Guest post by David Archibald
Professor Jan-Erik Solheim of the University of Oslo recently contributed an article to the Norwegian magazine Astronomi with the title: “The Sun predicts a colder (next) decennium”. Oddbjorn Engvold, a Norwegian solar physicist, has summarised the article in English:
In the first section he refers to the earlier work by Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen who showed a connection between the length of a solar cycle and temperature in the northern hemisphere.
The next section deals with “sunspot periods and temperatures in Norway”. He selected series of temperatures for a total of 10 locations in Norway. In these series of temperature he detected no, or hardly any, correlation between length of the sunspot cycle and temperatures averaged over the cycles. On the other hand, he found a strong dependence between the length of the sunspot cycles and the mean temperatures in the following period.
The diagrams shown on the following pages should be self explaining. The ledger at the bottom of the pages containing a map of Norway and the 10 diagrams says:
The red dots shows the measured temperatures at ten place in Norway (averaged for the sunspot periods; y-axis) and the length of the preceding sunspot periods (x-axis). The dark ellipses represent the predicted mean temperatures for the coming 11 years, while the mean measured temperatures for cycle 23 (1996-2008) are indicated with the circles.
If one trusts these findings, Solheim mentions that since the period length of previous cycle (no 23) is at least 3 years longer than for cycle no 22, the temperature is expected to decrease by 0.6 – 1.8 degrees over the following 10-12 years, relative to the mean values for period no 23.
Jan-Erik Solheim asks readers of this magazine to search for long temperature series in their home places and check whether or not the published correlation can be confirmed.
The table in the lower right on third page gives the starting years and lengths of the solar cycles from no 5 to no 24.
The final subsection discusses briefly possible explanations for the puzzling correlation that he presents here. I shall rather leave it to Jan-Erik himself discuss his ideas directly with you and others once he returns from his travel around 25 July.
It is my personal view that Jan-Erik’s results are astonishing and could potentially represent a breakthrough in our understanding of the Sun’s influence on climate.
The results that Professor Solheim got for the west coast of Norway are very similar to what Butler and Johnson found for Armagh in Northern Ireland in their 1996 paper.
I derive a steeper correlation for a number of sites in the north-eastern US, such as Hanover, New Hampshire.
Of course Norway has been at the forefront of wasting money on the global warming scare. It has been storing CO2 at the Sleipner gas field off the Norwegian coast since 1996, and more recently built another facility to waste money at Mongstad in 2008. Now comes a big whacking from the Sun.
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Note: There is no English version of the article, but you can try your luck reading it here with Google Translate. Messy, but best I can do.
Also for those that wished to order Archibald’s latest book covering many of these elements, but could not, there is good news.
He now has PayPal ordering available on his website here Direct by mail/personal check orders are also accepted via this order form – Anthony
Bill H says : ‘Galactic radiation causes the form of water to change in the atmosphere which changes the globe albedo drastically from one minuet to the next. ‘
Very poetic! The music of the spheres still governs life on Earth!
[OK I know it’s a typo, but I like it anyway.]
Given that the Earth’s temperature is 300Celsius above absolute zero entirely due to the Sun and we are led to believe that the Earth’s temperature has increased by about 1Celsius over the last 100 years it would be astonishing if this could not be layed at the foot of the sun’s varying energy output.
AGW proponents would like to present the Sun as having all the observed variability of an electric fire when in reality the observations that have been made show it more closely resembles a firework.
Even Eiknes says: I’m from Norway …. He points out that correlation is not evidence of a real connection but the findings warrants more research.
A thousand thanks — I was going to add a comment that “coincidence is not the same as correlation”, but obviously it isn’t necessary.
Steinar Midtskogen says:
July 13, 2010 at 11:55 pm
This article was discussed in the Armagh discussion recently. The trouble is that the plots don’t say much more than that there was a shift in solar cycle lengths about 1/3 into the rising temperature trend. So even if there is a real correlation, it can’t be convincingly shown until we have seen the temperature follow some more cycle length shifts.
What David is showing us is a fully testable theory plus an adjustment double-check.
Simply take your climactic data for any one place, sort according to solar cycle length, and examine the result.
Does it sort according to solar cycle length, or does it not?
You have all those nice historical temp. records that Phil Jones put together, like CRU91 & 94.
Do the places that sort according to raw data fail to sort after ‘adjustment’?
This looks like another lagged correlation between sun and Earth climate. Be interesting to see if this is a global effect or if it is stronger in northern latitudes? It is interesting to see that ocean temperatures are currently dropping and should this continue it is going to have a big effect on the coming NH winter. The next few years should prove to be interesting if the quiet sun continues – let’s just hope it’s not too interesting!
I can also recommend David’s book, there are many points regarding CO2 that are hard to argue against, along with the end of the warming wave.
But most interesting for me is page 75, a paper in press illuminating the solar velocity/cycle strength link and solar phase destruction. Waiting to hear more on this.
North Atlantic temperatures are closely dependant on the Gulf Stream flow.
In the summer months when the critical Arctic ocean passages are free of ice, the CETs tend to correlate with GMF and AMO (AMO lags the GMF). In the winter months (Dec, Jan & Feb) when the surface flow in Denmark and Davis Straits is obstructed by ice, the correlation fails.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-GMF-AMO.htm
rbateman says:
July 14, 2010 at 3:26 am
Simply take your climactic data for any one place, sort according to solar cycle length, and examine the result.
Does it sort according to solar cycle length, or does it not?
Yes, if you do that for a record ca. 1850 to 2010, but so what? If it doesn’t hold for 1700-1850 (which seems to be the case, but few such records exist), then what? Since climate at several locations correlate to some degree on a decennium scale, showing that it holds for just about every location that you try, isn’t enough. If you could show that it holds not only for 15 solar cycles, but for 30, 50 or 100 cycles, then in begins to mean something.
We also have to remember that if we’re free to pick any parameters that we’d like, any record lengths, any delay, etc, sooner or later we’ll find something that correlates. Try to sort the climate data according to the average sentence length in English newspapers during the following cycle, does it sort? If not, try something else. If it does, voila.
While it seems likely that the solar activity has some impact on the climate, it’d like to see a better evidence for it or anything else having a dominant role.
Tenuc says:
July 14, 2010 at 3:27 am
This looks like another lagged correlation between sun and Earth climate. Be interesting to see if this is a global effect or if it is stronger in northern latitudes?
Take any record anywhere in the NH covering this period and you’re very likely to see the same correlation. The correlation exists for the SH as well, but is weaker.
Sure there is a correlation, but I think you all are overlooking the real causation. Its the volcanoes making the clouds that bring on the ‘rain making time’ and the cooling. There definitely is a link between solar minimums, particularly deep minimums, and volume of eruption gasses and particulate.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
1980 66 eruptions
1981 55 eruptions
1982 58 eruptions
1983 55 eruptions
1984 59 eruptions
1985 54 eruptions
1986 67 eruptions
1987 64 eruptions
1988 63 eruptions
1989 54 eruptions
1990 55 eruptions
1991 64 eruptions
1992 57 eruptions
1993 58 eruptions
1994 58 eruptions
1995 62 eruptions
1996 76 eruptions
1997 52 eruptions
1998 78 eruptions
1999 66 eruptions
2000 67 eruptions
2001 64 eruptions
2002 67 eruptions
2003 64 eruptions
2004 74 eruptions
2005 73 eruptions
2006 76 eruptions
2007 78 eruptions
2009 67 eruptions
2010 53 eruptions so far
Before 1995 we stayed in the 50-60 mostly VEI 0-2 eruptions range.
After 1995 it went in the 60-70 with many more VEI 3-4 eruptions.
As the solar cycle climbs significantly to stronger maximum and begins to ramp back down the VEI (volcano exposivity index) stays lower, mostly in the 0-2 range.
If you look closer, during the deep solar minimum years the VEI of the eruption and volume from the plumes goes up. Lots of 3-4.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002AGUFMPP61A0298A
The Role of Explosive Volcanism During the Cool Maunder Minimum
The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, named for the English meteorologist John Dalton, lasting from about 1790 to 1830.[1] Like the Maunder Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Dalton Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. The Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2.0° C decline over 20 years.[2] The Year Without a Summer, in 1816, also occurred during the Dalton Minimum. The precise cause of the lower-than-average temperatures during this period is not well understood. Recent papers have suggested that a rise in volcanism was largely responsible for the cooling trend.[3]
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6…#otherarticles
Analyzing data from our optical dust logger, we find that volcanic ash layers from the Siple Dome (Antarctica) borehole are simultaneous (with >99% rejection of the null hypothesis) with the onset of millennium-timescale cooling recorded at Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2; Greenland). These data are the best evidence yet for a causal connection between volcanism and millennial climate change and lead to possibilities of a direct causal relationship. Evidence has been accumulating for decades that volcanic eruptions can perturb climate and possibly affect it on long timescales and that volcanism may respond to climate change. If rapid climate change can induce volcanism, this result could be further evidence of a southern-lead North–South climate asynchrony.
Alternatively, a volcanic-forcing viewpoint is of particular interest because of the high correlation and relative timing of the events, and it may involve a scenario in which volcanic ash and sulfate abruptly increase the soluble iron in large surface areas of the nutrient-limited Southern Ocean, stimulate growth of phytoplankton, which enhance volcanic effects on planetary albedo and the global carbon cycle, and trigger northern millennial cooling. Large global temperature swings could be limited by feedback within the volcano–climate system.
http://www.spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ssrcresearchreport1-2010.doc
…An independent review of historical records was performed for 350 years of global volcanic activity(1650-2009) and seismic (earthquake) activity for the past 300 years (1700 to 2009) within the continental United States and then compared to the Sun’s record of sunspots as a measure of solar activity. All three data sets were examined to determine whether a relationship existed between them and if the results of such a study could be used to develop methodology for identifying future geophysical events. The preliminary results from the study have shown that there exists a strong correlation between the solar activity that causes climate changes and the Earth’s largest seismic and volcanic events. The impressive degree of correlation for global volcanic activity (>80.6%) and for the largest USA earthquakes (100% of the top 7 most powerful) vs. solar activity lows provides a basis for future estimates of the time periods and magnitudes for the largest volcanic and seismic events many decades in advance. Finally, the coincidence of the Centennial and Bi-Centennial cycles of the RC Theory showed unmistakable relationships to these largest geophysical events. The use of such a tool may provide a new and valuable method for protection of people and property located in and around high risk geologic zones. Further, a significantly increased risk is indicated during the next 20 years for volcanic and earthquake events of historic scale. Citation: Casey, John. L. (2010), Correlation of Solar Activity Minimums and Large Magnitude Geophysical Events, Research Report 1-2010 (Premiminary), March 1, 2010, Space and Science Research Center, (SSRC). 1. Introduction.[2] Previous work by Casey (2008) known as the “RC Theory,” established solar activity as a reliable model for prediction of the Earth’s climate changes. During the course of the research it was observed that there may be a positive correlation between solar activity as measured by sunspot counts over a long term base line average, and major geophysical events specifically earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. This previous research found for example, that the largest ever recorded volcanic eruption, Mt. Tambora in Indonesia (1815), as well as the largest earthquakes in the history of the United States, the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812, all occurred near the bottom of the last solar hibernation known as the Dalton Minimum (1793-1830). Given this initial relationship, a more detailed study of geophysical records was made to assess the degree of correlation if any that may exist between the Sun’s activity and such events…
****But I think this solar cycle is about to take off and kick this can a bit further down the road.****crosses fingers****
Here’s the link:
Bipolar correlation of volcanism with millennial climate change — PNAS
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6341.full
Sorry about that, I copied that and the Harvard link out of…
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php/102513-Cyclic-Archeomagnetic-Jerks-Volcanic-Eruptions-amp-Solar-Cycle?s=490a73503cd826ac4c30eabb6891eca0
Our giant heat bank the ocean is losing the heat it gained from the decades of high activity. This correlation using real science is heartening as the sun has been denied by the warmists. Warm is good and this regardless if it collapses the alarmist case is not good for mankind.
Another correlation that is worrying is the fact that our geo magnet also winds down with low solar activity. Magnetic lows correlate with increased seismic activity and a general upturn in large volcanic activity.
With the oceans already rapidly cooling, volcanic activity can give us years of no summers and crop failures, not a good outcome.
It was until recently thought prudent to store a few years supply of food by governments, you will find now most countries cannot feed themselves for six months.
Warming is good.
I wrote about the “Armagh temperature – Solar cycle length” in my blog in June 2008.
http://agbjarn.blog.is/blog/agbjarn/entry/572530/
This is more or less a copy of an article in Þjóðmál (Thjodmal, if the special letters don’t print here).
After reading Solheim’s article here on WUWT (we here in Iceland can easily read Norvegian) I blogged again about the Armagh diagram and the article in Astronomi.
See: http://agbjarn.blog.is/blog/agbjarn/entry/1076879/
The Armagh plot has been updated from the previous blog. You can enlarge it by clicking twice on it. (The text there is all in Icelandic-sorry).
Note the large ellipse: If the average temperature of the next decade will be near the bottom, the the AGW theory does not hold. If it will be near the top, then the recent temperature is probably mainly because of CO2. I guess it will be somewhere in between.
A graph like this may tell us something about the validity of the AGW theory when we look back in a decade or two.
Agust
“Try to sort the climate data according to the average sentence length in English newspapers during the following cycle, does it sort?”
Are you suggesting that sentences get longer or shorter as temperature rises? What is the proposed cause and effect?
Fact is that there is a possibility that increased solar activity causes increased temperatures. That is the theory. The graphs showing correlations provide evidence to support that theory. I don’t think anyone is seriously proposing a theory based around English sentence length, right?
I would point out that the correlation showing rising temperatures and CO2 is an easy correlation to find. Lots of things show increases over short periods of time. Cyclical correlations are much rarer.
This will be very interesting for Mr.Archibald:
Solar Forcing of the Stream Flow of a Continental Scale South American River
http://www.iafe.uba.ar/httpdocs/reprint_parana.pdf
Warren says:
July 13, 2010 at 6:43 pm
but but but Nasa have it different…
Want to see JH Trains et al. wearing the Burka.LOL ☺
I wonder if David Archibald and Professor Jan-Erik Solheim would appreciate a month by month forecast for temperature deviations from normals for the next 10 to 12 years? based on what is doing it. And then experience the all important short term changes in the solar signal and how they play out in each hemisphere relative to the seasons. And then with an understanding of temperature/precipitation relationships, map out flood/drought months/years for somewhere like Australia, at ease.
Ulric Lyons says:
July 14, 2010 at 7:22 am
I wonder if David Archibald and Professor Jan-Erik Solheim would appreciate a month by month forecast for temperature deviations from normals for the next 10 to 12 years? based on what is doing it. And then experience the all important short term changes in the solar signal and how they play out in each hemisphere relative to the seasons. And then with an understanding of temperature/precipitation relationships, map out flood/drought months/years for somewhere like Australia, at ease.
Once again grand statements without substance. Can I suggest you start your own blog or even publish a paper (its not hard) that establishes your credentials that can be evaluated. If not your snake oil comments will not be taken seriously.
wayne Job says:
July 14, 2010 at 4:48 am
Another correlation that is worrying is the fact that our geo magnet also winds down with low solar activity. Magnetic lows correlate with increased seismic activity and a general upturn in large volcanic activity
Common sense would say: It is like that magnetic field being as an “embrace”holding the earth so tight as to don’t let it move. When it looses its strength then the earth can move more freely.☺
BTW, the paper I cited before shows the correlation between aa index and climate.
http://www.iafe.uba.ar/httpdocs/reprint_parana.pdf
Something valuable to quote from the Mauas’ paper is the following:
The other index we used was the aa index, which is a measure of the disturbance level of the Earth’s magnetic field based on magnetometer observations of two, nearly
antipodal, stations in Australia and England [25], and it is available since 1868 [26]. It is worth pointing out that the aa index follows the envelope of solar activity, and while SN returns to zero at each solar minimum, aa minima reflect the long-term level of solar activity seen in Fig. 1(b). Since the Earth’s magnetic field, which is affected by the solar wind, determines how much of the GCR flux ultimately
reaches the Earth, aa can also be used to test the GCR-climate hypothesis.
rbateman says:
July 13, 2010 at 9:02 pm
….Smart folks would use that C02 in a closed environment, like greenhouses, to grow precious food.
Don’t waste that precious plant fuel.
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You have it in one. Experiments are now being run to see if CO2 can be used to “fertilize” open fields. Since CO2 fertilized plants use less water as well as grow faster this could be very important if the temperature drops and resulting loss of upper latitude grain crops happen as predicted by David A.
In the future, Russia, China and Canada may be buying the CO2 from the rest of the world so they can continue to grow grain and other crops.
I don’t think I’d call this a breakthrough in understanding the influence of solar cycles on climate. It’s more like recognition of an influence. Understanding comes when someone can explain why the climate is effected in the following cycle. The hypothetical increased stratospheric clouds caused by weakened solar magnetic field doesn’t seem like it would have that much lag time.
“Of course Norway has been at the forefront of wasting money on the global warming scare. It has been storing CO2 at the Sleipner gas field off the Norwegian coast since 1996, and more recently built another facility to waste money at Mongstad in 2008. Now comes a big whacking from the Sun.”
While I do agree that Norway is at the forefront of wasting money on the global warming scare, this was only indirectly the reasoning behind storing the CO2 in the Utsira formation. The gas from the Sleipner field contained around 9% CO2 – above the customer technical requirements, and because of this there was a need to reduce the CO2 content. An offshore CO2 tax introduced in 1991 made offshore separation of CO2 from the wellstream the viable option.
The oceans as a whole don’t appear to be cooling. Sea level is still rising every year which means either increased inflow of fresh water or higher temperature or some combination of both. It appears true to say that the rate of warming was markedly diminished averaged over the past 8 years but sea level is still higher now than then.
That doesn’t mean the surface of the ocean isn’t cooling though. 90% of the world ocean is at a more or less constant temperature of 3 degrees C. The topmost 10% is the only portion that gets warm enough for brass monkeys. Depending on how much mixing happens between the warm surface and frigid depths there is the potential for some rather pronounced surface cooling events. Cyclical things with periods of months to tens of thousands of years cause climate change so at this point there’s no reason to be surprised if there are very long cyclical changes in surface and deep water mixing. We’ve identified some that have cycle times of decades. There are probably both lower and higher order harmonics of those.
, volcanic activity can give us years of no summers and crop failures, not a good outcome.
It was until recently thought prudent to store a few years supply of food by governments, you will find now most countries cannot feed themselves for six months.
Warming is good.
Steinar Midtskogen says:
July 13, 2010 at 11:55 pm
“….David, the big mistake made by those who predict steadily rising temperatures for the next century is to assume that the just one of the many variables governing the climate can be more important than the rest combined…..”
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No truer words were ever spoken.
I just wish we could get the politicians to hear them. Hopefully Mother Nature has a big surprise in store for us in the next few years that will wake up the semi-comatose masses and get them to pressure the politicians in to dealing with reality before we damage our civilization too badly.
The ocean oscillations – temp connection is already well known, as is the temporary effects of volcanic eruptions. Now we are finally seeing some acknowledgment of the solar – temp connection:
NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1319
However the href=”http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/studentresearch/climate_projects_04/glacial_cycles/web/index.html”>The Milankovitch Cycles coupled with the rest is what really worries me. A quiet sun, cooler oceans – all we need is major volcanic activity.
“… Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started.”
Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
wayne Job says:
July 14, 2010 at 4:48 am
“….It was until recently thought prudent to store a few years supply of food by governments, you will find now most countries cannot feed themselves for six months.”
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You can thank Dan Amstutz, and the grain traders for that piece of idiocy. They have convinced governments it interferes with “free markets” and their profits. While poor people were rioting in several countries over food price hikes in 2008, Cargill and Monsanto posted record high profits… and children died.
Now the transnational Ag corporations are trying to wipe out independent farmers and in some cases even make home gardens illegal. The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture written by Dan Amstutz, VP of Cargill is now used by individual governments as an excuse to impose “harmonized laws” throughout the world. The laws are written by the UN/WTO working groups and then dumped on the rest of us.
The FDA on Harmonization http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/int-laws.html
“The harmonization of laws, regulations and standards between and among trading partners requires intense, complex, time-consuming negotiations by CFSAN officials… Failure to reach a consistent, harmonized set of laws, regulations and standards within the freetrade agreements and the World Trade Organization Agreements can result in considerable economic repercussions.“
History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job: http://farmwars.info/?p=1565
Bill HR 875: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=12671
The scandal of EU’s deliberate policy to get rid of family farms: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/savePolishCountryside.php
WUWT recent article “Stinky environmental politics” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/08/stinky-environmental-politics/