Here are some highlights of these two new papers published in Physics Letters A by :
- Central Pacific region temperature dataset SST3.4 from 1990 to 2014 is studied.
- SST3.4 contains a sustained signal at 1.0 cycle/yr implying solar forcing.
- SST3.4 also contains a signal (<1 cycle/yr) showing El Niño/La Niña effects.
- This signal contains segments of period 2 or 3 years, phase locked to the annual.
- A 12-month moving average improves on a “climatology” filter in removing annual effects.
- Global ocean temperatures at depths 0–700 m and 0–2000 m from 1990 to 2014 are studied.
- The same phase-locked phenomena reported in Paper I are observed.
- El Niño/La Niña effects diffuse to the global oceans with a two month delay.
- Ocean heat content trends during phase-locked time segments are consistent with zero.
The papers, the link downloads the full PDF:
Paper 1 Abstract
Equatorial Pacific Ocean temperature time series data contain segments showing both a phase-locked annual signal and a phase-locked signal of period two years or three years, both locked to the annual solar cycle. Three such segments are observed between 1990 and 2014. It is asserted that these are caused by a solar forcing at a frequency of 1.0 cycle/yr. These periodic features are also found in global climate data (following paper). The analysis makes use of a twelve-month filter that cleanly separates seasonal effects from data. This is found to be significant for understanding the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon.
The Sun is the climate pacemaker I. Equatorial Pacific Ocean temperatures Physics Letters A; ©2014 Elsevier B.V.; doi:10.1016/j.physleta.2014.10.057
Conclusions and summary
Phase-locked sequences are found in Pacific Ocean SST3.4tem-perature data during the periods 1991–1999, 2002–2008 and in 2009–2013. These three sequences apparently being separated by climate shifts. It is asserted that the associated climate system is driven by a forcing of solar origin that has two manifestations: (1)A direct phase-locked response to what is identified as a solar forcing at a frequency of 1.0 cycle/yrfor the whole time series; (2)A phase-locked response at either the second or third sub-harmonic of the putative solar forcing between 1991 and 1999; 2001–02 and 2008; and again between 2008 and 2013.
This study confirms the results of [1]that some of the largest maxima/minima in the oscillations of the phase-locked state corre-spond to well-known El Niños/La Niñas. For example, the sequence 1996 La Niña – 1997/98 El Niño – 1999 La Niña corresponds to a minimum–maximum–minimum portion of phase-locked segment #9. The climate system is presently (June 2014) in a phase-locked state of periodicity 3 years. This state, which began in 2008, con-tains a maximum (El Niño) at about 2010 followed by a minimum (La Niña) followed by a maximum (weak El Niño at about 2013). If the climate system remains in this phase-locked state, the next maximum will not occur until about 2016 – i.e., no El Niño before that date. On the other hand, if a maximum occurs before then, it will signal the end of the phase-locked segment (and therefore a climate shift).
On its web site [15]the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-ministration asks: “How often does La Niña occur?” Answer: “El Niño and La Niña occur on average every 3 to 5 years. However, the histori-cal record the interval between events has varied from 2 to 7 years. …” Our findings show that duringphase-locked time segments the period is either 2 or 3 years. If a longer interval is observed, this is notrepresentative of a variable ‘period,’ but indicates the occur-rence of a climate shift between phase-locked segments.
It is pointed out that the 12-month moving average filter is demonstrably superior to the climatology method of removing sea-sonal effects in data. This is seen to be the case for interpretation of El Niño/La Niña data, which contains spurious annual effects when treated under the climatology scheme.
An extension of these results to global data will be presented in a second Letter [16]. It will be shown that patterns of sub-harmonics identical to those described here occur throughout the oceans.
Paper 2 Abstract
In part I, equatorial Pacific Ocean temperature index SST3.4 was found to have segments during 1990–2014 showing a phase-locked annual signal and phase-locked signals of 2- or 3-year periods. Phase locking is to an inferred solar forcing of 1.0 cycle/yr. Here the study extends to the global ocean, from surface to 700 and 2000 m. The same phase-locking phenomena are found. The El Niño/La Niña effect diffuses into the world oceans with a delay of about two months.
The Sun is the climate pacemaker II. Global ocean temperatures Physics Letters A; ©2014 Elsevier B.V.; doi:10.1016/j.physleta.2014.10.058
Conclusions and summary
Global ocean temperature time series from the surface to depths of 2000m since the year 2000 are found to agree in detail with those of other diverse climate indices. It is asserted that these systems are driven by a forcing unquestionably of solar origin that has two manifestations: (1) a direct phase-locked response to what is identified as a solar forcing at a frequency of 1.0cycle/yrfor the whole time series; (2) a second phase-locked response at a period of two years or three years.
With these findings it is becoming clear that the entire cli-mate system is responding to the varying incident solar radiation, and is subject to interactions, most likely nonlinear, thatproduce the subharmonics of two or three year period, and is moreover evolving non-continuously, as evidenced by breaks in the pattern whose timing can be identified with known climate shifts. The most prominent manifestations of the pattern are found in the El Niño/La Niña phenomena. As emphasized in [2], the “natural” pe-riodicity of El Niño/La Niña is two or three years, and observations of longer intervals should be considered probable evidence for an intervening climate shift.
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wot, no CO2? Can’t ‘av that can we??
/sarc
Just what I was thinking. One more nail in the coffin of the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming from man’s production of CO2.
Gee wiz, no pending multi-decadal deep freezer?
What will the media do with no pseudo-predictable pending doom catastrophe?!
They could break bones to see if the fracture is up or down. But then that is more reliable than the current climate models.
That is precisely why all this about the sun affecting the climate is just garbage. As I have pointed out on JoNova, the sun is thermonuclear. It doesn’t produce CO2, so it can’t affect the climate.
BWAGAHAHA…
Vuc your thoughts?
Articles point in the right direction, but conclusions will be dismissed by our resident solar expert, for the reason that just two sunspot cycles (1990-2013) is not long enough to draw a definitive conclusion.
We know that the ENSO (Pacific region) is strongly correlated to the Earth’s rate of rotation (with some years of delay), so is the de-trended global temperature (no delay-with a reverse correlation). Further more it has been shown that the Earth’s rate of rotation contains strong (~25% of its magnitude), 22 year cycle coincidental with the solar magnetic cycle.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Sun-GT-Nino.gif
Ergo: sun appear to be the ultimate driver, but the exact processes are not clearly defined.
Not only by him. Me too, I also consider that the examined record is not long enough to conclude anything. And given that we do have data from much earlier times, one wonders why it wasn’t used.
The “exact processes”, concerning the intake of heat from the sun, and the release of heat into the atmosphere is steered and controlled by the oceans. The ocean is the ultimate driver of climate! ___Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519): “Water is the driver of nature“, or
___“In the time-scale range from a few weeks to thousand years, the dynamics of climate is strongly controlled by the oceans.”, Klaus Hasselmann, 1990, “Ocean Circulation and Climate Change”, Tellus. (SSN 0937-1060), p. 1-37 (3).
Vuk, this is an interesting theory and you should keep banging away with it. Your temperature vs NINO 3.4 graph could also be interpreted to show the 60 year cycle, which imho may be related to orbital mechanics (tidal action pulling ocean water through mixing points). Changes in LOD would be a side effect.
Vuk
Yes, two solar cycles is far too short a time to draw any conclusions. Hope they have accurate data to go back a few more decades at least
tonyb
You’re in so much trouble when “blood sport” shows up lol
Isn’t the LOD change a response to the piling up of water (about 18″) in the Western Pacific? Bob T says it is wind driven and part of the ENSO process. If the mass shifts around the LOD changes. Vuc you note the correlation that is the result, not the cause. Possible?
Hi there in the land of the Mongols
LOD data spectrum does show minor component (among others) just under 5 years which I assume is caused by ENSO. However, as it is shown on the bottom graph the LOD (green time scale at the top) leads ENSO (black time scale at the bottom) by nearly two decades. Majority of the LOD changes come from the Earth’s core, it is unlikely that LOD itself causes anything, it is most likely a side effect.
Dr. J. Dickey of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena:
“One possibility is the movements of Earth’s core (where Earth’s magnetic field originates) might disturb Earth’s magnetic shielding of charged-particle (i.e., cosmic ray) fluxes that have been hypothesized to affect the formation of clouds. This could affect how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back to space and how much is absorbed by our planet. Other possibilities are that some other core process could be having a more indirect effect on climate, or that an external (e.g. solar) process affects the core and climate simultaneously. ”
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20110309.html
Mr Tisdale is certainly the expert on the Pacific, with immense knowledge on the subject, same as Dr. Svalgaard is on the matters solar, but that shouldn’t stop me or anyone else digging into data for correlations which may be coincidental or causal.
sorry, didn’ close bold: LOD (green time scale at the top) leads ENSO
We know that the ENSO (Pacific region) is strongly correlated to the Earth’s rate of rotation (with some years of delay), so is the de-trended global temperature (no delay-with a reverse correlation). Further more it has been shown that the Earth’s rate of rotation contains strong (~25% of its magnitude), 22 year cycle coincidental with the solar magnetic cycle.
None of those things are ‘known’ or have been ‘shown. Regardless of your persistent carpet-bombing claims.
but that shouldn’t stop me or anyone else digging into data for correlations which may be coincidental or causal
But it should stop you from claiming that your fantasies have been ‘shown’ or are ‘known’ to be causal.
vukcevik: Articles point in the right direction, but conclusions will be dismissed by our resident solar expert, for the reason that just two sunspot cycles (1990-2013) is not long enough to draw a definitive conclusion.
Do you know the reason they took such a short temperature series?
Dr. Svalgaard
They may have not been ‘known’ or have been ‘shown’ before, but then I took the dim-witted decision to put some effort into it, so now they are ‘shown’ and should be known, but that doesn’t mean there is a coherent or rational explanation.
Mr. Marler
No I don’t know, but could guess that their ‘curve fitting’ correlation exercise failed, thus didn’t support their claim outside the time range shown. That said, it is not correct to assume that the effort is total failure and should be dismissed. It is just possible that many of internal feedbacks very often overwhelm the driving force. Once the feedback energy subsides the ‘driver’ may pop-up again to be clearly identifiable.
I’ve produced a ‘disproportionate’ number of various correlations (yes, I know c is not c) , and more often than not they show periods of failure or intermittency, just take a look at graphs I contributed above.
“But the length of an Earth day also fluctuates over much longer timescales, such as interannual (two to 10 years), decadal (approximately 10 years), or those lasting multiple decades or even longer. A dominant longer timescale mode that ranges from 65 to 80 years was observed to change the length of day by approximately 4 milliseconds at the beginning of the 20th century.
These longer fluctuations are too large to be explained by the motions of Earth’s atmosphere and ocean. Instead, they’re due to the flow of liquid iron within Earth’s outer core, where Earth’s magnetic field originates. This fluid interacts with Earth’s mantle to affect Earth’s rotation. While scientists cannot observe these flows directly, they can deduce their movements by observing Earth’s magnetic field at the surface. Previous studies have shown that this flow of liquid iron in Earth’s outer core oscillates, in waves of motion that last for decades with timescales that correspond closely to long-duration variations in Earth’s length of day.”
It is the interannual variations in LOD (2-7 years) that correlate with ENSO, without lead or lag.
= = = = = = = = = =
ENSO events occur when both the QB [quasi-biennial] and LF [low frequency] components add constructively, with positive LOD and MSOI anomalies indicative of an El Nino (warm event—in which an increase in atmospheric angular momentum results in high LOD values), while a decrease in LOD and MSOI reflects cold (La Nina) events. No discernible lags or leads between the two series are observed. ‘It is the sum of these components, LF plus QB—-the full ENSO variability—that is the most coherent, indicating the robust link between the ENSO phenomena and interannual LOD variations.
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/handle/2014/22759
Here’s an independent plot of interannual LOD variations superimposed over the ENSO index:
http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-bhHlUSmFWfc/VH8u_rZgK5I/AAAAAAAAAiw/r13isbqjt5A/s800/LOD-vs-ENSO.png
Khwarizmi
Yes, agree t as I said above:
LOD data spectrum does show minor component (among others) just under 5 years which I assume is caused by ENSO.
Your graph shows 6-7 notable peaks for the 1960-90 period, which might correspond to ~ 5 year periodicity.
Another strong-ish component is around 16 years, assuming corresponds to the Himalayan monsoon and the Arctic ice variability, changes in which again could affect LOD.
I am of the view that it is unlikely that LOD itself causes anything, it is most likely a side effect.
Hence if the LOD can be correlated to the solar activity it would indicate that sun is affecting some of the events (ENSO, monsoon, Arctic ice) that periodically cause changes in the LOD.
Solar activity yet again! Oh how the words echo back in my mind! “No one can explain what effect the Sun’s power has on our climate, but whatever it is, it has already been overtaken by manmade Global Warming!” i.e. We don’t know what effect element A has upon element B, but we know for a fact that it’s overpowered by element C! Makes sound scientific sense, doesn’t it? 😉
Solar influence? Surely heresy. Off to Salem with’em.
How can the output from a nearby star, without which we are at near absolute zero, be the main driver? Huh.
superior to climatology? how can such a thing be possible?
Well a moving average filter is superior at removing any kind of effects in “data”.
Filters remove information; they don’t add information. The raw data is the only information about the data you will ever have.
Now there is an endless supply of “processing algorithms”, which can produce a whole host of other numbers, none of which tell you anything about the data that the data isn’t all ready telling you. They mostly tell you stuff about the processing algorithms.
For example, you can always simply add up all of the data numbers, to get a “grand total” of all the data.
The more data you have the bigger will be the grand total; well only if they are all positive numbers. If you want a bigger grand total, then add more data numbers together.
You can also divide the grand total sum, by the number of data numbers that you added to get the grand total.
So now you have used the “summation” algorithm, and the “division” algorithm. Both of those are well known to mathematicians.
Some people call that second result, the “average” of the data values. You can perform both of those summation and division algorithms, on ANY set of real rational numbers whatsoever; no matter where those numbers came from, or how you got them or made them up.
In all cases, so long as the number of data numbers is finite, the summation algorithm gives a unique value, that relates ONLY to that set of numbers, and the properties of the summation algorithm.
Likewise, the subsequent use of the division algorithm, always produces a unique value, unless the number of data values you added in the summation algorithm is zero. In other words you didn’t do anything. It that case, it is impossible to determine what the result of not doing anything will be.
Some people call this sort of process, “numerology”, and they do it for amusement.
Others call it “statistics”, and they usually get paid for doing it; but it really isn’t amusing.
I don’t do statistics; I don’t find it amusing, or useful.
But I sometimes repeat an experiment, just to confirm that I did the first one correctly.
If I don’t get good agreement, I generally try to figure out a better way to do the experiment.
If you do a crappy experiment a thousand times, you end up with a thousand crappy answers, and you can’t depend on any of them. Better to devise a good experiment, and then do it properly once. Doing it twice only confuses you.
If you have two clocks that show different times, you don’t know that you can believe either one of them, so you know less than if you just had one clock that worked properly.
G
By the way; not withstanding any of the above, I do find the first graph, fig.3 a interesting.
Although I do not have a grasp of exactly what is being plotted, here, just by my eyeball, I seem to see a 24 year time during which it has been getting cooler; or maybe hotter, depending on which they subtract from what to get the “anomaly” number.
But the blue “stick” graph is apparently generated by some climatology algorithm. Apparently the blue dots are in fact measured or calculated numbers of some kind. I’ll just assume that is ok.
Now I plot numbers like this quite regularly using M$ Excel. They call them “scatter” plots. And as in the present case, my X-axis number is always monotonically increasing from left to right, although that axis is not always, in fact it is seldom a time axis. Now I can have Excel connect the dots with a stick graph, just like in this fig 3 a.
But why do people do that, and end up with a discontinuous function; in this case infinite second derivatives.
The graphs I end up with in Excel never have infinite second derivatives, because the plot a continuous function through my data points.
And to boot, my graphs always do go through the original data points.
All the other infinity of points on the graph, are of course made up numbers, but that has to be a better representation of what is going on than these angular stick graphs.
Of course, if my original data set is a correct sampling of a band limited continuous function, then my smooth graph could be very close to an exact reconstruction of the original continuous function.
Now in my case, what I am mostly plotting, is in fact numbers that are computed from a specific formula. They are almost never the results of actual measurements of something, so I’m dealing with a special case.
But I still am curious as to why Climate folks, don’t draw plots that are a bit more imaginative than these stick graphs, which they must know cannot be accurate, even if their raw data points are quite accurate.
I must be missing something somewhere.
Classic , i have often thought same ,but my linguistics aren’t honed enough to explain it like you have.
I often find the term “cubic spline” associated with “smooth” graph plotting. I’m not fully up to speed on exactly what a cubic spline is, but they seem to be quite well known in a lot of engineering circles. I did not take Engineering Math courses; but so called “pure” and “applied” maths in a Science course (Maths and Physics) so I’ve not studied them.
I believe you can fit a parabola (second degree polynomial) to any three non co-linear points, but you get no point(s) of inflexion (zero curvature).
A cubic polynomial can fit any four non co-linear points, and can have points of zero curvature.
That leads me to guess (WAG) that a cubic spline involves fitting third order polynomials to groups of four points or something along those lines.
I invented a special form of optical low pass filter, that employs a rotationally symmetrical ripple shape, that is made up of sections of cubic polynomials. Each polynomial starts with a maximum (or minimum) slope, and proceeds through a point of zero slope to a point of minimum (or maximum) slope of the same magnitude as the starting point. So each half wave of the ripple, is a separate cubic that fit together continuously in value and slope, with points of inflexion at the junctions. The maximum slope magnitude is the same for each half wave. Then there are quarter cycle cubic polynomials that either start or end at zero slope, and match the same maximum slope magnitude as the half cycles, so the complete curve goes from a zero slope start point to a zero slope end point, with a quarter cycle at start and finish and some number of half cycles in between.
The polynomial are all third order, and all different, but they all derive from a single proto cubic function. This type of filter, seems to produce very low spurious responses in the stop band, which was the intent of developing it for anti-aliasing optical filters.
The point of all that manipulation is that the derivative of the complete profile is a curve that is bounded between positive and negative equal slope magnitude values.
That shape is scaled in maximum radial size, and maximum slope deviation as a perturbation on an otherwise smooth lens surface which itself can be aspheric.
The result is zones of equal positive and negative spherical aberration added to a prototype lens surface that previously was very well corrected. This produces a spherically aberrated spot of a controlled size, where each quarter cycle of the profile produces a spot of the same radial size. The result is an anti-aliasing low pass optical filter, that produces controlled fuzzy images that are larger than the pixels of a digital image sensor, which is a two dimensional sampling device.
This cubic form tends to spread the focused energy, uniformly along the axis, on both sides of the original sharp focal point, to get something akin to the Gaussian beam waist of a laser beam (but NOT Gaussian.).
So I don’t know why something like cubic spline fitting is not done in plotting these climate data graphs, to get rid of the stick like appearance.
Now I think this is quite different from Dr. Roy Spencer’s cubic polynomial fit that he used to provide “just for amusement only”.
G
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CubicSpline.html
My immediate reaction is: “How in the world did these papers get published?” But then, does “pacemaker” mean “primary driver?” The climate change extremists do love to quibble over words, you know.
“Pacemaker,” at first glance, does appear to be a misleading term. “Heart” (so far as the metaphor can go, that is, as in a heart steadily pumping and maintaining the body’s homeostasis with mild variations within a very limited range) would be the more accurate analogy, I think.
Nicely said, a solar heart is a much better descriptor. If we didn’t have a sun we would not have climate (but we wouldn’t be here to worry about it.) We’d look a lot like Pluto or Eris look today, only colder. Radioactive decay and the moon’s tidal energy would be our only heat sources… not much energy to live on.
Janice Moore At least half the heat comes from this “Heart”
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/jul/19/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-half-of-earths-heat
” About 50% of the heat given off by the Earth is generated by the radioactive decay of elements such as uranium and thorium, and their decay products. That is the conclusion of an international team of physicists that has used the KamLAND detector in Japan to measure the flux of antineutrinos emanating from deep within the Earth. The result, which agrees with previous calculations of the radioactive heating, should help physicists to improve models of how heat is generated in the Earth. “
J. M. (re: you at 12:33pm today):
I would go even farther and say that the Sun provides MOST of the earth’s warmth.
Just to clarify: the Sun is to earth’s climate what a violinist’s heart is to the music she or he is playing. The music is supported by the beating of the heart, but it is the violinist’s arms and fingers, muscles and tendons, which change the music’s dynamics (volume) and tempo. That is, the Sun does very MUCH to make music possible at all; the Sun does very little to create variety in tone and pace.
Hi again Janice
Just thought you might like this read .
“Do you feel inner peace and generally happier when you’re out in nature, away from crowds, traffic and the city?”
http://www.schumannresonator.com/
No. Generally, when I am out in nature, away from crowds and the (civilizations around the city) I feel some or all of the following: cold, hungry, tired, thirsty, isolated, out-of-hot-coffee; away from a snuggly bed; unable to find, keep, and preserve food; and worried about grizzly bears; dire wolves; unhappy wolves, not-so-unhappy wolves, hungry wolves; soon-to-be hungry wolves, sabre-toothed tigers; cave bears, polar bears, panda bears, and/or koala bears. And T-rex’es.
1. Thank you, Niel’s Zoo (sorry for the delayed acknowledgement!).
2. J. M. (re: your post of 1:25pm today)
Yes.
However…. this is the Schumann I prefer:
Good for changing the climate of the mind from city (ugh) to country (aah).
RACookPE1978
January 9, 2015 at 1:38 pm
And when the lights go out for say a week , your biggest threat will be man. Being a free range chook has to be a better life then one locked in a cage. You can stick your city life were the sun don’t shine. This little tune comes to mind ” Green acres is the place to be , farm liven is the life for me , land spreading out so far and wide ,to keep man happy, just give me that country side.
@ur momisugly Janice
Good for changing the climate of the mind from city (ugh) to country (aah).
Cheers for that . If music can sooth the savage beast , I guess it can excite the very same beast as well . Sound is a powerful tool we use every day ,some we hear and some we don’t.
such could be implied from most dictionary definitions, altho I would have chosen a stronger term such as your ‘primary driver’ to avoid ambiguity and split hairs.
The most plausible scenario for causation that I am aware of is described here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
Essentially, solar variability affects global cloudiness and then ENSO modulates the thermal response.
It’s like the heat from the sun evaporates moister in to the air to form clouds and when it cools and condenses it falls from the sky as rain or something /src
It doesn’t sound like you read it.
Anyway, I’m not so sure that these new papers are so relevant to me now since they don’t deal with cycles longer than one year. I seem to have misunderstood on first reading.
We all know there is an annual solar effect so I assumed they were talking about a full solar cycle effect but it seems not.
It’s okay Stephen some people don’t get sarcasm, I do agree that variability of solar cycle activity increases and decreases temperature on earth, what is strange (I’m just saying) is how anomaly’s seem to have this ‘thing’ where the last value carries over and is added to the next value,
A phase lock (loop) requires that the locking mechanism is totally dominant. If it isn’t the phase will drift. So, if their wording is precise, they are saying that the climate may try to vary under whatever influence but will brought bak into “phase” by the sun.
Am I right ?
Stay safe, over there near Paris, Stephen Richards. Glad to see you post today.
It’s over apparently, all hostages safe & abductors dead!
GOOD!
Even if the vermin were still at large, Paris would be much safer to roam than, say, Chicago or DC. Just to pick two cities at random. 😉
“…all hostages safe…”
Tragically, it appears that’s not the case.
brians356: Ever notice that Chicago & DC also have some of the strictest firearms control ordinances in the U.S.?
Any correlation to sun spots?
I can’t see any…
You never know, but I have read a book some 35 years ago about the influence of the sun on our climate. That included an influence on clusters of earthquakes in certain parts of the sun’s cycle, but also the number of conflicts from households to countries…
The latter was explained by the increase of cloudiness and rain in parts of the sun cycle (which is true, as the jet stream shifts polewards at high sun activity, including cloud/rain patterns). More bad weather gives more bad mood and thus more conflicts…
I have never seen any confirmation of the earthquake clusters, neither of the number of conflicts… Thus I have no opinion on this.
However interestingly there have been a lot of smaller scale earthquake clusters reported recently.
Does this overlap with the notch-delay theory of David Evans?
http://sciencespeak.com/climate-nd-solar.html
Stephen
I was following the development of the theory and then I lost track. I thought they were still working out some issues. Is this a new document? Bad eyes today, I cant see a date.
It is a summary of the present position.
There was a mathematical error which is being corrected but it makes little difference to the outcome and a new paper is in preparation.
It appears that David’s theory relates to longer term cycles than the annual ones referred to in this post but it does work by solar modulation of global cloudiness as per my hypothesis and that is consistent with these new papers.
My thoughts precisely.
That is with regard to David Evans notch filter.
“With these findings it is becoming clear that the entire climate
system is responding to the varying incident solar radiation,
and is subject to interactions, most likely nonlinear, that produce
the subharmonics of two or three year period, and is moreover
evolving non-continuously, as evidenced by breaks in the pattern
whose timing can be identified with known climate shifts.”
Willis, help!
The climate remains locked except at those points where there is a climate shift. Problem I see with that is that it isn’t locked if there are intervening “climate shifts” whatever to heck those are. Just reading this article, not the papers, but this sounds like it could be interpreted as saying the climate moves along until some level of CO2 is reached which causes the climate shift, then it locks in again until the CO2 level again causes a climate shift. And THAT is probably how they got published since the climate shift is a forcing that overpowers the locked solar cycles. Or maybe the triggers are volcanic in origin, It is rather obvious that the “furnace” effects the warmth level of the climate, but what causes these climate shifts, and how is that defined?
The climate remains locked except at those points where climate is not locked. A statement worthy of publocation and grant money for the CAGW crowd.
Tom O,
ENSO controls the climate until some level of solar induced cloudiness change sufficiently affects ocean heat content which then causes a climate shift then ENSO locks in again until a further cloudiness change forces another shift.
CO2 not needed.
From the paper:
“It is of course not surprising that an annual signal is found in all the ocean–atmospheric climate indices.”
I’ve got one of those signals in my back garden 🙂 Winter, less sun = cold. Summer, more sun = warm
The anomaly from the long term mean for the month shouldn’t show an annual signal if it were just the change of seasons (like the SH. http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadsst3nh/from:2005/plot/hadsst3sh/from:2005 ) and there was not a change in the difference between seasons as well as an overall warming.
Interesting that the drift in differences between seasons is more pronounced in the NH.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadsst3nh/from:1950/isolate:12/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1950/isolate:12
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3nh/from:1950/mean:3/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1950/mean:3 shows it better. That’s not natural.
There is usually a peak which occurs within weeks of the peak of the sunspot cycle. The secondary peak is likely caused by the previous sunspot cycle re-emerging 15 years later. That’s why it is sometimes two years and sometimes three.
There is also a 40 year delay delay, which links the giant 1960 sunspot cycle to the giant 1998 temperature spike.
I can’t embed images, but here’s a link: http://oi57.tinypic.com/1z3w1uv.jpg
This image shows the correlation of the current sunspot number to small bump in temp.
http://oi61.tinypic.com/2db2ttg.jpg
This image shows how the 15 year delay makes it appear that there is a 2 or 3 year cycle:
http://oi60.tinypic.com/2m2vy1j.jpg
This image shows sunspot number affecting temp after a 40 year delay:
http://oi57.tinypic.com/1z3w1uv.jpg
“This image shows sunspot number affecting temp after a 40 year delay:”
Shows a correlation, dear boy. Something causes both is the postulate.
Another paper is coming up in GRL soon with the same conclusion:
The sun IS the main driver of climate on earth, through the ozone.
This paper is also showing way of giving medium range weather forecast by analyzing the sun’s radiation.
This guy nails it with above 90% accuracy!
What do they mean “medium range”? Are they talking 6 months? That would be very useful if it can be backed up and actually works. Now you’ve got me curious.
My first impression: the record examined is too short to draw any valid conclusions about any correlation that they may have found. Chances for it to have happened just by coincidence are too big.
I’m confused. These papers aren’t talking about 11-year solar cycles at all, but rather seasons which occur on a 12-month cycle.
>”SST3.4 contains a sustained signal at 1.0 cycle/yr implying solar forcing.”
Yes, I’ll agree with Barry on this. Without any further justification it just implies a correlation, not necessarily a cause.
Earth’s four seasons are also on a 1.0 cycle/yr (up to a 6 hour or so calendar anomaly), but they’re caused by the inclination of the Earth’s axis. So at most, you could say the Sun ‘enables’, rather than ’causes’ the seasons.
But the Sun pretty much “enables” everything we do on Earth, so that doesn’t tell us anything new.
If the temperature variation is a seasonal effect, then the effect is due to the earth’s orbital mechanics, and not due to any variation in solar activity, nicht wahr? This does not mean there is no effect from solar activity, but the equator is the wrong place to look for it.
I’m puzzled by the term 1.0 cycle/yr in conjunction with “The analysis makes use of a twelve-month filter that cleanly separates seasonal effects from data”
I wonder if they mean that one solar cycle divided by the length of that cycle in years is providing a sustained solar signal year by year over and above the seasonal effects?
Clarification would be helpful.
Stephen Wilde, the way I read it is that they’re isolating annual variability due to the planet’s axial tilt and hemispheric land/ocean asymmetry from the varying solar signal so as to better characterize the frequency and amplitude of the latter. Sustained solar signal doesn’t seem to belong here, the whole point is that it’s not constant.
Thanks Brandon,
On that basis these papers could be supportive of my hypothesis after all since they appear to propose a solar effect on global cloudiness / albedo.
It is possible that the effect could appear on an annual basis as well as from solar cycle to solar cycle as proposed by me and others. I would have thought the annual change too small but maybe not.
I agree that the solar effect on global albedo is variable and likely due to factors other than simple TSI changes such as wavelength and particle variations.
Stephen Wilde,
You’re quite welcome.
I don’t see anything inconsistent with solar variability driving albedo via cloudiness. At its root, Milankovich theory rests on much longer cycle ice albedo effects at high northern latitudes. There it’s not solar variability but orbital and rotational wobbles as the timer and contributor to amplitude of the global temperature response. These things do all fit together quite nicely from my point of view.
We do disagree on the estimates of CO2’s observed role in all this, however. I’ll meet you half way. Over long periods of time, say 50-100 and beyond years, CO2’s role is that of amplitude, not so much timing. Prior to human activities, CO2 almost always lagged temperature so far as we can presently determine.
My instinct is that the annual changes are quite (relatively) small. TSI doesn’t do anything for me when I look at the data unless I take a multi-year average, usually 11. What that lead me to believe is that the level of detail I’m looking at stuff is not granular enough to pick up anything else but the chaotic “noise” of the planet’s annual internal variability. These papers don’t do that kind of low resolution modeling, so I wouldn’t expect to see what they’ve found in the data ….
…. except …. somewhere, once, I did an analysis where I did observe some phase locking with TSI variability, but it was only good from about 1940 to present, and the clear relationship went away prior to that. I was looking at GISS or HADCRUT4, so 1880 or 1850 is as far back as I went.
I know those sort of things are being studied, but I don’t know much about it other than it’s being done.
The potential top down effect from stratosphere to troposphere is becoming a very hot topic:
http://www.rmets.org/events/stratosphere-troposphere-coupling-earth-system-where-next
Of course, it has nothing to do with what I have been saying for years 🙂
Stephen Wilde,
That looks interesting, thanks for the tip. What about this have you specifically been saying for years?
That solar induced stratospheric temperature changes affect the global air circulation in the troposphere.
Stephen Wilde, I’d be interested in some elaboration.
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
In reply to:
Warmists need to take solar modulation of planetary climate 101. If one does not understand the mechanisms the discussion goes in circles, does not converge on the truth. There is a physical reason why the planet warmed in the last 150 years and there is a physical reason why the planet stopped warming 18 years ago. There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo climate record that correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes.
Sun spot count is a roughly measure of one of the two solar phenomena (closed magnetic flux) that creates solar wind bursts. The solar wind bursts remove cloud forming ions from the high latitude regions on the earth and add ions to clouds in the tropics which changes the amount of cloud cover in high latitude regions and the changes the properties of the clouds in tropics. Solar wind bursts move charges in the atmosphere by creating a space charge differential in the ionosphere. The process where solar wind bursts remove and add ions to clouds is called electroscavenging. Electroscavenging is what amplifies or inhibits El Niño events and cause high latitude regions to warm or cool.
Coronal holes, open magnetic flux regions on the sun, also cause solar wind bursts. What causes coronal holes to form is not known. Coronal holes can persist for months/years and have for some unknown reason occurred late in the solar cycle in low latitude regions thereby causing solar wind bursts to occur when there are few sun spots on the surface of the sun or no sunspots. Coronal holes make it appear that the solar magnetic cycle is not the primary modulator of the earth’s climate.
Comment:
The solar magnetic cycle also modulates the amount of high speed particles (called cosmic ray flux (CRF) or galactic cosmic rays (GCR) for historical reasons, the discoverers thought the phenomena was caused by a ray rather than a particle and the misleading name stuck) that strike the earth’s atmosphere creating cloud forming ions. The solar magnetic cycle and the solar wind create what is called the solar heliosphere which extends well past the orbit of Pluto.
Solar wind bursts remove and change the ions in the atmosphere, so solar wind bursts change make it appear that an increase in CRF/GRF does not cause there to be an increase in cloud cover in high latitude regions.
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MmSAI/76/PDF/969.pdf
The following is a review paper that discusses some of the mechanisms by which solar changes modulate planetary climate.
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
The link in my above comment is no longer active. The following is new link to the review paper in question.
http://www.albany.edu/~yfq/papers/TinsleyYuAGU_Monograph.pdf
William,
I abandoned the cosmic ray idea some time ago on the basis that there is no shortage of condensation nuclei in the Earth system.
I much prefer the idea of longer lines of air mass mixing causing more clouds when the jets loop about meridionally.
Since the changes from zonality to meridionality are solar induced we can regard cosmic rays and magnetic fields as proxies for the underlying solar variations but I don’t believe they are causative of climate changes in themselves.
The thing is that the only way to get the jet streams to loop about more meridionally or to get the climate zones to shift latitudinally is to change the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles which has the effect of changing the amount of space availabe below the tropopause for the jets and climate zones to slide around in.
To get such changes in tropopause height gradients one has to invoke changes in the balance of the ozone creation/destruction process in the stratosphere and, furthermore, the ozone changes must be different above equator and poles.
I don’t see any other plausible solution.
The current south solar polar CH is surprising given that we are just 3 month’s past NASA’s declared cycle 24 peak.
William Astley,
Odd thing to write when the topic is not one, but two, examples of primary literature attempting to understand those very mechanisms.
I am really pleased to know that more of these types of studies are being published ….. which infers the lessening of the author’s fears of retribution for doing said from their pro-CAGW peers and/or influential persons in authoritative positions.
If this trend continues then the pro-CAGW MSM, College Professors and High School Teachers, …… as well as Congress and other government entities, …. will be forced to respond to said “study results”.
The CAGWers are religious global warming/climate change fanatics and are unlikely to respond.
Religious zealots are almost impossible to convert. IMO
Alberta Slim, allow my responses to serve as notice that your probability estimates need work.
Alberta
Habits are hard to brake. The way to create changes in our lives is to stop doing what were been doing first , so we can create new habits . It only takes about 30 days to create a habit. Good habits take commitment and bad habits can sneak up on us without knowing.
jmorpuss,
Which is pretty much the consensus AGW mitigation stance that I endorse in a nutshell, including the allusion to the pedal which is opposite the one that works the throttle.
There you go Brandon, in the clutch, your analogy breaks down in a vehicle with three pedals .
Socrates,
Your feeble attempt to shift the flow of discussion away from my most excellent analogy would normally greatly fuel my ire. However, since yours is friendly fire, my forgiveness is obviously automatic. Now go thee hence and petrol for worthier ways in which to toot your own horn.
They’ll just yell louder, tell you that the new studies are paid for by the evil corporations, the debate is settled, 97% of scientists, and so on and on.
Alan Robertson, thus far I have read nothing in these two papers warranting any sort of refutation. Why I should want to yell at what appears to be good science which reaches reasonable and intuitive conclusions is quite beyond my ability to comprehend.
Brandon, I spoke to Samuel’s musings about possible response to the papers from the climate fearosphere, concerning the papers’ irrefutable conclusions (as you put it.) Your proclaimed acceptance of good science is one thing, the typical response we see from the fear manipulators is quite another.
You have essentially erected your claim of pristine understanding as a strawman, in order to deflect commentary about climate propagandists and to enable a subtle ad hom, to wit: Brandon “gets it”, therefore climate science gets it, so why doesn’t Alan?
Alan Robertson,
I don’t see myself as an outlier on this score, but then I have been known to wear rose colored glasses. Certainly I see “my side” loudly engaging in appeals to emotion — I particularly dislike the fear and guilt rhetoric. So my standard bit is that I don’t carry anyone’s water for them and argue my points of view for me.
Look to the hasty generalization in the comment I initially responded to. I sometimes fight fire with fire. Not the best tactic, it’s usually an emotional reaction and it does paint me out to be duplicitous. OTOH, I know that it only takes one example to falsify someone else’s non sequitur.
Let there be no mistake: I have no illusions about my understanding being pristine. By dint of us being human, none of us do.
Elsewhere I’ve explained specifically why I believe these two studies do not challenge the GHG theory of AGW. I should also like to point out that they are examples of consensus climatologists looking at how natural variabilities affect the system.
Curve fitting is “necessary” but can be dangerously misleading. I create models and curve fits for financial markets analysis and prediction. As you change your variables you can pretty much come up with a great fit 97% sucess rate….you could be a millionaire! Yeah right, it doesn’t work like that. In fact I can tell you I have been slapped badly by a heavy bet on a “perfect model” that breaks down at the worst time.
Models are always backtested, tortured. But a model that can stand the test of time, and also be based on some logical physical science are much desired. Create a model with known data and then observe over years if it is predictive, without tweaking the variables. Now you have something.
Great forum here, love all the original thinkers.
Personally, I think any climate model that doesn’t take the sun into account is wacked in the head. In particular solar magnetics (which are a very complex subject, but getting easier due to STEREO) and not just sunspots which are just part of the story, so magnetics and their effect on cosmic rays around earth, and cloud nucleation from this cast of characters.
stock out
Badger, in your business, you have an aspect of self-fulfilling prophecy. “Technical Analysis” is taught for divining short term future of the markets and is universally used. This has the effect of forcing the markets. Example from 40 years ago in commodity futures, everyone read a book(s) that I can’t recall the name(s) of that took two moving averages of the actual futures prices (100 days[?] and two weeks [?]). When the shorter crossed the longer going up, this was considered momentum for a buy, when the cross occurred going down, this was a sell. By the time so many people came to use the ‘system’, it began to influence markets somewhat. Gamblers ruin was always there for those who did no fundamental analysis of course (a frost in Florida – buy orange futures and sell orange juice futures because when the crop is frost burned, they make it into juice).
About 10-15 years ago, I came second in an international predict-the-gold-price one year hence (can’t remember the sponsor) and the price of one particular South African Gold Stock. I was almost right on with the gold price but the stock didn’t respond because of internal company shennanigans that I was unaware of. I remember the CEO became the victim of a carjacking murder many believed was a hit. Anyway, being in the mineral industry I used old fashioned supply and demand fundamentals (which could have been confounded of course if some president got killed or a new war started).
AT Pease, yes I was a master at Tech Analysis, there are many types, I had many of my own constructs also, which worked better because there weren’t 100,000 people using the same method….when that happens, its time for the HAL 20000 computers to “blow up the trade” and catch as many as possible on the wrong side of the trade. the HAL 20000 army by Goldman et al is what made tech analysis become less valuable. Sadly my expert skills became dinosaured by corrupt computers.
But I digress, in my main example of a “tuned” system failure, it was a brand new system, proven to create 33% annual returns over a 90 year period of data, with 92% winning trades, and the biggest loss being around 7% of money invested…..sounds perfect. Dropped 100K into that trade system (only a hundred people were using the system), and ended up with a $15k loss on the first trade! The first trade was by far the worst of 90 years……back tested or back tuned systems have a way of incorrectly forecasting the future.
Ya those small gold miners are amazing corrupt, even when listed on AMEX or TSX they still cannot be trusted. I would put more faith into a Warmist coming to their senses.
badger777,
Yup.
An especially hazardous place for users of probabilistic models. Less hazardous for the rare user whose model is connected to large enough asset accounts to nudge the market in a desired direction, but then only if those models are constantly updated due to a different model connected to a similarly massive war chest having figured out how to beat it at its own game.
That’s a game which is about as far from how thermodynamic equilibrium systems work. Newton, not Nash, is the better way to think about climate … until it comes time to making policy decisions.
The assumption here being that laws of physics don’t change, which, if we can’t assume, we may as well not bother.
The problematic assumption you make is that the known data are sufficiently accurate and representative expressions of the underlying physical processes to achieve the desired level of predictive skill. And it is of course always possible some fatal misunderstanding of the physical principles themselves will bite us unawares.
I do speak in extremes here. Point being that science is the process of incremental gains in knowledge either by new discovery, refining and enhancing previous knowns, or discovering errors and fixing them. Not the sort of thing one easily, or advisably, halts in the name of holding input parameters static just to see how they fare over some number of years.
Oh me too, it would be completely whacky to totally ignore the most significant source of heat in the system. Not ignoring it is one of the better explanations I can think of for why the Sun is studied so extensively.
The solar wind is cold by the time it reaches Earth , And the only reason were here is because the “resistance” created by this sun inside the Earth . http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/jul/19/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-half-of-earths-heat
jmorpuss,
Well I was raised to believe that solar photons, not charged particles were responsible for why I feel hot in the daytime and cold at night.
Another popular press editor who needs to be dragged out back and shot for writing an unclear headline. Better would be “Radioactive decay estimated to account for half of Earth’s interior heat”
Let’s see what the body text has to say:
Geophysicists believe that heat flows from Earth’s interior into space at a rate of about 44 × 10^12 W (TW). What is not clear, however, is how much of this heat is primordial – left over from the formation of the Earth – and how much is generated by radioactive decay.
I comment: Geophysicists also believe that Earth absorbs solar radiation at an average rate of about 129,970 x 10^12 W. Divide by 5.1 x 10^14 m^2 = 239.2 W/m^2, a number which should look familiar:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Topics/Fig1_GheatMap.png
Article continues:
The most popular model of radioactive heating is based on the bulk silicate Earth (BSE) model, which assumes that radioactive materials, such as uranium and thorium, are found in the Earth’s lithosphere and mantle – but not in its iron core.
Now that the dreaded keyword has been invoked, the conversation should now come to a screeching halt. That is if Trenberth’s energy budget cartoon didn’t kill it already.
@ur momisugly Brandon Your cartoon is comical and thanks for the laugh
jmorpuss, yeah well I’m having fun trying to imagine how you explain diurnal and seasonal temperature differences with the planet’s internal heat providing on the order of 50% of surface temperatures on average.
Solar activity has been considered, and can’t possibly have created the variations in temperature which we see. That is settled science, and can’t be changed. So why are these people still in their jobs?
The only way you can get the variations we see is if the temperature data is adjusted properly. This is very convenient for climate theorists – it means the models can be proven accurate against observation without going to the trouble of taking any observations…
Exactly! That is the number one concern for me with respect to climate science. The claim is that the effects of the sun have, apparently, been completely quantified and there is no room for other views.
In my opinion, any group of scientists that make this kind of claim about a system as complex as the climate should NOT be working in science. Period. The hard fact is that climate “science” (and likely much of environmental “science”) is a haven for the intellectually lazy and ideologically driven.
I hate these blown up graphs…and making some big deal out of less than 1/2 a degree
…a 1/2 degree you can only get through adjustments
Right on… How about making a graph of global temps in degrees Kelvin??
In degrees C…PLEASE! I realise you Americans are still stuck in F, but the rest of the world uses C. For F’s sake use the C word!
It’s not mine guys……James did it….ask him to do it for you
ask James to make you one….
http://suyts.wordpress.com/
@ghost, that is hilarious!
Latitude, really? GISTemp LOTI converted to Kelvin absolute:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/offset:14/offset:273.15/compress:12
Converted to Fahrenheit absolute:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/offset:14/scale:1.8/offset:32/compress:12
Converted to Celsius absolute:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/offset:14/compress:12
Click on the “Raw Data” link below each chart to get the data and graph to your heart’s content. The smallest y-axis value for K is obviously 0. -459.67 for F, -273.15 for C. Easy, no need to ask anyone to do anything.
Show of hands now, how many people here think we can fool Nature by playing silly tricks with unit conversions and y-axis scaling?
Who here understands that the purpose of plotting a chart is to help us understand what Nature is doing?
Latitude, really?…..yes Brandon really
Look at the damn scale…..
I hate these blown up graphs…
Latitude, I know you do. But looking at the non-blown up ones only changes your perceptions of reality, not reality itself. The salient debate here starts with whether the data themselves are accurate and representative of the underlying physics. By posting that graph, you are tacitly accepting the underlying data as correct. If you don’t realize that’s what you have done, then even more so it’s apparent you’re just playing games with images and have no intention of actually discussing the implications of what the data are telling us.
IOW, if you want to be taken seriously, engage in a serious discussion about the data in lieu of spamming the Internet with the same ridiculously uninformative plot which relies on arbitrary y-axis scaling to make a non-scientific argument.
It’s the way it looks on a Fahrenheit alcohol thermometer…..period
get over it
Latitude, that would be taking the “not to be taken seriously” avenue. But hey, to each their own.
Yes , dammit ! Computations MUST be done in Kelvin . Here’s a graph which puts the rise in CO2 and the rise in temperature in their true 0-based proportions :
http://cosy.com/Science/CO2vTkelvin.jpg
The total variation in temperature this politically genned hysteria is only about 0.3% . The earth’s equilibrium temperature varies about 4.3 degrees from peri- to ap-helion .
Bob Armstrong,
For calculating percentage changes in energy, if you’ll pardon the pun, yes, absolutely. For comparison, the percentage change in absolute surface temperature are 2.45% and 5.39% on the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales respectively.
Isn’t abusing math fun? On that note …
Which clearly isn’t a problem, else we might not be here.
The percent changes in F or C degrees are mathematically meaningless . You must have a true 0 , ergo , Kelvin , to talk ratios , ie , percentages .
Were the orbit of the earth circular at the aphelion distance , our temperature would be even more dangerously close to the gorilla tipping point around , 273.15K . As it is , the mean 278.7 gray ball temperature in our orbit is uncomfortably close . As it is , the mean temperature of an ocean blue ball will dip below freezing close to half a year .
To me the consequential aspect of these papers is the confirmation of the yearly oscillation which MUST be in the data . People seem to be getting off into all sorts of esoteric explanations of longer period phenomena . I would like to see a simple spectrum for monthly or finer grained data over the decades for which commensurable data are available . I cannot imagine that the yearly cycle will not blow away all others in terms of total variance explained . And one should be able to get a handle on the phase lag and dampening . And perhaps be able to ferret out an estimate of the effect of our north-south asymmetry .
These are some of the first analyses I would expect from a classical physics , quantitative analytical approach to understanding the planet’s mean temperature .
Bob Armstrong,
I agree. That was the point of my doing the percentage calculations on both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales.
Ok, a particular example might help.
The highest frequency and amplitudes are found in the diurnal cycle.
One should definitely try. Big difference between trying and being able.
Start with the relative differences in land vs. ocean surface. Consider also that the Arctic ocean is surrounded by land and the Antarctic is an ocean surrounding a continent. Keep going from there.
Me too.
I thought that might be the point .
All the stuff about solar cycles , etc , when the headline issue is the annual cycle and its obvious , on the basis of the most basic physics , orbital cause .
🙂 OK , I left that out of my thought . The diurnal variance of course swamps everything else . Here are the diurna temperatures ( from Accuweather or Weather.com , I can’t remember which ) for sea level , NYC , and 2500 meters where I live above Colorado Springs :
http://cosy.com/Science/NY_WPtemps.jpg
The diurnal variance at sea-level is about 8 degrees , or 2.8% , about 10x the 0.3% change over the century . Up here , the variance is about 19 degrees or 6.6% .
This change in variance is the overwhelming effect of CO2 and other radiantly active gases transducing radiant energy back and forth to thermal energy in the mass of the atmosphere . Yet I have never seen this overwhelming effect , as opposed to any minor change in the mean , discussed on the web .
Yep .
Bob Armstrong,
It comes up from time to time. So, from monthly GHCN/CAMS data, which I grabbed from KNMI Climate Explorer, from 1948-present the mean global annual seasonal range is 11.6 °C. For the 30-65N latitude, the range is 29.3 °C, and for 65-90N it’s 35.8 °C. Trends are 1.9, 2.3 and 2.8 °C/century respectively. 16.5%, 7.9% and 7.8% are the respective percentages.
Given that we’re not dead, obviously the seasonal range isn’t an issue. You’re asking what’s the big deal about a 2 °C/century change? Well there are some other percentage calculations we can do. Over the past million years, the range between top and bottom of an ice age cycle is ~6 °C. That’s estimated global average temperature. 2 °C is 33% of that. The Holocene is about in the middle of that range, -3.5 to the last glacial maximum, and + 2.5 for the Eemian interglacial.
Another thing to think about is rate. It took oh, call it 10,000 years to cover that 3.5 rise from the LGM to the Holocene mean, which works out to 0.035 °C/century. That’s nearly 60x slower than the observed trend from 1948.
How do we know that the observed rate isn’t just a natural variability that doesn’t show up in the ice core data? Well, that’s exactly what a lot of these long-term variability studies like the one being discussed here are all about — trying to understand the planet’s own rhythms over longer-period cycles so that we can separate out our own signal from the “noise”.
It’s just like you said; “classical physics , quantitative analytical approach”.
Brandon , We seem to agree on a lot .
I’ve only implemented the half dozen or so relationships , each a one line functions , the longest of which is the Planck distribution , required to calculate the equilibrium temperature of a radiantly heated uniformly colored ball , an another few definitions for arbitrarily partitioned spheres . All my effort now is toward fleshing out my 4th.CoSy language implementing recursive lists of lists structures in open Forth abstracted from a lifetime in APLs . In APL languages , a very competitive physical model of the planet can be implemented in just a few pages of succinct definitions .
One of the next steps I’d like to do is simply implement the temperature distribution as function of coordinates over the sphere , throwing on a lambertian function at each point just to see what the unconfounded distribution of temperature is as a function of latitude . I’d particularly like to see where the “tipping point” 0c boundary moves as function of mean temperature . Also , high on my list is implementing the relationships for semitransparent media , eg , atmosphere and oceans . I’m really looking for collaborators who know this physics deeply from teaching it and are interested in expressing it cleanly in executable form any talented teen can implement and play with on computers of any size .
I’ve never stated that a 2c change in mean temperature is inconsequential — particularly to the down side . A crude approximation to an ocean blue spectrum , reflecting about 9% of the solar spectrum brings our equilibrium temperature down to perhaps half a degree above 273.15 . And , of course , it’s the tipping into ice ages the planet has repeatedly experienced .
Love it! Hard to play Hockey with a straight stick, though. 😉
Oh, but see how close it got to the line? Think of the children!