Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high

BBC News ^ | Tuesday, 6 July, 2004 | Dr David Whitehouse

[George W. Bush]

Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high

By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor

Sunspots are plentiful nowadays

A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years.

Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past.

They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer.

This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue.

'Little Ice Age'

Sunspots have been monitored on the Sun since 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope. They provide the longest-running direct measurement of our star's activity.

The variation in sunspot numbers has revealed the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity as well as other, longer-term changes.

In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface.

This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.

Ice cores record climate trends back beyond human measurements

It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive.

Over the past few thousand years there is evidence of earlier Maunder-like coolings in the Earth's climate - indicated by tree-ring measurements that show slow growth due to prolonged cold.

In an attempt to determine what happened to sunspots during these other cold periods, Dr Sami Solanki and colleagues have looked at concentrations of a form, or isotope, of beryllium in ice cores from Greenland.

The isotope is created by cosmic rays - high-energy particles from the depths of the galaxy.

The flux of cosmic rays reaching the Earth's surface is modulated by the strength of the solar wind, the charged particles that stream away from the Sun's surface.

And since the strength of the solar wind varies over the sunspot cycle, the amount of beryllium in the ice at a time in the past can therefore be used to infer the state of the Sun and, roughly, the number of sunspots.

Latest warming

Dr Solanki is presenting a paper on the reconstruction of past solar activity at Cool Stars, Stellar Systems And The Sun, a conference in Hamburg, Germany.

He says that the reconstruction shows the Maunder Minimum and the other minima that are known in the past thousand years.

But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.

Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer.

The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.

Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase.

This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.

This latest analysis shows that the Sun has had a considerable indirect influence on the global climate in the past, causing the Earth to warm or chill, and that mankind is amplifying the Sun's latest attempt to warm the Earth.

[AaronInCarolina]

Thanks for the link. I read the whole thread. I actually read RealClimate quite frequently (but as I'm sure you know, I am quite impervious to their arguments; ;-)

Naturally, I cherry picked the responses for ones I liked, and this was the one that resonated best with me:

Gavin Schmitt says:
"However, it is also clear that since about 1980, while the total solar radiation, its ultraviolet component, and the cosmic ray intensity all exhibit the 11-year solar periodicity, there has otherwise been no significant increase in their values. In contrast, the Earth has warmed up considerably within this time period. This means that the Sun is not the cause of the present global warming."

Someone is forgetting some very basic thermodynamics. The heat source may have reached a constant temperature, but the Earth isn't necessarily at equilibrium with the new warmer environment yet.

Comment by Awatson — 21 Jul 2005

This echoes my earlier point about a time lag in response to solar irradience changes.

[sand88]

The real agenda of these global alarmists is to rid Earth of human activity, or at least limit it as much as possible, as the quotes in post#1 show. I’m surprised that so many people who consider themselves sane can possibly support them.

I have read so much by the AGW crowd. They are wholly an insane lot. They truly believe the Earth will go through this unstoppable change due to man. At the core of AGW believers is an evil heart. The AGW crowd is anti-human and anti-capitalist. For the most part spend they days in bitterness and hatred of those of us who believe in enjoying life and just "adapting" to what climate change will be brought about by the SUN. They are obsessed with an irrational belief that if we just cut back on our CO2 emissions things will be fine. For the most part, I just laugh at their utter pathetic arrogance. If it wasn't for the fact that the AGW crowd is determined to pass laws to foster the utter destruction of the US and our way of life, I would otherwise just laugh in their face. The AGW crowd is just using the climate change scare as a cover for their dark envious souls. The AGW could care less about the Earth -- they true goal is making everyone as miserable as they are. I pray to God Almighty that before they pass their laws and regulations, time will show them to be the fools they are.

[qam1]

The key thing I want you to note is how much bigger the drop in North America ca. 1950 was, compared to other continents. Why? Hmmm....

Why? There's more accurate records kept in the United States so he has more points for him to cherry pick from

Which he obviously did, since that North American Temperature chart looks nothing like the ones I've seen. In North America the 1930's were just as warm as the 1990's

Sorry but right there shows his computer model to be faulty

Sorry but there's no consistent pattern there to suggest sulfate aerosols or any other pollutant had anything to do with the cooling

Wishful thinking, not in accord with scientific understanding. An interview with Dr. Simon Tett "All attempts at detecting and attributing climate change signals need a reliable observed data set and simulations with mechanisms that drive climate change included.

Another cherry picked computer program

Sorry but I fail to see how this

Correlates with these

Since the beginning of the century sulfate aerosols kept going up & up and yet the temperature rose & cooled over the century regardless.

It also shows your liberal contradictory logic, you think the 0.2-0.5 W/M² shown in the graph caused all this cooling, yet a 4 to 10x increase of 2.0 W/M² solar irradience has no effect

Assertion. Show quantified estimates, please. India's smoke does not have an appreciable sulfate component, for example.

bbzzzztt! Wrong again

From the link where the actual picture is http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?vev1id=10980

The skies over Northern India are filled with a thick soup of aerosol particles all along the southern edge of the Himalayan Mountains, and streaming southward over Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal. Notice that the air over the Tibetan Plateau to the north of the Himalayas is very clear, whereas the view of the land surface south of the mountains is obstructed by the brownish haze. Most of this air pollution comes from human activities. The aerosol over this region is notoriously rich in sulfates, nitrates, organic and black carbon, and fly ash.

[cogitator]

There may be a lag, but it isn't attributed to solar variability.

Global warming in the twenty-first century: an alternative scenario (PDF)

"Paleoclimate data (13, 32, 33) imply that the equilibrium global climate sensitivity for doubled CO2 (a forcing of about 4 W/m2) is 3 +/- 1°C (thus 3⁄4 +/- 1⁄4°C per W/m2). This figure is similar to the sensitivity derived from climate models (4, 12), but it has a higher precision and confidence level. This climate sensitivity implies a thermal response time of the ocean surface of 50–100 years (32, 34). One implication of this ocean response time is that the observed global warming of 3⁄4°C since the late 1800s is consistent with the equilibrium warming of 1.2°C that a forcing of 1.6 W/m2 implies, because about 70% of the forcing was introduced in the last 50 years (6, 35). The remaining global warming of 0.4–0.5°C that is ‘‘in the pipelineÂ’Â’ is consistent with the present planetary energy imbalance of 0.6 +/- 0.1 W/m2".

[cogitator]

For some idiotic reason deluded minds like cogitator don’t want to believe that when the sun has increased in output by 0.3% over the last 200 years or so that it is NO surprise that the earth has warmed by about 0.3% during that same period of time.

For some idiotic reason, some people don't realize I'm aware of the Maunder Minimum. Some of the early 20th century warming is also attributable to increasing solar output, maybe the last "gasp" of recovery from the Maunder Minimum.

The warming since the 1970s -- now approaching 0.8 C -- cannot be explained by any correlation with any solar output/solar variability parameter.

The CO2 rise is quite likely the result, not the cause, of the temperature rise - at least ice core data suggests that strongly since it lags the temperature by about a millenium.

Totally and utterly wrong, particularly with regard to the modern era. See point #5 in my profile. With respect to the modern era, the temperature increase is not nearly enough to significantly affect air-sea CO2 fluxes -- and there are multiple ways of establishing that the atmospheric increase is due to fossil fuel combustion. You may be a physicist but you're clearly not a geochemist.

There may simply be a lag of several decades in the Earth’s temperature in response to the Sun’s radiation.

Or, more likely (as the climate scientists indicate), it's due to the lag of climate sensitivity in response to additional CO2 radiative forcing and ocean thermal inertia.

[cogitator]

Which he obviously did, since that North American Temperature chart looks nothing like the ones I've seen.

Clearly you've got to stop getting your primary data and images from the late John Daly's Web site.

Since the beginning of the century sulfate aerosols kept going up & up and yet the temperature rose & cooled over the century regardless.

Fabulous graph. You can even see the blip in the 1950s with rapid (and sulfur-intensive) industrial activity!

Let's go back and see what Dr. Tett said, exactly (I even underlined this part): "After 1970 our model with greenhouse gases alone begins to depart significantly from the observations. However, when we included sulphate aerosols, which have a cooling effect, the model agreed with the data from the 1930s and onwards."

I interpret as him saying that the effect of sulphate aerosols didn't throw the models off the "real" track until the 1970s, but adding their effect makes the models better back to the 1930s. Consistent with your fabulous graph.

It also shows your liberal contradictory logic, you think the 0.2-0.5 W/M² shown in the graph caused all this cooling, yet a 4 to 10x increase of 2.0 W/M² solar irradience has no effect.

Don't call me a liberal just because I'm knowledgeable about climate change. Where do you get the solar irradiance increase value? And it should be clear the sulfate aerosols exert a cooling effect -- I don't think "caused all this cooling" is an accurate characterization.

bbzzzztt! Wrong again

Not quite wrong, inaccurate. I should have quantified. Your quote was qualitative and concerned the general compositon of the Asian aerosol. My statement was about emissions from India: "India's smoke does not have an appreciable sulfate component, for example."

The Asian Brown Cloud (PDF)

Excerpt:

"SO2 emissions (which are converted to sulfate aerosols) are 5 Tg/yr of sulfur for India, 28 Tg/yr for China and 25 Tg/yr for North America. Emission sources of other aerosol components such as organics, black carbon, fly ash and dust are very poorly characterized. For black carbon, available estimates suggest that the Asian region may contribute about 30 to 50% of the total world emissions."

India's total emissions have a much lower sulfur content than higher-industry emissions from China and North America, because the Indian emissions are predominantly from cooking fires, not coal burning. My statement that India's smoke does not have an appreciable sulfate content was inaccurate. India's emissions have a much lower sulfate content than emissions from more industrialized countries. Thanks for requiring this clarification.

[AFPhys]

Great posts this thread.

Thanks for the graphs and the analyses.

[AFPhys]

Great graphics.

By the way, the only “last century or so” temperature records I actually believe are the US Temp you posted here. The others are way too fraught with collection and correction difficulties. There is probably a reasonably decent Ocean Temp record somewhere, but I’m not sure I’m familiar with it.

Your charts suggest they really don’t understand aerosols, clouds, or solar influences yet to make these models worth running.

Garbage in, garbage out: very, very fast.

[AFPhys]

“The problem with the IPCC and those who place extraordinary faith in their questionable findings is this, they don’t understand the sun. (Beyond the fact that they don’t want the sun to be the driver because the IPCC has always existed for one and one reason only... to establish CO2 as a harmful gas that the US produces at a higher per/capita rate than any other country).

“They just refuse to accept that the sun is the big player in our little neighborhood in the galaxy. Graph after graph shows incredible correlations between changes in solar irradiation and climate. But the problem is they (IPCC) can’t quantify why. So they “round up the usual suspects” (like in the movie Casablanca) and that usual suspect is always CO2....

“I think they understate the sun’s effect by almost a factor of 3. And I think they fail to understand that the issue is not the troposhere and whether the sun has been warming the troposphere. This increased irradience has been warming the oceans, the 800 lb gorilla in the room. Oceans take a long time to warm...

“As long as the IPCC and its followers continue to deny the impact of the sun, they will continue to push CO2 as the ONLY major driver. I think CO2 does have some measureable effect, but based upon the calculations I have seen and trust, I would put the contribution at only around 0.15 degC of the so-called 20th century rise of about 0.7 degC. The rest I estimate to be some combination of land-use change impacts on albedo and solar irradience increase, and to all of these combined would be applied a water-vapor feedback to bring us up to around +0.5 degC increase for the century.”
-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—

Awesome POST! Precisely. I agree competely and totally with your analysis of this post... probably could simply copy and paste it all here!

Also, CM: Thanks for the kudos, and for putting the graphics together. I see that the religionist/ alarmist amongst us has still not figured out how to respond to that “Inconvenient Truth” to coin a phrase... LOL.

[AFPhys]

Your profile #BS has been refuted by many posts and by greater minds than yours, which serves simply as an alarmist’s website by now, rather than a scientific presentation of the facts.

“The warming since the 1970s — now approaching 0.8 C — cannot be explained by any correlation with any solar output/solar variability parameter.”

Wrong. There clearly are parameters left out of the fool “models” that may EASILY serve to amplify the raw solar influence: for example, suppose that the additional solar activity translates to less cloud cover and lower albedo instead of ASSuming a constant albedo. That can EASILY account for the temperature rise of the last century.

Again WRONG: There certainly are time lags we know about, and there may easily be lag mechanisms we DON’T yet know about that explain the temperature rise of the last 30 years and are a result of solar influence. In addition, the very recent NASA release of aerosol data suggests the apparent “lag” in temperature of the last 30 years may well simply be aerosols masking the additional solar irradiance, just as suggested by this graph years ago:

Of course there global temperature changes that the models can’t explain. They can’t even be nearly as smart as the people who program them, and they’re not even close to being able to predict El Nino a few years from now! Yet you and other alarmists want to count on them to predict temperatures a century from now? Gimme a break!

As far as that link, I’ve seen that before and consider it a good site to get data (but not necessarily good interpretation), and the thing that stands out is that the cosmic measurements they show are ALL during a period of historically high solar activity, of course. Also they imply that the temperature increase “must be due” something other than the sun by the way they scale the data of fig.4, rather than the most likely explanation: aerosols masking the “natural temperature” increase during the 40s-70s, as was suggested by scientists, not alarmists, many years ago.

Of course there global temperature changes that the models can’t explain. They can’t even be nearly as smart as the people who program them, and they’re not even close to being able to predict El Nino a few years from now! Yet you and other alarmists want to count on them to predict temperatures a century from now? Gimme a break!

Of course you’re not going to bother trying to refute the rest of that post: it’s irrefutable. Even the statement that “Kyoto... [was]... based on... INCORRECT temperature data to begin” is irrefutable. Now, the alarmists are simply trying to save face by saying, “well, we see that after appropriate corrections the temperature is not rising as sharply as we thought to begin with, but it’s still due to greenhouse effect more than anything else” - something that is only clear in their fool models that are capable to demonstrate anything and where “runs” are thrown out if they predict the earth cooling... so of course they are biased to show it warming (imagine that!) They can just as well design next years high fashion dress as the temperatures of the next century. Oh, and by the way, you still haven't 'splained how they show the

Garbage in, Garbage out... probably the first computer maxim I ever learned, and still just as true - but climate models produce garbage faster and even more difficult to sort out the truth.

Of course, you don’t want to attempt to point out the enormous cost and utter pointlessness of draconian measures to lower “greenhouse gasses” (except for the most important one: water vapor) People might not want to join your religious cult if they found out about that. Again, it’s irrefutable. And, you KNOW the cost is going to be FAR HIGHER than the alarmists minimalist quotes suggest.

It's very, very telling as to what you choose to refute and the way you try to take it out to some authoritative area, and what you choose not to. Your arguments are weak, and you don't address reality.

And, I'm still wondering why you haven't come up with a 'splanation of how the IPCC published models have Earth's temperatures going down despite increased irradiance during the 20th century. Apparently the alarmist web sites haven't realized that yet, and haven't given you your marching orders. Or perhaps, they haven't been able to make a new "model run" that can "correct" some oversight? Perhaps they might have to admit they don't understand something? Perhaps aerosols and the SUN!!! have more to do with the weather than they care to admit?

Garbage in, Garbage out - very, very fast...

[AFPhys]

This has turned out to be a really informative thread, and possibly “turning point” type of info.

You’ve been missed - and I believe you could be a really good referee and contributor to see if we’ve missed anything.

In post#178, ol’cogs published the “model runs with and without greenhouse forcing” and I made an observation about them in post #214 that was really carried on in my absence by some others.

I’ve got to go now, but this thread, though somewhat ancient so to speak, might be of interest to you.

[tpaine]

Bookmarked.

Thanks.

[thinking]

What’s Up in Space — 12 Apr 2007
Subscribe to Space Weather News

Did you miss last night’s auroras? Next time get a wake-up call from Spaceweather PHONE.

BLANK SUN: The sunspot number has been zero for nine consecutive days. This may seem like a long time, but the sun can go much longer without sunspots. For instance, during the previous solar minimum in 1996, the sun was once blank for 37 consecutive days. How long will the current “blank” last? Stay tuned.

[MarkL]

This may be the very dumbest thing ever put into print:

The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing....This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.

--Economist editorial

To whoever wrote this... "The World" isn't a "living thing." It cannot benefit in any way from any thing. "The World" is a bunch of rock and dirt. Much like what's in your head! This guy is unbelievably dense, again, much like "The World."

Mark

[AFPhys]

Reviewing some of this thread, I read my “IPCC lowered” items. I just realized something the IPCC hasn’t yet raised, and that I suspect that the reality of the failure of Europe and other Kyoto signers to meet their minuscule “targets” with minimalist expenditures will soon start forcing: the COST of even relatively small, rapid reductions of CO2.

It is clearly going to be much more costly to force the planet to lower CO2 than they want to reveal or admit... thus they are going to greatly inflate the cost of a small amount of warming to make the enormous cost of reducing CO2 seem palatable to the unquestioning flock.

[GOP_Thug_Mom]

I scored a 33%! lol!!

[AFPhys]

“It doesn’t matter that solar activity has been increasing through the century and is at an all time high. Global warming theory says the sun does not matter. It could go supernova but as far as our global warming bur according to proven computer models, we’ll all be O.K. if we can only control our CO2 emissions.”
-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—

ROTFLMPO:

Still reviewing this thread prior to printing for future reference ... I really thank you for your bringing these graphics together. Probably we need to add this one, too, since it is the mid-1800s-present from MaxPlanck:

I still say SUN!!! plus aerosols to ‘splain the lack of immediate temp rise in the latter 20th, though it could benefit from similar rescaling to the junkscience.com graphic I posted in #250 to show the temp w/possible aerosol influence. (Bear in mind IPCC stated aerosol influence not at all well understood)... LOL... the spike through their heart...

"Models show..." LOL... GIGO!

I really gotta go now to start taxes.

[Rocky]

Great quotes! Thanks.

[AFPhys]

Wrong: Solkani has just published (last 6 months or so) “surprise” data from a REAL EXPERIMENT (not a model) that show cosmics are much more efficatious in initiating cloud cover than previously believed. His group has secured mucho bucks to explore the mechanism at the next CERN particle accelerator experiment. I believe it will be named CLOUD.

Wrong again: YOU even “calculated” in a post to me how a 1% change could account for the global temperature increase.

Sorry I don’t have time to look these up further for you ... I’ve got to go do my taxes now... be back in a few days ... LOL.

[AaronInCarolina]

Did you miss last night’s auroras? Next time get a wake-up call from Spaceweather PHONE.

I found a great web site for real-time tracking of changes in the Sun: Solar Cycle 24 (named after the next 11-year solar cycle which has yet to begin).

North Pole current Aurora:


From SolarCycle24.com:
The solar flux has reached a new low, now standing at 68. The last time it was this low was July 1997. There has now been nine days with a 0 sunspot number. Back in 1996 there was a period of about 3 months with no sunspots. Also that year the solar flux reached as low as 65. We will soon find out if we trend as low as 1996.

The solar wind is below 500 km/s. The chance of aurora will remain low.

The Blank Sun.


This web site supports claims that we are likely entering a period of cooling due to predicted weaker than usual 11-year cycles.

See David Archibald's paper about bold predictions of cooling in the next few decades: Past And Future of Climate

In this paper, My Archibald theorizes that, based upon the fact that Solar Cycle 23 is winding down slowly and the fact that sunspots from Solar Cycle 24 have not yet begun to appear, that that suggests that cycle 24 will be weaker than normal. And NASA announced that Solar Cycle 25 is also expected to be weak because of an apparent slow-down of the sun's "conveyor belt", which suggests that cycle 25 will be weak also. And see this post that he made to WarwickHuges.com by Mr. Archibald:

# David Archibald Says:
April 12th, 2007 at 2:46 am

Luke, this is your lucky day too. CO2-driven global warming in not totally wrong, but nearly so. It is only good for 0.3 degrees from here to eternity. Emissions to date are worth 0.1 degrees, there will be another 0.2 degrees to 620 ppm and then only a further 0.1 degrees to when the effect peters out due to the logarithmic effect you dread so much. Despite your bluster, you come across as a very sensitive soul who is bearing the troubles of the world, so sensitive in fact that you might be able to tell the difference between having your car’s air conditioner set a 21 degrees and having it at 22 degrees. But I very much doubt that you could detect a 0.4 degree difference. So there you are. CO2 is one less thing for you to worry about, because the effect is so miniscule.

Global Warming is a reversion to animism, but without the fertility rites. It is a tedious, killjoy religion.

My theory on Solar Cycle 24 will be proved correct in about three years. Until then, no amount of theorising will prove or disprove it. In the meantime, every day that passes without a sunspot from Solar Cycle 24 makes it more likely to be correct and increases the size of the temperature drop.

It is wonderful to be alive and in the middle of this vast experiment.