Guest post by David Archibald
When I started out in climate science in 2005, the prevailing view in the sceptic community was that carbon dioxide-caused global warming was real but it wouldn’t be anything as bad as it was painted by the AGW crowd. Sceptics generally thought that climate was a random walk and at that stage we hadn’t quantified the carbon dioxide heating effect. Roy Spencer’s paper finding negative feedbacks from warming was at that stage two years off. At the time, I thought that climate was controlled by the Sun and set out to find the relationship. The relationship had been found by Friis-Christensen and Lassen in 1991, and I extended their work to use solar cycle length as a predictive tool.
Now has come the first paper from Northern Hemisphere scientists to use solar cycle length to predict climate. Three Norwegian researchers, led by Professor Jan-Erik Solheim of the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Oslo, have just published a paper entitled “Solar Activity and Svalbard Temperatures”. It is available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3256
What these eminent scientists are predicting is significant: “We predict an annual mean temperature decrease for Svalbard of 3.5°C from solar cycle 23 to solar cycle 24 (2009–‐20) and a decrease in the winter temperature of ≈6°C.”
A 6°C temperature decrease in under ten years from the present day! This is significant at two levels. Firstly, it is going to get really cold very soon. This predicted cooling is calculated to have a 95% confidence level. Secondly, it gives the sceptic community a climate forecast that is based on physical evidence, with a statistician signing off. When the predictions of these three wise Norwegian are borne out, that is going to be a big thing.
Figure 3 from the Solheim paper is above. Forecasts for SC24 temperatures based on length of SC23 are given with 95% confidence intervals (diamonds with bars) for the year and winter temperatures. Temperatures over the rest of the decade will return to the early 20th Century.
This figure is from Willis Eschenbach’s post of 12th May, 2010. Location of Svalbard is marked by a snowflake and the North Pole is shown as a red star.
http://www.exploredata.net/
I would love to see someone dump all of the climate datasets into this program.
Willis Eschenbach says:
December 16, 2011 at 12:28 am
“David, good find. I love it when scientists actually make falsifiable predictions.”
Falsifiable prediction?
What the heck is that supposed to be? Predictions are, by definition, falsifiable.
Trivial statements like “I predict either rain or no rain tomorrow” is not really a prediction but rather a statement of fact.
In science, at least in Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, hypotheses are what must be falsifiable. In other words the hypothesis must predict something which, if found to be wrong, falsifies the hypothesis. The classic example Popper used is “All swans are white”. This can never be proven as it is impossible to guarantee that in no obscure corner of the universe a non-white swan isn’t lurking there. Popper’s point is that for a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it need not be provable so long as it is disprovable. Thus the hypothesis that all swans are white is a valid scientiific hypothesis because the observation of a single non-white swan falsifies it.
Got it? Write that down.
So what you really wanted to say is you like it when scientists make predictions and/or you like it when scientists make falsifiable hypotheses.
All the best,
w.
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 17, 2011 at 7:02 am
That Hathaway is confused does not mean that you should be too,
Thanks Doc
Great quote! It’s already on my SSN page .
One thing at a time. Only yesterday I was ‘cloning’ some stuff from: Long-term variation of geomagnetic activity, I; the IHV-index
@R. Gates (December 17, 2011 at 5:50 am)
Some of the variability at Hale subharmonics is due to beats of solar cycle nearest-harmonics with dominant terrestrial temporal modes.
For example, terrestrial season cannot be ignored due to the massive north-south terrestrial asymmetry in variance (due to ocean-continent heat-capacity contrast & ocean-continent geometry). (Note for readers lacking stats background: Leverage is a concept covered in part 2 of Stat 101. Ignoring gradients invites severe, paradoxical data misinterpretation.)
The data indicate with crystal clarity the towering importance of changing seasonal spatial contrast, mercilessly razing laughably naive “uniform 0.1K” solar-terrestrial narratives that have been foolishly & blindly defended by abstractly-misconceiving ‘solar experts’ (who need serious help from climatologists with the concept of thermal wind). In defense of society & civilization, taxpayer-funded abstraction artists need to be called firmly on such egregious errors. (Under present circumstances collegiality can’t take precedence.)
I appreciate your interest in the topic. There remains a tremendous amount of work to be done. There’s plenty of opportunity for sensible parties from across several disciplines to cooperatively share the load.
Regards.
Leif Svalgaard says:
…. coronal holes are strongly recurrent [i.e. they live for several rotations of the sun]. It is thought that this is related to the polar fields of the sun, the holes being extensions of the polar fields,
Yes, it appears that polar rotation is the strongest component
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-maxSpec.htm
Any additional clarification or correction for the graph?
crosspatch says:
December 16, 2011 at 8:34 pm
Gail Combs says:
December 16, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Don’t fall for the latest Fenton Communications generated popular bandwagon….
________________________________
I was using it as an illustration of an angry mob in the present day. Monsanto is very much disliked for what has been seen as taking advantage of local farmers. In this case “Truth” does not matter when you are being beaten.
If you want another illustration take the witch hunting during years when the crops are poor.
Am I right in thinking that the idea of polar amplification means that their would be a death spiral? If that is correct then KR please explain how the Arctic Ocean recovered from its previous ice-free conditions during some summers of the Holocene (~11,000 year BP).
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFMPP11A0203F
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/content/21/3/227.abstract
I’ll keep quiet about the effects of soot for the meantime.
Paul Vaughn,
Thanks for your thoughtful and thorough reply. The next 20 years promise to be the most interesting in terms of our advancement in our knowledge of climate dynamics, one way or another.
Rogers, M.L.; Richards, M.T.; & Richards, D.St.P. (2006). Long-term variability in the length of the solar cycle.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0606/0606426v3.pdf
“The resulting (O-C) pattern was normalized by subtracting the linear trend in the data. This trend was found by fitting a least squares line to the (O-C) data.”
Comical. Did anyone notice what went wrong with their conception there? (Hint: anonaly-think.)
The OIW (optimal interval width) determination section is also comical, but I give the authors full credit for realizing the issue is with conventional metrics that don’t capture core patterns.
“Phase Dispersion Minimization (PDM) […] produces better results than the FFT in the case of non-sinusoidal data.”
These authors are far more aware than most others of the potential for summary misinterpretation (for example in the absence of careful diagnostics).
I wasn’t aware of the newer version of this paper. Thanks R. Gates for pointing it out.
@R. Gates (December 17, 2011 at 10:11 am)
I want to start working with academics again.
Paul Vaughan says:
December 17, 2011 at 7:36 am
You are incorrect. Check the data a LOT more carefully.
You’re going on abstract misconception. I’m going on observation.
I know the data intimately having studied this for 40+ years. There is no support for any of your claims.
M.A.Vukcevic says:
December 17, 2011 at 9:10 am
Any additional clarification or correction for the graph?
Basing anything on such a short time series is not reasonable. Compute the spectrum for all Ap since 1844.
Paul
Many authors are misled by inaccurate spectral analysis. No two cycles are the same, but there are two very accurate ‘fundamental’ oscillating periods as the sidebands equidistant from a central frequency :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-Vfspec.htm
I shall write more on this, subject to the SC24 V-formula developments.
Leif Svalgaard says:
………
I used daily Ap-max not the average value. More than 10 rotations was sufficient enough to determine that the strongest component comes from the polar regions, at the same time identifying period of polar rotation as 29.3 days.
Jimbo says:
December 17, 2011 at 9:48 am
Am I right in thinking that the idea of polar amplification means that their would be a death spiral?>>>
“polar amplification” is a misnomer designed to mislead. There’s no such thing because it implies that the poles somehow “amplify” the effects of warming (or cooling) which is bull. They just react to any given change in radiance according to their temperature. The formula for an ideal black body (and the earth is close enough to ideal for the purposes of this discussion) that you can use to calculate temperatur of any given surface at any given equilibrium power input (from radiance for example) is calculated by P (in watts per meter squared) being equal to a constant times the temperature in degrees Kelvin raised to the power of 4. The equation reads:
P=5.67*10^-8*K*k*k*k
So it follows that an increase of say 4 w/m2 at a temperature of 233K (-40 C) is going to be several degrees, while an increases of 4 w/m2 at a temperature of 313K (+40 C) is going to be a tiny fraction of a degree.
So, there’s no such thing as “polar amplification”. The poles, which are cold, respond with larger temperature fluctuations to a given change in energy input (regardless of source) than do warm areas.
This is another reason why the whole CAGW meme is so misleading. Not only do the poles not amplify anything, consider what this means from the perspective of global warming being “true”. What would it imply?
It would imply that we would expect very little change in temperature at dat time highs in summer in the hottest areas of earth. We would expect the most change to be in night time lows, in winter, in the coldest areas of earth. The temperature records of GISS and HadCrut show this to be the case. The tropics vary 0.2 degrees and the poles 4 or 5 degrees. But does it make a lot of difference to life in the arctic if night time lows in January fluctuate from -45 to -40 and back again?
I think not.
M.A.Vukcevic says:
December 17, 2011 at 11:25 am
I used daily Ap-max not the average value. More than 10 rotations was sufficient enough to determine that the strongest component comes from the polar regions, at the same time identifying period of polar rotation as 29.3 days.
No, there is not enough data to generalize to all times [hundreds of years, tens of cycles]. It happens to be correct, but not because your plot shows it, but because when we examine ALL the data that is what we see. This is a common mistake that amateurs make, to generalize based on too little data. It could just be a random fluke for 2011 only, the Sun is messy.
@crosspatch
Is that taken directly from the 1971 Rasool paper he co-authored?
The I’ve read that one of the problems with the conclusions was an estimated CO2 sensitivity that was too LOW, compared to other estimates by a factor of THREE ( and noted in the footnotes, as suggested by referees)
Didn’t Schneider retract those conclusions a couple years later?
Samboc,
From here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/16/polar-amplification-works-both-ways/#comment-832772
“6°C has always being quoted as the temp that initiates a full blown ice age. This prediction is not good.
11,500 years. An Ice Age is over due.”
That is the predicted yearly mean change for a location.I think is over optimistic.3 degree C is more likely.
No we are not overdue for a new glacial age.The Milankovitch cycle indicates that we are in Climate Autumn part of the cycle.It has been cooling for around 4,000 years now.The SUMMER insolation at 65 degrees North has been running in negative territory for about 3,000 years.
Glacial age is coming near now.
It is the summer cooling trend in the far north that matters.
I wonder if David Archibald can supply the summer temperature predictions in place of the yearly mean temperature changes?
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-maxSpec.htm
dr. L.S ” It happens to be correct, but not because your plot shows it, but because when we examine ALL the data that is what we see !
That is more than good enough for me.
“11,500 years. An Ice Age is over due.”
By the way.The Interglacial period is already 16,000 years old.
I’m surprised there wasn’t a post about the 100 whales trapped by ice:
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/will-russian-icebreaker-make-it-time-save-100-whales-trapped-arctic-ice
KR: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/16/polar-amplification-works-both-ways/#comment-833074
Come on KR!
The climate at Antarctica has been about the same for the last 14 million years.There is no way it lose much of anything.Because it is at the South Pole.It is encircled by a COLD circular ocean current that blocks out most of the warmer water.It is well below freezing year round for around 98% of the continent.
Here is chart that illustrates it well:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/12/ipccs-claim-that-antarcticas-ice-sheets-are-melting-due-to-global-warming-is-found-to-be-fraudulent.html
Since Greenland and Antarctica has 99% of the worlds glaciers total.There is little else left for easy ice melting.It is simply too cold for much of any melting to be concerned with.
They easily survived the warmest part of the interglacial period.That was over 8,000 year ago now.
Leif Svalgaard (December 17, 2011 at 11:03 am) wrote:
“I know the data intimately having studied this for 40+ years. There is no support for any of your claims.”
You’re incorrect.
M.A.Vukcevic says:
December 17, 2011 at 12:16 pm
dr. L.S ” It happens to be correct, but not because your plot shows it, but because when we examine ALL the data that is what we see !”
That is more than good enough for me.
And that is the problem with you. Such acceptance is not good science [or science at all]. So, you should accept it because that is what I told you [based on all the data], not because you found it for 2011, which should not be good enough for anybody.