By Jo Nova
The big solar storms of 1201-1204 might be oldest historical records of extreme space weather.
It turns out the Sun was far more active than we thought during the warm late Medieval era — which is jolly awkward for the climate modelers who need to believe the sun is just a irrelevant ball of light that has no effect on Earth’s weather. If high solar activity correlates with warming on Earth (which it seems to) the modelers can’t keep ignoring the sun.
The crux of the matter, is if they add in more solar factors, the models might accidentally actually work without needing CO2. That would be a disaster (for the modelers).
On February 21 and 23 of 1201 AD, a Japanese poet wrote of seeing striking red auroras near Kyoto Japan. Someone nearby described the same thing on Feb 22, which makes it an intense three day solar storm. So researchers started looking for carbon 14 in buried wood in Northern Japan, and, voila, they found a huge spike in carbon 14 that suggest a “sub extreme solar proton event”. They rate this is “about 20% of the Miyake event in 774/775, a legendary solar storm.
The carbon 14 data was so detailed they were able to piece together three solar cycles from 1190 – 12:20. Which means the solar cycles then were only 7 – 8 years long, and were extremely active. In modern times we know that longer cycles are slower quieter ones. During the Little Ice Age the cycles were as long as 16 years and there were long periods with no sunspots at all.
Variation of the solar modulation parameter for the past millennium obtained based on carbon-14 data (Brehm et al., 2021).1)
The team found a whole new solar cycle peaking in 1204 that we didn’t know about.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/102/4/102_pjab.102.011/_html/-char/en
From the paper come the descriptions of many solar observations recorded from 800 years ago:
For example, in Meigetsuki, the diary of Fujiwara no Sadaie, a Japanese courtier famous for his poetry, there are descriptions indicating the occurrence of low-latitude red aurorae in Kyoto on February 21 and 23, 1204.6) The sighting of a red aurora is also recorded for February 22 in another historical document, Omuro Soshoki, which remains in Kyoto, suggesting that the intense magnetic storm continued for three consecutive days, making it one of the oldest extreme space weather events documented in historical records. During these three days, red and white stripes were observed toward the north and northeast. This event may be associated with the appearance of a large sunspot with the size of a date palm, as recorded in a Chinese document on February 21, 1204.3) There are also recordings of the sighting of aurorae in the following month in Meigetsuki as well as in a Chinese document2) and a French document.8) In Meigetsuki, there is a description that aurorae were seen over three nights,7) although it was hearsay within the imperial court.
This suggests that solar activity was higher for longer than we thought during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). It’s more evidence that solar activity correlates with the global temperatures.
It’s remarkable to see how many space weather events are recorded:
| Date | Location | Reference | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1193 | Jan 22 | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1193 | (Apr 4–May 2) | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1193 | Dec 3–12 | sunspot | China | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
| 1194 | Oct 23 | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1200 | Aug 11 | red aurora | Italy | Fritz, 18734) | |
| 1200 | Sep 19 | sunspot | Korea | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
| 1200 | Sep 21–26 | sunspot | China | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
| * | 1200 | (Nov 9–Dec 7) | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) |
| * | 1201 | Jan 9–29 | sunspot | China | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) |
| * | 1201 | Apr 6 | sunspot | Korea | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) |
| 1202 | Aug 23 | sunspot | Korea | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
| 1202 | Dec 19–31 | sunspot | China | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
| 1202 | Dec 19 | red aurora | Japan (Kyoto) | Centr. Met. Obs. and Mar. Met. Obs. of Japan, 19395) | |
| 1203 | Apr 1–3 | red aurora | Germany | Fritz, 18734) | |
| 1204 | Feb 3–5 | sunspot | Korea | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
| 1204 | Feb 21 | sunspot | China | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
| 1204 | Feb 21–23 | red aurora | Japan (Kyoto) | Meigetsuki and Omuro Soshoki (see Kataoka et al., 20176)) | |
| 1204 | Mar 29 | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882); Kataoka et al., 20176) | |
| 1204 | Mar 28–30‡ | red aurora | Japan (Kyoto) | Meigetsuki (see Inamura, 20027) and Kataoka et al., 20176)) | |
| 1204 | (Mar 8–Apr 7) | red aurora | France | Kataoka et al., 20176); Brial, 18228) | |
| 1204 | (Apr 2–May 1) | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1204 | (Apr–Jun) | red aurora | Germany | Fritz, 18734) | |
| 1205 | Jan 20 | red aurora | Japan (Kyoto) | Meigetsuki (see Inamura, 20027)) | |
| 1205 | May 4 | sunspot | China | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
| 1205 | Oct 8 | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1206 | Oct 10 | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1207 | Jan 25 | red aurora | China | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
| 1209 | (March 8–Apr 5) | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1210 | (Feb 26–Mar 26) | red aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1211 | Apr 23 | white aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1226 | Apr 13 | pale yellow aurora | China | Beijing Astronomical Observatory, 19882) | |
| 1238 | Dec 5 | sunspot | China | Abbott and Juhl, 20163) | |
‡Heresay within the imperial court.
REFERENCE
Hiroko MIYAHARA, Ryuho KATAOKA, Kazuaki YAMAMOTO, Fuyuki TOKANAI, Toru MORIYA, Mirei TAKEYAMA, Hirohisa SAKURAI, Motonari OHYAMA, Kazuho HORIUCHI, Hideyuki HOTTA. Extremely active Sun from 1190 to 1220 in the Medieval Period: Intercomparison of historical records and tree-ring carbon-14. Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B, 2026; 102 (4): 156 DOI: 10.2183/pjab.102.011
Red skies?
But not THESE red skies?
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8033693/sunset-and-afterglow-krakatoa-9-november-1883
Has anyone looked for “artworks” produced in the the 12th and 13th centuries, from China, Japan and Korea?
190
Wait, what – our [future] carbon emissions (sic) affected the Sun 800 years before we emitted them? Has the Mann from Michael fatchecked these numbers? What would Japanese courtier poets know about palm trees on the sun and complex scientific equations such as hokey shticks?
No no no, life in the 1200s was a flat line where all things knew their place in the cosmos and that big bright yellow ball in the sky merely fought battles with hungry dragons whilst the great unwashed awaited the coming of the wise one, the Profit of Penn (who wouldn’t know a sun spot from an error bar).
I shall wait for confirmation from such luminaries as The Grauniad or The Nonversation before placing any faith in these Medieval observant wordsmiths – heck, they didn’t even have the Interwebs back then, what would they know?
PS. Another great little article Jo, thanks.
500
Perhaps we can use these solar observation data to try and further understand our past, but we do know that we had a warmer early Holocene optimum and much higher sea levels for thousands of years.
Even their ABC told us that SLs on our east Aussie coast were 1.5 metres higher 4,000 years ago.
And co2 levels were only about 280 ppm during this earlier warmer Holocene period.
210
Re Aussie sea levels, there is a tourism board on Kangaroo Island titled “Making of the Landscape”.
The last image has the description:
“17000 years ago – The sea retreats to the edge of the Continental Shelf during the last ice age. Humans cross to the island. About 7000 years ago, the sea rises to its present position” (I don’t know how to post the image – bugger)
Amazing that our current fossil-fuelled lives made such a difference in the past
150
John in Oz, the Tassie Aborigines were also cut off after the full 90 K glaciation changed to our Holocene inter-glacial.
By the time of white settlement they had developed frizzy hair and were different in appearance to Victorian Aborigines.
80
No, that’s because they were a different wave of migration.
There have been a minimum 3 and as many as 5 different migrations into Australia before Europeans arrived.
161
The first wave may have had Denisovan DNA.
41
No, no, no!!
One continuous culture going back 20000, 40000, 60000, ++ (whatever today’s ‘always was, always will be’ narrative mistakenly pushes).
Can’t have other migrations being recognised and putting the brakes on the activists’ gravy train…….
140
Only if you were taught a bit of history without politic. Never mentioned these days are the mention of pygmies on Cape York. Can’t have the oldest living culture disputed by facts.
[Could we get back to the topic thanks? – J]
90
Hydrogen bonds cannot exist at low fluid pressures as a covalent bond is easily polarized by any moving (relative to the water molecule) magnetic field. Polarise the bond and the water molecule becomes less polar.
Liquid water changes to individual molecules. It boils and/or evaporates. This “boiling” will appear at the pressure change boundary.
This is how our planets climate works. Increase the magnetic field strength or decrease the air pressure (weather) and more water “evaporates”.
Nothing to do with CO2.
130
CO2 is not going to become a “runaway” greenhouse gas. EVER. It could be 100% of the atmosphere and no runaway would occur.
However, add some water and no global magnetic field and watch out.
Understanding water is key to predicting climate outcomes.
Today, we do not even generally appreciate how water boils far below its boiling point or how many states of water exist.
We say we want to become a hydrogen economy without carbon yet we do not study the input fuel, water.
30
I have always found it extraordinary that climate “models” generally don’t seriously take into account the fact that our sun is variable star or claim that the variation is too little to be significant.
In fact climastrologists laugh at members of the Thinking Community when this is explained to them.
260
As I have concluded and Judith Curry now advises her clients, climate can be explained and predicted entirely from Solar activity and ocean currents. It’s just so obvious. Our contribution to total CO2 each year is not 1% but 0.02%. We have zero impact despite our delusions of grandeur. As Ricky Gervais says, we didn’t put a man on the moon. Someone else did and that was 54 years ago. At least under Trump NASA is rediscovering its purpose and its not Climate Change. Elon Musk has shown them what one man can actually do with less funding and without their 18,000 full time people and $24Billion per year. Actually instead of Snowy II and the NBN, why don’t we put a man in space ourselves? It makes more sense and likely cheaper. We could combine the CSIRO and BOM. At least they would be useful.
210
I agree. Let’s combine them and form BROOMSIC- a body empowered to make sweeping changes.
Whether that new conglomerate would be useful, I cannot say. Both groups have great long term histories but the recent years aren’t as impressive.
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That’s what stupid always does, laugh when confronted with things they don’t understand.
60
This is all about measuring solar radiation from the creation of C14 in the upper atmosphere. The assumption has been since the 1950s that C14 from cosmic rays is a constant across our part of the universe and our time. Clearly underneath that you have microvariations of 0.14% directly from solar activity.
This is why when told that humans were dramatically increasing CO2 50% with fossil fuel emissions, I was very puzzled. In the literature even after two world wars in 1956 the effect was only 2.03%. So clearly the increase in CO2 was just from the ocean where 98% of CO2 lives. So it will all blow over. Scientists will correct the silliness of Al Gore and James Hansen.
Still in 2026 no one accepts that we can date atmospheric CO2 with radio carbon dating and check. We can determine solar activity in medieval times from tiny variations in tiny C14O2, which is great news. But absolute proof that the CO2 increase is not man made, the essential claim of Al Gore, is just sitting there in plain sight. And the IPCC ignores it. In fact so does the CO2 coalition. Prof Will Happer said he believed the increase was man made and that it was a ‘personal opinion’. Just like John Howard said he was ‘agnostic’ on Climate Change. This fraud lives on because people want to have their say or want it to continue when the very basis of the hoax, man controlled CO2 levels, is so obviously wrong.
Humans cannot change the CO2 level. It’s the vapour pressure of a dissolved gas, 98% in the ocean. But even great scientists want to have their two bob’s worth. And the UN just loves the money and the power. As for the Wuhan Flu, WHO knew all about it and covered it up, defending China. We are in a new era of government controlled science. Ask Professor Peter Ridd. You cannot hold a job and question man made CO2. Or the origin of the Wuhan flu.
380
For those interest in radio carbon dating, in 1965 the atmospheric hydrogen bomb blasts doubled C14 (molecules of C14O2) from one in a trillion to two in a trillion.
And the levels quickly returned to normal, half life 6 years. e-kt. Perfedctly understood. All the C14 went into the ocean, demonstrating the entire system.
I have been watching this as the C14 levels return to near zero. The 2% drop prior was the “Suess” effect from fossil fuel CO2. What is fabulous is that the new level has been in the ocean, not the atmosphere. So only 1/50th is in the air, adding +2% to C14. And the horizontal asymptote of the C14 graph is precisely 0.0%!
So atmospheric C14 levels are now exactly what they were 800 years ago! And the 2% fossil fuel CO2 depression has been cancelled. 2% now reflects not what came out of our car exhausts, it is the amount of fossil fuel CO2, 98% of which is in the ocean. Everything fits. But it does make dating objects in the late 20th century trickier. In fact the change in C14 was so rapid that forensic scietists were using it to date teeth accurately despite a half life of 5740 years! We can certainly tell how much fossil fuel CO2 is in the system, 98% of it in the ocean.
220
Ken Stewart has also linked to many of the earlier Holocene studies showing much higher sea levels during that warmer early Holocene period.
He called his post “the world’s biggest thermometer”.
https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2021/08/23/the-worlds-biggest-thermometer/
100
Dr Jim Steele had a short 20 minute presentation at the recent Heartland conference explaining why the recent Arctic warming may not be caused by an increase in co2 emissions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctSAv4f06f8
40
Perhaps inadvertently, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service vividly highlights the massive technical legerdemain embodied in the world’s climate model. Modelling corruption at a glance.
https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets/projections-cmip6?tab=overview
The plot of the foundational CMIP6 experiment shows the results of an ensemble of the 50-odd major CCM’s – hindcasting back to 1850 and forecasting from 2014 to 2100.
The hindcast is (literally) incredible. The grey overlay of the model reconstructions on the HadCrut mean global temperature tightly and consistently follow the ‘observed’ surface temperature for 164 years – within a band of +/- 0.25°. The modelling is so good that it reproduces the effects of ENSO effects that defy conventional meteorological predictions.
However, as soon as the modelling heads off into the unconstrained future, the spread over the ensemble mean for each emissions scenario quickly spreads out to +/- 0.75°.
Statistically pointing to the probability (actually, certainty) that the models are all closely parameterised, or ‘fitted’ to the observations they are being tested against.
Yet, as Copernicus reminds us:
“CMIP6 data underpins the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report.”
Dishonestly on stilts.
(Notably, in the literature, there is a move away from such simple plots – towards far more sophisticated graphics that aren’t quite as confrontational.)
130
Professor John Clauser won the Nobel prize for physics and at the recent Heartland conference he detailed why we shouldn’t trust the math and models used to scare us about their so called co2 warming.
I only hope Jo Nova and David Evans could help unravel his talk for us and why he may be correct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzS2E6yN194&t=12s
100
Another not obvious point about this very good C14 data is that it oscillates around a mean on a scale as short as 70 years. (please note the use of %o or 1/10th of 1%.)
Given C14 has a half life of 5740 years, how is this possible? Over a mere 100 years C14 should just go up and up and up with peaks superimposed on a steadily climbing curve as C14O2 accumulates in the atmosphere? But the C14O2 shown in 1380 is gone by 1450 with even a downwards peak. How?
What this oscillation about a C14 mean confirms that excess C14 formed in the stratosphere and above, changing N14 into C14, quickly disappears from the atmosphere completely and the long term average C14O2 is almost immediately restored. Because CO2 goes in the ocean quickly and is replaced from the massive ocean CO2 store resulting in a fast return to the long term average C14 level.
As pointed out in previous comments, perhaps the greatest accidental global experiment was the near instant doubling of C14 in 1965 with H bomb tests. These were shockingly 1000x as strong as previous uranium bombs and the French in particular exploded them without caution in the upper atmosphere, not underground. I was involved in protests at the time as the French did this in the Southern Hemisphere at our latitude where only 2% of people live. And the French secret service bombed the Rainbow Warrior yacht at harbour in Auckland killing the photographer on board. This remains unbelievable in peace time, French government ordered murder of protestors. No guillotine was used.
Still you see a huge 100% C14 peak, not 4%0 or 0.4% as in the Medieval data. And amazing total restoration of the equilibrium level over only 60 years, showing that all the CO2 from 1965 (bar 2%) is now in the ocean. (Please note zero is not zero but the long term C14 mean value.) This accidental data gave scientists a very accurate measure of the half life of all CO2 in the atmosphere. And it has been a pleasure to watch the C14 level end up at precisely 0.0%, the same result as the mean in Jo’s graphs. Mankind cannot control CO2. Our annual contribution to atmospheric CO2 is provably a trivial 0.02% per annum, not 0.5%. Just ask Google “what % of CO2 in the air is man made”.
What I cannot fathom is why you can publish on very accurate C14 measurements from the middle ages but not the 20th century. Because it makes nonsense of any attempt to control CO2 and Net Zero. Growing trees. Windmills.Tree farms. Fallow fields. Killing manufacturing. Leaving all manufactuing to China. I need to watch out for the French.
150
As a footnote to the murder of the photographer in the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the villains, French goverment employees weere caught and jailed. Despite being sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, due to pressures from the French state they spent merely two years confined to the French Polynesian island of Hao before being freed by the French government. Perfidious Albion has nothing on the French. Most of the major wars of the last 200 years are traceable to the French, except Korea. And once again they are wrecking Europe, killing coal power while they sell their nuclear power to the bunnies. There is nothing wrong with the Common Market, even the European Community, but the non democratic European (Political) Union is what Napoleon and Hitler had. Absolute power.
110
In 1965 Hubert Lamb came up with an unorthodox theory, he had the audacity to claim there was a Medieval Warm Period. These days its a generally accepted fact, but there is still debate whether it was universal.
The solar impact on weather is unambiguous over longer time spans like the LIA, but its effect during a brief period would be harder to prove. This is because there are other variables in play, like oceanic oscillations.
My guess, this particular solar event acted as a trigger. By 1250 there was growth in Atlantic pack ice, then came the massive Samalas eruption in 1257 and the associated volcanic winter which ushered in the Little Ice Age.
61
Browsing through the Agricultural Records and we see the year 1202 began with an exceptionally cold winter.
Holinshed records ‘ale was frozen within houses and cellars and sold by weight. Such a great snow fell also therewith that beasts died in many places in great numbers’
41
1250… 1257… Little Ice Age…
precisely when (the theory goes) Polynesian islanders en masse boarded their waka/canoes – men, women, children, dogs, rats, kumara & taro – and sailed south into the colder latitudes, ie. New Zealand.
Why leave balmy tropical paradise for wild wet & windy NZ, with a touch of frost snow & ice in season, unless 1) war 2) famine 3) dragons 4) man-made gobull cooling/warming causing fish to migrate south. She’s a mighty big ocean, ye olde Peaceful / Pacific, yet thar be monsters here, yarrrrr…
90
Around 1300 AD sea level fell dramatically, which caused considerable dislocation.
21
This is a classic example of solar forcing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Frost_of_1709
22
The Sun variability is a relatively small player in climate shifts.
Orbital precession is by far the dominant player because it causes very large shifts in seasonal solar intensity across latitudes.
As I pointed out yesterday, I got MS Copilot to agree that Greenland plateau had negative thinning. That was based on the data displayed in linked image:
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/3047/2025/essd-17-3047-2025-avatar-web.png
The last time orbit perihelion occurred on the December Solstice was 1326AD – zenith intensity was 1410.7W/m^2. That means that maximum daily sunlight is now moving northward. This year perihelion occurred on 7-Jan with zenith intensity of 1409W/m^2. Aphelion will occur on 7-Jul when zenith sunlight will be just 1318.5W/m^2.
On the July solstice, when the NH is pointing directly at the sun, the zenith intensity is almost 100W/m^2 less than the December solstice when SH faces the sun. But there is a 9,500 year reversal already 800 years in. The NH is getting more intense sunlight. That is increasing the ocean temperature and evaporating more water. Some of that water ends up as snow.
So far snowfall has overtaken ice compaction and flow above 2300m on Greenland. It is the “canary in the coal mine” for the coming glaciation.
The climate doomers are focusing on the positive thinning on the fringes of Greenland because this suits their storyline. They should be focused on the NEGATIVE thinning above 2300m. The high ground near the NE coast has accelerating negative thinning.
I am forecasting that permafrost will be advancing downward on northern Arctic slopes by 2200AD. And Sea level will be falling again within the next millennium if not already this millennium.
110
There is some belief that humans can avoid re-glaciation of the NH by geo-engineering. I place that in the hopeful category.
This year, the Kamchatka Peninsula provided insight into what serious snowfall looks like:
https://www.firstpost.com/world/snow-apocalypse-hits-russias-kamchatka-multi-storey-buildings-buried-in-viral-video-13970322.html
Human survival in these conditions requires lots of energy. Montreal’s snow clearing budget is now up to CAD200M. That is 4-fold increase over the past 26 years. Now remember that the orbit is only 800 years into the 9,500 year rising trend in the NH.
Energy scarcity will mean locations experiencing high snowfall will lose inhabitants. Hello North Africa:- the reverse migration from Europe.
130
I have always been fascinated with the idea that humans contribute to the weather. The total amount of heat we generate is utterly inconsequential. If you opened all the windows in mid winter in pitch black Murmansk(Population 360,000 Latitude 69North, -40C), the air would not warm up in the slightest. Everyone would be frozen to death in minutes. Or turn off the air conditioning in summer in Dubai or Qatar or Bagdad at over 50C. Humans do not control the weather. Our CO2 output is tiny from fossil fuels, 0.02% per year. Natural CO2 growth with ocean surface warming is 0.4% a year, 20x as much.
130
Every now and then, I look at Kangaroo Island and remind myself that the entire human race could stand there side-by-side, leaving thousands of square kilometers completely untouched. Staring at that fraction of a map, it feels almost impossible that a species with such a small collective footprint could somehow manage to unravel an entire planet.
90
This is utterly off topic.
In Britain, I am amazed at the ancient stone fences. It has taken thousands of years for Britons to make their landscape productive through sheer manual effort. And the Greens are undoing that in decades, as if ‘Mother Nature’ is kind and benevolent, which is utter rubbish. Most of the Green and rolling landscapes have been created by man, not nature. Bridges, streams, canals, roads even specialized forests all going back to before the Romans. Conversely in the middle of Australia, I have never seen so much nothing. Stunning. I would love to take that up with the ‘custodians’. They left a mess, wiped out the forests and brush, halved the rainfall in just 1000 years and utterly exterminated the magnificent and unique mega fauna. They should be paying reparations.
110
I have seen photographs from Sakhalin Island, below Kamchatka, above Hokkaido. Snow, bears, freezing. The heavy snow drifts are up to six stories on the side of apartment blocks. Like a giant slide out the window. Nice summer. If we have energy, humans can live anywhere. Even Brisbane.
120
For ice ages, orbital shifts combined with nutation are the likely culprits. But as the (retired) mathematicians under Prof Carl Otto Weiss who analysed the only real thermometer data for the last 250 years discovered, they could fit the temperatures perfectly (12 inflection points!) with just two cycles. The Solar De Vries cycles (250 years) and the ocean cycle (AMO/PDO) of 65 years. Only two cycles from 65 cycles! Staggeringly good explanation and found without prejudice in blind analysis.
To me it was open and shut conclusive. And the world pretends they did not hear. The biggest source of surface heat on the planet and the biggest store of surface heat on the planet. Who would have thought?
And absolutely no need for CO2 input. I am always suspicious of people who plot the match of temperatures in say the Southern Ocean in 1500 as accurate to 0.1C. It is the ultimate homogenization, projecting backwards half a millenium to a place where no one has ever lived and where ocean is over 7km deep from a time when thermometers did not exist. And then drawing conclusions from data you have invented.
140
Copious amounts of H2O in the stratosphere caused the AMO to spike in 2022.
https://chaac.meteo.plus/en/climate/amo-index-10.png
This might be useful knowledge as the Holocene slides into oblivion.
32
RickWill: “The Sun variability is a relatively small player in climate shifts. “
For fear of boring people because I feel like I’ve said it 100 times, solar variability includes huge changes in UV radiance every cycle, enormous shifts in magnetic fields as the whole solar magnetic dynamo flips upside down, and it includes the flickering whimsical ever shifting blasts of the solar wind with charged particles bombing our outer atmosphere at a million miles an hour and in changing speed, charge, and direction.
We know that streamflow on Earth correlates with solar cycles, that jetstreams and monsoons are also somehow connected. Jellyfish plagues come and go in ways related to solar cycles. Wind and rainfall patterns change.
More UV generates more ozone, which warms the stratosphere over the equator and pushes the tropopause lower.
It is hard to believe, given that solar activity is linked to rainfall and winds, that spectral shifts, magnetic and electrical fields Do Not have a significant effect on the weekly and monthly climate.
The climate models ignore every one of these variables. Probably I should have listed these in the blog post. Perhaps I should do a whole post on this…
Crikey, I see a lot of my original posts on this were ten or 14 years ago. It didn’t seem that long.
160
I agree that the climate models neglect much of the sun variability. However a more serious failure is making no distinction between solar power and solar energy.
In the present era, the sun zenith is over the NH 8 to 9 days more than it is over the SH. Both hemispheres receive almost the same amount of energy but SH gets its dose in a shorter time. So sunlight over the SH is more intense in summer than the NH summer and less intense in winter than the NH winter. So SH has a much wider range. As the situation reverses, the NH will go into glaciation.
Falling sea level of 4mm/yr will be a lot more dramatic climate change than the miniscule changes caused by solar variability.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image-57.png
The July daily average solar intensity at 15N right now is just past the bottom of the cycle as it was 400kyr ago as MIS11 interglacial terminated.
Precession cycle is the strongest signal in the change in sea level. Obliquity and eccentricity are detectable but solar variability is negligble in this arena.
30
I found the deep minimum around 1440 to be very interesting, in fact the 15th century. So I asked Google..
“The 1440s did not feature singular, isolated events, but rather bookended the coldest decade of the millennium (the 1430s), which marked the early onset of the Little Ice Age.
The 1430s Chill. The years leading up to 1440 experienced devastating weather characterized by a severe and extended seasonal cycle. Winters were extraordinarily harsh, causing lakes, rivers, and coastal waters across Northern and Central Europe to freeze completely. Summers, conversely, tended to be normal to excessively wet.”
This again points to a real low in solar activity, making C14 deviations a very useful tool.
40
And the climb upwards since 1400 to 1900 is equally interesting, regardless of the Industrial Revolution which according to the IPCC controlled the weather from 1750 onwards. Except this graph seems to give a completely different story of a little ice age and solar minimum. Perhaps the De Vries cycle.
40
The early onset of the LIA was in the 13th century and the proof is the dramatic sea level fall around 1300.
Here is an exciting new paper.
https://notrickszone.com/2026/05/18/even-the-dna-of-single-celled-plankton-can-upend-alarmist-arctic-sea-ice-melt-claims/
21
What’s so attractive about very cold weather or climate and why do clueless voters still line up to suffer more misery?
Canada’s average annual temperature is minus -4.3 C, while Australian average is +22 C and 50% of Canada’s population live in a tiny V shaped pocket east of the great lakes. Of course it’s a slightly further southern intrusion into the US and slightly warmer.
But still a very high population of about 20 million people in such a tiny area compared to the rest of Canada.
80
Not 20 million. I was stunned to read the current Canadian population…. 41.5Million. That recent muslim immigration must have been massive. As in Europe and Australia.
70
You’ll note that I stated that about 20 million live in a tiny V shaped pocket or the province of Ontario.
And I also said that was about 50% of Canada’s population.
But now that has fallen to about 16.2 million or about 40% of Canada’s population.
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The co2 Coalition scientists provide us with the facts about our climate and co2 levels over the last 140 million years.
We are now living in the lowest period for co2 levels and if we had continued on with co2 reduction future populations would’ve been at risk. Here’s their fact 3 link and graph.
https://co2coalition.org/facts/140-million-year-trend-of-dangerously-decreasing-co2/
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Here is the end of grok’s summary and critique of the article and comments. I’d say that grok almost gets out of its own way (but not quite). As usual its ínability to actually reason inductively or synthesize leaves it falling back to support the officially supported consensus of the day.
In short, grok can’t do science.
Bottom line: The post does a solid job spotlighting underappreciated historical solar data that enriches our picture of medieval climate and space weather. It underscores legitimate uncertainties in solar-climate links but overplays the “gotcha” against CO₂-focused models. Worth reading for the science summary, best paired with the original paper for details. Solar variability clearly mattered in the past and deserves ongoing study alongside other drivers.
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When every summary on the internet insists without any evidence that 50% of exhaust CO2 (and ONLY exhaust CO2) stays in the air forever, you know that artificial intelligence is pretend, a summary of what it reads, not what it finds to be supported by evidence.
There is enough information as in the 36 papers in Table 1 of Stallinga to cause doubt that ANY CO2 stays in the air for any reason. And that C14 proves it. What we have in this interesting analysis of the climate through tiny variations in otherwise constant C14 is never applied to the 20th century and CO2. C14O2 today is exactly what it was in 1200AD. That’s the end of man made CO2 made Global Warming. Or it should be.
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I also note that of the 36 papers cited by Stallinga discussion the massive rapid exchange of all atmospheric CO2 with that in the ocean, that the papers stopped cold in 1992. I wonder why?
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Thanks. Here is the last part of grok’s response. Without meaning to I think grok highlights the problem with grok. It simply can’t do science.
Strengths of the statement: It rightly criticizes oversimplified popular science, highlights residence vs. adjustment confusion (a genuine communication failure), and notes AI/language models often echo sources without deep critique. Skepticism of models is healthy.
Weaknesses: Over-relies on a critiqued simple model (Stallinga), misapplies C14 (which actually fingerprints fossil CO₂), and dismisses the multi-timescale carbon cycle and observed accumulation. The “no evidence” claim for long-term effects ignores decades of carbon cycle research, ice cores, and direct measurements.
In short, the physics and observations show human emissions are driving the CO₂ rise and associated warming. Nuanced discussion of timescales is useful, but the statement overreaches into dismissing the core mechanism.
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“misapplies C14 (which actually fingerprints fossil CO₂)”.
That’s wrong. Fossil fuel CO2 has zero C14 because it’s very, very old. It’s modern CO2 which has the C14 from cosmic rays. That’s the entire point of Radio(active) Carbon Dating. Grok doesn’t understand. It’s not artificially wrong. It’s just wrong.
What is extraordinary about the Stallinga paper is not just the shocking conclusion, it is the 36 papers in Table 1 which debate the time for ALL CO2 to go into the ocean, between 4 and 10 years. The actual answer is a half life of 6.5 years for the e-kt exchange. (shocking because this paper was actually published)
The whole warmist fable of fossil fuel CO2 stacking up in the atmosphere is bust if ANY of these papers are close to the truth. Worse, to get the arithmetic to work, man made CO2 warming advocates are forced to argue that half the fossil fuel CO2 stays in the atmospehre and half vanishes forever into the ocean and trees. That’s just ridiculous.
I’m not surprised people stopped publishing in 1992 on the time it takes for ALL CO2 to go into the ocean. It destroys net zero and Al Gore’s 1988 fairytale. And the UN/IPCC/WMO would not approve of such papers. And it looks like exhaust pipe CO2 disappears in only 3 months. Who is going to admit that?
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It’s not the Sun.
It’s people.
People carbon is the driver.
Keep your eye on the altimeter.
Looking out the window is not science.
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Past Ice Core data proves that present day temperatures do not have much effect on the natural carbon dioxide content of the Earth’s atmosphere because Oceanic thermal inertia means that this temperature will take an average of 800 years to reach its effect on the Ocean floor. The Medieval Warm Period peaked in 1200, which is 800 years ago.
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I note with interest that currently Kyoto in Japan is at the dipole Geomagnetic Latitude (GML) of +26 degrees. This is the coefficient latitude of Townsville and Noumea in the southern hemisphere. Captain Cook and his crews observed a similar strong aurora australis from near Timor (GML of -19 degrees) on September 16th, 1770. As a recent example of such storms, we only have to go back to The Great Auroral Storm of May 11th, 2024, which was recorded from Noumea and northern Australian sites with a similar GML.
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