APOD: Global Warming Predictions (2009 April 21)

[StACase]

... there is a sunspot group developing right now.

[Chris Peterson]

Precisely. No hint of the solar cycle showing up in the data.

[Chris Peterson]

... there is a sunspot group developing right now.

Hard to see in white light. It's just visible near the limb at about 2:30. Look at the Ha images (there are some at SpaceWeather). This activity has already been associated with the current sunspot cycle.

[hydroresearch]

Precisely. No hint of the solar cycle showing up in the data.

This graph has not had the stations with urban heat impacts removed. If you look at the true global temperature data set you will see the impacts from the solar cycle.

[BEC]

While I finally agree that the evidence is nearly overwhelming that there is global warming (I resisted it for a while), I am very skeptical (as are some good scientists) that we humans are causing it, or that we will be able to reverse it. There is too much evidence that such swings in global conditions have happened in the past without humans here to cause it. I believe we ought to stop polluting the environment, but I am skeptical that doing so will affect global warming.

[Chris Peterson]

This graph has not had the stations with urban heat impacts removed. If you look at the true global temperature data set you will see the impacts from the solar cycle.

Perhaps. The solar cycle does show up in short term climate, although it is very close to the noise level. It certainly is unrelated to the global temperature trend of the last century. We've had higher than average solar max cycles, and lower than average solar min cycles, but the overall trend in global temperature has simply been upwards.

[bhrobards]

... there is a sunspot group developing right now.

Hard to see in white light. It's just visible near the limb at about 2:30. Look at the Ha images (there are some at SpaceWeather). This activity has already been associated with the current sunspot cycle.

Love your style chris, you forgot to mention that this almost invisible sunspeck is the first in 25 days of blankness. Is this the best that you and cycle 24 got? The suns activity upswing is over a year late. The single best predictor of solar activity is the length of the last cycle. It was unusually (I don't mean never observed) long. This cycle should be weak. Just wait till a 23 speck appears next month. As Dr Soon says; "Its the sun stupid!"

[Chris Peterson]

Love your style chris, you forgot to mention that this almost invisible sunspeck is the first in 25 days of blankness. Is this the best that you and cycle 24 got? The suns activity upswing is over a year late. The single best predictor of solar activity is the length of the last cycle. It was unusually (I don't mean never observed) long. This cycle should be weak. Just wait till a 23 speck appears next month. As Dr Soon says; "Its the sun stupid!"

Yeah, it's a lower than average minimum. But the cumulative reduction in solar irradiation is trivially small. The solar cycle does not have much effect on weather, and even less on the last century's climate. It's a really, really poor argument against (or for) global climate change. The "best predictor" is still a poor predictor. Activity over the next few years could go either way.

[bhrobards]

The joke is on all the people who fail to have a full understanding of the science of climatology. I believe in global warming, but I also believe in global cooling. When you begin to remove the impact of the urban heat island effect from the global temperature data you will find that the global temperature is closely correlated with solar activity which is currently at some of the lowest levels in decades. Temperature trends at locations outside the the urban heat impacts are falling in response to the reduction in the solar flux.

We are living in an interglacial period and glaciers and ice should be receding. If solar activity continues to decline the evidence suggests that we may be entering into another cool episode in global climate.

I welcome all comments and discussion but receive absolutely no funding on climate change research. I make my living as a hydrologist with a strong background in climatology.

Thanks to all for taking the time to discuss this subject.

Richard

Don't forget though, we are at solar minimum right now but the cycle will swing back in the other direction very soon.

We are at the minimum between sunspot cycles right now, its characteristics indicate we might be looking at a Solar Minima or Solar Grand Minima. Your "very soon" might take a distressingly long time.

[BMAONE23]

This picture is obviously created by a moron. There is NO WAY any of this is going to happen. Every time anyone utters global warming and greenhouse gases and humans are causing it, i consider them the biggest !@#$ing morons on earth. All you have to do is look to the press who agree and sustain and uphold it.

People just love a doomsday senario. I hope, in 50 years, I and others who dispute this junk science, can wag our fingers at you and say, "Golly people are gullible and stupid". This is the first time I've ever been offended by an APOD posting. Stick to the cosmos and not disputed gossip trumped up by humanity haters...the real reason behind the global warming myth. If you hate people and mass population and carbon emissions...find someplace to live your life and sing kumbaya with your animal friends.

Although I believe you to be wrong, it won't stop me from hoping you are right. Though if we do curb our emissions and the climate cools or stabilizes, who is to say that wouldn't be the result? In the mean time, if we do nothing and things stabilize or cool (excluding the onset of a new Ice Age) i'll buy you a years worth of gas. but who is to say either of us will still be here in 50 years.

I dont think that the picture was created by a Moron though more likely just being interpreted as such by others of similar intelect.

[BMAONE23]

We went much longer without sunspot activity in 1901, and there was no global cooling going on then.

Interesting chart...it really shows exactly when the Ford Mass Production assembly line of its fine motor cars began having a direct effect on climate

[BMAONE23]

Precisely. No hint of the solar cycle showing up in the data.

This graph has not had the stations with urban heat impacts removed. If you look at the true global temperature data set you will see the impacts from the solar cycle.

Might you be able to produce this optional data in graph format?

[StACase]

Interesting chart...it really shows exactly when the Ford Mass Production assembly line of its fine motor cars began having a direct effect on climate

(-:

[neufer]

Precisely. No hint of the solar cycle showing up in the data.

Actually, from 1940 on (when the data is probably the best) there is a suggestive hint of a decadal solar cycle.

The solar cycle UV variation of about 10% actually does result in a 10º C variation in the summertime stratopause temperature (50 km. up). This excess sunspot maximum stratopause warmth makes the cold stratospheric polar vortex in the other hemisphere less stable and, hence, more likely to dynamically collapse early... as did occur with the early "sudden stratospheric warming" collapse of the 2002 Antarctic Ozone hole/cold polar vortex. Hence:

• Sunspot UV warming of the summertime stratopause
  => dynamic warming of the wintertime stratosphere/tropopause
  => ? troposphere ?

[sid113]

I enjoy the discussion here as it is at a higher level than normally seen on the web. I still have a problem with the "human caused global warming" science. As has been shown near the beginning of this discussion, climatic changes occur with or without humans. Also, there are cycles within cycles. For example, there are 100,000 year ice-age cycles, where the warming from the low to the high is on the order of the amount predicted from some of them global warming models. There are 11 year sunspot cycles, but there are also 206 year cycles, which do affect climate. There are 26,000 year earth-tilt cycles; again these affect climate. In fact, we are about 18,000 years into the current warming trend – at about the spot where temperatures increase the fastest (what a surprise).

In short, there are a whole slew of environmental cyclical activities that have a much greater impact to climate than 600-800 PPM of CO2 (CO2 is not a very powerful greenhouse gas). So, then people grab temperature data from 50 or maybe 100 years and say "see, we are all going to fry". Yet, if you grab a 600 hundred years of data, you may see that we are heading back to the average temperature of that time frame, not to some heat-death level. If you look at the ice record, you see that glaciers were shrinking long before people put much in the way of CO2 into the atmosphere. If you look at all of the different cycles, we are about right on for the cycle – nothing special happening.

As I have stated many times, my concern is not the science and study of the climate. My concern is the policy pushed on the world based on incomplete science and truncated data lists. BEC earlier said "I believe we ought to stop polluting the environment," and I agree.

However this desire leads to another problem. In the 1960's, the US (and most of the industrialized world) was pouring lots of pollutants into the air and water. The environmental movements started up, and were quite successful. In the US, particulate and aerosol pollution is down something like 95%; maybe more. The environmentalists did a great job. Now, most of the "pollution" generated today is in the form of water vapor and CO2. So, the environmental lobby and the hardcore neo-luddites have run into a problem - they were too successful. They could go to China and India where there is still a high-level of pollution, but that is not easy, is uncomfortable, and you could end up in jail.

So instead, they grab onto the "hockey stick curve" and run with it saying we have a huge global warming crisis on our hands. They push incomplete science as fact, and push hard. People like Al Gore latch on because they stand to make $billions in profit and gain a huge amount of power over manufacturing and energy deployment. The media latches on because it is exciting news "we are all going to die". The issue is almost too subtle and difficult for trained scientists, how is the average person going to make a decision (hint - the only way they can - emotionally).

We have all of the ingredients of a classic conspiracy theory movie. There are governmental power plays going on. (If you don't believe that, consider the fact that while the US has potentially hundreds of billions of barrels of oil and oil-equivalent reserves onshore, drilling is slow to non-existent with the concerns being environmental, and most being concerns over global warming.) There are people who stand to make billions in profits from the change in energy delivery (Al Gore’s company that deals in carbon credits could grow to a multi-billion dollar-per-year company if the full Kyoto accord were implemented North America and Europe). We have a UN that is trying to tax the rich countries tens or even hundreds of billions per year and funnel that money to undeveloped countries (like China and Russia as well as others) as well as their own pockets (consider the oil for food debacle). We have scientists who were told by the UN if they did not sign a cover “summary” of a report they would lose their funding, even though the summary had nothing to do with the contents of actual result.
In short, we have public policy being shoved down our throats that is worse for the environment then CO2 (consider the environmental destruction caused by hydroelectric power, or the huge amount of toxic chemicals generated by making solar panels, not to mention the unknown weather and climate impact of wind and sea energy harvesting).
Here is one example that is shocking. The government forced US citizens to use ethanol in their cars by forcing the gas companies to include ethanol in their gas. Ethanol increases the cost of a gallon of gas by $0.20 - $0.60. It increases the cost of food by 20% - 30%. It forces farmers to be more aggressive with their land, increasing the use of fertilizers and water resulting in more depletion of ground water in the Midwestern states. Yet, for this expense to the economy and the environment, what do we get? We get an INCREASE in greenhouse gas production, a DECREASE in automobile efficiency, an INCREASE in fuel usage, and an overall INCREASE in pollution. Oh yea, and the companies that gain with this legislation donated $MILLIONS to our senators and representatives (not to mention our current president), but there is no connection there.

It does not matter if the current global warming debate is good or bad science, it is resulting in bad policies that have already cost the US economy over $500 billion in transfer payments and wasted money (and I can easily argue the true cost is standing at $1.6 TRILLION to the economy).

[neufer]

It does not matter if the current global warming debate is good or bad science, it is resulting in bad policies that have already cost the US economy over $500 billion in transfer payments and wasted money (and I can easily argue the true cost is standing at $1.6 TRILLION to the economy).

What has really cost the US dearly is our addiction to foreign oil
and having to fend off the terrorists & rogue nations who feed off of petro-dollars.

If we spend $25 TRILLION (, presumably, most of it going to US workers) to wean us
off of this addiction then it is money well spent, IMO, regardless of global warming.

[hydroresearch]

I enjoy the discussion here as it is at a higher level than normally seen on the web. I still have a problem with the "human caused global warming" science. As has been shown near the beginning of this discussion, climatic changes occur with or without humans. Also, there are cycles within cycles. For example, there are 100,000 year ice-age cycles, where the warming from the low to the high is on the order of the amount predicted from some of them global warming models. There are 11 year sunspot cycles, but there are also 206 year cycles, which do affect climate. There are 26,000 year earth-tilt cycles; again these affect climate. In fact, we are about 18,000 years into the current warming trend – at about the spot where temperatures increase the fastest (what a surprise).

In short, there are a whole slew of environmental cyclical activities that have a much greater impact to climate than 600-800 PPM of CO2 (CO2 is not a very powerful greenhouse gas). So, then people grab temperature data from 50 or maybe 100 years and say "see, we are all going to fry". Yet, if you grab a 600 hundred years of data, you may see that we are heading back to the average temperature of that time frame, not to some heat-death level. If you look at the ice record, you see that glaciers were shrinking long before people put much in the way of CO2 into the atmosphere. If you look at all of the different cycles, we are about right on for the cycle – nothing special happening.

As I have stated many times, my concern is not the science and study of the climate. My concern is the policy pushed on the world based on incomplete science and truncated data lists. BEC earlier said "I believe we ought to stop polluting the environment," and I agree.

However this desire leads to another problem. In the 1960's, the US (and most of the industrialized world) was pouring lots of pollutants into the air and water. The environmental movements started up, and were quite successful. In the US, particulate and aerosol pollution is down something like 95%; maybe more. The environmentalists did a great job. Now, most of the "pollution" generated today is in the form of water vapor and CO2. So, the environmental lobby and the hardcore neo-luddites have run into a problem - they were too successful. They could go to China and India where there is still a high-level of pollution, but that is not easy, is uncomfortable, and you could end up in jail.

So instead, they grab onto the "hockey stick curve" and run with it saying we have a huge global warming crisis on our hands. They push incomplete science as fact, and push hard. People like Al Gore latch on because they stand to make $billions in profit and gain a huge amount of power over manufacturing and energy deployment. The media latches on because it is exciting news "we are all going to die". The issue is almost too subtle and difficult for trained scientists, how is the average person going to make a decision (hint - the only way they can - emotionally).

We have all of the ingredients of a classic conspiracy theory movie. There are governmental power plays going on. (If you don't believe that, consider the fact that while the US has potentially hundreds of billions of barrels of oil and oil-equivalent reserves onshore, drilling is slow to non-existent with the concerns being environmental, and most being concerns over global warming.) There are people who stand to make billions in profits from the change in energy delivery (Al Gore’s company that deals in carbon credits could grow to a multi-billion dollar-per-year company if the full Kyoto accord were implemented North America and Europe). We have a UN that is trying to tax the rich countries tens or even hundreds of billions per year and funnel that money to undeveloped countries (like China and Russia as well as others) as well as their own pockets (consider the oil for food debacle). We have scientists who were told by the UN if they did not sign a cover “summary” of a report they would lose their funding, even though the summary had nothing to do with the contents of actual result.
In short, we have public policy being shoved down our throats that is worse for the environment then CO2 (consider the environmental destruction caused by hydroelectric power, or the huge amount of toxic chemicals generated by making solar panels, not to mention the unknown weather and climate impact of wind and sea energy harvesting).
Here is one example that is shocking. The government forced US citizens to use ethanol in their cars by forcing the gas companies to include ethanol in their gas. Ethanol increases the cost of a gallon of gas by $0.20 - $0.60. It increases the cost of food by 20% - 30%. It forces farmers to be more aggressive with their land, increasing the use of fertilizers and water resulting in more depletion of ground water in the Midwestern states. Yet, for this expense to the economy and the environment, what do we get? We get an INCREASE in greenhouse gas production, a DECREASE in automobile efficiency, an INCREASE in fuel usage, and an overall INCREASE in pollution. Oh yea, and the companies that gain with this legislation donated $MILLIONS to our senators and representatives (not to mention our current president), but there is no connection there.

It does not matter if the current global warming debate is good or bad science, it is resulting in bad policies that have already cost the US economy over $500 billion in transfer payments and wasted money (and I can easily argue the true cost is standing at $1.6 TRILLION to the economy).

Great discussion! Some of my fellow climatologist who oppose C02 global warming theories have actually received death threats for stating their position. I choose to keep a low profile and stay out of the fray. Only time will tell who is correct on this issue. As for me, I am going to hang on to my winter clothes.

[hydroresearch]

Love your style chris, you forgot to mention that this almost invisible sunspeck is the first in 25 days of blankness. Is this the best that you and cycle 24 got? The suns activity upswing is over a year late. The single best predictor of solar activity is the length of the last cycle. It was unusually (I don't mean never observed) long. This cycle should be weak. Just wait till a 23 speck appears next month. As Dr Soon says; "Its the sun stupid!"

Yeah, it's a lower than average minimum. But the cumulative reduction in solar irradiation is trivially small. The solar cycle does not have much effect on weather, and even less on the last century's climate. It's a really, really poor argument against (or for) global climate change. The "best predictor" is still a poor predictor. Activity over the next few years could go either way.

Chris, What about the Maunder minimum. Is it just a coincidence that one of the coldest periods in recorded history was during a long period with no sunspots? Solar physics and climatology are two fields that need a lot more work before we can gain a confidence level to make serious economic/social/political decisions.

[hydroresearch]

Love your style chris, you forgot to mention that this almost invisible sunspeck is the first in 25 days of blankness. Is this the best that you and cycle 24 got? The suns activity upswing is over a year late. The single best predictor of solar activity is the length of the last cycle. It was unusually (I don't mean never observed) long. This cycle should be weak. Just wait till a 23 speck appears next month. As Dr Soon says; "Its the sun stupid!"

Yeah, it's a lower than average minimum. But the cumulative reduction in solar irradiation is trivially small. The solar cycle does not have much effect on weather, and even less on the last century's climate. It's a really, really poor argument against (or for) global climate change. The "best predictor" is still a poor predictor. Activity over the next few years could go either way.

Chris, What about the Maunder minimum. Is it just a coincidence that one of the coldest periods in recorded history was during a long period with no sunspots? Solar physics and climatology are two fields that need a lot more work before we can gain a confidence level to make serious economic/social/political decisions.

Your new sunspot lasted less than 24 hours, not a great start for the new cycle! http://www.spaceweather.com/

[Chris Peterson]

Chris, What about the Maunder minimum. Is it just a coincidence that one of the coldest periods in recorded history was during a long period with no sunspots?

Yes, the better part of a century with low solar activity. I didn't say that wouldn't have an effect- although the actual relationship between that cold period and the Maunder minimum remains unclear. But the silly talk here is that a slightly extended solar min, which is scarcely different from several other solar mins that have been recorded, is somehow having a dramatic effect on our current weather. Or, similarly silly, that changes in solar activity over the last century or two are somehow responsible for the current observed climate change.

[Chris Peterson]

Your new sunspot lasted less than 24 hours, not a great start for the new cycle!

Actually, that's how nearly every new solar cycle starts. What would you expect, some massive sunspot group and class X flares? This current activity makes it pretty clear that this minimum won't be as deep as the 1901 minimum, which itself had minimal impact on weather, and none at all on climate.

[hydroresearch]

Your new sunspot lasted less than 24 hours, not a great start for the new cycle!

Actually, that's how nearly every new solar cycle starts. What would you expect, some massive sunspot group and class X flares? This current activity makes it pretty clear that this minimum won't be as deep as the 1901 minimum, which itself had minimal impact on weather, and none at all on climate.

Chris, I would suggest checking the predicions from a few years ago about the new cycle. You will find they are all wrong. The global temperature trend over the past 8 years has been downward. Here is a discussion on the current cycle from the BBC.
Still Sun' baffling astronomers

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

"There's no sign of us coming out of it yet," she told BBC News.

"At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we'll be going into a normal period of activity soon.

"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a big scientific debate at the moment."

Sunspots could be seen by the Soho telescope in 2001 (l), but not this year (r)

In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell - known as the Maunder Minimum - lasted 70 years, and led to a "mini ice-age".

[Chris Peterson]

Chris, I would suggest checking the predicions from a few years ago about the new cycle. You will find they are all wrong.

For the most part, predictions of future solar cycles have always been poor. Nobody knows how to make such predictions yet.

It is easy to read too much into reports of solar activity. "A hundred year low" sounds so dramatic. But the current cycle isn't much lower than many others. It reminds me of the close approach of Mars a few years ago. Lots of people made a big deal about how it was closer than it had been for tens of thousands of years. That was true, but what usually went unmentioned was that it was only fractionally closer than it gets every couple of decades. Not really any big deal.

It's the same with the current minimum. True, we haven't seen such a deep one for a century. But we've seen other minimums during the last century that were nearly as deep. It is really premature to start seeing this as another Maunder minimum.

The bottom line is that actual measured solar irradiance over the last two solar cycles looks about the same. There's very little to suggest that the slightly deeper minimum we're coming out of has had much impact. There is a slight decline in average temperatures during every minimum. It's expected, it's part of the models, and it has nothing at all to do with the trend in global average temperature since we started pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (a relationship for which good, solid, scientific evidence does exist).

[BMAONE23]

here are a couple of interesting charts I found in WIKI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg this one on the relationship between solar activity, CO2, and Temperature
And this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbo ... labels.png showing solar activity recorded in radiocarbon

Interestingly, looking at the dates of the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum, It would appear that the cooling process started many decades prior to the Maunder Minimum

[bhrobards]

Cycle 24 sunspeck 1015 looks like its almost gone.