Guest Post by David Archibald
NASA’s David Hathaway has adjusted his expectations of Solar Cycle 24 downwards. He is quoted in the New York Times here Specifically, he said:
” Still, something like the Dalton Minimum — two solar cycles in the early 1800s that peaked at about an average of 50 sunspots — lies in the realm of the possible.”
NASA has caught up with my prediction in early 2006 of a Dalton Minimum repeat, so for a brief, shining moment of three years, I have had a better track record in predicting solar activity than NASA.
The graphic above is modified from a paper I published in March, 2006. Even based on our understanding of solar – climate relationship at the time, it was evident the range of Solar Cycle 24 amplitude predictions would result in a 2°C range in temperature. The climate science community was oblivious to this, despite billions being spent. To borrow a term from the leftist lexicon, the predictions above Badalyan are now discredited elements.
Let’s now examine another successful prediction of mine. In March, 2008 at the first Heartland climate conference in New York, I predicted that Solar Cycle 24 would mean that it would not be a good time to be a Canadian wheat farmer. Lo and behold, the Canadian wheat crop is down 20% this year due to a cold spring and dry fields. Story here.
The oceans are losing heat, so the Canadian wheat belt will just get colder and drier as Solar Cycle 24 progresses. As Mark Steyn recently said, anyone under the age of 29 has not experienced global warming. A Dalton Minimum repeat will mean that they will have to wait to the age of 54 odd to experience a warming trend.
Where to now? The F 10.7 flux continues to flatline. All the volatility has gone out of it. In terms of picking the month of minimum for the Solar Cycle 23/24 transition, I think the solar community will put it in the middle of the F 10.7 quiet period due to the lack of sunspots. We won’t know how long that quiet period is until solar activity ramps up again. So picking the month of minimum at the moment may just be guessing.
Dr Hathaway says that we are not in for a Maunder Minimum, and I agree with him. I have been contacted by a gentleman from the lower 48 who has a very good solar activity model. It hindcasts the 20th century almost perfectly, so I have a lot of faith in what it is predicting for the 21st century, which is a couple of very weak cycles and then back to normal as we have known it. I consider his model to be a major advance in solar science.
What I am now examining is the possibility that there will not be a solar magnetic reversal at the Solar Cycle 24 maximum.
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Richard (23:23:37) :
Are you saying that if the distance of the Sun is greater than it is now in the Northern Winter, we will receive less radiative energy from the sun due to this greater distance, which will cause the ice ages?
Essentially, yes. The Northern Hemisphere will receive less energy. That is the key. Because the Northern Hemisphere is where the great ice masses form. But there are good explanations of all this all over the internet. Geoff gave you a good link.
Leif Svalgaard (17:50:05) :
As an example of unsound argument, you said “Instead of the heat being lost to space, it gets into the earth climate system and does the rounds of increasing atmospheric angular momentum,” It does not increase angular momentum, it increases temperature, stuff expands and changes the moment of inertia [not angular momentum which is conserved], and so on. Sloppy, vague, and oversimple use of fragments of knowledge do not cut it.
It was late for me, I had done a lot of typing, and I was being elliptical. I assumed you could make the step with me from; “heat… get’s into the earth’s climate system” to the fact temperatures rise without me having to spell it out. Little did I realise you would pounce on it as a debating point-win you could then use to denigrate and insult me with.
OVERALL angular momentum of the system is conserved (more or less), but not that of the earth’s atmosphere, which changes according to it’s interactions with the crust through the core motion component of length of day change , and changing temperature via input from the sun.
To turn your insult back on you, saying that the atmospheric angular momentum is conserved is an example of your sloppy, vague, and oversimple application of fragments of knowledge to a complex non-homogeneous system and does not cut it.
If global atmospheric angular momentum is conserved, why does the curve on this graph go up and down?
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/aam/glaam.76.present.gif
Leif Svalgaard (23:48:17) :
Richard (23:23:37) :
Are you saying that if the distance of the Sun is greater than it is now in the Northern Winter, we will receive less radiative energy from the sun due to this greater distance, which will cause the ice ages?
“Essentially, yes. The Northern Hemisphere will receive less energy..”
Well then that is what I asked – how much less energy due to the greater distance. And I think the answer is not much.
From Geoff’s link:
“Among the most intriguing enigmas of the climate system is that on the one hand, the Earth’s climate appears to be exquisitely sensitive to relatively minor variations in the distribution of insolation owing to orbital variations, but on the other hand, it is in a grosser sense stable, in that it has varied only moderately in response to a roughly 30% increase in solar insolation over the life of the planet. ” Kerry Emanuel (JGR 107, D9, ACL4)
This is what I have been saying too – The Earth’s climate is very sensitive to small changes that we receive of the Sun’s energy.
And on a greater scale – the Earth’s climate is highly homeostatic. It tends to come back to its former state of equilibrium. Temperatures fall but then they rise again. They go down but then they come up.
Geoff “..here is a good presentation ..which ends stating the Earth’s insolation is 30% higher now than the last ice age.”
Where on earth does it state that? If the insolation varied in total only 30% over the whole life of the Earth, I would be very surprised if it varied by this amount only since the last ice-age.
Leif – ..we do not know the exact relationship between the changes in the Earth’s orbit and the changes in climate..
“The key word is ‘exact’. We know in large measures how it works.”
No we do not have a clue of why the 100,000 cycle works. Just a few guesses
But thank you Geoff for your link – it is very informative.
I did say earlier that I had read that the change in insolation due to variation of the ellipse is ~0.2% around the mean and in the 100,000 year cycle it is negligible.
And the change in seasonal insolation due to tilt and precession varies by ~10% about a mean value, at 41,000 year cycles at high and mid latitudes.
Leif Svalgaard (23:43:39) :
From 10Be cosmic ray fluxes Steinhilber et al. reports:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Holocene-TSI.pdf
that
“The entire record of TSI covering the past 9300 years is shown in Figure 3. Throughout this period TSI has varied by approximately 2Wm−2″
This extreme variation was reached only rarely and most of the time TSI stays within +/-0.5 w/m2 of average. A variation much lower than normally assumed in climate studies.
Kudos to Steinhilber, Frohlich, et al for including:
Table 1. Increase of TSI inWm−2 between theMMand the solar
cycle average (1365.9Wm−2) of solar cycle 22 (19861996)
of the PMOD composite [Fr¨ohlich, 2009] in comparison with
earlier reconstructions.
Which reveals that a small change in the slope of TSI curve (depending on whose bridging of the ACRIM gap you believe), will produce large changes (several fold) in the estimated TSI variation over the centuries between the medieval maximum, little ice age, and now.
This is key to understanding how the solar influence on planetary temperature can be smoothed away by tiny ‘adjustments’ to the TSI data.
Richard (00:05:47) :
Richard, I am not suggesting the total insolation will vary by 30% when the ellipse is at its greatest, but that at the furthest point this is what can be expected. There are swings and roundabouts involved. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find the paper that quantifies the overall difference. Do you have a paper that suggests no or very minor difference across the different orbit shapes.
Leif Svalgaard (22:30:26) :
“The black body is already warmer. If the radiation increases 10%, the temperature will increase 2.5%, no matter if the body was black or white.”
How did the black body get warmer? It could only have if it absorbed more radiation incident on it than the white body.
If they both started at the same temperature they would always remain the same according to you. Nope sorry Leif, I don’t buy it. You are pretty scathing in your criticism of others and I’m not letting you off the hook either.
Also – But the change insolation from Jan 2008 to Jan 2009, due to any change in the Earth’s orbit is not very great? That is the change we are talking about. Like with like.
“No, that is not important [as it is indeed small]. What is important is the change from January to July which is 90 W/m2 or about hundred times larger than the solar cycle change. Now, why is that important? It is because the date when we are closest to the Sun varies, which means that in Northern winter we get more heat from the Sun now than if we were closest to the Sun in July, in which case the Northern winters would be much more severe.”
Then you admit that all we are talking about are the changes in insolation due to the change in the distance from the sun of the Northern winters. This is small.
Why do you throw in the change in insolation due to the seasons, which are large as everyone knows? This has no relevance to either your claim of the cause of the ice ages or my argument that small changes in solar energy received by the Earth can cause large changes in the climate.
Leif Svalgaard (15:43:29) :
My main issue with this is that the result is not observed [i.e. all the correlations are so poor that they carry no significance].
Uh huh.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y2787E/y2787e03a.htm
Look at the match between LOD and ‘Zonal ACI’
Your solar magnetic graph
http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric-Magnetic-Field-Since-1900.png
matches pretty well with the geomagnetic aa index too.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/info/image2.gif
It looks like getting a measure of changing heat from below the crust might still be in it’s infancy:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20050628223731data_trunc_sys.shtml
tallbloke (00:02:43) :
If global atmospheric angular momentum is conserved, why does the curve on this graph go up and down?
Because that is the AAM at a certain altitude. The changes are compensated for by opposite changes at other altitudes.
Richard (02:30:10) :
If they both started at the same temperature they would always remain the same according to you.
Not at all. They have vastly different temperatures. Increasing the radiation by 10% will increase the temperatures by 2.5% for both bodies.
Then you admit that all we are talking about are the changes in insolation due to the change in the distance from the sun of the Northern winters. This is small.
No, this is large, a hundred times larger than the solar cycle change.
tallbloke (03:03:35) :
Look at the match between LOD and ‘Zonal ACI’
As I have been saying: if you heat the system, its moment of inertia and/or the wind speeds change, which cause the LOD to change, not the other way around.
Your solar magnetic graph
matches pretty well with the geomagnetic aa index too.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/info/image2.gif
Of course, it should. I specifically said that I interpreted your ‘Geomagnetic’ as meaning the main field [because we started out with a discussion of wander of the magnetic pole] and not geomagnetic ‘activity’ which is what aa measures.
It looks like getting a measure of changing heat from below the crust
The heat we get from underfoot is too minute [milliWatt/m2] and too constant to have any influence on the climate.
Leif Svalgaard (07:14:30) :
Because that is the AAM at a certain altitude. The changes are compensated for by opposite changes at other altitudes.
That sounds a lot like an assumption.
As I have been saying: if you heat the system, its moment of inertia and/or the wind speeds change, which cause the LOD to change, not the other way around.
Changes in windspeed can only account for around 10% of variation in LOD.
“It was shown (Lamb 1972; Lambeck and Cazenave 1976), however, that the observable changes in speed and direction of the air mass transfer may explain seasonal and annual, but not multi-decadal, LOD variations. Only 10% of the long-term LOD variation can be explained by the observable changes in atmospheric circulation. The calculations suggest that the average speed of zonal winds would have to be an order of magnitude larger than they are to explain the remaining 90% of the LOD changes.”
Dr Richard Gross of NASA told us the same thing in the quote I gave earlier. Give it up, you are outnumbered by experts. 😉
The heat we get from underfoot is too minute [milliWatt/m2] and too constant to have any influence on the climate.
The ocean floor is much thinner, and water is an efficient coolant/transporter of heat. I’ll try to find out more on this, because I’ve read various snippets which make me think there may be a lot more heat coming out of the inside of the earth at certain locations than you’ve been led to believe by general handwaving.
OK stuff to do, signing off from this thread for now. Thanks for a good debate and the pointers and links.
tallbloke (08:36:40) :
Only 10% of the long-term LOD variation can be explained by the observable changes in atmospheric circulation.
Of course, the major changes come from within. Yet you showed changes in the ACI. My point is that the 10% atmospheric part is climate dependent [and, according to you, therefore solar activity dependent], but the remaining 90% are due to slow internal changes that have nothing to do with solar activity.
Ocean currents circulation within Pacific, Indian and Atlantic will not affect LOD in a major degree, since each ocean has two currents flowing in the opposite direction but at different depths. This is not the case with polar currents Beaufort Gyre and Antarctic circumpolar current. Their flow is always in the same direction, caused by the Earth’s rotation. If these currents alter their velocity due to some external reasons than load on the Earth’s rotation will respond accordingly. The ocean waters, due to the salinity have attributes of electrical conductor. Circulation is affected due do build up of counter-EMF As the magnetic poles moves closer or further away from the centre of circulation, velocity will respond accordingly. It appears to be a relationship between temperature and magnetic polar drift. Geomagnetic field intensity will also vary in response to these movements.
For more details see:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/40/88/86/PDF/NATA.pdf
vukcevic (10:40:32) :
If these currents alter their velocity due to some external reasons
What external reasons?
Circulation is affected due do build up of counter-EMF As the magnetic poles moves closer or further away from the centre of circulation.
No, the current and the forces are much too small for this.
Leif Svalgaard (11:33:19) :
“What external reasons?”
The external reason (to the ocean currents) was described in the following sentence or two.
Leif Svalgaard (11:33:19) :
“No, the current and the forces are much too small for this.”
Dr. No strikes again! How do you know that?
No current or force is too small not to have an effect, it is just that magnitude of effect is proportional to the force and force is proportional to the current.
Have you numbers the Antarctic’s circumpolar current transport index, and appropriate electric current density, what change might have occurred in the relation to drift of magnetic pole? I do not, so I cannot claim to what extent they might affect the Earth’s rotation, but if there was a change, it must have been an effect too.
This is only a side issue; effect of thermal pressure on the warm currents from Indian Ocean into Southern Atlantic is of primary interest.
vukcevic (12:29:06) :
How do you know that?
It is the one who claims there is an effect to do the calculation. You are an engineer. And this calculation is a simple engineering type of calculation: so much water, such a conductivity, so much speed, so must bottom friction, forces acting for so long, etc.
I have done this type of calculation a long time ago in connection with the so-called ‘ocean effect’ of geomagnetic measurements. The result was minute.
You can find some background material here:
http://www.geomag.us/info/Smaus/Doc/ocean_encycl.pdf
Google ‘ocean effect geomagnetic’
Thanks for the link. Have seen it and many others relating to electric currents in the oceans (whatever google and google scholar comes up with). My interest is in the electric currents affecting the oceans flow and thus affecting climatic changes, as outlined here:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/40/88/86/PDF/NATA.pdf
vukcevic (13:41:15) :
My interest is in the electric currents affecting the oceans flow
The currents are generated by a conductor moving through a magnetic field or the field moving through a conductor. This is the standard problem you are having. The electric currents are consequences of the movements, in the oceans, in the solar wind, in the Sun, in the cosmos. This should be clear by now [I know it isn’t, but one can always hope].
Well I’ve based a good deal on the simple observation that the oceans do change their rate of emission of energy to the air on multidecadal time scales.
Another simple observation is that on Century time scales colder periods seem to correlate with periods of a less active sun.
Yet another simple observation is that the average latitudinal position of the air circulation systems does shift in response to changes in global oceanic sea surface temperatures.
I have described a climate scenario that accommodates all those observations and yet still complies with the need to approximately over time balance the energy value of incoming solar shortwave radiation with outgoing radiated longwave radiation and furthermore accounts for the failure of all the changes that do occur to significantly alter global humidity values.
Likewise it accounts for all observed global air temperature variations so far observed and all regional climate shifts observed as the global air temperatures alternately warm and cool.
I think that is quite an achievement.
The next step is to explain why and how the oceans do manage to alter their rate of energy transfer to the air on multidecadal time scales.
Tallbloke and others are making a respectable stab at that and Leif is raising perfectly sensible objections.
However what we see is what we see however unlikely and I still have difficulty accepting Leif’s negativism about every proposition.
Any theory must match observations and if it does so then it should be properly investigated and tested.
Simply announcing that it cannot be so for this reason or that reason is not a scientific approach.
At basis I think it is going to boil down to the fact that the Earth’s oceans are extremely sensitive to solar shortwave variations but that the air circulation systems are extremely efficient at neutralising them.
I accept that getting that proposition accepted by the climate establishment is going to be very difficult and it may only be recognised after I have been long deceased. By that time real world evidence may well render my proposition incontrovertible.
It’s a good job I just deal with this stuff for ‘fun’.
Stephen Wilde (13:53:02) :
However what we see is what we see however unlikely and I still have difficulty accepting Leif’s negativism about every proposition.
Any theory must match observations and if it does so then it should be properly investigated and tested.
sometimes [often, actually] people see things that aren’t there. Any proposer of a theory is convinced that it match observations, that alone is not enough, others must be able to see and accept the match. I’m not negative about every proposition, just the ones that are not convincing. Science is extremely conservation [for a good reason] and often it is frustrating to penetrate that [I feel that too in my quest for revising the sunspot number, for example]. On the other hand, if the case is good and the theory sound, conversion of the community can be very swift. So, bring it on.
“Leif Svalgaard (13:48:45) :
vukcevic (13:41:15) :
My interest is in the electric currents affecting the oceans flow
The currents are generated by a conductor moving through a magnetic field or the field moving through a conductor. This is the standard problem you are having. The electric currents are consequences of the movements, in the oceans, in the solar wind, in the Sun, in the cosmos. This should be clear by now [I know it isn’t, but one can always hope.”
Now this is geting interesting.
The radiation coming from the sun (the magnetic field) moves through a conductor known as the Earth.
The Earth is not a single conductor. There are two conductors namely oceans and air.
In both conductors water is the main player, as a liquid in the oceans and as a gas in the air.
Both behave differently and independently.
The oceans being hugely greater in density and volume create virtually all the ever changing variations in conductivity. Ever changing because the oceans are fluids in constant movement and with sizeable internal variations in density due primarily to uneven salinity.
Having created changes in conductivity the oceans than leave it to the air to deal with the instabilities caused by the oceans.
In order to keep our liquid oceans the air has to neutralise the variations in conductivity created by the oceanic instability.
It does so by changing the speed of the hydrological cycle and the means by which that is achieved is the latitudinal movement of all the air circulation systems.
Have I squared the circle ?
Stephen Wilde (13:53:02) :
” Simply announcing that it cannot be so for this reason or that reason is not a scientific approach. ”
I disagree with that statement; in fact reason(not assertion) is what makes it scientific.
A simple mathematical(yes I know that mathematics is nor science, but the analogy is precise) example: I can write down a mathematical “proof” that 1 = 2. Leif can disprove it by stating it is not true for the reason that I have divided by zero. He is correct (as he is always in the philosophy of science).
acementhead (15:59:14)
Actually I agree in principle but only if the reason is supported by incontrovertible evidence.
The trouble we have with climate science is that the reasons given for not accepting the possible validity of new ideas are far from incontrovertible.
Even Leif’s valuable input is based largely on assumptions about the sensitivity of the Earth system to tiny variations.
I happen to think that the oceanic heat content may be far more susceptible to tiny variations in solar output than is generally accepted.
I also think ocean heat content will turn out to be highly sensitive to other tiny variations as well such as the effect of internal ocean changes on the rate at which energy is released to the air.
My suppositions are based on observations which lead me to believe that there is no other solution to the current climate confusion.
In fact it is probably our ability to use technology to measure tiny changes and the extreme sensitivity of our lifestyles to such tiny changes that makes those changes seem significant when in terms of the cosmos those changes are truly insignificant.
Stephen Wilde (14:38:42) :
Have I squared the circle ?
No, you are about as wrong as one can be.
The solar wind plasma is a conductor. A conductor [with the high conductivity and large size typical of the solar wind] cannot move into a strong magnetic field [the Earth’s] and instead an electrical current is generated at a point where the energy of the solar wind is equal to the energy of the Earth’s magnetic field. This current keeps the two things [solar wind and the Earth] apart. The current depends on the precise balance between the pressure of the solar wind and the pressure of the Earth’s magnetic field. Because the solar wind is ‘gusty’ this balance is unstable, and the magnetic field in the solar wind can also connect with that of the Earth making the whole thing even more unstable, so the balance breaks down rather often with further currents and particles crashing into the ionosphere, creating aurora and magnetic disturbances. All of this happen above 100 km altitude.
Meanwhile, UV from the Sun breaks apart the molecules and atoms of the air above 100 km altitude, creating the ionosphere. The ionosphere needs sunlight to maintain its conductivity which is then much higher on the dayside. The upper atmosphere is heated by the sun and thermal winds are created that moves the ions across the magnetic field of the Earth thus creating a current [remember: moving a conductor and a magnetic relative to each other generates a current]. This current is always present on the dayside, but since the Earth is rotating it looks [for an observer on the ground] like the current is rising and setting [like the Sun] each day. This current has a magnetic effect that also seems to come and go during each day. A changing magnetic field through a conductor [sea water] generates another current in the water. This current makes a small perturbation of the magnetic field from all the other currents generated. Each link in this chain is weaker than the previous, so the effects get smaller and smaller. But, you can see that there are very complicated stuff going on. We know a lot about how all of this works. You can find more details in these 30-40 year old papers of mine [since then the details have become even better known, but the basic picture remains unchanged]: http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf and http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf
The air between the ionosphere and the ocean is basically an insulator and no currents flow. Now, this is not quite correct because there is a very weak ionization created by radioactiivty in the ground, cosmic rays, and thunderstorms, so there is a very weak current current [the ‘global electric circuit’], but its effect is orders of magnitude smaller than the other currents. In a sense there is a sort of ‘cascade’ of currents and magnetic changes to smaller and smaller strength [there are also currents, generated from all of the above, deep inside the Earth with still smaller effects, etc].
The main point is that our quantitative knowledge of this is solid and vast. We can calculate rather precisely the forces and effects.
Stephen Wilde (16:27:27) :
Even Leif’s valuable input is based largely on assumptions about the sensitivity of the Earth system to tiny variations.
The null-hypothesis is that there is no sensitivity. Every claim of a given sensitivity has to be calculated or at least made plausible by a mechanism or energy or scaling argument [and certainly must be physically possible]. The total sensitivity may be the result of interactions of several things. If so, each of these must be calculated or estimated as above. If not, then a high sensitivity becomes the assumption.