By Javier Vinós
Over the past two decades, solar activity has been characterized by an extended solar minimum spanning two solar cycles, known as the Clilverd Minimum. This phenomenon is currently affecting the climate, but before we can understand its impact, we must address the significant discrepancy between the solar effects observed in paleoclimate proxy records and modern observations. The relationship between solar signals and climate response is complex and not fully understood. However, there is substantial evidence from models and reanalyses that the relationship exists. A recent hypothesis is that the solar signal modulates heat and moisture transport to the Arctic, which explains its relatively small effect during a single solar cycle. However, when an anomaly in solar activity persists over several cycles, as it did during the 70-year modern solar maximum, its effect accumulates and has a large impact on the planet’s energy budget. Understanding this mechanism is critical to understanding the overall impact of solar activity on our climate.
Current Solar Activity
The monthly sunspot number for June 2023 reached 163.4. While this figure may be revised slightly, it’s likely to stand as the highest number seen in over two decades, since September 2002. Solar Cycle 25 is relatively young, only three and a half years old, which means there are ample opportunities over the next three years to surpass this month’s 20-year record. Based on recent data, it seems very likely that Solar Cycle 25 will surpass Solar Cycle 24 in terms of activity.
Both solar cycles 24 and 25 show significantly low activity compared to the average of the last 300 years. Together they represent an extended solar minimum, recently proposed to be named the Clilverd Minimum.[1] This name derives from a paper published in 2006 by Mark Clilverd and colleagues, in which they successfully predicted the occurrence of this event.[2]
Contrary to earlier predictions, the likelihood of a solar grand minimum in the 21st century is becoming increasingly remote. Similarly, predictions that the current extended solar minimum would lead to a marked decrease in temperature are incorrect. However, this doesn’t mean that the Clilverd minimum has no effect at all. Changes in solar activity indirectly affect surface temperatures in a complex way. Understanding how these solar variations affect the climate is crucial to identifying their effects.
The solar effect on climate (I). Modern observations
There exists a great discrepancy between the solar effects observed in paleoclimatic proxy records and modern observations. According to satellite instruments, the change observed over the solar cycle amounts to a mere 1.1 W m–2, and the variability observed over the past 9,000 years doesn’t appear to be much higher, approximately 1.5 W m–2.[3] This presents another challenge because the change is so minuscule that its impact should be indiscernible amidst the noise of climate data. However, numerous studies consistently identify a climate influence of approximately 0.1°C attributed to the solar cycle, which is about four times larger than expected from the slight radiative change. Consequently, there arises a necessity for an amplifying mechanism to account for this second discrepancy.
Adding to the complexity, the effect of the solar cycle on surface temperatures is not what would be expected from a marginal increase in total irradiance over the entire surface. Rather, it reveals a highly dynamic pattern characterized by certain regions experiencing warming of more than 1°C, while others show cooling trends (Figure 3). Interestingly, this pattern is like the warming observed between 1976 and 2000. During this period, the Northern Hemisphere experienced more warming than the Southern Hemisphere, land surfaces warmed more than the oceans, and the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere experienced the most pronounced warming effects.
This pattern is thought to result from an amplification mechanism rooted in the effects of increased solar activity on the ozone layer, leading to increased ozone levels and stratospheric temperatures. Consequently, these changes affect the speed of zonal (West/East) winds and the stability of the polar vortex. Through stratosphere-troposphere coupling, the solar signal is transmitted to the troposphere. The strength of the polar vortex plays a critical role in determining the winter state of the North Atlantic Oscillation, which becomes markedly positive during periods of high solar activity. In addition, the position of the jet stream is influenced by the strength of the vortex, causing it to shift poleward and become more circular (as opposed to meandering, see Figure 4) during these periods of high solar activity. As a result of this movement, cold Arctic air masses are trapped in the Arctic region, leading to warmer winters in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
In tropical regions, changes in atmospheric circulation occur due to the poleward motion of the jet stream and a reduction in the upward branch of the Brewer-Dobson circulation. As a result, the Hadley circulation expands, leading to a corresponding shift in the subtropical jet. These changes significantly affect precipitation patterns and contribute to mid-latitude warming, as less heat is transported to the Arctic due to a strengthened polar vortex.
Both data assimilation reanalysis products and climate models that incorporate ozone chemistry and stratospheric circulation can reproduce these effects in response to prescribed changes in solar activity. However, they do so in a somewhat muted manner, resulting in smaller changes than observed.
Nevertheless, because solar activity rises and falls over the course of a solar cycle, the cumulative effect of its changes over several cycles is often considered insignificant.
The solar effect on climate (II). Paleoclimatic observations
As noted above, there is a stark contradiction between the relatively small climatic impact observed during an individual solar cycle and the evidence provided by paleoclimate proxy data. Remarkably, the climate patterns observed over the past 2000 years are consistent with a millennial cycle of solar activity known as the Eddy Cycle (see here, Figure 1), named after astronomer John Eddy, who revived interest in the Maunder Minimum in the 1970s. Notably, the Little Ice Age, the coldest period in the Holocene, coincided with three solar grand minimums that occurred within a span of less than 500 years.
It is important to note that the onset of the Little Ice Age cannot be attributed to changes in greenhouse gas levels, as CO2 levels remained constant between 1100 and 1500 AD. In addition, the Little Ice Age cannot be explained by volcanic eruptions alone, as no significant volcanic events were recorded for an extended period of three hundred years, from 1458 to 1765.
The evidence linking solar activity to major climate changes strongly suggests that the Eddy Cycle has played a major role in shaping the climate of the past 2000 years. This is illustrated in Figure 5, which shows the 14C record – a proxy for solar activity – with its 1000-year bandpass frequency sinusoid. In addition, the figure shows a climate proxy: the measurement of petrological tracers in benthic cores that reflect the amount of iceberg discharge in the North Atlantic.[6] These tracers are carried by icebergs and released as they melt. During colder periods with increased winter snowfall, coastal glaciers advance and release more icebergs, resulting in a higher amount of tracer.
While the two curves may not be perfectly aligned, their overall correlation is too compelling to dismiss as mere coincidence. Any increase in iceberg activity, indicating colder temperatures and increased snowfall, corresponds to a decrease in solar activity. Consequently, this observed relationship implies that solar activity has served as the primary driver of climate on a centennial time scale over the past 2000 years.
The climate of the past two millennia can be divided into four distinct phases:
- The Roman Warm Period (ending around 400 AD)
- The Dark Ages Cold Period, which consists of two parts — an early part around 500 AD and a late one around 700 AD
- The Medieval Warm Period (centered around 1100 AD)
- The Little Ice Age (beginning around 1300 AD)
This scheme, marked by its millennial quasi-periodicity, finds strong support from an abundance of historical, biological, geological, and climatic evidence. A recent publication presents some of this compelling evidence in the form of colored bars (Figure 5), where warm indicators are represented by red bars and cold indicators by blue bars.[7]
The problem can be summarized as follows: If we do not acknowledge the substantial effect of low solar activity, we are left without a satisfactory explanation for the occurrence of the Little Ice Age. The application of causal identification techniques within systems theory sheds light on this problem of explainability.[8] These techniques involve comparing forced identification, using the forcings identified by the IPCC, with free identification, where no specific forcings are assumed. This analysis shows that a large solar forcing is needed to explain both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. As a result, the IPCC hypothesis of low climate sensitivity to solar activity is shown to be incorrect.
Resolving the discrepancy about the solar effect on climate
Ignoring evidence that contradicts a hypothesis is never a good idea in science. The IPCC reports rely on paleoclimate proxy evidence to assert that ongoing climate change is highly unusual and that current temperatures are most likely the highest they have been in a long time. However, when it comes to examining the paleoclimatic consequences of past variations in solar activity, the IPCC reports find the proxy evidence inconclusive.
In fact, the evidence is abundant and consistent, clearly indicating that the solar effect on climate does not result from small variations in total solar irradiance at the surface. On the contrary, solar changes primarily affect atmospheric circulation and, in turn, the intensity of heat and moisture transport to the Arctic, especially during the winter season when atmospheric circulation is enhanced.
During winter, the Arctic has a weak greenhouse effect because its atmosphere contains minimal water vapor – a critical component responsible for 75% of the greenhouse effect along with cloud formation. Consequently, the polar regions act as cooling systems within the thermodynamic heat engine of the climate. Changing the amount of heat transported to the Arctic during winter has a noticeable impact on the planet’s energy balance. Although the impact may seem small in a single year, it quickly accumulates to a large effect when changes in solar activity persist over several decades, as was the case during the Modern Solar Maximum for most of the 20th century.
This hypothesis not only reconciles paleoclimate and modern evidence, but it also has great explanatory power, i.e., it explains a greater number of facts, sheds light on puzzling observations, relies less on authority and more on empirical observations, makes a minimum of assumptions, and is more easily falsifiable. This makes it a better hypothesis than the one based on the enhanced effect of CO2 changes.
An academic book has recently been published by this author presenting the new hypothesis.[9] It has also been further explored in several blog posts on this site. In addition, a forthcoming book aimed at a broader audience will provide a compelling evidence-based explanation of the influence of changes in heat transport on recent climate changes.
This new mechanism does not contradict existing theories, such as the effects of increased human, such as the effects of increased human emissions, but it significantly reduces their potential impact. Paleoclimatic evidence strongly suggests that this mechanism serves as the primary driver of climate change on centennial to millennial time scales. As a result, the existence of a climate crisis and the potential positive climatic effects of drastically reducing our emissions must be seriously questioned.
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Vinós, J., 2022. Climate of the Past, Present and Future: A scientific debate. 2nd ed. Critical Science Press. amazon.com/dp/B0BCF5BLQ5/ ↑
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Clilverd, M.A., et al., 2006. Space Weather, 4 (9). doi.org/10.1029/2005SW000207 ↑
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Gulev, S.K., et al., 2021. Climate change 2021: The physical science basis. 6th AR IPCC. p.297. doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.004 ↑
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Lean, J.L., 2017. Sun-climate connections. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.9 ↑
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Bond, G., et al., 2001. Science, 294 (5549), pp.2130–2136. doi.org/10.1126/science.1065680 ↑
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Moffa-Sánchez, P. & Hall, I.R., 2017. Nat. Commun. 8 (1), p.1726. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01884-8 ↑
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de Larminat, P., 2016. Annu. Rev. Control, 42, pp.114–125. doi.org/10.1016/j.arcontrol.2016.09.018 ↑
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Vinós, J., 2022. Climate of the Past, Present and Future: A scientific debate. 2nd ed. Critical Science Press. amazon.com/dp/B0BCF5BLQ5/ ↑
Probably the scariest graphs and predictions I’ve seen on WUWT – not that I would mind an extra degree or 2 (or 5 for that matter 🍁) but the increasing warmth will be used to justify all kinds of repressive actions that will impoverish and endanger most people, while enriching and empowering a few well-connected despots.
I have been promulgating a very similar if not identical hypothesis for over ten years.
Many of Javier’s points have been scattered through my posts here and elsewhere over that time.
I have gone further in proposing a mechanism.
What happens is that solar variations in terms of particles and wavelengths ( not total irradiance) affect stratospheric ozone differently over the equator and poles so as to change the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles. That change in gradient determines the ability of the jet stream track to wander meridionally.
When there is more meridionality there are more clouds due to the increase in the length of the lines of air mass mixing. More clouds means less solar energy into the oceans. Less energy into the oceans alters the balance between El Niño and La Niña events to result in eventual cooling.
The opposite occurs when the jets are less meridional.
Stephen, there are more or less clouds because of more or less absorbed solar radiation.
“Less energy into the oceans alters the balance between El Niño and La Niña events to result in eventual cooling.”
The problem with your hypothesis is the evidence is against it except for TSI. The evidence is in favor of the active sun actively forcing the ENSO depending on TSI duration and level. The way you would be right is by you admitting less TSI causes fewer clouds & cooling.
The evidence is very clear, the ENSO is responding to the solar cycle TSI now as it did in at least the last nine solar cycles, increasing from La Niña to El Niño with the addition of new solar cycle energy on the ascending leg.
The ENSO region step-ups with the solar cycle, and step-downs with it too. The odds of this happening nine times in row is 1.6×10^19 to one, basically impossible without the sun.
In order for you to be right about disregarding TSI you would by necessity have to be able to beat those odds. You and Javier both make claims against TSI neither of you can support.
Where are your experiments? Where are your results? Where are Javier’s results? Where do you tie anything to anything else other than with rhetoric? Talking is not science.
On the other hand here I am again with evidence in hand… A great natural experiment has just been performed in the last year, as the timing of the change out of La Niña to El Niño was predicted by me at the 2022 Sun-Climate Symposium to occur after the 365day sum of zero sunspots equaled zero and the 365day average sunspot number exceeded 95 SN.
Here are my results: the predicted change happened three days after the 365d SN>95. You can see this right here below in this composite of eqOHCa and sunspots and TSI together.
My solar update at about 33% into the solar cycle; (c) has the current 365d SN average:
Realize ten more years will go by with you guys saying the exact same things and nothing will change for the better because neither of you is right about TSI. Neither of you have mustered a science experiment and collected data and analyzed results.
Isn’t it literally insane for any climate skeptic to take your lead if you guys can’t do that?
Here’s the last piece of evidence that shows the SST changes since May 2022:
My science experiment has literally hit the bullseye. Maybe you guys can understand now why I am all over you guys. My stuff works and yours doesn’t, but if I say the sky is blue, you guys are going to say it’s green right?
The details of how solar variations affect the atmosphere have been worked out by many scientists over the past 50 years. My contribution has been to tie the solar effect to a more general mechanism, the modulation of poleward transport of heat and moisture to the Arctic, showing how it affects the planet’s energy budget due to the low greenhouse effect at the poles in winter. The cumulative effect of solar-induced changes in the energy content of the climate system is what explains that changes in solar activity are the main climate driver on centennial to millennial timescales.
We can’t ignore the big contributions of scientists like Labitzke, van Loon, Haigh, Grey, Kuroda, Kodera, Matthes, Tung, and so many others. What remained was to show how the solar effect could change the energy content of the climate, and that can only be done by altering the radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere. Without changing the energy content of the climate system there is no global climate change.
The greatest change during the suns cycle is the UV radiation that impact the thermosphere and is presented as TCI, publshed at spaceweather.cpm
“Nevertheless, because solar activity rises and falls over the course of a solar cycle, the cumulative effect of its changes over several cycles is considered insignificant.”
When you and others systematically leave out the actual physical cumulative effect of solar irradiance you definitely will get insignificant results for both single solar cycles and more.
The entire 30ya SST is a function of this solar cumulative effect, which is TSI-based.
As the 30ya SST is also a linear function of the integrated MEI when it is mostly positive, there can be no doubt that the ENSO is also forced by this cumulative solar effect.
“However, numerous studies consistently identify a climate influence of approximately 0.1°C attributed to the solar cycle, which is about four times larger than expected from the slight radiative change. Consequently, there arises a necessity for an amplifying mechanism to account for this second discrepancy.”
Some of those studies are based on treating ENSO activity as a separate forcing, but I found out the step-changes are related to solar activity, so the average solar forcing is greater than 0.1°C/cycle when factoring in the solar-driven ENSO.
TSI forced a 0.35°C peak SST in solar cycle #24, annually, and a net of about 0.25°C by the solar minimum, greater than 0.1°C! The weakest solar cycle in 100 years produced more than twice the canonical 0.1°C expected increase. Javier, you didn’t even notice!
An interesting proposition and very different from the usual assumptions about TSI. Focusing on a cumulative effect rather than the degree of variation clearly has some merit.
My reservation about that would be that any changes from TSI variations would be quickly released by the system so that any accumulation would be minimal.
We have seen that the late 20th century warming spell was associated with a reduction of global cloudiness..
The longer historical record also seems to show a strong relationship with jet stream meridionality rather than with absolute TSI levels which is why I placed more reliance on cloudiness effects.
I would therefore suggest that cloud cover has a far more powerful effect on the multi century climate changes than any cumulative effect from TSI changes. On longer timescales we have to bring in other issues such as Milankovitch cycles.
I do agree that ENSO is involved but only via changes in the balance between El Niño and La Niña events.
If Bob can show why he prefers an effect from cumulative TSI changes rather than an effect of cloudiness changes then that would be worth discussing further. He needs to show why TSI changes would result in accumulation of energy rather than a near instant release back to space.
“My reservation about that would be that any changes from TSI variations would be quickly released by the system so that any accumulation would be minimal.”
Why is that your assumption? Did you establish a premise for it with data?
“I would therefore suggest that cloud cover has a far more powerful effect on the multi century climate changes than any cumulative effect from TSI changes.”
The reduction in cloudiness is a function of solar activity; the downtrend in cloud cover follows the solar activity downtrend. The temperature is more complicated.
http://climate4you.com/images/CloudCover_and_MSU%20UAH%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage%20With201505Reference.gif
“I would therefore suggest that cloud cover has a far more powerful effect on the multi century climate changes than any cumulative effect from TSI changes.”
How do you know that?
You haven’t supported anything you said against TSI, so I have no reason to go on with your presumption that TSI effects aren’t important, it’s just your usual dismissive rhetoric, you know Stephen, where you always assume the upper hand.
Don’t you realize you never get down to business proving your points, you just keep making new points and regurgitating some of the old ones? I want facts from you.
I have started to realize how this is a superiority complex and a double standard that is very prevalent, and what do I mean by that? Way too many people here assume they know something without verification, people assume previous assumptions were correct, so they never think twice over new falsifications or proofs, and because of those two things, good evidence is rejected out-of-hand, meanwhile counter-evidence is not forthcoming. So these are really not science discussions if you can’t interpret the information I posted and draw a conclusion that doesn’t just circle back to what you already believed.
“If Bob can show why he prefers an effect from cumulative TSI changes rather than an effect of cloudiness changes then that would be worth discussing further.”
See my Stephan-Boltzmann plot further up; TSI/ASR-OHC accumulation happens.
I don’t ‘prefer’ anything, the data leads me to the conclusion, and I already know it’s worth discussing further. Thanx for the discussion Stephen and I hope you’re willing to give up your nonscientific objections and assumptions over TSI forcing.
I was going to say something about ignoring cause and effect and feedback loops and nonlinearities, but I see Bob already did the heavy carrying.
“In fact, the evidence is abundant and consistent, clearly indicating that the solar effect on climate does not result from small variations in total solar irradiance at the surface.”
“This hypothesis not only reconciles paleoclimate and modern evidence, but it also has great explanatory power, i.e., it explains a greater number of facts,…”
You are so far off course with your hypothesis, it’s really not funny.
You offer criticism without reason. That’s not how science advances. His hypothesis and much more is clearly outlined in his book “Climate of the Past, Present, and Future.”
False. I gave many reasons with my criticisms several times before, and you ignored them just like a pigheaded person would.
I support Javier’s Figure 4 and these points below because I have a similar graph, and another one with the 120ya of the cosmogenic SN reconstruction which depicts the severe solar cooldowns that drove the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age.
I will be adding to this conversation in due time, including a new look at Law Dome CO2.
Climate scientists aren’t ready for a low solar reality if they think CO2 will keep us warm in some future long-term solar slowdown.
If you only focus on the amount of energy per meter it doesn’t seem like much. But the cross section area of Earth has a lot of square meters.
Sol is a constant stream of miniature supernova isn’t it – that what sunspots are all about.
It gives a clue as to how a fusion reactor could/might work – basically like a ‘piston engine’ = a series of bangs/explosions with it’s energy output averaged by a flywheel (thing with Inertia)
The thinking:
Hydrogen is pig awful stuff if me you anyone wants to confine it, esp with a view to it ‘burning’
So, take a leaf from ‘Hydrogen Bombs’ where they use a conventional fission explosion to trigger the Hydrogen explosion – the fission bang is the ‘compression stroke’ of the engine.
Sol does it’s compression stroke via Gravity, acting on a ‘combustion chamber/place’ but because the properties of Hydrogen, that place has to be very special – where both temp and pressure get high enough’
(Think lasers fired at pellets as they’re doing now – the crushed pellet being that special place.
But, it can only contain so much fuel and when it ignites, the resulting blast will stop any more fuel getting in. That being the Ignition/firing stroke of the engine
Then, once that ‘charge’ of fuel is burnt, the chamber will cool and under the weight (Gravity). the combustion products will be forced out and new fuel will fall in
(Exactly the principle of a classic 2-stroke petrol engine (Huuuuuge diesels also))
What will those cold ‘spent fuel products’ do if not bubble up and out and show up as sunspots.
Meanwhile, back in the combustion chamber, compression (Gravity) heats the new fuel until it ignites – the principle of the diesel engine.
And so it repeats
Why I say supernova as that is what they do when they run out of Hydrogen.
They cool and start to collapse and that pressure rise in the centre starts Helium burning and so the thing goes bang and gets really big and red (not so) hot. Not as hot as white hot.
A supernova is just One Great Big Sunspot
In a way but using only Hydrogen, that’s what Sol does’…
10 Gravity compresses Hydrogen in a combustion place (presumably near dead-centre)
20 It subsequently ignites and blows the ‘place’ apart – releasing immense energy that then slowly percolates up to the surface
30 The burning stops and the the combustion place cools
40 The relative coolness of the spent fuel shows a sunspots
50 Fresh Hydrogen fuel falls into the combustion place
60 GOTO 10
The engine’s Flywheel is the huge size of Sol relative to the size of the combustion place (the ‘pellet’ in modern fusion experiments)
The cycle length (speed or Revs per Minute) is One Rev per 11 Years
They had engines like that for threshing corn ## when I was a kid
Sometimes called = Hit and Miss Engines
Fascinating, Entrancing & Scary in equal measure
(Bit like Sol in fact)
El Sol just the same as the Hit&Miss engine, it speeds up a little, slows down a bit, lets off big bangs, lets off small bangs, sometimes you think its stopped but most notably, relies on a humongous flywheel to keep itself going.
Sometimes big puffs of smoke (lots of sunspots) sometimes small puffs of smoke (not many spotspots) and its speed is always changing
## Corn as in Oats (Avena sativa) – feed meant for Farm Horses
Liked the Hit and Miss Engine analogy.
Around here it is called a One Lung Engine:
ONE LUNG ENGINES I Have Used
P.O. Box 6 Wilmington, Vermont 05363
As I was born on a farm in Tunbridge, Vermont in 1925, I should
have grown up with one lung engines. By this time, these engines
were perfected to the point of being a dependable source of power.
Almost every New England farm had at least one, to be used for
sawing wood, filling silo, threshing grain and pressing hay. Others
were employed on farms to operate water pumps, cream separators,
milling machines, butter churns, washing machines, electric light
plants, and any other use where wheels had to be turned. Many
larger engines were being used to turn the wheels of industry.
After the disastrous flood of 1927 in New England, which washed out
many mill dams, many mill operators purchased engines to power
their mills, rather than rebuild the dams, that in many instances
were dependent upon the amount of rainfall for power.
Some of the properties of this type of engine (read the entire article) could be applied to Solar Convection studies.
Great article. Thank you for the sunspot cycle update and illustrating how the rarely discussed Eddy solar cycle helps explain recent climatological warm and cold periods.
Forgive me sir but “highest number of sunspots in X years “ is analogous to the war mists going gaga about how hot it was in Arizona yesterday. It’s meaningless.
Not to mention, just like temperature record keeping has been fudged, sunspot counters have fudged the pixels they count. Go look at what a 300 sunspot count looked like during the baby boom and tell me yesterdays sunspots look like there are one third of that. No way. some estimates state they are now counting four times as many pixels then would have been counted back then. So yesterday was a 25 in 1950’s equivalent sunspots.
Prove me wrong.
You provide no data to back up what you say. There is no need in science to prove baseless elucubrations wrong.
What the data says is that the cosmogenic isotope records and the sunspot record show a good agreement.
What you say is not supported by the evidence.
I am ignorant of sun spots but how can there be a tenth of a spot? You say 163.4 sun spots? Either they are or aren’t.
Because the monthly number of sunspots is the average of all the daily numbers, there are no fractions in the daily sunspot dataset.
Thanks. So depending on the sun’s rotation speed or life span of spots you could count the same spot multiple times.
Figure 5 shows “14C production levels (black curve), a proxy for solar activity.” So it’s not just counting. But the agreement of low 14C with low temperature is not very good during the dark ages cold period (ca. 500 CE).
The name Svensmark comes to mind….
WOW !
Even an old granny like me understands this.
¡Muchas Gracias!
No one ever seems to look at the electromagnetic effect on the Earth by the changing Sun and now the impact of our decreasing magnetic field. It’s TSI this and TSI that.
I would postulate this is probably the elephant in the room and no one looks at it. The Earth is a spinning magnet and is greatly effected by solar flaring, the solar wind and CME’s. Low pressure systems will intensify after a strong solar flare for example. Lightning also effects the weather. Electromagnetic energy no doubt has an effect on volcanic activity, which would impact the heat content of the oceans. And we are talking huge amounts of energy where an increase of a few percent really matters.
I would like to know about the effects of Earth’s magnetic field on the stability of the polar jet streams. Would it be possible that the Solar winds blowing against the Earth’s magnetic fields keep it taut, ensuring that the polar jet streams remain in a tight band. When the Solar winds wane, the polar jet streams are able to flag, like a loose sail, sending cold air away from the poles and warm air towards them. Now, I have no particular evidence to support this idea, but perhaps brighter minds than mine could deliberate on it if they chose and tell me in what way I am foolish.
Good comment, you’re on the right track.
There have been numerous papers written about such spaceweather effects on the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations, polar vortex outbreaks, and other effects from joule heating by particles. It is an interesting field. If I can get ahead enough I’ll be adding a monitoring app to my site to visualize the effects as they happen.
“And we are talking huge amounts of energy where an increase of a few percent really matters.”
Yes, but the overall light spectrum energy is far more. Ask Leif, he has the numbers.
I also agree with you except for your carping about TSI. In Oct 2013, I started out here at WUWT with my interest in solar flares, electromagnetic effects, what I call ‘electric weather effects’, then became a specialist in TSI and made numerous discoveries and findings because the field was wide open, and have held onto some very excellent news in the particle effect department until everybody understands the sun’s biggest energy, TSI.
I’ve produced this 5-minute solar and geomagnetic data image 24/7 since 2015. It’s live and fully automatic. The years of developing this app took so much time out of my TSI work too. It took me years to perfect this process, all the while I perfected my TSI climate work. I do this in order to study effects on earth. But right now everyone’s knowledge gap is in total solar irradiance effects, while there is a burgeoning spaceweather science field out there.
I own several domain names, one for lightning, one for volcanoes, so if I can ever get everyone together regarding the most important solar effect, TSI, I can do something with those unused inactive and expensive domains. I can truly understand your frustration.
So when the sunspots go up, the planet gets hotter?
Yes. Not the sunspots themselves but, from what I understand, the areas immediately around them emit more UV. So more sunspot activity = slightly more UV emitted = planet gets slightly warmer.
Thank you, Richard. So the learned ladies and gentlemen are discussing on this page what the mechanism might be, not disputing the observed effect.
Ah. The mechanism at source appears to be well known. The mechanism here at the receiving end as well as exactly what observed effects are relevant are still being discussed!
Could you please comment on the 14C and iceberg activity proxies between 500-700 AD during the Dark Ages?
The high values for both contrast sharply with the Little Ice Age. How do you reject the view that the Dark Ages falsify your theory?
The Dark Ages do not falsify my theory. 14C is a proxy for cosmic rays, not solar activity. This means that not every change in 14C is due to solar activity, but every change in solar activity should produce a change in 14C.
Inferred North Atlantic iceberg activity is a climate proxy for snow precipitation. This means that not every change in iceberg activity should be due to a change in solar activity, as other things change the climate. Should every solar grand minimum result in a change in iceberg activity? Not necessarily, only if it results in an increase in snow precipitation at the appropriate places. This is related to storm tracks’ position and depends on the general climate state at the time the solar grand minimum takes place. Let’s say the Wolff and Sporer minimums move the storm track southward. When the Maunder minimum arrives the track is so southward that its further displacement makes the snow fall over the ocean instead of over Greenland, so despite a similar climatic effect, the proxy does not register an increase in iceberg activity.
So only when you see a simultaneous change in solar activity and in the climate you can infer a causal relationship. During the Dark Ages, the 500 AD peak in iceberg activity coincides with an increase in 14C, and the 700 AD peak does too. Therefore the Dark Ages do not refute the hypothesis.
If this sounds like too much accommodation, let’s consider another case.
In the entire Holocene, 11,300 years, there have been only 4 Sporer-type grand solar minimums. They are recognized because they last 200 years, they increase 14C by 2% and they have a characteristic shape in the 14C record. There is no other solar activity decrease bigger and longer than that.
Each and every one of them precisely coincides with one of the biggest abrupt climate events that took place in the Holocene. The Boreal 1 minimum with the Boreal Oscillation, the Sumerian Minimum with the 5.2 kiloyear event, the Homeric Minimum with the 2.8 kiloyear event, and the Sporer Minimum with the LIA.
The following figure shows the radiocarbon curve (a) used by scientists to convert radiocarbon dates into calendar or calibrated dates. It is rock-solid science and shows the position of the four minimums as a deviation from the linear decay, as more 14C makes the samples appear younger. The inset (b) shows the 14C profile for the four Sporer-type minimums. The temperature curve (c) is from one of the most famous Holocene temperature proxy reconstructions by Marcott et al. 2013 using 73 proxies. All four climatic events have been widely studied and are well-known to researchers.
This evidence convinced me. If it doesn’t convince you, then no amount of evidence will do.
Thanks for the extensive response. I am not predisposed to doubting or being convinced but rather wanted to give you the opportunity to address what I suspect other objective observers would see as a weakness in your argument. I take it that you acknowledge that the Dark Ages proxy data require some explanation.
I don’t see anything in the proxy data for the Dark Ages that is inconsistent with the hypothesis.
I must be missing the point about Figure 5
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/figure-5.webp?resize=720%2C468&ssl=1
The 14C proxy is about the same or higher during most of the Dark Ages as it was during the Roman Warm Period and is very similar also to the MWP while very different from the LIA.
Yes you give possible explanations but then you seem to recognize my concern by saying “If this sounds like too much accommodation, let’s consider another case.”
So all I was saying was that Figure 5 doesn’t support your hypothesis and the discrepancy needs to be explained away in the case of the Dark Ages.
I see. What matters is not the 14C level, but its changes. The 14C curve depends in a big time on geomagnetic changes, and the detrending does not really compensate for that. Looking at a point in the graph and comparing it with another point at a different time does not tell you precisely their relative levels of solar activity. What this proxy tells you is that decadal to centennial changes in solar activity will result in changes in the proxy. So when the proxy is indicating an increase in 14C it is possible that solar activity was decreasing.
The 14C proxy presents two such changes corresponding to the changes in the climate proxy during the Dark Ages cold period, one around 400 and the other around 700. The fact that the first one is at a higher position does not indicate higher solar activity. There is no discrepancy that needs explaining.
Scientists use models to reconstruct solar activity from 14C records, but I prefer to use the 14C data because models tend to introduce interpretations.
You can see such a reconstruction here, and check the solar activity drop at 400 and 700 AD:
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2018/07/aa31892-17/aa31892-17.html
Fair enough Dr V. However, I don’t think you’re illustrating your point optimally by plotting raw 14C vs time, if what you really posit as relevant is the first derivative wrt time.
I’m having trouble with dates and names. The graph here shows the Spörer Minimum and the Little Ice Age (on the right). The blue vertical bar is just to the right of the 500 year tic. Yet a date for the Spörer Minimum seems to be 2 tics to the left. This might be because there are differences about the what and when of the Little Ice Age.
Hi John. The Spörer Minimum shows a decrease in solar activity around 1380 AD (570 BP) and reaches this activity level again around 1590 AD (360 BP). The LIA shows most of its cooling during this period.
The start of the LIA varies depending on the researcher. The 1257 big Samalas eruption is the earliest date when the climate worsens. It really cools during the Wolff Minimum around 1280-1330 (670-620 BP), but there is a clear recovery in temperature between 1340-1400. The cooling resumes after 1420.
Thanks,
John
‘The climate of the past two millennia can be divided into four distinct phases…’
All of which have been suppressed by the IPCC. Unfortunately, as compelling as I find your Figure 5 to be, there will be some who will take issue with the fact that the ‘two curves may not be perfectly aligned’.
This is the Landscheidt Minimum, named for Theodore Landscheidt who predicted this solar minimum over 30 years ago, and it could be the Landscheidt/Smith minimum adding Carl Smith who took Theodore’s predictions and fine tuned them to correct predictions of solar activity. Sadly both of them have passes, and neither one was beloved by Ivory Tower dwellers. Much like Climate Science, Solar Science has gatekeepers. Salvgard? who posts here is one.
Readers, you come to WUWT to see NEW information and reality. Do some research of those two for your self, the Sun’s output varies with the orbits of the gas giants, and they Both predicted the current low solar activity, Smith was more precise in his predictions.
Search Beyond Landscheidt.
http://www.landscheidt.info
I’ve always found Landscheidt cryptic and difficult to interpret. Where does he say that SC24 and SC25 would have low activity and constitute an extended solar minimum? Clilverd is very clear about it.
Should be the guiding light for everybody that uses their brain. Unfortunately, politicians, the media and all socialists do not care to admit this basic principle of obtaining knowledge.
Why don’t you show present-day vineyards on Fig 5? There are over 700 vineyards in the UK currently occupying over 4,000 Ha.
We live in a warm period, but also with lots of advances. There are now lots of new vine varieties that are a lot more cold-resistant. Vineyards are no longer such a good indicator.
With reference to Figure 1, the tangential acceleration of the sun around the solar system barycentre is a reasonable predictor of sunspot activity per attached.
Gravitational forces cannot impart torsional acceleration on bodies but the sun is so close to the centre of mass of the solar system that its tangential acceleration of the centre of its mass around the barycentre of the solar system results in differential velocity of the surface during its rotation. This velocity change is a function of both the tangential acceleration and the displacement of the sun CoM from the barycentre. I am yet to calculate that using the JPL planetary data.
Javier or Andy,
About 1975 colleagues introduced me to the newish mathematical field of geostatistics, since we were developing new mines that needed good methods to interpolate mineral grades between scattered drill holes with scattered chemical analyses along them. I noted that one could do a cross-correlation between (say) two adjacent drill holes or more generally, with diverse data sets. So, I looked through my past decades of Scientific American for long data strings of anything to look for interesting correlations that might fall out of numbers in general. Monthly measurements over several decades was the target. The longest and best looking data string I first found was the sunspot count. Then I found other factors like the yield of corn in some US states, the price of copper on the London Metal Exchange, the retail price of tomatos in California and a few others like this that I cannot recall. I lost all the papers in a home removal.
In summary, nothing correlated with sunspot count. I fully admit to likely methodolical inexactitudes and a host of other problems from doing the calcs by hand and not getting far into error bounds. But nothing correlated with sunspot numbers. Since then I have read with special interest, but I remain to be convinced. Maybe other people also thought sunspot counts were a nifty item to correlate with other variables and have been reluctant to drop sunspots because they might be the nostalgic key to something. So,I would be pleased if you nominate which is the best example of a correlation with some other earth science factor that leads you to think that there is something in it. I would like to be convinced of this. I am not a first principles denier at all.
Cheers Geoff S
That doesn’t work, Geoff. It has been tried since 1801 when William Herschel published the first correlation between solar activity and the price of wheat. Many people are still attempting it, like Willis or Bob Weber. But repeating something that hasn’t worked hundreds of times is foolish.
There is no consistent correlation between sunspots and the climate at the surface. The correlations are found in the stratosphere and above, or with 14C levels. It has been ruled out that the effect of solar activity acts directly on the surface. The effect is indirect on the atmosphere.
There’s plenty of evidence that the indirect effect of solar activity on the climate is so important as to be the main driver of climate changes on the centennial to millennial timescale, and there’s a lot of evidence on the mechanism. But it cannot be presented in a blog post, much less in a comment. And when presenting part of it many people are unconvinced, because it is the sheer amount of evidence that is convincing, not any particular piece of it. I have high hopes that the book will be much more convincing, as the amount of material is much higher and the explanation a lot more detailed.
5 years ago I wrote a couple of posts where people could learn how to download the data to check the climatic effect of the 1000-year solar cycle in two different proxies.
Do-It-Yourself: The solar variability effect on climate.
Do-It-Yourself: Solar variability effect on climate. Part II
They proved popular but I don’t think they swayed people’s opinion about the matter. I guess people are attached to their ideas and mainly look for confirmation.
“Many people are still attempting it, like Willis or Bob Weber. But repeating something that hasn’t worked hundreds of times is foolish.
It has been ruled out that the effect of solar activity acts directly on the surface. The effect is indirect on the atmosphere.”
Willis is just like you in one regard, he looks at the immediate sunspot number not the cumulative effect, just like all climate scientists. I will agree the way he does things will get no results, which is foolish. He got no results for the same reason everyone else gets no results, you all are ignoring ocean storage time. When you factor in 11 solar cycles, you get a quantifiable physical relationship that explains global ocean SST change with just TSI and albedo.
The sun warmed the ocean, the ocean warmed the sky, both on time delays.
What is really happening here is a double standard is being enforced upon skeptics by Javier. He gets his own rules, including a much reduced burden of proof for him and a much higher burden of proof for someone like me.
Ocean energy storage is measured. It is called ocean heat content, and its change over time bears no relation to solar activity.
Huh? I simplistically view the ocean as a huge ‘energy battery’, and its ‘charger’ is the sun, and its draw is from the atmosphere (load). So, the battery gets charged (change over time) when there is increased solar activity (sun heating up the ocean). Oversimplified (just like me) but what is wrong with that characterization?
Excellent reminder about the climate’s 3rd dimension – altitude. I constantly face this issue in my talks. Many have never heard of, and fewer understand the basics of, important mechanisms such as the QBO, Brewer-Dobson, and other complex interactions – which you describe very well in your book.
Javier, thankyou for sharing this. I became interested in space weather after reading
The Neglected Sun. I found the correlation between space weather and dendrochronology
of the long lived trees such as the sequoia’s and redwoods interesting. I believe you and
others in this arena are on the correct path of climate science.