New Cycle 24 Sunspot and SSN wavelet analysis

“Human being seem to be quite adept at making patterns out of noise, so I am skeptical about any 179 year periodicity”
While not a ‘raving cyclomaniac’, I believe the idea is the eletromagnahelic cycle is perturbed by the Jose cycle. I.R.G. Wilson used CAM synthetically to model this ‘teleconnection’.
As anna v. points out, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Basil,
If it would be useful, we have a linux cluster that will handle quite large problems. We have a short period now when it is not being fully used and could do some number crunching for you.

carl,
Your statement of “Nature releases much more CO2 than we do, though it also takes it all back so nature’s co2 usage is in a rather perfect equilibrium” is interesting. I don’t think that this is so. And indeed plants can absorb more CO2 than whatever Nature might put out by itself. There is no distinction with them what is man-made and what is natural. So I don’t buy that. At any rate, my point on CO2 was as a warming gas, which it is exceedingly weak at compared to other GHGs. So overall I may agree that, yes, human activity has increased the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but given its weakness as a GHG that does not equal the current warming. I think that would be my point, though perhaps not properly stated the first time around.
Yeah, you are probably right about the volcanic activity if it does have a global signature. But if the upper atmosphere is cooling and only the surface is warming then that goes against the AGW hypothesis, which provides for the top-down warming only. But if tropical oscillations are the theory, then that belongs in the domain of oceanic oscillations it would seem. Since those don’t operate in isolation, but have their own causes and connections, it would seem that they need further explaining too. That and cloud formation. It may just be that we do not know enough at this point about either, but I haven’t seen anyone say anything that would give us even a creative hint on which to work concerning those.
Back to volcanic activity for a minute though. That is happening world-wide. And many volcanoes are underwater too. Thus the gases get dissolved in water, but they may make their way up to the surface through current changes and evaporation. I may be way off of course, but it would be interesting all the same. We are prone to look at above-water eruptions because those are the ‘prettiest.’ But a great many volcanoes are at the ocean bottom and out of reach of easy observation. I don’t say it is THE cause. I don’t even know if it is A cause. But it is at least a reasonable inference of possible contribution. After all, scientists thought Arctic volcanoes could not erupt because of the water pressure down there, but they were wrong. So who knows.
Mike McMillan,
Yes, another slight mistatement on my part. I should have said nuclear fission uncontrolled. A nuclear reactor would be controlled nuclear fission, which as you said accurately is not dominated by PF or the thing would explode in a meltdown (i.e., Chernobyl). My mistake. The A bomb is a good example of what I meant, and it is dominated by PF.

Hi,
the use of wavelet methods for the analysis of the sunspot signal is not new and doesn’t bring anything “new” that couldn’t be obtained with other methods.
What you call the “edge of distortion” is well known as the cone of influence. It is related to the size of the support of the wavelet mother; here the morlet mother. It’s called a cone because it is also related to the scale. For small scales (high frequencies) the edge effect is small, but for large scales (low frequencies) the edge effects are very important. You have to plot the cone of influence on top of your graph, and I guess all the top part (from 22y period) of it is “contaminated” by the edge effects.
Don’t take it bad. I am a regular reader of your blog.

Well Andrew, that Morlet Wavelet Transform graph has to be either the most informative; or maybe the second most informative graph that I have ever seen.
I quickly discovered that at least two of my colleagues who do digital signal processing algorithms were aware of Wavelets and the Morlet variety. I can plead ignorance since my BSc in Physics and Maths dates from 1957 when Morlet was not even a twinkle in his father’s eye. Right now I haven’t the foggiest notion how my brain should interpret Basil’s fancy graph; bloody good work Basil; but I know that my brain says there’s a very important message on that page.
My other candidate for graphical immortality was located at:
http://www.mlo.noaa.gov/Projects/GASES/co2glob.htm and is a decade from 1987 to 1997 of the atmospheric CO2, ala Mauna Loa, but measured from pole to pole.
How could anything on planet earth be that assymmetrical. NOAA pulled that graph; probaly because it is as revealing as a naked blonde roller skating on the Malibu Pier. Of particular interest is the fact that at the North pole, the environment is able to take out 18 ppm of Atmospheric CO2 in just 5 months.
So much for the allegation that man made CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 200 years. Baloney, the removal time constant can’t be any longer than maybe 2 years at the most. Of course all those high paid NOAA scientists who have the actual raw data, must have already reduced that cyclic information to the exponential time constant decay form for a square wave input; so they must know what the best fit time constant really is; I’m sure they are too embarrassed to publish it.
Thanks for Monday’s sunspot picture Andrew; just in case I don’t live long enough to see any more; it was good while it lasted.

Re Carl/Bobby Lane/Mike McMillan, I don’t think you can describe the CO2 in the atmosphere as being anything like equilibrium.
For a start, at the south pole and well up into the southern ocean, the annual cyclic CO2 variation is no more than about 1 ppm p-p amplitude; whereas at the north pole it is about 18 ppm amplitude; and the down portion of that cycle is only five months; so whatever is absorbing CO2 in the arctic is doing so much faster than the atmospheric mixing can reach any sort of equilbibrium.
Then there is the exchange between the Atmosphere and the oceans. Virtually everywhere in the oceans, there is a downward temperature gradient down to the thermocline, and a slower decline below that; and it is well known that CO2 is more soluble in colder water. So the CO2 doesn’t just stagnate in the surface layers; but it is being constantly pumped into the ocean depths by a pseudo segregation coefficient due to the temperature gradient; which constantly depletes the surface waters of CO2 allowing for a continuous uptake from the atmosphere.
This same mechanism prevents the warm surface waters from becoming too acidic, so it prevents higher atmsospheric CO2 from influencing coral growths.
Also I don’t understand the concept of AGW causing a heating of the upper atmosphere.
At the surface where earth’s IR is mostly emitted, you have both the highest temperature, and the highest atmospheric pressure, so the Doppler and the Pressure broadening of the CO2 15 micron resonance line is maximum at the surface, so the influence of CO2 is maximised at the surface. The re-emission from the surface CO2 is inherently isotropic, so about half goes back down, and half goes up.
As you go up, the pressure drops, and the temperature drops; so both the collision broadening (pressure) and the Doppler broadening (temperature are reduced, so the CO2 line narrows as you go up in altitide, so much of the re-emitted IR radiation, now escapes capture by CO2 and exits the atmosphere. So the atmospheric warming by CO2 diminishes steadily as you go up in altitude.
At present CO2 levels it is approximately 14 molecule spacing between nearest neighbor CO2 molecules; so any CO2 molecule is quite unaware of the presence of any other. So the statistical mechanics are entirely dependent on the ordinary atmospheric gases of Nitrogen and Oxygen, with the occasional visit by one of those monoatomic Argon creatures.
It will take some kind of argument to convince me, that CO2 warming is supposed to increase at higher altitudes. Just compare the absorption by ozone, in the 9-10 micron range with the CO2 at 13.5 to 16.5 microns, to see the effect of line broadening. The ozone is a thin layer at altitude where it is cold and low pressure, so the line is much narrower than the surface CO2 line.

“daily variance”
I have been admonished by the good Dr. S, that ‘variablility’ is the correct term on another thread and must be here as well.

I don’t like “smoothed” when you say “smoothed sunspot numbers”. Why smooth them? The wavelet should smooth them. Maybe you are throwing away data in your smoothing when it would be better off left in for the analysis.