Spot the science error

yonason (00:20:37) “Am I supposed to believe that from solar activity […] could have been predicted? […] Sorry, but I’m not buying it.”
…and I’m not selling it. Until the conditioning is worked out, only fools & gamblers are predicting. Further analysis is warranted, but the job is far from done.
—
Mike McMillan (02:03:50) “Acoustic from cosmic rays? You must mean that ping I hear when they bounce off my tinfoil hat.”
Do you really think I’m talking about sound? [ :
lol at your tinfoil ping (no sarcasm intended – rhetorical Q – thanks for the exchange of light-hearted humor)

Speaking of “Oceans [literally] of Evidence,” Tim Patterson of Carleton University in Ottowa, has a wonderful series that elucidates the 11 and 22 year cycles, and much more. Here’s the first of 3.

The rest can be found there.

…of course if the Mssissippi is one foot deep everywhere, it works out fine;-)

One more thing occurred to me about the 34-year lag hypothesis: why an (essentially) exact multiple of the solar cycle? It is being discussed as if this was perfectly natural — assuming the causal connection, plus the existence of some lag. Of course it’s not! Why not 17 years, or 3, or 28?
What mechanism can be proposed that would make the lag conform to the periodicity of the causal agent? If there is a lag, it pertains to geographical and hydrological artifacts. Am I misunderstanding the nature of the “lag”? I have assumed that the hypothesis contends that the geomagnetic flux affects precipitation or other factors IMMEDIATELY, but that the effect somehow consumes a certain fixed lag time before its fingerprint appears in the Mississippi flow.
Does the paper suggest that there is a 34-year lag between the solar cycle and any physical signal in the earth’s system, be it PDO or other cyclical phenomena? On the face of it, this is preposterous (I say this as one who tentatively accepts that there may be value in the supposition of a detectable relationship between solar flux and Mississippi flow). What could mediate such a lag, and with such a constant length and — back to the original point — why over an exact multiple of the solar cycle?

R. Craigen (13:58:25)
That’s what we would all like to know.
The approx 30 year phase change of the oceans could be 3 solar cycles long just from coincidence. The timing could be due to some other mechanism altogether.
It isn’t an exact correlation anyway. The length between oceanic phase changes varies and the length of the solar cycle varies. I don’t think anyone has yet established a direct causative link between longer or shorter solar cycles and longer or shorter oceanic cycles or vice versa.
The global water flow effects on a regional basis are well matched with oceanic changes as are air temperature changes but the link to solar variability is a problem.
From obervations we seem to have at least 3 ocean cycles impacting on global climate. The ENSO phenmenon on an interannual basis, the PDO phase shifts on a multidecadal basis and it seems another longer cycle over 1000 years which supplies the changes from Mediaeval Warm Period to Little Ice Age to Modern Maximum.
I diagnose the 1000 year cycle as also having been ocean induced because I read somewhere that during the LIA the ITCZ was on or near the equator instead of somewhat north of it as now. In my opinion latitudinal air circulation shifts are a fingerprint of oceanic forcing.
The interesting thing is that those three oceanic cycles can explain all observed climate shifts without needing much or indeed any solar forcing at all.
Now there is some historical correlation between low solar activity and colder temperatures but the correlation is not perfect because oceanic and solar effects can combine or offset one another.
It remains possible (as per Leif) that the solar influence is very tiy compared to oceanic effects and that it is merely a coincidence that for the past 2000 years or so the solar changes have been in phase with the oceanic forcings.
We need information going back more than 2000 years for both solar and oceanic cycles to see whether oceanic cycles are ever out of phase with solar variations but we just don’t have enough data on the oceans to work that one out. Even using the positions of the ITCZ and the other air circulation systems as a proxy for ocean cycles we cannot get back prior to the LIA.
I think that what we need to do is just watch what now happens under the current weak solar regime and try to disentangle any solar influence from the undoubted effects that we are already seeing from the oceanic phase change which was due around now whether or not the sun became less active at the same time.
If oceanic cycles can explain all observed climate changes going back at least 500 years then the sun becomes a minor issue and we need to consider instead whether human produced GHGs might have a cumulative long term effect on the Earth’s energy budget and equilibrium temperature.
To resolve that issue we need most to know whether the ocean skin effect is real because if those gases cannot warm the oceans then the oceans will not allow them to alter the Earth’s equilibrium temperature because the oceans control the air temperatures.
The climate system deals well enough with warmer ocean surfaces causing water vapour changes (a greenhouse gas) by altering the speed of the hydrological cycle. The same mechanism would also deal with extra energy from CO2 in the same way. Both warmer ocean surfaces and more CO2 (via more downward re-radiated infra red) cause the same system response i.e. an increased rate of evaporation so it must be the case that the same mechanism deals with both in the same way.

Re: R. Craigen (13:58:25)
The cause of the lag is simple. All one has to do is note the amount of time that passed between the ~1900 aa index low and the 30s drought.
To be clear: There are a lot of nonsensical notions about lags in WUWT discussions. People here (generally speaking) need to do some learning about what lags convey – seriously.