Thursday, February 11, 2016

More Apps For Bunnies

To keep up with the trade, Eli offers an app for the bunnies to play with

From Bernd Herd, in honor of Nicola Scafetta, a gadget to show you how changes in sun spot number over the last couple of centuries doesn't explain very much.if you believe that the sunspot number is a good proxy for Total Solar Insolation aka TSI (bunnies can change the start date and the app updates each month)




Now some, including Eli might hope for a somewhat more recent take from the Sun Goddess or maybe even Leif Svalgaard.  Before the getting too crazy about the app allow Eli to point out that one thing the Rabett has learned from Leif is that the sunspot number is at best an interesting proxy for solar irradiance, and at worst not such a good one.  What is clear is that the old TSI reconstructions based on the Opinions, of course differ, but what is clear is that the variation since we have satellite observations has been minimal, nothing at all if we simply look at changes at the solar cycle minima, and less than 1 W/m2 from valley to peak.

That being said, over the Mauna Loa CO2 record, there is good agreement between the various solar reconstructions TSI do not correlate with the increase in temperature

8 comments:

CapitalistImperialistPig said...

Eli, I think that this is too simplistic. There is plenty of data that strongly hints at solar effect on longer time scales. See, e.g., The National Academies Press workshop report: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/13519/the-effects-of-solar-variability-on-earths-climate-a-workshop

Or this book: The Sun's Influence on Climate by Haigh and Cargill

These effects are not well understood, but there is pretty good proxy evidence. Most of these effects appear related to Grand Solar minima rather than piddling minima of recent years.

CapitalistImperialistPig said...

Of course the apparent existence of such effects doesn't say anything about the larger effect due to CO2.

Anonymous said...

I thought the only way that they could get a good fit using sunspot number was to integrate the sunspot number. Given that that would suggest some kind of multi-decade memory, it seems rather unphysical.

BBD said...

IIRC the correlation of GAT with Schwabe cycle is something like 0.2C peak to trough.

I think Leif Svalgaard's published version of the link Eli provides is Clette et al. (2014) Revisiting the sunspot number.

BBD said...

These effects are not well understood, but there is pretty good proxy evidence.

Depends on how far back you go, and your definition of 'pretty good' proxy evidence. Richard Telford has the scoop(s). Highly recommended.

EliRabett said...

Telford is great and it was Clette et (Leif being one of the ets)

OTOH the global T has moved quite a lot while the total solar has not, and the app makes that point.

BBD said...

OTOH the global T has moved quite a lot while the total solar has not, and the app makes that point.

Indeed it does, and Richard T's 'what evidence?' project isn't terribly encouraging for sun worshipers either.

Hank Roberts said...

et al. and Tsonis are cycling again:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL067325/abstract