On Climate Audit’s unthreaded comment forum, David Archibald noted some interesting facts about the solar cycle lengths and upcoming Solar Cycle 24, and provided the graph above.
Solar Cycle 20 was slightly longer than average at 11.6 years. The average solar cycle length from 1643 to 1996 is 11.4 years. Now that Dr Svalgaard has mentioned it, let’s talk about Solar Cycle 21. It was short at 10.3 years and hot (it started at the same time as the PDO shift in 1976) and was followed by a solar cycle 22 which was shorter again at 9.6 years and hotter. According to Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory, Solar Cycle 23 should have been hotter than Solar Cycle 22, and it was, even thought it is going to be a long one at about 13 years. There is plenty of correlation, all in our lifetimes. As for the physics, Hathaway found a correlation between Solar Cycle Length and the amplitude of the following cycle.
As for Solar Cycle 23 being almost done with, those are comforting words but the observational data suggests otherwise. Jan Janssens does it best – a recent plot is above. That suggests that we have a year to go and that Solar Cycle 23 is likely to be 13 years long. This is 3.4 years longer than Solar Cycle 22 and thus with mid-latitude temperatures responding at the rate of 0.7 degrees C per year of solar cycle length, Solar Cycle 24 will be 2.4 degrees cooler than the one we are still in.
The Financial Post has a story (Our Quiet Sun) that is echoing much of what Archibald is saying, but is quoting from other sources:
The sun, of late, is remarkably free of eruptions: It has lost its spots. By this point in the solar cycle, sunspots would ordinarily have been present in goodly numbers. Today’s spotlessness — what alarms Dr. Chapman and others — may be an anomaly of some kind, and the sun may soon revert to form. But if it doesn’t – and with each passing day, the speculation in the scientific community grows that it will not – we could be entering a new epoch that few would welcome.
Joe D’Aleo did an essay on IntelliCast on the possible consequences of a Solar Cycle 23 running out to 13 years, using some of the same things Archibald is saying:
Looking back at the full record of sunspot cycles, we can see this general behavior of short active cycles and longer, quiet ones. Successive 11 year cycles are different in their magnetic fields and the 22 year Hale cycle has in the past been related to some phenomena such as drought. Longer term cycles are apparent when you carefully examine the data. Very obvious from the long term plot of the 11 year cycles is the approximate 100 (106) year cycle. There is also a 213 year cycle. The last 213 minimum was in the early 1800s. The turn of each of the last 3 centuries has started with quiet long cycles with mid-century shorter, higher amplitude cycles. The quietest period was in the early 1800s (the Dalton Minimum). The 100 and 200 year minima are due the next decade suggesting a quieter sun ahead.
I’ll take Global Warming any day of the week and twice on Sundays over a Little Ice Age.
MattN,
I believe he’s referring to Ocean Heat Content. Dr Peilke has proposed that as a better metric for warming than atmospheric temperatures at his blog http://climatesci.org/
MattN
OHC= ocean heat content
Where is the missing heat?
MattN (09:50:17) :
Yesterday on climateaudit.org I asked for clarification of the David Archibald graph that you reference. I called attention to what seemed, (to me), to be a problem starting around 2008. A legend identifying the various curves would have helped. A response might have been made to my question, but changes in post numbers has left me uncertain on the issue.
DR: solar-OHC lag is about 10 years.
Seems to me consistent with a lower TSI (-0.1 degrC) since 1995 *AND* the vast heat loss from the ’98 el Nino.
If the ’98 el Nino is and -0.1 degr TSI offsets are enough to offset and plateau the warming trend, then you have the strength of the human GHG (CO2, methane) signal.
IOW, not very strong at all. I think it’s consistent with Stephen Schwartz’ time constant of about 8 years (+/- 4 yrs). Pinatubo’s coolth left a deep-ocean signal but its overall OHC effects were shortlived, so the same for OHC heating. SO the heat reradiative latency is more short term, which seems to contradict Hansen’s OHC “smoking gun.”
AAMOF the lower temperatures in the stratosphere are actually from Pinatubo’s ozone-destroying aerosols releases. Since ’93 the stratosphere has been going through a slight warming (contradicting AGW hypotheses). Before then there was no apparent AGW signal in the stratosphere (the predicted cooling), just normal inverse correlated oscillations against surface temps.
Interestingly, however, the stratosphere actually *heated* during the peak of the ’98 el Nino, demonstrating that a great deal of the excess heat in ’98 went out into space. IOW the stratosphere will warm when its awash in outbound heat that is in excess of functionally advected LW GHE heating. Essentially this is what Trenberth conceded, there are discussions on RC about it, even Gavin at RC has conceded (in 2006) it might gone out into space.
Better accounting in the heat budget of the newfound *net heating effect* of aerosols (Ramanathan), soot-driven Arctic melt (another 15% centennially and 1/3rd ongoing decimation) and proper accounting for surface ozone — all would subtract yet more heat out of the CO2 ledger column, making for a lower longterm AGW signal. The weird compounding effect of brown clouds which are heavy in tropospheric soot TS is that they dim the surface (a slight cooling) but seriously disrupt regional hydrological cycles leading to inland drought and yet more temperature anomalies. Not widely known but this is what led Ramanathan to get into trouble w/ the IPCC during INDOEX 2003 that the Indians & Chinese sought to suppress the studies via IPCC funding cuts for INDOEX. It’s canonical in AGW politics that soot is the carbon that must not be named.
The falling solar effect may last half a century. Naturally the AGWers claim that these are only temporary reprieves. But what they are admittedly missing is an understanding of the effects of aerosols amd clouds. The question of the errant OHC reveals they are genuinely just as confounded by speculation as anyone else.
My lay speculation is simple: It’s in the clouds. The observed increase in cloud cover & rainfall suggests to me: 1) Increased hydrological cycle rate due to near-surface CO2-water vapor (WV) feedback, or 2) Increased cosmic ray cloud-seeding (the TSI has fallen since 1995), or 3) Aerosol cloud-seeding. These conditions would lead to net OHC loss even w/ enhanced WV & relative humidity (RH).
Case #1 (above) by itself has suggested to many that an unforeseen heat-exchange function exists that is offloading heat into space (via ENSO? — what about AMO, PDO & AO?) driving increased cloud cover & advective & convective heat loss. Consistent w/ #1 is that the AGWer expected increases in RH & WV in the mid- to upper-troposphere have not been found, along with the WV shadows akin to Lindzen’s Iris Effect. Case #3 (above) has been documented by field data, wintertime storm seeding from tropos. soot (TS). Case #2 I’m not clear on.
That aerosol surface dimming / lowered evaporation effect would lead to lower WV & RH, but would also lend toward lower evaporative cooling of SST in places where the dimming is worse and ocean currents tend to introduce heat in those locale. The ENSO would displace the heat into the Southern Hemisphere (SH) where the dimming effect is least, suggesting to many that indeed the ENSO is shedding heat. To me this would seeem far more incriminating of aerosols than CO2 — aerosols are slowing the evaporative heat-pump capacity of the seas.
It’s been suggested here also that the emissivity:insolation of open polar waters would also lead to a net heat loss. That progressive decimation of Arctic ice from sootfall might paradoxically lead to both lower albedo *and* anew emitted heat (as opposed to high-albedo heat rejection) is an ironic result of the Earth’s 23 degr Axis tilt. IOW, at extremes of low to high ice conditions, the Arctic may function to either shed or reject heat, either through emissivity or albedo. An ice-free Arctic, IOW, could be as much a benefit as a fully iced one, in terms of total Earth heat content. From what I’ve seen, the accounting for this in polar ice models hasn’t been modeled to the extremes and has relegated emissivity behind albedo.
I think all of these data underscore how the system tends toward a thermal constant and that Earth is prone to ice ages, not heat ages. It makes more sense in terms GHG that during drier ice ages, water vapor is – by definition – much less prevalent, lending to even less GHG effect from water vapor. B/c of the seas when the Earth warms, it really warms, b/c as we all know: “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!” Paleoclimate research has clearly suggested this as a major factor, not CO2 during the Lower Pleniglacial. see: http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.html
Better yet oceanic reuptake of CO2 is higher during ice ages through either biogenic or thermodynamic absorption, and yet coral reefs & benthic fauna survived the presumably higher carbonic acid levels just fine. Carbonic acid is a much weaker acid than either sulphuric or nitric acids, and air pollution dumps plenty of both quickly into the seas perhaps falsely implicating AGW & CO2’s role in current coral bleaching, etc. Again the effects would be regional by aerosol concentrations, not global, hence leading to yet more climate confusion.
All aerosols (soot, sulfates, nitrates) & ozone have a short atmospheric half life and can be readily mitigated. Likewise were industrial & transport sources of albedo-diminishing soot reasonably mitigated, the boreal ice pack would be reclaimed. Other side-benefits of soot mitigation would be significantly lower arsenic & mercury deposition and so on.
If you put 10 monkeys to predict SC 24 they would probably do it with higher precision than scientists. Now I don’t want to make fun of those studying the sun but just want to make a point that we still know little about the sun. It is much about guessing and statistics still and too little about physical calculations. We only seem to be able to predict the sun if it behaves roughly as before.
Another thing I have noted is that all the solar minimums pointed out in the graph above has very low sun spot number between the shift between 2 solar cycles. This seems to only happen when there are weak cycles ahead and never when we have medium and strong cycles.
So just by looking on that fact there is close to 100% probability for weak cycles to come.
The closer the sun spot number is to 0 between 2 cycles the closer we get to a new Dalton minimum sun.
MattN,
OHC is “ocean heat content.”
DR
One question that’s being studied is how much solar faculae (the bright side of sun spots) also emit visible light near-infrared “heat” that is indeed absorbed by the oceans. There’s a correlation, or it may very with type of solar faculae. That same visible “heat” is reflected in tropospheric brown clouds from sulfates into soot particles, resulting in the net heating from brown clouds (despite the surface dimming).
Other studies clearly state that ocean heating lags solar max by 10 years.
FWIW UV heats the mid troposphere during solar max.
OK, cool. I googled “ocean heat content” and everything I get is only up to 2003. Is that because OHC has plunged and no one on that side wants to talk about it anymore (kinda like Antarctic ice levels)? I did see a mention somewhere that it dropped a lot in 2005, but was still higher than it was in 1993. What’s it done since 2005?
MattN and Pierre Gosselin.
The graf seems to show the temperature at different altitudes around the tropics. I think it is +/-20 degrees around the equator.
The value 800hPa – 200hPa reflects the atmospheric pressure at the altitude where the temperature is meassured.
I am not sure what data it uses, if it is weather balloons or satellites.
UAH got public satellite temperature data for different altitudes. Possibly the graph is created using data from UAH.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+002
Obviously there has been a sharp decrease in the troposphere around the tropics the last year.
MattN: Archibald’s own comment on his graph: “there are quality control problems which are irresolvable in the time allotted”.
Gary: I’m not confused. Archibald isn’t either. He is just sloppy [to be kind]. And solar ‘near-term’ behavior is not predictable [except by astrological means 🙂 as some will claim]
Bill: yes, I think we are in for a few low cycles. If Bill Livingston is correct [as he just might be] sunspots will become invisible by 2015. In my opinion, the Earth’s atmosphere will NOT cool dramatically [i.e. more than a tenth or two of a degree, if at all] as a result.
Mattn,
That is the question of the hour, now isn’t it?
AGW advocates say to the deep ocean (without an substantiation – and some contradictory information as in Antarctic deep ocean cooling) or somehow vented to space (simialr to Dr Lindzen’s equatorial iris effect) the Argos data has been ‘misinterpreted’ by the scientists who deployed them (again without substantiation).
Where is the missing heat? Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s simply taking “a bit of a breather” right now. But, not to worry, it will be back with a vengeance in 2009, no, wait make that 2010, no, 2012 for sure – never mind, we’ll get back to you on that. Sarc OFF.
For those consensus people I want you to name we one, just one, single major advance in science that did NOT come at the expense of an expert consensus.
Useful to a degree. We don’t know the conditions under which they measured temperature (did they know about microsite biases? Did they just walk outside with a thermometer and hold it up? How accurate were thermometers 400 years ago?)
jerker: The sunspot number in 1954 was very low (4) and such a low minimum has not been seen since [and only rarely before -[we have to go back to 1913 to see lower numbers]. Not even now in 2008. Yet 1954 was the minimum preceding the strongest cycle ever recorded. And we are trying to get away from statistics and attack the sunspot prediction with physical models. We have not been successful yet. Two very similar dynamo models predict very different activity [by at least a factor of two]. The coming cycle 24 may allow us to choose between the models. This is why the coming cycle is so important.
Do you realize that, according to your title, you just predicted that the subsequent solar cycle will be 13 years long?
What is very interesting to me is that Total Solar Irradiance has declined to record low levels over the past year.
The previous two solar cycles show TSI more-or-less bottoms out about 1,365.6 W/m2 at the bottom of the cycle while we are now down to 1,365.2 W/m2.
I believe this is contradictory to what Svalgard proposes in that, even at the bottom of the Maunder Minimum, TSI didn’t fall much below this bottom of the solar cycle level.
I think the latest TSI numbers shows the Sun is, in fact, cooling and there is no definitive lower limit for TSI.
A very fine article raising points that the AGW crowd ought to keeep in mind. I did notice a couple items to follow up on that were raised in preceding comments.
First, leebert raises some good points about the coming cooler regime. The quote from New Scientist is enlightening in the way AGW believers approach a less dynamic sun. They seem to dismiss the high level of solar activity during the preceding century as having any affect on the warming that’s occurred but warn that possible solar inactivity will lead to a cooler climate that masks global warming. They want to have it both ways. This sounds less like science and more like a faith based approach to understanding reality.
Second, bobw mentions the SIM hypothesis from Rhodes Fairbridge. An article on this hypothesis can be found at:
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
I find this an interesting approach as Fairbridge seems to be attempting to explain what might cause periods of solar inactivity. It appears different from most other approaches I’ve seen to date that compare previous cycles and attempt to extract predictions from past performance. This latter approach lacks understanding – it sees a pattern but doesn’t address the question as to why there is a pattern.
As Fairbridge attempts to discover the why, he postulates that the alignment of the gas giant planets affects the solar center of mass and hence solar activity, I wonder if work was ever done examining if this effect would be different between alignments of the gas giants at apogee versus perigee in their elliptical orbits. I would expect that if alignment of the gas giants occurs at their perigee that the effect would be greater than if the alignment occurs at apogee.
Bill: There is no consensus that TSI has fallen to the lowest level ever. There is also no consensus that TSI has increased. There are basically four groups that produce TSI measurements. One group claims an increase, one claims a decrease, one claims no change, and the last [SORCE] has only observed since 2003, so cannot say which way. One of things that has become clear is that the models we had of how TSI depended on other solar parameters don’t seem to work so well the last couple of years. We do not know what that means.
Leif, I sure hope you’re right. But history says otherwise. What happens when large expanses of Canada and US farmland sees its productivity fall (remember lower temperatures means shorter growing season which means low crop yields), when rice corps fail in Japan, the Koreas and northern China, when the grainlands of Russia and the Ukraine wither, and when the Australian and Argentinean wheat crop yields fall? In 1900 the world’s population stood at 1.6 billion. It is now 6 billion. History shows that when the earth cools nasty things happen. They’re called the Four Horsemen and we (humanity) may soon fear them again.
Leif Svaalgard: Thanks for commenting on this thread. Your comment about the earth NOT cooling more than a tenth or two… makes me wonder. Some claim the current bout of cooling is from the La Nina, but the global response to NINO 3.4 temperature, according to a Trenberth paper, is significantly less than the current decline. I’ve got a 0.09 scaling factor (global temp/NINO3.4) stuck in my head. I can go back and verify if need be. The recent NINO3.4 decline based on ONI is approximately 2.5 deg C, from a maximum in November 2006 of 1.2 to minimum in February of -1.5, yet the global temperatures have dropped much more than 0.25 deg C.
The recent Keenlyside paper suggests it’s the AMO, but Knight et al quantified global response to a peak-to-peak AMO on the order of 0.1 deg C, and we’re only a few years into a 30-year decline in the AMO, assuming the AMO peaked in 2005.
The PDO just turned negative. There weren’t any significant explosive volcanic eruptions since temperatures maxed out in 2007. (Unless you’re from Chile and live next door to Chaiten; then it was significant.)
If it’s not solar, what else is it?
Leif: Excuse the typo. 0.25 deg C should read 0.225 deg C.
So if the sun carries on how it is now with very little activity, the UK will notice much of a difference this winter? We may actually see some snow for once?
RHFrei: history shows that cold is bad [agreed], but not that the Earth will cool because of the Sun.
Are we premature with our speculations? Shouldn’t we wait until all the solar observation data is ‘corrected’ by NASA?