New Lockwood Papers Challenge Svalgaard, Livingston & Penn and WUWT?

Three new papers in print from Mike Lockwood et al are about to throw a spanner in the works for some. For years the crew over at WUWT have been pushing the agenda that the Sun has no impact on climate, along with the PDO has no impact on climate and is an after effect of ENSO, AND that the Sun is powered by an internal dynamo that has NO influence from the solar system planets. Try to discuss these issues on WUWT and Anthony Watts will eventually ban you.

Leif Svalgaard who is backed up by Willis Eschenbach and a whole host of groupies have been telling us "its NOT the Sun Stupid" for many years. Anthony Watts who runs the most read climate skeptical blog on the planet appears to be in agreement by allowing and protecting his partners in crime by publishing and promoting Svalgaard and Eschenbach. 

Svalgaard the ultimate sophist, has a grab bag full of responses ready to outwit anyone who claims there is a Solar/Climate link and even publishes papers that support his claims. He is also attempting to change the Sunspot record to suit his claims by promoting a Sunspot Workshop, I suspect it will be harder now to promote his agenda. What we don't hear about on WUWT is the papers that are published that refute Svalgaards claims, (or any of the new papers published concerning solar planetary influence).

Some  of the agenda driven arguments put forward by Svalgaard include:

The Lean (2000) TSI reconstruction is no longer valid.

There has been no recent solar grand maximum.

Solar output is governed by a flat floor.

The Group Sunspot Record (GSN) is incorrect before 1848.

The Sunspot record is inflated after 1945 (correct)

The Livingston & Penn Effect is real and accurate.

Small Sunspots are not increasing in proportion to large Sunspots in SC24.

The Layman's Sunspot Count is uncalibrated junk.

The new papers just out from Mike Lockwood seem to refute everything Svalgaard has been promoting for years and now pose a serious question on the merits of WUWT. So what are Mike and his colleges telling us?

The opening Figure on this article shows a graph from Lockwood showing solar output over the last 400 years. The blue line is his new suggested solar output that takes into consideration the "Waldemeir Discontinuity" along with the "Wolfer Discontinuity" and the "Wolf Discontinuity", he also suggests the red line (based on the GSN) is just as likely to be correct. The Lean (2000) TSI reconstruction is very close to the Lockwood solar reconstruction (Rc) and the GSN record (Rg) which will have huge ramifications if correct, it will reveal that the Sun has had a bigger variance in TSI over the sunspot record that is far greater than the 0.1% that Svalgaard and the IPCC subscribe to.

Svalgaard has been saying for years that there is a base level of solar output that is reached every solar minimum that aligns with periods such as the Maunder Minimum. He has also suggested that SIDC Sunspot record (R) prior to 1945 needs to be raised so there is no solar grand maximum as suggested by Solanki, Lockwood and many others. He has falsely claimed that the GSN record is in error and refuses to challenge the SIDC record (R) before 1848 in his workshops, he also uses the "Waldemeir Discontinuity" in an incorrect attempt to raise the pre 1945 SIDC sunspot records even further to flatten out the record. Lockwood acknowledges the recent work by Leussu et al who have gone back over the recently digitized Schwabe pre 1848 sunspot drawings that verify the GSN as being correct and that the SIDC values need to be reduced by 20% before 1848. The pre 1848 Wolf numbers used by the SIDC (R) were reconstructed by Wolf using solar proxy records and are now shown to be incorrect (SC5& SC6 are roughly correct, see figure at end of article). I highlighted the Leussu et al paper some time ago in an article HERE and also challenged WUWT to run a post on the paper which was rejected. It seems Svalgaard should have taken my direct advice to seriously look at the SIDC record before 1848 instead of ignoring it and pushing on with his own agenda, rather than working in the pursuit of real knowledge.

Interestingly Lockwood agrees with the "Waldemeir Discontinuity" where the post 1945 sunspot record is skewed because of the different counting method employed, but does not quite agree with Svalgaards 20% over count value and suggests an adjustment of around 10% to be more correct. On this point I would have to agree with Svalgaard as it is very easy to look at the actual sunspot counts of Locarno and see the actual values recorded per spot, there is no question that the "Waldemeir Discontinuity" is greater than 10%.

But of further interest is the "Wolfer Discontinuity" highlighted by Lockwood showing that the conversion factor employed by Wolfer (0.6) is not correct and has been subject to change over multiple solar cycles because of the changing relationship of small spots to big spots. I have been highlighting this as a major part of the Layman's Sunspot Count and Lockwood uses the same data from Nagovitsyn, Pevtsov and Livingston that show the proportion of small spots are HIGHER in relation to big spots over SC24. Lockwood also notes that the Nagovitsyn, Pevtsov and Livingston data suggests there is no L&P Effect once the smaller spots are removed from the L&P data as I have been pointing out, but over at WUWT there is no challenge to the L&P Effect with Svalgaard getting onboard with Penn in continuing to promote this false science. The L&P forecast of 7 SSN for SC25 is based on incorrect science.

If we want to compare SC24 with SC5 we need to allow for the "Waldemeir Discontinuity" AND the "Wolfer Discontinuity" as the Layman's Sunspot Count does, and now move away from Svalgaards claim that SC24 is much higher than SC5. David Archibald also needs to take in these factors when presenting comparisons on WUWT.

The evidence is emerging that there is indeed a solar link to climate and that the GSN record is more likely to be correct in the overall output of the Sun. It is time for Anthony Watts to look at all of the science (including the new planetary science) instead of pushing his own narrow view on the topics involved. WUWT is now a long way away from being recognized as a science blog, its now a platform for those pushing their own agenda's.

The full Lockwood papers can be found HERE.

Note the solar proxy records now agreeing with the solar output reconstruction.