Arguments
What climate change is happening to other planets in the solar system
The skeptic argument...
Other planets are warming
"[E]vidence that CO2 is not the principle driver of warming on this planet is provided by the simultaneous warming of other planets and moons in our solar system, despite the fact that they obviously have no anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.
What the science says...
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| Mars and Jupiter are not warming, and anyway the sun has recently been cooling slightly. | |||||
This argument is part of a greater one that other planets are warming. If this is happening throughout the solar system, clearly it must be the sun causing the rise in temperatures – including here on Earth.
It is curious that the theory depends so much on sparse information – what we know about the climates on other planets and their history – yet its proponents resolutely ignore the most compelling evidence against the notion. Over the last fifty years, the sun’s output has decreased slightly: it is radiating less heat. We can measure the various activities of the sun pretty accurately from here on Earth, or from orbit above it, so it is hard to ignore the discrepancy between the facts and the sceptical argument that the sun is causing the rise in temperatures.
TSI from 1880 to 1978 from Solanki. TSI from 1979 to 2009 from PMOD.
But if the sun’s output has levelled off or even diminished, then what is causing other planets to warm up? Are they warming at all?
The planets and moons that are claimed to be warming total roughly eight out of dozens of large bodies in the solar system. Some, like Uranus, may be cooling. All the outer planets have vastly longer orbital periods than Earth, so any climate change on them may be seasonal. Saturn and its moons take 30 Earth years to orbit the Sun, so three decades of observations equates to only 1 Saturnian year. Uranus has an 84-year orbit and 98° axial tilt, so its seasons are extreme. Neptune has not yet completed a single orbit since its discovery in 1846.
This is a round-up of the planets said by sceptics to be experiencing climate change:
- Mars: the notion that Mars is warming came from an unfortunate conflation of weather and climate. Based on two pictures taken 22 years apart, assumptions were made that have not proved to be reliable. There is currently no evidence to support claims that Mars is warming at all. More on Mars...
- Jupiter: the notion that Jupiter is warming is actually based on predictions, since no warming has actually been observed. Climate models predict temperature increases along the equator and cooling at the poles. It is believed these changes will be catalysed by storms that merge into one super-storm, inhibiting the planet’s ability to mix heat. Sceptical arguments have ignored the fact this is not a phenomenon we have observed, and that the modelled forcing is storm and dust movements, not changes in solar radiation.
- Neptune: observations of changes in luminosity on the surface of both Neptune and its largest moon, Triton, have been taken to indicate warming caused by increased solar activity. In fact, the brightening is due to the planet’s seasons changing, but very slowly. Summer is coming to Neptune’s southern hemisphere, bringing more sunlight, as it does every 164 years.
- Pluto: the warming exhibited by Pluto is not really understood. Pluto’s seasons are the least understood of all: its existence has only been known for a third of its 248 -year orbit, and it has never been visited by a space probe. The ‘evidence’ for climate change consists of just two observations made in 1988 and 2002. That’s equivalent to observing the Earth’s weather for just three weeks out of the year. Various theories suggest its highly elliptical orbit may play a part, as could the large angle of its rotational axis. One recent paper suggests the length of Pluto’s orbit is a key factor, as with Neptune. Sunlight at Pluto is 900 times weaker than it is at the Earth.
Claims that solar system bodies are heating up due to increased solar activity are clearly wrong. The sun’s output has declined in recent decades. Only Pluto and Neptune are exhibiting increased brightness. Heating attributed to other solar bodies remains unproven.
Last updated on 15 September 2010 by gpwayne.
While Jupiter receives 25 times less energy per square meter from the sun that the Earth does, Neptune receives 900 times less.
How is it that the 900 times weaker sunshine can drive weather and promote seasonal changes on Neptune, as you testify on this very blog above, but the much stronger incident sunshine on the face of Jupiter is considered inconsequential?
The fact is Jupiter is a strong case for solar driven climate change. The Great Red Spot is a singular weather event without a peer or analog on any of the other known worlds. Some people insist on describing it as a hurricane. This is incorrect. A hurricane is a low pressure zone funneling surrounding warm air to the ground. The Great Red Spot is a high pressure zone, forcing hot air out of the middle of the planet. It rises 8 kilometers above the surrounding methane cloud deck, like a turkey timer that is popping out to tell us that the thanksgiving meal is ready.
And now we have another great red spot, which will probably be with us for a very very long time.
Neptune is changing in a spectacular and miraculous way which a cut and dried pdf file will not impart to you.
Have a look at it in color. Neptune's orbit is 164 years long, and Voyager only visited it once back in 1989, so we have no baseline to judge if this change is the natural effect of Neptune traveling through it's orbit, or if it is the result of an augmented solar effect.
But either way it is the sun driving Neptune's weather.
Voyager was launched in 1977 and didn't get to Neptune until 1989. Right now, thirty years later, Voyager still has ten more years of travel before it reachs the heliopause, where the solar wind gives way to the pressure of interstellar space. So don't let this joker fool you that the sun is too weak or feeble to affect Jupiter.
Gierasch has extensively analyzed the jovian storms and has concluded that they can not be fueled by solar energy, there is not enough of it. Other teams have built very successful models of Jupiter's atmosphere, they all use internal heat as the energy source. All this has been published and is easy to find. Jupiter's core is extrememly hot, from compression and the residual heat from the planet's formation. That heat is the main driver of the planet's weather and climate.
Here is the first two sentences from Gierasch
Doesn't sound like he has extensively analyzed the Jovian storms to me.
Further on he says,
Now isn't it interesting that when in doubt Gierasch offers up water vapor as his main transport of heat energy on a planet without water. Recall it is the water born heat exchange which is not well modeled, misunderstood, discounted, and ignored by the IPCC on Earth as the basis for alarm, regarding CO2 warming.
Does this not disturb you?
Ingersol and company "infer" water deep under the opaque cloud cover, beyond direct inspected, due to lightening strikes. Is it not possible that some other chemical is the source of lightening activity on Jupiter?
There were two events which allowed the direct examination of whether Jupiter's atmosphere contained appreciable ammounts of water. The Galileo atmospheric probe, which found no water, and the Shoemaker Levi comet crash. In the first instance, Ingersol explained the lack of water found by the probe as due to it falling in an area analogous to a desert region on Jupiter. IN the second case, the comet, due to it's disintigration, fell over a wide area of Jupiter. Spectroscopic analysis found some water but it wasn't native to the planet. The water vapor found was carried by the comet and after a short period of time was converted through photolytic processes into Co2.
By the way, you left out Saturn and Enceladus on your list of planets or moons undergoing climate change.
I find interesting that "skeptics" so eagerly recommend taking the enormous amount of highly accurate data available for Earth with a grain of salt (or the all shaker for that matter), while at the same time accepting wild conclusions on poorly understood extra-terrestrial "climates" based on very scant, spotty observations. If you want to tell me about climate change on outer SS planets, I'll take the skeptical approach and ask for some serious climate history and data before considering any conclusion.
As for Pluto's expanding atmosphere observation, it was made under ideal conditions, with equipment never available before (KECK, if I remember right). So, even if the event witnessed on that occasion is a regular occurrence, it could never have been seen before, for that reason and this other detail: with a year lasting close to 248 Earth years, Pluto has not been observed through a full orbit yet. Should we add that Pluto's atmospheric changes are suspected to be highly albedo dependent and that Pluto has been darkening since the 50's (collection of space materials is probable)? There are countless caveats and like considerations for all the planets supposedly experiencing "climate change."
How about crunching some numbers and showing us what kind of energy output would be necessary from the Sun to obtain those changes that you assert are Sun driven? Then we could compare that with the observed changes in solar irradiance. You could crunch some more and come up with theoretical values of increased energy input for Venus and compare with what is actually happening there (not much unusual if I recall), where the Sun is mighty close.
Jupiter deserves some crunching too: three vortices merged into one to form the so-called Red spot Jr. How unusual is this? By the way, the idea of Jovian internal heat is not new, see this:
But Galileo certainly helped restart the debate, as discussed here:
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/1996/96-103.txt
I noted the following passage:
" According to mission scientists, Galileo probe data
strongly suggest that circulation patterns in Jupiter's cloud tops and its interior (which runs 10,000 miles deep) are part of one continuous process. Dr. David Atkinson of the University of Idaho continues to report persistent Jovian wind velocities of over 400 mph. The probe detected no reduction in wind speed, even at its deepest levels of measurement,approximately 100 miles below Jupiter's clouds. Galileo scientists regard this finding as confirmation that the main driving force of Jupiter's winds is internal heat radiating upward from the planet's deep interior. The strength of the Jovian winds and the fact that they do not subside with depth is very significant, according to Dr. Andrew Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA." This blurb is interesting also: http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/julsep96/sep0996/model.html
Closer to Earth: for all the talk about Mars, it is worth pointing that it went trough significant cooling after the Viking landing, before experiencing the more recent warming some are so excited about (which is best explained by dust storm patterns). It does not leave that much correlation with Earth changes.
The bottom line is this: what is presented as climate change carries little meaning when the climates in question are so poorly known to start with. Outer SS planets are exposed to all sorts of influences that have as much weight as the solar constant in their "climate." Attempts to show a solar source to terrestrial climate change by pointing to observations on other planets whose significance is unclear should be received with the highest skepticism. Especially when there are satellite observations of solar irradiance available for Earth. Sorry for the long post.
Here is also a cool pic from JPL:
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/captions/jupiter/watercld.htm
I had conversations with proponents of outer SS planetary warming before and for some reason, they seem to be fond of Dr Beebe. She contributed to this paper:
http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v31n4/dps99/212.htm.
Overall, it does not seem that Jupiter suffers a lack of water such as to invalidate the convective models proposed by Gierasch and many (most) others.
Remote mensurements would not be able to provide reliable data, as the technology used has changed and become much more precise in the past 40 years.
The Moon has no atsmosphere so only the surface temperature based upon the direct influence of the Sun would be recorded (I know there is a very slight atmosphere and there is slight internal heating but this should suffice as a baseline to compare the planets to)
There have been arguments that ground based weather stations can;t be reliable over a long period of time due to micro climate influences. Measuring stations near a grassy field 50 years ago may be a strip mall now. Before we commit billions of dollars in change. We should at least disprove the Sun's influence.
Anything that could melt IceCaps on Mars should have a noticable difference on our own Moon
Lower wavelengths travel further and are able to better penetrate atmosphere and other barriers. This is why both solar activity and solar intensity matter.
We know far more about the temperature trends on our own planet than on any other planet, and yet certain people use highly questionable speculations about other planet's temperatures to try to dismiss the trends we see here at home.
We have laughably few samples of temps on other planets as compared to the astounding array of data on our own Earthly climate trends. For example, we have a handful of probes on Mars and an orbiter. Mars is the planet we probably know the most about besides Earth. With that equipment we can only get the faintest idea of what's going on with the temps there.
To use this data (or records from other planets) as reliable evidence of anything more solid than the temperature sampling we have for Earth, is on its face absurd.
I would also like to say that there's too much attention paid to CO2 alone. Methane and Nitrous Oxides maybe be at least as problematic. Most of this comes from livestock production. Certainly, getting them under control first will give us more return on investment.
evolution is considered a fact because of the amount of evidence and no other scientifically plausible explanations, but that is not the case with climate change, it seems to me like every other theory is thrown out without the slightest consideration. there are plenty of plausible explanation for why the earth could be heating but none of them have undergone testing.
for example, i cant recall ever seeing a news report or debate where the participants were not already in agreement that humans are causing climate change, yet there are professors and such out there who do not agree with the UN's models so why don't we ever hear from them?
while different causes can still be debated there can be no settlement and laws should not be made to reinforce a theory that has yet to be proven, that would make it a religion, and not science
However scientists, being apparently quite anthropomorphically inclined, have placed their attention on a single variable, "human activity" and of course can then find lots of reasons to support their conclusions.
The more likely scenario is that highly-complex and interacting variables are behind warming or cooling of all the bodies in our solar system, and since this occurs both with and without the impact of homo sapiens, we have to consider that our puny contribution may possibly be of no consequence, and that we ought to be continuing our search for understanding of climate change in other directions.
This claim that scientists have placed their attention solely on a single variable is wholly incorrect. Please review this site and the primary sources that the articles link to, and consider that you may be doing exactly what you are condemning - finding lots of reasons to support a preconceived notion.
Also isnt this argument a (logical)fallacy ? 'Correlation is not causation' springs to mind
A&A 413, 745-751 (2004)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20031533
"Reconstruction of solar activity for the last millennium using 10Be data" I. G. Usoskin1, K. Mursula2, S. Solanki3, M. Sch?ssler3 and K. Alanko2
The study used ice cores. The authors concluded "In conclusion, we have presented here a new reconstruction of solar activity on the millennium time scale based upon a description of the related physical processes. It implies that the present high level of sunspot activity is unprecedented on the millennium time scale. The results will be the subject of further analysis."
With two out of three reconstructions showing negative sunspot numbers in some periods, and the third significantly under representing solar variability, it is clear that these methods are not sufficient to make so definitive a statement about sunspot numbers.
Even should we accept the reconstructions at face value, however, the fact is that solar forcing between twentieth century maximum and maunder minimum is about 0.3 W/m^2 at Earth's distance from the Sun. for Mars and the outer planets, the forcing is much less because of the inverse square law. Why we should ignore the 1.8 W/m^2 forcing from CO2 in favour of the much smaller solar forcing remains a mystery. Even more mysterious is why we should do so when the solar forcing has been declining over the last 30-50 years.