[Vision2020] Sunspots: 2009 Deepest Solar Minimum in Nearly A Century, Then 2010 Warmest Year in 131Years

[Paul Rumelhart]

Are you asking me to find you a peer-reviewed paper published in a 
credible scientific journal that backs up my claim that "clouds shade 
the earth"?  Really?

Paul

On 06/19/2011 10:28 PM, Ted Moffett wrote:
> Excuse me?
>
> You did not mention in your "Sunspots" post that in 2009 the solar
> minimum was the deepest in nearly a century, nor mention that the
> impacts on cooling global temperature that such a deep solar minimum
> should have were likely overcome by other forcings in the climate
> system, given that 2009 and 2010 were the second and first warmest
> years for global average temperature in Goddard's temperature record
> since 1880.
>
> Given your emphasis on sunspot cycles having a major influence on
> global temperature, to not mention the 2009 recent deep solar minimum,
> and the associated global temperatures, is a major and puzzling
> omission.
>
> As far as you posing as a credible critic of NASA's climate scientist
> James Hansen, pardon my intense skepticism.
>
> At the website below from James Hansen read discussion indicating that
> variations in solar irradiance associated with sunspot cycles do have
> an impact on global temperature in short time frames, from year to
> year, as does ENSO cycles, so the deep solar minimum of 2009, the
> deepest in nearly a century, should have had an impact on 2009 or 2010
> global temperature, even if small:
>
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/2009-temperatures-by-jim-hansen/
>
> > From website above:
>
> "The 5 year mean is sufficient to reduce the effect of the El Niño –
> La Niña cycles of tropical climate. The 11 year mean minimizes the
> effect of solar variability – the brightness of the sun varies by a
> measurable amount over the sunspot cycle, which is typically of 10-12
> year duration."
> ------------------------------
>
> Also, please refer to a published climate science article in a
> credible peer reviewed journal where in reference to Svensmark's
> cosmic ray/cloud formation theory the phrase "shading the ground" is
> used to indicate this is a major variable involved in cooling or not
> of the Earth's climate due to cosmic ray cloud formation variables.
>
> Good luck!
> ------------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>
> On 6/18/11, Paul Rumelhart<godshatter at yahoo.com>  wrote:
>> On 06/18/2011 11:47 AM, Ted Moffett wrote:
>>> The subject heading sums up the main point of this post.
>>>
>>> Odd (well, not really, actually what I've come to expect) that given
>>> your in-depth (?) research into solar activity and its relation to
>>> Earth's climate, you make no mention, in your sunspot comments below,
>>> of the very significant recent deep solar minimum in sunspot activity
>>> in 2009, the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century, according to
>>> NASA: "This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century,"
>>> agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight
>>> Center:
>>> http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum/
>> Sure I did.  It was the part where I said (and I quote) "I started this
>> a couple of years ago.  It was extremely boring at first,
>> because there would be stretches of sometimes months between sunspots."
>> I've been watching the Sun, mostly daily, ever since.
>>
>>> During and just after this deep solar minimum, Earth's average surface
>>> temperature in 2009 and 2010 remained among the top ten warmest years
>>> in the 131 year instrumental record from the Goddard Insitutue for
>>> Space Studies.
>>>
>>> In fact, 2010 was tied statistically with 2005 as the top warmest year
>>> in 131 years, according to GISS:
>>> http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20110112/
>>> http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
>> Wasn't 2010 an El-Nino year?
>>
>>> The following article from the Earth Institute at Columbia University
>>> mentions the 2009 deep solar minimum impacts on global temperature:
>>> 2000-2009: The Warmest Decade:
>>> http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/articles/view/2620
>>>    "In 2009, it was clear that even the deepest solar minimum in the
>>> period of satellite data hasn't stopped global warming from
>>> continuing," said Goddard Institute for Space Studies director Dr.
>>> James Hansen.
>> It would appear that a small drop in total solar irradiance does not
>> have an immediate effect upon surface temperatures.  However, it would
>> be ill-advised to ignore the Maunder Minimum / Little Ice Age connection
>> because of this.  There is a lot of heat currently in the system, much
>> of it in the oceans.  Maybe it takes a few years to have an effect.
>> That's if you trust the guys in charge of the surface temperature data
>> sets, which I don't.
>>
>>
>>> ---------------------
>>> In 2009, during this deep solar minimum, there was speculation in the
>>> scientific community that we could be entering a prolonged period of
>>> very low solar activity, that "...sunspots could completely vanish
>>> around the year 2015."
>>> http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/03sep_sunspots/
>>>
>>> But this did not occur.  Solar cycle 24 has seen an increase in
>>> sunspot activity, with sunspot activity predicted for 2015 above the
>>> 2009 deep solar minimum.
>> According to my phone, which may be incorrect, we're actually in 2011
>> right now.  The current sunspot cycle, which was much delayed, is
>> currently running between half and two-thirds the power that the last
>> cycle ran.  It's true that solar cycle 24 (the current one) has seen an
>> increase in sunspot activity.  It's now in that part of the cycle.  It's
>> turning out to be a rather dismal cycle for sunspots, though.
>>
>>> There are always a wide variety of theories and speculations occuring
>>> in the science community on many issues.  Those with a biased agenda
>>> cherry-pick the theories and research to suit their confirmation bias
>>> filter, and conveniently ignore a balanced consideration of all the
>>> scientific research.
>>>
>>> On 6/17/11, Paul Rumelhart<godshatter at yahoo.com>   wrote:
>>>
>>> "For example, there is an interesting theory by a guy
>>> named Henrik Svensmark that states that a weak sun allows more cosmic
>>> rays to strike the Earth, leaving ionized air molecules for clouds to
>>> form around.  This causes a cooling of the Earth by shading the ground
>>> and by changing the albedo."
>>>
>>> Your depiction of the cosmic ray/cloud formation impacts on cooling
>>> the Earth's is misleading.  Given my reading on this scientific issue,
>>> "shading the ground" is not a major impact of cloud formation
>>> associated with cosmic rays on temperature, though changes in albedo
>>> are:
>>> A detailed analysis of Svensmark's cosmic ray/cloud theories from
>>> Skepticalscience.com at this website:
>>> http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=388
>> "Shading the ground" not having a major impact is clearly BS.  Ever
>> stood outside on a hot day when the sun is out and had a cloud move in
>> front of the Sun?  Cools it down, doesn't it?
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>> ------------------------------------------
>>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>>
>>> On 6/17/11, Paul Rumelhart<godshatter at yahoo.com>   wrote:
>>>
>>>> I've been meaning to post on this subject for a while, but have been
>>>> short on time.
>>>>
>>>> You've probably all seen the news about some research that was unveiled
>>>> at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society that suggests that the
>>>> Sun will become more quiet over the next few years as sunspots become
>>>> rarer.  This is due mainly to a river of gas under the surface of the
>>>> Sun which disrupts sunspots.
>>>>
>>>> Sunspots are holes in the outer layer of the Sun caused by magnetic
>>>> fields.  The more sunspots on the Earth-facing side of the Sun and the
>>>> hotter it is.  Of course, this varies only slightly in comparison to the
>>>> overall output of the Sun.
>>>>
>>>> I just wanted to weigh in on this subject and to post some related
>>>> information about it.  I'll also give my take on it.  Not that anybody
>>>> cares.
>>>>
>>>> First, here is a representative article on the subject from the BBC:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13792479
>>>>
>>>> Global warming alarmists (as I like to think of them) were quick to
>>>> rebut this idea.  Here is a representative article from Discover:
>>>>
>>>> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/17/are-we-headed-for-a-new-ice-age/
>>>>
>>>> Here is a chart from NASA that shows solar cycle 24 (the one we're
>>>> currently in) compared to solar cycle 23.  It also shows their current
>>>> predictions for the rest of this cycle:
>>>>
>>>> http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif
>>>>
>>>> One of the reasons that this topic is so important is that the last time
>>>> sunspots declined for a long period of time during the Maunder Minimum,
>>>> we had the Little Ice Age, which followed the Medieval Warm Period.
>>>> Some people suspect there might be a link between the two events.  Here
>>>> is some info from Wikipedia about LIA and the Maunder Minimum:
>>>>
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_ice_age
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum
>>>>
>>>> Now, the main objection to the LIA (aside from the whole "Hockey Stick"
>>>> fiasco) seems to be that it was a phenomenon local to Europe.  However,
>>>> there is a paper by Huang and Pollack (1997) that looked at 6,144 sets
>>>> of heat flow measurements obtained from all over the globe suitable for
>>>> reconstructing temperature over the Earth for the last 20,000 years and
>>>> concluded that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were both
>>>> global phenomena.  Here is a link to an article on CO2 Science about it:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.co2science.org/articles/V3/N22/C3.php
>>>>
>>>> Now, there have been lots of rhetoric from both sides of the fence about
>>>> this.  No, I don't think we ought to all be idling our Expeditions so we
>>>> don't get any colder.  I do, however, think there might be something to
>>>> this.  Every day when I get up in the morning, I check my email, check a
>>>> few forums I post on, and see how the sun is doing.  I like to follow
>>>> the sunspot number, and since I check it every day I watch the
>>>> individual sunspots form, decay, and rotate around the Sun.  It's an odd
>>>> hobby, to be sure, but I find it fascinating.  Here are a couple of
>>>> websites where you, too, can spend your time watching the Sun instead of
>>>> doing something constructive:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.spaceweather.com/
>>>> http://www.solarham.com/
>>>>
>>>> I started this a couple of years ago.  It was extremely boring at first,
>>>> because there would be stretches of sometimes months between sunspots.
>>>> Now, the cycle has finally fired up.  The current sunspot number as of
>>>> this writing is 62.  I've seen it up over a hundred, but that's still
>>>> low compared to the last cycle.
>>>>
>>>> It makes sense to me that small variations in
>>>> ahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum large ball of fusing gas
>>>> that gives us almost all our heat might have an affect on climate.  The
>>>> professional climate modelers are convinced that the amount of
>>>> fluctuation is too small to make a difference, since TSI doesn't change
>>>> but by less than a percent.  The problem with this is that it, in my
>>>> opinion, is pure hubris.  We know so little about how the Sun actually
>>>> affects the Earth.  For example, there is an interesting theory by a guy
>>>> named Henrik Svensmark that states that a weak sun allows more cosmic
>>>> rays to strike the Earth, leaving ionized air molecules for clouds to
>>>> form around.  This causes a cooling of the Earth by shading the ground
>>>> and by changing the albedo.  This, of course, happens over a long period
>>>> of time, but adds up.  Poor Svensmark, lacking his stamp of authority by
>>>> the IPCC, has been shopping around begging for cloud chamber experiment
>>>> time.  Here is a youtube video describing the theory:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpDDqGqN16s
>>>>
>>>> This is just one possible mechanism by which small variations in the
>>>> Sun's output can affect climate.  To me, it seems crazy to discount the
>>>> Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum as being local events are
>>>> assuming they are not causally related simply because the climate models
>>>> we've designed don't show as strong of a connection.  I consider most of
>>>> the climate models unproven, while the global warming community
>>>> apparently thinks they are evidence.
>>>>
>>>> So, may take on it is that the science behind the sunspot predictions is
>>>> sound, there seems to be a connection between the last time this
>>>> happened and a large cooling down of the climate, and that dismissing it
>>>> out of hand is foolhardy at this stage.
>>>>
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>