Update (EW): Free link to the full paper, kindly provided by Dr. Willie Soon.
I received this email from Willie Soon today,
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I am proudly attaching this new paper:
“Group Sunspot Numbers: A New Reconstruction of Sunspot Activity
Variations from Historical Sunspot Records Using Algorithms from Machine Learning”
that just appeared online at Solar Physics,
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11207-021-01926-x
Indeed we think that this paper is very important on various fronts, including
even the rather clear and revisionist attempts by several activists during the last
10 years or more to try to modify the Group Sunspot Number (GSNs) record with
rather flawed reasonings and evidence as documented in this detailed paper.
If we are wrong, let the debate begin openly and objectively in the public and science
spheres. The rather ugly approach by the revisionists may not be clear but throughout the
last 10 years, they have been systematically ignored and censored any constructive criticisms
and suggestions by Douglas Hoyt, our co-author, who is a serious scholar on
the reconstruction of sunspot activity records.
For some of us that called America home, the fun aspect of this paper is
to point to the possible recovery of the long-lost first sunspot drawings
from Colonial America by Humphry Marshall (1722-1801).
Cordially,
Willie together with colleagues Victor Velasco Herrera, Doug Hoyt and Judit Murakozy
ps: for some of you whom may be interested in more details and discussion
concerning the origin of this article, please consider these two talks
(1) Studying the role of the Sun on Climate
(2) Studying Sunspot Activity Cycles: Hindcasting and Forecasting
Here is the paper’s abstract.
Abstract
Historical sunspot records and the construction of a comprehensive database are among the most sought after research activities in solar physics. Here, we revisit the issues and remaining questions on the reconstruction of the so-called group sunspot numbers (GSN) that was pioneered by D. Hoyt and colleagues. We use the modern tools of artificial intelligence (AI) by applying various algorithms based on machine learning (ML) to GSN records. The goal is to offer a new vision in the reconstruction of sunspot activity variations, i.e. a Bayesian reconstruction, in order to obtain a complete probabilistic GSN record from 1610 to 2020. This new GSN reconstruction is consistent with the historical GSN records. In addition, we perform a comparison between our new probabilistic GSN record and the most recent GSN reconstructions produced by several solar researchers under various assumptions and constraints. Our AI algorithms are able to reveal various new underlying patterns and channels of variations that can fully account for the complete GSN time variability, including intervals with extremely low or weak sunspot activity like the Maunder Minimum from 1645 – 1715. Our results show that the GSN records are not strictly represented by the 11-year cycles alone, but that other important timescales for a fuller reconstruction of GSN activity history are the 5.5-year, 22-year, 30-year, 60-year, and 120-year oscillations. The comprehensive GSN reconstruction by AI/ML is able to shed new insights on the nature and characteristics of not only the underlying 11-year-like sunspot cycles but also on the 22-year Hale’s polarity cycles during the Maunder Minimum, among other results previously hidden so far. In the early 1850s, Wolf multiplied his original sunspot number reconstruction by a factor of 1.25 to arrive at the canonical Wolf sunspot numbers (WSN). Removing this multiplicative factor, we find that the GSN and WSN differ by only a few percent for the period 1700 to 1879. In a comparison to the international sunspot number (ISN) recently recommended by Clette et al. (Space Sci. Rev. 186, 35, 2014), several differences are found and discussed. More sunspot observations are still required. Our article points to observers that are not yet included in the GSN database.
Update (EW): Free link to the full paper, kindly provided by Dr. Willie Soon.
Any facts that disturb the orthodox narrative are obviously in need of adjustment.
Hoyt & Schatten’s flawed GSN is the orthodox narrative.
Said the solar denier.
Anyone using the term “denier” gets immediately discredited on my planet. It is an underhanded attempt to disparage someone’s scientific results without falsifying or even mentioning those results. Bruce, all I do with people like you is point and laugh.
If you think Leif is wrong, how about you QUOTE HIS EXACT SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT(S) and show us (demonstrate, not merely claim) exactly how they are wrong.
w.
Willis, I used to peruse NASA’s daily sunspot photos, especially after a massive CME in 2008. Following one of those ejections, the Sun would regularly go back to snoring – OK, don’t get me started on that part of it, but the Sun would act “quiet”, like it was taking a nap.
And after the 2008 CME, there was some concern about whether or not Old Sol would come roaring back to life (which did happen) any time soon and what effect the “quiet period” would have on the weather. All sorts of stuff got published about it, but things went back to normal.
There seems to be ZERO regularity to any of that kind of activity, which begs the question {how can anyone ‘recreate’ history when CMEs have ZERO schedule?
There’s no regularity to it at all, it is random, and when the news media got their uninformed paws on it in 2008, the results became something on the order of Saturday morning cartoons – everything from “we’re all gonna die/starve/freeze” to “all your electronics will be junk’.
That part is even more likely now. 🙂 Think about The Horror of losing all your instant communications on WiFi or whatever because Old Sol burped or had one of Those Moments when even the Space Angels wept. (Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.)
So the idea that someone could accurately recreate historical stuff that must include CMEs and a Very Quiet Sun, to be accurate, is odd, but how much impact would a prolonged solar nap have on the Earth’s climate?
Given our present state of understanding it is naive, if not rash, to dismiss a sun/climate connection out of hand.
I have vast admiration for Leif as a teacher and as a solar scientist and I know he has looked for a sun/climate connection for his entire career but the fact that he has not found one does not mean that one does not exist.
Willis, I would suggest that Leif will agree with me because vast as is his understanding, he doesn’t know everything about the sun.
Heh, nor do you.
Keep at it both of you. You have taught me a lot.
===========
@Willis – while Bruce may be chided for issuing an ad hominem (only due to the word having been turned into a pejorative in modern usage) – Leif is just as “guilty” in his argument as Bruce. Neither one provides anything to prove their statement.
No, we should not expect an on the spot dissertation, but Leif could have provided a link to either his own work or that of others that purports to prove the H & S reconstruction is “flawed.” Similarly, Bruce could have provided a link to one or more of the MANY WUWT comments that Leif has made denying any significant effect of solar variation on recent climate.
I have provided extensive limksand discussion on this. The easiest is simply to refer to my website, where you can find all my work: https://svalgaard.leif.org/research/
“ Leif has made denying any significant effect of solar variation on recent climate”.
You must learn to distinguish between ‘denying’ and ‘demonstrating’.
@Leif – that was a mild slap on the wrist for Willis, not for you. For calling out the pot for being black, while ignoring the kettle, in this particular exchange of comments.
Yes, I am aware of your writings, adducing evidence and performing analyses re: “no significant solar variation effect on climate change.” However, there are other, equally capable persons adducing evidence and performing analyses re: “significant effect of solar variations on climate change.”
The science is not “settled” – either way. While climate change cannot be disputed rationally, the degree, or even the “sign” of it is quite disputable. As are any of the physically possible causes.
CO2 controlling climate is also the “orthodox” narrative.
This thread will be fun.
Shine on, Dear Sun.
==================
This paper should be regarded as interesting but put in the category of “useful curiosity”, that may at times be helpful. However, my worry is that it will become the “gold standard” and replace the actual observed sunspot record.
Looking back on my scientific career, there were numerous times where I just didn’t have the experimental data I needed to make a scientific claim. However, with this new AI tool, it seems that I can go back in time and reconstruct the data that my experiments “should have” produced. I would hope that if I tried that, that I would be laughed out of the profession.
It is a tragedy that we might not have a robust sun spot record, for whatever reason, but we have to go with the data we have. That is the tragedy of science in general and is what makes it so difficult.
I think we need to be very circumspect with tools like this. IMHO
Given the nature of AI/ML – i.e., weighting determined dynamically by algorithm – it will be very hard to argue objectively about the conclusions that are drawn b/c one won’t really know why things turned out that way. Oh, and what about error bars? I’m guessing that, as with the dubious climate models, multiple runs will be averaged to determine the deviation. GIGO as they say.
This should be treated as curiosity as i think there is some potential for abuse.
As soon as a special group of interest comes up with an idea to exploit it,this will become a proof of global warming and it’s just a matter of time before they say
” See ,we had many more sunspots 250 years ago.
There was a massive decline and now the number is so low ,yet the earth is warming = proof of AGW “.
It would be super-contraproductive if the AGW scamsters could highjack an idea from deniers to promote their crap.
PS
Remember the CFC scam.
They only had data of 11 years about the ozone holes ,yet they knew 100% that CFC’s are destroying it.
But, But, But—Sherry Rowland got the Nobel Prize for that work. So it must be correct.
I was at UCI at the time he received the prize and there was much celebration, but I could never make the whole narrative make sense. Too much hand waving. So I doubted the veracity of the data and premise. Over the years it seems that there is less and less support for this view as in essence, nothing has changed except we have far more expensive refrigerants now than before. And less efficient as well.
Not to mention toxic.
…. also not to mention, inferior propellants in asthma inhalers.
Not to mention that it was probably responsible for the loss of the shuttle Challenger.
And flammable. (Greenhill anyone?)
Just as Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize before he even had time to do anything, perhaps The Committee missed an opportunity to give Roland his Nobel prize before he even came up with the idea of anthropogenic destruction of ozone.
>>it seems that I can go back in time and reconstruct the data<< hey it works for temperature!
The truth is not justification for changing our settled science. Actually, this an area of research that I thought was needed since I stopped working on NASA projects (getting out of
scientific programming was a big mistake brought on by a divorce) and had been following sunspots then.
Another note of interest..
The Australian solar predictions are quite different from the US version and seem to be spot on.
https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Solar/1/6
NOAA and NCAR have very different one and are claim the sun is headed to an all time peak.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
Anyone with insight to major difference?
Just starting to look at Soon paper
BoM SWS prediction is a peak of 115 for SC25
NOAA SWPC prediction is a peak of 115 for SC25
Neither are anywhere close to an all time peak.
Am I looking at the wrong thing?
Was not clear
Look at timing, NOAA eat peak is 2 years later
NCAR is using to justify their claim an all time high is coming.
Will find NCAR link.
https://www.universetoday.com/149468/will-solar-cycle-25-dazzle-or-fizzle-in-2021/
About NCAR claims
With this I find difference in predicted cycle peak times curios
Yeah, 223 with that prediction. That’s definitely very high and on par with SC3, SC4, and SC8.
It looks like the paper is paywalled right now. I did find their 2021 paper here which I believe is describing the same or at least a very similar methodology and uses the same graphical style for their figures. It looks like they are predicting that we are at the bottom of a grand solar minimum right now and that going forward we will build into another grand solar maximum to peak around 2075 during SC30 with the same magnitude as SC19. They are classifying SC24-27 during the period 2008-2050 as a solar grand minimum.
“It looks like they are predicting that we are at the bottom of a grand solar minimum right now and that going forward we will build into another grand solar maximum to peak around 2075 during SC30 with the same magnitude as SC19. They are classifying SC24-27 during the period 2008-2050 as a solar grand minimum.”
bdgwx, I read through their paper to find they did not say we are in a GSM now.
From their conclusion:
“Our ML model forecasts that a new phase of extended solar minima that have started since sunspot Cycle 24 (ca. 2008 to 2019) and will persist until Sunspot Cycle 27 (2050 or so).
Based on the solar power deficit of Sunspot Cycle 24 and on the depth of negative power anomalies of Sunspot Cycles 25–27 (Fig. 6h) obtained with ML, it is estimated that the secular sunspot minimum of the 21st century could be similar to the Dalton Minimum.
Our model forecasts a peak annual sunspot number of 95 for Cycle 25 around 2024 +/-1 with an uncertainty between 80 to 115 sunspots.”
A definition of grand minima/maxima is provided by I.G. Usoskin et al, 2016 (using v1 SN):
5. New constraints on the temporal distribution of grand minimum and grand maximum events
“To identify grand minima, the following criterion was used (with one exception, see below):
the event in both reconstructions (using the mean of the ensemble) must correspond to a
SN value below a threshold value of SN=20 for at least 30 years.
To identify grand maxima, we similarly requested the events to have a SN value exceeding
the threshold of SN=55 for at least 30 years in both reconstructions.” [my formatting]
I.G. Usoskin et al.: Solar activity during the Holocene: the Hallstatt cycle and its consequence for grand minima and maxima 1602.02483
The Dalton Minimum therefore was not a grand solar minimum, as there were only two years during it when the lowest 30y v2 SN in 1824-25 of 31.7 and 31.5 fell below the v2 equivalent of the 30y GSM threshold of v1 20 SN, 31.9 v2 SN (divide v1 by 0.63 to get v2).
Usoskin etal Table 1 indicates the Maunder Minimum was the last grand solar minimum.
Clearly, with SC25 now consistently ahead of SC24, it is wrong to talk of a grand minima now. The extended solar minima they spoke of is for a Centennial type, not a grand solar minima.
Herrera et al. 2021 say that we are in the minima phase of cycle IV and refer to it as “the Grand minima” when describing figure 6 pictured above. Usoskin et al. 2016 is a great publication. I wonder why Herrera et al. did not adopt their definition if it is considered to be the established standard?
That’s a GRAND minimum? Grand?
Seems a bit overstated.
I don’t know. Someone more expertise and familiar with solar jargon could probably help us here. Leif Svalgaard?
Current minimum closely follows one from the early 20th century (centenary cycle)
Is the “mimimum” already over? Because you can’t tell by the galactic radiation levels.
Hi ren, It could be up to a year delay in the GCR modulation, since it may take that long for solar wind to reach heliopause.
Agreed, but compare with neutron levels at previous solar minima.
As solar magnetic polarity changes from odd to even cycles, there is a notable difference in GCR cycles waveform at minima between odd and even cycles due to direction of the GCRs impact.
Let’s compare galactic radiation levels in cycles 24 and 25 with previous cycles. This is clear evidence of a weakening of the solar wind magnetic field.
This is what is important for Svensmark’s hypothesis,
Let’s look at the flattening of the solar equatorial dipole.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Dipall.gif
que up Dr S and Vuc. for a fun time.
Too bad it’s paywalled. I cannot find any pre-prints either. There cannot be any serious discussion of the paper here if we don’t know what’s in it…would be interesting to know if Leif has read it hear his thoughts.
Yes, it is published. Their paper is really a poorly executed attempt to ‘rescue’ Hoyt & Schatten’s outdated series from the 1990s. The difference between their series and the revised Group Number series comes down to a single mistake they made: they posited that Wolf and Wolfer saw the same number of group even though they used very different telescopes [which still exist and can be (and are) used to compare what one would see with them: Wolfer’s larger telescope allows you to see about 65% more groups than Wolf’s tiny scope]. I have tried to explain this with the following Figure [I hope it will show]:
Well, it didn’t.
Here it is on my website:
Here’s a cropped version:
Thank you!
And one that you can zoom in on by clicking on it:
Don’t bite me, just give me a little snakey lick.
H/t BC.
=========
Thank you, Leif.
Regards,
Bob
Does condition of eyesight have any effect? I realize the telescope ‘corrects’ for eyesight (unless it’s an astigmatism) but two different viewers would have a slightly different focus setting perhaps (?).
Before I had cataracts removed, a look at the moon gave me a circle of overlapping moon images. Very cool. Of course a galaxy of moving spots were also actually in my eyes.
“Does condition of eyesight have any effect?”
It does. Wolf compensated by using increasingly stronger telescopes. In reconstructions we can compensate by comparing with younger observers.
Solar effects will certainly come back into fashion once the climate pundits can wrap their heads around the fault in standard schemes where the ~390 watts per square meter upward surface radiation has no physical basis. Everyone plugs it into their models without question. Trenberth schemes have even revised theirs up to 396! Few have recognized the unphysical nature of this flux where it assumes a surface temperature several degrees higher than the air just above. This yields in the ballpark of 25 watts per square meter mysterious extra radiation absorbed in atmosphere that, by process of elimination and creative accounting, has been attributed non-condensing greenhouse gas concentration and thus something like 5 watts per square meter forcing due to a CO2 doubling. It is total unphysical hog-wash characterization of surface radiation. Read TR Oke Boundary Layer Climates 1987 for proper treatment of surface energy balance concepts which, lo-and-behold, are dominated by non-radiative heat transfer from the surface. Alternatively read undergraduate course notes http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~swrhgnrj/teaching/MT23E/mt23e_notes.pdf. The surface skin maintains continuity with the air above by The Turbulent Heat Flux and Eddy Covariance. It sounds fancy but it is actually common sense to understand ground and air have similar temp. There is no mystery ‘extra’ heat trapping and no requirement to invoke trace gases for energy balance this and that. If you have ever felt confused reading Trenberth style schemes and tropopause forcing values etc etc it is because your intuition is telling you it is not making physical sense and has been grossly overcomplicated to “make it work” by imaginary accounting. The only physical thing that will muck with Earth energy balance state can be changes net heat inputs and dissipation whether it be by direct solar forcings, fiddling with availability of cloud condensation nuclei, or maybe even something else nobody has noticed. What we can say for sure is that optical thickness greenhouse factor of all sky atmosphere keeps OLR proportion fixed to surface upward flux. No amount of Co2 will mess with that. This is why the work of the Soons, the Svensmarks, and Scafettas will see their day in the sun. By the time anyone cares to notice they may be well gone and dead by then but the work will live on.
“It sounds fancy but it is actually common sense to understand ground and air have similar temp.”
JCM’s common sense fails near the ground.
You can verify this yourself: On a calm, hot summer, clear sky southwestern USA afternoon, the temperature of an asphalt road may be 40C or higher. Your feet will be at 40C but your nose sniffing air at 35C or less, thus the lapse rate order of 5C/m or 5000C/km thus 500 times the dry adiabatic far away from surfaces. Even more if it is windy.
Trenberth’s 2009 “396” is for the global avg. over 4 years with a surface emissivity rounded up to 1.0 (from broadband ocean water reported at 0.99) with no significant (less than 0.7 out of 340) loss of fidelity to nature in CERES data at 95% significance level.
Eddy diffusion ensures no net IR radiation heat flux (upward flow) reaches the atmosphere from the ground. There is no net upward IR radiative flux from the surface other than through the IR window. Add in some water that can be evaporated cools 20C. The inverse of your example of a hot dry climate is a wet climate where surface temperature is LOWER than air temperature. No rounding is necessary. Before rebutting my every post please try to understand surface energy balance concepts.
Trenberth schemes used in the standard radiative theory do not compare with measurements. This is because they are modified to be 100% correct radiation budgets. However, this viewpoint is imaginary. It’s cooked up by radiative physicists in the 1980s who were so excited about satellites that they truly did believe they could find all the answers. Round a few things here, make a few other assumptions there. You know, “make it work”. The entire field of boundary layer climatology was dismissed. You know, the scientists who actually take in-situ measurements e.g. https://www.knmi.nl/research/observations-data-technology/projects/cabauw-in-situ-measurements . Even now we see the skeptic community following the same path getting sucked into these illusions of IR radiative forcings. It’s probably due to convenience of accessing satellite data and that it ‘feels’ somehow authoritative. I have no idea. Anyway, the good old fashioned science with actual measurements and sound physics tells us that local profiles do not have to be conforming to an energy budget because there is a massive horizontal convective heat transfer. Every bit of radiative flux from the surface to atmosphere is compensated by atmospheric radiative flux to the surface (minus the bit transmitted through IR window upwards). The radiative equilibrium extends all the way to the ground surface. All you’re left with is dynamic net transport by sensible heat and latent heat by convection to dissipate heat. Clouds represent the critically important process where, in the presence of available CCN, latent heat is released aloft where it is easily radiated away. This also increases convection. Reduce your CCN somehow, less heat radiated. Additionally, clouds impact albedo too.
JCM: Your attempt to get this top post on solar effects turned into an assault on Trenberth 2009 and many other author’s Earth energy budgets by employing ill-informed atm. physics begs rebuttal.
“Few have recognized the unphysical nature of this flux where it assumes a surface temperature several degrees higher than the air just above.”
I just showed JCM that assuming a surface temperature several degrees higher than the air just above can be physical in nature. Many readers prefer commenters to stay on topic to better understand the top post & paper. There are posts, even recent ones, to debate earth energy imbalance physics.
“there is a massive horizontal convective heat transfer.”
That would be advective thermal energy transfer. Out.
It is you who engaged with me. My original intent was to highlight the flaws of IR radiation theory in order to emphasize the importance of other mechanisms such as solar physics. There isn’t much substance in the headpost to discuss. You have made for interesting discussion but I must have struck a nerve.
I agree! While thinking of upwelling and downwelling radiation might make it simpler to model I think it is better that a computer stick to modelling the processes as close as possible to reality. Everything starts with the energy coming in from the Sun (and Earth’s internal nuclear and energy store coming up from the ground, since we’re being fussy) and everything else is how well they reflect, absorb and warm up with that original input. I think it will lead down the wrong path or to a wild goose chase if things are modeled as separate, independent sources.
It is important to point out there is a “rectification effect” when trying to determine the global average radiant flux. The trivial method is to take the global average temperature and run it through the SB-law formula. Doing it that way you get sblaw(Σ[Tn, 1, N] / N) = 390 W/m2 where Tn is the temperature at grid cell n and N is the number grid cells. However, the more correct way to do it is to determine the radiant exitance at each grid cell first and then take the average of that. Doing it that you get Σ[sblaw(Tn), 1, N] / N = 396 W/m2. The rectification error is thus 6 W/m2 or 1 K. You get a similar problem with temporal sampling as well. See Trenberth et al. 2009 for details.
The satellite based models with adjusted fluxes so as to match the estimated global imbalance? I’ll take a look. thanks
I’m not really sure what you’re asking. It doesn’t have anything to do with a model or adjustments. It has to do with the T^4 term in the SB-law and the fact that Σ[(T/N)^4] does not equal (Σ[T/N])^4. The best way to illustrate this is with a hypothetical sphere that radiates at 390 W/m2 isotropically and another that radiates at 780 W/m2 on one side and 0 on the other. The average temperature on the first is simply (390 / σ)^0.25 = 288 K whereas the for the second it is [(780 / σ)^0.25 + (0 / σ)^0.25] / 2 = [343 + 0] / 2 = 171 K. But if for the second you averaged the radiant exitance first then you get 288 K for a rectification error of 117 K. The less isotropic the radiant exitance the more error you get when trying to average the flux first before plugging it into the SB-law. And remember, the various energy budgets like Trenberth and the like are focused on energy and balancing the energy budget so the figures are more representative of energy flows; not radiant exitance. You can’t plug any of those values into the SB-law; not even the surface radiation flux. It’s a quirk of the relative isotropic nature of Earth’s radiation and the fact that the various rectification effects tend to cancel that the surface flux in the energy budgets do tend to approximate the temperature when used in the SB-law. The same cannot be said for the other astronomical bodies like the Moon.
Sounds complicated bdgwx.
Is it this one? https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/90/3/2008bams2634_1.xml
“surface upward longwave radiation is adjusted to account for spatial and temporal variability. A lack of closure in the energy balance at the surface is accommodated by making modest changes to surface fluxes, with the downward longwave radiation as the main residual to ensure a balance.”
I’m sure the adjustments are decorated quite nicely but I can’t comment on the minutiae of RS radiative transfer model corrections. Good luck to you.
Yes. That is the Trenberth et al. 2009 energy budget. Read the section titled Spatial and Temporal Sampling. Notice in equation (2) that the rectification effect and associated error is not caused by models or adjustments. It is caused by the T^4 term in the SB-law. Also notice that KT97 uses the sblaw(Σ[Tn, 1, N] / N) method whereas Trenberth 2009 Σ[sblaw(Tn), 1, N] / N method. Therefore KT97 has the rectification error but Trenberth 2009 does not. The change or adjustment from KT97 to Trenberth 2009 is +6 W/m2.
Notice on the next page they find:
“For the surface we initially made estimates of the various terms, but encountered an imbalance of order 20 W m~2, which led us to reexamine the assumptions.”
But they didn’t actually reexamine the assumptions. They simply went on to make various other adjustments tweaking things here and there to make it work according to their expectations.
I’m not sure how that relates to the rectification effect. Are saying you believe the rectification error is bigger or smaller than 6 W/m2? Or that neither the original 390 nor updated 396 W/m2 are close to the true value?
My perspective is that 390 or 396 have no physical basis at Earth’s current surface temperature. They are both much too high because of misrepresentation of surface energy balance. Bringing it down to a physically plausible value of around 375 at 288K is a more realistic boundary condition. It is my sense that many are unwilling to budge on their assumptions about net surface IR flux, or that they’ve never given it much thought. The Trenberth style schematics will necessarily need to keep ramping up this number over time to maintain their enhanced greenhouse effect hypothesis. I ran the numbers over on this thread for a simple scenario and you’re welcome to add your input there, of course. Cheers https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/07/where-is-the-top-of-the-atmosphere/#comment-3428935
Furthermore, it should be a red flag to anyone that the adjustments applied by Trenberth and co. far exceed the magnitude of the greenhouse enhancement hypotheses. 20 watts /m2 here, 10 there, 6 over there. It might be time for a rethink.
Would mind taking the Trenberth 2009, Wild 2013, or other energy budget diagram and writing in your own values and posting it here?
The only problem with your example is that the earth is neither isotropic nor radiating at some value for half of the sphere and 0 for the other half. The half and half would only be true for a non-rotating earth and still wouldn’t be correct for a sphere.
You are still into “averages” which just don’t apply to a phenomena like the sun’s radiation encountering a rotating, tilted body.
If the sun is directly overhead at the equator, that point receives much more insolation than a point at one of the poles. That equatorial “grid point” is going to radiate much more (think ^4) than the “grid point” at the pole. Do you think an average is a true answer?
JG said: “The only problem with your example is that the earth is neither isotropic…”
That’s why a rectification effect exists.
JG said: “…nor radiating at some value for half of the sphere and 0 for the other half.”
That’s why the rectification effect is not as extreme like it is with the Moon.
JG said: “You are still into “averages” which just don’t apply to a phenomena like the sun’s radiation encountering a rotating, tilted body.”
That sounds like an off-the-cuff remark that you probably don’t actually mean. Do you think the TSI of 1360 W/m2 does not apply to the Earth? do you think the amount of energy received by the Sun at TOA of 340 W/m2 * 510e12 m2 * 31.536e6 s = 5.46e24 j does not actually apply to the earth?
JG said: “If the sun is directly overhead at the equator, that point receives much more insolation than a point at one of the poles. That equatorial “grid point” is going to radiate much more (think ^4) than the “grid point” at the pole. Do you think an average is a true answer?”
Yeah…that’s the core concept of the rectification effect. That’s why taking the average temperature of the surface and plugging it into the SB-law to determine the amount of energy emitted by the surface is incorrect. That’s what I’m trying to explain. It sounds like you get it. Can you explain it the WUWT audience? They might be more amendable to this fact if you explain it to them.
The “greenhouse effect” does not consider the key temperature limiting processes on Earth.
This is the SST for the Arctic Ocean above 80N:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/isstoi_v2_0-360E_80-90N_n.png
Range -1.8C to -0.6C.
This is the range of OLR for the same region:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iumd_olr_0-360E_80-90N_n.png
Range from 150W/sq.m to 230W/sq.m
This variation in surface emissivity is not considered in GHE theory. The 80W/sq.m variation in OLR for minute change in SST is not insignificant. On average 3.3% of the Earths surface is covered with sea ice so the 80W/sq.m change in OLR translates to 2.5W/sq.m averaged over the entire globe.
Few people would need to told the variation is due to the insulating property of ice – absolutely nothing to due with greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
Atmospheric ice has many times more influence on the energy balance than sea ice. Reflective cloud formation and persistence over tropical oceans is highly sensitive to the surface temperature. The albedo averages 0.5 over tropical oceans at 30C. GHE theory assumes a constant of 0.3. The difference is 80W/sq.m. Half of the oceans surface is above 25C where the albedo averages 0.38 or 20W/sq.m more than assumed by GHE theory. So half the oceans are reflecting an average of 50Wsq.m more sunlight than assumed by GHE theory that assumes the albedo is unlinked to surface temperature.
Sea ice formation limits ocean surface lower temperature to -1.8C. Atmospheric ice formation limits ocean surface temperature to 30C. Those two temperatures control earths energy balance. The rest is noise – often referred to as weather.
All climate models show parts of the tropical oceans exceeding 30C by considerable margin – that is a physical impossibility on Earth with the current atmospheric mass.
All climate models show precipitation increasing. That cannot happen because the solar input into oceans has been declining since 1585. Actual date shows global freshwater runoff is in decline – the exact opposite of what climate models are predicting.
The surface temperature of oceans is the inverse of the net energy uptake due to upwelling accelerating when net energy uptake is high. Deep, cool water is drawn to the surface due to higher rates of evaporation. The ocean heating in the present era is due to the water cycle slowing down and oceans retaining more heat. Ocean surface cannot be heated by increasing the surface radiation input. That just accelerates the water cycle.
Once the cold season arctic ice freezes above 80 north the surface (i.e. the ice) becomes in balance with the air just above, something like -30C or 190 watts per square meter. Assuming summer open water around 0C you’re looking at about 309 watts per square meter. It all shakes out to a global average annual 375 watts per square meter surface flux in a 15C world.
My point with the ice is that the retention of heat as a result of the ice formation has nothing to do with greenhouse gasses. The water surface below the ice maintains a constant -1.8C.
Likewise GHE theory assumes that the surface insolation is unaffected by the surface temperature. The feedback mechanism is so powerful that the atmosphere shuts off surface insolation at 32C and regulates around a 30C maximum temperature.
The 15C world is simply the average of the two ocean temperature limits. Two temperature controlled processes determine Earth’s energy balance; not greenhouse gasses.
Great!
Somebody actually found the 120 year sunspot cycle!
The vast majority of the sun’s energy that reaches the earth’s surface enters the oceans and then reaches the atmosphere, through the intermediary of the oceans, with a time lag of the order of 30 to 40 years.
Now, if one the considers this 120 year sunspot cycle, which which was at its maximum in the 1950s through the 1980s, in conjunction with the 70 year ocean cycle, which was at its maximum from about 2000 to 2020, and taking into account the 30 – 40 year time lag mentioned above, it is quite easy to understand that the global warming of the late 20th century and the peak global temperatures of the last 20 years was the result of these two cycles (the 120 yr solar cycle and the 70 yr ocean cycle) being in phase (i.e. simultaneously at their maximums). Global warming thus has little, if anything, to do with CO2.
The simultaneous transition of both of these cycles to their weak/cold phases will make for a rather cold 21st century, and hopefully will bury forever the CO2 climate change scam.
No need to invoke unproven lags of 30-40 years and 70-year ocean cycles. The climate via the ocean is controlled by the 109y SN average, lagged by 11 years, or 120 total years of solar activity, over 11 solar cycles. There will be decadal ocean warming again from this solar cycle, as there was from SC24, as long as the SC25 peak annual solar activity is higher than the warming threshold of 95 SN.
One can only hope – but I feel guilty wanting a prolonged cooling period to occur to shut-up the warmunists/Big Green robber barons who want to milk the issue for their own ends, when it would be great if humanity really did have a CO2 thermostat for the world, and if the world was really warming steadily and ongoing for the next few centuries. I’m a history buff, so looking back it’s pretty clear warm times->civilization heights, cold periods->famine, drought, plague and pestilence.
There is no 30-40 year lag. ENSO and the AMO act as negative feedbacks to changes in indirect solar forcing. Stronger solar wind states in the 1970-80’s drove colder ocean phases, and weaker solar wind states since 1995 have driven warmer ocean phases.
Machine learning is being applied to everything under and on the sun these days. It is extraordinarily trendy.
And the worrisome thing about it, is that although the machine can tell you its conclusions, it can’t tell you how it reached them. It’s “black box” science.
Wait till the climate science mob learns how to use AI/ML, as they surely will. Predictions of future doom will become even futher detached from reality than they are now.
The UV level, updated in real time, shows the actual sunspot activity for today.
Awesome! I learned something new today! I wonder if there is anything that, affected by UV, is then trapped and preserved in the geological record, or other suitable time capsule.
I was sorry to hear about the broken butterfly wings. I didn’t know about that.
Spotless Days per Month (smoothed). This shows the other side of the sunspot cycle – cycle minima as measured by the number of days each month without any sunspots. The peaks in the number of spotless days occur at about the time of sunspot cycle minima.
http://solarcyclescience.com/bin/SpotlessDays.png
http://solarcyclescience.com/solarcycle.html
We can’t assess the relevance of this or any other AI study if we don’t know all the premises, ie. the rules and data given to the AI machine. Regrettably, just as in climate modelling, you can get any result you want by tweaking the premises.
Reportedly, when AI was given the task of winning at GO, it was given only the rules of GO. It wasn’t given anything that a human learner might expect to be given, such as examples of past games and strategies. The result was spectacular. It very quickly became good enough to beat any human. In less precise applications, I gather that AI’s results have been far from spectacular.
In the case of GO, it was very easy for the AI to determine outcomes – a win is a win. In the case of sunspots, how does the AI determine an outcome? The devil is in the detail.
There does seem to be some obvious errors in this paper. Consider for example:
”Feynman, Leighton, and Sands (1963) define the power (P ) as the energy transfer ratio per unit time. For any physical variable, the power is equal to the integral of the quadratic amplitude (energy) along the duration of the event (Falkovich, 1978).”
The two sentences are clearly inconsistent. Firstly power is defined as energy/time then in
next sentence power is the integral of the energy with respect to time. There is no way that both statements can be true.
The other weird thing is why they felt the need to include such statements since it is completely irrelevant to the rest of the paper. Citing the Feynman lectures for something as basic as the definition of power (units of Joules/second) is usually a sign of pseudo-science.
I think you need to go back to school and learn what these folks are talking about. You can’t just throw around terms like energy/time = power and the integral of of energy with respect to time and expect them to be equal. They are describing different things.
You want to make a claim of error, then you also need to define the properties being dealt with in each paper and why those descriptions of “power” were used in each. Thinking about the difference between watt and watt-hour may help.
Jim,
I am not the one throwing around those terms. That is how they are defined in the paper. First they say that power equals energy transfer ratio per unit time which is the same as P=E/time and so as expected power has units of Joules/second. Next they claim that power is the integral of energy with respect to time which is just wrong. Simply dimensional anaysis shows that their two definitions of power have different units and so at least one of them is wrong.
Is power defined by watts or by watt-hours? Does unit time = 1 second thereby ending up with just joules? How do you get watt-hours if you don’t integrate?
Power is watts or joules per second. Energy is just joules. Time is second. The integration of energy wrt to time is thus joules * second (j.s). In SI base units this is kg.m2/s which happens to be the units for angular momentum. You get watt-hours by integrating power wrt to time.
Isaak, the two definitions are equivalent- the second one is in the variable case- it is the general case, you understanding of it is incorrect: see my coment
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/11/group-sunspot-numbers-a-new-reconstruction-of-sunspot-activity-variations-from-historical-sunspot-records-using-algorithms-from-machine-learning/#comment-3430260
Isaak, both definitions of power are equivalent. Physicists,
especially professors, tend to go to simple DC (direct current) circuits where voltage and amperage are constant to illustrate electricity functions, eg Power=V*I (‘I’ is amperage). On the other hand, engineers go to AC (alternating currents) to discuss power and the other electrical units.
Since alternating currents go back and forth in a circuit (commonly 60 times/sec or 60 herz) both voltage and amperage oscillate sinusoidally between 1 and -1 (times instantaneous voltage and amperage in the given circuit). In this case, Power= root mean square of maximum voltage times root mean square of maximum amperage, i.e. (V/√2)*(l/√2). Therefore P=2VI in the alt current circuit (the integral of half a sign wave =2 and V and I are 90° out of phase). Falkovich’s statement is the more genera case.
I do agree, however, that it seems sophomoric to quote these two references if it is only to support a definition of Power.
How the 25th solar cycle unfolds.
Does the current Northern Hemisphere winter circulation resemble the circulation during the Maunder Minimum.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/7122/chilly-temperatures-during-the-maunder-minimum
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2022/01/10/1200Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/overlay=temp/equirectangular=-345.00,0.00,179
Let me advise folks about my rule of thumb in such matters as these:
See the Svalgaard-Mansurov Effect …
w.
the link doesn’t work…
OK, folks, here’s the heart of the matter. All the rest are side-tracks.
Leif Svalgaard January 11, 2022 10:54 am
Now, if anyone has any SCIENTIFIC objections to that, they should post them below. Me, I tend to believe Leif in these matters. However, it’s not a matter of trust. It’s because whenever I’ve checked his claims, I’ve found them to be true.
But if you think he’s wrong in his very specific, detailed, and referenced claim above … here’s your chance.
w.
Sorry, but the difference between telescopes is not a sufficient argument. The fact is that during the Maunder Minimum you could walk from Poland to Sweden on ice.
Willis;
I would submit that Lief is totally wrong, for the following scientific reason.
The low sunspot activity during the LIA Maunder and Dalton minimums had NO effect upon Global Temperatures. All of the cooling during those representative LIA periods were due to SO2 aerosols spewed into the atmosphere by VEI4, and larger, volcanic eruptions.
See: “Central England Temps. Data Set: Key to Understanding the Cause of Climate Change”
https://www.Osf.io/b2vxp/
What do you think I was wrong about? What I showed was that solar activity does not have any upward trend the last three hundred years. What has that to do with your claim that grand minima have no effect on global temperatures?
Leif Svaalgard:
I owe you an apology!.
I confused you with Lief Svensmark, and his “Force Majeure”.
I am not aware of the paper which you thought that I was criticizing. I would very much appreciate a link as to where it can be read. And I would agree with you that solar activity has had no upward trend over the past 300 years.
“paper which you thought that I was criticizing”
Which paper are you talking about?
Leif Svalgaard:
Which paper are you talking about?
Beats me.
Wherever you said “what I showed was that solar activity does not have any upward trend the last three hundred years”
Large tropical volcanic eruptions have a positive influence on the North Atlantic Oscillation, causing 1-3 slightly warmer North Hemisphere winters following a major eruption. So they have diddly squat to do with colder LIA winters. In fact they tend to erupt soon after the colder winters.
Ulrich Lyons:
Nonsense!.
Please give an example, or two
1991, 1982, 1963, and dozens before that. The positive influence on the NAO is true, look it up before denying it.
Ulrich Lyons:
VEI4 and larger Volcanoes affect our climate by injecting SO2 aerosols into the stratosphere. These reflective (dimming) aerosols circle around our planet, with the maximum cooling occurring, on average 16 months after the date of the eruption.
Circulating SO2 aerosols are the actual control knob for our planet, creating SECONDARY effects,such as the NAO, and others. The NAO is just an observation, meaningless in itself. .,
Study the literature on tropical eruptions and the NAO, and you can study the NAO data following those eruptions too.
Thank you! Maybe we could use ML AI to search for comments that actually address this…🙂 They seem to be well hidden so far.
The problem is convincing the WUWT audience of this. They overwhelmingly and vehemently reject adjustments of any kind regardless of reason or legitimacy. They will say that it is not scientific to adjust for telescope size.
The current centennial minimum concerns only cycles 24 and 25. Cycle 26 will also be lower sunspot numbers as it is the same type as solar cycles 16 and 20, but the solar wind strength should be stronger than in cycles 24&25.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YOu7hHVEuaWWLuztj6ThEsJd7Z-765Uz-L68lQbRdbQ/edit
Do the sunspot numbers correlate with the temperature of the sun? No
Is there a mechanism for the cyclical variation in sun spot numbers? Yes
Does the mechanism itself cause or correlate with a change in the temperature of the sun? No
Sorted out then.
Second issue .
Finding omens in the augery.
Done with statistics rather than chicken guts.
You can eyeball numbers and correlations
You can get an AI to analyse numbers and correlations and patterns that you put in for it to look at.
For instance same data and look for a 19 year or a 37 year pattern and you will find lots.
Patterns always exist.
When we find them we get excited.
The clue to the veracity of the findings here is simple.
There are correlations due to a known 11 year cycle.
They then find 51/2 year and 22 year patterns .
Then they throw it all away with human rounding up routine imbedded into the AI.
30 , 60 and 120 year cycles.
If it is 11 years stick with it.
Use 33 55 and 110. ( helps the maths as well)
30 and 60 are wrong.
120 is lazy doubling of the previous
Instead of 10 11 year cycles you have 11 11 year cycles which is a thoroughly wrong 12 10 year cycles.
Sounds good but one loses a whole 11 year cycle in their and all the rest are 1 year short.
Misuse of length terms renders any conclusions drawn on this or the previous study not very helpful
The mode is ~10.4 years, and the long term mean is 11.068 years as there are usually longer solar cycles leading into and out of each centennial solar minimum. And the mean number of solar cycles per centennial cycle is 9.75, though in practice it varies between 7 and 12 solar cycles.
Misquoting is not very helpful.
Sorry Ulric, was not misquoting you.
my comment was just after yours.
Thanks for the more precise figures on duration.
–
The message is that the article coughs up dodgy cycle lengths. It is alright to round numbers up a little in context.
30 , 60 and 120 have no connection to sunspot timing whatever.
I agree. There is a fascination by some with the Jupiter-Saturn trigon series of 59.57 years, which is highly questionable that every third synodic period could create a ~60 year sinusoidal style cycle. And that pitch inevitably falls out of phase with an AMO envelope with a long term mean frequency of 54 years. I see no evidence for Saturn being involved with the ordering of Schwabe cycles or centennial minima.
Willie you are brave and honest person whom I admire. However, AI, machine learning, TOBs and station moves have already an ignominious history in the corruption of temperature data in the climateering sweepstakes. When one questions these adjustments, they have ‘reasonable’ grounds for it but it opens the door to fiddle data.
Let’s take station moves. Yes, growth of a city engulfs a station and it needs to be moved, but what happens is there is an adjustment for UHI that is insufficient and the residual UHI becomes a hidden part of Global Warming at the new site. Another way it is exploited is when a perfectly functioning station is not showing warming, they move it to a place where it will!
The most egregious one was the world’s hottest temperature ever recorded – Death Valley, 134F in July, 1913. It was an embarrassment that with GW it was never beaten. Well, they abandoned that one and located the station a decade ago where micro climate could enhance temperature. In 2020, Bingo! They reported a ‘new’ record of 129F, and to their delight another in 2021 of 130F. Back in 2013 the record was part of a heatwave in which 5 other days were hotter than 129F. Anthony Watts predicted this was what they were up to back when the new station was built.
You seem to have been able to show with unsifted data that the sun has an important place In natural variation in earth temperatures. If you employ the altered data, no matter how honestly it was done, you open the door to opponents easy critique of your methods. You already have a high stature solar physicist chiding the methodology on this thread.
One has to start somewhere.
Is there any simple description of why sunspot number is given such attention, other than it is a physical aspect that is relatively easy to measure (by counting)?
Is it not the case that sunspots cover only a tiny fraction of the sun surface at any given time?
Is there any decent measured anything that indicates that tiny fraction covered by sunspots is very relevant to the total energy output of the sun?
It is given attention because some claim that it drives global temperature.
Yes, the fraction covered is tiny [typically one in a thousand]
Np, the sunspots have very little influence on the energy output [typically one thousandth].
One imagines that solar output is basically fuel driven and in this context the amount of debris, dust and meteorites that the sun absorbs each day or month might cause a minor fluctuation in heat output.
Minor to it might still be detectable to us.
Otherwise as a solitary self fuelled stable atomic source of heat is probably is not able to vary very much apart from the orbital distance variations that we already factor in.
The is ‘fuelled’ by Hydrogen in the core of the sun, not by ‘debris’ falling into it.
It takes the energy generated in the core some 200,000 to get out to the surface from where it radiates into space.
Thanks, Leif.
–
Is the sun still accreting matter?
Would matter add to the fuel load?
The answer to both is yes though on a very small percentage in time spans relevant to humans.
–
Interesting the amount of force and density of particles to restrict that huge amount of energy getting through to the surface 200,000 years?
–
The radius of the sun is 700,000 kilometers, which is 7 trillion “steps” if each step is a tenth of a millimeter, and 70 billion steps if each step is 1 centimeter. From the drunkard’s-walk problem, you know that the average number of steps it takes to get a certain distance is equal to the square of the number of steps it would take to go in a straight line. So it would take 49 trillion trillion steps of 0.1 millimeter and 490 billion trillion steps of 1 centimeter each. The time it takes to travel those steps is the total distance divided by the speed of light. So, if you think photons only travel 0.1 millimeters between crashes, it will take more than half a million years for the photon to escape the sun. If you think it’s about a centimeter, then it will take about 5,000 years for the photon to get outside the sun.
The sun is losing 4 million tons per second due to the solar wind and another 4 million tons from ‘burning’ hydrogen to helium. These amounts are very insignificant fractions of the solar mass.
It takes about 200,000 years for the energy generated in the core to get to the surface.
Let’s compare galactic radiation levels in cycles 24 and 25 with previous cycles. This is clear evidence of a weakening of the solar wind magnetic field.
Let’s see what happens with ENSO. I predict that there is very little chance of a strong El Niño due to the weak solar wind. I’m betting on neutral.
Status as of January 10.
I think your in the middle of the BOM field on your prediction.
From whereever it is the trend is 51% back to the middle, 49% away from the middle.
Nearly neutral now form mild La Nina so you are 51% right.
Angech:
“no one has a clue”
Not true!
ALL VEI4 and higher volcanic eruptions cause a La Nina, if the eruption did not occur during an El Nino, because of volcanic SO2 aerosols injected into the stratosphere..
Likewise, all such eruptions result in an El Nino, if it did not occur during a La Nina, or is not quenched by another eruption. The El Nino occurs after the SO2 aerosols from the eruption settle out of the atmosphere, cleansing the air.
You will never find an El Nino where there has not been a reduction in atmospheric SO2 aerosol levels..
Nor a La Nina where there has not been an increase in atmospheric SO2 aerosol levels
The winter circulation in the lower stratosphere will be typical of the Maunder Minimum. This is because the geomagnetic field to the north is split into two centers.
It will be a tough winter for Europe’s energy industry.
https://i.ibb.co/3vQ3kQH/hgt300.webp
Very heavy rain and snowfall in the southeastern US.