Ned Nikolov: Dispelling the Milankovitch Myth

Posted: January 3, 2022 by tallbloke in climate, Critique, Cycles, data, Ice ages, Natural Variation, solar system dynamics, Uncertainty

Ned Nikolov, Ph.D.
Dec 30, 2021

There has been a long-standing belief in Paleoclimatology that orbital variations (a.k.a. Milankovitch cycles) have been responsible for the initiation and/or duration of glacial cycles (Ice Ages) over the past 800 Ky. Milankovitch cycles are often referred to as a pacemaker of the Ice Ages. This myth dates back to 1970s, when sediment cores revealed a weak correlation in the frequency domain between Earth’s 41-ky obliquity (axial-tilt) cycle and the periodicity of Ice Ages during the early Pleistocene (Quaternary). However, in the late Pleistocene, the frequency of glacial cycles better match the Earth’s 100-ky eccentricity cycle, which further fueled the confusion. Yet, no one has been able to demonstrate a meaningful relationship between glacial cycles and any of the Earth’s 3 orbital parameters obliquity, eccentricity and precession or combination thereof on a linear time scale. A physical causation requires a strong correlation between parameters in the time domain, not the frequency domain!

Using recent data describing the dynamics of global surface air temperature inferred from geological proxies and variations of Earth’s orbital parameters computed by the best available orbital models, we show here the lack of a physically meaningful relationship in the time domain between Milankovitch cycles and Ice Ages for the past 784 ky. Orbital data came from the state-of-the-art model by Laskar et al. (2004 and 2011) and were downloaded from a page on the official website of the Virtual Observatory Paris Data Center in France. The top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) solar insolation on summer solstice at 65o N latitude was obtained from the Milankovitch Orbital Data Viewer of Colorado State University. A time series of global surface air temperature for the late Pleistocene (past 784 ky) was constructed from published reconstructions by Snyder (2016) and Friedrich et al. (2016). All data series used in the analysis share the same temporal resolution of 1,000 years. Standard Score (a.k.a. Z-Score) is used in some graphs to plot time series having different measurement units on the same axis.

Figure 1.

Changes in Earth’s mean annual distance to the Sun (measured in Astronomical Units, AU) resulting from variations of planet’s orbital eccentricity have been minuscule for the past 800 ky (Fig.1) causing only a ± 0.05 W m-2 variation in the Earth’s baseline TOA Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) (Fig. 2). According to recent solar reconstructions (e.g., Egorova et al. 2018), this variation is 50 – 100 smaller than the TSI fluctuations caused by Sun’s magnetic activity on centennial to millennial time scales. 

Figure 2.

Hence, orbitally induced TSI changes are bound to have an immeasurably small effect on Earth’s global surface temperature. The latter shows practically no correlation to TSI variations induced by the Milankovitch cycles (Fig. 3a and 3b).

Figure 3a

Figure 3b


Earth’s obliquity (axial tilt) varied narrowly between 22.3o and 24.5o for the past 800 ky (Fig. 4) while showing no relationship to global surface temperature over this time period (Fig. 5a and 5b). The linear correlation between obliquity and the global surface temperature is R2 = 0.053 (Fig. 5b).

Figure 4.

Figure 5a.

Figure 5b.

Earth’s orbital eccentricity also varied over a narrow range (from 0.004 to 0.05) during the past 800 ky (Fig. 6). Note a pronounced 400-ky cycle in the eccentricity time series, which is not found in the global temperature record (Fig. 7a). The correlation between global temperature and eccentricity is rather weak (R2 = 0.235) (Fig. 7b) albeit a bit better than the correlation between temperature and TSI or temperature and obliquity discussed earlier.

Figure 6.

Figure 7a.

Figure 7b.

Figures 8a and 8b depict the relationship between rates of change of global temperature and Earth’s orbital eccentricity. These time-derivatives are correlated with a coefficient R2 = 0.341, which is the strongest relationship found between global temperature and any orbital parameter of Earth! However, this correlation does not imply a physical causation, because eccentricity changes have a negligibly small effect on TOA TSI and surface temperature.

Figure 8a.

Figure 8b.


Paleoclimatologists claim that Milankovitch cycles affect Earth’s climate chiefly through changes in the solar flux reaching the top of the atmosphere at 65o N latitude on the day of June summer solstice. According to this concept, a decreased summer isolation at 65o N due to a specific configuration of obliquity, precession, and eccentricity impedes the summer melting of snow at high latitudes and promotes ice accumulation, which over time allows glaciers to grow, thus initiating an Ice Age. The reverse process is believed to take place, when the summer isolation anomaly at 65o N is above its long-term mean (baseline value). During such periods, more snow/ice is expected to melt in the summer, which is thought to initiate deglaciation… However, the data reveal a complete lack of a relationship between summer insolation at 65o N and the global surface temperature for the past 784 Ky (see Figs. 9a and 9b). The correlation coefficient between these time series is a meager R2 = 0.031 (Fig 9b).

Figure 9a.

Figure 9b.

Roe (2006) claims to have found a strong correlation between the rate of change of Earth’s ice volume and the TOA June insolation anomaly at 65o N latitude. However, in his study, the ice volume (measured in “arbitrary units”) was estimated by models relying on oxygen isotopes. Noticeably one of the models (SPECMAP) dating back to 1984 assumed a-priori that ice volume and orbital forcing were related. Hence, the ice volume estimates utilized by Roe (2006) appear to be biased toward orbital cycles and much less reliable than modern proxy-based reconstructions of global temperature. Also, planetary-level climate change is physically much better defined through variations of the absolute global surface temperature rather than fluctuations of some unitless ice-volume estimates. This is because temperature is a fundamental metric controlling the dynamics of icesheets and sea ice. In an effort to “mimic” Roe’s approach as closely as possible, we compared the rate of change of global surface temperature to the TOA June insolation anomaly at 65o N latitude for the past 784 Ky (Fig. 10a & 10b). The correlation coefficient between these time series is R2 = 0.254 (Fig. 10b), which suggests an effective lack of control by the orbitally driven high-latitude summer insolation changes on the global surface temperature of Earth.

Figure 10a.

Figure 10b.

CONCLUSION: The available data indicate that, in the time domain, the Milankovitch orbital cycles are poorly correlated (if at all) to changes of global surface temperature inferred from sediment- and ice-core proxies for the past 784 Ky. Hence, the geological record provides no evidence that Ice Ages of the past one million years were controlled or even influenced by known variations of Earth’s orbital parameters. Putting to rest the Milankovitch orbital hypothesis of climate change as an unsupported conjecture seems to be an important and necessary step toward developing a new and physically robust Paradigm of paleoclimate drivers as discussed in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpUkPPtkPVc

Comments
  1. Ned Nikolov says:

    Stephen,

    What’s wise IMO is to stick to hard quantitative evidence, not prejudices. That’s my guiding principles. As I said in one of my comments above, in a scientific investigation, we should always remember the wise words of Arthur Conan Doyle:

    Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

  2. Pablo says:

    Brilliant thread…thanks everyone.

  3. Ned Nikolov says:

    Thank you, Pablo! This is dramatic storm video!!

  4. oldbrew says:

    Mars air pressure theory, originally from Dr. Jeffrey Kargel of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona.

    The Obliquity of Mars
    https://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-water-science-00d.html

    As Mars’ obliquity — and thus the warmth of its polar summers — increase still more, however, the second stage of the process starts: some of the accumulated patches of surface ice become as much as 20 deg C warmer.

    And the increased warmth of the polar regions has another important effect (recognized by almost all Mars researchers): a great deal of carbon dioxide stored underground — either as frozen dry ice, a “clathrate” mixture of CO2 with water ice, gaseous CO2 that has been “adsorbed” by Mars’ soil (that is, chemically stuck to tis grains), and perhaps even underground liquid CO2 under pressure — evaporates and is released into the air.

    Mars’ somewhat cooling equatorial soil absorbs part of this new CO2 — but it is well outweighed by the thawing polar CO2, and so Mars’ air pressure significantly increases.

    This still leaves its air pressure only a tiny fraction of Earth’s (at most, about 4%) — but it produces enough of an added CO2 greenhouse effect to warm Mars by another 10 deg C. And it also raises Mars’ air pressure enough that liquid water can exist on its surface (indeed, it’s only a little too low for liquid water to briefly exist there right now).

    The result of these two factors — as you might expect — is that many of the accumulated thick patches of water ice on Mars’ surface are able to melt, producing the runoff gullies we see today.

    But then — as the next stage of the obliquity cycle occurs and Mars’ axial tilt starts to shrink again — these high-latitude areas cool down again, and the extra carbon dioxide is once again absorbed back into Mars’ soil and subsurface, lowering its air pressure again to its current tiny level (or even lower, during those period when Mars’ obliquity is less than its current 25 degrees).

  5. oldmanK says:

    Speaking of the obliquity of Mars, I recall reading this:
    https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/the-great-tilt-that-changed-the-face-of-mars/

    Of course it had to be crustal shift, as otherwise it interferes with the dogma of the models.

  6. oldbrew says:

    A Causality Problem for Milankovitch

    Daniel B. Karner and Richard A. Muller
    Department of Physics
    University of California
    Berkeley, CA 94720

    Click to access Causality.pdf

  7. Ned Nikolov says:

    Thank you, Oldbrew!

    Many researchers have noticed over the years the inconsistencies between Milankovitch cycles and glacial fluctuations, but the “Milankovitch myth” continued to persist, because there was no other driver that science knew about (expect for the fictitious “CO2 radiative forcing”) that could explain the Ice Ages… until now!

    We now have a quantitatively verified alternative concept: Ice Ages were not a result of radiative forcing as everyone thought, but a consequence of a varying-through-time adiabatic forcing. This could have never been realized if it was not for our discovery about the adiabatic (pressure-induced) nature of the Atmospheric Thermal Effect. As it often happens in science, the discovery of a new paradigm in regard to one phenomenon leads to a complete overhaul of our understanding about other related phenomena…

  8. Paul Vaughan says:

    supplementary inclination

    “Figure 2. Earth’s orbital parameters from the La2010d astronomical solution […] (A) The orbital eccentricity variation, 0–10 Ma. (B) Periodogram of the orbital eccentricity variation shown in (A). (C) The orbital inclination variation relative to the invariable plane, 0–10 Ma (Note: Fig. 6 […] La2004 orbital inclination relative to the ecliptic plane). (D) Periodogram of the orbital inclination variation shown in (C). […]” — Cyclostratigraphy and Astrochronology – Linda Hinnov 2018

  9. Philip Mulholland says:

    Paul,
    Good digging, you’re mining a rich seam.

    δ18O is defined as the fractional change in 18O/16O in parts per thousand; its variations in the ocean are driven primarily by changes in the volume of global ice, which is depleted in 18O. We used two determinations for the depth of the samples. The first was to set the depth to the “driller’s depth” at the top of each core segment, assume no gaps between segments, and use linear interpolation in between. We call this the “adjusted depth”; there were no adjustable parameters in its determination. The second method was to adopt the scale developed by Berger et al. (1993), who argued that gaps were present between the core segments, and corrected for them by patching data from an adjacent core. The largest patch was for an assumed 75 cm gap near the depth 16 meters. We refer to this depth scale as the “patched depth.” The conclusions that we present in this paper are independent of which of these two depth scales we use.

    What is known in the geologic trade as “Gardening”. 🙂

  10. Ned Nikolov says:

    Trying to match frequencies in the sediment record to Milankovitch orbital frequencies and drawing “conclusions” from such matches is a dead-end exercise in terms of understanding the actual drivers of Ice Ages. Countless studies have run into such a dead end already. Yet, the Milankovitch myth continues to dominate scientific thinking suggesting an apparent lack of intelligence in the field of Paleoclimatology…

  11. oldmanK says:

    Part quote “δ18O is defined as the fractional change in 18O/16O in parts per thousand”.

    Taken from polar ice cores Vostok and Gisp2 agree, but are opposite to equatorial Kilimanjaro throughout the Holocene max. However all three increase abruptly at the end of the YD (definitely not a M causation).

  12. Philip Mulholland says:

    “but are opposite to equatorial Kilimanjaro throughout the Holocene max”
    Interesting point however we are there comparing a Hadley cell with the 2 Polar cells.
    Then there is the issue of vegetation water recycling (evapo-transpiration). Lots of vegetation in the tropics, zero for the polar icecaps.
    Too many confounding variables.

  13. Stephen Wilde says:

    ‘Many researchers have noticed over the years the inconsistencies between Milankovitch cycles and glacial fluctuations, but the “Milankovitch myth” continued to persist, because there was no other driver that science knew about.’

    I have seen it suggested that albedo variations are sufficient as a driver of ice ages since they mimic a change in distance from the sun. It is therefore untrue to suggest that science has not considered other drivers.
    Distance from the sun is a driver of the surface temperature enhancement along with atmospheric mass and the strength of the gravitational field (which together set surface pressure}. To that extent I agree with Ned.
    I find albedo variations pretty pursuasive because the phase change of water gives a potentially substantial and rapid response to Milankovitch cycles and the degree of response will be related to the configuration of the continents because ice forms more readily on land surfaces.
    If Ned wishes to insist on total global atmospheric mass variations as the only possible solution then I would like to hear of any mechanism that could change total atmospheric mass on the short timescale between glaciations and interglacials.

  14. I have been recording daily SOI figures (from the long paddock site https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/soi/) and have noted a tidal effect related to the moon. As the tides at Tahiti are fairly constant the effect mainly relates to the tides at Darwin which gives a change to the atmospheric pressure.
    This paper “The 1,800-year oceanic tidal cycle: A possible cause of rapid climate change”
    Charles D. Keeling* and Timothy P. Whorf
    Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0244
    Contributed by Charles D. Keeling, February 2, 2000; pp3814–3819 PNAS April 11, 2000 vol. 97 no. 8
    may interest Ned and those interested in the effect of the orbits of planets and the moon.
    The atmospheric pressures are related to oceans levels and ocean temperatures. The SOI is an indicator for ENSO. (El Nino/La Nina Southern Oscillation)

  15. Ned Nikolov says:

    Stephen,

    I have made this point before, but here it is again: Albedo changes cannot account for the Ice Ages, because the role of albedo in controlling the global surface temperature is quite limited. The planetary albedo is not a free variable as many tend to think! Watch my albedo video presented at the 101st AMS conference in Jan of 2021 for a full quantitative explanation of how this works… Also, albedo changes cannot explain the observed polar amplifications during glacial cycles!

  16. Philip Mulholland says:

    Ned,
    I cannot agree with your proposition that albedo is a fixed property of a terrestrial body. This is demonstrably false by observation. For example, the albedo of Mars is higher during global dust storms. The Galilean satellites of Jupiter are vacuum worlds with albedo values that range from a dark 0.19 for Callisto (JIV) to a bright 0.68 for Europa (JII).

    I believe that you are confounding atmospheric albedo with surface albedo. The four Jovian Satellites clearly demonstrate a wide range of albedo for different surface types. The albedo of Earth is a composite of an atmospheric cloud veil albedo formed by the main condensing volatile, water (droplets and ice) and the surface visible properties, ocean, vegetated land, desert land and surface ice fields.

    Because planet Earth is a fast rotator the descending clear air zone of the tropical Hadley cell is located in the mid-latitudes. Depending on the surface properties these zones are either desert land or desert ocean. For desert ocean with its low albedo surface the daily solar energy is captured, stored and transported by ocean gyres to high latitudes. For desert land the daily solar insolation is not stored but is instead lost back to space each night by thermal radiant transmission through the clear sky atmospheric window of the descending limb.

    It is variations in the surface albedo that are related to the long-term geologic changes. The slow geologic change of ocean plumbing e.g., the continental rifting of the Southern Ocean and the barrier separation of compressional arc formation e.g., the Isthmus of Panama that caused major surface environment changes e.g., icecap formation in Antarctica that led to long slow changes in Earth’s total composite albedo.

    Using our DAET climate model I have established that for a constant pressure Earth, the short-term high frequency albedo changes will be from 0.306 for a 15 Celsius inter-glacial world to a bright 0.344 albedo for a 11 Celsius ice age world. This albedo change is caused by the 65-year climate cycle of path length changes in the reflective jet stream path sinuosity (short term), and associated surface elevation changes (long-term). This long-term change is caused by slow land ice build-up that expands the Polar cell, forces the Ferrel cell to adopt a lower latitude zone by ice elevation blocking and also generates the cold climate re-enforcing surface gravity winds e.g., Antarctica. This albedo climate change scenario is for a constant pressure Earth.

    Using our DAET climate model I have also established that for a constant albedo (your preferred model) 15 Celsius Earth, the long-term geologic pressure change back from our present low value of 1013 mb to a higher pressure of 1092 mb will generate a hot-house 24 Celsius Cretaceous world.

    Our range of values of long period global atmospheric pressure change derived from our DAET climate model is much smaller than those you suggest. I know that you will dismiss this as modelling and stories, but ultimately Geoscience relies on storytelling and modelling validation of data.

  17. Ned Nikolov says:

    Phillip,

    As usual, you are jumping to conclusions before having actually understood the issue… I have never claimed that the “albedo is a fixed property of a terrestrial body“. Where did you get that crazy idea from?

    The role of planetary albedo in controlling surface temperatures is more complex than it meets the eye, and I tried to explain it in my video above. Please clear your mind of preconceived notions and watch the video 2-3 times while focusing on the the physics and numerical reasoning presented there…

  18. Philip Mulholland says:

    Ned,
    I have looked again at your video. I have a question – Did you study mean atmospheric molecular weight as one of your climate variables for Venus, Earth and Titan?

  19. Ned Nikolov says:

    Phillip,

    I hope you understood our concepts of baseline albedo and albedo perturbations around the baseline, and why perturbations are necessarily small compared to the baseline albedo.

    Our model uses molar density of the atmosphere measured in mol m-3, but does not deal with the average molecular mass of the atmosphere. Why are you asking that question?

  20. Philip Mulholland says:

    I am interested in the relationship between molar mass, escape velocity and solar irradiance.

  21. Ned Nikolov says:

    I have not studied this problem yet…

  22. Dear Ned,

    These functions you explore are severely periodic ones and any statistical rules developed for normal distributions are simply not applicable. What you obtained is that Pearson correlation coefficient is close to zero as it should be for multivariate functions.

    If we start applying a wrong statistics we can make many false discoveries…

    Regards

    Valentina

  23. Ned Nikolov says:

    Hi Valentina,

    Thank you for commenting on my blog!

    I’m aware of the effect of multivariate functions. One such function that has heavily been hypothesized to control Ice Ages is the TOA summer insolation at 65 degree North. Changes in this solar flux is a multivariate function of eccentricity, precession and obliquity. Yet, this flux displays NO meaningful relationship with variations of global surface temperature for the past 800 Ky as shown in Figures 9 and 10.

    In addition to the lack of meaningful statistical relationships between orbital parameters and their combination on one hand AND global temperature variation on the other, there are several physics reasons pointing to the fact that the Ice Ages were NOT driven by radiative forcing at all. Instead, glacial cycles were the result of changes in the atmospheric adiabatic (pressure-induced) forcing. Please watch these videos for more details about this new Paradigm. Note: this is not “more-of-the-same” science!:

    Demystifying the Greenhouse Effect“: https://vimeo.com/602819278
    Drivers of Earth’s Paleoclimate“: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpUkPPtkPVc

    Grasping this new concept might require watching the videos more than once!

  24. […] Ned Nikolov: Dispelling the Milankovitch Myth […]

  25. angech says:

    JJBraccili | January 29, 2022 at climate etc|

    Pressure is not responsible for planetary temperature. That “theory” is based on the fact that if you compress a gas the temperature rises. It is also a fact that any body above 0 K radiates energy. There is no energy source to hold the pressurized gas at the temperature due to compression. Without a source of energy, the body returns to close to absolute zero. The planetary temperature always depends on the energy balance between the planet and a star.

    The only impact pressure has on planetary temperature is to increase the molar density of greenhouse gases which increases the “greenhouse effect.”

    The planet’s rotation has zero impact on planetary temperature. Spinning a planet is not an energy source. All spinning a planet does is give the planet a more uniform surface temperature which will approach the radiating temperature of the planet as planet rotates faster and faster. Refer to my previous posts on this subject for proof.

  26. oldmanK says:

    angech says: January 30, 2022 at 6:07 am
    Quote “The planet’s rotation has zero impact on planetary temperature. Spinning a planet is not an energy source. All spinning a planet does is give the planet a more uniform surface temperature which will approach the radiating temperature of the planet as planet rotates faster and faster. ”

    There are several factors to consider. For a planet of spherical shape receiving heat from a point source, spin rate is important (dictates mode of heat absorption and rejection). So is orientation of spin axis.

    See https://tinyurl.com/3df8bny5 mainly page 23 for theory. Same mechanisms apply.

    For evidence see:
    1. a comparison of axis tilt to latitude temp variation (today comp to Eocene) https://www.facebook.com/melitamegalithic/photos/a.433731873468290/1957722401069222/
    From https://www.terrapub.co.jp/e-library/ecp/pdf/EC0301.PDF page 308 superimposed on graphs from Ned’s video.

    2. effect of slight tilt change on glacier ablation https://www.facebook.com/melitamegalithic/photos/a.433731873468290/2093466177494843/
    from https://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/papers2/Rothe_QSR_2014.pdf see pg 118, and compared to actual tilt measurements from past primarily around 173CE

  27. oldbrew says:

    angech says: there is no energy source to hold the pressurized gas at the temperature due to compression.

    Gravity.

  28. Philip Mulholland says:

    angech says: there is no energy source to hold the pressurized gas at the temperature due to compression.
    Gravity.

    oldbrew,
    In any discussing of these issues, it is instructive to apply Dimensional Analysis (DA) to the components of the physical system we are analysing. There are four physical dimensions in play here. These are:
    Mass (M)
    Length (L)
    Time (T)
    Kelvin (K)
    Work Done, that is Energy (E), is defined as Force applied (F) times Distance moved (L) is measured in Joules.
    Force (F) is defined as Mass (M) times Acceleration (a) and is measured in Newtons.
    Acceleration (a) is defined as the rate of change of Velocity (V) and so is calculated as V/T.
    Velocity (V) is defined as the rate of change of Position, i.e., distance moved (L) per unit time (T) and Velocity is measured in metres/second.
    So, putting all of this together we see that the dimensions of Velocity are:
    V = L/T or V = L.T^-1
    The dimensions of Acceleration are:
    a = V/T or a = L.T^-2
    The dimensions of Force are:
    F = M.a or F = M.L.T^-2
    The dimensions of Energy are:
    E = F.L or E = M.L^2.T^-2
    Now Gravity is an acceleration and therefore has dimensions L.T^-2 and so Gravity is not Energy.
    Likewise, Pressure (P), which is defined as Force per unit Area (A), (where Area has dimensions L^2) and so Pressure has dimensions:
    P = F/A or P = M.L^-1.T^-2
    Clearly Pressure is not Energy either.

  29. oldbrew says:

    What prevents the atmosphere from flying off into outer space?

  30. Philip Mulholland says:

    What prevents the atmosphere from flying off into outer space?

    oldbrew.

    Gravity is not Energy.
    Energy is the physical location (L) of mass (M) within a gravity field (acceleration = L.T^-2).
    Potential Energy = m.g.h = M.L^2.T^-2
    Don’t be disingenuous.

  31. oldbrew says:

    I read that the Moon’s gravity causes the tides of the oceans. No energy involved?

  32. Philip Mulholland says:

    I read that the Moon’s gravity causes the tides of the oceans. No energy involved?

    oldbrew,
    The Moon is in motion. You seem to be locked into a static concept, all of this is a dynamic system in which mass motion is the crucial aspect to study.

  33. Philip Mulholland says:

    Talking of mass motion. One of the most puzzling things for me was to learn in Meteorology 101 that the wind flows parallel to the isobars (lines of equal pressure). How is this possible? Surely it is pressure that drives the wind and so air must flow down the pressure gradient and not parallel to the isobars?
    I eventually resolved this paradox with a physical model. Consider a round-shaped pan with a flat level base that contains a given volume of liquid water at rest. The pressure of the water at the base of the water column is uniform across the bottom of the pan and no liquid water movement occurs.
    Now take a spatula and stir the water in the pan to create a vortex. What happens to the level of the now moving liquid in the pan? We observe a dimple shaped surface and note that there is now less water column in the centre of the pan. Clearly the water pressure has dropped in the centre of the vortex. In the extreme case we can stir the water to move sufficiently fast to have no water column, and therefore no water pressure, in the centre of the pan. This experiment demonstrates that in the pan it is water motion that generates the water pressure gradient at the bottom of the pan, and so we can conjecture that in the troposphere it is air mass motion that generates the surface pressure gradient.
    We observe in the atmosphere the presence of gravity currents caused by surface night-time and winter cooling. The motion of dense cold air generates cold fronts as the air moves meridionally. In the northern hemisphere the southerly track of cold dense air will generate a cyclonic vortex on its eastern margin, an anticyclonic vortex on its western margin and an entraining rolling vortex vertically above the cold front boundary (the jet stream).
    Continuing with our water-filled pan as an analogue model for the troposphere, next consider what happens if we place our pan of water on the hob and light the gas to heat the base of the pan in its centre. The water in the centre of the pan above the flame will begin to heat up, the water will become less dense and because of the presence of the confining gravity field the water will begin to convect and circulate in the pan. Now if we have a large diameter pan and a small flame then in this case the convecting water will cool at the liquid surface and the water will also cool at the sides of the pan.
    This point source heating of the water in the centre of the pan is not a useful model for studying the solar heated troposphere at the equator on a rotating planet. So let us now reposition the point heat source to the edge of the pan and rotate it to move the contact point heat source around the pan’s circumference. In this model the circumferential walls of the pan are the equator, the moving heat source is the sun’s daily zenith track and the centre of the pan is the pole of rotation.
    Using this analogue model, a lot of variables can be usefully studied. For example:
    1. The rate of rotation and its effect on convection cell structure.
    2. The depth of water and its effect on convection.
    3. How the aspect ratio of pan diameter size to water column thickness impacts convection cell structure.
    4. We can make the simple point source heat input into a model of an illuminated hemisphere with varying heat input across the pan’s base to model daytime solar elevation, and also have half of the base of the pan unheated as an analogue for a nighttime cooling environment.
    5. We can add surface rugosity to the base of the pan to model the impact of mountain barriers, such as the Andes and the Himalayas, to respectively study barriers to zonal and meridional motion within the model.

  34. Dan says:

    Everybody pretty much gets the concept of storing energy by compressing a gas. An air compressor is a familiar example where air at atmospheric pressure is compressed and stored in a pressure vessel. Stated differently, more air molecules occupying the same volume results in energy stored in the vessel. This stored energy can be used to power a wide variety of air tools. The size of the pressure vessel determines the energy stored at a given pressure; e.g. a 100 gallon vessel stores 20 times as much energy as a 5 gallon vessel. The energy stored in the the vessel could also be increased with an external heat source. This would also increase the pressure within the vessel, but that would be impractical for most applications. Conditions within the vessel are fairly uniform: It doesn’t matter much where you measure pressure or temperature, although there is some variation.

    But this is not the same as what’s happening with the Earth’s atmosphere. In fact, energy is stored not by compressing the atmosphere, but by expanding it against the pull of gravity. It’s roughly analogous to the way electrical generators store excess energy by pumping water to a higher elevation for later use. Or you can think of it like a giant clock spring constantly being rewound by incoming solar energy. Importantly for understanding, the energy being stored is heat, measured in joules, not temperature.

    Much like a larger pressure vessel stores more energy than a smaller one, more energy is stored by raising pressure (and temperature) over a larger and larger volume. Since pressure is directly proportional to the number of air molecules above, it’s easy to see that as the atmosphere heats and expands, more molecules of air are elevated from below any point above ground level to above that point, raising the pressure. Coincidentally, as more molecules of air are relocated upwards, the density at lower elevations is necessarily reduced.

    Unlike a pressure vessel where pressure is fairly uniform, we end up with a very discernible pressure gradient, with the highest pressure at the surface and the lowest at the top of the atmosphere. We also end up with a very discernible temperature gradient (lapse rate). Why is this so? The ideal gas formula tells us that

    PV = nRT

    Thus, T = PV/nR

    So, for any elevation, if we hold V constant we can see that P is rising and n is decreasing, resulting in T increasing as well. The exception would be at ground level where P stays constant since there is always the same number of air molecules above; however n still decreases as the atmosphere expands, meaning T will be higher with more expansion.

    The GHG zealots will be protesting that because T is so high at the surface, all that heat should be radiating out to space and the atmosphere having the same temperature as the lunar surface if not for “back radiation” and whatnot. They may be right, I don’t know. But it’s obvious that most of the atmosphere is not that hot. It’s like having a pressure vessel insulated except for one small area. Also, keep in mind that non-greenhouse gases do NOT radiate, so it’s even possible that more GHGs would result in more heat loss to space. (I’m not claiming that, just noting the possibility.)

  35. Pablo says:

    Thanks for that. Thoughts on water vapour as control for ocean temperature?

    Click to access Bomwatch-Willoughby-Main-article-FINAL.pdf

  36. pochas94 says:

    There are dozens of thing operating here, including which way the whales are migrating.

  37. Philip Mulholland says:

    Thoughts on water vapour as control for ocean temperature?

    Pablo.
    Thanks for the link.
    A lot to digest there.
    Very useful source.

  38. oldbrew says:

    Re. Philip Mulholland says: January 30, 2022 at 5:30 pm
    – – –
    I was quoting Wikipedia…
    On Earth, gravity gives weight to physical objects, and the Moon’s gravity causes the tides of the oceans.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity
    – – –
    Gravitational compression is a phenomenon in which gravity, acting on the mass of an object, compresses it, reducing its size and increasing the object’s density.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_compression

    The atmosphere of the Earth is an object.

  39. Philip Mulholland says:

    oldbrew,

    “and the Moon’s gravity causes the tides of the oceans.”
    This is as useful as saying:
    “and the Sun’s light causes the rain of the atmosphere”
    Can you not see that is is just a descriptive word salad with no useful explanatory information?

    The Wikipedia source you link to also contains the following gem:
    “which describes gravity not as a force …”
    Once again – Gravity is an acceleration NOT a force.

  40. […] Keep Moving the GoalpostsLinking Cold and Snow to Global Warming: An Extreme Climate Conundrum?Dispelling the Milankovitch MythClimate Action in New York Is Nothing But Virtue SignalingBigger spend needed for net-zero world […]

  41. oldbrew says:

    ‘Gravity is essential for the lapse rate because it compresses the atmosphere resulting in a hydrostatic pressure gradient. In bulk thermodynamic terms – air that rises up against gravity loses energy by doing work and air that falls gains energy by having work done on it.’

    More thoughts on the Lapse Rate

    Agree or disagree?

  42. Philip Mulholland says:

    Agree or disagree?

    Oldbrew,
    I am tired of this back and forth.
    I have no idea what you are hoping to achieve by this.
    Goodbye.

  43. bonbon says:

    Dr. Nikolov,
    Nitrogen is a major atmospheric component here, and Venus. It is also mostly dismissed.
    Yet 2 video’s :
    Ancient Bacteria Makes Oxygen In a Never Before Seen Way Without Photosynthesis

    Nitrogen Origins and Why It’s So Important For Habitable Planets

    For the first video shows we do not have a grip on the N cycle, nor its origin.
    Both videos have numerous publish paper links.
    So, is it possible the N cycle is far more affected by oceanic bacteria than acknowledged?
    And could this affect the atmospheric pressure on some kind of N fixation cycle?
    In other words, are the ice-ages responding to a living biospheric process?

    Just a question, prompted by this very provocative hypothesis….

  44. Dear Ned,

    Besides the application of a wrong statistics developed for normal distributions for comparing pair of measurements while they are strongly periodic functions, to which this statistics is not applicable by default, there are few other caveats in your calculations as outlined below:

    1) you also used the Sun-Earth distance positions one per year or one per 100 years that are strongly averaged magnitudes and, thus, are not correct. I have shown this point in my chapter Zharkova, 2021 https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/75534, fig.14.

    When one uses a single Sun-Earth distance per month (say 15=th day of month) and one solar irradiance per month, the difference between the irradiance deposited by the Sun in millennium 1 is only 1-1.5 W/m^2 lower than in millennium 2, while if one considers the daily Sun-Earth distances for every months, the difference in the deposition in millennium 1 and 2 approaches 25 W/m^2 higher in millennium 2. This tells us in practice that the average DOES NOT work for the evaluation of S-E distance changes and solar irradiance variations per year.

    The same is valid for your evaluation of the Sun-Earth distances during other millennia, because you keep forgetting that this distance changes periodically during a whole year, it changes also by the gravitation of the planets during each year, and how. much extra radiation is deposited into he Earth and other planets is not shown by the averaged distance and irradiance produced once a year. Therefore, the change of eccentricity is not the main change causing the change of irradiance as you estimated.

    2) The second point, which is not even discussed in your paper, is the area of the Earth covered by the solar irradiance when the Earth changes its inclination. When the Earth is more inclined towards the Sun, the more parts of each hemisphere are deposited with the solar radiation. If these areas are covered by the ocean, they have more heating and melt the ice etc. And this is different from the irradiance obtained from the sun because of the change of the distance.

    As far as I remember, Lascar’s calculations of Sun-Earth distances provide in their models this parameter which needs to be included into the consideration before you try to demote Milanckovitch’s cycles. I also know that computers cannot handle huge arrays, so you would need to process the daly distances and produce the daily solar irradiance for 10K and then for other 10k years and so on.

    3) You would need to include SIM into these calculations because it changes very dramatically the solar irradiance deposition in the opposite cases.

    Kind regards

    Valentina

  45. […] Keep Moving the GoalpostsLinking Cold and Snow to Global Warming: An Extreme Climate Conundrum?Dispelling the Milankovitch MythClimate Action in New York Is Nothing But Virtue SignalingBigger spend needed for net-zero world […]

  46. […] Keep Moving the GoalpostsLinking Cold and Snow to Global Warming: An Extreme Climate Conundrum?Dispelling the Milankovitch MythClimate Action in New York Is Nothing But Virtue SignalingBigger spend needed for net-zero world […]

  47. Pablo says:

    “….ice sheets terminated every second or third obliquity cycle at times of high obliquity, similar to the original proposal by Milankovitch.”

    “But how does a forcing with a 40-kyr period pace the 100-kyr late- Pleistocene glacial variability? One suggestion is that the phase and amplitude modulations of obliquity cause the 100-kyr variability, but it is difficult to see the climatic significance of such modulations. Instead, we suggest that the climate state skips one or two obliquity beats before deglaciating, thus giving quantized glacial-cycle durations of either 80 or 120kyr. A speculative scenario is for increased obliquity to increase high-latitude insolation and cause heating of an ice sheet, eventually warming the ice–bedrock interface. When the ice sheet is thin, basal temperature and pressure are low, and the obliquity heating has little effect—a skipped beat. But when the ice sheet is thick, basal temperature and pressure are high,…..”

    https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3382978/Huybers_ObliquityPacingTerminations.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

  48. Ned Nikolov says:

    Thank you for all the comments after my last reply to Dr. Zharkova. Later this week, I will only address Zharkova’s comments from Jan 31, because I already responded to all other comments in my previous replies on this blog, AND many questions still asked by people are addressed in details in the videos I linked to in this thread… Please watch these videos and try to think logically. Sadly, logical thinking based an real data and robust math relationships is a rare commodity in today’s consensus-driven climate science.

  49. Ned Nikolov says:

    Hi Valentina,
    Sorry for the tardy reply, but I was swamped with work at my federal day job over the past month. Here is my reply to your last comment above:

    1. I reviewed the paper you suggested (Zharkova 2021: https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/75534). I was surprised to see that in it, you try to relate an observed change of global surface temperature such as the warming since the Maunder Minimum to a difference in daily TSI sums (accumulations) between two dates. Such a relationship does not exist, because temperature is an intensive property of matter meaning that it does not depend on the size/mass of the system. In physics, the relationship between radiation (R, W m-2) and the absolute temperature of a material object (T, K) is given by the Stephan-Boltzmann Law:

    R = e*sigma*T^4 or T = (R/(sigma*e))^0.25

    where sigma = 5.67e-8 W m-2 K-4 is the Stephan-Boltzmann constant, and e is the emissivity (0.0 <= e <= 1.0). Note that, in this Law, R is the time-averaged or instantaneous radiation flux, not an accumulated radiation as discussed in your paper. Even though the above equations strictly only apply to isothermal surfaces, the average surface temperature of a sphere such as a planet is still proportional to the 4th root of the incoming radiative flux (or TSI), although the form of the equation mathematically differs from the above expression (for details, please see Volokin & ReLlez 2014: https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2193-1801-3-723).

    Thus, your attempt to explain global warming with a change in the annual sums of daily TSI values is physically invalid! Your paper also uses strange terminology such as “TSI or solar radiation deposition” over a year. The term deposition is totally inappropriate in this case, because radiation cannot be deposited (accumulated), since material objects always emit radiation back to the environment in response to an absorbed radiative flux. To use your improper terminology, planets always “deposit” radiation back to Space in response to an absorption of radiation from the Sun. This is another reason for the use of an average (or instantaneous) radiation flux in the Stephan-Boltzmann Law rather than a radiation sum as attempted in your paper. I’m surprised that the reviewers of your paper did not catch such a gross physical error in your approach!

    2. The use of an average annual distance between Earth and Sun and the TSI value corresponding to such a distance when calculating the global surface temperature of Earth is mathematically perfectly fine and physically justified, because Earth’s global surface temperature de-facto responds linearly to solar radiation over the range of TSI values between Perihelion and Aphelion. This Figure shows the relationship between TSI and the 4th root of TSI (a quantity that is proportional to surface temperature) over the largest possible range of values encountered at the Earth’s orbit when the eccentricity is at its maximum (e = 0.058):

    Note the red line through the green points. This is a linear regression model, which has a 0.9995 correlation coefficient with the data points. Such a nearly perfect linear response guarantees that using the mean annual Earth-Sun distance will accurately predict Earth’s mean annual global surface temperature. Hence, your argument against using the normal-distribution assumption becomes essentially a moot point.

    3. Your assumption that Earth’s obliquity (i.e., the tilt of the rotation axis) affects the absorption of solar radiation due to an unequal distribution of land masses and oceans between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere is incorrect, because satellite observations have shown that the cloud albedo fully compensates for differences in surface albedos between the two Hemispheres. In other words, the TOA albedos of NH and SH are essentially identical (see for example Datseris & Stevens 2021: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021AV000440). Therefore, Earth’s obliquity cannot and does not have any measurable impact on the amount of absorbed solar radiation by the Planet.

    4. Again, I’m encouraging you to carefully watch the movies I linked to earlier for a full understanding our new climate concept, which is backed by paleoclimatic proxy records and modern NASA observations:

    Demystifying the Greenhouse Effect “: https://vimeo.com/602819278
    Drivers of Earth’s Paleoclimate “: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpUkPPtkPVc

  50. Ned Nikolov says:

    Valentina,

    One additional point: Fig. 14 in your paper (https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/75534) shows a 25 W m-2 difference in the annually accumulated daily TSI values between years 1600 and 2400. You claim that this difference can account for a significant warming over an 800 -yr period. However, the actual TSI change that is relevant to Earth’s global temperature is not 25 W m-2, but 25/365 = 0.07 W m-2. Keep in mind that the sensitivity of Earth’s global surface temperature (dTs) to a change in the mean annual TSI (dS) is given by the formula:

    dTs = (Ts/4)*ln(1 + dS/S),

    where Ts is Earth’s global absolute surface temperature (K), and S is the mean annual TSI (W m-2). The derivation of this formula will soon be presented in an article to be published on this blog.

    For Earth, this formula produces a sensitivity of 0.053 K per 1 W m-2 change of TSI. Thus, a TSI increase of 0.07 W m-2 will result in a global warming of 0.053*0.07 = 0.004 K.

    This is correct calculation of the expected warming between years 1600 and 2400 according to TSI data shown on your Fig. 14.

  51. Pablo says:

    Ned

    “because radiation cannot be deposited (accumulated), since material objects always emit radiation back to the environment in response to an absorbed radiative flux.”

    Sorry Ned, that must be a misspeak or my misunderstanding.

    Objects will emit radiation at the temperature given to it by the absorbed radiative flux.
    The oceans absorb solar radiation very well and are warmed down to depths of 100metres, the temperature change is small on a daily basis. Over long periods of time, a change in solar radiation or cloudiness will alter sea surface temperatures.
    The land warms by solar radiation during the day and gets warmer throughout the summer season down to depth of about 6 metres in high latitudes and loses that warmth over winter.

    Thermal storage of solar radiation is important, are you saying it is not?

  52. Philip Mulholland says:

    because radiation cannot be deposited (accumulated), since material objects always emit radiation back to the environment in response to an absorbed radiative flux.

    Ned,

    My understanding of the statement above is that you are saying objects do not get warm when illuminated.
    Clearly this is false and so my understanding of what you are saying must also be wrong.

    When Stephen Wilde and I first presented our Noonworld model on WUWT we clearly showed how energy is accumulated in an atmosphere and that the planetary flux balance is a dynamic process.

    Philip

  53. Ned Nikolov says:

    Phillip,

    Your interpretation of my statement to Zharkova is incorrect. This is not what I meant! Of course, objects illuminated by EM radiation warm up but only to a point, where the absorbed solar flux balances out the radiative flux emitted by the object. Once such a balance is established, the temperature of the object stops changing. This is called equilibrium temperature. From this point on, there is no more accumulation of energy by the object.

    At any rate, the point I was trying to make to Zharkova is that the equilibrium temperature of material objects depends on the intensity of the incoming radiative flux (W m-2), not the cumulative amount of incident radiation over time as she assumed in her paper!

  54. Ian Hughes says:

    Under fig 8.b the word ‘isolation’ is used, when ‘insolation’ is needed.

  55. Dear Ned,

    Your reply came in a very bad time when Russian army invaded my home country Ukraine. My relatives abs friends were affected by bombardments and missiles, we tried to get at least woman and kids from the war zone. And to raise international awareness and help to Ukrainian people. Only now when Ukrainian army shows signs of offensive it became a bit easier. I believe Ukraine will win and throw out the Russian fascists from my beautiful Ukraine.

    Now about your comment. It is again contains the errors. You do apply again total averaging which goes not work! We all know that solar radiation in the northern hemisphere increases during the spring and summer and decreases during autumn snd winter. If the sun is in the focus of the ellipse of the earth orbit, this total amount of solar radiation during a year remains equal to zero. It is also known that the heating during spring and summer is deposited to the ocean and can be kept there for a year or two before released.

    Now if the sun moves about the barycentre and shifts closer to the earth during the spring equinox then this means that the sun will deposit more radiation during the spring and summer in the millennium when it is closer the earth orbit. This amount is not spread over the year, it is deposited every day in these 6 months February – July.

    And I found similar to what was found by Krivova et al, 2011 that if one takes averaged solar irradiance per month, then this excess is only 1-1.5 W/m^-2. But I consider daily input radiation than this excess becomes 20 and then 25 W/m^-2.. Thus us for the whole year. But the main input comes in the first 6 months February – July. This amount is spread partially to southern but mainly to the northern hemisphere.

    This will heat the ocean and atmosphere much stronger than in the previous millennium, and this heat is to be kept in the ocean much longer as it’s about is higher. And nowhere this amount is averaged over the year as it is already deposited to the earth in these 6 months!

    Kind regards

    Valentina

    However

  56. tallbloke says:

    Valentina: If the sun is in the focus of the ellipse of the earth orbit …. Now if the sun moves about the barycentre and shifts closer to the earth.

    The Earth and the Sun continuously orbit the Sun-Earth barycentre, which is always very close to the centre of the Sun. If the Sun were ‘to move about the [Solar System] barycentre and shift closer to the earth’ you would indeed see the ~20-25W/m^2 you calculate. But TSI measurements DO NOT show this 20-25W/m^2 swing on a decadal basis as Jupiter and Saturn move from conjuntion to opposition.

    The data do not show the TSI swing, because it does not exist. It does not exist because the Sun does not ‘shift closer to the earth’. When the Sun shifts with respect to the Solar System Barycentre, the Earth’s orbit shifts too.

  57. The data shows exactly the change of solar irradiance with a period of 2200 years! See the plot of solar irradiance derived from the radioisotopes shown in the book chapter and papers of Stainhibler et al, 2009, 2012. Plus the measurements I presented in the book chapter link to which I provided before. This is so called Hallstatt’s cycles.

  58. Pablo says:

    Googling deeper…
    
    ‘we test whether the Hallstatt cycle could derive from the rhythmic variation of the circularity of the solar system assuming that this dynamics could eventually modulate the solar wind and, consequently, the incoming cosmic ray flux and/or the interplanetary/cosmic dust concentration around the Earth-Moon system. The orbit of the planetary mass center (PMC) relative to the Sun was used as a proxy.

    We found that it undergoes kind of pulsations as it clearly presents rhythmic contraction and expansion patterns with a 2318 year period together with a number of already known faster oscillations associated to the planetary orbital stable resonances, which are theoretically calculated.

    the rhythmic contraction and expansion of the solar system driven by a major resonance involving the movements of the four Jovian planets appear to work as a gravitational/electromagnetic pump that increases and decreases the cosmic ray and dust densities inside the inner region of the solar system, which then modulate both the radionucleotide production and climate change by means of a cloud/albedo modulation.”

    N Scafetta 2016

  59. Valentina Zharkova says:

    This is a nonsense paper based on the wrong assumption that the sun-earth distance is invariant. I have the full list of objections as I referred this paper in JGR. Then they sent it to solar physics and published this rubbish!

    With wrong models one can get anything. Ptolemy managed to explain. The sky motion of planets as rotating about the Earth.. It was accepted for nearly thousand years… here we come again… manipulations with wrong models…

  60. Philip Mulholland says:

    @Valentina Zharkova

    manipulations with wrong models

    I fully agree. To apply the Vacuum Planet Equation derived from Astronomy, with its assumption of continuous instantaneous surface illumination averaged over 24 hours, and to use this model to study Meteorology is total nonsense.

  61. daveburton says:

    As Roger notes, there’s no noticeable effect on TSI from the slight solar system barycenter changes resulting from the orbits periods of Jupiter and Saturn.

    The Sun-Earth distance varies over the course of a year, due to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit, and that eccentricity varies over the 100K year Milankovitch 100K year eccentricity cycle. But the angular momentum of the Earth is conserved, so the length of a year and the mean orbital distance from the Sun don’t change significantly over that 100K year cycle. So TSI, integrated over the entire surface of the Earth, and over an entire year, also does not change significantly as a result of the Milankovitch 100K year eccentricity cycle.

    Yet Milankovitch cycles nevertheless do drive glaciation cycles. It’s not total or average TSI which causes it. Instead, by changing the magnitude of seasonal differences (“seasonality”) at the latitudes of the peripheries of the great northern Laurentide, Fennoscandian & Cordilleran ice sheets, Milankovitch cycles help determine whether those ice sheets advance or retreat each year.

    In general, greater seasonal temperature swings at those latitudes result in ice sheet retreat, and smaller seasonal temperature swings at those latitudes result in ice sheet advance.

    When seasonal swings are larger, summers are warmer, causing more summer ice loss from the ice sheets, and winters are colder, causing reduced snowfall on the ice sheets. That causes the ice sheets to tend to retreat.

    When seasonality is reduced, summers are cooler, reducing summer ice loss, and winters are warmer, increasing snowfall accumulation. That causes the ice sheets to tend to advance.

    In any single year, the resulting changes in NH ice sheet area are small. But the accumulation of those small changes for thousands of years, and the resulting progressive change in planetary albedo, constitute a form of positive integral feedback, which has a very large effect on the Earth’s climate.

  62. Valentina Zharkova says:

    Whatever Roger or Ken Rice said about the effects of Jupiter and saturn on the Sun-Earth distance is simply incorrect!

    In the book chapter figs. 5 and 6 I shown the official ephemeris taken from the Paris-Meudon observatory website and verified by the JPL site. The links are provided in the book chapter. They show change in these distances from 600 to 2600 by about 0.016 au as demonstrated by Fig. 7.

    The correspondent changes of tsi are shown in Figs. 8-10. These changes correspond to the measure tsi variations during Hallstatt’s cycle.

    You can leave your speculations about constant tsi for another SciFi movies!
    Regards

    Valentina

  63. tallbloke says:

    Valentina: They show change in these distances from 600 to 2600 by about 0.016 au as demonstrated by Fig. 7.

    0.016AU is ~2M km, which is approximately the distance the Sun moves WRT the SSB over the course of 19.86 years due to the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle. No 20-25W/m^2 change in TSOI is observed at that timescale, because the Earth’s orbit moves too. It has to, because the Sun is very massive, and very near, exerting a strong gravitational influence on the Earth.

    I am not arguing that TSI is constant, just that it’s the variation in solar output due to planetary motion cycles that causes Hallstatt cycles, not any supposed cyclic variation in Sun-Earth distance.

  64. Valentina Zharkova says:

    The two-millennial variations of TSI is observed by Steinhilber et al, 2009, 2012 and by the group from Belfast cited in my chapter in fig. 4 (Reames, 2009).

    Read the chapter please before dropping your believes instead of the facts.

    Regards
    Valentina

  65. tallbloke says:

    0.016AU is ~2M km, which is approximately the distance the Sun moves WRT the SSB over the course of 19.86 years due to the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle. This is a fact, not a belief.

    No 20-25W/m^2 change in TSI is observed at that timescale, This also is a fact, not a belief.

  66. Valentina Zharkova says:

    Why do you twist the facts? The change of solar radiation happens every day as shown in Figs. 8 and 9. The difference in the radiation increase is shown for every day for 12 months of a year. Thus radiation is deposited unevenly to northern and Southern Hemisphere depending on the earth position on the orbit.

    The sum of the radiation excess per year in 2020 I provided just to show that during that millennium the tsi input per year is not balanced as it should be if the sun in the focus. There is more tsi coming into the earth and other planets in this millennium. And this input is missed if one takes a simple arithmetic average. That is natural because definition of mean works only for normal (Gaussian) distributions while it is seen that monthly tsi distributions are far from normal.

    Therefore daily variations of tsi in 2020 were shown in plots 8 and 9. So do not try to substitute this fact with some dodgy assumption that one can see the increase if this tsi of 20 W/m^2 in one day or even in one month. It us spread over 6 months as you can figure out from the plots!

    Regards

    Valentina

  67. Philip Mulholland says:

    @Valentina Zharkova

    manipulations with wrong models

    Further to my comment above.
    The radiative theory of climate science is built on a model diabatic equation, the Vacuum Planet Equation. This equation is valid for thermal radiative loss to Space at the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA) but cannot be applied to surface meteorology at the base of the Troposphere.

    The critical starting point that proves my contention is the graphical relationship between the diabatic DAET model we created and the Vacuum Planet Equation (VPE) see Figure 3 here proves that the VPE is a Diabatic Equation. With this fact established it necessarily follows that when applied to the planet’s surface our diabatic DAET model, that does not have any thermal radiant opacity, proves that the greenhouse effect cannot be due to the so-called greenhouse gases because the adiabatic process is ignored.

    Adiabatic convection requires thermal disequilibrium between the surface and the air. N.B. This thermal disequilibrium can be either daytime surface heating by insolation or nighttime surface cooling by direct thermal radiative loss to space, both of these processes cause convection. Because convection is an adiabatic process it is not accounted for when the diabatic VPE is applied to the surface. The Troposphere therefore is not an isothermal system. The requirement for mass motion (convection) in the presence of a gravity field means that the atmosphere does mechanical work. Mechanical Work requires a thermal gradient and this thermal gradient is supplied by the adiabatic lapse rate which is established in the Troposphere by gravity and by Mean Atmospheric Molecular Mass and is completely independent of atmospheric thermal radiant opacity.

    The greenhouse gas conjecture is hereby now disproved.

  68. Valentina Zharkova says:

    To add to this comment I need to emphasise that the current ipcc models of CO2 emission does not include radiative transfer mechanism.
    https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ComputationOfRadiativeTransfer/

    Basically, what they miss is that the increase of abundance of CO2 leads to the increase of optical thickness and saturation of the emission coming out of the media affected by radiative transfer. Optical thickness of CO2 in the terrestrial atmosphere approaches about 400. But only emission from the optical thickness of unity can get out from this media!

    While the ipcc people simply ADD extra emission produced by increased numbers of molecules CO2. This is a severe model error!! They replace integration with summation when it is ineligible!

    I did my phd in radiative transfer of hydrogen emission in solar prominences. I hope there are other people who are familiar with RT to put forward this error to the people.

    Kind regards

    Valentina

  69. Ned Nikolov says:

    Valentina,

    Your 25 W m-2 TSI “variation” is computed in your paper by adding small daily changes in TSI over the course of a year. You claim that this summation impacts the global surface temperature. This is physically completely wrong!! There is NO physical law that describes the equilibrium temperature of a material object as a function of some arbitrary summation of incoming radiation! The equilibrium temperature of a body is always a function of the intensity of absorbed radiation, not the radiation sum! It’s called the Stephan-Boltzmann law as I explained in my previous reply to you.

    The arbitrariness of your 25 W m-2 difference is proven by the fact that using a monthly summation of TSI variations as opposed to a daily one produces a lot smaller number than 25 W m-2, as you stated in your paper. What difference will you get, if you calculate an hourly sum of TSI variations over the year instead of daily? It’ll be a much bigger quantity than 25 W m-2, correct?… Do you see the absurdity of your approach?

  70. Your comment reveals a complete misunderstanding how the radiation is transferred in planetary atmospheres.

    Maybe you better read the paper by Harde, 2017(Hindawi
    International Journal of Atmospheric Sciences Volume 2017, Article ID 9251034, 30 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/9251034) who applies the model with some sort of radiative transfer and calculate the input into he Earth heating if the solar radiation is increased only by 5 W/m^2.

    Hardy 2017 reports that in this case the heating is 6-% is caused by Sun and 40% by CO2.This is still is not correct because

    a) input of TSI is twice larger per year (this is how I simplify the extra amount of 20 W/m^2 deposited in 2020 from the Sun to the Earth by splitting it into two hemispheres);

    b) contribution from CO2 is overestimated by adding the emission of CO2 molecules and ignoring the radiative transfer of diffusive radiation in optically thick media.

    The CO2 emission only can be seen from the optical thickness of unity, thus it will become saturated with the increase of abundances of CO2 molecules.

    Therefore the increase of the TSI by factor 2 and reduction of CO2 will lead to the main player – solar forcing in heating of the terrestrial atmosphere in this Hallstatt’s cycle we are currently in (ascending phase).

    Regards

    Valentina

  71. Pablo says:

    “by splitting it into two hemispheres);”

    Interesting that this is so controversial for actual solar input.

  72. Philip Mulholland says:

    Interesting that this is so controversial for actual solar input.

    Pablo,
    It is this fact that will destroy climate science.
    Put simply the Sun does not shine on to the surface of the Earth at night.
    In climate science however, by averaging solar input to the surface over 24 hours, that is precisely what the foundation climate model actually does.

  73. […] independent of S for small variations of a planet’s orbit around the Sun such as those caused by Milankovitch cycles. This implies ∂P⁄∂S = 0, which reduces Eq. 6a […]

  74. […] small variations of a planet’s orbit around the Sun such as those caused by Milankovitch cycles. This implies ∂P⁄∂S = 0, which reduces Eq. 6a […]

  75. Bazz says:

    Has anyone applied Fourier Analysis to this mess of figures ?
    It might reveal any number of cycles hidden in the noise.

  76. […] piccole variazioni dell’orbita di un pianeta attorno al Sole come quelle causate di cicli di Milankovitch. Ciò implica ∂P⁄∂S = 0, che riduce l’Eq. 6a […]