Another paper showing evidence of a solar signature in temperature records

Anthony/Charles
Quick suggestion–you may want to substitute a lower-res JPG thumbnail in place for the chart graphic. Right now, the main article page attempts to load a rather large 723KB chart PNG. Save the PNG for the chart click-through.
Readers on dialup or mobile edge/3g will thank you. 🙂
Feel free to delete.

This gives me the opportunity to raise from its dormant state in cyberspace a longish comment I posted on
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/23/evidence-of-a-lunisolar-influence-on-decadal-and-bidecadal-oscillations-in-globally-averaged-temperature-trends/#comments
in which I picked up from an observation that Leif Svalgaard had made. But by the time I had got around to posting my notes on 8 June last everybody had moved on – as they say – and it has been undead in cyberspace ever since.
In case my notes are of interest to the millions who read WUWT, I’ll post it here again.
I do think WUWT readers will find the gushing article in the New York Times of October 28 1906 effusively reporting how the Sun controls our climate of great interest!
Here are my notes:
I would agree with you, Lief, that the field of research about relationships between the Sun’s behaviour and our climate is disconnected. I can’t say whether this disconnectedness is any more or less pronounced than other areas of scientific research.
I do know that research in many areas of scholarship (ie not only science and mathematics) is noticeably tunnel vision and hostile to outsiders.
A dynamic builds up largely through conditions of employment, promotion and funding for professionals to become better and better at less and less. Employees don’t have the luxury of spreading their wings. Publish as much as possible, get cited as much as possible, get on funding gravy trains and stay there as long as possible are the dynamics throughout most areas of scholarship, probably most professions. Professionals doing well in their area of specialization tend to close ranks against outsiders; multidiciplinarians are seen as jacks of all trades and masters of none, despised jackals coming to take away goodies from the hard working specialists. Worse still, specialist professionals will join ranks to gang up on their common enemy – the generalist who dares to challenge the specialists’ cherished paradigms and certainties. Once the outsider has been repelled the specialists resume their research programs within their narrow specialisms with the understanding that they won’t encroach on each other.
I note that Leif’s criticism that “the whole field is too ‘disconnected’, having all kinds of different findings piled on top of on another. The usual method in a valid endeavour is the build on other’s results, but I see very little of that here [other than saying that others also find some relations]” has been made before, most noticeably by one of the great minds of modern solar physics, John Wilcox, (see http://wso.stanford.edu/images/people/wilcox.html ) with whom Leif worked closely in his earlier years.
In 1973 John Wilcox wrote:
“An appreciable influence of solar activity on the weather is not widely accepted, and it is not in everyday use for forecasting purposes. The literature on the subject tends to be contradictory, and the work of the authors tends to be done in isolation. It is often difficult to compare the claims of one author against those of another. Many times an author starts from scratch, rather than building on the work of his predecessors in the classical pattern of science. A widely accepted physical mechanism has not yet emerged.”
I thought it would be helpful to our understanding of this situation and of interest to the millions who frequent WUWT to reflect just a little on some history of the field so as to better understand this enduring problem of disconnectedness.
The first major scientific effort to relate solar variability to climate was William Herschel’s two papers in 1801. At the time he was 63 and was acknowledged by all as Europe’s most distinguished Astronomer. He had held the appointment of the King’s Astronomer since 1782, was a Fellow of the Royal Society, which had awarded him the prestigious Copely Medal in 1781.
I have studied his papers and am writing a short paper about his work.
His two Sun/climate papers were careful, meticulous, full of qualifications and bubbling with excitement – as his papers to the Royal Society often were. They were first rate pieces of work. He had available Adam Smith’s huge tabulation of wheat prices. Adam Smith’s 1776 book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, included details of English wheat prices over 562 years from 1202 to 1764 compiled in the most careful manner. In contrast to this data, Herschel had rather flimsy solar activity data and he knew this.
William Herschel’s language is wonderful!
He wrote:
“Since light and heat are so essential to our well-being, it must certainly be right for us to look into the source from whence they are derived, in order to see whether some material advantage may not be drawn from a thorough acquaintance with the causes from which they originate.”
His observations showed that sometimes the Sun had more spots than others, sometime it had no spots. He concluded that the Sun’s output of ‘light and heat’ increased with the number of sunspots. He went over observational records since 1610 and identified five periods longer than two years in which no spots had been recorded. He reasoned that with no spots the Earth would receive less ‘light and heat’ and therefore be cooler.
Herschel reasoned that if the climate cooled in response to diminished ‘light and heat’ from the spotless Sun, the wheat harvest would be reduced and accordingly, the price of wheat would rise. He further reasoned that the effect of variable solar output on vegetation would be similar to the tidal effect of the Sun and the Moon. That is, that in some parts of the world the tides are very high and very low and that the tidal phenomena vary around the world over time and in relation to latitude and longitude. He pointed out that even though there were these great variations, the tidal phenomena are universally the result of a single principle, the variable gravitation of the Sun and the Moon, as Newton had shown.
Herschel applied his test to the five lean periods by tabulating the price of wheat for these periods.
Herschel found, and reported to the Royal Society that, roughly speaking, the price of wheat in England was highest when sunspots were absent. He summed up his argument in this way:
“The result of this review of the foregoing five periods is, that, from the price of wheat, it seems probable that some temporary scarcity or defect of vegetation has generally taken place, when the Sun has been without those appearances which we surmise to be the symptoms of a copious emission of light and heat.”
Members of the Royal Society mocked him mercilessly. One member, Henry Brougham, then aged 25, who in October 1802 launched the Edinburgh Review, which was to become one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century, made William Herschel the target of his mockery.
In January 1803 in the second issue of the Edinburgh Review Brougham made his most vindictive of all comment about Herschel’s theory of a relationship between variable solar activity and the price of wheat. Henry Brougham wrote:
“To the speculations of the Doctor on the nature of the Sun, contained in the last volume [of the Transactions of the Royal Society], we have many similar objections but they are eclipsed by the grand absurdity which he has committed in his hasty and erroneous theory concerning the influence of the solar spots on the price of grain.”
Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, implored William Herschel to ignore the ‘darts’ of Henry Brougham, assuring William that “….nothing can affect and overturn truths and discoveries founded on experience and observation.”
Henry Brougham would rise far in politics becoming Lord Chancellor and Baron Brougham in 1830, receiving a second peerage 30 years later.
Interestingly, Pustilnik and Yom Din 2004 reported their analysis of records of the price of wheat in England from 1259 to 1702 in relation to the established sunspot record. They found that Herschel was right: the price of wheat was high in medieval England during periods when there were hardly any sunspots, and low during solar maxima.
The following year Solar Physics published a second paper by the two authors extending their analysis to wheat prices in the US during the 20th century (Pustilnik and Yom Din 2005). The authors recorded their surprise, finding a relationship between numbers of sunspots and the price of wheat, just as Sir William hypothesised. The authors did not expect to see a sunspot connection due to modern technologies that make crops more robust in unfavourable weather, globalised markets, and the massive economic disruption that occurred during the two world wars. They reasoned that these factors should have cancelled out any variation in the data attributable to a sunspot effect. They surmise that the effect persists because 70% of US durum wheat grows in one part of North Dakota, where localised weather conditions could be expected to have a dramatic impact on total production.
Jumping to the 19th Century, the topic of the Sun causing climate change was fashionable and main stream. William Jevons, who became a famous Economist, Logician and Statistician, claimed that variable solar activity was responsible for almost everything that changed on the face of the Earth. He introduced the idea of business cycles into our economic language: he attributed them to the Sun’s activity cycles.
Towards the end of the 19th Century governments around the world were setting up national meteorological agencies. At that time, meteorologists were keen to understand weather and climate and devoted scarce resources to the search for explanations of the phenomena they were employed to predict. They embraced solar explanations.
In 1898, one of the world’s leading meteorologists of the day, Professor Bigelow, wrote:
“That there is a causal connection between the observed variations in the forces of the Sun, the terrestrial magnetic field, and the meteorological elements has been the conclusion of every research into this subject for the past 50 years.”
See here, for example: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9E0DE4DB1631E733A2575BC2A9669D946797D6CF (aka http://tinyurl.com/odr8um )
In the 1920s and 30s when it was still respectable for Government agencies to examine Sun/climate relationships, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology published two papers reporting that the Sun regulated our climate. One published in 1925 concluded that “The year 1914 was the culmination of what was in all probability the worst drought in Australian history” and attributed the drought to the weakness of Sunspot Cycle No. 14. In the other, published in 1938, the Bureau concluded:
“A rough generalisation from the winter rainfall over northern Victoria would suggest that when the new solar cycle begins with a rapid rise to a definite peak then the heaviest rains are in the early years, but when the solar activity begins more gradually and takes four or more years to reach a low or moderate maximum, then comparatively poor seasons may be expected in the early part.” (Details can be found in my paper, Mackey 2007, available here:
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf )
The low amplitude forecast for Solar Cycle 24 is that it will be the same as Solar Cycle 14. On the basis of the BoM’s early research this suggests another Federation drought for Australia beginning in the next year or two and poor seasons in northern Victoria. I wonder if the BoM of today would take this hypothesis seriously enough to allocate scarce resources to it.
In 1972, the distinguished scientist, Edward Bowen (see http://www.science.org.au/academy/memoirs/bowen.htm ) reported that in relation to these two BoM reports (see Bowen, 1975): “Other workers (Deacon and Das, private communication) have since extended these data to the 1950s, that is, for another 30 yr, and the relationship stands up”.
Dr Bowen also reported that the march of the high and low pressure systems around the poles as a result of solar activity first identified by the BoM in the 1920s could be used to improve the accuracy of long term weather forecasting.
A couple of generations after the pioneering research of the 1920s, the government meteorological agencies seem to have been lobotomised: explanatory-type research was generally prohibited and those that dabbled ostracised. Weather bureaux concentrated on getting good measurements of meteorological variables and forecasting by statistical analyses of them. Even research into the major oceanic/atmospheric oscillations, which are usually the proximal cause of weather, was heavily discouraged by the mandarins who controlled the weather bureaux.
Neville Nicholls, an Australian scientist employed for most of his professional life in Australia’s BoM who pioneered the BoM’s study of ENSO, pointed out that the BoM’s management took many decades of convincing before acknowledging in the 1990s that ENSO was a worthwhile subject of study for meteorological purposes (see Nicholls 2005).
Interestingly, Nicholls also reports the following:
“Throughout the atmospheric sciences in the middle decades of the twentieth century, climatology was “neither respected nor valued” (quoting from P. J. Lamb, “The Climate Revolution: A Perspective”, Climate Change, Vol 54, 2002, pps 11 – 28). According to Kenneth Hare, “only the old, the halt, and the infirm could be appointed to the climatological branch; the able-bodied men were expected to be forecasters” (quoting from F. K. Hare, “Dynamic and Synoptic Climatology”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol 35, 1955, pps 152 – 162). Climatology was regarded as “mere book-keeping….. to be posted to the climatological branch of a national weather service was like being made an intelligence officer, or a lighthouse keeper; it was a terminal appointment” (quoting from F. K. Hare, “The Concept of Climate” Geography, Vol 51, 1966, pps 99 – 110)”.
As I read the history of national weather services, after WWII management had a very narrow focus of operational meteorology. Unlike the earlier period, there was no interest in trying to understand the phenomena, there was little interest in long term predictions and any attempt to think outside the square of management’s paradigm was to risk dismissal. Management was not strategic, but obsessed with operational agendas. The persistence of this ingrained thinking may help explain the refusal of national weather services in Australia, the UK, the USA, Canada and NZ to resume research about Sun/climate relationships. In contrast, the national weather services of Russia and Japan maintain active and highly effective research programs in this field.
In 1972 one of the world’s leading meteorologists, Andrei Monin, wrote:
“The greatest attention should be devoted to the question of whether there is a connection between the Earth’s weather and fluctuations in solar activity. [emphasis in original]. The presence of such a connection would be almost a tragedy for meteorology, since it would evidently mean that it would first be necessary to predict the solar activity in order to predict the weather; this would greatly postpone the development of scientific methods of weather prediction. Therefore, arguments concerning the presence of such a connection should be viewed most critically.”
By the time Jack Eddy published his papers in the mid 1970s about the role of the Sun, the field was no longer fashionable and Eddy’s thesis suffered a fate not unlike William Herschel’s.
Nevertheless science marches on! An increasing quantity and quality of papers continued to be published supporting the hypothesis that the Sun regulates our climate.
A NASA organised conference in 1973 (at which Leif Svalgaard presented a significant paper) surveyed the entire area of Sun/climate research. The conference proceedings (Bandeen and Maran, 1975) outlined a framework which could guide future research. It included solar radiation, solar plasma and the Sun’s electromagnetic field and the complex structures created by solar activity in the Heliosphere (itself one of those structures) which could have climate consequences.
In 1978 NASA published a comprehensive review of Sun, climate and weather relationships (Herman and Goldberg 1978). John Wilcox wrote the following in his foreword to the book:
“’A growing mass of evidence suggests that transient events on the Sun affect our weather and long-term variations of the Sun’s energy output affect out climate Solar terrestrial exploration can help establish the physical cause and effect relationships between solar stimuli and terrestrial responses. When these relationships are understood, science will have an essential tool for weather and climate prediction.’ This paragraph, written by Robert D. Chapman as part of a proposal for a five-year plan for Solar Terrestrial Programs in NASA, is an indication of the present status of Sun-weather/climate investigations.”
It is to be noted that neither NASA publication addressed the role of the Sun’s gravitational field in the regulation of the Earth’s climate.
The developments in solar physics during the 1970s and 80s must have greatly aggravated the meteorologists’ nightmares so eloquently described by Andrei Monin.
Within a few years two prominent meteorologists, John Houghton (UK) and Bert Bolin (Sweden) joined the evil Maurice Strong to create the hideous, post-modern Golem of AGW/GHGs that is now on the cusp of destroying the world’s advanced democratic societies and sophisticated economies, as Maurice Strong originally and publicly intended.
For the meteorologists, the deal with Maurice Strong was that solar physics hypothesis would be buried so that meteorology would not become subservient to solar physics, but rather would be positioned to be indispensible to the governments of the world thus assuring meteorology a permanent place on the funding table of benevolent governments. In return, the meteorologists would give Strong’s environmental global domination agenda a veneer of scientific respectability with some plausibly sounding science and the elaborate climate computer-based models that meteorologists developed for their craft.
Returning to solar physics for the moment, the two NASA publications mentioned above provided a framework, which if followed, would end the disconnectedness in Sun/climate research reported by Lief and by John Wilcox more than 35 years before.
Inexplicably, the framework is ignored by some prominent solar physicists.
Thus the two distinguished solar physicists, Mike Lockwood and Claus Frohlich, ignore it totally in their mischievous papers published by the Royal Society in 2007/08.
These papers ignore the substantial findings about the role of the Sun’s plasma output and numerous heliospheric topology variables in generating the Earth’s climate dynamics (heliospheric variables include heliospheric structures (Heliospheric Current Sheet structure (inclination; homogeneity; thickness; current density); the Interplanetary Magnetic Field structure; open and closed fluxes; solar wind, Coronal Mass Ejections, Solar Proton Events; interplanetary counterparts of CMEs; Alfvenic waves; magnetic field directional turnings; pressure balanced structures; magnetic ropes and clouds (chilarity); and corotating interaction regions); solar polarity (dipole to multipole); solar hemispheric asymmetries; solar-terrestrial magnetic field orientation (parallel, antiparallel); solar-terrestrial orientation; Helioid; and Helioid-Geoid orientation. For an entrée into this world of science see the university website of Brian Tinsley, Professor of Physics at the University of Texas, Dallas:
http://www.utdallas.edu/nsm/physics/faculty/tinsley.html )
Lockwood and Frohlich ignore completely the established findings about the role of the gravitational fields of the Sun and the Moon in the regulation of the Earth’s climate. Because of this and other glaring errors in their papers, the Royal Society should not have published them. But not only did the Royal Society publish them, the Royal Society triumphantly editorialised that the papers prove that “the Earth’s surface air temperature does not respond to the solar cycle” and, as if Henry Brougham was still writing for the Royal Society, the blurb on the website of the Proceedings of the Royal Society states in relation to the Lockwood and Frohlich papers, the truth about global warming! The sun is not a factor in recent climate change!
Why would two of the world’s leading solar physicists author papers so blatantly incomplete? Why would a once esteemed scientific society make such a blatantly false announcement? As is usually the case, when lies are told it is inevitably the teller of the lies who is the most deceived. It is most unfortunate in the extreme that there is no one in the Royal Society (or in any leadership position in science in the UK, Australia or the USA) of the calibre and integrity of Sir Joseph Banks who was able to minimise the rabid nonsense of Henry Brougham.
More recently on May 7, 2008 as WUWT recently listed, NASA issued a press release quoting NASA’s Robert Cahalan, Head, Climate & Radiation Branch with news that “about 1,361 watts per square meter of solar energy reaches Earth’s outermost atmosphere during the sun’s quietest period. But when the sun is active, 1.3 watts per square meter (0.1 percent) more energy reaches Earth.” “This TSI measurement is very important to climate models that are trying to assess Earth-based forces on climate change,” Robert Cahalan said. There is no mention at all of established relationships between other solar variables and climate. It is as if NASA has dementia and all the work in the above mentioned NASA publications of 1978 and 1975, which has in the intervening 30 years advanced enormously, is lost to NASA’s corporate memory. Why is this?
It is customary in scientific research when trying to understand some phenomena to consider all relevant variables that might have a role and which a scientist can investigate. It is customary when doing so to use the notions of independent and dependent variables,
(see http://www.viswiki.com/en/Dependent_and_independent_variables )
Yet this way of thinking is totally absent in the science of climate dynamics; it is scarcely used in the study of solar-terrestrial relationships. Why is this?
If it was fully utilised in these two fields of inquiry the disconnectedness noted by Lief (and before him by John Wilcox) might finally vanish.
References:
BANDEEN, W. R. and MARAN, S. P., 1975. Symposium on Possible Relationships between Solar Activity and Meteorological Phenomena Proceedings of a Symposium held November 7 8, 1973 at the Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt Md.: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA SP 36.
Bigelow, F. H., 1898. “Solar and Terrestrial Magnetism in their relations to Meteorology”, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Weather Bureau, Bulletin No. 21. [quoted by Wilcox 1975].
Bowen, Edward G., 1975. “Kidson’s relation between sunspot number and the movement of high pressure systems in Australia” paper in Bandeen and Maran 1975 pps 43 – 45.
Brougham, Henry, 1803. “Art. XV. Observations on the two lately discovered Celestial Bodies By William Herschel, L.L.D. F.R.S. From Phil. Trans. RS 1802”. Edinburgh Review Vol 1 pps 426 – 431, January 1803.
Herman, John R., and Goldberg, Richard A., Sun, Weather, and Climate National Aeronautics and Space Administration 1978.
Herschel, W., 1801. “Observations tending to investigate the Nature of the Sun, in order to find the Causes or Symptoms of its variable Emission of Light and Heat; with Remarks on the Use that may possibly be drawn from Solar Observations”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, pps 265 to 301; Read April 16, 1801.
Herschel, W., 1801. “Additional Observations tending to investigate the Symptoms of the variable Emission of the Light and Heat of the Sun; with Trials to set aside darkening Glasses, by transmitting the Solar Rays through Liquids; and a few Remarks to remove Objections that might be made against some of the Arguments contained in the former Paper”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, pps 354 to 363; Read May 14, 1801.
KIDSON, E., 1925. Some Periods in Australian Weather. Research Bulletin No. 17 Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne.
Lockwood, M. and Frohlich, C. 2007 “Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature” Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences June 2007.
See http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/h844264320314105/fulltext.pdf
Lockwood, M. and Fröhlich, C. 2008. Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature. II. Different reconstructions of the total solar irradiance variation and dependence on response time scale Proc. Roy. Soc. A, 464 (2094) , 1367-1385 , 2008.
Lockwood, M. 2008. Recent changes in solar outputs and the global mean surface temperature. III. Analysis of contributions to global mean air surface temperature rise Proc. Roy. Soc. A, 464 (2094), 1387-1404, 2008.
Mackey, R., 2007 Rhodes Fairbridge and the idea that the solar system regulates the Earth’s climate. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 50 (Proceedings of the 9th International Coastal Symposium), 955 – 968. Gold Coast, Australia.
Monin, Andrei, 1972. Weather Forecasting as a Problem in Physics. MIT Press. [quoted by Wilcox 1975].
Nicholls, N. 2005. “Climatic Outlooks: from revolutionary science to orthodoxy” a chapter in Sherratt, T., Griffiths, T., and Robin, L. A Change in the Weather – Climate and Culture in Australia. National Museum of Australia Press 2005.
Pustilnik, L. and Yom Din, G., 2004. “Influence of solar activity on state of wheat market in medieval England”, Solar Physics, v. 223, Numbers 1-2, pps 335-356.
Pustilnik, L. and Yom Din, G., 2005. “Space Climate Manifestation in Earth Prices – from Medieval England up to Modern U.S.A.” Solar Physics v 224 Numbers 1-2, pps 473-481.
QUAYLE, E. T., 1925. Sunspots and Australian Rainfall. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria New Series, 37 Part 2, 131 143.
QUAYLE, E. T., 1938. Australian Rainfall in Sunspot Cycles. Research Bulletin No. 22 Bureau of Meteorology Melbourne.
Wilcox, J. 1975. “Solar Activity and the Weather” paper in Bandeen and Maran 1975 pps 25 – 38.

Anthony
I am curious as to whether your selection of weather stations matched that used by James Hansen when he formulated his original 1987 paper which is still much used by the climate industry-and IPCC- as proof of temperature change since 1880.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1987/1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf
Are his stations more reprsentative? Are they selected merely because there was a long term record available? It would be interesting to see how his ‘solar signature’ matches with yours.
Is Europe considered as one climatic region in meteorological terms? The UK has a vastly dfifferent climate to the Iberian peninsula, which is vastly different to Southern Europe, which again is different to central Europe where the Alpine influence comes into play.
A good piece of work. Thanks for the continued high quality of articles here.
Tonyb

My guess Mackey (above) correct. We shall see but its looking that way. It is the sun (mainly).

Richard Mackey (01:28:04) excerpt
‘In 1898, one of the world’s leading meteorologists of the day, Professor Bigelow, wrote:
“That there is a causal connection between the observed variations in the forces of the Sun, the terrestrial magnetic field, and the meteorological elements has been the conclusion of every research into this subject for the past 50 years.” ‘
Those old boys knew their onions, and I’ll bet their temperature readings were spot on and should stand, not be ‘adjusted’ in cavalier fashion.

Richard Mackey (01:28:04)
Thanks for reposting that. I was very interested to read that Herschel’s work on the correlation of grain prices with solar activity had been replicated in modern times. It is distressing that instead of widespread continuing research into possible solar forcing mechanisms, we see scientists actively trying to muddy the waters on solar issues. There are attempts to reinterpret past records, as well as attacks on any suggestion of researching solar climate connections. I feel the recent nature of the reinterpretations and the speed of attack on suggestions for new research belies the scientific impartiality of those involved. “Mischievous” may be too charitable a term for some of those involved in this behavior. The good news seems to be that like Lady Macbeth, no amount of scrubbing seems to make the issues with spots go away.

Richard Mackey, thanks for that post. It was a most intelligent and thoughtfully argued exposition of the general position.

Reading Mackey’s long comment again, I’m thinking its really worth considering for full post status?

I was shocked to learn firsthand from the Fire Information Officer last summer, when we had the terrible fires, that the USFS was being briefed by NASA on the constant smoke inversion that had aircraft grounded was due to GCR’s. Some part of NASA obviously was on top of things. It was only the times of prevailing winds picking up that allowed fire suppression from the air.
I was equally shocked 2 days ago when I learned from someone who knew Harry Geise that he used sunspots in his forecast method. Harry was notoriously accurate, and went longrange in a time when nobody else dared to.
I found for my own area how the low cycles of the late 1870’s through the turn of the century caused repeated losses in orchard and vine crops, as well as caused the original settlers of the area to remark upon the changing climate.
I don’t have the data typed out yet, but from taking notes at the historical center, it’s obvious that you find such instances occuring with great regularity in a hop-scotch pattern in the low cycles 12,13 & 14 than you do in the cycles 10 & 11.
In 1864, the Indians told the locals here of the Trinity River tributaries going underground 20 years before (1844) due to no rain in 20 moons, that being the minima of cycles 8 & 9.
From August J. Bowie’s Treatise on Hydraulic Mining (1890’s), the record of a great dry period in the Sierras in 1869-late 1870’s only fully recovered by the l880’s barrage of increasing wet weather. That the low-lying end of SC11 to the low-lying end of SC12, both 4 year long minima bottoms.
As always, it’s the literary record of people who keep this stuff.

This looks good, and these four scientists had also a paper in May 2009, “Evidence for solar forcing in variability of temperatures and pressures in Europe”
http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/07/new-paper-evidence-for-solar-forcing-in-variability-of-temperatures-and-pressures-in-europe
In the end of the abstract:
“In concluding, we find increasingly strong evidence of a clear solar signature in a number of climatic indicators in Europe, strengthening the earlier conclusions of a study that included stations from the United States (Le Mouël et al., 2008). With the recent downturn of both solar activity and global temperatures, the debated correlations we suggested in Le Mouël et al. (2005), which appeared to stop in the 1980s, actually might extend to the present. The role of the Sun in global and regional climate change should be re-assessed and reasonable physical mechanisms are in sight.“
–
(Meanwhile IPCC ignore this sun-climate connection the Waxman-Markey bill, the Copenhagen summit, etc are threaten to kill our economies and will (for some people may like this) reduce freedom, and may indirectly have the potential to cause the death of millions of people. Lomborg, but also prominent progressive economist and AGW believer Richard Tol [1], are totally ignored in the economics of climate policy (dominating by erroneous Stern). This seems to be the time of lies in science and economy and the time of the Malthusian ideology embraced also by non-socialist. We may see a triangulation by the far left/socialists using the cute environment issue (polar bear cub’s black eyes and the story of saving the world), and this cuteness of the issue seems to be something everyone wants to use (all political stances, and all businesses), but I think truth is the only thing that can create a good future for society. Scientists driven by careers efforts lie with computer models, which enables them to say the right things, although no empirical data supports it. A farce and modern tragedy. Some politicians also wants to replace current economic system with a distribution based “carbon system“. Anyway, to be on-topic agains data in these studies shows that a dominating sun can’t be ignored, but the great wall of China between politics/media and truth complicates things? Talk with your politicians, or journalists, or teachers… Truth should finally penetrate through the communication and prevail. Are we already on totalitarian territory? Shouln’t then communication be even more important, to bring down the wall?
[1] http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=1d78fc67-3784-4542-a07c-e7eeec46d1fc&k=0 )

anna v (05:20:01) :
” Solar variations are huge between day and night, winter and summer and latitudes.”
“The seasonal variations evidently make a large difference, from monsoons and trade winds to jet streams and ENSO and PDO, these are collective excitation modes by the sun’s energy beating in various rhythms ( day/night winter/summer,coriolis, tides) on the oceans and land. ”
But those variations are not caused by the sun’s output but rather conditions of the Earth. The Earth rotation creates the day and night, the Earth’s tilt creates the seasons and the Earth’s shape creates the difference in solar insolation at latitudes. The Sun doesn’t do anything different.

Richard Mackey 01:28:04
That’s good stuff, and thanks for reposting it. I’m sure you are aware of the study by Ruzmaiken, Feynman, and Yung showing a correlation between Nile River levels and aurorae borealis.
anna v 05:20:01
Do you think it is possible that the multiplicity of agents enhancing, in different ways, the small change in TSI can account for the lack of runaway sensitivity that has so worried Leif?
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From:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf
“Vincent Courtillot et al (2007) encountered a similar problem. (Courtillot, it should be noted, is the director of the Institute for the Study of the Globe at the University of Paris.) They found that time series for magnetic field variations appeared to correlate well with temperature measurements – suggesting a possible non-anthropogenic source of forcing. This was immediately criticized by Bard and Delaygue (2008), and Courtillot et al were given the conventional right to reply which they did in a reasonably convincing manner. What followed, however, was highly unusual. Raymond Pierrehumbert (a professor of meteorology at the University of Chicago and a fanatical environmentalist) posted a blog supporting Bard and Delaygue, accusing Courtillot et al of fraud, and worse. Alan Robock (a coauthor of Vinnikov et al mentioned in the preceding section) perpetuated the slander in a letter circulated to all officers of the American Geophysical Union. The matter was then taken up (in December of 2007) by major French newspapers (LeMonde, Liberation, and Le Figaro) that treated Pierrehumbert’s defamation as fact. As in the previous case, all references to the work of Courtillot et al refer to it as ‘discredited’ and no mention is made of their response. Moreover, a major argument against the position of Courtillot et al is that it contradicted the claim of the IPCC.”
Ah, “discreditation”…such a lovely process!

[snip]
4th of July, now the new national dependence day. Obama, congress and senate supports the us gov ruling every aspect of your lives.

anna v (05:20:01) :
UV changes by 8% for example and it is UV that penetrates the ocean depths
The same UV of course lands on plants/earth/houses. this would heat the “land” and hence the air above. A change in UV should show up as a temperature change (it does not in the FFTs). Or would you postulate that the UV is reflected from the earth?

Leif Svalgaard (09:04:22):
The problem is that you disconnect the obvious solar influence on local Weather and global Climate from other remainder domains which are more clearly affected by the intensity of solar irradiance and show the mechanisms through which the Sun drives climate.
At this pace, you’ll end believing that the Earth is an isolated system 100% protected from the fury of the Sun, if this has not occurred already.

There is ‘low quality’ research in climate science due to politicisation. The attempts to link hurricanes with global warming is one example (Holland and Webster, 2007 has been declared ‘statistically invalid’ in BAMS). Stefan Rahmstorf’s ‘smoothing’ of temperature observations in Copenhagen is another. The question about the sun-climate link is not ‘if’ but ‘how’ and ‘how big.’ I’m sure no one needs reminding that the AR4 LOSU for solar irradiance is ‘Low’ and even lower for other solar factors. Lockwood & Frohlich pointed to a solar amplifier and claimed that it wasn’t relevant ‘now’ even though they didn’t know the mechanism. Shaviv (2008) has provided more evidence of a solar amplifier:
Shaviv: “Yes, I pulled finger nails until the data said “I give up, I give up!”
o.k., now seriously.
In order to get the cleanest data I used the 24 tide gauges chosen by Douglas 1997 for different stringent criteria (e.g., in geologically stable locations, long records, consistent with other gauges nearby, etc). I used someone else’s tide gauges so that I could not be accused of cherry picking.
Secondly, because I am not interested in long term trends, but I am interested in short term derivatives, I treated the data differently than what other people do. Instead of averaging the station heights and then differentiating, I first differentiated the data for each station and then added the derivatives. The reason is that this way I avoid getting spurious jumps from the start or end of individual station data. Because it can give rise to spurious long term trends and because I don’t care about long term trends, I simply removed any linear trend from the data.
In the graph from 1870 that Lief Svalgaard points to, one cannot see the 11-year signal because the latter only amounts to a few cm amplitude (3.5 mm/yr!). It obviously drowns in the annual noise or the long term trends in Leif’s particular graph. Note that at least over the past 50 years, Holgate sees consistently the same 11-year variations in the data (e.g., referenced here). Of course, because he uses a lot of lower quality stations (177) and/or is not careful to first differentiate and then add the tidal gauge data, he sees somewhat different variations before 1950, than what I find. (Of course, this is not a problem because he does not care about 11-year variations). Anyway, did Holgate torture his data too?
Oh, and the fact that Lean 2000 is used for the TSI is totally meaningless. The correlation with any signal synchronized with the 11-year solar cycle would give the same result. Note that I removed any long term trends from the tide data and from the solar proxies (whether TSI or cosmic rays).”

Jeff Larson (04:51:01):
Yes, proper power spectrum analysis (not just FFTs, whose results, called “raw periodograms,” presume strict periodicity and vary as chi-square with only 2 degrees of freedom) has been applied often in search of a connection between the 11-yr Schwabe sunspot cycle and terrestrial temperature variations. The results of proper analysis have been almost uniformly negative, for the simple reason that surface temperature records usually have little spectral density near that fundamental frequency.
The situation becomes much more interesting, however, at the harmonics and subharmonics of the sunspot cycle–and all the more so when solar factors besides the TSI are considered.
In the present paper, a pronounced downward swing from the late 50’s to the mid-70’s is evident in both the solar metric and the (rather obscure) surface temperature metric. Both metrics employed then rise in concert from the trough, manifesting coherence at frequencies well below not only the Scwabe, but below that of the Hale (~22yr) cycle. Cross-spectrum analysis using different metrics consistently shows this multi-decadal coherence. Thus a necessary–but by no means sufficient–condition for a solar link to surface temperatures has been established.
The sufficent condition, i.e., an unambiguous physical mechansim, has yet to be discovered. I suspect that it is only a matter of time that accumulation of global satellite data reveals that mechanism–provided that the AGW crowd doesn’t totally hijack the science.

Leif Svalgaard (10:40:27) :
Nasif Nahle (10:07:06) :
Leif Svalgaard (09:04:22):
The problem is that you disconnect the obvious solar influence on local Weather and global Climate
What obvious influence?
Actually, the obvious influences are from primary school lessons:
1. Local temperatures depend on the intensity of solar irradiance, though local conditions could modify it.
2. Solar irradiance heats up the surface of oceans and land and the surface of oceans and land heats up the atmosphere.
3. The geographical distribution of biomes on Earth depends on latitudinal climate. Curiously, the distribution of biomes follows the line of the angle of incidence of the solar photon stream.
4. Evaporation from oceans is determined by the load of incident solar energy upon the ocean’s surface. Evaporation determines cloudiness, rainfall frequency and rainfall coverage, local temperatures and global temperatures.
5. As the Sun appears each morning on the horizon, the temperature of the surface exposed to the solar beams starts increasing and it starts decreasing as the Sun declines into the horizon.
6. The seasonal succession is due to the angle of incidence of the sunbeams upon Earth.
7. The champion on this issue is the iron stained grains, which definitely are shaped by the solar radiation. Its proportion is higher as the solar irradiance increases and gets lower as the solar irradiance decreases. Iron stained grains, curiously, are also used for knowing the climatic conditions prevailing at any geological era.
8. Winds are driven by the unequal heating of the surface, which is driven by the solar radiation.

Howard
I found this Received 16 February 2009; revised 24 April 2009; accepted 6 May 2009. Available online 18 May 2009 at Science Direct

We will be thankful, in the end, that sol doesn’t vary her output by more (or, indeed less) than 1/1000.
I don’t normally make predictions but a couple of brilliant people who work here do, so I guess it is rubbing off on me.
Richard Mackey (01:28:04) : – really great post.
timetochooseagain (09:02:23) : – legislative need trumps scientific investigation, court told.

Leif Svalgaard (12:22:17) :
Nasif Nahle (11:45:05) :
Actually, the obvious influences are from primary school lessons
You forgot the biggest of all
0) turn the Sun of if you don’t think the Sun has any influence.
I am almost sure that you, as a solar physicist, have had many experiences under the Moon’s shadow during solar eclipses. I am not a solar physicist, but I have experienced and observed dramatic changes of regional climate states during solar eclipses. I have observed how the temperature of ground and the atmosphere decreases as much as 10-14 degrees as the solar eclipses progress. I have experienced eddies which apparently come out from nothing during a calm day under the influence of a solar eclipse. Now… Imagine what would happen if the Sun turns off… Heh!
But none of you influences have anything to do with why the climate varies, so are hardly relevant.
Please, expand your posture on each one of the influences, which, by the way, are not mine.

Re: Nylo (01:28:27)
Sorry – that should be 22 year differencing in this case (see p.5, bottom right)).

tallbloke:
Spencer responded too:
http://climatesci.org/2008/05/23/follow-up-to-the-response-to-ray-pierrehumberts-real-climate-post-by-roy-spencer/

Re: John S. (11:11:06)
Thank you for these valuable notes.
– –
Re: anna v (05:20:01)
Well-said.
– –
Geoff Sharp (05:53:31) “[…] resist against those trying to stamp out fires that might one day provide the truth.”
With the stamping reaching a feverish pitch, one has to wonder what (beyond the obvious) is being protected.
– –
Jakers (15:10:23) “But it seems they found that solar activity and the actual temperature did not correlate well?”
The key is in this passage:
“When attempting to find long-term correlations, and possibly causal connections between observables linked to the climate system […] only the longer periods are relevant if the system is a linear one. But if it is nonlinear and moreover turbulent, cascades from the higher to the lower frequencies or the reverse can occur. In that sense, it is important to estimate the long-term behaviour of the higher frequencies (disturbances), a delicate task with many time series spanning several orders of magnitude in characteristic frequencies. […] complexity arises from interactions between different sources over different time scales. […] […] […] overwhelming effect of Earth’s annual orbit […]” – (Le Mouel, Courtillot, Blanter, & Shnirman)
It doesn’t take much of a nonlinear distortion to destroy (or impact) a linear correlation.
Also:
“It is not illegitimate to wonder about the significance and robustness of calculating a worldwide average for a disparate collection of trends.” – (Le Mouel, Courtillot, Blanter, & Shnirman)
They appear braced for irrational reactions.

So… um… you’re saying that the planet heats and cools based on the sun’s cycles and that it’s entering another cooling cycle? Not that being alarmed will change anything, but should I be alarmed and start wearing poster boards and hoarding the best winter gear LLBean has to offer?

Another worry about this paper… I can’t reproduce their solar magnetic curve from a naive running mean of sunspot numbers, which I think I would expect to be able to (should they be correlated, Leif?).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1920/to:1990/mean:120
The 1955-1960 peak is there, as is the little bounce around 1970, but their curve is missing the marked rise around 1980, and without that, their correlations with temperature wouldn’t be anywhere near as compelling. It’s as if their filtering method (if that’s what it is?) has a high-pass at around 20 years.
Also, it’s pretty clear to me that the sunspot peak significantly lags the temperature peak – by about 2 decades!:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1920/to:1990/mean:120/normalise/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1920/to:1990/mean:120/normalise
So I’m now seriously wondering whether I understand what it is they claim to be plotting… I’m going to have to read up about this “lifetime” business!

Sometimes, I think that this “Sun Is Responsible” argument is silly. Everyone knows that the Earth would not be warm, or as warm/hot as it is, without dear Sun. Yes, when the sun comes up, it is warmer on one’s spot on Earth — but it is cooler on the opposite side. Yes, when sun spots have “disappeared”, the Earth seems to have cooled considerably, but so far not predictably so. What it seems we are interested in (or at least I am and why I am choosing WUWT over most other blogs) is how the Sun interacts with Earth’s environment and position in the galaxy/universe. I am also interested in the chaotic nature of Earth’s weather/climate (or at least it seems chaotic at present).
I see no problem with one scientist saying that a perspective has been proven irrelevant — as-long-as-the-evidence-is-presented. And I see no problem with the scientist of the forcefully disputed position returning with more evidence in support of his/her ideas. Let the disputation focus on the hypothesis and evidence. I have experienced some very productive “yelling” on your blog, Anthony. Scientific disputations are not business meetings; in that regard I disagree with you. And yet it is yours, for which I am very grateful. Let the good times roll.

bill (06:31:40):
Today, I only have time for a quick note, namely, that certain nonlinear systems can indeed “pump” subharmonics of the forcing. Linear circuits are incapable of subharmonic response.
P. S. Have you ever plotted your FFT results as an equi-spaced sequence of frequencies at which they are computed. It is in the frequency domain–and not that of the period you plot–that the Parseval relationship between the magnitudes of the F. coefficients and the total variance applies. You might also be surprised how much those coefficients vary with slight changes in record length. That’s why raw FFT periodograms are not relied upon in power spectrum estimation.

To me it looks tantalisingly like there is a link between Earth climate and solar activity which is greater than can be explained by changes in TSI alone.
If we better understood the mechanisms which lie behind the suns 22y cycle, this would perhaps give us a better understanding of what we are missing.
My thinking is that we could, perhaps, make headway by looking for something that could be effecting the chaotic processes of both the sun and the earth. An external force could be effecting the whole of the solar system on a periodic basis, and have slightly differing effects on both the earth and sun regarding timing of the manifestation of event and the effects on differing mechanisms.
It sometimes only takes a small nudge to a chaotic system to cause a large event.

The Chandler wobble period plummeted from ~1921 until ~1942. The phase reversal was in ~1931 and can be linked (statistically – I’m still waiting for a physicist to explain the mechanism) to a very unique combination of the following: (1) terrestrial polar motion, (2) solar system dynamics, & (3) the lunar nodal cycle. The alignment is precise and unique in the entire polar motion record (1846-present) – i.e. there is no other such spike.
With awareness of this, some of you should be able to pull several threads together (e.g. precipitation, length of day, polar motion, atmospheric angular momentum, SOI, NAO, solar variation, temperature [global, regional, minimum, maximum, average, extreme monthly minimum, & extreme monthly maximum], rate of change of carbon dioxide concentration, …)

tallbloke (23:21:38) “Sounds like a piece of cake. I notice you are saying other people should do it though. ;-)”
Clarification:
I’ve done the preliminary analyses.

Paul Vaughan (02:04:12) :
were you the person I was conversing with on an old thread about CO2 and what causes the sudden dip (still no plausible answer by the way!!!!).
The final statements you made concerned inaccuracies you uncovered in the CO2 records. I was going to reply but the thread became old and you might have missed it
Anyway here is my comparison of Barrow data when sampled Monthly and “hourly” – all flagged errors have been removed from the hourly data.
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/2339/co2barrowhourvsmonthobs.jpg
The only errors I can see are that the hourly data is offset by +2 weeks from the monthly. Is that the complaint to which you refered?
This is the plot that sparked my query – “what causes the sudden dip in CO2 that dominates the globe including half the southern hemisphere, and why does it occur within a cople of monts from barrow to christmas island?”
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/6153/co2manysitesch4.jpg

tallbloke (08:32:30) “If you want to see the solar signal in the temperature series just smooth the temp series on a 43 month moving average […]”
Leif Svalgaard (08:48:45) “[…] the signal in your graph disappears when you just go a bit further back, e.g. to 1880.”
bill (09:06:23) “43 months – why? […] wonderful cherry orchard!”
tallbloke (09:24:51) “1910 on is more reliable SST data IMO. 43 months because that is 1/3 of the solar cycle.”
–
It may not have been evident, but my post at Paul Vaughan (18:11:23) [July 3, 2009] relates to the preceding quotes.
–
When one takes the harmonics of polar motion into account in analyses, whole arrays of phase relations crystallize.
–
Some would justify 43 month bandwidth as enough to suppress (some of) ENSO-related – or simply interannual – variation. 39 month time-integration can be theoretically justified by noting the beat period of the annual & Chandler wobbles – & working out the harmonics.
Clarification:
39 months on average — keep in mind that we’re dealing with nonstationary signals [which is why we can’t stop at basic FFT].
For deeper insight – Step 1:
Maximize the modulus of a Morlet (wavenumber = 2pi) complex wavelet transform of the magnitude of the gradient of the 2-dimensional (x,y) polar motion vector in the time-domain.
–
Once one takes the Chandler wobble reversal into account, the simplicity of previously-perplexing phase relations begins crystallizing.
–
For example, you should immediately see a problem with Leif’s claim (quoted above) as soon as you handle 1931 plus/minus a decade according to its unique conditions. You can create what statisticians call a “conditioning variable” – or what electrical engineers call a “switch”. (Note: You’ll actually need at least 2 switches.)
–
Everyone should read the following book – & for every detail:
William S. Cleveland (1993). Visualizing Data.
http://www.stat.purdue.edu/~wsc/visualizing.html
Pay attention, in particular, to everything about coplots (short for conditioning plot) if you want to enhance your ability to disentangle complexity – via conditioning.
–
Noteworthy:
1931 is dead-centre in Dr. Ivanka Charvatova’s trefoil window 1906-1956.
If one uses cross-wavelet acoustic analysis, one will find 1:2:3 resonance broken at 1931 and nowhere else during the polar motion record.
If anyone knows an open-minded astrophysicist who would be willing to patiently & respectfully help me work on the (physical) mechanics of this unique disruption of terrestrial phase relations (which can be precisely documented quantitatively via cross-wavelet acoustic analysis), please let me know. Statistical reasoning suggests this to be a MAJOR clue about the terrestrial hydrologic cycle.
–
Once again:
Strongly recommended reading:
Jan Vondrak (1999). Earth rotation parameters 1899.7-1992.0 after reanalysis within the hipparcos frame. Surveys in Geophysics 20, 169-195.
http://www.yspu.yar.ru/astronomy/lib/Rotation.pdf
[See particularly section 3.2.]
J. Vondrak & C. Ron (2005). The great Chandler wobble change in 1923-1940 re-visited. In: H.-P. Plag, B. Chao, R. Gross, & T. Van Dam (eds.), Forcing of polar motion in the Chandler frequency band: A contribution to understanding interannual climate variations, Cahiers du Centre Europeen de Geodynamique et de Seismologie 24, 39-47.
–
Also:
1) N.S. Sidorenkov (2005). Physics of the Earth’s rotation instabilities. Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions 24(5), 425-439.
http://images.astronet.ru/pubd/2008/09/28/0001230882/425-439.pdf
[See particularly the “thermal engine” conceptual framework laid out in section 2.]
2) W. Kosek (2005). Excitation of the Chandler wobble by the geophysical annual cycle.
http://www.cbk.waw.pl/~kosek/s11/LxPcorr_kosek.pdf
3) Harald Schmitz-Hubsch & Harald Schuh (1999). Seasonal and short-period fluctuations of Earth rotation investigated by wavelet analysis. Technical Report 1999.6-2 Department of Geodesy & Geoinformatics, Stuttgart University, p.421-432.
http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/gi/research/schriftenreihe/quo_vadis/pdf/schmitzhuebsch.pdf
4) Y.H. Zhou, D.W. Zheng, & X.H. Liao (2001). Wavelet analysis of interannual LOD, AAM, and ENSO: 1997-98 El Nino and 1998-99 La Nina signals. Journal of Geodesy 75, 164-168.
5) Gross, R. S. (2005). The observed period and Q of the Chandler wobble. In: H.-P. Plag, B. Chao, R. Gross, & T. Van Dam (eds.), Forcing of polar motion in the Chandler frequency band: A contribution to understanding interannual climate variations, Cahiers du Centre Europeen de Geodynamique et de Seismologie 24, 31-37.
http://www.sbl.statkart.no/literature/plag_etal_2005_editors/gross_1_CWTQ_final.pdf

@Paul Vaughan… Oh, Paul! Haven’t you realized that the Sun is a small torch oil-painted on a crystal sphere in the sky and has nothing to do with anything is happening on Earth? Welcome to wonderland! 🙂

Re: Nasif Nahle (09:25:58)
One begins to wonder if ‘global’ security somehow depends on Leif’s ability to keep the general public believing in Santa Claus.

Leif Svalgaard (11:55:50) “[…] when asked to reply to straight questions, squirming to avoid a straight answer doesn’t help your cause.”
Appropriate response is not always a straightforward reply. (It is unwise to take partisan-bait.)
–
Leif Svalgaard (11:55:50) “Perhaps you could clarify precisely what is supposed to linked with what…”
In increments perhaps.
To get started:
Does temperature (or temperature range) affect geomagnetic indices?

The Sun heats the planet and we know by how much. Without it we would be colder. Much colder. Anyone who argues that the Sun has nothing to do with our climate is crazy. I would not say such a thing. Leif would not say such a thing. Leif and all the other scientists I have read know how the Sun heats the planet and know how the slight variation in the Sun changes how much it slightly changes its capacity to heat the planet. None of that is arguable. To try to make it an argument speaks volumes about the poster who engages in such diversion nonsense. The argument here is whether or not the Sun changes in additional ways to affect the larger temperature swings we experience over decades or if it is an endogenous phenomenon. There are hypothesized mechanisms available for endogenous drivers that far outweigh in number, strength, and plausibility any hypothesized solar drivers of variability. It remains, at the end of the day, that endogenous drivers rule, so far.

Pamela Gray (18:02:34) :
The argument here is whether or not the Sun changes in additional ways to affect the larger temperature swings we experience over decades or if it is an endogenous phenomenon. There are hypothesized mechanisms available for endogenous drivers that far outweigh in number, strength, and plausibility any hypothesized solar drivers of variability. It remains, at the end of the day, that endogenous drivers rule, so far.
Yes, Pamela, that’s the argument here. Nobody is rejecting the idea on the existence of intrinsic and/or inherent factors which drive the climate of Earth. For example, the ocean acts as a thermoregulator. However, the Sun has been, is and will be always the primary source of energy and every change in the intensity of its radiation has been, is and will be affecting the climate on the Earth. I am talking about global climate.
The carbon dioxide has not thermophysical properties as to cause climate changes; it is not a primary source of energy, so we cannot say it “heats up the Earth”. What heats up the Earth is the Sun and the change of temperature of the Earth is directly proportional to the load of heat incoming from the Sun. If the Sun diminishes its output of energy, the load of energy received by the Earth would be lesser, etc.

Re: Pamela Gray (18:02:34)
Terrestrial polar motion occurs on Earth.

Paul Vaughn
I have checked the NOAA data for monthly and hourly CO2 data and it is basically the same plot as for CDIAC monthly and NOAA houly. About a 2 week lag between month and hourly.
I did not follow your suggestion as no time. I have suggested that you show what I am supposed to see. But you come back with more stuff – just no time with a full time job and family to do this stuff. Please show all here what you have discovered!
As to finding a solar influence on temperatures in the noise of the FFTs As I (and Leif) have stated – there is a signal somewhere in the noise – increase solar radiation and you will increase temperature) We are not trying to prove it is there, we KNOW it is. All the filtering, differentiation, signal analysis will eventually pick up the solar signiature this is not in dispute. It is SIMPLY that the signiature is so far in the general noise of temperature fluctuation that it can be ignored.
Nasif Nahle (21:25:36) : What heats up the Earth is the Sun and the change of temperature of the Earth is directly proportional to the load of heat incoming from the Sun
This statement is inaccurate (but approximate)
1. Taking the earth as a black body radiator as the earth heats it will non linearly lose more radiation.
2 As the earth heats More cloud / water vapour less ice etc will cause a non linear effect.
Solar radiation controls temperature but in a nonlinear complex manner.

bill (04:07:13) :
Nasif Nahle (21:25:36): What heats up the Earth is the Sun and the change of temperature of the Earth is directly proportional to the load of heat incoming from the Sun
This statement is inaccurate (but approximate)
1. Taking the earth as a black body radiator as the earth heats it will non linearly lose more radiation.
2 As the earth heats More cloud / water vapour less ice etc will cause a non linear effect.
Solar radiation controls temperature but in a nonlinear complex manner.
Nasif Nahle (21:25:36): What heats up the Earth is the Sun and the change of temperature of the Earth is directly proportional to the load of heat incoming from the Sun
This statement is inaccurate (but approximate)
1. Taking the earth as a black body radiator as the earth heats it will non linearly lose more radiation.
2 As the earth heats More cloud / water vapour less ice etc will cause a non linear effect.
Solar radiation controls temperature but in a nonlinear complex manner.
You took only a fragment of my statement. Here the whole paragraph:
“What heats up the Earth is the Sun and the change of temperature of the Earth is directly proportional to the load of heat incoming from the Sun. If the Sun diminishes its output of energy, the load of energy received by the Earth would be lesser, etc.”
Is it inaccurate? Please, this is not the Bible from which you can cherry pick only those sentences and phrases that best suit to a homily.
In my response to Pamela I said:
“Yes, Pamela, that’s the argument here. Nobody is rejecting the idea on the existence of intrinsic and/or inherent factors which drive the climate of Earth. For example, the ocean acts as a thermoregulator.”
Have your doubts were satisfied?

Leif Svalgaard (09:38:22) :
Nasif Nahle (08:45:10) :
“What heats up the Earth is the Sun and the change of temperature of the Earth is directly proportional to the load of heat incoming from the Sun. If the Sun diminishes its output of energy, the load of energy received by the Earth would be lesser, etc.”
Is it inaccurate? Please, this is not the Bible from which you can cherry pick only those sentences and phrases that best suit to a homily.
Yes it is wildly inaccurate. The temperature of the Earth varies with the fourth root of the incoming heat. Double the heat and the temperature only goes up 19%. This is the reason that the effect of a change of TSI is so small.
However, it is directly proportional. If the incident solar irradiance upon the Earth’s surface goes up, the temperature of the surface goes up also. It would be inaccurate if the incident solar radiation striking on the Earth’s surface would go up and the temperature of the surface would go down. But not, it is directly proportional, even when there are intrinsic factors which could modify the effect.

Leif,
If I may comment.
T^4 = S is proportional, in this case exponentially proportional, not directly proportional. Unfortunately many people use proportional sloppily to mean if x rises when y rises, then x is proportional to y.

k
Ћ = ———- (C) [(g β (Ts – T ∞) D^3 / v^2) (Pr)]^a
D^3
q = Ћ A (Ts – T∞)

deathsinger (11:34:03) :
Leif,
If I may comment.
T^4 = S is proportional, in this case exponentially proportional, not directly proportional. Unfortunately many people use proportional sloppily to mean if x rises when y rises, then x is proportional to y.
Yes, you are right:
http://id.mind.net/~zona/mstm/physics/mechanics/forces/directProportion/directProportion.html

Correction: Add K/W m^-2 after 0.12.

Leif Svalgaard (13:01:45) :
As I pointed out. But perhaps you were just being sloppy when you said that “the change of temperature of the Earth is directly proportional to the load of heat incoming from the Sun” and you meant ‘proportional to a [small] change of the heat incoming from the Sun’. I think that would have been the appropriate response rather than all your Greek symbols 🙂
Ok, I made a careless use of language; it’s not easy for me to express my ideas in a foreign language and I use to drop or raise one or more words; thus it is easier for me to express my ideas through Greek symbols. 😉

Re: bill (04:07:13)
As previously indicated, you can difference the series to see how they have imposed invariant seasonal structure upon the “data” (when you have time). CDIAC has a note at the bottom of their “data” files to alert people of the processing, but the articles to which they refer are not publicly available.
The diagnostics I described (from Stat 101) take only 2 minutes to complete. The lesson sinks in best when the exercise is conducted first-hand. When you have time, you will see that the residuals do not show random scatter (as they must in order for the model to be valid); rather, they show an exceptionally-systematic pattern (which is the most extreme model violation you can get).
Why is CDIAC presenting (badly) modeled-“data” instead of data? An analogy would be if before the sunspot numbers were released, they were all adjusted so that all solar cycles showed the exact same shape (but retained differing peak-amplitudes).
For anyone who studies phase relations & timescales other than 1 year, the preceding is of fundamental importance. (Based upon your various comments, you are restricting your view to the annual timescale and ignoring phase relations.) [Note: Don’t confuse timescale with resolution – for example, you can study hourly (resolution) data at the 17 month timescale.]
– –
Leif, you appear to be taking advantage of the general public’s failure to distinguish between linear relations and phase relations – capitalizing on this as an opportunity to drive a wedge between peoples’ common sense & their need for social harmony (achievable through conformity to your positions).
You leave the impression that your attitude is that since the general public is “never going to understand”, you are compelled to mislead (since you perceive yourself as advancing the lesser of 2 evils – not both of which can be avoided).
You are underestimating the audience.
– –
Re: woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (02:59:34)
Thanks for the comments on the woodfortrees “isolate” function – much appreciated.
May I ask for the story behind the name “woodfortrees”? This is of interest to me, in part, because I formally studied forestry & forest engineering and worked in forest research for a number of years. You’ve got me wondering if the development of the site had something to do with forest mensuration, biometry, &/or wood science.
Before addressing your other comments, I want to run some calculations and check some references (partly because I believe their procedure may be equivalent to another procedure I have seen used). For now I will note that while I do not suspect cherry picking, I do have concerns about the failure to include the 11a timescale summaries for comparison. [Ideally a multi-timescale color-contour plot would have been presented – among other benefits, this would have pre-empted “cherry picking” suspicions.]

Re: Leif Svalgaard
Repeating the answer from 12 days ago:
“Investigating relationships possibly involving SIM is worthwhile, in part since future SIM can be accurately predicted.”
I will also reiterate the qualifier:
“I’m not saying I agree with the more speculative comments Dr. Charvatova makes.”
…And I’ll stress this again:
One needs to maintain unwavering awareness of confounding when investigating what Dr. Charvatova calls “SIM”, since SIM is confounded with other indices (some of which are physically meaningful).
–
EOP (Earth Orientation Parameters) are affected by solar system dynamics & terrestrial weather patterns. This is not in dispute.
All of those “classes of people” [see Leif Svalgaard (18:11:10)] are capable of understanding that it does not take much of a nonlinear distortion to impact – or destroy – a linear correlation. Linear methods alone are insufficient for thoroughly investigating nonlinear relations.
Some of the relentless focus on amplitude needs to be diverted to phase, scale, conditioning, rate of change, & gradients.
Clearly the physicists (& all others) are overlooking important mechanics — otherwise we’d have all the answers and WUWT would need to find a new theme. I state this objectively, not maliciously.
I encourage you to refrain from disparagingly attacking other disciplines that may be able to help point you in the right direction in your search for missing mechanisms. This is a complex interdisciplinary problem.
If you look into what I am saying about the terrestrial Chandler wobble phase reversal, you will discover substance (even if you ignore the solar system centre of mass). If you think I’m peddling a statistics-based theory of barycentric influence on solar activity, you have fantastically misunderstood.
Despite your claims, I have doubts about your agenda; however, there’s an area of high priority where it seems we agree:
The truth takes precedence over social harmony.

Re: Leif Svalgaard (22:06:57)
You still appear to be on the attack. It won’t be sensible to address all of your comments, but I’ll address a few points:
1)
You appear to have misunderstood (or misread) the following:
Paul Vaughan: “If you think I’m peddling a statistics-based theory of barycentric influence on solar activity, you have fantastically misunderstood.”
I will reiterate here that my earlier comments are about terrestrial phenomena.
2)
Leif Svalgaard (22:06:57) “Most scientists do not consider just a correlation to mean anything.”
Surely you realize you are wasting my time with such elementary notes.
3)
Leif Svalgaard (22:06:57) “Your statement seems to imply that everything we need is sitting just in front of our noses and that we are just ‘overlooking’ the obvious.”
Yes. That is the nature of complexity – i.e. it’s not necessarily easy to figure out even if simple.

“… BUT THE CORRELATIONS BREAK DOWN AFTER …”
Of course the correlations break down! That is *exactly* what you would expect if you are looking at LINEAR shadows of NON-linear relations! It suggests a problem with assumptions. Only once all of the terms, interactions, & dimensionality are *fully* worked out will equations be linearizable. Perhaps some fluid is being treated as Newtonian when it should be treated as visco-elastic. And perhaps also some terms in some differential equations are being set to zero when this is not *always valid. Perhaps some mass is being treated as a point when it should be treated as a series of concentric shells with differential response to gravitational accelerations. Perhaps some probability density functions are being assumed to be of one form when they are really of another. Until the morphology of the various nonlinearities are all worked out you NEED to pay some more respect to phase relations Leif — and I’ve given you some big clues — if you haven’t turned up anything interesting with the clues I’ve shared about the Chandler wobble phase reversal, then I know you haven’t made much of an effort.

@Paul Vaughan… Can you give me a link to the whole process? I see the theory very interesting, but my knowledge on it is fragmented. Thanks!

Re: Nasif Nahle (09:03:03)
I had basic insights into this research problem as early as September 2008, but in the past 2 weeks, a pile of clean results avalanched on me after a key realization – and I’m still digging out. I’m used to communicating via software called FirstClass, which handles images beautifully. I’m finding this text-only medium quite limiting, but as I’ve indicated to tallbloke, I’ll look into webspace access. Even if I secure webspace access, it is going to take me weeks-to-months – perhaps years – to organize my work & pursue the new leads I’ve turned up — and an audience will have to have intuition about cross-wavelet acoustics to appreciate some of the findings. In the meantime, if someone can confirm that they have reproduced my step 1, I imagine that will be of interest to others who need to see reproducibility.
I have been advised by one of my senior colleagues to stop responding to Leif Svalgaard.

Here is the best wavelet tutorial of which I know:
http://www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/lewalle/tutor/tutor.html
It is worth going down every link-branch on that site in all detail. The site pitches at a truly introductory level. Someone with no background could spend weeks looking at other wavelet sites and get nowhere – and then get all the wavelet basics in a few hours on this site. There are a LOT of BAD wavelet sites that are just scrapes of other bad wavelet sites – it is epidemic.
The links between LOD, GLAAM, & ENSO are well-established and can be traced back decades in the literature. You might want to dig into the references listed in papers 1, 4, & 5 which I listed at Paul Vaughan (16:56:10). You may also have noted links provided by Richard Mackey (to Lambeck) & Ian Wilson (to Sidorenkov) during recent months — and the following (which includes tons of good references) is likely to be of interest:
R.S. Gross (2007). Earth rotation variations – long period (3.09). In: T. Herring & G. Schubert (eds.), Treatise on Geophysics, Volume 3, Geodesy, pp. 239-294.
ftp://euler.jpl.nasa.gov/outgoing/EarthRotation_TOGP2007.pdf
You may also be aware that Klyashtorin & Sharp make use of the polar motion harmonics I explained above:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/006/y5028e/
–
If anyone knows of any very concise summaries of the spatiotemporal extent & phasing of the 1930s drought (that affected at least North America), please let me know. Also, if anyone knows of any “respected” regional &/or global precipitation series, I will appreciate links.
Related:
“Currie (1996), who employs filtering techniques commonly used in electrical engineering, seems to contend that significant lunisolar components are detectable in a very wide variety of terrestrial time series, including virtually all climate series. He investigates terrestrial geographic sites individually (thousands of them) and cautions that zonal &/or global averaging masks locally detectable signals that are intermittently out-of-phase with those at different locations, even ones relatively nearby. […] Currie (1996) suggests that “on decadal and duodecadal time-scales the spectrum of climate is signal-like rather than noise-like, as radically assumed by statisticians and mathematicians the past 70 years.”” (Vaughan 2008)
Currie, R. G. (1996). Variance contribution of luni-solar (Mn) and solar cycle (Sc) signals to climate data. International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 16, No. 12, 1343-1364.

tallbloke, your intuition about acceleration, etc. is good — differencing approximates a derivative. The differencing is this simple: Say your x series is in column A in Excel – then enter in cell B2 the following:
+A2-A1
Copy B2 & paste it all the way down column B.
–
LOD & AAM:
When you have time, I encourage you to study:
a) figure 1a in Schmitz-Hubsch & Schuh (1999)
http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/gi/research/schriftenreihe/quo_vadis/pdf/schmitzhuebsch.pdf
b) Figure 6 in Sidorenkov (2005)
http://images.astronet.ru/pubd/2008/09/28/0001230882/425-439.pdf
c) figures 1, 2, & 3 in Zhou, Zheng, & Liao (2001)
d) everything Richard Gross has to say in Gross (2007)
ftp://euler.jpl.nasa.gov/outgoing/EarthRotation_TOGP2007.pdf
You will see that the PWP (Pacific Warm Pool) is something Zhou & associates are looking at to explain “left-overs” not explained by AAM (Atmospheric Angular Momentum). If you dig into Gross’s work, you’ll see that he looks at OAM (Oceanic Angular Momentum).
It is important to keep in mind that most experts agree that AAM accounts for a large proportion of LOD variation.
There is plenty of quantified speculation about polar motion, but my impression from digging in the literature is that it is not as well understood as LOD, even though certain aspects of it are certainly very well-understood.
The paper that originally drew my attention to polar motion was the following:
Yndestad, H. (2006). The influence of the lunar nodal cycle on Arctic climate. ICES Journal of Marine Science 63(3), 401-420.
http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/63/3/401
Over time I have developed the view that, while Dr. Yndstad’s research is a very important contribution, there are problems with his interpretations; I believe there are confounded-influences on polar motion (no simple matter to disentangle). There are different factors with very similar harmonic scales that show up in polar motion phase relations analyses (details will have to wait for another day).
–
Regarding wavelets:
It would take me weeks of heavy, more-than-full-time engagement to develop a good “Wavelets in Excel for Beginners” website. For now, I suggest you focus on getting the basics.
The simplest way to think of it is that the wavelet can shrink and grow —- at each size which it can assume, it takes a trip through the data, pausing at each time-step to measure how well its shape correlates with the data. As you know, correlations range from -1 to +1 – so if the wavelet records -1, that means it matched that data perfectly in a given time-step-window (& at a given size), but that it had to flip over to do it.
For each wavelet size (timescale) there is a string of measurements. In a wavelet plot the strings of measurements are stacked vertically on the timescale axis. Don’t confuse time (horizontal axis) with timescale (vertical axis) on wavelet plots.
What I’ve just described is for a real wavelet. To get at phase information, complex wavelets (with a real & an imaginary part) are used. The imaginary part is phase-shifted by 90 degrees (seahorse-shaped) so that it sees “uphill” vs. “downhill” (upside-down seahorse) while the real part (mexican-hat-shaped) sees “peak” versus “valley” (upside-down mex-hat). This enables one to know – from a pair of correlations – things like “going uphill & approaching a peak” or “in a valley bottom & about to go uphill”, etc. —- i.e. it takes you a step beyond just knowing “on a peak” or “on the side of a hill” — it puts these states into a richer context.
The mexican hat & the seahorse are cooperative traveling buddies. They have different shapes, but they always stick together & assume the same size. These explorers are always curious to see how well their complementary shapes match their surroundings on the time-series-landscape as they slide & change size together. Mathematicians call them a “complex pair” because of their relative appearance, but their view of the world is simple.
Wavelets come in other shapes. The Morlet wavelet gets lots of attention. It can be adjusted to control how many waves it has in its sliding window. This means it can be adjusted to achieve good timescale-resolution – but at the expense of lost time-resolution. For graphs that illustrate this point nicely, see here:
http://www.clecom.co.uk/science/autosignal/help/Continuous_Wavelet_Transfor.htm
If you get the basics from the tutorial at …
http://www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/lewalle/tutor/tutor.html
…to the point where you can look at the regular timeplots on that site and see how they map onto the wavelet plots and vice versa, that will be enough to tide you over until you master wavelet transform calculations — i.e. at least you’ll be able to read others’ work while you are learning to write your own.
Advised: Go through the tutorial links in the order in which they are presented.
Wavelet concepts are simple, but since the edge-effect varies with timescale – i.e. the wavelet hangs further off the edges of a time series as it grows – computer-coding gets fussy. This is just a technical issue – so reading comes fast, but writing takes a little longer.
I don’t have multiple free weeks to explain all of the coding technicalities now – and “part-way” coding doesn’t cut-it with computers. I suggest moving at whatever pace you can, with the first priority being ability to read wavelet plots.
For now I’ll take questions on that. I’m hoping to be positioned to start posting graphs within hours-to-days (there is a technical issue – & I never underestimate them).

Let’s see if this link works:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ChandlerPeriod.PNG

Also bill, why the 10 year averaging?