The Sun-Climate Effect

Principled skepticism regarding today's dominant AGW paradigm must ultimately rest on an alternative paradigm featuring solar climate influence. This thread will explore the history and development of solar climate inquiry, experimentation, hypotheses and theories.
The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (I). The search for a solar signal
Posted on July 31, 2022 by curryja | 32 Comments
by Javier Vinos and Andy May

“Probably no subfield of meteorology has had as much effort devoted to it as the effects of solar variability on weather and climate. And none has had as little to show for the research labor.” Helmut E. Landsberg (1982)


1.1 Introduction

The sun has been identified as the source of climate since the dawn of human intelligence, and consequently the sun was worshipped in many ancient cultures. Large sunspots are visible with the naked eye when the sun is low on the horizon and partially obscured by dust or smoke. Several myths and iconography suggest sunspots were known to ancient cultures from America, Africa, and Asia; however, the first written mention of a sunspot comes from Theophrastus’ De Signis Tespestatum c. 325 BC. This first written record of solar variability was already linked to a climatic effect, as Theophrastus mentions its association to rain. Theophrastus is considered the father of botany and was the student of Aristotle that succeeded him as the head of the Lyceum when Aristotle, teacher of Alexander the Great, had to flee Athens due to anti-Macedonian sentiment. Theophrastus mention in passing of sunspots must have referred to common knowledge from the past, since he lived through the Greek grand solar minimum of 390–310 BC (Usoskin 2017) and it is very unlikely that anybody at that time could have seen a sunspot with their naked eyes. Most naked-eye sunspot observations known to us come from China, where records have been found starting from 165 BC. The oldest known drawing of actual sunspots is from the Chronicon ex chronicis by John of Worcester, dated in the manuscript to December 1128, during the Medieval grand maximum in solar activity. . . .
Note: This is the first of a six-part series on the effect of solar variability on climate change. Javier’s previous 13-part series on climate change was posted between 2016 and 2018 and can be read at judithcurry.com by introducing “Nature Unbound” in the search box. It generated over 4,000 comments and was the basis of his September 2022 book, Climate of the Past, Present and Future. A Scientific Debate, 2nd ed., where part of the material in this series is included.

 

The real issue for most models is the sun's output is considered a constant. As if. But absent this ability to not consider the output, testing ancillary correlation could not be effectively managed. CO2 output is an easy culprit. The real issue is that democrats would have it be scarce. Why? Population control through public policy to control "climate".. again, as if.

 

Thanks for starting this thread. I will look forward to reading what you post.

The anti-fossil-fuel hysteria mongers have to find some way to erase the sun's effect on climate. They have screamed about the heatwaves this summer, but when someone points out the rapid, unexpected increase in solar activity over the last year, it's crickets. Look at this graph:

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2022/07/Solar_cycle_25_prediction_NOAA_July_2022

The red curve is what was expected, the jagged black line is the sun's actual activity. It's obvious that there has been a very steep increase in solar activity over the last year, far beyond what solar physicists had predicted, and in line with the very strong solar cycles of the 20th century when climate warmed substantially. So genuine climate science would expect to observe noticeable warming. We haven't seen this reflected in the UAH data yet, but that may be due to the recent La Nina.

 

It's a complicated topic, so only those who are really interested are going to continue pursuit.

The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (II). Solar activity unexplained/ignored effects on climate
Posted on August 7, 2022 by curryja | 28 comments
The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (II). Solar activity unexplained/ignored effects on climate

by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“The complicated pattern of sun-weather relationships undoubtedly needs much further clarification, but progress in this field will be hindered if the view prevails that such relationships should not be taken seriously simply because the mechanisms involved in explaining them are not yet identified.” Joe W. King (1975)

Continue reading →

2.1 Introduction

As showed in Part I of this series, the early 1980s saw a reversal in the consensus about an important sun-weather effect. The adversarial academic environment resulted in very few scientists dedicating their research efforts to this subject. Despite these difficulties, important advances have been made regarding the sun-climate effect. Lack of interest and disregard for a competing climate change mechanism hypothesis by mainstream climatologists has resulted in these advances being ignored. They remain under-cited and unknown to most supporters and skeptics of the CO2 hypothesis. More importantly, they are not discussed in most climate papers, they are simply ignored.

These advances refer to climate phenomena that typically are not properly included in climate models due to lack of knowledge of how they happen or what causes them. They are not, or only weakly, reproduced by models, yet in most cases they can be detected in climate reanalyses where the models are constrained by a huge number of real observations.

Importantly, no hypothesis for a sun-climate effect can be correct if it cannot explain or accommodate the relationship between these phenomena and solar variability. The sun-climate relationship, at present, represents a black hole in modern climatology that keeps growing without anybody seeing inside it. . . .

2.7 Conclusion

This part (2nd of the series) demonstrates the existence of a wealth of knowledge about the sun-climate effect, laboriously produced by scientists that have not received proper credit for shining light on what is probably the most complex, most controversial problem in climatology. This knowledge provides sufficient clues about the sun-climate effect mechanism.

It is no longer acceptable to say that solar variability in total irradiance is too small to have a significant effect on climate, when there is so much evidence that variations in total irradiance are not how solar variability mainly affects climate.

It is no longer acceptable to say that indirect effects of solar variability are too uncertain since their mechanism is unknown when clear evidence for the mechanism is published and ignored.

It is no longer acceptable to only consider changes in total irradiance in model studies and then declare that the modern solar maximum did not contribute to modern global warming.

It is no longer acceptable to reject a sun-climate effect based on the lack of a simple correspondence between surface temperature and solar activity, when evidence suggests that the solar effect on climate works through changes in atmospheric circulation.

If it remains acceptable, then we are building the foundations of climate change science on a false premise that prevents us from understanding it. It will set back the scientific advancement of climatology by decades, just as the refusal to accept the evidence for continental drift set geology back four decades. And it will have huge repercussions for the reputation of science, as most climatologists provide a justification for expensive socioeconomic policies while ignoring an important, well-documented, solar-climate connection.

 

Eventually, AI will figure this out; it may be too complex for the human mind. Unfortunately, climatology has now reached the point where large-scale deletion, fabrication, and alteration of surface temperature data to conform to the CO2-determines-surface-temperature hypothesis is a major impediment to AI analysis. Appalling and disgraceful.

 

This is an older article but it fits here and is worth reading.
Indirect Effects of the Sun on Earth's Climate
2017 › 06 › 10 › indirect-effects-of-the-sun-of-earths-climate
there could be at least two separate indirect solar effects on climate, namely GCRs and UV, and both might ... scientific literature on possible solar indirect effects on climate, and suggest a reasonable way of looking
the solar climate driver is discussed and the solar cycle 22 low in the neutron count (high solar activity)

 

This was a seminal paper.
Increased ionization supports growth of aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei
Svensmark, H., Enghoff, M. B., Shaviv, N. J. & Svensmark, J., 2017, In: Nature Communications. 8, 1, 9 p., 2199.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

Finally! The missing link between exploding stars, clouds and climate on Earth

Our new results published today in nature communications provide the last piece of a long studied puzzle. We finally found the actual physical mechanism linking between atmospheric ionization and the formation of cloud condensation nuclei. Thus, we now understand the complete physical picture linking solar activity and our galactic environment (which govern the flux of cosmic rays ionizing the atmosphere) to climate here on Earth though changes in the cloud characteristics.

 

Ironically, those who would most benefit from this review are also the most reluctant to read it.

FORCE MAJEURE - The Global Warming Policy Foundation
https://www.thegwpf.org › SvensmarkSolar2019
PDF
FORCE MAJEURE. The Sun's Role in Climate Change. Henrik Svensmark ... Svensmark presently leads the Sun–Climate Research group at DTU Space. Acknowledgement.
42 pages

Executive summary
Over the last twenty years there has been good progress in understanding the solar influence on climate. In particular, many scientific studies have shown that changes in solar activity have impacted climate over the whole Holocene period (approximately the last 10,000 years). A well-known example is the existence of high solar activity during the Medieval Warm Period, around the year 1000 AD, and the subsequent low levels of solar activity during the cold period, now called The Little Ice Age (1300–1850 AD). An important scientific task has been to quantify the solar impact on climate, and it has been found that over the eleven year solar cycle the energy that enters the Earth’s system is of the order of 1.0–1.5 W/m2. This is nearly an order of magnitude larger than what would be expected from solar irradiance alone, and suggests that solar activity is getting amplified by some atmospheric process.

Three main theories have been put forward to explain the solar–climate link, which are:
• solar ultraviolet changes
• the atmospheric-electric-field effect on cloud cover
• cloud changes produced by solar-modulated galactic cosmic rays (energetic particles originating from inter stellar space and ending in our atmosphere).

Significant efforts have gone into understanding possible mechanisms, and at the moment cosmic ray modulation of Earth’s cloud cover seems rather promising in explaining the size of solar impact. This theory suggests that solar activity has had a significant impact on climate during the Holocene period. This understanding is in contrast to the official consensus from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where it is estimated that the change in solar radiative forcing between 1750 and 2011 was around 0.05 W/m2, a value which is entirely negligible relative to the effect of greenhouse gases, estimated at around 2.3 W/m2. However, the existence of an atmospheric solar-amplification mechanism would have implications for the estimated climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide, suggesting that it is much lower than currently thought.

In summary, the impact of solar activity on climate is much larger than the official consensus suggests. This is therefore an important scientific question that needs to be addressed by the scientific community.

 

Here's the next chapter: atmospheric heat transport.

The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (III). Meridional transport
Posted on August 15, 2022 by curryja | 24 comments
by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“The atmospheric heat transport on Earth from the Equator to the poles is largely carried out by the mid-latitude storms. However, there is no satisfactory theory to describe this fundamental feature of the Earth’s climate.” Leon Barry, George C. Craig & John Thuburn (2002)

3.1 Introduction

Nearly all the energy that powers the climate system and life on Earth comes from the sun. Incoming solar radiation is estimated at 173,000 TW. By contrast geothermal heat flow from radiogenic decay and primordial heat is estimated at 47 TW, human production of heat at 18 TW, and tidal energy from the Moon and the Sun at 4 TW. Other sources of energy, like solar wind, solar particles, stellar light, moonlight, interplanetary dust, meteorites, or cosmic rays, are negligible. Solar irradiance, thus, constitutes over 99.9 % of the energy input to the climate system.

The energy received from the sun changes over the annual cycle by 6.9 % due to the changing Earth-Sun distance. The Earth is closest to the sun (perihelion) around the 4th of January and farthest (aphelion) around the 4th of July. Although half the Earth is illuminated by the sun at any given time (50.2 % due to the difference in size), the changes in the Earth’s axis orientation towards the sun, the irregular distribution of land masses, changes in albedo, and regional changes in surface and atmosphere temperature, cause important seasonal changes in the amount of reflected solar shortwave radiation (RSR) and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). As a result, the temperature of the Earth is always changing and the planet is never in energy balance.

Contrary to what could be naively expected, the Earth is warmest just after the June’s solstice, when it is farthest from the sun, and coldest just after the December’s solstice, when it is receiving 6.9 % more energy from the sun. Earth’s average surface temperature is c. 14.5 °C (severe icehouse conditions), but during the year it warms and cools by 3.8 °C (Fig. 3.1). As expected, the Earth emits more energy (total outgoing radiation, TOR) when it is cooling and less when it is warming, regardless of what it is receiving at the time, so the idea of an energy balance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is clearly wrong. The Earth displays little interannual temperature variability but there is no reason to think we properly understand the mechanisms involved in Earth’s thermal homeostasis. . . .

Continue reading →

 

More research on the Sun's climate effect.
New Study: A Post-2000 Increase In Absorbed Solar Energy ‘By Far The Largest Contribution’ To Warming
By Kenneth Richard on 22. August 2022

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Scientists have once again affirmed the 2000-2020 total greenhouse effect (longwave) forcing has been declining in recent decades just as absorbed solar radiation has been increasing due to cloud albedo modulation. The latter explains the net positive Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) and consequent global warming during this period.
Recently we detailed the satellite-observed decline in total (“all sky”) greenhouse effect forcing since 1985 and the concomitant increase in surface solar radiation over the last 35 years.

Yet another scientific paper has been published affirming a -0.23 W/m² per decade−1 decline in total longwave forcing (the net impact due to changes in greenhouse gases and cloud cover) and a +0.66 W/m² per decade−1 (+1.3 W/m²) increase in absorbed solar radiation during the 21st century (March 2000 to March 2020).

The net absorption of solar energy that has occurred due to the reduction of solar radiation reflected to space by clouds and aerosols is “by far the largest contribution to the increasing rate of change of EEI.” In other words, the impact of CO2 and other greenhouse gas forcing together with cloud has contributed a net cooling influence that has been soundly superseded by the increasing solar radiation trend.



Image Source: Stephens et al., 2022

 

Queue the catechism gatekeepers.... Buehler.... Buehler......

 

Here we illustrate the peril of claiming "consensus" on the basis of insufficient understanding.

The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (IV). The climate shift of 1997
Posted on August 22, 2022 by curryja | 28 comments
by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s.” Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson & Sergey Kravtsov (2007)

4.1 Introduction

While the study of weather variability has a long tradition, the science of climate change is a very young scientific topic, as attested to by the 1984 discovery of the first multidecadal oscillation, the primary global climate internal variability phenomenon, by Folland et al. The impact of this fundamental feature of the global climate system was discovered ten years later by Schlesinger and Ramankutty (1994), after modern global warming had already been blamed on CO2 changes, illustrating the risk of reaching a consensus with insufficient understanding of the topic at hand. The Pacific (inter) Decadal Oscillation (PDO) was discovered three years later (Mantua et al. 1997; Minobe 1997). The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) was not named until just two decades ago (Kerr 2000).

Prior to the 1980s, it was generally thought that climate changed so slowly as to be almost imperceptible during the span of a human lifetime. But then it became clear that abrupt climate changes took place during the past glacial period (Dansgaard et al. 1984), Dansgaard–Oeschger events demonstrated that regional, hemispheric, and even global climate could undergo drastic changes in a matter of decades. The problem was that modern climate-change theory was built around gradual changes in the greenhouse effect (GHE) and did not have much room for abrupt, drastic, global changes that could not be properly explained by changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) radiative forcing. . . .

Continue reading →

 

Here we begin to see how the Sun dominates climate change.
The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (V). A role for the sun in climate change
Posted on August 28, 2022 by curryja | 13 comments
by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“Once you start doubting, just like you’re supposed to doubt. You ask me if the science is true and we say ‘No, no, we don’t know what’s true, we’re trying to find out, everything is possibly wrong’ … When you doubt and ask it gets a little harder to believe. I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing, than to have answers which might be wrong.” Richard Feynman (1981)

5.1 Introduction

The 1990s discovery of multidecadal variability (see Part IV) showed that the science of climate change is very immature. The answer to what was causing the observed warming was provided before the proper questions were asked. Once the answer was announced, questions were no longer welcome. Michael Mann said of a skeptical Judith Curry: “I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility” (Mann 200. But as Peter Medawar (1979) stated, “the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not.” Scientists’ opinions do not constitute science, and a scientific consensus is nothing more than a collective opinion based on group-thinking. When doubting a scientific consensus (“just like you’re supposed to doubt,” as Feynman said) becomes unwelcome, the collective opinion becomes dogma, and dogma is clearly not science.

Lennart Bengtsson, former director of the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, winner of the Descartes Prize and a WMO prize for groundbreaking research put it succinctly after agreeing to participate in a skeptical organization headed by Nigel Lawson, a member of the House of Lords and former Chancellor of the Exchequer:

“I had not [been] expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expected anything similar in such an originally peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently, it has been transformed in recent years” (von Storch 2014).

This is the effect that dogmas have on scientists, normal scientific research becomes impossible by introducing a strong group-bias against questioning the dogma.

Once dogmas are established, they tend to evade scientific scrutiny. . . .

Continue reading →

 

That doesn't say how Earth is warming even though it has been coming through a solar cycle LOW.

 

You didn't read the article.

 

Solar activity has increased dramatically and unexpectedly this year. Remember, all we have are proxies. We don't actually know specifically what is going on with the sun or how it influences the earth's climate, we can't predict it yet, and we have only a very few years of data on important parameters like neutrinos. To say that we know the sun can't be causing the warming, all solar mechanisms have been ruled out, the science is settled, only CO2 can explain the 20th century warming, blah, blah, blah, is just a blatant attack on science itself.

 

I suggest you read further.

 

Yes, the Sun is starting its upward swing in radiation output, probably evidence of ending the low extreme of its cycle that we have been experiencing.

That should be of significant concern, as Earth has been warming even during the years of solar low.

And, NO. Denying the clear evidence of measured solar cycles and the measurements of heat reaching Earth on the assumption that their might be some other unknown cause is wishful thinking. Obviously, we should continue to look for sources of neutrinos and other theoretical possibilities, but that is NOT a justification for ignoring what we measure today.

 

Solar activity in the 20th century hit a high unparalleled over the past 600 years. The early 21st century solar ebb accounts for slower warming.


Fig. 5: Solar activity over the past several centuries can be reconstructed using different proxies. These reconstructions demonstrate that 20th century activity is unparalleled over the past 600 years (previously high solar activity took place around 1000 years ago, and 8000 yrs ago). Specifically, we see sunspots and 10Be. The latter is formed in the atmosphere by ~1GeV cosmic rays, which are modulated by the solar wind (stronger solar wind → less galactic cosmic rays → less 10Be production). Note that both proxies do not capture the decrease in the high energy cosmic rays that took place since the 1970's, but which the ion chamber data does (see fig. 6). (image source: Wikipedia)

• Carbon Dioxide or Solar Forcing?

 

No. We have not been experiencing anything remotely resembling an extreme low in solar activity. We have only gone from the extreme, sustained, multimillennial high in solar activity that characterized the 20th century to one cycle of normal activity, and may now be entering another high.

No. It has not. Earth has cooled during the last six years of normal solar activity, and would probably have continued cooling if the sun had not shown a dramatic and unexpected increase in activity.

That is what anti-fossil-fuel hysteria mongers do when they demand that all measures of solar activity but TSI be ignored.

No. It is denying that any solar factor but the heat reaching the earth could possibly affect climate on the assumption that CO2 has to be the principal driver of climate change that is not only wishful thinking, but blatantly anti-scientific bigotry.

It is anti-fossil-fuel hysteria mongers who demand that we ignore everything we measure about the sun today except TSI.

 

Yes. I was not referring to any multimillennial maximum or minimum.

We may now be entering another high - which should be of concern if one is interested in climatology.

Here's a cite:

https://public.wmo.int/en/media/pre... each decade,to record global average warming.

Solar irradiance is where Earth's heat comes from, and is being measured and cross checked in various ways.

The idea that climatology is somehow missing solar irradiance can not be supported.

The issue with CO2 and other greenhouse gasses is that they slow the departure of heat to space, changing the balance between arriving solar irradiance and departing heat.

The two issues, involve different spectra.

So, you have it backwards. Concern about climate change results in examination of why Earth is heating. From there, human sources of greenhouse gas pop out as significant, plus that is what is within our capacity to change.

 

It has been COOLING since 2015:



LINK

 

The green lines in that chart are being drawn by politicians, not scientists, plus you don't even bother to cite the source.



https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/189/graphic-temperature-vs-solar-activity/

 

Your chart is irrelevant and misleading.
FORBES CENSORED AN INTERVIEW WITH ME

 

I did cite the source it is a called a LINK, did you miss it?

The data for the chart is from UAH6/

NO politicians were involved in the making of the chart and you still haven't addressed the obvious COOLING trend since 2015 as I now use ALL the temperature data sets to make this chart:



LINK

Your misleading chart is a few years short of 2022