Oregon Solar Study Provides Evidence for Solar Causation in Global Warming

 

Alan Cheetham [2007/06/09]

 

A research paper published by University of Oregon researchers focused on measuring total solar irradiance at three sites in Oregon. (“Trends In Direct Normal Solar Irradiance In Oregon From 1979-2003”, Laura Riihimaki and Frank Vignola, Department of Physics, University of Oregon [http://solardat.uoregon.edu/download/Papers/DirectNormalTrends.pdf ] )

 

The sites studied are shown in Figure 1.

 

Figure 1: Sites Studied (Fig. 1 in the paper)

 

 

Figure 2 shows their published results of solar irradiance.

 

 

Figure 2: Solar Irradiance at the Three Sites (Fig. 2 in the paper)

 

 

 

 

The paper also contains two figures combining the available data from the United States National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB) with the data from their study, as shown below.

 

 

 

Figure 3: Combined Data for Burns (Fig. 5 in paper)     Figure 4: Combined Data for Eugene (Fig. 6 in paper)

 

 

I went to the NASA GISS temperature station database and plotted the available data for the nearest station at each study location [http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/]. The historical temperature trends are shown below.

 

 

Next, I combined the solar irradiance graphs from the study with the temperature graphs from the GISS database. These resulting graphs are shown below for all three locations. There is obviously a very high correlation between solar irradiance and the observed temperatures. This model requires no CO2 to describe the warming trend.

 

Burns

 

 

                                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eugene

 

 

 

Hermiston

 

 

 

So how does this evidence compare with the official IPCC position that: “models cannot reproduce the rapid warming observed in recent decades when they only take into account variations in solar output and vol­canic activity” (IPCC Scientific Basis report 2007 [http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch09.pdf]?

 

The PCC Scientific Basis report contains the following two figures:

 

From Figure FAQ 9.2-1                                              Figure 2.17

 

Superimposing the two figures provides the following figure. The solar matches the temperature but the models based on solar do not.

 

 

Looks like a problem with the models.