[quote]Actually the facts are not quite how you insist on presenting them Biknut.
[QUOTE=></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>
QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
http://<br />news.ya...DFjyURyEgoE1vAISolar variations not behind global warming: studyBy Ben Hirschler
Tue Jul 10, 7:03 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - The sun's changing energy levels are not to blame for recent global warming and, if anything, solar variations
over the past 20 years should have had a cooling effect, scientists said on Wednesday.
Their findings add to a growing body of evidence that human activity, not natural causes,
lies behind rising average world
temperatures, which are expected to reach their second highest level this year since records began in the 1860s. There is little doubt that solar variability has influenced the Earth's climate in the past and may well have been a factor in the first
half of the last century, but British and Swiss researchers said it could not explain recent warming.
"Over the past 20 years, all the trends in the sun that could have had an influence on Earth's climate have been in the opposite
direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures," they wrote in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
Most scientists say emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, are the prime
cause of the current warming trend. A dwindling group pins the blame on natural variations in the climate system, or a gradual rise in
the sun's energy output.
In order to unpick that possible link, Mike Lockwood of Britain's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Claus Froehlich of the World
Radiation Centre in Davos, Switzerland, studied factors that could have forced climate change in recent decades, including variations
in total solar irradiance and cosmic rays.
The data was smoothed to take account of the 11-year sunspot cycle, which affects the amount of heat the sun emits but does not
impact the Earth's surface air temperature, due to the way the oceans absorb and retain heat.
They concluded that the rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen since the late 1980s could not be ascribed to solar variability,
whatever mechanism was invoked. Britain's Royal Society -- one of the world's oldest scientific academies, founded in 1660 -- said
the new research was an important rebuff to climate change skeptics.
"At present there is a small minority which is seeking to deliberately confuse the public on the causes of climate change. They are
often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence is getting stronger every day," it said in a statement.
The 10 warmest years in the past 150 years have all been since 1990 and a United Nations climate panel, drawing on the work of
2,500 scientists, said this year it was "very likely" human activities were the main cause.
The panel gave a "best estimate" that temperatures would rise 1.8 to 4.0 degrees Celsius (3.2 to 7.8 Fahrenheit) this century.
[/quote]
Also in response to
The Great Global Warming Swindle
[quote] 'No Sun link' to climate change at BBC, Jul 11
http://us.rd.yahoo.c...ure/6290228.stmA new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change. It shows that for the last
20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.
It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.
Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the
present. "This should settle the debate," said Mike Lockwood, from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new
analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland.
Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on
Britain's Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis."All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that," he told the BBC News website.
"You can't just ignore bits of data that you don't like," he said. [/quote]
[quote]There are strong indications from solar studies that Earth's current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling
over the
next few decades.
What part of the earth do you think is getting warmer?[/quote]
At the present time glaciers from Antarctica to Greenland are all in rapid retreat. Alaska, Siberia, Chile, Alps, Pyrenees, the
Himalaya's and
even Kilimanjaro are all receding fast due to abnormally high global temperatures.
Ocean temperatures are on the rise as well, then again the satellite data that you are claiming deserves direct scrutiny, do you
have the link
to it directly for us to examine?
Not the link to somebody talking about the data but the data itself.[/quote]
<!--QuoteBegin--Lazarus Long]Actually the facts are not quite how you insist on presenting them Biknut. [/quote]
Who says?
Not these guys. This report is very wordy but basically it explains why this report you posted is crap. Definitely does a better
job than I could do. I'm sure you'll be just as suprised as I was when you read it.
Shining More Light on the Solar Factor: A discussion of Problems with the Royal Society Written by Dr. Joseph D’Aleo
Friday, 20 July 2007
When Lockwood and Froehlich go on to say that the intensification of solar activity seen in the past hundred years
has now ended, we don't disagree with that. We part company only when they say that temperatures have gone on
shooting up, so that the recent rise can't have anything to do with the Sun, or with cosmic rays modulated by the Sun.
In reality global temperatures have stopped rising. Data for both the surface and the lower air show no warming since
1999. That makes no sense by the hypothesis of global warming driven mainly by CO2, because the amount of CO2 in
the air has gone on increasing. But the fact that the Sun is beginning to neglect its climatic duty -- of batting away the
cosmic rays that come from 'the chilling stars' -- fits beautifully with this apparent end of global warming.
- Nigel Caulder, PhD
Summary for Policy Makers The authors of a newly published paper on the role of the sun’s variability on global temperatures overstate
their case that there has been no impact of solar variations on the earth’s temperature history during the past
several decades. Antithetically, changes to the sun are generally known to influence the earth’s climate on all
time scales, from eons to hours. However, the difficulty comes in trying to fully measure the magnitude of the
sun’s variability and then to understand how such changes result in changes to the earth’s climate.
In a new paper, authors Lockwood and Fröhlich seem to ignore these difficulties and uncertainties, dismissing
any work on this complex subject that doesn’t agree with their pre-conclusions.
For instance, in a series of papers published within the past two years, researchers Scafetta and West have concluded
that the solar variations may have been responsible for 10 to 30 percent of the observed global surface temperature
increase from 1980-2002. Lockwood and Fröhlich fail even acknowledgment of these widely-publicized findings. This is
but one example of the inadequacies of the research of Lockwood and Fröhlich.
The following discussion reviews the analysis and conclusions of Lockwood and Fröhlich and then asks other notable
scientists in the field of solar/terrestrial relations to comment on the findings. In doing so, it is found that the conclusions
being forwarded by Lockwood and Fröhlich—that the sun has had no impact on the earth’s surface temperature history
during the past several decades—is not consistent with the thinking of many other researchers, and instead, indicates more
a personal dogma rather than scientific truth.
- Robert Ferguson
Shining More Light on the Solar Factor
Since the release of the IPCC report a number of peer review papers and analyses found the sun was not given enough credit
for the changes in climate in the Fourth Assessment. In chapter 2, the AR4 discussed at length the varied research on the direct
solar irradiance variance and the uncertainties related to indirect solar influences through variance through the solar cycles of
ultraviolet and solar wind/geomagnetic activity. They admit that ultraviolet radiation by warming through ozone chemistry and
geomagnetic activity through the reduction of cosmic rays and through that low clouds could have an effect on climate but in the
end chose to ignore the indirect effect. They stated:
Since TAR, new studies have confirmed and advanced the plausibility of indirect effects involving the modification of the stratosphere
by solar UV irradiance variations (and possibly by solar-induced variations in the overlying mesosphere and lower thermosphere),
with subsequent dynamical and radiative coupling to the troposphere. Whether solar wind fluctuations (Boberg and Lundstedt, 2002)
or solar-induced heliospheric modulation of galactic cosmic rays (Marsh and Svensmark, 2000b) also contribute indirect forcings
remains ambiguous. (AR4 2.7.1.3)
For the total solar forcing, in the end the AR4 chose to ignore the considerable recent peer review in favor of Wang et al. (2005) who
used an untested flux transport model with variable meridional flow hypothesis and reduced the net long term variance of direct solar
irradiance since the mini-ice age around 1750 by up to a factor of 7. This may ultimately prove to be AR4’s version of the AR3’s
“hockey stick” debacle.
NEW PAPER CLAIMED TO BE THE NAIL IN THE COFFIN
<!--[endif]-->
The effort to debunk the sun did not end with the IPCC. Just recently, with the release in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of the
paper “Recent Oppositely Directed Trends In Solar Climate Forcings And The Global Mean Surface Air Temperature” by Mike Lockwood
and Claus Frohlich<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]-->, the global warmers declared victory and went home.
In their abstract, the authors noted “There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth’s pre-industrial climate and the Sun
may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century. Here we show that over the past 20
years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required
to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.”
Hansen chimed in "These half-baked notions are usually supported by empirical correlations of climate with some solar index in the past.
Thus, by showing that these correlations are not consistent with recent climate change, the half-baked notions can be dispensed with.
Dr. Lockwood said the study was "another nail" in the coffin of the notion that solar activity is responsible for global warming.
Lockwood’s involvement and statement was a surprise as he was one of those whose previous work is frequently cited as evidence for a
solar role in climate during the industrial era. Lockwood and colleagues at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory reported in 1999 that the
Sun's magnetic field has doubled over the century, and that this natural "solar forcing" will have affected the earth's climate (Nature 399 437).
Lockwood and Stamper (GRL 1999) in “Long-Term Drift Of The Coronal Source Magnetic Flux And The Total Solar Irradiance” tested the
method of Lockwood et al. [1999] and found a linear relationship between this magnetic flux and the total solar irradiance. From this
correlation, they showed that the 131 percent rise in the mean coronal source field over the interval 1901-1995.
Claus Frohlich, meanwhile, constructed a composite time series from satellite observations of total solar irradiance (TSI) made since the
late 1970’s. His composite, the so-called ‘PMOD’ model, modifies the published results of the Nimbus7/ERB and ACRIM1 science teams
to provide better agreement with the predictions of a statistical model by Judith Lean based on linear regressions against solar emission
and absorption line proxies for TSI.
To learn more about this I went to Dr. Richard Willson of Columbia University, the Principal Investigator for the series of NASA ACRIM
projects, designed to provide high precision monitoring of TSI and detect variations of significance for climate change and solar physics..
RICHARD WILLSON ON LOCKWOOD/FROLICH
Construction of a TSI composite time series stretching over the past, nearly three decades of satellite observations, requires connecting
the results of the ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 TSI monitoring experiments across the two year ‘ACRIM gap’ between them. Two, relatively low
precision satellite experiments measured TSI during the gap: the Nimbus7/ERB and the ERBS/ERBE. Unfortunately connecting ACRIM1
and ACRIM2 results using these two experiments gives dramatically different results for multi-decadal TSI composites. The Nimbus7/ERB
‘gap’ connection produces a significant upward solar trend during solar cycles 21 – 23, and a return to cycle 21 levels in cycle 24 as shown
by the ACRIM TSI composite (Willson & Mordvinov, 2003). The ERBS/ERBE connection produces a multidecadal TSI composite without a
significant trend. ERBS/ERBE results are by far the least reliable of the two ‘gap’ experiments and their difference from the Nimbus7/ERB
results during the ‘gap’ is readily shown to be uncorrected sensor degradation. Nevertheless, Lean and
“The selective use of data and models and the rush to judgment by Lockwood and Frohlich do not lend credibility to their investigation.”
Frohlich chose to use the ERBS/ERBE connection for their (PMOD) composite. It agreed better with the predictions of Lean’s proxy model
and demonstrated no significant long term trend, supporting the anthropogenic global warming scenario of the United Nations’ IPCC reports
The recent Lockwood/Frohlich publication’s assessment depends on the absence of a significant trend in the Lean/Frohlich (PMOD) TSI
composite. A more objective use of the TSI satellite observational database does not support the PMOD model or their conclusions. Just as
it would be premature to claim we understand TSI variability on climate time scales with extant satellite data, it is equally premature to use
the existing TSI database to relegate TSI's role in climate change to negligible levels. The selective use of data and models and the rush to
judgment by Lockwood and Frohlich do not lend credibility to their investigation. [End]
Willson believes the most convincing and recent work on the significance of TSI variability in climate change has come from Scafetta and
West, experts in systems analysis who have used a phenomenological approach to study the solar impact on 400 years of a global surface
temperature record since 1600. This period includes the pre-industrial era (roughly 1600–1900), when a negligible amount of
anthropogenic-added climate forcing was present and the sun realistically was the only climate force affecting climate on a secular scale,
and the industrial era (roughly since 1800–1900), when anthropogenic-added climate forcing has been present in some degree. In their
abstract, they noted, the use a recent secular Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction (Moberg et al., 2005), three alternative total
solar irradiance (TSI) proxy reconstructions (Lean et al., 1995; Lean, 2000; Wang et al., 2005) and a scale-by-scale transfer climate sensitivity
model to solar changes (Scafetta and West, 2005, 2006).
The phenomenological approach they propose is an alternative to the more traditional computer-based climate model approach, and yields
results proven to be almost independent of the secular TSI proxy reconstruction used. They found good correspondence between global
temperature and solar induced temperature curves during the pre-industrial period such as the cooling periods occurring during the Maunder
Minimum (1645–1715) and the Dalton Minimum (1795–1825). And importantly, the sun might have contributed approximately 50% of the
observed global warming since 1900 (Scafetta and West, 2006).
As Dr. Willson noted, Scafetta and West use much more sophisticated analytical techniques than Lean, Frohlich or Lockwood and their approach
doesn't rely on complex and uncertain modeling of climate phenomena. The simple statistics used by Lean, Frohlich, Lockwood et. al. and the
large uncertainties associated with TSI forcing models in GCM's cannot compete with Scafetta's phenomenological approach in deriving new
understanding of complex systems from observational data.
SCAFETTA’S RESPONSE TO LOCKWOOD AND FROLICH
Lockwood and Frolich are using the PMOD TSI composite (prepared by Frolich himself) to deduce their conclusions. By using ACRIM TSI
composite (prepared by Willson) the result would be quite different. Lockwood and Frolich just "assume" that ACRIM is wrong and PMOD is
right, and do not care to repeat their calculation with the ACRIM TSI composite. In our own works, we always try to repeat the calculations
with both data sets to be fair to both groups.
But, what is the difference between ACRIM and PMOD TSI composites?
This is an important question because many scientists do not seem to know the real difference. ACRIM is just a composite of the published
TSI satellite data, everybody with basic mathematical knowledge can obtain such a result by downloading the published satellite data and
following the instruction found in the Willson and Mordinov's paper. So, ACRIM faithfully reproduces the observations as the experimental
groups have really seen.
PMOD, instead, assumes that the published TSI satellite data are wrong and that they need several additional corrections. It is important to
stress that the experimental groups, which published the satellite TSI data, do not agree on the fact that their data require the additional
corrections implemented by Frolich. So, the PMOD composite would be right only if the modifications implemented by Frolich are indeed the
right ones, but that those calculations are the right ones is not really known right now. Frolich himself improves his calculations every few years!
In particular, PMOD severely alters the data from the Nimbus7/ERB TSI record during the ACRIM gap from 1989 to 1991. Nimbus7/ERB satellite
TSI data during such a short period show a clear upward trend while the PMOD during the same period is almost constant. So the Nimbus7/ERB
satellite TSI data has been altered. The alteration of the Nimbus7/ERB data during the ACRIM gap is responsible of the different shape between
the ACRIM and PMOD TSI composites. ACRIM composite suggests that TSI underwent a 22-year like cycle: the average TSI value during solar
cycle 21-22 (1980-1991) was lower than the average TSI value during solar cycle 22-23 (1991-2002), which seems is larger than the predicted
average TSI value during solar cycle 23-24 (2002-2003). PMOD instead shows a very slight negative average trend during the overall three cycles.
Thus, it is evident that with ACRIM the sun would have contributed to the global warming during the last decades. But, what if PMOD is right?
Does the adoption of PMOD imply that the sun did not contribute to the warming of the last decades as Lockwood and Frolich claim in their
paper? The answer to this question is:
No, it doesn't.
But there is the need of some comment about the mathematical/physical mistakes made by Lockwood and Frolich. I see two of them.
a) The mathematical way they calculate the running means does not have the physical meaning they infer in the test.
In fact, Lockwood and Frolich would like to compare the trend in the solar data with the global temperature trend. To do this they calculate the
average during a given period, for example 11-years between 1991 and 2001, and set such a value in the center of such period, that is, in 1996
(their figure 2). Then they move the period to cover the entire available interval from 1978 to 2006. Finally, they compare these moving
averages with the temperature trend and deduce their conclusions.
It is evident that this mathematical methodology is physically erroneous. In fact, it assumes that the climate is partially conditioned by the
"future" behavior of the sun! Note that by using the above example, the moving average value set in 1996 depends on the TSI values for
5 years in the past and the TSI values for 5 years in the future! And these values are compared with the temperature record.
The problem is that I am not aware of any climate model, or of any physical phenomenon, according to which the present state of a
thermodynamic system is a function of the "future" values of the forcings!
“I am not aware of any climate model, or of any physical phenomenon, according to which the present state of a thermodynamic system
is a function of the "future" values of the forcings!”
The present state of a thermodynamic system, such as the climate, is evidently a function of the present and past values of the forcings, not
of the future ones. Thus, it is evident that Lockwood and Frolich are "anticipating" what eventually might be happening in the future.
b) Thus, what is the right way to do the calculations? The answer is simple, by using a climate model that uses the temporal evolution of the
forcings as they are without doing multi-year moving averages that would improperly mix past and future!
The problem is that the actual climate models might be severely incomplete about the sun-climate coupling mechanisms. However, some
general properties are well known. In particular, it is well known that because of the thermal inertia of the ocean, the climate response to
an increase of the forcing is smoothed and delayed.
Lockwood and Frolich are indeed vaguely aware of this general climate property, (see the first paragraph in their section 3). However,
without doing any calculation they conclude that such effect can be neglected!!!
Indeed, the thermal inertia of the climate has a relaxation time response of the order of 10 years; this means that the thermal equilibrium
might require approximately 50-100 years. So, Lockwood and Frolich cannot conclude anything by looking at just the last 20 years of solar
data. They must look at a larger temporal picture, that is, at what happened at least during the last 50-100 years. And what it is observed
during the last century is a net increase of solar activity, and this happens whether we use PMOD or ACRIM since 1978. This net increase
of solar activity is indeed lasting since the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Thus, the sun has surely given a positive contribution to the
climate change during the last 50-100 years.
Indeed, this larger picture effect is evident if we look at the figure 4d in Lockwood and Frolich, even if these authors seem not to realize it.
The Be10 record, which is one of the solar records, is monotonically decreasing during the entire 20th century. This means that the solar
activity has been likely increasing during the entire century and that, therefore, the sun has contributed to the global warming up to the
recent years. Because of the thermal inertia of the ocean the solar induced warming would last even if during the last few years the sun
has cooled a little bit as PMOD would suggest.
What can be said is that if the recent predicted cooling of the sun for the solar cycle 23-24 (2002-2013), (which is recovered by both
ACRIM and PMOD) will last, it will affect the future climate, not the past one!”
OH YES, ONE MORE THING, THE EARTH STOPPED WARMING
As David Whitehouse noted in a response<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--> to the Lockwood/Frolich paper, that the temperatures
of the world have leveled off the during last decade after peaking in 1997/98. “Statistically the world's temperature is flat. The world certainly
warmed between 1975 and 1998, but in the past 10 years it has not been increasing at the rate it did.”
Indeed, temperatures have declined and then leveled off in the past 8 years. This year despite the predictions by Jones (Hadley Center) as
early as January that the year would end up warmest on record, looks to be cooler than 2006, with the record cold Southern Hemisphere
winter and a cooling Pacific, and continuing that trend.
***************
Addendum:
The truth is, we can't ignore the sun
By David Whitehouse
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/07/2007
According to the headlines last week, the sun is not to blame for recent global warming: mankind and fossil fuels are. So Al Gore is correct
when he said, "the scientific data is in. There is no more debate."
Of that the evangelical BBC had no doubt. There was an air of triumphalism in its coverage of the report by the Royal Society.
It was perhaps a reaction to the BBC Trust's recent criticism of the Corporation's bias when reporting climate change: but sadly, it only
proved the point made by the Trust.
The BBC was enthusiastically one-sided, sloppy and confused on its website, using concepts such as the sun's power, output and magnetic
field incorrectly and interchangeably, as well as not including any criticism of the research.
But there is a deeper and more worrying issue. Last week's research is a simple piece of science and fundamentally flawed. Nobody looked
beyond the hype; if they had, they would have reached a different conclusion.
The report argues that while the sun had a significant effect on climate during most of the 20th century, its influence is currently dwarfed by
human effects. It says that all known solar influences since about 1990 are downward and because global temperature has increased since
then, the sun is not responsible.
No. The research could prove the contrary. Using the global temperature data endorsed by the Inter-national Panel on Climate Change, one
can reach a completely different conclusion.
Recently the United States' National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that 2006 was statistically indistinguishable from
previous years.
Looking at annual global temperatures, it is apparent that the last decade shows no warming trend and recent successive annual global
temperatures are well within each year's measurement errors. Statistically the world's temperature is flat.
“No scientist could honestly look at global temperatures over the past decade and see a rising curve.”
The world certainly warmed between 1975 and 1998, but in the past 10 years it has not been increasing at the rate it did. No scientist could
honestly look at global temperatures over the past decade and see a rising curve.
It is undisputed that the sun of the later part of the 20th century was behaving differently from that of the beginning. Its sunspot cycle is
stronger and shorter and, technically speaking, its magnetic field leakage is weaker and its cosmic ray shielding effect stronger.
So we see that when the sun's activity was rising, the world warmed. When it peaked in activity in the late 1980s, within a few years global
warming stalled. A coincidence, certainly: a connection, possibly.
My own view on the theory that greenhouse gases are driving climate change is that it is a good working hypothesis - but, because I have
studied the sun, I am not completely convinced.
The sun is by far the single most powerful driving force on our climate, and the fact is we do not understand how it affects us as much as
some think we do.
So look on the BBC and Al Gore with scepticism. A scientist's first allegiance should not be to computer models or political spin but to the
data: that shows the science is not settled.
[Dr David Whitehouse is an astronomer, former BBC science correspondent, and the author of The Sun: A Biography (John Wiley & Sons)]
http://scienceandpub...per_by_loc.html
Edited by biknut, 01 August 2007 - 03:03 PM.
