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 - > > Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States > David Archibald > http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
