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).
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Thanks David Archibald – obviously an intriguing post.
As an aside, could I support those above who say that countering extreme warming doom with extreme cooling doom doesn’t seem very constructive. I don’t believe enough is known about the climate as a whole to make *any* specific predictions, and while AGW gets the lions share of the money and attention, we won’t be advancing our real knowledge of climate very far or very fast.
Also, are there now different ‘schools’ of climate prediction emerging based on geography? AGW from Euro-USA; geo- & helio-cooling from Scandinavia & Russia; and BAU from the Far East? I just note this from the whereabouts of the scientists with different predictions – it may be wrong or coincidence.
Final observation: many learned writers on this blog (indeed, this thread) can point to many sources showing past climatic variation (icecores, etc – see William @February 11 at 2:21pm).
Given this, how in blazes did climate scientists fall for the Hockey Stick for so long?!? (OK, rhetorical question, I know, but shouldn’t a lot of people be hanging their heads in shame?).
William M. Connolley says:
February 11, 2012 at 2:27 pm
that shouldn’t be read as a prediction-to-now
Fair enough. However if the rise has been only 0.16/decade since 1990, at some point it has to rise faster to even reach the lowest IPCC projection/prediction of 0.2/decade. As Phil Jones said in the BBC interview about two years ago, the fastest rise for any longer period at any time in the previous century was only 0.166/decade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Since the IPCC agrees that the increase in temperature due to CO2 is logarithmic, I see no reason to assume that the increase in temperature this century would exceed this value at any time. Would it therefore seem reasonable to NOT spend any extra money on carbon capture, etc until such a time as the temperature increase actually reaches 0.2/decade starting with 1990?
It does not matter at all: Be it colder or warmer: It´s “Climate Change”!! and we´ll pay for it. It is now called “sustainability” :
http://www.earthsummit2012.org/
But, as the summit will be held in Rio de Janeiro, June 2012, it won´t be surprising if it snows there.
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.
Tero-Petri Ruoko says:
February 11, 2012 at 7:47 am
There isn’t much available in English on what happened in Finland in the 17th and 18th Centuries with respect to climate and population. I think you could do the Finnish people a great service by going through the Finnish language records on those things in order to get an understanding of what is going to happen.
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]
mwhite says:
February 11, 2012 at 8:03 am
Wrong. Brian Fagan is a technical illiterate. In several of his books he refers to arrowheads weighing a kilo. He has no understanding of the physical world, and therefore seemingly no curiosity about it.
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.
AFPhys says:
February 11, 2012 at 8:13 am
Agreed. It seems that what is going to happen to a solar cycle is determined at its inception at the peak of the previous cycle. With Altrock’s green corona diagramme we are seeing the next solar cycle even before the first sunspots appear near solar minimum.
William M. Connolley says:
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?”
Well, I am from Norway, and I certainly don’t believe a word of what you are writing.
William:
Chart of Bond events
DO events, chart covers past 50K ybp.
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.
willie Connolley~ you were complaining about another solar scientist on your blog just in the past few days. I was wondering, have you written an article about him for Wiki yet?
~Otter
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.
William says:
February 11, 2012 at 2:21 pm
If the Dark Ages was the last Dansgaard/Oesheger event and they are 1,470 years apart, then we are due for one now.
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 11, 2012 at 1:09 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
As I said, they were not clear. And I can add that your contribution clarifies little. I’m not surprised that you are unable to take their Figure 3 middle panel further, as you don’t use the right methods for such jobs. Don’t waste anymore of my time.
I think the Svalbard number is off by a factor of 10. It should be 0.109° per year, I’m thinking.
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 (February 11, 2012 at 6:33 pm) wrote:
“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.”
I don’t usually do theory. More interested in hard numbers. But I’ll venture off usual pattern to suggest that this makes sense based on my observations of winter ice patterns while sea kayaking inlets of coastal British Columbia, Canada (called fiords or fjords elsewhere, but called inlets here).
I can tell you with absolute certainty that it works like a hard (and I mean HARD) switch. A layer of fresh water at the salt water surface in winter results in an absolutely hard QUALITATIVE dynamics change. It is a much, MUCH stronger contrast than day & night.
Thanks for the interesting notes.
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
David Archibald – has anyone looked into the rate of change from min to max or max to min of the soar cycle as a better correlate than the cycle length? I tried to do this several years ago, but had only graphs to eyeball and am not very good at maths, but I was left with the feeling that rate of change might be better than length per se, especially for some low peak but short cycles.
“The statistics in the Solheim et al paper are bullet proof.”
I wasn’t going to say anything, but this is too far over the top. As with all climate studies, the assumptions are untenable given our current understanding of the climate system, so statistical inference is a waste of time. At this infantile stage of understanding, we need to focus all guns on data exploration; it is our only hope of avoiding paradoxical interpretation of statistical inference. With a firm handle on all major sources of complex variance, meaningful climate statistical inference will be possible in the future, but for the present (& the foreseeable future) climate statistical inference is nothing more than a culturally-enforced hazard to the well-being of society & civilization.
Sincerely.
Data exploration and statistical inference differ FUNDAMENTALLY.
It’s not sensible to conflate the two.
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.
@David Archibald
Thanks for a very interesting thread.
@Ninderthana
Thanks for stopping by.