On 28/10/2010 21:54, Lawrence Jenkins wrote:
"Len wrote in message
...
Not sure whether this research has been covered on this ng already
but
Imperial College and Colorado have got together to study this old
chesnut. Although the effect of solar activity on the Earth's
atmosphere has been Joanna Haigh's claim to fame for a long time.
Summary: A decline in solar activity leads to a warmer Earth.
There is a lack of detail in the press release below, I suppose you
need to read the paper in 'Nature' for more info. Surprised they
published it on so few years data.

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandev...%3Dsun_climate

So am I, but on the other hand publishing it means that anyone with
similar data that could possibly be used to confirm or refute their
observations about UV band solar emissions will go take a look at any
historic data that they have to hand. The variation with the solar cycle
represents about 0.1-0.2% of TSI so it isn't a big change.

The ozone hole over Antarctica had been observed by fancy US satellites
for quite a while before UK ground based observations alerted everyone
that it was real and not some instrumental artefact.

Yes it has and as Nigel Calder sums it up nicely especially relating to the
eager pouncing on just 3 years bloody research, by the usual suspects.

http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/1...aft/#more-1649

"Let's say that the satellite results are surprising, but as they concern
solar irradiance and not variations in cosmic rays, there's no reason to
expect a big climatic impact. And Haigh's wish to invert the active Sun's
influence from positive to negative does nothing to explain all the
historical data on solar activity and climate change, going back to William
Herschel, 1801, and the link between sunspots and the price of wheat.

There is no doubt at all that the suns output does affect the Earths
climate or that the sunspot cycle has a small but measurable effect. It
has been in the IPCC science report from day 1. However, the sense of
that effect on the ground might just be in doubt if these data are
confirmed and can be verified over a full solar cycle. I think three
years data is nothing like enough to come to that conclusion (as the
authors themselves admit it could be a temporary anomoly).

I have to say that when I take the CRU data and remove the slow trends
the residuals binned onto an 11 year cycle do appear slightly
anticorrelated with sunspot cycle (ie. sunspot minima are warmer - but
the effect is so tiny I'd say it was down in the measurement noise).

Note that Herschels data shows that there is a link between sunspot
number and the price of wheat. It does not say in which sense the
driving force for low prices acts it could easily be due to more rain
for the growing phase rather than better sunshine and drought.

And I'm afraid that just as Al Gore had to share his Nobel Prize with the
Pachauri Gang, Haigh must split my award of three raspberries with the
editors of Nature and with the BBC's environmental team.

You are entitled to your ignoRANT opinions I suppose.

Suppose someone offered to Nature a paper saying, "We've got three years of
satellite data here and a computer model suggesting that an increase in
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cools the world." Would Nature publish it?
Would the BBC greet it with enthusiasm and carry the remark on its website,
"The view that carbon dioxide may be driving modern-day climate change has
clouded policy discussions"?

The satellite data in other bands they have published is interesting. I
am for the moment sceptical that their modelling really does reflect
reality - although as I said above when I tried to model the CRU data I
did get an antiphase answer for the sunspot correlated component.

You may doubt it, yet the doughty Richard Black of the BBC, who has made a
career of rubbishing the solar contribution to climate change, uses the
flimsy Haigh report to try to put the knife in once again: "The view that
the Sun may be driving modern-day climate change has clouded policy
discussions." "

There is no-one in the climate science community that doesn't think that
at least part of the warming in the past 150years is not due to the suns
luminosity increasing slightly. This is expected on strophysical grounds
over geological timescales output is increasing. Most practitioners
reckon that about half of all the increase is down to changes in TSI and
the rest which only became non-negligible after about 1970 is due to GHG
forcing. Even sceptical scientists admit to this since otherwise they
cannot balance the energy books for the Earth.

Regards,
Martin Brown