Quantifying the Solar Cycle 24 Temperature Decline

Short or long cycles, Mediterranean city under 2 ft of snow this morning
http://www.vijesti.me/slika-519×316/vijesti/podgoricani-da-ne-izlaze-bez-prijeke-potrebe-opasnost-sa-krovova-slika-107528.jpg

The corn breeders during the 70’s and 80’s worked on developing strains of corn that would produce with fewer heat units, thus speeding the northward push of the corn belt, especially in Canada.
Let us hope that the big corn companies are keeping their bases covered and still have some skills and knowledge to work on growing corn in lower heat units. Hopefully the university research departments have continued development. But even if anyone is working on it, can they ramp up selective breeding fast enough? Maybe this is where some of those government dollars need to be going instead of helping the rich buy politically correct electric cars.

rbateman says:
February 11, 2012 at 7:06 am
Irregardless of the mechanism explanation, the shoe fits as far as the cooling goes.
Hi Robert
Long time, no see, hope you’re well.
Agree, cooling is on the way, whatever is counted the SSN-wise. I’ve got here 3 different variables and all three show downhill from now on.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Fc.htm

John Slayton says: February 11, 2012 at 7:12 am
Svalbard is an outlier. Should it be taken at face value?
Sometimes Svalgaard is too.
However, there are some interesting aspects to the Arctic’s behaviour.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EAA.htm

Highest snowfall in my home city (Montenegro) since 1957.
http://www.vijesti.me/slika-519×316/vijesti/podgorica-zabranjen-saobracaj-privatne-automobile-slika-107622.jpg

I predicted global cooling in a 2002 article, excerpted below – see the last sentence. Timing was based on my (then) ~17 years of research, the Gleissberg Cycle and a phone conversation with paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson. If the PDO cycle is a better timing indicator, then cooling could happen sooner.
I do not know if cooling will be moderate or severe, but i believe there is a ~40% probability of severe cooling, sufficient to harm the grain harvest.
I am a professional engineer, and we, as a profession, really hate to be wrong. When we are seriously wrong, bad thing happen to good people, When I write a prediction in an article, it is because I believe it has a high probability of being correct (imnsho). I don’t do this for money, and I don’t do it for fun.
“It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”
( attributed to many )
Prediction is also hard on the ego, when one is wrong. That is why so many people are reluctant to do it.
Regards, Allan
Excerpt:
Kyoto Hot Air Can’t Replace Fossil Fuels
Allan M.R. MacRae
Calgary Herald
September 1, 2002
The Kyoto Accord on climate change is probably the most poorly crafted piece of legislative incompetence in recent times.
First, the science of climate change, the treaty’s fundamental foundation, is not even remotely settled. There is even strong evidence that human activity is not causing serious global warming.
The world has been a lot warmer and cooler in the past, long before we ever started burning fossil fuels. From about 900 to 1300 AD, during the Medieval Warm Period or Medieval Optimum, the Earth was warmer than it is today.
Temperatures are now recovering from the Little Ice Age that occurred from about 1300 to 1900, when the world was significantly cooler. Cold temperatures are known to have caused great misery — crop failures and starvation were common. Also, Kyoto activists’ wild claims of more extreme weather events in response to global warming are simply unsupported by science. Contrary to pro-Kyoto rhetoric, history confirms that human society does far better in warm periods than in cooler times.
Over the past one thousand years, global temperatures exhibited strong correlation with variations in the sun’s activity. This warming and cooling was certainly not caused by manmade variations in atmospheric CO2, because fossil fuel use was insignificant until the 20th century.
Temperatures in the 20th century also correlate poorly with atmospheric CO2 levels, which increased throughout the century. However, much of the observed warming in the 20th century occurred before 1940, there was cooling from 1940 to 1975 and more warming after 1975. Since 80 per cent of manmade CO2 was produced after 1940, why did much of the warming occur before that time? Also, why did the cooling occur between 1940 and 1975 while CO2 levels were increasing? Again, these warming and cooling trends correlate well with variations in solar activity.
Only since 1975 does warming correlate with increased CO2, but solar activity also increased during this period. This warming has only been measured at the earth’s surface, and satellites have measured little or no warming at altitudes of 1.5 to eight kilometres. This pattern is inconsistent with CO2 being the primary driver for warming.
If solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.
…

Dixon says:
“…Take the catastrophe out of climate – we’ll get a lot more science done.”
But at what point do we attempt to start some engineering? For example, how many 100-year, spring-time floods should be experienced in Minot, North Dakota before we try to engineer the run-off of heavier snow melts in Canada? Already Minot has required the rebuilding of homes on higher ground, but we can’t so easily move the agricultural grainfields to higher ground.

“Canadian agriculture will be reduced to trapping beavers”
More of a sport really than agriculture. Even with the cold, the fur-less variant doesn’t appear to have hurt demand any.

In reply to William M. Connolley’s comment:
“February 11, 2012 at 8:36 am
Does anyone actually believe any of this nonsense about rapid temperature falls over the next few years? If so, I have $1k that says you’re wrong. Do you think these wise Norwegians, or the author of this post, will be interested?”
You must of missed these papers.
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
See section 5a) Modulation of the global electrical circuit in this review paper, by solar wind bursts and the process electroscavenging. Solar wind bursts create a space charge differential in the ionosphere which removes cloud forming ions. As the electroscavenging mechanism removes ions even when GCR is high, electroscavenging can make it appear that GCR does not modulate planetary cloud if the electroscavenging mechanism is not taken into account.
The same review paper summarizes the data that does show correlation between low level clouds and GCR.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/5/1721/2005/acp-5-1721-2005.html
Analysis of the decrease in the tropical mean outgoing shortwave radiation at the top of atmosphere for the period 1984–2000
All cloud types show a linearly decreasing trend over the study period, with the low-level clouds having the largest trend, equal to −3.9±0.3% in absolute values or −9.9±0.8% per decade in relative terms. Of course, there are still some uncertainties, since the changes in low-level clouds derived from the ISCCP-D2 data, are not necessarily consistent with changes derived from the second Stratospheric Aerosols and Gas Experiment (SAGE II, Wang et al., 2002) and synoptic observations (Norris, 1999). Nevertheless, note that SAGE II tropical clouds refer to uppermost opaque clouds (with vertical optical depth greater than 0.025 at 1.02μm), while the aforementioned synoptic cloud observations are taken over oceans only. The midlevel clouds decreased by 1.4±0.2% in absolute values or by 6.6±0.8% per decade in relative terms, while the high-level ones also decreased by 1.2±0.4% or 3±0.9% per decade in relative terms, i.e. less than low and middle clouds. Thus, the VIS/IR mean tropical (30_ S–30_ N) low-level clouds are found to have undergone the greatest decrease during the period 1984–2000, in agreement with the findings of Chen et al. (2002) and Lin et al. (2004).
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JA014342.shtml
If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth ringing? A comparison of two solar minimum intervals.
Observations from the recent Whole Heliosphere Interval (WHI) solar minimum campaign are compared to last cycle’s Whole Sun Month (WSM) to demonstrate that sunspot numbers, while providing a good measure of solar activity, do not provide sufficient information to gauge solar and heliospheric magnetic complexity and its effect at the Earth. The present solar minimum is exceptionally quiet, with sunspot numbers at their lowest in 75 years and solar wind magnetic field strength lower than ever observed. Despite, or perhaps because of, a global weakness in the heliospheric magnetic field, large near-equatorial coronal holes lingered even as the sunspots disappeared. Consequently, for the months surrounding the WHI campaign, strong, long, and recurring high-speed streams in the solar wind intercepted the Earth in contrast to the weaker and more sporadic streams that occurred around the time of last cycle’s WSM campaign.
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MSAIt760405/PDF/2005MmSAI..76..969G.pdf
Once again about global warming and solar activity K. Georgieva, C. Bianchi, and B. Kirov
We show that the index commonly used for quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity and using this index leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity in the global warming in the recent decades. A more suitable index is the geomagnetic activity which reflects all solar activity, and it is highly correlated to global temperature variations in the whole period for which we have data.
In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied.It could therefore be concluded that both the decreasing correlation between sunspot number and geomagnetic activity, and the deviation of the global temperature long-term trend from solar activity as expressed by sunspot index are due to the increased number of high-speed streams of solar wind on the declining phase and in the minimum of sunspot cycle in the last decades.

Further in reply to William Connolley.
You appear to be out of the loop. Are you aware of Livingston and Penn’s finding that the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots is linearly declining with time?
Solar cycle 24 appears to be an interruption rather than a slowdown in the solar magnetic cycle. It appears solar cycle 24 will be a lead into a Dansgaard-Oesgher event .
There are multiple cycles in the paleoclimatic record that correlate with cosmogenic isotopes changes. All researchers agree the cosmogenic istopes are modulated by solar magnetic cycle changes. The question is how does the solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary climate.
The change 3C average drop in arctic temperatures and 6C drop in the winter would be due to a reduction in high altitude clouds. An increase in ions results in an increase in low altitude clouds and a reduction in high altitude clouds. The net affect (albedo less GWG warming of the water vapour/ice particles in the clouds) is for low altitude clouds to cool and high latitude clouds to warm. (See my comment above concerning the mechanism electroscavenging whereby solar wind bursts remove cloud forming ions. The late 20th century warming was caused by solar wind bursts which removed cloud forming ions.)
There very regular cycles of warming and cooling (1500 year cycle with 95% confidence the cycle is maintained to better than 12% over at least the last 23 cycles) which are too regular to be caused by an internal planet based mechanism. As there are cosmogenic isotope changes that are concurrent with the planetary temperature changes it is obvious the driver is solar cycle changes.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017115.shtml
Timing of abrupt climate change: A precise clock by Stefan Rahmstorf
Many paleoclimatic data reveal a approx. 1,500 year cyclicity of unknown origin. A crucial question is how stable and regular this cycle is. An analysis of the GISP2 ice core record from Greenland reveals that abrupt climate events appear to be paced by a 1,470-year cycle with a period that is probably stable to within a few percent; with 95% confidence the period is maintained to better than 12% over at least 23 cycles. This highly precise clock points to an origin outside the Earth system; oscillatory modes within the Earth system can be expected to be far more irregular in period.
Svensmark has an interesting paper that analyzes the record of the cyclic climate changes using ice sheet bore hole temperatures comparing the Antarctic to the Greenland Ice sheet temperature. The affect on temperature due to an increase in planetary cloud is opposite for the Greenland Ice sheet as compared to the Antarctic ice sheet. The albedo of the Antarctic ice sheet is greater than clouds so an increase in clouds over the ice sheet causes an increase in temperature due greenhouse effect of greater moisture above the ice sheet.
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612145v1
The Antarctic climate anomaly and galactic cosmic rays
Borehole temperatures in the ice sheets spanning the past 6000 years show Antarctica repeatedly warming when Greenland cooled, and vice versa (Fig. 1) [13, 14]. North-south oscillations of greater amplitude associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events are evident in oxygenisotope data from the Wurm-Wisconsin glaciation[15]. The phenomenon has been called the polar see-saw[15, 16], but that implies a north-south symmetry that is absent. Greenland is better coupled to global temperatures than Antarctica is, and the fulcrum of the temperature swings is near the Antarctic Circle. A more apt term for the effect is the Antarctic climate anomaly.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2000PA000571.shtml
On the 1470-year pacing of Dansgaard-Oeschger warm events
The oxygen isotope record from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core was reanalyzed in the frequency and time domains. The prominent 1470-year spectral peak, which has been associated with the occurrence of Dansgaard-Oeschger interstadial events, is solely caused by Dansgaard-Oeschger events 5, 6, and 7. This result emphasizes the nonstationary character of the oxygen isotope time series. Nevertheless, a fundamental pacing period of ∼1470 years seems to control the timing of the onset of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. A trapezoidal time series model is introduced which provides a template for the pacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Statistical analysis indicates only a ≤3% probability that the number of matches between observed and template-derived onsets of Dansgaard-Oeschger events between 13 and 46 kyr B.P. resulted by chance. During this interval the spacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger onsets varied by ±20% around the fundamental 1470-year period and multiples thereof. The pacing seems unaffected by variations in the strength of North Atlantic Deep Water formation, suggesting that the thermohaline circulation was not the primary controlling factor of the pacing period.

As I said in the last thread on snow, the cooling effect od longer cycles is felt mainly on the upper latitudes of the N Hemisphere.
But that is what people in the N or Europe and America want to know. An average of world temperatures saying the ‘world is warming’ is of absolutely no use to a barge captain stuck in ice floes on the Rhine, or Balkan villages under 4m of snow.
If these so-called ‘scientists’ want to help, instead of hinder, they need to bring out regional climate models – preferably ones that indicate cooling in N Europe (because that is what we have experienced for the last 3 years.)
.

0.5 deg C per year anomaly seems about right for England, http://virakkraft.com/CET-SCL.png
and SCL is predi.. eehm… CET is predicting … – some very short solar cycles coming …

Hello L.B.K.
I thought it odd also that Rahmstorf states that the observational evidence clearly supports the assertion that the 1470 year cycle is caused by an external forcing function and does not connect the past changes with solar magnetic cycle changes.
If find it also ironic that Alley, one of the discoverers of abrupt climate change has also jumped on the extreme AGW band wagon. Based on the data and the mechanisms it appears that we are about to experience a Bond event or possibly a Heinrich event. I would have assumed Alley would be interested in what caused the past abrupt climate change events.
The Antarctic ice sheet proxy data masks abrupt climate change due to the polar see-saw (see Svensmark’s attached paper that explains how an increase in planetary clouds causes the Greenland ice sheet to cool and the Antarctic ice sheet to warm which is called the polar see-saw.) so when the researchers at first did not believe the observational evidence of extremely fast abrupt climate change found in the Greenland Ice sheet data was correct. They therefore drilled as second Greenland Ice sheet core which confirmed there are regular abrupt climate change events at which time there is concurrent cosmogenic isotope changes.
There must be group blindness or paradigm acceptance by the extreme AGW promoters. It seems obvious that the planet is about to abruptly cool based on the what has happened in the past. Solar cycle 24 appears to be an interruption rather than a slow down of the magnetic cycle.
It is interesting that the Dansgaard/Oescheger events which have a characteristic period of 1470 years have continued throughout the Holocene interglacial period. As there are cosmogenic isotope changes that are concurrent with all of the Dansgaard/Oescheger events (also referred to a Bond events named after Gerald Bond who tracked 23 of the cycles) and the Heinrich events it is obvious a specific solar cycle change is causing what is observed.
It is obvious if one looks at the past Greenland Ice Sheet temperature data and the cycles of warming and cooling that the planet is about to abruptly cool.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
ABRUPT CHANGE IN EARTH’S CLIMATE SYSTEM
http://academic.evergreen.edu/z/zita/teaching/CClittell/readings/Jan31_Overpeck_and_Cole_2006.pdf
What do we mean by abrupt change? Alley et al. (2), in a seminal paper arising from a U.S. National Academy of Sciences report (5), followed on the original definition of abrupt change (6): an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Others have defined it simply as a large change within less than 30 years (7) or as a transition in the climate system whose duration is fast relative to the duration of the preceding or subsequent state (8).
Further analysis of diverse records has distinguished two types of millennial events (13). Dansgaard/Oeschger (D/O) events are alternations between warm (interstadial) and cold (stadial) states that recur approximately every 1500 years, although this rhythm is variable. Heinrich events are intervals of extreme cold contemporaneous with intervals of ice-rafted detritus in the northern North Atlantic (24–26); these recur irregularly on the order of ca. 10,000 years apart and are typically followed by the warmest D/O interstadials.
Cold-climate abrupt change occurs with a characteristic timescale of appro.1500 years, a feature that must be explained by any proposed mechanism. North Atlantic and the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) records exhibit a period of approx.1470 years (64, 65). However, the adjacent ice core isotope record from the Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) site exhibits periods closer to 1670 and 1130–1330 years, which is in agreement with the independently dated record from Hulu Cave (49, 66). Time series studies generally converge on a picture of a noisy climate system paced by a regular, perhaps external, forcing, with the sensitivity of the system to the forcing varying depending on background conditions or stochastic variability [e.g., (67– 69)]. Solar forcing, although subtle, is the leading candidate for external forcing and has been found to be consistent with either a 1450–1470–year period (70, 71) or the 1667- and 1130-year periods (66).
The roots of modern paleoclimatology have origins in studies of late Holocene climate variability in, and around, the eastern North Atlantic. The so-called Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Ages are etched into both the climate change literature and popular imagination. We now know that parts of Earth were nearly as warm as the mid-twentieth century between AD1000 to 1100 and that this generally warmer period was followed by colder temperatures at least in the Northern Hemisphere before giving way to the unprecedented global warming of the twentieth century (76–79).
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/8200yrevent.html

I think the researchers in the following 1979 news article might turn out to be right:
Prediction: Warming trend until year 2000, then very cold

AFPhys says:
February 11, 2012 at 7:46 am
Yes, the theory first came from Friis-Christensen and Lassen in the early 90s, though I think Lassen recanted late that decade. It was figure 5 in a 1996 paper on the Armagh record by Butler and Johnson that set me off. There was very little scatter about their line of best fit, and so I realised that it is a great predictive tool and you can apply it to individual station records. It is easy enough for high school students to do. Once you set the template up in Excel, you can do a station in about 15 minutes – graphs and all. So I published a few papers and I thought that this methodology would be copied quickly. It is such an easy way to build your publication record. But nothing happened until Professor Solheim took it on, so I am very grateful to him and his co-authors. Very, very grateful.
Without this methodolgy, we would be looking into the rear view mirror. Now we can see forward for up to one and a half cycle lengths. And even longer than that using Ed Fix’s solar model. I am very happy that it is all coming together. And Altrock’s green corona diagramme – I love it all.
And just as there isn’t much scatter around that line of best fit of Butler and Johnson’s figure 5, this methodology is very precise. The predicted coolings are going to happen. Professor Solheim and his co-authors did their statistics very carefully. It may take a while for that to sink in generally, but nothing is going to stop these predicted coolings from happening.
I am well aware that my contribution to the advancement of science and pushing back the darkness was to realise that you can look forward if you have an estimate of solar cycle length. Finally, wishing and hoping isn’t going to make things better. We should be grateful that we now know what Nature has in store for us instead of wondering each year why the wheat crop was killed by an unseasonal frost again.

In reply to Ninderthana’s comment:
February 11, 2012 at 4:21 pm
William says:
February 11, 2012 at 2:21 pm
It is interesting that the Dansgaard/Oescheger events which have a characteristic period of 1470 years have continued throughout the Holocene interglacial period.
The next Dansgaard Oescherger event is not in 150 years. We are currently experiencing the start of Dansgaar/Oescheger event. Cooling will start winter 2012/2013. It appears likely this Dansgaard/Oescheger event will be very strong cooling period which is called a Heinrich event. The last Heinrich events were the 8200 year ago abrupt cooling and the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling 12800 years ago. Interglacials of course end abruptly not gradually.
During the interglacial period the Dansgaar Oesheger events are called Bond events. The last Bond event was roughly 1400 to 1500 years ago. (See this paper.)
There are cosmogenic isotope changes at the all of Dansgaar Oesheger events. Changes to the solar magnetic cycle cause the abrupt cooling of the planet. The mechanism is quite interesting.
http://biogeochemistry.org/biblio/Cacho_et_al_99_Paleoceanography.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_event
Bond events are North Atlantic climate fluctuations occurring every ≈1,470 ± 500 years throughout the Holocene. Eight such events have been identified, primarily from fluctuations in ice-rafted debris. Bond events may be the interglacial relatives of the glacial Dansgaard–Oeschger events, with a magnitude of perhaps 15–20% of the glacial-interglacial temperature change.
Gerard C. Bond of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, was the lead author of the paper published in 1997 that postulated the theory of 1,470-year climate cycles in the Holocene, mainly based on petrologic tracers of drift ice in the North Atlantic.[1][2]
The existence of climatic changes, possibly on a quasi-1,500 year cycle, is well established for the last glacial period from ice cores. Less well established is the continuation of these cycles into the holocene. Bond et al. (1997) argue for a cyclicity close to 1470 ± 500 years in the North Atlantic region, and that their results imply a variation in Holocene climate in this region. In their view, many if not most of the Dansgaard–Oeschger events of the last ice age, conform to a 1,500-year pattern, as do some climate events of later eras, like the Little Ice Age, the 8.2 kiloyear event, and the start of the Younger Dryas.
List of Bond events
Most Bond events do not have a clear climate signal; some correspond to periods of cooling, others are coincident with aridification in some regions.
• ≈1,400 BP (Bond event 1)
• ≈2,800 BP (Bond event 2) — correlates with an early 1st millennium BC drought in the Eastern Mediterranean, possibly triggering the collapse of Late Bronze Age cultures.[9][10]
• ≈4,200 BP (Bond event 3) — correlates also with the collapse of the Akkadian Empire and the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom.[11][12]
• ≈5,900 BP (Bond event 4) — correlates with the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, and the arrival of nomadic pastoralists in the Middle East.[5]
• ≈8,100 BP (Bond event 5)
• ≈9,400 BP (Bond event 6) — correlates with the Erdalen event of glacier activity in Norway,[13] as well as with a cold event in China.[14]
• ≈10,300 BP (Bond event 7)
• ≈11,100 BP (Bond event 8) — coincides with the transition from the Younger Dryas to the boreal.[15]

Neapolitan says:
February 11, 2012 at 8:08 am
No, Solar Cycle 24 started in December 2008 and as it will be finishing in 2026, we still have 14 years to go.

Jay Curtis says:
February 11, 2012 at 10:56 am
There are a couple of things I forgot to put into this post. One is that it will get stormier (predicted by Hubbert Lamb in the 1970s). The other is that the temperature differential between the Arctic and Antarctic will reduce which in turn will move the Intertropical Convergencen Zone south, that in turn means that monsoonal rains won’t reach as far north as they do now.

Although there are abrupt cosmogenic isotopes changes at each of the 23, 1470 year cycle abrupt cooling events and geomagnetic excursions at the Heinrich abrupt cooling events, there was an urban myth spread that an abrupt stoppage of the North Atlantic drift current caused the 1470 year cyclic abrupt climate change events and the more sever Heinrich events.
As the paper below notes, a complete stoppage of the North Atlantic Drift current would result in cooling of Europe in the winter of roughly 2 to 3C. This a factor of five less than a Heinrich event cooling. The last Heinrich event, the Younger Dryas 12900 years before present (BP) abrupt cooling event at which time the planet when from interglacial warm back to glacial cooled, with 70% of the cooling occuring in less than 10 years occurred a 1000 years after Lake Agassiz drained into the Atlantic. (i.e. An interruption to the North Atlantic Drift current did not cause the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event.)
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/pubs/Seager_etal_QJ_2002.pdf
In conclusion, while OHT warms winters on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean by a few degC, the much larger temperature difference across the ocean, and that between the maritime areas of north-western Europe and western North America, are explained by the interaction between the atmospheric circulation and seasonal storage and release of heat by the ocean. Stationary waves greatly strengthen the temperature contrast across the North Atlantic and are themselves heavily influenced by the net effect of orography. In contrast, transport of heat by the ocean has a minor influence on the wintertime zonal asymmetries of temperature. Even in the zonal mean, OHT has a small effect compared to those of seasonal heat storage and release by the ocean and atmospheric heat transport. In retrospect these conclusions may seem obvious, but we are unaware of any published explanation of why winters in western Europe are mild that does not invoke poleward heat transport by the ocean as an important influence that augments its maritime climate.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2006/4/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate/1
The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth by Richard Seager
For many years, the leading theory for what caused the Younger Dryas was a release of water from glacial Lake Agassiz, a huge, ice-dammed lake that was once situated near Lake Superior. This sudden outwash of glacial meltwater flooded into the North Atlantic, it was said, lowering the salinity and density of surface waters enough to prevent them from sinking, thus switching off the conveyor.
The North Atlantic Drift then ceased flowing north, and, consequently, the northward transport of heat in the ocean diminished. The North Atlantic region was then plunged back into near-glacial conditions. Or so the prevailing reasoning went.
Recently, however, evidence has emerged that the Younger Dryas began long before the breach that allowed freshwater to flood the North Atlantic. What is more, the temperature changes induced by a shutdown in the conveyor are too small to explain what went on during the Younger Dryas. Some climatologists appeal to a large expansion in sea ice to explain the severe winter cooling. I agree that something of this sort probably happened, but it’s not at all clear to me how stopping the Atlantic conveyor could cause a sufficient redistribution of heat to bring on this vast a change.

cui bono says:
February 11, 2012 at 5:24 pm
The statistics in the Solheim et al paper are bullet proof. Therefore temperature will end up within the range of their error bar.

William M. Connolley says:
February 11, 2012 at 2:11 pm
> If so, I have $1k that says you’re wrong
No-one? [Disclaimer: you need to be a real person] What about the author of this fine post – does he actually believe in the 0.8 oC temperature drop “predicted” by the graph?
Hello William,
In principle I will take your bet, but I must ask you to state what you are betting very clearly and unambiguously. then I guess I would like Anthony to provide a way of holding the stakes. I would suggest checks from each of us to the other, with one to be released and one destroyed when the bet is decided.I will accept that your check will not bounce if you will do the same for me.
Murray

murrayv says:
February 11, 2012 at 7:27 pm
Not that I know of. We haven’t tired of the existing methodology yet which works with a lot of precision.

In reply to the Realclimate “bet”.
William M. Connolley says:
February 11, 2012 at 2:11 pm
> If so, I have $1k that says you’re wrong
I suppose it will be obvious if there is a rapid climate change event “Ricky”, of the cooling type that there were a number of fundamental mistakes made in AR4. It appears everyone has forgotten that there are cyclic “Rickies” of the cooling type in the paleoclimatic record. Stop and take amount to look at paleoclimatic record.
Based on the paleo record and my understanding of the mechanisms we will not need to wait much longer to see the first sign that there is a significant problem.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_January_2012.png
There is a lag of 5 years +/- 1 for the ocean surface temperature to reach equilibrium in response to a step forcing change based on analysis of forcing changes due to SO2 cooling caused by volcanic eruption. The observed 10 to 12 year delay in Arctic cooling, (See paper linked to below) from the initiation of the interruption of the solar cycle to the cooling of the arctic is interesting and is to do to a different issue than thermal lag. The authors of the paper are predicting a 3C average cooling with 6C cooling in the winter. (Applies to the entire Arctic?)
The reason for the 10 to 12 year delay in cooling is the same reason why there is correlation of ocean level to solar magnetic cycle progression (high when the cycle is high and low when the cycle is low). There will be (assuming I understand the mechanisms) during this solar cycle interruption be an anomalously large drop in sea level. (Anomalous as the drop in sea level will be significantly more than can be explained by thermal contraction or by increased ice sheet mass. There are in the paleo record past anomalous significant unexplained large changes in sea level.)
I am curious what the Realclimate et al and the IPCC’s response would be to unequivocal significant cooling. Which group accepts responsibility for the food to biofuel fiasco? (See my comment above.) Obviously abrupt cooling with no preparation will be more than a PR problem. If the planet abruptly cools are we allies? What is the backup plan?
If the planet’s response to a change in forcing is to resist the forcing (negative feedback, planetary clouds in the tropics increase or decreasing to resist the change) then there is a very, very, large forcing function that is causing the cyclic changes in planetary temperature in the paleoclimatic record.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
Richard S. Lindzen1 and Yong-Sang Choi2
We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/images/VostokTemp0-420000%20BP.gif
http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3256
Solar activity and Svalbard temperatures
The long temperature series at Svalbard (Longyearbyen) show large variations, and a positive trend since its start in 1912. During this period solar activity has increased, as indicated by shorter solar cycles. The temperature at Svalbard is negatively correlated with the length of the solar cycle. The strongest negative correlation is found with lags 10 to 12 years. The relations between the length of a solar cycle and the mean temperature in the following cycle, is used to model Svalbard annual mean temperature, and seasonal temperature variations. Residuals from the annual and winter models show no autocorrelations on the 5 per cent level, which indicates that no additional parameters are needed to explain the temperature variations with 95 per cent significance. These models show that 60 per cent of the annual and winter temperature variations are explained by solar activity.
Additional variables may contribute to the variations. These models can be applied as forecasting models. We predict an annual mean temperature decrease for Svalbard of 3.5±2 oC from solar Cycle 23 to solar cycle 24 (2009 to 20) and a decrease in the winter temperature of ≈6 oC.
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
Sudden climate transitions during the Quaternary
Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years. The decadal-timescale transitions would presumably have been quite noticeable to humans living at such times,
Initial evidence from the GRIP ice core evidence (Dansgaard et al., 1993; Taylor et al. 1993) indicated that the Eemian (My comment last interglacial period) was punctuated by many short-lived cold events, as shown by variations in electrical conductivity (a proxy for windblown dust, with more dust indicating colder, more arid conditions) and stable oxygen isotopes (a proxy for air temperature) of the ice were used by these workers infer the climatic conditions during the Eemian. The cold events seemed to last a few thousand years, and the magnitude of cooling was similar to the difference between glacial and interglacial conditions; a very dramatic contrast in climate. Furthermore, the shifts between these warm and cold periods seemed to be extremely rapid, possibly occurring over a few decades or less.
http://www.news.wisc.edu/9557
Glacial records depict ice age climate in synch worldwide
“During the last two times in Earth’s history when glaciation occurred in North America, the Andes also had major glacial periods,” says Kaplan.
The results address a major debate in the scientific community, according to Singer and Kaplan, because they seem to undermine a widely held idea that global redistribution of heat through the oceans is the primary mechanism that drove major climate shifts of the past.
The implications of the new work, say the authors of the study, support a different hypothesis: that rapid cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere synchronized climate change around the globe during each of the last two glacial epochs.
“Because the Earth is oriented in space in such a way that the hemispheres are out of phase in terms of the amount of solar radiation they receive, it is surprising to find that the climate in the Southern Hemisphere cooled off repeatedly during a period when it received its largest dose of solar radiation,” says Singer. “Moreover, this rapid synchronization of atmospheric temperature between the polar hemispheres appears to have occurred during both of the last major ice ages that gripped the Earth.”

“The onset of the deep bicentennial minimum of TSI is expected in 2042±11, that of the 19th Little Ice Age in the past 7500 years – in 2055±11.”
Now this prediction is much better for humanity – in that we will have more time to prepare for severe cooling. Perhaps by then the phony global warming crisis will be fully discredited, and we will, as a society, no longer be led by scoundrels and imbeciles.
I guess that makes me an optimist. 🙂
Regards, Allan
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/abduss_APR.pdf
http://www.ccsenet.org/apr Applied Physics Research Vol. 4, No. 1; February 2012
178
ISSN 1916-9639 E-ISSN 1916-9647
Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to
Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age
Habibullo I. Abdussamatov
Pulkovo Observatory of the RAS Pulkovskoye shosse 65, St. Petersburg, 196140, Russia Email: abduss@gao.spb.ru
Received: September 22, 2011 Accepted: October 9, 2011 Published: February 1, 2012 doi:10.5539/apr.v4n1p178 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/apr.v4n1p178
Abstract
Temporal changes in the power of the longwave radiation of the system Earth-atmosphere emitted to space always lag behind changes in the power of absorbed solar radiation due to slow change of its enthalpy. That is why the debit and credit parts of the average annual energy budget of the terrestrial globe with its air and water envelope are practically always in an unbalanced state. Average annual balance of the thermal budget of the system Earth-atmosphere during long time period will reliably determine the course and value of both an energy excess accumulated by the Earth or the energy deficit in the thermal budget which, with account for data of the TSI forecast, can define and predict well in advance the direction and amplitude of the forthcoming climate changes. From early 90s we observe bicentennial decrease in both the TSI and the portion of its energy absorbed by the Earth. The Earth as a planet will henceforward have negative balance in the energy budget which will result in the temperature drop in approximately 2014. Due to increase of albedo and decrease of the greenhouse gases atmospheric concentration the absorbed portion of solar energy and the influence of the greenhouse effect will additionally decline. The influence of the consecutive chain of feedback effects which can lead to additional drop of temperature will surpass the influence of the TSI decrease. The onset of the deep bicentennial minimum of TSI is expected in 2042±11, that of the 19th Little Ice Age in the past 7500 years – in 2055±11.