But there are problems
with volcanic influences.
Not exact matches
When scientists use climate models for attribution studies, they first run simulations
with estimates of only «natural» climate
influences over the past 100 years, such as changes in solar output and major
volcanic eruptions.
As the Shindell paper shows: the
influence of
volcanic is within the modelled unforced variability, except for Europe, where it is outside, but
with the wrong sign -LRB-!)
The most likely
influence during this period is variable output from the sun combined
with pronounced
volcanic activity.
There we see that
volcanic influence has led to cooling by up to 0.25 K and
with a decay that has taken a few years.
The literature since the AR4, and the availability of more simulations of the last millennium
with more complete forcing, including solar,
volcanic and greenhouse gas
influences, and generally also land use change and orbital forcing) and more sophisticated models, to a much larger extent coupled climate or coupled earth system models, some of them
with interactive carbon cycle, strengthens these conclusions.
Compared
with natural factors that
influence climate (including solar variation and
volcanic eruptions), human activities — primarily burning fossil fuels and deforestation — have been a major contributor to climate change over the last 50 years.
The origin of the 1400 - period begins
with the 1998 paper in Nature «
Influence of
volcanic eruptions on northern hemisphere summer temperature over the past 600 years» As the title suggests, the paper is primarily about identifying eruptions
with spikes in the record.
The Hansen paper is an extreme case, combining a strong
volcanic forcing
with a model
with high sensitivity, and so probably provides an upper bound for the
volcanic influence on temperature.
There is also another paper in discussion on the pitfalls of assuming you can remove solar /
volcanic / ENSO
influences with any confidence.
Moreover, the net TOA energy flux is profoundly
influenced by
volcanic eruptions (not new) and almost simultaneously, but
with some blurring, so too is OHC.
With f anthropic (t) or f
volcanic (t) or f T (t) the steady state is disturbed and that will
influence both f out - gassed (t) and f absorbed (t) and thus dCO2 / dt, where the whole system tries to restore the dynamical equilibrium.
Figure 1: Global surface and lower atmosphere temperature data from 5 data sets (
with a 12 - month running average) before and after applying the statistical methodology of Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) to remove the
influences of ENSO and solar and
volcanic activity.
http://www.agci.org/docs/lean.pdf «Global (and regional) surface temperature fluctuations in the past 120 years reflect, as in the space era, a combination of solar,
volcanic, ENSO, and anthropogenic
influences,
with relative contributions shown in Figure 6.22 The adopted solar brightness changes in this scenario are based on a solar surface flux transport model; although long - term changes are «50 % larger than the 11 - year irradiance cycle, they are significantly smaller than the original estimates based on variations in Sun - like stars and geomagnetic activity.
Argo era or 21st century is used quite a bit because it is «cleaner» less
volcanic super El Nino
influence and it includes more of the state of the art satellite and ocean data., you can pick any spot you like I guess for a pub conversation, but the comparison
with projections is the real tell of the tape.
After accounting for seasonal bias and
volcanic eruptions, Feulner finds no significant trend
with the sunspot number, and that the solar activity
influence is «comparatively small».
Forster et al. (2007) described four mechanisms by which
volcanic forcing
influences climate: RF due to aerosol — radiation interaction; differential (vertical or horizontal) heating, producing gradients and changes in circulation; interactions
with other modes of circulation, such as El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO); and ozone depletion
with its effects on stratospheric heating, which depends on anthropogenic chlorine (stratospheric ozone would increase
with a
volcanic eruption under low - chlorine conditions).
Hansen et al. (1981), «emerge» p. 957; another scientist who compared temperature trends
with a combination of CO2, emissions from
volcanic eruptions, and supposed solar cycles, likewise got a good match, and used the cycles to predict that greenhouse warming would swamp other
influences after about 2000.
From solar min to solar max the
influence on temp has been estimated at around 0.1 deg C (some scientists came to 0.2), and the LIA was at least partly
influenced by a sustained period of low solar activity, combined
with high
volcanic activity (see eg the wikipedia link I provided in the blog post).