Guest post by David Archibald
A large part of the US is currently in drought. A recent paper by Springer et al – “Solar forcing of Holocene droughts in a stalagmite record from West Virginia in east central North America” – analysed the Sr/Ca ratios and C13 values in a Holocene stalagmite from east-central North America. Their work “demonstrates solar forcing of droughts in east-central North America on multiple time scales. Droughts typically occur during solar minima when SST in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are comparatively cool. These SST anomalies cause migration of the jet stream away from east-central NA, yielding decreased meridional moisture transport and reduced convergence over east-central NA.”
Futhermore: “The 210-year period coherency in the BCC-002 Sr/Ca andd13C time series is evidence that the de Vries solar irradiance cycle has significant effects upon moisture levels in east-central NA.”
So, to predict the onset of de Vries cycle droughts in North America, all we have to know is when the last de Vries cycle started. That was in 1798 at the beginning of the Dalton Minimum. 210 years after 1798 makes 2008, which happens to be the end of Solar Cycle 23 and the beginning of Solar Cycle 24. Solar activity has been quite weak since 2008, so everything is happening on schedule.
That is shown in the following figure of the annual average temperature of Providence, Rhode Island:
The periods of the Dalton Minimum (Solar Cycles 5 and 6) and the current Eddy Minimum (Solar Cycles 23 and 24) are shown as blocks. Gleissberg maxima and minima from a paper by Peristykh and Damon are shown as down-facing red arrows and up-facing blue arrows respectively. The next Gleissberg maximum should be around 2043, which agrees with a projection of solar activity by Fix (2011, in press).
Separate to the de Vries cycle-based projection of climate, the onset of a cold period is confirmed by application of Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory, shown above on the temperature record of Providence, Rhode Island.
Drought has an obvious agricultural impact, but this will be compounded by lower average temperatures and a shorter growing season.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) stated that “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Whether or not we are aware of previous de Vries cycle events, we are going to experience them and their consequences anyway, but knowing means that should not be a surprise.
Links to papers cited:
http://www.geo.wvu.edu/~kite/SpringerEtAl2008GRLpaper.pdf
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/BinWang07-d/PeristykhDamon03-Gleissbergin14C.pdf
Does this backcast the poor farming practices and drought of the 1930’s.
The Warmists will be surprised.
They remind me of the grasshopper and the ant.
I thought it was George Santayna who said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Interesting philosopher: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/523188/George-Santayana
/pendant mode OFF 🙂
The Damon paper you cite as evidence for the Friis-Christensen&Lassen theory explicitly disavows that speculation [in para 63]:
“Friis-Christensen and Lassen have used variations of solar cycle length to explain the total 20th century warming. As has been noticed by Damon and Peristykh [1999] this is again equivalent to climate change forcing by variations of the Gleissberg cycle activity timescale. This not only requires excessive solar forcing by the Gleissberg cycle but also repetitive global warming of similar magnitude in the past 300 years which is not in accord with paleoclimatological data.”
Reply to Andrew Russell says:
April 17, 2011 at 9:25 pm
I thought it was George Santayna who said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Interesting philosopher: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/523188/George-Santayana
/pendant mode OFF 🙂
You are right, but so is David Archibald
http://www.google.ch/search?q=Those+who+don%E2%80%99t+know+history+are+destined+to+repeat+it.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
We did see a significantly deeper and longer solar minimum then average between cycle 23 and cycle 24, but there is a lot to disagreement between those who argue that TSI fell a tiny amount during the minimum and that the minimum will have a negligible effect upon climate and those who argue that while TSI did only fall a small amount the higher energy wavelengths fell 10 percent or more and that this could have a much greater impact upon our climate. Furthermore there was a much longer than normal increase in cosmic rays striking the earth during the minimum. There is a theory that the increase in cosmic rays could also affect the climate.
The next 11 to thirteen years will prove one way or the other which camp is correct on the solar front. In the meantime, AGW has turned out to be a massive case of bad science followed up by even larger amounts of fraud. I will enjoy eating popcorn while the alarmists go down in flames.
Leif, I think you are grasping the last straw.
Dependence of the Earth’s climate on the Solar activity and Solar cycles has been demonstrated in so many ways and so many times that any reasonable person would at least allow such a possibility. You don’t seem to be able to admit it.
P.S. Re: being confused. Recent discovery of the super-massive cluster of galaxies on the edge of the infrared telescopic vision that, according to the Big Bang explanation of the red shift, must be no older than 780 million years but could not have formed in less than 6 billion years according to the tenets of the same dogma — one more nail in the coffin of your favorite creationists’ creation.
Can you tell me what the graph of Providence temperatures is supposed to explain? If I look at it, I see a variety of vague cycles imposed upon a trend that has risen maybe 2ºC in 160 years. I would have thought this was prima facie evidence of substantial warming since the pre-industrial period.
Hate to be cynical, but why is Providence so special?
When last up in the Dakotas, I noticed that the road side trees were dying. I was informed that these anti-dustbowl lines, often 20 miles in length had reached the end of their natural age.They were also planted along field borders. And no one saw to maintain these small but important barriers.
mct says:
April 17, 2011 at 11:36 pm
Providence is up there amongst that regional carbon trading initiative. They are fixated on carbon dioxide when they are going to get whacked by a de Vries minimum. It is just hilarious.
It’s colder than we thought…
If these cycles do have an effect on weather, would it be useful to compare the weather of 1800/1 to 2010/11?
In China, 1800, there were great floods. 2010 there were great floods.
Coincidence?
In hopes of adding to this discussion, I’d like to present something Timo Niroma wrote sometime around 2001 here:
“The 200-year sunspot cycle is also a weather cycle”
I’m sure some of you have seen his work, while some of you have not.
Some of it is difficult to wade through, but his theories are interesting to read.
Niroma also mentioned some other studies, regarding a 200 year cycle:
Enjoy
This is a fscinating post. I’ll let Messrs Archibald & Svalgaard battle out the details.
Deja vu. We are talking about the big shiney thing in the sky here. The thing essential for life on Earth, that gives us 100% of our naturla light, 99% of our natural heat energy, & possess 99.9% of the mass of the Solar System, & Earth has a mere fraction of 0.1% of the mass of the Solar System. So if TSI only varies by 0.1% throughout a Solar Cycle, how is this too little to explain the lack of potential for it to effect our climate? Is this not just economies of scale? I have already read papers that suggest a trigger level within that small variation which appear plausible.
PS sorry ut the typos!
The length of the solar cycles affects precipitation totals, so regions experiencing drier conditions during longer solar cycles are going to suffer droughts, while opposing regions experience an abundance of precip.
Every regions has it’s own quirks, so the key point is to know what that history is, to learn from it. The other part of the equation is to know what solar cycle length to expect. We can exist without satellites, not so without adequate crops.
As the problems with the ‘hockey stick’ have shown paleoclimate reconstructions are not a credible source to argue that specific cycles exist. Certainly not for cycles of over a century in length when many other factors come into play and can swamp any small solar/ocean cycle influence. This seems to be the cause with the Rode Island data, it shows some ‘periodic’ variation, but that is dwarfed by the underlying warming trend.
While the Springer et al paper may show some corellation between paleoclimate records for the N.E. US and hypothesized solar cycles it seem odd to be adducing this as evidence for the role of solar cycles in the drought in the South West of the 48. They are different climate areas with different influences and modulating factors.
There is a further problem with the claim that the drought is within natural variation and is therefore nothing to do with any climate change. Climate change may not cause events that are outside the normal range, but it may alter the probability of such ‘normal’ variations. It introduces a probability bias, so that rather like weighted dice, its not the occurance of double sixes that raises suspiscions, they are a ‘natural’ result of throwing two dice, but if they are occuring more than 1/36 times then the bias is present.
Frosty says:
April 18, 2011 at 1:34 am
Wouldn’t it be nice if every weather station had 210 years of data?
Wouldn’t it be almost as nice if certain Climate Scientists had not lost precious station data prior to 1895?
My deep concern is that so much effort is being directed at trying desperately to prove the AGW hypothesis that little or no effort is being directed at other possible causes, i.e. solar cycles. As seems likely the AGW hypothesis will be debunked in the next few years by real world data if not science. Should we slip into a prolonged cooling period the world is totally unprepared due solely to the fixation of governments on AGW. Our CSIRO is not researching food crops in anything other than a warming world where by and large production will be easier. Growing long season crops in short cooler summers will be much more difficult.
NCDC data says that the percent of land that is dry is not unusual. No trend. http://vlb.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/uspa/index.php?area=wet-dry&month=0&year=2011
There is always some area in drought. No trend. Get it? No trend.
Has anyone mentioned how wet it has been recently in Australia? La Nina.
Why not draw the “temperature predicted from solar cycle length” across the whole graph? There must be a function for it if you’re drawing conclusions like this.
I’m not sure what you’re seeing here. The arrows don’t match anything, nor do I see anything resembling a 210 year cycle.
David Archibald says:
April 18, 2011 at 12:40 am
David, whilst it might be ‘hilarious’ that Providence is “fixated on carbon dioxide”, that doesn’t mean that comparing temparature there – by itself – to solar cycles in your mind means anything. Sorry.
So, the sun has created the drought and not the changing circulation patterns hmmmm.
Lack of precipitation is a solar event?
Current precipitation patterns seem to be following the path of glaciation.