Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
[UPDATE: Upon reading Dr. Shaviv’s reply to this post, I have withdrawn any mention of “deceptive” from this post. This term was over the top, as it ascribed motive to the authors. I have replaced the term with “misleading”. This is more accurate since it describes the effect of the analysis on the readers, and not the intentions of the authors. Dr. Shaviv and his co-authors have my apologies for my unwarranted accusation of bad faith.]
I see that Dr. Nir Shaviv has a blog post up regarding the recent fixing of problems in the historical sunspot record. He put up several interesting graphs and made several interesting claims, and I wanted to comment on them. To begin with, here’s an overview of his claim about the new sunspot record:
So, what do I think about it [the new sunspot data]? First, I have no idea whether the calibration is correct. They do make a good argument that the SN reconstruction is problematic. Namely, some corrections are probably necessary and there is no reason a priori to think that what they did is invalid. However, their claim about solar activity in general not varying much since the sun came out from the Maunder minimum is wrong. There are other more objective ways to reconstruct solar activity than subjective sunspot counting, and they do show us that solar activity increased over the 20th century. So at most, one can claim that solar activity has various facets, and that the maximum sunspot number is not a good indicator of all of them.
And here is his first graph, comparing the new and old sunspot data:
Figure 1. Dr. Shaviv’s first figure from his blog post, showing the old and new sunspot numbers.
His basic claim is that the changes in historical sunspot numbers don’t make a difference, and that there is still an increase in solar activity over the 20th century. Since both datasets are very similar during the 20th century, the new/old dataset choice makes no difference. However, I wouldn’t say that “solar activity increased over the 20th century”. It increased from 1900 to 1960, and decreased after that.
He then puts up the yearly aa index data, and points out that “The AA index (measured since the middle of the 19th century) clearly shows that the latter part of the 20th century was more active than the latter half of the 19th century.” Well, yes … and the sunspot data says that as well, and again this is true no matter which sunspot dataset is used. So I’m not clear how this adds to his argument.
Next, he examines the beryllium isotope 10Be record. This record is claimed to reflect solar activity. I say it is a very poor proxy for solar activity. I’ve pointed out a variety of problems with this “proxy” in my post here. Dr. Shaviv says:
The longer 10Be data set reveals that the latter half of the 20th century was more active than any preceding time since the Maunder minimum.
Note that he’s making a brand new claim, that the latter half of the 20th century is more active than anything since 1700. Again, I must point out that both sunspot datasets, new and old, say the exact same thing. However, they differ greatly from the 10Be proxy. In addition, he is also using the 10Be data to tacitly claim a significant increase in solar strength since 1425 or so.
Figure 2. Solar activity proxies, showing concentration of the beryllium isotope 10Be (blue), as well as the sunspots (red). From Dr. Shaviv’s blog post.
So does Figure 2 show that the old sunspot number is correct? Does it show that solar activity has been increasing since 1425, or that the sun has been “particularly active in the latter half of the 20th century”? Well … no. All it shows is that 10Be is a very poor proxy for solar activity. Let me add a few annotation lines to Dr. Shaviv’s graph to illustrate one of the reasons why it’s a bad proxy.
Figure 3. Solar activity proxies as in Figure 2, with added lines connecting the 10Be data to the sunspot record.
I’ve added a horizontal red line at a 10Be concentration of about 1.1 or so. From there, I’ve dropped vertical violet lines to the sunspot data, and then horizontal blue lines over to the sunspot scale.
So … if the marvelous 10Be “solar activity proxy” has an averaged value of 1.1, does that mean that the sunspot level is zero, or twelve, or twenty-four, or thirty-six sunspots per year? I’m sorry, but using 10Be data as a “solar proxy” in that manner doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Dr. Shaviv’s final claim in his blog post is that there is a clear solar effect on the sea level. He says (emphasis mine):
The second point I wanted to write about is a recently published analysis showing that the sun has a large effect on climate, and quantifying it. … Daniel Howard, Henrik Svensmark and I looked at the satellite altimetry data. It is similar to the tide gauge records in that it measures how much heat goes into the ocean by measuring the sea level change (most of the sea level on short time scales is due to thermal expansion). Unsurprisingly, we found that the satellite altimetry showed the same solar-cycle synchronized sea level change as the tide gauge records.
…
You can see in fig. 4 how much the sun and el-Niño can explain a large fraction of the sea level change over yearly to decadal time scales.
In support of this idea that the small approximately 11-year variations in the sun affects the sea level, he posts the following graph:
Figure 4. Graph quoted in Dr. Shaviv’s blog.
Figure 4 is from the paper by Howard, Svensmark, and Shaviv, The solar and Southern Oscillation components in the satellite altimetry data. Their abstract states (emphasis mine):
Abstract With satellite altimetry data accumulating over the past two decades, the mean sea level (MSL) can now be measured to unprecedented accuracy. We search for physical processes which can explain the sea level variations and find that at least 70% of the variance in the annually smoothed detrended altimetry data can be explained as the combined effect of both the solar forcing and the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
So to be clear, they are talking about studying how solar forcing and ENSO affect sea level. According to their abstract, they model the sea level, using solar forcing and ENSO as their independent variables, to get the purple line in Figure 4 above. And to be fair, Figure 4 shows a pretty good match between model (purple line) and data (blue dots).
Now, in order to get their model results (lovely purple line) to match the sea level data (blue dots), would you care to know how which solar dataset the authors actually used? Because after the big buildup about the sun, and about solar forcing, I was certainly curious which dataset they would choose. Would they look at TSI, total solar irradiance? Of, since Svensmark is a proponent of solar-modulated cosmic rays affecting the climate, would they use the neutron count dataset that measures cosmic rays? Or would it be something else, solar wind or something … the paper gives the answer.
…
…
…
No solar data. Period.
Not one bit of solar data was used in their study. No aa index data. No TSI (total solar irradiation) data either. No trace of the sunspot data. Not a sign of the cosmic ray information. Nothing about the solar wind. No sign of heliomagnetic information. Rude truth is, no solar data of any kind were harmed in the creation of their model … because no solar data of any kind were used.
Instead, what you see is a seven-tunable-parameter model (purple line), using solely El Nino 3.4 data as the only observational input, that has been fitted to the sea level data (blue dots in Figure 4 above). No solar data was involved at all.
Well, of course when I found that out, I had to go see why they didn’t use the solar data. After all, we have reasonable TSI data and good sunspot data for the period.
Figure 5. Sunspot data (black, at bottom, scale on right) and satellite TSI (total solar irradiance) data (color) from a succession of satellites. SOURCE
I started by doing what the authors did. I used the detrended Colorado sea level data and the Trenberth El Nino 3.4 data. I’ll call the El Nino 3.4 Index the “ENI” for simplicity.
Next I standardized the datasets, which means I transformed them by subtracting out the mean (average) and dividing by the standard deviation. This gives both datasets a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. I often do this to get an idea of how well related a couple of datasets might be, when they are in different units. Note that this standardization procedure does not include any tunable parameters. Here’s the result:
Figure 6. A comparison of the standardized detrended monthly Colorado satellite sea level (red) and the monthly El Nino 3.4 data (black)
As you can see, there is a reasonably good overall correlation between the El Nino 3.4 Index (“ENI”, black) and the detrended sea level (black). Now, what we want to determine is whether the solar variation is a possible explanation for the difference between the ENI and the sea level. To do that we need to look at the “residuals”, which means the part if the sea level data that is NOT explained by the ENI. The procedure is to use the ENI values to calculate the expected corresponding sea level values. Then we subtract those fitted sea level values from the actual sea level values, and what is left are the “residuals”. These residuals are the variations in sea level which are not related to the ENI. The residuals are what we hope is explained by solar fluctuations. Here is a graph of the residuals over the period after we subtract out the El Nino 3.4 variations:
Figure 7. Residual sea level after removal of the El Nino variations.
Now, when the authors saw that, they must have been very happy. That sure looks a whole lot like a solar-related variation to me. So what’s not to like?
Well, as also unfortunately happens at times with my own ideas, a beautiful theory founders on a hidden reef of data. Let me overlay the actual solar variations on top of the residual sea level shown in the figure above. I’m showing both the sunspots and the TSI, so you can see how the sunspots are an excellent proxy for TSI.
Figure 8. Residual sea level as in Figure 7 (black), overlaid with the sunspot (blue) and TSI (red) data. This is the new sunspot data, but for this period the new and old data are nearly identical.
I’m sure you can see the problem the authors faced with using actual solar data … the TSI/sunspot records (red/blue) start out well correlated, with both bottoming out in about 1996. But then, the TSI/sunpots inconveniently peak around 2001 and bottom out around 2008-2009. Meanwhile, sea level peaks at around 2006, about five years after the TSI/sunspots, and doesn’t bottom out until 2011 … no bueno for their lovely theory.
So, just what is a poor scientist supposed to do in such a case? Sadly, what Dr. Shaviv and the other authors decided to do was to just add a simple sine wave to the model and claim that it is the “solar term”. Here’s their graph of their so-called “harmonic solar component” …
Figure 9. The “harmonic solar component” used in their model
And here’s how it fits into the previous figure …
Figure 10. As in Figure 8, but overlaid with their “harmonic solar component” (black/yellow). For clarity I have not shown the underlying TSI/sunspot data, only the gaussian averages (red/blue).
How lovely! You see that a sine wave (black/yellow line) is a pretty good fit to the sea level over the period. The only problem is that despite the authors calling it the “harmonic solar component”, there is nothing “solar” about a sine wave at all. Zero. Nada. It has nothing to do with the sun. Instead, it is merely a 12.6 year sinusoidal cycle that has been fitted to match the sea level data.
And why have they chosen a 12.6 year cycle? The study says:
Last, we take P = 12.6 years, which is the duration of the last solar cycle.
However, I note that the actual length of the last solar cycle was 12.4 years (trough-trough, from the data shown above). I also note that the best fit of the simple sine wave to the residual sea level data gives a “harmonic solar component” with a period of 12.61 years. It is possible that is a coincidence.
Conclusions? In no particular order …
• The 10Be beryllium isotope truly sucks as a solar proxy when used as it was in their study.
• Climate science is in a horrible state when you can pass off a bog-simple 12.6 year sine wave as a “harmonic solar component”. The journal, the peer reviewers, and the authors all share responsibility for this highly misleading study. The study is not about “The solar and Southern Oscillation components in the satellite altimetry data” as the title claims. Iit’s not about solar anything. Instead, it is about fitting a sine wave to sea level data. That is false advertising, not science of any sort.
• Finally, a seven-parameter model? Have these folks never heard the story of Von Neumann’s elephant? Obviously not … so I attach it for their edification. In any case, they have the following parameters in their model:
The intercept parameter, which adjusts the model results vertically
The trend parameter, which sets the trend of the model results
Three sine wave parameters (amplitude, phase, and period) for their grandly-named “harmonic solar component”
The ENI index parameter, setting the effect of the ENI
The ENI index integral parameter, as they’ve used both the ENI and the integral of the ENI in the model
Seriously? Seven tunable parameters? Von Neumann weeps …
In any case, summer is here, the day is warm … I’m going walking in the solar forcing.
Best to all,
w.
The Usual: If you disagree with someone, please quote the exact words that they used that you disagree with. I’m tired of being accused of things I never said. Quote the words you object to so we can all understand what you are getting at.
[UPDATE]: In the comments, Brandon Shollenberger says correctly, albeit quite unpleasantly, that I was remiss in not discussing the authors’ stated reason for using a fitted sine wave in place of the real solar data, so let me remedy that oversight. They say:
The above empirical fit assumed a harmonic solar forcing. Although it is only an approximation, it significantly simplifies the analysis. By describing the radiative forcing anomaly as a complex number: ΔFsolar(t) = ΔFsolar exp(−iωt), each component of the sea level can then be described with a complex amplitude. The phase will then describe a lag or lead relative to the solar forcing.
Let me begin by saying that if the real solar data had fit the sea level record, if the actual solar observations had provided strong and unequivocal support for their hypothesis that tiny variations in the sun affect the sea level, they would have used the real data without a qualm or a question. And rightly so, I’d do the same myself, as would you or anyone. Finding such clear evidence of solar influence would be the jewel in the crown, it would be the final piece to the puzzle that folks have searched for over centuries.
But the fact is, as the graphs above clearly show, the solar data does NOT match up with the sea level residuals, not in any sense. And it also doesn’t match up with the sine wave, so their claim that the sine wave is an “approximation” of the solar data doesn’t hold water either.
As a result, we can start with the certain knowledge that they have left out the main explanation for why they didn’t use the solar data—because it didn’t fit the sea level residual for beans. They’ve put a sine wave in their instead and called it a “harmonic solar component”. I call that highly misleading.
However, there is another, larger reason that describing the sine wave “solar” anything is misleading, which is that it “begs the question”. This oft-misused expression means that the speaker assumes what they are trying to demonstrate—in this case, they assume that the cause is the sun, and go forwards with that unproven, untested, and unlikely assumption. They have assumed that the solar variations are the missing link in explaining sea level variations, but that solar-sealevel connection is exactly what the authors are trying to prove! Circular logic at its finest.
So they can’t assume that connection, they have to demonstrate it … and unfortunately, the solar data doesn’t support it.
Let me try to clarify this by example. Suppose I’m studying the effect of gamma rays on marigold growth. And unfortunately for my lovely hypothesis, the gamma ray data is uncorrelated with the marigold growth data.
But I notice a sine wave can be fitted to the marigold growth data quite well, and the sine wave kinda sorta looks a bit like my gamma ray data, and even better, using the sine wave allows me to “significantly simplify the analysis” … sound familiar? So I throw away all of my gamma ray data, and I just use the sine wave in my analysis.
Here’s the question. Given that there is no gamma ray data of any kind in my study, am I justified in calling the sine wave a “harmonic gamma ray component”, and calling the cycle of the sine wave the “gamma ray cycle”? Or is that misleading?
I say it is misleading as hell, because it leads the reader to believe that gamma rays and the “gamma ray cycle” are indeed the cause of variations in marigold growth, when in fact my gamma ray study showed the opposite, little correlation. Here’s the bottom line. Once I pull out the gamma ray data and replace it with a sine wave, I no longer have a gamma ray model. I have a sine wave model. My sine wave model can only tell me if there is an apparent sine wave component to the marigold growth. It can’t tell me anything about gamma rays because there are none in my model.
Note that the same thing is happening in their paper. Despite the fact that the solar cycle is clearly NOT correlated with the sea level data, and despite the fact that there isn’t one scrap of solar data in their study, they call a simple sine wave a “harmonic solar component”, they ascribe causality to “the Sun”, they call what their model shows “solar forcing”, and they talk at length of “solar cycles” in an effort to persuade the reader that they’ve demonstrated their case about the sun causing sea level variations … when in fact, the data shows the opposite, little correlation. Here’s the bottom line. Once they pull out the solar data and replace it with a sine wave, they no longer have a solar model. They have a sine wave model. Their sine wave model can only only tell us if there is an apparent sine wave component to the sea level. It can’t tell us anything about solar variations because there are none in their model.
And that’s why their paper is misleading. Here’s the simple version. If you have to use a sine wave because the solar data doesn’t fit, you can’t claim it is a “harmonic solar component” when that is what you are trying to prove … even if it ”significantly simplifies the analysis”. It may indeed let you simplify the analysis, or it may not, but that doesn’t magically make it a “harmonic solar component”. It’s a fitted sine wave, and claiming otherwise is misleading.
Finally, the authors never seem to have considered the effect of their replacement of actual data with a sine wave. While it is true that you can do analyses using a sine wave that you can’t do using the real data, because the real data doesn’t look like a sine wave … doesn’t it seem to you that the results of said analyses are likely to apply only to the world of the sine wave, and not to the world of the real data?
Freeman Dyson tells the story of Von Neumann’s elephant (emphasis mine)
We began by calculating meson–proton scattering, using a theory of the strong forces known as pseudoscalar meson theory. By the spring of 1953, after heroic efforts, we had plotted theoretical graphs of meson–proton scattering.We joyfully observed that our calculated numbers agreed pretty well with Fermi’s measured numbers. So I made an appointment to meet with Fermi and show him our results. Proudly, I rode the Greyhound bus from Ithaca to Chicago with a package of our theoretical graphs to show to Fermi.
When I arrived in Fermi’s office, I handed the graphs to Fermi, but he hardly glanced at them. He invited me to sit down, and asked me in a friendly way about the health of my wife and our newborn baby son, now fifty years old. Then he delivered his verdict in a quiet, even voice. “There are two ways of doing calculations in theoretical physics”, he said. “One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating. The other way is to have a precise and selfconsistent mathematical formalism. You have neither.” I was slightly stunned, but ventured to ask him why he did not consider the pseudoscalar meson theory to be a selfconsistent mathematical formalism. He replied, “Quantum electrodynamics is a good theory because the forces are weak, and when the formalism is ambiguous we have a clear physical picture to guide us.With the pseudoscalar meson theory there is no physical picture, and the forces are so strong that nothing converges. To reach your calculated results, you had to introduce arbitrary cut-off procedures that are not based either on solid physics or on solid mathematics.”
In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, “How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?”
I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, “Four.”
He said, “I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
With that, the conversation was over. I thanked Fermi for his time and trouble,and sadly took the next bus back to Ithaca to tell the bad news to the students. Because it was important for the students to have their names on a published paper, we did not abandon our calculations immediately. We finished them and wrote a long paper that was duly published in the Physical Review with all our names on it. Then we dispersed to find other lines of work. I escaped to Berkeley, California, to start a new career in condensed-matter physics.
Again, a very excellent analysis and summary Willis! Thank you.
The TSI composite fig. 5 seems to suggest a mean TSI value of about 1362.x
This is what I believe NASA / NOAA issued somewhat recently (last 12 months) and 1362 is te number I have taken to using, instead of the 1366 that we often see floating around.
G
It’s interesting that the original number used for the average by NASA in the design of solar arrays for the average (measured in the 1960’s and 70’s) is 1358 w/m2.
It increased from 1900 to 1960, and decreased after that.
==============
as did the tree ring data. hide the decline.
oh wait, my mistake. Photosynthesis relies on temperature, not sunlight. 97% of climate scientists agree. From the Greek. Photo = warm, synthesis = temperature.
Very good point Fred.
This is so obvious but I’ve never seen in mentioned before. If Briffa’s tree ring data is archived anywhere it would be very interesting to see how it compares to some solar proxy like SSN.
Ditto the Thanks and accolades, Willis. You do good work and lots of it.
Is the 12.6 0r 12.4 the years of a solar cycle? Shouldn’t the sine wave length match the solar cycle? Doesn’t the solar cycle vary? Doesn’t that make a sine wave inapplicable?
Do I just not “get” this sine wave thingy? Shouldn’t we use empirical data or an accurate proxy?
You math wizards can really leave me questioning my knowledge and even my intellect but I think this time these guys went too far. Maybe as a search for a starting point but surely not for a conclusion.
There is very little truth about any of the points raised by Eschenbach in this article. In particular, his analysis excludes the fact that the ocean has a large heat capacity such that one expects the sea level change rate to vary in sync with the solar forcing (which it does) and not the sea level itself. This basic physics mistake is the reason he finds no correlation. If you’re interested in reading more, I tried to address his main mistakes in: http://www.sciencebits.com/reply-eschenbach
I will not answer any comments on this page, since after Eschenbach expressed his derogatory remarks I see no point.
Also, since I am traveling, I will have little time to answer comments on my blog, but I will try.
It’s a great pity,Professor Shaviv, that you have chosen not to waste time sharing your vast knowledge on this forum, but I fully understand the reason for this choice, and it is a disgrace that certain individuals should have forced you to make it. I for one will continue to follow your amazing work elsewhere.
Jay Hope,
Well you can always look at his work at his blog. Or critique it there. To make it easy on you I’ll leave the link.
http://www.sciencebits.com/reply-eschenbach
Very nice. Very nice work..
Godzilla is coming!
http://m.aol.com/article/2015/08/13/godzilla-el-nino-may-be-coming-to-california-latest-forecast/21222389/
“could bring “extreme rainfall” to drought-stricken California.”
notice that Godzilla will bring “extreme rainfall”. Not rain, but “extreme” rain. So what sort of rain do they have in Seattle every winter? Mega Super Friggin’ Torrential Deluge? The Mother of all Rains? Did all the pussies in the US move to California, or were they simply born there?
I think terms are relative in the eyes of some people. I live in No Ca at about 2500 ft elevation. Last Dec. we had 10 inches of rain in ONE day. I do not call that extreme, it happens. Some, elsewhere would call that extreme.
Do I wish we would have had more than one of those days, or more for the season – sure!
Seattle rarely gets extreme rain. They get all day drizzles in fall and winter. Dallas gets more annual rainfall than Seattle.
Hi Willis,
The sunspot integral correlates ~95% with the global temperature anomaly, why not use the accumulated solar energy proxy i.e. departure from the mean SSN instead of the raw sunspot data (this is from Leif’s data downloaded from his website in mid-2014):
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wLCEUB9Aw28/U-cGLCEaBPI/AAAAAAAAGMQ/NAl4KtFKmog/s1600/sunspot+integral+2.jpg
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/08/new-sunspot-record-shows-accumulated.html
And from Leif’s previously submitted paper:
“Still, although the levels of activity were not exceptional except maybe for cycle 19, the particularly long sequence of strong cycles in the late 20th remains a noteworthy episode. Indeed, the 400-year sunspot record and one of its by products, the number of spotless days, show that such a tight sequence of 5 strong cycles over 6 successive cycles (from 17 to 22, except 20), which we can call the “Modern Maximum”, is still unique over at least the last four centuries. Given the inertia of natural systems exposed to the solar influences, like the Earth atmosphere-ocean system, this cycle clustering could still induce a peak in the external responses to solar activity, like the Earth climate. However, we conclude that the imprint of this Modern Maximum (e.g. Earth climate forcing) would essentially result from time-integration effects (system inertia) [i.e. the sunspot time-integral], since exceptionally high amplitudes of the solar magnetic cycle cannot be invoked anymore. In this suggested revision, the estimated or modeled amplitude of the effects, including the response of the Earth environment, can be quite different, necessarily smaller, and should thus be re-assessed.
The recalibrated series may thus indicate that a Grand Maximum needs to be redefined as a tight repetition/clustering of strong cycles over several decades, without requiring exceptionally high amplitudes for those cycles compared to other periods.”
Best regards.
That [over-cautious] wording reflects the then opinion of Frederic Clette, which he no longer holds, as per the IAU press release on August 7th. It took some time for Frederic to come to terms with the facts [that there simply is no Modern Grand Maximum]. Trying to ‘redefine’ what a grand maximum means is simply a distortion. I warned him about that. That his words would be misrepresented, and you prove me correct.
Comparison with 14C cosmic ray proxy:
http://www.leif.org/research/Comparison-GSN-14C-Modulation.png
Total Solar Irradiance derived from sunspot group number:
http://www.leif.org/research/New-TSI-from-Group-Number.png
Solar wind magnetic flux [top]. Cosmic ray modulation [middle], and group number [bottom]:
http://www.leif.org/research/Usoskin-et-al-2015.png
The Group Number for the first half of the data since 1700 was 4.4+/-0.5, and for the last half also 4.4+/-0.2. Statistically indistinguishable.
The new number is discussed here: http://www.leif.org/research/The-July-Seminars-2015.pdf
Bottom line: There is no long-term trend over the last three centuries. Integration of a series minus its mean gives you as result a nice round zero.
What’s excellent thing about this is that if it does cool, then the ingenuity required to blame CO2 and/or man will reach stupendous dimensions.
==================
“Trying to ‘redefine’ what a grand maximum means …”
How is a “grand maximum” currently defined? As far as I can tell there is no such definition in the literature.
So you are saying it really is true.
On average, nothing ever happens.
g
Thanks, hockey, always good to hear from you. The problem with the integral of the sunspots is that it is totally dependent on the exact dataset and the exact starting and ending points. For example, here is the integral of the new monthly sunspot data, which starts in 1749:
I’m sure you can see the difficulty …
w.
Integrals have nothing to do with means. What on earth are you doing?
One “difficulty” is the graph will always begin and end with y=0.
Leif once suggested a better method, running sum, the sum of the last 100 yrs for instance,
http://virakkraft.com/SSN-integral-temp.png
This is not an integral of the sunspot data. This is an integral of the sunspot data with the mean subtracted out. And, subtracting the mean out means that you are arbitrarily detrending the integrated result.
It is very clear that solar activity was increasing over the 20th century. Just look at the running averages over 50 years
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:600
It’s not just the peaks that matter, it’s also the area under the them. This new SSN data set does not eliminate the increased activity. Here are 50 year and 100 year running averages of the new SSN data:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/ssnfilt_zpsbgautent.jpg
The actual thermal response of the Earth is undoubtedly complex, with many long term time constants and modal responses. But, it is clear that the increased energy input over the 20th century is a viable candidate for having produced the warming observed over it.
Here is the sunspot group number [11-yr averages] since 1610:
http://www.leif.org/research/Comparison-GSN-14C-Modulation.png
Not a viable candidate for global warming.
There is a clear upward trend since 1800. Are you blind? No, just Leif being Leif.
Kanagroo on heat …
http://s16.postimg.org/dr6m4st9g/Kangaroo.jpg
Sunspot number.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn
Global mean and AMO.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/plot/esrl-amo/from:1950
“george e. smith August 14, 2015 at 10:07 am:
So you are saying it really is true.
On average, nothing ever happens.”
LOL the ultimate tautology!
I really don’t know how anyone could suggest that there’s been an increase in solar activity over the past two centuries:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HjRC_1B–LI/Vc-9Ey9bAGI/AAAAAAAAHUg/BRv_cxld_NE/s320/trend.png
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/sidc-ssn/mean:600/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:600/trend
Shenanigans. So many shenanigans. Tell me this: why do they need shenanigans if they’re trying to convince people of the truth?
BTW: Sunspots are not a complete indicator of solar magnetic activity. There are also, at certain points of the solar cycle, significant emissions from the coronal holes (aka open magnetic field lines), and these two modes might actually peak at different times.
See http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MmSAI/76/PDF/969.pdf
“We show that the index commonly used for quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity and using this index leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity in the global warming in the recent decades. A more suitable index is the geomagnetic activity which reflects all solar activity, and it is highly correlated to global temperature variations in the whole period for which we have data.”
Referencing Kristian Birkeland’s terrella …
Coronal holes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Richfj/test
Sunspots:
http://www.holoscience.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/Birkeland-sun.jpg
We can debate the causes, but two different modes, and apparently replicable in the plasma laboratory.
Cue Leif in three, two, one …
BTW, I find those terrella experiments extremely compelling. It blows me away when they are dismissed out of hand.
The solar open flux [top panel] follows the sunspot group number [bottom panel]:
http://www.leif.org/research/Usoskin-et-al-2015.png
Let’s face it, ALL of you are jumping at shadows, jumping to conclusions and just generally jumping for attention. Any reasonable member of the public should be demanding that public funding is cut off for the lot of you. Put you all on unemployment benefit until you find yourselves something productive to do. Then we could all pay less taxes and have more money to spend on heating or cooling our homes, holidays and generally enjoying ourselves.
wickedwenchfan August 13, 2015 at 8:47 pm
Let’s face it. I have no idea what you are talking about, or who you are referring to. In any case, ALL of us are not doing anything, there are far too many folks around here who are too contrary to ever do what the others do.
Actually, when anyone starts talking about what ALL of some given group does, I most often tune out … those kinds of sweeping statements are generally the mark of a black-and-white mind struggling to stay afloat in a world of shades of gray, and there’s usually too much bitterness in that struggle for my taste.
w.
Hi Willis
‘Actually, when anyone starts talking about what ALL of some given group does, I most often tune out’
Well your’e dead right there mate.Wickedwenchfan is some nutcase who referred to the Aussie prime minister and his government as ‘A vile bunch of hate encouraging extremists’
That’s the goverment that repealed the carbon tax and the mining tax,stopped giving money to Flannery and his mates for advice that we were going to get for free anyway and now she wants to pay less tax!
Well your global mean sea level data looks much different then the CU site. I guess the swift sea level rise in the last 15 years hasn’t hit my neck of the woods or my sisters on the west coast. We can just go outside at look at the dock. I realize you need a mass index of tidal gauges but why is the data the ipcc uses show this sharp sea level rise in recent years? I realize there is much skepticism for that but how do they get that analysis?
Easy Charlie, you take a dataset that is off message. Imagine a reason reality does not reflect what your models insists it must be, invent an adjustment. In this case Glacial Isostatic Rebound is causing sea levels to fall everywhere (Or not rise as fast as expected, which is a neat trick if you think about it.) because the land is still rising after the last ice age. It turns out that the land is rising exactly as much as needed to make the models work.
Charlie, it’s detrended data.
All the best,
w.
That explains a lot. Thanks guys.
Charlie: You need to understand that the changes in sea level, no matter what the source, are quite small — an inch a decade or less. You won’t easily see that on your dock in the presence of waves, tides, winds, air pressure changes, etc. On top of which, the “solid ground” under your dock is very likely rising or sinking — maybe as fast as a few inches a century. Maybe more if the folks where you live are pumping a lot of oil or water out from under it.
Simple. They make it up as they go along, just as they do for the temperature data. Then they think up some dodgy excuse for the changes they made to the real data.
Death Valley recorded a 136 F in 1910. If the earth is warming, shouldn’t this temp have been exceeded recently, like in 2014, the warmest year ever? Or something even close? California has been under a “hot spell.” Shouldn’t its hottest desert show it?
It’s amazing to me that people, such as CAGWers, don’t live what they preach. Like, why isn’t Hudson Bay a major move-to, or Whitehorse, NWT? Why are the CAGW cognoscenti still buying properties in the tropics? Is Christiana Figureres spending her winters in Bergen, Norway? Why not? I’d like to see her move there, and chop her own wood to burn to keep herself warm. And raise her own geese to collect goose down for her blankie.
In 1910, Death Valley only had weather, not climate.
“In 1910, …only had weather, not climate.”
How true… +1.0001 (+/- 0.5)
When you have to plug in a sin wave and tune it to make your data fit your theory… Well…
Question; Is the 10Be (Beryllium) data a valid proxy for SUNSPOT NUMBERS or is it a valid proxy for SOLAR FLUX (e.g. 10cm)? As Livingston and Penn have pointed out, those 2 items are not one and the same.
Thanks, Walter. Shaviv says 10Be is a valid proxy for sunspot numbers, that’s the point of his graph. I say no.
Is it a proxy for solar flux? No clue … but in theory it should be related to cosmic rays, and thus to the magnetic field. Which is why it should be related to sunspots … but it’s not, as shown above.
So I doubt if 10Be is a good proxy for anything … but hey, the data is out there, you could be the one to find the missing link.
w.
There remains an unexplained elephant in the room. Why else would we live in the fifth unexplained glacial period? Talking about since the Proterozoic. You have to understand the temptation to make that elephant the sun.Then we could all quit thinking and go fishing or play golf or something.
No such luck, and probably all for the best. The nature of the human condition is that we be continually challenged. We are just special ed hominids cast into a mysterious universe. Pretty much like every other creature that ever lived.
Is everyone sure there is no relationship between sunspots, volcanoes and el Ninos?
I looked at sunspots and volcanoes here and here … no relationship found.
Haven’t looked at El Nino and sunspots. However, I have looked at the closely related question of sunspots and SST here … again, no relationship.
w.
Ah but what if there are more drivers. Then the relationship would be undetectable. In fact, I think its inevitable there are many drivers of climate and many and varied lags between them and so looking at relationships between any two of them is unlikely to be particularly helpful. Or perhaps relationships found between them might seem more important than they really are.
It’s unicorns
http://spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ssrcresearchreport1-2010geophysicalevents.pdf
As one can see from the data there is a clear correlation between major geological events and solar activity.
Steven Mosher August 14, 2015 at 5:35 am Edit
Thanks for that insight, Mosh, and not only that, but I can prove it’s unicorns. Here’s how.
The beauty of the method is, I don’t have to have any actual unicorn data for my proof. I’ll just fit a sine wave to the desired result, call my paper “The unicorn And Southern Ocean Components in the satellite altimetry data” and talk sagely about “unicorn forcing” and “the Unicorn” and “unicorn cycles” … and conclude by calculating the unicorn forcing to two decimal places. Plus an error estimate … yeah, that’s the ticket.
However, I’ll be sure to make it clear to everyone that I’m using the sine wave as an approximation of the unicorn data for the same reason the authors gave above. I’ll simply state that it’s not because I don’t have unicorn data—it’s merely to “simplify the analysis”. That way, some untrusting person like Willis can’t bust me for deception regarding unicorns, because (as Brandon will surely point out in my defense), I’ve explained my reasons for not using real unicorn data, so I’m off the hook as far as deception goes.
And this simplification of the unicorn analysis is a good thing, because I can assure you, without that simplification, analyzing unicorn forcing is very, very hard … which means that I was totally justified in using a fitted sine wave instead of unicorn data. Just to simplify the analysis. And for no other reason.
Totally …
w.
Yes, I think that a relationship between sunspots and El Ninos has been found. Check out The National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Willis, IMHO this is one of your best. There will be gnashing of teeth at this exposure of yet more lies masquerading as science, I’m sure.
Exposure of lies, Everard? Don’t think so!
The truly odd thing about the historic sun spot number record is it cannot be improved upon. It is what it is. Full stop. In the instant it is declared wrong it also becomes useless and needs to be ignored. It ceases to exist as a resource. But the vexing part is, people who should know better believe it is only wrong and they know how to correct it. By pulling adjustments from their assets, I presume. It is simply not possible to glean the unknown by injecting best guesses data into the mix. That is not science – it is best guesses.
Only in climate science is all data salvageable by the hindsight of a chosen few and paid for with taxpayer dollars. The fact remains, if it is wrong, it is always wrong. The real problem is, regarding climate scientists, the truth is not within them.
The truly odd thing about the historic sun spot number record is it cannot be improved upon.
Not true. All the original data are still available and the calibration process can be repeated at will. In fact, the ‘historical’ sunspot number was improved on and recalibrated several times over the centuries, see e.g.
Slide 13 of http://www.leif.org/research/The-History-of-the-Sunspot-Number.pdf
Good heavens, dp, I’d thought you usually did your homework. The “historic sun spot number” is presumably what you are calling the individual observational records taken at the time. Nobody is “improving” those. Nobody is “correcting” those. Nobody is “pulling adjustments from their assets” for those. The problem lies elsewhere.
The problem is that those historic observations need to be converted into something called a “sunspot number”. This is NOT a simple count of sunspots, and it is done by means of a formula, a formula that was changed in the past. As a result, the sunspot numbers that we’ve been using for years were CALCULATED INCORRECTLY.
What the current authors have done is gone back to the “historic sun spot number” observations, and applied the same formula to all of the historic sunspot numbers. Since all of the resulting values have been calculated in the same fashion, they have thus created an internally consistent record. This new record corrects the mistakes made in the past calculations.
And if you think that correcting past mistakes is not just another part of how science works, I don’t know what to say.
w.
Which sun spot number are you referring to – the Boulder number (NOAA) or the Belgium (International sunspot) number? Of the two, which is correct? Apparently neither. So now we want a third number and by golly we’re going to get it right this time. And we know this because, ahhh, em, because the third time’s a charm!
dp August 14, 2015 at 5:57 am
So your position is that we should never correct our past scientific errors? That’s an odd point of view, but hey, up to you what you believe.
Call me crazy, but I’m in the totally opposit camp. I think that science is inter alia very much about finding errors in past work and correcting them. Will we “get it right this time”? Perhaps not, although it is likely to be “righter” than before … but for me, leaving it wrong is not an option.
Regards,
w.
I question only why we think we can get it right. So far that has failed at least twice else we would not be having this conversation. What has changed? Why will a third index be better than the other two and why should anyone invest their confidence in it? What degree of confidence does anyone have that this will be a permanent change and not yet another mistake?
There will be no ‘permanent changes’. The new series will also be subject to revisions in the future. The new series results from correcting past mistakes that have been identified. Future work will further improve the series, but will not undo the mistakes that have been corrected. In that sense the new series is a better approximation to actual solar activity [and at this point the best we can do]. It makes no sense to continue to use the old series with their known errors.
Thanks Willis.
What is going on with this site? Where in the world do you get off accusing people of deception for doing something they say they do? This post makes a huge deal of the fact the authors of this paper didn’t use solar data, but the authors never said they used solar data. They said they included a term in their model to try to account for the variability attributable to the sun. Whether or not you agree with their choice, they were perfectly up front and honest about what they did.
Heck, the paper explicitly discusses aspects of the nature of their choice of parameter for their model, pointing out solar forcing wouldn’t actually follow a sin wave, but stating they use a sin wave as an approximation to simplify the analysis. And this post calls them dishonest because… they didn’t use solar data? They told you they didn’t use solar data. You may not like that they didn’t use solar data, but they told you they didn’t.
You can’t accuse a person of dishonesty for doing an analysis in an up front, honest and perfectly clear manner simply because you don’t like it.
And oh, guess what:
There are plenty of sources which give the 23rd solar cycle’s duration as 12.6 years. For instance, Wikipedia (the first hit on Google when I searched for the cycle’s duration) says:
Making an issue of a two month difference which is fully explained by minor differences in sources used when making a choice in model parameter is hardly becoming. But hey:
Because people being completely up front and honest is apparently a sign of dishonesty at this site now. I guess we should just be grateful Willis Eschenbach didn’t say anyone prostituted themselves, perhaps at the direction of higher ups.
Brandon Shollenberger August 13, 2015 at 11:28 pm
No, they were not honest in the slightest. Claiming that a sine wave is a “harmonic solar component” is simply not true. Shaviv describes it as follows (emphasis mine):
But he hasn’t shown that at all, he hasn’t shown anything about the sun. And I note he doesn’t say “a term in our model has a large effect on climate” as you suggest. He says his results are about “the Sun”, not about the fitted sine wave.
Then there’s the abstract, which says (emphasis mine):
But they haven’t shown anything of the sort about solar forcing. Instead, they have passed off a sine wave as a measure of solar forcing or a proxy for solar forcing. If you think a sine wave is a proxy for solar forcing, I fear you don’t know from solar.
Then they say (emphasis mine):
But there is no “solar cycle” data in their work at all, nor is their any “radiative forcing” data. How is that not deceptive? They have not used the solar cycle in any shape or form, and claiming they have is highly deceptive.
Then there’s this, from the paper:
But while there is ENSO in their work, there is no “Sun” in their work anywhere. They don’t say “a term in our model tries to explain the decadal sea level changes” as you suggest above. They say the SUN explains the sea level changes. And they say they know the “solar forcing” … but they don’t have a scrap of forcing data.
Elsewhere they say:
That is pure deception, Brandon. They are not using solar data precisely because the sea level is NOT in sync with the Sun as they falsely claim. If it were, they’d have used it. But they didn’t and that statement above is designed to deceive. The altimetry data is in sync with a TUNED SINE WAVE. It is not in sync with the Sun, and to claim otherwise as they do is exactly the deception I’m talking about.
Then we have:
Hogwash. They have not shown one thing about the Sun. There is no data about the Sun.
What else … they say:
There is no “solar component”. There is a fitted sine wave with no relation to the sun. Calling that sine wave a “solar component” assumes what they are trying to prove.
And that is possibly the most deceptive part of what they’ve done. They have ASSUMED, with no evidence, that in addition to the ENSO the sun also controls sea level. Then because the sun wouldn’t cooperate, they put in a sine wave that they ASSUME represents the solar component.
But that purported solar effect is exactly what they are trying to prove. As a result, calling the cause of the unknown variation “the Sun” and the “solar forcing” is assuming what their analysis claims to prove.
Look, if they had used actual solar data and it had worked as well as the sine wave, THEN they could make a claim that it is the sun.
But they don’t use actual solar data, simply because it doesn’t fit the residual for beans … and when that happens, you can’t just stick in a sine wave and call it a “harmonic solar component”. Not when you have carefully avoided using solar data precisely because it DOESN’T fit the sea level observations. At that point, calling anything “solar” is scientific dishonesty.
And if you can’t see that, well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
w.
Willis Eschenbach:
This is such a ridiculous non-sequitur I don’t know how you wrote it without your head spinning. I was talking about the paper. You responded to my comment about the paper, said I was wrong then immediately proceeded to quote something not in the paper. I’m sure you understand the difference between a paper and a blog post about the paper. For instance, you can’t blame the journal editors and peer-reviewers if one author of the paper says something in a blog post about the paper which is wrong.
But since you did, now I’m going to have to call you dishonest. Because according to your standards, you are. You knew what you said wasn’t accurate, yet you said it anyway. And any lack of clarity must be interpreted uncharitably to label people as dishonest.
That’s… not even in the copy of the paper I’m looking at. The link you provided doesn’t work for me, and that text doesn’t show up when I open the paper here.
It’s fascinating how you can read people’s minds to know their motivations and reasons, and based on that, accuse people of lying. Like seriously, you’re claiming these authors performed the analysis you did in this post (or a similar one), found they got bad results, scrapped them and intentionally performed new tests that got answers they liked. And your entire basis for this is the one test you did in this post and your pathetic attempts at reading minds and papers. It’s disgusting this got posted.
You can keep saying this, but it doesn’t make it true. It is perfectly reasonable to use modeled components when performing fits. And if the modeled component is known to be reasonably accurate, it is normal to refer to the two interchangeably. Do you know how I know this? Because its happened on this very site dozens of times. You didn’t show up to call people liars for any of them.
Where have you been Willis? Do you only call people liars if you don’t like them? Or are you willing to say Anthony Watts and the people here are every bit as responsible for deception as the editors of this journal are?
Sure. Except I’ll also mock you repeatedly for claiming authors who repeatedly indicated they used a modeled component for a solar term were dishonest for not using actual solar data.
Oh, and I’ll do one other thing. I’ll call you dishonest. Because in all your quotes here, you’ve failed to point out the authors repeatedly disclosed the fact their solar term was a modeled component. If you had quoted the paper fairly rather than selectively, you’d have never been able to make the claims of dishonesty you have.
You may not like that the authors didn’t use actual data, but you are obligated to inform your readers the authors repeatedly indicated they didn’t use actual data. By failing to, you deceived them.
By the way, I should point out that last point of my comment prompted me to write a post about this whole thing. Interested parties can read it here. It’s not kind. Long story short, the authors of the paper discuss, in multiple locations and in great detail, the nature of the modeled component Willis Eschenbach portrays them as having passed off as real data. At one point they even say:
Explaining that by choosing to use a harmonic solar forcing instead of actual data, they can perform analyses which could not be done if they had used actual data. They then go on to describe.those analyses.
Above, Eschenbach claims the authors chose not to use real data because they knew that data wouldn’t give them the results they wanted. This is the authors’ stated reason. You’ll note, Eschenbach never disclosed this explanation. He never told anyone the authors gave this reason for using a modeled component rather than data. He didn’t say, “The authors give this reason, but I don’t believe them because…” Instead, he simply withheld that information from readers to give the appearance there was no legitimate reason to use a modeled component.
I don’t know why he did that. What I do know is it is absolutely ridiculous for this site to run posts accusing people of lying in publications based upon such flimsy, or to be frank, non-existent grounds.
Brandon, here’s their abstract:
I see nothing in their entire abstract to indicate that there is not a scrap of solar data in the entire analysis. I see nothing saying that they have substituted a sine wave for the actual solar data. Instead they talk glibly about “solar forcing” and “the solar component”.
So they claim that they find that the sea level variance can be explained by solar forcing and ENSO, and that they find the solar forcing to be 1.33 W/m2. That’s the abstract, that is supposed to describe the important things going on. The other thing at the start of their work is this:
Again, no mention of a model. No mention of the fact that they have provided no evidence that the sun actually explains anything about the sea level changes. How could they, since their model has no solar data at all.
Perhaps you see that as being honest and transparent. Me, I don’t.
If you get your rocks off by mocking people, be my guest. You’ll have to stand in line, though, hating on me is a popular sport out there.
They repeatedly implied that they DID use actual data. They claimed no less than sixteen times, for example, that they are using the “solar cycle” … but they do not say “repeatedly” that this is NOT the solar cycle, it is a sine wave.
Instead, they start out by using the term “solar cycle” in its normal sense, viz:
Note that these are all referring to the real solar cycle. But later in the paper, they switch without notice, and they start calling the fitted sine wave the “solar cycle” … perhaps you do not find that deceptive. I do, and they did not repeatedly disclose anything about that big of sleight of hand.
As to whether the authors “repeatedly disclosed the fact their solar term was a modeled component”, they did eventually disclose that, although not “repeatedly”, and not in the abstract or the key points.
They also disclosed that their ENSO term was a modeled component, which indeed it is, viz:
So the natural assumption is that the solar term, like their ENSO term, was based on real data. It is only by a close reading of the study that the lack of solar data becomes visible. As a result, saying that the solar and ENSO were both terms in their model is far from sufficient disclosure.
Regards,
w.
Willis Eschenbach… so your accusations are based on nothing more than you being bad at reading? The authors devoted an entire section of their paper, which makes up something like 20% of the paper’s length, to analses tied to the fact their solar term is a sin wave. They explicitly say their choice of parameter is inaccurate to some extent but allows them to perform those analyses. It doesn’t require a “close reading” to understand that. It requires simply not ignoring one of the main components of the paper.
But even after pointed that section of the paper out to you, directly quoting it for you, you ignored it. Because… what? You just don’t read you criticize? You’re dishonest? Something else? I don’t know. What I do know is this is pathetic. There is no way anyone could actually read this paper with an open mind and fail to realize the authors used a modeled component for their solar term, and that doing so allowed them to perform a series of analyses which makes up a significant portion of the meat of the paper.
I don’t know how you failed to understand something so obvious, but it’s pathetic, and you owe the authors an apology. As well as the editors of the journal, whoever peer reviewed the paper and climate scientists as whole. Because quite frankly, this blog post is libelous, and if you were sued over it, I wouldn’t speak in your defense.
You, Anthony Watts and everyone else here can’t just go around accusing everyone of deception/fr*ud/lying willy-nilly just because you feel like it. It’s disgusting.
Please forgive the missing words in my previous comment. Typing on a phone across multiple red lights is tricky.
The thing I don’t like about this solar sine-wave thingy they have added, is that they appear to have displaced the entire sine-wave. In fig 10, the sine-wave troughs appear to be displaced by 2 years and the crest by more than 3 years. What was the reason for displacing the “solar forcing” value by 2 or 3 years? Any explanation?
If their solar sine-wave was simply representative of an ‘average sunspot cycle’, I could see the point of adding it, and assuming it represented a solar forcing influence. But this sine-wave does none of that. The true solar sine-wave is asymmetric, and had recent minima in 1997 and 2009, and their solar approximation has none on these.
To be honest, I don’t see why they did not add the stock-market sine-wave into the mix too – it would have as much relevance.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v2dPxyUHoos/UYnHZBJU9PI/AAAAAAAAAcA/_6DxPUhl_EI/s400/Stock.png
Telling us you are typing your posts while driving in traffic does not do anything for the credibility of your arguments. Did you also read Willis’s article while driving? It sounds like you were not paying proper attention to what he wrote and comparing it to the quotes from the paper he was critiquing.
dp asked ‘which sunspot number are you referring to?’ It’s the one that the warmists all adore. It’s the sunspot equivalent of the IPCC falsified data on temperatures.Already the warmists have taken to it like ducks to water, and are acting as if the old data never existed. They’re calling it a ‘makeover’.In actual fact it is a fraudulent whitewash.
Hi Willis, im a fan of MANY of your articles on WUWT, especially the coral reef topics etc. And much more.
?w=1050&h=851
For the first time im not really agreeing with you.
The “passion” with which you seem to recent, reject, toss away the Be proxy for Solar activity itself is for me a little strange.
Yes, all can agree that the Sun activity is not exact in the timing with Be, but its not laughable at all, and you just dont justify these harch verbs with this “test” of yours. It just confirms that the timing is not perfect, since you use fixpoints in time. But most (all?) can see that already. But i think many can also see that indeed there is an overlying correlation – especially this is interesting because the underlying scientific argumentation of correlation is sound. We are not comparing blackbird numbser to sunpot number and concluding something on such a odd approach.
No, i cant share your “too passionate” opinion against the Be-Sun correlation. It makes your own message sound less scientific than the article you dislike in my view.
If you had just said: “One should be a little cautious of making too strong conclusions on the Be-Sun.. ” it would sound a bit more scientific. An maybe its true, one should be a little careful, but still i think the correlation and science behind it definitely is worth mentioning (!!)
But hey, this is a blog, and i guess its ok to through around with words like you do? Perhaps.. 🙂
Kind regards, Frank
Frank Lansner August 14, 2015 at 1:08 am
Frank, the 10Be in the graph above simply does not do what Shaviv et al. claim. It does NOT show a consistent increase in solar strength since 1425. To shot that it would have to have some constant relationship with the solar data … but as I showed, there is no such constant relationship. So it clearly doesn’t work for what they’re trying to use it for.
In addition, as I said above, this is not my first encounter with the 10Be data. I gave you a reference to my previous work in the head post. You haven’t mentioned finding anything wrong with that work, which also shows that 10Be is a poor solar proxy.
Finally, the only “evidence” that you adduce that 10Be is a good solar proxy is that “many can also see that indeed there is an overlying correlation” … sure. People claim they see correlations all the time. For example, “many can also see” the constellations in the sky … the problem is that humans are designed to find patterns, and we find them even when they don’t exist. The fact that humans are pattern-seekers doesn’t mean that the “overall correlations” we find are any more real than the constellations.
Which is why we invented statistics … because we’re too good at fooling ourselves with statements like “many can also see” …
w.
So I know what a ” sine wave ” is.
So what is a ” tuned sine wave ” , and just what is it tuned by and to ?
g
Good question, George. A “tuned sine wave” is a sine wave which has had its three parameters (amplitude, phase, and frequency) adjusted to give the best fit to some certain dataset. In the current example, the dataset to which their model is fitted is the detrended satellite sea level data.
w.
It is a fact that there is a physical explanation for everything that has or will happen. Solar cycle changes are the principal cause of recent and past climate change. It is a fact that there are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record. The problem is determining how solar cycle changes modulate planetary climate.
Currently although sunspots are disappearing, strings of coronal holes continue to appear in low latitude regions of the surface of the sun. It is interesting to see if you can find out what is the theory for what creates coronal holes on the surface of the sun. Why coronal holes appear or do not appear at different times in the solar cycle? Interesting as there is no theory. The solar wind bursts of from the string of coronal holes that continue to appear on the surface of the sun make it appear that the abrupt change to the sun will not cause the planet to cool. The planet will cool when there are no longer coronal holes in low latitude positions on the sun.
The coronal holes create a solar wind burst that in turn creates a space charge differential in the earth’s ionosphere which in turn creates a movement of charge in high latitudes of the planet and equatorial regions.
This movement of electrical charge (electroscavening) causes changes in the amount of cloud cover in high regions and changes cloud properties in both high and low latitude regions. The electroscavenging effect persists for three to five days. It is therefore the number of solar wind bursts and the period between the solar wind bursts that determines how the coronal holes affect planetary temperature. (i,.e. A single high magnitude solar wind burst has less effect than a large number of regular repeating solar wind bursts. For this reason the affect is not measured by averaging the Ap for a month but rather counting the number of disturbances in the geomagnetic field with is measured by the four hour paramater Ak).
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JA014342.shtml
If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth ringing? A comparison of two solar minimum intervals.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf
http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1264.pdf
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MmSAI/76/PDF/969.pdf
Taken to their logical extremes, Willis & Svalgaard would have us conclude that, since the sun is of no consequence, it may be removed forthwith!
Focusing on sunspots leads to blindness (even with a filter).
Don’t you mean Willis and Lord Kelvin?
“Taken to their logical extremes, Willis & Svalgaard would have us conclude that, since the sun is of no consequence, it may be removed forthwith!”
Again someone who fails to understand the claim is that it is the CHANGE in solar activity that is too small not that the Sun is of no consequence.
Also a reminder to look at Leif’s second graph, the red one labeled “Total Solar Irradiance derived from sunspot group number:”. The variance in TSI is under 2 w/m2 over the entire 415 years of the graph. If placed on an absolute scaled graph you wouldn’t even notice it.
jonesingforozone August 14, 2015 at 2:43 am
Oh, please, I’ve never said anything even remotely resembling YOUR statement that “the sun is of no consequence”.
What I have said is this. Despite much searching, I’ve never found any statistically sound evidence that the tiny ~11-year variations in the sun’s strength have any detectable effect on any ground-level climate phenomena. I’ve looked for the putative effect of tiny solar variations on a host of things: sea surface temperatures, satellite sea levels, land temperatures, individual station temperatures, TAO buoy data, global tide-guage average sea levels, individual tide gauges, atmospheric pressure measurements, lake levels, river flows, precipitation, the list is very long.
And I’ve looked with a variety of tools—simple correlations, Fourier analyses, cross-correlations, and more.
And in no case have I found anything of substance. When looked at closely, they are all like this paper—the claims are simply not borne out by the facts.
And through it all I’ve been clear that this does NOT mean that the tiny solar variations have no effect.
It just means that despite extensive investigations, I’ve never been able to find such an effect.
To sum up, if you think that my statements about whether tiny solar variations can be detected in climate datasets imply in any way that I’m saying “the sun is of no consequence”, then you desperately need to upgrade your reading comprehension skills …
w.
PS—A review of my work might be helpful in clearing your mind of some misconceptions about my claims … enjoy.
Congenital Cyclomania Redux
Well, I wasn’t going to mention this paper, but it seems to be getting some play in the blogosphere. Our friend Nicola Scafetta is back again, this time with a paper called “Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs”. He’s…
Cycles Without The Mania
Are there cycles in the sun and its associated electromagnetic phenomena? Assuredly. What are the lengths of the cycles? Well, there’s the question. In the process of writing my recent post about cyclomania, I came across a very interesting paper entitled “Correlation Between the Sunspot Number, the Total Solar Irradiance,…
Sunspots and Sea Level
I came across a curious graph and claim today in a peer-reviewed scientific paper. Here’s the graph relating sunspots and the change in sea level: And here is the claim about the graph: Sea level change and solar activity A stronger effect related to solar cycles is seen in Fig.…
Sunny Spots Along the Parana River
In a comment on a recent post, I was pointed to a study making the following surprising claim: Here, we analyze the stream flow of one of the largest rivers in the world, the Parana ́ in southeastern South America. For the last century, we find a strong correlation with…
Usoskin Et Al. Discover A New Class of Sunspots
There’s a new post up by Usoskin et al. entitled “Evidence for distinct modes of solar activity”. To their credit, they’ve archived their data, it’s available here. Figure 1 shows their reconstructed decadal averages of sunspot numbers for the last three thousand years, from their paper: Figure 1. The results…
Solar Periodicity
I was pointed to a 2010 post by Dr. Roy Spencer over at his always interesting blog. In it, he says that he can show a relationship between total solar irradiance (TSI) and the HadCRUT3 global surface temperature anomalies. TSI is the strength of the sun’s energy at a specified distance…
The Tip of the Gleissberg
A look at Gleissberg’s famous solar cycle reveals that it is constructed from some dubious signal analysis methods. This purported 80-year “Gleissberg cycle” in the sunspot numbers has excited much interest since Gleissberg’s original work. However, the claimed length of the cycle has varied widely.
The Effect of Gleissberg’s “Secular Smoothing”
ABSTRACT: Slow Fourier Transform (SFT) periodograms reveal the strength of the cycles in the full sunspot dataset (n=314), in the sunspot cycle maxima data alone (n=28), and the sunspot cycle maxima after they have been “secularly smoothed” using the method of Gleissberg (n = 24). In all three datasets, there…
It’s The Evidence, Stupid!
I hear a lot of folks give the following explanation for the vagaries of the climate, viz: It’s the sun, stupid. And in fact, when I first started looking at the climate I thought the very same thing. How could it not be the sun, I reasoned, since obviously that’s…
Sunspots and Sea Surface Temperature
I thought I was done with sunspots … but as the well-known climate scientist Michael Corleone once remarked, “Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in”. In this case Marcel Crok, the well-known Dutch climate writer, asked me if I’d seen the paper from Nir…
Maunder and Dalton Sunspot Minima
In a recent interchange over at Joanne Nova’s always interesting blog, I’d said that the slow changes in the sun have little effect on temperature. Someone asked me, well, what about the cold temperatures during the Maunder and Dalton sunspot minima? And I thought … hey, what about them? I…
Splicing Clouds
So once again, I have donned my Don Quijote armor and continued my quest for a ~11-year sunspot-related solar signal in some surface weather dataset. My plan for the quest has been simple. It is based on the fact that all of the phenomena commonly credited with affecting the temperature,…
Volcanoes and Sunspots
I keep reading how sunspots are supposed to affect volcanoes. In the comments to my last post, Tides, Earthquakes, and Volcanoes, someone approvingly quoted a volcano researcher who had looked at eleven eruptions of a particular type and stated: …. Nine of the 11 events occurred during the solar inactive phase…
Early Sunspots and Volcanoes
Well, as often happens I started out in one direction and then I got sidetractored … I wanted to respond to Michele Casati’s claim in the comments of my last post. His claim was that if we include the Maunder Minimum in the 1600’s, it’s clear that volcanoes with a…
Sunspots and Norwegian Child Mortality
In January there was a study published by The Royal Society entitled “Solar activity at birth predicted infant survival and women’s fertility in historical Norway”, available here. It claimed that in Norway in the 1700s and 1800s the solar activity at birth affected a child’s survival chances. As you might imagine, this…
Last Updated: 18 June 2015
This special collection includes a series of papers that present the very first results from ESA’s Earth Observation satellite mission, launched on November 22, 2013. This mission, which comprises three satellites at low Earth polar orbits, with two spacecraft flying side-by-side at low altitude (about 460km), and one flying at a slightly higher altitude (510km), provides high-precision and high-resolution measurements of the strength, direction and variation of the magnetic field, complemented by precise navigation, accelerometer and electric field measurements. These, and the constellation configuration, make it possible to separate and model the various sources of the geomagnetic field and investigate the in situ behavior of the ionosphere. This series of papers present the mission, some of its innovating instruments and the very first results and conclusions that could already be derived from the first year of Swarm in space.
http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/issue/10.1002/%28ISSN%291944-8007%28CAT%29SpecialIssues%28VI%29SWARM1/
This ever-lasting discussion about sequence of the dimension-less subjective numbers is not going to lead to resolving the solar activity climate change question.
The TSI measurements appear to indicate that its variability is far too small to account for more than about 0.1C in the global temperatures.
Sun has also two closely related magnetic fields that are about 90 degrees out of phase. For poloidal field there are instrumental data going back to late 1960s. This is a weak field and has a very little or no effect on what may be going on down here; however it is a useful tool for research in the origins of the much stronger magnetic toroidal field driving the sun’s sunspot cycles. Periodicity of both is about 22 years.
The toroidal magnetic field, represented with longitudinal vector of orientation, in the northern hemisphere direction coincides with the direction of solar rotation during even-numbered cycles, while in the southern hemisphere it is in the opposite direction. Relationship between direction of rotation and direction of the magnetic vector B is reversed during odd-numbered cycles.
Two hemispheric fields are usually of opposite polarity and most of time slightly out of phase. Near magnetic field is of closed type, however the open field propagates through the solar system and it is readily measured at the Earth’s orbit.
Sun also has bursts of flares and coronal mass ejections, following less distinct 11 year cycles, which trough the interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere produce strong geo-magnetic signatures.
If solar activity has any direct effect beyond the TSI on the climate it is to be found in these two effects, both having a clear imprint on the slow changing Earth’s magnetic field.
The Northern hemisphere land and sea temperatures as measured since 1860s have weak ~22 year and a much stronger ~60 years component (as the most prominently found in the AMO) which so far has not been directly related to the solar activity.
Earth’s magnetic field records in the N. Hemisphere go back to 1600s, thus imprint of the solar magnetic signal should be detectable. Analysis of the geo-magnetic signal for the location of the strongest field in the N. Hemisphere during the last four centuries (North East Canada) offers further insight in the possible climate relationship.
It has been found that geo-magnetic field has:
a) ~22 year component synchronous and in phase with the solar toroidal component in the sun’s northern hemisphere, and of strength slightly above an average geomagnetic storm.
b) ~60 year component with strength of an order of magnitude greater, roughly in phase with every 3rd solar magnetic cycle and in the counter phase with the climate’s ~60 year quasi-periodicity.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SE.gif
Point b) is of particular importance since geo-magnetic signal’s strength is such that it can not be accounted by direct input from the sun, then question of its origins arises.
Are the geomagnetic field’s multidecadal oscillations directly synchronised by the much weaker solar impact or are the both solar and geo-magnetic oscillations caused by the common cause?
No full understanding of the sun-climate variability relationship is likely without understanding the above.
TSI:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod
Measurements made over the past six months confirm the general trend of the field’s weakening, with the most dramatic declines over the Western Hemisphere.
http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2014/06/magnetic_field_changes/14582173-1-eng-GB/Magnetic_field_changes_node_full_image_2.jpg
For example, the South Atlantic Anomaly is an area where the magnetic field is particularly weak – in fact, it is only half as strong as in Europe. This is problematic for satellites orbiting Earth, and the majority of technical faults occur when they pass through this region.
Well, I believe the cosmic rays of solar origin have a peak alternating between sharp and flat in alternating solar cycles. This alternating beat, in the timing of the sine wave apparently of oceanic origin, could generate a clocklike mechanism for explication of the historical temperature record, if: 1. The timing works. 2. Cosmic rays have that much effect. 3. The shape of the peak is critical.
Leif has thought about this, considers it a lower order effect, and he’s probably right. Nonetheless, the symmetry is attractive, as is the simplicity.
================
Well is it legitimate to call solar originated charged particle ” Cosmic Rays ”
Aren’t real cosmic rays orders of magnitude higher energy than solar charged particles ??
g
Hi GES
Kosmos according to Pythagoras represented an orderly system including solar system, so it is correct to call it ‘cosmic’ but they are not rays. So it is 50/50.
Duality I would have thought would have allowed them to be rays at least some of the time.
Gone cold …
If I was going to look at sea level cycles I’d want to look at the lunar cycle as well just for completeness.
I mean, it’s not inconceivable that the Sun affects the Oceans but it seems a smaller jump to say the Moon does.
Solar and lunar gravitation both affect sea levels, that’s why there are two tide cycles a day. However it’s difficult to see why solar activity should, especially not in the short term as we know that bulk oceanic warming lags atmospheric warming by decades at least, possibly centuries.
Anyway, we have the answer to global warming; a Saturn V loaded with benzoyl peroxide.
-Just don’t tell the Greens or they’ll take it seriously.
The Sun and the Moon also effect ATMOSPHERIC TIDES.
Brandon Shollenberger August 14, 2015 at 12:49 am
Brandon, thanks for the clarification. You still don’t seem to get it. Yes, they have attempted to justify the fact that they have not used real solar data. But do you actually think that if the actual solar data plus ENSO had been a strongly significant fit to the sea level, they would not have used the real data?
Of course they would have used the real solar data if it strongly supported their case. It would be the jewel in the crown, the final demonstration that tiny solar variations can affect the climate. They would have jumped on that data and used it, and rightly so, I would have done the same. It would be strong evidence that tiny solar variations do affect the sea level.
But the fact is, as the graphs above clearly show, the solar data does NOT match up with residuals, not in any sense. And it also doesn’t match up with the sine wave, so their claim that the sine wave is an “approximation” of the solar data doesn’t hold water either.
In any case, they are free to stick a fitted sine wave in their model because the solar data doesn’t work … but at that point it is NOT A SOLAR MODEL. Saying that the fitted sine wave has anything to do with the sun is nonsense. We’ve already seen that the sun does NOT line up with the sine wave. So no, the sine wave is not a “harmonic solar forcing” or an “approximation” of the solar forcing as they incorrectly assert in your quoted section above. That sine wave has nothing to do with the sun. It is a random sine wave that is fitted to the sea level data, and that sine wave clearly DOESN’T fit the solar data. Calling it “solar” anything is totally incorrect and deceptive.
There is another, larger reason that calling the sine wave “solar” anything is deceptive, which is that it begs the question. It assumes what they are trying to demonstrate—it assumes that the cause is the sun, and goes forwards with that unproven, untested, and unlikely assumption. They have assumed that the solar variations are the missing link in explaining sea level variations, but that solar-sealevel connection is exactly what the authors are trying to prove!
So they can’t assume it, they have to demonstrate it … and unfortunately, the solar data doesn’t support it.
Let me try it by example. Suppose I’m studying the effect of gamma rays on marigold growth. Unfortunately the gamma ray data is uncorrelated with the marigold growth data.
But I notice a sine wave can be fitted to the marigold growth data quite well, and even better, using the sine wave allows me to perform analyses which could not be done if I had used the actual gamma ray data … sound familiar?
Given that, am I justified in calling the sine wave a “harmonic gamma ray component”, and calling the cycle of the sine wave the “gamma ray cycle”? Or is that deceptive?
I say it is deceptive as hell, because it is an attempt to persuade the reader that gamma rays and the “gamma ray cycle” are indeed the cause of variations in marigold growth, when in fact my gamma study showed the opposite, little correlation. My sine wave model can only tell me if there is an apparent sine wave component to the marigold growth. It can’t tell us anything about gamma rays because there are none in my model.
Note that the same thing is happening in their paper. Despite the fact that the solar cycle is clearly NOT correlated with the sea level data, they call a simple sine wave a “harmonic solar component”, ascribe causality to “the Sun”, call what their model shows “solar forcing”, and talk at length of “solar cycles” to try to persuade the reader that they’ve demonstrated their case about the sun causing sea level variations … when in fact, the data shows the opposite, little correlation. Their sine wave model can only only tell us if there is an apparent sine wave component to the sea level. It can’t tell us anything about solar variations because there are none in their model.
Here’s the simple version. If you have to use a sine wave because the solar data doesn’t fit, you can’t claim it is a “harmonic solar component” when that is what you are trying to prove … even if it does let you “perform analyses which could not be done with actual data”. It may indeed let you do those, or it may not, but that doesn’t magically make it a “harmonic solar component”. It’s a fitted sine wave, and claiming otherwise is deceptive.
Best regards to you,
w.
PS—If you can do analyses using a sine wave that you can’t do using the real data, because the real data doesn’t look like a sine wave … doesn’t it seem to you that the results of said analyses are likely to apply only to the world of the sine wave, and not to the world of the real data?
Hello Willis,
I’m with you that they should have used solar data, and that this is a big error and makes the conclussions of the paper bogus. I’m not totally with you with your claim that solar data does not match the residuals at all. It seems to me that if you include a 2-3 years lag to the solar data (something that they kinda do when selecting which sine wave to use, as the phase is one of the parameters and makes it be lagged wrt the true solar data), it looks more like the residuals. I’m pretty sure that calculating their correlation would show a positive correlation (I’m surprised you didn’t try, or maybe I missed it through my quick read). Of course, it is not a perfect fit. Applying it just reduces de residuals, it doesn’t make them totally disappear. IMO, the paper just misses the last step (a very important miss IMO). Using the sine wave for the complicated calculations is fine, they can extract the most appropriate lag for the solar data and value for the solar forcing caused by it, but then they should have applied those values to the solar data itself (lagging and amplifying), and have included the solar data in their model with those two corrections. In any case, the 7 parameters (6 in the way I see it as one of them, frequency of the sine wave, is not arbitrarily chosen) are a cause of concern, for sure.
Nylo August 15, 2015 at 12:06 am Edit
Thanks, Nylo, interesting points. Even if they used a 2-3 year lag, the peaks of the solar and sine waves are about six years apart. This is one of the big problems with using a sine wave, which is that the length of the increasing and decreasing parts of the sunspot cycle are different. So even if some parts line up, others don’t.
Another and much larger problem is that at the start of the record, the low spots of the solar (blue line, Fig. 10) and the sea level data (solid black line, Fig. 10) line up quite nicely … which means if we lag the solar effect by three years, the effect (rising sea levels in the early record) occurs before the claimed cause (solar changes).
A “positive correlation” is not the proper measure. In any case, for the purposes of this paper I’m discussing their methods, not trying to invent methods of my own.
In addition, I have not done it because that kind of curve fitting generally goes nowhere. Yes, if I use a six or seven parameter fitted model I can make the sea level elephant wave his trunk … so what?
You’re looking at it totally backwards. The three numbers they get (amplitude, phase, and frequency|period) for the fit of the sine wave are unique to that particular form (a sine wave). If you fit a square wave to the data you’d get another set of numbers.
IF (and it’s a huge if) I were to do that, I’d just fit the damn solar data directly to the sea level data. Note that this is exactly what they’ve done with the ENSO data. They’ve just fit it to the sea level dataset, no mess around with sine waves.
And that brings me to the final reason that I didn’t screw around with trying to fit the solar data to the sea level data … I know they’ve already done it, and had it worked out, you can be damn sure they would have put the solar data into their final model and we’d have heard nothing about a sine wave.
Seriously. That’s just what they’ve done with their other two variable (ENSO and integral of ENSO), fitted them to the data. So I know they tried the same with the solar, and I know it didn’t work. If it had worked, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, and the solar cycloholics would be dancing in the streets …
Best regards,
w.
Willis Eschenbach:
Okay, you are a coward, and a dishonest one to boot. This post portrays the authors as having deceived their readers by passing off a modeled component as real world data. Now, you acknowledge the fact they not only showed that their data was modeled, but tried to justify why they used modeled data instead of real world data. That means the entire basis for the claim of deception in your post was wrong, yet despite having backpedaled away from it, you won’t admit you were wrong.
You can disagree with the authors’ assumption all you want. You can say it is wrong. That’s fine. But there is nothing deceptive about making an assumption then carrying out an analysis based upon that assumption. The only person who has been deceptive here has been you, by pretending the authors were anything other than completely up front about what they did. And you’re still doing it here.
But please, stick with the libelous accusations based upon nothing but poor reading skills and amateur level analyses. I’m sure crying, “Liar!” every time you dislike a person’s approach will really help the skeptic cause gain traction.
(Facetiousness aside, if you have this sort of reaction to such a minor case of “deception” in this paper, you’d probably have a rage-induced heart attack if you looked at what all the skeptic favorite Richard Tol has been up to over the last couple years. The latest from him is just stupefying.)
I just wanted to post a quick update on this comment since I see Willis Eschenbach has finally admitted he was wrong to claim this paper was deceptive. I don’t know when he first acknowledged that since he didn’t bother to put timestamps on his edits so people could actually follow the exchanges, but it’s good to see my repeated insults were on-target as he’s now acknowledged every criticism I made of this post.
Whether or not my derogatory remarks had anything to do with Eschenbach’s admission is something I’ll never know. What I do know is we can now see they were completely correct; this post was both entirely wrong in its claims of deception. It should never have been published as it was. That such obviously untrue and libelous accusations were published without any hesitation is a disgrace.
Brandon Shollenberger August 17, 2015 at 2:30 pm
Oooh, I’ve apologized to Dr. Shaviv, and now you want to whine because my apology wasn’t time-stamped … poor fellow.
And no, Brandon, I have not “acknowledged every criticism [you] made of this post”. You just made that up. My opinions of the validity of the study are unchanged, despite your criticisms. I still think it is a meaningless 6-parameter model fitted to a very short dataset, because it has cross-contamination of solar and ENSO, and because ENSO temperature is calculable from the sea level, it has no independent variables.
Actually, you’ll know right now. Your ugliness had very little to do with my actions. I expect that no matter what position I take, someone will tell me it’s 100% wrong … if I listened to the derogatory remarks from the vox pop, I’d never post anything, because according to public opinion somewhere, everything I do is bad and incorrect.
And hard as it may be for you to believe, I make my choices based on other things than your opinion. The big factor that convinced me of my error was the generally measured and temperate response of Dr. Shaviv.
Hey, I got hot under the collar and went over the top. So I apologized. So sue me. It’s never happened to a perfect person like yourself, of course, so you are completely justified in making a Federal felony case out of it …
Take a deep breath, Brandon … life and WUWT go on.
w.
Many folk here seem to just dismiss solar out of hand.
There are many solar outputs, all have different reactions
with the earth’s atmosphere and we are only in our infancy
studying and researching them. Lets not dismiss all solar
out of hand, as realistically it is the only energy source
of note outside of the earth and it does do very complex things
in reactions in the upper atmosphere, some of which we know
a little of and very much that we don’t understand yet.
These various effects must have and do have significant effects on the weather.
We need study on how each aspect of solar affects the atmosphere and weather
not just the TSI which is too broad-brushed, but research into how AP, KP, Proton,
Electron, Magnetic, 10.7, X ray, Ultra Violet, etc react with our atmosphere,
weather, temperature, etc.
I have forecast weather for 40 years and I can tell you that many of these solar features
have a significant effect on frontal strength, low and high pressure strength, rainfall and temperature, etc.
They, of course, have to be used together with oceans and atmospheric to gain a decent weather forecast result, but leave them out and the forecast result lowers significantly.I don’t know much the reasoning behind much of what goes on with these various solar elements, but they certainly need researching as a priority. Why do global weather models go wrong after about 4 to 7 day? Because imo they leave out the various solar inputs and effects and they will not improve their forecasts much at all any further out in time if they do not…again imo anyway. cheers
holts7 August 14, 2015 at 2:27 am
Sorry, I read no farther than your first line. Hardly anyone here “dismisses solar out of hand”, including myself and Leif. This is why I said that if you disagree with someone (WHICH YOU DO) please quote the words you disagree with (WHICH YOU DON’T).
You want me to read your work? Don’t start with bogus, unquoted claims that people here “dismiss all solar out of hand”. That just marks you as someone to avoid, someone who reeks of preconceptions and vague unpleasant generalities.
Look, you might indeed be a genius with brilliant ideas, and I mean that seriously … but I’m not going to wade through your uncited, unquoted fantasies about what I and others think about solar to get to your immortal concepts. Too many comments, too little time.
w.
Shaviv is correct, solar cycle changes are the reason for the anomalous increase in ocean level. Temperature changes are not however the explanation for the anomalous increase in ocean level.
There is a mystery concerning the 20th century ocean rise. The rise in ocean level is greater than the rise that would be expected based on a very, very conservative estimate of glacial melting and the rise due to ocean temperature warming. The rise cannot be an increase in mass as that would change the earth’s rotational speed. The rise in ocean level is too great, too linear, the rise is an anomaly, a paradox.
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/10/6550.full.pdf
Walter Munk (PNAS, 2002) “The historic rise started too early, has too linear a trend, and is too large.”
There is a physical explanation for everything that has happened and will happen.
Does everyone remember the burn marks on the surface of the planet on multiple continents at different latitudes that correlate with the Younger Dryas abrupt climate change and that correlate with the largest change in C14 in the Holocene? The fact that burn marks are on multiple continents at different latitudes and the fact that there are no impact craters rules out a comet as the cause of the burn marks. A basic astronomical calculation indicates it is impossible for a single comet to cause what is observed due to orbital paths. It is not possible for multiple comets to cause what is observed due to likelihood of comet impact and timing of the collision. It is ridiculous that the comet theory as the cause of the burn marks has persisted.
The burn marks also correlate with a geomagnetic excursion which occurred at the same time as the Younger Dryas abrupt climate change. Are people aware the geomagnetic field varies cyclically and abruptly? The abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field correlate with abrupt climate change. The puzzle is what could cause the geomagnetic field to change abruptly and cyclically?
Does everyone remember there is a potential difference of 250,000 volts from the earth’s ionosphere to the surface of the earth? The potential difference is interesting as it should quickly dissipate due to current flow. (Think of the ionosphere/earth’s surface as a capacitor, think of the amount of surface area.)
Are people aware that nuclear decay rates have been found to vary seasonally with earth sun distance? Radioactive decay rates for certain elements are affected by a charge imbalance by a potential difference. The effect on radioactive decay is not caused by solar neutrino emission changes, but rather by a charge difference that occurs due to earth sun seasonal distance changes.
A persistent charge change will also affect ocean level and will cause the ocean level to rise without no change in ocean mass. (i.e. The ocean level change needs to be explained as there is no change in the earth’s rotational speed.)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.0924
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.3754.pdf
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283
William Astley says; “…there is a potential difference of 250,000 volts from the earth’s ionosphere to the surface of the earth…A persistent charge change will also affect ocean level and will cause the ocean level to rise without no change in ocean mass.”
If I understand this correctly, you are saying the ocean levels rise, with no change in mass, from this potential difference? Do you have more information on this?
No. The potential difference does not cause the oceans to rise. The massive electrical charge causes the ocean to expand.
“The massive electrical charge causes the ocean to expand.”
Thanks William, is there a name for this?
Willis’s post seemed to me to prove a shocking deception was attempted in the paper.
Brandon then commented. Thank you Brandon.
I am left feeling deceived by Willis. It seems to me that Willis did leave out significant statments/disclosure from the paper and build shock effect in his ‘effort’ here.
I feel the paper Willis commented on has an interesting angle on things but is not presented well. I feel it’s clarity is poor and what it can reveal is not well established. But Willis’s dissection and presentation here seem to be contrived somewhat.
I will be more suspicious of Willis’s post in the future.
Nobody’s perfect. Several commenters often approach it as a limit.
==========
Neillusion August 14, 2015 at 3:44 am
There is indeed deception going on, but not by me. It seems you’ve read Brandon’s claims but have ignored my responses. I’ve added an update at the end of the head post to explain my position. If you still feel that I’m deceiving you after reading the update, I’m happy to discuss it further.
Here’s the deal, Neillusion. I find it very deceptive that a “solar” analysis about claimed effects of “the Sun” that talks about “solar cycles” and “solar forcing” in fact doesn’t have one bit solar data in it and thus has nothing at all to do with the sun,
If you don’t think that is deceptive, perhaps you could explain to us why the words “sun” or “solar” should appear anywhere in the study.
w.
Neillusion, I forgot to add that you wisely say:
This is a good thing, it is just this kind of universal skepticism that is missing in the field. I encourage you to be suspicious, not just of my claims, but those of all the scientists on both sides of the aisle, and ultimately, suspicious of your own claims as well. It is this skepticism that is the heart of science.
My grandma was a very wise woman, and she used to say
w.
Willis.
In fig 3 you show that the 10Be plot does not match the sunspot plot. But the increase in 10Be looks fairly regular and consistent, for whatever reason (not sure how they achieve this plot).
If you detrended the 10Be plot by the amount it appears to be increasing, would it then become a good proxy for sunspot activity?
Just wonderin’
R
Perhaps, but then it wouldn’t support the idea of the “solar grand maximum”, which is what they were using it for.
w.
True.
But it might make the 10Be plot more useful in other research, if it began to look more reliable.
R
Mr Eschenbach, this is somewhat unrelated: have you seen or prepared a map showing the difference between the UAH/RSS troposphere temperature anomaly and the surface temperature anomaly from one of the “surface temperature anomaly providers”? I’ve noticed they seem to drift away from each other, but I was wondering if the drift is focused more on the north of 60 latitudes, and if the answer may not be the use of sea ice temperature rather than air temperature just above the ice? Am I making sense?
.
I like fig 7, the Residual sea level after removal of the El Nino variations. It looks like a nice 15-year sine-wave, and happens to be a 1/4 harmonic of the PDO.
The blind watchmaker’s mechanism in action?
River, lake, sea levels ect are correlated with solar
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/22/solar-to-river-flow-and-lake-level-correlations/
One of many postings and published papers. Svaalgard is an AGW’er as I understand… who would you believe?
I think some South African scientists published this some time ago a comprehensive study on this thus confirming Brandon ect.
http://skepticalscience.net/pdf/rebuttal/sunspots-and-water-levels-intermediate.pdf
Eliza, both of those studies are badly flawed, as are the overwhelming majority of such claims. See my posts Sunny Spots along the Parana River and Sunspots and Sea Level for a discussion of their problems.
All the best,
w.
Willis,
This is off topic, but since the sunspot / TSI record is freshly queued in your mind, which do you think is more accurate the ACRIM composite or PMOD?
Thanks, LT, but I have no clue. Ask Leif Svalgaard, he’d know.
w.
The increase in galactic radiation. Lock southern polar vortex. Attack of winter in Bolivia.
http://www.bartol.udel.edu/~pyle/thespnplot2.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t50_sh_f00.gif
Very beutifully crafted analysis Willis! Congratulations!
I wouldn’t trust a word Lord Kelvin said, or Willis.
Since you have not quoted a word that either Lord Kelvin or I said, or pointed out what you disagree with, I fear you’re just exercising your constitutionally-guaranteed right to make meaningless noise in public …
w.
So the name LK has stuck……..I’m delighted you find it appropriate.
Jay Hope August 14, 2015 at 3:06 pm
Stuck? Appropriate? Not a bit of either one. When I wrote it, I hadn’t seen the earlier thread, so I thought you were actually talking about Lord Kelvin … sorry to disappoint you.
I also note that you still haven’t quoted one thing you disagree with, instead contenting yourself with childish names and personal attacks … classy.
w.
Willis, Unfortunately, I won’t have time to get back to this for a day or two and I must start on my long list of tasks now. Haven’t had time to read all the comments, Maybe someone else has addressed my points. Probably better than I
1. I don’t know much about sunspot numbers, but I’m pretty sure they are an index, not a count. A single small sunspot generates a SSN around 10, not 1 — which is why we seem never to see daily SSNs of say 5. May not be a problem at all or perhaps not for any but low SSN numbers
2. IMO, all sea level change estimates are suspect. They are all extremely small numbers measured in a very noisy environment subject to a lot of physical variables that may not be known as well as they are thought to be. For example, for whatever reasons the CU data from the Topes/Poseidon satellites show half again as much rise as tidal qauge averages and the earlier GOES satellite data. Detrending the data may defang that issue … or not.
Nice article.
Analyzing residuals is OK as long as the independant variables are truly independent. What should you expect if a relationship exists between ENSO and sunspots? An interaction effect.
Perhaps the missing factor of this whole discussion is the cyclical Sea level Tidal component?
http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/files/2011/09/TIM-TSI-Reconstruction1-1024×788.jpg
The Shaviv sunspot numbers don’t correlate all that well with the measured irradiance. The IPCC TSI Reconstruction is better.
However, cycle 21 looks from the data to be about 20% (1/2 W to 1 W) more energetic at its peak than cycle 22 instead of the less that 0.05 W shown in sunspot and TSI reconstructions.. Why is that? Was there an initial ERB calibration issue?
There is the whole question of transparency. A layman expects to get the whole picture up front. Scientists use complex language, and leave it to other skilled scientists to decipher the text.
I am with Willis. It is time climate science stopped using ‘hide the decline” tricks. All the paper showed was that there “might” be a sun influence “if” someone else could find the physics to explain the sine wave. They did not themselves have the physics. They needed to have said that. Thus that is deceptive to me the layman. I need full transparency.
ECB August 14, 2015 at 6:26 am
ECB, the study cannot show us anything about the sun’s influence, or whether their “might” be a solar influence, because it doesn’t contain any data about the sun.
w.
Willis, It seems to me that TSI should be compared to the *rate of change* in the sea level residuals. That is, when the TSI is high, temperatures should be high, and the rate of SLR should be high as well (allowing for some lag). Is that what you did?
Incidentally, a couple of years ago I plotted the rates of change in temperature (hadcrut4) and SLR (Jevrejeva). Both exhibited a ~60yr cycle, with SLR lagging temperature by about 20yrs.
https://sites.google.com/site/climateadj/multiscale-trend-analysis—hadcrut4
climateadj August 14, 2015 at 6:52 am
No, I did what the authors did, to see where they went off the rails.
w.
Actually, I have no problem with what you did. I believe my logic was faulty. However, I suspect there should be a substantial lag due to convective inertia.
Hell, no one has “a good, solid, robust reference for the actual temperature” of Earth today!
That was supposed to be a reply to “philincalifornia
August 14, 2015 at 6:23 am” on the “Halfway to Hell” topic.
(Firefox suddenly behaved in a totally unexpected manner.)
Actually, now that I think about it, the rate of change in SLR should lag an additional 1/4 cycle, making the comparison worse I believe.
There is a physical explanation for everything. There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record that correlate to solar cycle changes. The solar cycle changes are the primary cause of cyclic planetary climate change, not changes in atmospheric CO2. The sun causes the planet to warm and cool by directly and indirectly causing changes in planetary cloud cover.
As noted coronal holes on the surface of the sun cause persistent regular wind bursts which cause a space charge differential in the ionosphere which in turn causes a movement of electric charge from the high latitudes of the planet to tropical regions. The movement of charge cause an increase in cloud cover in both high and low latitude regions, a change in cloud properties, and a change in cloud duration.
The electroscavenging effect last for 3 to 5 days and is hence dependent on the number and duration between wind bursts. To measure the driving solar mechanism requires a count of the number of solar wind bursts which is related to a count of Ak the four hour change in the geomagnetic field rather than the month average change in the geomagnetic field. i.e. A single large change in the solar wind has less impact on the electroscavenging mechanism than a string of persistent solar wind bursts which is what coronal holes produce.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JA014342/abstract
Thanks, Willis, for another excellent article.
Willis when it comes to solar/climate relationships you are in a word clueless.
The AA index which so far has not been manipulated shows that solar activity increased substancially during the 20th century and in response to this sea surface global temperatures.
The aa-index suffers from a calibration error in 1957, see Section 5.3 of http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf
Leif you always have an answer for everything to make it fit into your wishful thinking for a non existent solar /climate relationship which you are entitled to.
The data below is from the research Bob Weber has done and what he has posted. It shows beyond a shadow of of a doubt (contrary to what Willis keeps trying to show) that sunspot activity between the years 1935-2004 was much higher then sunspot activity from the years 1865-1935.
In addition sunspot activity post 2004 -today is once again much lower then the maximum from 1935-2004 and is gong to continue n this manner going forward and even become even lower against the 1935-2004 average. I dare say the sunspot average going forward will also be below the 1865-1935 sunspot average going out to year 2030.
The AP index continues to be much less post 2005 as opposed to the time prior to 2005 and the implications of all of this will once again be a decline in global sea surface temperatures and a decline in the average global temperatures, as has been the case with every single previous prolonged solar minimum period of time. In addition the atmospheric circulation will become more meridional and volcanic activity will be on the rise, (AS HAS BEEN THE CASE) with all previous prolonged solar minimum periods of time.
Objective non manipulated data shows this CLEARLY to be the case, and it will be the case once again as we move forward thru this decade and beyond.
DATA FROM BOB WEBER WHICH SHOWS CLEARLY A MAXMUM OF SOLAR ACTIVITY FROM 1935-2004.
Using the new v2 monthly SSN data:
The modern maximum in solar activity occurred from June 1935 to Nov 2004, 834 months (69.5 yrs), when v2 monthly SSNs averaged 109, as compared to the previous 69.5 years, between Dec 1865 and May 1935, when the SSNs averaged 65.7, which was a 69.5 year 65.6% increase in sunspot activity.
Again with v2 yearly SSN data:
The modern maximum in solar activity occurred from 1935.5 to 2004.5, a 70 year period, when v2 yearly SSNs averaged 108.5, as compared to a 65.8 per year average for the 70 years between 1865.5 and 1934.5, which was a 70 year 65% increase in sunspot activity.
Take your pick- monthly or yearly data, 69.5 or 70 years, and either a 65.6% or 65% increase.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01a3fcde48d2970b-pi
Data(not manipulated) which shows the solar/climate connection.
Well … no. All it shows is that 10Be is a very poor proxy for solar activity.
According to you Willis but unfortunately for you others do not share your in your opinion on this al for that matter on all your solar/climate findings. Especially me and we shall see going forward which view is correct.
Even with the new numbers, the period from about 1880 to around 1940 had pretty low number of sun spots, and the 5 largest peaks since the end of the little ice age have occurred since 1940.
The Group Number for the first half of the data since 1700 was 4.4+/-0.5, and for the last half also 4.4+/-0.2. Statistically indistinguishable. Thus, no long-term trend.
What matters is how weak will solar activity be going forward in contrast to the 1935-2004 period.
So far solar activity is weaker in contrast to the 1935-2004 maximum period of solar activity and I look for this to only become more pronounced as we move forward thru this century.
The climate response will be for lower global /sea surface temperatures, due to primary and secondary associated effects with prolonged minimum solar conditions.
I agree with Leif that, if we were to call the current solar maximum a “grand maximum”, we would have to say the same about the 1700-1800 period. It is not unusual, if we compare it to what we had at that time. However, I don’t agree that this excludes any possibility that the sun is not behind the XX century temperature rise. Because between 1700-1800 we also DID have quite a temperature rise as well. And not small at all, we were leaving the crudest part of the LIA behind. And the current solar maximum may not be greater than the 1700-1800 maximum, but it is certainly greater than any other period from 1800 onwards.
A problem for the solar influence is that the last three cycles were similar to the three cycles about a century ago, while temperatures now are significantly higher than back then. Of course, all kinds of tortuous excuses can be brought forwards: lags, integrated effects, unknown forcings, bad data, etc., but they are sound like special pleading to me.
Below is the criteria I have come up with to determine how much activity is taking place on the sun.
Notice I did not include sunspot numbers. Why because they are subjective and easily manipulated.
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.
There is such a strong correlation between Sunspots and the 10.7 cm Flux that there is a formula:
Flux = 67.29 + 0.316 R + 0.01084 R^2 – 0.006813 R^3 + 0.0000001314 R^4
Since the Flux is actually measured on the Earth, after 1948, why use the Sunspots?
http://www.spaceweather.ca/solarflux/sx-4a-en.php
http://www.spaceweather.ca/solarflux/sx-6-mavg-en.php
The Flux is the best proxy for Solar Energy actually reaching the Earth.
The relationship formula is from
http://www.leif.org/research/The%20SWPC%20Solar%20Flux.pdf
The measured flux does not tell us what activity was before 1947, which is why the sunspot series is important. It is, however, possible to estimate the solar flux back to the middle of the 18th century from the effect of solar activity on the geomagnetic field, see e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction-of-Solar-EUV-Flux-1740-2015.pdf
Don’t care about Sunspots before 1948. I care about what is happening now! [ last 60 years]. Isn’t this when most of the “Climate Change” has occurred. I don’t use Sunspot peaks; I use the integral of the energy over the years.
The F10.7 flux has almost no energy in itself and is just a proxy for the real energy [TSI and its proxy: sunspots]
You published the formula for the relationship between Sunspots and Flux. Solving that equation for R gives
R = 0.0184502 (-790. + 3.16228 (-1.76115*10^6 + 27100. Flux)^(0.5)) .
Put in a value of Flux and you get Sunspot numbers.
So TSI has a relationship to both Sunspots and Flux. Therefore Flux is also a proxy!
The Flux instrumental reading is much more accurate that attempting to count Sunspots! In addition, the Flux [proxy], is measured on the Earth not 93 million miles away via a telescope.
Again, all I care about is after 1948.
Then you only get a distorted short-term view of the variability which nobody else would care about. Suit yourself.
I didn’t ask you to comment or give your views about anything. Contrary to your view, many people are interested in the relationship of Flux to Sunspots and Sunspots to Flux.
Of course, you ignored the integral of the Flux over time. That concept has an entire website devoted to it. Maybe you should visit it to get a more rounded view of reality.
When you use my formula you expose yourself to my comments. I myself am very interested in the flux and its relationship with sunspot numbers, and have published several papers on that subject. The flux is a proxy for the EUV emission. Here are the EUV and flux back to the 1740s:
http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction-of-Solar-EUV-Flux-1740-2015.pdf
But you don’t care about that, only what the sun did after 1947. So your view is limited and not representative of the solar variation.
Just to be clear, you mean that there was no Solar variation after 1948, and for 65 years?? This is the time I’m interested in. I’m concerned about “the recent past”, “the now” and “future”. Of course, I use the Flux, a great proxy for energy from Sunspots and TSI actually reaching the Earth.
You can see the flux after since 1840 [and then of course also since 1947] in Figure 16 of http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction-of-Solar-EUV-Flux-1740-2015.pdf
So what I’m getting from this is “sun hot = sea high, sun cold = sea low” with a displacement of a few years
prjindigo August 14, 2015 at 10:16 am
Nope. There is no solar data in the analysis. What you are really getting from this is
“sine wave high = sea high, sine wave low = sea low”
And your confusion on this matter is an example of why I say the study is deceptive.
w.
FTA: “So … if the marvelous 10Be “solar activity proxy” has an averaged value of 1.1, does that mean that the sunspot level is zero, or twelve, or twenty-four, or thirty-six sunspots per year?”
So, if the SSN, which is itself a proxy, has an average value of 60, does that indicate 100, 1000, or 10000 W/m^2 coming our way? Why get hung up on one measurement as being only a general indicator of solar activity versus another which is… a general indicator of solar activity?
Bart August 14, 2015 at 10:33 am
Sunspots are more than a “general indicator of solar activity”. They is a very good indicator. The sunspot cycle is very closely related to the cycles of a variety of other solar phenomena (solar wind, magnetic field, etc.).
10Be, on the other hand, is a rubbish indicator of solar activity. Despite that, for political or other reasons it is used as a solar proxy. I show above that it is a very poor proxy, one which says little about solar activity.
And yes, as the sunspot/TSI graph in the head post shows, there is indeed a very close relationship between the sunspot level and the TSI. The relationship is so close, in fact, that it allows us to calculate the TSI, with little error, directly from the sunspots, and tell us whether we have “100, 1000, or 10000 W/m^2 coming our way” (more like changes of tenths of a watt/m2, but you get the idea) … and you absolutely cannot do that with the 10Be data.
So your idea, that they are both “general indicators of solar activity”, is not true. One is an excellent indicator of solar activity, and the other, as I show above, is mostly useless and incorrect.
w.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/media/education/reu/2010/docs/posters/lois_smith_poster.pdf
TSI has to be looked into the component parts that make it up some of which are anti- correlated making TSI to appear more stable then it is.
Wills says below which he offers no convincing proof to back it up with as usual..
10Be, on the other hand, is a rubbish indicator of solar activity. Despite that, for political or other reasons it is used as a solar proxy.
“One is an excellent indicator of solar activity, and the other, as I show above, is mostly useless and incorrect.”
One is a reasonable indicator of solar activity in terms of irradiance at TOA, at least in the modern era where it can be directly compared, I will grant you that.
The other is an indicator of solar modulated cosmic ray activity. So, which one is more applicable to climate?
Bart August 14, 2015 at 12:02 pm
Thanks, Bart. I fear you overstate the case. The 10Be is CLAIMED to be an indicator of solar cosmic ray activity. But sunspots are well known to be closely correlated with cosmic ray activity … so IF the 10Be were an “indicator of solar modulated cosmic ray activity” as is claimed, it would also be an indicator of sunspots …
… but Figure 3 clearly shows that 10Be is NOT an indicator of sunspots. This conclusion is also backed up by Fourier analysis of the 10Be records, which shows no sign of any 11-year cycle. And since the 11-year cycle is by far the biggest of the solar cycles, the odds of 10Be detecting slow small changes in solar activity seem miniscule.
In other words, the theoretical part of the question is sound. We know that 10Be is produced by the action of cosmic rays. That much is clear. So we would expect 10Be to vary on an 11-year cycle … but it doesn’t.
The problem seems to be that the cosmic ray signal is totally effaced, erased, and lost in the weeds by whatever other variable physical processes affect the eventual fate of the 10Be. Which in my book makes it of little use in estimating historical solar variations.
My best to you,
w.
It seems you are arguing that sunspots are a better indicator of cosmic ray activity on the Earth than an element which is produced by cosmic rays. I find that unlikely. But, it behooves us to ask, what exactly are we measuring?
We should not generally expect or look for 1:1, direct relationships. That is not generally how nature works. I would expect that the rate of deposition of 10Be to be more or less inversely proportional to solar activity, and the actual accumulation of 10Be would then have a long term, smoothed out relationship to solar activity. And, long term, smoothed out versions of SSN look not unlike the 10Be indicator (see above).
I must leave. Lack of further response should not necessarily be construed as acquiescence to or agreement with any further discussion.
Only 2 ounces of 10Be are produced worldwide per year over the whole globe. The 10Be in ice cores was mostly not produced in Greenland or Antarctica, but elsewhere and transported to the polar regions by atmospheric circulation, i.e. depends on the climate and not so much on the Sun, which is why 10Be is only a very rough indicator of solar activity, and an equally good indicator of climate conditions.
Excuse me interrupting, but as Fig 5 shows no sea level rise for twenty years, I’m buying that seafront plot in Charleston SC that I ‘ve had my eye on.
Sorry to burst your bubble, Lionheart, but the sea level data is detrended …
w.
However, having said that, there’s been no acceleration in sea level rise, I’d buy land on the ocean. Well, land on some ocean, don’t like the cold oceans …
w.
Sunspots are the worst indicator for solar activity because they are subjective, and do not tell the whole story.
For some reason coronal holes and associated solar wind speeds are being ignored which are far more important, when it comes to the solar/climate connection which shows al solar minima are not alike.
Salvatore Del Prete August 14, 2015 at 11:05 am
That sounds interesting. So how about you stop talking about it and give us the LINK to the actual data of the “indicator for solar activity” that you think is the best?
For bonus points, you might explain to us why
a) sunspots are “subjective” and
b) if they are “subjective”, why do they fit the TSI data so accurately, and
c) just what your choice as the best indicator might have that none of the other boys and girls have got?
w.
Below is the criteria I have come up with to determine how much activity is taking place on the sun.
Notice I did not include sunspot numbers. Why because they are subjective and easily manipulated.
In addition sunspots do not tell the whole story when it comes to solar activity and I will resend the study showing this to be so in my next post which is the basis for my argument.
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.
Makes no sense. Do you add them all up to determine “how much activity is taking place on the sun”? Do you average them? What if one goes up and the other goes down? What if they all go down? What does it mean for any one of them to go down, or go up?
w.
What I have done is come up with low average value solar parameters if reached (all of them at the same time over a sufficient duration of time , should have an effect upon the climate if the following two conditions are meant.
Conditions one- these low average solar parameters follow 10 years or of sub-solar activity in general which we have now had post 2005.
Condition two- these low average value solar parameters when reached have a duration of time in excess of normal solar minimum duration of times associated with the quote 11 year sunspot cycle.
I think going forward these solar conditions can be achieved and if so we shall see what climatic effects materialize or do not materialize.
They were achieved during the 2008-2010 lull for the most part and certainly achieved during past prolonged solar minimum periods, if the 2008-2010 short duration solar lull is used as an indicator guide line for the variability the sun can achieve.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JA014342/abstract
This study is the reason why sunspots should not be the tell all indicator for what effects solar activity may or may not have upon the earth.
William Astley had sent this same study.
“If the Sun was so quiet why was the Earth ringing?”
Because of the high-speed streams that occur prior to every minimum
The solar wind cycles are closely following the sunspot cycles. They vary in a different way within the cycle [for good and understood reasons], but as the sunspot cycles go, so go the other cycles. That is: given a sunspot cycle, the solar wind cycle is determined:
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Wind-Climatology.png
So, the sunspot number is a VERY good measure of what goes on.
Your comment as usual is a silly attempt to confuse. I assume you understand the difference between a solar wind burst and the average of solar wind speed. You have made a number of comments in this forum which are incorrect and which I would assume you know are incorrect. Gavin Schmidt and some of his buddies over at Real Climate do the same thing.
The papers I quoted above noted that coronal holes cause solar wind bursts and coronal hole appearance is not connected with the sunspot cycle. i.e. Coronal holes can appeared late in the solar cycle and did appear late in the solar cycle. The solar wind bursts from coronal holes remove cloud forming ions so even though the solar heliosphere is weak at the end of the solar cycle and GCR is hence high, the high levels of GCR which creates cloud forming ions does result in an increase in cloud cover as the solar wind bursts remove the ions and there is hence no cooling which explains Lockwood’s observation that there use to be correlation of planetary temperature and sunspot count and now there is no longer correlation.
Regardless of what you do or do not say (propaganda and/or incorrect scientific theories do not change reality), the solar cycle has been interrupted and there is now observational evidence of the start of cooling.
The Greenland summer ice melt started two months late this spring and has now ended. The Green Land Ice sheet gained 200 GT this year. Hudson bay sea ice for this point in time of the year is the highest in 20 years. Arctic multiyear ice has increased by 30%.
http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
While we wait for in your face unequivocal cooling, I have been keeping busy investigating astronomical anomalies and paradoxes (there are more than a hundred astronomical paradoxes and anomalies, truly amazing, the solution drops out if one uses the observations to lead rather than shoving the observations into an incorrect theory, big surprise) that are directly related to how the sun can and does cause cyclic abrupt climate change.
There is a physical explanation for everything that has happened and will happen.
There is a physical explanation for what causes cyclic abrupt climate change in the paleo record. It’s the sun. Big surprise the sun and stars are significantly different than the standard model and there are piles and piles of astronomical and solar system anomalies/paradoxes to support that assertion.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/VostokTemp0-420000%20BP.gif
http://sheridan.geog.kent.edu/geog41066/7-Overpeck.pdf
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017115.shtml
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/05/is-the-current-global-warming-a-natural-cycle/
the solar cycle has been interrupted
Of course not. This is your invention.
Leif, could you please specify calendar years for your graph? I would like to know reliable these measurements are.
The curves are the average of 11 solar cycles #13-#23, just repeated 6 times to aid in seeing the pattern.
Every cycle shows the same general pattern. The data is reliable enough to show the same pattern in each cycle.
Sorry – … how reliable these measurements are.
Thanks for the link, Salvatore. I don’t understand why you sent it. I don’t think that sunspots are the “tell all indicator” for all possible variations that solar activity might have.
However, sunspots are known to be closely correlated with variations in things like TSI, EUV, magnetic field, cosmic rays, and the like. In some of those cases, e.g. TSI, we can actually use the sunspot numbers to make very accurate estimates of the other quantity.
Finally, even though the sunspots may not be well correlated with other solar phenomena as noted in the study, almost all solar phenomena generally wax and wane in lockstep with the ~11 year variable sunspot cycle. This is clearly visible by doing a Fourier analysis of the relevant solar phenomena.
And this is why I’ve used Fourier analysis to try to determine any possible solar effect on climate observations—not because of sunspots, but because the sun in general runs on the same ~11-year solar cycle. So if solar wind or cosmic rays are affecting the tide levels in Novosibirsk, we would expect to see some kind of ~11-year cycle in the data.
But we don’t …
w.
Thresholds were probably not met. Normal 11 year sunspot cycle not extreme or long enough in duration.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/253753797_Earth%27s_rotation_ocean_circulation_and_climatic_changes
This is much more relevant then sunspots.
Salvatore, could I ask you in future to please indicate if your link is paywalled or is just the abstract? I just wasted time following that link, only to find the full study is not available at all at that link.
w.
I will. Thanks.
Gosh Willis,
You had to go through a bunch of effort to debunk some crap.
And then a bunch more work to respond to nit-pick
way more patience than me bro. way more patience
Yeah, and that from the usual peddlers of nonsense and ignorance. No wonder that some people laugh at WUWT.
At least we see dissension and discussion on WUWT. If you happen to pass by SkS all you see is rows of automatons genuflecting in awe before molecules composed of oxygen and carbon. Molecules that were apparently able to cause Minoan, Roman and Medieval warming periods before these molecules even existed. Clever things these molecular gods, they can even influence the past.
.
Conversely, to those of us capable of independent logical thought, it would appear wholly likely that another agency was at work in these past eras. And there are not many agencies to chose from, that could cause these great variations in climate – especially the big ones, like the ice ages.
One of those possible agencies – in fact the most likely agency – is that great seething ball of fire that causes ALL the weather on this Earth. The Sun. And if I were a solar scientist, who knew more than anyone else about the inner workings and external influences of the Sun, I would dedicate my career towards looking into each and every variability in that seething mass of fire, to see what could be possibly trigger an abrupt change into an ice age.
This would be a voyage of discovery into the unknown, tracking down multiple variables that may only trigger an terrestrial event when they all come into alignment and act in concert. This would be an adventure that would pique the brightest and most enquiring of minds, a cosmic quest that might even determine the onset of the next ice age.
Instead, we have Leif…….
R
a cosmic quest that might even determine the onset of the next ice age.
Glaciations are caused by the action of planets [mainly Jupiter] on the orbit of the Earth, so that quest has already yielded results. Solar activity has nothing to do with that.
Thanks, Mosh and Leif. Yeah, Mosh, I know that this paper is bogus, and the effort to falsify it is not small.
But to misquote someone, for bad science to succeed it is only necessary for good scientists to do nothing …
Regards, and thanks for your contributions,
w.
Lief, if glaciation is caused by Jupiter, why can’t someone come up with a date for the next ice age? Not some date that is off by 10,000 years, but one that is within a hundred or so.
Because it takes thousands of years to build the ice sheet, so when do you declare that the glaciation is there?
Well it may take tens of thousands of years to build a mile high sheet of ice but it seems like it only takes a few hundred to significantly drop the temperature so that an ice sheet can begin to build. What you are essentially saying is that Jupiter has some muti-millenial effect on the earth which sinks us into an ice age and I find that curious and would like to understand better how that could be.
To have a censorship-free forum, everyone has to put up with a few things and have your patience tested on occasion. In exchange for a forum based on free expression I say Lief, let them laugh.
The key words here are “on occasion”. If it happens too often, it stops being funny.
I have sent this again with the errors corrected. I have to run.
What I have done is come up with low average value solar parameters if reached all of them at the same time over a sufficient duration of time , should have an effect upon the climate if the following two conditions are meant.
Condition one- these low average solar parameters follow 10 years of sub-solar activity in general which we have now had post 2005.
Condition two- these low average value solar parameters when reached have a duration of time in excess of normal solar minimum duration of times associated with the quote 11 year sunspot cycle. Let ‘s say 2 years or longer in duration.
I think going forward these solar conditions can be achieved and if so we shall see what climatic effects materialize or do not materialize.
They were achieved during the 2008-2010 lull for the most part and certainly achieved during past prolonged solar minimum periods, if the 2008-2010 short duration solar lull is used as an indicator guide line for the variability the sun can achieve.
Willis.. The sun has no effect whatsoever on climate you are correct I apologise also to L svaalgard
Eliza August 14, 2015 at 2:37 pm
Eliza, I have never said that, nor anything even remotely resembling that. Those are YOUR WORDS, not mine. Your clumsy attempt to imply that I said them is childish, underhanded, and unpleasant.
I have invited you to quote what you think I’ve said that is wrong, and tell me why you think it is wrong. Instead, you try to put words in my mouth …
If you think that kind of action will get you traction on a scientific site, think again. All that does around here is get you laughed at.
w.
In fact the sun has no effect whatsoever on the earth LOL
Quite right, Eliza. I’m glad you have seen the error of your ways and are now willing to accept the be-Lief (Svalgaard system. 🙂
In reply to:
William,
The most important scientific event of this millennium (the interruption to the solar cycle) is obviously underway and you continue to repeat your mantra that the sun cannot abruptly change and/or that solar cycle abrupt changes cannot cause abrupt climate change. I suppose it is unimagined from your perspective that the solar and stellar standard model is fundamentally incorrect.
Normal filtered. Sunspots are now no longer visible. (P.S. In previous cycles sunspots were visible in this filtered view. The sunspots for past cycles were large and long lasting.)
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_4500.jpg
Enhanced view of sunspots. Note the tiny short lived sunspots (pores).
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_HMII.jpg<