Memories of the 28th Century

At some time in the past I blogged about the various solar cycles that come into play when the temperature of the Earth is involved, but I hadn't been paying attention to the most important of those cycles, the Sunspot Cycle. The Sunspot Cycle has been shown to correlate closely with the Earth's climatic cycles, and there is a known causal link between the two. This cycle has also been known for hundreds of years, and astronometers have expanded their knowledge as time has passed. That is to say that this is not a new and untested hypothesis.

As with all of the really good material, I had no need to dream up any of this; these are the actual facts, but we will have to wait to learn whether the predicted results will come out as predicted.

The Sun has an eleven year cycle in the number of sunspots, and there is a relationship between the number of sunspots and atmospheric temperatures on Earth. The interesting part of the process is that the Sun's output of ultraviolet light (UV) increases greatly during sunspot maxima. In the upper atmosphere UV breaks the bonds in oxygen molecules (O2) and adds the energy necessary for the monatomic ions to latch onto other O2 molecules to make ozone (O3). The other UV rays break up the O3, and this reaction gives off energy in the infrared range, which imparts heat, so one of the effects of the process that creates the ozone layer is to convert UV energy into heat in the atmosphere. This is not a huge amount of energy, but the Sun's UV output increases from 0.1% to 10% of the Solar output during sunspot maxima, so it is rather substantial at some times.

Another process that goes on during a sunspot maximum that may lead to a rise in average temperatures on Earth (please note the may) is that other particles from the Sun increase in quantity. These can be trapped in the Earth’s magnetic field and forced to the North or South Pole, depending on charge, and the particle will lose energy as they are dragged along. This process creates the aurora. Along with pretty lights some of the energy is converted to infrared; thus warming the atmosphere. This is a very variable source of atmospheric warming that is tiny at most times but becomes large during solar storms.

These are just two processes that warm the atmosphere on a cyclic basis due to solar activity. There are other cycles that effect solar output, but few, if any, are as capable of warming the Earth’s atmosphere. Even these two processes do not add large amounts of heat to the atmosphere, but small quantities can be significant. And these processes have made larger effects in recent decades, because the last few sunspot cycles have produced more sunspots than most, and there have been some huge solar storms. If the present cycle is as weak as has been predicted, then there will be no significant addition to the Earth’s warmth as a result of the sunspots.

Another matter that I have mentioned in the past is that from the historical temperature records it is uncertain whether a rise in CO2 preceded or followed rising temperatures, but it appeared that the CO2 rose in response to warming. I took that as an indication that frozen material was thawing and releasing trapped CO2. That may be happening, but a more significant factor is that the amount of CO2 that can be dissolved in water decreases as the water warms (see link for details). Taking this into consideration it becomes clear that graphs that include both atmospheric CO2 and average tempratures are showing us that the increase in CO2 is actually following the increase in temperature.

In light of this information, the assertions that CO2 was driving increases in temperature dissolve from a complete lack of evidence. But this is where the actual science takes us. We already knew that there was very little CO2 in the atmosphere, and that CO2 has a very weak greenhouse effect. Now we know that the increase in CO2 followed the increase in temperature of water in which CO2 was dissolved, and that there were at least two solar mechanisms that increased the warming of the Earth. It is quite possible that human activity has increased temperatures by some tiny amount, but it is much more likely that that the bulk of the rise that has happened in recent decades were results of sunspot activity, and it is most likely that the rises that have occurred since the Little Ice Age were nearly all results of the sunspot cycle. If the present cycle will be as weak as predicted, then we will have further evidence in this matter within the next decade.



Readers who are interested can look at some of the linked pages for more information

General sunspot sites
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/l...n/sscycle.html
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
http://phys.org/news/2013-11-calm-so...act-earth.html
Sun Cycles and Climate Change
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmu...ge2/06_3.shtml
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/.../sunspots.html
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...an_sunclimate/
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm
http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/Sol...al-cooling.pdf
ftp://ftp.geolab.nrcan.gc.ca/data/so.../fluxtable.txt
http://www.space.com/19280-solar-act...h-climate.html

Effects of Solar Variability on Earth's Climate purchase and download
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/13519/the...ate-a-workshop

Solubility of CO2 in water by temperature
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ga...er-d_1148.html