September 2017 – Page 4 – Iowa Climate Science Education

Solar activity waxes and wanes in 10- to 11-year cycles; this is now general public knowledge. However, we know this only because of existing long-term records. Thanks to these histories, we also know that properties of solar cycles vary on timescales of 100 years and even longer. Thus, some of the most important processes on the Sun may take decades if not centuries to reveal themselves [Owens, 2013].

This long timescale means that some issues are not resolved, or even identified, at the time when data are acquired. Synoptic observations of solar activity, programs that span many years, feed future research to solve these issues.

However, present-day research funding schemes tend to focus on providing effective funding for rapidly changing research goals. Funding agencies and the National Academies emphasize short grants, lasting 3–5 years, as the prime vehicle for funding scientific research, a duration that is too short to ensure the survival of synoptic programs.

How do we change this focus so that the synoptic studies so critical to our understanding get sustainable funding?

Insights Gained from Taking the Long View

Historical data show the presence of grand minima and grand maxima, when the Sun was either inactive or extremely active for an extended period. Those major changes in solar activity seem to have created significant changes in the past Earth climate, making long-term records essential to solve critical issues of the 21st century.

Even records of past solar activity that come from isotopic sources such as ice cores and tree rings rely on establishing a relationship between radiocarbon measurements and the direct observations of solar activity. Because the natural circulation of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere was affected by the explosive increase in the use of fossil fuel at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, only historical observations of solar activity can be used for calibrating radiocarbon data. The absolute radiocarbon standard is based on 1890 wood.

Sometimes, historical records of direct observations of solar activity themselves may require critical analysis. Recently recalibrated records of sunspot numbers [Clette et al., 2016] indicate, for instance, that solar cycle amplitudes may have been more uniform in the past 3 centuries than assumed until recently. If this result can be fully confirmed, it weakens the evidence for a solar cause of global warming.

A series of images of the Sun taken 7–17 March 1989 shows the evolution of a large sunspot group (NOAA 5395) as it moves around the Sun. The top sequence, taken in white light, shows the sunspot as it appears in the photosphere (solar visible surface). The bottom images are magnetograms of the same sunspot region, showing variations in magnetic polarity. During its disk passage, this active region produced more than 100 X-ray flares, including 11 flares in the most powerful X class. This eruptive activity was the cause of the “great geomagnetic storm” of 13–14 March, which affected radio communications and satellite operations and caused the famous Quebec blackout on 13 March 1989. See *Allen et al.* [1989] for a detailed description of solar and geomagnetic activity associated with this active region. Credit: NOAO/AURA/NSF

We also have historical time series of direct measurements of sunspot magnetic field strengths (e.g., see Figure 1) and ultraviolet observations of the Sun going back more than a century. In combination with modern dynamo models, these historical data allow us to explore the possible changes in properties of solar plasma in the convection zone, where these magnetic fields are generated, and form a better understanding of future cycles.

Paraphrasing Carl Sagan, “You have to know the past to understand the future.”

Shortsighted Funding Strategies

Unfortunately, despite the importance of long-term time series, we are witnessing an alarming decline in funding, and even cancellation, of long-term programs. For example, last year brought us the disbanding of a solar group at Debrecen Heliophysical Observatory in Hungary, thus interrupting the recording of a historical time series of sunspot group areas that spans more than a century. This project had started at Greenwich Royal Observatory in May of 1874 and transferred to Debrecen at the end of 1978.

At Mount Wilson Observatory in California, scientists continue direct measurements of sunspot field strength that began in 1917. Funding for this project has been discontinued, but the effort lives on because of heroic efforts of remaining observing personnel. Similar cuts to sunspot measuring programs threaten research around the world.

Orchestrating Change

The success of long-term synoptic observations requires long-term sustainable funding. The short-duration project funding schemes that have prevailed over recent years are unsuitable for long-term data collection and continuous monitoring. Indeed, long-term continuity is a key requirement for producing meaningful and usable data sets.

This does not mean that nothing changes over the term of a time series. Not all historical time series need to be continued, and instruments inevitably change over the lifetime of long-term time series. However, change must be carefully planned and orchestrated to maintain the uniformity of a time series, including cross calibration of new and old instruments.

Although some efforts are being made to develop replacements for aging synoptic facilities, there is an overall lack of long-term planning for such programs. This lack of planning may lead to the creation of ad hoc “networks” of nonuniform instrumentation and unnecessary duplication.

This area of research also benefits from close international collaboration. One strategy for using funding efficiently would be to establish a list of observables that the international community considers worthy to continue for an extended period of time. Then the funding agencies and the National Academies could be approached to establish a mechanism for shared funding for such time series. In this funding model, even the countries with limited research capabilities may contribute to the overall success.

To ensure the survival of historical time series, this work needs to be done now.

Fig. 1. This sunspot drawing shows one of the largest sunspot groups observed over the past 100 years. Observations were taken on 7 April 1947 at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Solar north is toward the top of the drawing, and solar west is to the left. Markings on the drawings indicate the positions and magnetic fields of all sunspots measured that day. Credit: Carnegie Observatories

Full post

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

http://ift.tt/2yNWDD7

September 30, 2017 at 06:27AM

Following the well accepted paper A Method of Google Search Bias Quantification and Its Application in Climate Debate and General Political Discourse (WUWT, 09/08/2017), I checked evolution of the intentional Google bias back to the early 2015. The intentional Google anti-conservative bias in news & opinion has not noticeably changed since early 2015. The intentional Google pro-alarmist bias in climate debate has not noticeably changed since early-mid 2016. I could not get earlier data. The very low correlation between PGSTN and popularity of the news & opinion domains in 2016 and 2015 confirms validity of the PGSTN methodology.

Artificial Google bias, persisting over the long time, has been causing a vicious spiral: less traffic from Google search to demoted domains caused less sharing on social and traditional media, and less traffic from other sources. That led to even lower Google ranking, and so on. These effects further decreased Google ranking of the site, and so on. Finally, news & opinion websites, artificially demoted by Google, were not considered by many individuals as legitimate sources. This social component of the vicious spiral probably had a destructive social effect, and significantly contributed to the political polarization of recent years.

The PGSTN methodology does not capture effects of this vicious spiral. It is impossible to quantify how much suppression the conservative speech suffered because of the intentional Google bias.

A surprising finding, unrelated to the subject of the research, was a sharp drop in the relative popularity of the former liberal MSM sites since March 2016:

Domain	US Rank 2016	US Rank	“popularity”	“popularity” change

cnn.com	18	24	4.52	-0.34
nytimes.com	22	31	4.24	-0.38
huffingtonpost.com	37	64	3.54	-0.52
usatoday.com	70	116	3.05	-0.41
nbcnews.com	119	239	2.54	-0.48
abcnews.go.com	162	248	2.52	-0.28
cbsnews.com	157	263	2.48	-0.34
pbs.org	242	502	2.11	-0.42
msnbc.com	342	531	2.08	-0.24
cnbc.com	251	173	2.76	0.24

Lower Rank is better. Only CNBC domain improved its popularity. On average, the center and right-of-center news and opinions sites in this research saw some popularity decrease, too, but nowhere near to the left/liberal MSM sites, especially those of the TV networks and The NY Times. I have some late lessons for them, especially:

NY Times – Lies do not pay.
CNN – The voters (and even your viewers) are not so stupid, after all.

Attached is the supporting material – spreadsheet PGSTN-Domains-Expanded.xlsx.

via Climate Realism against Alarmism

http://ift.tt/2x4yOER

September 30, 2017 at 06:17AM