More stuff about ozone, including very cool maps:
http://www.albany.edu/faculty/rgk/atm101/ozmeas.htm

Possible ozone data:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ozwv/dobson/

Maybe the thicker the ozone layer is, or the longer it stays thick, the warmer it gets. CO2 is trapped as well in such a thermally encased greenhouse. In fact all kinds of stuff are trapped inside the greenhouse. But the ozone layer is what is causing the earth to stay toasty. Then when the blanket thins during minimums, the temperature decreases. It may also be that the temperature decreases unevenly since the blanket is worn thin in an uneven pattern.

Since the sun has been ramping down over the past few years as it heads toward minimum, more and more rays are getting to our ozone layer and even through it (which can easily be measured and is at several sites around the globe). Maybe that is why we haven’t seen an increase in temperature.

Let’s add cosmic ray data to the playground.

Side note: Does CO2 escape with the warm air. Is it somehow destroyed by some aspect of the rays as they penetrate through the thinned blanket?

Here it is. The whole thing is filled with data, some of it ready to cut and paste into spread sheets and then search for correlations. Like finding a gold vein in a mountain. It also has excellent descriptions of what all the stuff is that comes out of the sun that you might be able to site and cut and paste. I have found lots of other really cool data sets on this site that are more earth bound. Explore!

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/ftpsolarflares.html

“They actually turn out to be somewhere between the 18.6 year lunar tide cycle and the 22 year Hale cycle.”

Gary said:

“Basil, don’t forget to consider harmonics when looking at curious/unexpected frequencies.”

Also, if radio frequency ideas are used, look at the “hetrodyning” principle (two signals mixed across a non-linear device). The atmosphere is considered non-linear for mixing of radio waves (sum/difference, or 40.6/3.4 using the 18.6 and 22 year cycles).

Maybe this will make sense to someone else (it does to me because I teach electronics).

One additional aspect of the dreaded “hole” over the Antarctic is that there isn’t a similar hole over the Arctic, but this has been covered in the past by an author, whose name eludes me, pointing out that there are several active volcanoes in the Antarctic. These not only produce ozone damaging gases, but have an excellent delivery system, both by simple convection and by volcanic emissions. Other than that, I entirely agree with your stinks master.
On the Dupont aspect, have you read Kary Mulliss’ book, “Dancing naked in the mind field”? Great fun.

Anthony and I are working on an update. But don’t expect anything dramatic. From here on, I think the progress will be incremental. The basic pattern in the warming rate holds up, as we can see from Paul’s Fourier transform. The length of the warming rate cycles go in and out of phase with the solar cycles, suggesting some other forcing at work. A couple of commenters have suggested influence from the 18.6 year lunar tide cycle, and we are looking into that. But the bidecadal peaks in the warming series — the ones that are highest, and which seem to correlate to odd numbered solar cycles — are too long to be simply 18.6 year lunar tide cycles. They actually turn out to be somewhere between the 18.6 year lunar tide cycle and the 22 year Hale cycle.

I personally think that the most significant finding is the consistent way in which the amplitude of the warming rate varies from one cycle to the next. When attention is drawn to the numerous reports of decadal and bidecadal rhythms in climate data and proxies as evidence of a solar influence on climate, those skeptical of that influence dismiss this evidence because there is supposedly no known physical basis for it. But we know that solar magnetic pole reversal influences the cosmic ray flux, and that a mechanism has been proposed by which this would influence terrestrial climate through cloud cover formation. So I think it is facile to so casually dismiss the sun as a causal factor in explaining decadal and bidecadal rhythms in terrestrial climate.

I’m even leaning in the direction that a certain kind of absence of evidence may actually be evidence of something. I’m aware of studies (tree rings, I think) that purport to find 22 year periodicities, but not 11 year periodicities. Well, what if the solar influence is stronger every other solar cycle? Might it not then be possible that in the alternating cycles, the influence is less, and the signal doesn’t always show up?

Well, enough for now. We hope to have an update soon.

Basil

Interesting coincidence don’t you think?

Here is the way I understand ozone and was taught it in High School AP Chemistry class by perhaps the best chemistry teacher ever :)

Oxygen is a diatomic molecule. In review, this means that naturally it wants to be paired with one other oxygen atom, and float around as O2. However, when radiation hits this free floating O2 molecule, it gets excited, and latches on to an extra Oxygen atom, forming O3 (otherwise known as Ozone).

Now, the Earth is spinning on its axis. This means that the atmosphere (and the planet to some degree) bulges out at the Equator and thins at the poles. In addition, the Sun shines more on the equator and less on the poles because of how our planet faces. To me this says that both of the ingredients to Ozone formation (Oxygen and radiation) are at a minimum at the poles. So it is logical to see holes at either pole.

In regards to the hole getting larger, this can be explained I believe in the same manner that the current warming is explained. As the sun’s magnetic field gets stronger, it blocks off more of the cosmic solar radiation from reaching the solar system. So the main source of radiation for the poles is reduced even further, making the hole grow larger. It would be interesting to see if anyone set up radiation detectors at the poles to see if the radiation level has dropped while the hole grew.

Second thing I am confused about is if my above premise is correct, then isn’t it the free floating O2 that protects us from the radiation by absorbing it and forming Ozone? Not the Ozone protecting us? So basically, we will always have an Ozone layer unless we run out of Oxygen? In which case, I think we would have larger problems then an ozone layer. :P

Would be great if individual station data from gisstemp could be imported.
I’ve always been curious about the top of Mt Washington New Hampshire.
They have a record going back to 1933 I believe.

Anyways, wonderful job!

Any chance to get an aa-index time series among the base data? The agreement with the low-passed temperature should be quite patent.

(Glad to see the graphs work well with the SnapShot mouseovers – that was the idea of the slightly odd layout of that page)

I *am* collecting requests for new datasets to add, which will be the fun part… Anthony & Basil have already suggested quite a few that I haven’t had time to add yet – it will come, though.

It would be useful if you could post them here, rather than mail me, so that others can help refine them; I will go through this article and check them all out even if I don’t respond individually. I need the URL of the dataset (which the site will fetch automatically), but also the kind of context and reference information I have at http://www.woodfortrees.org/credits It turned out that for the first few datasets hunting down and writing up the reference information took almost as long as writing the import filter!

Some specific replies:

Mike: Yes, it was perhaps rather naughty of me to include the CO2/temperature one in the examples, because we’re still discussing whether it’s valid or not – but part of the point of this is that we can all play and understand what is happening enough to understand it. I’m not a climate scientist, just a hacker, so I rely on others to help work out if something is significant. It was certainly a surprise to me that CO2 should react so quickly, and at such detail, BUT the amplitude of the signal compared to the annual oscillation and the overall upward trend is really tiny.

Pam: Thanks for your mail – do you have references to sources of sun flare/ozone time series?

Alan: Likewise – Where can I find that econometric data etc.?

Gary: I had considered import of your own data; it shouldn’t weaken security if it was based on a cut-and-paste form, but it’s rather tricky to integrate into the site how it works at the moment: Let me ponder that one further. You can generate frequency spectra now, but I’m trying to work out how to convert that into wavelength spectra with so few harmonics – any help/pointers in that regard would be appreciated.

Walter: I did notice your request for a 19/20 month analysis a few weeks back, and it was one of the impetuses to do this, so anyone can try this kind of thing out. There is definitely a 19/20 month signal in the last 7 years, but I have no idea what it might be! A 6-month running mean shows it quite clearly:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/mean:6

Thanks again to Anthony for hosting this great open space for this kind of discussion.

Paul

Try a 12-month running mean on Hadley data from 2001 onwards like so… http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/mean:12/from:2001

Note the “sawtooth pattern”. Now try it for 19 and 20 month means like so… http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/mean:19/from:2001 and http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/mean:20/from:2001 which flattens out the sawtooth pattern. Does this mean anything?

Be sure to check out the Weather Stations section (right-hand side of the page, CATEGORIES heading). That is the true gold of this site: The sad (yet comical) plight of the weather stations. Check out all the chapters (56 and counting) and you will see what is the likely root of the recent spike in temperatures. Hint: it’s not an invisible gas–it’s not “invisible” anything!

I–promise–you you will find what is contained there to be deliciously shocking, astounding, and outrageous.