From the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
Sun’s impact on climate change quantified for first time
For the first time, model calculations show a plausible way that fluctuations in solar activity could have a tangible impact on the climate. Studies funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation expect human-induced global warming to tail off slightly over the next few decades. A weaker sun could reduce temperatures by half a degree.
There is human-induced climate change, and there are natural climate fluctuations. One important factor in the unchanging rise and fall of the Earth’s temperature and its different cycles is the sun. As its activity varies, so does the intensity of the sunlight that reaches us. One of the key questions facing climate researchers is whether these fluctuations have any effect at all on the Earth’s climate. IPCC reports assume that recent solar activity is insignificant for climate change, and that the same will apply to activity in the near future.
Researchers from the Physical Meteorological Observatory Davos (PMOD), the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG), ETH Zurich and the University of Bern are now qualifying this assumption. Their elaborate model calculations are supplying a robust estimate of the contribution that the sun is expected to make to temperature change in the next 100 years. For the first time, a significant effect is apparent. They expect the Earth’s temperature to fall by half a degree when solar activity reaches its next minimum.
According to project head Werner Schmutz, who is also Director of PMOD, this reduction in temperature is significant, even though it will do little to compensate for human-induced climate change. “We could win valuable time if solar activity declines and slows the pace of global warming a little. That might help us to deal with the consequences of climate change.” But this will be no more than borrowed time, warns Schmutz, since the next minimum will inevitably be followed by a maximum.
Strong fluctuations could explain past climate
At the end of March, the researchers working on the project will meet in Davos for a conference to discuss the final results. The project brought together various research institutions’ capabilities in terms of climate effect modelling. PMOD calculated what is known as “radiative forcing” taking account of particle as well as electromagnetic radiation, ETH Zurich worked out its further effects in the Earth’s atmosphere and the University of Bern investigated the interactions between the atmosphere and oceans.
The Swiss researchers assumed a greater fluctuation in the radiation striking the Earth than previous models had done. Schmutz is convinced that “this is the only way that we can understand the natural fluctuations in our climate over the last few millennia.” He says that other hypotheses, such as the effect of major volcanic eruptions, are less conclusive.
Exactly how the sun will behave over the next few years remains a matter of speculation, however, since appropriate data series have only been available for a few decades and they reveal no evidence of fluctuations during this time. “To that extent, our latest results are still a hypothesis,” says Schmutz, “and it remains difficult for solar physicists to predict the next cycle.” But since we have been observing a consistently strong phase since 1950, it is highly likely that we will experience another low point in 50 to 100 years’ time. It could be every bit as intense as the Maunder Minimum, which brought particularly cold weather during the 17th century.
Important historical data
The research project also placed great importance on the historical perspective. The Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern compared data series on past solar activity with other specific climatic conditions. People have been recording the number of sunspots, which correlates well with solar activity levels, for some three centuries now. However, it is much more difficult to quantify exactly how cold it was on Earth back then. “We know that the winters during the last minimum were very cold, at least in northern Europe,” says Schmutz. The researchers still have a fair amount of work to do before they have a detailed understanding of the relationship between solar activity and the global climate both in the past and in the future.
h/t to The GWPF
It never ceases to amaze me that we need a model to prove the Sun affects our climate. That the Sun warms us and lack of it cools us should be intuitive. We wouldn’t even exist without the Sun.
It should be intuitive, but the way our education system appears to work today, and the gullibility of CAGW worshipers, this model may be the only way to reach them.
Half a degree?
If they were smart they would have declared that the ongoing solar lull had already decreased planetary temperatures by a full degree Celcius. That way they could once again make the required upward adjustments to current temperatures, kill ‘the pause’, and claim that… wait for it… “that the CO2 warming is even worse than we thought!”
Blown opportunity if you ask me.
Everyone understands that the Sun warms the planet. What is not “intuitive” is whether small fluctuations in solar activity make a noticeable impact on climate.
Oh dear, two alert words in one sentence: model and “robust”.
We can’t model the climate even at the decadal scale, we can’t model solar activity at all, how the hell are they pretending to “robustly” model the effects of one on the other for the next century.
I call BS on this and refuse to waste any more of my life looking at their claims.
Sorry… meant to write ‘masked’ not ‘decreased’
It will be even worse, as the postulated CO2 climate warming does not exist.
Geo: We don’t need a model to show that TSI (total solar irradiance in W/m2) is nearly constant and therefore doesn’t change our temperature appreciably. A model is needed to explain historical cold periods associated with reduced “solar activity” (sunspots or high energy particles or magnetic field). A model is needed to project that hypothesized future reductions in “solar activity” will cause significant cooling in future decades. If you don’t like solar models, don’t expect weaker solar activity in the future provide significant cooling.
Frank, The data from just over a decade of SORCE readings shows that TSI varies by at least 1.3 w/m2, which would certainly affect the climate, as the IPCC’s best guess for the radiative forcing effect of cumulative human CO2 emissions is 2.0 w/m2. In addition, observations show that the solar spectrum itself is inconsistent, with radiation at some wavelengths being 10 times what was expected. What we need is more data to show just how large the variations can be.
The high-energy end of the solar EM spectrum, ie UV, varies by about 100%. Spectral composition also differs from top of the atmosphere and the planetary surface.
Yes, but that variation has not shown any long-term trend so does not explain recent Global Warming:
http://www.leif.org/research/EUV-F107-and-TSI-CDR-HAO.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/EUV-Reconstruction-Long-Term.png
Absorption of UV radiation in the gaseous atmosphere is primarily due to molecular
oxygen O2 and ozone O3.
http://irina.eas.gatech.edu/EAS8803_Fall2009/Lec6.pdf
Ted: I went to the SORCE website and couldn’t find any observational evidence that TSI has varied by 1.3 W/m2. I did find a historical RECONSTRUCTION of TSI – ie a MODEL – from sunspot data that varied by 1.3 W/m2. Converting sunspot number (or Be-11 or C-14 solar proxies) into a change in TSI is a challenging proposition.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/data/tsi-data/#plots
ClimateDialogue convened experts on both sides of the solar debate. Several of the experts say no one knows which reconstructions, if any, are right. You decide for yourself.
http://www.climatedialogue.org/what-will-happen-during-a-new-maunder-minimum/
Warning: When comparing changes in TSI to other climate forcings (such as 3.7 W/m2 for 2XCO2), you need to remember that GHG forcing occurs over a global surface area of 4*Pi*R^2 while TSI is delivered to a disk of Pi*R^2 and that 30% is reflected rather than absorbed. That means a 5.7 W/m2 change in TSI (about 1361 W/m2) translates into a solar forcing of only 1 W/m2.
Frank, you should also be aware that you are not looking at true earth TSI. Which varies from 1315 to 1406. A differences of 91 w/m^2 over a year. The orbit of the earth is not completely circular. It is 158 million km at aphellion and 153 million km at perihelion. The true earth data is also from SORCE. The nearly constant number is from the Lagrange point. My first calculation using the power formula had a 78 w/m^2 difference. SORCE has another column which gives you the true earth TSI which I was informed of. You can’t use a simple formula as an average. When calculating the retained heat, it’s no good. It’s also no good in calculating the black body radiation. The reason is you have a band of numbers that are changing. The position of the earth between the NH and SH are constantly changing in relation to distance. A complete cycle takes about 390 years.
Just the instrumentation error alone on many papers that were written uses 1370 as the TSI as a constant. Still they are trying to get the figure closer to 1370 than 1361/1362. Why is that important ? It wipes out a third of the calculated temperature increase due to co2.
We really are in uncharted territory. If the orbit varies a little as much as a million km +/-, most astronomers wouldn’t be too upset about it. It’s a fairly good circle except that it has implications for climate.
There has to be a certain amount of thermal inertia that is built up in the oceans. If the calculation that every 10 w/m^2 results in a 0.5 C, then from aphellion to perihelion it about 4.5 C.
The only thing I’m fairly certain of is that co2 is not controlling temperature. Maybe we should be glad that there is warming, co2 or otherwise. Is a LIA the norm and not the exception?
Frank, in the first link you posted, directly above the paragraph on historical reconstruction, is a plot of the data from SORCE showing TSI changes by at least 1.3 w/m2.
Remember: When comparing changes in TSI to the forcing from additional CO2, that the changes in w/m2 from the sun is based on observation, not reconstruction, while the amount of forcing for changes in CO2 are hypothesized based on the assumptions that solar changes were negligible, magnetic changes were negligible, and a positive feedback cycle; all of which run counter to observations made since the proposal that CO2 was the largest factor in warming.
lsvalgaard March 31, 2017 at 4:39 pm
IMO, EUV looks to correspond well with warmer and cooler cycles since the 18th century. Probably would too if extended farther back into the LIA.
As I said, your mileage varies with your beliefs and bias. You just proved that point.
The EUV in the 1870s and 1780s was on par with what we have measured the past 30 years.
You think the temperatures [or the climate] during those three periods were the same. Let that stand as your belief. It is not mine.
Frank said, March 31, 2017 at 12:56 pm:
True. The solar parameter that matters to the climate system is the ASR (“Absorbed Solar Radiation”), not TSI. People seem not to be aware of this simple fact.
TSI itself basically does nothing. Because it’s nearly constant over time. However, the actual solar input to the earth system, the “solar HEAT” [Q_sw], the ASR, is largely determined rather by earth’s global albedo. Earth’s heat flux from the sun, after all, is not TSI. It is the “net SW”, TSI minus reflected SW (albedo):
IOW, ASR is the solar parameter that we need to look at, not TSI. TSI is just one component of the net. And a pretty constant one at that. It is not what’s actually absorbed by the earth system. The ASR is.
The ASR is (globally) ~240 W/m^2 at the ToA, ~165 W/m^2 at the surface. At the ToA it is (more or less) balanced in full by the OLR (“Outgoing Long-wave Radiation”): Q_in = Q_out. At the surface it is balanced by the radiative heat loss (“net LW”, Q_rad) + the conductive heat loss (Q_cond) + the evaporative heat loss (Q_evap):
Q_in = Q_out (Q_rad (53W/m^2) + Q_cond (24W/m^2) + Q_evap (88W/m^2))
Ted said, March 31, 2017 at 3:15 pm:
Well, I’d say the range from peak to trough is about 1-1.3 W/m^2:
But you’d have to divide that number by 4 to get the global annual average. The earth is a spinning ball, after all.
So, in terms of earth’s energy budget, the TSI at the ToA isn’t 1361 W/m^2. It’s 1361/4 = 340.25 W/m^2. And the range from cycle top to cycle bottom becomes 0.25-0.33 W/m^2 rather than 1-1.3 W/m^2. That range hardly matters at all when compared to the reflected SW (albedo) variability, mostly caused by clouds:
Rishrac and Kristian: Thanks for the repies. I agree that the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit (3.5%) causes a 7% annual variation incoming TSI. However, neither that annual variation nor the 11-year cycle cause apparent cyclical changes in GMST.* On the climate time scale, these rapid (annual and decadal) fluctuations average out. To compete with CO2 as an influence on climate, solar changes need to produce a continuous FORCING change comparable to CO2 – more than 1 W/m2 and they need to be applied for decades, not just a few years. As I noted above, a 1 W/m2 forcing is equivalent to a change in TSI of 5.7 W/m2.
Rishrac commented: “The only thing I’m fairly certain of is that co2 is not controlling temperature. Maybe we should be glad that there is warming, co2 or otherwise. Is a LIA the norm and not the exception?”
I think a smart guy like you would say that CO2 is not the ONLY thing controlling temperature. Ice cores show us how much temperature change was caused by other factors during the Holocene before GHGs became involved. (Divide by 2 to correct for Arctic amplification.) The unfortunate answer currently appears to be that other factors caused less change than CO2 will do in the future – if climate sensitivity is high (3 K/doubling). So CO2 is not the only thing, but it currently appears to be a good candidate for most important thing.
There were wild changes in temperature (glacial/interglacial) before the Holocene. Milankovitch cycles apparently involve trivial changes in global TSI. CO2 change lagged behind temperature change and was a feedback. Given our limited understanding of what causes glacials and interglacials, I choose to draw my inferences about what is controlling temperature today from what is known about Holocene temperature variation (but other positions are tenable).
* Which brings me back to the subject of why global temperature doesn’t change with the 11 year solar cycle or the annual 7% cycle due to eccentricity. I believe the correct answer is heat capacity. W/m2 is a power flux. It needs to be integrated over time to become an energy flux and then combined with heat capacity per unit area to become a temperature change. (Many people mistakenly convert W/m2 to degC using ECS, without recognizing that this factor applies only at equilibrium, many decades in the future.) If you assume a 50 m mixed layer over 70% of the Earth (plus trivial contributions from atmosphere and land), a 1 W/m2 radiative imbalance is capable of producing an INITIAL rate of warming of 0.2 degC/yr. However, even on the time-scale of Pinatubo, the idea that temperature change is confined to the top 50 m of the ocean isn’t viable, a significant amount of heat begins to reach below the mixed layer in less than a year This can also be seen in ARGO data. Furthermore, any temperature change also modifies radiative cooling to space – though the size of that correction depends on ECS. Thus the peak -3 W/m2 forcing from Pinatubo created roughly a cooling of only -0.6 K 1.5 years later (and WIllis can’t “spot the volcano” in temperature records). So an 11 year solar cycle with an amplitude of 1 W/m2, becomes a solar forcing change of about 0.17 W/m2 and an initial rate of change of 0.035 degC/year if confined to the mixed layer (and less when some of the heat escapes). So the 11-year solar cycle is (just barely) buried by unforced and other forced variability in temperature.
The much larger 7% annual cycle disappears when we calculate temperature anomalies. When we don’t use anomalies, we see a 3.5 degK change in GMST that is 180 degrees out-of-phase with TSI. It is out of phase because the heat capacity of the NH is half that of the SH. During the Holocene Climate Optimum these factors were in phase and maximum TSI arrived during summer in the NH. In either case, changes in TSI last only several months.
Kristian,
SORCE data only exists from 2003, so we don’t really know how much TSI has varied over time. (It also shows an average of about 1631 W/m2, a definite difference from the graph you posted, further highlighting the uncertainty). As you mentioned, what really counts is how much energy is not reflected. The solar portion of that is not TSI, but radiation at and near visible wavelengths, and the limited data we have shows those wavelengths changing ten times as much as TSI, and are not in sync with TSI. So the 0.3 W/m2 from TSI could easily be 3.0 W/m2 of forcing.
To compete with CO2 as an influence on climate, solar and cloud changes need to produce a continuous forcing that exists as a HYPOTHESIS. And since the IPCC declined to include changes in clouds or solar radiation as factors, that means every bit of change from either one reduces the estimate of how much forcing has occurred from CO2 down below the current guess of 2.0 W/m2.
Can you prove it then?
Gosh. They’ve demonstrated this hypothesis by “elaborate model calculations” …. be still my beating heart.
At some point, people will realize that “elaborate model calculations” are among the weakest kind of evidence about anything.
Clearly, however, that point is not today.
w.
I don’t know…
If you have a very robust observation that you can replicate with “elaborate model calculations” and your model can predict future observations… You are way ahead of having a very robust observation that you can replicate with “elaborate model calculations” and your model has a 30+ year track record of failing to predict future observations 95% of the time.
IF
SteveT
Models are essential to science. Some are better than others. Applying GCMs to climate has produced execrable results. But the history of science shows many examples of successful models, with great explanatory power, capable of improvement to the point that we now know them to be objectively valid, ie found to be scientific facts when direct observation of the modeled phenomena became possible.
Modern science begins with Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the “universe”, as opposed the to Ptolemy’s geocentric model. It was improved by Kepler’s discovery of elliptical orbits, Galileo’s observations of the “fixed” stars, Newton’s theory of universal gravitation, and subsequent astronomical developments.
“Modern science begins with” the heliocentric model, which was first put forward by Aristarchos of Samos (circa 310 BC to circa 230 BC) and resurrected by Copernicus (1473 AD to 1543 AD).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
During the intervening centuries between the lives of Aristarchos and Copernicus, the 97% consensus rigourously suppressed the heliocentiric model in favour of the geocentric model.
Nick,
After Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310 to 230 BC), attempts were made to resurrect the heliocentric hypothesis, but all were decried as impious even by pagans.
Plutarch even goes so far as to assert that Seleucus of Seleucia (c. 150 BC) maintained heliocentrism as a fact, not just an hypothesis, as did Copernicus. Others toyed with the idea.
Copernicus read Greek, and was influenced by classical pagan scientists. But his supporting work was all his own. Little survived of the relevant writings of Aristarchus, Seleucus, et al.
Modern physical science started with Copernicus reviving an hypothesis reviled even in antiquity, and modern life science with Vesalius daring to break away from the authority of Galen, based upon his own observations, both in books published in the same year, 1543. Copernicus had held his belief for at least 36 years at that time, however, but dared not publish widely for fear of his church’s reaction.
Made the same comment elsewhere earlier today. Read the paper out of curiosity. “elaborate model calculations” is unfortunately an understatement.
Rud,
Where did you find the paper?
Thanks!
G, NoTricksZone posted on this yesterday. Pierre gave a link to SNF.ch. Follow it and go to the bottom where it says link to related papers. Click. The paper is the first listed. Click thatnlink. Caveat: I read what is,posted there in German. It is actually a final project summary document for a conference in Davos this week that wraps up SNSF funded project 147659, funding end 3/31/17. No indication if this will then be turned into a formal journal paper. I would think so, but that is yet to come. You could query lead investigator Werner Schmidt of PMOD; his contact info is available by following the links above. He may have an English version available for you.
The hierarchy of lies:
Lies
Damned Lies,
Statistics.
Computer Model Output.
G, typo. PMOD head is Schmutz, not Schmidt. His contact info available in the link chain cited.
Thanks.
My impression was that there would not be a formal paper until after the conference.
I read German, so no worries.
Appreciate your sleuthing.
Is this the paper?
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Werner_Schmutz/publication/311496618_Modeling_of_the_middle_atmosphere_response_to_27-day_solar_irradiance_variability/links/584fd12b08aeb989252e675a.pdf
But Willis, they said their model is “robust.” So, it is to be trusted.
My slide rule never crashed. My computer, on the other hand, crashes all the time. By that definition the slide rule is more robust. Maybe robust is a synonym for annoying and relatively useless.
On the other hand, their chief researcher is named Schmutz, which I believe is German for “mess.” GIGO, perhaps?
@commieBob
My slide rule never crashed.
However, I could not say the same for myself.
Willis:
,” the end of March, the researchers working on the project will meet in Davos for a conference to discuss the final results”
Wow my favorite time of the skiing year !
“Spring skiing” you know the time you ski in T-shirts and shorts! ( or less). These guys sure know how to pick the time and the locations!
(And frankly I stopped reading after the first comma ( the next word was models))
My opinion is this is a preemptive shot to make sure no matter what naturally occurs, our friend global warming is still there in the background. Kind of like herpes.
I feel the same way.
Certainly. The Swiss governement needs Global … to justify the increasing costs and penalizing taxes, the threats (don’t heat your home, or the earth will die) and to push further the innovative and alternative “greening” efforts. It’s a huge part of the market foundation for the next bunch of years.
It really gets me how everthing is always turned into AGW. Or climate change.
I can imagine the Swiss government, that is net importer of oil and gas, to tax energy to make their people to be frugal consuming energy. It makes sense.
“It really gets me how everything is always turned into AGW. Or climate change”
With some folks, everything is due to blind fate. Others will say that deity dictates our human existence. The tenet that science can offer a choice to control the future is very alluring to the human desire to control all aspects of our paradigm.
Testable predictions are always welcome.
Probably not going to be right but no risk no gain.
AGW “combat” gives ruinous losses and costs, meantime. At a 7-10% discount rate, you get both mega resource-waste risk and no gain.
They are moving towards this hypothesis:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
which refers to both particle and electromagnetic (wavelength) variations, as they do.
Such variations alter global cloudiness which changes the proportion of solar energy able to enter the oceans.
If that is so, Mr. Wilde, then, good for them.
However — it is NOT necessary to burst out with the tic of
to quietly put forth the intriguing and plausible atmospheric chemistry arguments. The stench of that rotten egg statement permeates the entire article. Further, for a not-tech degree person trying hard to learn, it so taints their mixture that I just simply do not trust what they say.
IOW: their credibility lies in smithereens on the floor.
Sad. But. True.
According to project head Werner Schmutz this reduction in temperature is significant, even though it will do little to compensate for human-induced…temperature adjustments
Yes, late to the party bearing gifts already received.
So they expect the Earth to cool during the sun’s down cycle by roughly the same amount that it rose during its up cycle. Is that the takeaway here? If so, what happened to AGW? Will we also see new papers describing the struggle our ecosystem will undergo as it attempts to cope with global cooling in the same manner to which it purportedly struggles to cope with global warming?
According to Rep Beyer during the House hearing, a half degree is nothing.
Of course, using his logic, we’ve wasted a lot of money over nothing.
exactly….take away the 1/2 degree and the adjustments….and we’re in major negative terrority
LOL nice one
Is this how a bona fide scientist talks??
By asserting blatant conjecture as fact? Without any qualification or modifier (e.g., “we believe” or “to some degree”) whatsoever?
The science giants of WUWT use far more precise, careful, language; thus, I know the answer to my question.
However much one might want to take the rest of the lecture seriously, after that big piece of junk lands with a thud on the lecture room floor, one simply cannot.
Janice, smartrock in another post where the same type of language was used. They may have had to put that in there to get published. That doesn’t diminish what you are saying though.
The whole quote is:
“There is human-induced climate change, and there are natural climate fluctuations.”
It’s called being neutral, Janice. This is Switzerland we’re talking about.
Thank you, Mr. Parsons, for pointing that out to me. Yes, yes, good ol’ Switzerland….
They need to study the meaning of their words, nevertheless. Asserting that there is any significant, controlling, human influence is to also assert that any measured changes we have seen so far are NOT well within natural variation. This is not a neutral statement. It is taking a position.
Lol, poor old Dr. Strangelove and his not-neutral right arm… 🙂
Humans cause climate change! Aaaaaaa! Gkfffbbffpphhhsshmpkkkffff!
(youtube)
There is human-induced climate change…” is an assertion, vigorously debated.
“There are natural climate fluctuations….” is an undeniable fact.
Joining these two statements with ‘and’ is a deliberate attempt to make a hotly debated assertion appear to be equivalent to a fact. It is not ‘being neutral’ – it is being disingenuous.
” It is not ‘being neutral’ – it is being disingenuous.”
It’s stating a fact not in evidence. These people are assuming *way* too much.
Janice,
There is human-induced climate change. When we transform a prairie into farmland, build dams, impound reservoirs, cover large swaths of ground with asphalt and concrete, we are inducing climate change. Our GHG, aerosol and other emissions induce a small degree of climate change (maybe +0.2C).
Mr. Middleton: Thank you for taking the time to educate me.
Your conjecture, however, has no evidence proving causation of a shift in climate for any significant portion of the globe. It is plausible that human activity causes enduring weather pattern shifts, but not “climate change” to any meaningful degree. If you cut up the landscape of earth into small enough chunks, even a bumble bee can “change the climate.”
All the chunks add up.
Could we be inducing a global effect? Sure, it’s possible. Humans are responsible for about half of the rise in atmospheric CO2 from 280 to 400 ppm. All other things held equal, this will result in a slightly higher average temperature. However, all other things are never held equal and we don’t understand most of the other things very well at all.
Is there anyway to quantitatively differentiate our influences from all of the “natural” drivers? No.
Since the Earth’s climate isn’t changing any differently now, than it had been changing before we invented SUV’s, it’s a pretty safe bet that our influence is minimal… But we still do have an influence and the planet will just have to get used to our influence.
When we transform a prairie into farmland, build dams, impound reservoirs, cover large swaths of ground with asphalt and concrete, we are inducing climate change.
I’d say when we do these things we are inducing local environmental changes – and that these are the changes that should concern local inhabitants. The top soil abuse resulting in the dust bowl had national consequences, but are you prepared to say the world temperature highs reached in the 30’s were likely due to other factors – factors which we can’t as yet define but which this lead article are trending towards.
The local changes add up.
The Dust Bowl clearly was due to a combination of factors… Our lack of soil conservation measures and the onset of abnormally warm and dry climatic conditions. The climatic conditions were almost certainly natural; but our contribution to the Dust Bowl made it even worse.
+1, Bill Parsons — sounds much more accurate to me.
“…are you prepared to say the world temperature highs reached in the 30’s were likely due to other factors …” skipping the rhetorical question, this might read more clearly this way:
… it’s unlikely that the temperature highs reached in the 30’s were due to man-made causes.
Still, anyone who lived through the dust bowl and can remember it, like for instance my mother, seems to have a hard time dis-associating man-made events from those that have a natural cause.
Since UHIs and other local effects aren’t properly accounted for by the book-cooking GASTA guardians, man-made changes probably do figure into the global average. Environmental alterations clearly affect temperature and rainfall locally at locations around the world.
But I agree these man-made changes have a negligible effect on real worldwide climate change, apart from the Mann-made temperature “record”.
Now… Mann-made climate change is a whole different thing and it is an existential threat to liberty and prosperity.
Last I heard the planet had “greened” up ~15%…and somewhere around 11% is used for crops
And vegetation is part of “climate.”
“bout like farmland
No David, what you cite are ecological changes. NOT CLIMATE CHANGES.
See Pielke, 2005
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/310/5754/1625
And Pielke et al., 2011
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.144/abstract
And Pielke et al., 2015
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/08/in-physics-today-land-use-change-drives-climate-change/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate
When you convert prairie to irrigated farmland, cover land with concrete & asphalt, turn river vallies into lakes and clear forest areas, you alter evapotranspiration patterns.
Daryl,
Environmental changes have definitely changed the climate of Clark County, NV, for instance. Enough such local changes could add up to a global effect, however negligible, IMO.
“Is there anyway to quantitatively differentiate our influences from all of the “natural” drivers? No.”
There you go, Janice, he agrees with you (and me:).
Any AGW/CAGW advocates want to take issue with David’s statement?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate
When you convert prairie to irrigated farmland, cover land with concrete & asphalt, turn river vallies into lakes and clear forest areas, you alter evapotranspiration patterns.
David, I agree up to a point ( because our family has on a small scale by planting trees and growing a farm where there once was not one changed a small piece of the environment). But as far as those few acres is concerned the effect is minuscule, do they add up as far as the whole local area? ( which was a semi arid desert a 100 years ago) yes they do because our neighbors are doing the same thing but as far as I am concerned in this debate ? I am not sure, as far as the population of the planet it is all concentrated in small ares like Singapore, Mexico City, Tokyo, NY etc, on that local scale I can see huge variations from a few decades ago but on a planet wide basis it has to be minimal, if not even measurable
The majority of the world’s population lives in highly dense areas but as far as population density on a global scale ? Some body pointed out somewhere if you’d put all of humanity a foot apart you would not be able to cover Texas ( they can have them) The planet is empty in my view and needs all the help (CO2) it can get!
Millions, then billions of humans transforming a few acres here and a few acres there over hundreds to thousands of years adds up.
See Pielke’s papers.
It would be more accurate to describe the changes you mention as microclimate changes, since they only affect small areas.
Small areas are cumulative… they add up. HadCRUT and GISTEMP aren’t globally measured temperatures. They are spatially weighted averages of thousands of local temperatures, albeit heavily “adjusted.”
Ah, but Janice–humans have been having a bit of an effect on the climate for a long time now–deforestation goes back millennium, large water impoundments raise humidity, and of course the ever increasing urban heat islands. Just don’t suspect that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have very much to do with it though, and it does seem that the good from that outweighs any possible negative by a large margin.
late to the dance as usual.
But, always welcome when-EVER you arrive. 🙂
Draining swamps lowers humidity.
If you go to Tony Heller’s website where he posts the temperature history of Rural sites you will note that in most cases the temperatures have actually DECREASED in the last 100 years. So what have the human changes in agriculture done?
I was under the impression that I alone had an irrational belief that the sun had an impact of earth’s temperature. When the sun is up where I live, it is on average 10C warmer than when the sun goes down, and that happens in 12 hours. So ….maybe…
Thankfully, an immense amount of water vapor plus a few trace radiative gases keep that from being a 100C variation as the planet rotates daily. Beyond that, solar irradiance variations due to activity remain to be seen. My gut says there is a connection, but my mind remains unconvinced.
I wonder if their model calculations take into account the expected increase in global temperature due to GHGs, making this cooling of 0.5C a net figure?
The book cookers at HadCRU, NOAA and NASA won’t let average global temperature drop by 0.5 degrees C, no matter what actually happens in the real world. Once they shut down UAH’ satellite program, they’ll have the “record” to themselves, now that RSS has joined the Borg and is going to adjust its “data” to conform to the “consensus”.
Expecting Leif to blow a gasket in 3 … 2 … 1 …
Dr Svalgaard does not quite blow a gasket, but he does do righteous indignation quite well 🙂
Snarky he can be, but he presents data with his comments in a matter-of-fact fashion and responds to questions, maddening as his answers sometimes are for us who think it’s all about the sun.
“According to project head Werner Schmutz, who is also Director of PMOD, this reduction in temperature is significant, even though it will do little to compensate for human-induced climate change. “We could win valuable time if solar activity declines and slows the pace of global warming a little. That might help us to deal with the consequences of climate change.” But this will be no more than borrowed time, warns Schmutz, since the next minimum will inevitably be followed by a maximum.”
Hmm. Cycle 24 is predicted to end about the middle of 2020. That means cycle 25 should be expected to peak somewhere around 2025-26. And this guy implies that when it does we’re going to have to “deal with the consequences of climate change”?
Can we ever just get the facts without the BS predictions of “consequences” etc? It really does get tiresome and at least for me brings into question the veracity of the claims made in a paper.
They are preparing their excuses for when the pause resumes.
I’ll check the real thing by going outside. I’ll take the elaborate set of stairs to perform this. That’s after wading through all manner of catastrophes caused by humans to then look up at the sun and behold the politically-unassisted fusion reactor of nature. I’ll go back inside after Leif comments.
The sun’s output currently keeps the Earth at a temperature of about 300K above the background level of the universe. If the sun’s output varies by 0.1% over the course of a normal solar cycle, one would expect the Earth’s temperature to also vary by about 0.1%, or 0.3K.
It’s not quite that linear.
I know, 4th power and all that. I was assuming that over an interval as small as 0.1%, the difference from purely linear would be small enough to ignore.
It is very nearly linear, but the slope of the line is only a quarter of slope from 0K to 288K.
I’m not understanding why the slopes would not be the same. Do you have a reference that I could review?
T^4 ~ S
4*T^3*dT ~ dS
4*dT/T = dS/S
That, of course, is assuming no other significant contributor, e.g.,
T^4 ~ e*S
4*T^3*dT ~ e*dS + de*S
4*dT/T = dS/S + de/e
MarkW, you’re on the right track. The 1/4 proportionality is, indeed, due to the “4th power and all.”
The relation between temperature and radiation intensity (power) is nicely linear for small perturbations (as are most things in nature). But it’s governed by the Stefan-Blottzman law:
R = σT⁴
where T = absolute temperature (Kelvin), R = emitted radiation power, and σ = a constant
Since, at equilibrium, incoming and outgoing radiation are of equal intensity (though different frequency spectrums), that same equation gives us the expected relation of temperature to incoming radiation (TSI) at equilibrium.
So, how do changes in radiation intensity (power) relate to changes in temperature?
We need the derivative of R with respect to T.
So, for clarity, let’s rename things.
Let x = temperature = T
R is a function of T, so let R = f(x), the radiation intensity as a function of temperature
R = σT⁴
That’s the same thing as:
f(x) = σx⁴
Taking the derivative w/r/t temperature x:
f'(x) = 4σx³
I.e., the derivative of radiation w/r/t temperature is 4 times the 3rd power of temperature times (the constant which relates radiation to the 4th power of temperature).
The “4” is because the derivative of “something to a constant exponent c” is c times “something to c-1”.
In this case c is 4, so the change in radiation is proportional to 4 times the change in cubed temperature.
But, for our purposes, we can ignore the word “cubed.”
“Eh,” you say? How can you ignore the fact that temperature is cubed?
Yes, we really can ignore the fact that temperature is cubed, because we’re talking about perturbations in temperature, i.e., small percentage changes. For small perturbations, the percentage change in cubed temperature is almost identical to the percentage change in “not-cubed temperature.”
e.g., (289³/288³) ≈ (289/288)
i.e., (289³/288³) / (289/288) = 1.0070 which is almost exactly 1.
So we can say that, for small perturbations, the change in radiation is proportional to 4 times the change in temperature.
That means the change in temperature is proportional to 1/4 the change in radiation intensity (which is what Leif said).
That’s where the “1/4” comes from.
Note: usually when I do something like this, I botch a couple of things. I’ll be grateful to whoever finds them for me, this time!
Oh, boy. I really botched it.
The ratio of the percentage change in cubed temperature to the percentage change in “not-cubed temperature” for a one degree increase is not:
(289³/288³) / (289/288)
It is:
((289³/288³)-1) / ((289/288)-1)
And that is not approximately one. It is approximately three.
So I think I’m pretty hopelessly confused. Again.
I’m also tired. It’s 1:50 a.m. here. In the immortal words of Scarlett O’Hara, “I can’t think about this now… I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
Dave burton,
Very nice. I love this stuff. Sites like WUWT are a graduate school in virtually the entire range of knowledge – climate, geology, biology, physics, chemistry, history, economics,…..
Thank you, Gary, you are very kind, but I completely botched it. If any university were to teach such tripe, you should demand a refund. If rgb stumbles across this I’ll never be able to take a course from him because he’d have to peremptorily flunk me, as a matter of principle.
Plug in real numbers to see just how horribly I botched it.
This part is right:
R = σT⁴
where σ is a constant (the Stefan-Boltzmann constant multiplied by an adjustment for the fact that the Earth is not a black body)
The constant σ is approximately 5E-8, but its precise value doesn’t matter for our purposes.
So, for example, if T=288 K, then R = 288**4 * 5E-8 = 344 W/m² (close enough for gov’t work)
Equivalently, T = k(R^(1/4)) = k*sqrt(sqrt(R)), i.e., a constant, k, times the 4th root of R.
The constant k turns out to be approximately 67, but its precise value doesn’t matter for our purposes. I’m going to use 67 for the rest of this.
So, for example, R=342 W/m² -> T = 67 * sqrt(sqrt(342)) = 288.125256404 K (close enough for gov’t work)
So, using T = 67 * sqrt(sqrt(R)) and plugging in a few values:
R T 100.0 211.872603231 100.1 211.925551531 342.0 288.125256404 342.1 288.146315883 342.3 288.188420993 500.0 316.823439016 500.1 316.839279000For radiation around 100 W/m² the ratio of change in temperature to change in radiation (the slope) is:
(211.925551531 – 211.872603231) / (100.1 – 100.0) = 0.529
At around 342 W/m² the ratio of change in temperature to change in radiation is:
(288.146315883 – 288.125256404) / (342.1 – 342.0) = 0.211
(Which Lief rounded to “1/4”.)
At around 500 W/m² the ratio of change in temperature to change in radiation is:
(316.839279000 – 316.823439016) / (500.1 – 500.0) = 0.158
So, as you can see, most of what I wrote above is nonsense. Mea culpa.
At around 342 W/m² the ratio of change in temperature to change in radiation is:
(288.146315883 – 288.125256404) / (342.1 – 342.0) = 0.211
(Which Leif rounded to “1/4”.)
No, I didn’t round. The value is exactly 4. You see it this way:
S=aT^4 S-B law
dS=a (4T^3) dT differentiate
dS/S= (a 4T^3)/(aT^4) dT divide both sides by S = a T^4
dS/S= (4/T) dT = 4 dT/T re-arrange
http://i0.wp.com/tyronetribulations.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/wpid-wp-1439377778857.jpeg
Note to self: In future, to avoid looking like idiot, always plug in some real values and make sure they produce reasonable results.
DB, I have also eaten late night crow here and at CE. True peer review can be swift and brutal. Stuff happens. Soldier on.
Hmmm… that all looks correct, Leif.
So what did I do wrong…. Oh… I see it. Gadzooks, what’s wrong with my head this week?
((211.925551531 – 211.872603231) / 211.872603231) / ((100.1 – 100.0) / 100)) = 0.25
((288.146315883- 288.125256404) / 288.125256404) / ((342.1 – 342.0) / 342)) = 0.25
etc.
Sigh. I used to be able to do simple math like this. My brain is rusting, from disuse, perhaps.
No, that is incorrect. The percentage variation of the temperature is a quarter of the percentage variation of solar output, so 0.075 K.
Leif: No. That is not correct. You are assuming the earth’s surface temperature is in equilibrium with a square meter of the solar constant at TOA, which is around 1366 Wm-2. That IS ridiculous. But the earth radiates IR in all directions as a sphere and only half the solar disk is lit continuously and over that half, the solar insolation must be latitude adjusted. When it is (by the redone KT energy balance here in BAMS 2009):
https://www.scribd.com/document/25071132/The-Saturated-Greenhouse-Effect-Theory-of-Ferenc-Miskolczi
you add 161 Wm-2 ( surface) plus 78 Wm-2 atmosphere to get OLR of 239 Wm-2. That is the skin radiation absorbed at the surface and what is emitted to space at TOA after GHG amplification of the surface temperature.
Not counting GHG amplification, your equation above after rearranging is dT/dS = T/4S.
From KT balance then dT/dS = 255K/956 Wm-2 = .27K/Wm-2, not .075KWm-2.
You can work it the same way just differentiating the non GHG surface temperature from Stefan Boltzman:
S= aT^4
dS/dT = 4aT^3, so dS/dT = 3.76Wm-2K-1 or the same as above, dT/dS = 1/4aT^3 = .27K/Wm-2.
The change in earth temperature would be much greater than you state with an incorrect comparison of TOA insolation to surface temperature. Add in the GHG surface temperature and it reduces to .18K/Wm-2, but that assumes a decrease will not unspool any tropospheric water vapor, an unlikely assumption.
Leif: No. That is not correct. You are assuming the earth’s surface temperature is in equilibrium with a square meter of the solar constant at TOA, which is around 1366 Wm-2.
Not at all. The correct formula is dT/T=(1/4) dS/S. dS/S is the same for a disk and a sphere. Using T = 288K in dT/T takes into account all matter of emissivity, albedo, etc. So dS/S = 0.1% means dT/T = 0.1/4 % or 288/4*0.1/100 = 0.072 K.
Forgive me for disagreeing, but CO2 has its own radiative channel to space entirely separate from the effective Planck temperature of the atmosphere as a whole. This channel radiates at the tropopause and above where the lapse rate reverses and becomes negative. Rather than radiating at a lower temperature, with increasing concentration and higher radiative altitude, CO2 radiates to space to the fourth power of a higher temperature with increasing concentration.
“At around 342 W/m² the ratio of change in temperature to change in radiation is:
(288.146315883 – 288.125256404) / (342.1 – 342.0) = 0.211
(Which Leif rounded to “1/4”.)
No, I didn’t round. The value is exactly 4. You see it this way:
S=aT^4 S-B law
dS=a (4T^3) dT differentiate
dS/S= (a 4T^3)/(aT^4) dT divide both sides by S = a T^4
dS/S= (4/T) dT = 4 dT/T re-arrange”
All of this Sanskrit treats the atmosphere as a brick. It is not a brick, it is a solution of gasses. Below the optical depth of about a kilometer, the atmosphere actually radiates according to your formula. Our satellites tell us that above a kilometer first CO2, and then at about five kilometers water; become free agents with their own separate channels to space.
So?
The effective delta to space from incremental addition of CO2 is a balance between additional absorption in the poorly populated “wings” in the troposphere and additional radiation in the stratosphere and above in the highly populated fundamental bend.
So?
“Using T = 288K in dT/T takes into account all matter of emissivity, albedo, etc.”
So, I am doubting that using 288K really does account for the material properties of CO2. I do not doubt the 1/4 relationship per se. The 9K increment above 279K Planck temp largely accounts for water in the air.
As you say, using 288K largely accounts for water in the air. What is not to like?
What is not to like, and the reason the surface measured 288K does not account for all manner of emissivity, is that the energy CO2 radiates to space from the lower stratosphere is not surface energy. Surface energy in the fundamental bend and rotational sidekicks is extinguished in some few meters. It can be easily shown in MODTRAN that no surface radiation in the fundamental bend etc. makes it to the tropopause at 280ppm. Yet the satellites see radiation in these bands from space.
“Your quote abounds with the usual weasel words”
That’s your way of handwaiving out the evidence and hypotheses you disagree with. They don’t use the right words. It is becoming quite pathetic.
Words matter. We don’t ‘suggest’ that solar storms ‘may’ cause aurorae and geomagnetic disturbances, because we know that they do. That is the difference between science and suppositions.
How do they dare to provide evidence that solar variability affects climate so much as to move glaciers on a global scale?
And they don’t show that. They show that there was a LIA which is not in doubt in the first place.
“If the sun’s output varies by 0.1% over the course of a normal solar cycle, one would expect the Earth’s temperature to also vary by about 0.1%, or 0.3K.
Pretty simple thinking. Now what about this: During the Last Glacial Maximum, the amount of solar radiation that the planet received was essentially the same as during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, or as now. And if you try to invoke Milankovitch, 21,000 years ago the Earth had essentially the same axial tilt, and the same position in the precession cycle (northern summer insolation and all that), as of now. Yet 21,000 years ago, the places where a lot of people are reading this were covered in many hundreds of meters of ice.
It is clear that what is important is the response of the Earth’s climatic system, not the magnitude of solar radiation changes. Something so simple, and even climate scientists fail to realize.
1. As Leif Svalgaard pointed out (in the thread just above), the effect on temperature of a small change in solar output is actually even less than that. A change in TSI of 0.1% gets you only about 0.025% change in temperature, i.e., less than 0.07°C.
2. We don’t actually know that at Last Glacial Maximum the amount of solar energy the planet received was essentially the same as during the HCO or now. We have some evidence to support that conjecture, but IMO it is overstating the strength of that evidence to say that we know it.
Dave,
1. “A change in TSI of 0.1% gets you only about 0.025% change in temperature, i.e., less than 0.07°C”
Well that is the change in temperature caused by a short drop in TSI during the low of a Schwabe cycle. We don’t actually know how the climate system responds to a decades long drop in TSI, but some evidence seems to support that the change in temperatures is much larger. IMO it is overstating the strength of that evidence to say that we know it.
2. “We don’t actually know that at Last Glacial Maximum the amount of solar energy the planet received was essentially the same as during the HCO or now.”
Well, this is the first time I see somebody propose that the glacial cycle could be due to changes in solar output. Curious considering that you just defended that changes in TSI are just too small to support significant changes in temperatures. Are you just arguing for the shake of it?
Javier wrote, “…this is the first time I see somebody propose that the glacial cycle could be due to changes in solar output.”
Where on earth did you “see” someone propose that? I think you need new glasses. Before you order them be sure to measure your PD (or get it from your optometrist, along with the prescriptions, when you get your eye exam).
“Where on earth did you “see” someone propose that?”
Well, arguing without any evidence that solar output could have been different during the Last Glacial Maximum goes a long way.
Evidence, theories, and understanding of our Sun support that its activity has increased over hundreds of million of years in a change too small to be noticed in a scale of tens of thousands of years. Dr. Svalgaard could lecture you on this subject, so you don’t embarrass yourself with wacko conjectures with zero support from evidence or theories.
I find it almost unfathomable the Sun has little to no effect upon our Terrestrial Weather. Maximum and Minimum Solar cycles are showing various changes in the Solar Wind. Current flow thru the Polar regions I would also believe heats the Earth’s Mantle, which records are beginning to show increase in Tectonic plate movements……. The heat generated by the Ionization of our upper atmosphere by basic laws of Physics induces higher temperature of our atmosphere. I am not going to sit here and say Man has nothing to do with Global warming, yes we contribute to it. We (Mankind) are not the Root cause. NASA recently stated there had been a 1% increase of heat output from the Sun…..Just may have heated us up a bit. For Centuries….. Scientists had plenty WRONG ( usually because of the CHURCH)….. I will say I AGREE our Sun affects our Weather.
NASA recently stated there had been a 1% increase of heat output from the Sun
No, they have not done so.
The changes in the output are of the order of 0.1% [ten times less]. And that surely will have an effect, namely about 0.07 degrees, so you are correct: “I will say I AGREE our Sun affects our Weather”. The question is HOW MUCH? and the answer is “not so much”.
And some think the Earth is FLAT….
do you also AGREE with that?
Your .1% stated is Luminosity stated
Jan, 8th 2013 by NASA…..I will locate the article about 1% Temperature increase. During Solar Minima the Gamma Ray output goes up…….Also recently stated by NASA. Sunspots may be non-existent but Energy output can climb.
Solar output grows by about one percent per 110 million years, so Javier is correct that on the time scale of tens of millennia, this gain is not noticeable. This very long-term secular trend can be swamped by the natural cyclical variability of solar activity on the scale of years, decades, centuries and millennia.
During the whole of the Quaternary ice age, ie the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs of the past 2.6 million years, solar power grew only about 0.024%. That’s obviously not enough to account for the glacial/interglacial cycles, even assuming some variation from natural cycles. But solar activity at the LGM wasn’t much lower than now, if at all.
But solar activity at the LGM wasn’t much lower than now, if at all.
Neither was it during the LIA, see e.g.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL046658.pdf
“the best estimate of magnetic activity, and presumably TSI, for the least‐active Maunder Minimum phases appears to be provided by direct measurement in 2008–2009. The implied marginally significant decrease in TSI during the least active phases of the Maunder Minimum by 140 to 360 ppm [0.04%] relative to 1996 suggests that drivers other than TSI dominate Earth’s long‐term climate change”
“I find it almost unfathomable the Sun has little to no effect upon our Terrestrial Weather.”
That solar variability has an important effect on climate change is completely non-controversial in paleoclimatology, with paper after paper stating so. And they are the ones looking at the evidence on a daily basis. Here at WUWT is a different matter.
That solar variability has an important effect on climate change is completely non-controversial in paleoclimatology, with paper after paper stating so
‘Consensus science’ at its worst.
Abraham Lincoln was fond of asking, “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” “Five,” his audience would invariably answer. “No,” he would politely respond,” the correct answer is four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”
Tobacco companies said Smoking does not cause Cancer…..Many also believed the Earth was flat…… A full Forest has been found under a Glacier…… We do not fully understand our solar environment yet…. I just read an article stating Ultraviolet radiation does not penetrate the Stratosphere…….. Hmmmmm.
I just read an article stating Ultraviolet radiation does not penetrate the Stratosphere
Some does and some does not, depending on wavelength. The shortest and most energetic does not.
“Consensus science’ at its worst.”
Your opinion only. As I said they are the ones looking at the evidence. I trust they know better than you what they talk about. You are just an outsider to paleoclimatology giving your opinion about something you know little about.
You are just an outsider to paleoclimatology giving your opinion about something you know little about.
However, I do know a lot about Solar Activity, Cosmic Rays, and Solar-Terrestrial Relations, probably the World’s authority on these subjects. I doubt there is any paleoclimatologists who can even approach that, so my opinion carries a large weight, like it or not.
.1% is 10,000 degrees…….Roughly if 1,000,000 degrees is a base.
You are just an expert on the wrong solar system body for this matter, Leif. As I said there is no known difference in the Sun and its irradiation of the Earth between the Last Glacial Maximum and today, yet the climate is completely different. It is the Earth climatic system that matters, and that is precisely the part you know little about. Playing to calculate the temperature effect of solar variability, when with the same irradiation and solar energy distribution you can get a 5°C difference shows how misguided you are. The Earth’s past is telling us about solar variability and climate change, not the Sun’s present.
As I said there is no known difference in the Sun and its irradiation of the Earth between the Last Glacial Maximum and today, yet the climate is completely different.
This has nothing to do with solar activity but rather with orbital orientation of the Earth. Shows how little you know about this.
“This has nothing to do with solar activity but rather with orbital orientation of the Earth. Shows how little you know about this.”
The orbital orientation of the earth 19,000 years ago was very similar to today’s. Almost same obliquity, almost same precession factor. Shows how little you know about this.
Obliquity
Today 23.44
-19 kyr 23.30
Insolation 65°N 21st June
Today 480.37
-19 kyr 483.80
Where is the difference? Well the climate could not be more different.
The glaciation itself was due to different orbital situations. Coming out of the glaciation resulted in a very unstable climate with numerous excursions back and forth, hence it is no wonder than it took a long time for the climate to stabilize. That you don’t know this shows how little grip you have on elementary climate science. Those wild swings were not related to or caused by solar variations. What is disconcerting is that, apparently, are trying to mislead the readership on this. No cookies for you as Willis would say.
“Coming out of the glaciation resulted in a very unstable climate with numerous excursions back and forth, hence it is no wonder than it took a long time for the climate to stabilize. That you don’t know this shows how little grip you have on elementary climate science.”
19,000 years ago the planet was not coming out of the glaciation. It was in a deep glacial state. It was actually colder than it had been for most of the Weichselian or Würm glaciation.
You fail to realize that with the same amount of solar radiation and with nearly the same latitudinal distribution of that radiation, the climate of the Earth was radically different. Of course it is important what the Sun sends and the orbital disposition of the Earth, but even more important is what the Earth climate system does with that energy. Different orbital distributions of the solar energy can have similar climate states, and similar orbital distributions of the solar energy can have very different climate states. If you don’t realize this is because you have little grip on elementary climate science.
On all this you know nearly nothing. You talk with certainty about what a 0.1% change in solar radiation can do and can’t do but you are completely ignorant on what the climate system of the Earth can do with that difference, because you ignore nearly all about energy transfer between the different parts of the climate system. It is known that the stratosphere responds differently to that 0.1% change than the surface, and we don’t know enough to rule out a climate effect whose impact could accumulate over time to produce one of those excursions that out of ignorance you assign to climate instability. You might be the one misleading the readership.
You fail to realize that with the same amount of solar radiation and with nearly the same latitudinal distribution of that radiation, the climate of the Earth was radically different.
So, solar variation is not the cause of dramatic change. You don’t seem to realize that the climate back then was wildly unstable and did not vary due to solar activity.
“You don’t seem to realize that the climate back then was wildly unstable and did not vary due to solar activity.”
I don’t understand why you say it was unstable. It took many thousands of years of increasing polar summer energy and changing the equator-polar thermal gradient to finally come out of the glacial state, So it looks pretty stable to me. In fact the climate of the planet is 80-90% of the time in a glacial state, so I would say that we are now in the unstable climate situation.
And the record shows that climate variability during the Holocene is subdued compared to climate variability during the last glacial period.
And yes, several of those Holocene climate changes could very well be due to solar activity variability. That the Sun only changes by 0.1% is no obstacle. The climate system of the Earth has demonstrated in the past what it can do with less, given enough time. The evidence shows that five decades of low solar activity (Maunder minimum) have many times the effect of five years (2009 minimum).
I don’t understand why you say it was unstable.
Just proves my point: you do not understand much about the climate. People who know what they are talking about consider many reasons for instability, e.g. changes in ocean circulation due to changes in salinity brought about by melting of glacial ice, or by opening/closing of the Bering Straight due to changes in sea level connected with pulses of melt water, etc.
Please also bear in mind that a 0.1% change in TSI masks a 100% swing in the high energy end of solar output, ie X-rays, UVC, UVB and UVA, not to mention gamma rays from solar flares, which also undergo cyclic fluctuations.
UV affects ozone levels, which clearly have a climatic effect.
Please also bear in mind that a 0.1% change in TSI masks a 100% swing in the high energy end of solar output
Changes in TSI are measured in Watts while changes in the high-energy output are measured in milliWatts, it is like you are arguing that you can gauge Bill Gates’s wealth by the amount of loose change in his pockets.
Sunlight in space at the top of Earth’s atmosphere at a power of 1366 watts/m^2 is composed (by total energy) on average of about 50% infrared light, 40% visible light, and 10% ultraviolet light. At ground level, this decreases to about 1120-1000 watts/m^2, and consists of 44% visible light, 3% ultraviolet (with the Sun at the zenith, ie directly overhead, but less at other angles), and the remainder infrared, ie normally still a majority.
However, that ten percent average UV varies from around seven to 14%, obviously with correspondingly lower shares of visible and IR light. Also, when UV flux is higher, a larger share manages to get through the atmosphere and reach the water and land surface.
Thus, much of the energy from the Sun arrives on Earth in the form of infrared radiation. With the sun at its zenith, the composition of sunlight at ground level per square meter is on average about 527 watts of infrared radiation, 445 watts of visible light and 32 watts of ultraviolet radiation. The balance between absorbed and emitted infrared radiation has a critical effect on the Earth’s climate. Water vapor, by far the most important GHG, and droplets of liquid water, ie clouds, in the air have a profound effect.
“People who know what they are talking about consider many reasons for instability”
No. What you call instability was a multi-millennial process of change from a climate state (glacial) to another state (interglacial). Periods of climate change are by definition periods of climate instability, as the climate changes. But saying that climate change is climate instability adds nothing. According to that the modern global warming is a period of climate instability, the descent into the LIA was a period of climate instability, the warming to the MWP was a period of climate instability, and the cooling after the Roman WP was also a period of climate instability. So it is 2000 years of climate change or climate instability. Is the climate ever stable or we don’t just have enough information about the climatic changes that were taking place at that time? Some millennia appear more stable than others, but I guess people that know what they are talking about don’t talk about climate instability. Climate change is the rule, not the exception.
Periods of climate change are by definition periods of climate instability, as the climate changes. But saying that climate change is climate instability adds nothing.
Your comment was a good example of verbal diarrhea. The wild swings recorded in Greenland are not seen in Vostok:
http://www.leif.org/research/Vostok-GISP-Temperatures.png
strongly suggesting that they are caused by local conditions [e.g. ocean current changes] rather than [non-existing] solar variations. Again, you don’t know what you are talking about.
“The wild swings recorded in Greenland are not seen in Vostok strongly suggesting that they are caused by local conditions [e.g. ocean current changes] rather than [non-existing] solar variations. Again, you don’t know what you are talking about.”
You keep changing subjects trying to confuse the readership. Now about Dansgaard-Oeschger events. I have never said that D-O events are due to solar variability. And in fact I wrote an entire blog article on the D-O cycle where I reviewed a good part of the relevant bibliography on them, so I have a good idea of what I talk about.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/17/nature-unbound-ii-the-dansgaard-oeschger-cycle/
This is probably another climatic cycle that you don’t accept since there is no evidence that it is orbital driven, or do you accept that there is a ~ 1500 year Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle? Plenty of scientists accept the existence of this periodic climatic oscillation even though its causes and mechanisms are still unclear.
I have never said that D-O events are due to solar variability.
Yes you did. “And yes, several of those Holocene climate changes could very well be due to solar activity variability”
«Yes you did. “And yes, several of those Holocene climate changes could very well be due to solar activity variability”»
No, I didn’t. D-O events do not take place during the Holocene. Shows how little you know about this. You need to do more reading about D-O events. Start with my article.
That is splitting hairs. Bond evenst during the Holocene are often considered to be continuation of the D-O events.
The point is that they are all internal to the climate system and not related to solar activity.
“That is splitting hairs. Bond evenst during the Holocene are often considered to be continuation of the D-O events.”
By people like you that don’t know what a D-O event is. A D-O event is highly asymmetric with rapid warming of about 8-10°C in Greenland in just a few decades followed by slow cooling over at least 200 years and afterwards by rapid cooling for at least 200 more years for a minimum duration of 400 years. It is matched by a similar peak of methane levels of similar amplitude and duration. And it is preceded by prior Antarctic warming that peaks about 220 years after the Greenland warming peak. There is nothing remotely similar during the Holocene. To complicate matters D-O events only happen when sea levels are between 40 and 90 m. below current sea levels. The people that think Bond events are D-O events during the Holocene show how little they know about this.
“The point is that they are all internal to the climate system and not related to solar activity.”
You have no evidence to support that all Holocene climatic variability is due to internal forcing. Curious words for a scientist, because in absence of evidence you are clearly following a belief. The problem is that you come to WUWT and expose your beliefs as if they were based on scientific evidence and you mislead people that don’t know you are just talking about your beliefs and that you aren’t even knowledgeable on the subject.
The people that think Bond events are D-O events during the Holocene show how little they know about this
Lots of people associate Bond events with D-O events [e.g. http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_grl_2003.pdf%5D but, of course, they also don’t know what they are talking about. Even the late G. Bond thought so when I discussed this with him back in 2003 http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/sns/2003/sns_dec_2003.pdf . They was doubt that Bond events could trigger a full-fledged [and much larger] D-O event, but not that there was a connection or even a common origin.
You have no evidence to support that all Holocene climatic variability is due to internal forcing
Very disingenuous. Obviously, there is always a 0.1K solar cycle variation, Holocene or not.
There is no evidence of any larger solar-activity-related forcing. Lots of claims and speculations [including yours], but no convincing evidence.
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_grl_2003.pdf
Rahmstorf agrees with me that there are no Holocene D-O events. From your citation:
«There is some evidence that this cycle may also be present in the Holocene but does not trigger DO events then»
So no, Bond events are not D-O events. Not for me, not for Rahmstorf. Perhaps for you.
“There is no evidence of any larger solar-activity-related forcing. Lots of claims and speculations [including yours], but no convincing evidence.”
Now you are trying to turn this around to get away. You said “The point is that they are all internal to the climate system and not related to solar activity.” Where is the evidence for that? You have none. There is no evidence that some of the abrupt, profound climatic changes that have taken place during the Holocene could not be due to solar variability.
You said something for what you have no evidence. You are just telling people your beliefs and misleading them into thinking that they are based on empirical evidence and knowledge. They are not.
«There is some evidence that this cycle may also be present in the Holocene but does not trigger DO events then»
Because they simply were not large enough. Rahmsdorf thought D-O events have a cycle time of 1470 years. The same cycle time is often reported for Bond-events, so on that basis there appeared to be a connection. It would quite a coincidence that two unrelated phenomena should have the same cycle period.
There is no evidence that some of the abrupt, profound climatic changes that have taken place during the Holocene could not be due to solar variability.
Is a typical fallacy. There is also no evidence that they could not be due to unicorns, aliens, and infinitely many other causes.
There is, however, evidence that the Sun has not varied much the past 400+ years and that it cannot get any weaker than during the Maunder minimum and that we have just observed that low point during the past solar minimum.
Leif,
Many climatic phenomena are correlated with solar minima. Moreover, good candidate mechanisms exist to make this connection causal.
You make a general, hand waving statement. Unless you back that up with specific studies and mechanisms your statement carries no weight.
You may be interested in:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2003ScienceMeeting/dec03_Sci_Program/Goode.pdf
“Sun is hotter and smoother at activity minimum.
Picture that emerges is Picture that emerges is Spruit’s Spruit’s corregated surface at high activity, so it is difficult to imagine a sun that was significantly dimmer during the holocene holocene than at present activity
minima”
Leif,
It’s not hand-waving. Others and I have repeatedly cited such studies. Just today I posted a link to a 2006 study of Andean tropical glaciers, which advanced during solar minima during the LIA from their receded positions in the Medieval WP, when solar activity was higher.
As for mechanisms, in recent days I’ve noted for instance the effect of UV variability on ozone production. IIRC, you replied to that comment, so it’s not as if you’re unaware of the plethora of papers finding such connections and mechanisms.
today I posted a link to a 2006 study of Andean tropical glaciers, which advanced during solar minima during the LIA from their receded positions in the Medieval WP, when solar activity was higher.
One swallow does not make a summer.
It is about time to repeat Willis’ suggestion:
Pick the one paper that illustrates your point the best and we can discuss that.
I’ve noted for instance the effect of UV variability on ozone production
We find that UV has had no long-term trend since at least the 1740s. So if UV is a major driver, climate should also not have shown any such trend. Do you agree with that?
“The point is that they are all internal to the climate system and not related to solar activity.”
The point is that you not only do not have any evidence that they are not related to solar variability. You also do not have any evidence that they are due to internal variability. You may as well claim that they are due to unicorns or aliens because you lack the evidence to show what causes them.
So there are several hypotheses of what causes abrupt Holocene climate change, and while aliens and unicorns have little support in the scientific literature, solar variability has more support than internal variability. Since you lack evidence and knowledge, you can go around telling your opinion, but when you say that it is not due to solar variability you are just expressing your belief, as I say. And beliefs are not the basis for science. Empirical evidence is the basis of science.
Empirical evidence is the basis of science.
You have no empirical evidence, just refer to ‘consensus science’: “in the scientific literature, solar variability has more support than internal variability”. According to that yardstick AWG must be king of the heap.
The point is that you not only do not have any evidence that they are not related to solar variability.
We have good evidence that the Sun has not varied much, so assuming that such lack of variation nevertheless results in a dominant solar control of climate variations requires either a great leap of faith [some people have that] or a compelling reason or mechanism for how this could happen [and nobody has that].
Gloateus,
He’ll reject any evidence that you present. I have already been there.
The point is that he doesn’t have ANY evidence for what he says. This is not a question of our evidence being better than his, it is a question of him not having any evidence to back up his claims.
lsvalgaard April 3, 2017 at 3:30 pm
Why pick just one, when there are hundreds, at least, of papers finding connections with solar activity in climatic phenomena such as ice, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, winds, oceanic circulation, temperature, you name it.
Whether there is a long-term trend in UV since 1740 doesn’t really matter. That was at the end of the longest, strongest sustained warming cycle since the onset of the LIA, to include the alleged late 20th century warming. If you could show that UV was as low as now during the Maunder Minimum, you might have a case for that particular parameter of solar activity, but not the others.
What does matter is the fact that when a greater share of TSI is in the high energy band, the climate warms up and does other observable things. There have been a lot of solar cycles and cycles of cycles since 1740, and higher UV correlates well with the climatic phenomena I’ve mentioned.
Javier,
You may prove correct. We;ll see how Dr. S. responds.
What does matter is the fact that when a greater share of TSI is in the high energy band,
No, that is not the case. The following is taken from a talk by Jack Eddy [where he said that he no longer thought the sun was a major driver]:
http://www.leif.org/research/energy-sources.png
only 1/10,000 of TSI is in the ‘high energy-band’.
“You have no empirical evidence, just refer to ‘consensus science’”
You are the one that has no empirical evidence and no published science to back up your claims that it is due to internal variability.
Let’s review one by one all the abrupt climate change events in the Holocene and let’s see what the people that studied them said about their possible causes. Against that you only have your opinion and your beliefs.
You are the one that has no empirical evidence and no published science to back up your claims that it is due to internal variability.
Lots of empirical evidence and published science that the Sun has varied very little over time and that variation energetically is insufficient to explain global warming [both short-term and long-term]
Let’s review one by one all the abrupt climate change events
Useless exercise. Let us take the ONE event that is the best example and look at that.
While not a single event, the influence of solar activity on ENSO and patterns like that oscillation is well supported.
This is a summary of a paper in a book-length workshop report by NASA, NOAA and other scientists on “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate”
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/
Meehl, et al, connect the sunspot dots with SST in the tropical Pacific, with trade winds and rainfall:
http://www.space.com/7195-sun-cycle-alters-earth-climate.html
As the link says:
“The solar cycle does not have as great an effect on Earth’s climate as the El Nino cycle”
So it is wrong of you to assert:
“influence of solar activity on ENSO and patterns like that oscillation is well supported.”
Meehl, et al, connect the sunspot dots with SST in the tropical Pacific, with trade winds and rainfall
Here is Meehl’s view of climate change and it sources:
http://www.leif.org/research/Meehl-2004.png
Check out the top two panels.
Leif,
As you know better than most, it depends upon how you define high-energy. I thought you might go with just XUV. But if you consider UVA, UVB and UVC, ie everything higher in energy than visible light, without even throwing in gamma rays from solar flares, then it averages 10% of TSI at the TOA, and three percent at the surface.
However that share can fluctuate by 100%, and other factors affect where on earth more of the average three percent hits, such as clouds. It’s a complex system, the climate, and can boost small, multiple inputs into large effects.
But if you consider UVA, UVB and UVC, ie everything higher in energy than visible light, without even throwing in gamma rays from solar flares, then it averages 10% of TSI at the TOA, and three percent at the surface. However that share can fluctuate by 100%
No, by 1%
http://www.leif.org/research/energy-sources.png
Have you lost your ability to read?
“We have good evidence that the Sun has not varied much, so assuming that such lack of variation nevertheless results in a dominant solar control of climate variations requires either a great leap of faith [some people have that] or a compelling reason or mechanism for how this could happen [and nobody has that].”
The smallness of the changes in TSI is not a show stopper. Only if you assume that it is the total amount of TSI that has to be involved in the climatic changes, and there is no reason to assume that. The mechanism is unnecessary for the hypothesis to be correct. Darwin did not have a mechanism for the generation (mutation) and segregation (genetics) of varieties, and yet his hypothesis was correct. Wegener did not have a mechanism for the continental drift, and yet his hypothesis was correct. Both stuck to the evidence in the face of general derision and attacks and were proven correct. Solar variability hypothesis for climate change does not need a mechanism to be correct. Our ignorance is still too great to get to the actual mechanism, but the research of Drew Shindell, Joanna Haigh, Lesley Gray, Karin Labitzke, Harry van Loon, and many others appears well oriented and making nice progress towards an understanding on how the solar signal in the stratosphere is transmitted down to the surface.
assume that it is the total amount of TSI that has to be involved in the climatic changes, and there is no reason to assume that.
Lots of reasons. That is where the energy is.
The mechanism is unnecessary for the hypothesis to be correct.
But goes a very long way to establish that the hypothesis is correct. Without a plausible mechanism [it does not have to be correct, but possibly correct] the hypothesis is not evidence.
No, back to Willis’ lament” what is the ONE best piece of what you consider ‘evidence’.
The rest of your comment is just boilerplate gabble.
“The solar cycle does not have as great an effect on Earth’s climate as the El Nino cycle”
This is likely because during half of the solar cycle the climate is moving in one direction, and during the other half in the opposite direction, and as these are likely to be slow changes the climate ends not changing much. But when you get to a grand solar minimum, then the climate is moving only in one direction during 50-100 years and that gets the climate to a very different state.
But when you get to a grand solar minimum, then the climate is moving only in one direction during 50-100 years
You have no evidence for that. Only supposition. And solar output even during a grand minimum is only a tiny bit different than now. Now, sunspots diminish solar output. What do you think would happen if there were no sunspots to diminish the solar output?
lsvalgaard April 3, 2017 at 4:08 pm
I could ask you the same question. Did Lamb’s talk include SORCE data?
I posted the share of near UV, as reported in this 2003 paper:
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/Courses/6140/ency/Chapter3/Ency_Atmos/Radiation_Solar.pdf
It shows a much higher portion of UV in TSI than your table.
“The solar constant is the amount of solar radiation received outside the Earth’s atmosphere on a surface normal to the incident radiation per unit time and per unit area at the Earth’s mean distance from the Sun.
“The solar constant is an important value for the studies of global energy balance and climate. Reliable measurements of solar constant can be made only from space and a more than 20-year record has been obtained based on overlapping satellite observations. The analysis of satellite
data suggests a solar constant of 1366W m^2 with a measurement uncertainty of 73Wm^2.
“Of the radiant energy emitted from the Sun, approximately 50% lies in the infrared region (40.7 mm), about 40% in the visible region (0.4–0.7 mm), and about 10% in the UV region (o0.4 mm).
The solar constant is not in fact perfectly constant, but varies in relation to the solar activities.
“Beyond the very slow evolution of the Sun, a well-known solar activity is the sunspots, which are relatively dark regions on the surface of the Sun. The periodic change in the number of sunspots is referred to as the sunspot cycle, and takes about 11 years, the so-called 11-year cycle. The cycle of sunspot maxima having the same magnetic polarity is referred to as the 22-year cycle.
“The Sun also rotates on its axis once in about 27 days. Satellite observations suggest that the solar cycle variation of the solar constant is on the order of about 0.1%, which might be too small to directly cause more than barely detectable changes in the tropospheric climate. However, some indirect evidence indicates that the changes in solar constant related to sunspot
activity may have been significantly larger over the last several centuries. Furthermore, solar variability is much larger (in relative terms)in the UV region, and induces considerable changes in the chemical composition, temperature, and circulation of the stratosphere, as well as in the higher reaches of the upper atmosphere.”
If TOA UV averages ten percent of TSI, then that implies that it might fluctuate between around seven and ~14 percent. I don’t have the exact data.
Did Lamb’s talk include SORCE data?
Not Lamb, but Jack Eddy [look him up if you don’t know about him].
Eddy’s table is correct:
http://www.leif.org/research/energy-sources.png
Javier @ 4:05
Speaking of transmission mechanisms from stratosphere to surface:
Leif,
Those aren’t actual “observations”. Those are cooked books. Please compare with actual observations, ie by satellites and balloons, not the imaginary “data” of the GASTA gatekeepers.
Meehl necessarily pays obeisance via burnt offerings to the false gods of NCAR, but that doesn’t invalidate his work on transmission mechanisms for solar effects on terrestrial climate.
Reminds me of Uri Geller. When he was caught in cheating his believers claimed that in all the other cases where he was not caught he really had psychic powers to bend spoons.
“That is where the energy is.”
You are again assuming that it is a matter of total energy. It is not necessarily so. With the climate system a small change at a special place can have a lever effect over the whole system. We know that a hurricane can start as some very small change at a certain place that cannot be predicted to have such huge effect. That’s why weather prediction becomes unreliable, because some changes get amplified and the system evolves in unpredictable directions. The upper atmosphere is a place where very little energy has a disproportionate effect as there are much less molecules there.
“what is the ONE best piece of what you consider ‘evidence’.”
I always give Willis the same answer. It is not one special work, it is the accumulated evidence and work from hundreds of articles what results so convincing. From paleoclimatology to reanalysis one can construct the picture piece by piece, and it is very consistent.
We know that a hurricane can start as some very small change at a certain place that cannot be predicted to have such huge effect.
If the energy is not there to begin with [very warm surface water] no hurricane will result from even the most energetic flapping of butterfly wings.
As your basic statement may not even be true. Find me an example of an observed very small change in a certain place caused a specific hurricane. If you cannot, then your statement is just popular-belief pseudo-scientific gabble-gabble.
It is not one special work, it is the accumulated evidence and work from hundreds of articles what results so convincing. From paleoclimatology to reanalysis one can construct the picture piece by piece, and it is very consistent.
Same argument can be made of AGW.
In normal scientific work we can usually find the crucial single, seminal paper, discovery, or observation that turned the tide and made a [previous extraordinary and derided] claim into an accepted paradigm. Which one would you consider to be the one that clinched your case?
lsvalgaard April 3, 2017 at 4:31 pm
Sorry. I meant Eddy. Yes, I know who he was.
“You have no evidence for that. Only supposition.”
There is some evidence in the expansion of the Hadley cells that has been taking place for decades indicating that there has been a very slow atmospheric reorganization towards a warmer state for which the greenhouse gas hypothesis has no explanation. Some authors believe that the Hadley cells were smaller during the Little Ice Age due to persistent NAO– conditions.
None of this has anything to do with the Sun being the driver of this. Just that the LIA was real which is very likely.
Leif,
Funny you should mention hurricanes (OK, I know that Javier brought them up), but did you know that years with extraordinary numbers of cyclones forming outside the tropics happen to occur in the lows of solar cycles? It’s true.
Big extratropical cyclone formation years were 1975, 1988 and 2004.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclogenesis#Middle_latitudes
Here are the sunspot cycles for those decades. I don’t know if your revamping has changed this pattern or not:
http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/Radio/solar-cycle-19-23.gif
Coincidence? I think not.
Perhaps you should count on this chart:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/Atlantic_Storm_Count.jpg
Leif,
Maybe you missed that I was referring to temperate zone-formed cyclones in all oceans, not all cyclones in the Atlantic.
I would think that if solar activity had anything to do with anything the null-hypothesis would be that the effect should also show up in the Atlantic [where we happen to have good data].
But here are some data for the Australian Sector:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/images/tc-graph-1969-2012.png
Doesn’t seem to fit your scheme either.
Leif,
It does apply to the Atlantic. The key distinction is outside the tropics, not in which ocean the cyclones originate.
I would have thought that fact pretty obvious.
It applies to the Lant, Pac and IO. There are probably statistically significantly more extratropical cyclones in all basins during low solar activity years. The statistical issue would be whether the record affords a high enough N for significance to be tested fairly.
But at the very least, there are no counterexamples. Every high extratropical cyclone year is at or very near the bottom of the solar cycle.
But at the very least, there are no counterexamples. Every high extratropical cyclone year is at or very near the bottom of the solar cycle.
You only provide three examples. in a 100+ years? And cleverly omit the URL where you got the data.
Three examples carry no weight at all.
“If the energy is not there to begin with [very warm surface water] no hurricane will result from even the most energetic flapping of butterfly wings.
As your basic statement may not even be true. Find me an example of an observed very small change in a certain place caused a specific hurricane. If you cannot, then your statement is just popular-belief pseudo-scientific gabble-gabble.”
There’s plenty of energy in the climate system for the types of changes we are talking about. The climate system is throwing away energy to space in great amounts all the time.
Everything that you don’t know or understand appears to be pseudoscientific for you. A problem considering there is so much that you don’t know.
«The butterfly effect concept has also guided meteorologists to zero in on regions known as chaos hot spots to make weather predictions more accurate. James Yorke, a math professor and chaos guru at the University of Maryland, recently led a team to identify these hot spots and showed these areas, which make up about 20 percent of the global map at one time, are more sensitive to small changes like the flapping of a butterfly wing. By locating the perpetually shifting hot spots and taking good observations from them, meteorologists can get a step up on chaos and make better predictions. Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., points out the finding sheds light on one caveat in Lorenz’s butterfly theory. “There are times and places where butterflies will make no difference,” Emanuel said. “But in the right place and time, even a butterfly can alter the whole pattern of weather if you wait long enough.”»
Still no specific example. Only gabble.
“None of this has anything to do with the Sun being the driver of this. Just that the LIA was real which is very likely.”
It does have to do.
“The existence of signals of the 11-year solar cycle in meteorological fields of the lower atmosphere has been confirmed in analyses of observational data (see e.g. van Loon and Shea, 2000; Haigh, 2003, Gleisner and Thejll, 2003, Crooks and Gray 2005). The responses found are latitudinally non-uniform and locally larger than would be predicted from radiative forcing considerations alone (Haigh, 2001). Atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) are beginning to be able to reproduce some of these effects when forced by changes in solar ultraviolet radiation in the stratosphere (Haigh 1996, 1999; Shindell et al 1999; Matthes et al 2004) suggesting that changes in the stratosphere may exert some dynamical control on the troposphere.
We use a simplified atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) to investigate the response of the lower atmosphere to thermal perturbations in the lower stratosphere. The results show that generic heating of the lower stratosphere tends to weaken the sub-tropical jets and the tropospheric mean meridional circulations. The positions of the jets, and the extent of the Hadley cells, respond to the distribution of the stratospheric heating, with low latitude heating displacing them poleward, and uniform heating displacing them equatorward.”
Haigh, J. D., and M. Blackburn. “Solar influences on dynamical coupling between the stratosphere and troposphere.” Space Science Reviews 125.1-4 (2006): 331-344.
http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/190/1/ISSI2005_final.pdf
As they confess”Clearly the responses seen in the simple model experiments U5 and E5 are much larger than those found to be due to solar influences in the data analysis.”
As they confess “Clearly the responses seen in the simple model experiments U5 and E5 are much larger than those found to be due to solar influences in the data analysis.”
In a mature field [solar influence claims go back almost 400 years] scientists build on each other’s work. The paradigm en vogue consists of a huge tower of interconnected and supporting work. The solar deals are disconnected and fragmented. If authors build on something it is usual their own work of yesteryear.
“Still no specific example. Only gabble.”
here is the article
Patil, D. J., et al. “Local low dimensionality of atmospheric dynamics.” Physical Review Letters 86.26 (2001): 5878.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ea9e/f4d1139e22e07198a997a4f9a7b4f25852b4.pdf
It shows that despite the high dimensionality of the Earth’s atmosphere, there are regions that exhibit low dimensionality. It has been measured. It is a specific example. Regions where small changes in initial conditions produce very large changes in outcome.
Of course there are such regions where conditions are favourable, but they have not shown specifically which little detail [which butterfly] caused the hurricane and what direct measurements they had of that specific trigger [when, where, energy, etc]. Still just hand waving.
Besides extratropical cyclones, let’s consider another common climatic phenomenon, monsoons.
One of the earliest connections between the solar cycle and weather or climatic phenomena was the Indian monsoon, about a century ago. This has since been extended to other monsoonal flows, such as in China.
Here’s a recent reaffirmation of the correlation of the Indian monsoon and the solar cycle:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682614001370
As they say in the highlight section:
“No consistent relation between the ISM rainfall and solar cycle is observed.”
“As they confess”Clearly the responses seen in the simple model experiments U5 and E5 are much larger than those found to be due to solar influences in the data analysis.”
It is not a confession, it is the design of the experiments. They explain it very clearly:
“The U and E experiments were each carried out with the two different amplitudes, of 1K and 5K, in order to assess whether the patterns of response were independent of the magnitude of the forcing and to what extent the response scaled with the forcing.”
With realistic 1°K warming in the stratosphere in the U1 experiment they find the same pattern, because they are independent of the magnitude.
Regardless, it is not evidence. And there is no clear solar cycle effect in stratospheric temperatures. What is observed is a steady decline interrupted by upwards spikes at times of great volcanic eruption. People found that the radiative effects of human emissions of ozone-depleting substances and greenhouse gases have driven marked atmospheric cooling at stratospheric altitudes, not solar activity. [My daughter-in-law is our resident stratosphere-ozone expert, having even made the front page of Nature magazine, so has educated me on this]. There is a mystery here: after each volcanic eruption the stratosphere has cooled down to a new plateau where it stays until the next eruption, after which it drops again to a lower plateau, etc. Not all all regulated or influenced by solar activity.
“but they have not shown specifically which little detail [which butterfly] caused the hurricane and what direct measurements they had of that specific trigger [when, where, energy, etc]. Still just hand waving.”
It is in the computers that successfully predict the weather on which we rely every day. At each initialization every few hours a slightly different set of initial conditions produces very different outcomes a few days later.
I don’t know in how many more fields of science you are going to show your ignorance today.
Nonsense. There are no input of directly measured tiny triggers to the computer models.
At each initialization every few hours a slightly different set of initial conditions produces very different outcomes a few days later.
That is most likely due to the imperfections of the models. Errors tend to grow with time. In an earlier life, I was a weather modeler and even though models have become much better, the problem of computational error propagation is stil with us.
“And there is no clear solar cycle effect in stratospheric temperatures.”
This is not correct. Karin Labitzke has shown a correlation between the solar cycle and stratospheric geopotential heights and temperatures. She has extended her database to 65 years including six solar cycles.
This is from her 2001 work:
Labitzke, K. (2001). The global signal of the 11-year sunspot cycle in the stratosphere: Differences between solar maxima and minima. Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 10(2), 83-90.
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/solar_signal/MetZ_Labitzke_2001.pdf
“The temperature differences at the 30-hPa level (Fig. 8, upper panel) are very similar to the differences at the 70-hPa level. That means that throughout the year between about 40N and 40S and from about 100 hPa up to 20 hPa the whole lower stratosphere is warmer (between 1 and 2 K) during maxima than minima of the SSC. Such a value of temperature change (1 to 2 K) has been required by SALBY and CALLAGHAN (2000) to explain their results. The strong signal in the temperatures at the 30-hPa level implies a continuation of the solar signal in the heights further up in the middle stratosphere, above the 10-hPa level which is the highest level available from the NCEP/NCAR re-analyses.
The structure of the differences of the zonal mean 30- hPa heights between solar maxima and minima, Fig. 8 (lower panel) is also very clear: except for the polar regions where the correlations (not shown) are weak, the heights are always higher during maxima of the solar cycle. Between 60N and 40S the zonal mean 30-hPa heights are practically 75 to 100 geopot. meters higher during the maxima, except for the late northern winter when the dynamics of the arctic polar vortex are disturbing the solar signal from the northern subtropics to the Antarctic (LABITZKE and VAN LOON, 2000), Section 5.
The temperature (Fig. 7) and height differences (Fig. 8) over the subtropics agree with our earlier work using radiosonde stations (LABITZKE and VAN LOON, 1995). We showed that an increase in the temperatures from minimum to maximum in the 11-year solar cycle is found already in the upper troposphere and that the height increases observed in the stratosphere must follow from the hydrostatic relationship. We suggested that the positive temperature differences could be explained to some extend by an intensified Hadley circulation, i.e. intensified downward motion in the upper troposphere during solar maxima in the ring of largest positive correlations.
The concurrent correlations and height differences over the Southern Hemisphere agree with this idea, as there are always two cells (downward branches) of the Hadley circulation, moving meridionally as the sun with the seasons.”
This figure from the article shows the difference in geopotential heigth in kilometers for the 30-hPa at a point near Hawaii compared to the solar cycle.
http://i.imgur.com/uVotN0L.png
Labitzke has been showing these differences for 30 years now and she has been generally ignored. This is very common in science. When a researcher shows evidence that contradicts the consensus paradigm he or she is usually ignored if not ridiculed, like Jacques Cinq-Mars and his discovery that humans were in North America 11,000 years before generally accepted by the Clovis-first dominant paradigm.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/jacques-cinq-mars-bluefish-caves-scientific-progress-180962410/#QIbV2UD2zTqKeHB0.99
By adhering to the “It can’t be the Sun” paradigm and ignoring the evidence that contradicts it you are setting yourself for the same destiny as the “Clovis-first” archeologists whose paradigm finally collapsed after decades of abusing, criticizing, and ostracizing researchers that disagreed.
If solar variability can move the Hadley cells it can change the climate, and it doesn’t need much energy for that. The climate system contributes the energy by shifting the equator-polar energy gradient.
Labitzke has been showing these differences for 30 years now and she has been generally ignored.
Because her analysis has not held up over time. Satellite measurements of the temperature give conflicting results. One would expect an effect because UV does vary with the cycle, but the effects on the stratosphere is not large nor systematic, with no effect in the middle stratosphere.
“That is most likely due to the imperfections of the models. Errors tend to grow with time.”
Ed Lorenz begs to differ about the cause of the observed effect. I’ll go with him.
Ed Lorenz begs to differ about the cause of the observed effect. I’ll go with him.
http://eaps4.mit.edu/research/Lorenz/Effects_of_analysis_85q.pdf
ftp://wxmaps.org/pub/straus/ICTP/Weather_Predict_2A.pdf
The error doubling time is about 2 days
“Because her analysis has not held up over time. Satellite measurements of the temperature give conflicting results. One would expect an effect because UV does vary with the cycle, but the effects on the stratosphere is not large nor systematic, with no effect in the middle stratosphere.”
She has shown that the data has to be compensated for the QBO phase. But I am not surprised that you reject any evidence that supports hypotheses that you don’t subscribe. That is the classical way of not having to deal with such evidence. Same happened to Alfred Wegener, and same happened to Jacques Cinc-Mars, and to countless others that confronted the dogma. “Your evidence is not good,” then a few decades later it turns that it was good.
The main obstacle to scientific progress is not the society, it is the famous scientists, like yourself, that oppose new hypotheses and ideas that might even slightly challenge their views. The famous Planck’s principle has been shown:
“In this paper, we use a difference-in-differences setup to test “Planck’s Principle” by examining how the premature death of 452 eminent academic life scientists alter the vitality (measured by publication rates and funding flows) of treated subfields in which these scientists actively published in the years immediately preceding their passing, compared to matched control subfields in which no eminent scientist dies. In contrast with prior work that focused on collaborators (Azoulay et al. 2010; Oettl 2012; Jaravel et al. 2015), our work leverages new tools to define scientific subfields in order to provide the first evidence on the response by non-collaborators. To our surprise, it is not competitors from within the field that assume the mantle, but rather outsiders that step in to fill the void created by a star’s absence. Importantly, this surge in contributions from outsiders draws upon a different scientific corpus and is disproportionately likely to be highly cited. Thus, consistent with the contention by Planck, the loss of a luminary provides an opportunity for fields to evolve in new directions that advance the frontier of knowledge within them.”
Azoulay, P., Fons-Rosen, C., & Zivin, J. S. G. (2015). Does science advance one funeral at a time? (No. w21788). National Bureau of Economic Research.
https://www.unamur.be/en/eco/eeco/w21788.pdf
So there is nothing to worry. You just fit the pattern. Nothing that the time can’t cure.
She has shown that the data has to be compensated for the QBO phase.
Nonsense, this is just epicycle upon epicycle to satisfy the believer.
“quantification and attribution of the solar signal in stratospheric ozone remains an open scientific question. Currently, this is even more critical as the present solar cycle (known as Solar Cycle 24) is one of the weakest in the last 100 years. Also, recent solar flux measurements from various instruments on the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellites show significantly different variations in the solar fluxes than previous solar cycles. Using SORCE measured solar fluxes, Haigh et al. (Nature, 2010) and Merkel et al., (GRL, 2011) argued that the upper stratospheric ozone solar signal during solar cycle-23 is out of phase with the TSI changes. We performed SLIMCAT simulations with different solar flux sets for 2001-2010 and compared them with two satellite ozone data sets: SABER (2002-2010) and MLS (2004-2010). Overall we find that that model does not show an out-of-phase ozone solar signal in the upper stratospheric with the new solar fluxes. Furthermore, due to the large uncertainties in MLS and SABER ozone observations in the upper stratosphere, and the limited length of the data record, we cannot establish the exact nature of the upper stratospheric ozone solar signal during solar cycle
It is a mess.
The main obstacle to scientific progress is not the society, it is the famous scientists, like yourself, that oppose new hypotheses and ideas that might even slightly challenge their views
Your venomous arguments are much like what Velikovsky would have said, but for every new idea that turns out to be right there are legion that are dead wrong. In addition, there is nothing new in anything you say. It is simply the same, same old. Each new generation harbors people like you who become enamored by the follies of the past. But, to use your deplorable allusion, funerals take care of them too.
You also seem to have an authority-fetish, so here is an authority for you: Back in the 1970s I was one of the leading scientists researching solar influence on weather and climate. What has happened since then? We had hoped that new data and fresher minds would lead us to along to progress. Unfortunately, that did not happen, probably because our cause was only a doomed dream with no connection with reality. But at least back then, we were civil and tolerant of different views, in sad contrast to people of now, like you. I guess what has happened is that what used to be science has turned into intolerant religion
“It is a mess.”
You conveniently forget about the Berlin geopotential height data that confirms the results. As we say “there is no worse blind that the person that doesn’t want to see.”
There is no confirmation when everybody disagrees with everybody. Confirmation bias is sometimes the bearer of results.
“Confirmation bias is sometimes the bearer of results.”
Cute remark as usual to try to invalidate the data that shows that geopotential heights vary with the solar cycle and that the stratosphere is significantly affected by the solar cycle both in ozone and temperatures.
This is our current understanding of the issue. Obviously you disagree:
“Measurements from satellite instruments have established that the radiation emitted by the Sun varies in time alongside other indicators of solar activity, such as the number of sunspots. Total (spectrally integrated) irradiance varies by only a small fraction, around 0.08% of the total, over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but this conceals a very different behavior across the spectrum. Models of solar activity suggest that the variations are of much greater amplitude at shorter wavelengths (e.g., a few percent around 200 nm), and available satellite data confirm this, although the observational data show a wide range of values for the actual magnitude.
Solar UV radiation is absorbed in the stratosphere, where it influences temperatures and ozone concentrations. The response in the tropical upper stratosphere over the 11-year cycle is of the order 1 K in temperature and 2%–3% in ozone, which can largely be explained by direct absorption of solar UV radiation and associated photochemical effects. In the lower stratosphere, the temperature signal, of the order 0.5– 1 K cannot be explained by direct radiative heating, indicating some dynamical response to the Sun, and similarly, the 2%–3% variation in lower stratospheric in ozone is also most likely produced by transport processes. Coupled chemistry-climate models are able to reproduce these signals, within the wide bounds of uncertainty, although interpretation of the processes involved is not complete. At winter higher latitudes, the solar signal is modulated by the phase of the quasi-biennial oscillation; this may be associated with a modulation of the transmission of planetary waves through the middle atmosphere in a mean state altered by the changes in solar irradiance.
A growing body of evidence that the state of the stratosphere influences the troposphere by dynamical coupling suggests that any solar influence in the middle atmosphere may produce an impact on tropospheric climate manifest in changes in phase of polar modes of variability and also the mean circulation in the tropics.”
The Stratosphere: Dynamics, Transport, and Chemistry (Geophysical Monograph Series)
2013
https://www.amazon.com/Stratosphere-Transport-Chemistry-Geophysical-Monograph-ebook/dp/B00CM7AUY0
Your opposition to the current understanding is noted.
It is not that simple. Your quote abounds with the usual weasel words [may, suggests, etc]. The truth is more murky. See e.g.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Dhomse-Ozone-Solar-Cycle.pdf
“influence of solar flux variability on the climate system remains an open scientific question”
“But at least back then, we were civil and tolerant of different views, in sad contrast to people of now, like you. “
Don’t play victim to me. You have attacked and abused me personally ever since I started writing about evidence and hypothesis that you don’t like. Every usual reader here at WUWT knows how you behave against people that defend the solar-climate connection. You just happen to not like when you are at the receiving end.
Back in the 70’s the problem might have been insolvable as it might required a more advanced and detailed knowledge of the climate system that was available then or even might be available now. Tough luck.
Don’t play victim to me. You have attacked and abused me personally
Nonsense. I ‘attack’ your faulty views not your person. That is the difference.
“I ‘attack’ your faulty views not your person.”
Not true. You have accused me [falsely] of misrepresenting an article, cherry-picking evidence, purposely deceive others, being biased, being a cyclomaniac, lack of rigor, and many other nice opinions about me, not my views.
You have erected yourself as the guardian of the solar orthodoxy here at WUWT, God knows why. And everybody is aware on how you react against people that dare to manifest opposing views. They even joke about it. Perhaps you don’t even realize how abusive you result, even if you get into food fights with lots of people. I was driven out of contributing to WUWT for one of my fights with you, as you are Anthony’s sacred cow. There is no difference between this and the gatekeeping that was exposed by climategate, only this is just a blog. You have decided to drive any scientific discussion on solar variability influence on climate out of these pages with the help of your pal Willis. You have no problem in using the authority fallacy referred to yourself even about fields of science you aren’t knowledgeable about, while attacking the authority of others.
In the end I think you are a liability to your cause, as quite a lot of people react to your methods. This is after all a place frequented by a lot of people that don’t buy the authority argument that you represent.
Not true. You have accused me [falsely] of misrepresenting an article, cherry-picking evidence, purposely deceive others, being biased, being a cyclomaniac, lack of rigor, and many other nice opinions about me, not my views.
All of those are valid characterizations of how you expose your views. Anything goes when it supports your ’cause’. This shows how dedicated you are to your cult, just like when Stephen Schneider said that sometimes one has to lie a bit to get the message across [the end justifies the means].
But that does not mean that Schneider and you are necessarily bad people, just people overly dedicated to their cause.
Perhaps you would care to list all the nice things you have expressed about my opinions.
It is telling that every time I point out that one of your cherished opinions is less established than you think it is, your invariably are back with ‘pathetic’ and worse. Now, I have a thick skin so don’t take those things as ‘attacks’, only as ravings.
I have often said that science is a ‘blood sport’ and so it is, but it has to be science in order to be seriously discussed. Some of the things that seem to be original with you [e.g. your cyclomaniac cycles] do not qualify as science and do not deserve extended educative discourse.
“This shows how dedicated you are to your cult, just like when Stephen Schneider said that sometimes one has to lie a bit to get the message across [the end justifies the means].
But that does not mean that Schneider and you are necessarily bad people”
You see, now you accuse me of lying using a guilty by association fallacy. Well what was then when you said you had shaded a figure to indicate contamination, when the authors that actually did the shading were indicating the Hallstatt cycle?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/24/the-bray-hallstatt-cycle/#comment-2353546
Was that a bit of a lie to get the message across?
“Perhaps you would care to list all the nice things you have expressed about my opinions.”
I am guilty of treating people the way I am treated. But I also have a thick skin, so I don’t complain.
“Some of the things that seem to be original with you [e.g. your cyclomaniac cycles] do not qualify as science”
You don’t decide what is science and what it isn’t. What I talk about is all published in scientific journals, which is the usual criterion to define science. Like it or not.
What I talk about is all published in scientific journals
No, not true. How about your cycles? just to mention one example.
And you carefully select what you like and disregard what you don’t.
“No, not true. How about your cycles? just to mention one example.”
They are not my cycles. Each and every one of the cycles I talk about has been published to extenuation. If you doubt it I can provide references. You just have to be more specific. My only role here is to put together the information available on this issue in the scientific literature, so conclusions can be drawn, or at least the status of available knowledge evaluated.
Now you disavow your own ‘work’. Your combined ‘cycle’ plot is nowhere discussed in the literature, and is one of the strongest examples of cyclomania I have come across in quite a while.
I suspect that we’ll have much greater understanding once the cycling of the great oceanic oscillations is explained. Could that be solar? Why sure it could. More than that I cannot say.
================
“Now you disavow your own ‘work’. Your combined ‘cycle’ plot is nowhere discussed in the literature”
No I don’t disavow anything. As I said I just put together the information.
– The millennial (Eddy) cycle is discussed in the literature to extenuation.
– The ~2400 year (Hallstatt) cycle is discussed in the literature to extenuation.
– The ~1500 year (oceanic) cycle is discussed in the literature to extenuation.
– The 208 year (de Vries) cycle is discussed in the literature to extenuation.
– The centennial solar cycle is also discussed widely in the literature.
– And obviously the 11 year solar cycle.
Their position is identified in the literature. I just put together that information in graph format for easy viewing. If you think something is wrong with my identification you are welcome to tell me. If I think you’re right I’ll correct it. I think some people get a better understanding of solar variability cycles by looking at my graphs as they would not bother to read the papers.
Their position is identified in the literature. I just put together that information in graph format for easy viewing.
No, you assume that they all are real and solar and well-determined, then combine them to a supercyclomaniac graph and use that to ‘predict’ future activity and climate. This is not science. You could help by showing that graph again [I don’t have the inclination to hunt down where it is].
More than anything else that graph alone put you in the pseudo-scientific box.