Archibald makes an Ap Index prediction

does / has our star ever ‘switch[ed]’ poles, as our planet has ? I don’t have a good feeling for/about our planets inhabitants if this event were to occur.
in any case, tend to agree, those just born and living long enough may be in for a gradual surprise.

We have geomagnetic “fossil” records for magnetic flipping of the poles, but obviously there’s no similar record for solar flipping.

Um… I thought that “flipping” of the sun’s magnetic field was part of the regular solar cycle? That is, it happens about once every 22 years.
Please correct me if I’m wrong about that.

Adam Gallon (01:19:24) :
We have geomagnetic “fossil” records for magnetic flipping of the poles, but obviously there’s no similar record for solar flipping.

The first thing that came to my mind after reading this article was the points mentioned above, a ‘Solar Flip’. Is it possible that this could be a precursor to an ‘Earth Magnetic Flip’ and is so how could you test this. I am no solar scientist so I hope Leif can give some pointers here.

Sdk/Dave K:-)
I am no solar scientist either, but the magnetic field reverses every 11± year Schwabe cycle & flips back again after the 22± year Hale cycle. I am sure the likes of Lief Svalgaard can direct you to good sites that give the basics in lay terms.
However, that is an interesting point, do the flips back & forth in the sun have at some stage for whatever reason, affect the Earth’s magnetic flip, I seem to recall that this occurs every few hundred thousand years or so, again better brains than mine can advise of this phenomenon!
I read an article by geologist Texan Gregory Benson a few years ago explaining all the likely causes of Climate Change, hot or cold, without any need for CO2 involvement, including some very interesting data on Solar variations. Well worth a good read for lots of interesting background info for anyone interested in further informal study!

The observed Ap continued to fall in November and December 2008 as predicted from the above, and this correlates with the previous posted article concerning cosmic rays. More than a coincidence that the globe is cooling? Svensmark’s theory should be on the front pages as the first real theory on climate change — instead of this CO2 political science theory.

Since Lief has not shown up yet. The solar magnetic field flips regularly every 7.5 to 15 years. The last time the Earth’s field flipped was about 800 Kyears ago. The state of the Sun and its magnetic field is interesting, but not alarming. It may lead to a grand minimum, but the change in Total Solar Irradiance is small so don’t count on a solar driven little ice age.

I’m impressed by the fact that even the short term variation is smoother. It really looks quiet compared to the rest of the record. It’s too bad we don’t have more time in the record. I think Leif and others may be right about cycle 24 being very weak.
Off topic. Real climate just stated that models predicted Antarctic warming all along. They already knew, those guys are so smart. In February 08 they said the same thing about cooling in the antarctic.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/real-climate-doubletalk-blog-food/

Dear E.M. Smith:
Thank you for doing this important work! I would like to be able to e-mail you questions about your progress and findings for the book I’m researching on the climate wars. The safest way for me to get you my e-mail address would be if you could leave a comment (“Hello” would be enough) on my weather and climate blog (http://www.talkingabouttheweather.com). Thank you for your consideration!

When my late Mother passed,we had a beautiful funeral in LaGrande,Oregon.The Organist at her Church, is a well known Warmist.It was October of ’05.We were walking
across the parking lot,on a golden fall day.She said:”Sure is warm anymore!” I said,
dang near on the day the Ap dropped,”Yeah but,this is a cycle,I think the Solar cycle is
going to quiet down.”-this after reading that paper on the slowing solar conveyor-She
looked at me like-HERETIC!-and said:”You haven’t read Algore’s book!” I-“No, only excerpts”-then she stormed away,saying”-#%$&- Republicans!”-oh I’m not a Republican BTW…
Then she hit me for $75 bucks for her Organ wizardry…

It may lead to a grand minimum, but the change in Total Solar Irradiance is small so don’t count on a solar driven little ice age.
uhm….regardless the cause, there is significant historical evidence that grand minima DO result in a cooler earth.

my vote would be to use C, and a procedural approach ! the results would be quite readable and maintainable, if coded from pseudo code viewed that way.

E.M.Smith — Why not propose an open source rewrite of the data reduction program? There must be enough programming types here to do that, in short order. And why not use PYTHON or BASIC, something almost everyone can read? I have often wondered why not just do this in the open for ourselves. Hey, someone could write a book documenting the process and code — LOL.

Actually, once I have completed a rather large project I am engaged in at work, I should have a bit more free time on my hands and I would like to attempt such a task as you speak of. However, my goal is to rewrite their model in Java, create a web interface for it and publish it on the Internet for everyone to play with as they please. I have begun to organize the code in anticipation of proceeding such an undertaking. Please be patient however, as this will take some effort and I am typically a rather busy individual. But, this does excite me. Welcome to my world. 😉

All the wind generators in the UK mentioned above remind me of the stunt that was put on the ballot in California. It got a resounding boot by the general vote, the Dem and the GOP parties for it’s obvious drawback: A huge landgrab resulting in one man playing Eminent Domain God.
Not to worry about the public getting mislead: Al Gore is responsible for grabbing attention to the climate. Others such as David Archibald hand the public what it needs to sort out what is happening around them in a manner befitting true Science.
Observe and consider.
Observe the descending cold.
Consider what is going on and compare it to past events.
Come to a conclusion not driven by those who wish to profit from our misfortune.

sdk (09:31:49) :
my vote would be to use C, and a procedural approach ! the results would be quite readable and maintainable, if coded from pseudo code viewed that way.

If you are going down the C road, I would recommend C++ and write it in a modular / OOP architecture, especially if you are looking to involve multiple developers. Management of the project would be much easier and coding could be much more concise and require far less documentation while maintain clear readability.
My personal preference would be to write it in Java. Although the performance would not be quite as good (probably still better than Fortran/Python however), it would be a lot easier to publish on a J2EE server, create a java servlet filter, create a web interface and allow the public to play with the model. This may be a pie in the sky idea, as it could potentially require horsepower that I do not possess, but it may be worth a try anyway.
I personally believe that there should be a legal mandate (and perhaps there is) that would require Hansen’s team (and any other publicly funded projects) to create their models in such a fashion, and require them to do such publishing, so that the public (their employers) could actually use the software that we keep paying for. I have always thought it to be incredibly ridiculous that these guys have been able to hide a lot of this stuff from us. I believe (although I am not of legal background) that if one really investigated thoroughly, one would find that Hansen and others have been violating several laws concerning full disclosure of this kind of research, paid for with tax payer dollars. Hansen, et al, have not historically been forthcoming. What’s Obama’s new buzz word? “Transparency”

Ooops, there I go, mouth opens, both feet rammed firmly in!
Sun merrily flipping its magnetic poles.
Ed Scott, err, there is a Greenhouse effect inthe earth’s atmosphere, otherwise we’d be at a balmy 15 below zero C
“The natural greenhouse effect is a myth, not a physical reality. The CO2-greenhouse effect, however, is a manufactured mirage”
A mountain of male bovine excrement there old chap.
Few scientists would argue that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist, the debate is to what extent AGW exists.

E.M.Smith
Good work!
“So that would lead me to believe that a simple cross check dataset can be made by taking the NOAA UHI adjusted data directly and doing station to station comparison graphs.”
Probably not, unfortunately. NOAA does not actually make UHI adjustments to the data, but make an allowance in uncertainty instead, from what SteveM has been able to find.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4901

It might also lead to some enterprising computer science majors who might want to start an open source project, on the model codes themselves, to at least comment the code and analyze the code blocks and what they are doing.
I imagine there are several masters thesis sitting there for the taking, for math majors and computer science majors, and physics majors to dig into the major climate models and produce annotations and analysis of their methodology. Open source documentation of how they work, and the limits of their accuracy from a pure mathematical, physical, and statistical point of view would be invaluable to the world community.
Larry

sdk (09:31:49) :
my vote would be to use C, and a procedural approach ! the results would be quite readable and maintainable, if coded from pseudo code viewed that way.

C++, perhaps used as “a better C” to keep it simple would be my choice. Much better support for strings and other useful things like containers and classes that improve readability enormously. But C and C++ goes well together. It is also possible to mix C++ with existing Fortran if needed, I wrote a tutorial on it a decade ago
http://arnholm.org/software/cppf77/cppf77.htm
An open source library for climate data processing is indeed a good idea.

Ed Scott — thanks. The Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner paper summary should be read by all here. At this time the warmists claim that most scientific societies endorse the greenhouse garbage. One would hope that physical research groups would be the first to defect to the rational side if the AGW theory (or propaganda) is as fundamentally flawed as G &T claim. And, if there is someone here who is qualified to critique G & T, lets see it.
Perhaps readers of this blog can help to promote a high level debate at the national academy of sciences here and its equivalents wordwide. So far, the AGW people have essentially disorganized and unfunded opposition, while the warmists have multi-millions in grants and media support. They are, in a sense, winning by default. High level critiques might help, but the ultimate rebuttal may come from nature over the next several years.

I don’t understand half of whats is said here at this blog but I keep reading and learning little by little a bit more each day.
And I can’t stop reading about this stuff, it’s an addiction.
Now my latest confusion is on this greenhouse effect, I have read laborisly though some papers arguing that there is no such thing as the greenhouse effect outside of a real greenhouse. To sum up as best as I can, in a greenhouse the sun heats the objects and air, the hot air rises but is trapped because of the glass. But outside it is different, the sun heats objects and the air, the heats rises and continues to rise because there is nothing to stop it, maybe slow it down but no stopping. After all heat flows from hot to cold and if it is colder at higher altitutes than heat must continue to rise until it escapes our atmosphere.
So where’s the greenhouse? I’m confused
I would think this is basic stuff and the answers should be settled but there seems to be an argument about this simple concept.

The general public is going to understand this to the extent of that which they are able to follow. For those that connect with them, there will be increasing support.
For those that bury everything in deep heiroglyphical mumbo-jumbo and secret models known only to a select few, there will be nothing but scorn and dismissal.
Thier senses tell them something is going down, and it’s not what mainstream is telling them.

—–
The state of the Sun and its magnetic field is interesting, but not alarming. It may lead to a grand minimum, but the change in Total Solar Irradiance is small so don’t count on a solar driven little ice age.
—–
It’s interesting to see what people contemplate whilst fishing in the Florida keys, but perhaps during the next fishing trip CaptDallas2 should also contemplate what evidence we have regarding the TSI during the Maunder minimum since the SORCE satellite was not in orbit during the 1600’s. It may be that solar irrandiance remains high during a grand minimum but the only way to rule this out is through measurement of such an event. Using data from 2003 as guide makes for a big assumption.

I think re-engineering the code would be a huge service.
If you will allow a small observation from a gray-hair:: this is the type of application for which object-oriented languages are really poorly suited. Java is a great language, and so is C++. You don’t need objects here – in fact, you will have to work around the OO aspects of the language in order to get a decent implementation.
For this sort of problem, Fortran is a good choice. Even better would be a functional language like Lisp or ML.
I teach part-time and I always tell my students: a programming language is a tool. Would you hire a mechanic who only owns a screwdriver? It may be a really nice screwdriver, but sometimes you need a wrench. Any really good programmer will know several completely different programming languages, and know when each one is appropriate.

Wonder what that organist is playin now in LaGrande????
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?map.x=251&map.y=214&minlon=-122.11&maxlon=-116.45&minlat=43.57&maxlat=47.67&mapwidth=354&site=pdt

Sorry this is OT, but I didn’t see another way to get in touch with you.
This is the address of a newly published commentary in the APS Forum on Physics and Society written by Robert E. Levine. In it, he decries the advocacy implied in the APS’s statement on AGW that was recently the focus of the uproar over their publication of Monckton’s letter. He asserts that the APS has abandoned the “openness principles” of scientific inquiry by issuing a supporting statement for AGW without promoting the continuing research that will improve our understanding of the governing forces of our climate.
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200901/levine.cfm

Ed 13:04:57 asks “where is the greenhouse effect”
I think there is no doubt that certain gases like water vapour and carbon dioxide absorb long wavelength radiation and that this keeps the world warmer than it would be if they were not present. The problem is that this has been called a “greenhouse effect”. We were told in school that the glass of the greenhouse lets UV light in but does not let infra red radiation out. As a result of this radiation imbalance the temperature rises until it is sufficient to support losses from the outer surface of the glass to balance the incoming radiation energy. Whilst this schoolboy explanation has some validity it is pretty obvious that the main reason that a greenhouse warms is not the radiation imbalance but the prevention of convection. For example greenhouses have been made from plastic that is equally transparent to UV and infra red radiation (they work perfectly) and one only has to open a roof vent and most of the “greenhouse effect” goes.
I don’t think we should get too hung up about the descriptor “greenhouse gas” although I do regret the fact that it makes the average punter think he knows what is going on and has a “picture” in his mind which is miles away from reality.
Water vapour, and to a lesser extent CO2, methane and other molecules with dipole energies in the infra red region really do affect the radiation balance. There is a good description in Wikipedia but this is my understanding of how it works.
The atmosphere is mainly composed of nitrogen and oxygen and these are transparent to infra red radiation. If these were the only gases in the atmosphere the surface would radiate directly into space. In this scenario the incoming UV energy would be balanced by the outgoing infrared radiation even if the surface temperature was well below zero. The effect of the “greenhouse” gases is to absorb infra red radiation of certain specific wavelengths. Water vapour absorbs relatively weakly but has a large number of absorption bands whilst CO2 absorbs strongly but mainly in one 13 to 18 micron band.
Radiation from the surface, within these bands, is absorbed by the atmosphere within a few hundred feet. The absorbing molecules then reradiate the energy in all directions. Some of this is downwards and this adds to the UV flux from the sun and warms the earth. The rest is radiated upwards and this is then reabsorbed and reradiated until it gets to a point in the atmosphere when any photon radiated upwards is unlikely to be absorbed and so it is radiated into space. If one increases the concentration of the absorbing gases the altitude of this final radiation into space increases. As temperature decreases with height this reduces the temperature of the radiating layer. Because this layer is colder it radiates less and therefore the surface has to increase in temperature to ensure increased radiation at the other wavelengths to maintain the energy balance.
This is not to say that increasing CO2 will automatically cause global warming. The problem is that the CO2 effect is very small. A doubling of CO2 on its own is only thought to cause a 1 degree F change in global temperatures. To achieve the dire predictions quoted by the scaremongers one has to postulate positive feedback mechanisms such as reduced albedo through melting ice and further radiation forcing through increased water vapour. At the same time one has to ignore the possibility of negative feedbacks such as increased convection losses, decreased water vapour through increased precipitation and higher albedo due to increased cloud.
So the effect is real even if the descriptor is misleading. But the magnitude of the effect is small until proven otherwise. At one time the AGWs argued that there was no other explanation for the recent “unprecedented” rises in temperature and this was proof enough for them of the positive feedback mechanisms. But now the temperature has gone down again and there are a plethora of alternative theories as to why the climate changes.
The onus is on them to really prove their theories.

@ bradley13 (13:42:10) :

I think re-engineering the code would be a huge service.

I would agree with you that re-engineering would be an undertaking, but after perusing through their code during my 1st iteration, I suspect that approaching this as a project in any manner would be a great undertaking, or to quote “be a huge service”. This is no trivial task.

If you will allow a small observation from a gray-hair:: this is the type of application for which object-oriented languages are really poorly suited. Java is a great language, and so is C++. You don’t need objects here – in fact, you will have to work around the OO aspects of the language in order to get a decent implementation.

As a fellow “gray-hair” with more than 27 years as a computer scientist, professionally active in real world problem solving, I would have to disagree. I believe the modeling of complex chaotic systems is precisely an object oriented problem. I have spent many years in the past developing software for modeling complex human behaviors in a quantitative fashion. I have also developed software for the DOD and DHS, again modeling rather complex systems in a large variety of environments (cannot really detail). Modeling these kinds of complex relationships are not nearly as easy to represent in procedural languages. This is the reason why we have developed object oriented languages. The more complex the system relationships, the more useful object oriented languages become. This is really Computer Science 101.

For this sort of problem, Fortran is a good choice. Even better would be a functional language like Lisp or ML.

Fortran was a good technology for mathematical computation as its primary focus is directed towards mathematics in syntax, but as far as mathematical computation in itself, there is no computational performance advantage over many other languages such as C or C++ or many other similarly compiled languages. As for LISP or ML, I cannot possibly imagine trying to tackle such a project using these tools. Fortran to LISP is quite a sharp contrast. I have had rather extensive experience (way back) developing applications with both languages, and they have absolutely no correlation to each other what so ever. They have vastly different fundamental purposes, and in my opinion, neither are well suited for modeling complex chaotic systems. I will cite exception to this in one respect. LISP would be well suited to describing the model structure and relationships themselves, as that is what it is intended, but very poor in its computational effectiveness. Since modeling climate would require crunching huge volumes of data, I believe LISP would be an extremely poor candidate overall as it is designed for managing set theory algorithms and primarily List Processing.

I teach part-time and I always tell my students: a programming language is a tool. Would you hire a mechanic who only owns a screwdriver? It may be a really nice screwdriver, but sometimes you need a wrench. Any really good programmer will know several completely different programming languages, and know when each one is appropriate.

May I ask what it is you teach? Your prior paragraph is quite shocking to me if I am to consider you an educator. Perhaps this explains why I learned far more about computer “tools” and problem solving in my professional career than I ever did in my collegiate career. I have been fluent in more than 40 programming languages and currently actively developing using at least 12 of those. Languages ranging from Assembler programming on PC’s and IBM mainframes, to Java J2EE distributive systems on Intel and AS400 platforms. I know the value of having a robust toolbox, knowledge-base and experience to draw from. I have spent a good portion of my career successfully guiding companies on their own choices of development environments, from languages to operating systems to hardware platforms, always goal oriented and overall subject specific. I am definitely not one of those preconception geeks that only adopts the fashionable technology (ie: “Windows sux .. Linux is all”), rather quite the contrary, each technology has its advantage or disadvantage and each in turn has its place. Throughout my career I have also been a very outspoken opponent to such practice and I have even forfeited some rather large contract opportunities because of my adherence to fundamental principals instead of adopting the industry buzzword of the day.
I am in the belief that we are currently experience something quite interesting in the industry of modeling in general, especially and specifically when talking climate modeling. It appears to me that climate modelers, such as Hansen’s group, continue to throw huge amounts of money and hardware at their problems, but are neglecting to adopt more modern development languages and techniques. I believe this is in large part due to the fact that they are government operated. I worked for the government for a period of time, and I know how they operate, and I can say from a developers perspective, it was a somewhat sad experience in this regard. I utilize far greater technology on my own home projects than they do on some of the multi-million dollar projects I worked on at the DOD. That’s pretty sad.
The other problem with their development efforts is that they usually span such an inordinate amount of time. Take for instance these climate models. This isn’t new code. They have been writing, rewriting, revamping, modifying, and basically “cowboy coding” this stuff for years. Just take a look at the code and you can clearly see this. My experience has shown me that whenever an organization finds themselves in this position with a project, they are eternally bound to the technology in use. They have not the monetary nor human resources to do otherwise. The programmers are unlikely to press for anything else, as they pay their 40 hours and collect their checks. To them, having a mess is good job security in a job that usually supplies a respectable salary, great benefits in a pretty laid back and easy going environment. Not a bad position to be in if you can get it (speaking from experience). The people that head these projects, such as Hansen, don’t actually know technology all that well. No, they don’t! Again, speaking from experience. They only know the buzzwords, they don’t actually understand the intricacies of implementations nor the pros/cons of the specific technology implementations themselves.
In closing, I would agree that Fortran could still work for these models, although not ideal in my judgment. LISP, LM or any similarly narrowly focussed languages are out of the question and I am still shocked at the suggestion. C might be alright, but if you are going to go that way, you would be better off leveraging the power of OOP with C++. Java has the advantage of portability and the possibility (as stated prior) to easily couple to a web interface and expose to the general public, but has the disadvantage of a performance trade-off. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, if launching such a project will utilize multiple programmers, OOP lends itself to cooperative development efforts much more easily than procedural languages do. The idea is to build a lot of little “black boxes”, build the relationship connectors and simply plug them together. Each individual (or sometimes teams) is responsible for her/his box and the function it provides. Others need not know what is inside the box specifically, only what the box requires as input, and in what form it will spit the output. If this doesn’t scream climate model, I guess I am completely missing the problem at hand.

pochas (06:20:03) :
nobwainer (5:00:07)
“In nearly 12 months we hit the spot where the solar system exerts its maximum disturbing influence…”
When will this influence become apparent? Instantly? What is your vision of the process taking place on/in he sun that generates sun spots? Are there no time lags involved?
Its totally apparent now, its a gradual process as the alignments move into phase. The process taking place is largely unknown, but there is some evidence that the change in angular momentum changes the spin rate of the Sun. This could be internal or overall, but the differential rotation speed is varied. Ian Wilson and Javaraiah have studies on this phenomena. Angular momentum is not a start/stop force, but more a gradual rise and fall. Having said that, we still need to consider inertia and how situations like after SC20, show how a big slow down can affect the next cycles. I think SC21 and 22 activity would have been even higher as the angular momentum was very high at the time.
My graph shows this here http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/12/ultimate_graph2.jpg

@ CodeTech (16:32:25) :
Hahah, somehow, this doesn’t surprise me. I was rather astonished at the poor quality of the code myself.
This may require quite a bit of hand picking to accomplish. Perhaps a method of divide and conquer may be necessary. Identify blocks of related coding, break those into modules, further identify components and break them out accordingly. Iterate through this process until you can identify and overall architectural structure, analyze and develop an object oriented architectural model, then translate each of the previously discovered components into their respective objects, develop the relationships and plug them together. Viola! … sounds easy huh? Probably not so much, but still perhaps worth a try.

Squidly (16:25:40) :
@ Richard M (14:55:24) :
I believe there is an automated tool for converting Fortran to C. That might be a good start and then convert that code to Java.
Probably several, and his sounds like a plausible idea. One might even be able to leverage such a tool to fundamentally clean the code by replacing some of the identifiers with more meaningful ones. Could be a very good place to begin. Great suggestion!

Squidly : I also have about 27 years of experience as a software developer and software architect. I agree with your long post regarding languages and conclusion regarding C++. I would just add that C++ is multi paradigm and does not enforce object orientation per se, it can be used as “a better C”. But I would use it precisely for object orientation and I do that daily.
I have also long experience with Fortran and how to integrate it with C++. I can say with absolute certainty that trying to convert undocumented and messy Fortran to C using an automatic tool is the sure way to a useless result….
There are essentially two workable options:
1. Call , from C++, existing Fortran subroutines without touching the Fortran source code or
2. Redesign the code from scratch
If the existing code is non-trivial and not well understood, the second option will be the fastest.

@ Carsten Arnholm, Norway (17:06:51) :

There are essentially two workable options:
1. Call , from C++, existing Fortran subroutines without touching the Fortran source code or
2. Redesign the code from scratch
If the existing code is non-trivial and not well understood, the second option will be the fastest.

I guess I would personally be more inclined to option #2, but perhaps in not yet knowing enough detail of the code we are working with here, this could be more that what it may seem on the surface?
I am hesitant to simply break out modules of Fortran and call them from another language, as that doesn’t appear to me to gain anything of value in the long run. If I were to involve myself in such a project, it would be to further develop the process and ultimately create a model that is more accessible by others, such as through a web interface. Hence my tendency to lean towards a Java/J2EE solution as lends itself nicely to developing such a web application. This of course would necessarily require a complete rebuild, and perhaps a tremendous amount of work.

BTW, it is -10F outside, we are looking at -20F for the second time in a little over a week and only the third time in my life. Based on my car thermometer, I think there is a different kind of UHI that even affects rural areas. Vehicle caused turbulence heating. I noticed, on these past two extremely cold nights, that my car thermometer dropped 5 degrees F when getting off a traveled highway onto my lightly traveled road, and when it was -20F, it dropped another 5 degrees when driving the 700 ft up my non traveled driveway.
I think that the cold air settles in layers, with the dense, -20F air near the ground, and the warmer, -10F air maybe 10 or 20 ft above. As trucks and cars drive by, the turbulence brings down the warmer air to the highway. The colder air stays settled near the ground, for instance, at my garage, which is far from the road and separated by a small wood.

captdallas2 (05:24:13) :
Since Lief has not shown up yet. The solar magnetic field flips regularly every 7.5 to 15 years. The last time the Earth’s field flipped was about 800 Kyears ago. The state of the Sun and its magnetic field is interesting, but not alarming. It may lead to a grand minimum, but the change in Total Solar Irradiance is small so don’t count on a solar driven little ice age.
If the last cool periods (LIA) weren’t driven by the Sun, what was the driving factor, and don’t tell me volcanoes.

Ed (a simple old carpenter) (13:04:57) :
‘And I can’t stop reading about this stuff, it’s an addiction. ………
So where’s the greenhouse? I’m confused’
Well old carpenter, I recommend the following link?
He does a nice job of explaining the so called ‘greenhouse effect’
http://wwwjunkscience.com/Greenhuose/

I need to clean my glasses
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse

I think that you guys are right about c/c++ being the best language of choice.
What about adding Cuda
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html
NVidias new way of using your graphics card to change your pc into a supercomputer with 128+ FPU processors.
Just a thought-
It would make a good facebook group. I’m sure that there are plenty of people willing to code/validate out there.

To TJ:
We live in similar settings. My home is situated in an open, virtually treeless plot of 16 acres, and it is positioned 700 ft from a rural paved highway that is seldom traveled at night. My home is located 2 miles north of a small town of circa 1,600 people, and beyond that at another 14 miles to the east is a city of circa 110,000. Last week my wife and I were in the city for an evening event, and we departed for home about 10:00pm. It was a clear night as a cold front had passed through the previous day. The temperature reading on my truck instrument was 43F as we traveled on the Interstate in the city. It takes about 22-23 minutes to drive home. During the drive, the temperature reading gradually declined to 34F midway between the city and the small town in definite rural surroundings, then rose to 36 F when we entered the small town. At the gate leading to my home, it was again 34F, but by the time we parked near the house, it was 32F. I went into the house immediately and checked my remote temperature sensor located 200 ft away from my home (and 900 ft away from the rural highway), and it registered 31F. The city has an official weather reporting station for NOAA (it has been surveyed); the temperature recorded at 10:00pm in the city was 45F. (Who says UHI isn’t real?) As the highway leading to my home is poorly traveled at night (maybe 20 cars per hour at 10:00pm), the effect was not as noticeable as in your case. I have compared city and home temperatures for years; the maximum difference between the readings occurs during winter following recent passage of a cold front when the sky overhead clears and the dewpoint drops (and the heat is free to radiate).

On the Fortran->C issue. The problem is not compiling the code to
another language, the problem is understanding what the code does.
Automatically generated C from Fortran would be harder to understand
than the original Fortran.
Like others I have been in the commercial software business for
decades and have used and taught dozens of languages. For portability I
suggest C, but the main problem is figuring out the algorithm. My
second choice for portability and speed would be object-oriented Perl,
a choice many will see as absurd, but it is FAST, easy to write, and
widely available. Heck, one could use FORTRAN, wrap it in a .COM
layer and express it many ways. The problem is documenting the algorithm.
I agree with the point about using a functional language. It is probably
the best approach, but has a serious drawback. So few people know
functional programming you can never convince anybody that the
program is valid, so nobody would trust the results. People would
still want the code in C.
Whatever language is used, visualization should be divorced from data
homogenization.
The code will execute quickly, whatever it is. There simply is not that
much data to crunch. A nice desk-side system today is a million times
faster than nice computer from a few decades ago. 16GB of RAM now
costs as much as a nice dinner with wine.
At SIGGRAPH this past August I spent time with the Google Earth
developers asking about an idea. I thought it would be great to have
a full-earth layer that showed inaccuracy in data recording for temperature.
No such GE layer exists, but it is possible to create one using a proxy,
or man-in-the-middle, approach.

Ed (a simple old carpenter) (13:04:57) :
I would think this is basic stuff and the answers should be settled but there seems to be an argument about this simple concept.
I do not know if somebody has replied to your puzzlement.
The “misnomer” of the global “green house” effect is not disputed even by Real Climate followers. It is a mistaken analogy. The climate “green house” has nothing to do with the “tomatoes greenhouse”. It is a label that has been attached to the effect of various infrared absorbing gases, the most important of these being water vapor, in the atmosphere. The effect of these is real.
Empirically think of the desert, how dry it is and how cold it gets at night just because of this. Generally humid nights keep the heat in everywhere as anybody who has some curiosity about the world he lives in will know. That is the “greenhouse” effect in climate.
How this happens is another confusing story, but happens it does.

Thanks to E.M. Smith, squidly, Ed Scott, cal and others for their very interesting and informative posts.

Ron de Haan (17:34:48) :
…
The USA now has a President that made the following statement:
“Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology.” Barack Obama
And recently he anounced (sic) that he will communicate with all Americans directly via e-mail.
What could go wrong?

An excellent idea! A couple of days ago, shortly after President Obama made that statement, I sent the following to him:

President Obama,
Congratulations on your historic inauguration. I wish you great success in your administration. The great American experiment in civilization, begun over two centuries ago, continues.
It is our obligation to make sure, as best we can, that experiment succeeds and flourishes
Mr. President, you recently made public statements regarding the openness of government information and how you would try to reinforce this policy.
In this regard I would like to recommend that – perhaps through the mechanism of Executive Order – you require that all scientists and researchers whose work is supported in any way by public funds, on the publication of their theories, conjectures or findings, make publicly available through, electronic or other suitable media, all relevant data, methods, procedures, etc. that may be required for their work to be reconstructed and then reproduced or verified/falsified by interested parties.
In the interest of true scientific advancement, all published scientific theories and conjectures must be subject to review – especially when financed by public funds. If not subjected to review and verification, such research becomes no better than “magic” and is equivalent to “Trust me, I’m right!”
When potentially very expensive public policy may be made based on the recommendations and opinions of the scientific community, those recommendations/opinions should be subject to open review.
The above suggestion would, of course, not apply to matters related to national security.
Thank you for your attention,
[esignature]

The email address is comments@whitehouse.gov
[sarcasm on]
I’m sure he would be more than pleased to hear from the rest you should you feel so inclined.
[sarcasm off]
I don’t really expect anything to come of it, but if enough others also wrote … well, who knows?

Carsten Arnholm, Norway (17:06:51) :
Squidly (16:25:40) :
@ Richard M (14:55:24) :
Fractals is the newest hot math to describe complex systems.
I am sure this just blew over heads LOL
oh well
FORTRAN is not a controlled language, C++ might be the way to go.

Looking for the switch that caused Glaciation within a period of 1 year?
http://1965gunner.blogspot.com/2008/08/last-ice-age-happened-in-less-than-year.html

Re: Philip McDaniel (11:21:56)

Try Visual Basic…if Microsoft hasn’t changed it beyond all recognition. I used it several years ago to build some programs that analyzed Diesel engine performance. The language allows inclusion of Active X controls, of which there were many build by independent programmers and companies.

You forget that not everyone is prepared to (or has the money to) pay for a windows license and a visual basic license. The inclusion of active X controls will also result in many people not being able to view the results correctly.
If the project ever gets of the ground then it should use a language that is well defined and available on multiple platforms.

I think David Archibald is on track. I can give you a trend for 1-5 yrs or I can give it for the next century. The next five yrs should definitely be cooler as we will most likely be in grand minima, if not, expect cooling like SC20.
Was there cooling during SC20? The mid-20th century cooling began in the 1940s. SC20 didn’t start until 1964 – around 20 years later. The end of SC20 (in 1976) actually signalled the start of the modern warming era.
Like a lot of the solar theory stuff – things just don’t add up.

Further to the ‘what programming language is best’ debate. I think it’s pretty pointless trying to re-write the GISS code because you’d never be able to prove that your re-write was functionally the same as the original. I’d be far more interested in someone doing some thorough black box testing on the code as it is, to find out if it actually works correctly. If you could prove that the code always produces results with a warm bias, then you’d really put GISS on the spot.

braddles (03:32:15) :
Will people talking about computer languages and other irrelevancies go away please? This is a thread about solar activity.

if [ $topic != “solar” ]
then
  discard($topic)
else
  accept($topic)
fi
🙂

Here is Dr. Judith Lean talking about the solar cycle influence and global warming theory in 8 minutes (she is a very fast talker).
A couple of interesting points – she pulls ENSO, volcano, GHG, aerosols influences out to arrive at the solar cycle residual – And then she splits the atmosphere into the surface, middle troposphere and stratosphere in which she shows there is much bigger solar cycle influence in the stratosphere +/-0.3C versus the surface at +/-0.1C and the lower troposphere is also higher +/-0.2C. Something we will have to take into account when we talk about the solar cycle in the future.

Ron de Haan (01:55:25) :
Looking for the switch that caused Glaciation within a period of 1 year?
http://1965gunner.blogspot.com/2008/08/last-ice-age-happened-in-less-than-year.html
When it’s 40 below outside, your heater is on the opposite side of the room, you open the door to get some firewood, and the inside of your house by the door drops precipitously.
Just pop a hole in the R value of the atmosphere somewhere and plenty of heat will go rushing out. Like, say, the pole.

There are but a few sources of heat on Earth.
One is the gravitational collapse to form the body (leftover).
Another would be tidal forces acting on the planet.
The one that actually maintains the heat input to keep up the current equilibrium (the Sun).
What else is there?
Mess with the input, tinker with the R value of the atmosphere, shade the place with vulcanism and you get a new net value that has to find equilibruim.
My point is that the oscillations may drive the place to keep the equilbrium that it seeks, but they cannot change the net heat value of the planet.

Leif Svalgaard (22:55:13) :
Ross (22:16:15) :
In the interest of true scientific advancement, all published scientific theories and conjectures must be subject to review
Review by whom?

Thanks for your feedback. In explanation, originally I had considered including phrases such as “… by qualified scientists” or “… by qualified individuals”, but felt that – if disclosure were ever mandated – it would give an out to those not wishing to disclose by claiming that any potential reviewer was “not qualified”.

hotrod (11:14:43) :
Lots of water every year falls on us from “out there”.
Also-
Plasma. Bubbles, wind, stream, what you will;
http://mcf.gsfc.nasa.gov/Fok/PUA1911.pdf
http://fenyi.sci.klte.hu/publ/Praga2002.pdf
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002JA009690.shtml
http://www.souledout.org/magfieldsaudio/magfields.html#plasma

Electrical currents induced in the core, mantle and atmosphere by the effects of solar wind and solar storms buffeting the magneto sphere.
This one is clearly solar forced, or lack of it.
Just seems to me that Solar is our big gun in this process…so far.

Although it is obviously derived from the sun, it is a “hidden input” as most people focus on the direct radiant energy from the sun (light and IR) when they are talking about “solar input. Recently we are talking about indirect effects like the changes in cloud developement due to the solar effects on the magnetosphere, but I have not heard anyone try to tally up a value for how much energy is coupled directly by magnetic/electrical effects to the atmosphere itself, when they are talking about solar input.
I have no clue how big the actual energy inputs might be, but induction heating is used to melt scrap iron, if strong coupling exists it is conceivable that large amounts of energy could be transferred in a non-obvious way. It is possible, that the electrical current heating induced by solar storms both in the body of the earth and the atmosphere might be significant compared to the direct radiant heating from the solar irradiance.
I have never seen any sort of limits placed on this mechanism, or any measurements of it made.
The ground currents developed by lightning strikes are significant and obviously produce local heating. Likewise I am not aware of anyone trying to put a value on direct heating of the atmosphere by lightning. This might in the grander scheme of thing be a gnat sneeze in a hurricane, or the world wide power dissipation for thunderstorms might be pretty impressive. It if nothing else is a way of moving energy from high altitudes to low altitudes, as static electrical energy harvested from rising water crystals, eventually gets released as lightning inside the cloud and to ground as these space charges try to equalize.
I know that the ground currents induced by solar storms can also be significant! I would not want to pay the power bill for the northern lights if they were being powered off the grid. That power eventually degrades to heat! How much heating is generated in the atmosphere by the kinetic energy of ions and electrical currents in the auroral displays?
Could those sudden stratospheric heating episodes be due to electrical energy being degraded to heat?
People forget how little we know of the electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere. It was just a few years ago that “sprites” and “elfs” were discounted as unproven or optical illusions. They were found to be impressively powerful events.
http://elf.gi.alaska.edu/
I submit that it is at least possible that a considerable amount of energy is coupled directly into the atmosphere and surface of the earth due to magnetic effects. Perhaps they are not included in the energy accounting, because no one has thought to quantify them, and add them to the earths energy budget. If they are trivial, than like Edison learning from tests that showed what did not work, we have eliminated one other possible mode of power transfer to the earths weather systems.
Larry

To Robert Bateman (10:14)
One potentially significant source of heat (which is almost never talked about and could be an alternative theory to the greenhouse effect itself) is “gravitational compression.”
What makes a star heat up and compress so that nuclear fusion is possible?
What makes Venus so hot? Why is Jupiter 20,000K at its core? Why is Mars colder even though it has so much CO2 in its atmosphere?
The density of the atmosphere itself produces a gravitational compression and this produces heat (beyond the compression which exists in the mantle and in the core). The weight of the atmosphere itself produced a warming and acts a non-greenhouse blanket keeping the heat in.
The density of the atmosphere itself is a heating and heat-trapping mechanism (disregarding any impact from the Sun.)
This theory has more explanatory power for the various temperatures seen around the solar system and in the stars. Of course, EM radiation from the Sun comes in and leaves the planet and the rates at which this happens is modulated by the absorption frequencies of the different molecules so the greenhouse effect has to also play a role.

Gravitational compression would seem to me to be a constant, easily calcuable. It’s effect then would be establish a nightime minimum as in a polar night, given a constant atmosphere content.
As for Mars, while it’s atmosphere is almost wholly CO2, it hasn’t much of an atmosphere, hence it is far colder for it’s distance for the Solar heating it recieves, which it doesn’t do a great job of holding onto.
Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere of mostly C02. It is far warmer than it’s distance.
The two planets above would be far different if thier atmosphere were identical to Earths, and so would the Earth be far different if it had a CO2 atmosphere.
For a planet with almost no atmosphere, Mercury is a good test case for TSI and gravitational compression.
So, take the difference between Mercury’s nighttime temp and the cold of space, scale up to Earth size, and you have a reasonable approximation of Earth’s gravitational compression heating.
Lack of magnetic field will also help isolate in the Mercury case.

braddles (03:32:15) wrote: “Will people talking about computer languages and other irrelevancies go away please?”
No! Braddles… please! I find all this talk fascinating, and am filled with awe and admiration for those posting. It may even lead to a project which drags (no doubt kicking and screaming) many hot air balloons into Century 21, as implications in the posts being made seem to indicate a whole lot of the “climate science” we are getting is coming from hand-cranked codes and coders of yesterday.
Let the future take fire! Even better; let me watch the first sparks here.

Granted, that is indeed a mystery still unsolved perhaps. I have been searching for something concrete on atomic testing through the late 40’s and 50’s but without much success, but did come across some old forum posts on the late John Daly’s site where Dr. Landsheidt commented on a similar discussion. He was of the opinion that nuclear testing might well explain the discrepancy.

Just what sort of info are you looking for? The complete list of above ground nuclear tests has been available since 1962 in documents published by the U.S. Government.
===================
1 Trinity 16/7/45 Alamgordo New Mexico — tower shot — 19 kt yield
2 Combat 5/8/45 Hiroshima Japan ——– air burst —– nominal yield
3 Combat 9/8/45 Nagasaki Japan ——— air burst —– nominal yield
4 Able 30/6/46 Bikini atoll ————- air burst —— nominal yield
5 Baker 24/7/46 Bikini atoll ——– underwater burst —- nominal yield
6 x-ray 14/4/48 Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– 37 kt yield
7 yoke 30/4/48 Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– 49 kt yield
8 zebra 14/5/48 Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– 18 kt yield
9 Able 27/1/51 Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 1 kt yield
10 Baker 28/1/51 Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 8 kt yield
11 Easy 1/2/51Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 1 kt yield
12 Baker-2 2/2/51 Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 8 kt yield
13 Fox 6/2/51 Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 22 kt yield
14 Dog 7/4/51Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– not specified
15 Easy 20/4/51Eniwetok ————- tower shot —– 47 kt yield
16 George 8/5/51 Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– not specified
Nominal yield indicated wartime designs intended to yield approximately 20 KT yield
The list goes on —
Source see:
The Effects of Nuclear Weapons
Samual Glastone Feb 1964
pages 671- 677 Appendix B
Was available from Government Printing Office
The book was republished in 1977 without the detonation listing appendix.
Larry

How much heating is generated in the atmosphere by the kinetic energy of ions and electrical currents in the auroral displays?
a few tens of GigaWatt. E.g. http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/pmap/

Thanks!
So that works out to a fraction of a percent of the suns total irradiance, around about 0.1% give or take.
Larry

Granted, that is indeed a mystery still unsolved perhaps. I have been searching for something concrete on atomic testing through the late 40’s and 50’s but without much success, but did come across some old forum posts on the late John Daly’s site where Dr. Landsheidt commented on a similar discussion. He was of the opinion that nuclear testing might well explain the discrepancy.
It doesn’t bother you, then, that 2 recent cycles for which there is good quality data in terms of both temperature and solar observations have failed to produce the expected results.

E.M.Smith (08:26:50) :

Frankly, it’s the sort of thing best done with a database and simple report language.

I do a lot of Oracle programming – I’d like to try this. Maybe we can get a couple of different programming tracks going, one using a database with SQL and maybe a Java version with flat files, so we can compare results.
Can you contact me? You can reach me at bionuclearguy at gmail dawt com.

John Finn (02:16:06) :
Ocean shifts.
And where does the ocean gets it heat from?

I hope Leif Svalgaard or one of the other people taking part in this discussion can help with a gnawing problem I have had for some time.
Looking at the (admittedly flawed) Vostok ice core data (trace of temperatures during the last ~400,000 years) it would seem that deglaciation/warming occurs much faster than glaciation/cooling –BUT I can not figure out why the warming is so STEEP and the cooling is so gradual.
Peter Salonius

And where does the ocean gets it heat from?
From the sun – but any additional forcing could have been from decades earlier. Also it might be a re-distribution of heat rather than additional heat.

John Finn (00:49:58) :
And where does the ocean gets it heat from?
From the sun – but any additional forcing could have been from decades earlier. Also it might be a re-distribution of heat rather than additional heat.
I suspect all the climate drivers are feeding from the Sun in different ways and use that energy in different time scales. I have raced Go karts for several years and have learned, its the sum of small things that make you go fast. Small changes in solar output taken up by many drivers probably determine our climate. There is no other heat source apart from under our feet.
In my opinion, continued research on what regulates the Sun remains one of science’s most important projects.

The Earth is not a “small change” entity. My hunch is that given the fact that water circulates around the globe, and it takes a bit to go ’round, air circulates around the globe, ozone circulates around the globe, water vapor circulates around the globe, and all the other stuff in and around our planet circulates and is not well mixed, the Sun is the constant source while the Earth owns the rather variable weather drivers.
How long did that spot last? Did it last as long as other specks (23 or 24) that got numbers?

There are several posts on this site about solar effects on the weather / climate and I feel I’m missing something basic. From what I gather, low solar activity has some correlation to lower temperatures. Is this correct? What exactly does this have to do with the weather / climate effects of CO2 (if any)? Thanks.

Regarding the negative effective-sunspot-number (SSNe) on our web site. The SSNe is derived by fitting a climatological model of the ionosphere to global ionospheric conditions. The fitting is accomplished by adjusting the SSN fed to the model (its only input other than day-of-year and hour-of-day), and the SSN that provides for a zero mean difference between model and observations is the SSNe. When SSNe is negative, that just means the global ionosphere is at lower density than was observed globally when the SSN was zero in the data set used to generate the climatology. Second order effects fold in from geomagnetic disturbances and spatial distribution (of input data) effects.

This is OT but there is an interesting article in the March issue of Astronomy magazine about gravity and what is not known about it. For example, the Astronomical Unit (AU) distance is increasing about 23 feet per century. So if we wait long enough all of our alleged warming problems will cease (tonque-in-cheek).

psi (17:25:01) :
Keep up the great work, keep your “cool” under the provocation of those who dismiss the sun’s role as the prime driver, and keep us all informed as the work develops. Assuming your current predictions hold, which to my layman’s untutored mind seems to be unfolding, you and Carl et al are about to have your day in court.
Thanks for your support, there are a few predicting an imminent grand minimum, but none using angular momentum controlled by Neptune & Uranus as far as I am aware. I think in time science will accept the inevitable conclusion that the planets do control our Sun, the evidence is building by the day. Perhaps we need some input from the Astronomy section of science who might be better equipped to understand the principles involved.
Updates are happening daily at the moment with so much information coming to hand.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/95