Guest post by David Archibald
When I started out in climate science in 2005, the climate people ignored the solar physics community. A casual perusal of the literature though indicated that the difference in climate outcome from Dikpati’s (NASA) estimate for Solar Cycle 24 amplitude of 190 and Clilverd’s (British Antarctic Survey) estimate of 42 amounted to 2.0°C for the mid-latitudes.
Since then, the prognostications of astute scientists with respect to Solar Cycle 24 amplitude have come to pass. Some commentators though are over-reaching and predicting a recurrence of the Maunder Minimum. We now have the tools to predict climate out to the mid-21st Century with a fair degree of confidence, and a repeat of the Maunder Minimum is unlikely. A de Vries Cycle repeat of the Dalton Minimum is what is in prospect up to the early 2030s and then a return to normal conditions of solar activity, and normal climate.
The three tools we have to predict climate on a multi-decadal basis are the solar cycle length – temperature relationship, the logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide and Ed Fix’s solar cycle prediction. Let’s start with the solar cycle length – temperature relationship, first proposed by Friis-Christensen and Lassen in 1991. This is the relationship for Hanover, New Hampshire:
The relationship established for Hanover is a 0.7°C change in temperature for each year of solar cycle length. Solar Cycle 23 was three years longer than Solar Cycle 22, and thus the average annual temperature for Hanover, New Hampshire will be 2.1°C lower over Solar Cycle 24 than it had been over Solar Cycle 23. Why did I pick Hanover? Governor Lynch recently vetoed New Hampshire leaving the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Professor Jan-Erik Solheim of Oslo University replicated this methodology for ten Norwegian temperature records, and thus this methodology is confirmed as valid:
These ten Norwegian temperature records all confirm a solar cycle length – temperature relationship, and predict that temperatures of these stations will be about 1.5°C colder over the next ten years than they have been over the last ten years.
The second tool to use is the logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide. The pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was approximately 290 ppm. It is currently 390 ppm. The first 20 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provides half the heating effect to date. By the time we get to the current concentration, each additional 100 ppm provides a further 0.1°C of heating. We are currently adding 2 ppm to the atmosphere each year so carbon dioxide will provide further heating of 0.1°C every 50 years. That said, the temperature fall over the next 22 years should result in a higher rate of carbon dioxide uptake by the oceans. The logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide is shown by this graph, using data derived from the Modtran site at the University of Chicago:
Lastly, to put a multi-decadal climate forecast together, we need a prediction of solar cycle length that comes with a very good hindcast match. This is provided by Ed Fix’s long ephemeris simulation. This simulation is described in Ed Fix’s paper which is included in an Elsevier volume edited by Don Easterbrook, “Evidence-Based Climate Science”, due out in September. You can put advance orders in for it now:
This is a window of Ed Fix’s simulation:
The green line is the solar cycle record from 1914 to 2010, with alternate cycles reversed. Solar Cycles 19 to 23 are annotated. The red lines is the model output, from which the lengths of individual solar cycles in the mid-21st Century can be calculated.
Combining all the above tools, this is the climate forecast for Hanover, New Hampshire, which is a good proxy for what is going to happen along the US-Canadian border:
Solar Cycles 24 to 27 are annotated. For the next thirty years odd, temperatures will be at mid-19th Century levels. With the two year decrease in the length of Solar Cycle 26 from 25, temperatures will rise by 1.4°C by mid-century to late 20th Century levels.
By then, anthropogenic carbon dioxide will be providing a very welcome 0.2°C to the temperature.
The graph shows that quantified solar effects dwarf the quantified anthropogenic carbon dioxide effect.
David Archibald
12th July 2011
Robert Austin says:
July 13, 2011 at 8:36 am
Pamela Gray says:
July 13, 2011 at 6:50 am
“It is my opinion that suggestions of cause and effect without plausible mechanisms clearly outlined as part of the post does a huge disservice to the debate. Until the subpar aspects of this post are corrected, I consider this post a fail.”
“Pamela,
I think that you are being overly harsh and critical of this post. I agree that an official scientific paper should propose a mechanism in addition to trying to extract pasterns and correlations (possibly spurious) from disparate data (can we say bristle-cone pines?). On the other hand, there is room on these informal blogs for people to play with the data and look for interesting patterns that lead to discussion. Finding patterns is just a clue that says “dig here”. There is no guarantee of treasure at the location.”
Everyone, AGW fanatics and skeptics alike continue to pursue the holy grail of a climate model without knowing or including the complex interations of all of the variables involved. Example, a few large volcanic eruptions could be game changers for all of the models. I do not believe these have been proven to be very predictable, though Iben Browning thought they were.
Tom in Florida says July 13, 2011 at 11:12 am
Is this what you’re after, Tom?
R. Gates says:
July 13, 2011 at 10:16 am
I suppose you don’t exhale CO2?
“”””” Richard S Courtney says:
July 13, 2011 at 6:20 am
Richard111:
At July 13, 2011 at 5:11 am you ask;
“Interesting stuff, thank you. But this layman is still baffled as to how that first 20 parts per million of CO2 causes any sort of global warming. Surely after all these years there must be tutorials that a layman can understand. Anybody have a link or two, please?”
The best explanation for Laymen that I know is provided by Jo Nova at
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/4-carbon-dioxide-is-already-absorbing-almost-all-it-can/
Simplisticly, what happens is as follows.
The Earth’s surface is heated by the Sun and the heated surface loses this heat. One of the ways the surface loses heat is to emit heat radiation (i.e. infra red radiation, IR). This IR is energy. “””””
Richard, as you well know ln(1+x) = x for small values of x.
I submit that the believable observed (actual measurments) of atmospheric CO2 and earth surface Temperature, are not sufficiently noise free to distinguish between logarithmic, and linear; or for that matter any other definable function. Even if we accept the jonova argument postulating that because of “saturation”, the relationship is NON-LINEAR, that is no justification for asserting that the non-linear function is LOGARITHMIC.
As to the up/down 50-50 split of the presumed isotropic LWIR emission from the atmosphere, I have several times pointed out that the escape path to space is favored over the return path to the surface, because the troposphere has both a density and a Temperature lapse rate with altitude; so any upper layer of atmosphere, always has a lower line width for emission spectrum lines or bands, since both Doppler(Temperature), and density (collision) broadening will be less, so recapture is lower probability going upwards, than it is going downwards, to a denser warmer air layer that has even wider Temperature and Density broadening of the absorption bands.
Also though the “greenhouse capture” effect may warm the atmosphere (troposphere) an immediate result of that is that ordinary “heat” transport processes (conduction and convection) take effect, and it is obvious to anyone who is smarter than a fifth grader, that those processes invariably transport “heat” upwards, because that is the direction of the Temperature gradient; conduction and second law. The density gradient directs the convection also upwards, so the atmosphere does not significantly “heat” the surface by thermal processes, which together account for a good fraction of the energy transport in the atmosphere. And we shouldn’t forget, the transport of latent heat as a result of atmospheric evaporation and convection of water vapor.
That leaves LWIR radiation to deal with the rest, and a most likely consequence of downward LWIR radiation, is absorption in the top 10-50 microns of water surface, since more than 70% of earth surface is water, and LWIR does not penetrate deeply as does solar spectrum energy, so the effect of downward LWIR radiation is to promote prompt surface evaporation, which immediately returns most of that energy to the atmosphere in the guise of latent heat, as well as additional water vapor, which directly blocks additional solar spectrum energy from reaching the surface.
H2O in any phase anywhere in the atmosphere can absorb a significant fraction of the incoming solar spectrum energy. Not having a super Teracomputer to calculate, I have to simply eyeball available published spectral absorption graphs, for H2O, and I would put the likely H2O absorption as about 15% +/- 7.5% of the total solar spectrum energy. I of course have to allow for the traditional 3:1 fudge factor endemic to climate science.
Even additional CO2 will absorb some small part of the incoming solar spectrum energy, and prevent it from reaching the ocean; so it may warm the atmosphere, but it cools the deep oceans where most of earth’s free clean green renewable solar energy is stored.
Many thanks to Richard S Courtney at 6:20 am and Williamat 7:00 am above for your informative replies and links to more data which I will be reading shortly.
I am currently trying to discover just how much energy is transported up from the surface assuming a global average temperature of 15C. If I assume a global average surface emissivity of 0.93 then I get a value of 362.8W/m^2 leaving the surface. This will be gray body radiation covering a wide IR band from about 3microns to beyond 100microns. My simplistic evaluation of the energy curve shows that the 15micron band carries just 5% of that energy, some 18W/m^2.
I can well believe that all that energy is absorbed by CO2 molecules in the air but I cannot believe all that energy is reradiated without some of it heating the air. The question is how much heat goes into the air and how much is reradiated. My unverified calcs suggest just 2%, 7.25W/m^2, is returned to the surface in the 15micron IR band. And all of that “backradiation” can only happen at night under clear skies. Any clouds and and/or even limited daylight will totally swamp that CO2 “backradiation”.
Gates is cherry-picking again:
“…looking back nearly a million years, the most non-normal event that we can measure is the current high level of CO2.”
The fact is that current CO2 levels are extremely low. Here’s the big picture.
See http://www.agwnot.blogspot.com/ . I’m expecting a rather cooler period, but agree it will not be a Maunder Minimum. We should be in a Deep Grand Minimum like the Maunder, but we are well up the ca 1000 year warming half cycle, so not as cold. 2 different approaches, – similar conclusions.
DA correlates temperature to SC length, and also tried SC amplitude. I suspect a better and simpler correlation : temperature to SSN direct. Anyones tried that? More noise of course. Also try F10.7 to temps for a further improvement.
Smokey says:
July 13, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Gates is cherry-picking again:
“…looking back nearly a million years, the most non-normal event that we can measure is the current high level of CO2.”
The fact is that current CO2 levels are extremely low. Here’s the big picture.
==========================================================
Of course……but I think he’s having fun with it, he can’t possibly be serious
Co2 was higher, plants/diatoms/plankton/bacteria/etc came along and used it up, CO2 levels got so low that plants slowed down until they reached an equilibrium with the low amount of CO2 that’s available for them…..that holds CO2 levels at a very dangerous but stable low level
………obviously, because plants speed up when you increase CO2 levels
Cosmic rays are just trace particle. By smokey logic, since a trace gas cant impact the climate, a trace particle cant.
Good eye. There are several things missing from this post.
1. no description of the methods (not reproducealbe)
2. No source and no data.
3. No physical mechanisms.
Worse than Mann, which is quite an accomplishment.
And he leaves out the other half of human forcings ( C02 is only HALF the story). And he applies the warming due to c02 wrong.
Be as skeptical of the stories you like to hear as you are of climate warming science.
Tom in Florida says:
July 13, 2011 at 11:12 am
R. Gates says:
July 13, 2011 at 10:16 am
“Excellent point. But looking back nearly a million years, the most non-normal event that we can measure is the current high level of CO2. But of course, according to skeptics, CO2 is a barely necessary “trace gas” that has very little impact on the climate.”
Another Gatesism, to wit “current high level of CO2″. Technically correct in that CO2 is higher than the recent past but a Gatesism none the less due to no accompanying sense of magnitude.
Now Gates, what say you about the Eemian period?
_____
Well, it seems my skeptical friends always want to reject the fact that CO2 is 40% greater than it has been on average over the past million years, which of course incorporates the Eemian period. So now, during this this interglacial our temps are approaching the Eemian temps, and, if models are correct, we will exceed those temperatures in the next few centuries at least. A better example of the kinds of climate changes we may be in store for are perhaps more akin to the PETM.
Smokey says:
July 13, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Gates is cherry-picking again:
“…looking back nearly a million years, the most non-normal event that we can measure is the current high level of CO2.”
The fact is that current CO2 levels are extremely low.
______
It seems you’d like to forget that the evolution of the current basis of our grain supply came about during the mild weather of the Holocene, with its related range of CO2 averaging around 280 ppm. Grains are the foundation of our civilization, and tend not to like the steamy jungles of the planet when CO2 might have been much higher. We (i.e. modern humans and our civilization) pretty much evolved on a planet with CO2 in a range around 280 ppm, but if you think you’d like to return to a time when CO2 was much higher, I guess you’d like to see how things were when there were no grain plants and humans were tree-shrew like animals.
David;
“It doesn’t matter how it works. The stats says it works.”
One replication validates your model? Not in my book. That’s the book I used to teach graduate research out of.
Trying to boil down climate to a few simple variables that become predictive is, IMHO, a fool’s errand.
Sorry. Ultimately your model, no matter how elegant, will be disproved.
Regards.
Jay
P.S.
I admire most of you on this blog for being so polite to David Archibald, when all climate modeling is really nothing more than the “Kings New Clothes” revisited. It became important because the government and various foundations threw so much money at it. In truth, climate modeling is where you START with real research. It has gotten completely out of hand with the net result that the credibility of science and scientists in general will take a long time recovering from the disgrace of “Climategate” and all the rest of it.
R. Gates says:
July 13, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Grains are the foundation of our civilization, and tend not to like the steamy jungles of the planet when CO2 might have been much higher.
=================================================================
Grains are flowering grasses, they evolved in the early Cretaceous. CO2 levels were 2-4 times higher.
What we grow for food has been hybridized and selectively bred from those………
Companies like GreenSeeds, etc have developed grains, particularly rice, that do just fine in hot steamy jungles
I think Ed Fix might be a bit embarrassed at the way his study has been represented. More info in a thread from a couple of months ago here:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/david-archibalds-mysterious-model-from-ed-fix/#comment-6277
George E. Smith:
Thankyou for your post at July 13, 2011 at 12:08 pm which comments on my post at July 13, 2011 at 6:20 am.
Your post is quite long so I will address what I understand to be your points. If I miss any you think important then that is my failure to understand, so I would be grateful if you were to point it out.
You say to me:
“Richard, as you well know ln(1+x) = x for small values of x.”
I did see this statement (which is correct in every way) but I fail to understand the point you are making so I cannot address it. Sorry.
You then say;
“I submit that the believable observed (actual measurments) of atmospheric CO2 and earth surface Temperature, are not sufficiently noise free to distinguish between logarithmic, and linear; or for that matter any other definable function.”
Yes, your submission is absolutely right. However, the logarithmic relationship is derived from theory (Beer–Lambert Law) and laboratory experiments. Indeed, this relationship is why the observed data in the real world are too “noisy” to observe the logarithmic relationship.
As my post explained, almost all the IR that CO2 can absorb is absorbed in the atmosphere. Much is absorbed by water vapour and CO2 absorbs almost all the rest. Indeed, the first 20 ppmv of CO2 absorbs about three quarters of the available IR, the next 20 ppmv absorbs about three quarters of what is left, and so on. By the time 200 ppmv is reached there is so little effect of additional CO2 that the effect is lost in the “noise”. This is clear from the graph in the link I provided; i.e.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/4-carbon-dioxide-is-already-absorbing-almost-all-it-can/
Anybody can see that the effect is so attenuated above 200 ppmv that little if any discernible effect results from increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. And, as I said, other effects are important so this explains why I agree that CO2 is a GHG but any variations to its concentration above ~200 ppm can only have a trivial effect on climate that is too small to be discernible.
You then say;
“As to the up/down 50-50 split of the presumed isotropic LWIR emission from the atmosphere, I have several times pointed out that the escape path to space is favored over the return path to the surface, because the troposphere has both a density and a Temperature lapse rate with altitude; so any upper layer of atmosphere, always has a lower line width for emission spectrum lines or bands, since both Doppler(Temperature), and density (collision) broadening will be less, so recapture is lower probability going upwards, than it is going downwards, to a denser warmer air layer that has even wider Temperature and Density broadening of the absorption bands.”
Yes, but so what?
Almost all the IR from the surface that CO2 can absorb is absorbed in the lowest 100m of the atmosphere. I fail to understand how the effects you mention can be significant over a mere 100m altitude.
Then you assert;
“Also though the “greenhouse capture” effect may warm the atmosphere (troposphere) an immediate result of that is that ordinary “heat” transport processes (conduction and convection) take effect,”
Hmmm. That one is interesting. Molecules do not warm by radiative excitation: they are raised to a higher vibrational and/or rotational state.
However, an excited molecule can return to a lower excitation state by
(a) emitting a photon
or
(b) collision with another molecule.
Almost all the molecules in the air are nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) which are not greenhouse gases. So, collisional de-excitation of a CO2 molecule is almost certain to be by transfer of energy to N2 and O2 molecules which are accelerated (i.e. warmed) by the transfer. Hence, this does “warm the atmosphere” to some degree. Indeed, this is why the water vapour feedback which supposedly enhances the effect of atmospheric CO2 leads to the putative ‘hot spot’ (which is not detected as having occurred).
But the effects of collisional de-excitation are to reduce (n.b. reduce and not remove) the amount of back radiation and also – as you say – to alter the lapse rate.
And you add;
“That leaves LWIR radiation to deal with the rest, and a most likely consequence of downward LWIR radiation, is absorption in the top 10-50 microns of water surface, since more than 70% of earth surface is water, and LWIR does not penetrate deeply as does solar spectrum energy, so the effect of downward LWIR radiation is to promote prompt surface evaporation, which immediately returns most of that energy to the atmosphere in the guise of latent heat”
Yes!
I very strongly agree (as I have repeatedly said in several places including on WUWT). But the important point In your statment is your word “most”. So long as there is some heating of the surface which is not released by evapouration then there is no alteration to my explanation of why the first 20 ppmv has most effect on surface temperature. And I remind that my post said evapouration releases heat from the surface.
And you conclude that statement saying;
“as well as additional water vapor, which directly blocks additional solar spectrum energy from reaching the surface.”
Perhaps, but if it does “block” that solar energy then the “blocked” energy is added to the atmosphere and contributes to back radiation because molecules can be collisionally excited as well as collisionaly de-excited. So, this does not affect my explanation (which I admitted is simplistic).
You conclude by saying;
“Even additional CO2 will absorb some small part of the incoming solar spectrum energy, and prevent it from reaching the ocean; so it may warm the atmosphere, but it cools the deep oceans where most of earth’s free clean green renewable solar energy is stored.”
Sorry, but I fail to understand this argument so I cannot comment.
Again, thankyou for your response to my post. I hope this answer is sufficient to demonstrate that I genuinely appreciate your dispute of the explanation I gave Richard111, and I hope your arguments and my responses to them have both helped him in his ‘quest for knowledge’.
Richard
Ian Bryce says:
July 13, 2011 at 12:17 am
David, send this to Julia Gillard and all her Cronies. Maybe the Liberal party as well.
Send it to Cameron and the idiot he has as our “Energy Minister.” Hopefully he’ll be gone soon if PC Plod ever gets round to enquiring about his driving habits!!
Mr. George E. Smith, are you the one who used to work at Bell Laboratories, co-invented the charge coupled device and received the Nobel prize in Physics in 2009?
Mr. Archibald’s prediction should be easy to verify: as per his graph, along 2011 a drop of more than 2.5 ºC should be happening in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Are temperatures there behaving like that?
“When I started out in climate science in 2005, the climate people ignored the solar physics community”
That is such an absurd statement that it’s impossible to believe that anything you write can be serious.
“The logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide is shown by this graph, using data derived from the Modtran site at the University of Chicago”
This is a little bit dishonest, isn’t it? Modtran gives you radiative forcings, in W/m2. It doesn’t give you temperatures. To get those, you need to multiply the forcings by a climate sensitivity. And if you were being truthful, you’d have stated that you’d multiplied the forcings by a climate sensitivity that you’ve chosen, arbitrarily. You’ve used a value that is much smaller than any value found in the scientific literature. As a result, your graph is not meaningful.
R. Gates says:
July 13, 2011 at 12:49 pm
“Well, it seems my skeptical friends always want to reject the fact that CO2 is 40% greater than it has been on average over the past million years, which of course incorporates the Eemian period. ”
Yet the Eemian interglacial was warmer. And there is now permafrost where there wasn’t then, and where there is now tundra where forests once were. Perhaps you should consider CO2 is not that important. (but i am not surprised you used your favorite Gatesism: CO2 40% greater).
“So now, during this this interglacial our temps are approaching the Eemian temps, and, if models are correct, we will exceed those temperatures in the next few centuries at least. ”
Got to hand it to you, you always put in the disclaimer about “if models are correct”. However I do not recall you ever establishing you views on whether this modeled temperature increase is good or bad and whether we should try to remedy this, just in case the models are correct. Perhaps you could enlighten me?
AJB says:
July 13, 2011 at 12:02 pm
“Is this what you’re after, Tom?”
I have seen that chart many times but no I wasn’t after anything really. Just a reminder that our friend R Gates loves to insert certain “facts” that need to be put into proper context to have any real meaning. That is something R Gates never does hence the term “Gatesism”.