THE DEMISE OF SUNSPOTS—DEEP COOLING AHEAD?
Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
The three studies released by NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network this week, predicting the virtual vanishing of sunspots for the next several decades and the possibility of a solar minimum similar to the Maunder Minimum, came as stunning news. According to Frank Hill,
“the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”
The last time sunspots vanished from the sun for decades was during the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1700 AD was marked by drastic cooling of the climate and the maximum cold of the Little Ice Age.
What happened the last time sunspots disappeared?
Abundant physical evidence from the geologic past provides a record of former periods of global cooling. Geologic records provide clear evidence of past global cooling so we can use them to project global climate into the future—the past is the key to the future. So what can we learn from past sunspot history and climate change?
Galileo’s perfection of the telescope in 1609 allowed scientists to see sunspots for the first time. From 1610 A.D. to 1645 A.D., very few sunspots were seen, despite the fact that many scientists with telescopes were looking for them, and from 1645 to 1700 AD sunspots virtually disappeared from the sun (Fig. 1). During this interval of greatly reduced sunspot activity, known as the Maunder Minimum, global climates turned bitterly cold (the Little Ice Age), demonstrating a clear correspondence between sunspots and cool climate. After 1700 A.D., the number of observed sunspots increased sharply from nearly zero to more than 50 (Fig. 1) and the global climate warmed.
The Maunder Minimum was not the beginning of The Little Ice Age—it actually began about 1300 AD—but it marked perhaps the bitterest part of the cooling. Temperatures dropped ~4º C (~7 º F) in ~20 years in mid-to high latitudes. The colder climate that ensued for several centuries was devastating. The population of Europe had become dependent on cereal grains as their main food supply during the Medieval Warm Period and when the colder climate, early snows, violent storms, and recurrent flooding swept Europe, massive crop failures occurred. Winters in Europe were bitterly cold, and summers were rainy and too cool for growing cereal crops, resulting in widespread famine and disease. About a third of the population of Europe perished.
Glaciers all over the world advanced and pack ice extended southward in the North Atlantic. Glaciers in the Alps advanced and overran farms and buried entire villages. The Thames River and canals and rivers of the Netherlands frequently froze over during the winter. New York Harbor froze in the winter of 1780 and people could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing many harbors. The population of Iceland decreased by half and the Viking colonies in Greenland died out in the 1400s because they could no longer grow enough food there. In parts of China, warm weather crops that had been grown for centuries were abandoned. In North America, early European settlers experienced exceptionally severe winters.
So what can we learn from the Maunder? Perhaps most important is that the Earth’s climate is related to sunspots. The cause of this relationship is not understood, but it definitely exists. The second thing is that cooling of the climate during sunspot minima imposes great suffering on humans—global cooling is much more damaging than global warming.
Global cooling during other sunspot minima
The global cooling that occurred during the Maunder Minimum was neither the first nor the only such event. The Maunder was preceded by the Sporer Minimum (~1410–1540 A.D.) and the Wolf Minimum (~1290–1320 A.D.) and succeeded by the Dalton Minimum (1790–1830), the unnamed 1880–1915 minima, and the unnamed 1945–1977 Minima (Fig. 2). Each of these periods is characterized by low numbers of sunspots, cooler global climates, and changes in the rate of production of 14C and 10Be in the upper atmosphere. As shown in Fig. 2, each minimum was a time of global cooling, recorded in the advance of alpine glaciers.
The same relationship between sunspots and temperature is also seen between sunspot numbers and temperatures in Greenland and Antarctica (Fig. 3). Each of the four minima in sunspot numbers seen in Fig. 3 also occurs in Fig. 2. All of them correspond to advances of alpine glaciers during each of the cool periods.
Figure 4 shows the same pattern between solar variation and temperature. Temperatures were cooler during each solar minima.
What can we learn from this historic data? Clearly, a strong correlation exists between solar variation and temperature. Although this correlation is too robust to be merely coincidental, exactly how solar variation are translated into climatic changes on Earth is not clear. For many years, solar scientists considered variation in solar irradiance to be too small to cause significant climate changes. However, Svensmark (Svensmark and Calder, 2007; Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997; Svensmark et al., 2007) has proposed a new concept of how the sun may impact Earth’s climate. Svensmark recognized the importance of cloud generation as a result of ionization in the atmosphere caused by cosmic rays. Clouds reflect incoming sunlight and tend to cool the Earth. The amount of cosmic radiation is greatly affected by the sun’s magnetic field, so during times of weak solar magnetic field, more cosmic radiation reaches the Earth. Thus, perhaps variation in the intensity of the solar magnetic field may play an important role in climate change.
Are we headed for another Little Ice Age?
In 1999, the year after the high temperatures of the 1998 El Nino, I became convinced that geologic data of recurring climatic cycles (ice core isotopes, glacial advances and retreats, and sun spot minima) showed conclusively that we were headed for several decades of global cooling and presented a paper to that effect (Fig. 5). The evidence for this conclusion was presented in a series of papers from 2000 to 2011 (The data are available in several GSA papers, my website, a 2010 paper, and in a paper scheduled to be published in Sept 2011). The evidence consisted of temperature data from isotope analyses in the Greenland ice cores, the past history of the PDO, alpine glacial fluctuations, and the abrupt Pacific SST flips from cool to warm in 1977 and from warm to cool in 1999. Projection of the PDO to 2040 forms an important part of this cooling prediction.
Figure 5. Projected temperature changes to 2040 AD. Three possible scenarios are shown: (1) cooling similar to the 1945-1977 cooling, cooling similar to the 1880-1915 cooling, and cooling similar to the Dalton Minimum (1790-1820). Cooling similar to the Maunder Minimum would be an extension of the Dalton curve off the graph.
So far, my cooling prediction seems to be coming to pass, with no global warming above the 1998 temperatures and a gradually deepening cooling since then. However, until now, I have suggested that it was too early to tell which of these possible cooling scenarios were most likely. If we are indeed headed toward a disappearance of sunspots similar to the Maunder Minimum during the Little Ice Age then perhaps my most dire prediction may come to pass. As I have said many times over the past 10 years, time will tell whether my prediction is correct or not. The announcement that sun spots may disappear totally for several decades is very disturbing because it could mean that we are headed for another Little Ice Age during a time when world population is predicted to increase by 50% with sharply increasing demands for energy, food production, and other human needs. Hardest hit will be poor countries that already have low food production, but everyone would feel the effect of such cooling. The clock is ticking. Time will tell!
References
D’Aleo, J., Easterbrook, D.J., 2010. Multidecadal tendencies in Enso and global temperatures related to multidecadal oscillations: Energy & Environment, vol. 21 (5), p. 436–460.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2000, Cyclical oscillations of Mt. Baker glaciers in response to climatic changes and their correlation with periodic oceanographic changes in the Northeast Pacific Ocean: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 32, p.17.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2001, The next 25 years; global warming or global cooling? Geologic and oceanographic evidence for cyclical climatic oscillations: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 33, p.253.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2005, Causes and effects of late Pleistocene, abrupt, global, climate changes and global warming: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 37, p.41.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2006, Causes of abrupt global climate changes and global warming; predictions for the coming century: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 38, p. 77.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2006, The cause of global warming and predictions for the coming century: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 38, p.235-236.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2007, Geologic evidence of recurring climate cycles and their implications for the cause of global warming and climate changes in the coming century: Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, vol. 39, p. 507.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2007, Late Pleistocene and Holocene glacial fluctuations; implications for the cause of abrupt global climate changes: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 39, p.594
Easterbrook, D.J., 2007, Younger Dryas to Little Ice Age glacier fluctuations in the Fraser Lowland and on Mt. Baker, Washington: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 39, p.11.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2007, Historic Mt. Baker glacier fluctuations—geologic evidence of the cause of global warming: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 39, p. 13.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2008, Solar influence on recurring global, decadal, climate cycles recorded by glacial fluctuations, ice cores, sea surface temperatures, and historic measurements over the past millennium: Abstracts of American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting, San Francisco.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2008, Implications of glacial fluctuations, PDO, NAO, and sun spot cycles for global climate in the coming decades: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 40, p. 428.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2008, Correlation of climatic and solar variations over the past 500 years and predicting global climate changes from recurring climate cycles: Abstracts of 33rd International Geological Congress, Oslo, Norway.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2009, The role of the oceans and the Sun in late Pleistocene and historic glacial and climatic fluctuations: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 41, p. 33.
Eddy, J.A., 1976, The Maunder Minimum: Science, vol. 192, p. 1189–1202.
Hoyt, D.V. and Schatten, K.H., 1997, The Role of the sun in climate change: Oxford University, 279 p.
Svensmark, H. and Calder, N., 2007, The chilling stars: A new theory of climate change: Icon Books, Allen and Unwin Pty Ltd, 246 p.
Svensmark, H. and Friis-Christensen, E., 1997, Variation of cosmic ray flux and global cloud coverda missing link in solar–climate relationships: Journal of Atmospheric and SolareTerrestrial Physics, vol. 59, p. 1125–1132.
Svensmark, H., Pedersen, J.O., Marsh, N.D., Enghoff, M.B., and Uggerhøj, U.I., 2007, Experimental evidence for the role of ions in particle nucleation under atmospheric conditions: Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. 463, p. 385–396.
Usoskin, I.G., Mursula, K., Solanki, S.K., Schussler, M., and Alanko, K., 2004, Reconstruction of solar activity for the last millenium using 10Be data: Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 413, p. 745–751.
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UPDATE: Bob Tisdale has posted a rebuttal. Here is what he has to say via email.
Hi Anthony: The following is a link to my notes on the Easterbrook post:
We should have progressed beyond using outdated TSI datasets, misrepresenting the PDO, and creating bogus global temperature graphs in our arguments against AGW.
I’ve advised Easterbrook, and we’ll see what he has to say – Anthony
Murray says:
June 17, 2011 at 10:59 am
Tisdale’s caveats seem more like nitpicking than contributing.
I agree, the thrust of the Easterbrook presentation is correct. The world temps follow a combination of PDO and solar output fluctuations that cannot be challenged over the short term. We need to look into whether both data series are connected over the longer term.
The TSI argument is just a strawman used by the warmista’s, there are much bigger fluctuations in UV and EUV that can account for a larger solar contribution to global temp changes. Perhaps some of the TSI brigade should acquaint themselves with some of the new research in this area especially concentrating on the polar vortex changes during extended solar minimums. The last three very cold winters provide ample data for those wanting to dig deeper.
Easterbrook uses the standard PDO values (http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest) as far as I can see. I cant see why it is necessary to compare with other pacific indexes.
Thank you Dr. Easterbrook.
Mark Wilson says @ur momisugly June 17, 2011 at 2:13 pm “Doesn’t work that way. You are the one claiming that current ice levels are the lowest ever. You need to back up your claim.”
Mark Wilson says: @ur momisugly June 17, 2011 at 2:15 pm “The arctic warmed the last time the PDO was in it’s warm phase. Then the cold phase came along and it cooled back down.”
Is there a citation / or citations that empirically review how the PDO in warm/cold phase impacted the ice that you can share?
Looking forward to reading those. Thanks.
steven mosher says:
June 17, 2011 at 2:08 pm
R. Gates. I bet we go lower than 2007 with ice this year.
whadda u think
_____
Could be….I’d give it a better than 50/50 chance at the present moment. Weather will play a big role, but the large expanses of open water right now in the Kara. Laptev, and Barrents sea means lots of warm water going into the heart of the melt season in July and August,
Old Engineer says:
June 17, 2011 at 6:36 pm
The link to the distant past in terms of Grand Solar Minimums and climate downturns exists mostly in Literature from the times in question. Science as we know it either did not exist or was in its infancy. I.E. – not enough was looked at to pin down a causation for the correlation, nor is there enough knowledge to determine a mechanism for the big chills. We just know that in space-time, they co-exist.
Even larger questions loom:
What specific phenomena on the Sun (that we now see) do what things to the climate, both in Grand Minima and Grand Maxima?
Are the proxies that are available for the unobserved periods of Solar Activity accurate and without contamination?
Do the various Grand Minima always exhibit the same set of phenomena, or are they unique combinations?
R. Gates says:
June 17, 2011 at 8:16 pm
steven mosher says:
June 17, 2011 at 2:08 pm
R. Gates. I bet we go lower than 2007 with ice this year.
whadda u think
_____
Could be….I’d give it a better than 50/50 chance at the present moment. Weather will play a big role, but the large expanses of open water right now in the Kara. Laptev, and Barrents sea means lots of warm water going into the heart of the melt season in July and August.
========================
Why don’t you guys take your off-thread to one that discusses sea ice….as opposed to a discussion on the sunspot issue.
Or….better yet….why don’t you just email each other.
Typical R Gates blog-o-terrorist hi-jack….but this thread has NOTHING to do with sea ice discussion.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
John B says:
June 17, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Certainly it “looks” like a conspiracy, yet it really doesn’t qualify as one because it’s there for everybody to see: The UN’s Agenda 21. Everything is explained in black and white, and please don’t count yourself as uninformed as Naomi Orekses because she’s clueless (the left has a huge gaggle of useful tools).
Henry@ur momisugly R.Gates
Note that the Co2 content has increased from 0.03% to about 0.04% in the last 4 or 5 decades.
That is a difference of 0.01%. Referring to that as a 30 or 40% increase is clearly a bit misleading.
There has been no exact scientifc proof that a net increase in the CO2 causes warming. Namely it also causes cooling by deflecting sunlight and by taking part in the life cycle. Plants & trees need energy and CO2 to grow, it is an endothermic reaction.
There is also clear evidence of earth has become greener in the past 3 or 4 decades as reported here recently on WUWT. For more on this I suggest you read my blog:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
I find that the warming observed on earth in the past 4 decades was caused by an increase in maxima. Maxima were find rising in a ratio of 4 for Maxima to 2 for mean average temperature to 1 for minima.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
I therefore find that the warming was natural and was not caused by an increase in GHG’s. If the ratio found was the other way around I would have agreed with you that an increase in GHG’s had caused the warming.
Note that the SH did not show any warming, most of it happened on the NH.
So you can all stand on your heads now and cry over spilled ice:
but there is nothing you or I could have done about it.
Unless you can stop the sun from shining and/ or make clouds appear?
Then you must be God.
I say more carbon dioxide is better for the environment as I can see it works like fertiliser and stimulates growth.
Bob Tisdale says:
June 17, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Is TSI expected to drop below the minimums of the last few solar cycles? I’ve never seen this discussed in any paper presented about the current solar minimum.
No, there is no reason to expect that.
Therefore, where do these expectations of decreased TSI come from?
From the degradation of the widely used PMOD TSI composite: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-Diff-PMOD-SORCE.png and http://www.leif.org/research/PMOD%20TSI-SOHO%20keyhole%20effect-degradation%20over%20time.pdf
My question for you, Leif: are we expecting TSI to drop below its “normal” cycle minimum during the upcoming cycles?
No, there is no evidence to support such an expectation, on the contrary http://www.leif.org/EOS/Foukal-Dimming.pdf :
“Solar activity minima between 1914 and 1996 exhibit no significant secular increase in f (Foukal & Milano 2001). This argues against a secular increase of TSI due to increasing network area during the 20th century, as proposed in addition to 11 year TSI modulation by Lean et al. (1995) and by Lockwood & Stamper (1999). This finding from archival solar images is supported by the subsequent reconsideration of such additional secular solar brightening over the past century (Lean et al. 2002; see also Svalgaard & Cliver 2010).”
Geoff Sharp says:
June 17, 2011 at 7:50 pm
The TSI argument is just a strawman used by the warmista’s, there are much bigger fluctuations in UV and EUV that can account for a larger solar contribution to global temp changes.
UV and EUV fluctuations follow those in TSI because they are due to the same cause [magnetic field].
ROTFLMAO! Clearly the winner! If there are any prizes to hand out, Anthony should immediately reward Roger Knights for coining the term of the decade and perhaps the next few solar periods.
Right. And Obama is not a socialist because ivory tower academics have not pronounced him thus. Some things are self-evident, and prominent among them is the fact that a cooling phase peaked in the late-1970’s and a warming phase began circa the mid-1980’s. You are correct by accident with respect to the weasel words “body of scientific work”, because at least one actual scientist was on the right track, see here and here. Goddard has been collecting the media reports for quite a while and many have appeared here.
Here is the truth: The pop-scientists of the 1970’s were busy doing then, what the AGW pop-scientists are doing today. They are *not* promoting an ice-age or CAGW Earth per se, but, they are trapped only thinking inside-the-box. To be exact, they were (and are) extrapolating their current climate forwards without even considering that it will once again turn-around naturally.
Catastrophic Thinking in a nutshell …
1970’s cool phase —-> coming ice-age
1990’s warm phase —-> coming scorched Earth
And yes, that can be stretched back into the previous cycles of warm/cold with the exact same result.
The rational thinkers of each period did not sweat this, they knew (we know) that these micro-cycles (of admittedly variable duration) will once again change.
The irrational thinkers of each period pressed forward, citing future catastrophe culminating today in the absurd precautionary principle of ‘de-industrialize or die‘.
When you try to erase something the size of the ice-age hype, well, I’m afraid not even a red pill will help you escape from the AGW Matrix. But I encourage you to continue to try because nothing rallies the troops better than an insult to their very intelligence.
Has Hell has frozen over? Steve Mosher tied himself to a concrete prediction? It is not particularly courageous to jump in *now*, as we are but a few days from the NH Summer Solstice. Joe Bastardi went early in right here at WUWT in November 2010 (as did Foster Grant Tamino from what I have been told).
But since Mosher is a very careful scientist, he must know that even though Ice Extent has increased since 2007, it has been exposed as a practically useless metric due to the skewing factors of wind and compaction.
The point is this: if we skeptics were as devious and hypocritical as he constantly portrays us, we would be pressing this issue even more today than in 2008, 2009, 2010. But we are not because most realize it is a game of ice-cube roulette. I am left wondering why someone as careful as Steve would even jump into this now? What is the motive?
rbateman says:
June 17, 2011 at 9:01 pm
What specific phenomena on the Sun (that we now see) do what things to the climate, both in Grand Minima and Grand Maxima?
TSI and things that tag along [e.g. UV]
Are the proxies that are available for the unobserved periods of Solar Activity accurate and without contamination?
Not perfect, but rapidly improving.
Do the various Grand Minima always exhibit the same set of phenomena, or are they unique combinations?
We have really only observed one [the Maunder], so it is hard to tell.
from SORCE website :
Precise space measurements obtained during the past 20 years imply that TSI varies on the order of 0.1% over the solar cycle (see Figure 1), but with greater variations on a short-term basis. For example, the passage of sunspots over the disk produces 2-4 times that amount. The variation apparently occurs over most time scales, from day-to-day variations up to and including variations over the 11-year solar cycle. How TSI variations are distributed in wavelength is still poorly understood. The largest relative solar variations are factors of two or more at ultraviolet and shorter wavelengths, but the greater total energy available at visible and longer wavelengths makes their small variations of potential importance.
I do hope Dr. E responds. Jumping all over his article w.r.t. TSI is somewhat vacuous based upon the explanation given above.
Also, re Mr. Bob Tisdale’s
Fig 2. I note that there is a rather sharp, in magnitude, drop between mid 1998 and late 1999 – perhaps a poor choice of words by Dr. E ?, but still, what Dr. E was trying to say ?
regardless of the criticism, and I understand it is good that there is criticism, to relegate this article to the trash is to offer a rather shallow and short sided opinion.
Lets see what develops.
Leif,
thank you for the paper. Unfortunately I would have to describe it as pearls before swine. I think it was rather poor, but, that is probably my own ignorance.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 17, 2011 at 10:01 pm
UV and EUV fluctuations follow those in TSI because they are due to the same cause [magnetic field].
This statement is simply incorrect. EUV can vary by at least 16% over a cycle. Furthermore modern EUV records display a reluctance to follow a baseline ie the current levels even after a ramp up of SC24 are just above the bottom of the SC22/23 minimum (maybe lower on the next update). So levels can be lower during a prolonged solar grand minimum. We are also seeing the lowest thermosphere height in the satellite era which is a direct result of lower EUV and solar wind. It’s time to come clean on this topic and stop ignoring the facts.
I always wonder why the TSI proxy records never show a common baseline?
Ged says:
June 17, 2011 at 2:24 pm
@R. Gates
I posted you a link to the actual temperatures. Where is this warming you are saying would be there? Furthermore, why the Arctic and not the Antarctic? The data is not showing a rapid warming, at least no data I see, it’s completely along the normal line. If there is actual data, please post it like I posted some, instead of telling me what the data disagrees with (and then making knocks against political beliefs. You know nothing about my beliefs in any way, shape, or form)
As Latitude pointed out, water temp is the only thing that makes sense; and water temp will be controlled by circulation patterns of the oceans (since, again, AIR TEMP is holding along the normal average line, and thus cannot explain what we are seeing).
————
A short term temperature reading over a very narrow region of the arctic means very nothing in terms of the climate or measuring climate change being seen in the arctic. If you really want to understand the truth of what’s going on, you can start with real scientific research as found at sites like this:
http://amap.no/swipa/
Geoff Sharp says: “I agree, the thrust of the Easterbrook presentation is correct. The world temps follow a combination of PDO and solar output fluctuations that cannot be challenged over the short term.”
It can’t be challenged? Why’s that? The PDO is an aftereffect of ENSO. The PDO does not represent the Sea Surface Temperature of the North Pacific. The PDO is actually inversely related to the detrended SST anomalies of the North Pacific over decadal time scales and the PDO lags them. Taking all that into consideration, through what mechanism would the PDO impact global temperatures?
While it certainly is begining to look as though the “Gore Effect” is more significant than first thought I suggest that the developing minimum should not be named for political reasons but after Landscheidt and his work on solar torque cycles who predicted the developing state of affairs.
After the current solar cycle 24 maximum in 2013-2015(?) its going to be downhill all the way. I’m buying coal mining stocks in the UK, snow shoes and spears for mammoth hunting. As the geomagnetic field collapses the developing Landscheidt Minimum could well trigger a full blown 100,000 year glaciation.
steptoe fan says: “Also, re Mr. Bob Tisdale’s Fig 2. I note that there is a rather sharp, in magnitude, drop between mid 1998 and late 1999…”
That’s simply the response of the North Pacific SST anomalies to the initial phase of the 1998/99/00/01 La Nina. The 1997/98 El Nino was massive and it was followed by a rather long La Nina.
Steve Goddard has been turning up story after story about warming and cooling fears throughout the years.
This one is a gem by a scientist who got it right and it ties in directly to the current projected down-sizing of solar activity …
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/1951-mit-scientist-correctly-predicted-global-cooling-based-on-sunspots/
Of course that is more than offset by the endless stories of coming catastrophe. These are titles only (go there for links) and were just posted in the past few hours …
1950 : Record Rain In Queensland
1950 Consensus : Earth Warming And Glaciers Melting
1950 : Rapid Warming In Greenland
1941 : Terrible Droughts Forecast Until 1990
1912 Plan To Warm Up The Arctic And Improve The Climate
1911 : Climate Experts Said That Wireless Communications Are Destroying The Climate Of Southern California
1923 : Remarkable Warming In The Arctic
1914 : Rapid Ice Loss At Both Poles
1923 : Exceptional Thawing In The Arctic
1934 : World Wide Drought – Glaciers Receding
1947 : “Catastrophic Arctic Warming”
There must be a thousand of these over there already, and there is no end in sight.
Leif Svalgaard (June 17, 2011 at 10:01 pm): Thanks, Leif.
Climate Nature did NOT cooperate. It never does, and it never makes straight lines for long.
I am glad that it did not, for now there is healthy competiton in the climate business once more.
The Sun is no exception, making unexpected twists and turns.
The behavior of the Sun during SC24 has remained remarkably consistent. At some point during the cycle change to before SC24, that behavior departed from the cycles before it. We don’t know why it did that, but we do know that it did change.
Murphy’s Law gets into this act, since we don’t know for certain how long the current Solar behavior will last, the record indicating various degrees of Minimum. The data set is poor. Man’s aptitude for choosing wisely is not in high regard.
AGW has been caught crying wolf, poisoning the well of choice by going overboard with exaggeration.
Man does not need any help displaying the knack of making bad choices at the real junctures of critical importance.
Ah, but there is still hope: Perhaps the shock of almost getting shoved into hasty reaction will force a bit of maturity.
It could also be the Sun, 93 million miles away, that nothing new takes place under, which finally forces some much needed sobriety.
RockyRoad said:
“please don’t count yourself as uninformed as Naomi Orekses because she’s clueless (the left has a huge gaggle of useful tools).”
I am intrigued as to why you think she is clueless. I have not read her book, but I have seen her presentations and read articles by and about her. She is a science historian, not a scientist. She makes what looks to me like a solid argument that the climate sceptic movement can be traced back directly to anti-regulation and anti-communist groups like the George C Marshall Institute, via names like Singer and Seitz, and other conservative think tanks like Cato. I am sure you know the story. She doesn’t say all sceptics are in that vein, but she contends that those are the origins of climate scepticism. She also finds that the tactic of “doubt is our product” is shared with tobacco, acid rain, CFC and other sceptical movements.
According to wikipedia:
“The Marshall Institute has been critical of the book, but most other reviewers received it favorably.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Oreskes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Institute
Which of this do you doubt? No name calling, please, I would really like to know.
Blade says:
June 18, 2011 at 1:33 am
And to that I add this:
Real change comes too widely separated in time for a species short on memory.
” I am intrigued as to why you think she is clueless.”
Oreskes is clueless because she denies the ability of well educated thoughtful individuals to weigh up evidence for themselves independently.
Whenever such people reach conclusions that differs from hers she tries to rationalise it with paranoid constructs about right wing think tanks, tobacco and oil companies et al.
Jim Cripwell says:
June 17, 2011 at 6:49 am (Edit)
Tallbloke writes “The numerical model I created”
How did you validated your model? Have you used it to predict the future, and then compared the predicted results with what actually happend? If you have done this, do your predicted results agree tihe the observed data? And have you done this a sufficient number of times so that the agreement could not be coincidental, at the 5 sd level? If you have not, then I suspect what you model predicts is not worth the powder to blow it to hell.
Easy now Jim. I only created it two years ago, and it pretty obvious we are at the peak of the warming curve, so it’s not possible to validate it against observations in such a short time. My model doesn’t produce different answers each time I run it, because it is based on the motion of the planets and Earth’s spin rate, which are predictable. It doesn’t predict individual El Nino events effect on the surface temperature record, so it will take a decade or more to validate it against observations.
On the plus side, it hindcasts well, back to 1825.
http://www.adn.com/2011/06/16/1921104/arctic-ice-melting-faster-than.html
Further problems with this paper is how they measure Summer temperatures from ice cores and lake sediments. The resolution is generally just a few years at best, yearly at best with sediments, but no resolution seperating seasons. Tree rings are the only ones that determine growing seasons, but Summer can’t be distinguished between the growing season in Spring or Autumn. (only if trees grow during Summer) Also most of the Arctic doesn’t have any trees (even if it was just land, too cold in Summer) and the tree-line is only around the sub-Arctic. Therefore the sub-Artic doesn’t say much about most of the Arctic itself, even if tree rings were good proxies for temperatures. The sub-Arctic temperatures observed using modern instruments vary much greater than what happens in the Arctic circle during all seasons. Tree rings are a good proxy for rainfall during the growing season, but that is all.