by Verity Jones and Tony Brown (Tonyb)
Back in October Tony asked me to help with a big idea. Searching Norwegian climate site Rimfrost (www.rimfrost.no) Tony had found many climate stations all over the world with a cooling trend in temperatures over at least the last thirty years – which is significant in climate terms. You see Tony had a grand vision of a website with blue dots on a map representing these “cooling stations”, where clicking on the dots brought up a graph of the data and the wonderful cooling trend. Would this not persuade people to look again at the notion of worldwide global warming?
I asked Tony how many stations he had in mind. “Oh two hundred or so…” He suggested breaking it down into bite-sized chunks and sending me sets of ten at a time. I was to compare the data with that on the GISS site and/or those of national met agencies where available to verify the source, and produce graphs to a standard template.
We were concerned that this could be seen as ‘cherrypicking’ nonetheless it was an attractive idea. In many cases it was not just cherrypicking the stations, but also the start dates of each cooling trend. Despite these reservations we decided to go ahead, although ultimately we have not completed the project, partly for these reasons, but also because it is a case where the journey became more important than the destination and it is worth sharing.
The first 10 (Set 1) of Tony’s target stations, which at this point I should say seemed to be a randomly chosen set, were:
- Brazil – Curitiba (1885 to 2009) Cooling 1955 to 2009
- Canada – Edmonton (1881-2009) Cooling from 1886 to 2009
- Chile – Puerto Montt (1951-2009) Cooling from 1955
- China – Jiuquan (1934-2009) Cooling all years
- Russia – Kandalaska (1913-2009) Cooling 1933-2009
- Iceland – Haell (1931-2009) Cooling all years
- India – Amritsar (1948-2009) Cooling all years
- Morocco – Casablanca (1925-2009) Cooling all years
- Adelaide – Australia (1881-2008) Cooling all years
- Abilene, Texas – USA (1886-2009) Cooling 1933-2009
The comparisons in many cases were not straightforward. While many matched GISS data, some of the graphs in Rimfrost used unadjusted data, others homogenised data. For some such as Kandalaska, there was a close but not exact match to either GISS data set. The data for Haell was clearly from the Icelandic Met Office, but I could find no match for Edmonton to any GISS series or data from Environment Canada (although having looked at Canadian data further since I am not entirely surprised). The first set took much longer than we had anticipated; however, I drew the graphs to a template and prepared to start on Set 2.
Tony also wanted a ‘spaghetti’ graph for the anomaly data of the first set, and this is where it got most interesting. In fact we were blown away by what the graph looked like. Taking these ten locations from across the globe and superimposing the anomaly data produced a sine wave-like pattern (Figure 2) with distinct cooling from the early 1940s to mid-1970s followed by warming to present; for many of the locations the older data was warmer, or at least as warm as present. Now I had seen this before with many individual stations, but it really impressed me to see the pattern matching from such far-flung locations.
But in the meantime there were other developments. Tony knew I was interested in putting the GHCN v2.mean temperature data from stations all over the world into a database. As usual, this exceeded my own knowledge and capabilities, but I had made a start and was learning as I went along. Tony, whose contacts and connections never cease to amaze me, put me in touch with a computer professional, database, web and mapping expert who was well known to commenters on The Air Vent, Climate Audit and WUWT as “KevinUK”. Kevin was also keen to put climate data into a database.
By now this was the end of November. Kevin and I rapidly established a good rapport by email and voip and, with really only a few pointers to GHCN and GISS datafiles from me (and probably lots of hindrance), he rapidly built a fully functional database. Not only that but he set about writing software to plot graphs and calculate trends from the data and put the whole lot on an interactive map – and all this in a period of about 6 weeks. It is still a work in progress, fixing glitches and preparing Version 2.0; for more information see blog post Mapping Global Warming and the website itself: www.climateapplications.com.
I did deliver 40 graphs for Tony in the end, but I was quite slow about it (and that “sine wave” pattern kept showing up again and again and stuck in my mind). Tony had moved on to researching other climate projects and Kevin’s maps meanwhile showed so much more than we ever could. With the “sine wave” climatic pattern in mind, the following maps (focussing on North America and Europe) show how climate has cooled, warmed, cooled and warmed again since 1880.
So is this “sine wave” the true climate signal? It would seem so, although we can’t expect it always to be so regular. Choosing stations that are more closely geographically located does give a more homogeneous shape to the wave.
It is most extreme in the high Arctic – Figure 4a shows the graph for six stations above 64N where the magnitude of change is +/- several degrees Celsius. Further south (e.g. Figure 4b – four stations in the US) the magnitude is smaller, and close to the equator (Figure 5, Madagascar) the magnitude is less still.
A final point – with the exception of the Madagascar graph, which was prepared for a blog post (link), all these graphs were part of different sets (the first 40 stations for which data was examined). Although the original data was chosen for its cooling trend this, in many cases, results from warmer temperatures in the period 1930-1940 than present.
The wave pattern is still present in many data sets worldwide, no matter what the overall trend. In some the date of the onset of warming or cooling is later or earlier, depending on location – as would be expected with the oceans moving warmth around the globe. In others however the wave pattern is not present or is obliterated by something – in these sets should it be present or not? Is it wiped out by anthropogenic effects on the temperature record such as growth of cities and even small rural communities though the otherwise cooling 40s, 50s and 60s?
For us the take-home message of this study was simply how widespread and consistent the wave pattern is, and this, ultimately is very convincing of the veracity of the arguments against CO2 as a primary cause of current warming. From the physics I don’t doubt it has a role in warming, but its role needs to be disentangled from the large magnitude natural climate swings that are clearly present all over the world – a pattern that is not widely disseminated.
Wow. Well Done to all of you involved in the project!
What an eye-opener to see how the unadjusted temperatures play out…
Isn’t this well-known? The standard explanation for this is of a long-term CO2-driven warming trend which was temporarily opposed by sulphate-driven cooling. Both mechanisms are solidly grounded in experimental observation and in theory. If you want to chuck that out of the window, you have to:
1) Explain why CO2 doesn’t produce warming, given its known radiative characteristics
2) Explain why sulplates don’t produce cooling, given their known reflective characteristics
3) Suggest a convincing physical process generating a sinusoidal change in surface temperature
4) Explain why the same sinusoidal trend is *not* observed in longer-term data series such as ice core data, tree ring series, etc.
It is intriguing to see how many attempts there are to describe temperature history in terms of a single `one size fits all` cycle.
You can tell rather little about the cause of warming from the temperature records alone. You have to consider the forcing histories, both natural (solar, volcanic, etc.) and anthropogenic (greenhouse gases, aerosols etc.).
The sine wave is pretty simple really, it follows the PDO trend and as Scaffetta and others have noticed it also follows the solar velocity power waves. A similar solar modulation pattern is also a close fit.
A truly beautiful expose. So much for Government Science.
The nit-picking (and worse) will likely be fierce, but please don’t let it dissuade you from continuing with this work. Much more may come of it than is already apparent. All three of you have my admiration for the effort you have put into this.
/dr.bill
Thanks Verity and Tony for this illuminating work!
I have wanted to do something similar for some time – but not having the skills. I found the same pattern (which I called a ‘double hump or camel, rather than a hockey stick) in the Arctic in research during 2006 for my book (Chill, 2009), where I examined 32 coastal or near coastal stations from the GISS network – not by anomaly but by actual average annual temperature. My criteria were stations with an uninterupted record from about 1900 to present – thus showing the previous Arctic warm period. By 2004, only one station in Greenland showed higher temperatures in recent times than in the 1930-40 period. The sine wave was apparent in nearly all stations with slight differences in timing – from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Spitsbergen and Russia.
Repeating the same exercise this year, with records to 2009/2010, out of the same 32 stations, 23 had higher temperatures in the previous warm period; seven were close in each period or slightly above in the later period; and two were significantly higher in the later period.
And this in the climate zone that has apparently recorded a 3-4 degrees Celsius anomaly and which leads the global warming trend!
A lot depends upon how an anomaly is calculated with reference to a base period – Hadley, for example, use 1961-1990, which includes a large portion of the ‘trough’ between the two humps and thus will make modern temperatures look anomalously high.
I don’t doubt the current accelerated ice-loss on the ice-cap in Greenland or the ‘record’ low of sea-ice, but have yet to see adequate comparisons with what was happening in 1930-1940 when instrumentation was more limited. Nor do i discount the possibility that Greenland is strongly affected by the build-up of warmth in the North Atlantic – but the latter is also a cyclic phenomenon, and the Atlantic is now losing heat rapidly as the cycle turns.
Thanks again for the clarity of your work and the huge effort entailed.
richard telford says:
“You can tell rather little about the cause of warming from the temperature records alone.”
Maybe not. But it’s a damn good place to start.
This is excellent work, Tony and Verity. Now, if I may go off topic somewhat, Tony posted about visiting a school recently, talking about CO2. I’d love to hear more about this – how do I contact you? Or, if you ask them , would the moderators please give you my email address? Many thanks, Dave.
Peter Ellis refers to the sulphate cooling phenomenon – a factor in all the climate models to 2007, when the IPCC admitted, but did not publicise, could not have caused the cooling from 1945-1975 – which was a global pattern even in areas free from pollution. There are three key papers in the 2005 issue of Science – Pinker, Wielicki and Wild, all of which show the true nature of ‘global dimming’.
When I asked the team at NCAR in February of this year, why they still held to the old story in their models, he simply was unaware of those papers and the IPCC retraction! The next IPCC report will make interesting reading – this is a little-known problem that the standard modellers seem anxious not to have aired!
Peter EllisIf you want to chuck that out of the window, you have to:
1,2,3,4, etc
JK: Or you have to compare that sine curve to the solar cycle data and see how good the match is.
Thanks
JK
Lovely work, Verity and Tony.
I’ve long felt the need to go back to individual station records whose metadata we know well enough, or whose locations haven’t changed, and have stayed truly rural. And only then to start carefully adding stations with UHI issues where the UHI can be assessed from guides like McKitrick or John Daly or this amateur survey or this Russian survey.
Here we see the 30-year cycle that is solar-related and that Akasofu extends even further back (IIRC). It can no longer be deemed “not related to the Sun” because of UHI contamination of the correlation.
I’m not a “lukewarmer” insofar as I believe (on the wide-ranging and commonsense evidence I’ve studied) that our contribution via CO2 is too small to measure. This is based on the evidence of the vastness and thermal inertia of the oceans, Henry’s Law, and the solar correlation that reappears when UHI etc are properly accounted-for. And though the lukewarmers are certainly helping get the science back on the rails, by challenging the alarmism, IMO the science needs to go further than what lukewarmers need, in order for its integrity to be regained.
Every call for looking afresh at the data does help.
Peter Ellis:
1) Explain why CO2 doesn’t produce warming, given its known radiative characteristics
Suppose Spencer’s feedback estimate is right, and CO2 doubling only amounts to about 0.6 degrees of warming. Then current CO2-induced warming is only ~0.2 degrees, i.e. hardly detectable.
2) Explain why sulplates don’t produce cooling, given their known reflective characteristics
There are two problems here: First, sulphate emissions and soot emissions are correlated, and the latter produces warming. Second, it’s not clear that sulphate emissions really have dropped (they have increased sharply in India and China from about the same time they dropped in the U.S. and Europe).
3) Suggest a convincing physical process generating a sinusoidal change in surface temperature
4) Explain why the same sinusoidal trend is *not* observed in longer-term data series such as ice core data, tree ring series, etc.
I think climate is far too complex to show anything resembling a sinus graph over longer periods.
Isn’t this well-known? The standard explanation for this is of a long-term [thank you, Peter Ellis] recovery from the Little Ice Age coupled with a multi-decadal cyclic signal similar to the PDO (see Akasofu’s http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/20/dr-syun-akasofu-on-ipccs-forecast-accuracy/ ).
Geoff Sharpe: The sine wave is pretty simple really, it follows the PDO trend……
I believe Roy Spencer also has something to say about cloud cover tracking PDO and temperature.
riskaverse says:
September 4, 2010 at 5:22 am
Geoff Sharpe: The sine wave is pretty simple really, it follows the PDO trend……
I believe Roy Spencer also has something to say about cloud cover tracking PDO and temperature.
What does he say?
Is cloud cover a driver or consequence?
I started looking at New Mexico temperature data several years ago to see whether we had joined the global warming trend. During the last 30 years NM had been warming but I found the same oscillation in the temperature data in this region. It seems to be about a 60 year cycle and I agree with Geoff Sharp that it is a multi-decadal PDO trend that is tied to solar modulation noted by Scaffetta. Girma Orssengo in his WUWT post in April of this year showed this same cycle using IPCC global temperature data supplied by the CRU of the Hadley Center. Using that projected trend, he predicted that from 1900 to 2100 that we will see a total global temperature increase of 1.2 deg C. El Paso, TX shows a 60 year cycle from 1949 to 2009 even though the cycle has a several degree upward trend in average temp due probably to UHI effects. I live in Las Cruces, NM (just north of EP) and our temps here tend to be 5 to 10 degrees less than EP. There are not too many sites in NM that have more than 60 years of good data (with no missing months or years) but Cimarron NM has over 100 years of data and is a rural site that shows this cycle and has no warming trend. Of the 60 NM sites that I looked at (all raw data obtained off the web from the Western Climate Center) there were many with a flat trend and a few with cooling trends. Many had the 60 year cycle in them. Rather than the warming that we have seen for the past 30 years, I predict that the next 20 or 30 years here in the northern hemisphere (probably even globally) will cool. My NM data already shows a flat trend so the next 10 years will tell the tale.
Bernie McCune
It looks to me like the data for Abilene may be off. The summer of 1980 was incredibly hot everywhere in Texas, but that isn’t reflected in the graph. I know it’s an annualized number, but still it looks fishy to me.
There also seems to be a 60 year cycle in Klotzbach and Gray’s Hindcast versus Observed Net Tropical Cyclone chart (1950 to 2007) published in their 2 June 2010 report. If so there should be a dropping trend in NTC during the next 30 years. The next 10 years will tell the tale. Observed NTC in 1950 was 250 dropping to below 50 in the mid 1970s and 80s and recently (2005) peaking at 275. 2006 was slightly below 50 and 2007 was 50.
Don’t want to get too crazy about all this cyclical stuff but does seem to jump out at you without looking too hard.
Bernie McCune
Great data–it shows what geologists have been saying all along. Your curves almost exactly match the glacial and PDO records over the same period, i.e., cooling from 1880 to about 1910, warming from 1910 to about 1945, cooling from about 1945 to 1977, warming from 1977 to 1999, slight cooling since 1999. Glaciers advanced during the cool periods and retreated during the warm periods. One of the nice things about the glacial record is that it goes back thousands of years, well before CO2 could have possibly been a factor, and is verified by the isotope record from the well-dated Greenland ice core. Yes, there is indeed a sine curve fluctuation of climate change, not only from your data, but also over the past 500 years in the ice core data. I’ve plotted the Greenland isotope data and it shows a regular oscillation of warm and cool periods for the past 500 years, with a 27 year average period that matches the PDO and glacier fluctuations (you can see this on my website).
Your data is extremely interesting because it quantifies what the glacial and isotope records tell us about climate fluctuations and, in the process, tells us that climate changes are independent of CO2 (i.e., natural variations).
I’ll add one more item to refute Peter Ellis’ item 1). Ferenc Miskolczi and his theory of a constant GHG effect.
http://www.suite101.com/content/no-greenhouse-effect-in-semi-transparent-atmospheres-a243477
Via my website (click on my name) I collect historic temperature records. There are far more records not listed than are listed for a variety of reasons, but the upshot is that viewing the old records show distinct climate cycles with a climatic shift out of the Little ice age in 1698 and a generally warming trend since then. However this did not appear to be universal throughout the record, and I suggested to Verity that it would be interesting to find if there were any areas that bucked the warming trend- other than those cited by the IPCC-if so, where they were located.
She was able to take a mass of data that I researched and turn it into a comprehensible visual picture and add her excellent comment .
This is the IPCC view on any cooling;
“However, the updated data shows only very limited areas of year-round cooling in the north-west North Atlantic and mid-latitude North Pacific. Over 1901 to 2000 as a whole, noting the strong consistency across the land-ocean boundary, most warming is observed over mid- and high latitude Asia and parts of western Canada. The only large areas of observed cooling are just south and east of Greenland and in a few scattered continental regions in the tropics and sub-tropics.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports//tar/wg1/057.htm WG1″ (Please read full section for context) Previously the IPCC had confirmed the only signs of cooling were in South Greenland and some areas of the tropics.
The notion of a single global temperature is, to me (and I believe Verity and Kevin) somewhat bizarre, whether it is measured in anomalies or actual readings, as this concept averages out all data and disguises a lot of noise in the temperature signal through siting problems, land use changes, stations moving (often to airports) and uhi not being properly accounted for. In my view, sticking together a hugely variable number of ever moving stations with inherent problems and calling that a highly accurate global temperature only serves to confuse the debate as the warming signal will overwhelm the cooling one when the trend IS warming and the noise helps to accentuates that trend.
As I say, if records are old enough you can follow the ups and downs of a natural cycle. Depending on where you intersect it you will find either a cooling, static or warming trend. This paper was intended originally to find those in the cooling cycle which still exist despite IPCC’s assertions, but whilst many of us may find the idea of a natural cycle to be self evident it is something that the IPCC do not consistently factor in to their climate models. They believe the reasons for the current general warming can only be explained by C02 increase, because that is what their models are programmed to find..
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/SixtyYearCycle.htm
http://www.heliogenic.net/2010/03/26/scafetta-on-the-60-year-temperature-cycle/
The net result of all this is that some parts of the world appear to be running counter cyclical to most of the rest of the world which is (or has been) warming and these cycles are not being properly accounted for in models. There appears to have been a general warming cycle of around 300 years to date, on which this shorter 60 cycle old cycle is overlaid and I am sure there are further wheels within wheels that will reflect the cycles of the PDO, AO and solar factors..
I am intrigued to find out more about those areas that are cooling as this may help to give us more clues as to why some areas are warming, whilst Verity is intrigued by the sine wave like pattern that has emerged and will I hope want to investigate this further.
We have come to believe the IPCC mantra that we are experiencing ‘Global’ warming, when the real position appears to be much more nuanced than that.
tonyb
You two are great! Thanks for showing what independent collaboration can do.
John
DaveF
You can contact me by clicking on my name to go to my website and then going to the contact point at the foot of the page.
Tonyb
Interesting Start, really interesting data although where it will lead is up in the air
Peter Ellis says:
1) Explain why CO2 doesn’t produce warming, given its known radiative characteristics
2) Explain why sulplates don’t produce cooling, given their known reflective characteristics
3) Suggest a convincing physical process generating a sinusoidal change in surface temperature
4) Explain why the same sinusoidal trend is *not* observed in longer-term data series such as ice core data, tree ring series, etc.
One) The ocean drives the climate and global temperature so the known radiative forces have little effect. UHI’s and evironmental changes have a local affect, but have no influence on climate or weather patterns on a large scale. Since 1940 only 18 years out of 70 have a correlation with CO2 rises. (26%)
Two) All combined aerosols during the changing background only account for about 0.01c per decade. When comparing the effect with major volcanic eruptions have on the earth. Therefore too low to explain these changes that have occurred over the planet.
Three) The oceans and albedo reflect most of this and change how much shortwave radiation reaches the surface, plus in what areas.
Four) Not shown in ice cores because too coarse and some CO2 is lost in the samples when analysing. Tree cores reflect the best growth season only and many factors determines this. For example these show better proxies for droughts then temperature.
Geoff Sharp says:
September 4, 2010 at 4:04 am
it also follows the solar velocity power waves. A similar solar modulation pattern is also a close fit.
No, jinki, [not sure what the muddled ‘solar velocity power wave’ concept is] solar activity does not follow the sine wave pattern of this topic.
Thanks to all so far for the really positive response. I’ve done enough of my own nitpicking about this study, which is one of the reasons we sat on it for so long (having put it to one side in December), however that does not mean we have been idle, and the ideas and analysis are moving along still. The key to posting it has been in finding the crux of the story – the take home message if you will, and that is that this pattern exists and is widespread, even to the point of being able to match disparate locations, but not to say any more than that.
There are many anthropogenic changes that may have affected local temperature records – changes in agricultural practices for example, that may have the same effect ascribed to CO2. How do we disentangle those? We need to think differently.
The full map here of the 1940-1969 period is here: http://www.climateapplications.com/GHCN/images/GISSraw1940to1969map.png The cooling trend beginning in ~1940 and running to ~1970 is important. Indeed it may have been reduced by man’s activities rather than caused by them (as global dimming – sulphur etc.); it is widespread, yet completely misses out many places close to others which are cooling. As many commenters point out CO2 (and SO2) should not do that.
#
#
jim karlock says:
September 4, 2010 at 4:43 am
Peter EllisIf you want to chuck that out of the window, you have to:
1,2,3,4, etc
JK: Or you have to compare that sine curve to the solar cycle data and see how good the match is.
Thanks
JK
________________________________
Do not forget the ocean cycles too.
Peter Ellis:
Good questions but the answers are readily available to all who bother to look and think.
1) Explain why CO2 doesn’t produce warming, given its known radiative characteristics
Either or both of:
i) Too small in relation to natural variability to be measaurable.
ii) Readily offset by negative feedbacks especially by changes in the hydrological cycle.
2) Explain why sulplates don’t produce cooling, given their known reflective characteristics
Same as for 1) above
3) Suggest a convincing physical process generating a sinusoidal change in surface temperature
Variable rates of energy release from the oceans combined with solar variability and as a direct consequence of those cyclical elements a cycling latitudinal shift in the air circulation systems resulting in changing global albedo and variable solar input to the oceans.
4) Explain why the same sinusoidal trend is *not* observed in longer-term data series such as ice core data, tree ring series, etc.
Those proxy sources of data are too coarse to reveal the full extent of natural climate variability because to varying degrees they are partly dependant on other variables.
If AGW theory is dependent on an alleged lack of answers to those questions then it is a small beast indeed.
******
Peter Ellis says:
September 4, 2010 at 3:44 am
Isn’t this well-known?
******
The period of their chart is included in Mann’s hockey stick chart. Where’s the hockey stick blade? Isn’t this well-known?
I should point out that most of the data from Rimfrost matched unadjusted (GHCNv2mean) combined station data from GISS (downloaded Oct-Dec 09). Some of the data matched original sources (e.g Icelandic Met office) and some matched GISS homogenised. I considered it a major issue that the data was such a mixture and would have been happier if it was all unadjusted, or all homogenised.
Kevin went back to original sources NOAA/GISS for his maps of which there are both unajusted (‘raw’)and adjusted data versions.
Thanks to the authors and all of us relatively intelligent amateurs for all your work. We have more than opinions on some of these complicated issues. And thanks to Antony for giving us the ability to share our work.
For Robert Kral and Abilene TX temps – One year’s average temp is weather. See below.
When I was putting together the monthly averaged annual NM temps, I noticed a couple of interesting things. First that NM temps from site to site “followed” each other or were in phase mostly throughout the length of the record (60 to 110 years depending on the site). Secondly, temperature swings from year to year might be very dramatic and of course temperatures at alpine sites versus desert sites were offset by several degrees. Swings from year to year might be as much as 7 degrees and offsets due to altitude and/or biota might be as much as 10 degrees. But decadal trends were very obvious and were also mostly in phase at most of the sites. All these were in degrees F.
I looked at temperatures in Japan and found this same regional “in phase” spikey temperature trend. Two things I found in the Japanese temperature data- first was an increase of 1 degree C in 1989 that did not spike back down for the next 4 or 5 years. The second interesting thing about the Japanese data when I compared it to my NM data was that it was exactly out of phase. When NM sites were trending up, Japanese sites were trending down. WUWT?
Great work. You wave certainly does not seem to follow the suspot record. but it sure shows a possible feedback loop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:800px-Sunspot_butterfly_with_graph.gif
Peter Ellis: “If you want to chuck that out of the window, you have to: explain …”.
Not actually – this is an observation, just plotting of the data. As such it just “is”. You can’t chuck the data even if you can’t explain it. If this represents CO2 warming vs. sulphate cooling, why the sine wave pattern? Clearly something is going on.
Geoff Sharpe: The sine wave is pretty simple really, it follows the PDO trend……
I believe Roy Spencer also has something to say about cloud cover tracking PDO and temperature.
What does he say?
Is cloud cover a driver or consequence?
Spencer says it’s a forcing:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/our-jgr-paper-on-feedbacks-is-published/
Peter
You have the cause and effect reversed. Look at all the ice core data. Earth’s themperatures increase and CO2 concentrations increase 200-800 years later. When Earth’s temperatures decrease, CO2 concentrations finally fall 800-2,000 years later.
CO2 concentrations have been increasing over the last 200 years because we came out of the LIA and the oceans warmed, outgassing CO2. Any fool can see that CO2 is a lagging indicator, nota forcing! That is why it is obvious to anyone without an ulterior motive that AGW is the biggest scam ever foisted on humanity!
Bill Yarber
In some the date of the onset of warming or cooling is later or earlier, depending on location
A “phase” plot would be interesting.
In some the date of the onset of warming or cooling is later or earlier, depending on location
A animated “phase” plot would be interesting.
richard telford says:
September 4, 2010 at 3:53 am
“You can tell rather little about the cause of warming from the temperature records alone. You have to consider the forcing histories, both natural (solar, volcanic, etc.) and anthropogenic (greenhouse gases, aerosols etc.).”
Yeah, aerosols. Aerosols are nice. We can assign a positive or a negative forcing to them, any way we need it to make the GCM hindcasting fit. And as long as we don’t do real science to find out the real influence of aerosols, we stay free to use them to fudge our models any way we need to to achieve our political goals, right? So just let’s not do real science. Knowledge always gets in the way of the cult leaders.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2010 at 7:04 am
No, jinki, [not sure what the muddled ‘solar velocity power wave’ concept is] solar activity does not follow the sine wave pattern of this topic.
Not muddled, just not understood by yourself, can I advise a link that might be enlightening.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.4639
riskaverse says:
September 4, 2010 at 7:48 am
Geoff Sharpe: The sine wave is pretty simple really, it follows the PDO trend……
I believe Roy Spencer also has something to say about cloud cover tracking PDO and temperature.
What does he say?
Is cloud cover a driver or consequence?
Spencer says it’s a forcing:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/our-jgr-paper-on-feedbacks-is-published/
I can see by your concealed ID that it describes reality.
Take the risk and describe your point.
Excellent work. Well done Tony and Ms Jones of course.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2010 at 7:04 am
Geoff Sharp says:
September 4, 2010 at 4:04 am
it also follows the solar velocity power waves. A similar solar modulation pattern is also a close fit.
No, jinki,
I see that my associate “jinki” is giving you a caning on solarcycle24.com
Peter Taylor says:
September 4, 2010 at 4:29 am
Very interesting I’ve been looking at some of the Arctic too with interest in the Northwest passage, but have only done a few non-technical postings so far, although they are coming (when I can find the time). It frustrates me no end that many of the current spate of well-meaning expeditions to the Arctic are highlight the warming, but few ever bother to read into the climate history.
DaveF says:
September 4, 2010 at 4:35 am
You can find my email address under the ‘About’ tab on the blog.
Espen says:
September 4, 2010 at 5:12 am
“Suppose Spencer’s feedback estimate is right, and CO2 doubling only amounts to about 0.6 degrees of warming. Then current CO2-induced warming is only ~0.2 degrees, i.e. hardly detectable.”
I’d certainly bet on a ‘real figure’ below current levels of ‘measured’ warming, but it is mostly gut instinct from looking at the data.
Bernie McCune says:
September 4, 2010 at 5:50 am
“It seems to be about a 60 year cycle and I agree with Geoff Sharp that it is a multi-decadal PDO trend that is tied to solar modulation noted by Scaffetta.”
Tonyb provided this link, which is certainly persuasive: http://www.heliogenic.net/2010/03/26/scafetta-on-the-60-year-temperature-cycle/
“Don’t want to get too crazy about all this cyclical stuff but does seem to jump out at you without looking too hard.”
That’s exactly how I’ve felt about it!
Don Easterbrook, I knew your name, but have not previously looked at your site. I’ve just found it and will have a thorough look with interest.
There are also cyclical waves within the satellite LT ocean data.
http://tinyurl.com/yb8k5mh
Bill Yarber says:
September 4, 2010 at 7:50 am
Peter
“You have the cause and effect reversed. Look at all the ice core data. Earth’s themperatures increase and CO2 concentrations increase 200-800 years later. When Earth’s temperatures decrease, CO2 concentrations finally fall 800-2,000 years later.
CO2 concentrations have been increasing over the last 200 years because we came out of the LIA and the oceans warmed, outgassing CO2. Any fool can see that CO2 is a lagging indicator, nota forcing! That is why it is obvious to anyone without an ulterior motive that AGW is the biggest scam ever foisted on humanity!”
Bill Yarber
With all of the intercorrelations of the potential causal variables, the reversed cause and effect is as good a bet a any. We should not, however, make public policy which has drastic economic consequences based on Las Vegas principles as is being done by the AGW crowd. Excellent post!!
It seems to confirm that the planet climate is a self regulating system – like any such system, there will be an oscillation between the high and low points as the various mechanisms in play act to “correct” the variable. (In this case, temperature). (leaving aside the argument that we don’t know what the right temperature is for the planet!)
But the analysis does not explain what the mechanisms are that create the oscillation. In addition, if there is an underlying planet scale forcing (Anthropogenic CO2 being the current favourite) then the overall trend would still be up – but with a visible oscillation superimposed. It looks from the graphs that there is no long term upward trend – but that’s just from the visuals not from the data…..
Whilst interesting, it seems to me it will not be enough to impact the views of the AGW proponents.
The amplitude of the sine wave, that is so often seen in long-term weather data, is muted by the presence of moisture, or it’s absence.
Sacramento, CA, Delta breeze capital:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/SacCRU.GIF
Winnemucca, NV, popcorn dry:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/Winn1.GIF
Geoff Sharp says:
September 4, 2010 at 8:21 am
Not muddled, just not understood by yourself, can I advise a link that might be enlightening.
The link does not contain the words ‘solar velocity power wave’…
Geoff Sharp says:
September 4, 2010 at 8:27 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2010 at 7:04 am
Geoff Sharp says:
September 4, 2010 at 4:04 am
I see that my associate “jinki” is giving you a caning on solarcycle24.com
You have never been known for common decency. Even lying about the identity of ‘jinki’.
richard telford says:
September 4, 2010 at 3:53 am
You can tell rather little about the cause of warming from the temperature records alone. You have to consider the forcing histories, both natural (solar, volcanic, etc.) and anthropogenic (greenhouse gases, aerosols etc.).
Response:
Even after working on the NM temperature data, I had lots of doubts about trying to use the results for anything other than some sort of indicator. But if we can see this cyclical result over the past and next several hundred years, we can say that this trend is some sort of natural, and then by my definition “unforced”, effect. When other oscillations seem to match up, it does lead one to think about correlations but we should be very careful about that. The latest 30 year warming period matches nicely with CO2 increase (however, the previous 30 year cooling period doesn’t).
Geologic glacial cooling and interglacial warming seem also to be rather regular and natural. Over the past few thousand years there have been what seemed to be forced mini-warming periods and little ice ages. Lots of theories and likely drivers but WUWT?
The roles of all the GHGs and particulates may prove in the end to be very important in finally determining these “near/short term” dramatic climate shifts but obviously H2O (the GHG and the liquid and ice forms) and the sun will probably be proven to be the more significant long term players. Only my opinion – not quite enough data yet – but we will probably collect enough and be able to analyze this very soon. Bright people and the data will finally give us a greenhouse gas theory that can be easily explained to any elementary school student (and me)!
Bernie McCune
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2010 at 7:04 am
No, jinki, [not sure what the muddled ‘solar velocity power wave’ concept is] solar activity does not follow the sine wave pattern of this topic.
—————–
Leif,
OK, I give up after trying Google to find what the heck “jinki” refers to. Only thing I found is some Japanese anime series about autobots or something.
What is it?
John
Hi Ms Jones and Tony
Excellent work
I took liberty to superimpose the Arctic’s resultant Geomagnetic field (de-trended GMFz) on your Fig. 2 temperatures chart.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TB-A-GMF.htm
It appears to be a good match.
More details about the Arctic Geomagnetic is available at:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
Bill Yarber says:
September 4, 2010 at 7:50 am
==
Peter
You have the cause and effect reversed. Look at all the ice core data. Earth’s themperatures increase and CO2 concentrations increase 200-800 years later. When Earth’s temperatures decrease, CO2 concentrations finally fall 800-2,000 years later.
======================================================
Bill, taking that one fact, CO2 is not even a good insulator, much less heating or warming the planet.
The ‘cycles’ are going to do what they are going to do, and doesn’t give one hoot what CO2 levels are.
Three cheers for the project!
I’m generally no fan of graphs that look like an escaped caterpillar, but this one is good. That the cooling sites are so widely diepersed and yet produce that wave is really eye-popping. Good job.
And as for comments requesting that the project team state the cause of the wave, I didn’t get that to be the point. It seems to me that speculation on the cause has been left to the reader as an exercise.
John Whitman says:
September 4, 2010 at 9:37 am
OK, I give up after trying Google to find what the heck “jinki” refers to.
Geoff was banned on solarcycle24.com for bad behavior and therefore posts over there under a false name ‘jinki’ even claiming to have undergone a sex change.
Leif Svalgaard as always keeps the sun honest!
Perhaps his forebears came from ancient Egypt in the days of the heretical Pharoah Akhenaten for whom the sun was the one true god, controlling and responsible for the good and the evil things affecting mankind.
3,350 years later we are still arguing for and against!
Verity and TonyB: Very well done. Stellar. Natural variation that is not explained by monotonically increasing CO2… Way to go!
What I am seeing more and more, which is quite exciting, is that more amatuers are getting involved in this class of science, and as we have seen from astronomy, this can only be a good thing!
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2010 at 9:59 am
Geoff was banned on solarcycle24.com for bad behavior and therefore posts over there under a false name ‘jinki’ even claiming to have undergone a sex change.
—————–
Leif,
OK heh ehe ehhhh. . . . .
But, it is tooooo late. I think I am hooked on the Jinki Japanese anime series now. Seems it was targeted for adults somewhat. That is your fault. Take care. : )
John
roger says:
September 4, 2010 at 10:04 am
in the days of the heretical Pharoah Akhenaten for whom the sun was the one true god, controlling and responsible for the good and the evil things affecting mankind.
3,350 years later we are still arguing for and against!
They were, of course, quite wrong. It was not the Sun that regulated everything [rising of the Nile, when to harvest, etc] but simply the change of the seasons which is due to the Earth’s changing disposition relative to the almost constant Sun. Current debate has not progressed much further, it seems…
Geoff Sharp says:
September 4, 2010 at 4:04 am
The sine wave is pretty simple really, it follows the PDO trend and as Scaffetta and others have noticed it also follows the solar velocity power waves. A similar solar modulation pattern is also a close fit.
“Solar velocity power waves” – are these related in any way to oscillation in the relative position of the barycentre and the sub-Jupiter point – i.e. oscillation of the sun’s angular momentum? As described in this paper:
Decadal variations in geophysical processes and asymmetries in the solar motion about the Solar System’s barycentre
Nikolay Sidorenkov, Ian Wilson, and Anatoly Khlystov
Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 12, EGU2010-9559, 2010
Link: http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2010/EGU2010-9559.pdf
A quote from this paper:
Ian Wilson et al. (2008) presented evidence that claimed that changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized with changes in the Sun’s orbital motion about the barycentre of the Solar System. This paper showed that the recent maximum asymmetries in the Solar motion about the barycentre have occurred in the years 1865, 1900, 1934, 1970 and 2007. These years closely match the points of inflection in the Earth’s LOD [length of day].
Its interesting the inflection years listed seem close to inflection years of the PDO.
Can I echo Verity’s thanks for all the constructive comments.
Vuk said;
“I took liberty to superimpose the Arctic’s resultant Geomagnetic field (de-trended GMFz) on your Fig. 2 temperatures chart.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TB-A-GMF.htm
It appears to be a good match.”
Yes it does Vuk.
It would be interesting to see how other elements such as the PDO and the jet stream also match up. I suspect there are dozens of causes of changing climate (of which we currently know very little) At any one time a few combine to cause minor changes but periodically many of the more important ones combine to create major changes.
Man is a big factor in local effects (through UHi and land use) but I doubt he is a major player on a global scale. It would be nice if everyone wasnt so fixated on C02 and looked at the cause and effect more objectively
Tonyb
Be careful about about the apparent widespread indications of cyclic climate patterns.
Many geophysical phenomena expressed as a time series of measurements exhibit what is called flicker noise characteristics. Flicker noise is very counter-intuitive. For example it is easy to show mathematically ( using Fourier analysis) that a flicker noise time series has no average value. Sure you can take some number of years and compute an average value for that interval but all other equal value intervals will have different average values. The average does not exist. Over increasing long intervals increasingly large variations are evident. This is the essence of the 100 year storm concept.
Another problem with flicker noise phenomena is that the human eye nearly always sees a low frequency periodicity- usually semi- sinusoidal – in flicker noise time series data plotted on lin-lin axis. However the “clearly apparent periodicity” is usually an illusion with no evident spike or peak in the Fourier spectrum of the data series.
This is not to say there is no climate periodicity, just that eyeball identification of said periodicity in time series data is far from conclusive.
phlogiston says:
September 4, 2010 at 10:50 am
Ian Wilson et al. (2008) presented evidence that claimed that changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized …
We looked into the changes of solar rotation very carefully in http://www.leif.org/research/ast10867.pdf and it is hard to see any significant systematic variation over time, c.f. Figure 1.
There seems to be a very weak dependence on activity in the sense that more activity slows the surface rotation down [Figure 2]. This is what would be expected: the more magnetic the Sun is, the more rigid is its rotation.
Thanks plenty for this!
Brgds from Sweden
/TJ
The physics can be correct in principle, while the magnitude of the effect has little overall effect.
Since the CO2 rise does not prevent the documented cooling in the 1880-1910 and 1940-1970 periods, it seems quite apparent that the CO2 effect is getting swamped by other much more powerful forcings.
The CO2 entanglement is there. It is just very weak.
The wave pattern of global mean temperature anomalies seen here appears to match those displayed in Girma Orssengo’s work posted by A. Watts on April 25, 2010. I believe Girmo used Hadcru raw data. Is my assumption correct?
Two cities that really stand out for me in the list of cities showing cooling up top are Edmonton and Curitiba.
Edmonton because in 1886 it would barely have existed. Wikipedia lists the first public building built out side of the fort in 1871. Today it is a city of roughly a million people. Interesting that wikipedia also lists the coldest day as
“1886 – Edmonton’s coldest temperature is recorded as -49.4°C on January 19”
Any temperature station in the area of what was then Edmonton would be located in the heart of the city now and so a prime candidate for Urban Heating Effect. That it would show cooling over that time is truly bazaar.
As for Curitiba here is a picture of what it looks like today. Draw your own conclusions.
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_Psy7928WSbc/Rfhnkm4RxZI/AAAAAAAAAE8/jCc2Xo-Bv40/s1024/DSC03428.JPG
For Rollie
Is Had CRU raw data? From what I can read about it, it is decidedly not raw. But I’m sure Girman Orssengo used Had CRU data.
Bernie McCune
Bill Yarber says:
September 4, 2010 at 7:50 am
Peter
You have the cause and effect reversed. Look at all the ice core data. Earth’s themperatures increase and CO2 concentrations increase 200-800 years later. When Earth’s temperatures decrease, CO2 concentrations finally fall 800-2,000 years later.
CO2 concentrations have been increasing over the last 200 years because we came out of the LIA and the oceans warmed, outgassing CO2. Any fool can see that CO2 is a lagging indicator, nota forcing! That is why it is obvious to anyone without an ulterior motive that AGW is the biggest scam ever foisted on humanity!
The temperature rise following the ice ages was ~6 deg C and resulted in a CO2 increase of ~100 ppm which was only fully realie, as you say, ~800 years or so after the temperature rise. The temperature increase since 1850 is less than 1 deg C but we’ve had an increase in CO2 of more than 100 ppm.
The logic of your argument is flawed.
Richard M says: September 4, 2010 at 6:48 am
“I’ll add one more item to refute Peter Ellis’ item 1). Ferenc Miskolczi and his theory of a constant GHG effect.”
The referenced paper is not the latest one. The latest paper (published in E&E in 2010) enforces the conclusions of his previous papers and presents measured data to prove the regulatory role of the H2O vapors. More details here: http://global-warming-explained.blogspot.com/
Re: vukcevic
Thanks for being so prompt in sharing this:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TB-A-GMF.htm
Even though I don’t buy many of the attempts to explain the physics, no one has come (even remotely) close to convincing me that these variables are independent.
We can leave the physics to the physicists, but from my interactions with physicists, climate scientists, etc. during the past 2.75 years, I am convinced that they need help with the analysis of existing empirical data.
For example, nonstationary spatial phase relations have been largely (& in most cases completely) ignored.
This is far from trivial. There is something called “Simpson’s Paradox” which applies here.
–
Re: Geoff Sharp
Geoff, the wave is nonstationary.
For those unfamiliar with this term:
The (ephemerally) “60 year cycle” cannot be temporally extrapolated.
[I base the preceding comments on empirical records.]
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2010 at 10:41 am
If the sun were truly constant, even the solar cycles would be as predictable as tides.
The Constant Sun is an illusion, just as the serenity of an volcano thought extinct is one day shown to be a transitory state of quiescence.
You have picked your year breaks badly. The most suspect range of station data is 1977 to 1997 where their curve shows rising temperatures that do not exist. That is the range that should be separately analyzed from the range of 1999 to 2010. 1998 is an outlier – a super El Nino that should not be averaged with any other year because it is not part of the ENSO system. You should find two horizontal trends, one before and one after that super El Nino. Get back to the drawing board and do it right this time.
rbateman says:
September 4, 2010 at 1:17 pm
The Constant Sun is an illusion
I said ‘almost constant’, and for the things that affects the change of seasons and regulated the ancient Egyptians way of life, the solar cycle etc would not be discernible. Even today, it is hard to tease the tiny solar cycle effect out of the climate [or weather].
Re: Leif Svalgaard
Thank you for reminding us of the following:
Brajsa, R.; Wohl, H.; Ruzdjak, D.; Vrsnak, B.; Verbanac, G.; Svalgaard, L.; & Hochedez, J.-F. (2007). On the solar rotation and activity. Astronomische Nachrichten 328(10), 1013-1015. doi:10.1002/asna.200710867.
http://www.leif.org/research/ast10867.pdf
Regarding Figure 1:
a) Can the plot be extended back to 1865 (for example by using other data sources)?
b) Are the plotted data available via plain-text webpage?
Paul Vaughan says:
September 4, 2010 at 1:30 pm
a) Can the plot be extended back to 1865 (for example by using other data sources)?
b) Are the plotted data available via plain-text webpage?
a) difficult. There is data for 1862-1866, but not digitized.
b) no, but I could, of course, make such a page. The day only has 24 hours, though…
Bruce Long says:
September 4, 2010 at 11:27 am
“Many geophysical phenomena expressed as a time series of measurements exhibit what is called flicker noise characteristics.”
Having spectrum analyzed several hundred century-long temperature records, I disagree entirely with your speculative premise. The dominant spectral feature is usually a strong peak at multi-decadal periods, without any sign of the f-inverse monotonic decay of spectral density characteristic of flicker noise. That doesn’t mean that the multidecadal oscillations are strictly periodic, but they are quite persistent in most records from stations at latitudes of ~50 degrees or less.
DirkH says:
September 4, 2010 at 8:10 am
Yeah, aerosols. Aerosols are nice. We can assign a positive or a negative forcing to them, any way we need it to make the GCM hindcasting fit. And as long as we don’t do real science to find out the real influence of aerosols, we stay free to use them to fudge our models any way we need to to achieve our political goals, right? So just let’s not do real science. Knowledge always gets in the way of the cult leaders.
———————–
Different types of aerosols have different radiative properties – carbon black absorbs radiation, sulphates reflect it – so the sign of their forcing differs. Was that too complicated? Cold years after large volcanic eruptions demonstrate the cooling properties of sulphates, why should anthropogenically derived sulphates behave any differently? If this goes against your creed, design an experiment to falsify these ideas.
Ignorance is much less useful than knowledge.
This is a great post! And I think its getting closer to the true picture.
It always concerned me that the cooling reported in the 1970s (with concommittant fear of a new ice age) doesnt show up enough in the temperature data – plus there is a nice graph of temperature trend by population of county in California which suggests that low population counties have seen virtually no warming I just cant see how those counties could be effectively cooling when the rest of the world is supposed to be in a global warming trend.
Yeah, brilliant work – and good to see Adelaide in there as a trend setter.
Re: Leif Svalgaard
If you can find the time to put up a page (whether plain-text or Excel-file), I am sure many (myself included) would appreciate such access to the data. I will watch for a link…
Best Regards.
Congratulations to Verity and TonyB, for producing a good piece of work which shows how our climate oscillates up and down naturally, thus refuting the conjecture that CO2 has a warming effect.
This sort of quasi-cyclic behaviour is typical of a driven pendulum and trying to use linear trends on systems like our climate is futile.
The more smart and open-minded people are looking at the reality (=data), the more the “it’s only CO2” fantasyland falls apart. I am lovin’ it. Thank you, guys.
Peter Ellis, Ulric Lyons, richard telford,
None of you addressed that it was warmer in the 30’s, in many cases, than now. Being warmer in the 30’s does not support the global warming hypothesis.
Don Easterbrook
Here is a video of you covering the same things you have in your comment. Watching on video is easier to follow for readers. Things that seemed docile in print come alive on video:
Thanks again to all for the great encouragement and suggestions. This will spur us on to continue “looking differently” at the climate record. I’ve been reminded this evening of my own response to seeing the spaghetti graph (Figure 2) for the first time and it was much the same as the response here.
Bruce:
“This is not to say there is no climate periodicity, just that eyeball identification of said periodicity in time series data is far from conclusive.”
yup. we are wired to see patterns so I’ll wait for the math on this.
When NM sites were trending up, Japanese sites were trending down. WUWT?
The likely explanation is that ocean heat release is the primary driver of atmospheric temperatures over these timescales. Different ocean regions release heat over different cycles (periods) as you would expect from variations in ocean heat distribution or ocean circulation.
Any global effect is merely the sum of regional effects. That is, global scale forcings (CO2, sun, etc) have little effect.
Further, I am sceptical that regional ocean heat release is globally synchronize, and therefore think any global warming/cooling signal is largely spurious.
Get away from the forcings model of climate and there is little reason to think in terms of a global climate (over a century timescale).
I’d be interested to see the same data graphed separately for Europe, N America, Australasia, S America and see if the same sinusoidal pattern (in synchronization) still occurs. If it does, then I’m wrong about no globally synchronized ocean heat release. If it doesn’t, then I’m probably right.
Jim G
Thank you, I think?
If you know any control system engineers, ask them to look at the temperature vs CO2 concentration for:
Ice core data
Earth’s temp and CO2 concentrations for the past 200 years
Anyone who has dynamic process control experience will immediately see that CO2 concentration is not a driver, but is a lagging variable. This is very basic process loop tuning analysis and I can’t believe that climate scientists could ever look at those tend lines and believe that CO2 was a forcing. Don’t believe the outputs from computers until it pasts a “common sense” check. GIGO has been known ever since digital computers were first developed. When the biggest source/sink for CO2 covers 70% of the Earth’s surface, it’s hard to give much credience to pump mankind!
Last point: we know the Earth has been warmer over the past 5 million years (evenwarmer in the Holocene Optimum, the Roman Warm Period and the MWP) and that CO2 concentrations have been higher in the past by up to a factor of 5-7 times. We have ice ages and interglacials, but the Earth’s temperature never ran away to the up side. If it hasn’t happened once in the geologic history of the world, the probability of this time being different is practically nil! As I said, the “common sense” test.
Bill
The data seems to support a theory I have that lower level particuate pollution causes the atmosphere to warm while higher level particulate pollution causes the atmosphere to cool. During the dust bowl years (1910-1939) low level particulate pollution, caused the atmosphere to warm (mostly in the center of the USA).
During the war years (1940-1969), with bombs (including atomic testing) causing high level particulate pollution, the atmosphere cooled.
Above ground testing of nuclear devices ended in the 1970s lowering the amount of high level particulate pollution, thus causing the atmosphere to warm (1970-2010).
High level particulate pollution absorbs the sun’s radiant energy and radiates the energy into space. Low level particulate energy absorbs the sun’s radiant energy and transfers the energy to the atmosphere.
Paticulate pollution absorbs most of the radiant energy it receives while GHG only affect a tiny part of the spectrum. Particulate pollution seems to me, to be a far greater factor than GHG.
Excellent work, guys!
Yet again, further proof that when you look at something closer to raw data rather than averages of averages of averages, the truth is more likely to emerge.
The signals are there for anyone who chooses to see them, rather than blindly accepting the orthodoxy favoured by those who ‘believe’ there is a ‘consensus’. This periodicity of ~30 year (and other) natural cycles has been noted elsewhere many times, but the warmistas’ PR establishment seems reluctant to bring them to the public’s attention, and when they do grudgingly concede their existence (after retrospectively screwing the data to downplay previous cycles), insist that the most recent cycle is ‘unprecedented in human history’. Your efforts here add to the evidence that this is not the case.
The compliant, disaster-seeking mainstream media has accepted and promulgated the myth for so long that a substantial proportion of the general public has, understandably, fallen for it. Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graphic and others like it have been very effective in manipulating Joe Public’s opinion on these matters, and it’s high time that the man in the street had the opportunity to see less-tortured representations of our climate history.
I guess what really bugs so many of us on this side of the fence is the fact that, unlike the purest practise of science as a relentless pursuit of the truth, however it pans out, climatology has become, more so than any other discipline, a shameless branch of QED science: the facts and interpretations are selected and twisted to fit the conclusion that has already been drawn.
It is analogous to a topical subject here in Australia at the moment. A new toll-based road tunnel in Brisbane has become the latest financial disaster, following the example of two similar tunnels in Sydney in recent years. They are all victims of “work-back modelling”, where the starting parameter for the feasibility study is an attractive return to investors and the end result is the number of motorists needed to use the tunnel every day. When the tunnel is opened and only a fraction of the wildly optimistic, model-derived number of motorists choose to avail themselves of the latest insult to their daily expense possibilities, the whole project becomes a financial toilet.
So it is with AGW models. They begin with the “CO2 is evil and we westerners should all be ashamed of ourselves” trope, and fiddle the models backwards to prove it, even resorting to crappy, discredited factors such as aerosols to prove their point.
I don’t know what you call that, but it ain’t science.
One cannot argue with the necessity to use statistical methods to try to find patterns in data that has a lot of noise. But after all, we don’t experience climate, we only get weather, and weather is all noise. Only when we scrutinise the base data can we see it as it is, whereas models are better at concealing the truth than revealing it.
Tony B,
for some time I have been looking at the long term temperature data, and using Fourier Convolution, or Spectral analysis signal conditioning methods to see what would fall out. The following graphs show three data groups. A data group is one with records starting before a point in time. These include records starting before 1650, 1750 and 1800. Most of the data comes from the Rimfrost ( http://www.rimfrost.no ) site.
For each station a anomaly series was computed. These anomalies were then averaged to form a composite anomaly for that group. Each group was then filtered with a fourier convolution lo-pass filter, with a cut-off period of 40 years. The following graph are the result, including a comparison with the Hadcet data. One thing that was striking is the almost periodic cycles around the 50 year point.
Ave1- i.e. Central England
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/lt-temp-1650-2008-1-Rxrdy.gif
Ave4 Anomaly data from 1750-2008 – including Cen Eng., Debilt, Uppsalla
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/lt-temp-1750-2008-4-EyvXd.gif
Ave14 Anomaly data from prior to 1800 to 2008
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/lt-temp-1800-2008-14-9ZSv8.gif
One of the things I would like to look at in the future would be to ocean and solar cycles.
Jaypan says:
————-
the more the “it’s only CO2″ fantasyland falls apart. I am lovin’ it.
————
Nope. It was never “only CO2”. There was always a bunch of other stuff happening at the same time. The important questions are:
1. how important is the other stuff?
2. can we do anything about the other stuff?
3. If the other stuff is cyclical and CO2 is trending linear upwards, how much trouble are we going to be in on the peak of the next cycle, if we dismiss CO2 because we are in the bottom of a cycle now.
As the other guy says; naysayers have to grow up about attributing single causative factors in climate. The climatlogists are certainly not that naive.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2010 at 11:30 am
“There seems to be a very weak dependence on activity in the sense that more activity slows the surface rotation down [Figure 2]. This is what would be expected: the more magnetic the Sun is, the more rigid is its rotation.”
Thank you Lief, for that information on the surface rotation variance. pg
Verity Jones and Tony Brown; Thank you for shareing the fruits of your work. At least those of us on the fringe can see the data for what it is and not what a driven agenda needs. pg
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2010 at 9:19 am
The link does not contain the words ‘solar velocity power wave’…
No, but it is shown in figure 5. The wave lining up with the PDO wave.
The solar modulation wave as you know works in parallel but skips a phase. From trough to peak is around 90 years and is confused with the Gleissberg cycle, these two cycles stay in phase because they are a product of the gas giants. The sunspot cycle follows the AM cycle which has the PDO cycle linked in.
http://www.landscheidt.info/images/Powerwavesm.png
phlogiston says:
September 4, 2010 at 10:50 am
“Solar velocity power waves” – are these related in any way to oscillation in the relative position of the barycentre and the sub-Jupiter point – i.e. oscillation of the sun’s angular momentum? As described in this paper:
No, Ian is talking about solar rotation changes, unfortunately this is a difficult area to measure. Scaffeta is showing the solar velocity as it fluctuates as it travels around the SSB. Figure 5 shows how this fluctuation lines up with the PDO. My theory is that because both power waves are linked the neg PDO most likely always occurs during solar grand minima
LazyTeenager
would you prove co2 does what ‘global warming’ says it does?
Despite weather and climate to be driven by chaotic inputs I would expect natural climate to be cyclic as feed backs, both negative and positive depending on cycle stage, take over. ie. as it gets warmer radiation increases as does cloud which has a negative feedback. As it cools so cloud will lessen and radiation reduce so warming will follow. This is assuming a constant solar input. But as we all know this is not correct so variations in solar input will add to the chaotic mix. Non of this shows any anthropomorphic input. Town and cities will be warmer but heat loss from these will be greater, to comply with 2nd law of thermodynamics, so the overall effect is probably zero.
J. Bob says: September 4, 2010 at 8:50 pm
One thing that was striking is the almost periodic cycles around the 50 year point.
I am also inclined to think there is a 51-2 year, rather than usually referred 60 year cycle.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETs.htm
The same cycle permeates solar activity :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/FFT-Power-Spectrum-SSN.png
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC2.htm
JBob
I have a particular interest in CET and was interested in your graphs. There are many cycles it would be interesting to examine further-it is likely the jet stream plays a large part in all this and solar and the PDO also (amongst many other influences).
Can I suggest that if you are interested in solar influences that you look at Vuk’s charts that he referenced above and I later referred to.
Tonyb
“Temperature records to be made public”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7981883/Temperature-records-to-be-made-public.html
“Climate scientists are to publish the largest ever collection of temperature records, dating back more than a hundred years, in an attempt to provide a more accurate picture of climate change”
I wonder how many sets of records will appear in both collections?
I’d write the whole thing off as outrageously biased.
If you chose a large number of stations at random and marked them with blue and red dots, then I’d think the work was balanced enough to pay attention. Otherwise, the motion is simply propagandistic. “Wonderful cooling trend”???
Fortunately, there are now numerous places on the web where people have, in the last year, taken the raw data from large numbers of stations and plotted their own time series with their own methods and come up with credible alternatives to the official surface records. Some of these have been done by avowed skeptics (such as the Air Vent, which you mentioned), and much credit goes to them for ponying up and doing the hard yards without selecting data to favour a preferred agenda.
John Finn says:
September 4, 2010 at 12:31 pm
I can’t believe this level of logical thought can exist from anyone with a high school education.
Bill is saying that Temperature rises cause CO2 rises.
You then claim that because CO2 has risen while temperature has not, he is obviously wrong.
The obvious conclusion you seen to be missing is that CO2 has NOT caused temperature rises in the past, but the other way around. The fact that CO2 has risen (because we are burning fossil fuels) does not then mean that temperatures will rise now, as indeed, they seem not to be.
Wait a minute – is the notion you’re rebutting here meant to be “every single place on Earth has been warming”? I hope not, as your endeavour will have been in vain. No one has advanced that notion except climate change skeptics. You’d be wasting your time on a straw man.
If you want to call something into question that’s actually said by mainstream climate science, you’ll have to go for bigger fish. The smallest resolution you could tackle is continental. According to the IPCC, every continent except the Antarctic has warmed significantly over the past century. At a smaller scale, some regions have cooled over the century, according to IPCC.
eg
Chapter 3 – Observations
At even smaller scales, of course, there is more variability, such as with cities and towns.
barry,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/04/in-search-of-cooling-trends/#comment-475542
“If you chose a large number of stations at random and marked them with blue and red dots, then I’d think the work was balanced enough to pay attention. Otherwise, the motion is simply propagandistic. “Wonderful cooling trend”???”
I went a little further than choosing random stations and decided to use the whole GHCN v2 and GISS temperature datasets (in Figure 3 above). The net result of the analysis can be seen in Figure 3 above so I’m sorry barry but you are way off the mark as there has been Zero cherry picking in my analysis, far from it in fact. Instead I’ve left the ‘propaganda’ that you seem so concerned about to others. Here is a classic example.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadghcnd/HadGHCND_paper.pdf
Have a look at Figure 6 and then have a look at Figure 3 above again. Now tell me barry who is the propagandist, me or our friends from the Hadley Centre and NCAR? Who has deliberately chosen to start their maps in 1946? Who is hiding evidence of cooling while warming is occurring at the same time within nearby stations at the same time and there that there is significant warming in parts of the world while there is clear significant cooling in other parts of the world at the same time?
I despise colour contour plots almost as much as I despise the whole anomalisation and gridding processes that go into derivation of the MGST temperature indices much beloved by people like Mosh, Zeke H, Nick Stokes and Ron B over at Lucia’s Blackboard.
The fact is these processes (anomlisation and gridding) are clearly designed to hide/obfuscate very clear evidence of very significant natural climatic variability on a multi-decadal scale (multi-centennial in the more long lived records like the CET and Uppsala etc).
barry says: (September 5, 2010 at 2:34 am)
Did you actually read what was written? Figure 1 – the dots are yellow, red only implies a subset. Figure 3 mpas have no bias – they are ‘all stations’ with whatever trend. As for “Wonderful cooling trend”??? Don’t you recognise ‘tongue in cheek’
The point and only point of this post is: Verity Jones (September 4, 2010 at 7:08 am)
Meanwhile, back on the ground in Norway, snow falls on the Jotunheimen mountains between Trondheim & Bergen
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=0&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abcnyheter.no%2Fnorge%2F100829%2Fsnofaste-bilister-reddet-ned-fra-fjellet-0
“People were afraid for a while. It was simply dangerous to drive. A lot of standing firm, and motorcycles had overthrown and driven out of the way. Everyone has the summer now, “says Turid Berge.
Valdresflya Hostel is located at almost 1,400 meters high on top of Valdresflyveien. . After a new light snowfall in the ten o’clock Sunday morning it became milder.
– “But it is far too early for snowfall now. Not since the early 1990’s have we experienced something similar”.
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=no&tl=en&u=http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/08/29/nyheter/innenriks/ver/sno_and_norge/13163246/&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhihlKF9hrR67H7Z6s8hvJqxj7XSJw
Links dated 29th August 2010
NIC Asia&Europe Snowfall Map 2nd Sept 2010 shows fresh snow in the Jotunheimen.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/ARCHIVE/EuAsia/2010/ims2010245_asiaeurope.gif
vukcevic says:
September 4, 2010 at 9:43 am
I took liberty to superimpose the Arctic’s resultant Geomagnetic field (de-trended GMFz) on your Fig. 2 temperatures chart.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TB-A-GMF.htm
It appears to be a good match.
Vuk, thanks. That certainly is an interesting graph; I find your work generally very intriguing.
Vukcevic & tonyb
Another item of interest, was that as more stations, (western & central Europe), with later starting dates were added, that pesky ~50 yr. cycle persisted. It would indicate that this was going on in other parts of Europe. Also of interest was the cycle showing up in the Hadcet data series.
What would be interesting would be to take the sunspot records, that appear to go back farther then the temp data, and see what correlation results. As Vuk’s charts show, this would enhance my gut feel that there is solar influence, that we still do not know of. It could very well be that there are even lower freq. cycles one is not seeing, simply because the data isn’t there. This lower freq. could show up as “trends” on shorter time plots.
tonyb, if you compare my CET graph with Tamino’s, you will notice a different result at the end. Guess in the next few years we will see who is more correct.
Concrete, asphalt, steel, glass, and deforestation (land use change), as well as, population density, winter heating, summer cooling, traffic, etc., would seem to have more to do with climate systems and global climate than CO2(+) could ever be remotely responsible for. But, it would seem that even all these UHI ingredients, plus thousands of mis-sited thermometers, do not make much of a dent in the natural ‘Global Longterm Temperature Cycle’. “What hath God wrought?” seems just as appropriate today as it did on May 24, 1844.
JBob said
“As Vuk’s charts show, this would enhance my gut feel that there is solar influence, that we still do not know of.”
I totally agree. I think the sun is the overwhelming influence on our climate and that we still as yet have an imperfect understanding of all the forms that influence actually takes.
tonyb
Verity Jones and Tony Brown
And what about the Argo Project, is there any data that shows warming or cooling?
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/
Peter Ellis writes:
If you want to chuck that out of the window, you have to:
“1) Explain why CO2 doesn’t produce warming, given its known radiative characteristics
2) Explain why sulplates don’t produce cooling, given their known reflective characteristics
3) Suggest a convincing physical process generating a sinusoidal change in surface temperature
4) Explain why the same sinusoidal trend is *not* observed in longer-term data series such as ice core data, tree ring series, etc.”
You assume that CO2 does explain the phenomenon and place the burden of proof on the sceptic. Brilliant rhetoric, lousy logic. The burden of proof is on manmade CO2 as the cause. Why don’t you just send them a bill for their new, high carbon taxes?
Arno Arrak says:
September 4, 2010 at 1:29 pm
You have picked your year breaks badly. The most suspect range of station data is 1977 to 1997 where their curve shows rising temperatures that do not exist. That is the range that should be separately analyzed from the range of 1999 to 2010. 1998 is an outlier – a super El Nino that should not be averaged with any other year because it is not part of the ENSO system. You should find two horizontal trends, one before and one after that super El Nino. Get back to the drawing board and do it right this time.
—…—…—…
No! No data should be thrown or discarded for ANY reason at present.
There have been no large volcanoes the past 15 years, and NO published records of any mythical all-encompassing world-affecting particles or sulfates or soot. The myth of variable particles is added to the Mann-made CAGW programs to back-calculate their results to a linear CO2 increase. But actual soot and particle values are (very cleverly) only approximated or calculated, not cited against measured values of anything worldwide or country wide.
Well, the “dots” of sample points – without GISS/Hansen’s tampering and “corrupting” influences!!! – cover the US thoroughly, the north American continent effectively, south America and Africa somewhat less, most of Europe through to the Pacific with good regional coverages.
The original data set should add in DMI’s 80 degree north latitude Arctic daily temperatures since 1958: That will show additional coverage north towards the Arctic circle.
There is NO particular reason for ANY “skeptic” researcher or plotter-of-data to be forced to provide ANY specific theory for a 60 year cycle, the 800 year cycle, nor the 10,000 Ice Age cycle at present. Just revealing the untampered, uncorrected, un-edited and un-biased data is sufficient right now.
Previously on a WUWT discussion of DMI’s 80 degree north daily record, the summer temperatures in the Arctic (those for June, July, and August when average temps are above freezing) were clearly plotted as FALLING for the overall period of 1958 through 2010. (GISS-Hansen somehow claims an unsupported +4 degree rise in the Arctic during the same period for some reason from unnamed sites from unnamed data.) I’d strongly recommend not using the “annual” averaged temperatures but monthly plots of the monthly running 10 year averages for your plots, or plotting summer and winter “averages” separately. I say “running ten year average” specifically to avoid smoothing out the (potential) 60-year sinusoid trend while reducing the year-to-year variation.
I suspect you might see significantly different trends: Are summers actually getting cooler, while winters are getting warmer from 1850 through 2010?
A major nitpic, but a nitpick nonetheless:
re CO2, and: “From the physics I don’t doubt it has a role in warming…,”
Sure. It has a “role.” So do clouds, humans, animals, dirt, ice, water, water vapor, the thin stuff at the boundary between atmosphere and vacuum, ozone, Sun, Earth’s core, Earths albedo, Earth’s orbital distance, Earth’s gravity, worms, trees, deserts, seas, and probably anything that you’d care to name encased within Earth’s magnetosphere.
Of course I threw in the nitpick (with and without ‘k’) before pointing out I appreciate the work you folks did here. I’d love to see the followup to it when anyone gets the time.
Speaking of time, thanks also, for the time you put into it.
Thanks for a really interesting post Verity and TonyB.
I saw a nice animation of the changes in surface magnetism across the globe from 1600AD and was struck by the apparent correlation between areas of lower magnetism and higher regional temperatures. The motions of these areas can be on decadal to centennial timescales. I haven’t had time to investigate that eyeball estimate numerically, but I think Vuk’s ideas on magnetism should be taken seriously as a promising line of investigation.
tallbloke
I regularly look at Vuks work and comment on it. There is certainly some compelling correlation. How and why that should be so needs investigating further.
tonyb
Ulric Lyons,
Here are the links you need:
1) Wavelets:
http://www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/lewalle/tutor/tutor.html
2) Sunspot Numbers:
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/INTERNATIONAL/monthly/
With a mastery of link#1, your questions will dissolve.
Best Regards.
—
AusieDan & Orkneygal,
As indicated: If/when I secure sufficient reliable funding, elaboration & catering (for audience segments) may become more feasible.
Until then: It will be whatever balances with indispensable competing obligations. The choice is between sharing nothing and sharing strategically at a reduced pace. I choose the latter.
—
Stephen Wilde, I addressed your original comments here. I will offer a bit more: Of course clouds, pressure, wind, temperature, etc. are interrelated. I would advise (1) against underestimating the role of the atmosphere and (2) considering the alignment, acceleration, & integration of recurring phenomena with respect to annual terrestrial cycles (keeping in mind that there are many). [Relationships involving the hydrologic cycle, for example, reverse seasonally for large portions of the globe, so phase-acceleration (which switches relations as seasonal thresholds are passed) is not irrelevant to integrals.] Variables to look at: earth orientation parameters, geomagnetic aa index, solar wind. [The SCL’ pattern is buried in all of the preceding. Also, I have recently posted this request (which may interest participants like vukcevic & tallbloke in particular). Elaboration will have to wait.]
I wish you efficiency in your synthesizing efforts Stephen. Thank you for your comments.
Someone just now brought this to my attention. I have no clue whether this is true or not.
http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/08/special-post-life-on-this-earth-just.html