Guest blog by Marcel Crok
Over at Climate Dialogue we have started a new discussion about the influence of the sun on the climate. People familiar with climate discussions know that the sun has been and still is a popular argument to explain at least part of the warming since 1750. This has to do with solar proxies correlating well with climate proxies (in the distant past), although Willis Eschenbach in a series of posts here at WUWT has shown that the solar signal is often not easily detected in climate records.
Also the Little Ice Age coincided with the Maunder Minimum, a period with few visible sunspots. So if the sun played a role in the past, why shouldn’t it in the present?
But figuring out how the sun has varied in e.g. the past millennium isn’t easy. And in fact, the science seems to be developing in the other direction, i.e. showing an even smaller solar influence than scientists thought let’s say a decade ago. AR5 said that in terms of radiative forcing since 1750 the influence of the sun is almost negligible.
Meanwhile solar activity has dropped to levels last seen a century ago. Some scientists suggest the sun might go into a new Maunder Minimum in the coming decades. What influence will that have on our climate?
So the timing of this dialogue is apt. We have a record number of participants, namely five. Two of them – Nicola Scafetta (USA) and Jan-Erik Solheim (NOR) – believe in a large role of the sun. Mike Lockwood (GBR) – in line with AR5 – thinks the sun is only a minor player. The two other participants – Ilya Usoskin (FIN) and José Vaquero (ESP) – seem somewhere in between.
In our Introduction we asked the participants the following questions:
1) What is according to you the “best” solar reconstruction since 1600 (or even 1000) in terms of Total Solar Irradiance?
2) Was there a Grand Solar Maximum in the 20th century?
3) What is your preferred temperature reconstruction for the same period? How much colder was the Little Ice Age than the current warm period?
4) What is the evidence for a correlation between global temperature and solar activity?
5) How much of the warming since pre-industrial would you attribute to the sun?
6) Is the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) of the sun all that matters for the Earth’s climate? If not, what amplification processes are important and what is the evidence these play a role?
7) what is the sun likely going to do in the next few decades and what influence will it have on the climate? Is there consensus on the predictability of solar variability?
There will be a lot of area to cover. Please head over to the dialogue and feel free to leave a public comment. Keep in mind that the goal of Climate Dialogues is to find out on what participants agree, on what they disagree and why they disagree.
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THE CRITERIA – Until this is meant I expect no significant changes in the climate which is the case through today. However once prolonged solar minimum conditions become more firmly established as this decade proceeds my criteria should come into play and at that time and only at that time will we know how right or wrong or how successful my experiment may or may not be.
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.
Once again I can say without a doubt under statistical rules of significance (used to prevent prim rose path junkets), given your brief study outline, and tested with only a single block of hoped for solar cycles (a quiet solar period somewhere in the future), your results will show insignificant findings. Now, tell me why.
I lost you after “Prolonged Solar minimum conditions” I do not understand this.
I think everyone is so hung up on radiative forcing that solar means TSI and TSI variability is too small to matter, so forget the sun.
We lack data. We can’t even agree on the TSI record. We have no idea whether the solar wind affects cloud formation, just to give one example.
TSI variability as a metric is nonsense for a start.
Then why do we have billions of dollars spent dedicated to measuring it? Granted most satellites have numerous sensors designed to measure any number of conditions. I think it is a necessary metric when combined with our growing data sets related to cloud cover and other aerosols. If we want to understand natural climate variability, measuring solar output at the top of the atmosphere is the starting number in any calculation.
I really couldn’t care less about TSI Pamela, if you’re stupid enough to spend “billions” as you say, on a non-metric then who am I to stop you. I really do not care.
The whole thing is ridiculous!
Not you personally of course Pamela 😉
Then what are you interested in in terms of solar output? What metric? SSN? Solar wind? Forbush events? The magnetic field? Name that tune.
Well, I’ll just jump in here (hope it’s okay), Pamela and say that I highly admire your mind (always have, ever since I read your first post) and….
I’m wondering….. about a certain situation … with a certain person …. how’s things?
MYOB? 🙂
Well! I DID pray and within a month …. . Pretty cool, I thought…. 🙂
Hope springs eternal
Pamela! Grrr, I wish I could give someone an earful (if I were your sister….. I would march right on over there and do it!). Such a treasure to just leave lying there…. sparkling…. IN THE TSI (and in other areas of knowledge and ability, too!). Hang in there, but…. not too long. You deserve to be respected and valued.
He was and is a great guy. The best in fact. I had to focus on securing my job and buying a home.
Before we get booted off Janice we had better return to science. But thanks for your thoughts. And no worries.
Mario Lento October 19, 2014 at 3:32 pm
“Huge changes”? My dear Mario, we’re talking about a change of 0.7% in a hundredth of the spectrum … if that is a “huge change” on your planet then we inhabit different worlds entirely.
I learned nothing from your citation, Mario, as I knew all that about the EUV already. I merely wanted you to back up your handwaving with facts, so that we could discuss those facts. I didn’t want to provide the facts, because far too many times in the past the issue has then become “my” facts and whether they are right. So I ask people to back up their ideas with their facts for two reasons: first, because it is the scientific thing to do, and second, so we can discuss the implications of the facts and not discuss whether “my” facts are wrong.
If you learned something, fine. So far, you’ve reveal absolutely nothing I didn’t know, except that you believe in the bizarre idea that a 0.7% change in 1% of the spectrum is a “huge change” in the energy frequency spectrum..
Thanks for that, Mario. It turns out that I’m a genius when I agree with someone, but an idiot who can’t see past his nose and knows nothing of the changes in EUV when I disagree with someone.
w.
Wilis: What I said originally was not changed by showing you supporting documents. I do appreciate knowing that you are unimpressed. Other brilliant people feel the way you do on this subject. Your opinions and work always give me pause, and that’s a good thing. That it took this long to extract an opinion from you (given that evidently you already knew what I knew) was fairly painful and did nothing to advance the dialogue.
You could have said, “I know, Mario, but I think such changes in UV and other spectral energy have NO affect on this planet that can be measured.” As a process control engineer, I am extremely skeptical that other frequencies do not matter. The reason is that earth undeniably changes in response to these frequencies –and those changes affect how earth absorbs or reflects energy. These are feedbacks which individually are not zero. Perhaps I’m being a bit too philosophical and not scientific enough. That’s because I rely on people such as you and other scientists (yes I consider you a scientist) to go out and find reason.
A near 1% change in UV (and other spectral changes) is significant as I originally wrote. Some have shown that such a measurable difference changes the make up of compounds which react to UV. After all things on earth do respond to UV! When you change something in a complex system such as we have on this planet, I for one am interested in those effects.
The historical climatic record shows a good correlation between extremes in solar variability and the climate. The problem for so many is they just do not understand or do not want to understand that at times when solar variability is limited solar/climate relationships are going to become more obscure. Nevertheless post Dalton solar activity had been on a steady overall rise(especially the magnetic component) and overall global temperatures once again move in an upward fashion which was to be expected. Post 2005 solar activity has switched from an active to an inactive state and correspondingly the temperature rise has already ended and soon it will be down.
As I have requested many times show me the data which shows a long period of time when prolonged minimum solar conditions corresponded to a global temperature increase over several years and when prolonged maximum solar conditions corresponded to a fall in global temperatures over several years. I have yet to see such data.
Now going forward in order for solar variability to overcome the noise in the climate system it has to reach certain low value parameters for a sufficient length of time in order to show a significant solar /climate relationship. I have outlined those parameters and believe they will be coming into play as this decade advances.
One condition has already been satisfied which is several years of sub-solar conditions in general now it is just a matter of waiting for the maximum of solar cycle 24 to end and then seeing how deep and long in duration the depth of solar minimum conditions become and see how this translates to the climate.
As far as AGW theory CO2 is increasing year in and year out and temperatures are not responding in an upward fashion ,if that same situation in a reverse way happens with my theory I would admit to being wrong instead of standing by something (agw theory) which will soon be obsolete.
History has shown that the climate of the earth is NOT static and that it has gone abrupt and significant changes from time to time and I say the the most likely route cause for this is the item that drives the climate that being the sun . When something that drives something changes it, it will change what it is driving to a varied degree.
The essence of all my post is that if solar variability is long enough in duration and strong enough in degree of magnitude change it will have a significant impact on the climate but absent this solar/climate connections will be very obscure.
This decade offers a great chance to see if extreme solar conditions will impact the climate.
Hi Salvatore: Interestingly the supoosed 97% of scientists knew that there would be NO pause in temperature increase –well until the pause remained in place. Then some started saying they expected that a pause could happen. The one thing they do not consider (the sun) changed… and along with it, temperature increases stalled. I for one find it of interest. I hope you get your experiment (with the sun continuing its decline).
http://iceagenow.info/2014/10/earths-magnetic-field-trouble-short-video/
More evidence to support my claims that weak geomagnetic fields and solar fields lead to a cooling of the climate.
Usoskin’s point seems reasonable in recommending a TSI history. Using the Max-Planck Institute MPS approach, the TSI history shows a modest solar ‘grand’ maximum in the 20th century.
The period of the solar ‘grand’ maximum corresponds to the period that AGW theory says has warmed virtually entirely by CO2 fossil fuel. This correspondence warrants significant funds to research it and the funds should be those diverted from the unproductive approach of the IPCC endorsed GCMs.
John
Mario I am confident that much more will be known before this decade is out.
This time period I think is very similar to the time period just before the Little Ice Age started around 1300 ad.
The sun was coming off a maximum period of time as now and the climate during the Medieval warm period was similar to today’s climate.
I think a period in the climate similar to the Little Ice Age is definite possibility.
For now with a solar flux north of 150/ ap index near 10 the sun is to strong, these parameters have to drop to the criteria I have outlined and stay there for some time.
Salvatore, you’ve been very specific, and have a record of claims which people will remember. I am anxious to follow and see what happens. I think it will be good if the suns continues its decline, because if the hypotheses are valid, we might get a respite from politicians who vilify CO2 and profit from making people less wealthy. More importantly, people will get a chance to study this new phenomenon –I say new because we have tools and methods that were not present 50 or 200 years ago.
That all said, I’m not the typical engineer. I have a very strong track record of winning debates with high level engineers who convince themselves of outcomes based on complex models. They consider my views “hunches.” By winning, I’ve had to literally show observable outcomes which their thinking had precluded as impossible. So – though I have no numbers or “proof”, I’m fairly confident the sun will have more of an impact on changing things that affect our climate. For now it’s hand waving.
Examples of hand waving have been on macro economic claims, housing prices, market crashes, how fast a car can go around a track and more. The car going around a track was the most fun. The engineer had a masters degree at UC Berkeley and had been driving for 12 years in his high performance special addition BMW M3 lightweight. It was a fierce debate, which he based on a complex model he made of the limits of speed his car could attain around a track. It used telemetry data, hp to weight ratios, threshold braking force, acceleration, rotor thickness, coefficient of friction and his experience. The only way to show he was off by literally 300 feet per lap (on a 2.5 mile road coarse) was for me to jump in his car with him in it and do what he considered impossible. That he let me was cool! No amount of data, argument, or discussion would shut him up except that moment when he looked at the lap timer… I then concluded, observation always trumps models… so – YOUR MODEL was wrong. I coach him now.
Oh – and many other hand waving examples have been in process control involving servo motion and communication protocols that interact with the motion. Examples are in automated welding of spent nuclear fuel canisters (and though I develop weld recipes with over 20 parameters, I am not a licensed welder), Optical fiber manufacturing from 7 story tall draw towers, robotics wafer handling robots, Siemens medical treatment machine motion control and more. I’ve learned to debate with people about the limits of what is possible because I do have an understanding of motion and machine control that most controls engineers lack.
Most control engineers get into the bits and bytes, the various low level programming methods, the encoder update rates, analog and digital response times and so forth. They get caught up in the specs. I on the other hand deal with latency of real time events coupled with overlapping state machine processes. So to me, it does not matter what the process is, as long as I apply what is possible – the outcomes always rock! My most satisfying win was getting Siemens medical to remove two PLCs from a Linear Accelerator treatment machine and put in our technology (Berkeley Process Control motion and machine controller) to control motion while emulating and interpreting the old command protocols on that Linear Accelerator treatment machines. The results led to $7 million worth of controls sales and getting them to market (where they were 1.5 years late by the time I convinced them they could not meet their design spec without us). Their machine rocked! And of course, Siemens corporate was not happy.
Reblogged this on Globalcooler's Weblog and commented:
It’s not until you get past Pamela and Viking that you get to the magnetic variation as a likely cause. Then there is always solar inertial motion.
Do tell us about the mechanism you are proposing. Or what you refer to as solar inertial motion. Are you referring to the rotating band of the Sun’s surface and how they might get a bit wound up now and then because some bands rotate faster than others?
There’s a whole paper on solar inertial motion. As and you shall receive.
I’ve not read it… but you Pamela, made me curious. Let’s see if your gueses were right/*smile*
http://www.billhowell.ca/Charvatova%20solar%20inertial%20motion%20&%20activity/Charvatova,%20Hejda%20Aug08%20-%20A%20possible%20role%20of%20the%20solar%20inertial%20motion%20in%20climatic%20changes.pdf
The link is to a power point, not a peer reviewed paper. Find the peer reviewed paper centered on this cyclomanic baricentric attempt to ascribe the cause of Earth’s temperature trends and we can talk. Power points are gray papers. I can slice and dice the power point up into confetti but will wait to see if you can find a peer reviewed paper first.
It is clear that the region of the magnetic poles is particularly sensitive to changes in solar activity. It’s hard to imagine that these changes do not affect the state of the polar vortex.
“Researchers have long known that the Earth and sun must be connected. Earth’s magnetosphere (the magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet) is filled with particles from the sun that arrive via the solar wind and penetrate the planet’s magnetic defenses. They enter by following magnetic field lines that can be traced from terra firma all the way back to the sun’s atmosphere.
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“We used to think the connection was permanent and that solar wind could trickle into the near-Earth environment anytime the wind was active,” says Sibeck. “We were wrong. The connections are not steady at all. They are often brief, bursty and very dynamic.”
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/30oct_ftes/
Visible shift of the polar vortex towards Europe threatens the free inflow of cold air to America over the Bering Strait.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/10/25/1800Z/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-17.86,66.40,344
Let’s see how anomalies arise in the area of the ozone at an altitude of about 27 km above the Arctic Circle.
Can combine with the solar activity and magnetic field?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.gif
Girma October 18, 2014 at 8:11 pm
Willis Eschenbach
Sorry, Girma, but you can’t compare smoothed data with unsmoothed data, and using smoothed data for further calculations is a fools game. And even then, look at 1995 in your chart. Temperature is rising fast … and sunspots are at a low. A few years after that sunspots start to rise … so if we wish to imply causation, your data shows that the RSS temperatures cause sunspots?
Finally, you only show three sunspot cycles. I guarantee you, you will learn nothing from such a short sample.
w.
The ones that oppose solar /climate connections have had nothing of substance to offer to support their views. It has been up to now meaningless talk and in some cases trying to manipulate the data .
I essentially do not care what any one has to say on the subject because I have reached my own conclusions and have laid out the specifics . The data going forward is what will matter not what various commentators have to say..
If right I will ramp up my proposals. For now I am in a wait and see mode.
Salvatore, I do not “oppose solar/climate connections”. The problem is that I have not been able to find any evidence that there is a connection between the sunspot cycle phenomena and the climate. I’ve looked using periodograms, I’ve looked using cross-correlations, I’ve looked at stacks and stacks of datasets.
In none of them have I found any evidence for such purported connections
I am saddened that you say:
I have no fixed views on the subject, and I’m always interested in what people say about evidence and data. I haven’t found any evidence for the connection, but If you show me the dataset that demonstrates such a connection, I’ll change my views.
To date, however, all I can say is, where is the evidence?
Best regards,
w.
You haven’t looked, so no wonder you haven’t found what you’ve studiously avoided seeking.
There are thousands of papers going back a century showing beyond any doubt the influence of solar activity on many climatic phenomena. Had you ever actually studied climatology you would already know this and not make such ridiculous, baseless assertions.
Here’s one from August, on the influence of solar cycles on climate of the Last Glacial Maximum, for instance:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n9/full/ngeo2225.html
The sun looms large in terrestrial climate not only during interglacials but glacials as well, as it has done for the past four billion years or so.
@sturgishooper October 21, 2014 at 4:11 pm
IMO, this issue has been studied for over 400 years, not just a century. Willis & I disagree on the validity of Herschel’s findings from his study of sunspots & wheat prices in Britain, 1779–1818, but his work actually falls in the middle of scientific investigation of the influence of the sun on climate. For a review of the history of this work, & conclusions with which I don’t completely agree, please see:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/WhatsNew.pdf&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm0SYVKWJ_FdNIoBU9e91-2mEZmcjg&oi=scholarr
Speaking of real climatology, here’s a 2009 study remarkably free of carbonized cant, which analyzes an important climate metric strictly in terms of the ocean, atmosphere & land, without reference to a magic trace gas. It finds that the PDO shift of 1977, which I recall so well from NW North America, shows up prominently on climatologically significant the Tibetan Plateau as well. It discusses decadal changes in solar activity as well as fluctuations in insolation based upon albedo & other modulatory factors.
The more Chinese “climate science” papers I read, the more I respect the work of scientists there & in Russia, despite a lifetime resisting Communism. A sad comment on the decline of the West, although the fact that the PMs of Canada & Australia are now being vilified by the International Green Machine gives me some hope.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY
Int. J. Climatol. 29: 1926–1944 (2009)
Published online 7 January 2009 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/joc.1759
Inter-decadal variation of the summer precipitation in China and its association with decreasing Asian summer monsoon
Part II: Possible causes
Yihui Ding,a* Ying Sun,a Zunya Wang,a Yuxiang Zhub and Yafang Songa
a Laboratory of Climate Studies, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China
b China Meteorological Administration Training Centre, Beijing 100081, China
ABSTRACT: The present article is the second part of a study on the inter-decadal variability of the summer precipitation in East China, which mainly addresses the possible cause of this change. Firstly, an updated analysis of the long-term variations of snow cover, snow days and snow depth in the preceding winter and spring over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) was done by using station and satellite data. The abrupt increase in the winter and spring snow over the TP since around 1977 has been well documented. At that time, the inter-decadal variation of the atmospheric heating over the TP in spring and summer had been estimated. It has been revealed that the atmospheric heating fields in subsequent spring and summer over the TP assumed a significant weakening after the late 1970s. This weakening is closely related to the significantly reduced surface sensible heat flux into the atmosphere and subsequent cooling over the TP and its surrounding atmosphere. The latter was produced by the increase of surface albedo and soil hydrological effect of melting snow under the condition of abrupt increase in the preceding winter and spring snow over the TP. On the other hand, three phases of significant inter-decadal warming of the sea surface temperature (SST) in the tropical central and eastern Pacific, which occurred in the mid-1960s, the late 1970s and the early 1990s, respectively, have been found. The above inter-decadal variability of heating fields over the land area in the Asian region and neighbouring oceanic region of the West Pacific has consistently reduced the land–sea thermal contrast in summer in the Asian monsoon region based on the estimate of atmospheric heating fields.
This cause is likely to lead to weakening of the Asian summer monsoon. In such case, the northward moisture transport in East Asia is greatly weakened and cannot reach North China, thus causing the condition of less precipitation or droughts.
In contrast, the Yangtze River basin and South China receive a large amount of moisture supply and have strong upward motion, creating favourable conditions for frequent occurrence of heavy rainfall. In the process of the southward shift of the high-precipitation zone, two abrupt or rapid regime shifts observed in the late 1970s and the early 1990s were possibly in response to the increase in the winter and spring snow over the TP, and two major rapid warming events of the SST in the tropical central and eastern Pacific in the late 1970s and the early 1990s.
Correlative analysis has further confirmed that high TP snow and oceanic forcing factors have a positive correlation with the subsequent summer precipitation in the Yangtze River basin and most of South China, and a negative correlation with the summer precipitation in North China. This correlative relationship implies that if the TP has excessive (deficient) snow in the preceding winter and spring and the tropical central and eastern Pacific anomalously warms up (cools down), North China will have decreasing (increasing) summer precipitation, whereas the Yangtze River basin and South China will have increasing (decreasing) summer precipitation.
Copyright 2009 Royal Meteorological Society
Pamela Gray says: October 21, 2014 at 5:47 am
“The link is to a power point, not a peer reviewed paper. Find the peer reviewed paper centered on this cyclomanic baricentric attempt to ascribe the cause of Earth’s temperature trends and we can talk. Power points are gray papers. I can slice and dice the power point up into confetti but will wait to see if you can find a peer reviewed paper first.”
There are plenty of peer reviewed papers which support the concept of CO2 being the be all and end all of climate, and man made CO2 at that. Not so sure why one should care quite so much about “peer review”. Guess the big question may be who the peers are and whose drum are they beating.
When it comes to solar/climate connections it is how one SPINS the data in their own mind.
In fact when it comes to climate one can spin anything and make it appear reasonable. It is the only scientific discipline that allows this to be so prevalent.
I think I could spin any climate scenario even AGW theory and make it appear on the surface reasonable.
Marcel Crok,
Solheim says:
“It should be emphasized that Central Greenland temperature changes are not identical to global temperature changes. However, they tend to reflect planetary temperature changes with a decadal-scale ”
Around 1350 to 1150 BC was a very cold period for the mid latitudes, it caused the collapse of may civilizations, including the Minoans who this record warm period in the GISP proxy is named after.
In Solheim’s figure 6, the Dark Ages cold period is during the 4th to 6th centuries, ending around 540 AD, again the opposite of GISP. So predicting a warm peak around 2060 for Greenland is essentially predicting cold for the mid latitudes then. The interval between the Dark Ages and LIA is remarkably long compared to the frequency of such like periods in previous millennia. Many are around 800yrs apart, and occasionally at around 400-500yrs. The only way round it is to work what causes them, banking on 1000/1180yr pattern repeating is not recommended.
Solheim says:
“The reconstruction by D. Hoyt and K. Schatten (1993) updated with the ACRIM data (Scafetta, 2013) gives a remarkable good correlation with the Central England temperature back to 1700.”
1836-1845 averaged at 8.676°C on CET, almost as cold as the coldest run of years in Dalton (1807-1817 at 8.666°C), and that was during a larger solar cycle (SC8). What the two periods should have in common is a lack of Aurora.
Lockwood says:
“Furthermore, any proposed mechanism must explain all – and I stress all – the data, not just the global means air surface temperature: such constraints include the latitudinal profile (why the Arctic has warmed most), coherent longitudinal variations, the altitude profile (the cooling in the stratosphere), the seasonality (why the warming is greater in winter), the lack of a diurnal variation increase. All these features are well explained by the observed rise in well-mixed greenhouse gases and so to be considered a serious alternative, any proposed mechanism must also explain all these observations.”
All the IPCC models give increasingly positive NAO/AO conditions with increased GHG forcing, while warming of the Arctic, and the AMO, seems to occur when the NAO/AO is increasingly negative.