Four new papers discuss the relatiosnhip between solar activity and climate: one by Judith Lean (2010) in WIREs Climate Change, a GRL paper by Calogovic et al. (2010), Kulmala et al. (2010), and an on-line preprint by Feulner and Rahmstorf (2010). They all look at different aspects of how changes in solar activity may influence our climate.
More on sun-climate relations
Something Is X in the State of Denmark
We received a letter with the title ‘Climate Change: The Role of Flawed Science‘ which may be of interest to the wider readership. The author, Peter Laut, is Professor (emeritus) of physics at The Technical University of Denmark and former scientific advisor on climate change for The Danish Energy Agency. He has long been a critic of the hypothesis that solar activity dominates the global warming trend, and has been involved in a series of heated public debates in Denmark. Even though most of his arguments concern scientific issues, such as data handling, and arithmetic errors, he also has much to say about the way that the debate about climate change has been conducted. It’s worth noting that he sent us this letter before the “CRU email” controversy broke out, so his criticism of the IPCC for being too even handed, is ironic and timely.
Update – the link in the letter is now fixed. -rasmus
Why the continued interest?
I believe the idea that galactic cosmic rays (GCR) play a role for the present global warming is unlikely to fade soon, despite a growing number of scientific arguments that normally would falsify a hypothesis and lay it dead (see links here and here). Despite all the arguments against the role of GCR, there was a solicited talk about ‘cosmoclimatology’ at the European Meteorological Society’s (EMS) annual meeting in Toulouse. Henrik Svensmark is further invited by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (NASL) to provide an introduction to their seminar on climate. So why is the GCR-hypothesis still perceived as an interesting explanation?
Still not convincing
In a new GRL paper, Svensmark et al., claim that liquid water content in low clouds is reduced after Forbush decreases (FD), and for the most influential FD events, the liquid water content in the oceanic atmosphere can diminish by as much as 7%. In particular, they argue that there is a substantial decline in liquid water clouds, apparently tracking a declining flux of galactic cosmic rays (GCR), reaching a minimum days after the drop in GCR levels. The implication would be that GCR can affect climate through modulating the low-level cloudiness. The analysis is based on various remote sensing products.
ACRIM vs PMOD
Filed under: — rasmus @ 6 May 2009 - (
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) Two recent papers (Lockwood & Fröhlich, 2008 – ‘LF08′; Scafetta & Willson, 2009 – ‘SW09′) compare the analysis of total solar irradiance (TSI) and the way the TSI measurements are combined to form a long series consisting of data from several satellite missions. The two papers come to completely opposite conclusions regarding the long term trend. So which one (if either) is right, then? And does it really matter?
