Don sent me his AGU paper for publication and discussion here on WUWT, and I’m happy to oblige – Anthony
Abstracts of American Geophysical Union annual meeting, San Francisco Dec., 2008
Solar Influence on Recurring Global, Decadal, Climate Cycles Recorded by Glacial Fluctuations, Ice Cores, Sea Surface Temperatures, and Historic Measurements Over the Past Millennium
Easterbrook, Don J., Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225,
Global, cyclic, decadal, climate patterns can be traced over the past millennium in glacier fluctuations, oxygen isotope ratios in ice cores, sea surface temperatures, and historic observations. The recurring climate cycles clearly show that natural climatic warming and cooling have occurred many times, long before increases in anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 levels. The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are well known examples of such climate changes, but in addition, at least 23 periods of climatic warming and cooling have occurred in the past 500 years. Each period of warming or cooling lasted about 25-30 years (average 27 years). Two cycles of global warming and two of global cooling have occurred during the past century, and the global cooling that has occurred since 1998 is exactly in phase with the long term pattern. Global cooling occurred from 1880 to ~1915; global warming occurred from ~1915 to ~1945; global cooling occurred from ~1945-1977;, global warming occurred from 1977 to 1998; and global cooling has occurred since 1998. All of these global climate changes show exceptionally good correlation with solar variation since the Little Ice Age 400 years ago.
The IPCC predicted global warming of 0.6° C (1° F) by 2011 and 1.2° C (2° F) by 2038, whereas Easterbrook (2001) predicted the beginning of global cooling by 2007 (± 3-5 yrs) and cooling of about 0.3-0.5° C until ~2035. The predicted cooling seems to have already begun. Recent measurements of global temperatures suggest a gradual cooling trend since 1998 and 2007-2008 was a year of sharp global cooling. The cooling trend will likely continue as the sun enters a cycle of lower irradiance and the Pacific Ocean changed from its warm mode to its cool mode.
Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling, glacial fluctuations, changes in warm/cool mode of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and sun spot activity over the past century show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections. The announcement by NASA that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) had shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007) and coincides with recent solar variations. The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years, virtually assuring several decades of global cooling. The IPCC predictions of global temperatures 1° F warmer by 2011, 2° F warmer by 2038, and 10° F by 2100 stand little chance of being correct. “Global warming” (i.e., the warming since 1977) is over!
Figure 1. Solar irradiance, global climate change, and glacial advances. Click to enlarge
The real question now is not trying to reduce atmospheric CO2 as a means of stopping global warming, but rather (1) how can we best prepare to cope with the 30 years of global cooling that is coming, (2) how cold will it get, and (3) how can we cope with the cooling during a time of exponential population increase? In 1998 when I first predicted a 30-year cooling trend during the first part of this century, I used a very conservative estimate for the depth of cooling, i.e., the 30-years of global cooling that we experienced from ~1945 to 1977. However, also likely are several other possibilities (1) the much deeper cooling that occurred during the 1880 to ~1915 cool period, (2) the still deeper cooling that took place from about 1790 to 1820 during the Dalton sunspot minimum, and (3) the drastic cooling that occurred from 1650 to 1700 during the Maunder sunspot minimum. Figure 2 shows an estimate of what each of these might look like on a projected global climate curve. The top curve is based on the 1945-1977 cool period and the 1977-1998 warm period. The curve beneath is based on the 1890-1915 cool period and 1915-1945 warm period. The bottom curve is what we might expect from a Dalton or Maunder cool period. Only time will tell where we’re headed, but any of the curves are plausible. The sun’s recent behavior suggests we are likely heading for a deeper global cooling than the 1945-1977 cool period and ought to be looking ahead to cope with it.
Figure 2. Global temperature variation 1900 to 2008 with projections to 2100. Click to enlarge.
The good news is that global warming (i.e., the 1977-1998 warming) is over and atmospheric CO2 is not a vital issue. The bad news is that cold conditions kill more people than warm conditions, so we are in for bigger problems than we might have experienced if global warming had continued. Mortality data from 1979-2002 death certificate records show twice as many deaths directly from extreme cold than for deaths from extreme heat, 8 times as many deaths as those from floods, and 30 times as many as from hurricanes. The number of deaths indirectly related to cold is many times worse.
Depending on how cold the present 30-year cooling period gets, in addition to the higher death rates, we will have to contend with diminished growing seasons and increasing crop failures with food shortages in third world countries, increasing energy demands, changing environments, increasing medical costs from diseases (especially flu), increasing transportation costs and interruptions, and many other ramifications associated with colder climate. The degree to which we may be prepared to cope with these problems may be significantly affected by how much money we waste chasing the CO2 fantasy.
All of these problems will be exacerbated by the soaring human population. The current world population of about 6 ½ billion people is projected to increase by almost 50% during the next 30 years of global cooling (Figure 2). The problems associated with the global cooling would be bad enough at current population levels. Think what they will be with the added demands from an additional three billion people, especially if we have uselessly spent trillions of dollars needlessly trying to reduce atmospheric CO2, leaving insufficient funds to cope with the real problems.
Figure 3. Global population.
old construction worker (19:41:09) :
“Who is arrogant enough to say man can control climate change?”
The Great and Powerful Wizard is, and can 🙂
‘old construction worker (19:41:09) :
Who is arrogant enough to say man can control climate change?’
That doesn’t stop them from trying. Cloud seeding and chemtrails for two.
Who knows what else is being done on cover of “Classifed”.
Does anybody have a link of albedo change versus time? At least over the satellite period?
Shading the sun is as effective in increasing/decreasing heat input as if the sun were changing. Look at http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Earth_temp.html andn play with the toy model.
Nice pendulum demonstration, Leif. One can see what would happen with three or more coupled ones, which is surely closer to what the climate system is .
One would not take out the sun intensity oscillations due to the turning of the earth around it, in these calculations, because they are one of the pendulums probably bouncing off the ocean currents. Day and night might be too fast to affect the inertia of the final oscillating system.
If temperatures fall as we seem to suspect, Al Gore will probably take credit by fudging reported results with his friend Mr. H. They can then keep up the pretense of reducing CO2 and keep all the scientists working until one day in the distant future some smart egg figures it all out. OTOH, I hope temperatures continue to drop enough that in 4 years the American public will have had enough BS to throw out the AGW baby with the IPCC bathwater!
Can anyone give a hint to what actually are the references (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007) mentioned in the abstract.
Leif said:
Could it be solar input, as opposed to solar output? Even if sun had been absolutely stable, could something like slow varying distance to the sun, number of asteroids between earth and sun, etc provide enough input power variation to cause all this?
Leif,
“People that cannot accept oscillations of the climate system seem happy to accept oscillations of the Sun. Go figure…”
Of course they both oscillate. But imagine if you removed the Sun oscillations (which are indeed quite frequent – 11-year, 78-year, etc., etc.), you’d have a very different situation here on earth. The sun drives the climate.
Surely solar oscillations play a far greater role in influencing earth climate than CO2. The fact remains that the sun now appears to have entered a new phase of a cycle (still waiting for 24). So expect some changes here on earth.
Bob Sykes (06:21:53) :
Predictions of mass starvation seem unwarranted.
[…] In that case, the total world population should peak around 8 billion, or a little less, around 2030 and fall slowly throughout the remainder of the century. No need to promote Ehrlich’s dementia. Read Julian Simon (RIP).
Just to second this notion… We can grow at least 10 times as much food as we do now. How? Hydroponics, Greenhouses, etc. And that is without even taking the minor effort to put gardens in instead of lawns or put greenhouses in deserts and other inhospitable places.
See:
http://mbao.org/hydropn3.html
http://tastyharvest.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=ZCOM&Store_Code=TH
These are a couple of semi-random pages picked from a Google search. There is a bit of un-clarity from the quoting of production and yield but not making clear what’s what. You get about 20% to 50% more crop / acre / planting from just hydroponics. Add the greenhouse with faster crop cycles, more crop cycles, higher yields, more degree days, lack of pests, etc. and you get 10 times as much total yield per year per unit area.
Oh, and you use about 1/10th the water, almost no pesticides, fumigants, etc.
So why don’t we do this now? (Why? don’t ask why… down that path lays insanity and ruin…)
Basically, farmers do not grow for maximum yield, they grow for maximum profit with the least effort (least money & labor). They only move to more intensive farming techniques when market prices justify it. Basically, there is not enough demand to justify it.
(And no, there is no shortage of materials to make greenhouses. The poles and glazing can all be made from plastics made from plants, if desired, and there is no shortage of rock and sand for bricks, cement, glass, whatever.)
All the stories of the form “We are going to run out of {food, fuel, energy, fresh water, living space, …]” are just that; stories to scare the children and the gullible.
The writing is already on the whole. The abstract is available on the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AGUFMGC21A0725E
Leif argues quite rightly that the TSI levels now are the same as during the Maunder (like at every solar minimum), but the difference is if we stay there for 50 years it will obviously have a temperature impact.
The grand minimum we are now in will probably only last 1 phase as we missed the boat in SC20 and the last phase looks weak, (the sporer, maunder and perhaps wolf suffered 3 phases, dalton 2) this one will be the shortest grand minimum in 1000 years, so expect only 2 cycles of low activity followed by fairly low to medium activity for the next 100 years.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/12/ultimate_graph2all.jpg
G.R. Mead (08:31:39) :
In Georgia, for instance saw a rise of total farm output over this period by more than 40% — from an index of about 1.25 in 1990 to almost 1.85 in 2004. Iowa saw a rise from about 3.9 to 5.1, a rise of over 30 %.
This attributes all the gain to more degree days. It isn’t. There have been dramatic improvements from seed development and more precise fertilization regimes. In some cases the newer faster varieties have allowed for two crops to be produced when before there was only time for one. (Old corns, for example, were 120+ days. I have a 50 day corn in my seed locker…)
A more accurate prediction would look at total degree days before vs now and adjust for the availability of seed stock that needed fewer degree days. There could easily be no net change.
(I don’t expect no net change. I expect folks to plant what they always did and have some crop failures before they change over, but I could be wrong. Modern farming is far more computerized and technical than it was just a couple of decades ago; and they might well adjust same season to colder weather predictions. I’ve already started planting ‘siberian’ tomatoes instead of brandywine. The siberian sets fruit at 45F where the brandywine sets at about 80F and takes twice as long to grow…)
I’d expect at most a one season blip as farmers got the wake up call to shift to faster more cold tolerant crops. Though if we enter a Maunder type event, well, nothing much grows under ice…
Stephen Wilde (10:43:35) :
If you hitch solar changes to ocean changes as the article does then there is no problem explaining all the past and present global temperature observations without involving CO2 at all.
And here NASA links it to ozone modulation with UV (with obligatory GW nag):
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011207iceage.html
In this case, the low solar activity depicted by fewer sunspots) during the Maunder Minimum meant decreased UV radiation which impacted the protective ozone formation in the upper atmosphere (stratosphere). The changes, then, in the upper atmosphere, feed down to the surface climate and affect many systems, including the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation. These are jet stream systems that would transport warmer air to America and Europe. SUPER: NASA / ESA
Leif Svalgaard (20:32:03) :
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (15:06:58) :
Maybe, but such oscillations must have some kind of physical explanation, or else it is just astrology, voodoo or whatever you want to call it.
Physics. A simple example is the coupled pendulums:
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/explore/michaelspages/Coupled.htm
Try to play with some of the settings.
I am a structural engineer. That is just a pair of coupled pendulums that happen to hit eigenvalues for some parameter choices (and some of them are invalid since the theory is valid only for small oscillations).
But this does nothing to explain the physical nature of the oscillations of solar activity or oscillations of the earth’s climate, or whether they are coupled.
How to deal with an increasing world population ???
Well you could lie and cheat, and make sure that the world population
was ‘geared up’ to a ‘warming situation’, so that types of crops planted
and the locations, would ensure world famine should they fail due to cold,
You could shut down power stations, and not build new ones, (not even nuclear) ‘as not so much energy is needed in a warmer world’…and when people die from cold by the millions due to having no power, that too would reduce the world population, and hey, with any luck maybe a war or two over food and resources would reduce the population even further.
Cynical… perhaps… but how else to explain the apparent lack of ‘governmental foresight’ and apparent ‘governmental complacency’ in not ‘seeing’ what seems obvious to us ‘deniers’ (who don’t have a fraction of the resources governments have). And after all, the ‘new world government’ and their families would be ok, in their warm and cosy ‘bunkers’
conveniently paid for by your ‘carbon taxes’ before you kindly kicked the bucket to save the planet !!!
Leif Svalgaard (11:01:07) :
Coronal holes form from decaying sunspots, so rather than competing, sunspots feed coronal holes.
Wow! Respectfully, how do you explain the fact that we have had almost consistant coronal holes all through this year, yet very few sunspots? Seems to me its time to change your theory on what causes Coronal holes:)
I made k=2 and theta2dot= 2. System was stable for 64 seconds and was quite entertaining, until the sun blew up or maybe the earth plunged into the sun!! Whatever!!
DR M.A. Rose,
I believe some folks at the JPL did a study about a decade ago arguing that changes in both the PDO and AMO lead to the “dust bowl” decade of the 1930s. I don’t think anyone has scientifically tied global temps to changes in the AMO, but medium and long range forecasters both in Europe and North America give this teleconnection a close focus.
I can’t provide a link (it is now gone) to the JPL paper. But, the gist of it said that slightly cooling Pacific waters (mainly Central Pacific) with abnormally warm Central Atlantic waters (the AMO was in its warm phase) caused the Gulf of Mexico fetch to migrate far to the south (Eastern Mexico). The Great Plains therefore lost its main source of moisture. Dry Easterlies dominated the weather patterns from Arkansas through Montanta from 1931-1939. The Bermuda High extended itself into Southern Canada, and the 1930s became the hottest decade of the century.
Currently the AMO is in its positive mode, and has provided Europe with fairly warm climate for the last 15 years. If I am not mistaken, the AMO oscillates every 25 years. So it could remain in a positive mode for antoher decade. As far as I know, we could be stuck ina cold PDO/Warm AMO for the next several years. This may not bode well for precipitation across North America. But again, not all weather analogs play out the same. The AMO could be shifting to a negative mode soon according to some forecasters (most notably Joe Bastardi).
I think we should be clearer when talking of global population(s). For the developed nations, 18 of 20 of them will see stable but aging demographics. And if the demographics do not change, the developed nations will see population decreases by 2030. Most of the developed nations have fertility rates below 1.8 (the lowest are Russia, Japan, Greece, Italy, and Spain, and perhaps China with rates around 1.1). Only the US (2.1) and Austrailia (2.2) have fertility rates at the replacement levels. Scandanavia and France average about 1.8, and the rest of Europe hovers near 1.5. Africa has been ravaged by AIDS and war; India is about 3.4.
This means that the nations that hold 90% of the world’s wealth (and prodcue the vast majority of GHGs) are rapidily aging. I’m not sure how the world can continue its rapid economic growth engine with such aging populations. The developing nations such as Brazil could lead the way, but they too are dependent upon developed nations capital and markets. The US is rapidily losing its apetite for Free Trade and is about to turn inward. Nations like Brazil, Vietnam, and Signapore could be left out in the cold as much of the developed world’s wealth will be spent on geriatrics and social welfare spending.
I would not at all be surprised to see the current CO2 concentrations of 390ppm to drop belwo 370ppm by 2030.
Re: E.M.Smith (01:53:26)
[I have a 50 day corn in my seed locker…)]
50 day corn! I didn’t know such a thing existed. What kind of yields (bu/acre) does it produce? (BTW, just in case you are British, by “corn” you are referring to maize aren’t you?)
[I’d expect at most a one season blip as farmers got the wake up call to shift to faster more cold tolerant crops.]
You seem to be assuming here that the seed supply would exist. Does it? I could envision a rapid increase in demand for varieties that are in little demand today very quickly outstripping the supply. I think a 3-5 year “blip” is more likely.
For people wondering about oscillations and couplings.
If one has all the variables of the climate system, one can write differential equations of what affects what, starting from energy conservation, momenta ( angular and linear) masses + a number of variables that have to do with the climate . These equations will be coupled as the same variables will be shared around. In addition these will not be linear differential equations. The system is not solvable except with approximations.
The GCM models have tried to introduce first order approximations of the solutions, assuming they are linear, and that is the reason they fail: the real solutions can be highly divergent from linearity and this shows up after a number of iterations.
A. Tsonis et al have tried to model the climate with a neural network, the paper can be found here http://www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/tsonis-grl_newtheoryforclimateshifts.pdf
A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts
Anastasios A. Tsonis,1 Kyle Swanson,1 and Sergey Kravtsov1
Received 5 April 2007; revised 16 May 2007; accepted 15 June 2007; published 12 July 2007.
[1] We construct a network of observed climate indices in
the period 1900–2000 and investigate their collective
behavior. The results indicate that this network
synchronized several times in this period. We find that in
those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a
steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices,
the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new
climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with
significant changes in global temperature trend and in
ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the
great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence
for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a
state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this
mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of
synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of
the size and complexity of the climate system.
Citation: Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov (2007),
A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, GeophysRes. Lett., 34, L13705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030288
They use “the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the North
Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the El Nin˜o/Southern Oscillation
(ENSO), and the North Pacific Oscillation (NPO)”
a discussion here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2223
and links here since the climate audit ones do not work
http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/
A good exposition of the use of neural nets in climate is here:
http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/BAMS_proofs.pdf
pkatt (04:18:03) :
how do you explain the fact that we have had almost consistent coronal holes all through this year, yet very few sunspots?
It doesn’t take many spots to maintain a coronal hole [BTW, it has been the same few holes we have seen all the time. They live for months or years]. An occasional spot at the edge of a hole is enough to keep it alive. Coronal holes are not ‘independent phenomena’ that exist on their own, they must be maintained by emerging magnetic flux. That is the prevailing theory at least. Observations [and simulations] show that the the magnetic field must be renewed every 40 days or so. That does not mean that we fully understand all of this. For example, it is not known why sunspots keep appearing near the edge of a coronal hole to keep it alive. For the polar holes, all spots will be near the edges, since spots generally occur at lower latitudes, so the mystery is not so deep for those. On the figure on page 3 of http://www.leif.org/research/Polar%20Fields%20and%20Cycle%2024.pdf you can directly see the ‘streams’ of red [south polarity] and blue [north polarity] magnetic flux feeding the polar holes.
The total magnetic flux in a coronal hole is only that of a single [or perhaps a couple] of the flux in a sunspot.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (02:20:05) :
But this does nothing to explain the physical nature of the oscillations of solar activity or oscillations of the earth’s climate, or whether they are coupled.
It was not intended as an explanation of solar activity, but simply as an illustration of that oscillations of systems can occur without a direct external driver. Add some randomness to the system and the effects of stochastic fluctuations can be maintained for a long time.
E.M.Smith (02:03:52) :
And here NASA links it to ozone modulation with UV (with obligatory GW nag):
That old paper by Shindell et al. uses [what we now know] an incorrect reconstruction of TSI [Hoyt and Schatten’s] that has a variation since the Maunder Minimum that is much too large.
Here is a Solar Terrestrial Activity Report from a day with sunspot count of 120, and a mess of surrounding coronal hole.
Just scroll down to see the SOHO image and the Activity Map.
http://www.solen.info/solar/old_reports/2004/january/20040108.html