdf&ei=F1PlU6mdEYLjoATDxYK4BQ&usg=AFQjCNH8Tmk37dLdKDzsgx91JCEwGvGiWg&bvm=bv.72676100,d.cGU
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:39 pm
There is evidence that large volcanic eruptions temporarily make for cooler summers, especially during cold periods like the LIA, as happened after Tambora. But that doesn’t mean that glacial advance in general during cold periods is due to increased volcanism. An already growing glacier might grow more because of two cold summers in a row.
But that has nothing whatsoever to do with your presumed oceanic effect, leading to centuries long climate fluctuations like the Minoan Warm Period, Greek Dark Ages Cold Period, Roman Warm Period, Dark Ages Cold Period, Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and Modern Warm Period, all of which had major volcanic eruptions.
You have yet to produce a single shred of evidence in support of your conjecture that increased volcanism caused the Little Ice Age. If that were the case, then it should have started in the 12th or 13th century rather than the 15th or 16th and should still be going on.
Sturgis, here ya go. 1257. It was a super big one. Not the biggest ever but this one had additionally a tremendous amount of ejecta, clearly seen in the ice core data. Scientists are beginning to recognize this eruption a possible opening door to the LIA.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEIQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lgp.cnrs-bellevue.fr%2Fdocuments%2Fevenements%2FAbstract_samalas_en.pdf&ei=01PlU_-OA8zuoASN4YKwBQ&usg=AFQjCNG7ot8PnOl9Q7NR0m2Vac3BD8tRwg
Sturgis, why would it still be going on? That makes no sense.
The Little Ice Age was not one long cold chill. There were many ups and downs. Some decades were very warm during the Little Ice Age. It is a common mistake to consider the entire period one of cold temperatures. It was not.
Brand new paper. Just the abstract. I will try to find a preprint
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/28/10077
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:47 pm
What has driven you over to the Dark Side? Can’t possibly be search for reality, since all the evidence in the world is against your conjecture. You are now in league with Michael Mann, desperately trying to find some other excuse for the “putative” Medieval Warm Period and LIA now that his HS scam has been so thoroughly discredited.
That big eruptions might encourage a nascent El Nino to form or strengthen is plausible, since they are weather events. But he offers no more explanation or supporting evidence than you do for how eruptions every 50 to 100 years can cause climate fluctuations like the Medieval Warm Period to the LIA, especially since these transitions occur at fairly regular intervals in all interglacials (and glacials) and are clearly associated with solar activity and modulations of irradiance and magnetism.
Again, there were no more big eruptions in the LIA than in the Modern WP so far, and there was more sulfate aerosol lofted during the Medieval WP than the LIA. But there’s no convincing a true believer with fact, evidence or reason.
Sturgis, that thread has grown to a rope. However, I still think that the “disruption of the overturning circulation” issue needs to be informed with the speculation that oceans spent a great deal of time undergoing evaporation, IE energy discharge processes and not enough recharging to keep from sliding into cold regimes.
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:52 pm
Sturgis, why would it still be going on? That makes no sense.
——————–
Obviously because the number of volcanic eruptions has increased, not decreased since the LIA.
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:54 pm
The Little Ice Age was not one long cold chill. There were many ups and downs. Some decades were very warm during the Little Ice Age. It is a common mistake to consider the entire period one of cold temperatures. It was not.
———————–
You’re telling me this, after I posted the fifty year averages and decade by decade temperature breakdowns for the LIA? Do you read the comments in the posts to which you respond?
The ups and downs in the LIA further give the lie to your baseless assertion. There were no big volcanic eruptions during the depths of the LIA nor during he rapid rebound from those depths. Try actually looking at the record before spewing pointless pap.
The closest big volcanic eruption to the depths of the Maunder Minimum during c. 1690 to 1710 occurred at 1660 +/- 20 years, so could have been as late as 1680, but probably wasn’t. In any case, it was nothing special. There wasn’t another one until about 1783.
Look at your own linked graph, for crying out loud!
Sturgis, the ice core data I referred to (which is the data set used by ice core scientists) demonstrates that stratospheric ejecta was far greater during the Little Ice Age than during the previous Medieval Warm Period, so I don’t get your comment about the amount of sulfate aerosol during the MWP. And most scientists now accept the 1257 eruption as having occurred when the MWP was over and may have even been its demise.
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:01 pm
If you think you can demonstrate physically how your speculation would work, please do the work and write it up. Until then, it’s nothing but idle conjecture.
Volcanic modulation of insolation leading to prompt summer cooling and longer term winter warming for a few years at most are weather events. Volcanoes aren’t a pimple on the posterior of the vast energy fluctuations produced by the sun’s internal variability and the more potent, longer-lasting, indeed continuous, other modulating sources.
I tell you what Sturgis, write a rebuttal to the journals that have published the now too many to link to papers about how you think they are wrong. These studies are well done and I think are on the right track. But be as upset as you wish that I do not think your comments here to be equivalent rebuttal to the literature review.
This is a keen area of interest for me and I keep current on the literature. It was very exciting to see that 1257 volcano identified. It has sparked a renewed interest in the Little Ice Age and I think will help us understand its causes, devastations, and recovery.
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:08 pm
I know the “ice core scientists” to whom you refer. Who says that the LIA started in the 13th century? Mann? Of course he’d like that, but it’s yet another outrageous lie. Disappointing that you’ve bought into such blatant mendacity.
Since you acknowledge that the Medieval Warm Period and LIA have ups and downs, here for the umpteenth, they are for the CET and Manley’s reconstruction of it farther back in time, from which data a real climate scientist, Lamb, identified the MWP & LIA (last number is the annual average):
800-1000 3.5 3.5 15.9 15.9 9.2
1000-1 I00 3.7 3.7 (16.2) 16.2 9.4
1100-1150 3.5 3.5 (16.2) 16.5 9.6
1150-1200 3.9 4.2 (16.3) 16.7 10.2
1200-1250 3.8 4.1 (16.3) 16.7 10.1
1250-1300 3.9 4.2 (16.3) 16.7 10.2
1300-1350 3.6 3.8 15.9 16.2 9.8
1350-1400 3.6 3.8 15.7 15.9 9.5
1400-1450 3.4 3.4 15.8 15.8 9.1
1450-1500 3.5 3.5 15.6 15.6 9.0
1500-1550~ 3.8 3.8 15.9 15.9 9.3
1550-1600 3.2 3.2 (15.3) 15.3 8.8
1600-1650 3.2 3.2 (15.4) 15.4 8.8
1650-1700 a 3.1 3.1 (15.3) 15.3 8.7
1700-17508 3.7 3.7 15.9 15.9 9.24
1750-1800 3.4 3.4 15.9 15.9 9.06
1800-1850 3.5 3.5 15.6 15.6 9.12
1850-1900 3.8 3.8 15.7 15.7 9.12
1900-1950 4.2 4.2 15.8 15.8 9.41
Please note that tied for the warmest 50 year interval is the time in which you & your new best buddy Mickey have decided to revise climate history into the LIA. And the following 100 years were also warmer than the early Medieval Warming Period and much more so than the whole of the LIA.
Only in Stalin’s USSR and modern “climate science” could such revisionism tolerate a rewrite of history of this magnitude.
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:14 pm
Again, as is your SOP, you “cite” anonymous studies. If you know of them, trot them out. If not, then don’t mention them. Vague hand waving doesn’t cut it in science. Where are all these “peer reviewed papers”? I showed you mine. When will you show me yours? Until then, as always, you’ve got nothing, noodnik, nada, zilch, zip, but idle (and I do mean idle) conjecture.
I’ll employ your method and mention the sure to be far more numerous papers showing the solar influence on climate change, some of which I’ve already presented and to which you had no response.
Sturgis, you are a rather unpleasant person if you take your rebuttal style as representative if your persona. But that aside, I can see you are someone who clearly will not consider the entire breadth of possible causes of events that form the body of this blog, preferring your solar link. Nonetheless, time will tell the difference between us.
Re: Mann. In case you are wondering, I have commented many times about Mann’s reconstruction and I do not recommend its use. That does not negate the excellent study done on alpine glaciers. I’ve learned to discern research results. It is not uncommon that published research has its strengths and weaknesses. It is rather the rule, not the exception. You learn to take what is good and critique what is not so good. Heck, I can’t read my own one claim to fame without pointing out its weaknesses. But it has been replicated using different methods yet the results were the same. So even with its weaknesses, my study has stood the test. And as a result of my experience, I can tell you plain and straight, one needs cojones to do research and publish, whether it turns out good or bad. I had beginners luck.
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:34 pm
Mann’s climatic conclusion is totally unsupported by his glacier analysis, yet that’s the part that you like.
I have considered and still do consider every possible plausible explanation for decadal, centennial and millennial climatic cycles. Having done so, I can reject the role of volcanism in causing these observed cycles. Volcanoes can and do affect weather within climatic cycles but there is no instance in this or any other interglacial of single volcanoes, even the very biggest, as shown in your own link, “causing” a centennial or millennial, ie D/O or Bond Cycle.
Not even the Toba supervolcano some 74,000 years ago, which nearly wiped out humanity, had any lasting climatic effect, although it occurred well into a glacial.
Increased volcanism lasting millennia have been implicated in past climatic changes, even catastrophes like mass extinctions, but the causes of the Permian/Triassic and Triassic/Jurassic events remain controversial. The Siberian Traps and Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (start of Pangaea breakup) have been implicated, however.
Climatic effect even of Toba limited at best, and might not even have stressed humans as much as suggested:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23458-supervolcano-eruptions-may-not-be-so-deadly-after-all.html#.U-VrcKNupmc
Involves modeling, but no record of climatic effect in geologic or paleoproxy records. Robock thinks maybe the effect was too brief to show up.
For that matter, climate was basically the same before and after the end-Mesozoic impact that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and so many other lifeforms 65 mya, despite so many creatures having perished in the K/T boundary extinction.