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Post by dontgetoutmuch on Aug 27, 2013 14:11:56 GMT
The TSI is an interesting metric. The problem is how to explain large terrestrial changes with variations of less than a tenth of a percent. My view is that different components of the sun's spectrum drives different part the earth's. It is becoming clear that the solar cycle is significant, but there is no obvious and direct causal relationship. Everyone is looking for direct and essentially linear and modellable changes. But what about threshholds in chaotic systems? The climate does show large swings, over geological time. That is a signature of a chaotic system. If there are several disparate drivers of the climate ( external solar cycles, TSI, wind, magnetic field, cosmic rays, etc, and internal cloud cover, oceanic currents, volcanic activity ) then it is hardly surprising that it is difficult to model. When a chaotic system changes state, from one quasi-stable state to another, it will often does so with little or no warning. To that end, the temperature of the high Arctic may be showing signs of a switch. Danish Centre for Ocean and IceView AttachmentThe temperature staibilty of the high Arctic is remarkable. It tends to reach zero C within a day or two every year, and fall below zero with the same regularity. Except things seem ro be changing since 2004. Slight wobbles appeared, late zero crossing and slightly below average for almost all of the time. This year is significanlty different. The rise about zero was two weeks late, and most of the time it was 1 or more degrees below average. The normal variation is 0.1 C. Now is falling away below zero at least a week early, and at a rather sharp rate. The winters in Northenn Europe have been decidedly chilly, especially 2010. It looks to me as though the Mander minimum is showing the first signs. The cimate is about to switch to another state, with lower Arctic temperatures. Don't let anyone tell you the Arctic temperatures are rising! George, IMHO the main driver of temperatures in the high Arctic is the phenomenon called the Polar Vortex. The text below was lifted from the WUWT Polar Vortex Reference Page... A polar vortex is a persistent, large-scale cyclone located near one or both of a planet’s geographical poles.” “The vortex is most powerful in the hemisphere’s winter, when the temperature gradient is steepest, and diminishes or can disappear in the summer. The Antarctic polar vortex is more pronounced and persistent than the Arctic one; this is because the distribution of land masses at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere gives rise to Rossby waves which contribute to the breakdown of the vortex, whereas in the southern hemisphere the vortex remains less disturbed. The breakdown of the polar vortex is an extreme event known as a Sudden stratospheric warming, here the vortex completely breaks down and an associated warming of 30-50 degrees Celsius over a few days can occur. The Arctic vortex is elongated in shape, with two centres, one roughly over Baffin Island in Canada and the other over northeast Siberia. In rare events, the vortex can push further south as a result of axis interruption.
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Post by cuttydyer on Sept 3, 2013 8:12:07 GMT
mnn reports: Scientists baffled to discover that Venus’ spin is slowing down Venus with its “retrograde” rotation (only planet in our solar system that spins clockwise) appears to be slowing down; measurements, if correct, would seem to indicate that Venus’ rotation has slowed by 6.5 minutes — a dramatic decrease on a planetary level — compared to when it was last measured just 16 years ago. This leaves a rather large question: What could possibly be causing a planet’s spin to decelerate so rapidly? Since Venus is also Earth’s closest neighbor, should we be worried? “It is difficult to find a mechanism that will cause the average rotation rate to change this much in only 16 years,” said Venus Express project scientist Håkan Svedhem. “The origin of this could lay in the solar cycle or in long-term weather patterns that modify the atmospheric dynamics. But this puzzle is not yet solved.” Link: www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/scientists-baffled-to-discover-that-venus-spin-is-slowing-down-0____________________________________________________________ Why does Venus rotate backwards from the other planets? - courtesy of the "astronomycafe" Link: www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q50.htmlThe rotation period of Venus cannot be decided through telescopic observations of its surface markings because its featureless thick atmosphere makes this impossible. In the 1960's, radar pulses were bounced off of Venus while at its closest distance to the Earth, and it was discovered that its rotation period, its day, was 243.09 +/- 0.18 earth days long, but it rotated on its axis in a backwards or retrograde sense from the other planets. If you were to look down at the plane of the solar system from its 'north pole' you would see the planets orbiting the Sun counter clockwise, and rotating on their axis counterclockwise. Except for Venus. Venus would be rotating clockwise as it orbited the Sun counterclockwise. Venus is not alone. The axis of Uranus is inclined so far towards the plane of the solar system that it almost rolls on its side as it orbits the Sun. What accounts for the extreme inclinations of the rotation axis of Venus and Uranus? For years it was thought that in the case of Venus that the Earth was the culprit. It is a curious fact that as Venus rotates three times on its axis in 729.27 days, the Earth goes twice around the Sun ( 728.50 days) This has suggested to many dynamicists that Earth and Venus are locked into a 3:2 tidal resonance. There are many bodies in the solar system that seem to be locked into various kinds of spin-orbit resonances, especially families of asteroids with the planet Jupiter. Mercury also seems to be gravitationally locked into some kind of resonance with the Sun since its day (58.646 days) and its year ( 87.969 days) are also in the proportion of 3:2. Forces acting on spinning bodies result in some peculiar acrobatics. For instance, if you take a spinning top and give it a push, it will begin to wobble in a manner called precession. The axis of the Earth makes a 26,000 year wobble with an amplitude of tens of degrees. This is all due to the influence of the Moon's tidal attraction of the Earth. In the case of Venus, however, the gentle gravitational forces it may receive over billions of years to place it in a 3:2 resonance with the Earth don't seem to be strong enough to tip the entire planet over to make its rotation retrograde. The best, current, ideas still favor some dramatic event that occurred while Venus ( and Uranus for that matter) were being formed. It is known from the cratering evidence we see on a variety of planetary surfaces, that soon after the planets were formed, there were still some might large mini-planets orbiting the Sun. One of these may have collided with the Earth, dredging up material that later solidified into our Moon. The satellites of the outer planets are probably representitives of this ancient population of bodies. Venus may have experienced an encounter with one of these large bodies in which, unlike for the Earth, the material didn't form a separate moon, but was absorbed into the body of Venus. In addition to mass and kinetic energy, this body would also have contributed angular momentum. The result is that the new spin direction and speed for Venus was seriously altered from its initial state which could have been very Earth-like. Today, the result of that last, ancient collision is Venus with a retrograde rotation. This theory may also apply to Uranus provided that the collision happened before the 15 satellites themselves were captured or formed. Their orbital planes look very uniform and show no evidence for a dramatic gravitational event such as a collision. It may be, too, that the Uranian collision event dredged up matter and flung it into orbit around Uranus, and out of this were formed the larger moons of Uranus. This is, clearly, a complicated and not well understood phenomenon. The facts for Venus point towards a collision event to put its axis and rotation in the retrograde sense. The tidal action of the Earth on Venus, acting steadily over billions of years, then established the 3:2 spin-orbit resonance. Every 2 earth years, the exact same portion of the Venerian ( Cytherian) surface faces Earth. Could there be some sub- surface concentration of mass on this portion of Venus that the Earth can grab onto to create the tidal lock? Stay tuned!!!
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Post by cuttydyer on Sept 3, 2013 9:37:31 GMT
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Post by icefisher on Sept 3, 2013 16:29:37 GMT
mnn reports: Scientists baffled to discover that Venus’ spin is slowing down Why does Venus rotate backwards from the other planets? - courtesy of the "astronomycafe" Link: www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q50.htmlVenus with its “retrograde” rotation (only planet in our solar system that spins clockwise) appears to be slowing down; measurements, if correct, would seem to indicate that Venus’ rotation has slowed by 6.5 minutes — a dramatic decrease on a planetary level — compared to when it was last measured just 16 years ago. This leaves a rather large question: What could possibly be causing a planet’s spin to decelerate so rapidly? Since Venus is also Earth’s closest neighbor, should we be worried? The rotation period of Venus cannot be decided through telescopic observations of its surface markings because its featureless thick atmosphere makes this impossible. In the 1960's, radar pulses were bounced off of Venus while at its closest distance to the Earth, and it was discovered that its rotation period, its day, was 243.09 +/- 0.18 earth days long, but it rotated on its axis in a backwards or retrograde sense from the other planets. If you were to look down at the plane of the solar system from its 'north pole' you would see the planets orbiting the Sun counter clockwise, and rotating on their axis counterclockwise. Except for Venus. Venus would be rotating clockwise as it orbited the Sun counterclockwise. Venus is not alone. The axis of Uranus is inclined so far towards the plane of the solar system that it almost rolls on its side as it orbits the Sun. How do they know its slowing down? The subsequent article on Venus' spin direction suggests its rotation is once every 243.09 earth days +/- .18 .18 of an earth day is about 259 minutes.
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Post by magellan on Sept 3, 2013 17:20:06 GMT
That will never see the light of day at WUWT.....
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Post by cuttydyer on Sept 5, 2013 8:43:58 GMT
WUWT reports: "Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory of clouds and global warming looks to be confirmed" From a Technical University of Denmark press release comes what looks to be a significant confirmation of Svensmark’s theory of temperature modulation on Earth by cosmic ray interactions. The process is that when there are more cosmic rays, they help create more microscopic cloud nuclei, which in turn form more clouds, which reflect more solar radiation back into space, making Earth cooler than what it normally might be. Conversely, less cosmic rays mean less cloud cover and a warmer planet as indicated here. The sun’s magnetic field is said to deflect cosmic rays when its solar magnetic dynamo is more active, and right around the last solar max, we were at an 8000 year high, suggesting more deflected cosmic rays, and warmer temperatures. Now the sun has gone into a record slump, and there are predictions of cooler temperatures ahead Simulating what could happen in the atmosphere, the DTU’s SKY2 experiment shows molecular clusters (red dots) failing to grow enough to provide significant numbers of “cloud condensation nuclei” (CCN) of more than 50 nanometres in diameter. This is what existing theories predict. But when the air in the chamber is exposed to ionizing rays that simulate the effect of cosmic rays, the clusters (blue dots) grow much more vigorously to the sizes suitable for helping water droplets to form and make clouds. (A nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre.) Atmospheric chemists have assumed that when the clusters have gathered up the day’s yield, they stop growing, and only a small fraction can become large enough to be meteorologically relevant. Yet in the SKY2 experiment, with natural cosmic rays and gamma-rays keeping the air in the chamber ionized, no such interruption occurs. This result suggests that another chemical process seems to be supplying the extra molecules needed to keep the clusters growing. “The result boosts our theory that cosmic rays coming from the Galaxy are directly involved in the Earth’s weather and climate,” says Henrik Svensmark, lead author of the new report. “In experiments over many years, we have shown that ionizing rays help to form small molecular clusters. Critics have argued that the clusters cannot grow large enough to affect cloud formation significantly. But our current research, of which the reported SKY2 experiment forms just one part, contradicts their conventional view. Now we want to close in on the details of the unexpected chemistry occurring in the air, at the end of the long journey that brought the cosmic rays here from exploded stars.” Paper link: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51188502/PLA22068.pdfWUWT link: wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/04/svensmarks-cosmic-ray-theory-of-clouds-and-global-warming-looks-to-be-confirmed/#more-93048
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zaphod
Level 3 Rank
Posts: 210
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Post by zaphod on Sept 5, 2013 13:19:52 GMT
Nice find, Cutty.
It is of course UV and hard/soft x-rays that create the radio-reflective layers in the atmosphere. That is all about ionisation, so it is hardly surprising that particles relevant to weather are produced. What I cannot yet work out though is how they seperate the effect of truly cosmic radiation from solar which is much much stronger.
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Post by cuttydyer on Sept 10, 2013 7:27:55 GMT
All quiet on the solar front... Activity in the northern hemisphere is especially low: "Solar activity remains very low. The sole remaining visible sunspot (1838) is struggling to stay visible. The Earth facing side of the Sun is at risk of going spotless for the first time in over two years." Below is a reminder of NASA's 2006 prediction for the current solar cycle: ____________________________________________________________________"Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one." The article goes on to say: "Most compelling of all, believes Hathaway, is the work of Mausumi Dikpati and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. "They have combined observations of the sun’s 'Great Conveyor Belt' with a sophisticated computer model of the sun’s inner dynamo to produce a physics-based prediction of the next solar cycle." In short, it's going to be intense."Link: science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/21dec_cycle24/_________________________________________________________________________________
Well, it turned out that NCAR's "sophisticated computer model" was a dud; solar cycle 24 as of 1st September: Link: www.solen.info/solar/images/cycles23_24.png
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Post by karlox on Sept 10, 2013 8:24:27 GMT
I believe we are very lucky as to witness and live in such interesting times for science. Our Sun displaying a major "experiment" taking place right before our eyes. We should learn a lot from this in the coming years...
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Post by cuttydyer on Sept 10, 2013 8:45:25 GMT
I believe we are very lucky as to witness and live in such interesting times for science. Our Sun displaying a major "experiment" taking place right before our eyes. We should learn a lot from this in the coming years... I couldn't agree more; another interesting "60 year cycle" paper has just been published: Stratospheric Polar Vortex as a Possible Reason for Temporal Variations of Solar Activity and Galactic Cosmic Ray Effects on the Lower Atmosphere Circulation. S. VeretenenkoCorresponding author contact information, E-mail the corresponding author, M. Ogurtsov Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Politekhnicheskaya 26, 194021, St.Petersburg, Russia New paper relates natural 60 year climate cycle to the effects of solar activity and cosmic rays A paper published today in Advances in Space Research finds a possible reason why the effects of solar activity and galactic cosmic rays on the lower atmospheric circulation can vary over time, due to a 60-year natural cycle of the stratospheric polar vortex. According to the authors, "?60-year oscillations of the amplitude and sign of Solar Activity/Galactic Cosmic Ray effects on the troposphere pressure ...are closely related to the state of a cyclonic vortex forming in the polar stratosphere. The intensity of the vortex was found to reveal a roughly 60-year [cycle] affecting the evolution of the large-scale atmospheric circulation and the character of Solar Activity/Galactic Cosmic Ray effects." The paper is one of the first to connect the effects of solar activity and GCRs with the well-known 60-year climate cycle. Fig. 3. Distribution of the correlation coefficients R(GPH700, NM) between tropospheric pressure and GCR intensity (left) and their statistical significance (right) for the periods of a strong (a) and weak (b) polar vortex. Curves 1 and 2 indicate the climatic positions of Arctic fronts in January and July, respectively. Similarly, curves 3 and 4 indicate the climatic positions of polar fronts. The confidence levels are shown in grayscale: 0.9 (black areas), 0.95 (dark grey areas), 0.97 (grey areas), 0.98 (light grey areas) and 0.99 (white inner area). Fig. 4. a) Yearly values of the NAM/AO index (Li and Wang, 2003); b) the Fourier spectrum of the NAM/AO index; c) yearly values of sunspot numbers. Grey lines show the linear trends; thick solid (a) line shows the 6th order polynomial fit of the NAM/AO indices; dashed line (b) shows the 6th order polynomial fit of sunspot numbers in the maxima of the 11-year solar cycle. Fig. 6. The Fourier spectra of SLP (a) and temperature (b) anomalies in the Arctic region, the frequency of occurrence of the C-type meridional circulation (c) and correlation coefficients R(SLP,Rz) between SLP at high latitudes (60-85°N) and relative sunspot numbers (d). Confidence levels are calculated for a red noise with AR(1) coefficient =0.3 (a), 0.65 (b) and 0,4 (c). Paper link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117713005474Schtick link: hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/new-paper-relates-natural-60-year.html_________________________________________________________ Alan Cheetham's take on the 60 year cycle is worth a read: www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/SixtyYearCycle.htm
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Post by cuttydyer on Sept 20, 2013 9:25:01 GMT
Nir Shariv’s lecture at EIKE 2013 explains the solar and cosmic ray connection.Professor Nir Joseph Shaviv (Hebrew: ? ??, born July 6, 1972) is an Israeli?American physics professor, carrying out research in the fields of astrophysics and climate science. He is currently an associate professor at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Nir gave a lecture at EIKE (Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie [2]) January 2013. In the lecture at EIKE he flows through some of what is wrong with IPCC assertions and models, then drops in extraterrestrial, solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, showing some neat plots. Asserts that solar accounts for a major proportion of whatever temperature change has gone on and how IPCC omit critical factors. Models are over-sensitive. Video:
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Post by cuttydyer on Sept 23, 2013 8:13:23 GMT
New paper finds another amplification mechanism by which the Sun controls climate. A paper published today in Advances in Space Research finds small changes in solar wind speed may affect both the North Atlantic Oscillation [NAO] and the Arctic Oscillation [AO] on both short-term [day-to-day] and long-term [inter-annual] timescales. Both the NAO and AO in turn have major effects upon global climate. The authors propose these effects are related to "A connection via the global atmospheric electric circuit and cloud microphysical changes" [similar but not the same as the cloud seeding hypothesis of Svensmark et al]. The paper may demonstrate yet another amplification mechanism by which tiny changes in solar activity can be amplified to produce large effects upon climate. Fig. 2. Superposed epoch analyses of daily values of NAO (a) and (d), AO (b) and (e) and the SWS [solar wind speed] itself in km/s (c) and (f), with the key days being minima in the SWS in winters (Nov.–March). The low-volcanic eras (1967-1983, 1985-1993 and 1995-2011) are on the left (a)–(c) and the high volcanic eras (Nov. 1963-March 1966, Nov. 1983-March 1985, Nov.1993-Mar. 1995) are on the right (d)-(f). The solid lines are the mean of parameters of all the events and the dashed lines are the error of the mean value. Paper link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117713005802Schtick link: hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/new-paper-finds-another-amplification.html
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Post by magellan on Sept 26, 2013 2:02:56 GMT
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Post by AstroMet on Sept 28, 2013 23:25:57 GMT
That will never see the light of day at WUWT..... Most likely not in the short-term Magellan, but then again, it takes time for those stuck in their own ways to catch up the fact that the Earth is not a singular member of the solar system. the problem with many is that they fail to utilize all three of the things necessary to be able to function and forecast, which I use. It is called SAS: 1.) System 2.) Analysis 3.) Synthesis Most are using the wrong systems (which is why they are unable to forecast even monthly weather, and certainly not seasonal, or yearly weather and never long-range climate. Therefore, by using the wrong systems, they fail to be able to analyze properly. This is easily seen in the pure conjectures on climate and weather that is faulty, since opinions, ideology and personal sentiments are not science, nor is it forecasting. And three, there is simply no way they will be able to get to synthesis, since they fail to achieve the first two requirements. Those who cannot employ the SAS requirements will never - and I mean ever - be able to forecast. As Isaac Newton once said, that whole point of science is the ability to predict. So, until those who want to forecast are able to drop their egos, opinions, ideology and personal sentiments, all they will do is to opine endlessly, usually on petty matters, but they will never come any closer to the actual ability to be able to forecast the climate accurately.
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Post by nautonnier on Sept 29, 2013 1:51:03 GMT
That will never see the light of day at WUWT..... Most likely not in the short-term Magellan, but then again, it takes time for those stuck in their own ways to catch up the fact that the Earth is not a singular member of the solar system. the problem with many is that they fail to utilize all three of the things necessary to be able to function and forecast, which I use. It is called SAS: 1.) System 2.) Analysis 3.) Synthesis Most are using the wrong systems (which is why they are unable to forecast even monthly weather, and certainly not seasonal, or yearly weather and never long-range climate. Therefore, by using the wrong systems, they fail to be able to analyze properly. This is easily seen in the pure conjectures on climate and weather that is faulty, since opinions, ideology and personal sentiments are not science, nor is it forecasting. And three, there is simply no way they will be able to get to synthesis, since they fail to achieve the first two requirements. Those who cannot employ the SAS requirements will never - and I mean ever - be able to forecast. As Isaac Newton once said, that whole point of science is the ability to predict. So, until those who want to forecast are able to drop their egos, opinions, ideology and personal sentiments, all they will do is to opine endlessly, usually on petty matters, but they will never come any closer to the actual ability to be able to forecast the climate accurately. It always amazes me that astronomers will identify stars with planetary systems by detecting a doppler shift due to the star's 'wobble' caused by the star actually orbiting a barycenter not just spinning on its own axis -- yet those same astronomers will deny that the Sun has any wobble, no epitrrochoid motion, no change in AM. It's almost a Ptolemy like hangover - that the Sun is special not like those other downmarket stars that wobble. I have actually pointed out the journal papers where they describe finding extra-solar-system planets and said surely the same effect is seen in the Sun? Almost got banned from some blogs doing that.
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