There’s been some concern lately over climate and agriculture. In the last few days we’ve had headlines such as:
Crops under stress as temperatures fall (UK Telegraph)
Canadian Wheat Output May Fall on Dry, Cool Weather (Bloomberg)
Southeastern Missouri farmers try to overcome wet spring, soggy crops (TV4 Kansas City)
About the same time as these stories I got an email from David Archibald that talks about shifts in growing areas in the USA and the increased yields we’ve seen in the past quarter century. The concern of course is that those gains may vanish with the advent of a quiet solar cycle:
Anthony,
The attached article, dated 30th December 2008, was noted on Icecap in early January.
The prediction in it appears to have been borne out by subsequent events. Note this report of widespread frosts:
Canada frosts the most widespread in recent memory (Reuters, also source of photo above)
Your readers may benefit from having it reposted on WUWT. It is a good example of the practical application of Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory, and thus solar science to practical matters at ground level.
David
Quantifying the US Agricultural Productivity Response to Solar Cycle 24
In 2006, The National Arbor Day Foundation updated the 1990 US Department of Agriculture map of plant hardiness zones for changes in the annual average minimum temperate over the intervening sixteen years.
That map is reproduced following:
Figure 1: US Plant Hardiness Zones from http://www.arborday.org/media/graphics/2006_zones.zip
Relative to the location of the zones in the 1990 USDA map, hardiness zones have shifted northward by the following amounts relative to the latitude band:
30° N 110 km northward shift
35° N 200 km northward shift
40° N 280 km northward shift
The improvement in growing conditions resulting from this northward shift in annual average minimum temperature caused an increase in agricultural productivity. Following is a graphic of the agricultural output of a number of US states accounting for 19% of US agricultural production:
Figure 2: Agricultural Productivity of Six US States 1960 to 2004.
Productivity is calibrated against Alabama’s production in 1996.
It is apparent from the graphic that there was a step change in the rate of increase of agricultural production at about the time the USDA plant hardiness zone map was created in 1990. Over the subsequent fourteen years, agricultural production in these six states rose 34%. The USDA state productivity data is available at:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/AgProductivity/table03.xls
A proportion of the increase would have been due to the introduction of GM crops and other changes in agricultural practices. Nevertheless, the productivity growth is substantial and coincident with improved climatic conditions.
The change in plant hardiness zones over the 1990 to 2006 period is explained by solar cycle length changes. Solar Cycle 20 from 1964 to 1976 was 11.6 years long. Solar Cycle 21 was shorter than average at 10.3 years and Solar Cycle 22 from 1986 to 1996 was very short at 9.6 years long. There is a correlation between solar cycle length and temperature over the following solar cycle. In the mid-latitudes of the US north-eastern seaboard, this is 0.7° C for each year of solar cycle length.
With the cumulative change in solar cycle length between Solar Cycle 20 and Solar Cycle 22 of two years, this would have translated to a 1.4º C increase in temperature by early this decade relative to early 1970s. This is reflected in the northward shift of plant hardiness zones as mapped by The National Arbor Day Foundation.
By virtue of a lack of Solar Cycle 23 sunspots, solar minimum of the Solar Cycle 23 to 24 transition appears to have been in late 2008. This makes Solar Cycle 23 three years long than its predecessor. Consequently, using the 0.7° C per year of solar cycle length relationship, there will be a 2.1º C decline in temperature of the mid-latitudes next decade during Solar Cycle 24.
Using the calibration provided by the climate shift caused by the Solar Cycle 20 to 22 change in solar cycle length, the following shifts in climatic zones, and thus growing conditions, are estimated:
30° N 160 km southward shift
35° N 300 km southward shift
40° N 420 km southward shift
Assuming that two thirds of the productivity increase in mid-western states from 1990 to 2004 was climatically driven, then the productivity decline in this region due to Solar Cycle 24 is expected to be of the order of 30%. The total US agricultural productivity decrease would be less than that at possibly 20%, equating to the export share of US agricultural production.
David Archibald
30th December, 2008
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“Assuming that two thirds of the productivity increase in mid-western states from 1990 to 2004 was climatically driven”
That’s a big assumption right there. Monsanto might disagree, as it is also co-incident with the introduction of GM crops in north america.
Up here in Washington, we have cold tulips — see http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/its_showtime_but_where_are_the.html
This extract from another article seems relevant:
“If jet streams, on average, are further south then the high pressure systems to the north of them predominate and the globe is cooling. If, on average, they are further north then high pressure to the south of them predominates and the globe is warming.
I’ll leave it to others to check it out but I’ll just give an illustration.
I well remember the very cold winter of 1962/63. The UK persistently had high pressure over Greenland and Northern Europe giving a primary flow of air from the north. That feature was not just for the duration of that winter. Throughout the cooling trend up to 1975 or thereabouts winds with a northerly component were much more common than they were during the subsequent warming trend.
During the warming trend from 1975 to 1998 there were very few northerly flows of air in Western Europe. The hot summer of 1976 had the main area of high pressure over Southern Europe bringing a steady flow of hot equatorial air northwards. From 1998 to date there has been a shift away from the more frequent southerly flows and since 2007 the tendency for a polar component to wind flows at 45 degrees latitude in both hemispheres has increased further. In the spring and early summer of 2008 (continuing in 2009) North America has been plagued by regular incursions of air from the north and Western Europe has been cooler than average due to many days of winds with a northerly component.”
Full article here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1458
Check out this article dated 3/26/2009, to see what farmers in Washington state have been up against this year. Degree Days, sometimes called Thermal Units, have been falling for 3 years, with consequent effect on our yields.
** WEATHER CAFE **
Cooler spring delays harvest
Growers note consistently low temperatures
Degree-days
Cumulative degree days – 45 F minimum, 85 F maximum – from Jan. 1 through March 19 in the years designated.
2007 2008 2009
Bellingham 114 69 45
Mount Vernon 133 84 58
Wenatchee 69 64 18
Yakima 106 101 48
By COOKSON BEECHER
Capital Press
Late harvests may be in store for Washington state growers this year, according to reports from the field.
Underscoring the field reports are comparisons of degree-days – also known as heat units – from the start of the year to March 19, which show fewer heat units this year than in 2008 or 2007.
Rufus LaLone, an entomologist and meteorologist, said this year’s situation is worrisome because 2008 had the latest harvests in the region since 1984.
“We’re way behind last year,” LaLone said. “It’s still early, but if March and April stay cold, we’ll really be behind.”
According to LaLone’s Weather Cafe report on March 23, April 3 or 4 should see a return to a cold upper trough dropping down from the Gulf of Alaska bringing wet and unseasonably chilly conditions to the Pacific Northwest for several days. Eastern Washington basins will return to near-winter feel by early April, as cold air aloft will hinder spring. Possibly drier, but nippy weather, is forecast for April 8-12.
Each plant needs a certain number of degree-days before it reaches the next stage of its development.
LaLone compares degree-days to money in the bank.
“If enough heat units are generated, the plants collect them,” LaLone said. “It’s like a savings account. They don’t forget what they’ve accumulated.”
In Skagit County, Wash., William Roozen, co-owner of Washington Bulb, said the daffodils are later this year than last year, and the tulips may go into peak bloom later than usual. His brother John said that in an average year, daffodil harvest runs from Feb. 18 to 22, but this year picking didn’t start until early March.
Many Western Washington farmers say that if the flowers are late, harvest for other crops will probably be late. But John Roozen said Mother Nature calls the shots.
“If the weather warms up, the tulips can go like lightning,” he said.
Skagit County, Wash., potato grower Darrin Morrison said he’s watching soil temperatures, which were still low on March 20.
“It’s a late spring,” he said. “Even our orchard trees haven’t budded out yet.”
In Whatcom County, Wash., Allen Brown, fieldman for Curt Maberry Farm, said that last year crews started the main fungicide spraying regime for blueberries on March 12.
“We haven’t sprayed a single blueberry this year,” he said on March 20. “We’re probably three weeks behind last year.”
Raspberry cane planting is also running late. While Maberry’s usually has all of its new raspberries in by March 20, the farm still had 90 acres to plant, and some growers in the area hadn’t planted any new canes.
“We’ve had a lot of cold weather and freezing temperatures – 18 degrees for three days in a row a week or so ago,” Brown said. “It was like winter.”
Brown said berry growers in his area are praying for sunshine.
“We’re behind, and we want to get going,” he said. “We’re in a hurry-up-and-wait mode.”
LAST YEAR was no great shakes either — Cherry and apples crops took a hit due to unseasonable cold. see http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2008/06/23/story4.html
and this:
“A period of several decades of reduced solar activity will quickly need more emissions producing activity to SAVE the planet yet nonetheless the populations of most living species will be decimated. At present population levels a repeat of the Little Ice Age a mere 400 years ago will cause mass starvation worldwide. Does anyone really think that the CO2 we produce is effective enough to reduce that risk to zero when we have plenty of astronomic evidence of an imminent reduction in solar activity.”
and this:
“A change in global weather patterns which I noticed as long ago as 2000 whereby the jet streams moved back towards the equator from the positions they adopted during the warming spell. The observation that a global warming or cooling trend can be discerned from seasonal weather patterns seems to be unique to me and will be dealt with in more detail in my next article.”
From here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1396
A click on the pretty “organic (!!??) cranberries” photo gave me an “ERROR 404” message………….
yet more :
“1) Active sun in (short) cycles 18 and 19 then a less active sun in cycle 20 plus a negative PDO = cancelling out of expected warming during 18 and 19 followed by cooling when the sun became less active in cycle 20 (!940 to 1975).
2) Active sun during cycles 21, 22 and the double peak of 23 plus positive PDO = significant warming. (1975 to 1998)
3) Slightly quieter sun during extended tail end of cycle 23 plus positive PDO = stable temperatures. (1998 to 2007).
4) Quiet sun as cycle 23 fizzles out and cycle 24 is deferred plus a negative PDO = Rather chilly in my opinion. (2007 to 20 ?)
Could it be that the IPCC and the modellers have been completely wrong footed and are now recommending exactly the opposite policy decisions to those that the world really needs? ”
from here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1302
There was a report today in Australia media regarding the slump in share price of agricultural fertiliser companies due to the late onset of wheat planting due to cold weather. Two companies listed here Nufarm and Incitec Pivot were mentioned but I think the planting season referred to North America.
Agricultural companies can be an interesting barometer to the planting and weather cycle and their share price/cold temperature correlation is worth watching.
Wheat didn’t increase much. Nor did Beans. Just corn exploded.
Oh, wheat didn’t go GM. Beans? Nope. Corn went GM. It was, mostly (really, really mostly) GM Seeds.
Many nations will not accept our GM exports. To them, it’s the equivalent of cardboard.
David has a point: The year on year shift to cooler weather continues unabated.
Heavy driving thunderstorms active here the past 2 weeks. The Emergency Broadcast System has been busy with intense hail & rain warnings. Stay inside, they tell you, wait until it passes.
Warnings to be prepared for a year without a summer in some northern states are not a joking matter. It’s the real deal.
So is this quiet sun.
Tiny Tims and a handful of fattened pores won’t get the scales tipped.
Monsanto would disagree. They have been making fat profit on the back of naturally increasing yields.
Eastern Canada here. June 16th, and to date we have had one day above 20C. Cold, wet, rainy, late frosts. Ice in early, out late. Weather is not climate, but it is cold.
This was irresistable I’m afraid!
http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=ddj8vbbd_1cprzq6fk&skipauth=true
OT, maybe some else can relate to my situation? Rain and Lightning is all we get for summer with mild 70deg F Temps. It’s been raining since Saturday Here in Okinawa, Japan. I took an HD picture of a 1+ gallon bucket filled with water and over flowing. I took the picture today, but the bucket has been full since Sunday. The reason I even took pic of it is because I noticed the sun for the first time since Sat poking through the evening sky. It was not bright at all as there was a haze of gray dominating the sky. 3/4’s of the sky was completely gray with few lighter low lying clouds so low I could almost touch them. The rain however is coming from the higher darker gray clouds. The reamining 1/4 of the sky was dominated by white puffy clouds with just enough space or sun to be visible. I was able to stare at the sun without any difficulty. That is when it dawned(get it) on me to take a few pics. As I took a couple of pics the sun was overcome by the dark gray sky. The sky being completely dark and featureless onc again. When will this stop. The weather man says maybe by Sat it will be mostly cloudy for the weekend. Beyond that it would be guessing. So my guess is that it will remain as is. I wish we were experiencing the drought problems we had 2 years ago when it was rare for it to rain, with exception a nearby tropical storm or typhoon would graze by us only depositng much needed rain. However this year everyone is begging for a week or two of sunshine. Summer lovers and farmers alike. My plants are very sad and pathetic lately, although they are well watered “logged”. Last Wed, Thur and Fri was the first time in week that the sun shined and gave us reason to go outside. Any way, I hope someone somewhere is having a better “real” summer.
We’ve heard from tallbloke and Kum Dollison on just how much GM had to do with the increase in yield. Kum says outside of corn, not much. Tallbloke says the opposite.
Are there any farmer types, or those who know what is really going on in the fields who would care to comment on this?
Don’t really care what Monsanto would have to say as they would want to take as much credit as possible.
Here in Colorado, we have had a very cool and wet spring. It is still a little iffy to be putting beans in the ground as they will likely just turn yellow without some heat. We’ve also had day after day of tornadoes, hail, and heavy rains (for Denver). Very unusual. Rockies game delayed by tornado warning, with some seen hovering over downtown Denver.
Streams and rivers are running heavier than usual. I was up on my favorite streams over the weekend. Not only running a little high, but the hills are deep green, something I haven’t seen in a long time. Good fishing. I joked with my wife I wasn’t fishing, I was doing a stream survey. All the trout were heavy and strong.
I know a single spring fishing trip is not a trend, but I have been going up on these streams since ’68 and one does remember patterns.
Just one other observation: saw only one other fisherman, that was down on stream running through the rest stop. Usually, on a weekend in the middle of June you can count on seeing at least a few. Only evidence of anyone up on second stream was a single boot print in the sand.
OT: Comnispa climate proxy
I haven’t seen anything on WUWT on the Comnispa climate proxy. This European Alps stalactite based temperature proxy shows that the warming of the last quarter of the 20th century is completely within normal climate variations:
Now the delta-18O is related to temperature at about 1°C per 0.22‰. Looking at the graph we see swings of 3 to 4 degrees(C) over the last 10 centuries, often in a very short time.
I wonder if WUWT would like to write something on comnispa and its consequences and its comparison with Manns hockestick :-). Googling provides all the relevant links.
Oops my image link for comnispa didn’t work: here is the graph
tallbloke (01:05:54) :
Monsanto would disagree. They have been making fat profit on the back of naturally increasing yields.
And scams?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts – and no income.
So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.
The crisis, branded the ‘GM Genocide’ by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a ‘global moral question’ – and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.
Speaking by video link to a conference in the Indian capital, Delhi, he infuriated bio-tech leaders and some politicians by condemning ‘the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming… from the failure of many GM crop varieties’.
On the weather front, as reported in today’s The Daily Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/5543939/Call-for-more-accurate-forecasts-as-English-summer-continues-to-cause-havoc.html
“Tobias Ellwood, Bournemouth East MP, said the tourism industry is regularly losing money because tourists are put off by doomladen predictions which turn out to be false.”
And they wonder why we laugh at predictions like this one?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/5469353/Global-warming-to-push-London-temperatures-up-to-105F.html
The warmists can repeat their “It’s only weather, not climate” mantra, but if it’s obvious that weather can’t be predicted accurately, even days ahead, why should climate decades ahead be predictable?
Is it time to start panicking yet?
Crop scientists fear the Ug99 fungus could wipe out more than 80% of worldwide wheat crops as it spreads from eastern Africa. It has already jumped the Red Sea and traveled as far as Iran. Experts say it is poised to enter the breadbasket of northern India and Pakistan, and the wind will inevitably carry it to Russia, China and even North America — if it doesn’t hitch a ride with people first.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-wheat-rust14-2009jun14,0,1661589.story
“A click on the pretty “organic (!!??) cranberries” photo gave me an “ERROR 404″ message………….”
They weren’t really “organic”.
Are the right people getting this news? Have any of the farmers noted got the ear of their representatives. Hard core warmers are not going to change their tunes (thankfully journalists are sensing a “hot” new news cycle and these “fair weather friends” can turn from cosy as heck to derisory and mean without a moment’s notice). Your first poster “NS” shows how warmers will react – quietly pull on your longjohns and rationalize the data. They are already specialists at making smoothies with their data blenders.
I hope solar physicists use this historic development to learn more about the sun and climate and don’t stick to their guns so strongly to protect their long-held territory. The long wrangle that took place between a few solar posters under the “Thermostat Hypothesis” suggests that “inconvenient truths” are beginning to pop up around the world. We can either learn something great or fight it off like the geological establishment did the theory of “Continental Drift” for 40 years before the resisters got literally overwelmed with data and grudgingly were rescued by a “new” theory – Plate Tectonics, which was essentially the same thing, just an uglier term.
The Canadian Prairie Provinces and the Northwestern Regions have had poor fall and winter precipitation for two year in a row. The 2008 fall precipitation was 4.2 % below normal and the winter precipitation was down 4.7% below normal. The 2007 fall precipitation was down 4.7% and the winter precipitation was down 22.1%. During the same time the winter and spring temperature anomalies have also been falling . Similar statistics apply for the Northwest or the north half of the tree Prairie Provinces
Prairies Average Spring temperature anomalies
2006 +2.1
2007 +1.9
2008 +0.3
2009 -1.0
So the spring temperatures have dropped 3.1 C since only 2006 in the Prairies
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/todays-paper/Crop+concern+grows/1687952/story.html
Canadian climate records show that nationally or Canada wide there was less precipitation during many past cool PDO years like 1948-1972
. http://www.msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/ccrm/bulletin/annual08/figchartp_e.html?season=Annual&date=2008
A study by ALBERTA ENVIORNMENT on Canadian Prairie drought reported:
The earlier studies of Dey and Chakravarty identify the presence of a mid-tropospheric
ridge centered over the prairie provinces leading to extended dry spells and precipitation deficits
during the summer season. The study of Bonsal et al. extends this idea and tries to develop a
causal relationship between SST patterns over the North Pacific and extended dry spells over the
Canadian prairies. Bonsal et al. find a certain configuration of SST pattern—anomalously cold
water over an area between 140 and 160W longitude and centered around 30N latitude in
conjunction with anomalously warm water off the coast of northern British Columbia—as
favorable for the development of a mid-tropospheric ridge over the prairies. This ridge
development, according to Bonsal et al., leads to extended dry spells and drought during the
summer season.
http://environment.gov.ab.ca/info/library/6673.pdf
Lets hope that there is not another drought in this region. The last ones were 2001,2002, mid 1980’s, 1977,1961 , 1936-1937,1929-1931 and 1919-1921
Interesting article from farmer’s viewpoint discussing nature of recent corn yield increases:
http://johnwphipps.blogspot.com/2009/06/where-bushels-come-from.html
Also, http://www.farmdoc.uiuc.edu/marketing/mobr/mobr_08-02/mobr_08-02.html is referenced in above.
For Tony & crew, this is off-topic, but a pertinent link for WUWT — Secular variations in geomagnetism appear to correlate with changes in ocean currents:
http://www.iop.org/News/news_35352.html