Guest post by David Archibald
Solar Cycle 24 is now three years old and predictions of the date of solar maximum have settled upon mid-2013. For example, Jan Janssens has produced this graph predicting the month of maximum in mid-2013, which is 54 months after the Solar Cycle 23/24 minimum in December 2008:
For those of us who wish to predict climate, the most important solar cycle attribute is solar cycle length. Most of the curve-fitting exercises such as NASA’s place the next minimum between 2020 and 2022 (eg: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/06/nasas-november-solar-prediction/). Solar minimum in December 2022 would make Solar Cycle 24 fourteen years long, which in turn would make the climate of the mid-latitudes over Solar Cycle 25 about 1.0°C colder than the climate over Solar Cycle 24.
Curve-fitting leaves a lot to be desired. Even late in the progression of Solar Cycle 23, the curve fitters in NASA had poor predictive ability.
Examination of Altrock’s green corona emissions plot from mid-2011 suggests that a new predictive tool is available to us. The original is available here:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~deforest/SPD-sunspot-release/6_altrock_rttp.pdf
This is my annotated version:
Altrock had observed that solar maximum occurs when the “rush to the poles” reaches 76°. The magnetic poles of the Sun reverse at solar maximum, which is also considered to be the beginning of the new extended solar cycle.
We also observe that solar minimum for the last four minima has occurred when emissions are exhausted at 10°. The latitude of 10° is shown as the red line on the diagramme. Further to that, the last two solar cycles show that the month of minimum can be predicted by drawing a line between solar maximum (the point at which the rush to the poles intersects 76°) and the point of exhaustion at 10°. The bulk of activity is bounded by this line.
Altrock has noted that the “rush to the poles” in Solar Cycle 24 is much weaker and much slower than in previous solar cycles. The line he has drawn intersects 76° in mid-2013, consistent with other predictions of Solar Cycle 24 maximum.
The shape of the emission regions also suggests that Solar Cycle 24 will be quite extended. The blue bounding line from the Solar Cycle 23 maximum intersects 10° latitude in 2026, making Solar Cycle 24 eighteen years long.
That would be an exceptionally long solar cycle. The most recent cycle that neared that length was the seventeen years from the maximum of Solar Cycle 4 to the maximum of Solar Cycle 5. Prior to that, the Maunder Minimum had some very long solar cycles as interpreted from C14 data:
It seems that the first solar cycle of the Maunder Minimum was also eighteen years long.
An eighteen year long Solar Cycle 24 would be very significant in that it would be five and a half years longer that Solar Cycle 23. With the solar cycle length/temperature relationship for the US-Canadian border being 0.7°C for each year of solar cycle length, a further cooling of 3.8°C is in train for next decade. The evolution of Altrock’s green corona emissions diagramme as a predictive tool will be followed with some interest.
Back to the subject of curve-fitting, it may be still too early to call Solar Cycle 24 using that technique. The following graph shows the raw monthly data for sunspot number amplitude for Solar Cycles 5 and 6 (the Dalton Minimum) with Solar Cycle 24 to date aligned on the month of minimum. Solar Cycle 5 took about four years to get going before it had a sudden burst, and then died off over the following ten years. It is still a bit too early to be certain about how Solar Cycle 24 will shape up.
A physicist says:
January 8, 2012 at 2:32 pm
Rahmstorf is based in Potsdam, which as I say in this speech:
http://www.davidarchibald.info/papers/Failure%20To%20Warm.pdf
is a notorious hotbed of climate modelling activity. To use the Marxist lexicon, he is a discredited element. There is only one true temperature series, that of Spencer and Christy.
George, Not to worry. The last Naval vessel we sent to OZ ran aground and never got there.
But the latest plan is to hire 20 of the new Russian SU-35 fighter aircraft to oppose your 20 American F-35s as it has been noticed that in a recent war game held in Hawaii the Russian SU-35 walked the American F35s. No contest apparently. If we haven’t got any aircraft carriers left we can hire an American one or a French one.
Phil’s Dad, Cool. it’s a done deal then. We can just walk in. Would you mind awfully if we replace your parliament building with Buckingham Palace ?
ferd berple says:
January 8, 2012 at 2:38 pm
“There is considerable evidence that planetary alignment influences solar activity.”
____________________________
So, ferd…
keepin’ yer eye peeled for more harmonica virgins?
J Martin says:
January 8, 2012 at 3:49 pm
http://www.iwp.edu/docLib/20111205_DavidArchibald.pdf
The Institute of World Politics hosts my last lecture on food security and other matters. See the link above.
David Archibald,
An update of this pdf of yours, to include food security would be nice.
http://solarcycle25.com/attachments/database/ThePastandFutureofClimate5thJune2009Archibald.pdf
David, with respect, Marxist-style claims that there is “only one true temperature series” make a whole lot of folks feel uneasy.
J Martin says: (January 8, 2012 at 4:40 pm) “Would you mind awfully if we replace your parliament building with Buckingham Palace?”
Not since 1901. Don’t conflate Head of State (and military allegiance) with Government.
But we are getting very OT here.
I would like to return the discussion to David’s post.
David-
If I understand your annotated version of Altrock’s “green emissions” graph, the “rush to poles” occurs at the peak of the cycle. For instance the rush to pole for cycle 22 occurs in 1990. The blue line then crosses the red line at the end of the following cycle. But the blue lines were drawn after the fact, except of course the last one. After studying the graph for some time I have come to the conclusion that the slope of the last blue line is really conjecture at this point in time. I agree with your last statement: “It’s still a bit too early to be certain about how Solar Cycle 24 will shape up.” But Altrock’s graph is really an elegant way to look at the Solar Cycle.
A physicist says: “David ought at least to comment on that.”
Perhaps he should.
I do appreciate your relatively polite manner in defending the warmist view. However, I wonder if you would request comment on the clearly unscientific, agenda driven crap SCIENTISTS on your side engage in? Just one little example of the aforementioned garbage; i.e., email from Tom Wigley to Phil Jones listed below.
2009 ClimateGate email
Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. [Tom Wigley, to Phil Jones and Ben Santer]
BarryW says:
January 8, 2012 at 2:19 pm
“Records are being broken or challenged by blizzards in Prince William Sound and cold temperatures in Nome”
You mention Nome, this account of the difficulty in delivering Fuel Oil makes a point.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083542/Tanker-carrying-supplies-stranded-Alaskan-village-gets-stuck-ice-flows-crosses-frigid-Bering-Sea.html
“A Russian tanker carrying desperately-needed fuel supplies for the far northern Alaskan city of Nome keeps getting stuck in thick ice flows as it crosses the frigid Bering Sea in the dead of winter.
Fortunately, the 370-foot tanker Renda is escorted by a specially-designed Coast Guard ice breaker, the USCGC Healy, whose extra-thick hull is capable of crashing through ice several feet thick.
But that means going is slow. The two ships are covering just five to six nautical miles a day, even though they still have more 300 miles of sea ice to burst through before they can reach Nome.
Russian-flagged tanker Renda
Slow going: The Coast Guard icebreaker Healy leads the way for the Russian tanker the Renda
Coast Guard Cutter Healy breaks ice around the Russian-flagged tanker vessel Renda
A massive storm prevented the town of 3,500 on the northwestern coast of Alaska from receiving its last delivery of supplies before it was socked in by the unspeakable winter cold.
The town could run out of the fuel it needs to heat and power homes, vehicles, hospitals and schools.”
Anybody want to bet that there will be a new set of hysterics wanting to spray soot on polar bears like they wanted to in the early 1970s?
@A physicist: Groucho or Harpo??
Doug Cotton says:
January 8, 2012 at 1:57 pm
“Ferd. You do indeed seem very certain of your claims that “every time the planet warms CO2 levels increase” – so do they decrease as a result of it cooling – such as just after 1945? (LOL).”
Answer – Actually, Yes they did Doug
Despite the huge quantities of manmade CO2 emissions, atmospheric CO2 did decrease year-over-year in some of the global cooling years from 1959-1974*.
My question:
Has this not happened recently because of increased humanmade CO2 emissions, or because the world has, until recently, been getting warmer?
Regards (and LOL), Allan
______________________
Annualized Mauna Loa dCO2/dt has “gone negative” a few times in the past (calculating dCO2/dt from monthly data, by taking CO2MonthX (year n+1) minus CO2MonthX (year n) to minimize the seasonal CO2 “sawtooth”.)
These 12-month periods when CO2 decreased are (Year and Month ending in):
1959-8
1963-9
1964-5
1965-1
1965-5
1965-6
1971-4
1974-6
1974-8
1974-9
* Modern CO2 data collection at Mauna Loa started in ~1958.
I note that ‘a physicist’ vanished following Steven M. Allen asking him an uncomfortable question concerning a Climategate email.
And as David Archibald says:
“There is only one true temperature series, that of Spencer and Christy.”
Agree. Drs Spencer & Christy show their data and methodologies, unlike the Mann/Jones crowd.
ShrNfr says:
“@A physicist: Groucho or Harpo??”
More like Lysenko.
Attention all you cherry picking warmists who’ve the nerve to point to the warmer winter in this parts as evidence of global warming, what were you saying the last couple of years? Meanwhile, a pattern shift is on the way for the period starting about the middle of this month which should see a return to wintry conditions where it’s been unseasonably warm for perhaps the rest of the winter.
BarryW says:
January 8, 2012 at 2:19 pm
A physicist, . . .
{Rockies, list of Alaskan cities }
Cherry picking is fun isn’t it? ”
You did not pick up on Austria!
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/317536
David Archibald says: January 8, 2012 at 4:40 pm
There is only one true temperature series, that of Spencer and Christy.
===============
Which series is that? They have publicly admitted that the discover page is a load of dingo’s kidneys.
“Roy W. Spencer said…
If you would have read the disclaimer at the Discover website, you would have realized you can’t compare the daily, automated, quick-and-dirty data averages there with the fully intercalibrated, quality-controlled UAH dataset that we update every month.
The Discover website data are meant to give a rough idea of how the latest month is shaping up compared to the same calendar month a year earlier, that’s all.
21 December 2011 23:59:00 GMT ”
If they cannot be bothered with data that most of the public sees then why should the get right the data to which you may be referring.
The satellite data is is just modeled data from a proxy.
Pokerguy, the short answer is pretty darn simple:
(1) If we focus on global temperature averages, and we subtract short-term fluctuations correlated to independent observations of volcanoes, ocean current oscillations, and the solar cycle, then we see very clearly a warming trend.
(2) If instead we focus on local temperature records, and we do not subtract any short-term correlates, then we see very clearly that both in the US and around the world, more local temperature records (by far!) are being broken at the high-end than at the low-end. Which again, shows us a warming trend.
(3) Scientists like Jim Hansen are on-record as predicting that both kinds of evidence of warming (global warming trends and local heat temperature records) will strengthen in coming years.
David Archibald’s predictions are notable because they are precisely opposite to the Hansen-type predictions (1-3). In recent years, and taken as a whole, the temperature data have increasingly strongly confirmed the Hansen-style predictions, and disconfirmed Archibald’s predictions.
So it would help clarify matters if Archibald were to update his predictions as to when predictions (1-3) will reverse (Archibald’s 2008 predictions not having been confirmed to date). Because Hansen and his climatology colleagues aren’t waffling; they’re on-record as affirming that predictions (1-3) will continue to hold good, and will in fact strengthen in coming years.
J Martin: “A 3.8 C temperature drop. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s Maunder minimum territory and all that that implies. As the UK imports nearly half it’s food (40% in 2009) the consequences of such a drop could prove interesting.”
During the Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation/economic collapse, WR eventually started to collateralize their bonds with land because the Deutschemark became worthless.
Last week, Greece announced they’ll be collateralizing their bonds with land. Given the inevitable collapse of the US$ given all their money printing and $1.5 TRILLION/yr budget deficits, America may also be forced to do the same…
It’s amazing how many lines of historic change are starting to intersect.
Deja’vu, all over again….
“Has this not happened recently because of increased humanmade CO2 emissions, or because the world has, until recently, been getting warmer?”
In 2009 global human CO2 emissions declined but atmospheric CO2 continued to rise. This would indicate that the growth in human-caused CO2 emissions is a negligible factor in accounting for the growth in atmospheric CO2. If human CO2 emissions were significant, a reduction in those emissions would have been reflected in a reduction in atmospheric CO2 or at least a significant reduction in the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2. There was no change. So if human CO2 emissions drop and atmospheric CO2 rise continues unabated, that should be fairly good evidence that maybe the two aren’t connected.
The oceans are probably still warming from the LIA and that will likely continue unless we see temperatures drop to those seen during the LIA causing the oceans to cool again.
@Smokey Ah but that is another tail now isn’t it?
I would expect that the warming of the oceans that I feel reasonable in assuming has occurred since the end of the LIA has caused CO2 contained in them to come out of solution. Things are too fuzzy for me given I am not an oceanologist to make a good ballpark on how much has come out, but I suspect it is a fairly reasonable contributor to the total increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. Of course, the ENSO and AMO have some modulating effects here too. I note that the largest annual growth rate of the Mauno Loa CO2 measurements corresponded to the 1998 super El Nino event. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ But correlation is not causation. If it were, we would have had tons of CO2 around in the Medieval Optimum. We didn’t. Lotsa trees and all turning it into wood and leaves.
old engineer says:
January 8, 2012 at 5:15 pm
The line I have drawn is the best fit on the data to date.
Once again I note that ‘a physicist’ is ignoring Steven M. Allen’s uncomfortable question concerning the Wigley/Jones Climategate email, which discusses how to fraudulently jigger the numbers in order to sell AGW to the masses… while still desperately nitpicking something that Dr Archibald has already answered. So ‘a physicist’ complains about the mote in someone else’s eye, while ignoring the beam in his own eye. I believe ‘hypocrisy’ is the proper term for what ‘a physicist’ is attempting.
Nice analysis of Solar Cycle 24 and it’s implications for temperatures. If in fact, as appears likely, that we are in for another Dalton Minimum (or even Maunder) this will be an excellent opportunity to comparing solar forcing on the downside to the warming forcing from increases in GH gases. A better time to be a student of the climate I can’t imagine. Very exciting!