Posted on 02/25/2010 5:19:01 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
People have known for 200 years that there’s some link between sunspots and our climate. In 1800, the astronomer William Herschel didn’t need a climate model, he didn’t even have a calculator — yet he could see that wheat prices rose and fell in time with the sunspot cycle. Since then, people have noticed that rainfall patterns are also linked to sunspots.
Sunspots themselves don’t make much difference to us, but they are a sign of how weak or strong the sun’s magnetic field is. This massive solar magnetic field reaches out around the Earth, and it shields us from cosmic rays. Dr Henrik Svensmark has suggested that if more cosmic rays reach further down into our atmosphere, they might ionize molecules and help “seed” more clouds.
As it happens, this year, the sun has almost no sunspots, but for much of the late 20th Century, the solar magnetic field was extremely active. If the theory is right, an active field means a warming earth with fewer clouds. A quiet sun though, means a cooler earth with more clouds.
Graph: Svensmark reply to Lockwood and Frolich, Cosmic Rays. NB: The Cosmic ray axis (right) measures the fall in rays.
AGW replies: Lochwood and Frohlich showed the theory doesn’t fit rising temperatures after 1980.
Skeptics say: They used surface temperatures, not atmospheric ones (see the graph above). Cosmic rays correlate well with temperatures from weather-balloons. But thermometers on the surface are affected by things like car-parks, and air conditioners which are close to the sensors. All that Lockwood and Frohlich prove is that there’s no link between cosmic rays and air conditioners.
AGW replies: There’s no link with clouds and cosmic rays either.
Skeptics say: That’s only true if you look at the wrong kind of rays and the wrong kind of clouds. There’s a good correlation between high energy rays and low clouds.
The correlation between cosmic rays and temperature is much better over all time spans than that with carbon and temperature.
Sources: Reply to Lockwood and Frohlich Svensmark 2007. Falls in cosmic rays affect low clouds Svensmark 2009, see also Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development, Alexander.
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I have some pretty sunspot charts at nationalforestlawblog.com Oct. Newsletter under my name.
Now that I posted my work, I am finally finding others who know something about sunspots.
Sincerely,
Did you get a Research grant for that work...?
Looks pretty good.
I saved a copy on my hard drive so I can look thru it more carefully.
No grant. In the latter par of “Low Sunspot...Global Warming, is the historical portion annex and how it began.
I began to study the last ice age as a retirement project about four years ago and asked the Question amongst many, “When could the Earth have its first hurricane?”
I noticed that as glaciers slowly melted away, hurricanes picked up pace. As Niagara Falls froze up in 1911 and Hurricanes nearly zeroed out in 1914.
Only one variable could contribute to that in a five year period from 1911 to 1914, the lack of sunspot activity.
Only one variable contributes to separating us from mini-ice age, that is, over 300 years; sunspots activity.
Depending on elevation and latitude, at this time, glaciers should be melting, standing still or growing,
We are in that period like a roller coaster at the top of the hill looking over the front at the next valley.
We just don’t know yet where the bottom is at.
Sincerely,
Paul Pierett
Thanks E.
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