From the AGU: Sun’s activity controls Greenland temperatures
![Greenland-Heat-Map[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/greenland-heat-map1.jpg?resize=720%2C404)
Scientists have sought to understand why Greenland cooled during the 1970s through the early 1990s while most of the Northern Hemisphere experienced rising temperatures as a result of greenhouse warming.
The new study suggests high solar activity starting in the 1950s and continuing through the 1980s played a role in slowing down ocean circulation between the South Atlantic and the North Atlantic oceans. Combined with an influx of fresh water from melting glaciers, this slow-down halted warm water and air from reaching Greenland and cooled the island while temperatures rose across the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, according to the new study accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
The new research also suggests weak solar activity, like the sun is currently experiencing, could slowly fire up the ocean circulation mechanism, increasing the amount of warm water and air flowing to Greenland.
Starting around 2025, temperatures in Greenland could increase more than anticipated and the island’s ice sheet could melt faster than projected, according to Takuro Kobashi, a climate scientist with the Department of Climate and Environmental Physics at the University of Bern in Switzerland and lead author of the new study.
This unexpected ice loss would compound projected sea-level rise expected to occur as a result of climate change, Kobashi said. The melting Greenland ice sheet accounted for one-third of the 3.2 millimeters (0.13 inches) rise in global sea level every year from 1992 to 2011.
“We need to really consider how solar activity will change in the future,” said Kobashi. “If solar activity becomes really low, as scientists expect, the Greenland ice sheet will melt faster than we expected from the climate model with just greenhouse gas [warming].”
The new study compared past solar activity with historical temperature records to figure out if the cooling Greenland experienced during the late 20th century was part of a long-term pattern.
The team used ice cores drilled from the Greenland ice sheet to reconstruct snow temperatures for the past 2,100 years. A relatively new technique, which measures argon and nitrogen gases trapped in the ice, allowed the scientists to measure small changes in temperature at 10- to 20-year increments.
The ice cores showed that for the past 2,000 years changes in Greenland temperatures have generally followed any temperature shifts occurring in the Northern Hemisphere. The new research found that the change in Greenland temperatures vacillated up and down around the average change in Northern Hemisphere temperatures over time. The vacillations coincided with changes in the sun’s energy output that occurred over multiple decades, according to the new study.
When the sun’s energy output increased, there was a bigger drop in Greenland’s temperature compared to the change in average temperature across the Northern Hemisphere. When the sun’s energy output decreased, there was a larger increase in Greenland’s temperature compared to the change in average temperature that occurred across the Northern Hemisphere.
Climate models showed that changes in solar activity could prompt shifts in ocean and air circulation in the North Atlantic that affect Greenland’s climate, according to the new study.
Shifting circulation patterns
Water circulation in the Atlantic follows a steady pattern of movement, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Warm water flows from the South Atlantic toward the North Atlantic, transferring heat toward Greenland. As the water cools, it sinks to the ocean floor and travels south toward the tropics, completing the circular pattern.
During a period of high solar activity, more energy from the sun reaches Earth and is transferred to tropical waters. When this warmer-than-usual water reaches the North Atlantic, it is not dense enough to sink. With nowhere to go, the water causes a traffic jam and the water circulation pattern slows down.
Changes in solar activity can also alter the atmospheric circulation pattern over the Atlantic, which in turn affects ocean circulation, but how this process works is still unknown, said Kobashi.
In the late 20th century, there also was a compounding problem. Large amounts of freshwater gushed into the North Atlantic as climate change caused increased melting of glaciers, icebergs, and the Greenland ice sheet. Freshwater, being more buoyant than salt water, entered the intersection where cool water drops to the ocean floor and travels south to the tropics. Climate models showed that the water in the intersection became less salty and less likely to sink. Models also showed that additional freshwater came from an increase in rainfall, according to the new study.
The traffic jam worsened and the water circulation pattern that transfers heat from the South Atlantic to the North Atlantic slowed. This slow-down caused the air above Greenland to cool and temperatures there to drop, according to the new study.
Because the oceans take a long time to heat up or cool down, the temperature changes in Greenland lagged 10 to 40 years behind the high solar activity, showing up from the 1970s through the early 1990s, according to the new study.
The new study suggests low solar activity could have the opposite effect and lead to warmer temperatures in Greenland in another decade. When there is less solar energy reaching the Earth, water reaching Greenland easily sinks and returns to the tropics along the ocean floor. The water circulation pattern speeds up, quickly funneling heat toward Greenland and warming the island.
Greenhouse gases versus solar activity
The new study makes a good case that the solar maximum in the 1950s through the 1980s may have played a role in the cooling Greenland saw in the late 20th century, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist with the Department of Meteorology at Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the new study.
Another recent study by Mann and his colleagues proposed that trapped greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning caused warming across the Northern Hemisphere and triggered an increase in ice melt. This led to the slowdown in ocean circulation and a cooler Greenland.
Both studies suggest buoyant meltwater from melting glaciers would have interrupted the sinking of the AMOC and its return to the tropics along the bottom of the ocean. But the new research suggests solar activity is the main driver behind the changes to the ocean circulation pattern.
“I’m open-minded that the real answer is more complicated, and it may be a combination of the two hypotheses,” said Mann. “This article paves the way for a more in-depth look at what is going on. The challenge now will be teasing apart the two effects and trying to assess the relative importance of both of them.”
Kobashi contends that solar activity explains the change in ocean circulation and Greenland warming since 1995, which he says cannot be explained by increasing greenhouse gases alone.
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e new study makes a good case that the solar maximum in the 1950s through the 1980s may have played a role in the cooling Greenland saw in the late 20th century, said Michael Mann
April Fool’s??? When did they hire Michael Palin and Eric Idle to write the Climate Change script??
Wait, what? I could have sworn that up till last year they were claiming that Greenland has warmed.
Now they are admitting that it has in fact cooled, but trust us it’s about suffer major warming.
This time we mean it.
If it warms, greenland cools, so if it cools greenland warms, see UAH trend
http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/rbailey/2015_05/MapNewUAHTemperatureTrends.jpg
Solar activity has number of components.
Greenland sits astride a largest gravity and geoid anomalies on the globe (see HERE )
Gravity and geoid anomalies in this part of the planet are function of the postglacial isostatic uplift starching from the North Canada to Scandinavia.
However, the major unknown here is that the uplift is not a simply linear but contains strong quasi oscillating component around 60 years (synchronised with every third even numbered sunspot cycle), and surprise, surprise the N. Atlantic sea surface temperature is following it in the periodicity but reversed in phase.
You persist with this nonsense. No surprise there.
Your Scandinavian colleague, author of numerous articles on the subject, Martin Ekman in one of them wrote:
“Reconstructing old shorelines is an essential part of understanding the historical development of the Nordic area through the millennia. In principle we could in the same way also look into the future.”
Than he had to pay homage to the ‘consensus’ and said:
“However, the future is much more difficult to predict because of a large uncertainty: that of future climate changes influencing the level of the sea.”
lsvalgaard : You persist with this nonsense. No surprise there.
But there is a surprise here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/DrS-IS.gif
The rebound is occurring in a viscous medium which means the actual rebound should be modeled as a damped spring, (though I am not fully confident that the spring constant is not a function of displacement in this case) I would expect that in the time since the weight was released from the northern hemisphere ice sheets, that the rebound would have some oscillating components. Whether or not these would then affect circulation patterns and temperature is really anyone’s guess. If the oscillation were large enough, I could credit the theory, but I would think we would be able to measure the oscillation if it was having that kind of effect. I haven’t read all the papers out there on iso-static rebound, so I may have missed the paper that describes these oscillation measurements. The papers I have read talk about the tilt of the sub-plates but haven’t mentioned any oscillation component of the movement.
Owen hi, thanks for the your comment.
Uplift in the most active area i.e. Hudson Bay is of order of 3 meters/century. This has a considerable effect on volumes of fresh water flowing into the Bay affecting salinity of the Hudson current, important contributor to the Subpolar gyre, the engine of the heat transport across the North Atlantic Ocean, driver of AMOC, etc.
R.W. Fairbridge has already identified less defined relationship with double sunspot sycle or solar magnetic reversal (at ~22 years) via feature known as “the staircase” preserved in a of 184 isostatically uplifted beach lines on Hudson Bay.
http://www.crawfordperspectives.com/images/rhodes6_000.jpg
Fairbridge: “The Hudson Bay “staircase”, a typical series of 184 successively uplifted strandlines, situated in Richmond Gulf on the eastern side of Hudson Bay, Canada. The sand gravel beaches are preserved by permafrost, and recur with great regularity about every 45 years, representing the cycle of storminess. There are longer cycles of 111 years and 317 years evident in the beaches, which are linked with planetary cycles.”
http://www.crawfordperspectives.com/Fairbridge-ClimateandKeplerianPlanetaryDynamics.htm
I am not familiar with the accuracy of the Fairbridge’s dating method, but neither the high pass filter or spectral analysis I used have found significant presence of 45 year cycle.
High pass filter output and spectral analysis I used both show strong components at ~ 22 and ~ 66 years (see graphs above and below).
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NECIUS.gif
It is far easier for Dr. S to declare it a ‘nonsense’, rather than contradict data analysis. His ‘theory’ says not possible, data says it is. No need to remind us of what Richard Feynman recommended if a theory and data don’t agree.
It is not about a disagreement between theory and data, it is about drawing unwarranted conclusions from the data; here are some examples that are just as flimsy as yours http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Number of errors in the above, including “~66 years”, it should be “~60 years”
Doc, most of us would suspect that the sunspot magnetic cycle may not have sufficient power do drive postglacial uplift oscillations.
What must be of the greatest concern to you is that there might be (the) ‘something’ else far stronger driving both, the sunspot magnetic and the isostatic cycles.
Don’t wish to be sent to ‘naughty corner’, so ‘nuff’ said by me.
Spurious correlations don’t need a cause and do not cause concerns, except perhaps about the mental state of the one proposing a spurious correlation.
Owen in GA
“The papers I have read talk about the tilt of the sub-plates but haven’t mentioned any oscillation component of the movement.”
Existence of step by step uplift (as in Hudson Bay’s shore ‘staircase’) at the high pass filter’s output or in spectral analysis would show as ‘oscillations’.
As an example (in reverse) perhaps I could suggest a bouncy ball rolling down a staircase.
Re: Spurious correlations
Hi again. I have not mentioned spurious or otherwise correlation. Fact that two sets of 400 years long data have synchronised ‘oscillations’ is indeed very odd unless somehow related.
If such ‘god forbid’ correlation did exist I would propose commonality rather than causality ‘modus’.
They real actual data do not have synchronized variations, so there is nothing to be surprised about.
The 400 years is not a valid point. You might also have said that there are 150,000 days of synchronized variations or 3 million hours. The number of degrees of freedoms is vastly smaller than you think it is, perhaps only 40 or so.
If not spurious then almost surely commonality rather than causal either way. My suspicion is that the common cause is something we’ve not yet perceived, or at least not yet recognized the meaning of the perception.
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Kim, hi
Perception of associations gives life to the otherwise dreary data files; it is a delightful way of drifting down the nature’s more obscure alleyways.
But is not in any way science
Dr. S
You got that one wrong
Latin : scientia
English: knowledge, science, awareness
Knowing that isostatic postglacial uplift in the North East Canada contains two components, ~ 60 years of the same periodicity and opposite phase as the North Atlantic SST oscillation, and ~ 22 years of the same periodicity and phase as solar magnetic field oscillation it is a addition to our knowledge and therefore belongs to section of human endeavour generally known as science.
It is not what you know that gets you in trouble, but what you know that ain’t.
That two things may be occurring at same time [and they actually arn’t] does not mean that they have anything to do with each other. Let me quote Feynman: “the easiest one to fool is oneself”. You are a good example of that truth.
Again, if not spurious, then a commonality is most likely. Consideration of unknown unknowns, exploration of the imagination, is science, as Leif knows perfectly well. I can’t decide if it’s funny or sad that he pretends otherwise.
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You belabour one obvious point while dodging admission of another obvious point. Nonetheless, I highly respect what you do know. Have similar respect for what you don’t know.
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I respect that you have contemplated majestically, your entire career, looking for a sun/climate connection, and haven’t convinced yourself that there is one.
You should not admit it is beyond you to find one, but so far that is so.
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The planet cools (particularly the Greenland Ice sheet) when solar activity drops due to increase cloud cover and changes in cloud properties.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper. William: As this graph indicates the Greenland Ice data shows that have been 9 warming and cooling periods in the last 11,000 years. The 9 warming periods correlate with increased solar activity and were all followed by cooling periods when solar activity reduced.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
More than 75% of the warming in the last the last 30 years was due to reduce planetary cloud cover which in turn was caused by specific solar activity. (More complicated than how many ruddy sunspots are on the sun. Come on man, this is getting tedious.)
If that assertion is correct the planet will now cool, as Solar activity is the lowest in 150 years. If the planet cools the game is over for the cult of CAGW and the cottage industry of data changing and manipulation.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
There is now quarter by quarter solar observational evidence (multiple parameters) that supports the assertion that the solar cycle has been interrupted as opposed to a slowing down of the solar cycle. There will be spotless days by the end of this year and next year there will multi day periods when there are no sunspots.
There is a mechanism that delays the solar modulation of planetary cloud cover by roughly 12 years. The large warm blob in the Pacific is caused by that transient mechanism.
There are now large regions of the ocean that have cooled. That fact and the fact that there is now record sea ice in the Antarctic for ever month of the year and there is the rapid recovery of multi year sea in the Arctic supports the assertion that the planet has started to cool due to the abrupt change in the sun.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.7.16.2015.gif
There is now quarter by quarter solar observational evidence (multiple parameters) that supports the assertion that the solar cycle has been interrupted
There are no indications of this [and you have not defined what ‘interrupted’ means, so your statement is meaningless]. And, sure, there will be spotless days in the future as is normal in the declining phase of a solar cycle.
re: William Astley July 16, 2015 at 12:19 pm
“The planet cools (particularly the Greenland Ice sheet) when solar activity drops due to increase cloud cover and changes in cloud properties”
I think you may want to rewrite that. Cloud cover and changes in cloud properties have no effect on what the Sun is doing.
Thanks William for that contribution with charts.
I noticed this in the article: “…the solar maximum in the 1950s through the 1980s may have played a role in the cooling Greenland saw in the late 20th century”
Cooling in Greenland (?) coinciding with the warming of Greenland (?) that saw the loss of ice mass and the whole freshwater argument? Since when does cooling on the continent lead to warming and melting of the continent, with rising temps (measurements) during high solar activity and rising temps that correlate with low solar activity (claims)?
They state forthrightly that cooling leads to more melting. We know from proxies that historically increased solar activity increases the Greenland Temp. We know from measurements that during recent high solar activity Greenland cooled which we are not told led to increased melting caused by global warming. They claim there was more fresh water ‘pouring’ into the Atlantic, so much as to affect the currents and overturning.
This confused paper doesn’t pass the smell test. And Mann’s supporting comments contradict the authors.
The pause did start right about the time the last solar maximum ended.
TiF, the clause starting with ‘due to’ refers to ‘the planet cools’ rather than to ‘solar activity drops’. Rewrite would help, a refining.
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Another from the ain’t going to happen school of alarmism.
this slow-down halted warm water and air from reaching Greenland and cooled the island while temperatures rose across the rest of the Northern Hemisphere…..
…and yet, somehow, NW Europe got warmer???
Sure, the heat just teleconnected, bypassing large swaths of ocean…just like the missing heat reaching the depths without ever warming a single layer above it. (do i need /sarc?)
Correct me if I’m wrong (and I’m sure someone(s) will), but I thought the AGW crowd have been saying the sun’s activity does not affect climate.
Only when it doesn’t. When it does, it does.
Simple, really.
Exactly. Here is an example of an upcoming newspaper heading: “Little Ice Age Will Melt Northern Ice Cap By 2035”
The result of lower solar radiation…This unexpected ice loss would compound projected sea-level rise expected to occur as a result of climate change, Kobashi said.
I never realized that the entire globe’s ocean levels would not be affected by lower solar radiation.
The new study suggests high solar activity starting in the 1950s and continuing through the 1980s played a role in slowing down ocean circulation between the South Atlantic and the North Atlantic oceans
Except that solar activity rose to high values in every century since telescopic observations began:
http://www.leif.org/research/Comparison-GSN-14C-Modulation.png
so this should have happened in every century…
Not to worry. Now they’ll find “proxies” that say it did! 🙂
So I’m thinking that Greenland must have been a tropical Paradise during the Maunder minimum.
And during the Maunder Min. Greenland should have been ice free…
Another example of “climate science” gone wild.
Yes, the Vikings multiplied there during the Maunder Minimum and they farmed all across Greenland and then suddenly, when the rest of the world began warming up after 1800, the entire place froze a mile deep! See?
Easy peasy!
And of course, there was no Medival Warm Period nor Roman Warm Period or any warm period because the only warm weather in the last 2 million years was last year and this year! Another amazing fact none of us could have guessed living today where snow is ignored and distant tropical storms are earth shattering events.
I think, with so many variables and lots of input manipulation, the trunk of this study has now learned how to type on a cell phone while dancing on the head of a pin, not just wriggle its trunk.
Something tells me you are skeptical of these claims. This is simply more “climate change porn” published for the CAGW congregation by the bishops to keep at bay any falsification of the CO2- CC linkage.
Larger solar activity causes the polar vortex is strong. Temperature above the polar circle more falls in winter.
Where is the data, not model output, that says AMOC actually slowed?
Another case of climate change can be anything we say. Which now includes, unrelated to CO2, increasing solar activity which cools where we didn’t expect it to. But in a post hoc reanalysis we “predicted it all along.”
Climate change proponents will continue.
So here is the truthful revision to last sentence, “which he says cannot be explained by increasing greenhouse gases
alone, which models said should have forced Greenland’s warming.”“Where is the data…”
What is this thing called “data” that you speak of?
Why, didn’t you know?
Here at Climate Science Headquarters we have all the data we need – we call this data “models” and for some reason this data always confirms our fervent beliefs.
Ain’t life grand?!
Wasn’t Data a character on Star Trek Next Generation? Of course his likeness was stolen without acknowledgement from Issac Assimov’s character R. Daniel Olivaw.
Joel – “Where is the data, not model output, that says AMOC actually slowed?”
No data that the Gulf Stream portion has ‘slowed’, but 20 years worth that is about the same.
H. Thomas Rossby, a professor at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography, has spent much of his long career studying ocean circulation – especially the Gulf Stream – and how it makes its way across the Atlantic towards Europe and as far north as northern Norway. For the last 20 years he and his colleagues have measured the Gulf Stream using an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) attached to a ship, the freighter Oleander, which makes weekly trips across the Gulf Stream from New Jersey to Bermuda. The instrument, which measures the velocity of water moving beneath the ship down to more than 600 meters, has collected some 1,000 measurements of the Gulf Stream since it was installed in late 1992.
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“The ADCP measures currents at very high accuracy, and so through the repeat measurements we take year after year, we have a very powerful tool by which to monitor the strength of the current,” said Rossby. “There are variations of the current over time that are natural — and yes, we need to understand these better — but we find absolutely no evidence that suggests that the Gulf Stream is slowing down.”
Covered Here – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/04/uri-oceanographer-refutes-claims-that-climate-change-is-slowing-pace-of-gulf-stream/
I thought low solar activity drove the Vikings from Greenland? Does that mean they were flooded out?
The deal isn’t that Greenland temps warm during low solar activity, but rather that if world-wide temps go down X during low solar activity, Greenland’s go down some fraction of X less than 1.
DJ What you are talking about then is the anomaly. There is no mention of relative changes in the anomaly (Greenland v.s. the reference temp of everything else).
They refer to temperatures going up and down. Given the contradicting evidence that there is no change in the Gulf Stream and no change in the overturning circulation, I conclude the article is speculating about what might happen ‘if”.
Personally I think the Greenland ice sheet will melt entirely. It is not very old and it has completely disappeared many times before. Why not again? If sea level rises far enough to cover Florida and parts of Georgia, the Gulf Stream will be headed towards Greenland, not Scandinavia. It will melt the whole Eastern Arctic.
Crispin, now you are talking about a time scale of thousands of years for Greenland meltpulse waters.
It’s the Alarmist enviro-nutjob crazy sect of the Church of AGW that believes we only have a few decades, maybe a century and half before a hothouse hell and 10 meters of sea rise swamps not just Florida but every major coastal city in the world.
By that time, whatever triggers the end of interglacials *could* be the coming next ice age doom. (Taking a page from the alarmist’s Precautionary Principle abuses.)
(the word “could” is so badly misused, anything “could” happen.)
When the sun’s energy output increased, there was a bigger drop in Greenland’s temperature compared to the change in average temperature across the Northern Hemisphere. When the sun’s energy output decreased, there was a larger increase in Greenland’s temperature compared to the change in average temperature that occurred across the Northern Hemisphere.
Year-by-year the solar variations play increasing roles in the climate variations.
“Combined with an influx of fresh water from melting glaciers, this slow-down halted warm water and air from reaching Greenland and cooled the island while temperatures rose across the rest of the Northern Hemisphere”.
So how much of the warming of the Northern hemisphere was not caused by CO2?
Except they dont mention that Greenland Norse colonies dissapeared as the sun apparently entered the Wolf min and then Sporer min.
Don’t forget, there is a simple rule when you see a study done by alarmists. Change the sign, and the results of the study will be closer to reality. This work on almost every single one.
this isn’t just funny, it’s likely true. humans often act 180 degrees out of phase with oscillating phenomenon. it’s one of the weaknesses of our evolved psychology. you can see this in the stock market, investment in hurricane prone areas, etc
It becomes more and more clear with every study that comes out that Climate scientists really have no clue what’s happening or why.
At least we have established which is the preferred ocean circulation system for arm waving. No other circulation system is pushed and pulled as much as this one. It may beat out tree rings at this rate.
Climate scientists invoking “solar activity” to explain data are effectively saying that they don’t have a clue what is going on. I can’t believe that “solar activity” is allowed to be invoked in these papers, why not also invoke the price of fish?
Climate science journal editors should strip out all useless speculations from this kind of paper (including the politically correct and funding friendly CO2 thing) and ensure that only the phenomenological facts remain, which appears to be that there might have been a change to the ocean currents near Greenland.
The caption says “Greenland temperatures fell from the 1970s through the early 1990s while temperatures across much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere rose.” But it appears to me that most of the Northern Hemisphere had no change or was colder.
Then he says, “Large amounts of freshwater gushed into the North Atlantic as climate change caused increased melting of glaciers, icebergs, and the Greenland ice sheet.” If Greenland was colder, why were glaciers and icebergs in the North Atlantic melting?
This article feels like the author thinks it’s all about solar activity, but has thrown in the CAGW stuff in order to get it published.
When absolutely all the basic data is screwed up, anything goes.
Then we get rid of say, the cold cycle in North America during the 1970’s which I lived in during that cold period and did tons literally of snow removal (I was a super in NYC).
This idea that NA wasn’t cold in the 1970’s is lunacy, of course. Unless one is talking about LA. LA is the center of the universe for warmists and no other place matters.
This one confused me as well. I read it something like, Greenland cooled over a 20 year period causing large amounts of fresh water to gush into the North Atlantic.
Basically this is saying that solar controls the AMO, which is what I have been saying for over two years here and elsewhere. Though they have the AMOC relationship reversed. A warm AMO is driven by increased negative NAO, but if you look at low AMOC events on the RAPID data, they occur during negative North Atlantic Oscillation episodes.
The AMO appears to move anti-phase with solar cycles in its warm mode. Based on that it would of cooled temporarily around this sunspot maximum, and warm again through the next decade, strongly too as negative NAO episodes will increase greatly in this solar magnetic phase, following the same pattern as the Dalton and Gleissberg (1880-90’s) minima, with the weakest magnetic phase being between the sunspot maxima of the first two weak sunspot cycles.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/from:1880/mean:13/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1880/normalise
The bottom line though is that increased GHG’s should according to the IPCC, increase positive NAO, which would cool the AMO+Arctic+Greenland. So the decline in solar forcing of the NAO since the mid 1990’s is very much overwhelming increases in GHG’s, as the recent Arctic warming is almost as fast as the post 1925 Arctic warming.
Having a time delay on cause and effect is a pretty good way to obfuscate the one from the other.
When the sun’s energy output increased, there was a bigger drop in Greenland’s temperature compared to the change in average temperature across the Northern Hemisphere. When the sun’s energy output decreased, there was a larger increase in Greenland’s temperature compared to the change in average temperature that occurred across the Northern Hemisphere.
Huh? Wha?
Oh!
It is still the sun stupid, only, it is opposite day.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Sunspots_11000_years.svg
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspots_11000_years.svg
Except Wikipedia is incorrect on this one.
About all Wikipedia is good for is birth and death days of movie stars and celebrities.
It can *not* be trusted for much else. Too many editors with agendas make Wikipedia edits.
I don’t care what you skeptics say. This summer will be the summer I reach the North Pole by kayak.
I know last year I had problems with lay-a-way at Dick’s sporting goods. This year, I am just saving up, joining REI, and just buying the kayak outright – with a gofundme campaign.
Which of the gofundme sites should I use?
All Federal agencies, States, and many municipalities have money to spend on “public information campaigns”. NIH might be a good place to start or maybe Commerce.
btw don’t forget the sun screen!
Great idea – the cost to get me set up will be nothing compared to the cost to rescue me…but I won’t include that as a line item.
Lots of “suggests” in their findings. I suggest they go out and get proper jobs. Twonks.
It’s amazing what wrong-headed notions about multi-decadal changes in solar activity and ocean circulation spawn in terms of speculations about multi-decadal variations of Greenland temperatures. The principal transporter of tropical waters to that region is the Gulf Stream and related North Atlantic Drift, which never sink in corpore to the bottom. The AMOC is but a very weak and sporadic adjunct, with negligible impact upon surface temperatures.
A compounding feedback of waning solar flux on global temperature. With the planet receiving less solar radiation, more of the global heat generated from solar radiation goes into melting ice on Greenland. This paper must be very unsettling for the settled science cult.
Hahahahaha. Thanks for the laugh. I needed that.
“The new research also suggests weak solar activity, like the sun is currently experiencing, could slowly fire up the ocean circulation mechanism, increasing the amount of warm water and air flowing to Greenland.”
New? renewed warm air advections along eastern Greenland is a consequence of cooler denser polar air masses expulsion -see Leroux-, hardly New…
Let me try to approach it in this manner. The shortfall when it comes to climate is many are unable to intergrade all the various factors that are involved when it comes to the climate that will not result in a given item (the sun) changing in a given way resulting in an x climate outcome. Somehow this opinion prevails that an x change in solar variability has to immediately translate to an x change climatic response. In addition lag times need to be incorporated into the equation of the climate.
This article being a prime example of this which is trying to interject a change in solar variability all of a sudden in the late 20th century all of a sudden had a dramatic effect on Greenland temperatures due to oceanic circulation pattern changes when previous periods of time show no such result or an opposite result.
In addition one would think if Greenland cooled due to a slower oceanic circulation that Europe would have not warmed due to this same slower oceanic circulation which it did in the late 20th century.
How do they reconcile that fact!
More BS from the climate science community which is nothing new.
Layman here; this rings some bells of stuff I’ve read:
1. AO positive keeps Greenland cooler
2. El Chinon in the 1980s and pinatubo in the 1990s
3. “Arctic Oscillation response to the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption: Effects of volcanic aerosols and ozone depletion” [AO positive]
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002JD002090/full
Up is down. Black is white. Hot is Cold. No, Really.
No… really. Really… I’m not kidding.
Okay, I’m kidding.
I am presenting a prolonged deep solar minimum possible climate mechanism which suggest the opposite of what they are trying to convey. This makes much more sense then their theory.
I further suggest prolonged solar minimums if deep enough in magnitude and long enough in duration of time will not give the same climate result that typical solar minimums give when part of the 11 year rhythmic solar cycle which is what has taken place since the Dalton Solar Minimum ended around 1830.
Only maybe since post 2005 is the sun going to enter another type of a prolonged severe solar minimum period which will effect the climate in a completely different way then what the typical solar minimum periods do when the sun is in a more or less 11 year rhythmic sunspot cycle.
Perhaps a severe prolonged solar minimum period could translate to what is suggested below.
One last thought before I get to that is, (which these fools who wrote this article do not understand) is Climatic Thresholds are always present and only slight differences in the degree of magnitude change /duration of time in the item or items causing the climate forcing could make the difference between the climatic threshold being reached or not reached ,which in turn would make all the difference in the world of the x climate out come.
One solar climate mechanism/connection theory which has much merit in my opinion, is as follows:
A BRIEF OVERVIEW. At times of low solar irradiance the amounts of sea ice in the Nordic Sea increase, this ice is then driven south due to the atmospheric circulation (also due to weak solar conditions) creating a more northerly air flow in this area.(-NAO) This sea ice then melts in the Sub Polar Atlantic, releasing fresh water into the sub- polar Atlantic waters, which in turn impedes the formation of NADW, which slows down the thermohaline circulation causing warm air not to be brought up from the lower latitudes as far north as previous while in lessening amounts.
This perhaps can be one of the contributing solar/climate connection factors which brought about previous abrupt N.H. cool downs during the past.
This makes much sense to me.
NAO= NORTH ATLANTIC OSCILLATION
NADW= NORTH ATLANTIC DEEP WATER
To elaborate on the above, when the sun enters a prolonged solar minimum condition an overall reduction takes place in solar spectral irradiance, namely in UV light (wavelengths less then 400 nm). The shorter the wavelength, the MUCH greater the reduction.
UV light reduction likely will cause ocean heat content and ocean surface temperatures to drop, due to the fact that UV light in the range of 280 nm-400nm penetrates the ocean surface to depths of 50-100 meters. A reduction in UV (ultra violet) light then should have a profound effect on the amount of energy entering the ocean surface waters from the sun extending down to 50-100 meters in depth, resulting in cooler ocean temperatures.
This ties into what was said in the above in that if ocean waters in high latitudes such as the Nordic Sea, were to be subject to cooling the result would be much more sea ice which could impede the strength of the thermohaline circulation promoting substantial N.H. cooling.
Adding to this theory is fairly strong evidence that a decrease in UV light will result in a more meridional atmospheric circulation (which should cause more clouds, precipitation and snow cover for the N.H.0), due to changes in ozone distribution in a vertical/horizontal sense which would cause the temperature contrast between the polar areas of the stratosphere and lower latitude areas of the stratosphere to lesson, during prolonged solar minimum periods. Ultra Violet light being likely the most significant solar factor affecting ozone concentrations ,although not the only solar factor.
This could then set up a more -NAO, (high pressure over Greenland) which would promote a more Northerly flow of air over the Nordic Sea, bringing the sea ice there further South.
You forgot to add (or subtract?) the effects of turning on the water in the kitchen sink.
Is there any salinity data to back up their claim of fresh water being released from Greenland? And isn’t the prevailing wind over Greenland from the west while the ocean circulation pattern is confined to the east side?
Sure it is right there in the model output next to the dial they turned that says “add fresh water”…(/sarc)
“I’m open-minded that the real answer is more complicated, and it may be a combination of the two hypotheses,” said Mann. “This article paves the way for a more in-depth look at what is going on. The challenge now will be teasing apart the two effects and trying to assess the relative importance of both of them.”
==============
Is that the same as saying you’ve put the transmission into reverse and have your foot to the floor ?
What Mann is saying is quite clear: “I disagree with the paper and the hypothesis, but as they are supporting the CAGW meme I have to chat it up.” The ‘two hypotheses’ are contradictory: one says cold melts the ice and the other says warmth melts the ice. They are mutually exclusive explanations. His ‘supporting comments’ contradict the authors’ hypothesis. This is ‘climastrology’ at its best. Everything conspires to support the global warming meme, except when it doesn’t, in which case it does. Case closed.
First they say, “When this warmer-than-usual water reaches the North Atlantic, it is not dense enough to sink.” This happens during a period of high solar activity. But then they say:
“When there is less solar energy reaching the Earth, water reaching Greenland easily sinks and returns to the tropics along the ocean floor. The water circulation pattern speeds up, quickly funneling heat toward Greenland and warming the island.”
So, my question is, if periods of low solar activity quickly funnels “heat” toward Greenland, why is it that the water is also dense enough to sink easily? Wouldn’t the water have to be cool by the time it reaches Greenland for it to quickly sink? If the water that reaches Greenland during low solar activity is cooler and sinks easier, why does it warm Greenland more than the “warmer-than-usual” water that reached Greenland during high solar activity and is too dense to sink? It would seem to me that warmer waters that linger until cool enough to sink would warm the atmosphere around Greenland more than cooler waters that sink quickly. What am I missing?
Their explanation is that during the low-activity period, the warm water that gets to Greenland is cooler than during the high-activity period. Since it is already cooler when it gets there, it sinks more easily, allowing the water behind it to keep coming up. During high-activity periods the warm water doesn’t sink and “pools” further south of Greenland, aided by the surface layer of colder but less dense fresh water riding the surface; kind of like a jammed conveyor. This lack of warm water in the immediate vicinity of Greenland allows the cold Arctic air to dominate the island. That’s what they’re saying, not what I’m saying.
Ok, but why is there a lack of warm water near Greenland if the water that arrives doesn’t sink because it is too warm? That seems like a contradiction. As soon as the water cools sufficiently, it will sink, right? And that will make room for more warm water to take it’s place. So what I still don’t understand is why warmer water moving slower doesn’t release as much heat as cooler water moving faster.
I thought that water push under the arctic ice and melts the north pole…how can it then not go by Greenland? Easy: because the model they wrote said so, so it must be true (man, articles like this bring out my /sarc tag)
You’re not missing anything. Their whole premise is that temperature inversions, which are virtually never observed in the oceans, are commonly created.
I also don’t understand why there would be more fresh water from melting glaciers when Greenland is cooler than when it is warmer. Any explanation for that?
The explanation is the article is clueless.
Save this quote by Kobashi:
“If solar activity becomes really low, as scientists expect, the Greenland ice sheet will melt faster than we expected from the climate model with just greenhouse gas [warming].”
It could be very humorous to look back on towards the end of SC25.
I have plans to conduct a survey of all the leading climate scientists.
Buried in there wil be the question “do you know someone named Jack”
I then plan to publish the results with the title “Most climate scientist don’t know Jack.”
CORRECT YOU ARE!!
+1000 🙂
What you really mean is “97 percent of climate scientists…..”
So, that is why during the Maunder Minimum, the Vikings died off in Greenland: it was TOO WARM! HAHAHA.
If this doesn’t convince you that what we are looking at is nothing more than a giant scam nothing will. Mind you, you’ve swallowed that the colder atmosphere can heat a warmer surface already, so who knows how people will react? Ocean heat is hiding in the colder waters below the surface. Now a colder sun will make ice melt faster. Truly the stupidity virus is spreading
I think every time one of these pseudoscientists opens his/her mouth or publishes a paper they lose people. It might not look it on the surface, but people everywhere are waking up to what’s really going on. They know it too, these charlatans, that’s what has them panicking.
The mainstream climate community does not know what they are talking about. They are in a word clueless.
The air temperature over the vast majority of Greenland is–and stays–so far below freezing that temps would have to rise hugely in order for any significant melting to occur. Precise figures are doubtless available. As for the article, it is nonsense, as many of you have stated. What the sun does or doesn’t do will surely affect the earth, including Greenland; but the few tenths of a degree shown in the graphs (or postulated in some of the articles I’ve seen) won’t melt anything. When the warming is enough to take the temperature of sizeable portions of Greenland above freezing for whole seasons, then I’ll pay attention. Not now.
The article may help to explain why the Vikings settled Greenland from around 800 to around 1200 AD and remained there during the Oort minimum, which occurred in the 11th Century and before the Medieval Maximum. I have also wondered what part volcanic activity along the Gakkel ridge has on water temperatures around Greenland and hence its climate. This would be particularly relevant during deep solar minimums when volcanic activity increases due to the extra muons produced by the increased galactic cosmic rays getting through to the solar system when the average solar magnetic field strength is lower.
Quoting them out of context will makes for a more accurate & honest paper:
“But the new research suggests solar activity is the main driver behind the changes ….”
WOW, do I plan for heat or cold?, all the uncertainty is making my head spin…….One thing for certain, USA is broke and we are the next Greece, CO2 will drop when we implode to no manufacturing.
“The ice cores showed that for the past 2,000 years changes in Greenland temperatures have generally followed any temperature shifts occurring in the Northern Hemisphere.”
Not so. In the 8th century Greenland was particularly cold, while Europe was as warm or warmer than recent decades. The opposite happened around 1200 BC, which is erroneously called the Minoan Warming, that was a very cold-dry period for the mid latitudes that finished the Minoans off with most Mediterranean cultures as well as the European Neolithic culture.
“When the sun’s energy output increased, there was a bigger drop in Greenland’s temperature compared to the change in average temperature across the Northern Hemisphere.”
Which contradicts this sneaky earlier piece:
“Scientists have sought to understand why Greenland cooled during the 1970s through the early 1990s while most of the Northern Hemisphere experienced rising temperatures [as a result of greenhouse warming].”
So they giving it that the Sun cooled the Arctic but CO2 warmed everywhere else. That’s a big joke as increased CO2 forcing should increase positive NAO/AO, and that will cool the Arctic too just like a stronger solar signal will.
“Because the oceans take a long time to heat up or cool down, the temperature changes in Greenland lagged 10 to 40 years behind the high solar activity, showing up from the 1970s through the early 1990s, according to the new study.”
No they don’t, for example look at summer 2012, the deep negative NAO warmed Greenland and reduced a lot of sea ice. The low in the solar signal was then and not decades before, it all works at the scale of weather, the lags are weekly to seasonal. It’s then a matter of how the positives versus negatives accumulate over time. The last two summers have seen positive NAO and Arctic cooling. I made long range solar based forecasts for the weeks that would happen, and predicted a relative increase in sea ice extent on that basis.
And again they have the AMOC back to front. High solar gives positive NAO, which gives a fast AMOC. Low AMOC events occur during negative NAO episodes:
http://www.rapid.ac.uk/
UAH lower trop north pole Dec 1978 to Mar 1995:
http://snag.gy/mfOI7.jpg
That graph can’t be right…GISS says that most of the warming was in the arctic, how can the 2 meter temperatures be reaching thermageddon while the troposphere is getting cooler? Clearly the “microwave brightness” model must be worse than the “smear sub-tropical station data 1000s of km over the poles” model. (so much /sarc so little real data)
“Starting around 2025, temperatures in Greenland could increase more than anticipated”.
Must be the funniest line of the lot. “anticipated” by who? The modellers? Then it could be a double whammy! And all without a hint of a measurement.
My previous model showed Greenland would reach absolute zero by 2025, so any real data would beat that expectation. (/sarc)
“When the sun’s energy output increased, there was a bigger drop in Greenland’s temperature compared to the change in average temperature across the Northern Hemisphere. When the sun’s energy output decreased, there was a larger increase in Greenland’s temperature compared to the change in average temperature that occurred across the Northern Hemisphere.”
Ok. Now, let’s apply that analysis to the Antarctic Peninsula, the Greenland analogue in the southern hemisphere. Let me guess…opposite?
I thought that the IPCC claimed that the sun could have no effect on the temperature of the earth and now some sympathetic writer is suggesting that solar activity might cool or warm the massive Greenland Ice Block!! They can’t have it bot ways.
If the sun can do what is suggested in this “new” paper, then the sun must have significant influence on global temperatures causing all types of circulation modifications which relate to the behaviour of El Nino/La Nina in kind. In all probability the sun has complete control over all of the earth’s temperature and climate.
No, the IPCC said the sun could have no impact on their ANALYSIS of climate change, since their mandate only allows for assignment of human causes. (I wish this were sarc)
Helpfully our friends at NOAA, have a cottage industry going to continue to prop up the sunspot number, obvious to where the trend is going and what is going to happen next both to the sun and to the earth’s climate.
Do you think the public will notice abrupt planetary cooling?
Do you think the political opposition will pick up on irony that the planet is abruptly cooling and we have been told for the last 30 years the worry was warming which must be addressed by wasting billion of dollars on green scams that do not work… blah, blah, blah?
Oh in addition to the fact that the green scams have made almost no difference to the increase in atmospheric CO2, we find when the planet abruptly cools that atmospheric CO2 levels also abruptly drop.
The primary reason for the increase in atmospheric CO2 was the temperature increase rather anthropogenic CO2.
The solar cycle has been interrupted, it is not slowing down. What is the point of discussing this fact with someone who denies the obvious?
There was and is a physical reason for past cyclic abrupt climate change. The physical reason for past cyclic climate change and the recent high latitude warming is solar cycle modulation of planetary cloud cover. Observational evidence to support that assertion is the fact that there is now record sea ice for ever month of the year in the Antarctic.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
Record sea ice does not support the narrative of dangerous warming. It supports the narrative of unexplained (hint it is the sun) cooling.
Solar cycle 22 and solar cycle 23, sunspots were clearly visible here. As the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots groups gradually declined is was no longer possible to ‘see’ the sunspots groups with single frequency, therefore there was move to use a compensate that use the magnetic field spectral graph and visual to help us ‘see’ the poor disappearing sunspots.
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_4500.jpg
To appease an old … here is an enhanced view for those how love to manipulate the silly sunspot number past data and current data to continue to play their pointless sungate game.
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_HMII.jpg
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf
Yep, det er svært at spå – især om fremtiden. By the way, what else would one want to pre-dict?
CLIMATIC THRESHOLDS – which AGW apparently does not embrace, because the forecast they have put forth through their useless models have not only predicted a warming trend from now to 2100 but they have predicted it to be gradual, and steady. This is not how the climate changes. Rather when the climate changes, Ice Core data CLEARLY shows it is in a step fashion not gradual. In other words the climate does not transition into another climate regime in a gradual fashion but in a step fashion.
The upshot of al of this is what I say below which is the essence of how the climate changes which does not seem to be comprehended by mainstream climatologist which is par for the course since they clueless to begin with.
My statement below is most important.
Climatic Thresholds are always present in the climate system and slight differences in the degree of magnitude change /duration of time in the item or items causing the climate forcing could make the difference between a climatic threshold in the climate system being brought about or not ,which in turn will all the difference in the world of the x climate out come.
This is why AGW enthusiast the climate changes in a STEP fashion not gradually.
As I have said we have a convergence of climatic items which are phasing together which eventually are going to bring the climate into a cooler regime in a step like down turn superimposed likely upon a jig/saw up and down temperature trend in the meantime with a slightly down bias.
These climatic items which are showing a convergence in bring the climate to a colder trend are as follows:
Solar Variability- weakening.
Geo Magnetic Field – weakening.
Milankovitch Cycles – on balance more favorable for cooling in contrast to 8000 years ago.
Land/Ocean Arrangements remaining highly favorable for cooling.
Ice Dynamic- S.H. could become favorable for cooling.
The above is the big picture in the climate dynamic.
For the refined picture of the climate dynamic one has to look at earth intrinsic climatic items.
PDO – should return to cold phase favorable for cooling.
AMO – should go to cold phase favorable for cooling.
ENSO – should feature more La Nina type action going forward ,favorable for cooling.
Volcanic Activity – should increase associated with prolonged solar minimum conditions favorable for cooling.
Low Clouds- should increase with prolonged minimum solar conditions favorable for cooling.
Meridional Atmospheric Circulation -should increase due to prolonged minimum solar conditions favorable for cooling. This type of atmospheric circulation could slow down the AMOC which would be favorable for cooling if more precipitation were to occur in the N. Atlantic. Should also give rise to an increase in snow cover in the N.H..
COR to above post – should have said– which in turn will MAKE all the difference
COR- should be– These climatic items which are showing a convergence TO bring the climate into a colder
“Climate models showed that…” really should read “Climate models are programmed to show…”
As long as these “researchers” use this bogus phrasing, their “work” should be disregarded. They should receive approbation rather than publication.
Yep, but you may mean ‘disapprobation’. It’s a word I like a lot. Try saying it in rapid succession, or mumbling it. Imagine a crowd effect, masses mumbling, even a machine effect, grumbly, mumbly, growls.
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Ah, yes, the giant GCM, rumbling supercomputers disapprobating derisively, mumbly-grumbly, all the outrageous direct observations; preferring pure piston-like precious presumptions to all of yon glorious outstanding reality.
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Hmm, when I look at the Ozone hole map ( http://www.arctic.uoguelph.ca/cpe/environments/climate/climate_future/ozone/ozone_hole.htm ) It shows a big hole over Canada and no hole over Greenland… Maybe more UV rays hitting Canada kept it warmer relative to Greenland… Nah clearly an unrelated coincidence… Had to be CO2.
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