Guest post by David Archibald
The most skillful climatologist the World has seen was Hubert Lamb (1913 – 1997). He can be credited with making the first prediction of the current solar minimum. This was in 1970 in a report (Weiss and Lamb) for the German Navy.
He did it by making a reconstructed record of the average frequency of southwesterly surface winds in England since 1340. Quoting Lamb “We sense a cycle or periodicity of close to 200 years in length.” and “There may be a valuable indication of the origin of this apparent 200 year recurrence tendency, in that the sharp declines of the southwesterly wind indicated in the late 1300s, 1560s, 1740s-1770s and now, in each case fell at about the end of a sequence of sunspot cycles which built up to periods of exceptionally great solar disturbance (around 1360-80, the 1570s, the 1770s, the 1950s and more recently). The frequency maxima of the southwesterly wind, and evidence of warm climate periods in Europe sustained over several decades, all bear a similar relationship to these variations of the Sun’s activity.”
Following is Figure 11.6 from Lamb’s 1988 book “Weather, Climate and Human Affairs”:
The frequency of the southwest wind at London is shown by the solar line. A tentative forecast (broken line) is made simply by moving the whole curve 200 years to the right, i.e. the forecast implied by accepting the apparent 200 year recurring oscillation shown by the series.
Successful predictions have many fathers. Lamb’s successful prediction forty years ago was the first prediction of the current minimum and reminds us that climate cycles can be relied upon to continue to the end of time.
References
Weiss, I. and Lamb, H.H. (1970) ‘Die Zunahme der Wellenhohen in jungster Ziet in den Operationsgebieten der Bundesmarine, ihre vermutliche Ursachen and ihre voraussichtliche weitere Entwicklung, Fachlich Mitteilungen, Nr. 160, Porz-Wahn, Geophysikalisher Bertungsdiesnt der Bundeswehr.
David Archibald
February 2012
Frequency of warm winds from South-West are basically result of Arctic or North Atlantic Oscillation index. NAO oscillates in 80-year long cycle and agrees with CET winter temperatures extremely well.
“The World won’t …………because they are inconvenient.”
Aint that the truth.
And an earlier prediction from 1979 here:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/libby-and-pandolfi-were-correct/
“……and reminds us that climate cycles can be relied upon to continue to the end of time.”
I wouldn’t go quite that far.
Cycles may continue and they can change.
This reminds me of the work by Nicola Scafetta and Girma Orssengo.
Who will get the cycles right?
Does that mean you believe the current configuration of Earth’s continents is now fixed?
The Git’s chickens believe that being fed night and morning will continue to the end of time. Until they have their necks wrung and find themselves being cooked for dinner 😉
Please correct the source; some typos in there. Corrected it looks like:
Weiss, I. and Lamb, H.H. (1970) ‘Die Zunahme der Wellenhöhen in jüngster Zeit in den Operationsgebieten der Bundesmarine, ihre vermutliche Ursachen und ihre voraussichtliche weitere Entwicklung, Fachliche Mitteilungen, Nr. 160, Porz-Wahn, Geophysikalischer Beratungsdienst der Bundeswehr.
Cycles, cycles! AGW demands, indeed insists upon, straight lines or hockey sticks, nothing else will do!
Related:
Changes in total wind speed, kinetic energy of the atmosphere, over the last 150 years a 30% increase.
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/fletcher.htm
> Lamb’s successful prediction forty years ago
It isn’t clear to me what Lamb is supposed to have predicted. Lamb doesn’t use the word prediction in any of the text you quote. If you take Lamb’s graph as a “prediction”, which I think is questionable, then he “predicted” the frequency of winds near London. Since you’ve made no attempt to verify that prediction, you can’t possibly claim it was successful. You appear to be claiming some kind of back-prediction from this to solar cycles, but I fear the connection is tenuous at best.
William M. Connolley says:
February 18, 2012 at 1:07 pm
“> Lamb’s successful prediction forty years ago
It isn’t clear to me what Lamb is supposed to have predicted. Lamb doesn’t use the word prediction in any of the text you quote. If you take Lamb’s graph as a “prediction”, which I think is questionable, then he “predicted” the frequency of winds near London. Since you’ve made no attempt to verify that prediction, you can’t possibly claim it was successful. You appear to be claiming some kind of back-prediction from this to solar cycles, but I fear the connection is tenuous at best.”
“Die Zunahme der Wellenhöhen in jüngster Zeit in den Operationsgebieten der Bundesmarine, ihre vermutliche Ursachen und ihre voraussichtliche weitere Entwicklung”
“The increase of wave height in the near past in the operating areas of the German navy, it’s probable causes and estimated future development.”
It helps to speak German.
I see that the correlation of shifting 200 years is pretty good.
But, and I may be miss-interpreting, but do these curves show London cooling until the end of the 20th century, then warming through the 21st?
“The Git’s chickens believe that being fed night and morning will continue to the end of time. Until they have their necks wrung and find themselves being cooked for dinner ;-)”
I believe that IS the end of time for that particular chicken. They may be smarter than you think. They might know they must eventually die in any case and realize they can’t train a fox to feed them twice a day…
@William Howard M Connolley
As tenuous as “temps have risen, CO2 has risen, therefore CO2 is the cause of rising temps”?
Natural variability and cycles
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NVa.htm
It’s nice to see Mr. Connolley has taken time from spinning climate change at Wikipedia to obfuscate at Watts Up.
There are cycles within cycles within cycles …
Ocean cycles, orbital cycles, solar cycles, galactic cycles. Some of these amplify, some of them cancel.
As Beesaman imputes, there are no straight lines or hockey sticks, only curves and aberrations – chaotic variations entirely expected and predictable by their very unpredictability.
We know so much and yet so little.
Les Johnson says:
February 18, 2012 at 1:17 pm
“…do these curves show London cooling until the end of the 20th century, then warming through the 21st?”
I assume the correlation is negative. It stands to reason – a blustery winter day versus the dog days of late summer.
No harm, no fowl said @ur momisugly February 18, 2012 at 1:19 pm
http://landofblogging.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/poorpoorfifiagain.jpg?w=490
Robert in Calgary says:
February 18, 2012 at 12:41 pm
“……and reminds us that climate cycles can be relied upon to continue to the end of time.”
I wouldn’t go quite that far.
Cycles may continue and they can change.
Yes, they can continue to follow ever longer cycles, which may force amplitude and length changes in them.
Even the Ice Ages show a lot of variation in the last sequence of 8.
Heck, the Earth can drop as much as 4 C at the Poles and still not leave an interglacial.
I imagine the Sun can do lots of different dances we know nothing about.
Their ‘200 years’ may be actually the 170-180 years found by Carl Smith in the perturbations of the Sun’s net angular momentum:
http://www.landscheidt.info/
“The Git’s chickens believe that being fed night and morning will continue to the end of time. Until they have their necks wrung and find themselves being cooked for dinner ;-)”
The basic problem is that some chickens, and a lot of politicians and some of the hysterical crowd on all sides seem to be able to carry on without a head. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken
Typo
The frequency of the southwest wind at London is shown by the solar line.
Should be
The frequency of the southwest wind at London is shown by the solid line.
Here is an example of a very successful prediction: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/189/4201/460.short
Speaking about climate cycles and their causes, I’ve seen a couple of days an intriguing comment here on WUWT. It was about sun’s influence through UV and the “permeability” of the atmosphere (as to varying the part that is blocked by O3 and other not clouds).
It sounds reasonable and would have the potential to be a driver, much more then direct TSI, but wonder if we do have such data as to: what is the UV variability of the TSI and what is the TSI as measured at the ground in a certain location and not in space. I can imagine this would be highly variable and difficult to see a trend, but wonder if there have been any studies in this direction, or is it a dead end?