{"id":349,"date":"2006-09-13T18:19:25","date_gmt":"2006-09-13T22:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=349"},"modified":"2007-08-23T12:38:27","modified_gmt":"2007-08-23T17:38:27","slug":"the-trouble-with-sunspots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/09\/the-trouble-with-sunspots\/","title":{"rendered":"The trouble with sunspots"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann<\/small><\/p>\n

Solar forcing<\/a> of climate is a subject that gets far more attention than any new observations or improved understanding would warrant. Two new articles appearing today attest to that. One is occasionally tempted to agree with Oscar Wilde when he said:<\/p>\n

Why does not science, instead of troubling itself about sunspots, which nobody ever saw, or, if they did, ought not to speak about; why does not science busy itself with drainage and sanitary engineering?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except in this case it’s Nature<\/i> rather than Science<\/i> who are troubling themselves…<\/p>\n

A new review paper by Foukal et al<\/a> does a reasonable job summarising the mainstream opinion on the issue. In particular, they outline quite clearly why some ideas related to long term solar variability (such as solar disk radius changes, or the difference between cycling and non-cycling stars) have recently fallen out of favor. Indeed, they assert that there is little evidence for any solar variability in irradiance that is not related to the shielding\/enhancements of sunspots and faculae – which implies only a modest decrease in solar flux at the Maunder Minimum for instance. We could quibble with their use of paleo-reconstructions, their climate modeling approach, and the rather cursory treatment of the substantial body of work relating to amplyfying mechanisms due to UV\/ozone links, but we’ve gone over this ground<\/a> before and we refer readers to those earlier discussions. <\/p>\n

Slightly more novel is the description in the News section of a new experiment at CERN<\/a> that is attempting to test the cosmic-ray\/cloud hypothesis by building a large cloud chamber mimicing the atmosphere and firing high energy particles at it. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea, but given the $11 million to spend on climate change research, we would have tended to favour projects that, unlike this one<\/a>, have at least some empirical support within the observations…. <\/p>\n\n<\/div> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann Solar forcing of climate is a subject that gets far more attention than any new observations or improved understanding would warrant. Two new articles appearing today attest to that. One is occasionally tempted to agree with Oscar Wilde when he said: Why does not science, instead of troubling itself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-climate-science","category-sun-earth-connections","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t