NASA finds correlation to previous climate change and sun

[ballz2wallz]

Apparently NASA scientists have decided to go back and look at old records to see what they could find about climate change, and alas, they find solar activity and climate change go hand in hand.

It seems every day the global warming nonsense gets more and more exposed.

NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records
March 19, 2007

Long-term climate records are a key to understanding how Earth's climate changed in the past and how it may change in the future. Direct measurements of light energy emitted by the sun, taken by satellites and other modern scientific techniques, suggest variations in the sun's activity influence Earth's long-term climate. However, there were no measured climate records of this type until the relatively recent scientific past.

Scientists have traditionally relied upon indirect data gathering methods to study climate in the Earth's past, such as drilling ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica. Such samples of accumulated snow and ice drilled from deep within ice sheets or glaciers contain trapped air bubbles whose composition can provide a picture of past climate conditions. Now, however, a group of NASA and university scientists has found a convincing link between long-term solar and climate variability in a unique and unexpected source: directly measured ancient water level records of the Nile, Earth's longest river.

Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., together with Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., have analyzed Egyptian records of annual Nile water levels collected between 622 and 1470 A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo. These records were then compared to another well-documented human record from the same time period: observations of the number of auroras reported per decade in the Northern Hemisphere. Auroras are bright glows in the night sky that happen when mass is rapidly ejected from the sun's corona, or following solar flares. They are an excellent means of tracking variations in the sun's activity.

Feynman said that while ancient Nile and auroral records are generally "spotty," that was not the case for the particular 850-year period they studied.

"Since the time of the pharaohs, the water levels of the Nile were accurately measured, since they were critically important for agriculture and the preservation of temples in Egypt," she said. "These records are highly accurate and were obtained directly, making them a rare and unique resource for climatologists to peer back in time."

A similarly accurate record exists for auroral activity during the same time period in northern Europe and the Far East. People there routinely and carefully observed and recorded auroral activity, because auroras were believed to portend future disasters, such as droughts and the deaths of kings.

"A great deal of modern scientific effort has gone into collecting these ancient auroral records, inter-comparing them and evaluating their accuracy," Ruzmaikin said. "They have been successfully used by aurora experts around the world to study longer time scale variations."

The researchers found some clear links between the sun's activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common - one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.

The researchers said the findings have climate implications that extend far beyond the Nile River basin.

"Our results characterize not just a small region of the upper Nile, but a much more extended part of Africa," said Ruzmaikin. "The Nile River provides drainage for approximately 10 percent of the African continent. Its two main sources - Lake Tana in Ethiopia and Lake Victoria in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya - are in equatorial Africa. Since Africa's climate is interrelated to climate variability in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, these findings help us better understand climate change on a global basis."

So what causes these cyclical links between solar variability and the Nile? The authors suggest that variations in the sun's ultraviolet energy cause adjustments in a climate pattern called the Northern Annular Mode, which affects climate in the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere during the winter. At sea level, this mode becomes the North Atlantic Oscillation, a large-scale seesaw in atmospheric mass that affects how air circulates over the Atlantic Ocean. During periods of high solar activity, the North Atlantic Oscillation's influence extends to the Indian Ocean. These adjustments may affect the distribution of air temperatures, which subsequently influence air circulation and rainfall at the Nile River's sources in eastern equatorial Africa. When solar activity is high, conditions are drier, and when it is low, conditions are wetter.

Study findings were recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

[MTdream]

what next water vapor will have an impact? say it aint so!!!!!

[JaJae]

oh snap

Does this mean that before humans were destroying the earth w/ CO2 the sun was having the same impact the global warming skeptics are saying it has right now? Say it ain't so.

[MTdream]

Originally Posted by JaJae

oh snap

Does this mean that before humans were destroying the earth w/ CO2 the sun was having the same impact the global warming skeptics are saying it has right now? Say it ain't so.

nah, clinton did it!!!!


or wait..Gore invented the sun!!! that is it!!!

[MTdream]

wiat..I got it...

[7960]

Originally Posted by MTdream

or wait..Gore invented the sun!!! that is it!!!

he won't say that but he won't correct other people when they do... when pressed he'll finally admit he "took the initiative in creating the sun."

[Diamond Cross]

Baloney. This is just science being objective, something which ballz claims that it can't be when it comes to gw because of it being too politicised on by the proponents when the opponents (anti gw people) can't politicise it in any way shape or form just because they're more objectionable than anybody else.

[MTdream]

Originally Posted by Diamond Cross

Baloney. This is just science being objective, something which ballz claims that it can't be when it comes to gw because of it being too politicised on by the proponents when the opponents (anti gw people) can't politicise it in any way shape or form just because they're more objectionable than anybody else.

this is sooo cute...


science being objective, when it is from NASA, but any other person with reputable background, organization, etc.

we villainize...

nothing like a double standard...

[Diamond Cross]

You just made my point. Thank you.

That it's really the anti gw people that are turning into a political far more than the proponents of it.

[MTdream]

Originally Posted by Diamond Cross

You just made my point. Thank you.

That it's really the anti gw people that are turning into a political far more than the proponents of it.

right...your funny

slight correction...we are pointing it out!!!!

you cant even with a straight face say Gore is not the biggest abuser of this...come on...

[Diamond Cross]

But the problem is opponents of gw are making it out to say that all scientists and scientific organizations that agree that gw is real with sound science are the ones who're no different than Gore who in my mind is an enviromental extremist, and that all of these scientist and scientific organizations are the ones who're doing the politicising when nothing could be further from the truth.

And what I've been saying is that it's the extremists that're getting all the attention when they shouldn't be, not the more moderate and reasonable ones.

[MTdream]

Originally Posted by Diamond Cross

But the problem is opponents of gw are making it out to say that all scientists and scientific organizations that agree that gw is real with sound science are the ones who're no different than Gore who in my mind is an enviromental extremist, and that all of these scientist and scientific organizations are the ones who're doing the politicising when nothing could be further from the truth.

And what I've been saying is that it's the extremists that're getting all the attention when they shouldn't be, not the more moderate and reasonable ones.

it is hard to have sound science with the methods that are being used to extrapolate their conclusions...

[MTdream]

Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds

By Ker Than

Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events.
Others argue that such claims are misleading and create the false impression that rapid global warming, as Earth is experiencing, is a natural phenomenon.
While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species.

Wobbly Mars
Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, recently linked the attenuation of ice caps on Mars to fluctuations in the sun's output. Abdussamatov also blamed solar fluctuations for Earth’s current global warming trend. His initial comments were published online by National Geographic News.
“Man-made greenhouse warming has [made a] small contribution [to] the warming on Earth in recent years, but [it] cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,” Abdussamatov told LiveScience in an email interview last week. “The considerable heating and cooling on the Earth and on Mars always will be practically parallel."
But Abdussamatov’s critics say the Red Planet’s recent thawing is more likely due to natural variations in the planet’s orbit and tilt. On Earth, these wobbles, known as Milankovitch cycles, are thought to contribute to the onset and disappearance ice ages.
“It’s believed that what drives climate change on Mars are orbital variations,” said Jeffrey Plaut, a project scientist for NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission. “The Earth also goes through orbital variations similar to that of Mars.”
As for Abdussamatov’s claim that solar fluctuations are causing Earth’s current global warming, Charles Long, a climate physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Washington, says the idea is nonsense.
“That’s nuts,” Long said in a telephone interview. “It doesn’t make physical sense that that’s the case.”
In 2005, Long’s team published a study in the journal Science showing that Earth experienced a period of “solar global dimming” from 1960 to 1990, during which time solar radiation hitting our planet’s surface decreased. Then from the mid-1990’s onward, the trend reversed and Earth experienced a “solar brightening.”
These changes were not likely driven by fluctuations in the output of the Sun, Long explained, but rather increases in atmospheric clouds or aerosols that reflected solar radiation back into space.

...

“Global warming on Neptune's moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some [scientists] scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets … Could there be something in common with all the planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the same time?”
Peiser included quotes from recent news articles that take up other aspects of the idea.
“I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system,” Peiser said in an email interview. “Perhaps this is just a fluke.”
In fact, scientists have alternative explanations for the anomalous warming on each of these other planetary bodies.
The warming on Triton, for example, could be the result of an extreme southern summer on the moon, a season that occurs every few hundred years, as well as possible changes in the makeup of surface ice that caused it to absorb more of the Sun’s heat.
Researchers credited Pluto’s warming to possible eruptive activity and a delayed thawing from its last close approach to the Sun in 1989.
And the recent storm activity on Jupiter is being blamed on a recurring climatic cycle that churns up material from the gas giant’s interior and lofts it to the surface, where it is heated by the Sun.

...

The Maunder Minimum
This is not to say that solar fluctuations never influence Earth’s climate in substantial ways. During a 75-year period beginning in 1645, astronomers detected almost no sunspot activity on the Sun. Called the “Maunder Minimum,” this event coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, a 350-year cold spell that gripped much of Europe and North America.
Recent studies have cast doubt on this relationship, however. New estimates of the total change in the brightness of the Sun during the Maunder Minimum suggest it was only fractions of a percent, and perhaps not enough to create the global cooling commonly attributed to it.
“The situation is pretty ambiguous,” said David Rind, a senior climate researcher at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has modeled the Maunder Minimum.
Based on current estimates, even if another Maunder Minimum were to occur, it might result in an average temperature decrease of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, Rind said.
...

I have not gotten such a chuckle out of an article in a while
"...Yes it is,..."
"No it isnt..."
"yes it is..."
"that is nuts..."
"no it isnt..."

I have bolded sections that seemed interesting to me...I find it fascinating how this is getting play in other media circles...like this headline at MSNBC...and others...

Opinion: To pretend that we know why, and what the causes are, of our planets increasing temps, and then in the same breath say we know this isnt true, because it could be, or we think this on that planet...

and then in the very next breath to say, it is just a coincidence that all these planets are warming...

then one of the explanations is wobble...yet that is dismissed on earth...yet it is causing reductions in polar activity on mars...yet is cant be what is happening on earth...

hmmm no sun spot activity...coldest time in history...nah...cant be anything to do with sun....

I wonder...what is the common element in 1645, and the warming that we and other planets are experiencing..hmmmm.....I am really scratching my head here...

Curious if any of you might be able to help me...

[7960]

this is already being discussed in at least 3 global warming threads and two al gore threads that have flipped over to actually being about global warming

we need another?

[Roonie]

Question....... isn't the sun supposed to warm our planet? Isn't that its job and what makes life livable here?

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Roonie

Question....... isn't the sun supposed to warm our planet? Isn't that its job and what makes life livable here?

Yes. The problem is that the alarmist are considered to understate or ignore the effects of the sun to promote CO2 as the root of all global warming evil. CO2 = manufacturing and industry and thus can be a political issue. If the sun is responsible for most of our warming, they lose all political clout, funding and their careers are exposed to have been surrounded around pushing an alarmist agenda when the facts were right in front of their face the entire time.

This article shows that there are many scientists willing to give the sun more credit than the mainstream would want us to believe and it shows temperature patterns of surrounding planets and compares their cycles to earth. Basically what they're doing is showing the sun's output and comparing it to the temperature of the earth and showing it could have a stronger correlation than CO2 which some argue doesn't have much of a correlation at all hence the 30 years or so in the second half of the 20th century when the scientists were screaming about global cooling (even though they were dumping more CO2 into the air than ever before, the temperature was dropping). The earth warmed faster when there was less CO2 being pumped out. But as the sun's energy decreased, as did the temperature on earth. All scientists believe CO2 has an effect, it's just as of lately many scientists are starting to run away from the mainstream and question the propaganda. Hence all the new threads coming out and all the Al Gore hysteria in the media as of late.

Basically a quote from a scientist runs through my head right now. If you want to know why the earth is warming look at the most obvious source.. the sun. The sun warms not just our planet, but all surrounding planets and goes through cycles of energy output which correspond to climate on earth. CO2 (as we know to be a very minor Greenhouse Gas) he says is practically nothing compared to the effects of the sun.

[mididoctors]

attacking proxy data sets as invalid in general yet supporting aurora records as a valid proxy data set strikes me as suspect

at least tree rings and ice cores are actually physical evidence to study?

How accurate does one think aurora data is?.. boarders on the anecdotal?

but my real objection is it contradicts previous arguments attacking proxy methodology

to detect a true cycle one needs at least two cycles....yes

using a single proxy like this strikes me as hazardous

A similarly accurate record exists for auroral activity during the same time period in northern Europe and the Far East. People there routinely and carefully observed and recorded auroral activity, because auroras were believed to portend future disasters, such as droughts and the deaths of kings.

has anybody a link to this data?

aurora activity occurs in two forms one type close to sunspot minima and one closer to sunspot maxima.. aurora activity is different in the two phases the sunspot minima tend to be long lasting and less spectacular, whether this difference is accurately recorded in the aurora record is another question?

Boris
London