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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
R. Gates says:
January 24, 2012 at 11:19 am
Take a closed container of air at room temperature and inject into it sufficient CO2 to raise the CO2 concentration to 5,000 PPM. After two weeks time what will be the temperature inside the container? After one month? One year?
Bill Illis says:
January 25, 2012 at 4:07 am
CO2 was flat over this period, at 275 ppm for almost the entire period.
So any changes in the climate over the period were not caused by CO2.
In fact, CO2 exhibits almost no correlation to the climate over any time period you look at.
R. Gates and the pro-AGW people think it is one-for-one, mostly because they just believe it rather than see if it actually does so.
————-
I know of no model that shows or climate scientist who thinks the “fit” between CO2 and climate is “one-for-one”. Given the complex and chaotic nature of the climate system, such a linear relationship would not be just impossible, but illogical. You should really check your facts before making such nonsensical statements.
Re: Neutron Flux that killed 1/3 of Finland population. ??
Sources?
I think what you have picked up on here, is actually a 17th century prohibition act. The trouble was that the government gave 2 years warning of impending prohibition, and so many people took the opportunity to turn their grain into alcohol that 1/3 of the population starved to death. The Nordic lands have always had a problem with alcoholism.
I tried to find a web entry for this 17th century event, but it is not to be found. But it was in the history book in Finland last time I was there.
.
R. Gates
Yes, well, it seems that, because climate (when considered over periods of about 100 to 150 years) is currently increasing approximately linearly by about 0.06 degrees C per decade (this rate itself gradually reducing and expected to be about 0.04 degrees C per decade by 2100) and because levels of carbon dioxide are also more or less increasing linearly, then carbon dioxide MUST be controlling climate. LOL.
(For proof of the above figures see the plot at the foot of my Home page at http://climate-change-theory.com and, while you are there, read the “Radiation” page to learn why backradiation cannot warm the surface, nor slow its rate of cooling.)
John Finn
You wrote: “There has been a strong warming trend at Armagh since ~1975. In fact it’s warming faster at Armagh than it is at Aldergrove airport (Belfast).”
Indeed there was a strong warming trend between 1975 and 1998 in most places in the world in the lead up to the biggest (natural) El Niño on record. Just North of Northern Ireland, the Arctic also warmed strongly then, but not as strongly as its 4 degree rise between 1919 and 1939. Nor is the Arctic as warm yet as it was in WWII years. (Plots on my site.)
For a better understanding of what’s happening, see the plot of rates of change of temperatures (entirely due to natural cycles) at the foot of my Home page http://climate-change-theory.com and, while there, patch up your knowledge on why backradiation can neither warm the surface nor slow its rate of cooling – because it is not absorbed and converted to thermal energy. The IPCC has never been able to prove empirically that it does, even though they claim so in their explanation of their greenhouse effect.
R Gates:
You now need to move on to the “Radiation” page on my site and then study the computations by Professor Claes Johnson if they are not above your head.
The Earth at any one point does not have a constant source of energy as you say. Have you noticed the Sun is not visible at night? Do you know the air you stand in at night cools faster than the ground under your feet? Do you feel all that backradiation warming your face – after all, it’s supposed to be at least a quarter as strong as direct sunlight. To check more carefully, hold an umbrella covered in metal foil over your head at night and see if it then feels a touch cooler.
Finally, explain why (as proven by spectroscopy) a gas does not absorb spontaneous radiation from a cooler emitter, but it does absorb when that same emitter is warmer than itself. This is a proven fact, so don’t argue about it – just explain it. (Hint: You will be able to after you read my “Radiation” page http://climate-change-theory.com/RadiationAbsorption.html )
Bill
“In fact, CO2 exhibits almost no correlation to the climate over any time period you look at.”
Just as the theory predicts. The theory predicts that temperature is a result of many factors.
Not just c02. Further the effect is lagged, so you have to
1. account for other forcings besides c02
2. use the proper lag
The easy way to do this is to run a GCM with and without c02 forcing.
Doug
“You explain nothing of the supposed mechanisms leading to your claims. The “official” IPCC explanation is that “backradiation” warms the surface, which it doesn’t. ”
That is not the official explanation.
The science is simple. Its measured and proven. Radiation escapes to space from the ERL
The ERL is determined by the concentration of GHGs above the ERL.
When you increase GHGs you increase the concentration. That drives the ERL higher.
Higher is colder.
A cold body radiates more slowly than a hot body.
When the earth radiates from a higher ERL, the surface will “warm”
Start here:
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~aos121br/radn/radn/sld001.htm
pay attention here:
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~aos121br/radn/radn/sld012.htm
more resources for you:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=ERL+effective+radiating+height&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CEcQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmeteo04.chpc.utah.edu%2Fclass%2F1020%2FLecture2.20100205.pdf&ei=V3cgT_fUFMKeiQKh2IHICw&usg=AFQjCNEYQIllxqMd8h4icSR0pqHmaF9_-A
http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap7.html
steven mosher said @ur momisugly January 25, 2012 at 1:38 pm
OK Steve, I’ll take you up on that. Lend me your Cray, I’ll ask my drinking buddy who writes numerical weather forecasting software to write the code and I’ll ask the good folks here at WUWT to put their hands in their pockets to help out with the electrickery bill. That should work 🙂
Steven Mosher
You claim: “When the earth radiates from a higher ERL, the surface will “warm”
Why? If it’s not radiating away enough energy, just add some more carbon dioxide and that will help radiate more energy away, and thus cool. Carbon dioxide will also absorb some of the incoming Solar radiation that is in the infra-red part of the spectrum, thus reducing the warming effect of the Sun. (The official calculated warming effect is only 13% of this cooling effect.)
By what physical process does the surface end up with more thermal energy? Why isn’t such energy just accumulating a bit somewhere up in the atmosphere until some humid day when there’s plenty of water vapour to radiate it away?
After all, in any one location it can cool at night and between summer and winter. How could it do this in a particular hemisphere if your warming process is the only thing happening?
How could the world cool for a full 30 years as it did, for example, from mid 1938 to mid 1968, and will again?
Regarding what they say, read their website and by all means post a link to some page on the IPCC site, not that anything they say proves the point.
Here’s my link to what the IPCC says.
All the IPCC would have to do is show empirically that backradiation warms anything at night. No-one has.
Have you not seen all those Energy Balance diagrams that show retention of about 0.5% of the Sun’s radiative flux? So accurate – LOL. Could it NEVER be -0.5% rather than +0.5%?
All signs point to a triple whammy of continued demographic (and hence economic) collapse, a cold (and therefore, lower midlatitude and tropical regions, dry) period, and, great war. The great war will seal the deal, adding a kicker to the cooling.
SteveSadlov says:
January 25, 2012 at 7:43 pm
All signs point to a triple whammy of continued demographic (and hence economic) collapse, a cold (and therefore, lower midlatitude and tropical regions, dry) period, and, great war. The great war will seal the deal, adding a kicker to the cooling.
——–
Wow, there’s a cheery fellow. But, Nostradamus Jr., I think your tea leaves my be a bit stale…
Doug Cotton says:
January 25, 2012 at 1:35 pm
R Gates:
“Have you noticed the Sun is not visible at night?”
——
Is this a new revelation to you? You really need to get outside more…
Doug Cotton,
To be fair, let’s take this little tidbit from your website:
“If there were no sun, the atmosphere would still “dam” the heat flow from the core and create a base temperature at the surface. The sun adds daily thermal energy which is mostly dissipated away each night as the temperature falls back towards the base temperature The greater the warming, the faster will be the cooling as we can all observe when sand and rocks on a beach get hotter on a warmer day than on a cooler day, but still cool off to similar temperatures at night.”
——
First, if there were no sun, Earth quickly turns into a little frozen snowball floating in space, as all the water vapor quickly condenses from the atmosphere as it gets colder and colder. No amount of heat from the core is available to prevent this. Second, you are discounting the great amount of residual heat stored in the oceans of the planet and that is stored over long and short time frames. 70% of the surface of the planet is water, and no where close to all that is absorbed each day is released each night. But of course, if you take away the sun, the ocean surface freezes over from the poles to the equator, and that heat would be locked up for a very very long time, though under the frozen ocean surface it is very possible that life in some form would go on, even without a nearby star for the Earth, possibly of the type we find living near the hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean. But as for the surface of the planet above the frozen oceans and ice capped land…no life would be seen in the dark, frozen wasteland.
Steven Mosher
If you are genuinely interested in learning why your linked Slide 12 etc is misleading I will endeavour to explain …
Emission of a photon is not a once only thing – up to space or back to Earth. There will nearly always be a series of random captures and emissions, quite often with less energy on emission. New emissions will also take place as a result of carbon dioxide et al absorbing thermal energy (by collision) from oxygen and nitrogen molecules as well as absorption of IR solar radiation and photons from the surface. Hence it is not just all about energy radiated from the surface.
As Prof Johnson has proved, and I have demonstrated with two empirical examples, radiation from the atmosphere that hits the surface will not be converted to thermal energy but will, instead, be re-emitted (or just deflected) back into the atmosphere. The net result is equivalent to reflection as far as energy and intensity are concerned.
Hence we have series of multiple captures and re-emissions (including those off the surface) until photons happen to escape to space. The energy they then carry may well have made hundreds of random “journeys.” It doesn’t matter. The radiation will, and does, get to space – at least 99.5% of it, even when the world is warming.
Such radiation can start at almost any level and, I repeat, it will make many random “journeys” between air molecules and also the surface. But probabilities dictate that it will (with high certainty) get to space, even if it did start out at a low altitude. After all, some of it has to re-start from the surface.
Absolutely nothing in this process has any effect on the rate of cooling of the surface. The surface will continue warming in the morning and cooling at night by diffusion (conduction), evaporation and, yes, some radiation. These processes will not be affected by the (additional) “bouncing off” of those stray low energy photons from the atmosphere. Nor will the temperature gradient (lapse rate) in the atmosphere be affected by this radiation because any local temporary warming just leads to extra radiation. There is no constraint on the amount of radiation in this sense, just because carbon dioxide is capturing more photons. And don’t forget, it also has a cooling role as I have explained in other posts.
R. Gates
Firstly, how about you go back to the first post and address the serious points I made there, rather than just the sarcastic one-liner.
Secondly, I didn’t say the equilibrium temperature of the surface would not be colder in the absence of the Sun – I just said there would still be some damming effect by the atmosphere. Yes, the whole world would be a bit like the poles in winter, but nowhere near absolute zero. There would be a slightly higher heat flow from the core due to the steeper gradient, but this is not a major factor. The atmosphere would still act like a blanket, even without any carbon dioxide. It would just be a case of far less energy going into the atmosphere and far less radiating out. There is no point in discussing this off topic subject any more.
Please consider answering my questions about why gases only absorb when the emitter is warmer, and why frost is not melted during the whole day by all the backradiation.
R Gates
PS Of course, without the Sun, you are wrong in saying “it is very possible that life in some form would go on.” Where would it get the energy? How would even plants survive without photosynthesis? I’m surprised you make such a point of the energy in the oceans: that would be a drop in the bucket compared with all the energy under the surface, down to the core. We simply don’t know if the rate of generation of energy in the core and mantle would keep up with the increased outward flow (due to the steeper gradient) but that outward flow would actually determine the mean temperature of the Earth + atmosphere system as S-B would still have to apply. Probably over millions or billions of years the core would cool down quite a bit and the surface a little more in response. I guess the surface would be a fair bit colder than the poles in winter, but the lapse rate is still a function of gravity, so the surface would be somewhat less cold than the above mean – which was basically my point in the first place.
R. Gates said @ur momisugly January 25, 2012 at 10:48 pm
Others may ignore your every post, but the Git finds many of them amusing. This is your best effort yet. Please keep it up 🙂
Doug Cotton – the problem that I have with your explanation of how CO2 cannot (does not) heat the surface is that it addresses only radiation and ignores conduction and convection.
This issue has been around for a long time, and I have thus far seen no fully credible explanation either way, the most stunning omission being the IPCC report, where the mechanism of AGW is not explained at all. The picture I have in my mind is of outward radiation from the tropical surface warming atmospheric CO2, which thus transfers heat to surrounding air as well as re-radiating. Rain originating in or passing through that air thus arrives at the ocean slightly warmer than it would have been. Thus over time the ocean’s surface layer warms.
In other words, there is a possible mechanism by which the CO2 can warm the surface. I don’t know whether the amount of warming would be trivial or significant. The fact that the tropical troposphere does not warm faster than the surface suggests that it is trivial (or less than other effects not recognised by the IPCC), but nevertheless there is a possible mechanism.
You say that the oceans are only a small part of the total heat in the planet, but wrt climate they do seem to me to be more important. Heat does not seem to flow well through land thus the core heat may have little influence, whereas the major heat flows of the oceans obviously do affect climate.
Mike Jonas
My view is that carbon dioxide plays a far greater role in cooling the atmosphere. If there is any warming in some layers, then there is immediately a greater propensity to radiate that energy away, probably before it rains. Once it is radiated it will find its way to space, even if captured and re-radiated many times, as does happen. The radiation will never warm the surface which rejects it. It doesn’t even melt frost on the ground, let alone warm the oceans.
In regard to cooling, thermal energy from warmer oxygen and nitrogen molecules diffuses to carbon dioxide which then radiates it away. Also, carbon dioxide absorbs (and re-radiates to space) some of the incoming solar radiation which is in the IR band.
Even if the oceans and/or land surfaces warm temporarily (as they do every sunny day, and every summer), it would take a far greater amount of energy to maintain them at that temperature for hundreds or thousands of years because the extra energy would seep into the crust and would have to raise the whole (near linear) plot of the temperature gradient all the way from the core to the surface. There’s a lot of area under that line to fill in with extra energy, but it would have to happen because (as we observe) underground plots (from up to 9km down) all tend to extrapolate to base surface temperatures anywhere in the world.
Finally, the temperature records show only a ~1000 year natural trend for which the rate of increase is declining and there is no influence of carbon dioxide – see yellow trend line in the plot at the foot of my Home page http://climate-change-theory.com