Tag Archives: Solar

Earth’s thermosphere collapses – film at 11

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Layers of Earth's upper atmosphere. Credit: John Emmert/NRL.

Earth’s thermosphere collapses – film at 11: NASA releases a news report on how the thermosphere (the top 500K of Earth’s atmosphere) is affected by solar activity. This is Anthony Watts’ excuse to revive the hoary bogus claim that climate change is all driven by the sun and will swing back no matter what humans do. Also, NASA are a bunch of ‘Chicken Littles’, always worrying about things. Don’t ever listen to them!

Too bad these fluctuations (the “collapses” are the result of upper atmosphere cooling triggered by lower solar activity) don’t mirror anything that’s happening to Earth’s climate. If you want to get technical, the historical patterns suggest that last decade of declining solar activity should have been accompanied by minor global cooling, not record warming…

The paper that NASA’s summary is derived from is: Emmert, J. T., J. L. Lean, and J. M. Picone (2010), Record-low thermospheric density during the 2008 solar minimum, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L12102.

Of course Anthony also highlights the NASA author’s e-mail address for easy harassment.

That solar sinking feeling

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“That solar sinking feeling“. Anthony Watts tries to imply that the beginning of the end of the current, and somewhat unusual, solar minimum is going to lead to global cooling.

The denialists like to ignore the fact that these cycles are of sunspot activity, not energy output. They have no significance for Earth’s climate except in the wild theories of goof-ball amateurs.

But all those charts sure look “sciencey”.

New paper: Tropical cyclone response to solar UV

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“New paper: Tropical cyclone response to solar UV“. Anthony Watts posts parts of a Geophysical Research Letters paper, Daily tropical cyclone intensity response to solar ultraviolet radiation by three geographers at Florida State University, about cyclone intensity over the Caribbean and an inverse relationship to the number of sunspots (full copy here). The “compelling” hypothesis is that it is changes in UV radiation that are significant and not Total Solar Insolation (TSI). No real-world physical model is offered to explain it.

Here’s the quote from the conclusions that Anthony likes, because it can be waved about to suggest that climate change is all due to the sun:

a tropical cyclone can act to amplify the effect on the Earth’s climate of a relatively small change in solar output.

More local evidence used to infer global meaning. More grasping at straws for a random theory to magically “prove” humans aren’t contributing to Global Warming. Anther shiny thing to swing back and forth in front of Anthony’s readers.

Sun’s magnetics coming alive again

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“Sun’s magnetics coming alive again“. The Sun’s geomagnetic activity has ticked upwards after about five years of general decline. Anthony Watts wants denialist followers to think that this is a reason to expect global cooling. Just wait a bit longer… It’s coming, really!

ISES Solar Planetary Index 2010/05/04

Solar Dynamics Observatory – STUNNING first images and movies

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“Solar Dynamics Observatory – STUNNING first images and movies“. No argument from me on this one…

SDO First Images - Full Disk Multicolor. Source: NASA.

http://www.nasa.gov/sdo Go there!

Solar Dynamics Observatory first light images to be released today

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“Solar Dynamics Observatory first light images to be released today“. A NASA press release. The denialist line will undoubtably be to only trust observations from this new satellite, so we’ll have to wait for at least 100 years before we can have enough information to act.

Here’s the SDO’s dedicated NASA website.

Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite subsystems. Source: NASA.

Lockwood demonstrates link between low sun and low temps

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“Lockwood demonstrates link between low sun and low temps“. Steven Goddard takes solar scientists to task for changing their opinions to reflect apparent changes in the Sun’s behavior. That’s called science, Steven. Unlike ignorantly misconstruing or misquoting Dr. Lockwood’s statements about Solar activity.

Plenty of confusion in the comments too. Is it a conspiracy? Are the solar physicists trying to quietly switch to the denialist side? Are the climate changes driven by low sunspot activity or high sunspot activity? Steven’s own sour contributions to the comments are particularly amusing.

The truth is that the Sun’s output is very constant with only trivial changes in activity such as sunspots and convection. These correlate poorly with the Earth’s climatic variations. Yes, the Sun’s energy input is the single largest input into our climate. But it doesn’t actually vary.

Keep looking for that “final nail”.

Levy walks, solar flares, and warming

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“Levy walks, solar flares, and warming“. Once more with conviction: there is no link between solar flare cycles and global temperature trends. A statistical analysis by Martin and Kristoffer Rypdal, discussed at Physorg.com here, puts the solar climate theory of Scafetta and West to bed.

No correlation between Solar Flare Index and Climate. This would be a better presentation if the time scales matched...

You know that a “disproof” of AGW is pretty stinky when even Anthony Watts is reluctant to use it. His readers seem less picky though and are fighting over whether they can still cling to it.

To quote the paper authors:

A corresponding theory of global warming of solar origin does not exist. What does exist is a set of disconnected, mutually inconsistent, ad hoc hypotheses. If one of these is proven to be false, the typical proponent of solar warming will pull another ad hoc hypothesis out of the hat. This has been the strategy of Scafetta and West over the years, and we have no illusion that our paper will put them to silence.

This remark seems to also have relevance to the recently discussed amateur climate theories of Stephen Wilde…

Spaceweather alert – first “red alert” in 6 years

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“Spaceweather alert – first “red alert” in 6 years” A solar wind substorm is approaching, according to the  Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite. Standby for Global Warming! Actually, this post is fundamentally irrelevant to the Global Warming debate.

Anthony Watts shows this chart of Total Solar Insolation, which I’ve recreated for clarity, that his readers may decide implies that the Sun’s energy output is variable and hence the natural and temporary source of any Global Warming:

Jan-Apr 2010 Total Solar Insolation as recorded by the SORCE instruments. Note highly truncated vertical scale (click to enbiggen).

But isn’t this chart a more honest depiction of the data?

Same data with the full vertical scale used. Click to enbiggen.

The SORCE experiment is sound and the data is good, but it’s hilarious that this deceptive chart is the very next thing that Anthony posts after Frank Lansner’s allegations about IPCC Report chart “tricks”.