Guest post by David Archibald
The story so far: in this recent post – Ap Index Neutrons and Climate, we had looked at the Dye 3 oxygen isotope-derived temperature record to see how big climate swings have been over the last few thousand years.
Figure 1: Dye 3 Temperature Record from Oxygen Isotope Ratios
As Figure 1 shows, the raw Dye 3 data shows plenty of noise and rapid swings in temperature.
Figure 2: Dye 3 Temperature Record 22 Year Smooth and less Millennial Cooling Trend
Applying a 22 year averaging to the data (the Hale Cycle) and taking off the millennial cooling trend that averages 0.00010915°C per annum produces the data in Figure 2. It is evident that the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period occurred as a result of few excursions to the lower bounding line of activity.
Figure 3: Dye 3 Normalised Temperature Distribution
Figure 3 shows the result of sorting the normalised Dye 3 temperature record from lowest to highest and then plotting that up. The vertical lines are deciles of 377 years. What is striking is that the temperature range in the 2nd and 9th deciles is almost the same as that of the 5th and 6th deciles, which means that the average isn’t normal. What is normal is change. If temperature dwelled in the middle of the range and was subject to excursions up and down, then the curve would be flatter in the middle. In fact the temperature is only in the middle if it is on its way to somewhere else, either hotter or colder. Which means that there is no Arcadia of normal bliss – growing ranges are constantly either contracting or expanding like a concertina.
Figure 4: Lagged Dye 3 and CET Temperature with Inverted Be10 Data 1659 – 1750
Nobody lives on top of the Greenland icesheet so how does the Greenland data affect the affairs of Men? Figure 4 plots the Dye 3 temperature data, lagged three years, in red (plus 36°C) against the Central England Temperature (CET) Record in blue with the Dye 3 Be10 data in green. The interval 1659 to 1750 was chosen because this includes the fastest change in the CET record and the biggest spike in the Dye 3 Be10 record. There is a very good correlation between the Dye 3 temperature record and the Dye 3 Be10 record. There is good correlation between the Dye 3 temperature record and the CET record apart from the decades 1690 to 1710.
There is another good reason for looking at the decades 1690 to 1710 and that is that the decades 2010 to 2030 might be a re-run of them. Famines caused by the cold killed roughly 10% of the population in France 1693-94, Norway 1695-96 and Sweden 1696-97, 20% in Estonia 1696-97 and 33% in Finland 1696-97 (Elizabeth Ewan, Janay Nugent (2008) ”Finding the family in medieval and early modern Scotland” Ashgate Publishing. p.153).
Humans expand to fill the habitable zone, but the habitable zone can shrink too. This is a link to the Arbor Day Foundation’s animation of the changes they made to their hardiness zone map in 2006: http://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm
Figure 5: Hardiness Zones Map
Figure 5 shows the current hardiness zones map. The 10°F width of these zones just about equates to the 5°C drop in temperature due to the length of Solar Cycle 24 over that of Solar Cycle 22.
The lesson from the Dye 3 temperature data, and that late 17th Century Finnish famine, is this: exploit the expansion in the habitable zone as the Sun becomes more active, but be prepared to run back towards the equator because it isn’t going to last.
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Excellent article but one nitpick:
The “Dye 3” label in figure 4 points to the same line as the CET, which was rather confusing at first.
Do you have a similar map for Europe?
On your graph Dye 3 label is attached to the CET record in blue. From the text, I believe it should be attached to the red curve. To lesson confusion I would put the font in red and attach it to the red curve.
This is all very interesting, and I am a huge believer that the sun plays a major role in modulating our climate, but now is likely being trumped by the rapid build-up in greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, but increasingly methane and N2O as well. Seems at least some solar experts and models indicate that even were we to have a Maunder type minimum over the next century (they give it an 8% possibility), the impacts on overall global temps will be very minimal.
Slightly OT, but you might not mind a comment about galactic cosmic rays. The Oulu count is certainly staying high, two years after the solar cycle minimum, compared to the two other cycles on the 22 year cycle. If Svensmark is right, cool times ahead.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startdate=1964/01/01&starttime=00:00&enddate=2012/01/24&endtime=22:25&resolution=Automatic choice&picture=on
“which means that the average isn’t normal”
Which means that typical statistical methods are likely to return misleading results.
R. Gates: Puh-leeeeeze. Either put a figure on it or stuff a cork in it.
It’s an interesting theory, but over baked. Call me crazy, but a graph with a note identifying the date of “The neutron flux that killed a third of Finland” in the 1690s hardly engenders confidence (figure 4).
If you want to try to establish a connection between neutron flux and temperature, that’s one thing, and a good thing too. But prematurely claiming without sufficient evidence that neutron flux killed people in Finland in 1696? Not science in my book, we’ve had enough of that alarmism from the AGW crowd already/
w.
10Be records from Greenland are grossly contaminated, they are as good as useless.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be.htm
seriously unconvincing. Have you done a proper statistiacl correlation between Dye 3 and CET. It fails my eyeball test. And we all know temperature is not random in the snese that a trend tends to continue at least for a while.
As I said in the other thread, I don’t doubt that the trend shown in Figure 2 is present in the data shown in Figure 1, but the conclusion drawn from these figures is closer to pure speculation than scientific prediction.
In general, conclusions based on extrapolations in time [“the past shows a trend, so the trend must continue”] and space [“it’s happening in one place, so it’s probably happening elsewhere”] without additional supporting data or attribution to the underlying physical cause are unlikely to be robust.
R. Gates:
Fantasized “This is all very interesting, and I am a huge believer that the sun plays a major role in modulating our climate, but now is likely being trumped by the rapid build-up in greenhouse gases, mainly CO2…”
Perhaps you meant to write:
“This is all very interesting, and I am a huge believer that the sun plays a major role in modulating our climate, [since the] trumped [up affect of] rapid build-up in greenhouse gases, mainly CO2 [does not seem to be causing any increase in global average temperature for the last 13 years]”
Year Deviation from the base period 1961-90, degrees C
1998 0.529
1999 0.304
2000 0.278
2001 0.407
2002 0.455
2003 0.467
2004 0.444
2005 0.474
2006 0.425
2007 0.397
2008 0.329
2009 0.436
2010 0.470
2011 0.356
Source: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt
Carbon Dioxide goes up and the Temperature remains the same
Here, Brian: Europe Hardiness Zones.
Search “hardiness zones europe map”
Mike Bromley the Canucklehead says:
January 24, 2012 at 10:52 am
R. Gates: Puh-leeeeeze. Either put a figure on it or stuff a cork in it.
_____
Solar output likely to decline over the next 90 years from 20th century averages, but would onnly result in a 0.08C decline in global temps for a Dalton Type minimum, and a 0.13C decline in temps for a Maunder type decline. Either of these small declines would be more than offset by a much larger increase in temps from increasing greenhouse forcing:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-decline-solar-output-offset-global.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/solar-output-research
I know even the smallest suggestion that the much anticipated (by some skeptics) big cool-down may not happen, and that the world will continue warming will cause much angst among those skeptics. While Mr. Archibald does an excellent analysis for what it is, and I whole-heartedly support the notion that the sun was largely responsibly, directly or indirectly, for most of the sub-Milankovitch modulations of Earth’s climate over the past few million years, the underlying assumption that Earth 2012=Earth 1600 is simply that, an assumption, and not supported by the extensive changes to atmosphere, hydropshere, and biosphere by human activities in that time frame.
Interesting reading, some correlation.
Robust findings? No……..
@Willis
I believe that the remark on the graph was intended to imply correlation rather than causation. But given the type of science reporting that we have these days, it might be reported as causation if another third of Finns croak.
That assumes the only change in climate is from the small variation of TSI. If Svensmark is correct, a change in the behavior of the sun could be amplified by changes in Earth cloud cover which would cause larger changes in climate than the variation of TSI itself could produce. In other words, an indirect effect resulting from solar change may provide more climate impact than any direct effect of actual solar energy variation. If you are electronically inclined, imagine the climate being the current flow through a transistor. If you change the supply voltage a tiny bit on the collector, your signal on the collector varies only a tiny bit. But if you apply the same amount of variation to the base, the collector current varies considerably. The ability of the sun to modulate the quantity of GCR in the inner solar system may have more impact than the change in surface energy emitted by the sun.
There *IS* a striking correlation between solar cycle length and climate going all the way back to the 1800’s. There is NO such correlation between CO2 and climate save for one 30 year period of the record.
Andrew30:
Well, we’ll certainly all get to see how a Dalton or Maunder Minimum compares to a 40% increase in CO2 over the next few decades. As 9 out of 10 of the warmest years on instrument record have been since 2000, and 2012-2015 look to continue as warm, guess the skeptics are holding out for the next solar cycle for the cooling to begin? What an exciting time to be studying the climate!
Not certain I entirely understand Fig.3 but it looks like typical Gaussian distribution curve if rotated by 90 degrees to the left.
R. Gates says:
January 24, 2012 at 11:19 am
Both of your posts are modeled climatic projections. Note the “projection” and not prediction.
It is obvious when looking at historical climate data that we are missing a large piece of the clmate puzzle. As a Skeptic, i have no more faith in the models which show a modest cooling than the models which show a large warming.
@R.Gates: It´s funny, so you are not going to follow the advice: be prepared to run back towards the equator because it isn’t going to last.
You will be frozen like Lot´s wife, turned into a block of salt… 🙂
R. Gates says:
January 24, 2012 at 11:19 am
“the underlying assumption that Earth 2012=Earth 1600 is simply that, an assumption, and not supported by the extensive changes to atmosphere, hydropshere, and biosphere by human activities in that time frame.”
As is the underlying assumption, and it is just an assumption, by the crystal-ball modellers that there is going to be this huge temperature increase in the future. Referring to Met Office propaganda is not really going to convince anyone. Their ongoing recital of the meme in the face of evidence to the contrary–summarized above by Andrew 30–is not what I would accept as soundly-reasoned projections. Their estimates are only that. And while they may teem with juicy scientific precision (“0.08”), that is inestimable fluff…and immeasurable as well. So, please, try again, R.
Don B says:
It is remarkable!: Oulu cosmic rays:
2007.12.31 00:00:00 2007.9972603 5264 6670 1031.75
2012.01.19 00:00:00 2012.0493151 6024 6407 1008.33
crosspatch said:
“There *IS* a striking correlation between solar cycle length and climate going all the way back to the 1800′s. There is NO such correlation between CO2 and climate save for one 30 year period of the record.”
____
Agree completely. And hence why it will be so interesting to see how the 40% increase in CO2 stacks up against whatever forcings (direct, indirect, or otherwise) the sun can deliver over the next few decades. The correlation between SCL and climate is one of my favorite natural cycles to look at, but it’s existence in no way precludes the possibility that at some point during the past century, that correlation might be broken by the forcing caused by increases in CO2. Again, what an amazing time and opportunity to be studying the climate!
Gates,
Your harping about “9 out of 10” & etc. is making you sound stupid. Here, let me help:
The planet has been emerging from the LIA along the same trend line for hundreds of years. There has been no acceleration in the warming despite rising CO2.
Conclusion: Going back to the LIA, every decade will tend to be the warmest. And despite the ≈40% increase in harmless, beneficial CO2, the most recent decade has shown no warming.
Thus, even if CO2 causes some minor [and completely beneficial] warming, its effect is insignificant. It is not even measurable. Because your CO2 conjecture doesn’t stand up to real world evidence, your comments sound like science fiction and fantasy. Wise up. CO2 is only a bit player. If even that.