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.

[cogitator]

It's not really a surprise when Christy and Spencer disagree with other analyses using the same data. It's been happening for years.

Having said that -- there used to be a major discrepancy. Now it's smaller. Other groups don't find one. And perhaps there are processes not adequately captured by models at this time. Ultimately it hasn't achieved the level of a major concern.

[AaronInCarolina]

So if Lindzen thinks as you think he does -- and I believe what you wrote is reasonably accurate -- I have strong confidence, at or above the 90% level, that he's basically wrong. And I've shown just one of many reasons why.

Does your 90% confidence in the IPCC allow for you to explain why for the past 6 or 7 years why there has been no appreciable continuation of the warming trend? And I base this upon GISS, NOAA and IPCC data. Any graph, even of surface temperatures, that you want to look at (if it is current up to 2007) show a plateau was reached by around 2001. This is the longest lasting stable period since the recent warming apparently began (assuming UHI isn't a big factor). Can we blame this on sulfate aerosols this time? There have been no big volcanic eruptions in this period. CO2 continues to go up rapidly over this 6 year period.

[cogitator]

Maybe you should look at post 198 again. I see no appreciable plateau.

[AaronInCarolina]

Also from the GISS:



When the spikes due to El Nino are removed, it is a clear leveling off.

[AaronInCarolina]

Also, this shows clear leveling off:

[cogitator]

If it's from GISS, why does it say "Junkscience.com" on it?

Let's wrap this up. 1998 was the warmest year in the record, with a major El Nino, according to NOAA. GISS puts 2005 above 1998, NOAA puts it just barely under 1998. Either way, there was no El Nino in 2005. For that to happen, there has to be an underlying warming trend -- like it or not, and not matter how Steve Milloy replots the data. If the El Nino in 1998 hadn't happened, this would not be an issue. As it was, it was so strong it yanked Spencer and Christy's recalcitrant MSU record into positive territory, and subsequenct corrections and years have made it more so.

[AaronInCarolina]

And this:

[AaronInCarolina]

Either way, there was no El Nino in 2005.

No one said anything about an El Nino in 2005. The graph shows one in the winter of 06/07, which did occur, although relatively weak.

[cogitator]

No one said anything about an El Nino in 2005.

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

"The dog did nothing in the night-time."

"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

[AFPhys]

Tremendous graph.

From what I see on that graph, the temperature has bounced up and down some, but is essentially flat - having spend a whole lot of time in the 0C thru 0.2C band during the last 30 years, with short excursions from that.

[jonrick46]

The higher the solar activity, the more cosmic rays get blown away from the solar system. The less cosmic rays, the less clouds formed to reflect solar radiation and the warmer things get. The warmer things get the more CO2.

Case closed.

[AFPhys]

” The primary argument in either case is “the argument from authority.” I was taught in college that this is a fallacy. The example given in my state (government) school was that of citing the authority of the Bible. It also applies to citing the authority of “scientists,” or to citing “a consensus of scientists.” In all cases, it is a fallacy. In addition to logic, we have seen that the scientists were wrong in 1976 in predicting Global Cooling.

“The socialist model is that we surrender power to “experts.” Economists would plan our economy. Educators would change human nature. Environmental experts and computer modelers, cited in post 1, predicted doom and gloom if government did not reign in free enterprise (and freedom). The simple fact is that socialism has been shown to have no merit. It works poorly. It has a poor track record. Experts claim too much and are self serving. The “experts” have a poor track record, from Malthus to Marx, to Erlich, to DDT hysterics, to nuclear power hysterics, to global cooling hysterics, and now to global warming hysterics. In the case of Global whatever, I doubt that surrendering power to national governments will be “sufficient.” It is likely that global problems will inevitably require “solutions” from global government. But whether the solutions are national or international, they will be bad. They will reduce freedom and prosperity, and, ironically, this will hurt the environment.”
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Awesome POST!!!

I was going to simply comment on parts of it, but I’m going to let it stand.

Thanks for a well worded statement about “global anything”

[AFPhys]

There is a lot of good data about “Solar Irradiance” more and more nowadays. Check Max Planck Institute website for their Solar Irradiance pages. They use Be10 isotope measurements in ice cores to get data... with the dataset now stretching out over 8000 years back. This is also correlated to, strangely enough, flood data from the Nile during the 600-1400AD time frame, which seems to be related to El Ninos and thereby to solar irradiance, and sunspots.

The data overwhelmingly suggests that the Sun is as warm now as it has ever been during the last 8000 years.

[AFPhys]

LOL...

The funniest thing about those global alarmist models you just posted just struck me...

The temperature “without greenhouse gas” is falling while the solar temperature is at the highest level in 1000yrs!!!

ROTFLMPO.

Compute models: garbage in, garbage out.

lllol

[AFPhys]

“Yes, the mid troposhere is warmer than the original conclusions made by Christy et al, but only by 0.035 degC per decade. It did not change the overall conclusion that warming in the upper parts of the troposphere does not match greenhouse gas theory.”
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“The improper use of weighting functions originally appeared to bring the tropospheric trends more in line with surface trends and model predictions, so if you choose to use those improperly weighted (with height) data sets, you can also then satisfy yourself that there is no discrepancy. We do not agree with that.”

Great post. Doesn’t matter to the global warming alarmists that the data don’t match their theories... they can make their models fit anything ... even designing a dress. I notice that the IPCC seems to have lowered several of their even more alarmist 2001 contentions probably for the same reason so they don’t get laughed off the planet:

Lowered the high end of their temperature range by 2C.
Lowered the sea level rise by a factor of about 2.
Lowered their “confidence level” from 95% to “90%”.

Meanwhile it is ever more clear that the temperature data they started out their “quest” with in the 80s was faulty, and quite surprisingly, the Sun is warmer now than ever before in human written history.

But the alarmists only notice the polar bears floating on icebergs as they always have, and that the Arctic Ocean is becoming navigable... as it was in the early part of the last millenium - can you say Marco Polo?

They’re all trying to get more power and more money and more control of the lives of the world’s population. The real scientists who look at the data, like Lindzen, state accurately that the CO2 is more an effect, not a cause, of the temperature rise - which is primarily driven by the Sun.

[Gator113]

From my study of the human existence during the past 58 years, I am convinced that the experiment has failed and that it would be a good time to clean the slate.

Perhaps we could give the dinosaurs another chance........

Imagine, a world without democrats and incompetent freaks that call themselves scientists. What a beautiful world it must have been.

[AFPhys]

I will be specific. I believe that the bulk of the evidence is pointing to the SUN as the major contributor to the warming of the earth during the last century and indeed throughout history. Of the temperature change during the last century or so, my studies indicate human activities have likely contributed a maximum of 20% to the rise, with the remaining 80% due to the sun and its effects.

Furthermore, the benefits that we have accrued from that very small contribution FAR oughtweigh the costs of cutting CO2 emissions. Take for example, what Canada has effectively committed themselves for their share of Kyoto’s miniscule 0.07C temp rise slowing: stop driving ALL autos and stop ALL their coal-fired electricity. For that, the effect of their sacrifice, since they emit about 2% of the world’s CO2, will be 2% of 0.07C, or in other words, 0.0014C - one THOUSANDTH of a degree. Then you want to actually do something REAL and enact draconian measures that are THIRTY times more restrictive than Kyoto - and each increment of that is going to be more and more costly? It is time for Canada to refute and pull out of Kyoto, and we have to thank the US Senate for their strong stance in the 1990s in voting UNANIMOUSLY to refute Kyoto.

The ANNUAL cost of even Kyoto, according to Gore’s(!) own specialist, for the US, was 100-400B$ ... that’s billion with a B. That is not a “one time” cost ... it is a recurring cost. How many times has the “estimated cost” quoted by any proponent in government ever come in higher than the estimate? How many times has it come in lower? I maintain that even Kyoto would cost more than 400B$/yr. Bear in mind, also, that to do what the alarmists suggest is needed is to cut CO2 by THIRTY times Kyoto’s result! Though the cost of the such a cut would certainly not be linear, but probably sharply exponential, let’s pretend it is for now, and say that such a DUMB move would imply that the US spend 3-12 TRILLION DOLLARS per year of its 12T$ economy.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - even the 100B$/yr would cut into PRODUCTIVE activities would be like an added tax of 1% on productivity. Not much? Bear in mind that the difference between Africa and the United States is 1% higher productivity growth in the US during the last 200 years. That 1% (swelling into 4% and more and more) will clearly harm the world economy - much more in the Third World than in the US. Higher productivity is the key to human development, not higher taxation.

Kyoto, and other such CO2 limitations, are foolish. They were based on two things:
First, INCORRECT temperature data to begin with that grossly inflated temperature rises, until the effects of “urban island” and lousy kept temp stations was pointed out that... but the early alarmists couldn’t let that keep them down though they were grudgingly forced to at least somewhat correct their charts.

Second, the models are modelling only what based on the garbage they are fed... and there are so many free parameters in the models they could be just as well used to design a dress as to model Earth’s climate. OF COURSE, they show CO2 and temp change are correlated! That’s a prime input! Of course, they don’t show effects of clouds, aerosols, cosmic rays... and who knows what else... they aren’t designed to show that! There are a myriad of things that they don’t include - any of which could account for a temperature rise. I’ll still bet that the SUN is easily the most important player - and in any event, our efforts to change the temperature by draconian limiting of CO2 would have far worse effects on world health and happiness than the temperature change.

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.

Global models: Garbage in, Garbage out.

[AFPhys]

“If it’s from GISS, why does it say “Junkscience.com” on it?”
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Probably because they are one of the most effective organizations in distributing data refuting junk scientists?

[AFPhys]

“The higher the solar activity, the more cosmic rays get blown away from the solar system. The less cosmic rays, the less clouds formed to reflect solar radiation and the warmer things get. The warmer things get the more CO2.

Case closed.”
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Case Closed.

[AFPhys]

By the way, even cogitator has admitted that even a miniscule 1% change in the effect of cloud cover could account for the global temperature rise of the 20th century.

I’m sure it was in some moment of weakness, but there it is.

Case Closed.