Habibullo Abdussamatov, Dr. Sc. – Head of Space research laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory, Head of the Russian/Ukrainian joint project Astrometria – has a few things to say about solar activity and climate. Thanks to Russ Steele of NCWatch
Key Excerpts:
Observations of the Sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is “not guilty” and as for what lies ahead in the upcoming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged, temperature drop.
[…] Over the past decade, global temperature on the Earth has not increased; global warming has ceased, and already there are signs of the future deep temperature drop.
[…] It follows that warming had a natural origin, the contribution of CO2 to it was insignificant, anthropogenic increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide does not serve as an explanation for it, and in the foreseeable future CO2 will not be able to cause catastrophic warming. The so-called greenhouse effect will not avert the onset of the next deep temperature drop, the 19th in the last 7500 years, which without fail follows after natural warming.
[…] We should fear a deep temperature drop — not catastrophic global warming. Humanity must survive the serious economic, social, demographic and political consequences of a global temperature drop, which will directly affect the national interests of almost all countries and more than 80% of the population of the Earth. A deep temperature drop is a considerably greater threat to humanity than warming. However, a reliable forecast of the time of the onset and of the depth of the global temperature drop will make it possible to adjust in advance the economic activity of humanity, to considerably weaken the crisis.
Full Study is here. (PDF patience, takes a bit to load)
Leif Svalgaard
Interesting – if cosmic ray and/or solar periodicities come and go as non-stationary waves – does this not suggest interference and harmonic / resonant effects? Looks like we need a sound engineer to help us with this.
Is it so unreasonable to suggest that a small solar cycle could have amplified effect if it harmonised with another oscillation such as an intrinsic one like the oceanic decadal oscillations? We all know that small forcings have greatest effect when they are in phase with natural frequencies of systems – just try walking with a glass of water in your hand to observe this effect.
Phlogiston (17:29:46) :
anna v, Leif Svalgaard
What about resonance and harmonics?
Resonances and harmonics have a role in a deterministic system, i.e. where we can put in parameters and boundary conditions and come out with a solution. Not in deterministic chaos. They may look like resonances but the causative link is involved and non linear.
Deterministic chaos is where there are many deterministic equations entering the system and the system cannot have a predictable output as a solution. The theory of chaos and complexity is a total new “mathematical” field that covers disciplines from biology to physics.
Climate is a classical case of deterministic chaos ( famous butterfly).
Since you ask, in my personal view the climate should be modeled on the lines of the Tsonis et al paper ( was discussed here a while ago), where they developed a chaotic model with inputs PDO ENSO and the rest of the acronyms and did have as an output the stasis/cooling of the present days. I would add the small TSI changes, the tides (i.e. the moon/sun gravitational effect on the oceans and maybe the Coriolis ), the changes of albedo due to cosmic rays, the UV reaching the ocean, the UV on the ozone, etc, all the speculative tantalizing “causes” none of which is strong enough be a “cause”, and let the program develop to its attractor stages.
Leif Svalgaard (14:39:23) :
Even more dubious is the Piers Corbyn-type of pseudo-science [that he even failed to elucidate], where you use a combination of the 22-year cycle and the moon to forecast the weather next week. But, hey, if he can make a quid on it, there are worse scams out there.
I have been trying to find an explanation of his method unsuccessfully.
Nevertheless, I would not discount the moon. I live in Greece, which is a peninsula in the middle of the Mediterranean and so the observations apply here: Folk wisdom has it that the weather changes with the quarter of the moon. If the weather does not break within a day at the change( from rain to dry, from north winds to south,etc), it will continue another quarter. I have not been keeping statistics, but the truth is, from rain to dry, which interests me for the walks I take, it seems true that the change comes with the quarter of the moon.
Leif Svalgaard (14:39:23) :
Even more dubious is the Piers Corbyn-type of pseudo-science [that he even failed to elucidate], where you use a combination of the 22-year cycle and the moon to forecast the weather next week. But, hey, if he can make a quid on it, there are worse scams out there.
I have been trying to find an explanation of his method unsuccessfully.
Nevertheless, I would not discount the moon. I live in Greece, which is a peninsula in the middle of the Mediterranean and so the observations apply here: Folk wisdom has it that the weather changes with the quarter of the moon. If the weather does not break within a day at the change( from rain to dry, from north winds to south,etc), it will continue another quarter. I have not been keeping statistics, but the truth is, from rain to dry, which interests me for the walks I take, it seems true that the change comes with the quarter of the moon.
example: we are expecting a drastic change from tomorrow, after a week of average October weather the day temperature drops 9C. And the moon will be full.
anna v (02:12:32) :
anna v (02:12:32)
‘Phlogiston (17:29:46) :
anna v, Leif Svalgaard
What about resonance and harmonics?’
“Resonances and harmonics have a role in a deterministic system, i.e. where we can put in parameters and boundary conditions and come out with a solution. Not in deterministic chaos. They may look like resonances but the causative link is involved and non linear…”
Science is still bad at understanding dynamic chaotic systems like our climate and often prefers to use linear trend lines which mean nothing and can be ‘cherry-picked’ to your hearts content.
Some climate processes also have a fractal nature and this is has been know for some time as this abstract from a 1994 paper illustrates:-
“Fractal analysis of climatic data: Mean annual temperature records in Hungary – L Bodri
Rescaled range analysis of the annual mean surface air temperatures at 7 meteorological stations in Hungary for the period of 1901–1991 indicates that the considered temperatures are fractals with a mean fractal dimension of 1.23 ± 0.01. This value compares favourably with the fractal dimensions of other climatic records, both on small time scale of 10–100 years and for time spans 10^3–10^6 years. Possibly such fractal dimensions are characteristic of climate change over the whole spectral range of 10 to 10^6 years. If this assumption becomes confirmed through analysis of a wider set of climatic records, long-range climatic prediction (in statistical sense) on different time scales will appear feasible.”
As you say, it could by that there is no single simple cause relating to solar cycles, rather a mass of small – possibly connected – events which push our climate into a lower energy state.
Living in England, I know the influence of something as simple as the movement and strength of the jet stream can have a large effect on weather and I’m sure systems like this and the strength of the Arctic polar vortex, for example, can have big impacts over the longer term.
anna v (03:30:06) :
we are expecting a drastic change from tomorrow, after a week of average October weather the day temperature drops 9C. And the moon will be full.
A full moon on Halloween is bound to have some effect :-))
Gene Nemetz (23:22:07) :
>i>Leif doesn’t like the work of Henrik Svensmark. Is Svensmark’s work a waste of time?
Of course not. And it is not about “doesn’t like”. These are words that do not belong in scientific debate. Svensmark’s work is good science. I happen to have reasons to believe that his conclusion will not stand the test of time. Such disagreements are good and healthy. This is how progress is made.
What was wrong with the Russian paper, was using obsolete data, dishonestly claiming it was newer data. That paper was not science, but propaganda. And as such it was lapped up by AGW skeptics because it supported their own bias. Some of their comments on this thread:
“I’m loving it.”
“At long last, there’s something for a Russian to be proud of…”
“a well written, thoughtful and compelling essay.”
“He’s not on a soap box on the street, or teaching in an obscure community college. I think you’d love that too.”
“Now they’re beating the USA in study of the sun.”
“Its surprising the quality of work Russian scientists can still produce”
etc
anna v, Tenuc
I agree entirely that climate, atmospheres and ocean need to be studied with the expectation that they show dynamic chaos and non-linear / non equilibrium pattern, with attractors etc. I wasn’t aware that this rules out harmonics but if so, so be it. Maybe some aspects or the system are linear, some not.
Climate, atmospheres and ocean are a dynamic system bound to be chaotic / nonlinear. This does indeed need to be taken seriously, it implies a large part of all theory and discussions on the subject to date may be irrelevant. Like astronomers pre Galileo and Copernicus discussing epicycles and other attempts to make the observed facts fit the model of all celestial objects orbiting the earth. No doubt some very intelligent people argued for epicycles. But their basic assumptions and model (sun orbits the earth etc) were so flawed that it was impossible for their work to be in connection with reality.
Tenuc is right that fractal character should be expected in such a non-equilibrium non-linear system. I’ll repeat part of a posting that I put up here under the recent Richard Lindzen thread:
“For example, take the Petit 1999 deuterium temperature reconstruction from the Vostok core going back 420,000 years. You can look at the difference (change) measured between neighboring core data points going back (or forward) in time. Then plot the nat log of point to point deg C change with nat log of frequency. What you get is:
y = -2.1052x + 3.0077
R2 = 0.9305
x: nat log of change
y: nat log of frequency
So with an R2 of 0.93 we have what is effectively the fractal dimension of Vostok temperature change of 2.105.”
A bit higher than your value from Hungary but probably our methods were different. (Perhaps you can point out an error in my method.)
Before Gore, Kneel (19:17:27) :
Huh! So NASA uses the same chart on the 27th of October. Wonder why:?
Because they are using the wrongly calibrated PMOD TSI from Froehlich as we have discussed already. A more graphical account of the problem is here: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20Difference%20PMOD-SORCE.pdf
“It is quite probable that many mechanisms in conjunction with the chaotic behavior of the ocean and atmosphere currents will be finally involved to solve the jig saw puzzle that is climate.”
And with respect to the source of energy, the ocean and atmosphere are passive components.
gary gulrud (08:58:37) :
And with respect to the source of energy, the ocean and atmosphere are passive components.
The food I eat and the oxygen I breathe are the sources of my energy, I’m just a passive component [by your logic] in the system that is ‘me’.
”Congratulations to Piers Corbyn and everyone at WeatherAction on the latest advances in their solar forecasting technique. Who needs a Met Office supercomputer with the carbon footprint of a small town when the behavior of the Sun provides a more efficient and environmentally-acceptable forecasting solution? Now that measurement has definitively established anthropogenic “global warming” to be bunk, the British taxpayer could save a fortune by abolishing the Met Office and all other government departments that credulously believed in the alarmist nonsense peddled by the self-serving IPCC, and switching to WeatherAction instead. Three cheers for private enterprise, and for WeatherAction!”
– Monckton of Brenchley
Hard to have the label of ‘charlatan’ hold for Pirs Corbyn since he is right most of the time.
There must be a secondary definition that a few use. 😉
Gene Nemetz (10:44:21) “[…] the British taxpayer could save a fortune by abolishing the Met Office […]”
Obstructing climate research is not the answer, but restructuring appears clearly warranted.
The mistakes left-wing organizations are making on the climate “issue” are so obvious that no comment is needed, but I think we all need to pause to realize why their nonsense has gone so far: The right-wing believes climate research has no value for society and therefore should not be funded at all; this “logic” is as fundamentally flawed as the alarmist “logic”.
Gene Nemetz (10:44:21) :
”Congratulations to Piers Corbyn and everyone at WeatherAction on the latest advances in their solar forecasting technique…
Well, Corbyn did not deliver anything, and is just being used by Monckton in his own agenda.
I had predicted very dry weather in California where I live, and since May it has only rained twice. Corbyn still ranks as a successful charlatan in my book.
Leif Svalgaard (06:17:42)
3) the desire of finding SOME variation ::
Which is a legitimate and natural line of inquiry.The converse argument that the sun is a perfectly governed heat engine, responding to changes in its radius and conversion of potential energy to mostly irriadiance seems um unnatural.
Leif Svalgaard (11:17:05) :
Corbyn still ranks as a successful charlatan in my book.
It’s something to do with quantum mechanics and the moon. Has anyone got a Total Lunar Irradiance graph? 🙂
It’s a cliche, but the wish is the father to the thought with most of the comments here. You’d have thought that it would be more interesting to people that even in the face of a virtually unchanging solar input we’ve still had very large shifts in climate up and down over the past millennia. As far as I can tell the most prominent AGW proponents ascribe this to the, er, Sun.
Here is a report of Corbyn’s method from an attendant of the “climate fools conference”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/
there are some plots at the botom.
And here is a ppt presentation deciphered from the above link ( it gave an erroneous header to it). http:// http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/data/WAclimatechange.ppt
anna v (13:50:33) “[…] Corbyn’s method […] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/ “
So, in a nutshell:
11*9.3 / (11 – 9.3) ~= 60 years
Truly mind-blowing.
Note to non-alarmists:
I think we need to seriously consider that Corbyn is an agent of the alarmists (on a puppet’s mission to undermine the credibility of non-alarmists). [no sarcasm intended]
Mr. Corbyn: I invite you to prove me wrong.
maksimovich (12:21:35) :
3)”the desire of finding SOME variation”
Which is a legitimate and natural line of inquiry.
But for the wrong reason: as an argument against AGW.
I have a desire to find variation too, but not for that reason. Should there be any, so more the better,
Here’s a link to the .ppt used in the presentation.
http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/data/WAclimatechange.ppt
anna v (14:14:22) :
Here is a report of Corbyn’s method from an attendant of the “climate fools conference”
some comments on individual slides:
10: stop conveniently in mid 2008, before the increases in 2009
12: from the desrciption it looks like the obsolete Hout&Schatten TSI was used. Or an early Lean.
28: stops conveniently in 1989, just before the correlation breaks down.
29: same problem. If averaged over the 60-yr SLAM [see slide 37] cycle, there are two data points with perfecr correlation
31: geomagnetic activity should show a clear 22-yr cycle too [and there is actually one; not on his plot]
32: would seem that one has to predict solar activity first one year ahead
36: the ultimate cyclomania
the rest: not weve wrong.
I say ‘snake oil’.
REPLY: Maybe not snake oil, but some variant. Perhaps “reptile balm”. I get these forecasts from him regularly, and they are so full of self promotion I can hardly stand to read them. Mostly I just press delete rather than try to wade through it. Too much noise. – Anthony
Paul Vaughan (15:19:44) :
So, in a nutshell:
11*9.3 / (11 – 9.3) ~= 60 years
Truly mind-blowing.
For once, I’ll have to agree with Paul.