Guest post by David Archibald
Three wise Norwegians – Jan-Erik Solheim, Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum – have just published a paper entitled “The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24”. It is available online here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.1954v1.pdf
The authors have found that Northern Hemisphere temperature changes by 0.21°C per year of solar cycle length. The biggest response found in the temperature series they examined was Svalbard at 1.09°C per year of solar cycle length. The authors also credit me with the discovery of a new branch of science. On page 6 they state.” Archibald (2008) was the first to realize that the length of the previous sunspot cycle (PSCL) has a predictive power for the temperature in the next sunspot cycle, if the raw (unsmoothed) value for the SCL is used.” I have decided to name this new branch of science “solarclimatology”. It is similar to Svensmark’s cosmoclimatology but much more readily quantifiable.
What we use solarclimatology for is to predict future climate. Professor Solheim and his co-authors have done that for Solar Cycle 24 which takes us out to 2026. Using Altrock’s green corona emissions diagram, we can go beyond that to about 2040: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/08/solar-cycle-24-length-and-its-consequences/
The green corona emissions point to Solar Cycle 24 being 17 years long, and thus 4.5 years longer than Solar Cycle 23. Using the relationship found by Solheim and his co-authors, that means that the 0.63°C decline for the Northern Hemisphere over Solar Cycle 24 will be followed by a further 0.95°C over Solar Cycle 25. That is graphically indicated thusly, using Figure 19 from the Solheim et al paper:
The last time we witnessed temperatures anything like that was in the decade 1690 – 1700. Crop failures caused by cold killed off 10% of the populations of France, Norway and Sweden, 20% of the population of Estonia and one third of the population of Finland.
As noted above, Svalbard’s relationship is 1.09°C per year of solar cycle length. That means that it is headed for a total temperature fall of 8.2°C. The agricultural output of Svalbard and the rest of the island of Spitsbergen won’t be affected though, because there isn’t any. The biggest effect will on some of the World’s most productive agricultural lands. The solar cycle length – temperature relationship for some localities in the northeast US is 0.7°C degrees per year, which is a good proxy for the latitude of the US – Canadian border and thus the North American grain belt. Newman in 1980 found that the Corn Belt shifted 144 km per 1.0°C change in temperature. With the temperature falling 5.2°C, the Corn Belt will shift 750 km south to the Sun Belt, as shown following:
The outlook for Canadian agriculture is somewhat more dire. I expect Canadian agriculture will be reduced to trapping beavers, as in the 17th Century.
The current cold conditions in Europe resulted in more than 300 souls departing this mortal coil, and has discomforted some millions. Solheim and his co-authors note “As seen in figures 6 and 7, the Norwegian and Europe60 average temperatures have already started to decline towards the predicted SC24 values”.
References:
Newman, J. E. (1980). Climate change impacts on the growing season of the North American Corn Belt. Biometeorology, 7 (2), 128-142. Supplement to International Journal of Biometeorology, 24 (December, 1980).
nemo says:
February 11, 2012 at 9:36 am
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Yes, but these are only the directly related deaths (and I do not think that it includes motoring accidents that probably would not otherwise have happened).
There are many more (by a couple of orders of magnitude) of indirectly related deaths. For example, here in the UK a cold winter is usually considered to increase the winter death toll by 15,000 to as much as 40,000, The UK is the worst in Europe for this mainly because of our poor housing stock, damp climate, and low pension income.
William says:
February 11, 2012 at 11:35 am
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Whichever side of the science you sit on, there is an extremely strong case that the response to the perceived threat is wrong and a strong case that some of the response could rightly be classified as a crime against humanity. Whilst I am sceptical of the thread, I really can’t understand how we have got the response so very wrong.
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 …
Paul Vaughan says:
February 11, 2012 at 12:21 pm
Mursula, K.; & Zieger, B. (2001). Long-term north-south asymmetry in solar wind speed inferred from geomagnetic activity: a new type of century-scale solar oscillation?
There is no such asymmetry: http://www.leif.org/research/Semiannual-Comment.pdf
Max Hugoson says:
February 11, 2012 at 10:23 am
First to post this:
http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2012/02/bitter-cold-grips-europe.html
Nothing but WEATHER, really…just weather..
WHY IS NO ONE DOING A ATMOSPHERIC ENERGY BALANCED BASED ON THE ENTHALPY PER CUBIC FOOT OR METER?
I’m rather sure that running it for NH or SH would show (for example with this cold EUROPE winter and WARM North American winter) a net balance.
The reason that nobody is “doing an atmospheric energy balance based on the enthalpy per cubic foot/meter” is that there are surprisingly few people who actually understand enthalpy. Unsurprisingly, it is climate ‘scientists’ that seem to have the least grasp of this. Repeatedly telling them that ‘atmospheric temperature does NOT equal atmospheric heat content’ does not work they go straight back to using temperature.
The claim of AGW is that the Earth’s energy balance is being affected by absorption of outgoing infrared by carbon dioxide and other so called green house gases leading to rising temperatures. Yet as stated above – atmospheric temperature is not a metric for atmospheric heat content. As an example (used before): A Louisiana bayou in the afternoon just after a thundershower the air temperature is 25C (~77F) the humidity is 100% with mist slowly burning off in the sun. At the same time over in the Arizona desert the temperature is 38C (~100F) and almost zero humidity. The energy content of the air in the bayou at 25C is ~76.8 kJ/Kg but the energy of the Arizona air at 38C is ~38.2 kJ/Kg only half that of the cooler Louisiana air.
As posted in WUWT the paper: doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00003.1
Surface Water Vapor Pressure and Temperature Trends in North America during 1948-2010
Shows that relative humidity has been dropping 0.5% per decade for the last 62 years.
So what do we find people discussing? The statistics of temperature measurement error, how Stevenson screened weather measurements have been poorly sited etc etc. Almost no-one points out that the wrong metric is being argued over. The aphorism of the drunk looking for his keys under a lamppost despite having dropped them some way away describes precisely what the climate ‘scientists’ are doing. They are measuring atmospheric temperature as it’s easy to measure and they have records like CET that go back a long way. The fact that atmospheric temperature is not the correct metric is of no interest to people who claim that they can use trees like thermometers. But that does not excuse everyone else joining them under their lamppost. They should be told -bluntly- that they are using the incorrect metric to measure the Earth system’s heat content. This would normally be something done at initial ‘peer review’ – but we all know what has happened to that in climatology. There seem to be so many areas where the metrics of climatology follow what is easy to measure and what is the simplest way of measuring rather than what should be measured and what methodology should be used; yet nobody is picking them up on these areas instead the arguments center on the statistics used when fudging those incorrect metrics.
/rant
Ian W says:
February 11, 2012 at 1:17 pm
I agree with you 100%. Mechanical temperature is NOT a measure of heat.
William at 2/11/11:35, 8:36 a.m. and 12:12 p.m.
Excellent discussion and wonderful links. Re the latter, I have downloaded all I could and will try to find the JGR(2009) paper free somewhere. Again, thank you! BTW, so interesting to see that S. Rahmstorf accepts the 1470-year cycle hypothesis. Some of these fellows seem to exhibit multiple-personality disorder.
Ian W says:
February 11, 2012 at 1:17 pm
The reason that nobody is “doing an atmospheric energy balance based on the enthalpy per cubic foot/meter” is that there are surprisingly few people who actually understand enthalpy.
Enthalpy is not heat nor energy.
“Another useful state variable is enthalpy, defined as the sum of the internal energy and the product of pressure and volume. In other words, H = U + PV. The justification for defining this variable is really only a matter of convenience, because we often find that the sum U + PV occurs in thermodynamic equations. This isn’t surprising, because the work done by a quantity of gas depends on the product of pressure times volume. When a gas expands quasi-statically at constant pressure, the incremental work δW done on the boundary is PdV, so from the energy equation dU = δQ – δW we have δQ = dU + PdV. Noting that, at constant pressure, dH = dU + PdV, it follows that δQ = dH for this process. This explains why enthalpy is often a convenient state variable, especially in open systems. Obviously enthalpy has units of energy, but it doesn’t necessarily have a direct physical interpretation as a quantity of heat. In other words, enthalpy is not any specific form of energy, it is just a defined variable that often simplifies the calculations in the solution of practical thermodynamic problems.”
> 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?
> Adaptive Options and Policy Implications of Sea Level Rise and other Coastal Impacts of Global Climate Change Report of the Coastal Zone Management Subgroup of the IPCC Response Strategies Working Group. 1989
Nice try, but no cigar. The “1989” there is the date of the workshop, not the date of publication (“Publisher: [S.l.] : Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, [1990]”). Here’s a full ref, which you somehow omitted: http://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!silibraries&uri=full=3100001~!397666~!0 to give.
William M. Connolley says:
February 11, 2012 at 8:33 am
It projected a rise of ~0.3 oC/decade over the next century, with an uncertainty range of 0.2-0.5.
In order that no one can accuse me of cherrypicking a data set, I will use the average of the four as follows:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1980/plot/wti/from:1990/trend
#Time series (wti) from 1979 to 2012
#Selected data from 1990
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0157919 per year
This is about 0.16/decade so it is lower than the lowest number of the range at 0.2/decade. So should we still be worried about CATASTROPHIC AGW?
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 have no problem with cellulose ethanol since it doesn’t contribute to huge dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico each summer. I do oppose a government mandate for its usage, however…” Especially since nobody can make it? It has become a hidden gas tax. Blend in unicorns or face a fine.
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
Me, I prefer to watch from the sidelines and observe as money moves, i.e. follow the money. A good start would be a world register of energy ownership, patents etc. If you find the Al Gore mates are quietly buying up “dirty rotten stinking” (insert favorite nasty “green” term) coalfields (or any future energy) all around the world its a good indication the profiteers see a way for them and theirs in a cooling world rather than in a warming world – a real climate shift.
> So should we still be worried about CATASTROPHIC AGW?
Personally, I would say it is unlikely; the IPCC would agree with me (or rather, its the other way round: I agree with them). But you miss several points: the minor one, is that shouldn’t be read as a prediction-to-now. The important one is that I was refuting a claim by “Bill” that “I just read an old article from the IPCC in the late 1980′s about how the globe would warm 2.9 degrees C by 2020. (32 years)”. Which is wrong on two counts: the trivial one, that IPCC ’90 was in… 1990, not late 1989. The important one is that the IPCC didn’t, and never has, predicted 2.9 degrees C warming by 2020.
It is a bit of a shame “Bill” doesn’t give his source; presumably he can, since he has only just read whatever it was that he read.
The same of course for the news media, doom and gloom, scary, just shifts to garner the money.
Thanks, David, for a nice clear post explaining how the sun is the real driver of climate. I find it interesting that there are lots of different projections for a cooler climate regimen over the next few decades. This from Timo Niroma, the respected Finnish climatologist, fits well with your prediction…
A 2000-year historical perspective
http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspot5.html#200years
“…If we take the Schove estimates of the maximum magnitudes (R(M)) from the period 1500-1750 and the measurements from 1750, we get (the rounding for exact centuries done only to make the general picture clear):
1410-1500 ? cold (Sporer minimum)
1510-1600 107 warm
1610-1700 61 cold (Maunder minimum)
1710-1800 114 warm
1810-1900 95 cold (Dalton minimum)
1910-2000 151 warm
2010-2100 ? cold?”
Very quick significant falls in temperatures are recorded in ice cores so there is evidence quick decreases can and did happen. No confidence in a temperature change over the next few years of a magnitude decrease in 0.8c or an increase of 0.8c. The small changes of the sun on the Earth’s sudden internal shifts are generally not known, with the mechanism(s) not confirmed.
Anyone notice that after two ongoing La Ninas this may actually be the sign of the great Pacific ocean shift occuring again. If so then a third La Nina may also be following with a global temperature drop of around 0.3c instead of the 0.3c increase during the last one after the mid-1970’s . Therefore there likely won’t be a 0.8c decline, but a 0.3c drop could be possible.
Again we have the typical rantings of a sophist. at
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 11, 2012 at 2:07 pm
As usual, good old Leif misses the whole point of Ian W’s post so that he can spend his time nit-picking over the details of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics in an open system. Why not just accept the fact that Ian W is right in that, when it comes to the heating of the atmosphere, we should be talking about the heat content of the atmosphere and not the temperature.
Ian Wilson [I am not Ian W]
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.
Willliam, You have obviously looked at my blog posting at:
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/1470-year-do-events-transition-from.html
which predicts the next onset of a D/O event around about 2154 A.D.
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.
You must have read my blog post at:
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/1470-year-do-events-transition-from.html
which predicts that the onset of the next D/O event will take place around 2154 A.D.
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Not really a new prediction.. Don Easterbrook has been saying we could have a cold change to the climate at about this time.. for the next several decades or so.
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Ian W says:
February 11, 2012 at 1:17 pm
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I thought that it was universally accepted by sceptics that air temperature data is the wrong metric and does not reveal what is happening to the energy budget.
I have never understood why climate ‘scientists’ do not at the very least take steps to correct thius fundamental error when compiling land based data sets. Of course, depending upon whether there is the appropriate humidity data, it may be impossible to compile a past history and one would have to start afresh with new data starting at the present time. That has draw backs since one would need at least 15 years worth of data to even begin to draw some tentative conclusions.
Presently the only meaningful data sets are ocean temps since they do record changes in heat content. And of course, the thermal heat content of the ocean in any case swamps that of the atmosphere and ocean data is not polluted by UHI.
In my opinion analysis should be be based solely upon ocean temps.