Solar cycle #24

[orionjim]

In the article to which you linked he did not say anything about cycle 25 and he stated that an extended minimum would not cause cooling:

That article was to show NCAR’s Mausumi Dikpati and NASA’s David Hathaway predictions for cycle 24. If you want to see Hathaway’s prediction for cycle #25 check here:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2..._longrange.htm

Note Hathaway’s comment in the 6th paragraph:

"The slowdown we see now means that Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries," says Hathaway.

interviewer: I KNOW THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE WONDERING NOW IF THE SUN CONTINUES WITHOUT SUNSPOTS, WILL IT GET COOLER ON EARTH?

Hathaway: It wouldn’t cause cooling, it just might decrease the rate at which the Earth is heating.

Yes that makes all the sense in the world. He's saying the sun acts as a furnace not an air conditioning unit. But if I turn my furnace back in the winter I bet my house will get cooler! My furnace isn’t cooling the house; it just can’t warm it up as much. Therefore my house will get cooler.
Also he is talking about Cycle 24 not Cycle 25. If Cycle 25 has very few or no sunspots we will be in an extended Minimum similar to the Maunder Minimum. And like I said there is very little data linked to temperature, only the accounts of the Maunder Minimum and the reference to it as The Little Ice Age. Will it get cooler? The small amount of data suggests yes it will. And like I said – we will know within 10 or 12 years.

Originally Posted by orionjim
if co2 forcing is real

Provide any evidence you have that it isn't real.

Easy; read the 2001 IPCC report. They say: "it is very likely that man made co2 causes warming"; and they go on to say that "Very Likely" means greater than 90 percent probability of occurrence". That means that there is up to a 10 percent chance that it doesn't cause warming (or not real).

But you know very little about the greenhouse effect as evidenced by the following hogwash...

You are right about that, but I do think it is important and respect the fact that we as humans need to reduce the co2 we pump into the atmosphere.

But you need to remember that this thread is about solar cycles, not climate change. There was not a portion in your post regarding solar cycles and while I responded to your questions this time I refuse to be drug into an argument on climate.

Jim

[flynjack1]

Orionjim,
Thanks for the links. As a daily viewer of Spaceweather.com its been a little boring seeing the sun so blank. Of course the site does provide great pics of atmospheric phenomenon, some that I get to see frequently as a pilot. Back on topic, my understanding is that at the begining of a new solar cycle sunspots of new and old polarities may occurr, how is the starting point then actually defined, especially with such low activity? In other words, are we solidly in cycle 24 or the extended end of 23?

[orionjim]

Orionjim,
Thanks for the links. As a daily viewer of Spaceweather.com its been a little boring seeing the sun so blank. Of course the site does provide great pics of atmospheric phenomenon, some that I get to see frequently as a pilot.
[…]

A site that you might like is http://www.solarcycle24.com
Also keep an eye on the Lasco C2 and C3 images and videos. These indirectly measure our solar systems “current sheet”. If you google “current sheet” +”pete riley” you will find links that explain what you are looking at. This current sheet is the largest thing in our solar system and flows out from the sun encompassing all of the planets. Pete is the main “Current Sheet” person.

[...]
Back on topic, my understanding is that at the begining of a new solar cycle sunspots of new and old polarities may occurr, how is the starting point then actually defined, especially with such low activity? In other words, are we solidly in cycle 24 or the extended end of 23?

To understand how they can tell the start of a new solar cycle you need to understand Hales Polarity Law. This can be seen on this page: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/haleslaw.jpg

The starting point of a new cycle is when a switch in polarity of the leading spots swap position.

There can be an overlap of several months to a year. But once the sunspots begin to ramp up you can safely say we are into the new cycle.
Also you may find this page interesting; it explains what we don’t know about the Solar Dynamo:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/dynamo.shtml

Also if you google Ulysses mission you will see the knowledge we’ve gained about the sun in the past 18 years; it is truly astounding.

The most exciting thing happening is in the next few years man may begin to really understand how the sun works. For that to happen the sun will need to go into an extended minimum and from the looks of things it will be during cycle 24 or cycle 25.

Jim

[Superluminal]

Just read that the solar wind pressure is at a record low since the beginning of the space age. Is there any way from fossil evidence, tree rings, or lunar samples that we can get a handle of what the solar wind may have been like in the past?

[orionjim]

I listened to the NASA broadcast that William mentioned here:

The solar wind is at a 50 year low. There is a planned news conference Tuesday, September 23rd to discuss the implications.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008...conference.txt

What amazed me was that Ulysses measured a 25 percent drop in the solar wind since the last solar cycle. I don’t think anybody would have thought that there would be that big of a drop in only one cycle.
The problem as I understand it is the galactic cosmic rays would increase because of the reduced solar wind; however the earth is protected by its magnetosphere. I wouldn’t even begin to guess what proxy data someone would use to detect long term changes in the solar wind. But a 25 percent change in wind in 11 years is totally mind boggling. I wonder what the long term changes would be?

Jim

[William]

As noted in this comment http://www.bautforum.com/astronomy/6...ml#post1309015 , data in a paper by Livingston and Penn shows the magnetic field strength of individual sunspots has been linearly decaying at 77 gauss per year. Specifically what is causing the reduction in magnetic field strength of individual sunspots is not known.

This is a link to the press release from the NASA September 23, 2008 teleconference conference that discussed Ulysses space craft data that indicates the solar wind has dropped to a 50 year low.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-178

"The sun's million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy," said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio , Texas . "Ulysses data indicate the solar wind's global pressure is the lowest we have seen since the beginning of the space age."

This border, called the heliopause, is a bubble-shaped boundary surrounding our solar system where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the wind of other stars. The region around the heliopause also acts as a shield for our solar system, warding off a significant portion of the cosmic rays outside the galaxy.

"Galactic cosmic rays carry with them radiation from other parts of our galaxy," said Ed Smith, NASA's Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength. If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system."

"The sun cycles between periods of great activity and lesser activity," Smith said. "Right now, we are in a period of minimal activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated."

[flynjack1]

I wonder what the net effect could be from a decreasing earth magnetic field simultaneously with the decreased protection from the solar wind? As I understand it and I need to recheck sources but the earths field has been decreasing. Earths field changes over much longer periods of time, but we are geologicaly speaking overdue for a reversal. The simulations indicate that Earths field drops to very low values prior to a swap. I hope Im not flying in the clouds that day.

[flynjack1]

Here's a quote from a quick google search:

Even scarier: The Earth's magnetic field has weakened by ten percent over the last 160 years. Does that mean we're due for a flip? Dan Lathrop, a geophysicist at University of Maryland, will try to find out when he spins up his mega steel ball and recreates (on a small scale) the magnetic conditions on Earth.

No one has a solid theory for the Earths magnetic flips, but one has to wonder if there are similarities to the mechanisms behind solar and Earth fields.

[George]

This is a link to the press release from the NASA September 23, 2008 teleconference conference that discussed Ulysses space craft data that indicates the solar wind has dropped to a 50 year low.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-178

"With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength. If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system."

This seems a little off. If the solar wind is at an all-time low, then the heliopause would also now be at its closest distance to us (~ 100AU), right? [At 1 million mph, it only takes one year to reach 100AU.]

As the Sun begins to crank-up, isn't it likely the heliopause distance will increase instead of decrease in the near future?

Further, I assume that the heliopause distance would only drop to about 70 AU if the solar wind is reduced by another 50% (inverse sq. law).

[megrfl]

Thank ya. Just created a short cut to solarcycle24. Very cool.

[flynjack1]

When looking at the old records of sunspots I began wondering how they were recorded and to what resolution they were cabable of seeing spots. Would the smaller short lived spots seen today have been recorded then? What methods were used back in the 1600's-1700's. I would assume they projected the images, but with what resolution? What if any adjustments have been made to account for any differences in the technology?

[George]

Well....once upon a time....and a good while after Galileo argued that the spots seen were actual on the Sun and not transits of planets...

Heinrich Schwabe announced that the sunspot cycle had a period of about 10 years. Along came Rudolf Wolf (Swiss astronomer) and found a more acurate value of 11.2 years. In an effort to start quantifying sunspot activity, in 1848 he introduced the sunspot equation -- the Wolf relative sunspot number, R:

R = k(10g + f)

f is the total number of visible sunspots.
g is the total number of groups of sunspots.
k is the personnel reduction coefficient.

At the Zurich observatory, Wolf used an 80mm refractor (1100mm focal length) with 64 magnification for his observations and used k =1.

The counting method changed in 1882 and the k value was changed to k = 0.6 allowing it to convert to the old scale. This k value has been used ever since.

Wolf also sought an obtained international collaboration in filling in the sunspot record gaps that took this estimated data back to 1749 (some show 1745).

Other sunspot number systems exist that are used for various purposes, as I understand.

[William]

The following is more detailed concerning the recent change in the sun. The solar wind has become 13% cooler, 20% less dense, and its speed has dropped by 3%. This is a long term change that started in the mid 1990’s.

As a result of the reduction in the solar wind cosmic rays have increased by about 20%.

Also interesting is the solar large scale magnetic field has dropped by 30%.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...htm?list826300

Curiously, the speed of the million mph solar wind hasn't decreased much—only 3%. The change in pressure comes mainly from reductions in temperature and density. The solar wind is 13% cooler and 20% less dense.

"What we're seeing is a long term trend, a steady decrease in pressure that began sometime in the mid-1990s," explains Arik Posner, NASA's Ulysses Program Scientist in Washington DC.

"The solar wind isn't inflating the heliosphere as much as it used to," says McComas. "That means less shielding against cosmic rays."
In addition to weakened solar wind, "Ulysses also finds that the sun's underlying magnetic field has weakened by more than 30% since the mid-1990s," says Posner.

"This reduces natural shielding even more." Unpublished Ulysses cosmic ray data show that, indeed, high energy (GeV) electrons, a minor but telltale component of cosmic rays around Earth, have jumped in number by about 20%.

In reply to George's comment:

As the Sun begins to crank-up, isn't it likely the heliopause distance will increase instead of decrease in the near future?

Further, I assume that the heliopause distance would only drop to about 70 AU if the solar wind is reduced by another 50% (inverse sq. law).

It is not clear the solar magnetic cycle will restart, at least in the near future. The Maunder minimum lasted for around 70 years. For 30 years of the 70 year low cycle Maunder minimum period, there were only 50 sunspots observed as opposed to the typical 40,000 to 50,000 sunspots.

In reply to Superluminal's comment. The satellite solar wind data starts from the mid 1960's, which is the limit of direct measurement. There cosmogenic produced isotopes that can be analyzed to determine changes in the solar heliosphere. Studies of the cosmogenic isotopes show there has been in the past been semi-periodic sudden reduction in the magnetic effectiveness of the solar heliosphere. There is correlation in time of past sudden planetary cooling with the increase in cosmogenic isotopes.

An increase or decrease in the magnetic effectiveness of the solar wind cause an decrease or increase in GCR. The high galactic cosmic rays (mostly protons) creates cosmogenic isotopes.

Comment:
The increase in cosmic rays will in accordance with the GCR ion cloud nuclide hypothesis result in an increase in planetary cloud. For this case that did not happen due to the electroscavening mechanism.

Starting in the mid-1990’s there were strong solar wind bursts produced by coronal holes that moved down to the solar equator. The solar wind bursts are hypothesized to create a space charge in the earth’s ionosphere which creates a charge differential that removes cloud forming ions by a process is that is called electroscavenging.

Palle’s satellite data and analysis and Palle’s earthshine data and analysis shows there was a reduction in planetary cloud cover at the latitudes where the electroscavenging mechanism is strongest from the period 1994 to 2002.

The solar coronal holes are now gradually starting to dissipate. If the GCR/cloud hypothesis is correct, there should now be an increase in planetary cloud cover.

[orionjim]

When looking at the old records of sunspots I began wondering how they were recorded and to what resolution they were cabable of seeing spots. Would the smaller short lived spots seen today have been recorded then? What methods were used back in the 1600's-1700's. I would assume they projected the images, but with what resolution?[...]

It was Antonio Castelli, working with Galileo, who developed the method of projecting the Sun's image through the telescope onto paper then tracing the spots, a technique that made it possible to study the Sun in detail even when it was high in the sky.
If you look at the images recorded you will see they don’t lack in detail.
See:
http://www.orbit.zkm.de/?q=node/194
http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/sunspots.html

[…]
What if any adjustments have been made to account for any differences in the technology?

I read somewhere that they set up a standard on size (I don’t remember if duration was included) so the recorded sunspots of today would correlate with the ones recorded starting in Zurich Observatory starting in 1749. These recorded sunspots in Zurich became the standard with cycle 0 actually starting half way through the cycle. The cycles weren’t numbered until 1843 when Samuel Heinrich Schwabe noticed the appearance of the cycles.

Jim

[dmr81]

That article was to show NCAR’s Mausumi Dikpati and NASA’s David Hathaway predictions for cycle 24. If you want to see Hathaway’s prediction for cycle #25 check here:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2..._longrange.htm

That article does not support your claim that he predicted "cycle #25 will be off the charts to the low side, the start of a minimum".

It also does not support your claim that "he believes there will be a cooling".

If you have anything to substantiate those claims, please provide it.

Easy; read the 2001 IPCC report. They say: "it is very likely that man made co2 causes warming"; and they go on to say that "Very Likely" means greater than 90 percent probability of occurrence". That means that there is up to a 10 percent chance that it doesn't cause warming (or not real).

More hogwash. The current IPCC report was published in 2007, and neither it nor the 2001 report contains the quote you have posted.

Here is what the current report says:

The combined radiative forcing due to increases in CO2, CH4 and N2O is +2.3 [+2.1 to +2.5] W/m2, and its rate of increase during the industrial era is very likely to have been unprecedented in more than 10,000 years

[William]

In reply to dmr81's comment: The GCR hypothesis is a wildly ATM idea. The proposed mechanism has several problems ( http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...ys-for-a-spin/ ) and it is falsified by the real world data, which shows no correlation http://www.skepticalscience.com/cosm...al-warming.htm .

Dmr81, Those people who post at the sites you provided a link to appear to not understand the solar modulation of cloud mechanisms (note there are two solar cloud modulation mechanisms: http://www.bautforum.com/astronomy/6...ml#post1152143 ) and appear to have not seen the data that supports the solar modulation of clouds. Planetary cloud cover follows GCR changes with a 99.5% confidence level if the second solar cloud modulation is taken into account post-1994.

Is it possible Palle, Svensmark, Marsh, Tinsley, Yu, and Shiva are incorrect? Yes. But they have data and analysis in published papers to support their assertions. Mechanisms that are supported by data and analysis in published papers are not ATM. I have investigated this subject in some detail. (Paleoclimatic data. Cosmogenic isotope data that correlates with past rapid planetary temperature changes. Earth Orbital Insolation Changes. Competing theories as to what causes Ice Ages. Competing theories as to what has caused past rapid planetary temperatures changes. And so on.) Everything I have found supports the solar modulation of cloud mechanism.

As I have stated, data and analysis indicates solar wind bursts are removing cloud forming ions via the electroscavenging process. (The blue spikes in the solar flux/planetary index A. http://www.dxlc.com/solar/ ) As noted in my last comment GCR has increased by 20% the solar wind pressure has decreased by 20%. When the solar wind bursts cease there will, if the GCR cloud modulation mechanism is real, be a step increase in planetary cloud cover. (i.e. It will be possible over the next year or so to determine which hypothesis is correct.)

http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1264.pdf

The possible connection between ionization in the atmosphere by cosmic rays and low level clouds by E. Palle´ et al.

Some authors have suggested that the new (post-1994) ISCCP data may have a calibration error (Marsh and Svensmark, 2003), however, no such error has been reported by the ISCCP team so far. Another explanation may be that other climatic parameters are acting on cloudiness in addition to atmospheric ionization. (my comment: Second solar modulation of cloud mechanism.) A clear decreasing trend over approximately the past two decades is seen in both the total cloud amount reported by ISCCP (not shown), and the low cloud data (Figs. 2 and 3). A simple linear fit to the yearly low cloud data (Fig. 2) has a slope -0:065%/yr. If this trend is subtracted from the low cloud data the correlation coefficient rises from 0.49 to 0.75, significant at the 99.5% level.

The second process, considered by Tinsley and Yu (2003), namely electroscavenging, depends on the action of the global electrical circuit (see review by Rycroft et al. (2000)). The transport of charge by rapidly rising convective currents in the tropics and over continental land masses leads to a approx. 200 kV positive charge of the ionosphere compared to Earth. This large voltage difference, in turn, necessitates a return current which must pass through the regions of the atmosphere where clouds are formed.

They find that the electroscavenging process is likely to be more important over oceanic rather than continental regions and that it leads to a positive correlation between clouds and cosmic rays at higher latitudes and a negative correlation at low latitudes. Thus the electroscavenging process can explain several of the most striking features of Fig. 5, namely: (1) the peak in significant positive correlations at latitudes around 50 degrees North and South (Fig. 5a);

The Earthshine Project: update on photometric and spectroscopic measurements by E. Palle et al.

http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1266.pdf

Our observations of the earthshine take the ratio of the earthshine to moonshine, so they are insensitive variations of the solar irradiance. The 5 +/- 2% change in our observed reflectance translates to … Solar and terrestrial changes are in phase and contribute to a greater power going into the climate system at activity maximum. ...

...However, the effect of the albedo is more than an order of magnitude greater. Our simulations suggest a surface average forcing at the top of the atmosphere, coming only from changes in the albedo from 1994/1995 to 1999/2001, of 2.7 +/-1.4 W/m2 (Palle et al., 2003), while observations give 7.5 +/- 2.4 W/m2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 1995) argues for a comparably sized 2.4 W/m2 increase in forcing, which is attributed to greenhouse gas forcing since 1850.

[William]

In reply to dmr81's comment:

That article does not support your claim that he predicted "cycle #25 will be off the charts to the low side, the start of a minimum".

It also does not support your claim that "he believes there will be a cooling".

If you have anything to substantiate those claims, please provide it.

Hi dmr81,

First a comment to everyone who is posting to this thread. Let’s move the discussion of the science of GHG, recent planetary temperature changes, and future planetary temperature changes, to the science section of this forum. GHG science is an interesting subject that deserves its own thread.

The subject of this thread is the solar cycle and solar cycle 24. There appears based on the data to be a significant solar change underway.

It is suggested that we wait for more actual solar data concerning solar cycle 24 rather than just post speculations as to whether cycle 24 will or will not be a Maunder minimum. There will be solar data in the next few months to discuss and I would expect there will be papers published that discuss what is happening.

As noted early in this thread there were three papers published in the last 10 years that predicted an imminent Dalton or Maunder solar magnetic cycle minimum.

1) One paper made their prediction based on the analysis of current solar data, using a physical based solar model.
2) A second paper made their prediction of an imminent solar magnetic cycle minimum, based on the analysis of the paleo record of cosmogenic isotope changes which show a cyclic pattern of solar magnetic minimums.
3) A third paper analyzed the periodicity of the sun’s motion about its barycentre which also correlates with past solar magnetic cycle minimums.

The solar magnetic cycle minimum appear to occur when there is a change in direction of the sun, as it moves about its barycentre. The solar barycentre change in direction is cyclic as the sun’s motion is controlled by the relative positions of the large planets and the sun’s current position and velocity.

The following is the 2004 paper that predicts the sun is heading towards a Maunder minimum based on an analysis of the paleo record of solar activity.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004ApJ...605L..81B


This is the 2003 paper that predicts a solar cycle minimum based on a physical model.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003SPD....34.0603S

This is the 1987 Solar barycentre motion paper: Prolonged minima and the 179-yr cycle of the solar inertial motion by R.Fairbridge and J. Shirley

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w57236105034h657/

Comment:
The solar barycentre motion theory hypothesizes that specific motions of the sun about its barycentre, interrupts the formation of the magnetic ropes at the solar tacholine (Tacholine is the interface to solar radiative zone and convection zone.) With the barycentre hypothesis a Maunder minimum is an interruption to the solar magnetic cycle as opposed to a slow down.)

[dmr81]

note there are two solar cloud modulation mechanisms

It doesn't matter what mechanism you are proposing, the alleged effect is not visible in the temperature data. The only signal visible related to solar activity is the small amount that would be expected from the variation in TSI.

Mechanisms that are supported by data and analysis in published papers are not ATM.

There is nothing stopping ATM proponents having their papers published. They would only cease to be ATM if they were accepted by mainstream opinion in the relevant field. If you wish to assert that your cosmic ray idea is not ATM, provide a citation from the IPCC endorsing it.

I have investigated this subject in some detail. Everything I have found supports the solar modulation of cloud mechanism.

No, you have simply clung desperately to your ATM idea despite all evidence to the contrary, even in the papers you are citing here...

http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1264.pdf

Here's what that paper actually says:

In previous sections, it has been shown how the evidence for a connection between GCR and low clouds is inconclusive; though some aspects of our study are encouraging, others are basically negative.

[dmr81]

The following is the 2004 paper that predicts the sun is heading towards a Maunder minimum based on an analysis of the paleo record of solar activity.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004ApJ...605L..81B


This is the 2003 paper that predicts a solar cycle minimum based on a physical model.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003SPD....34.0603S

This is the 1987 Solar barycentre motion paper: Prolonged minima and the 179-yr cycle of the solar inertial motion by R.Fairbridge and J. Shirley

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w57236105034h657/

orionjim's claims, for which I asked for supporting evidence, were specifically about Dr Hathaway. I may have a look later at the papers you've linked to if I get time.

I'm sure you were listening to the conference call on Tuesday so you will know that the NASA scientists on that call were not willing to make a prediction for cycle 24, let alone further in the future.

Furthermore, whilst the current conditions are interesting for them because they have not occurred in the short time that satellites have been available, they stated that it is not unusual in the context of the last 200 years. I'm not aware of any extended minimum in that time period.

[William]

In reply to dmr81's comment:I'm sure you were listening to the conference call on Tuesday so you will know that the NASA scientists on that call were not willing to make a prediction for cycle 24, let alone further in the future.

This paper by Livingston and Penn shows the magnetic field strength of all sun spots formed at particular moment in time on the sun, has been decreasing at 77 gauss per year. The sunspots which have formed recently are being torn apart by motion in the solar convection zone as they rise up from the tachocline through the solar convection zone. The few sunspots that do survive the journey through the solar convection zone are soon torn apart by motion of the plasma on the sun's surface.

http://www.bautforum.com/astronomy/6...ml#post1308914

The current set of solar observations is not expected and indicates the solar cycle has been interrupted. The solar conveyor speeds on the surface of the sun have dropped by a factor of three. The solar wind pressure has dropped by 20%. There were sudden x-ray emissions at the end of solar cycle 23 which is not expected if the solar cycle was progressing normally.

Hathway's solar prediction method does not work for a solar cycle interruption. His method uses the observations at the end of the last solar cycle to predicted the next solar cycle.

[orionjim]

Originally Posted by orionjim
Easy; read the 2001 IPCC report. They say: "it is very likely that man made co2 causes warming"; and they go on to say that "Very Likely" means greater than 90 percent probability of occurrence". That means that there is up to a 10 percent chance that it doesn't cause warming (or not real).

More hogwash. The current IPCC report was published in 2007, and neither it nor the 2001 report contains the quote you have posted.

Here is what the current report says:

The combined radiative forcing due to increases in CO2, CH4 and N2O is +2.3 [+2.1 to +2.5] W/m2, and its rate of increase during the industrial era is very likely to have been unprecedented in more than 10,000 years

Congratulations, you just proved I was correct in what I stated from memory.

While you scanned the 2007 IPCC report looking for something to match your beliefs you totally missed what we were talking about; and that was UNCERTAINTY. Go back to your link to the 2007 IPCC report and bring up the Full Report. Then go to page 5 of the .PDF file (this is page 27 of the report). The header says Treatment of Uncertainty. Go to paragraph 5 and your will see this:

Where uncertainty in specific outcomes is assessed using expert judgment and statistical analysis of a body of evidence (e.g. observations or model results), then the following likelihood ranges are used to express the assessed probability of occurrence: virtually certain >99%; extremely likely >95%; very likely >90%; likely >66%; more likely than not > 50%; about as likely as not 33% to 66%; unlikely <33%; very unlikely <10%; extremely unlikely <5%; exceptionally unlikely <1%.

Now go back and read the portion of the sentence you posted and you will see the term “very likely”, this means they have up to a 10% level of uncertainty, and if I remember right you just called this HOGWASH!

You should really read the total report rather than just scanning it looking for things that support you personal ideas. Remember this report is a consensus of the scientists that put it together, and when it comes to “Certainty” they are really not all that certain.

Oh and while you’re at it, you should also read the rules about posting on this site. I find your comments very rude.

[dmr81]

Congratulations, you just proved I was correct in what I stated from memory.

No, you are totally misrepresenting the meaning.

The combined radiative forcing due to increases in CO2, CH4 and N2O is +2.3 [+2.1 to +2.5] W/m2, and its rate of increase during the industrial era is very likely to have been unprecedented in more than 10,000 years

The "very likely" clearly applies only to whether the rate of increase is "unprecedented in more than 10,000 years".

when it comes to “Certainty” they are really not all that certain.

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidere...-even-sure.php

Oh and while you’re at it, you should also read the rules about posting on this site. I find your comments very rude.

You are the one who is being rude. You have lied about Dr Hathaway's views and you have lied about what the IPCC say.

If you think my posts are inappropriate, you should inform a moderator rather than whining about it on the thread, as you would know if you had read the rules yourself.

[orionjim]

if co2 forcing is real

Provide any evidence you have that it isn't real.

I did that with the IPCC definition of “Very Likely”; 10 years, 100 years or 10 million years doesn’t change the fact their definition of uncertainty is about 10%. If it was higher they would have used either "virtually certain >99%"; or "extremely likely >95%" and they didn’t do that.

The thing to remember is there was uncertainty in what they said and there was my uncertainty in my statement. I am a retired statistician, I know there is no such thing as 100% certainty; therefore I used the word "if" in was I said.


As far as Hathaways statement; I read an interview on EarthFiles and posted a link here:

[…]
I found an interview on earthfiles.com with Dr. David Hathaway, a NASA solar expert whose studies were referenced by Casey. He talks about solar cycle 24 and solar cycle 25 and the predictions made by Casey. I was going to copy and paste parts of the interview on this post but the earthfiles site makes it clear that it would be a copyright violation, so here’s the link:
http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?I...tegory=Science

I was surprised that Dr. Hathaway talked about the cycles’ potential impact on the weather, but given that he did I wasn’t surprised by what he said.
[…]

When I posted the link there was no charge to read the article. Unfortunately a person needs to subscribe to read archived articles and if you click on the link you will see it is now archived.

Like I said in the post, I was surprised he made a comment about cooling. The reason being: the lack of data to tie an extended minimum to cooling. I believe it does, he said he thought it would cool; but the data is pretty weak. I think a person’s belief comes from how they believe the sun or more specific how the solar dynamo works. And nobody knows.

You made a comment to William about all the scientists on the NASA Ulysses conference were not willing to comment on future weather predictions and that was true. The reason I think is because they are all solar scientists and they shouldn’t be talking about weather predictions. I commend all of them for not saying anything. The reason is they would only be giving you their personal beliefs and that was not what the conference about.

[dmr81]

I did that with the IPCC definition of “Very Likely”; 10 years, 100 years or 10 million years doesn’t change the fact their definition of uncertainty is about 10%. If it was higher they would have used either "virtually certain >99%"; or "extremely likely >95%" and they didn’t do that.

As I have already demonstrated, the report did not, as you claimed, express any uncertainty about the fact that there is a climate forcing from CO2.

As far as Hathaways statement; I read an interview on EarthFiles and posted a link here:

And as I showed, your claim that he was predicting cooling was absolutely false.

Here it is again:

interviewer: I KNOW THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE WONDERING NOW IF THE SUN CONTINUES WITHOUT SUNSPOTS, WILL IT GET COOLER ON EARTH?

Hathaway: It wouldn’t cause cooling, it just might decrease the rate at which the Earth is heating.

I have also posted a link to the opinion of an expert in climate science who also says it would not cause cooling even if your ATM idea was correct and we did go into an extended minimum.

When I posted the link there was no charge to read the article. Unfortunately a person needs to subscribe to read archived articles and if you click on the link you will see it is now archived.

No it is not.
http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?I...tegory=Science

Like I said in the post, I was surprised he made a comment about cooling. The reason being: the lack of data to tie an extended minimum to cooling. I believe it does, he said he thought it would cool;

No he did not, as I have demonstrated.

[orionjim]

dmr81,

Incredible! Simply Incredible...

[flynjack1]

Orionjim, I'm with you. A 10 percent uncertainty is better odds than you'll get in Vegas on many games. I also agree that Dsrm81's arguments are rudely presented. Some folks just cant maintain objective reasoning in the face of conflicting information.

[William]

The Solar specialist Livingston is still gathering sunspot magnetic field data for his paper. (See link below for a copy of his paper.)

The magnetic field strength of the September, 2008 very, short lived sunspot 'specks' are following the trend line of his graph.

This again is a copy of the graph from Livingston and Penn's paper.



http://www.bautforum.com/astronomy/6...ml#post1309015

[beethovenspiano]

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2..._blankyear.htm

Sept. 30, 2008: Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the "blankest year" of the Space Age.

As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1954, three years before the launch of Sputnik, when the sun was blank 241 times.

[DC51]

Hello'
I've been reading about this for the last month or so. I've been on the fence on the global warming theory, but after a summer of rain wetter than the average winter, I was beginning to wonder. Now we have had snow before Halloween. I'm in Ireland and am 51 years old, I've never seen that before. Hard frost ok, particularly 20+ years ago. Is this far too early, or could the extra cloud cover theory be having an effect?

[dmr81]

Now we have had snow before Halloween. I'm in Ireland and am 51 years old, I've never seen that before. Hard frost ok, particularly 20+ years ago. Is this far too early, or could the extra cloud cover theory be having an effect?

You can't tell anything about global climate change from short term local weather. And there's no mystery about the cause of this weather...

"This is the first real taste of winter,'' Barry Gromett from the Met Office said. "Yesterday the cold came from straight northerly winds blowing down from the Arctic and the winds are certainly polar in origin.

"The extra moisture from the north Atlantic will increase the frequency of snow showers.''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/oct/28/weather