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.
Can a plage region suffice to feed a Coronal Hole?
I am reminded of the 3 things it takes for a gas engine to run:
Compression, fuel & spark.
The fuel is flowing from the sunspecks & plages to the Coronal Hole, but the ignition coil ain’t putting out any spark.
Robert Bateman (08:32:26) :
Here is a Solar Terrestrial Activity Report from a day with sunspot count of 120, and a mess of surrounding coronal holes.
A good illustration of how sunspots help feed the holes. A hole forms whenever there is a large enough area with unipolar magnetic field. If the area shrinks a little, the hole will close, but add a little flux to the area so it expands a little and the hole will reform. The hole forms simply be the corona being ‘drained’ by the solar wind expansion along the ‘open’ magnetic field lines.
Robert Bateman (09:04:24) :
Can a plage region suffice to feed a Coronal Hole?
Yes, a plage is also an area of magnetic flux, and, in fact, the sunspot must first decay to a plage before the feeding can begin.
“The total magnetic flux in a coronal hole is only that of a single [or perhaps a couple] sunspot.” is less mangled. The point is that the total magnetic flux in coronal holes is small and is easily supplied even by a few spots.
I must admit that Leif’s answers to questions are telling me a great deal about what is known (and more importantly not known ) about the sun.
Surprising how much we still do not know.
Leif, you have a badboy side! Purrrrrrrr
Stephen Wilde (09:43:00) :
Surprising how much we still do not know.
The more we know, the more questions we can ask.
Robert Bateman: 09:04
Perhahs it is a diesel.
Stephen Wilde (15:00:14) :
I’ve formed the impression that the oceans behave pretty much as they please and dominate atmospheric temperatures when the various oceanic cycles combine with each other and/or solar changes.
Can you clarify what you think your link tells us ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faint_young_Sun_paradox
As we see here ,we can observe there is no “standard model “for paleoclimate/present transformations, each brings a new set of problems and paradox’s due to the non linearity and complexities of the systems (much like the Russian . marushka dolls) the deeper we dig the less we know.
Ghil sums this up well in this statement
“As the relatively new science of climate dynamics evolved through the 1980s and 1990s, it became quite clear from observational data, both instrumental and paleoclimatic, as well as model studies that Earth’s climate never was and is unlikely to ever be in equilibrium.”
Now this is a problematic problem in climate science, where the average “observables” from a paleo data set have some predictable charecterisitcs, however they also have unstable dynamics. Here climate science assumes that in the absence of anthropogenic forcing climate is in a unique and stable configuration and that in the presence of a forcing the comprehensive knowledge of past history, and of the forcing will allow us to deduce reliably the systems response for all subsequent times.This is clearly not the case.
1. Nothing new, see Solomon’s “The Deniers” for a partial list of those anticipating global cooling.
2. Have other commentary supporting this and other heresies at: http://www.justplainbill.wordpress.com , enjoy the controversy.
maksimovich,
Thank you, I’m inclined to agree with the idea that we are dealing with a fundamentally unstable system and that superimposing a human driving force is not likely to be an adequate answer to our predictive requirements.
Pamela,
I’m sure you are just as cuddly as Leif.
LYL = LIVE YOUR LIFE
Retuning to the Easterbrook paper some definitions may be applicable .
We can divide the PDO etc and its relationship with climate and its related interpretations into two components.
A) The fluctuations within a persistent regime or state, and
B) The supercritical or inverse oscillations of persistent states that are described as positive or negative (hotter or cooler)
Here A is a subset of B, and we can find a trend within the state being positive or negative, but we cannot use a trendline between states as this has different stochastic attributes.ie different chaotic attractors
We see this illustrated with the PDO and IPD where both phenomena changed phase near the time of the Pacific “climatic shift” around 1976 and which apparently influenced global temperatures.
These global bifurcations are called ‘‘Shilnikov phenomenon” and are well described in mathematical literature.
Shilnikov A. L., Nicolis, G. and Nicolis, C. [1995] Bifurcation and predictability analysis of a low-order atmospheric circulation model, Int. J. Bif. Chaos 5(6), 1701–1711.
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Shilnikov_bifurcation
In the presence of inversion symmetry, we note that a periodic orbit can always be classified as either asymmetric or symmetric, with asymmetric orbits always
occurring in pairs in which each member transforms into the other under the inversion operation, while symmetric orbits are unique.
In a (supercritical) Hopf bifurcation, the real parts of the eigenvalues of a fixed point increase through zero from negative to positive, causing the stationary point to lose stability and a stable periodic orbit to be created
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/asymmetry.jpg
Complementary on the publication of Don Easterbrook:
1. Quantifying the US Agricultural Productivity Response to Solar Cycle 24
by David Archibald, (forecasting that agricultural productivity will drop by 30%)
http://www.icecap.us
2. http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/warren-county/index.ssf?/base/news-1/123044076267040.xml&coll=3
Besides the pressure on productivity caused by a cooler climate, the introduction of carbon taxes on life stock will send many farmers into bankruptcy.
The wind mill playing hour is over. It’s time to prepare for real problems.
Instead of a carbon tax, the US govt should be considering what the UK is doing: Shutting off or timing useless rural street lights and cutting back on the consumption of the fossil fuels used to generate electricity used for frivolous purposes. Put the money into tangible things, like scrubbing the coal plant outputs, cleaning up toxic wastes.
I’m all for taking care of our place, not wasting energy, and some good old fashioned cleanup. What the AGW should have been focusing on.
anna v (30/12),
Thanks for the link to the Tsonis paper. It looks very interesting. Maybe you can help me understand the following comment from the paper:
“It is vital to note that synchronization and coupling are not
interchangeable; for example, it is trivial to construct a pair
of coupled simple harmonic oscillators whose displacements
are in quadrature (and hence perfectly uncorrelated),
but whose phases are strongly coupled [Vanassche et al.,
2003]”
Is it that coupling refers to an interaction between elements which would lead to synchronization in the absence of interation with other elements? While synchronization refers to what happens with the entire system when all elements are interacting? If so I can’t see how his treatment teases the two apart.
Thanks for the answer Leif:) !!
“Yes, a plage is also an area of magnetic flux, and, in fact, the sunspot must first decay to a plage before the feeding can begin.”
Well I have certainly seen enough of those this year that didnt turn into actual sunspots but I will start paying more attention to where they are in relation to holes..
Ok silly Qs number two.
While TSI hasnt changed much during our minimum, thus causing you to discount the sun as a warming or cooling element, couldnt the magnetic field changes be the smoking gun we are missing? We dont know what causes our ocean currents but if something as ‘small’ as the moon can change tides couldnt different magnetic strengths from our sun be the driver of our currents and even weather patterns?
I guess it just boggles my mind a bit because if you look at a soho series from the height of the solar cycle side by side with one now its really hard to believe that the change in amount of magnetic activity on the sun doesnt effect us at all. Especially if we have things like magnetic portals, and events that shatter our protective magnetic bubble even for a short time.
Ps Im working my way through your site. I have to admit it takes a few reads and some side work for me to grasp stuff sometimes so thanks for being kind.
davidc (14:41:39) :
anna v (30/12),
Thanks for the link to the Tsonis paper. It looks very interesting. Maybe you can help me understand the following comment from the paper:
“It is vital to note that synchronization and coupling are not
interchangeable; for example, it is trivial to construct a pair
of coupled simple harmonic oscillators whose displacements
are in quadrature (and hence perfectly uncorrelated),
but whose phases are strongly coupled [Vanassche et al.,
2003]”
Is it that coupling refers to an interaction between elements which would lead to synchronization in the absence of interaction with other elements? While synchronization refers to what happens with the entire system when all elements are interacting? If so I can’t see how his treatment teases the two apart.
Synchronization means ” happening in lock step”. Coupling means two or more things/equations are connected with common variables. One variable is displacement of , example, the pendulum bob, if two pendulums are coupled as in the example Leif gave us http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/explore/michaelspages/Coupled.htm . Phase means the difference between the motion of the pendulums in time ( motions sine wave like) Two uncoupled pendulums have a phase difference that is not affected by each other’s motion. The quote above says that there is a choice for the coupled system where the displacement of each will seem independent of the other, nevertheless plotting the phase a dependence will be there. So by studying and finding that the displacements are asynchronous you cannot conclude that there is not coupling, since it does not mean that there may not be synchronicity with phases or other variables of the system. So synchronicity and coupling are two different things.
Mamfred (15:34:22) wrote :
“I don’t think the current projections take into account the rapid population growth in the islamic world that is rather independant on development and personal income. So, as the islamic portion of the world population increases rapidly over time, the population growth will pick up again, irrespective of stagnating growth elsewhere.”
This article talks about falling birthrates in the Middle East:
Mideast fertility rates plunge
http://www.metimes.com/Editorial/2008/01/25/editorial_mideast_fertility_rates_plunge/6336/
Something dramatic is happening to fertility rates in the Middle East. For many years, most analysts and observers have focused on the remarkably high proportion of young people in Arab countries; those under the age of 25. This has provoked some crude commentary on the implications for birth rates and thus for the role of women in those countries. A great deal of that commentary now appears to be wrong-headed, according to new data from the Demographic and Social Statistics unit of the U.N. Statistical Division. Released last month, its findings were largely ignored in the holiday season.
They should have won much wider appreciation, for what they suggest is that Arab birth rates in general are dropping dramatically, and that the number of births among women under the age of 20 is dropping even more sharply. Overwhelmingly, the only places in the world where high birth rates are still the norm are in sub-Saharan Africa, and in Central America, and in two Arab countries: Yemen and the Palestinian territories.
anna v (21:32:26) asked:
“Does anybody have a link of albedo change versus time? At least over the satellite period?”
This article by Palle et al. show large albedo effects over the last two decades. In particular, look at Figure 2 which includes for comparison the estimated size of the forcing by greenhouse gasses since 1850.
http://www.iac.es/galeria/epalle/reprints/Palle_etal_EOS_2006.pdf
anna v,
Thanks, that’s clear. The first message for me is that what most people on both sides are doing (looking for “correlations” which amounts to looking for synchronicity, in things like TSI and a measure of temperature; or the absence of) is simplistic. Even in Lief’s simple example of the coupled pendulum this approach would fail to demonstrate a causal connection between the motion of one pendulum and the other.
But I’m still having trouble with Tsonis et al and how they tease out coupling from the observations. Firstly, I can’t see how a neural net can say anything at all about underlying dynamic processes, unless these are somehow incorporated in the structure of the net (which Tsonis doesn’t do, as far as I can see). In the section that prompted my question:
[6] An important aspect in the theory of synchronization
between coupled nonlinear oscillators is coupling strength.
It is vital to note that synchronization and coupling are not
interchangeable;
Notice that they are using the terms “coupling” and “coupling strength” as though they are the same. But in discussion of their results they say:
“The network synchronizes again in 1950. This state is followed by a
decrease in coupling strength and, as was the case in 1920s
no major shifts occur. Finally, the network synchronizes
again in the mid 1970s. This state is followed by an increase
in coupling strength and incredibly, as in the cases of 1910
and 1940, synchronization is destroyed (at the time marked
by the right vertical line) and then climate shifts again.”
In your definition (which I’m quite happy with) “coupling” is an invariant property of the system, whereas here “coupling strength” is a time-dependent variable. I think this passage would read much the same if you substituted “degree of synchronicity” for “coupling strength”. So I think that’s what their “network distance” d(t) is measuring: “degree of synchronicity”. (They pretty much say that earlier: “The distance can be
thought as the average correlation between all possible pairs of nodes and is interpreted as a measure of the synchronization of the network’s components.”) The question of how useful this is in understanding “coupling” in your meaning of the term depends on whether their model allows for extrapolation into the future. As it’s currently formulated I don’t think it has that capability.
But where it does seem to be potentially very useful is in providing guidance for the development of a genuine dynamical model. They seem to have shown that their 4 indices are the major components of the climate system. So a climate model could involve just 4 ordinary simultaneous differential equations, one for each “index” (=dependent variable) rather than some pretend version of Navier-Stokes. What is missing from Tsonis is any indication as to what the fundamental drivers are. But with a 4 ode model that would be much easier to investigate than attempting to work with observations of the entire system.
pkatt (14:52:52) :
its really hard to believe that the change in amount of magnetic activity on the sun doesnt effect us at all.
It does, but not enough to be a significant driver of climate. It is a question of energy. The magnetic Sun constantly delivers energy to the Earth-system. It varies between a GigaWatt and a TeraWatt in total, but the TSI delivers a steady 174,000 TeraWatt
davidc (15:21:44) :
I can’t see how a neural net can say anything at all about underlying dynamic processes,
I agree with this. A neural network is just curve fitting [and with a ‘hidden layer’ to boot] and teaches you nothing.
REPLY: Personally I think looking for climate change as a result of direct energy variance from the sun, in whatever form, is misleading. What I suspect is the reality is a transistor like effect, where a small signal variance is amplified.
Lookup Field Effect Transistor or FET to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Svensmark has the right idea, but that may not be the mechanism. It may be a combination of effects. One things is for certain, we don’t fully understand all of the issues between the earth and sun linkage, anyone who claims to fully understand it is overstating their skill. – Anthony
Leif Svalgaard (17:25:58) :
we don’t fully understand all of the issues between the earth and sun linkage, anyone who claims to fully understand it is overstating their skill. – Anthony
As are those who claim that there is a ‘perfect’, ‘obvious’, ‘clear’ cause and effect solar-climate connection.
davidc (15:21:44) :
Coupling vs coupling strength.
Coupling is the fact that two equations are coupled, that a spring exists between the pendulum bobs. Coupling strength is the spring constant and that is left a variable in their study. The spring constants in the climate framework are not constant. Think for example the connection between PDO andENSO, certainly there will be a time dependence on how one affects the other.
On neural nets: They are just another tool of integration, like a Monte Carlo,. When I worked a bit with the concept more than ten years ago, the net was generating for us probabilities for the validity of different models against the data.
The way Tsonis et al are using neural nets reminds me of analogue computing back then in the 1960’s, before digital computers and thinking took over: The differential equations were set up as LCR circuits, the constants were volt inputs and the value of the L,C,R, and the output, measured in volts was the solution. They worked very well and were orders of magnitude faster than digital computers, but of course had to be redesigned for each problem ( look it up in the wikipedia.com if interested).
The reason I think the neural net approach is useful is because the system is set up with the known functional dependences and let to run to see the result of all the nonlinear couplings, which cannot be done analytically if you just take the four or five or whatever currents and storm fronts.
I have wondered before why there is no analogue climate model computer. I suppose it is because the knowledge has fallen through the cracks and is lost.
Reading this after a few hours, I wonder what I meant and missprinted !!
before digital computers and thinking took over:
I think I meant digital way of thinking. We are now completely in a digital mode.