Climate scientists focus on CO2 emissions because they are the dominant factor in climate change. Carbon dioxide is the most significant of all of the greenhouse gases and so it is the one that has the most impact on global temperatures. However, climate scientists are aware that other factors such as land use, aerosols and other pollutants also have an effect on the climate. It is not scientifically ideal to only focus on CO2 emissions when predicting climate change, as other factors can contribute to the overall climate change picture. As such, climate scientists take all of these factors into consideration when making their predictions.

Consider that Mars lost its atmosphere due to loss of its magnetic field. Then it is straightforward to include that variation in the magnetosphere affects the weather pattern on a planet. There are no studied examples of climate change during a drastic change in magnetosphere, so only simulations and modeling would give immediate answers. At the same time, changes in the atmosphere by magnetosphere changes can be difficult to relate to the magnetosphere, since there are no sensitive tools to correlate the dynamics of low pressures and high pressures to the magnetic fluctuations. So there are several things missing, the focus from climatologists on the magnetosphere and its relation to the atmosphere, advanced and state of the art tools to study this interaction, and not to mention, political and economical incentives to include also these factors in correct modeling of the climate. After all, if the magnetosphere is vital to have an atmosphere at all, then its fluctuations must at the least be affecting the atmospheric dynamic. So again, why are not climatologists able to think broadly and give more accurate descriptions on the fluctuations in the weather? This when such drastic events occur in this period of the Earth which may be even more profound than that which is attributed to climate gases.

Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic GHG after carbon dioxide (CO2), accounting for about 20 percent of global emissions. Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities. Because methane is both a powerful greenhouse gas and short-lived compared to carbon dioxide, achieving significant reductions would have a rapid and significant effect on atmospheric warming potential.so it is important to focus on methan as well as carbon dioxid by climate scientists

Thanks Indees, but these ideas and notions do not rule out that the geomagnetic anomalies starting 160 years ago may be a big contributor to the current situation. So the question still stands, with sufficient equipment, knowledge, why do all climatologist jump on the same topic without looking around for contributing factors? There is a poor scientific value in studying the same with the same parameters all the time, and even, without being sure that the same parameters have bigger effects than other unstudied parameters.

To me it is poor science, if not, monomanic science.

Hi Sergio Manzetti,

Interesting question. I am not a climate modeler and therefore cannot give a conclusive answer to your question about why climate models don’t consider the effects of changes in the location and strength of the Earth’s magnetic field. I’ll pose four possible explanations/hypotheses:

1) Perhaps climate models already do consider this. Neither of us is a climate modeler. As others have pointed out, your perception that “these [climate] models are based entirely on the level of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2” is incorrect. I will also point out that climate models do include the “spin-effect of the globe on weather patterns” (= Coriolis, I presume). If they didn’t, the models wouldn’t be able to simulate the spatial patterns of temperature across the planet, the location and direction of ocean currents, and other things that models are very good at simulating. So, as a hypothesis, perhaps you are similarly wrong about whether climate models include changes in Earth’s magnetic field.

2) Alternately, perhaps climate modelers have thought about these issues and decided that they are just not important enough to include in a climate model. That doesn’t seem like an ideal approach, but the close agreement between the output of climate models and Earth’s actual climate over a variety of time scales does suggest that the major influences on the climate are already accounted for in the models.

3) Another possibility is that climate modelers would like to include geomagnetic field effects in their models, but not enough is known to mathematically describe how Earth’s magnetic field varies over space and time. Although not an authoritative source, Wikipedia’s article on “Earth’s magnetic field” tells me that “The nature of Earth's magnetic field is one of heteroscedastic (seemingly random) fluctuation. An instantaneous measurement of it, or several measurements of it across the span of decades or centuries, are not sufficient to extrapolate an overall trend in the field strength. It has gone up and down in the past for unknown reasons.” It seems like that would be a challenging thing to code into a model.

4) Lastly, perhaps climate models really are missing an important influence on Earth’s climate system. This could be a chance for you (or someone else) to really help move the science forward.

Hi Scott, the first is certainly not the case. Even NASA has had struggles with giving sound explanations on the link between geomagnetic field and the atmosphere. The rest you write is more likely.

There is another category, gravity waves. There are numerous studies on gravity effects on the upper stratosphere, but they do not seem to provide any data on effects on weather (very few, if any: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=gravity+waves+in+stratosphere+weather+pattern&btnG=). Besides, I have modelled the climate , but not from climate-gas perspective. You can look up my papers.

Thanks

I am not going to take sides on which causes of global warming, we should emphasize whether it is mostly sunspots, greenhouse gasses, or land clearing. Rather I am concerned that the nuclear industry has taken advantage of it to pretend that the present nuclear plants are wonderful and sustainable. This is being accepted by the public even though the industry has not been able to devise (or accept?) a practical way to dispose of spent rods etc. This is very scary.

Yes, this is what is NOT happening unfortunately, emphasis on sunspots and climate is another crucial thing to investigate! And strangely, the sun has been very weak in terms of sunspots in the last 15 years, a series of record lows. This happens simultaneously that we have the hottest years in years (2012-2014 particularly).

Does Earth’s magnetic field affect the weather?

by Mike Follows Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK.

The jury is still out, but the verdict is likely to be that there is 'no causal link' between the Earth’s magnetic field and Climate (Change).

A possible link was suggested by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in his galactic cosmic ray hypothesis. It proposes that protons in cosmic rays blasted out by exploding stars (supernovae) collide with our atmosphere. The hypothesis states that, 'this would create condensation nuclei', leading to cloudier skies, colder weather and a cooling climate! Yes, this would have a cooling effect on Climate.

We actually observe the opposite dear Sergio, hence how about the impact of the magnetic field of the Earth and Climate Change? I have the impression that we can classify the hypothesis of 'Magnetic Fields' vertically in the bin of hypothesis' proven wrong!

All the best and a happy New Year,

Frank

During the warm age in the 11th century, when VIkings lived in the southern Greenland with grazing animals, the magnetic North Pole was between the Faeroe Islands and Norway. CO2 levels were also on "normal", about 50 times lower than today.

Have a look at for instance the following papers:

1. Gubbins, David, and Peter Kelly. "Persistent patterns in the geomagnetic field over the past 2.5 Myr." Nature 365.6449 (1993): 829.

2. St-Onge, Guillaume, and Joseph S. Stoner. "Paleomagnetism near the north magnetic pole: a unique vantage point for understanding the dynamics of the geomagnetic field and its secular variations." Oceanography 24.3 (2011): 42-50.

Geomagnetic anomalies are associated with global cooling and global warming. During a period of some hundreds of years 1000-1500 BC, the magnetic North Pole was between Hawaii and California and there was 25 degrees in summers and no ice on the North Pole. The CO2 level were around 50 times lower than today.

During the warm age in the 11th century, when VIkings lived in the southern Greenland with grazing animals, the magnetic North Pole was between the Faero Islands and Norway. CO2 levels were also on "normal", about 50 times lower than today.

How do you explain that, Frank?

Apparently 'climate scientists' are not aware that water vapor molecules have been increasing 7 times faster than CO2 molecules. Water vapor molecules have been increasing substantially faster than possible from just planet warming. http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com

See https://www.coatsengineering.com/climate.htm for many proofs of the following.

The co2 global warming theory is the greatest technical scam in history, as should be obvous to any competent engineer or scientist aware of the simple facts: Incoming and reflected solar is about 55% infrared and makes any blackbody ir emission from the earth's surface completely irrelevant. The incompetent theory says that incoming solar is absorbed at the surface and then converted as it cools to blackbody infrared emission that is increasingly trapped by increasing atmospheric co2. Every process engineer on earth knows that the earth's surface and objects on them at nominal temperatures cool by conduction/convection to the surroundings, not by blackbody emission which is negligible.

The reason why CO2 has no significant effect on climate is explained at https://energyredirect3.blogspot.com.

I wonder how wide the growing separation between the rapidly rising CO2 and barely rising temperature will need to get for some people to realize that perhaps they missed something.

Just yesterday, at the Norwegian national news, a neutral meteorological scientists from the Norwegian Meteorological institute who was invited to comment on a strange heat wave in Europe these days, and when asked "Is this caused by CO2 emissions or by cycles "? The answer was surprisingly "Both". With the obsessive focus climatologist display on CO2 emissions, this was rather surprising, positively indeed.

Using the two references:

1. Gubbins, David, and Peter Kelly. "Persistent patterns in the geomagnetic field over the past 2.5 Myr." Nature 365.6449 (1993): 829.

2. St-Onge, Guillaume, and Joseph S. Stoner. "Paleomagnetism near the north magnetic pole: a unique vantage point for understanding the dynamics of the geomagnetic field and its secular variations." Oceanography 24.3 (2011): 42-50.

We can see that during the warm age in the 11th century, when Vikings had grazing animals in the south of Greenland, which today would be impossible, or 3000 years ago, when the temperature on the North pole was 25 degrees during summers, then the magnetosphere was in an "abnormal" inclination. In the first case, 11th century, the magnetic North Pole was located between Norway and the Faroe islands!

In the second case, 1000 BC, the magnetic North Pole was located between Hawaii and California.

Today, the climate is changing rapidly, and the North pole is again behaving strangely, moving towards Siberia at a speed of 8 meters pr day.

How can such obvious planetary cycles be ignored when a good simulation must include as many parameters as possible to give a realistic basis?

Sergio. In answer to your question, I have a question (I am not an astrophycist, as will be evident from my question): Does the superstrong solar magnetic field in sunspots have any effect on the orientation of earth’s magnetic field (or is the distance from the sun too great)? It is well established that sunspot activity is one of the four main (known) factors driving the increase in minimum temperatures on earth. If the answer to my question is yes, i.e. the shift in earth's magnetic field is influenced by changes in solar magnetic field (associated with sunspots), then the shift in magnetic field would be correlative with, rather than causative of temperature changes.

Hi Ross, this is a great question and I do not know the answer. Hopefully, someone here can answer this.