El Niño is expected to strengthen and last through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2009-2010

What’s interesting is that according to Unisys, while El Nino’s still going, the SST’s appear to be dropping more than rising
Compare
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-090830.gif
To
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-090830.gif
Still either not too much difference or cooler than what’s shown at this date
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-090628.gif
Could it be the ocean is releasing tons of heat through this El Nino thus resulting in cooler SST’s?

If that is true then it’s going to be a big snow/rain year for the Pacific Northwest.
California has been crying their eyes out, screaming Droughtal Warming.
Now the can have thier Delugal Warming and eat it, too.
in 1983, Donner Summit had 880 inches of snowfall.
That’s 73 feet. We could look up from Sierra City on the ridge to the South in May and see old-growth Cedar trees with the snow behind them drifted up 2/3 the way to the top of the trees.
Somewhere’s about 120 feet.
Be careful what you ElNinol Warming Dream for.

Warm oceans & cold air. Buy snow blower stock.

So if this is the case, will the rational experts predict the broadly expected effect of this on:
1. Arctic Sea Ice Extent – any influence? Because Mark Serreze will be jumping on that like nobody’s business.
2. ‘Global Temperature’ – what’s the expected effect on temperature in the next 18 months? Because warmists will be rubbing their hands with glee expecting it to be going up but blaming it on ‘global warming’….
3. Hurricanes? We’ve all seen the data which says no more hurricanes over the past 100 years, although recently apparently tornadoes in-land may have gone up……any likeliood of increases? Because they’ll be blaming it on us, not El Nino…..
4. Floods? California? Peru??
5. Droughts in Australia? In Brazil??
What else?
Flag it ALL up using reasoned best-estimates.
So that it’s subtracted from natural variability in the quest to find human signatures……
By the way: did Landscheidt predict this el Nino before he died?? Might be interesting to revisit his predictions and see if he’s a visionary or just another person who got it right sometimes and wrong somtimes…….

Not all the runs are the same. There are dynamical models and statistical models. The dynamical models are experimental and are being compared to the tried and true statistical models (so says NOAA). Note that the statistical models are nearly ALWAYS predicting less El Nino strength than the dynamical models are. I have often wondered why that is the case and NOAA does not do a good job of explaining what is in the dynamical models that says “hotter”. I have a hunch that they have included a CO2 affect.

That is not a building El Nino.I say that it;s snowblower time too.
1969and 1972 were Nino years and quite Nasty…

tallbloke (13:50:54) :
I believe your thinking is quite clear.
When enough heat is released, it’s El Dumpo time.
Stuck/Stubborn weather patterns have been in place for over 2 years now.
The Sun’s not going anywhere with this cycle. Nothing to drive the system but the Oceanic heat.

So DOES this portend a wetter winter for California? We had out first autumn storm front (weak) move through David this morning complete with gnarly low clouds, thunder an a few drops of rain. I didn’t see any lightening, but there must have been somewhere (although I saw lightening in Reno last month with no thunder). Hope there were no lightening-ignited fires in the foothills or Sierra.

The forecasts are predicting a strengthening of El Nino conditions and there is considerable time left yet until the normal peak of the ENSO in December, but there is very little happening right now to strengthen the El Nino.

tallbloke (13:50:54) :
Enjoy the warmth while it lasts, and get some food planted next spring. Tough times lie further ahead
Bill Illis (15:33:24) :
there is very little happening right now to strengthen the El Nino
….PERIOD

Tallbloke” right on its a negative feedback system me thinks makes sense.

Shilevich Volcano in the Kamchatka just went blammo-not good for our winter and fall
in the North.See here:
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/
A joker just got put in the card game of AGW…

John Edmondson (12:13:12) :
OT
North East Passage in BBC website
just another untrue stroy. the only new thing appears to be a political change, that allows foreign cargo ships to do what russian ships have done regularly during the last 80 years.
“…and in the 1930s the Northern Sea Route, a shipping lane, was established by the USSR. Since World War II the Soviet Union and now Russia has maintained a regular highway for shipping along this passage through the development of new ports and the exploitation of resources in the interior. A fleet of Russian icebreakers, aided by aerial reconnaissance and by radio weather stations, keeps the route navigable from June to October.”
http://www.reference.com/browse/passage

OK, is this forecast based on actual data or wishful thinking that El Nino will strengthen? All I’ve heard/read is that negative PDO favors short/weak El Ninos and the Southern Oscillation Index has been, well, mixed over the last few months.

Leif 18:01:19
It is not, that we know of. If there is a causal relation, the mechanism is unknown.
=======================================

wws (16:11:45) :
Let’s see what this baby will do: If the sun dramatically reverses course and the cooling trend stops on a dime (big if) then there should be a significant and somewhat sudden move upwards in the temperature anomolies when the La Nina boat-anchor effect ends sometime down the road.
62 out of the last 64 days dead sun. Activity only in the lee.
The “why” of it is taboo, and it cannot possibly be the sun or anything to do with the sun.
The Sun cannot affect Earth, and nothing can affect the Sun. Sentinels.
Stuff happens on them just because and no other reason.

Kevin Kilty (17:56:45) :
The ice is beginning to re-form in in key places up there, as foretold by the DMI Explorer.
Like Henirk says, enjoy Global Warming while it lasts.
Those who insist upon driving the wrong way on the Freeway, let ’em go, just as long as I don’t have to join them.

Winter of 71/72 here in Oregon was like that too-started snowing on Halloween and didn’t stop ’til late Feb… midding fair Nino then too…
(Good thing I got a Season Pass at the local ski area..)

Contrary to what some on this site say, there is an indirect link between the level of solar activity and climate here on Earth.
The link is that both are influenced by the same underlying mechanism.
The level of long-term solar actvity is simply set by a mechanism that is synchronized with half the beat period between the (retrograde) Jose cycle (= 3 x Synodic period of Jupiter/Saturn or 60 years i.e. the time it takes for the alignments of Jupiter and Saturn to rotate once around the Sun with respect to the stars in a retrogade direction), and the (prograde) orbital period of Neptune (164.8 year), such that:
(1/2) x (164.8 x 60)/(164.8 + 60) = 22 years
Likewise, the long-term (multi-decadal) variations in the lunar/solar tidal dissipation in the Earth’s oceans, and important factor in setting the long-term varaitions in the ocean surface temperatures, are set by a mechanism that is synchronized with the dominant periodicity of the assymetries in the Sun/Earth’s motion about the Solar System’s barycentry = 36 years = twice the lunar Saros period.
Since the Sun and the lunar/solar tidal dissipation probably both play a role in setting long-term temperatures here on the Earth, thee changes should be set by the beat period between the 36 year solar assymetry cycle and the 22 year Hale solar cycle, such that:
(36 x 22)/(36 – 22) = 57 years
Hence, the roughly 60 year cycle that is seen in both the trade-wind strengths and ocean surface temperatures.

Manfred (17:47:30) :
In Sweden the lying is even more blatant. Dagens Nyheter, the largest newspaper (fanatically pro-AGW), claims that the freighters went through the Northeast Passage without icebreakers, and illustrates the story with a photgraph of one of the freighters following a russian nuclear icebreaker. They apparently assume that the average reader doesn’t recognize an icebreaker, and they are probably right.

rbateman (19:47:14) : “Those who insist upon driving the wrong way on the Freeway, let ‘em go, just as long as I don’t have to join them.”
Even if you don’t you may end up in a frontal collision with the ones who do.

tallbloke (13:50:54) : This is resulting in heat/energy leaving the oceans all over the globe, and it will continue for a good while while the sun is quiet. The result will be a sustained but moderate el nino modoki extending through the winter, as I predicted some months ago. But when it dies down, the reduced ocean heat/energy content will result in sea surface temperatures lower than jan 2007 in 12-16 months time.
This makes perfectly sense and I have no problem to imagine that something like this will happen. If the release of heat from the oceans becomes particularly effective, the temperature drop may become substantial in a couple of years. Thus, I encourage famous scientists that think along these lines but sit on the fence to speak in public now – it is time to be brave and ignore the temporal issues with unpopular climate statements.

el happ (23:13:20)
Hi Erl,
I’m still trying to sort out whether the driver is changes in the air as you propose (along with Svensmark and others) or changes in the oceans as I propose.
Could you provide something that shows why you think it is the air that initiates the process rather than the oceans ?
I can see that it might look like the air in control on interannual ENSO time scales although I think the evidence at that level is ambiguous being capable of interpretation either way.
Of more interest is the 25 to 30 year oceanic phase changes. I have never seen them correlated adequately with changes in the air so I tend to favour the oceans as the driver with the air simply following and, of course, then showing the processes which you describe.
For example, if the oceans start to release energy faster then low cloud dissipates but a little later there is more evaporation, cloud at higher levels, precipitation and wind which then cools the oceans. Roy Spencer’s recent thread here showed the time lags and the sequence of events quite well.
There might be a positive solar feedback for a short while as the low cloud dissipates but soon there follows a much stronger negative feedback as the speed of the entire hydrological cycle accelerates globally from the enhanced evaporation that you mention.
Can we really explain it all with a beginning of the process in the stratosphere rather than in the oceans given the immense thermal mass and inertia of the oceans ?
I’m inclined to the view that the changes in the stratosphere occur when the flow of energy from surface to space interacts with the portion of solar energy that is always interacting in it’s own ways with the top of the atmosphere.
I can see a general background flow of energy from sun to sea to air to space and an interaction with solar input at the air/space boundary but I cannot envisage events in the air or at the top of the atmosphere working downwards against the background flow so as to enter and direct oceanic behaviour.
Can you help me on this ?

Leif Svalgaard (03:17:32) :
“As Al Gore says: “if we don’t know anything, anything is possible”.”
I couldn’t care less about Mr. Gore’s thoughts.
We have a limited knowledge, not zero knowledge. Common sense and instinct also come into play.

JP (06:26:37)
It takes some time for El Nino warmth to move through the oceans to affect other areas around the world. In fact it may take up to 10 years for El Nino warmth to circulate to the Arctic Ocean (1998 El Nino and 2007 Arctic ice melt for example).
In the meantime the effect of warmth transferred to the air during an El Nino event is rapid. The equatorial air masses expand, the air circulation systems move a little poleward and the speed of the entire hydrological cycle accelerates pumping more energy to space faster.
Now we currently have a situation where the run of strong El Nino events from 1975 to 2000 has ended and we are in a negative oceanic mode whereby El Ninos tend to be weaker and La Ninas tend to be stronger.
Thus the warming of the northern hemisphere from oceanic influences has declined and gradually the winter cooling of the northern continents must increase. Whenever we now get a weak or moderate El Nino pushing more energy into the air it will come up against cooler northern regions than was the case during the 1975 to 2000 warming period.
Expect a greater climate conflict this winter over the northern continents as colder polar air resists encroachment from the warm air from the current El Nino. I think that the recent ‘climate disaster’ in China was an example of just such an event but I cannot predict a repeat of that or any similar eent elsewhere. The severity of any incident is greatly affected by the size of the area over which it is distributed.
In weather terms I expect the mid latitude jets to remain further south than their 1975 to 2000 positions over North America Europe and Asia with more dramatic snowfall events scattered around as the climate conflicts occur in varying locations.
Places that remain poleward of the mid latitude jets will be cooler than they have been for a couple of decades but regions south of the jets may well be quite warm.
All this assumes that the current El Nino persists. If it collapses to a new La Nina my expectations will change.
Let the dice roll.

JP-any note that this was during the Cold phase of the PDO?
I was in Portland Or. period,nasty ice storms….

Record July 2009 Sea Surface Temperatures? The View from Space
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/21/record-july-2009-sea-surface-temperatures-the-view-from-space/
All this heat energy being released into the atmosphere? I may be wrong but shouldn’t all that carbon dioxide in the air be preventing heat from being radiated into space???? Shouldn’t those El ninos at the beginning of the decade have lead to an ever increasing temperature anomaly????

Mr. Alex (23:36:28) :
Look, there was and there is not a real Nino, and not because of any theory whatsoever but because, if you live near an El Nino ares, as I do, in front of El Nino 1+2, you would be able to say the same and citing that funny phrase about La Nina. In fact when it is going to be a big el Nino in december there is no winter in july/august, then, in any case it seems, as you mentioned after Landscheidt, a feeble Nino and a return to La Nina conditions for several years.

Leif Svalgaard (09:51:53): What about the cold period in the 1840s-1870s that coincided with the strong cycles 8 to 11?
I speculate that the instant value of HMF B makes little sense. It is the accumlated HMF B that influences global temperature. See:
http://i25.tinypic.com/fb97ph.jpg
The green curve is accumulated HMF B.

In relating solar cycles and temperature, are we not supposed to consider a time lag of about six years, as many times has been posted here in WUWT?

Leif Svalgaard (09:51:53) :
Leif, always like your comments.
Nevertheless, when I look on Armagh, CET, Uppsala, De Bilt, Hohenpeissenberg,
locally (Europe), it cuts both ways.
There were cold years and warm years in the 1840s and 1870s. When using centered
averages over several years, generally the 1836 to 1840, 1875 to 1882 and the 1886 to 1890 are the timeframe with lowest averages. It differes a little bit from dataset to dataset. However, I couldn’t say it would support Invariant’s (09:33:40) nor you.
Best Regards
KlausB

Pamela Gray (11:22:27)
I think one should take the average net latitudinal position of the jets globally. However I don’t think that is being done at the moment.
Additionally that position will depend on the average net contribution of all the oceans at any one time (often ocean phases are out of phase with each other). That is not being done at the moment either.
At any given moment there is a huge range of possibilies for jet stream positions in relation to individual locations. I am sure those possibilities vary according to the distribution of warm and cold pools as you say.
On top of that is normal day to day chaotic variability.
The word ‘jumbled’ is appropriate in this case.

erlhapp (09:25:19)
I can see the logic but can also see alternative ways to get the same observations.
You clearly see that the northern hemisphere has a lot more land so solar heating of the land especially in the northern summer would provide a larger contribution to stratospheric air temperatures than would the contribution from the seas.
Thus I don’t see a larger variability in northern hemisphere air temperatures as significant as ocean temperatures.
Turning now to the greater variability of ocean temperatures in the polar regions as opposed to tropical regions then it seems clear to me that where energy is being lost to space faster i.e. at the poles then the waters nearest the poles get a far greater opportunity to lose energy than do the tropical waters where solar energy arriving always exceeds the rate of energy lost to space.
Thus tropical waters vary hardly at all but polar waters would vary greatly depending on how much energy filtered to them from equatorial regions. The degree of variation seems to be dependent on the supply of warm waters reaching the polar seas and that in turn seems to depend on partly the ENSO cycle but more substantially the 25 to 30 year ocean phase shifts.
It is those phase shifts which need explaining if events in the air are to qualify as drivers of anything. As far as I know there is no correlation between those phase shifts and anything that happens in the air or involving the sun (at least directly).
The northern polar regions would vary more than the southern polar regions because the warm water flow gets right into the Arctic Circle whereas in the south it can only circulate around the Antarctic continent.
So, whilst seeing what you are saying I come to a different opinion and conclude that the oceans drive the air and the air cannot drive the oceans or the climate in the way you suggest, but it’s only my opinion.
I see all the air based phenomena you describe as entirely consistent with oceanic forcing.

Leif Svalgaard (09:19:56)
I see that reply as confirming your doubt that solar variations drive global temperature changes on ANY timescale.
My problem with that is the absence of any other supply of energy to the system.
I had the impression that you were doubtful about the AGW hypothesis but if one excludes solar variability completely as an adequately large driver then of course one is driven to conclude that something else is responsible and that something else could be increasing CO2 in the air.
Please could you explain how you are still able to doubt the CO2 AGW hypothesis whilst considering that solar changes are insufficient to produce observed climate changes.
The reason I cannot accept CO2 even as a provider of a background rising temperature trend is that we clearly see a slow cyclical background rise and fall in past global temperatures over several centuries at a time when human sourced CO2 could not have been an issue.
I’m sure it doesn’t apply to you but wouldn’t it be useful for the AGW lobby to have the assistance of someone who SAYS he does not believe in the hypothesis but who works tirelessly to eliminate or debunk all possible alternatives.
It boils down to a simple issue,
There have always been slow cyclical global temperature variations in the background even throughout interglacials.
Human sourced CO2 cannot have been a serious issue until after WW2. even the IPCC accepts that.
How does one exclude solar variability as a driver of those changes when many historical sources show a correlation (which you seek quite strenuosly to deny) and when there is no other energy source for the climate system ?

Nogw (10:39:52): In relating solar cycles and temperature, are we not supposed to consider a time lag of about six years, as many times has been posted here in WUWT?
This makes perfectly sense in my toy model, as I have made the assumption that the temperature is the time integral of the solar cycle. Assuming that Qout is constant and Qin is sine function with period 11.1 years due to varying solar activity we obtain
m•cp•dT/dt = Qin – Qout
Qin ~ sin (2π•t/11.1)
T ~ cos (2π•t/11.1)
Everybody knows that sine and cosine are the derivative of each other and are out of phase by half the period, meaning that the time lag would be 11.1/2 = 5.55 years which is almost the value proposed by Mogw. I should listen more to Mary Poppins that once said:
“Why do you always complicate things that are really quite simple?”

Stephen Wilde 7:47:40
Pretty clearly the earth is a heat engine that pumps heat poleward from the equator. My figure for the lag is about three years, the time it took for the peak of temperature around 2004-2005 to melt the Arctic Ice in 2007. Just as the globe has cooled since 2005, the Arctic has been freezing back up for the last two years. NB, this is highly speculative.
====================================

kim (13:15:47)
I agree with that but think the 2007 melt was also componded by residual energy in the oceans from 30 years of dominant El Ninos and favourable synoptics blowing ice out of the Arctic.

Invariant (12:54:24) : Don´t worry, there are cycles that lasts 13 years, so….

I have a question for Dr. Svalgaard,
Dear Dr. Svalgaard,
If you go to a cabin in the Norwegian mountains in wintertime the first thing you do is to make a fire in the fireplace. In the beginning the cabin is freezing cold below zero, but after a few hours the temperature starts to increase and within a day or two the cabin is comfortable. While the air in the cabin is quickly heated, the cabin itself may take a couple of days to heat.
Let us imagine that the fireplace resembles the sun and that the cabin resembles our planet. My main point is that we do not need to see that the output from the sun (fireplace) increase in order to see that the temperature in our planet (cabin) increase. The only requirement is that heat from the fireplace (Qin) is larger than the heat dissipated through the walls (Qout).
To make the analogy complete we can assume that the initial freezing state of the cabin resembles our planet during the little ice age. So I argue that the heating of our planet since the last ice age is perfectly possible without any increase of the output from the sun in that period. I do not want to speculate what caused the little ice age, but do you agree that our planet will heat even if solar activity is constant as long as Qin > Qout?
My second question is how much reduction in the output from the sun is required to get a similar temperature fall as we had during the little ice age?

kim (13:32:52) : Hmmm, but 11.1/4 is 2.8 years. Even closer to my 3.
Great. Yes it should be 11.1/4. I divided by 3 instead this is embarrasing, no wonder I sometimes find bugs in my FORTRAN code.

Invariant (10:33:52) ” http://i25.tinypic.com/fb97ph.jpg “
Interesting.
You might next toy around with inclusion of an ENSO term in your model.

Perhaps Lief needs a larger net. The measurement of radiant energy of the sun would seem to me to be as effective as measuring the radiant energy of a large pot of water over a camp fire to discern the energy output of the pot. The radiant output would not change as long as the water lasts. Whether the pot simmers or boils, the radiant signature would stay nearly the same. The boiling pot would release a lot more energy then the simmering pot.
We know at this time that the solar wind is at a very low point, maybe the earth is encountering less energy as it transits the solar wind.
Finally as an old refrigeration man, I know that a very small change in input or output of energy into a vacuum sealed container, as the earth, can cause considerable changes in energy inside the container.

p.g.sharrow (00:05:37)
With that analogy the extra energy loss when the pot boils is in the form of the latent heat of evaporation (which speeds up) and so is not discernible as part of the energy radiated.
To be fair to Leif I don’t see how the sun can take advantage of some other process similar to the evaporative process in order to get more energy to the Earth than is represented by the measurement of radiative energy.
Even the variations in the magnetic flux and the solar wind seem to be directly related to TSI.
The answer seems to be a fine balance within the Earth system with that balance swinging above and below the changes one would expect from the observed changes in TSI and of course I favour the oceans as the source of those irregularities with the air having to counter them to restore stability. The Earth system is apparently very sensitive to small changes in input and as a result of that sensitivity of response (always a fast and powerful negative response) it is very insensitive to anything that tries to disturb it’s internal equilibrium.
The air circulations always provide a fast negative feedback to the slow oceanic forcings arising within the Earth system. Otherwise we would see much bigger differences between incoming solar energy and outgoing radiative energy.
The issue to be resolved is the time scale at which the small solar variability takes over from the much larger internal Earth system variability. I see it in the historical record on century time scales but Leif and other solar scientists seem to be moving to longer and longer timescales as they further reduce their estimates of past solar variability.
As we more finely tune our solar knowledge there are two main issues:
Are the solar scientists being over enthusiastic in the extent to which they are applying what they do think they know to their guesses about past solar variability ?
Are there internal Earth system oscillations at longer timescales than we have yet been able to reliably observe ?
The answer must be a balance between those two parameters. Either way it’s a much bigger effect than anything CO2 can achieve as we have seen from the size of the pre industrial age changes in global climate.
AGW theory is firmly dependent on late 20th century warming being faster and bigger than anything the natural forcings can achieve and then they go on to extrapolate it indefinitely.
The past 12 years or so is good evidence that their extrapolations are unfounded and the past 2000 years shows that the natural forcings are far larger.
Additionally they have failed to show that changes in the air alone have any effect on ocean energy content the variable release of which is our most direct climate driver. Sceptics relying on changes in the air alone have the same problem.

Just to clarify one point.
The oceans provide either a negative or positive response to variations in solar input depending on whether the oceanic oscillations are in phase with the solar variations or not.
The air circulation systems combined with the speed of the hydrological cycle always provide a fast and very variable negative response to whatever the sun and oceans do to vary the speed of energy flow through the Earth system.
The same system in the air deals very effectively in neutralising changes that occur in the air alone so that changes in the air alone can never alter the equilibrium temperature set by sun and oceans at any given moment (and it is always changing).

Map of the 14th is out
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2009/anomnight.9.14.2009.gif

As Warwick and others have pointed out the SOI is “near zero”. In fact, it is banging, rail-to-rail, like a disconnected Tach.
Significant cloudiness, inreased H20 vapor aloft(even Accuweather’s GW blog has had the equatorial satellite photos), means no heat entering or leaving. Despite the untimely El Nino SSTs this is a neutral regime.

Paul Vaughan (22:56:00): You might next toy around with inclusion of an ENSO term in your model.
Ideally a model would not need to include ENSO, as ENSO would be something that a good model should predict. There is always a danger in science to “add epicycles” which is a sign of bad science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicycle#Slang_for_Bad_Science
Our climate is a transient boundary value problem of the same type as the heat equation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation
With all the required transient initial and boundary conditions available it should in theory possible to calculate the climate accurately without any assumptions about ENSO, PDO and the other oscillations that are just a redistribution of heat within the ocean – atmosphere system.

Leif Svalgaard (11:38:04) :No. But it could be like this [as it may be for the Sun as well]. We don’t know
Dear Dr. Svalgaard,
I sincerely subscribe to your point of view. A couple of years ago I studied buoyancy forces in great detail and I was in contact with the best people on the subject. The lesson learned is indeed we do not know. In particular since chaotic buoyancy forces both dominate the oceans, the atmosphere and the interior of the sun, the prediction of the future climate seems nearly impossible. On the other hand, this situation is terribly interesting, and I suspect that human capabilities may outperform computers in predicting the future climate – buoyancy forces almost always leads to wildly diverging solutions in a numerical simulation.

Erl Happ; You wrote, “The focus on ENSO 3.4 suits the warming brigade. It’s a red herring and a very effective one at that.”
Would you explain that for me? If it suits them, it’s because they misunderstand it, or misinterpret it, or misrepresent it. Obviously, they’re missing something.

Leif Svalgaard (11:38:04)
I think it’s legitimate to consider the direction that observations and simple logic are taking us.
The effect of solar variability is being pushed to longer timescales than some would like but it is still there as the provider of background trends on one timescale or another.
The recent observation of that 25 to 30 year oceanic phase change cannot be ignored either and as the solar effect is pushed back into longer timescales that oceanic effect becomes more and more influential.
The observation of latitudinal shifts in the air circulation systems is highly significant because it happens in tune with and always follows the ocean phase changes and to a lesser extent the ENSO cycle.
One has to formulate a scenario that accommodates all those observations and yet complies with basic physics and a plethora of other climate phenomena.
That is what I have made an attempt to do and it is not simply a matter of ‘“it’s the Sun, stupid” or “it’s the Oceans, stupid” .
In fact my approach is what the climate professionals should have done at least two decades ago but they failed to respond to real world evidence preferring to rely on inadequate models and an ideological decision as to the effect of extra human sourced CO2.
There are certain key facts that cannot be denied:
1) All the energy in the system is originally from the sun (discounting geothermal for the moment)
2) The oceans redistribute that energy in time and space releasing it at variable rates to the air.
3) There is no other potential climate forcing agent anywhere near the size of sun and ocean variability and such other potential forcings as there are simply constitute single components of a plethora of such second and third order forcings that as often as not just cancel each other out.
4) The speed of the hydrological cycle clearly changes in response to ocean energy release variability as evidenced by those latitudinal shifts.
5) Air cannot heat oceans.Only the sun can do that.
6) The energy flow is one way from sun to sea to air to space.
7) The latitudinally oscillating air circulation systems provoked by those oceanic changes explain all observed regional climate changes.
Putting all that together with various other facts and observations the position must be that there is a natural mechanism that prevents changes in the air from changing the equilibrium temperature of the globe which is in fact set by sun and oceans together and not by the composition of the air.
Tyndall was right about the effect of more GHGs in the air but wrong about the effect on the equilibrium temperature. Instead of heating the oceans all that happens is that the rate of energy transfer from surface to space is increased to a miniscule extent compared to the natural swings induced by the oceans.
The more I debate this on these boards the clearer it is becoming and as yet I see no one in a position to contradict where observations and logic have led me.

Re: Bob Tisdale (14:32:07)
Compare their model-maps with their observation-maps. It will be interesting to track their progress as time passes.

To follow on from Stephen Wildes’ and Pamela Grays’ threads and add my questions are the Polar Vortex or other artic highs effected by solar cycles. I am intrigued by the lack of discussion in energy loss from the Earth as this would seem to be the crux of why the atmosphere cools or heats. Is stratospheric heating at the poles varied by the changes is UV insolation from solar max to min (sometimes of the order of a 400% change)? Does lack of stratospheric heating produce stable high pressue zone as we have seen across the artic this summer (Environment Canada has had most of the low pressure systems crossing the Canadian Arctic at above 1000mB this summer and the North has been characterised by a constant stream of high pressure systems). If these changes affect jet stream stability over Northern lattitudes, I can concieve that stable, cold and intensly dry arctic air allows heat to be radiated to space faster than the reverse situation so that the global climate is varying not so much by how much heat is entering the system but by how much heat is being distributed to the poles mainly by the oceans and lost. I can also conceive that if a positive phase of ocean currents is pumping more heat to the poles whilst at the same time stable southern jets streams and lack of stratospheric heating were to occur simultaneously (Winter 08/09?) the atmosphere cools dramatically and artic air breaks out periodically to deep freeze North America and Eurasia. So these short term solar changes will interact with medium period oceanic cycles sometimes positively or neagatively or marginally. Is anybody looking at these questions, can we see any trends that follow a solar signature? I hope not, I live in Canada. Heres to solar minimum.

Leif Svalgaard:
“Observations and simple logic do not tell us that the Sun has any influence.”
Of course they do. All the energy in the system comes originally from the sun.
Your summary of what I said is surprisingly adrift considering how clearly I put it.
Anyway you have previously accepted some solar variability and have accepted some climate effect. The only issues are , the size of the variability, the size of any climate response and the timescal on which the solar effect eventually overcomes any climate response whether it be hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of years.
My opinion is that ANY solar variation will slowly alter the global equilibrium temperature over enough time via it’s effect on the oceans.

Nick Britnell (17:25:08) “I am intrigued by the lack of discussion in energy loss from the Earth as this would seem to be the crux of why the atmosphere cools or heats.”
I share your interest in the role of Arctic highs. Thank you for your stimulating comments.
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Re: Bob Tisdale (17:37:57)
Meehl seems to be a clever character (both scientifically and politically). I’ll be watching how he plays his hand with great interest.

The Southern Oscillation apparently has not heard the news.
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/SeasonalClimateOutlook/SouthernOscillationIndex/30DaySOIValues/
Positive readings correlate with La Nina, negative readings with El Nino. On Sept. 15, the running thirty day SOI was exactly 0, while the 90 day average has been weakly positive for a week

Perhaps climate science could move forward quicker if it is stopped assuming that a single cause like the sun, ocean currents or CO2 are responsible for climate change and start to look at how multiple small nudges to the different climate mechanisms can alter the Earth’s energy balance over different time-scales.
Dynamic chotic systems like our climate only need multiple small changes to cause massively different observed outcomes. Seems like Edward Lorenz theory has been forgotten.

Tenuc (10::17)
Actually the real issue is how the potential for catastrophic changes that would remove our liquid oceans has been avoided since the sun was 30% weaker.
I nominate the hydrological cycle which has the ability to vary it’s speed and thus the rate of energy transfer from surface to space.
The power, speed and flexibility of that process has maintained liquid oceans despite a 30% increase in solar power and can shrug off the effect of human CO2 by such a miniscule adjustment that we could never measure it.
The observation which tells us the current speed of the hydrological cycle at any given moment is the average global latitudinal position of the main air circulation systems.
Note however that it is constantly changing in response to the current rate of energy release from the oceans (again, averaged globally).
No one is currently paying any attention to those two most crucial parameters.

Invariant (08:32:19) “[…] what is the main explanation to reject the theory that a small, but constant and positive Qin – Qout may be the main explanation for the heating from the little ice age?”
Interesting question.
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Invariant (08:32:19) “Let us imagine that something else than the sun caused the little ice age”
I applaud your efforts to raise awareness. So few in our current society make the effort to think conditionally. The mainstream education system has poisoned conventional thinking with excessive-linearity; the mainstream media has reinforced this almost-beyond hope. Most in our society wouldn’t recognize a paradox if it smashed them in the face with a baseball bat. (Hence other societies are overtaking us.)
There is such cultural insistence on dumbing everything down to:
a) “If A goes up, B goes up.”
b) “If A goes down, B goes down.”
…and at the mainstream extreme, it is:
c) “If A goes up, B goes down.”
d) “If A goes down, B goes up.”
There is nothing illogical about paradox – and yet we see it ridiculed day after day after tiresome day on these discussion boards by those who (perhaps inadvertently) advocate the preservation of intellectual-blindness.
With educational reform we might increase the future (decades out) pool of intellects in our society who might be capable of independently succeeding at challenging tasks such as the generation of an ENSO-table (that works like a tide-table).
The education system could be immersing our children & mature students in the challenges of (logical) paradox, rather than succumbing, in fear, to an inadequate preference for “soundbite logic”. (“If C goes up, we blow up.”)–[Imagine future security with this hopelessly-linear “logic” dominating the masses.]

Paul Vaughan (12:25:15) : I applaud your efforts to raise awareness. So few in our current society make the effort to think conditionally.
Thanks for the nice comments Paul Vaughan! I wonder why Dr. Svalgaard has not commented the idea that a small, but constant and positive Qin – Qout may be the main reason for the heating from the little ice age. I am really uncertain whether this is a good idea. On the other hand, if it is a bad idea I would very much appreciate to know why.

erl happ:
“There is no reason to expect that the surface, whether it be land or water, varies in the rate at which energy is released into the atmosphere. That idea is ‘unphysical’.”
Reply:
I can see the sense in saying that a variable rate of energy release is ‘unphysical’ in relation to a solid such as land.
However I don’t see it as being at all ‘unphysical’ in relation to a liquid such as water.
A body of liquid as great as an ocean has a good deal of movement within it. Furthermore light penetrates to varying depths before it is all converted to heat energy.
It must be the case that the oceans absorb or release energy to the air at variable rates depending upon movements within the body of the water.
That certainly seems to be what happens at the 25 to 30 years phase changes
and is probably what happens during ENSO changes.
I see this as a critical issue because the idea of variable oceanic energy release puts the oceans firmly in control of changes in the air rather than
our having to go to greatly convoluted lengths to explain how changes in the air alone can change the energy flow to or from the oceans.
If the source of variation is indeed the oceans so that the air is forced to then respond (as I propose) then any theory, either AGW or of a sceptical nature, that relies on changes in the air alone as a primary climate driver must fail.

erlhapp (09:25:19) “[…] the flux in stratospheric ozone is due to the change in flow of oxides of nitrogen from the mesosphere where the concentration of these chemicals is dependent upon solar irradiance and geomagnetic activity.”
Question for anyone:
Is there consensus on this (across all groups) or is this disputed?

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
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http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/30/tropical-tropospheric-amplification-an-invitation-to-review-this-new-paper/#more-9005
I find this a very credible feedback mechanism.

Much more important than the albedo of clouds is the evaporation caused by trade winds feeding the ITCZ cu-nims which is then pumped up into the stratosphere by the super-cells, where it then falls back to the ocean as cold rain. Thus while they don’t have the cooling effect of a hurricane, everyday, starting sooner or later, they start the process of ripping heat from the ocean and continue into the night. I’m not sure what you mean by higher level drying, it’ll be wet/icy in the cu-nims as we suspect the Airbus that went down found out.

“erlhapp (03:16:04) :
Stephen,
Re: “It must be the case that the oceans absorb or release energy to the air at variable rates depending upon movements within the body of the water.”
Warmest water will always be at the top because it is less dense and the energy transmission rate will vary with wind strength because of its effect on evaporation. Wind strength does not, as far as I know, vary on thirty year time scales.
The atmosphere can not function as a variable inhibitor of the loss of surface warmth.”
Repy:
1) Warmest water will always be at the top because the effect of direct insolation and downwelling IR is always added to the background energy level at or near the ocean surface. However sunlight gets into the water to depths of 100 metres or more which is well below the region involved in evaporation. Thus there is plenty of scope for an uneven and constantly shifting distribution of energy below the evaporative layer. Each time such unevenness affects the surface layer it will increase or decrease the total energy at the surface by adding to or subtracting from the effects of direct insolation and downwelling IR. Furthermore the density of water and it’s thermal capacity will ensure that such internal oceanic variations in energy flow will vastly exceed any variability in insolation or downwelling IR.
2) An increase in wind strength generally follows an increase in energy at the ocean surface rather than leading it. When more energy is released by the oceans the entire hydrological cycle speeds up as shown in another thread by the lag curves set out by Roy Spencer. First evaporation, then clouds and rain and then windiness. You seem to be suggesting that windiness comes first but I cannot see how that could be so because more windiness needs more convective activity which in turn needs more evaporation which itself needs warmer ocean surfaces first.
3) On 30 year timescales (approximately) in tune with ocean phase changes the entire hydrological cycle speeds up or slows down as the air circulation systems shift poleward or equatorward. The windiness in a specific location or region may not be typical of the global effect because each location or region is primarily affected by the change in it’s location in relation to the air circulation patterns and not by the global change in windiness. Thus larger equatorial air masses globally may well show less windiness in the tropics and other places affected by high pressure cells but nonetheless the global speed of the hydrological cycle has increased with greater global windiness overall.
4) I must insist that the air can and does provide a variable and always negative response to changes in the rate of energy release by the oceans. I judge that the oceanic variation and the negative response in the air are orders of magnitude greater in terms of the scale of energy transfer than anything that can happen in the air alone. Thus the processes you observe are in my opinion merely second or third order modulating effects within the overall ocean/air interaction and are never strong enough to alter the trend imposed by oceanic variability. AGW and the Svensmark approach have the same problem.
You can counter what I say if you can demonstrate how the processes described by you can inject enough energy into the oceans to create those 25 to 30 year phase changes in relation to which I see no correlation with the processes you describe, or the cosmic ray variability or indeed CO2 increases.