THE FINGERPRINT OF THE SUN IS ON EARTH'S 160 YEAR TEMPERATURE RECORD,

CONTRADICTING IPCC CONCLUSIONS, FINGERPRINTING, & AGW

SOLAR GLOBAL WARMING

by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD

3/27/10. Cor. 4/17/10.

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Solar energy as modeled over the last three centuries contains patterns that match the full 160 year instrument record of Earth's surface temperature. Earth's surface temperature throughout the modern record is given by

where S n is the increase in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) measured as the running percentage rise in the trend at every instance in time, t, for the previous n years. The parameters are best fits with the values m 134 =18.33°C/%, m 46 =-3.68°C/%, b=13.57(-0.43)°C, and τ=6 years. The value of b in parenthesis gives T(t) as a temperature anomaly. One standard deviation of the error between the equation and the HadCRUT3 data is 0.11°C (about one ordinate interval). Values for a good approximation (σ=0.13°C) with a single solar running trend are m 134 =17.50°C/%, m 46 =0, b=13.55(-0.45)°C, and τ=10 years.

Global average surface temperature with solar formula overlay. The figure is IPCC's AR4 Figure 3.6 from HadCRUT3, with Earth's surface temperature from Equation (1) added in berry color. The new temperature model is a linear combination of two variables. The variables are causal, running trend lines from the solar model of Wang, et al. (2005). IPCC's blue curve is the temperature smoothed by a backward and forward symmetric, non-causal filter. FIGURE 1

All data for this model are primary data preferred by IPCC in its Reports for solar radiation and for Earth's surface temperature. The solar running trends are elementary, backward-looking (realizable) mathematical trend lines as used by IPCC for the current year temperature, but computed every year for the Sun.

Any variations in the solar radiation model sufficient to affect the short term variability of Earth's climate must be selected and amplified by Earthly processes. This model hypothesizes that cloud albedo produces broadband amplification, using established physical processes. The hypothesis is that while cloud albedo is a powerful, negative feedback to warming in the longer term, it creates a short term, positive feedback to TSI that enables its variations to imprint solar insolation at the surface. A calculation of the linear fit of surface temperature to suitably filtered solar radiation shows the level of amplification necessary to support the model, and isolates the short term positive feedback from the long term negative cloud albedo feedback.

This model hypothesis that the natural responses of Earth to solar radiation produce a selecting mechanism. The model exploits evidence that the ocean dominates Earth's surface temperature, as it does the atmospheric CO2 concentration, through a set of delays in the accumulation and release of heat caused by three dimensional ocean currents. The ocean thus behaves like a tapped delay line, a well-known filtering device found in other fields, such as electronics and acoustics, to amplify or suppress source variations at certain intervals on the scale of decades to centuries. A search with running trend lines, which are first-order, finite-time filters, produced a family of representations of TSI as might be favored by Earth's natural responses. One of these, the 134-year running trend line, bore a strong resemblance to the complete record of instrumented surface temperature, the signal called S 134 .

Because the fingerprint of solar radiation appears on Earth's surface temperature, that temperature cannot reasonably bear the fingerprint of human activity. IPCC claims that human fingerprint exists by several methods. These include its hockey stick pattern, in which temperature and gas concentrations behave benignly until the onset of the industrial revolution or later, and rise in concert. IPCC claims include that the pattern of atmospheric oxygen depletion corresponds to the burning of fossil fuels in air, and that the pattern of isotopic lightening in atmospheric CO2 corresponds to the increase in CO2 attributed to human activities. This paper shows that each of IPCC's alleged imprints due to human activities is in error.

The extremely good and simple match of filtered TSI to Earth's complex temperature record tends to validate the model. The cause of global warming is in hand. Conversely, the fact that Earth's temperature pattern appears in solar radiation invalidates Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).