After an exciting encounter last week with some genuine sunspots that weren’t arguable as specks, pores, or pixels, the sun resumes its quiet state this week.
People send me things. Here’s the latest email from Paul Stanko, who has been following the solar cycle progression in comparison to previous ones.
Hi Anthony,
Out of the numbered solar cycles, #24 is now in 7th place. Only 5, 6, and 7 of the Dalton Minimum and cycles 12, 14, and 15 of the Baby Grand Minimum had more spotless days. Since we’ve now beaten cycle #13, we are clearly now competitive with the Baby Grand minimum.
Here’s a table of how the NOAA panel’s new SC#24 prediction is doing:
November 2008: predicted = 1.80, actual = 1.67 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 83.7)
December 2008: predicted = 1.80, actual = 1.69 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 84.7)
January 2009: predicted = 2.10, actual = 1.71 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 73.2)
February 2009: predicted = 2.70, actual = 1.67 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 55.6)
March 2009: predicted = 3.30, actual = 1.97 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 53.8)
April would require the October data which is still very incomplete. If this analysis intrigues you, I’d be happy to keep you updated on it. Please also find a couple of interesting graphs attached as images.
Paul Stanko
Here’s the graphs, the current cycle 24 and years of interest are marked with a red arrow:
And how 2008/2009 fit in:
Paul,
If our host is willing, I know that many readers would be very interested in keeping up with this.
Regards,
hunter
Buy long underwear.
We are going to need all the help we can to stay warm.
How do we factor in the 1912-13 data to reflect the fact that we have, today, far better observations upon which to rely?
I’m sorry Mr. Watts, but there’s a fundamental inaccuracy in this post. That is clearly the 5-ball in the picture, not a cue ball.
How DARE someone who is not a qualified pool player comment on cue balls!!! /Gavin Schmidt
Meanwhile the UK merrily destroys its energy security and continues to tilt billions at wind turbines…
And I ask again.
If Sunspot activity is linked to climate, as appears to be so (and even the disputed tree record appears to record the Dalton minimum) – then what is the causal factor??
If it is not TSI, solar wind, magnetic flux or cosmic rays, then what could be the causal factor? Anything we have missed?
.
Looks like over 200 more spotless days needed to move up to the next place in the spotless total days.
Based on progression of the cycle so far (for those of you who chart such things), what are your predictions for how many more spotless days could be expected in this cycle?
After an exciting encounter last week with some genuine sunspots that weren’t arguable as specks, pores, or pixels
Something gravitational from planets in the solar system rustled the surface of the sun. 😉
BTW, whatever happened to solar flares??
I haven’t been in a location where the Northern Lights, aurora borealis, are viewable. Can anyone give an update on how active that has been?
Besides cooling the earth is a quiet sun making for quiet Northern Lights?
———————————–
NASA | The Mystery of the Aurora :
Just look at the big beautiful sleepy orange ball!
Gerard Harbison (11:11:35) :
That is clearly the 5-ball in the picture
The sun is actually white. 😉
You can see it when you’re on a plane and see the tops of clouds; they would be colored orange instead of white if the sun was orange.
But maybe you already knew that and were just joking. 😉
The most important issue is to try and separate any solar influence on air temperatures from oceanic influences.
That would in turn help us to ascertain how much of the observed climate variation could still be regarded as unexplained by natural forces and thus still available to AGW proponents to support their theory.
I am currently of the view that a variable combination of solar and oceanic variations cover all observed climate changes with the CO2 effect just an assumption programmed into the models to cover up an underestimate of the significance of the solar and oceanic combination.
After 50 years experience and reading I think it likely that any extra energy in the air from more GHGs is just accelerated to space faster by a slightly more energised hydrological cycle with no efect on equilibrium temperature as I have explained elsewhere.
Leif Svalgaard is pretty sure that solar variation is insignificant on any timescale relevant to human activity. I’m fairly sure that on century timescales solar changes provide an upward or downward temperature trend but from historical data I also suspect a solar influence on timescales of a couple of decades.
A period of a relatively quiescent sun is very helpful at present even if it does turn out to cause humanity some discomfort.
In any event the global temperature behaviour ovr the past 10 to 15years is hardly helpful to the AGW heory.
Scientists have been given godlike powers and hold sway over all our lives.
How many people on the entire planet do those scientists they speak of are enumerated at? Lets just agree that number would be .001% of the entire population. So you are telling me that .001% of the population hold sway over my life without a debate?
I want the names of these people. They have been given too much power to ruin our lives.
I want a complete and thorough dissertation done on this subject.
Thank You.
ralph (11:17:55) :
then what is the causal factor?? Anything we have missed?
You may want to look in to the work of Henrik Svensmark, Willie Soon, and Piers Corbyn (et al). On October 28 Piers Corbyn has said he’s going to make public some of the key ingredients of his method. That’s just 25 days away now.
I am anxious to learn about myself. How about everyone else?
It’s ok to say, “we don’t know”. It’s a shame so much research cash is being thrown at CO2 when we know so little about big yellow firey thing in the sky.
One question, are we gearing up for the big one in 2012??
Now, from my forays on the world wide web, the common belief seems to be we are heading for turbulent times ahead during our transit across the plane of the ecliptic of the milky way when we will be experiencing the full force of the black hole at the centre and the gravity field, associated with it. I believe we are entering the constellation of ophiucus are we not?
I am happy to be corrected and informed on all of this by those more versed with this subject. My point is this. the belief is whilst the sun is quiescent now and may be for a year or two, the fear is it may burst into life during the year 2012 or shortly afterward. Are we now in the quite period before the storm?
My interest is in the UFO phenomena, and I have read Dan Shermans testimony how he was in a programme called Project Preserve Destiny. He was trained specifically to communicate on higher mental level than most if us normally do, but his preparation was for a time when the electromagnetic communications we have now, no longer function.
The first things this implies is solar storm of massive proportions. Now, tieing all this together as best I can, I wonder if indeed the sun is entering an area of great perturbation of gravity, cosmic rays, and magnetism, as we enter this part of the galaxy, and wonder if there is some correlation as yet unknown with the quitenss if the sun as it is now.
Is there a mechanism inside the sun that may cause it to explode, flare up, and are these external factors of the earths transit through the galactic plane, about to have dramatic effect upon the sun???.
I wonder if NASA and NOAA and a few others either know or suspect something is about to happen that is not not in the public field of knowledge. Just a suspicion, based on a few disparate witnesses such as Dan Sherman, and others.
Has anyone out there reading this blog, come across any rumours to back up some of these things I refer to? What is said in the scientific establishment, about all this????
I notice how this subject is definitely not on the mainstream media, are they being warned off it I wonder? Just some thoughts,
What are your thoughts on this then??
[Please, folks, no UFO speculations on this blog. They got LOTS of other blogs for that! ~ Evan]
Does anyone know how the two latest sunspots 1026 and 1027 scored on magnetic field strength? According to Livingston and Penn they should be 2000 Gs or less to fit in their prognosis of dissappearing.
This is also a game of psychology. Are you smart enough to play?
We have to change the word Denial to the word Agreement. Most people when surveyed are in Agreement that global warming aka climate change is not a problem, is not occurring, and agree we have global cooling now, confirmed by the satellite data, ocean data, and solar activity which has been nill for over 2 years.
Fred from Canuckistan . . . (10:52:41) :
“Buy long underwear”.
Log store full, oil tank full, food store full. Anything else we should do?
Stephen Wilde (11:28:23) :
After 50 years experience and reading I think it likely that any extra energy in the air from more GHGs is just accelerated to space faster by a slightly more energised hydrological cycle with no efect on equilibrium temperature as I have explained elsewhere.
A very prominent Russian scientist would roughly seem to agree with you :
“Ascribing ‘greenhouse’ effect properties to the Earth’s atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated. Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away.”…..”Instead of professed global warming, the Earth will be facing a slow decrease in temperatures in 2012-2015. The gradually falling amounts of solar energy, expected to reach their bottom level by 2040, will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-2060,”
–Habibullo Abdussamatov
-Head, space research laboratory, Russian Academies of Sciences’ Pulkovo Observatory
-Head, Astrometry project, being conducted on the Russian 1/2 of the International Space Station
link :
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070115/59078992.html
>nick-ynysmon (11:36:07) : One question, are we gearing up for the big one in 2012??
The one term wonder loses his job? Just asking. 🙂
It’s worse than we thought isn’t it?
There’s too any hockey sticks in your graphs there AW, you’re going to be getting some people worried on their sickbed.
Philip T. Downman (11:43:17) :
Does anyone know how the two latest sunspots 1026 and 1027 scored on magnetic field strength? According to Livingston and Penn they should be 2000 Gs or less to fit in their prognosis of dissappearing.
Right on the curve. Leif gave a link to a plot:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
The first of Paul’s plots shows cycle 24 to have had 738 spotless days. This is quite remarkable considering that cycle 24 is less than a year old….
Philip T. Downman (11:43:17) :
Does anyone know how the two latest sunspots 1026 and 1027 scored on magnetic field strength? According to Livingston and Penn they should be 2000 Gs or less to fit in their prognosis of dissappearing.
Their average was 1917 G, so right on track
I did some checking of previous solar cycles and there just doesn’t seem to be any correlation between rising monthly sunspot numbers and a relative count of spotless days. Other than they become less frequent. Now there does seem to be a threshold for spotless days right around a monthly sunspot number of 45. Based upon predictions that the Sun might be at or near solar minimum, with maximum predicted to be in the range of 75 around spring of 2013, spotless days total should come in right under 1000 for SC23. I think that would be the low end. If the Sun takes longer to ramp up, solar maximum is delayed and the monthly sunspot count only reaches, say 50, the sun could break the record for total spotless days of any solar cycle. Fascinating stuff.
UK Sceptic (11:15:52) :
“Meanwhile the UK merrily destroys its energy security and continues to tilt billions at wind turbines…”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6248257/Planned-recession-could-avoid-catastrophic-climate-change.html
Quoting Leif on solarcycle24.com:
For 1027 [1026 he didn’t get], the mean of 12 spots over 4 days was:
1917 Gauss for field strength
0.850 for contrast
Needless to say [!] the results fall just where they should be:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
” Phillip Bratby (11:51:10) :
Fred from Canuckistan . . . (10:52:41) :
“Buy long underwear”.
Log store full, oil tank full, food store full. Anything else we should do? ”
Learn to like hockey, curling & ice fishing 🙂
The bright side is you can think of the outdoors as a giant walk-in beer fridge 🙂 🙂 🙂
This will make an anti fossil fuel movement — already suggesting evil things, as to put a carbon cap on development countries — extra evil.
I think we need yet more towards non-toxic-, non-polluting-, and fertilizing CO2 positive pro-fossil resistance, but also reveal the environmentalism as a pro-regulation common political discource.
What a task… This site’s absolutely great!
There has not been a new topic posted over at Real Climate since September 30th. Whatts the matter? Do they all have their panties in a bind over there?
REPLY: They post a new topic once a week, that has been the schedule for months. – A
I like comparisons of “predicted” aka soothsaying verses “actual”. If more of these comparisons with regards to climate science were shown in the media more people would realize the futility of the predictive aspects of weather forecasting in the longer term also known as climate forecasting. It’s funny that people know that the weather forecasts are going to be wrong one week to ten days out or even wrong for the next day but they accept without question the doom-saying scenarios of extreme long range weather forecasting that the climate will implode on us. I guess it’s easy to accept that man has mucked it up. Yup, some of us have mucked it up and those are the ones projecting climate on long range time scales using simplistic models expecting them to be able to have any accuracy when confronted with the inbuilt randomness of natural weather and climate cycles.
So please continue the comparisons of forecasters, whether or not they are weathermen or climate scientists. I’d love to see a detailed comparison between what the IPCC and Dr. Mann et. al. have predicted verses what Nature has actually tossed us. I think these sorts of comparisons need to be shown to people in as simple language as possible so that the widest range of people can comprehend it.
pwl (12:14:06) :
Here’s Piers Corbyn’s success record : …showing a success rate of 85%…
http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/pv.asp?p=wact5&fsize=0
Activity on the sun is the main ingredient in his forecasts.
Here is his 100 year forecast :
As has been noted on WUWT, there were increased clouds in 2007 and 2008. Correlation is not causation as we know, but this would be a prediction of the GCR theory of increased clouds from a quiet sun. If we did not observe the increased clouds, the theory would have to be examined to see where it is going wrong. Something that the AGW folks seem to have a problem doing since they have transformed it from science to a religion. You might as well be arguing transubstantiation with them as to get them to accept scientific evidence. All I know is that the historical record of 1911-1913 showed a global cooling that somehow has not been “adjusted out” of the Hadley data. We have had an increased albedo due to clouds and a cooling for the past two years. Some of this is probably due to the down slope of the AMO with regard to cooling. I suggest to the Brits that they may find the predictions made by Hadley to be a bit off again this year. Wind and solar are all very nice and well. But when the sun does not shine and your turbine blades have a load of ice on them, things are not quite so pretty.
Leif Svalgaard (12:01:21) :
Hi Leif,
As usual you are correct. 🙂 The most accurate way to state it since the minima are considered the borders between cycles would be 23-24, 23 to 24, or something like that. Hope I got the quote feature syntax right, and thanks for making sure I stay honest. Have a great day all!
“Michael (11:31:44) :
Scientists have been given godlike powers and hold sway over all our lives.
How many people on the entire planet do those scientists they speak of are enumerated at? Lets just agree that number would be .001% of the entire population. So you are telling me that .001% of the population hold sway over my life without a debate?
I want the names of these people. They have been given too much power to ruin our lives.
I want a complete and thorough dissertation done on this subject.
Thank You.”
I recall an interesting discussion on this topic called, “It’s Time for a Change”
on holoscience.com. The author discusses the power of scientists in society over the “unscientific masses”, aka scientism. http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=6bcdajsb
From Wik:
“The term scientism is used to describe the view that natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life, such as philosophical, religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations, and over other fields of inquiry, such as the social sciences. The term is used by social scientists like Hayek[1] or Karl Popper to describe what they see as the underlying attitudes and beliefs common to many scientists. “
Gene Nemetz (12:21:41) :
Here’s Piers Corbyn’s success record : …showing a success rate of 85%…
The 85% refers to:
“March to Sept 2008 showing a success rate of 85%”
Activity on the sun is the main ingredient in his forecasts.
Except there was no solar activity during that interval…
The wild card:
Solar Minimum versus volcanic activity:
http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:dtuqhJKoOs0J:www.khalilov.biz/pdf/About%2520possible%2520influence%2520of%2520solar%2520activity%2520upon%2520seismic%2520and%2520volcanic%2520activities%25203.pdf+solar+activity+and+volcanic+eruptions&cd=15&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
” Leif Svalgaard (12:01:21) :
The first of Paul’s plots shows cycle 24 to have had 738 spotless days. This is quite remarkable considering that cycle 24 is less than a year old….”
Presumably, the graph might more accurately, though cumbersomely be titled: “Number of Spotless Days During the Minimum Between Cycles n-1 and n”?
Surely one might offer a suggested correction without the need to make a pejorative comment?
ShrNfr (12:26:36) :
increased clouds in 2007 and 2008…if we did not observe the increased clouds, the theory would have to be examined to see where it is going wrong
If light from stars didn’t bend around the sun then General Relativity would have to be examined too. But it did.
And there is an increase in clouds as you point out. So this is more evidence that Henrik Svensmark is correct. Time will tell more.
Paul Stanko (12:28:37) :
The most accurate way to state it since the minima are considered the borders between cycles would be 23-24, 23 to 24
So ’24’ means from maximum of 23 to maximum of 24.
Now, you also have a cycle 1, which then must be from maximum of cycle 0 to maximum of cycle 1 … There are no daily sunspot numbers for cycle 0… and lots of data gaps before cycle 8, so one cannot really count spotless days before cycle 8…
“REPLY: They post a new topic once a week, that has been the schedule for months. – A”
Thanks for correcting my error. I was confused because they only have 300 and something comments on their last topic.
Whether the Sun is at fault or not, Intellicast is showing below normal temps. here all week next week, not sure about the rest of the NH because it would be cooling overall for the Winter.
The Southern Hemisphere is set to get warm though, with the forecast maps showing some wild temperature swings in the southern half of South America for instance, “Not quite an El Nino” is showing no strengthening as well and Ocean Temps in the SH seemingly on their way down.
Ern Matthews (11:53:59) :
are we gearing up for the big one in 2012??
The one term wonder loses his job? Just asking. 🙂
And Sarah Palin becomes president. Just answering.
Leif: You only offer criticism. Surely the sun is always active? What explanation do you have for Piers Corbyn’s success rate compared to that of the Met Office?
Leif
What do you think of the paper linked by Ron De Hann above?
Leif Svalgaard (12:33:19) :
It’s good that you were able to pick up on that from the link. This is why I posted a link, i.e., so that anyone can go and read it for themselves.
From this, and all the additional audit information on Piers Corbyn at the linkyou would agree that he has a fantastic record? Also, do you know of someone better?
For anyone who is not familiar with this famous old work …
Sunspots And Their Effect – Harlan True Stetson
Something all Americans should justly treasure IMHO.
Always worth a read when you’ve settled in front of a log fire on a chilly night having done something like, oh I don’t know, tended to a ewe that sadly in the end died giving birth but you’ve managed to successfully get the surviving lamb paired with the single of another ewe with a good udder. It seems to cheer the heart and puts things back into perspective again somehow. Haven’t the faintest idea why!
Can’t say anything about it’s claimed predictive qualitied, I;m not really interested in that. It’s just a good read. The correlations in the underlying work are said to fairly remarkable though.
I also think there’s a staggering amount that we don’t yet understand about the sun-earth connecion in all sorts of areas. I’d venture to suggest there’s a heck of a lot more going climate wise than just heat (possibly drivers for tornadoes and earthquakes, for example). But that’s pure speculation without foundation at all.
Bear in mind the science has moved on considerably in recently years. There’s a large number of specialized satellites buzzing now, determined to further knowledge in this area. If you’re interested, pop over to NASA’s site and take a look.
As you may know, some use this work as a basis for predicting market movements, etc. Others use it for quite different purposes. Here’s one I turned up while searching for a link to an unembellished English translation of Tchijevsky’s original underlying work to post here. This site’s not my cup of tea at all, but feel free to make of it what you will.
Unfortunately, I failed to find what I was looking for 🙁
Leif Svalgaard (12:33:19) :
Activity on the sun is the main ingredient in his forecasts.
Except there was no solar activity during that interval…
I see. The sun was out of town then, I guess. 😉
Aelric (12:38:21) :
Surely one might offer a suggested correction without the need to make a pejorative comment?
I see you don’t know Leif Svalgaard.
Won’t be long until we are back on the global cooling scare…probably why it’s called climate change now. Either way a money making opportunity, though I think they may have missed the opportunity thanks to mother nature!
SOON THEY WILL HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE POWER OF THE OCEANS and the sun (ominous voice)!
My guess is global cooling until at least 2035. Ocean cycles negative through 2030-2035, solar decreasing through that period as well. Followed by a resuming of warming…
Can anyone think of how we could do a poll whereby we could enter our predictions? Continued Warming or Cooling, peaking at 20XXad? Would be very interesting to make a graph of the current consensus of WUWT readers.
Gene Nemetz (11:51:10) : A very prominent Russian scientist would roughly seem to agree with you : Habibullo Abdussamatov. Head, space research laboratory, Russian Academies of Sciences’ Pulkovo Observatory
Right! We all have to admit that there are many brilliant Russian scientists in the good old tradition of Landau and Lifshitz,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau#Landau_and_Lifshitz_Course_of_Theoretical_Physics
It is sometimes amusing to watch the so called climate “experts”, like the journalists, the lawyers and the economists, who have strong opinions about our climate – most of them cannot understand a single page in the Landau and Lifshitz Course of Theoretical Physics! We should really be extremely humble and acknowledge that we understand so little compared to the great minds in our time.
@ ShrNfr
What’s the source for increases in cloud cover 2007/08? Anything published?
Phillip Bratby (12:59:44) :
Leif: You only offer criticism. Surely the sun is always active?
Not that we [and Corbyn] can see…
What explanation do you have for Piers Corbyn’s success rate compared to that of the Met Office?
He did not compare with anybody else for those 40 odd events.
Dennis Wingo (13:01:00) :
What do you think of the paper linked by Ron De Hann above?
Not much. This a claim that surfaces every so often, just like sun-weather/climate connections.
Gene Nemetz (13:03:27) :
>i>Activity on the sun is the main ingredient in his forecasts.
“Except there was no solar activity during that interval…”
I see. The sun was out of town then, I guess. 😉
It seems that Corbyn didn’t know that…or managed anyhow…
Phillip Bratby (12:59:44) :
Leif: You only offer criticism. Surely the sun is always active?
Not that we [and Corbyn] can see…
What explanation do you have for Piers Corbyn’s success rate compared to that of the Met Office?
He did not compare with anybody else for those 40 odd events.
Dennis Wingo (13:01:00) :
What do you think of the paper linked by Ron De Hann above?
Not much. This a claim that surfaces every so often, just like sun-weather/climate connections.
Gene Nemetz (13:03:27) :
Activity on the sun is the main ingredient in his forecasts.
“Except there was no solar activity during that interval…”
I see. The sun was out of town then, I guess. 😉
It seems that Corbyn didn’t know that…or managed anyhow…
Invariant (13:10:39) :
Right! We all have to admit that there are many brilliant Russian scientists in the good old tradition of Landau and Lifshitz
I’m sure that L&L would cringe at this quote from ‘the brilliant Russian scientist:
“Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away.”
As there are no sunspots and temperatures have not fallen should we think of another mechanism for the Little Ice Age. Dust in the upper atmosphere for example
35F.Snowing and rain,snowing on the Blue Mountains of NE Oregon,fire in fireplace,
Wife and Springer dozing peacefully, perfect late Novem…er, wait a minute….
I have a question,
Looking at the chart above The highlighted bar is flanked by Cycle “13 and 14”. Both of these cycles were over 100 years ago. The Cycle “14” according to what Ican tell occurred between cycle 13 and 14n and Cycle “13” occurred between 12 and 13. Given the listing I have this places the minimums at Feb 1902 and March 1890 respectively. Given that, how do we compare the record from that era to this era? The ability to see minuscule “Tiny Tims, Specs, Pores, or Blown Pixels” of today would probably point to an under counting of Cycle 23-24 spotless days in comparison.
I am not against counting these pores as spots, but we probably should not use them as historical comparisons to past events. Given what I have observed of cycle 24, the spots of the last week would have counted as only the second and third group for historical proposes. This in not a perspective issue, only a scientific one. I do not know whether this would change the historical count significantly, but it would be more accurate.
Ern Matthews (11:53:59) :
>nick-ynysmon (11:36:07) : One question, are we gearing up for the big one in 2012??
The one term wonder loses his job? Just asking. 🙂
Just teasing, more likely. Since homogenized global warming peaked eleven years ago, it is appropriate that Sen Kerry is introducing a climate bill to control it. That’s the fire truck arriving in time to hose down the ashes.
The assault on common sense coming from Washington DC is mind numbing. The AGW facts are on the table for them to see, but no one cares to look.
Three cheers for Rio, and get well Keith.
A casual look at the rate of change plot for SC24 spotless days since the first SC24 spotless day, available at: http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html, (see panel; Evolution of spotless days in SC23-24 and comparison with other cycle transits), indicates that the current sun spot accumulation/month may soon exceed the 1st standard deviation for the average of SC10-15. While these rates of change functions are not linear and it appears that SC24 is past the mid point of SC24 spotless day accumulation, it is not a stretch to expect SC24 spotless days to exceed SC15 @ 300+ of the early 1900s.
The period SC10-15 (approx.1849-1930) is associated with cooler climactic conditions.
Just thinkin…
In my humble opinion, comparison of spotless day records is rather useless considering some of us today count spots that aren’t even visible with a Galilean telescope.
Many have repeated this on countless threads about the minimum: If all these pores and tiny tims that come up time and time again were not counted, we would be at 1000 spotless days at least.
A better comparison would be solar cycle length.
Looking at sunspot numbers (And for those that say SC 24 began in 2006 with a reversed magnetic signature; to be fair you cannot determine SC length by looking at Magnetic orientation, because in 1810 there were no magnetograms);
SC 23 is at least 12.6 years long, the longest since the Dalton Minimum and the 3rd longest on record. If the pores were eliminated from the count, it would probably make the cycle even longer.
These two new regions may have been impressive, but looking at solar wind, it is still very weak. SC 24 is trying but I have a feeling this is just another false start to a low cycle.
Aligner (13:03:10) :
According to these studies the level of activity on the sun affects your health :
At higher daily levels of GMA, RCA/LAD culprit lesions in AMI are equal; at low GMA and higher CRA (neutron) activity, LAD lesions are predominant.
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0167527307011771
Implantable cardioverter defibrillator recordings and treatment of episodes of VT/VF appear to be inversely correlated with the daily level of GMA and directly correlated with CRA (as measured by neutron fluctuations).
http://www.viamedica.pl/gazety/gazeta1/darmowy_pdf.phtml?indeks=101&indeks_art=1366&VSID=90da16d
A trend of a drop-off for all three immunoglobulins was seen on the far side of the maximal point of the solar cycle.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p7gn825670552312/
Leif Svalgaard (13:20:58) :I’m sure that L&L would cringe at this quote from ‘the brilliant Russian scientist:“Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away.”
Please explain. I am quite familiar with thermal expansion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_thermal_expansion
In Praise of Winter.
“The Frost
The frost moved up the window pane
Against the sun’s advance.
In line and pattern weaving there
Rich scenes of old romance;
Armies on the Russian snow,
Cockade, sword and lance.”
Ned Pratt
Invariant (13:50:40) :
“Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away.”
Please explain. I am quite familiar with thermal expansion
‘greenhouse gases’ only or especially? ‘lighter as a result of expansion’? perhaps the other way around…
The statement seems to be an attempt to explain how the ‘heated greenhouse gases’ influence our climate. The mushiness of this is in stark contrast to the precision of L&L [I had the pleasure (and a bit of pain as they were a challenge) of studying using their textbooks]
Paul
Many thanks for the plots. What I found just as interesting was the positons of cycles 18,20,21,22 and 23. All the shortest mins were in the recent cycles. Global warming ?
Invariant (13:10:39) :
We all have to admit that there are many brilliant Russian scientists
We should easily be able to admit it—we just need to remember Sputnik and how embarrassing that was to the USA.
But people forget.
Mr. Alex (13:44:36) :
A better comparison would be solar cycle length.
There is no significant correlation between temperature and cycle length. If anything there is a [weak – and not significant] positive correlation: longer cycles = warmer:
http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%20Length%20Temperature%20Correlation.pdf
Is there really any value in comparing calendar years with most spotless days? I mean, it surely matters if the minimum happens to occur in the middle of a year versus the boundary of two? It would make some sense if the average cycle length was much longer compared to one year, but with ~11 years, I think the “randomness” of where in the calendar the deepest minimum occurs contributes too much.
If the planet begins to cool due to reduced energy entering earths system, wouldn’t that ultimately reduce the amount of wind on the planets surface? It seems to me that a planet with reduced external energy input would be more temperature stable and thereby have less wind energy. Maybe this is too simple of a hypothesis. Though it would be a real pisser to rely on a bunch of wind energy and then have it disappear.
Mark Wagner (13:12:37) :
Anything published?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/26/the-2007-2008-global-cooling-event-evidence-for-clouds-as-the-cause/
Leif Svalgaard (13:15:36) :
I wasn’t agreeing with you Leif. Did you imagine I was??
Am I just seeing things or do some years that have a high number of spotless days are then followed by a very warm year or years?
Eg 1911-14 followed by a significant increase in temps in 1915 and 1916.
1922-24 followed by high temps in 1925 and 1926
1986 then follows increased temps 87 and 88
1976 and then a big increase in 1977
1996 and then a big increase 1997-1998
1964 followed by increases in 1965-67
1932-34 breaks the pattern a little (cool in 1935) but then increases from 1936-38
Is this a pattern?
carol smith (13:28:13) :
We could also consider there is a delay in reaction, like a delay in water in a freezer before it turns in to ice.
Leif Svalgaard (14:07:08) :
‘greenhouse gases’ only or especially? ‘lighter as a result of expansion’? perhaps the other way around…
Now, there I was wrong, they are warmer, expand, and rise. What really got me was the reference to ‘greenhouse gases’. This applies to all gases.
Paul Stanko: I’m interested in how you compute number of spotless days for cycles 1-8 when we don’t have [complete] daily values for those cycles.
Also takes care of:
Gene Nemetz (13:04:27) :
I see you don’t know Leif Svalgaard.
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/solar-warming-solar-cooling/
Gene Nemetz (14:22:23) :
I wasn’t agreeing with you Leif. Did you imagine I was??
Don’t care much either way.
Slightly OT…
Environment Canada back on Sept 1, had much of Canada above normal for the winter months(DJF)…..Oct 1, they have flip-flopped and now much of Canada is below normal….its worse than we thought…
@Gene Nemetz:
> According to these studies the level of activity on the sun affects your health
Gene, I can’t get at the underlying papers from you links (thanks for those) but from the abstracts, yes. Does that suprise you? I’m sure you’ll discover much else, keep digging! There’s a russian science paper from about 1907 I’ve been trying to dig up recently that’s supposed to have lots of health related correlation in it. No luck so far.
I’m afraid I’m pretty tired and heading for bed. Goodnight.
Leif Svalgaard (14:07:08) : The statement seems to be an attempt to explain how the ‘heated greenhouse gases’ influence our climate.
Certainly you know L&L better than most people and certainly better than me, that’s probably why I cannot figure out what is wrong wit the statement of Habibullo Abdussamatov. I still think that heated gases become less dense and will expand and rise and give their heat away. I always prefer to make things as simple as possible because I usually cannot understand complicated matters. This ability to explain complicated issues in a simple way was not only promoted my Feynman but also by Landau,
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau
Landaus vitenskapelige stil var fri fra den dessverre ganske utbredte tendensen til å vanskeliggjøre det enkle (ofte begrunnet med generalitet og formalitet som uansett viser seg illusorisk). Selv strevde han mot det motsatte: å forenkle det kompliserte, å avdekke den sanne enkelhet i naturlovene. Denne evnen til å forenkle og anskueliggjøre var en egenskap han satte meget høyt.
http://ncwatch.typepad.com/media/2009/06/cooling-synergy-no-sunpots-and-more-volcanic-eruptions.html
Leif,
Is there any work like this involving vaccuum domains that you know of going on in the states and what credence would you give to the idea?
http://www.math.nsc.ru/directions/Geoeng.htm
Give the English a little latitude, the translation’s a bit rough in places.
ralph 11:17:55,
A slight increase in albedo has enormous impact on the incoming energy. Anything that impacts cloud formation will have a magnified impact.
“Leif Svalgaard (14:10:50) :
Mr. Alex (13:44:36) :
A better comparison would be solar cycle length.
There is no significant correlation between temperature and cycle length. If anything there is a [weak – and not significant] positive correlation: longer cycles = warmer:”
Neat graphs Leif, thanks.
I wasn’t referring to temperature correlation at all in the post, merely commenting on solar minima and how similar the current minimum is to the Dalton (in terms of cycle length), whilst the biased spotless days count shows otherwise; but thanks anyways.
For anyone interested, Leif has posted an update of the L&P Umbral Data Graph on the SC24.com message board: http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=855
Leif writes:
“For 1027 [1026 he didn’t get], the mean of 12 spots over 4 days was:
1917 Gauss for field strength
0.850 for contrast”
Ian George (14:28:12) :
“Am I just seeing things or do some years that have a high number of spotless days are then followed by a very warm year or years?
Eg 1911-14 followed by a significant increase in temps in 1915 and 1916.
1922-24 followed by high temps in 1925 and 1926
1986 then follows increased temps 87 and 88
1976 and then a big increase in 1977
1996 and then a big increase 1997-1998
1964 followed by increases in 1965-67
1932-34 breaks the pattern a little (cool in 1935) but then increases from 1936-38
Is this a pattern?”
Ian George,
You will find plausible answers to your question here:
Also read the links in the article(s).
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/
Invariant (15:08:23) :
I still think that heated gases become less dense and will expand and rise and give their heat away.
Yes, they expand and thereby become less dense, and hence rise and thereby cool. The jarring aspect was the fixation on ‘greenhouse gases’ and what their expansion has to do with anything: “Ascribing ‘greenhouse’ effect properties to the Earth’s atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated”.
Ron de Haan (15:10:24):
Volcanic eruptions and their climatic effects around the Dalton minimum may indeed be what fools people into believing the culprit is the Sun.
Aligner (15:14:14) :
Is there any work like this involving vaccuum domains that you know of going on in the states and what credence would you give to the idea?
Vacuum domains are not part of accepted science and I know of no reputable scientists working on those in the US or elsewhere. That could just be ignorance on my part 🙂
Leif Svalgaard (15:30:19) :The jarring aspect was the fixation on ‘greenhouse gases’ and what their expansion has to do with anything:
Thanks for the explanation. I will have to think about this for a while. The atmosphere is troublesome to understand since transients dominate it all – we can understand very little by a fixed steady state picture without any movement of anything.
“The influence of solar activity is plainly important in driving air temperature above the 200hPa level (about two thirds of the way into the troposphere). Ice cloud is also found in the stratosphere..
The upper atmosphere has an electrodynamic dimension (related to the increasing presence of plasma with elevation) that renders it susceptible to the influence of the flow of charged particles from the sun. This may be responsible for the change in surface pressure at the poles in relation to that at the equator and the phenomena whereby the upper tropical stratosphere suddenly cools as the polar stratosphere warms.
The atmosphere is asymmetric between north and south in part due to the presence of the Antarctic ice mound and the relative abundance of land at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere. The distribution of land and sea is a strong contributor to atmospheric dynamics. So, the hemispheres are essentially very different, a strong factor influencing atmospheric dynamics.
The atmosphere is not amenable to modeling that treats the globe as a closed system. Our understanding of atmospheric processes is elementary. Mathematicians who do not appreciate that the basic parameters driving climate are externally imposed and forever changing, are a hindrance to progress and best employed elsewhere.
It is unnecessary to invoke the increase in the concentration of trace gas concentration in the atmosphere as a cause of surface temperature change. This pattern of thought is nonsense. Natural processes are at work and these owe nothing to the activities of man. It is the height of folly to drive up the price of fossil fuels in pursuit of a furphy.
Footnote: A furphy, also commonly spelled furfie, is Australian slang for a rumour, or an erroneous or improbable story”.
From: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/
Vacuum domains are not part of accepted science
Bin 🙂
How about the recent spin theory stuff
http://www.theresonanceproject.org/research.html
I guess this *is* accepted science, yes?
Paul Stanko’s version of spotless days is probably closer to the old standard than NOAA or SIDC. However, it’s not “official”. I suggest waiting another couple of weeks. The italian webpage http://daltonsminima.wordpress.com/dati-sole-in-diretta/ has a running daily update to http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html#Evolution As of Oct 3, we’re 10 days away from cycle 13 according to SIDC, and 7 days according to NOAA.
Leif:
Well, there’s a whole can of worms right there, isn’t there? Your point interested me so I did a Google and Wiki came up with this:
What intruiges me is that a huge decline in global temperatures (2 degrees), strongly correlated with low solar activity, has no firm explanation in the literature. It intruiges me because it demonstrates a lack of understanding, yet there is so much certainty surrounding a warming of 2 degrees in the other direction. It’s probably because I’m left-brained, but I see some inconsistency here.
I’m interested to know what you think when you see graphs like this one, as a solar physicist: (cosmic ray flux against temperature reconstruction). To me that there is a relationship is clear (although it’s causal properties are not so clear). When you look at this are you willing to conceed at least a long-term (millions of years) cause and effect, even if perhaps you aren’t willing to conceed a short-term one?
Lief,
Do you think the lack of sunspots during the Maunder minimum were careless counting, or just not correlated to TSI?
There was quite a lack for a long time…makes the Dalton minimum look pretty insignificant.
Ed
The suns total irradiance varies by 0.1% over the solar cycle and is out of step with the observed change in surface temperature. At the height of the sunspot cycle a La Nina cooling event is frequently experienced. Plainly, the temperature of the Earth is unrelated to the sunspot cycle. However, there is a second mode of variation in solar activity that is deterministic. This is the Quasi Biennial Oscillation.
QUASI-BIENNIAL OSCILLATIONS OF THE SOLAR MAGNETIC FIELDS E.V. Ivanov, V.N. Obridko, B.D. Shelting
Quasi-biennial oscillations (QBO) in various active events in the Sun are the second most powerful variation after the 11-year cycle. They are stable harmonic oscillations with a period changing noticeably from ~1.5 to ~3.0 years. QBO have been detected in the dynamics of sunspot indices, active longitudes, activity indices in the polar zone, magnetic field of the Sun as a star and large-scale field, solar irradiance, neutrino flux, coronal mass ejections, solar wind and heliospheric parameters, and geomagnetic activity.
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/solar-warming-solar-cooling/
OT Eruption at Cleveland volcano:
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/eruption-at-cleveland-volcano-alaska/
It’s much worse than the pure spotless days numbers would suggest.
The Area measurements of the spots are way down, as compared to runs such as 1911-13.
Most likely attributed to L&P effect, we don’t see them.
And if that were not enough, not only are we seeing smaller and weaker spots, we spent a huge amount of time with little to no visible facula. That, coupled with the spotless days records, makes a running, blow by blow tally with the cycles that daily spots were counted/measured all pale by comparison.
SC23-24 isn’t over yet, and while we have no really detailed data from the Dalton, SC23-24 will end up with the Dalton cycles or right behind them. All that has to take place is for SC24 to continue doing what it has been doing all along: A Walter Payton dead-leg fake on the linebacker.
I’ll let the experts in here figure out how that translates into Solar Cooling.
Walter Dnes (15:59:03) :
Paul Stanko’s version of spotless days is probably closer to the old standard than NOAA or SIDC.
His first graph is dubious as we do not have daily sunspot numbers before 1818, so cannot compute ‘spotless days’ for cycle 1 to 8, yet he shows such values. I’m trying to get him to explain where they come from.
Ron de Haan (15:50:44) :
The upper atmosphere has an electrodynamic dimension (related to the increasing presence of plasma with elevation) that renders it susceptible to the influence of the flow of charged particles from the sun.
This is a muddled and misunderstood and vague and somewhat wrong description of things. I have pointed that out to Erl dozens of times, but he refuses to learn.
UV from the Sun [not charged particles] basically creates the ionosphere, and heats the upper atmosphere causing it to expand. In addition, there are currents flowing into the polar ionosphere from the tail of the Earth’s magnetosphere [not from the Sun]. These currents heats the upper atmosphere too.
This may be responsible for the change in surface pressure at the poles in relation to that at the equator
The density of the atmosphere decreases by a factor of 1000 for each 50 km you ascend, so up in the ionosphere and thermosphere the density is down by a factor of a million [at 100 km] to a trillion [at 200 km], and expansion of contraction of whatever of that small amount of air has no measurable effect on surface pressure.
The rest of the comment is just rants and generalities [even platitudes].
Aligner (15:58:18) :
I guess this *is* accepted science, yes?
I’m afraid not.
Robinson (16:06:17) :
I’m interested to know what you think when you see graphs like this one, as a solar physicist: (cosmic ray flux against temperature reconstruction).
Can’t see the graph as it doesn’t want to be hot-linked to. You have to save the graph [or screen shot of the graph], then upload the image to someplace then linking to that.
“What then is the actual cause of sudden stratospheric warming?”
Scherhag suggested a connection with solar activity. His successors at the Free University of Berlin have established strong links between temperature above 200hPa and solar activity. These you can investigate at:
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/products/cdrom/html/section6.html#fig31
However, linking change in the weather with solar influences, even in the stratosphere, is unfashionable. If the sun determines weather, a raft of people might be seen to be both misguided and even a burden on the public purse”.
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/the-atmosphere-dancing-in-the-solar-wind-el-nino-shows-his-face/
It is seems to me that the alarmists are in a win win situation and that the AGW debate will go on for decades. It appears that global mean CO2 emissions are trending downwards:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_gl.png
This is no doubt because of the massive world wide propaganda campaign regarding the alleged danger of excess CO2 to life on the planet and the recent downturn on industrial activity. This may be offset somewhat by population increase but still should trend downwards.
If so and global temperatures decrease then the alarmists will claim that it is the reduction of CO2 that is causing this. If temperatures do not decrease then the alarmists will claim that we have to do more on reducing CO2 emissions.
Therefore they are in a win win situation and the sceptics are in a lose lose one (unless CO2 emissions do not decrease but temperatures do). So, as it stands I can see no resolution to the issue in most of our lifetimes.
Ed (16:12:59) :
Do you think the lack of sunspots during the Maunder minimum were careless counting
No, I speculate that the sunspots were there, but were invisible [the L&P effect]. The evidence for this is that the Sun were still modulating cosmic rays during the MM just as now, so the solar cycle was still operating.
Ron de Haan (16:16:26) :
This is the Quasi Biennial Oscillation.
It shouldn’t be called that, as it has nothing to do with the similarly named QBO in the Earth’s atmosphere.
On the Sun, activity comes in pulses or spurts, especially when activity is low [so spurts don’t overlap too much]. A particularly good example is solar cycle 14: http://www.leif.org/research/SC14.png
Ah didn’t realise it would do that. Go to this page and scroll down to figure 5. I don’t know a huge amount about this stuff. I’m guessing the reconstruction is based on some kind of isotope proxies.
Ron de Haan (16:58:53) :
“What then is the actual cause of sudden stratospheric warming?”
Mountain ranges and land-sea temperature contrasts generate long (wavenumber 1 or 2) Rossby waves in the troposphere. These waves travel upward to the stratosphere and are dissipated there, producing the warming by decelerating the mean zonal flow. The Sun has nothing to do with this.
Ed (16:12:59) : writes
“Leif,
Do you think the lack of sunspots during the Maunder minimum were careless counting”
If you are really interested in this, I suggest you read Edward Maunder’s second original paper 1922 The Prolonged Sunspot Minimum 1645 – 1715 Journal of the British Astronomical Society 32: 140. He makes an extremely good case that this was NOT a case of careless counting. Unfortunately I have no way of quoting from the actual paper, unless I type out the whole thing.
Top chart omits the number of spotless days in the transit leading into cycle 4.
Robinson (17:11:43) :
Ah didn’t realise it would do that. Go to this page and scroll down to figure 5. I don’t know a huge amount about this stuff. I’m guessing the reconstruction is based on some kind of isotope proxies.
The reconstruction of the cosmic ray intensity relies on the Galaxy having a certain regular [and known!] shape with spiral arms that are fixed in position over billions of years and that the Sun’s orbit in the Galaxy is constant. Recent mapping of the spiral arms shows that the arms are not in the position assumed by Shaviv: e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/0906-2777.pdf so that theory hasn’t got legs anymore.
Jim Cripwell (17:22:26) :
He makes an extremely good case that this was NOT a case of careless counting.
As I said, it is not careless counting. They really couldn’t see the invisible spots.
Now, many are thinking we should be seeing reduced temps. Not necessarily immediately.
My view is that the oceans heat more rapidly than they cool. Oceans are heated directly by the Sun’s incoming SW visible spectrum. Oceans cool by evaporation and long wave thermal radiation.
I submit that the heating is more rapid than the cooling.
So, don’t expect to see a great and immediate drop in temps; however, a slow, gradual decline can be anticipated if the Sun doesn’t get a little more excited.
Are there any real time data sources or graphs of the height of the ionosphere? This, to me, is a measure of the total internal energy of the atmosphere.
Leif, I check your graphs every day – yes, I don’t have much of a life :^)
I notice that, although we are getting spurts of sunspots and other signs of solar activity, the range of fluctuation of the magnetic field is still at low-low levels. I also notice that the F10.7 is not ramping up as anticipated; will it drop again below 70?
francisco (17:30:12) :
Top chart omits the number of spotless days in the transit leading into cycle 4.
Explain
Robert Wood (17:37:44) :
Are there any real time data sources or graphs of the height of the ionosphere? This, to me, is a measure of the total internal energy of the atmosphere.
every five minutes:
http://www.spacew.com/www/hmf2.html
King of Cool, if you check the series back behind 2005, you will see greater -ve changes than that of this year.
The point is, the increase is due to the wartmer planet, and not vice versa.
Now, if you want proof that CO2 residency is short, not long, look at that graph. How co0me there are seasonal variations? Surely, if the residency time was large, then these seasonal variations would not exist.
Gene Nemetz (14:31:47) :
carol smith (13:28:13) :
We could also consider there is a delay in reaction, like a delay in water in a freezer before it turns in to ice.
How come Piers Corbyn is able to base medium term weather forecasts on solar (or lack of ) activity, then? Surely this implies an immediate effect. So which is it?
Jim Cripwell (17:22:26) :
Unfortunately I have no way of quoting from the actual paper, unless I type out the whole thing.
email it to me and I’ll put on my ‘library page’
leif at leif.org
Robert Wood (17:42:43) :
I also notice that the F10.7 is not ramping up as anticipated; will it drop again below 70?
I don’t think it will. It will certainly not drop back to its level [66] at minimum back in December.
ralph (11:17:55) :
If Sunspot activity is linked to climate, as appears to be so (and even the disputed tree record appears to record the Dalton minimum) – then what is the causal factor??
If it is not TSI, solar wind, magnetic flux or cosmic rays, then what could be the causal factor? Anything we have missed?
CO2? ;^}
.
Leif Svalgaard (17:14:31) :
Ron de Haan (16:58:53) :
“What then is the actual cause of sudden stratospheric warming?”
“Mountain ranges and land-sea temperature contrasts generate long (wavenumber 1 or 2) Rossby waves in the troposphere. These waves travel upward to the stratosphere and are dissipated there, producing the warming by decelerating the mean zonal flow. The Sun has nothing to do with this”.
Leif, is this event also related to Rossby waves?
The sudden stratospheric warming in the Arctic, January 2009
For a pictorial overview of the structure of a polar vortex and its interaction with the surrounding atmosphere see:
http://www.jhu.edu/~dwaugh1/gallery_stratosphere.html
The temperature of the atmosphere between the surface and the top of the stratosphere is shown in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 shows the Arctic and Figure 2 the equatorial region.
Figure 1 shows the sudden stratospheric warming in the Arctic that commenced 11th January 2009.
Vertical distribution of temperature 65-90°North
Figure 1 Vertical distribution of temperature 65-90°North
Figure 2 shows cooling in the stratosphere above the equator that occurred at exactly the same time. This is of great interest because it coincided with warming of parts of the ocean.
Vertical distribution of temperature 10°N to 10°S
Figure 2. Vertical distribution of temperature 10°N to 10°S
Source: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/
Sudden Stratospheric Warming 60-90N
Stratospheric Cooling 25N to 25S
The dynamics behind the stratospheric warming event can be followed via an animation at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/36000/36972/npole_gmao_200901-02.mov
“Here is my interpretation of what is happens: An increase in the solar wind occurs as a coronal hole appears on the surface of the sun in an Earth facing position accelerating the solar wind. The atmosphere inflates over the equator and is sucked back from the polar regions, in particular the night pole which faces away from the sun. This enhances the penetration of short wave radiation into the ozone rich stratosphere of the winter hemisphere causing it to warm. The density loss consequent on coronal hole activity reduces the supply of air feeding the polar night jet (the Arctic vortex). The vortex carries within it compounds from the mesosphere that erode ozone. As the vortex is weakened the ozone content of the stratosphere at high latitudes in the winter hemisphere dramatically increases. If the vortex is sufficiently weakened this warm air takes over its home, flooding into the night zone.
Change begins in the lower stratosphere in the Arctic at 70hPa on the 8th. It starts in the upper stratosphere at the equator about January 10th and in the Arctic stratosphere January 11th. The most intense change starts at the highest levels of the stratosphere working its way gradually downwards. This I believe reflects a gradual erosion of the width of the vortex at the highest altitude where solar radiation is most intense. As this happens the ocean starts to warm because a warming upper troposphere loses ice cloud.
An idea of the mechanism that is involved can be gleaned from the abstract of a very recent paper:
Crowley, G., A. Reynolds, J. P. Thayer, J. Lei, L. J. Paxton, A. B. Christensen, Y. Zhang, R. R. Meier, and D. J. Strickland (2008), Periodic modulations in thermospheric composition by solar wind high speed streams, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L21106, doi:10.1029/2008GL035745.
ΣO/N2 ratios in the Earth’s thermosphere are measured by the Global Ultraviolet Imager (GUVI) on the TIMED satellite, and demonstrate strong 9 and 7 day oscillations in 2005 and 2006, respectively, that are well correlated with the solar wind speed and Kp index. This work builds on the recently discovered connection between rotating solar coronal holes and thermospheric mass density variations. The work described here is the first description of geomagnetically forced periodicities in neutral composition. Furthermore, these observations provide the first definitive proof that the processes creating neutral composition changes during geomagnetic storms occur continuously at all activity levels and all over the world. The ΣO/N2 response versus the mass density response indicates the important role of vertical winds at high latitudes while thermal expansion dominates at lower latitudes”.
John Finn (17:52:17) :
If Piers Corbyn has figured out how much effect and how long of a lagtime for sunspots to affect weather, he probably has a comfortable margin with which to work with.
If you knew what the monkeywrenches were that routinely goof up > 3 day forecasts and what they did, you’d be in high demand. You’d also have a dead aim if you knew when those gear-wreckers were about to drop into the mechanism.
Spotless days records can be deceiving, for instance the Laymans’ Count that has a standard and ignores specks (which aligns it with past counting methods) between june 2008 and june 2009 has a spotless days number of 349. That only leaves 16 days in the year with a spot.
As far as the future is concerned there is good news, there are no chances of major grand minima for the next 1000 years at least, but we will still get the minor versions like we are experiencing now.
Gene Nemetz (11:32:08) :
… on October 28 Piers Corbyn has said he’s going to make public some of the key ingredients of his method. That’s just 25 days away now…. I am anxious to learn about myself. How about everyone else?
I’m just appealing to my Higher Power that it’s not a Wheel of Fortune that he throws darts at!
So what is the L&P effect….probably just a reduction in solar activity strength that we have been witnessing since SC21. Most of the L&P records are taken from the downslope of SC23 where a reduction would be expected. There are signs of a small recovery in the1026 and 1027 readings, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a leveling off or small gain as we head towards a weak SC24 max. Full recovery probably cannot be expected before SC26.
Sunspots may not appear under a certain Guass limit, but they would still appear on the magnetogram….this we are still not seeing.
@ Lief,
You aked me to explain my comment that “Top chart omits the number of spotless days in the transit leading into cycle 4.”
Just a simple observation, and I was curious about the number. The chart titled “Spoless Days in each cycle” has a bar for all cycles 1 through 24 inclusive, except for cycle 4.
Ron de Haan (18:11:16) :
Leif, is this event also related to Rossby waves?
The sudden stratospheric warming in the Arctic, January 2009
I think so. Now, there is no doubt that solar UV and activity controls the temperature and influences the chemistry at very high altitudes, but those things have no direct effect on the ground. One could argue that the reflectivity of the upwards traveling waves might be influenced by solar activity, but no detailed mechanism has been put forwards. A clue is perhaps that SSWs are very rare in the Southern hemisphere which would be hard to explain if the cause is external to the Earth system.
Geoff Sharp (18:21:40) :
So what is the L&P effect….probably just a reduction in solar activity strength that we have been witnessing since SC21.
No, it is a visibility effect. Not a reduction in the number of spots.
There are signs of a small recovery in the1026 and 1027 readings
Nonsense. Those are just the natural variability from spot to spot and do not constitute a trend.
Sunspots may not appear under a certain Guass limit, but they would still appear on the magnetogram….this we are still not seeing.
Yes we are. They are very clear on magnetograms.
The L&P effect is not general decline of solar activity but a visibility effect due to low field strength. The Radio Flux indicates that we should about twice as many spots as we actually do for the moment, so the spots are getting harder to see. The radio flux is a ‘better’ indicator of solar activity and we have seen [as discussed a while ago on this blog] the relationship between flux and spots changing.
francisco (18:38:31) :
has a bar for all cycles 1 through 24 inclusive, except for cycle 4.
Ah, sharp eyes there. Perhaps because cycle 4 was so long that it went off the chart, or perhaps there was no daily data, but then cycle 1-8 shouldn’t be there either. This we still await an explanation for. Paul?!
Hard to believe I once taught English. “… at which he throws darts.” Idiomatic usage looks terrible in written form.
What happened to cycle #4 in the chart above ??? Its the only one that is missing ? No data ??
Leif Svalgaard (18:45:54) :
I am quite aware its not about a reduction of the number of spots, but the underlying Guass strength involved. They should still show on the magnetogram if “invisible” sunspots are in production.
1027 had a high reading of 2237 Guass, 1024 had a high reading of 2332 (much larger group). Before that we have to go back to April 2008 to get a higher reading of 2294. There is not enough data yet to make any conclusions.
@Mark Wagner
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/26/the-2007-2008-global-cooling-event-evidence-for-clouds-as-the-cause/
Apparently Spencer is working up a paper that has not yet been finalized.
@Gene Nemetz
I agree that it re-enforces the potential for predictive value, however always remember that the first duty of any scientist is to poke a hole in a current theory. Its finding the places that theories break that expand our understanding of the universe. I personally find the Svensmark GCR theory quite compelling. Its not all there is, of course, the odd volcano can really ruin your forecasts, but absent that, there appears to have predictive value. Certainly more than you can say about the IPCC models. But then again, the CO2 AGW folks have turned it into a religion, not a science. That is in addition to the ones that have turned it into a game of enriching themselves at the expense of their fellow human being.
Geoff Sharp (19:11:48) :
They should still show on the magnetogram if “invisible” sunspots are in production.
And they do, as there have been several examples of recently.
There is not enough data yet to make any conclusions.
sounds a lot better than: “There are signs of a small recovery in the1026 and 1027 readings”.
As for the cycles 1-8, if there’s a group, it’s because there are spots.
And, like someone stated earlier, it’s our surviving records that are more of a problem than not.
Ron de Haan (16:58:53) :
“What then is the actual cause of sudden stratospheric warming?”
Leif Svalgaard (17:14:31) :
Mountain ranges and land-sea temperature contrasts generate long (wavenumber 1 or 2) Rossby waves in the troposphere. These waves travel upward to the stratosphere and are dissipated there, producing the warming by decelerating the mean zonal flow. The Sun has nothing to do with this.
Nice copy/quote from Wikipedia, Leif. Shouldn’t you have referenced it?
And, regardless of whether or not “the sun has nothing to do with this”…
the jury is still out as to what causes the SSWs.
Also you may have forgotten this…
http://www.ncas.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=446&Itemid=305
The jury is still out on the cause (more like causes) of SSWs.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
rbateman (19:48:08) :
As for the cycles 1-8, if there’s a group, it’s because there are spots.
That’s not the problem. It is that we don’t have observations on every day, so cannot make a count of days with no groups.
Is there a 200 year solar cycle? The Dalton Minimum occurred about 200 years ago and the Maunder Minimum about 400 years ago… just wondering.
As there are no sunspots and temperatures have not fallen should we think of another mechanism for the Little Ice Age. Dust in the upper atmosphere for example
It takes time. There’s normally only a 0.1C difference between minimum and maximum.
It’s when the minimum persists for a long time that the cooling really begins. That hasn’t happened yet. One would not expect much effect at this point. If cycles 24 and 25 are busts, however, the effects could “snowball”.
(Note that this is correlation. No causation has been definitively established as of yet.)
Is there a 200 year solar cycle? The Dalton Minimum occurred about 200 years ago and the Maunder Minimum about 400 years ago… just wondering.
It is believed so. It is called the Seuss (or DeVries) cycle.
And, yes, we’re about due.
We also have a Gleissberg cycle, believed to occur every 80+ to 100 years. Last one was in the 19-teens and the one before that was the Dalton Minimum.
And yes, we’re about due for that, too.
There’s also a proposed 2300-year cycle (The Hallstatt cycle), but I’m not sure where we are in that one.
Wheels within wheels. But it’s very complicated and there’s no way to tell for sure. Also, severity is impossible to predict.
savethesharks (20:07:56) :
Nice copy/quote from Wikipedia, Leif. Shouldn’t you have referenced it?
Saves me typing, and saves you to go there, and find the relevant text.
the jury is still out as to what causes the SSWs.
I don’t think so. We have known how this works since 1971 at least.
Also you may have forgotten this…
No, I have not, but that has nothing to do with what causes SSWs.
The muons don’t cause the SSWs, the SSWs [or simply the temperature] modulates the muons, so they can be used as a probe of stratospheric temperature.
As always…Wikipedia or not, Leif is on point.
Here is a great study on the Wiki reference as to the cause of SSWs.
http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/users/isavelyev/GFD-2/Rossby%20waves.pdf
Regardless…Earth is not a closed system…and someday interstellar variations on climate and even weather…may be recognized.
For now….the Rossby Wave theory is a good and reasonable one.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Got a question(s):Ok, if the sun does not make much of a difference in output as far as warming goes,Albedo may indeed be a factor.How can we measure the Earth’s
Albedo? Lunar surface reflectivity? Satellites? If we can easily, what would that show?
evanmjones (20:38:10) :
It’s when the minimum persists for a long time that the cooling really begins.
It doesn’t matter how long the minimum persists, the cooling will not go on.
rbateman (19:48:08) :
As for the cycles 1-8, if there’s a group, it’s because there are spots.
Because of missing data we don’t know what the number of spotless days were for those cycles. One might try to estimate how many spotless days there were for each year. It goes like this example: in 1804 there were 106 days with no observations, thus 260 days with observations. Of these 126 were spotless [i.e. groupless], and one could then assume that the proportion 126/260 would also hold for the full year and guess that the number of spotless days were 126/260*366 = 177, and so on. I’m interested in how Paul Stanko estimated his counts, now that he has clarified what the cycle numbers meant.
Leif Svalgaard (20:16:54) :
I thought I already said that, but in case you misunderstood me, there is ample evidence of dedicated observers, but less than ample located/surviving records.
Now, where did I put those papers?
savethesharks (20:51:26) :
As always…Wikipedia or not, Leif is on point.
If what Wiki says jives with what I otherwise know, I have no qualms lifting their verbiage to save typing. The entry is probably lifted from a more technical source anyway. Good phrases live forever.
someday interstellar variations on climate and even weather…may be recognized
And maybe even remote control by aliens, who knows what’s out there 🙂
It doesn’t matter how long the minimum persists, the cooling will not go on.
So you have often said. Yet I remain unsure. There’s a correlation going back as far as the actual observations go.
The Oort, Wolf, and Spoerer minimums are prior to continuous observations. We know them only by proxy. Same for surface temperatures, for that matter. So a bit of fuzziness in correlation prior to the Maunder is to be expected.
I agree that there is no established causal connection. (That doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t any.)
“And maybe even remote control by aliens, who knows what’s out there
:-)”
You left out unicorns…
evanmjones (21:14:06) :
“It doesn’t matter how long the minimum persists, the cooling will not go on.”
So you have often said. Yet I remain unsure.
If you set the thermostat to 70F the room will reach 70F after some time. Then you turn down the thermostat to 69F and the room will cool a degree, but it does not continue cooling a degree to 68, 67, 66, … no matter how long the thermostat stays on its lower setting.
savethesharks (21:28:48) :
“And maybe even remote control by aliens, who knows what’s out there :-)”
You left out unicorns…
I’ll let you supply implausible ones… [there is an inexhaustible supply]
evanmjones (21:14:06) : “I agree that there is no established causal connection. (That doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t any.)”
A fair and reasonable observation…with the door left open to other possibilities.
The inductive method at work.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
rbateman (21:04:48) :
there is ample evidence of dedicated observers
Even the most dedicated observer still falls victim to overcast, lest he makes up some numbers…. As Hoyt and Schatten did when they interpret “I haven’t seen a spot for two years prior” as 730 days of bona fide observations of 0 spots.
Douglas DC (20:53:24) :
How can we measure the Earth’s Albedo? Lunar surface reflectivity?
Yes, there is a long-term project running measuring Earthshine on the Moon’s dark side and in that way measuring the albedo. They find variations, but not linked to the solar cycle. Google: Earthshine Albedo Palle
If you set the thermostat to 70F the room will reach 70F after some time. Then you turn down the thermostat to 69F and the room will cool a degree, but it does not continue cooling a degree to 68, 67, 66, … no matter how long the thermostat stays on its lower setting.
What I’m proposing is that (by analogy) normally the thermostat is set to 65, but long before it gets that cold the thermostat is set back to 75, so the cooling stops at around 69.
But what if there’s a grand minimum and the thermostat doesn’t get set back to 75? The temperature will continue to drop towards 65, at which point it will bottom out until the thermostat is turned up again. That sort of thing appears to be what happened during the Little Ice Age.
evanmjones (21:53:59) :
That sort of thing appears to be what happened during the Little Ice Age.
During a cycle there is a 0.1% variation = 0.07K, so the set points on the thermostat are only 0.07K apart…
And the little ice age lasted centuries. Much longer than any of the minima. We may only have come out of it in the 1910s or so.
Interesting that 1976 shows up in the most spotless days in 100 years graph considering the 1976 summer was a heatwave summer in the UK (And too 1986 I think).
I propose that this may be in error. It may be the “whipsaw point” rather than the actual “setting”. We are not sure how solar variation affects temperatures in so narrow a range. (I also note that a 0.1% decrease in earth’s temperature would be around 0.29K.) Just how sure are we about that thermostat setting?
Also, there were a lot of prolonged ups and downs during the LIA. The LIA is (normally) said to have ended c. 1840, and there certainly were some very warm periods between then and 1910.
Of course multidecadal oceanic-atmospheric cycles would be part of the mix. It’s very hard to measure.
Out of curiosity, to what do you ascribe the LIA? (“I don’t know,” is an acceptable and perhaps very wise answer.)
Also, once the temps get down to that 65 level, the “whipsaw point” changes, and things go up and down at a cooler level until some long, strong 75 settings occur. That would explain the LIA duration (and how it ended).
evanmjones (22:14:43) :
(I also note that a 0.1% decrease in earth’s temperature would be around 0.29K.) Just how sure are we about that thermostat setting?
A 0.1% decrease in solar output causes a 0.1%/4 percent decrease in temperature because radiation goes with the fourth power of the temperature, so 0.07K
Out of curiosity, to what do you ascribe the LIA? (”I don’t know,” is an acceptable and perhaps very wise answer.)
Nobody knows. One could guess internally driven oscillations e.g. involving the oceans.
Also, once the temps get down to that 65 level, the “whipsaw point” changes, and things go up and down at a cooler level until some long, strong 75 settings occur.
Solar activity in cycles 3 and 4 was very high, cycle 3 around 1780 on par with cycle 19. Cycle 8, 9 and 11 were very high too on par with 21 and 22.
You left out unicorns…
I’ll let you supply implausible ones… [there is an inexhaustible supply]
No thanks, I’ll pass.
PD
Found these graphs on the ‘great climate shift’ of 1976.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/The1976-78ClimateShift.htm
A 0.1% decrease in solar output causes a 0.1%/4 percent decrease in temperature because radiation goes with the fourth power of the temperature, so 0.07K
I have heard this but I wonder if all TSI is “created equal”. Since it comes in in short waves which are converted to longwave (heat) “on the bounce”, might something variable in the incoming SW, itself, affect this?
One could guess internally driven oscillations e.g. involving the oceans.
Pretty intense, although possible. It’s one heck of a swing.
Solar activity in cycles 3 and 4 was very high, cycle 3 around 1780 on par with cycle 19. Cycle 8, 9 and 11 were very high too on par with 21 and 22.
8 was right around when the Dalton Minimum ended, though, and by cycle 11 (just before 1880) things had gotten pretty warm. And Cycle 4 ended around 1798, just before the Dalton Minimum began and the temps dropped.
I am going to do a graph of spots vs. temps to see how good or bad the correlation is. (Of course temps are proxy prior to 1880.)
evanmjones (22:14:43) :Out of curiosity, to what do you ascribe the LIA? (”I don’t know,” is an acceptable and perhaps very wise answer.)
Leif Svalgaard (22:40:41) : Nobody knows. One could guess internally driven oscillations e.g. involving the oceans.
Or a COMBINATION of internally driven oceanic oscillations (and volcanic)… AND perhaps some externally driven as well.
The Earth and its solar system is rotating around the Milky Way about once every 250 MM years. Previous Ice Ages have occured when we pass through more dense arms.
We are coursing through variable interstellar space at 500K MPH.
Notwithstanding the Earth has its own cycles….varying on weeks to thousands of years….Earth is not a “clean” closed system…somehow immune from the rest of the universe.
Whether or not the LIA has any relation to extra-terrestrially driven systems or not remains to be seen.
Certainly the longer period waves/oscillations (even beyond Milankovitch) seem to show that REAL ice ages are driven , at least partially, externally.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
evanmjones (23:01:30) :
I have heard this but I wonder if all TSI is “created equal”.
The fourth power law holds for all. But I realize that all these arguments are of little value as they are ad-hoc to save the big picture…
The warmers are making some big money off AGW right now and when there is more proof of cooling, will they switch and start yelling ice age and make money off that. Reminds me of when I was in Rome a couple of years ago and all the souvenir sellers where hawking their wares on a nice day and not an umbrella in sight. Well then it rained the next day and they all had umbrellas to sell. I am waiting for the switch. Wonder if Gore is working on that power point right now.
savethesharks (23:07:36) :
The Earth and its solar system is rotating around the Milky Way about once every 250 MM years. Previous Ice Ages have occured when we pass through more dense arms.
Not given, as it presupposes that the arms and the solar orbit stay fixed, and BTW upthread I posted a link to a recent paper showing that the latest map of the arms do not fit the Shaviv scheme.
Certainly the longer period waves/oscillations (even beyond Milankovitch) seem to show that REAL ice ages are driven , at least partially, externally.
More likely by the changing configuration of the continents [plates] and the distribution of land and sea, and the resulting changing ocean currents. But, perhaps the movements of the plates are also externally driven? Unicorns, perhaps…
If you want to talk about external drivers, picture this asteroid ….
Unicorns…and most certainly asteroids (haha I caught that) aside, my point is… that Earth is not an entirely closed system.
Most of its drivers are internally driven, without a doubt.
However…the universe is WAY to big and old a place, though, to rule out, external influences on little old Earth.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
savethesharks (23:44:00) :
However…the universe is WAY to big and old a place, though, to rule out, external influences on little old Earth.
Absolutely, the Sun will become a red giant in 4 billion years and the Earth will fry to a crisp. [unless we have learned by then to move ourselves out of harms way].
Ron de Haan, Save the Sharks and Leif
“The universe is WAY to big and old a place, though, to rule out, external influences on little old Earth”.
I agree.
I think it is time for Leif to show us how he can turn on a sixpence.
There is a new post at: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com
Absolutely, the Sun will become a red giant in 4 billion years and the Earth will fry to a crisp. [unless we have learned by then to move ourselves out of harms way].
We don’t have to wait 4 billion years. There are plenty of others.
One day 1859 will repeat, and it will be a BIG disaster.
If a new Maunder Minimum occurs…who knows what its effect will be….or not.
Asteroids, GRBs, the LIC Cloud, and the mere Milankovitch cycles are all causes for at least observation, not necessarily concern.
Point is….Earth is not a closed system…
Leif,
I take your point from your thermostat analogy so that turning it to 69F would allow the temperarure to drop to 69F but no further.
However I’m not sure that the analogy really works for the sun.
If one assumes that the amount of energy emitted by the sun over each cycle is much the same (you can tell me whether it is or not) then the longer a cycle the greater the length of time over which roughly the same package of energy is delivered.
Consequently the longer the cycle the more the thermostat is turned down and the cooler the Earth system becomes over time.
A different view of ENSO and systematic climate change
Posted By Erl Happ, October 4
“The end point of this essay is a realization that ENSO is not a tropical phenomenon at all. It is a driven by conditions at the poles, particularly Antarctica, and ultimately by the interaction between the mesosphere and the stratosphere”.
“Sea surface temperature depends upon the stratosphere”
“There is no other force than the sun that will warm the oceans in such an expansive fashion on this relatively rhythmic schedule. There is no chaos in this system. There is order and regulation. The largest sea surface temperature responses are at higher latitudes and the smallest responses are at low latitudes. This mirrors the pattern of temperature variation in the stratosphere”.
For the entire post:
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/a-different-view-of-enso-and-systematic-climate-change/
I note the comments above about SSWs (Sudden Stratospheric Warmings).
I have tried to accommodate those in my general climate description by pointing out that climate is governed by independent variability at two levels i.e. at the sea/air interface and at the air/space interface.
It is the interplay between variations at both interfaces which ensures the resolution of two conflicting parameters namely that the sea surface and surface air temperatures need to stay in equilibrium whilst at the same time the energy into the system has to match the energy leaving the system. If either parameter were capable of being disturbed for long then soon we would lose our liquid oceans.
That implies that from time to time the variations in energy flow from sea to air and from solar effects (not just TSI but also solar wind and magnetosphere variations) to the top of the atmosphere will both seek to disrupt the balance between energy in and energy out and it is leftto the air circulation systems to resolve those attempts at disruption.
Just as changes in the air circulation systems change in the troposphere to regulate the speed of energy flow from troposphere to stratosphere I propose that the air circulation systems in the stratosphere change to regulate the speed of energy flow from air to space.
Both processes can work in tandem or in opposition to regulate the system and keep the climate roughly stable over billions of years despite even asteroid strikes and severe volcanic outbreaks.
One of the side effects would be apparently anomalous stratospheric warming and cooling events as the energy flow to space is accelerated or decelerated to maintain equilibrium.
Thus the energy flow from sea to air is variable in exactly the same way as the energy flow from air to space and climate is the product of the continuously varying interplay between both types of internally generated variability with the sun being merely an enabler by providing the background energy flow in only very slightly varying quantities (except when orbital changes cause ice ages).
Wherefore art thou Niño?
posted by Erl Happ, August 22
“Figure 9 plots the moving 12 month average of 20hPa temperature at 10°north to 10°south and also the departure of each month’s mean from the period average for that month. This is a very important graph. It shows the dramatic change in the forces driving sea surface temperature over the period of record. And indeed, what changes there have been! Here is a list of the patterns that emerge.
* There are four, five or six warming cycles in stratospheric temperature per solar cycle. The nature of these warming cycles has changed over time.
* Cycle 18 produced relatively stable temperatures in the stratosphere.
* Strong peaks in stratospheric temperature occurred in 1963, 1971, 1983, 1992 and 2007.
* The strongest advances in stratospheric temperature occurred in the early stages of odd numbered cycles 19, 21 and 23.
* Much enhanced variability in temperature from month to month is seen to develop in solar cycles 22 and 23.
* Stratospheric temperatures are again on the increase in the last half of cycle 23.
* Cycle 20, when the globe cooled, was marked by declining temperatures in the stratosphere after solar maximum as was cycle 22.
It is abundantly evident that the basic parameter driving the warming of the tropical sea has changed dramatically over the period of record. Conventional climate science and the UNIPCC knows nothing of this.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
It is apparent that cycles of warming in the tropics contributed strongly to the increase in global temperatures between 1978 and 1998. The forces that control the temperature of the stratosphere influence the flux in ice cloud cover in the subtropics and thereby the frequency and intensity of warming events in the tropics. The role of cirrus cloud in determining the flux of temperature at the surface is currently misunderstood. This misunderstanding is a product of reliance on greenhouse theory in complete defiance of the evidence that other factors overwhelm and negate the response to the increase in trace gas content. As the upper atmosphere warms in subtropical latitudes cirrus evaporates and the surface manifestly warms. It does not cool. The IPCC has it the other way round. It maintains that cirrus cloud traps heat and warms the surface. This theory is completely at odds with observation. It should be consigned to the scrapheap of intellectual thought along with Lysenkoism. It is Junk Science”.
To read the entire posting:
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/wherefor-art-thou-nino/
evanmjones (20:45:04) :
It is believed so. It is called the Seuss (or DeVries) cycle.
And, yes, we’re about due.
Wheels within wheels. But it’s very complicated and there’s no way to tell for sure. Also, severity is impossible to predict.
Its never impossible to predict. I can tell you this current grand minimum will be short and sweet, the one after will be on a par with the Dalton and then out to 3000 its all milk and honey. There are strong correlations and good data that allow this prediction, that is being tested as we speak.
The Younger Dryas may have been caused by an asteroid air burst, simply on the basis that there are six North American sites with 12,900 year old Nano-diamond rich soil.
In the NH glacial conditions returned in the following 2,600 years, but in the SH it got 2C degrees warmer according to this paper.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5847/86
ET or not ET? That is the question. And how was the SH spared?
NC (23:10:58) :
Gore… Power Points…. insufficient ladders to reach the hockey stick terminus…
Faster than you can imagine.
Where there’s a Gore, there an Agenda Door.
Leif Svalgaard (21:34:11) :
But we don’t know how many of those days were cloudy.
Suffice to say we lack sufficent data.
Leif Svalgaard (19:47:32) :
Geoff Sharp (19:11:48) :
They should still show on the magnetogram if “invisible” sunspots are in production.
————————
And they do, as there have been several examples of recently.
The only other activity on the magnetogram has been whats associated with the specks that have been coming through, no convenient missing spots to speak off.
There is not enough data yet to make any conclusions.
————————
sounds a lot better than: “There are signs of a small recovery in the1026 and 1027 readings”.
I am talking about the whole L&P statement, Hathaway is dubious also and for good reason I believe. The data collection process also has to be questioned, L&P do not have full time access to the telescope, so the process is a bit hit and miss. To do a proper analysis, every day of every spot needs to be recorded.
1027 had a high reading of 2237 Guass, 1024 had a high reading of 2332, 1027 had a pixel reading of 153, 1024 had a pixel reading of 300 and lasted days longer. 1027 also shared time on the disk with 1026 which some might say drains the battery more. Looking at these factors I can see “signs of a small recovery” in the Guass measurements.
SC24 pixel timeline here: http://www.landscheidt.info/images/sssn.png
Leif will never discover anything – he has no scientific curiosity. A good peer reviewer, perhaps, but not such a good scientist.
.
evanmjones (22:14:43) :
“Out of curiosity, to what do you ascribe the LIA?”
Leif Svalgaard (22:40:41) :
“Nobody knows. One could guess internally driven oscillations e.g. involving the oceans.”
There is a strong possibility of a critical area of the ocean currents circulation being affected by ‘geo-mechanics’, resulting in a climatic response via number of intermediary factors.
Michael (12:47:34) :
Thanks for correcting my error. I was confused because they only have 300 and something comments on their last topic.
That’s because they have alienated so many people with their ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude and draconian filtering policy that there’s not that many who stop over at RC anymore. Also, if you did a print out of any one of the RC postings and removed all comments by “dhogaza” you’d not have much left to wipe with.
Cheers
Mark.
>>Edward Maunder’s second original paper … Unfortunately
>>I have no way of quoting from the actual paper, unless I
>>type out the whole thing.
Any interesting quotes?
Phillip Bratby (11:51:10) :
Fred from Canuckistan . . . (10:52:41) :
“Buy long underwear”.
Log store full, oil tank full, food store full. Anything else we should do?
Water tank full. Lots of places get droughts when it gets cold…
>>Robert E. Phelan (18:08:46) :
>>ralph (11:17:55) :
>>What could be the causal factor? Anything we have missed?
>>CO2? ;^}
Ah, yes, I forgot. The Great Green CO2 Devouring Machine came along in the early 19th century (just at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution), and caused the Dalton Minimum. 😉
Must have been one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s early inventions.
.
>> savethesharks (23:44:00) :
>>Most of its drivers are internally driven, without a doubt.
In terms of weather, if you disregard a few volcanic hotspots, are not ALL of climate drivers externally driven? There would be NO temperature, nor resultant weather and climate systems, were it not for the output of the Sun.
This is why I continue to believe that the primary driver for Earth climate will be found to be an external factor.
.
Leif:
Ok yes that particular hypothesis may be wrong, but the graph shows cosmic ray intensity over time, alongside temperature – and there is a very clear correlation. At the very least I would be asking myself the question, “why?”, rather than dismissing it out of hand.
rbateman (18:12:13) :
John Finn (17:52:17) :
If Piers Corbyn has figured out how much effect and how long of a lagtime for sunspots to affect weather, he probably has a comfortable margin with which to work with.
i notice you use the term ‘weather’ and not ‘climate’. Are the effects of sunspots immediate (or more immediate) on weather? I’m confused. I’d really like to know what the ‘climate lag’ is. Someone, in an earlier post, said that solar activity had been decreasing since SC21 which ended ~23 years ago. SC 22 was still pretty ‘active’ but that ended in 1996. For the past 3 years we’ve had a very long and deep solar minimum.
Whatever anyone says about temperatures peaking in 1998 (they didn’t), the last 5 years (2004-2008) are warmer than the previous 5 years (1999-2003) and those 5 years were warmer than the 5 years before that and so on. Currently, global temperatures in 2009 are still at the elevated levels of 2004-2008 (all using UAH satelllite record).
I don’t detect the hint of a downturn. There might be a subtle shift in the oceans which has slowed the warming rate. The trend may have even flattened, but there is no sign that temperatures are falling or about to fall off the edge of a cliff.
So – about this lag? How long?
Leif Svalgaard (22:40:41): A 0.1% decrease in solar output causes a 0.1%/4 percent decrease in temperature because radiation goes with the fourth power of the temperature, so 0.07K.
Robert Wood (17:37:44): Now, many are thinking we should be seeing reduced temps. Not necessarily immediately. My view is that the oceans heat more rapidly than they cool.
To me it seems that Dr. Svalgaard almost exclusively argues along the lines of the instant Stefan Boltzmann power law,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan–Boltzmann_law
However, I would argue that this law is insufficient to understand the transient dynamics of our planets overall temperature. Indeed, it seems reasonable to think that Robert Wood is correct when he states that oceans heat more rapidly than they cool. This seems very natural as heated surface sea water may circulate down to very deep waters and hide it from the instant Stefan Boltzmann power law for a long time. Again, please take a look at the thermal time constant,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_time_constant#Thermal_time_constant
Although the mechanism is not yet discovered, I suspect that tiny variations in solar cycle length and amplitude may have a dramatic impact on our climate along the lines of sensitive dependency on initial conditions explained in the classical Lorenz (1963) paper that has been cited 5772 times in the peer reviewed literature. In fact, if we assume an ad-hoc relationship between HMF B and global temperature, we only need to fit two parameters to see a relationship,
http://i25.tinypic.com/fb97ph.jpg
Although this is a trivial example only, I argue that we cannot say that there are no such extreme sensitivities in our climate, there are many possibilities that have not been investigated and we understand so little. So, I expect that we may roughly see a global cooling as we saw about 100 years ago.
Anyway, I cannot understand why Dr. Svalgaard always argues along the lines of the instant Stefan Boltzmann power law, and never discusses in terms of the thermal mass and thermal time constant of our planet. For example, I cannot see that he has commented my point that the time integrated HMF B [indirectly] may influence global temperature as displayed in the figure above. Please comment.
savethesharks (23:07:36) : The Earth and its solar system is rotating around the Milky Way about once every 250 MM years. Previous Ice Ages have occured when we pass through more dense arms.
The term “ice age” in common usage has two different meanings that are often confounded. I generally try to use “ice Epoch” and “glaciation” to distinguish them.
We are presently in an “Ice Epoch” of very long duration. We have had several cycles of “glaciation” (that folks often call an Ice age, but sometimes they call ice epochs and ice age too…) and are presently in an “interglacial” inside our present ice epoch.
What causes glaciation / interglacial cycling appears to be orbital mechanics (after Milankovitch ) but what causes Ice Epochs to come and go is less clear. There appears to be a necessary pre-condition of a lot of land at the poles (so ice can build up) which means position of the continents and plate tectonics matter a lot. There also might be some galactic position pixie dust effect too. And some folks have posited an impact from atmospheric composition. No unicorns, though, as near as I can tell…
But it really is important to understanding this to keep clear the distinction between an Ice Epoch that comes around in the hundreds of millions of years range, and the glaciation / interglacial cycles inside of that that happen on 100,000 year type time scales (sometimes 40,000 – though folks don’t know why sometimes it’s 100,000 and sometimes 40,000…)
Hope I helped … I know I made it more confusing…
With respect to the Maunder paper, all I have is a photocopy. Let me type
“Thus, for close upon 70 years, the ordinary progress of the solar cycle, as we have been accustomed to it, was in abeyance – in abeyance to such a degree that the entire records of those 70 years combined together would scarcely supply sufficient observations of sunspots to equal one average year of an ordinary minimum such as we have been accustomed to during the past century.
It may be objected that, bearing in mind the feeble instruments of the seventeenth century, and the paucity of observers, it may well have happened that many spots passed unnoticed. But no great power is needed to detect the presence of a sunspot…”
“It ought not to be overlookecd that, prolonged as this inactivity of the Sun certainly was, yet a few stray spots noted during “the seventy year dearth” – 1660,1671,1684,1695,1707,1718 – correspond, as nearly as can expect, to the theoretical dates of maximum… “just as in a deeply inundated country, the loftiest objects will still raise their heads above the flood, and a spire here,a hill, a tower, a tree there, enable one to trace out the congiguration of the submerged champaign” so the above-mentioned years seem to be marked as the crests of a sunken spot-curve.”
erlhapp (00:10:13) :
Ron de Haan, Save the Sharks and Leif
“The universe is WAY to big and old a place, though, to rule out, external influences on little old Earth”.
“I agree.
I think it is time for Leif to show us how he can turn on a sixpence.
There is a new post at: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com”
Erlhapp,
I have read your latest publication and posted a link at this threat.
The solar link is a hot item at this blog.
I am confident there will be an interesting discussion here as more posters here take notice of your work.
It’s great to have your comments first hand.
Thank you for “thinking out of the box”.
Leif Svalgaard (14:52:37) :
Gene Nemetz (14:22:23) :
I wasn’t agreeing with you Leif. Did you imagine I was??
Don’t care much either way.
You don’t seem to be acting that way.
Ron,
You’re welcome. Thanks for your support. Climate science is in a parlous state. The general assumption that carbon is important is holding us back. It’s effect is three fifths of five eighths of FA. The atmosphere is first and foremost a very effective medium for the transport of energy away from the surface.
Let me say that the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl is a fantastic resource. In that data base all the answers lie. They are there waiting to be picked up. All the properties of the atmosphere are expressed in that database.
As Kim is wont to remind us repeatedly, the answer lies in the clouds.
John Finn (17:52:17) :
Gene Nemetz (14:31:47) :
carol smith (13:28:13) :
We could also consider there is a delay in reaction, like a delay in water in a freezer before it turns in to ice.
How come Piers Corbyn is able to base medium term weather forecasts on solar (or lack of ) activity, then? Surely this implies an immediate effect. So which is it?
I think Carol was asking about how a Little Ice Age could happen over years. I didn’t think she was asking about specific weather events that happen for a day or days, or about a general trend for a given winter or summer, etc.
Also, I think there are elements in activity from the sun that Corbyn uses that are unrelated to sun spots. He also has said something to the effect he doesn’t rely on the 11 year cycle.
He has said that he will make known key elements to his method on October 28th. You can see him say it in this video :
John Finn (17:52:17) :
Surely this implies an immediate effect. So which is it?
Just to make it clearer : there are sun spots, there are solar flares, there is the 11 year cycle. There is a focus on these. But these are not the whole picture. There are other things happening on the sun.
The immediate effect you are talking about is found in a view of the big picture—which includes the moon, cosmic rays, etc.— i.e., not just the traditional idea of solar activity.
evanmjones (22:14:43) :
(”I don’t know,” is an acceptable and perhaps very wise answer.)
But apparently hard to admit to for some….
John Finn (02:57:39) :
Whatever anyone says about temperatures peaking in 1998 (they didn’t)
I guess all them thar dad gum thermometers was wrong! 😉
Robinson (02:42:08) :
Ok yes that particular hypothesis may be wrong, but the graph shows cosmic ray intensity over time, alongside temperature –
The ‘cosmic ray intensity’ hundred of millions of years ago is not known but was estimated based on the configuration of the spiral arms. BTW, one might ponder how we can say much about the temperature hundreds of millions of years ago, when we cannot even agree on whether there was or was not a MWP a thousand years ago.
Stephen Wilde (00:13:22) :
Consequently the longer the cycle the more the thermostat is turned down and the cooler the Earth system becomes over time.
Well, the basic premise [that TSI integrated over a cycle is constant] is wrong. Every second we get 1361 J/m2 no matter how long the cycle is. During a few years we might get 1362 W/m2. That heats up the system by 0.07K which is then lost during the next few years when we are back to 1361 W/m2. If we don’t fall back to 1361 the 0.07K stays, but no more, it does keep going up 0.07K every decade for all eternity.
rbateman (01:10:00) :
But we don’t know how many of those days were cloudy.
Suffice to say we lack sufficent data.
Yet, it does not keep Paul Stanko from saying that during cycle 6 when ‘we lack sufficient data’ there were precisely 2236 spotless days. I want to know how [considering all that missing data] that number was arrived at.
Invariant (03:16:39) :
I cannot see that he has commented my point that the time integrated HMF B [indirectly] may influence global temperature as displayed in the figure above. Please comment.
Suppose HMF B was absolutely constant at all times [then it would be hard to say that climate variations are due the unvarying HMF]. Now, integrate that constant HMF over time and you’ll find that it goes up, up, up, indefinitely, accounting for the rise in your Figure.
Ron de Haan (00:24:40) :
“The end point of this essay is a realization that ENSO is not a tropical phenomenon at all. It is a driven by conditions at the poles”
” The forces that control the temperature of the stratosphere influence the flux in ice cloud cover in the subtropics and thereby the frequency and intensity of warming events in the tropics. ”
Erl is trying to say that the conditions at the poles drives conditions in the subtropics and thereby in the tropics. And that solar activity heating the poles drives the whole system. He has no physical theory for this, no calculations of the energies involved, no estimates of the time constants, no statistical analysis of the data, nothing except feeding on animosity towards IPCC.
Geoff Sharp (01:16:37) :
The only other activity on the magnetogram has been whats associated with the specks that have been coming through, no convenient missing spots to speak off.
An example was the active region so clearly defined by in the magnetograms for several days around April 1st, 2009. Yet there were no spots.
To do a proper analysis, every day of every spot needs to be recorded.
No, it is enough that there be an unbiased selection of a subset of the data.
Looking at these factors I can see “signs of a small recovery” in the Gauss measurements.
People ‘see’ what they want to see. The number tell a different story. The last batch of measurements had 12 values for a mean of 1917. The 12 measurements before that had a mean of 2098, the 12 before that was 2213. No ‘small recovery’.
As for your ‘prediction’ out to 3000, that is just pseudo-scientific cyclomania as we have discussed so many times. There is no evidence for any of this.
Invariant (03:16:39) :
Anyway, I cannot understand why Dr. Svalgaard always argues along the lines of the instant Stefan Boltzmann power law, and never discusses in terms of the thermal mass and thermal time constant of our planet…..Please comment.
Ummm… maybe because he’s a troll in sheep’s clothing…but that couldn’t be…. could it?
Gene Nemetz (04:57:13) :
I wasn’t agreeing with you Leif. Did you imagine I was??
“Don’t care much either way.”
You don’t seem to be acting that way.
I care about the folks getting the science right, not about what you agree on or not.
Ron de Haan (00:24:40) :
“The end point of this essay is a realization that ENSO is not a tropical phenomenon at all. It is a driven by conditions at the poles”
” The forces that control the temperature of the stratosphere influence the flux in ice cloud cover in the subtropics and thereby the frequency and intensity of warming events in the tropics. ”
Erl is trying to say that the conditions at the poles drives conditions in the subtropics and thereby in the tropics. And that solar activity heating the poles drives the whole system. He has no physical theory for this, no calculations of the energies involved, no estimates of the time constants, no statistical analysis of the data, nothing except feeding on animosity towards IPCC.
Voici un site qui parle d’un refroidissement climatique en France et qui vous suit de très pret. Nous sommes totalement en accord avec ce que vous dites. Bravo continuez comme ça.
http://www.laterredufutur.com/html/
pwl (12:14:06) :
they accept without question the doom-saying scenarios of extreme long range weather forecasting that the climate will implode on us.
The nightmare scenarios from warming described by Al Gore have not happened on earth previously (that I know of). So that may be why ‘skeptics’ aren’t really worried about warming, if it does happen. In fact times of warming were good for people.
But nightmare scenarios from cooling have happened. And according to some scientists, based on previous patterns, a time of cooling is coming.
Here is one description of a nightmare scenario caused by cooling on earth that really did happen :
>>Keep clear the distinction between an Ice Epoch that comes around
>> in the hundreds of millions of years range, and the glaciation…
>>that happens on 100,000 year type time scales
Ice Epoch = long wavelength cooling period over millions of years.
Ice Age = shorter wavelength cooling periods within the above
Job done.
.
Leif Svalgaard (06:10:16) :
“Erl is trying to say that the conditions at the poles drives conditions in the subtropics and thereby in the tropics. And that solar activity heating the poles drives the whole system. He has no physical theory for this, no calculations of the energies involved, no estimates of the time constants, no statistical analysis of the data, nothing except feeding on animosity towards IPCC.”
Must have trouble reading.
In 1991 Friis-Christenssen and Larsen showed a very strong correlation between length of the sun-spot cycle and temperature. Later, they noted that the correlation did not continue into the latter part of last century, and so stepped back from their earlier hypothesis – showing their scientific integrity. However, in looking at the temperature data upon which they changed their minds, in the light of recent information regarding the warming bias in the data, it seems to me that their original hypothesis was correct.
To put it another way, the correllation that they found in 1991 – one that had held true for hundreds of year – is also evidence suggesting that the recent temperature history put out in line with the IPCC info has a strong warming error.
Just a thought – the center of the earth is a big iron ball and the variations in sun spots (or lack thereof) lead to variations in the electromagnetic climate, if you will, of the earth. How would this effect the amount of heat generated in the core of our planet?
I think I’ve never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
Or so disquieted to see
The forest for a single tree.
==================
I remain confused by Dr. Svalgaard’s views on his peer and friend, Dr. Jack Eddy. Dr. Svalgaard clearly admired, and was fond of, Eddy.
And Eddy will likely be known for generations to come for his scientific research and theorizing regarding the bottom-most depth of the Little Ice Age, to which he gave the name of “Maunder Minimum.”
But here we have Dr. Svalgaard belittling, aggressively, anyone who simply repeats the major tenets of his good friend’s scientific analysis (let alone expands upon them).
I don’t anticipate ever figuring this one out.
erlhapp (07:07:10) :
Must have trouble reading.
Having trouble making sense of what you write.
Grant (07:07:26) :
In 1991 Friis-Christenssen and Larsen showed a very strong correlation between length of the sun-spot cycle and temperature. Later, they noted that the correlation did not continue into the latter part of last century, and so stepped back from their earlier hypothesis – showing their scientific integrity.
They argued that the reason their ‘finding’ did not hold up was AGW – that we have warmed the atmosphere over and above what the Sun did.
The truth is that there is no such correlation.
See for yourself: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%20Length%20Temperature%20Correlation.pdf
The blue curves show the cycle length [two ways: min to min and max to max]. The pink curves show the temperature anomalies averaged over the cycles as determined by the blue curves. The correlation [or rather lack thereof] is shown in the second graph as open pink circles. The green curves are the temperature curves with the long-term trend removed. Still no correlation [there is a weak – not statistically significant] positive correlation, if you insist, in the sense that longer is warmer.
Greg (07:09:13) :
How would this effect the amount of heat generated in the core of our planet?
Not in any measurable way.
Harold Ambler (07:30:10) :
I don’t anticipate ever figuring this one out.
Instead of you waiting for eternity, let me TELL you right here and now and valid for all time to come:
(1) They really didn’t see many spots during the Maunder Minimum, so that is not in doubt
(2) When Eddy looked at this it was thought [based on Abbot’s measurements that a 1-2% change in solar constant depending on solar activity was possible. That translates into a ~1 degree K change in temperature, so a Maunder Minimum was a plausible cause of the LIA.
(3) Measurements during the space age showed a variation 10-20 times smaller, leading to a correspondingly smaller temperature change
(4) Jack Eddy gave the After-Dinner talk at the SORCE 2003 meeting
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2003ScienceMeeting/dec03_meeting_final_science_program.html
Nice photo of Jack here: http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/sns/2003/sns_dec_2003.pdf
He told us that when the spacecraft data became available, it was clear to him that the association between MM and LIA would have to be abandoned on grounds of energy: there is simple not enough variation in the sun’s output to have much of an effect. And I happen to agree with him.
erlhapp (00:10:13) :
There is a new post at: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com
Interesting reading Erl, I think there will be a day when our 2 area’s will come together. Scafetta has shown that there is correlations between the PDO and Solar velocity, your work and others is showing the importance of UV in the regulation of cloud cover and a possible driver of ENSO. And Svensmark of course has his lumbering giant. TSI may vary slightly and have some impact on ocean heat retention but perhaps a bigger player is the positive feedback that comes with the TSI variations. The Earth uses those positive feedbacks (cloud cover and ocean cycles) to further regulate the solar TSI, everything is solar related and I believe I have the answer for solar output. Us fellow Aussies should get together someday, I’m sure Archibald, yourself and myself could have an interesting discussion.
Leif Svalgaard (08:26:52) :
He told us that when the spacecraft data became available, it was clear to him that the association between MM and LIA would have to be abandoned on grounds of energy: there is simple not enough variation in the sun’s output to have much of an effect. And I happen to agree with him.
His last slide was based on the TSI reconstructions of Lean 2000 and showed a 4 W/m2 change since the MM. At the time [2003] there was already evidence that this change was too large [today we think it is about five times lower]. Any lowering of the change would further undermine Eddy’s initial assessment as he readily admitted. He was already uncomfortable with the need of continuously having to bump up climate sensitivity to cope with the ever-shrinking change since the MM. As he said: on energy grounds it made sense in 1976, not in 2003 [and even less in 2009].
Leif Svalgaard (06:05:47) :
Geoff Sharp (01:16:37) :
The only other activity on the magnetogram has been whats associated with the specks that have been coming through, no convenient missing spots to speak off.
—————
An example was the active region so clearly defined by in the magnetograms for several days around April 1st, 2009. Yet there were no spots.
Nice try but you should know by now you cant fob me off with a quick fix that is not correct. The area on the magnetogram for April 1 is a plage left over from a previous sunspot the appeared at the same latitude on Feb 24-25. On April 1 we are seeing a remnant of an old region, not totally unlike 1026 only a little weaker. Nothing new going on here.
To do a proper analysis, every day of every spot needs to be recorded.
————–
No, it is enough that there be an unbiased selection of a subset of the data.
This has shades of Briffa, but nothing is intentional here of course. But all the data must be processed otherwise there is reason for doubt.
Looking at these factors I can see “signs of a small recovery” in the Gauss measurements.
———————————
People ’see’ what they want to see. The number tell a different story. The last batch of measurements had 12 values for a mean of 1917. The 12 measurements before that had a mean of 2098, the 12 before that was 2213. No ’small recovery’.
Perhaps you are seeing only what you want to see by only referring to a means value, the means can be skewed by the length of the spot appearance. I prefer to look at the maximum level achieved, and when we do this the result is different.
As for your ‘prediction’ out to 3000, that is just pseudo-scientific cyclomania as we have discussed so many times. There is no evidence for any of this.
Your typical answer when you have no answer or the topic is in disagreement with your thinking. You should leave your ridicule and ad hom at home.
“In terms of weather, if you disregard a few volcanic hotspots, are not ALL of climate drivers externally driven? There would be NO temperature, nor resultant weather and climate systems, were it not for the output of the Sun.
This is why I continue to believe that the primary driver for Earth climate will be found to be an external factor.”
You are misinterpreting what I am saying. It is a given that without the sun, we would have nothing to talk about here because we would not exist and Earth would be an ice ball.
What is being discussed is do the VARIATIONS in the Sun [spot cycles, TSI, etc.] cause the variations in Earth’s climate and to what degree, or not.
In terms of drivers….there are multiple ones, and, no doubt, undiscovered combinations of ones, as Stephen Wilde is trying to fish out.
But I am not in total disagreement about the possibility of external drivers…as a matter of fact, if you read my posts, I am certainly leaving that door open.
Wlide, Svensmark, Happ, Svalgaard and others….they are ALL on to something, some many more degrees than others, but regardless…the truth is out there somewhere.
The answers to Earth’s climate and what drives it are as unbelievably complex as one can imagine, but simple (notice I did not say simplistic) at the same time.
Will leave the “simplicity”, as it were to the fraud-science of the IPCC.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
E.M.Smith (03:18:35) :
Points taken. Thanks.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Jack Eddy, in a November 15, 2008, telephone interview that I did with him as part of the research for my forthcoming book, made the following remarks:
“I started to get into it 30 years ago. I found the situation where the Sun had become very irregular for 70 years and it seemed to coincide with a period of very cold weather in Europe, especially. It suggested to me that there would be a very strong correlation with climate, not just the 11-year cycle that people had seen, but a slowly progressing forcing function, that the Sun could have an effect on longer-term climate. I haven’t backed away from that at all.
“At the time that I did the study of the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age, I said that I saw a very strong correlation, and I’ve also taken the view that the Sun is indeed an important factor in climate change, and you can show that in many ways. There has been abundant research showing the Sun’s role.
“The effect of what the Sun can do, based on what we now know in terms of the Sun’s radiation and output of particles, those effects, though important, are now dwarfed by another factor that’s there. Most solar scientists would say that the Sun may be contributing a fourth or a fifth of the warming that we now attribute to greenhouse gases.
“If we were entering another Maunder Minimum it would be of interest to me because it would further confirm the reality of that event. We’re at a prolonged minimum now, of which there have been precedents. Whether we’re going to go into one of these profound minima or not, we won’t know until we get there. It might make me famous if it happens, but I don’t see that we know that it will happen.”
I will underscore three principal points made by Dr. Eddy:
1. He had not, in the months prior to his death, backed away from Sun-Earth climate connections “at all.”
2. He had also become persuaded, to a significant extent, of the relevance of co2 and other manmade greenhouse gases as a climate driver.
3. He retained, however, an open mind about the duration and effect of the current solar minimum.
It would be manifestly inaccurate to say that Dr. Eddy’s views may be summed up in any single way. The intellectual and scientific curiosity that led to his publication of “The Maunder Minimum” in Science, back in 1976, was still very much a part of the man until the end.
The relatively inactive sun is yet more confirmation that solar irradiance is not a substantial factor in this being the warmest decade since instrumental records began. It also means that the next time we have a decent El Niño combined with a solar maximum, record-breaking global average temperatures are virtually inevitable.
Lief,
Any ideas on the source of the 6200yr cycle recorded in 10be, C14 and the temp record? Hit a minimum at the LIA, also at 6200yrs ago…
http://s852.photobucket.com/albums/ab89/etregembo/?action=view¤t=10be_C14.jpg
http://s852.photobucket.com/albums/ab89/etregembo/?action=view¤t=Vostok_GISPS_AVG_DIV.jpg
Ed
Very insightful post, thank you, Harold.
Will look forward to that book!
And it is interesting to note that even Dr. Eddy can be in error:
“The effect of what the Sun can do, based on what we now know in terms of the Sun’s radiation and output of particles, those effects, though important, are now dwarfed by another factor that’s there. Most solar scientists would say that the Sun may be contributing a fourth or a fifth of the warming that we now attribute to greenhouse gases.”
To err is human….even for the brightest among us.
Certainly the rest of his comments are spot on.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Leif Svalgaard (06:05:47) : Suppose HMF B was absolutely constant at all times [then it would be hard to say that climate variations are due the unvarying HMF]. Now, integrate that constant HMF over time and you’ll find that it goes up, up, up, indefinitely, accounting for the rise in your Figure.
This is not correct. One of the parameters in my toy model is the equilibrium value at which the contribution from HMF B reverses sign. A constant HMF B below this value means that the temperature goes down, down, down, indefinitely. A constant HMF B above this value means that it goes up, up, up, indefinitely. Currently we are way below the equilibrium value and the temperature goes down which is in agreement with observations the last couple of years. The equation is:
T_est = 0.007640*cumsum(HMF_B-5.7848)-0.4470;
When do you think HMF B again will be larger than the equilibrium value 5.7848?
Geoff Sharp (09:10:15) :
The area on the magnetogram for April 1 is a plage left over from a previous sunspot
And so? That is what the active regions would look like when there are no spots. Remember that the region starts as a plage without a spot and ends with as a plage without a spot. L&P is about how visible the spot between these two stages will be. With moderate L&P there will be a speck [as we see now]. With full L&P not even that will be visible, but the region will still be there. I don’t see what your problem with this is. The whole point was whether we could see the invisible spots on magnetograms or not; and the answer is clearly “yes”. Nobody is trying to ‘fob’ you off, just to show you what a plage looks like without a sunspot, as you clearly had a problem with imagining that. Here is a region that never made it to a spot:
ftp://howard.astro.ucla.edu/pub/obs/gif/m090527_1578_0fe1.png
ftp://howard.astro.ucla.edu/pub/obs/drawings/dr090527.jpg
But all the data must be processed otherwise there is reason for doubt.
But all the data is processed. There is no other data. I don’t know what your problem with this is. There are times when no data can be taken [clouds, no telescope time, sick, etc]; that does not cast doubt on the data that could be taken.
I prefer to look at the maximum level achieved
maximum of what? The maximum level for the July data was 2332, for the September data it was 2237. For March 2008, 2658. Recovery?
Your typical answer when you have no answer
I point out there is no evidence that convinces anybody. The quantity you plot is derived by circular reasoning. You have not supplied any valid evidence, so the answer stays the same.
Harold Ambler (09:31:39) :
“At the time that I did the study of the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age, I said that I saw a very strong correlation”
Jack picked his words very carefully. His view at the end was that the Sun did influence the climate, but a lot less than he and everybody else back then suggested.
And there is no belittling in my remarks. The influence of a scientist does not lie in whether he is correct or not, but in the degree to which his work inspires and motivates other scientists, and in that department Jack scores very high. Perhaps you have forgotten my campaign for naming the next [when ever it occurs] Grand Minimum the Eddy Minimum. Does that sound as belittling?
Gene Nemetz (05:31:13) :
John Finn (17:52:17) :
Surely this implies an immediate effect. So which is it?
Just to make it clearer : there are sun spots, there are solar flares, there is the 11 year cycle. There is a focus on these. But these are not the whole picture. There are other things happening on the sun.
Right – and from these (or the lack of these) we can deduce what?
The immediate effect you are talking about is found in a view of the big picture—which includes the moon, cosmic rays, etc.— i.e., not just the traditional idea of solar activity.
Meaning what?
I asked about the climate lag following solar fluctuations. We’ve now had several years where the “solar activity” has been lower than it was in the early 1990s, say. When is the downturn in temperatures expected?
Gene Nemetz (06:00:12) :
John Finn (02:57:39) :
Whatever anyone says about temperatures peaking in 1998 (they didn’t)
I guess all them thar dad gum thermometers was wrong! 😉
There was an anomalous spike in 1998 caused by an particularly intense El Nino. The temperature trend (OLS) continued upwards after 1998. As I posted earlier, the 5 year period between 2004-2008 was warmer than the the 1999-2003 period which was warmer than the 1994-1998 period….and so on. The warmest 5 year period in the UAH satellite record occurred after the SC23 solar maximum and during ~3 years of the deepest solar minimum in a century.
“Icarus (09:35:50) :
The relatively inactive sun is yet more confirmation that solar irradiance is not a substantial factor in this being the warmest decade since instrumental records began.”
70 years of high solar activity in this modern maximum behind us and you expect a transition to Dalton-era climate overnight? Not happening, be patient.
Solar Irradiance may not have substantial impact but SI is not the only factor. Many are still unknown especially magnetic influences, and so a connection and mechanism cannot be ruled out.
We are currently experiencing a minimum never witnessed or recorded by modern science and we cannot jump to such conclusions until the experiment is complete, it has only just begun.
Ed (09:54:00) :
Any ideas on the source of the 6200yr cycle recorded in 10be, C14 and the temp record? Hit a minimum at the LIA, also at 6200yrs ago…
I thought the LIA was just a few hundred years ago… That aside, both 10Be and 14C are influenced by variations of the Earth’s magnetic field which does vary on such long time scales.
Invariant (10:31:50) :
A constant HMF B below this value means that the temperature goes down, down, down, indefinitely. A constant HMF B above this value means that it goes up, up, up, indefinitely.
I think you are trying to say that any set of values of B below your chosen equilibrium will mean runaway down and any set of values above will mean a runaway up, so should B fall to and stay for a thousand years the range 4.0-5.5 nT, the Earth would freeze up. I think that invalidates your model.
When do you think HMF B again will be larger than the equilibrium value 5.7848?
Five years from now.
IMO, El Nino is not a cause, it is another effect. What caused the El Nino event?
kim (07:28:00) :
Or so disquieted to see
The forest for a single tree.
That one’s a witty one!
That one tree would be YAD06 ?
Invariant (10:31:50) :
T_est = 0.007640*cumsum(HMF_B-5.7848)-0.4470;
applying this for B varying as a sine wave around 5.7848 [between 4.78.. and 6.78..] produces this result: http://www.leif.org/research/JUNK.png with the temp [pink going up towards infinity…
Leif Svalgaard (11:23:05) :
Invariant (10:31:50) :
T_est = 0.007640*cumsum(HMF_B-5.7848)-0.4470;
applying this for B varying as a sine wave around 5.7848 [between 4.78.. and 6.78..] produces this result: http://www.leif.org/research/JUNK.png with the temp [pink going up towards infinity…
I forgot to add that after a while I bump B up by 1 nT and kept it there.
with the temp [yellow] going up towards infinity…
gosh, when it rains, it pours…
Harold Ambler (07:30:10) :
I don’t anticipate ever figuring this one out.
I was in the same place as you, for months. But I realized I could lower my expectations. Then things made sense.
The relatively inactive sun is yet more confirmation that solar irradiance is not a substantial factor
The question is what would happen if there was a seriously prolonged major minimum. That remains to be seen.
in this being the warmest decade since instrumental records began.
Another way of putting that is that since 1998 it has cooled at a slower rate than it warmed from 1979 – 1998. (There’s also the question of raw vs. “adjusted” temperatures.)
evanmjones (11:41:17) :
“The relatively inactive sun is yet more confirmation that solar irradiance is not a substantial factor”
All the other stuff we get from the Sun contains a million times less energy than the irradiance.
The question is what would happen if there was a seriously prolonged major minimum. That remains to be seen.
We have been there before: 1900-1935 and what happened? the temperature went up.
John Finn (10:48:49)
It took about 9 years for the peak of the long period of positive El Ninos during the late 20th Century (which peaked in 1998) to result in the peak Arctic ice melt of 2007.
However oceanic effects are quite seperate from solar effects and much more substantial.
As Leif Svalgaard keeps pointing out the size of the solar variations is very small and the real puzzle is as to why the observed climate changes are so large in proportion.
As is well known here and elsewhere I am closing in (I hope) on a sufficient explanation for all observed global and regional climate changes as having been caused by variations in both the speed of the supply of energy to the air by the oceans and the speed of the supply of energy to space by the air.
Co2 is apparently not needed and increasingly it seems that more substantial solar variation may not be needed either. There is now just a small gap to be bridged between the length of time solar effects need to become substantial enough to contribute to events such as the cycling of global air temperature from Roman Warm Period to Dark Ages to Mediaeval Warm Period to Little Ice Age to the recent Modern Maximum. In fact if we can identify an oceanic cycle of around 1000 years then that would do nicely to take us from one peak to another at 1000 year intervals. Interestingly the thermohaline is supposed to take about 1500 years to complete a circuit but there are different parts to it taking different periods of time.
Take into account the time lags involved in oceanic processes and your bleating about warmer years having occurred after 1998 becomes an irrelevance.
To keep it simple for you it may well be that solar changes take decades and possibly centuries to become noticeable with oceans taking 8 to 10 years but if both sun and oceans are in phase (both negative as they are now) then genarally any ocean induced changes that do occur in global air temperatures will be quicker and larger than if they were both in opposing phases as they were during the 70s cooling scare.
Thus only from about 2007 would it be likely for the peak of warming to have been properly reached and indeed in that year we did see a powerful La Nina and a sizeable if temporary drop in global air temperaures.
Things have recovered a bit now with a weak El Nino but it is spluttering and I think we are now over a peak and on a downward trend. No one knows how long or intense it will be but the available observational evidence certainly does not suggest that the next solar max will be strong nor are we likely to get another powerful El Nino for some time given the current and newly negative PDO phase.
John Finn (10:37:52) :
When is the downturn in temperatures expected?
You can check the data. You will see it.
John Finn (02:57:39) :
Piers Corbyn is not the first to do this. Harry Geiese was legendary in his time.
Weather, yes, that is what meteorologist do, short & long range. Climate is composed of weather accumulated events (instances), and you cannot take the weather out of climate.
As for the UAH and continued warming, stick your head out of the window, John.
I wonder sometimes if the satellite records suffer from foreshortening effects, or they are just plain being fiddled with. The real world is a far different place than what the Media is trying to paint it as.
The climate where I reside grows steadily cooler over the past 8 years.
How’s your climate?
John Finn (10:48:49) :
an anomalous spike
Temperature is temperature. If you want to pull out this ‘anomalous spike’ then you have to pull all of such out. Do you find that important?
John Finn (10:48:49) :
Did you adjust for UHI?
“……speed of the supply of energy to space by the air.”
Indeed. The equivalent of that “extra” 150 W/m^2 at the surface passes through the TOA every 0.625 seconds. Sounds like a razor-thin margin expressed in those terms, doesn’t it?
Leif Svalgaard (11:46:44) :
You spend all day stoking the stove to get the house warm, and then somone opens a window or door, forgets to shut it, and lets it all out.
The energy to heat the place is overwhelmed by the energy it took to open the window/door and leak out the stove heat. A lesser state wins in the moment of lapse.
Space/atmosphere is all too able to take energy and dissipate it.
Just because nobody in the house wants to admit thier lapse does not mean that the energy lost comes back, any more than not knowing how the Climate lost energy means that the energy did not escape.
And just because Eddy said we will not be able to sustain one for one MM to LIA on the current space data does not mean that the LIA or MM did not happen.
They most assuredly did.
The problem is that the Climate has noise called Weather.
The big headache is in trying to pin down the actual blow-by-blow energy loss when there is little in the way of a script. Nature moves things around. At what point in moving tropical heat to the poles does any specific mass of energy escape?
Invariant (10:31:50) :
T_est = 0.007640*cumsum(HMF_B-5.7848)-0.4470;
I have just completed a paper that determines HMF B back to1835. Here is the result when I apply your formula:
http://www.leif.org/research/junk1.png
I have extended the data past 2009 with the data from 1901 on as we seem to be down in the same neighborhood:
http://www.leif.org/research/junk1.png
dT marches off to infinity…
If I change your dividing value from 5.78.. to 7, I get:
http://www.leif.org/research/junk3.png
dT marhces off to minus infinity
A value of 6.4 gives:
http://www.leif.org/research/junk2.png
which is well-behaved with a total swing of 0.3K.
So, unless, you chose a very special value of Bo [the dividing field], namely the exact mean value of all the B-values, the temp will march off to +/- infinity. This shows that your model does not make physical sense.
evanmjones (11:41:17) :
(There’s also the question of raw vs. “adjusted” temperatures.)
Also UHI.
This warmest blah blah since blah blah could be from an AC vent. 😉
It would seem that the NOAA sunspot prediction panel is forever the optimist in making its predictions. Evidently there just might be a few things we do not fully understand about the sun and solar cycles … and with those two along, understandings of the ramifications on Earth’s weather and climate (past, present & future).
Sun big. Earth small.
Small change on big sun big change on small earth
about 1,000,000 Earths would fit inside the sun
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970518a.html
pictured together
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/vulken/Los%20Angeles/Sun_Earth_size_comparison_labeled.jpg
Eugene (12:30:31) :
Evidently there just might be a few things we do not fully understand about the sun and solar cycles … and with those two along, understandings of the ramifications on Earth’s weather and climate (past, present & future).
However, there are those ‘in the know’ who can predict thousands of years in advance and those who can achieve 85% accuracy, so the situation is not so grim, after all.
Dear Dr. Svalgaard,
Thanks for commenting my model in so much detail. Indeed it is a toy model, and not only HMF B influences our climate. In addition I suspect that there are a number of feedback mechanisms, some positive, but most of them negative, that prevents our planet to become one large desert or one large snowball. This means that heat added Qin may not alter the temperature only, but also alter the heat dissipated Qout,
m•cp•dT/dt = Qin – Qout
The Stefan Boltzmann power law is one case where Qin may increase T which would increase Qout. Another example is when increased Qin may lead to more clouds which may influence both Qin (less sunshine) and Qout (less radiation back to space). Also I would argue that the equilibrium value of HMF B equal to 5.7848 nT could also be subject to change dependent on the current state of the heat balance equation – it is all dependent on how much energy is stored in the oceans, in the air and in all the strange energy forms, see Feynman,
http://www.phy.davidson.edu/FacHome/swp/courses/PHY110/Feynman.htm
I do not regard the toy model as valid at all; it is way too simple and does not take into account anything but HMF B. So please regard it as one of many factors only. Still, I cannot see why variations in HMF B or TSI should not be one of the most important factors. Thus I still have the attitude that in the current situation and in the next 5 years (as long as HMF B is below 5.7848 nT) I would not be very surprised if the global temperature is continuing to go down.
Best Regards,
Invariant
Gene Nemetz (12:39:57) :
Sun big. Earth small.
Quote of the week !!!!
Leif Svalgaard (06:05:47) :
“Ron de Haan (00:24:40) :
“The end point of this essay is a realization that ENSO is not a tropical phenomenon at all. It is a driven by conditions at the poles”
” The forces that control the temperature of the stratosphere influence the flux in ice cloud cover in the subtropics and thereby the frequency and intensity of warming events in the tropics. ”
Erl is trying to say that the conditions at the poles drives conditions in the subtropics and thereby in the tropics. And that solar activity heating the poles drives the whole system. He has no physical theory for this, no calculations of the energies involved, no estimates of the time constants, no statistical analysis of the data, nothing except feeding on animosity towards IPCC”.
Leif,
I know, respect and value your views and your attitude towards science, especially in regard to the variable factor of our sun effecting our climate.
What Erl Happ has done is building quite a radical theory based on observation and data. In my humble opinion this is a serious attempt of “thinking out of the box” and I can only applaud him for that.
Sure, there is a lot of explaining to be done, questions to be answered but without a basic view how the climate system could work, none of those questions will be asked
and no progress will be made. I hope you at least can agree with that.
In regard to Erl’s alleged animosity towards the IPCC, I can only say that he isn’t the only one with these kind of feelings.
This organization and all the collaborating Government Institutions pushing the AGW hoax based on semi science and plain lies is an absolute disgrace.
Stephen Wilde (00:13:22) :
Leif,
If one assumes that the amount of energy emitted by the sun over each cycle is much the same (you can tell me whether it is or not)
It doesn’t need Leif to tell you; the idea is wildly(sorry) wrong. Since TSI is almost constant then the size of the “packet” of energy is proportional to the length of the cycle. There is not a ‘quantum’ of energy being spread over a longer period during a longer cycle..
Maybe it was a joke. No, MUST be a joke in which case congratulations, you got me; congratulations as I usually manage to pick up the subtlest(Leif’s).
Dear Dr. Svalgaard,
It is not necessary to denote your plots of my equations as “junk”. The word “toymodel” would be better. I suspect that you would not like to publish the new HMF B data here, instead I can forward the least squares Matlab program. You need two files “f.m” and “toymodel.m” – they are given below. It should be interesting to see what values of the two parameters that are found by the program with the new data.
Leif Svalgaard (12:20:15) : So, unless, you chose a very special value of Bo [the dividing field], namely the exact mean value of all the B-values, the temp will march off to +/- infinity. This shows that your model does not make physical sense.
Sometimes things are really sensitive, just as Lorenz (1963) once pointed out….
Best Regards,
Invariant
==================== function f.m ===================
function y = f(a, Data)
T_est = a(1)*cumsum(Data(:,3)-a(2)) + Data(1,2);
T = Data(:,2);
y = T-T_est;
end
=================================================
================== program toymodel.m =================
Data = [
1850 -0.447 6.22
1851 -0.292 6.21
1852 -0.294 5.31
1853 -0.337 5.86
1854 -0.307 4.97
1855 -0.321 4.71
1856 -0.406 5.48
1857 -0.503 5.86
1858 -0.513 7.14
1859 -0.349 8.73
1860 -0.372 8.29
1861 -0.412 7.73
1862 -0.540 7.04
1863 -0.315 6.37
1864 -0.516 5.82
1865 -0.297 5.55
1866 -0.303 5.38
1867 -0.334 5.24
1868 -0.291 6.03
1869 -0.313 7.46
1870 -0.302 9.60
1871 -0.344 8.99
1872 -0.255 8.67
1873 -0.331 7.28
1874 -0.397 6.12
1875 -0.418 5.40
1876 -0.403 5.50
1877 -0.091 5.28
1878 0.023 4.99
1879 -0.265 4.95
1880 -0.260 5.78
1881 -0.242 6.31
1882 -0.246 7.07
1883 -0.298 6.77
1884 -0.381 6.29
1885 -0.362 6.39
1886 -0.275 6.14
1887 -0.387 5.45
1888 -0.337 5.18
1889 -0.192 5.16
1890 -0.431 5.02
1891 -0.378 5.88
1892 -0.484 8.11
1893 -0.505 6.70
1894 -0.444 7.72
1895 -0.420 6.44
1896 -0.211 6.51
1897 -0.243 5.89
1898 -0.432 5.69
1899 -0.314 5.15
1900 -0.223 4.58
1901 -0.302 4.18
1902 -0.431 4.26
1903 -0.509 5.06
1904 -0.554 5.28
1905 -0.412 5.82
1906 -0.329 5.32
1907 -0.507 5.98
1908 -0.559 6.29
1909 -0.564 6.46
1910 -0.548 5.62
1911 -0.581 5.13
1912 -0.491 4.52
1913 -0.489 4.27
1914 -0.305 4.66
1915 -0.213 5.56
1916 -0.434 6.08
1917 -0.506 6.86
1918 -0.388 6.81
1919 -0.331 7.07
1920 -0.314 6.60
1921 -0.261 5.95
1922 -0.381 5.42
1923 -0.347 4.71
1924 -0.360 5.05
1925 -0.274 5.59
1926 -0.162 6.79
1927 -0.254 6.15
1928 -0.255 6.32
1929 -0.376 6.31
1930 -0.165 6.57
1931 -0.124 5.28
1932 -0.155 5.26
1933 -0.297 5.11
1934 -0.159 5.07
1935 -0.184 5.48
1936 -0.152 5.95
1937 -0.034 7.38
1938 0.009 8.14
1939 -0.001 7.60
1940 0.018 7.55
1941 0.077 7.42
1942 -0.031 6.26
1943 -0.028 6.06
1944 0.120 5.69
1945 -0.007 5.93
1946 -0.205 8.33
1947 -0.197 8.12
1948 -0.204 6.84
1949 -0.211 7.98
1950 -0.309 7.56
1951 -0.169 7.48
1952 -0.074 6.90
1953 -0.027 6.00
1954 -0.251 5.37
1955 -0.281 5.88
1956 -0.349 7.91
1957 -0.073 9.26
1958 -0.010 8.78
1959 -0.072 8.33
1960 -0.123 9.00
1961 -0.023 7.12
1962 -0.021 5.87
1963 0.002 5.63
1964 -0.295 5.23
1965 -0.216 5.12
1966 -0.147 5.55
1967 -0.149 6.62
1968 -0.159 6.25
1969 -0.010 6.22
1970 -0.067 6.54
1971 -0.190 5.98
1972 -0.056 6.27
1973 0.077 6.18
1974 -0.213 6.13
1975 -0.170 5.66
1976 -0.254 5.92
1977 0.019 6.02
1978 -0.063 7.48
1979 0.049 7.25
1980 0.077 6.71
1981 0.120 8.10
1982 0.011 8.71
1983 0.177 7.17
1984 -0.021 6.68
1985 -0.038 6.08
1986 0.029 5.96
1987 0.179 5.70
1988 0.180 6.59
1989 0.103 9.35
1990 0.254 7.70
1991 0.212 8.93
1992 0.061 7.73
1993 0.105 6.54
1994 0.171 6.08
1995 0.275 6.09
1996 0.137 5.04
1997 0.351 5.62
1998 0.546 6.65
1999 0.296 6.41
2000 0.270 7.93
2001 0.409 7.94
2002 0.464 6.89
2003 0.473 7.49
2004 0.447 6.22
2005 0.482 6.23
2006 0.422 5.26
2007 0.405 4.67
2008 0.327 4.35
2009 0.418 4.25];
c = lsqnonlin(‘f’,[1.0 1.0], [],[],[],Data)
t = Data(:,1);
T = Data(:,2);
T_est = c(1)*cumsum(Data(:,3)-c(2)) + Data(1,2);
plot(t,T,t,T_est);
================================================
Leif, the question that has been puzzling me is whether you believe that there is a correlation between the Maunder and Dalton Minimums and what appear to be recorded drops in temperatures during those Minimums.
If you believe that there is a correlation, is this just a statistical aberation – a coincidnece? Or is there some causation somehow at play?
Curiously yours,
Craig
Ron de Haan (13:14:13) :
Leif Svalgaard (06:05:47) :
Ron de Haan (00:24:40) :
What Erl Happ has done is building quite a radical theory based on observation and data. In my humble opinion this is a serious attempt of “thinking out of the box” and I can only applaud him for that.
I have followed that from the beginning and I’ll venture to estimate that nobody else has spent as time as I have studying his writings. The problem is that it is ‘too much out of the box’. It doesn’t hang together and it not supported by the data. These are harsh words, I know, but they are my honest and professional assessment. What more can I say? I’ll challenge anybody, Erl and you for that matter, to state in a single paragraph the basic idea. You might say that that is impossible, but I have yet in my life to see a physical theory that is so complicated that the core, the essence, the crux cannot be expressed clearly and with the brevity necessary for grokking the idea [if I may use that wonderful term]. And if you cannot state clearly what the idea is, you don’t have it.
In regard to Erl’s alleged animosity towards the IPCC, I can only say that he isn’t the only one with these kind of feelings.
But he uses it as part of the evaluation of his ideas: they go against IPCC and are thus, by definition good.
Invariant (13:35:30) :
It is not necessary to denote your plots of my equations as “junk”.
There is a practical reason for it: they have only a short lifetime as I’m going to delete them soon [can’t have my space fill up with stuff], and mark them as ‘junk’ to remind me that they are doomed.
I suspect that you would not like to publish the new HMF B data here
All my work is fully public and the data can be found at http://www.leif.org/research/IDV09HMF.xls and IDV09HMF.txt [for a text version].
Madman (13:42:39) :
correlation between the Maunder and Dalton Minimums and what appear to be recorded drops in temperatures during those Minimums.
There are really no ‘recorded’ temperatures to speak off. The temperature record, such as it is, is severely ‘contaminated’ by several large volcanic eruption in the decade 1810-1820 and it is hard to untangle solar [if any] and volcanic contributions. For the Maunder Minimum, the situation is better: temperatures and sunspot count were both low. I personally would not discount coincidence, especially since the temperatures were low for much longer than the Maunder Minimum.
Gene Nemetz (12:00:01) :
John Finn (10:37:52) :
When is the downturn in temperatures expected?
You can check the data. You will see it.
Sorry I can’t. I take it you can’t either. It’s ok to admit you don’t know something.
Gene Nemetz (12:09:16) :
John Finn (10:48:49) :
Did you adjust for UHI?
What ?? UHI in the satellite record??
Madman (13:42:39) :
Leif, the question that has been puzzling me is whether you believe that there is a correlation between the Maunder and Dalton Minimums and what appear to be recorded drops in temperatures during those Minimums.
Have you any data which shows the “recorded drops in temperature ” during the Dalton Minimum.
Ed (09:54:00) :
Any ideas on the source of the 6200yr cycle recorded in 10be, C14 and the temp record? Hit a minimum at the LIA, also at 6200yrs ago…
Good question ED, the LIA and the period around 6000 years ago have a lot in common. The Sun goes through what I call golden periods which is actually a period of very high disturbance that shuts down the sun for extended periods of time. Leif will scoff at the evidence but both periods have one thing in common, they both are subject to a high degree of movement by the sun from the SSB on a continual basis. This is not something dreamed up and is provable via JPL etc. These correlations can be ignored but never falsified….the data is good.
Dont be fooled by Leif’s response about the Earth’s varying geomagnetic field having an impact on the solar proxy records. This is once again not telling the whole truth. Both the 14C and 10Be records have had adjustments made to compensate for the geomagnetic field changes over time.
I have overlaid both proxy records and there is an outstanding match, I have also contacted Steinhilber who produced the latest 10Be report and he has given me a link for the raw data which I will plot directly against the Solanki raw data. He also stated to me the geomagnetic compensations had been applied.
I have an article on the project here: http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/51
Stephen Wilde (11:50:19) :
John Finn (10:48:49)
It took about 9 years for the peak of the long period of positive El Ninos during the late 20th Century (which peaked in 1998) to result in the peak Arctic ice melt of 2007.
However oceanic effects are quite seperate from solar effects and much more substantial.
Quite possible – but I was referring quite specifically to the solar – not ocean effects.
As Leif Svalgaard keeps pointing out the size of the solar variations is very small and the real puzzle is as to why the observed climate changes are so large in proportion.
Wihout an additional mechanism then solar variations are as Leif says too small.
As is well known here and elsewhere I am closing in (I hope) on a sufficient explanation for all observed global and regional climate changes as having been caused by variations in both the speed of the supply of energy to the air by the oceans and the speed of the supply of energy to space by the air.
Co2 is apparently not needed and increasingly it seems that more substantial solar variation may not be needed either. There is now just a small gap to be bridged between the length of time solar effects need to become substantial enough to contribute to events such as the cycling of global air temperature from Roman Warm Period to Dark Ages to Mediaeval Warm Period to Little Ice Age to the recent Modern Maximum. In fact if we can identify an oceanic cycle of around 1000 years then that would do nicely to take us from one peak to another at 1000 year intervals. Interestingly the thermohaline is supposed to take about 1500 years to complete a circuit but there are different parts to it taking different periods of time.
Hmmm.
Take into account the time lags involved in oceanic processes and your bleating about warmer years having occurred after 1998 becomes an irrelevance.
I’m sorry but my “bleating” is relevant. Temperature responses to significant changes in solar irradiance are usually fairly rapid. Think day/night or winter/summer. You seem to have some vague idea about climate being influenced by multi-centennial/millenial shifts in ocean circulation – presumably because the MWP was ~1000 years ago. This is completely at odds with all the solar theorists which claim there is a clear correlation between solar activity and climate.
To keep it simple for you it may well be that solar changes take decades and possibly centuries..
Thanks for keeping it “simple for me” but you seem to be hedging your bets somewhat. It cannot be “centuries” because, as I wrote above, we would not see any correlation. By saying it might be “decades and possibly centuries” you are virtually admitting that there is no correlation. I happen to agree with you on this. Any correlation is desperately weak.
…to become noticeable with oceans taking 8 to 10 years but if both sun and oceans are in phase (both negative as they are now) then genarally any ocean induced changes that do occur in global air temperatures will be quicker and larger than if they were both in opposing phases as they were during the 70s cooling scare.
1. The cooling did not take 8 to 10 years in the 1940s. Most of the cooling had taken place by the early 1950s.
2. There might have been a “70s cooling scare” but there was no cooling in the 1970s. In fact the climate shifted to warming during the 1970s. The weak solar cycle, i.e. SC20, ran from 1964 til 1976 during which time global temperatures were essentially flat.
Geoff Sharp (16:56:57) :
Dont be fooled by Leif’s response about the Earth’s varying geomagnetic field having an impact on the solar proxy records. This is once again not telling the whole truth. Both the 14C and 10Be records have had adjustments made to compensate for the geomagnetic field changes over time.
Not the record shown by Ed.
Leif Svalgaard (21:40:48) :said:
Douglas DC (20:53:24) :
How can we measure the Earth’s Albedo? Lunar surface reflectivity?
Yes, there is a long-term project running measuring Earthshine on the Moon’s dark side and in that way measuring the albedo. They find variations, but not linked to the solar cycle. Google: Earthshine Albedo Palle
Thanks, Lief.
Dang nabbit! _Leif_
Dyslexics of the world untie!
yes,I am…
Gene Nemetz (12:39:57) :
“about 1,000,000 Earths would fit inside the sun”
Hmmm curious about this one… so (and I am working this out as we type) we have the sun’s radius as approximately 6.955×10^8 m or 6.955×10^5 km.
Therefore with volume being 4/3*PI*r^3 we get a volume of 1.41×10^18 km^3.
Now the earth’s radius is approximately 6,371.0 km and again assuming a perfect sphere this arrives at a volume of 1.08*10^12.
Now spheres packed as closely as possible would have a pore space of 26%, so the available volume of the sun for perfectly spherical packed earths would be 1.04×10^18 km^3.
Whaddaya know? Pretty close to a million earths…. good to know for the next quiz night.
Leif 15:53:40 in response to madman.
Thank you for your knowledge of the timing of the vulcanic activity and the temperatures during the Maunder and Dalton Minimums. There is enough uncertainty to entertain several correlations as being causative. And by all means, The Eddy Minimum.
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but haven’t you also said that the Dalton Minimum sunspots were large, sparse and primarily southern hemispheric?
I think Erl Happ will find the ultraviolet contributions to the whole climate regulating mechanisms or stimulate its explication. Many of his ideas fit right in with others like Tisdale, Spencer, and van Loon.
The sun is very sultry and we must avoid its ultry-violet rays.
H/t Noel Coward.
==========
If indeed an Eddy Minimum is dawning then let us hope there will be few enough confounding factors, such as vulcanism or other variations in albedo, that we’ll be able to untie the Gordian Knot of climate regulation if there is a sun-earth climate effect. I suspect we are doing observing enough and calculating and cogitating enough to figure it out.
But really, send shysters, gats, and loot.
==========================
kim (18:10:08) :
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but haven’t you also said that the Dalton Minimum sunspots were large, sparse and primarily southern hemispheric?
Maunder, not Dalton
I think Erl Happ will find the ultraviolet contributions to the whole climate regulating mechanisms or stimulate its explication.
Except that Erl doesn’t deal with that. From de Haan’s quote:
“The upper atmosphere has an electrodynamic dimension (related to the increasing presence of plasma with elevation) that renders it susceptible to the influence of the flow of charged particles from the sun.”
No UV there. The UV bit comes in because he believes that the atmospheric ‘thickness’ [controlled by solar wind] or some such absorbs the UV. But, as I have said so many times, his writings are so incohenrent that it is really hard to suss what he proposes.
Dr. S, you forgot to mention those ‘in the know’ who can predict a 100 year forecast with such accuracy that governments should destroy their economies based on them.
Ok, so let’s go with the idea that nothing with respect to the sun caused the LIA. So what IS the best theory its cause? And if there is no other smoking gun, then how much faith can be put into theories that CO2 must be the cause of global warming BECAUSE THEIR ISN’T ANY THING ELSE to explain it? If you can’t explain the LIA by any KNOWN processes, then you CAN’Tjustify CO2 warming simply because those same known processes can’t explain the warming. We obviously don’t know what all can cause climate changes.
Mann, et al, screwed up. They shouldn’t have tried to get rid of the LIA; they should have claimed that CO2 levels were lower during that time (and higher during the Holcene Optimum). That would have solved all their problems (well, except for them being up a tree at the moment, so to speak).
But back to sunspots. Anyone care to explain Herschel’s observations? He wasn’t exactly a hack, or motivated by funding issues. Yet more coincidences?
Bear in mind that Leif is not saying definitively that the sun has nothing to do with the LIA.
If I’m not mistaken, he’s saying that the TSI difference between then and now can’t account for it.
He also questions the actual correlation of temperatures with sunspots (which is something I am looking at). For now, I think there is some relationship, perhaps in the solar wind if not irradiance. But I am not sold on the notion. And I definitely think oceanic-atmospheric patterns play a role, regardless.
jtom (19:35:29) :
But back to sunspots. Anyone care to explain Herschel’s observations? He wasn’t exactly a hack, or motivated by funding issues. Yet more coincidences?
There probably is [and should be] a solar cycle variation in temperature of the order of 0.1K. To explain the correlation with the price of wheat, you would have to assume that wheat can sense this small difference and react to it by yielding more when it is 0.1K warmer. Now we moved the problem from the Sun and the climate to the wheat. Do you have an explanation for this extreme sensitivity of wheat to temperature?
As for not being a hack, Herschel believed the Sun was inhabited.
Leif Svalgaard (17:53:52) :
Not the record shown by Ed.
You are inferring the graphs arnt accurate because of geometric influences. Ed should be using the Solanki or Steinhilber graph which shows his point more succinctly. The two deep lows of solar inactivity are accurate.
Ed, look here: http://www.landscheidt.info/images/solanki_sharp.png
Lief,
I would be interested in the geomagnetic data you refer to. Does it have a 6200yr cycle? And a compensated dataset as well if you have it. Thanks.
Geoff,
How is the angular momentum calculated, and the variation around the Solar system barycenter? Would you happen to have an excel model of some form? I’ve seen a pseudo 3d models that show an 11yr variation of the sun getting pulled around the center of the solar system. Haven’t had the patience to try it on longer time scales. Would love to be able to pull numbers from it but it doesn’t support that, more just a physical visual of the solar system.
What an awesome website and resource for one to attempt to come up with your own conclusions on the Earth’s climate system. Many thanks Mr. Watts and all who contribute, no matter their LOSU.!
Ed
Ed (20:40:26) :
Geoff,
How is the angular momentum calculated, and the variation around the Solar system barycenter?
The distances and AM involved is extremely accurate and is based of JPL horizons data and it has been cross checked by many including Leif. Carl Smith is the founder of the AM graph that now gives us so many answers. His raw data is available from:
http://plasmaresources.com/ozwx/SSB/ephemerides/cSun_tSSB_6000y_x5d.tsv.zip
Solanki’s raw data (geomagnetic leveled) plus some of my own is available from here: http://www.landscheidt.info/images/solanki_sharp.xls
Steinhilber’s report is available here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Holocene-TSI.pdf
There is no point hiding data.
John Finn:
“Have you any data which shows the “recorded drops in temperature ” during the Dalton Minimum.”
Mr. Finn, surely you accept that the temperatures during the Dalton Minimum (ca. 1796 – 1820) were lower than the period preceding and following the Minimum. Er, don’t you?? If so, what’s your point?
Craig
Gene Nemetz (12:39:57) :
“Sun big. Earth small.
Small change on big sun big change on small earth.”
NICE!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Leif Svalgaard (15:53:40) :I suspect that you would not like to publish the new HMF B data here All my work is fully public and the data can be found at http://www.leif.org/research/IDV09HMF.xls and IDV09HMF.txt [for a text version].
Thanks. However, I cannot find any reliable temperature data going back to 1835, so I cannot do my least squares fit between temperature and HMF B. Note that when you are using the equation, the initial temperature is given by the HADCRUT3 data set.
T_est = c(1)*cumsum(Data(:,3)-c(2)) + Data(1,2);
Leif Svalgaard (11:12:30) : I think you are trying to say that any set of values of B below your chosen equilibrium will mean runaway down and any set of values above will mean a runaway up, so should B fall to and stay for a thousand years the range 4.0-5.5 nT, the Earth would freeze up. I think that invalidates your model.
Yes. However, I think it is the sensitivity you are criticizing, not the idea that a _significant_ change in the sun’s output should turn our planet into one large desert or one large snowball. You are stating that the quite significant oscillation in HMF B should not impact our planet significantly at all. What makes you think it is so?
Madman (21:29:37) :
John Finn:
“Have you any data which shows the “recorded drops in temperature ” during the Dalton Minimum.”
Mr. Finn, surely you accept that the temperatures during the Dalton Minimum (ca. 1796 – 1820) were lower than the period preceding and following the Minimum. Er, don’t you?? If so, what’s your point?
As a matter of fact, I don’t agree that temperatures in the 1796-1820 period were significantly lower than the periods preceding and following the Dalton Minimum. I’ve looked at a number of the the long term records that are available (e.g. CET, DeBlilt, Uppsala) and cannot see anything particularly unusual about the Dalton period.
I don’t always agree with Tamino (hardly ever actually) but this plot seems a about right.
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/17temps.jpg
This show the average temperatures at 17 stations between 1770 and 1850. There is a dip in ~1815 but this was around the time of the huge Tombura eruption and, in any case, this was no greater in magnitude than the dips in the mid-1780s and in ~1840.
That’s my point.
John Finn (01:17:31) :
Your temperature sample is based on an average of 17 stations….do you think that is enough to go on when determining world temperature trends?
Leif Svalgaard (20:07:47) :
Wheat needs good weather to mature. Consistentcy is key.
Throw in rainy & wet conditions and it rots before it can be harvested.
A dry spring or unexpected frosts are just as bad.
What Herschel observed has it’s place in unseasonal spats of weather that affected yields.
You plant the variety of wheat that is suited to the climate of the area.
When that area gets unseasonable weather and enough of it, it fails.
Wheat just happens to be a main staple crop. High demand. Weather went askew.
Yields suffered. Priced soared. A prosperous Europe could afford to import, and it did.
The current agenda is travelling down a path that will hugely exaggerate any such repeat, and the way the Solar Cycle is progressing, abberant crop weather is to be expected.
Is this making sense to you?
Ed (20:40:26) :
I would be interested in the geomagnetic data you refer to. Does it have a 6200yr cycle? And a compensated dataset as well if you have it. Thanks.
There are data ‘out there’ on this. I’ll do some digging, in the meantime, here is an [old] plot of the 14C production and of the Earth’s dipole moment. You can see how they vary opposite to each other: http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg
Invariant (23:13:43) :
You are stating that the quite significant oscillation in HMF B should not impact our planet significantly at all. What makes you think it is so?
What makes you think there should be significant impact? The energy in the magnetic field of the solar wind in 10 million times less that of simple sunlight
John Finn (01:17:31) :
There is a dip in ~1815 but this was around the time of the huge Tombura eruption and, in any case, this was no greater in magnitude than the dips in the mid-1780s and in ~1840.
I agree with john, that there is no evidence for a Grand Minimum type temperature minimum during the Dalton. Whatever temperature variation [such as we have data for] there was can be explained as due to volcanism [there were other large eruptions besides Tambora, e.g. Majon].
rbateman (04:12:55) :
the way the Solar Cycle is progressing, abberant crop weather is to be expected.
Is this making sense to you?
No
Geoff Sharp (04:07:44) :
Your temperature sample is based on an average of 17 stations….do you think that is enough to go on when determining world temperature trends?
People who claim that there was a significant temperature minimum during the Dalton will have to produce their worldwide records to show us. I think the 17 European studies are about the only good data we have. Loehle’s reconstruction of global temps: http://www.leif.org/research/Loehle-Temp.png does not show a sharp dip during the Dalton, and BTW shows the lowest LIA temperatures near 1600 at a time of high solar activity.
How about the correlation of Nile River levels with aurorae?
===================================
kim (04:51:52) :
How about the correlation of Nile River levels with aurorae?
Yeah, how about it?
Leif Svalgaard (04:17:34) : What makes you think there should be significant impact? The energy in the magnetic field of the solar wind in 10 million times less that of simple sunlight.
Good point. Do you have a similar time series for simple sunlight that goes back to 1850? What do you recommend?
Ed (20:40:26) :
I would be interested in the geomagnetic data you refer to.
“There are data ‘out there’ on this. I’ll do some digging”
Here is some more on this and some further pointers:
http://igpphome.ucsd.edu/~cathy/Publications/Preprints/dipole.pdf
Geoff Sharp (04:07:44) :
John Finn (01:17:31) :
Your temperature sample is based on an average of 17 stations….do you think that is enough to go on when determining world temperature trends?
And you have what exactly to show that the Dalton Minimum was a particularly cold period in history? I accept that some regions could remian warm even during a prolonged global cold period, but I think we’d be somewhat unlucky if locations with the only recorded temperatures of the period to be in the non-cooling regions. In any case, there is a heavy bias towards european locations. This is where the LIA supposedly had most effect. All the anecdotal stuff talks about Napoleons march from Moscow and the Thames frost fairs, etc, etc. The fact that the Thames froze many times both before and after the Dalton Minimum (it even froze for 14 weeks in the MWP) and the Germans faced bittely cold conditions in Russia in WWII shows that events such as these were not limited to the Dalton Minimum.
Leif Svalgaard (04:39:02) :
People who claim that there was a significant temperature minimum during the Dalton will have to produce their worldwide records to show us.
This area is extremely shaky, I wouldn’t be putting my reputation on it. Some of the stations show a 2 deg fall during the Dalton, others dont. Proxy records are all over the place, this webpage will give you any result you want, just pick the graph that suits your cause.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_Part1_PreHistoricalRecord.htm
Yeah, I know, it’s about Nile River levels not about the sun. Hmmm. Small place, big effect. Oh, well, I’m sure it’s the clouds. Just sure.
====================================
Looking back, too, we seem to have had sub millenial scale alternations between warming and cooling phases, historically known at least as far back as the Roman Optimum. Perhaps the Grander Solar Minimums are also on a similar time scale, and the Dalton one not deep enough to have effected temperature much.
===========================================
Invariant (05:42:08) :
Good point. Do you have a similar time series for simple sunlight that goes back to 1850? What do you recommend?
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20%28Reconstructions%29.xls column C
Geoff Sharp (06:16:56) :
This area is extremely shaky, I wouldn’t be putting my reputation on it.
This works both ways. You are saying that one cannot trust the statement that the Dalton Minimum was a time of cold and that there is no hard evidence for that. I agree completely.
Dr. Svalgaard
After reading your recent presentation ‘Updating the Historical Sunspot Record’, I went back to the article by Usoskin, Mursula & Solanki
‘Reconstruction of solar activity for the last millennium using 10Be data’
Am I correct in assuming that there a very noticeable difference for pre 20th century results obtained by two methods.
(I have the articles but no link for the Usoskin et alia).
acementhead (13:17:39)
Yes I realised that just as soon as I had posted and regretted the absence of an edit function.
Sometimes one can post before engaging brain 🙂
Vukcevic (08:54:20) :
Am I correct in assuming that there a very noticeable difference for pre 20th century results obtained by two methods.
Yes, except that it is not a difference in methods per se. The difference derives from the fit of the 10Be cosmic ray record to the Group Sunspot Number, which means that their reconstruction has the assumption of the GSN being correct built in. You may expect them to wiggle and squirm about this for yet another solar cycle.
Leif Svalgaard (08:02:02) : http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20%28Reconstructions%29.xls column C
Thanks! Not any significant variations at all it seems. In fact all the columns from the various scientists in the sheet show nearly no variations. I did not know this. My conclusion is that the variation of HMF B is much larger. Your HMF B data has these statistical properties from 1850 to 2009.
min 4.1800 nT
max 9.6000 nT
mean 6.3446 nT
var 1.3959 nT
Then it becomes quite clear that the variations in TSI cannot explain the cold period in the beginning of the previous century.
I do not know if you have had time to look at my parameter estimation program, however, if you are interested, it is somewhat fascinating to see that the correlation between time integrated HMF B and global temperature becomes almost the same if we skip the first years of the available data set
0.0076 5.7848 (1850 – 2009)
0.0079 5.8711 (1860 – 2009)
0.0089 5.9328 (1870 – 2009)
0.0094 5.9160 (1880 – 2009)
0.0039 4.8103 (1890 – 2009)
0.0088 5.8551 (1900 – 2009)
So, if HMF B really can influence cloud formation, as Svensmark suggests, there should be a possible support in the available HMF B data set. A nonlinear correlation can possibly be even better.
Best Regards,
Invariant
Invariant (10:07:38) :
fascinating to see that the correlation between time integrated HMF B and global temperature becomes almost the same if we skip the first years of the available data set
0.0076 5.7848 (1850 – 2009)
0.0079 5.8711 (1860 – 2009)
0.0089 5.9328 (1870 – 2009)
0.0094 5.9160 (1880 – 2009)
0.0039 4.8103 (1890 – 2009)
0.0088 5.8551 (1900 – 2009)
Try to skip from the other end…
Leif Svalgaard (10:31:07) : Try to skip from the other end…
0.0076 5.7848 (1850 – 2009)
0.0053 5.6226 (1850 – 1999)
0.0030 5.2238 (1850 – 1989)
0.0014 4.1888 (1850 – 1979)
0.0013 4.1072 (1850 – 1969)
0.0012 3.8541 (1850 – 1959)
0.0008 2.8375 (1850 – 1949)
Invariant (11:57:32) :
Leif Svalgaard (10:31:07) : Try to skip from the other end…
0.0076 5.7848 (1850 – 2009)
0.0053 5.6226 (1850 – 1999)
0.0030 5.2238 (1850 – 1989)
0.0014 4.1888 (1850 – 1979)
0.0013 4.1072 (1850 – 1969)
0.0012 3.8541 (1850 – 1959)
0.0008 2.8375 (1850 – 1949)
Now the relationships change a lot, and systematically. Showing that there is no true relation.
Indeed. Things are not this simple. Obviously there many:
1. nonlinear oscillations, and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Pol_oscillator
2. exponential decays
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_decay
in the earth climate (driven) system, each with characteristic amplitudes, delays, time constants and eigenfrequencies. Thus if we observe too short periods in our climate (standard AGW arguments…:-), we will violate the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem and see no pattern at all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem
At this point we cannot conclude. We cannot say that HMF B influences our climate, and we cannot say that HMF B does not influence our climate. We do not know. But my suspicion is that we may see a temperature drop the start of this century exactly as we saw in the previous century when Titanic unfortunately hit the ice berg. Then we can think “here we go again” and suspect that something fishy is going on. Let’s hope it is not mankind that hit the ice berg this time – we all know that the next ice age is overdue!
Invariant (13:28:06) :
We cannot say that HMF B influences our climate, and we cannot say that HMF B does not influence our climate. We do not know.
If we do not know, then our null-hypothesis must be that it doesn’t, to be [potentially] refuted at such time [if ever] when we do know.
Leif Svalgaard (13:48:56) : If we do not know, then our null-hypothesis must be that it doesn’t, to be [potentially] refuted at such time [if ever] when we do know.
Yes. This is the rational approach. But human beings including myself are irrational; and our hunch can sometimes lead us in the right direction. This sort of intuition is not black magic but instead based on our experience as scientists and engineers.
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
Albert Einstein
Leif Svalgaard (08:02:02) :
Dalton Minimum was a time of cold and that there is no hard evidence for that. I agree completely.
Good, so from now on I wont expect to see you saying the Dalton Minimum had no affect on temperature…we simply don’t have enough evidence to make a statement either way.
Invariant (14:42:03) :
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
When founded on solid knowledge and sound physical principles, otherwise it is called wishful thinking. Lots of that going around.
Agreed. Intuition without knowledge is nonsense. For example if I did not know the first law of thermodynamics, I would never had starter to integrate HMF B in the first place. Solid intuition, when it works, is much more advanced than the rather trivial rational approach that follows from simple algebra. In order to discover what we do not know there must be some trial and error guided by our intuition, we do not have time to investigate all possibilities – afterwards we can leave the details to the mathematicians. Thus in a sense the most rational and sophisticated mode of our mind is when we really are irrational…
Lief: The link/reference : http://www.leif.org/EOS/0906-2777.pdf does not work. Could you please point to original paper? TIA
One of the processes on blogs is ‘Distributed Intuition’.
=================================
If the solar cycle points to global cooling in the future, what excuse will there be when new global temperatures records are established in the next few years?
Just curious.
Silly rants won’t change the future.
jack mosevich (16:08:01) :
The link/reference : http://www.leif.org/EOS/0906-2777.pdf does not work.
Does now.
Invariant (15:56:45) :
intuition, when it works…
And when it doesn’t work [like in this case] becomes a millstone around your neck, because you can’t let go of it.
jack mosevich (16:08:01) :
The link/reference : http://www.leif.org/EOS/0906-2777.pdf does not work.
Was a test of the seriousness of the participants of the debate. If they don’t bother even look, how serious could they be? just peddling their stuff instead.
For the rest of us: the link works now. 🙂
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
Albert Einstein
I think I saw intuition operating in Brett Favre tonight. But so much in Aaron Rogers.
😉
rbateman (13:02:32) :
Gene Nemetz (12:39:57) :
Sun big. Earth small.
Quote of the week !!!!
savethesharks (21:46:51) :
Gene Nemetz (12:39:57) :
“Sun big. Earth small.
Small change on big sun big change on small earth.”
NICE!
h/t Willie Soon.
Leif Svalgaard (18:16:21) : And when it doesn’t work [like in this case] becomes a millstone around your neck, because you can’t let go of it.
Sorry, but this is jumping to conclusion Dr. Svalgaard. I have never said that HMF B is the only influence the temperature on this planet.
Leif,
We are not computers. We are neural networks. We sometimes discover the potential (output) of the neural network by “feel”. We know that people without feelings can’t think. The “feeling” of a well trained neural network allows decision making. For the network to be well trained it is important that mistakes hurt. Very important.
So what is to be done? If you have a “feeling” check the math. i.e. confirm it in the real world.
M. Simon (00:35:26) :
So what is to be done? If you have a “feeling” check the math. i.e. confirm it in the real world.
That’s what we do.
Invariant (15:56:45) :
You are correct there. I would also add imagination to the intuition, which again is a very personal quality, without which science progress would be rather pedestrian.
Here is my example of both:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0401/0401107.pdf
Vukcevic (04:08:35) :
Invariant (15:56:45) :
You are correct there. I would also add imagination to the intuition
Let me add ‘flights of fancy’. Luckily for science there are enough ‘pedestrian’ scientists around to make sure that both feet stay on the ground. Various people have noticed that “progress is 1% inspiration and 99% transpiration”.
Leif Svalgaard (05:36:17) :
Various people have noticed that “progress is 1% inspiration and 99% transpiration”.
Or “perspiration”.
Leif Svalgaard (05:36:17) :
You are correct there too. Inspiration and imaginations are gifts that cannot be learned. It is those fortunate ones that make intrusions in ‘comfy’ world of academia, to which is than to shoot ‘flights of fancy’ down, and on rare occasions, sweep cobwebs out of their cupboards, and get on with laborious work of ‘transpiration’ and ‘perspiration’.
It was a JFK’s ‘flight of fancy’ (and he was not a scientist or engineer) that got NASA ‘perspiring’ to beat Russians in space race and put man on the moon.
Not many ‘flights of fancy’ since.
M. Simon
But you can’t let feelings affect your results. “I have a feeling it’s getting warmer this last century.” Then possibly bias your results to get what your feelings have told you.
Vukcevic (07:25:43) :
Inspiration and imaginations are gifts that cannot be learned. It is those fortunate ones that make intrusions in ‘comfy’ world of academia
Most scientists [and in academia] I know have that gift. It has to be tempered with reason and knowledge and peer criticism. Most pseudo-science imaginations and flights of fancy [including your own] are not.
My definition of real science is when people do not know what they are trying to discover, because if they knew they would not need to discover it. Basically real scientists do not know what they are doing!
If we consider two great minds of the previous century, Richard Feynman and Lev Landau, they both avoided reading too many scientific articles or books and they encouraged student to work out the details themselves instead of becoming familiar with the published literature in a field. The reason is obvious, the more we learn, the more limited our minds becomes. Roughly we can divide scientific research and methods into two main groups:
1. Analytical approach based on rational methods and published papers.
2. Intuitive method based on trial and error and standalone calculations.
The more a person practices the second method, the better the intuition is trained, and the faster the person manages to judge whether a new idea is useful. I do not have the point of view as Dr. Svalgaard that 99% of the discoveries are made by the first method. With Feynman and Landau in mind, I think that most brilliant scientists practice both methods 50% of the time – this balance is crucial.
Obviously new ideas do not arise from analysis and existing papers alone, trial and error and solitary work is needed too.
Vukcevic (04:08:35) : Here is my example of both:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0401/0401107.pdf
Nice paper. If this is correct it could explain the sunspot cycles to some degree.
Invariant (09:08:16) :
Vukcevic (04:08:35) : Here is my example of both:
Nice paper. If this is correct it could explain the sunspot cycles to some degree.
Unfortunately, it is not science.
I do not have the point of view as Dr. Svalgaard that 99% of the discoveries are made by the first method.
No discoveries are made by the first method. You make the discovery using the 1% inspiration bit and then it takes the 99% to make it science.
Invariant (09:08:16) :
http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0401/0401107.pdf
Nice paper. If this is correct it could explain the sunspot cycles to some degree.
Two most respected solar scientist of our age Dr. Svalgaard and Dr. Hathaway are rejecting it as worthless, but for different reasons, which makes me believe there must be some substance to it, since the two most eminent names say it is wrong, but do not agree why.
Their problem is that the numbers used are not plucked from thin air, they are values well known to any astronomer. In order to get paper accepted I had to omit names of the two largest planets of the Solar system. As far as I am concerned, I sit back and wait for either of them or anyone else, to come up with something better.
Leif Svalgaard (09:40:21) : No discoveries are made by the first method. You make the discovery using the 1% inspiration bit and then it takes the 99% to make it science.
I think we have to agree that we do not agree at this point. Obviously there are many viewpoints here….
Vukcevic (09:53:49) :
Two most respected solar scientist of our age Dr. Svalgaard and Dr. Hathaway are rejecting it as worthless, but for different reasons, which makes me believe there must be some substance to it, since the two most eminent names say it is wrong, but do not agree why.
We do not disagree as to why. It can be [and is] worthless on many accounts. The problem with the ‘paper’ is that it is in the 1% category, but lacks in the 99% part that makes it science.
And submitting it to xxx.lanl.gov is not ‘having it accepted’. Try to submit it to the Astrophysical Journal [Letters] and report on the result: http://www.iop.org/EJ/home/AP . They accept papers from anybody. I can submit it for you if you feel you cannot.
Leif Svalgaard (10:09:59) :
Try to submit it to the Astrophysical Journal [Letters] and report on the result: http://www.iop.org/EJ/home/AP
They accept papers from anybody. I can submit it for you if you feel you cannot.
You are on. I will correct one or two small spelling errors, or if you are really serious about it, lets go trough to it together, either privately or publicly (I do not mind), not to add or take anything out, but to make the paper more presentable, to give it a fair chance. I trust you would do your best.
Alternatively, if you are not happy to undertake such commitment, anyone else on this ‘the best science forum’ with the experience of writing short science papers is welcome to help.
Original paper: http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0401/0401107.pdf
I can be contacted here: http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/first.htm
Vukcevic (09:53:49): Two most respected solar scientist of our age Dr. Svalgaard and Dr. Hathaway are rejecting it as worthless.
Please do not give up. And sometimes one should avoid listening too much to respected scientists, simply because sometimes there is a paradigm shift in science and the old school becomes obsolete. For example:
“The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.”
– Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project
Regarding your paper, I think it would be a good idea to look into a possible physical mechanism producing the mathematical behaviour you see.
The viewpoint that HMF B does not influence climate at all may at some point be in the same category as the quite above – many similar quotes here:
http://slotvent.com/2009/02/famous-silly-and-funny-quotes/
Leif,
I guess this *is* accepted science, yes?
I’m afraid not.
Eh? Guy has published paper, peer reviewed with award. Is all this bogus?
See also this paper from 1980; ‘abstract’ useless, behind a wall, heavily referenced. Is this a repost of ‘vacuum domain’ concepts?
Please provide links to defs of “accepted science”, “reputable scientist” and explanation of your use of smiley driven innuendo. Not been here a long, a tad confused by your answers.
Thanks.
Geoff Sharp (15:13:52) :
Good, so from now on I wont expect to see you saying the Dalton Minimum had no affect on temperature…we simply don’t have enough evidence to make a statement either way.
While there is no hard instrumental data to back it up, it surely does not mean that other evidence is thereby of no value.
It does not preclude that someday we could know, for not knowing and never being able to know are two separate issues. Perhaps it is to the benefit of some for us to not find out.
The bottom line for the Dalton is that the Literary works and the news of the day is the observation.
Invariant (10:03:42) :
I think we have to agree that we do not agree at this point. Obviously there are many viewpoints here….
I’m a practicing scientist and can only describe my experience. Not my viewpoint.
Vukcevic (10:48:24) :
if you are really serious about it, lets go trough to it together
I’m afraid that I cannot add anything of value that would not diminish your message, so I offered to do the submission for you [although it is not hard – website is easy]. Writing the paper is your job. On the website there are detailed guidelines for how the paper should be written, style issues, and nitty-gritty stuff. Follow those [it is not hard] and when you are ready, we can proceed.
Invariant (10:49:36) :
Please do not give up.
I don’t think he ever will, no matter how many people find the paper worthless. It may even strengthen his resolve, feeling that he is on the forefront battling established, corrupt, outdated mainstream science.
Aligner (11:57:25) :
Vacuum domains as such are a highly hypothetical subject explored in string theory. I don’t think anybody has actually observed one. What you asked about was the work of these two guys:
http://www.math.nsc.ru/directions/Geoeng.htm
And THAT is definitely not part of accepted science. Neither is the ‘resonance project’. That they both refer to vacuum domains is like the theory that gravity from Sirius runs my life. If I point out that that is hardly science, you will respond: “you mean that gravity is not accepted science”.
I often use a smiley for things that I consider dubious. You may still be a firm believer in such things, in which case my opinion hardly matters.
Leif Svalgaard (13:48:24) :
I’m afraid that I cannot add anything of value that would not diminish your message..
Oh well!
It was not matter of ‘adding value’, I did clearly say:” not to add or take anything out, but to make the paper more presentable, to give it a fair chance.”
You did not have to agree with any of it in order to set it out within expected parameters of presentation, after writing countless papers, that should not have been a hard work. I shall indeed have a go, and my invitation is still there. Thanks.
Haven’t had time to read all posts lately, perhaps this has been overlooked:
Svensmark just published in Geophysical Research Letters.
“Cosmic Ray Decreases Affect Atmospheric Aerosols And Clouds”
“Thus a link between the sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale.”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038429.shtml
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090801095810.htm
Vukcevic (14:07:56) :
I did clearly say:” not to add or take anything out, but to make the paper more presentable, to give it a fair chance.”
To make the paper more presentable SOMETHING must be altered.
after writing countless papers, that should not have been a hard work
It is indeed easy, if the subject makes sense. If not, it is VERY hard.
rbateman (13:40:42) :
knowing and never being able to know are two separate issues. Perhaps it is to the benefit of some for us to not find out.
For society it is important to know. For some, including myself, knowing is not the goal. Finding things out is the game and is fun and rewarding. If somebody from the future would come to me and offer to tell me how everything works, I would refuse. Because that would deprive me of the joy of finding it out.
The bottom line for the Dalton is that the Literary works
Of cold brought about by volcanoes. Or just of blind fate.
Vukcevic (14:07:56) :
“It is indeed easy, if the subject makes sense. If not, it is VERY hard”
To give you an example. The paper starts out with the usual boilerplate stuff that every paper on solar cycle would have, that is not problematic, but then suddenly says this:
“produces a remarkably similar result as it is demonstrated in the diagram shown in Fig.1.”
And right here is the problem, because the sunspot curve and the mathematical curve bear very little relationship to each other. Now, there are ways of quantifying if one time series looks like another. So, you should use standard statistical methods to show this or use inspiration to discover a brand new statistical method of comparison that gives the desired result. Now, I’m writing as a referee of your paper [and I and David H] might actually be such if you submit it. As a referee, I’ll say that there is no remarkable similarity and stop right there and not bother with the rest. So, your first job is to prove that they are similar. Not just say it. Scientists have a lot of on-the-job training in judging wiggle similarity and a so-trained neural network will instantly tell if there is something worth pursuing. And your diagram 1 fails that test [at least for my neural network]. So, first item of work: quantify the similarity using [preferably] a standard technique.
If you can do that and the result is that there is a remarkable similarity, then, perversely, the rest of the paper doesn’t matter either, because diagram 1 alone would be enough to prove your case.
Leif Svalgaard (14:48:07) :
Vukcevic (14:07:56) :
If you read German [as you might] the following little tale by Rudolf Wolf might be of interest: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Wolf-LXXV.pdf
It describes his comments of an idea by W. Sellmeier about the influence of the planets on solar activity.
rbateman (13:40:42) :
The bottom line for the Dalton is that the Literary works and the news of the day is the observation.
The weight of evidence is pointing towards the Dalton being a cooler period, most of the proxy records and literature suggest a cooling at 1800. But as we are finding out temperature proxies are less than reliable.
Geoff Sharp (15:07:20) :
the proxy records and literature suggest a cooling at 1800. But as we are finding out temperature proxies are less than reliable.
So the literature reports the results of volcanic cooling, as it must because the WAS volcanic cooling.
Geoff Sharp (15:07:20) :
The proxies are somewhat vague and noisy.
The record of observation are the historical accounts here.
It was getting colder as much as 20 years in the US prior to the big volcano going off.
In the case of the Dalton it was to a reference point of global temperature that Tambora added it’s effect.
While Volcanoes can occur at any time, they show a distribution that has more occuring during times of minimum. Nothing new, just that many have noticed the tendency, and not much more than speculation as to why this happens. This much is obvious: Minimums are not seen to be the cause of volcanoes, but the occurence of Minimum and elevated volcanism are the norm.
Leif Svalgaard (14:30:02) :
The bottom line for the Dalton is that the Literary works
——————————–
Of cold brought about by volcanoes. Or just of blind fate.
That statement seems to accept that you do think it was cold during the Dalton. Blaming it solely on volcanoes is a bit of a long stretch as we have previously discussed. Its hard to see any downtrend in temps in the GISS record during the Pinatubo and Krakatoa eruptions and ice core records during the Dalton show the SO3 levels are washed out very quickly, lasting 2 or 3 yrs in the atmosphere. While acknowledging there must be some climate affects from volcanic eruptions, the degree is questionable.
Geoff Sharp (16:56:38) :
While acknowledging there must be some climate affects from volcanic eruptions, the degree is questionable.
Noisy as the proxies are, they do show the effect of the volcanoes, most famously “the year without a summer” 1816. Apart from that we have no good evidence it was generally colder. Regional anecdotal evidence is all over the map. Here is the famous CET series [which are measurements actually]: http://www.leif.org/research/CET%20and%2010Be.png
Also shown is the 10Be record [converted to HMF B] There is nothing special about the Dalton temperature-wise. 16 other European records show the same. You may argue, that we don’t know what the temperature was, in which case you cannot claim it was cold.
Geoff Sharp (16:56:38) :
While acknowledging there must be some climate affects from volcanic eruptions, the degree is questionable.
People that model these things:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17047898
“Results indicate that on global and hemispheric scales, the volcanic forcing is largely responsible for the temperature drop in this period, especially during its second half, whereas changes in solar forcing and the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations were of minor importance”
Now, the usual response [snip] so you can always take that route too.
Reply: c’mon Leif, you know better. ~ ctm
Dr. S:
I can find no paper showing wheat being as sensitive to temp change as you suggest, although in honesty I can find no studies involving the cultivar of wheat used during the subject time period. BUT I DID find this study:
“INFLUENCE OF SOLAR ACTIVITY ON THE STATE OF THE WHEAT
MARKET IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND” LEV A. PUSTIL’NIK1,2 and GREGORY YOM DIN3
1Israel Cosmic Ray Center, Tel Aviv University and Israel Space Agency, P.O. Box 2217, Katzrin,
12900, Israel (e-mail: levpust@post.tau.ac.il)
2Sea of Galilee Astrophysical Observatory, Jordan Valley College, 15132, Israel
(e-mail: lev@yarden.ac.il)
3Golan Research Institute, Katzrin, 12900, Israel (e-mail: rres102@research.haifa.ac.il)
Solar Physics 223: 335–356, 2004.
From their conclusion:
“We show that for all 10 time moments of the solar activity minima the observed prices were higher than prices for the corresponding time moments of maximal solar activity (100% sign correlation, on a significance level <0.2%). We consider these results a direct evidence of the causal connection between wheat prices bursts and solar activity."
So do you think that wheat IS that sensitive to a vanishingly small temp. change; that the causal connection described in the above paper is really just a long string of coincidences; that both Herschel and the research paper are just flat-out wrong about wheat prices and solar activity; or that there may be something we don't completely understand going on? I think that covers all the possibilities.
Oh, and Newton believed all sorts of strange things (and dismissed experimental data that didn't fit his theories), but I wouldn't consider him a hack scientist, either.
Leif Svalgaard (17:38:11) :
Now, the usual response [snip] so you can always take that route too.
Reply: c’mon Leif, you know better. ~ ctm
But he might not.
Leif Svalgaard (17:31:46) :
There is nothing special about the Dalton temperature-wise. 16 other European records show the same. You may argue, that we don’t know what the temperature was, in which case you cannot claim it was cold.
Archibald’s graph shows 3 European stations displaying a downtrend. US stations also show a downturn during the Dalton. I think you are struggling here and perhaps trying to fit some of the data to your agenda instead of accepting the data is questionable. I will sit on the fence right now.
jtom (17:50:35) :
So do you think that wheat IS that sensitive to a vanishingly small temp. change; that the causal connection described in the above paper is really just a long string of coincidences; that both Herschel and the research paper are just flat-out wrong about wheat prices and solar activity; or that there may be something we don’t completely understand going on? I think that covers all the possibilities.
At the COSPAR meeting last year the authors of the paper you cite have come to a more nuanced view of this issue. Here is what they said:
“Space Weather Influence on the Earth wheat markets: past, present, and future:
We consider problem of a possible influence of unfavorable states of the space weather on agriculture market through chain of connections: “space weather”-“earth weather”-“agriculture crops”-“price reaction”. We show that new manifestations of “space weather”-“earth weather” relations discovered in the last time allow to revise wide field of expected solar-terrestrial connections. In the previous works we proposed possible mechanisms of wheat market reaction in the form of price bursts on the specific unfavorable states of space weather. We show that implementation of considered “price reaction scenarios” is possible only for condition of simultaneous realization of several necessary conditions: high sensitivity of local earth weather in selected region to space weather; state of “high risk agriculture” in selected agriculture zone; high sensitivity of agricultural market to possible deficit of supply. Results of previous works (I, II) included application of this approach to wheat market in Medieval England and to modern USA durum market showed that real connection between wheat price bursts and space weather state is observed with high confidence level. The aim of present work is answer on the question, why wheat markets in one region are sensitive to space weather factor, while another regional wheat markets demonstrate absolute indifferent reaction on this factor. For this aim we consider distribution of sensitivity of wheat markets in Europe to space weather as function of localization in different climatic zones. We analyze giant database of 95 European wheat markets from 14 countries during about 600-year period (1260-1912). We show that observed sensitivity of wheat market to space weather effects controlled, first of all, by type of predominant climate in different zones of agriculture. Wheat markets in the North and part of Central Europe (England, Iceland, Holland) shows reliable sensitivity to space weather in minimum states of solar activity with low solar wind, high cosmic ray flux and North Atlantic cloudiness, caused by CR excess, with negative sequences for wheat agriculture in this humid zone. In the same time wheat markets in the South Europe (Spain, Italy) show reliable sensitivity to space weather state in the opposite (maximum) phase of solar activity with strong solar wind, low cosmic ray flux and deficit of CR input in cloudiness in North Atlantic with next deficit of precipitations in the arid zones of the South Europe. In the same time the large part of markets in the Central Europe zone, functioned far from “high risk agriculture state” show the absence of any effects-responses on space weather. This asymmetry is in accordance with model expectation in the frame of proposed approach. For extremely case of the Iceland agriculture we show that drop of agriculture production in unfavorable states of space weather leads to mass mortality from famines correlated with phase of solar activity with high confi- dence level. We discuss possible increasing of sensitivity of wheat markets to space weather effects in condition of drastic and fast change of modern climate, caused by global warming of the Earth atmosphere with fast and unexpected shift of numerous agriculture regions in the world to state of “high risk agriculture zone”. ”
I think this might fit in any one of the possibilities you suggest.
Gene Nemetz (06:05:57) : Ummm… maybe because he’s a troll in sheep’s clothing…but that couldn’t be…. could it?
I suspect he is not a troll, just a curmudgeonly professor who has had to deal with far too many clueless but enthusiastic students over the years all attracted to the same “shiny things”… (BTW, some of my favorite folks have been curmudgeonly sorts, they usually have much “clue” and that can be wearing in the world so devoid of it. I hope to “grow up” to be a surly curmudgeon some day myself, but I have a ways to go. I’m still too nice and hopeful that this time the clueless will be different… )
Oh, and I think you will find him in cotton and cotton polyester blends, not wool. Stanford isn’t really cold enough for wool… 😉 Though I can picture a fine old Wool School Tie… and maybe even a wool sports coat on those wintery days that deserve one.
Leif Svalgaard (06:10:16) : I care about the folks getting the science right, not about what you agree on or not.
Strangely enough, I’m having this same problem over on my blog. There is a fellow who seems to think I give a tinkers darn about what he thinks and what my reputation might be in his eyes. Somehow folks who are largely driven by what others think of them simply can not grasp the fact that it isn’t about them and it isn’t about me. It is all about data, process, analysis, understanding, results. There is no ego in data, nor in method. There is no ego in a formula nor in how physics works.
If you ever figure out how to give clue to folks that “It doesn’t matter what you think of me, all that matters is where the truth leads” I’d sure like to know how to get it into their heads without sounding like a surly curmudgeon…
Or maybe that’s my answer in both cases…
Invité (06:24:56) : Voici un site qui parle d’un refroidissement climatique en France et qui vous suit de très pret. Nous sommes totalement en accord avec ce que vous dites. Bravo continuez comme ça.
Je vous remercie pour cela. Nous avons un groupe de gens français participant ici:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/gistemp-pas-dun-coup/
Peut-être que vous aimeriez mettre la même note, là-bas?
Grant (07:07:26) : To put it another way, the correllation that they found in 1991 – one that had held true for hundreds of year – is also evidence suggesting that the recent temperature history put out in line with the IPCC info has a strong warming error.
I can pretty much confirm that GIStemp has a built in warming bias. It’s at about 1/2 C through the first 2 STEPs, Haven’t measured it in the later steps yet (need to make a binary to ascii conversion program to use my benchmark after STEP2). Inspection of individual records shows a warming bias in the code, but I can not yet characterize it as to magnitude.
Do you know if they used GIStemp or Hadley (The Dogs Lunch) data? If so, they ought to redo the analysis with GHCN Adjusted data without the GIStemp “lift”…
Geoff Sharp (08:34:32) : The Earth uses those positive feedbacks (cloud cover and ocean cycles) to further regulate the solar TSI, everything is solar related and I believe I have the answer for solar output.
FWIW, I suspect that very long term there will still be some truth to the notion of Sun as Driver through some sort of amplification (be if from changing length of day / rotation rate of the earth changing currents or from clouds, or…) but the warming in the GIStemp temperature series is not compatible with the solar thesis.
You will want to demonstrate a correlation with GHCN data pre-GIStemp to have something solid as a measurement. I’m contemplating making a “cleaned up” version of the GIStemp code where I take out all the cherry picked parameters and shorten the distances over which it applies the Reference Station Method and producing my own temperature series.
If you have any interest in “SmithTemp” 😉 data, let me know at my blog and I’ll make the series. It would not take long. I would most likely just rip out all of their UHI “correction” and take the GHCN “Adjusted” data for UHI correction. Then it would just be a matter of shrinking the RSM parameter from 1000, 1200, 1500 (it varies…) km to something more reasonable like 100 km and running the code. Oh, and I’d want to toss out any thermometers with less than a dozen or two years of lifetime. They just clutter up the thing with unjustified perturbations.
Geoff Sharp (18:28:52) :
I think you are struggling here and perhaps trying to fit some of the data to your agenda instead of accepting the data is questionable. I will sit on the fence right now.
What nonsense. What I am saying is that there is no good evidence for it being abnormally cold globally [below what the volcanoes obviously wrought – 1816]. There is also no good evidence that it was abnormally warm. That accords with your fence sitting, I reckon.
Guess we are all ready for a new topic eh?
Someone come up with something interesting! Please!
E.M.Smith (18:41:03) :
surly curmudgeon…
“An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions”
and surly to boot, eh?
E.M. (love your work) Maybe you could clear this up.
I was reading the climate alarmism the other day
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914-1,00.html
And this caught my eye.
“Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F.”
Is this an accurate Gisstemp number for 1940 – 1972?
E.M.Smith (19:05:03) :
Thanks, your idea for a project sounds interesting, especially the reconstruction of GISS data. Trying to match the temp record with solar movements with the positive feedbacks is a daunting task at this stage, the feedback mechanisms in my opinion are not clearly quantified and understood yet. But the framework I think is very promising.
John Finn (17:43:35) :
2. There might have been a “70s cooling scare” but there was no cooling in the 1970s. In fact the climate shifted to warming during the 1970s. The weak solar cycle, i.e. SC20, ran from 1964 til 1976 during which time global temperatures were essentially flat.
In who’s temperature series? If it is from GIStemp, you are using a broken ruler.
BTW, I lived through that time period and it WAS colder. There were snows in that time period that were not seen for 40 years prior nor for 40 years after. (I asked the old folks who told me about ‘the last time’).
I think you are looking at “cooked books” for your temperatures.
Hey, don’t call me surly.
Were you to know how it all worked out think of the yet more complex and difficult to know things you could be working on with your new found knowledge.
=================================
Ed (19:29:41) :
Someone come up with something interesting! Please!
This is even on topic:
We plan to submit tomorrow to JGR the following:
http://www.leif.org/research/IDV09.pdf
showing the run of the heliospheric magnetic field since 1835 [not a typo]. I plan to discuss the whole peer-review process here on WUWT, complete with nasty comments by the reviewers and our responses. This will be an illustration of the peer-review process as it unfolds. Should be interesting.
If Vuk ever gets his act in gear, he could do the same. Or even nobrainer and Co.
Geoff:
“Solanki’s raw data (geomagnetic leveled) plus some of my own is available from here: http://www.landscheidt.info/images/solanki_sharp.xls”
Has the dating shifted from the original dataset for the 10-be? Funny, because I actually had shifted it myself once for comparison to GISP2 as it seemed the timing was in error, i.e. there are three very large peaks in the 10BE data (~9000yrs ad or so), which match up suspiciously well with the GISP2 temp data for the same time period if one decreases the time span for the dataset linearly.
Do you or Leif have the Steinhilber TSI data in .txt or .xls?
Thanks,
Ed
kim (18:10:08) : I think Erl Happ will find the ultraviolet contributions to the whole climate regulating mechanisms or stimulate its explication. Many of his ideas fit right in with others like Tisdale, Spencer, and van Loon.
The sun is very sultry and we must avoid its ultry-violet rays.
Oddly enough, as someone with “The Redhead Gene” I’m a very sensitive UV sensor. I can say with absolute certainty that the UV this summer was “wrong” and low. I was out in the sun for periods of time that ought to have given me a sunburn and got nothing. (Yes, I’ve “calibrated” myself. 20 minutes high noon California in summer is a 1st degree burn. 1 hour is second degree… and yes, I’ve had blistering from a sunburn.)
FWIW, the higher energy bands drop a heck of a lot more than the TSI and, IMHO, that delta between what frequencies are carrying the TSI is important. No, I have no mechanism, but I can say that it matters a great deal to certain living things… especially red ones…
kim (18:17:26) : If indeed an Eddy Minimum is dawning then let us hope there will be few enough confounding factors, such as vulcanism
And what if vulcanism is the solar influence? What if the delta in angular momentum changes the loading on the plates such that the “accidental” correlation of solar changes with cold is not so accidental but is a direct consequence? This, IMHO, is the most likely answer to this Gordian Knot. The delta AM leads to the flexure of the planet surface at the same time that it slops the ocean around and gives a PDO et.al. flip. BINGO! we have the “accidental” “coincidence” of volcanoes and the cold time with the planetary positions (that modulate the solar AM / earth AM process).
I suspect that trying to separate the vulcanism from the AM from the clouds from the … is a fools errand. One is trying to separate cause from effect.
I’m also fairly certain that the present temperature series have little relation to this since GIStemp is “cooked” and the thermometer record patterns do not support it as a short term driver. I still hold out hope that the hundreds of years cycles are driven by the sun, but the 1880 to present in GIStemp is not solar nor CO2 related. It is thermometer count and location driven (the code can not compensate for a factor of 10 increase in thermometers in warm southern locations).
But really, send shysters, gats, and loot.
I really hope you are of the female persuasion because I really like the way you…, er, are… (and I have a delicate ego structure 😉
Leif Svalgaard (20:07:47) : There probably is [and should be] a solar cycle variation in temperature of the order of 0.1K. To explain the correlation with the price of wheat, you would have to assume that wheat can sense this small difference and react to it by yielding more when it is 0.1K warmer.
Um, not so fast… UV levels influence plants. Water influences plants. Cloud cover influences plants. TSI is not everything. The specifics matter a great deal when it comes to plants. Jevons did the early work on this and he was a fairly careful worker. There IS a correlation between yields, prices, and the sunspot levels. Why is still somewhat unclear, but the pattern is something you can bank on. Literally.
The link has weakened a bit lately, probably due to the genetic manipulation we are doing to plants, irrigation, and the wide availability of fertilizers; but the pattern in the early work was fairly clear.
Plants can be very sensitive to minor marginal changes. Most tomatoes will not set fruit if night temperatures are below 50 F. 51 to 55F+ are fine. 49 is not. My runner beans have beautiful red flowers in mid summer, but will not set seed when the temps are above about 90 ish F. I’ve not calibrated it exactly, but they set seed well when it is 80 something and have flower drop at 90 something. (I think the cut off is about 92 to 95 F, but have not exactly measured it). So you can have a 100% change in yield from a couple of degree change in limit temperatures (NOT average…).
Now we moved the problem from the Sun and the climate to the wheat. Do you have an explanation for this extreme sensitivity of wheat to temperature?
While I’ve not grown wheat in quantity personally, I think the above examples are informative of the issues. Tomato pollen generally will not grow the needed tubule into the ova inside the 3 day pollen life if the temperatures are below 50F. Similarly, the Runner Bean fertilization fails at about 92F on the hot side.
Each plant as a ‘growing season length’. If you have a 120 day crop and have 121 days, you are fine. 100 days, not so much… This is frequently frost mediated, so the “last frost” and “first frost” days are critical. If these are 121 days apart, you get a crop. 110?… This is dramatically seen in places like England were you can get tomatoes briefly one year and nothing but “green tomatoes” the next if the degree days are short or the frost early. And some crop land is always “at the margin”. So a marginal change in a price inelastic commodity can have a magnified effect on the price of what crop there is.
This is part of why agriculture gets special treatment in price support and market stabilization programs. The price can vary widely with modest changes of yield from trivial changes in temperature, rainfall, and frost dates.
So I could easily see a change in UV, for example, having a marginal change in plant growth rate and rainfall that turns a 110 day crop into a 130 day crop and at the same time turns a 120 day season into a 110 day one, and have a crop failure. From bumper crop to zero in one step.
This kind of stuff is why trading ag commodities is the hardest thing to do, IMHO. Ranks right up there with gold trading (often driven by news, panic, government pronouncements, and other non-quantifiable nor predictable stuff.) Stocks and bonds are trivial by comparison.
As for not being a hack, Herschel believed the Sun was inhabited.
And Einstein believed in an invisible man in the sky with a fixation for counting hairs on heads but not so much interested in dice.
Do not judge a work by the author’s belief in other things. Judge it only on the merits of the work.
John Finn (01:17:31) : As a matter of fact, I don’t agree that temperatures in the 1796-1820 period were significantly lower than the periods preceding and following the Dalton Minimum. …
This show the average temperatures at 17 stations between 1770 and 1850. There is a dip in ~1815 but this was around the time of the huge Tombura eruption and, in any case, this was no greater in magnitude than the dips in the mid-1780s and in ~1840.
Take a look at:
http://www.smhi.se/content/1/c6/02/50/31/attatchments/upps_www.pdf
The thin moving average line shows a nice dip between 1790 to 1820. It is layered onto a longer cycle droop from 1710 to 1880 (gee… just the cherry picked bottom when GIStemp chooses to begin history…) so an ill informed statistical analysis might miss the pattern. Oh, and both the 1780s and 1840s have as similar depth, but the width (and integrated area) are less.
And to reiterate a point I raised above: What make you so sure that the same thing driving the sun spot drop is not the exact same thing driving the increased vulcanism? We are presently having a drop of solar activity AND an increase in vulcanism. It seems to happen in each minima. How often must a coincidence happen before you start to suspect mutual causality? It is quite high for vulcanism and sunspots and cold, oh my!
E.M.Smith (21:32:02) :
Um, not so fast… UV levels influence plants. Water influences plants. Cloud cover influences plants. TSI is not everything.
UV is a part of TSI, and a small part at that. Of the 1361 W/m2 TSI, 105 W/m2 are in the UV, and most of that is in the Near UV that actually varies opposite to the solar activity. The UV that varies a lot ins the Extreme UV which does not reach the surface of the Earth.
Leif Svalgaard (17:31:46) :
Once again, Leif, it was not so much the cold that ruined the European wheat harvest, it was the unseasonable rains. And those unseasonable rains also wreaked havoc in the 2 Grand Minima preceeding the Dalton. 3 eras noted makes for a history.
It’s in the literature of the times, and I have posted more than once the references to them. Those are the accounts of what transpired. It was colder, it got to places well beyond Europe, and it was cold enough to make the writers of the time take note of it. Tambora was insult added to injury.
E.M.Smith (21:32:02) :
We are presently having a drop of solar activity AND an increase in vulcanism. It seems to happen in each minima.
It sure is happening. The pattern is repeating yet again.
Leif Svalgaard (20:03:09) :
Should be interesting.
Agree, I will be paying close attention.
As a side note, the shape of the HMF and GCR (10Be) values at SC22 is interesting. It looks to be following the temperature record to some extent, allowing for some lags etc. Independent of sunspots to some degree but perhaps working in unison, the TSI on the overall upswing with the HMF and GCR’s boosting the reduction in clouds to a greater extent around SC22 through extra UV and also reduced cloud nuclei, perhaps increasing the overall TSI at the surface. A combination of TSI and its positive feedback mechanisms, the movement away from the sunspot record being the important point. SC22 and SC19 HMF are both very similar.
This could be bad for the AGW crowd.
Geoff Sharp (22:38:13) :
SC22 and SC19 HMF are both very similar.
As was SC23 and SC13, and as [I think SC24 and SC14 will be.
But make further comments over in the dedicated thread for this.
kim (07:31:40) : Looking back, too, we seem to have had sub millenial scale alternations between warming and cooling phases, historically known at least as far back as the Roman Optimum.
It goes back well before that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age_Cold_Epoch
Heck, even RC does not dispute that the Minoan Warm Period existed, they just dismiss the relevance:
http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Lavoisier_Group
“1. Climate change is a constant. The Vostok Ice Cores show five brief interglacial periods from 415,000 years ago to the present. The Greenland Ice Cores reveal a Minoan Warm Period 1450–1300 BC, a Roman Warm Period 250–0 BC, the Mediaeval Warm Period 800–1100AD, the Little Ice Age and the late 20th Century Warm Period 1900–2010 AD.”
The issue is not whether climate changes have occurred (they have), but why it is changing now
So you get to go back all the way to 1450 BC at a minimum… FWIW, there is a 1500 or so year long “ripple” in climate history. This means that any “trend” analysis based on less than 1500+ years of data must detrend for that known cycle or it is just a fantasy based on not understanding what wave they are riding upon.
Stephen Wilde (09:13:01) : Sometimes one can post before engaging brain 🙂
Sometimes? Braggart!
Leif Svalgaard (06:35:53) :
Leif Svalgaard (05:36:17) :
Various people have noticed that “progress is 1% inspiration and 99% transpiration”.
Or “perspiration”.
Some of us are animals, others are vegetables. Some choice, eh?
Vukcevic (09:53:49) : As far as I am concerned, I sit back and wait for either of them or anyone else, to come up with something better.
To the extent you are right, it will be a very long wait. Glad to see you are still attending, btw. I like your work, but just can’t quite tease out a mechanism. Then again, we don’t know how gravity works either…
Leif Svalgaard (18:29:03) : I think this might fit in any one of the possibilities you suggest.
It actually is rather strong support for the thesis. Cold limited in the cold north, moisture limited in the hot south (with expected opposite sign), and neutral in the middle away from the marginal influences. Exactly what one would expect from a change of climate warmer / colder. A shift of the range of survivability north / south.
Leif Svalgaard (19:33:03) :
E.M.Smith (18:41:03) :
surly curmudgeon…
“An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions”
and surly to boot, eh?
I said I admired your curmudgeonly moments and that I aspired to the surly part. I very carefully did not connect surly with you. While you enjoy sniping, you do not rise to the level of surly, try as you might. I hope to one day exceed my mentor 😉
Leif Svalgaard (21:48:59) :
UV is a part of TSI, and a small part at that. Of the 1361 W/m2 TSI, 105 W/m2 are in the UV, and most of that is in the Near UV that actually varies opposite to the solar activity. The UV that varies a lot ins the Extreme UV which does not reach the surface of the Earth.
The bad news is perhaps it doesnt need to hit the surface, the interaction at the top of the atmosphere is enough to change weather patterns, pressures and cloud cover say some.
Ripper (19:34:16) : E.M. (love your work) Maybe you could clear this up.
Thanks! Though I’ve taken another ‘sanity break’ to recharge and make a bit of money before diving back into the STEP3 warming measurement and the STEP4_5 bigendian “issue”. Sometimes it’s that “put food on the table” thing that needs tending…
I was reading the climate alarmism the other day
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914-1,00.html
And this caught my eye.
“Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F.”
Is this an accurate Gisstemp number for 1940 – 1972?
I don’t think so. GIStemp generally puts in artificial warming to the data. Then again, in that time period the GIStemp code was not as it is today. The GHCN data that is the input to GIStemp shows no such trend, though it is strongly dependent on just which thermometer records you use:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/gistemp-quartiles-of-age-bolus-of-heat/
Has the trend from 1939-69 of “global average of all thermometer records” for the 4 quartiles of thermometer record longevity as:
top: -0.5 C
2nd: -0.5 C
3rd: -0.1 C
Bottom: +7.7 C
So that’s about -0.9 F for the two best thermometer records which is a bit shy of the 2.7 F number. (Then again, this is the data pre-GISification, so it might well be buggered further in GIStemp by 1.8 F, but I would believe the basic GHCN data more than the GIStemp product.)
You can also see in these numbers how all the “warming” in carried in the small set of thermometers with the shortest lifetime. These are largely airports in the tropics and southern hemisphere; and while the AGW True Believers will rant that grids, boxes, and anomaly processing will erase this effect, I’ve shown that it does not.
So my best estimate is that the world cooled by about 1/2 C during that interval based on the best longest lived thermometer records and ignoring the airports added on tropical islands after WWII.
E.M.Smith (23:20:46)
Thanks ! So as far a CRU is concerned they< .6 C as well.
So either the "adjustments" have been severe or the alarmism was exaggerated by a factor of three back then.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Leif Svalgaard (21:48:59) :
E.M.Smith (21:32:02) :
“Um, not so fast… UV levels influence plants. Water influences plants. Cloud cover influences plants. TSI is not everything.”
UV is a part of TSI, and a small part at that. Of the 1361 W/m2 TSI, 105 W/m2 are in the UV, and most of that is in the Near UV that actually varies opposite to the solar activity. The UV that varies a lot ins the Extreme UV which does not reach the surface of…
My point was that shifting energy from UV to, say, “yellow” would leave TSI unchanged, yet a living thing, such as me would be sunburnt under one and happy as can be under the other. The point about what does not reach the surface is interesting, but does not explain why I was able to go all summer in the garden with no sunscreen and even left my (obligatory) sun hat in the bedroom. The UV at the surface that causes sunburn was much less than in the recent past. Enough that I could feel the difference (I get a distinct ‘tingle’ as the UV dose approaches ‘1st degree burn in 20 minutes’ level of UV irradiation. After a few dozen burns, you start to notice these things 😉
Plants have similar issues with spectrum. For example, they reflect green and don’t use it very well and some can sunburn from too much UV. Also insufficient UV will result in seedlings that extend length until they fall over and die. I learned this attempting to grow radishes in a box in my room as a 12 year old and learned that normal window glass blocks enough UV to cause the ‘infinitely extending seedling’ problem. Greenhouse operators pay particular attention to issues of spectrum. The glazing has to let in the right mix and any “grow lights” must have the right mix. Even minor changes can result in plant death, spindly growth, failure to flower, or other problems; and each species has it’s own particular sensitivities. Some, like beans, don’t seem to care. Others, like Orchids and radish seedlings and Onions can be terribly picky.
Onions, for example, are ‘day length sensitive’. You must pick a variety matched to your latitude and expected total hours of light of sufficient strength during your growing season. If you don’t get the “match” right, you get poor or no onions. The onion waits until the day is short enough to say “winter soon – but enough summer remains to make a bulb” to make the bulb. If that signal is at the wrong time and early, it bulbs too early and small. If that signal is too late, the onion does not bulb. So what happens with a small spectrum shift that moves the energy in the particular band that signals ‘day length’ to a different quantity?… (this, btw, has driven me nuts for years. Only in the last 2 years have I finally gotten to the point where I can grow onions with any reliability. You simply MUST match the onion to the seasonal timing to the latitude).
And that is why TSI makes me nervous. There is a great deal that is hidden in that “average” that is of great importance to plants and other living things… especially those that are red, or trying not to become more red…
So yes, I could easily see TSI staying of constant energy, yet a spectral shift of that constant energy leading to a crop failure or crop reduction. (Early flowering, late flowering, seedling ‘lodging’, failure to bulb, reduced growth rates, etc.) There are particular ‘incantations’ for some species that greenhouse operators need to know to get crops ‘out of season’.
http://www.actahort.org/members/showpdf?booknrarnr=770_20
http://www.umass.edu/umext/floriculture/fact_sheets/greenhouse_management/photo.html
When it comes to plants the TSI is important, but so is each constituent part.
rbateman (22:04:15) :
Once again, Leif, it was not so much the cold that ruined the European wheat harvest, it was the unseasonable rains. And those unseasonable rains also wreaked havoc in the 2 Grand Minima preceeding the Dalton. 3 eras noted makes for a history.
Bob, I think you got it right there.
From late 1700s, centre of the North Atlantic precipitations was moving eastwards across Europe towards Siberia. Inflow of fresh waters from great Siberian rivers Ob, Yenisey, etc, affected salinity of the Arctic Ocean, and consequently the Labrador Sea circulation. While the Gulf Stream along the European west coast was hardly affected, cold Arctic waters did cool the east coast of US. This was a reason for differences in climatic changes as shown in temperature graphs produced by H. Lamb (most notable British climatologist of 20th century) and American J. Eddy.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Temps.jpg
It should be remembered these are regional, NOT global temperature variations. Since even two sides of the North Atlantic cannot be standardised, it seems to me, attempts to produce a uniform global chart are a futile exercise and bound to not make the grade. Good old doc looks to be correct, it was not due to solar irradiance, but certain other factors were coming into play.
My interpretation of the wheat crop phenomena is simply that very small changes in TSI appears to cause a shift in weather patterns, which may create significant localized climate changes (for better or worse).
A .1k temp change is below the noise threshhold, but if, say, jet streams shift by a couple of hundred miles north or south (a small deflection) for an extended period, then regional weather will be significantly altered. What happens to the average ‘global climate’ would be a matter of conjecture, and for practical purposes a moot point. (If the wheat belt became colder/wetter, negatively and severly impacting agriculture, and the South Pacific became warmer/dryer impacting nothing, the result would be no net change in the global climate, but who cares? We’ll still be in a bad way). It would be interesting to see the debate if globally temperature began to rise again, but the heavily populated areas of the world actually cooled. Most of the higher temps seem to be in the polar/Siberia areas as it is.
I would say at this point everyone is right concerning the piece-parts, but we can’t yet predict the end result. That’s a good thing – science would be far less interesting if we had all the answers.
I’d guess that Nile River levels have fewer variables than wheat production and marketing. Then again.
===============================
Hello all,
I’ll be able to fully respond to Leif’s issues and criticisms on Saturday evening my time when I’m at work, because that’s where my spreadsheet is that I take this data from. In the meantime, here is a partial answer…
Regarding solar cycle 0, there is in fact substantial data from before solar cycle 1, more than enough to paint in the maximum of the preceding cycle. There is, however, not enough before that to nail down the minimum. That is why Schwabe started the cycle numbers where he did. So it is in fact legitimate to talk about the minimum from 0 to 1.
Regarding missing days due to clouds, the people of the 1700’s and 1800’s weren’t very sophisticated by our standards, that is true. But they weren’t dumb. They recognized clouds as an issue for sunspot observations. That’s why they organized a Europe-wide observing network. Even if their communications were crude, they got the job done so there are very few missing days due to clouds in the record. Even so, if it would satisfy Leif, I’ll add a ‘~’ to the chart to say ‘approximately’. By the way, if you notice solar cycle 3-4 is missing, that’s because the data gaps here were huge. I ended up with 29 spotless days and just said, “er, right…”. So I threw out cycle 4. Our best guess is that the Napoleonic wars kind of messed up the works.
Anyway, on Saturday, I’ll post a full detail of how many years had how many days of records. I’m sure most will agree that most years are quite sufficient, and the least worthy I’ve already discarded.
Thanks to all,
Paul
kim (07:12:26) :
I’d guess that Nile River levels have fewer variables than wheat production and marketing. Then again.
The Nile flows out of Lake Victoria and the level of LV was following the sunspot cycle in the late 19th century, then it drifted out of phase in the 20th, and may now again have drifted back in phase. This is the basic problem: there are approximately decadal changes of climate/weather. These drift in and out of phase with the approximately decadal changes of solar activity, causing a ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ type of correlation. Depending on your agenda and other outlook on the world, the field is thus open for all kinds of speculation.
Paul Stanko (07:40:21) :
Anyway, on Saturday, I’ll post a full detail of how many years had how many days of records. I’m sure most will agree that most years are quite sufficient, and the least worthy I’ve already discarded.
For each cycle lists: how many days in the cycle [spots, observations, or not – just the number of days], how many days with observations, how many days with no spots observed.
Leif Svalgaard (19:33:03) :
E.M.Smith (18:41:03) :
surly curmudgeon…
“An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions”
and surly to boot, eh?
Leif, I’m not sure if you are a native speaker of English. (I suspect not). If you are, please forgive this bit… but if you are not, you may not appreciate an odd subtlety of the word “curmudgeon”: It has an “endearment” quality.
It is used about the Uncle who is sometimes “difficult” to deal with, but just happens to be right all the time when you are saying something stupid.
It has the quality about it of the “bright person experienced in the world who is not suffering fools well” and also of the person who stays centered in “the old ways” when fools are running this way and that with silly fads.
Basically, the “stubborn notions” is more ambiguous as to whom is right than the straight dictionary meaning might imply. And the implication is often that the “ill tempered” part comes from a “voice of authority and experience” while the “resentment” has an implication of “resentful of fools wasting his time” more than general unhappiness.
I first encountered this word, and the person to whom it was applied, in High School. That person was Mr. McGuire. I never heard any other name for him than that. He, in large part, shaped who I am today (though I doubt he recognized it at the time; I didn’t.) He was a retired Lt. Colonel in the Air Force (from WWII) and did not “take crap” from folks. He liked to put you on the spot in a somewhat uncomfortable way when you were being stupid, but with a bit of help to point you at the way out…
He was my Chemistry and Physics teacher. On one occasion I made the “mistake” of asking him what what gasoline was made of. (He was also a retired research chemist from U.S. Steel). His answer is prototypical of the “curmudgeon” whom you respect and admire: “Mr. Smith, here is the CRC handbook. The library is down that hall. Report to me in 1 week with your answer.” I learned a great deal about refineries, alkanes, gasoline chemistry, fuels, crude oil. Things I still use to this day. Things I would not have known had he said “Hyrocarbons from C5 to C12 in length, both rings and linear molecules, with a boiling point in a modest range near that of hexane to octane”
I knew he could tell me in 10 seconds. He knew I knew. He also knew that I was ready to do the research myself and that the best thing he could do for me was to assure I learned that.
It was from him that I learned why the Diesel was superior (and why I drive a Mercedes Diesel today. He had a 190D IIRC. I now have a 240D. Not in emulation, but in understanding.) It was from him that I learned why my 2 tons of metal would take its share of MV as M and the little tin car would take it as V and that the energy was distributed at V^2…
And it was him whom I sat next to at a violin concert in our gym and watched tears sneak down his cheek at the exquisite music from the performer (who’s name meant nothing to me, but played a Stratavarious and was getting about $100 a ticket in 1970… and gave us a free concert). I still can here him commenting to another teacher (my Biology teacher, another “curmudgeon” I can only thank…) that the physics knowledge displayed by the player was of high caliber ( he was positioning the audience in just the right places to correct acoustic ‘issues’ with the gym).
It is in that context that I aspire to become a “Surly Curmudgeon”.
And you ought to take it as a compliment to be labeled a “curmudgeon” as it does imply someone who is just a bit ahead of the rest, has been for a long time, and sometimes just gets a bit ‘resentful’ of folks asking so many stupid questions… “Mr. Smith, The library is down that hall!”
If someday I can earn the word “curmudgeon” on my tombstone, I will feel like I’ve finally made it into the company I admired most.
One final note: It may be a sub-cultural artifact, but the specific phrase “surly curmudgeon” is often used in the computer support arena for that “difficult by exceedingly bright” programmer that just happens to be the best one on the staff. I’ve managed several “surly curmudgeons” and did so with pride that I could provide a place where they could excel with minimal irritation from the merely gifted. That has probably colored my willingness to use the phrase. To be granted the label “surly curmudgeon” is something of a badge of honor among geeks, hackers, and programmers.
Sidebar: CNBC World is reporting a couple of 7.x quakes near Vanuatu in the pacific and another tsunami warning. SOMETHING is going on with the earthquakes / volcanoes thing…
E.M.Smith (17:37:29) :
Leif Svalgaard (19:33:03) :
E.M.Smith (18:41:03) :
surly curmudgeon…
“An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions”
and surly to boot, eh?
My attempt of humor didn’t have the intended effect, but I agree that curmudgeon can be a term of endearment and will carry that badge with honor.
Leif:
I’m returning a bit late to this thread, I fear, but I wanted to set something straight.
There was the question earlier whether temperatures were lower during the Dalton Minimum and I get comments on the order of “it wasn’t abnormally cold globally below what the volcanoes obviously wrought” or “yhe temperature record, such as it is, is severely ‘contaminated’ by several large volcanic eruption in the decade 1810-1820”. Based on these comments, it seems the answer is that temperatures WERE lower during the Dalton.
So, Leif, I don’t believe you directly answered my original question. Do you attribute the lower temperatures during the Maunder and Dalton minimums to coincidence or do you feel that there is some mechanism linking the two? You said earlier: “I personally would not discount coincidence”, so should I infer that you are unsure or are you convinced in coincidence? I am truly trying to understand.
Thanks,
Craig
Leif Svalgaard (18:07:33) :
E.M.Smith (17:37:29) :
Leif Svalgaard (19:33:03) :
E.M.Smith (18:41:03) :
surly curmudgeon…
“An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions”
and surly to boot, eh?
My attempt of humor didn’t have the intended effect, but I agree that curmudgeon can be a term of endearment and will carry that badge with honor.
Given the lack of a smily the ‘tone of voice’ was ambiguous. So I waited for the ‘humor comeback’ to the “I’m the surly one” comment. When there was none I started to think maybe I’d gone “an adjective to far” 😉
Glad to finally get the ‘tone’ right …
Madman (19:10:30) :
Based on these comments, it seems the answer is that temperatures WERE lower during the Dalton.
The issue is if there were much lower such that they could be said to unusual. As there were many periods in the past 200 years that had equally low temperatures, it would not be appropriate to single out the Dalton minimum cold as something that required a special explanation. There were a couple of exceptional years, like ‘the year without a summer, 1816’ but they were due to volcanoes. This is my view. You can find opposing views, especially from people with agendas or pet ideas, and you may buy into those as you please, of course.
Hi all,
It was definitely not my intent to be evasive, sorry if I seemed that way! This spreadsheet where I store all my data is at work and I happened to be on vacation. This being my first day back, I’m happy to supply the information Leif requested. I’m sure that this will please all other readers as well. In addition, I’ll post my proposed definition of the months and years where each cycle began, which may well prove necessary for the other requested information to make sense. I’ll work backward since most people here seem to suspect the information gets less reliable the farther back you go.
Since the info for min-to-min is already available in the graphs above, I’m assuming Leif means the spotless days within each cycle boundary, so that’s what I’m providing below.
Cycle 10: Jan 1856 to Feb 1867, total 4077 days, 4077 obs (100%), 535 0-day
Cycle 9: Jul 1843 to Dec 1855, total 4567 days, 4526 obs (99.1%), 579 0-day
Cycle 8: Oct 1833 to Jun 1843, total 3560 days, 3458 obs (97.1%), 474 0-day
Cycle 7: May 1823 to Sep 1833, total 3806 days, 3764 obs (98.9%), 901 0-day
Cycle 6: Apr 1810 to Apr 1823, total 4778 days, 4625 obs (96.8%), 2197 0-dy
Cycle 5: Apr 1798 to Mar 1810, total 4382 days, 3113 obs (71.0%), 1892 0-dy
Cycle 4: Aug 1784 to Mar 1789, total 4991 days, 1016 obs (20.4%), 429 0-day
Sorry, I’ll have to finish this analysis tomorrow… I’m just about out of time.
Don’t worry, the data won’t be changing (promise!) 🙂
Late catching up here. Mercifully I am away from the computer during the work week.
From Leif:
“Erl is trying to say that the conditions at the poles drives conditions in the subtropics and thereby in the tropics. And that solar activity heating the poles drives the whole system. He has no physical theory for this, no calculations of the energies involved, no estimates of the time constants, no statistical analysis of the data, nothing except feeding on animosity towards IPCC.”
Perhaps if Leif took the time to study the atmosphere he would learn a little more about the dynamics of the polar vortexes, the modulation of ozone by vortex activity and the contributing role of irradiance and the solar wind in determining the concentration of nitrogen oxides AND OZONE in the mesosphere and (by virtue of the polar vortex) in the stratosphere). Then perhaps we might have a meaningful discussion about the role of the sun in determining the rate of energy pickup by the oceans and the rise and fall of surface temperature over sixty to seventy years.
If Leif simply refuses to learn, or even to contest any particular observation that I put forward there is little point in contributing. Some remarks follow.
From Leif: “He has no physical theory for this.”
That’s bull. The theory and the identities involved are encapsulated in figure 1 and 2 of http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/a-different-view-of-enso-and-systematic-climate-change/
From Leif: “no calculations of the energies involved”.
This is currently beyond the abilities of supercomputers I would think. Determining the change in radiation at any given latitude and working out how that energy is distributed into the sea would be a massive task because of seasonal effects and the changing dynamics of the climate system over time.
From Leif: “no estimates of the time constants”.
Better fill me in on what you mean by this. Sounds impressive. But if you mean lags, there is virtually none.
From Leif: “no statistical analysis of the data”.
You could boot out lots of observation on this basis because of the competing effects of the two polar vortexes that influence SST variably by latitude and time of year and also over decades. Better have a look at the document referred to above to see what I mean. The atmosphere ocean system is complex. But manifestly, as the stratosphere (and the upper troposphere down to 200hPa) warms, so does the sea and there is no time lag.
From Leif: “nothing except feeding on animosity towards IPCC.”
That is just plain surly.
From Leif: “What more can I say? I’ll challenge anybody, Erl and you for that matter, to state in a single paragraph the basic idea. You might say that that is impossible, but I have yet in my life to see a physical theory that is so complicated that the core, the essence, the crux cannot be expressed clearly and with the brevity necessary for grokking the idea [if I may use that wonderful term]. And if you cannot state clearly what the idea is, you don’t have it.”
Here is the idea: The level of irradiance at the surface (and surface temperature) depends upon the amount of energy intercepted by the atmosphere. Do you grok that?
The mechanism works like this. Cloud in the form of ice crystals is the agent of interception. The rate of interception depends upon atmospheric temperature which is very sensitive to local ozone content. (No change in UV is necessary). A change in ozone content (most energetically above the winter pole) is observably associated with change in stratospheric temperature and the alignment of SST with stratospheric temperature. The parts affected, and the degree to which they are affected is different in each hemisphere and changes over time. That relates to the competing activity of the two unequal vortexes as they determine stratospheric ozone content. Prior to 1978 the monthly temperature anomaly at 10hPa over Antarctica is centered on March. After 1978 it is centered on September causing a marked warming of the southern ocean in southern spring. That has been the source of the warming between 1978 and 2003.
From Leif: “No UV there. The UV bit comes in because he believes that the atmospheric ‘thickness’ [controlled by solar wind] or some such absorbs the UV. But, as I have said so many times, his writings are so incohenrent that it is really hard to suss what he proposes.”
Now grok this: When surface pressure falls in Antarctica, 10hpa temperature over Antarctica rises. Simultaneously, surface pressure at the equator rises with tropical sea surface temperature. And…wait for it, 10hPa temperature over the equator falls.
So, the interesting bit is the fall in 10hPa temperature over the equator as equatorial sea surface pressure rises and the sea warms. I suggest that the zone of atmospheric ionization at the equator moves outwards as the surface pressure increases at the equator and falls at the pole. So, a temperature drop occurs at the highest elevations above the equator as the amount of short wave radiation received falls away. It is simply absorbed at a higher level. How can this be? The ionized parts of the atmosphere shift so that there is more of it over the equator. Any other suggestions to explain this set of phenomena will be most welcome.
Leif, you should be aware of what happens on the dayside under the influence of geomagnetic activity. Observe the phenomena. By all means check it out for yourself. Then tell me why it happens in that way.
Not so ‘incohenrent’ after all and all the words are generally spelled correctly according to USA usage.
Leif,
I must say I am surprised at your apparent arrogance/humor? Not sure which. But I would guess that it is humor. It is as though you feel to know all… The sun can have no significant affect on our climate other than TSI…? or maybe when it finally becomes a Red Giant? Can you hold out no possibility that other factors are at play? Einstein once saide that “an idea if at first not absurd, has no chance”. There is some uncommon sense in that statement. I hope Svensmark keeps up the good work!
Len