David Archibald proposes the sun drives the earth's climate at the ICCC

[David]

Contrary to Terry Sloan's UK study,

'No Sun link' to climate change
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7327393.stm

-----

David Archibald gave a March presentation to the
International Conference on Climate Change -

Using the Sun's Activity to predict the Earth's
Climate to 2030
Brett Anderson - Accuweather Global Warming Center

http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2008/04/using_the_suns_activity_to_pre_1.html

-----

Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States
David Archibald
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf

All the best,
David Christainsen

[Eric Swanson]

Archibald's presentation is so bad its laughable.

First off, he provides no references and no sources for his data.
Does that matter? Well, looking at the first figure, which is claimed
to be "The 29 years of high quality Satellite Data". But, which
analysis of "the satellite data" is it? There have been several
different attempts to analyze the data from the MSU, starting with
Spencer and Christy's work. This batch looks like S & C's so-called
"middle tropospheric" set, based on the MSU channel 2 data. Back in
1992, S & C claimed that this data set was flawed, as it included
weighting from the lower stratosphere, which was known to be cooling
due to ozone depletion. S & C then produced their TLT, or Lower
Tropospheric analysis. If Archibald used the MT data, it would not be
a surprise that little or no warming is seen. It's noteworthy that
Bob Carter also incorrectly used this data in his presentation before
Congress. I think Vincent Grey used it also. All three are wrong.

Archibald continues, showing a graph of global sea-ice area. But, the
important changes seem to be happening in the NH and are especially
evident in the minimum extent, which has exhibited a very strong
negative trend. Last summer saw the least sea-ice extent in the
available record. While that low value may not be repeated this year,
the trend before last year was quite negative.

Next, we see data for 5 rural sites around Georgia. Archibald then
asserts, without any attempt at proof, that the variation is due to
solar effects. He completely ignores the Dust Bowl years, which were
the result of very poor agricultural practices after WW I. Abut the
same time, the cotton farms of the southeast were decimated by the
Boll Weevil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil
This period was also the time of the Great Depression, during which
time many small farmers left the land. Later, land formally used for
growing crops was converted to massive tree farms, which have a
cooling effect on local microclimate.

Archibald goes on to present a graph with temperature and solar
anomaly, claiming a cause and effect relationship. Trouble is, the
solar insolation data does not have a scale associated with it!
And, he is using only U.S. data, again ignoring the impact of the Dust
Bowl years, as well as the possible impact of air pollution from 1940
thru the start of the Clean Air Act.

Moving on, he shows a temperature series for Central England, pointing
to the time of the Maunder and Dalton Minimums in sunspot activity.
No problem there, but one will notice that the low temperature
supposedly associated with the Dalton Minimum is less than that of the
Maunder Minimum. Later, on page 9, he shows data for 3 European
stations, claiming that the 2 degree decline at one station was the
result of the Dalton Minimum. But, wait, what about The Year Without
Summer? What about the Tambora volcanic eruption, which appears in
the ice core record as the strongest sulfate spike in the past 400
years. Not only that, but there was another eruption a few years
earlier, so the cooling seen in Europe and New England was most likely
due to the short term impact of those volcanic eruptions.

Back on page 6, Archibald shows a graph supposedly representing
temperatures during the Medieval Warm period and Little Ice Age. He
gives no source for this graph. The figure looks very much like one
presented in the First IPCC report, one which Tom Crowley called a
"cartoon" in sworn testimony before a Congressional Committee. And,
Crowley's graph did not have a temperature scale, as I recall. Where
did that temperature scale come from? Without knowing the source, who
can say?

Archibald goes on and on, with lots of unproven assertions, finally
getting to the end on page 29, where he claims (as do others) that the
temperature since 1998 has not shown any warming, which is likely to
be true, since 1998 was an usually warm year. Over the longer time of
the record, say, the last 30 years, the Earth is seen as warming.
Picking the very warm year as the start of one's period of reference
is completely bogus.

I think Archibald's entire report is very bad science and should be
ignored. I hope you will agree.

E. S.
--------------------------------------------------

David wrote:
> Contrary to Terry Sloan's UK study,
>
> 'No Sun link' to climate change
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7327393.stm
>
> -----
>
> David Archibald gave a March presentation to the
> International Conference on Climate Change -
>