New paper finds solar energy at Earth's surface greatly increased between 1973 and 1998

A paper published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research notes observations of the solar energy at the European earth surface significantly increased ~ 3.4 W/m2 per decade during the period 1973-1998. That would be a total of 8.5 W/m2 over the 25 year period. By way of contrast, the IPCC claims a doubling of CO2 levels results in 3.7 W/m2 additional forcing. CO2 increased from 330 to 366 ppm (11%) during that period, and 11% of 3.7 is 0.41 W/m2 in claimed CO2 forcing. Thus, the change in solar radiation impacting the Earth surface during that 25 year period of global warming is about 21 times greater than the alleged effect of CO2. Alarmists who constantly say they can't find any other possible explanation for global warming between the 1970's and 1998 besides the trace evil gas CO2 please take note. It's the Sun, stupid.


[along with amplification of variability in solar radiation due to clouds/aerosols]

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 116, D18205, 13 PP., 2011
doi:10.1029/2010JD015396

Simulation of dimming and brightening in Europe from 1958 to 2001 using a regional climate model

Key Points

• RCM-simulated clear-sky dimming/brightening in line with observations
• All-sky signal dominated by cloud forcing in contrast to observations
• Temperature trends could not be improved with transient aerosol emissions

E. M. Zubler et al

The present study applies a regional climate model with coupled aerosol microphysics and transport in order to simulate dimming and brightening in Europe from 1958 to 2001. Two simulations are performed, one with transient emissions and another with climatological mean emissions over the same period. Both simulations are driven at the lateral boundaries by the ERA-40 reanalysis and by large-scale aerosol concentrations stemming from a global simulation. We find distinct patterns of dimming and brightening in the aerosol optical depth and thus clear-sky downward surface shortwave radiation (SSR) in all analyzed subregions. The strongest brightening between 1973 and 1998 under clear-sky conditions is found in mid-Europe (+3.4 W m⁻² per decade, in line with observations). However, the simulated all-sky SSR is dominated by the surface shortwave cloud radiative forcing (CRF). The correlation coefficient R between 5 year moving averages of the CRF and all-sky SSR equals 0.87 for all of Europe. Both model simulations show a similar evolution of cloud fraction and thus all-sky SSR due to the constrained circulation induced by the reanalysis at the lateral boundaries. For most subregions, the modeled differences in all-sky SSR due to transient versus climatological emissions are insignificant in comparison with estimates of the model's internal variability.