EnviroLink Forum

Yes, which is why Water Vapor and Clouds rank and number one and two for being the strongest greenhouse gases. Changes in either in response to temperature changes will have profound impacts on temperatures. The satellite evidence suggests negative feedbacks and an insensitive climate system exist naturally.

Is it possible for CO2 to have a greater capacity to absorb heat than the gases surrounding it making up the atmosphere?

Yes, which is why Water Vapor and Clouds rank and number one and two for being the strongest greenhouse gases. Changes in either in response to temperature changes will have profound impacts on temperatures. The satellite evidence suggests negative feedbacks and an insensitive climate system exist naturally.

Well water vapour was known to effect climate before CO2 and are clouds a greenhouse gas? I've never heard them described as such before. The thing is water vapour precipitates out and CO2 does not.

I have heard some people say or imply that water vapour is ignored by scientists. Now I have a little bit of knowlege I know that this is ridiculous.

Is it possible for CO2 to have a greater capacity to absorb heat than the gases surrounding it making up the atmosphere?

The debate is largely whether which has contributed to most of Global Warming.

The evidence that natural factors are playing a larger role than anthropogenic factors, however, is overwhelming.

Contributed significantly will do. There's nothing magic about a majority.



Alright, I'll play. Say they're larger. I'm back to the previous point. If a smaller contribution is still significant and that is what we are able to control, would we not attempt to control it simply due to the fact that there are more influential factors beyond our control?

Are you saying that the human impact is insignificant?

Let's start with nine peer reviewed studies that document that the sun was a likely driver of the 20th Century Warming.

Palle Bago and Butler 2001
Palle Bago and Butler 2001, using many formulas they derived in their earlier, 2000 paper, calculated that the solar effects, directly and indirectly, caused 0.5 Degrees C of the 0.55 Degree C warming. This means that they found that 91% of the warming over the past 100 years can be explained by solar variability, directly and indirectly alone. They mention that there is a "possibility" that solar attribution could be less during the most recent decades, but they are not definite with this statement. They simply state that the solar contribution an unknown over the last and most recent decades. This probably has to do with the ACRIM and PMOD TSI Composites and the controversy surrounding these datasets which Scafetta 2009 documents.



Georgieva et. al 2005
Georgieva et. al 2005 used the Geomagnetic AA Index to quantify the solar impact on Climate Change, rather than the sunspot number, because using the sunspot number to quantify the solar contribution to climate change, as many studies do, leads to an underestimation of the Solar impact on Climate Change.




The above figure from Georgieva et. al shows the Geomagentic AA Index with the broken line, and the Global Temperature Anomalies with the solid line. They find that the correlation coefficient between the AA Index and Global Temperatures is 0.85, meaning that the sun can explain 85% of the variances in temperatures over the last ~150 years.


Cliver et. al 1998
Cliver et. al 1998 also used the Geomagnetic AA Index to estimate the solar contribution to climate change.




Above figure: From Cliver et. al 1998. The AA Index is the dotted line, and the solid line are the temperature anomalies.

They found that 50-100% of the warming could be due to the sun, but it should be noted that this analysis does not include other factors like volcanic activity and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions when estimating the total contribution. Nonetheless, this study also shows that other studies which do include these factors are only at the lower end of the 50-100% range for the solar contribution over the last 100-150 years. It also supports other studies with a larger solar contribution to climate change because of the remarkable correlation with the AA Index and temperatures.


Solheim et. al 2012
Solheim et. al 2012 found that the solar signal is reinforced by the Atlantic Ocean, and this reinforcing signal in the Atlantic Ocean is calculated to be from 63-72% of the variances in temperatures over the entire timeframe. They get a lower solar contribution to land based stations, but the reinforced signal is probably what would lead to a more accurate solar contribution, since most of the world is covered by oceans, and likely, reinforcing the solar signals.


Link et. al 2011
The box that represents the % solar contribution from Link et. al 2011 actually represents the probability whether the entire trend over the last 100-150 years is natural. The authors calculate that the probability of the warming being caused by solar activity over this entire timeframe is 40-90%. It should be noted that these probabilities go up significantly over shorter timeframes like 1900-1950 and 1960-2005.


Scafetta and West 2008
Scafetta and West 2008 adresses the uncertainty raised in the first paper. If a TSI curve that shows an upward trend from Solar Cycle 21 to 22 is used from the ACRIM TSI composite rather than the flat PMOD TSI composite, then a higher contribution from the sun would be needed. The authors find that up to 69% of the variances in temperatures can be explained by solar activity.




The image above from Scafetta and West 2008 shows the divergence between the PMOD and ACRIM TSI datasets, which makes attribution to past climate change even harder. The red curve is the ACRIM TSI composite, the blue curve is the PMOD TSI Composite, and the black curve and green line are the Global Temperature anomalies.


Scafetta and West 2007
The ACRIM verses PMOD controversy continues in this paper. 50% or more of temperatures can be attributed to the solar forcing, depending if the ACRIM TSI composite is used or not. This further adds on to resolving the uncertainty between the PMOD and ACRIM datasets during the ACRIM Gap.





The graph above from Scafetta and West 2007 shows the excellent correlation between solar activity and temperatures. It also shows that a large portion of the warming can be attributed to solar activity. Over the last 30 years, a significant portion of the warming can be attributed to solar activity if the ACRIM TSI composite is used.




Ogurtsov 2007
Ogurstov 2007 estimated that the solar contribution directly and indirectly caused about 0.25-0.35 degrees C of the warming that took place during the 20th Century. Using the Skeptical Science trend calculator gives an approxiate warming of 0.6 Degrees C during the 20th Century. This means that 41-59% of the trend upward can be attributed to solar activity over the past 100 years.

Blanter et. al 2008

Blanter et. al 2008 found that temperatures correlated remarkably well for all periods between the solar activity indicies and the observed temperatures for stations in Europe and the United States during the 20th Century. They used a finding from a previous study that the temperatures at weather stations correlated remarkably well if they were up to a 1000 km distance from each other. They also state in the abstract that these changes can "possibly" be extended onto a Global scale. Being that they found that solar activity can account for all temperature changes over the 20th Century, I reduced the range slightly from 100% to somwhere in the 90-100% range to account for the anthropogenic forcings.

I will be posting more papers later on this thread that support a natural solar and oceanic cause for recent warming, and not anthropogenic.

Humans have had more of an impact on climate change over the last 40 years than they have had over the last 150 years. This is primarily due to the sharp increase in Greenhouse Gas concentrations over the last 40 or so years. This means that not all of the warming over the last 40 years can be ascribed to natural causes.

With this in mind, we can start with Borie and Thoyaib 2006.

The abstract reads:

Data for geomagnetic activity index aa and solar sunspot number Rz for 1868-2004 were subjected to
correlation analysis with the global surface temperature (GST). The annual-means GT show that it had
two warming phases and one cooling period. Observations of the Earth's near-surface temperature
showed a global-mean temperature increase of approximately 1.1° C since 1877, occurred from 1887 to
1940 and from 1970 to the 1998. The temperature change over the past 35 years (1970-2004) is unlikely
to be entirely due to internal climate variability. Attribution of the warming early in the century has
proved more elusive. The correlation analysis between the variation of global temperature and both aa
geomagnetics and solar activity are +0.5 ± 0.05, for any lag or lead, indicating a significant role in such
variation. All graphs have illustrated strong correlations between the solar activity and geomagnetics
and surface global temperature. Our results do not, by any means, rule out the existence of important
links between solar activity and terrestrial climate. Our results displayed that the present changes in aa
geomagnetics may reflect partially some future changes in the global surface temperatures.

From the conclusions:

The excess of aa geomagnetics led to excess
solar energy which stored and accumulated for few future
years in the near-Earth system, leading to the global
temperature variability. The running coefficients for the
late years (1873-1930) displayed only negative
remarkable role of solar activity or/and aa geomagnetic in
global temperature change (Figure 5b). On contrast, the
aa index and the sunspot number played, direct or
indirect, a great role in global cooling temperature
throughout four decades from 1931 to 1970. During the
period 1971-1998, the correlation between Rz and
temperature persisted positively. So, the sensitivity of
global temperature to aa geomagnetics is significant and
may be real.

Mufti and Shah 2011

The abstract and key points read:


A long uninterrupted homogeneous data set on the annual mean Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomaly records as a representative of the Earth's climatic parameter has been analyzed in conjunction with 158 year long time series on the annual sunspot indices, Rz and geomagnetic activity indices, aa for the period 1850–2007. The 11-year and 23-year overlapping means of global (δtg) as well as northern (δtn) and southern (δts) hemispheric SST anomalies reveal significant positive correlation with both Rz and aa indices. Rz, aa and δtg depict a similar trend in their long-term variation and both seem to be on increase after attaining a minimum in the early 20th century (∼1905). Whereas the results on the power spectrum analysis by the Multi-Taper Method (MTM) on δtg, Rz and aa reveal periodicities of ∼79–80 years (Gleissberg's cycle) and ∼9–11 years (Schwabe solar cycle) consistent with earlier findings, MTM spectrum analysis also reveals fast cycles of 3–5 years. A period of ∼4.2 years in aa at 99% confidence level appears recorded in δtg at ∼4.3 years at 90% confidence level. A period of ∼3.6–3.7 years at 99% confidence level found in δtg is correlating with a similar periodic variation in sector structure of Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF). This fast cycle parallelism is new and is supportive of a possible link between the solar-modulated geomagnetic activity and Earth's climatic parameter i.e. SST.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Research highlights


► Instrumental records of temperature anomalies analyzed in conjunction with sunspot, Rz and geomagnetic, aa indices. ► Significant positive correlation exists between Rz and aa when they are referred to long-term trends. ► Besides the 79 year and 11 year cycle the present investigation has also revealed fast cycle periods of 3–5 years in SST and aa. ► Geomagnetic activity could be a possible link through which solar activity may influence the Earth's climate. ► The Sun has a significant role to play in the long-term and short-term climate change.

Raspopov et. al 2007 Found that long term trends in solar activity can create SIGNIFICANT temperature changes. A substantial lag can also occur with the sun and the temperature on the Earth, which would refute your earlier logic that just because the sun's irradiance according to PMOD has flatlined, does not bmean that it has not contributed to the recent warming. They also find that recent warming from 1945-2003 matches with expected predictions from a long term increase in solar activity.

From the abstract:

The influence of ∼200-year solar activity variations (de Vries cyclicity) on climatic parameters has been analyzed. Analysis of palaeoclimatic data from different regions of the Earth for the last millennium has shown that ∼200-year variations in solar activity give rise to a pronounced climatic response. Owing to a nonlinear character of the processes in the atmosphere–ocean system and the inertia of this system, the climatic response to the global influence of solar activity variations has been found to have a regional character. The regions where the climatic response to long-term solar activity variations is stable and the regions where the climatic response is unstable, both in time and space, have been revealed. It has also been found that a considerable lag of the climatic response and reversal of its sign with respect to the solar signal can occur. Comparison of the obtained results with the simulation predictions of the atmosphere–ocean system response to long-term solar irradiance variations (T > 40 years) has shown that there is a good agreement between experimental and simulation results.



Fig. 2. (a) Results of simulation of the spatial distribution of surface temperatures when the atmosphere–ocean system is affected by long-term solar irradiance variations (T > 40 years) (Waple et al., 2002). The asterisk (the North Atlantic region) and crosses show the sites the climatic data for which were used in our paper; (b) variations in annual average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere for 1954–2003.

The sun's activity began to rise in 1900, according to this paper also by OM Raspopov et. al.

Which Raspopov and Dergachev found was a 'controlling factor' in 20th Century warming.

Yu 2002 found that great uncertainties still remain with GCRs and climate, and more research needs to be done to quantify these uncertainties.

Kilcik 2005

It is a clear fact that the Earth's climate has been changing since the pre-industrial era, especially during the last three decades. This change is generally attributed to three main factors: greenhouse gases (GHGs), aerosols, and solar activity changes. However, these factors are not all-independent. Furthermore, contributions of the above-mentioned factors are still disputed.We sought whether a parallelism between the solar activity variations and the changes in the Earth's climate can be established. For this, we compared the solar irradiance model data reconstructed by J. Lean to surface air temperature variations of two countries: USA and Japan. Comparison was carried out in two categories: correlations and periodicities. We utilized data from a total of 60 stations, 18 in USA and 42 in Japan. USA data range from 1900 to 1995, while Japan data range from 1900 to 1990.

Our analyses yielded a 42 per cent correlation for USA and a 79 per cent for Japan between the temperature and solar irradiance. Moreover, both data sets showed similar periodicities. Hence, our results indicate marked influence of solar activity variations on the Earth's climate.

Kilcik et. al 2010

By applying multitaper methods and Pearson test on the surface air temperature and flare index used as a proxy data for possible solar sources of climate-forcing, we investigated the signature of these variables on middle and high latitudes of the Atlantic–Eurasian region (Turkey, Finland, Romania, Ukraine, Cyprus, Israel, Lithuania, and European part of Russia). We considered the temperature and flare index data for the period ranging from January 1975 to the end of December 2005, which covers almost three solar cycles, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd.

We found significant correlations between solar activity and surface air temperature over the 50–60° and 60–70° zones for cycle 22, and for cycle 23, over the 30–40°, 40–50°, and 50–60° zones.

The most pronounced power peaks for surface air temperature found by multitaper method are around 1.2, 1.7, and 2.5 years which were reported earlier for some solar activity indicators. These results support the suggestion that there is signature of solar activity effect on surface air temperature of mid-latitudes.



Fig. 1. Eleven year running mean sunspot numbers and departures of sea surface temperatures from the long term mean (units hundredths of a degree Celsius). The coherency between the solar activity and climate records can be seen in this figure comparing polynomial fits to the sunspot record and the global mean sea-surface temperature SST (Reid, 1999).

In Figure 4 of Dorman 2012, it can be seen that GCRs can explain pretty much all temperature variability from 1937-1994.

Carslaw et. al 2002

This paper shows that there is a long term decrease in GCRs over the 20th Century, which would correspond to a more active sun, as this would mean that there would be more solar wind to prevent GCRs from reaching Earth. It is also shown that in 1992, a record low in GCRs was recorded, indicating record high amounts of solar activity occured during the late-20th Century.



Soon et. al 2011:

(From the abstract:)

The 20th century surface air temperature (SAT) records of China from various sources are analyzed using data which include the recently released Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project dataset. Two key features of the Chinese records are confirmed: (1) significant 1920s and 1940s warming in the temperature records, and (2) evidence for a persistent multidecadal modulation of the Chinese surface temperature records in co-variations with both incoming solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere as well as the modulated solar radiation reaching ground surface. New evidence is presented for this Sun–climate link for the instrumental record from 1880 to 2002. Additionally, two non-local physical aspects of solar radiation-induced modulation of the Chinese SAT record are documented and discussed.

Teleconnections that provide a persistent and systematic modulation of the temperature response of the Tibetan Plateau and/or the tropospheric air column above the Eurasian continent (e.g., 30°N–70°N; 0°–120°E) are described. These teleconnections may originate from the solar irradiance-Arctic–North Atlantic overturning circulation mechanism proposed by Soon (2009). Also considered is the modulation of large-scale land–sea thermal contrasts both in terms of meridional and zonal gradients between the subtropical western Pacific and mid-latitude North Pacific and the continental landmass of China. The Circum-global teleconnection (CGT) pattern of summer circulation of Ding and Wang (2005) provides a physical framework for study of the Sun–climate connection over East Asia. Our results highlight the importance of solar radiation reaching the ground and the concomitant importance of changes in atmospheric transparency or cloudiness or both in motivating a true physical explanation of any Sun–climate connection. We conclude that ground surface solar radiation is an important modulating factor for Chinese SAT changes on multidecadal to centennial timescales. Therefore, a comprehensive view of local and remote factors of climate change in China must take account of this as well as other natural and anthropogenic forcings.

Tinsley et. al 2009 find that the CRF (Cosmic Ray Forcing) is a likely climate driver, and find that it needs to be represented in the models, since it has a very important role in climate change.

Belov et. al 2005

A method of prediction of expected part of global climate change caused by cosmic ray (CR) by forecasting of galactic cosmic ray intensity time variation in near future based on solar activity data prediction and determined parameters of convection-diffusion and drift mechanisms is presented. This gave possibility to make prediction of expected part of global climate change, caused by long-term cosmic ray intensity variation. In this paper, we use the model of cosmic ray modulation in the Heliosphere, which considers a relation between long-term cosmic ray variations with parameters of the solar magnetic field. The later now can be predicted with good accuracy. By using this prediction, the expected cosmic ray variations in the near Earth space also can be estimated with a good accuracy. It is shown that there are two possibilities: (1) to predict cosmic ray intensity for 1–6 months by using a delay of long-term cosmic ray variations relatively to effects of the solar activity and (2) to predict cosmic ray intensity for the next solar cycle. For the second case, the prediction of the global solar magnetic field characteristics is crucial. For both cases, reliable long-term cosmic ray and solar activity data as well as solar magnetic field are necessary. For solar magnetic field, we used results of two magnetographs (from Stanford and Kitt Peak Observatories). The obtained forecasting of long-term cosmic ray intensity variation we use for estimation of the part of global climate change caused by cosmic ray intensity changing (influenced on global cloudiness covering).

Climate Change can be forecasted based off of the predictions for the GCR Flux. Given how closely the model represents reality as shown in Figure 3, it is hard to discount their predictions of cooling in the near future due to an increasing GCR Flux.

In my next post I will have a compliation of peer reviewed papers that predict a cooling in the next couple to few decades.

Significant is an extremely subjective term. Significant to some people could be 10%, while to others, it could not be significant.

Take a look at some of these peer reviewed studies, which show that the sun has a large impact on climate change:

The human impact on climate should be kept at a minimum, but human impact does not necessarily mean GHGs, it also pertains to deforestation and urbanization.

But, people who claim that most of the warming can be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gases have ZERO evidence to back themselves up.

http://climatecrocks.com/

Piloted this March, Gridbid says it auctioned more than $300,000 in rooftop solar projects during its first week online

Look at a Cloudy Night when compared to a Clear night, clear nights are generally cooler because the excess cloud cover prevents heat from radiating out to space at night. Clouds also reflect incoming solar radiation during the day, so they act to reduce the DTR.

No one is saying that water vapor is being ignored, it is integral for future climate predictions.

There are still large uncertainties in climate science that still need to be resolved. Cloud and Water Vapor feedbacks are one of these VERY high uncertainties, as well as temperature attribution over the last 100 or so years.

These honest climate scientists feel that there is so much uncertainty still left, that it is unclear how much of the recent (last 30 years) is natural.

Compo et. al 2009 finds that changes in the changes in the SSTs have led to temperature changes over land- not GHGs directly. The oceans themselves have warmed from a combination of natural and anthropogenic causes over the recent warming, they say.

Duplissy et. al 2010

In its Fourth Assessment Report, 2007, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) attributes more than
90% of the observed climate warming since 1900 to the rise
of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (IPCC,
2007). Aerosols and clouds are recognised as representing
the largest uncertainty in the current understanding of climate
change. The IPCC estimates that changes of solar irradiance
(direct solar forcing) have made only a small (7%)
contribution to the observed warming. However, large uncertainties
remain on other solar-related contributions, such
as the effects of changes of ultra-violet (UV) radiation or
galactic cosmic rays on aerosols and clouds

Fang et. al 2011

In recent decades, there have been a number of debates on climate warming and its driving forces. Based on an extensive literature review, we suggest that (1) climate warming occurs with great uncertainty in the magnitude of the temperature increase; (2) both human activities and natural forces contribute to climate change, but their relative contributions are difficult to quantify; and (3) the dominant role of the increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (including CO2) in the global warming claimed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is questioned by the scientific communities because of large uncertainties in the mechanisms of natural factors and anthropogenic activities and in the sources of the increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. More efforts should be made in order to clarify these uncertainties.

I will have more papers adressing the natural variability and solar aspect of the natural contributors.

To say that the cause is anthropogenic, as claimed by the IPCC, is not scientifically correct, since there remain large uncertainties with natural contributions and the evidence for natural causes as having a significant, and dominant contribution to the late-20th Century warming is VERY high, as well as causing the warming over the last 100-150 years.

Okay here we go. Predictions of cooling in the next 30-50 years (largely based off of what the activity of the sun will do in the next 30-50 years- it will be quiet, although the PDO/AMO combo will probably contribute as well.)

Qian et. al 2010 finds that most of the warming can be reasonably ascribed to natural causes, the world should cool by 2035, and we will only warm 0.1-0.2 Degrees C by 2100.

Masnich and Bashkirtsev 2002 predict a drop in temperatures by around 2025-2030 because of variations in the sun.

Ermakov et. al 2009 finds that Global Cooling should persist until 2060 (!)

Large and Yeager 2012

Global satellite observations show the sea surface temperature (SST) increasing since the 1970s in all ocean basins, while the net air-sea heat flux, Q, decreases. Over the period 1984-2006 the global changes are 0.28°C in SST and -9.1 W/m2 in Q, giving an effective air-sea coupling coefficient of -32 W/m2/°C. The global response in Q expected from SST alone is determined to be -12.9 W/m2, and the global distribution of the associated coupling coefficient is shown. Typically, about one-half (6.8 W/m2) of this SST effect on heat flux is compensated by changes in the overlying near surface atmosphere. Slab Ocean Models (SOMs) assume that ocean heating processes do not change from year to year, so that a constant annual heat flux would maintain a linear trend in annual SST. However, the necessary 6.1 W/m2 increase is not found in the downwelling longwave and shortwave fluxes, which combined show a -3 W/m2 decrease. The SOM assumptions are revisited to determine the most likely source of the inconsistency with observations. The indirect inference is that diminished ocean cooling due to vertical ocean processes played an important role in sustaining the observed positive trend in global SST from 1984 through 2006, despite the decrease in global surface heat flux. A similar situation is found in the individual basins, though magnitudes differ. A conclusion is that natural variability, rather than long term climate change, dominates the SST and heat flux changes over this 23 year period. On shorter time scales the relationship between SST and heat flux exhibits a variety of behaviors.

The Yeager paper is relevant to the Compo paper which suggests that degree of anthropogenic and natural contributions to recent ocean warming are unknown. It answers the Compo paper by saying that natural factors (in this case natural variability [probably due to cloud cover]) have dominated the SSTs.

Xian and Shan 2007
A novel multi-timescale analysis method, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), is used to diagnose the variation of the annual mean temperature data of the global, Northern Hemisphere (NH) and China from 1881 to 2002. The results show that: (1) Temperature can be completely decomposed into four timescales quasi-periodic oscillations including an ENSO-like mode, a 6–8-year signal, a 20-year signal and a 60-year signal, as well as a trend. With each contributing ration of the quasi-periodicity discussed, the trend and the 60-year timescale oscillation of temperature variation are the most prominent. (2) It has been noticed that whether on century-scale or 60-year scales, the global temperature tends to descend in the coming 20 years. (3) On quasi 60-year timescale, temperature abrupt changes in China precede those in the global and NH, which provides a denotation for global climate changes. Signs also show a drop in temperature in China on century scale in the next 20 years. (4) The dominant contribution of CO2 concentration to global temperature variation is the trend. However, its influence weight on global temperature variation accounts for no more than 40.19%, smaller than those of the natural climate changes on the rest four timescales. Despite the increasing trend in atmospheric CO2 concentration, the patterns of 20-year and 60-year oscillation of global temperature are all in falling. Therefore, if CO2 concentration remains constant at present, the CO2 greenhouse effect will be deficient in counterchecking the natural cooling of global climate in the following 20 years. Even though the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated. It is high time to re-consider the trend of global climate changes.

My next post will highlight peer reviewed papers that show there is no 'smoking gun' or fingerprint that most of the climate change observed is anthropogenic.

Continuing...

http://www.pnas.org/content/97/23/12433.full

Current global warming commonly is attributed to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere (3). However, geophysical, archaeological, and historical evidence is consistent with warming and cooling periods during the Holocene as indicated by the solar-output model. The current warm period is thought to have not reached the level of warmth of the previous warm period (A.D. 800-1200), when the Vikings raised wheat and livestock in Greenland. Therefore, the magnitude of the modern temperature increase being caused solely by an increase in CO2 concentrations appears questionable. The contribution of solar-output variations to climate change may be significant.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2 ... 0336.shtml

From the frequencies of sunspot and aurora sightings, abundance of carbon-14 in the rings of long-lived trees, and beryllium-10 in the annual ice layers of polar ice cores, we have reconstructed the history of a variable Sun. In the last 1,800 years, the Sun has gone through nine cycles of changes in brightness. While these long-term variations account for less than 1%of the total irradiance, there is clear evidence that they affect the Earth's climate.

http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/37/1/71.abstract

Some studies indicate that the solar modulation of galactic cosmic ray (GCR) particles has profound consequences for Earth's climate system. A corollary of the GCR-climate theory involves a link between Earth's magnetic field and climate, since the geomagnetic field also modulates the GCR flux reaching Earth's atmosphere. In this study, we explore this potential geomagnetic-climate link by comparing a new reconstruction of the Holocene geomagnetic dipole moment with high-resolution speleothem data from China and Oman. The speleothem δ18O data represent proxy records for past precipitation in low-latitude regions, which is a climate parameter that is likely to have been sensitive to variations in the GCR flux modulated by the dipole moment. Intriguingly, we observe a relatively good correlation between the high-resolution speleothem δ18O records and the dipole moment, suggesting that Earth's magnetic field to some degree influenced low-latitude precipitation in the past. In addition to supporting the notion that variations in the geomagnetic field may have influenced Earth's climate in the past, our study also provides some degree of support for the controversial link between GCR particles, cloud formation, and climate.

http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... /1221.full

Galactic cosmic ray (GCR) changes have been suggested to affect weather and climate, and new evidence is presented here directly linking GCRs with clouds. Clouds increase the diffuse solar radiation, measured continuously at UK surface meteorological sites since 1947. The ratio of diffuse to total solar radiation—the diffuse fraction (DF)—is used to infer cloud, and is compared with the daily mean neutron count rate measured at Climax, Colorado from 1951–2000, which provides a globally representative indicator of cosmic rays. Across the UK, on days of high cosmic ray flux (above 3600×102 neutron counts h−1, which occur 87% of the time on average) compared with low cosmic ray flux, (i) the chance of an overcast day increases by (19±4) %, and (ii) the diffuse fraction increases by (2±0.3) %. During sudden transient reductions in cosmic rays (e.g. Forbush events), simultaneous decreases occur in the diffuse fraction. The diffuse radiation changes are, therefore, unambiguously due to cosmic rays. Although the statistically significant nonlinear cosmic ray effect is small, it will have a considerably larger aggregate effect on longer timescale (e.g. centennial) climate variations when day-to-day variability averages out.

http://ppg.sagepub.com/content/23/2/181.abstract

Current concern over ‘greenhouse’ warming and possible human influence upon global climate has been countered by claims that recent advances in solar theory demonstrate a greater role than previously thought for solar forcing in recent climate change. This is still disputed for this century, but new evidence from a range of palaeoenvironmental indicators lends strong support to the notion that not only the long-term (105 to 103 years) climate changes of the Pleistocene but also short-term (101 to 102 years) climate changes in the Holocene may derive in large or small part from solar variability. Evidence from recent research into proxy climate records is reviewed and set in the context of recent advances elsewhere in studies of late Quaternary palaeoenvironments and in solar science.

http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/Douglass_remote_sensing.pdf

Updated tropical lower tropospheric temperature datasets covering the period 1979–2009 are presented and assessed for accuracy based upon recent publications and several analyses conducted here. We conclude that the lower tropospheric temperature (TLT) trend over these 31 years is +0.09 ± 0.03 °C decade−1. Given that the surface temperature (Tsfc) trends from three different groups agree extremely closely among themselves (~ +0.12 °C decade−1) this indicates that the ―scaling ratio‖ (SR, or ratio of atmospheric trend to surface trend: TLT/Tsfc) of the observations is ~0.8 ± 0.3. This is significantly different from the average SR calculated from the IPCC AR4 model simulations which is ~1.4. This result indicates the majority of AR4 simulations tend to portray significantly greater warming in the troposphere relative to the surface than is found in observations.

http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/ ... OC1651.pdf

We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model
simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era).
Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by
more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than
observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with
those of recent publications based on essentially the same data.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 ... 010.513518

We compare the output of various climate models to temperature and precipitation observations at 55 points around the globe. We also spatially aggregate model output and observations over the contiguous USA using data from 70 stations, and we perform comparison at several temporal scales, including a climatic (30-year) scale. Besides confirming the findings of a previous assessment study that model projections at point scale are poor, results show that the spatially integrated projections are also poor.

So the models that the IPCC uses to attribute past climate change and predictions for the future may not be all that accurate... hmmm....

So using that measurement, those who claim cosmic rays are the cause have a negative amount of evidence?

http://climatecrocks.com/