Guest post by David Archibald
The most skillful climatologist the World has seen was Hubert Lamb (1913 – 1997). He can be credited with making the first prediction of the current solar minimum. This was in 1970 in a report (Weiss and Lamb) for the German Navy.
He did it by making a reconstructed record of the average frequency of southwesterly surface winds in England since 1340. Quoting Lamb “We sense a cycle or periodicity of close to 200 years in length.” and “There may be a valuable indication of the origin of this apparent 200 year recurrence tendency, in that the sharp declines of the southwesterly wind indicated in the late 1300s, 1560s, 1740s-1770s and now, in each case fell at about the end of a sequence of sunspot cycles which built up to periods of exceptionally great solar disturbance (around 1360-80, the 1570s, the 1770s, the 1950s and more recently). The frequency maxima of the southwesterly wind, and evidence of warm climate periods in Europe sustained over several decades, all bear a similar relationship to these variations of the Sun’s activity.”
Following is Figure 11.6 from Lamb’s 1988 book “Weather, Climate and Human Affairs”:
The frequency of the southwest wind at London is shown by the solar line. A tentative forecast (broken line) is made simply by moving the whole curve 200 years to the right, i.e. the forecast implied by accepting the apparent 200 year recurring oscillation shown by the series.
Successful predictions have many fathers. Lamb’s successful prediction forty years ago was the first prediction of the current minimum and reminds us that climate cycles can be relied upon to continue to the end of time.
References
Weiss, I. and Lamb, H.H. (1970) ‘Die Zunahme der Wellenhohen in jungster Ziet in den Operationsgebieten der Bundesmarine, ihre vermutliche Ursachen and ihre voraussichtliche weitere Entwicklung, Fachlich Mitteilungen, Nr. 160, Porz-Wahn, Geophysikalisher Bertungsdiesnt der Bundeswehr.
David Archibald
February 2012
What a superb and detailed paper! Thx muchly.
The annual 60° latitude swing of the intertropical conversion zone over Asia (vs. about 10° elsewhere) is astonishing.
Bart & David: I know what the units are; SW wind days. I also don’t think that it is a negative correlation, as Lamb uses “warming” in conjunction with the greater wind days. I also know that the SW wind is usually warm, as its a result of an enlarging of the Azores High. When the area of the Azores high is larger, there is clockwise circulation bringing more warm weather into Europe. If you have more days with a warm wind, you should see a warming.It should be a positive correlation.
GlynnMhor
Their ’200 years’ may be actually the 170-180 years …
Or their 200 years may actually be 200 years,
http://virakkraft.com/Sun-southwest-wind-London.png
I wonder if William M. Connolley is on his way to Damascas.
Some come to mock, but stay to heed.
Hubert Horace Lamb
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-professor-h-h-lamb-1249739.html
Quoting Lamb “We sense a cycle or periodicity of close to 200 years in length.” and “There may be a valuable indication of the origin of this apparent 200 year recurrence tendency, in that the sharp declines of the southwesterly wind indicated in the late 1300s, 1560s, 1740s-1770s and now, in each case fell at about the end of a sequence of sunspot cycles which built up to periods of exceptionally great solar disturbance (around 1360-80, the 1570s, the 1770s, the 1950s and more recently).
The frequency maxima of the southwesterly wind, and evidence of warm climate periods in Europe sustained over several decades, all bear a similar relationship to these variations of the Sun’s activity.”
Successful predictions have many fathers. Lamb’s successful prediction forty years ago was the first prediction of the current minimum and reminds us that climate cycles can be relied upon to continue to the end of time.
Since climate scientist have supposed periods in the temperature proxies, they have tried to press them into the dimension of earth years [y], mostly with a variation limit of years and sometimes with a label of the name of the scientist who has supposed that ‘cycle’. This exercise may be good enough for repetition of events of the July 4th but is not in science, and there are reasons for this.
Time cycles or periods of time have no existence in science in general, because the dimension of time is social defined dimension. Also the more useful dimension of a frequency f [Hz] has no existence in physics unless it is not coupled to energy E [J] or the Planck constant h [Js]. Multiple oscillating processes in nature and physics cannot be solved in earth years but with the dimension of energy E [J]. This is necessary because there can exist couplings or superimpositions of energies from objects in the solar system of difference frequencies which cannot be differenced in the dimension of time [y] (This is understandable if one should calculate the average velocity of an airplane which is 800 km per hour form London to New York and 1000 km per hour from New York to London because of the jet stream. The average velocity is about 888.88 km per hour and not 900 km per hour.).
Thinking in cycles in time is a trap in the work of science.
This holds also to the ‘close to 200 years in length’ of H.H. Lamb, but also for the cycles of N. Scarfetta or all other x year cycles, which have no existence or relation to an real object. Here waits another trap using ‘holy’ year cycles from FFT analyses because this tool is only able to analyse sinusoid frequencies, but there are no real sinusoid frequencies in the energies of the solar system.
On the other side, frequencies and difference frequencies if they supposed to the solar system are all precise known, and can be fitted and compared with the temperature proxies over 6 millennia.
H. H. Lamb has also published adapted Bristlecone tree ring data in California for the last 5000 years. And the data show that there may some or o lot of temperature frequencies hidden in the data, and it is not clear which frequencies with which non sinusoid function are involved.
But taking simple two or three non sinusoid frequencies from adequate objects in the solar system, the temperature spectrum given by H. H.Lamb is less mysterious:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_23_lamb_comp.jpg
Solving the strength of the single frequencies in the solar system it changes from a verification tool to a forecast tool for the next 1000 years:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/GHI_11_ghi4_.gif
And by superimposing more (eleven) frequencies from real objects in the solar system this forecast tool is able to forecast the climate up to temperature frequencies of 1/month as a comparison with the hadcrut3 archive shows:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_had_1960_3.gif
Lamb’s successful prediction forty years ago was the first prediction of the current minimum and reminds us that climate cycles can be relied upon to continue to the end of time.
I think a forecast by shifting curves in integer years (called cycles) becomes not a worth because the shift is done by a pioneer and authority in climate sciences. Evidence is not to be owned by authority; it must be recognized in each present anew.
If a prediction is right it does not says any about the logic. I you take the fraction 16/64 and canceling a six on top and a six on the bottom, you get that 16/64 = 1/4. The result is correct, but the logic is wrong.
V.
Time-weighted for accuracy and detail, Pandolfi and Libby’s forecast from 1979 is likely to have been the best prediction of the current minimum. What I like about Lamb’s forecast is that it is pure wiggle-matching and based on detailed work.
What about the mothers of invention?
In Reply to
William M. Connolley comment of
February 18, 2012 at 1:07 pm
Connelly: “You appear to be claiming some kind of back-prediction from this to solar cycles, but I fear the connection is tenuous at best.”
Astley: I do not understand why you statement “tenuous at best”. Have you examined the paleo record? There are 100’s of published paper concerning this issue. How do you explain the last 23 Dansgaard-Oeschger events all of which have cosmogenic isotope changes?
There is an exhaustive set of data that which unequivocally supports the assertion, that cyclic significant solar changes force the planet’s climate. Solar cycle 24 appears to be start of the cooling portion of a Dansgaard-Oesgher event.
Without question the 1470 year Dansgaard-Oesgher events (23 have been found) in the paleoclimatic record, have a physical cause. As there are cosmogenic isotope changes (smoking gun evidence, the same suspect is at the scene of the crime 23 times) at all of the Dansgaard-Oesgher events the question is not “if”, but rather “how” does the sun cause what is observed. It is interesting that the largest C14 change in the entire paleo record occurs at the Younger Dryas event. The cosmogenic isotope data indicates that there are cyclically small, medium, and very, very, large solar events.
It is interesting that the Younger Dryas cooling event occurred at the same time as a Dansgaard-Oesgher event. The 8,200 year ago abrupt cooling event (the 8200 year cooling event was about ¼ of the magnitude of the Younger Dryas cooling event) also occurred at the same time as a Dansgaard-Oesgher event.
http://www.climate4you.com/images
/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
There sun was at its highest activity level in roughly 11,000 years during the last half the 20th century.
http://www.climate4you.com/
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0784v1
Long-term Evolution of Sunspot Magnetic Fields
Independent of the normal solar cycle, a decrease in the sunspot magnetic field strength has been observed using the Zeeman-split 1564.8nm Fe I spectral line at the NSO Kitt Peak McMath-Pierce telescope. Corresponding changes in sunspot brightness and the strength of molecular absorption lines were also seen. This trend was seen to continue in observations of the first sunspots of the new solar Cycle 24, and extrapolating a linear fit to this trend would lead to only half the number of spots in Cycle 24 compared to Cycle 23, and imply virtually no sunspots in Cycle 25.
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.
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. … ..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.
http://www.falw.vu/~renh/pdf/Renssen-etal-QI-2000.pdf
Reduced solar activity as a trigger for the start of the Younger Dryas? (Astley: The cause of the abrupt change was not a change in solar TSI. ) The Younger Dryas (YD, 12.9}11.6 ka cal BP, Alley et al., 1993) was a cold event that interrupted the general warming trend during the last deglaciation. The YD was not unique, as it represents the last of a number of events during the Late Pleistocene, all characterised by rapid and intensive cooling in the North Atlantic region (e.g., Bond et al., 1993; Anderson, 1997). During these events, icebergs were common in the N Atlantic Ocean, as evidenced by ice-rafted sediments found in ocean cores. The most prominent of these episodes with ice rafting are known as Heinrich events (e.g., Bond et al., 1992, 1993;Andrews, 1998). A Heinrich-like event (H-0) was simultaneous with the YD (Andrews et al., 1995). Moreover, the YD seems to be part of a millennial-scale cycle of cool climatic events that extends into the Holocene (Denton and KarleHn, 1973; Harvey, 1980; Magny and Ru!aldi, 1995; O’Brien et al., 1995; Bond et al., 1997).
http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www.gg.rhbnc.ac.uk/elias/teaching/VanGeel.pdf
“A number of those Holocene climate cooling phases… most likely of a global nature (eg Magney, 1993; van Geel et al, 1996; Alley et al 1997; Stager & Mayewski, 1997) … the cooling phases seem to be part of a millennial-scale climatic cycle operating independent of the glacial-interglacial cycles (which are) forced (perhaps paced) by orbit variations.”
“… we show here evidence that the variation in solar activity is a cause for the millennial scale climate change.”
Last 40 kyrs
Figure 2 in paper. (From data last 40 kyrs)… “conclude that solar forcing of climate, as indicated by high BE10 values, coincided with cold phases of Dansgaar-Oeschger events as shown in O16 records”
Recent Solar Event
“Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) “…coincides with one of the coldest phases of the Little Ice Age… (van Geel et al 1998b)
Periodicity
“Mayewski et al (1997) showed a 1450 yr periodicity in C14 … from tree rings and …from glaciochemicial series (NaCl & Dust) from the GISP2 ice core … believed to reflect changes in polar atmospheric circulation..”
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years
We combine physics-based models for each of the processes connecting the radiocarbon concentration with sunspot number. According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago.We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1500-year_climate_cycle
So, I don’t see an answer to my question: just exactly what is it that Lamb is supposed to have predicted? Was it, as the graph says, Southwest wind at London, or something else?
We take “Warmists” to task for not using the Scientific Method diligently, but this article also seems to be a bit abbreviated w.r.t. the Scientific Method. So apparently Lamb’s prediction was “successful”. If so, there must be details somewhere of the method of testing the prediction, and the the results that confirmed it was successful. Where?
William,
In the text that David quoted from the Lamb, you’ll see that Lamb attributed the changes in wind to some connection with changes in sunspot cycle intensity. It does seem that what he was trying to predict was the wind, but given that he was connecting it to the sunspot cycle, he was also predicting changes in that. I would very much like to see if his London wind prediction held up, which, as you pointed out, isn’t checked here. However, there has been a drop in solar activity right around the time he would have expected, so his indirect prediction seems to be coming true.
RockyRoad says:
Apparently, you don’t know what the word “exponential” means since your statement is nonsensical. An exponential function satisfies the relation that the rate of change of the function is proportional to the value of the function. And, in fact, if you take the function to be the excess of CO2 concentration above the ~280 ppm pre-industrial concentration, the rise has been approximately exponential. (If you take the function to be the total CO2 concentration instead, then the rise has been considerably faster than exponential.)
>Astley: I do not understand why you statement “tenuous at best”.. How do you explain the last 23 Dansgaard-Oeschger events
Err, but what has this got to do with the “prediction”?
> It does seem that what he was trying to predict was the wind
Insofar as he was trying to predict anything, yes. So you’d expect the author of this post to have attempted to verify this prediction, since that is clearly the primary “prediction”. But he appears to be totally uninterested in what Lamb was interested in.
> the sunspot cycle, he was also predicting changes in that
Well maybe, but in that case, what exactly was his prediction, in regard to the sunspot cycles? This post claims “the first prediction of the current solar minimum” but I can’t see that in Lamb’s words. This looks to me like a “prediction”, made after the fact, retro-fitted to some words that won’t support it.
Bob_FJ says:
Only in the minds of those who don’t understand the concept of statistical significance and errorbars in trend analysis.
I got bored of our discussion because you haven’t shown any ability to learn anything that in any way contradicts what your ideology forces you to believe. However, just gave it one more shot in that thread. Maybe you will surprise me.
When science becomes nothing but an exercise in wriggle matching you run the high risk of making the same mistake coders make when finding the name Obama in the Bible next to the phrase “antichrist”. It is a spurious finding not to be taken with anything but with your tongue in cheek.
In reply to William Connelly:
Lamb’s paper from the 1970’s is perhaps dated. I assume that is what your point is. Surely you are not asserting that the 1470 year Dansgaar-Oeschger (Bond) cycle and Younger Dryas (Heinrich cycles) did not occur or that cosmogenic isotope changes do not correlate in time with those events. Are you asserting that there are not cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record?
Lamb’s 1970’s conclusion has been proven to be correct. There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo climate record. That is a fact.
See this link for graphs and data from some of the key papers.
http://www.climate4you.com/
Comment:
Mann’s attempt to remove the cycles with the Hockey stick paper not withstanding. That paper is a distraction. Mann used data from tree rings which are sensitive to both precipitation changes, as well as temperature changes (from a region that receives higher rainfall during cold periods and therefore exhibits greater tree ring growth when the planet is colder) and then used a mathematical technique “principal component” to force the cherry picked tree ring data force the other tree rings to fit the hockey stick. Following the hockey stick paper, there was the spaghetti paper, where appropriate and inappropriate proxy data is presented to make it appear (as the different proxies look like spaghetti on a page) that there is no way to know what has happen in the past. As noted above there are 100’s of papers that discuss and try to explain the Dansgaar-Oecshger cycles, the Heinrich cycles, the glacial/interglacial cycle, the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event, and so. Unbiased specialists in proxy data interpretation no longer question whether the warming and cooling cycles occurred. The field has moved on to try to explain what causing the changes.
There are 100’s of papers published subsequent to Lamb’s 1970’s paper, that confirm that there are cycles of warming and cooling that correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. The cosmogenic isotope changes are caused by solar cycle changes as well as by concurrent changes to the geomagnetic field. It is only in the last 10 years that scientists have made significant progress in the discovery of the mechanisms by which solar cycle changes modulate planetary cloud cover and planetary temperature (There are 7 different mechanisms which I am aware of.) Roughly 70% of the 20th century warming was due to electroscavening where solar wind bursts create a space charge differential in the ionosphere which removes cloud forming ions. There is an interesting series of papers that try to explain how and why the solar wind changed during this period.
What will happen next is completely dependent on the mechanisms, the current change to the sun, as well as the planet’s feedback response to a change in forcing.
It appears we will have a front row seat to observe the once in 1470 year Dansgaar-Oeschger cycle and it seems based on what has happened before that it is likely that this will be a medium or very large Dansgaar-Oescherger event. (See my comment above for links to some of the key papers.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Lamb
Lamb was one of the first to propose that climate could change within human experience, going against the orthodox view of the time that climate could be treated as constant for practical purposes.[1] He developed early theories about the medieval warm period and little ice age, and became known as the “ice man” for his prediction of global cooling and a coming ice age.[3] In 1965 he published his study on “The early medieval warm epoch and its sequel”, based on “data from the realms of botany, historical document research and meteorology”. His view was that “Evidence has been accumulating in many fields of investigation pointing to a notably warm climate in many parts of the world, that lasted a few centuries around A.D. 1000–1200, and was followed by a decline of temperature levels till between 1500 and 1700 the coldest phase since the last ice age occurred.”[4] The paper included a series of diagrams of temperatures in central England over the period, simplified in a 1982 version adjusted to account for “probable under-reporting of mild winters in Medieval times” and “certain botanical considerations” including historical records of vineyards in southern and eastern England. This version was featured in the IPCC First Assessment Report of 1990, figure 7.1c on p. 202, as a “Schematic diagram of global temperature variations for the last thousand years.”[5]
Joel I don’t see an exponential rise in ppm of CO2. I question that prediction. You don’t?
> Lamb’s paper from the 1970’s is perhaps dated. I assume that is what your point is
No. My point is that the entire premise of this post – that Lamb predicted the “current solar min” (whatever exactly is meant by that) is spurious. Lamb made no such prediction. The post, when examined with vaguely “skeptical” eyes, falls apart.
> Lamb’s 1970’s conclusion has been proven to be correct. There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo climate record.
Yeees. But it isn’t in doubt. It wasn’t in doubt when Lamb wrote the paper. No-one is questioning that assertion.
Nice to se you quoting wikipeia. I’m sure everyone else here will tell you that’s a no-no (unless it says something you want to read, of course). As for IPCC First Assessment Report of 1990, figure 7.1c, you may find this helpful; I’ve edited the Lamb page to link to it so it can help others, too.
> It appears we will have a front row seat to observe the once in 1470 year Dansgaar-Oeschger cycle
How very nice. So, when is this event scheduled to begin? When will it peak? Indeed, when was the last peak?
David Archibald says:
February 19, 2012 at 6:43 am
Time-weighted for accuracy and detail, Pandolfi and Libby’s forecast from 1979 is likely to have been the best prediction of the current minimum.
Yes, it was a mostly correct prediction out of carbon isotope data more than 1800 years back i time. There is not a current minimum yet, they have predicted the temperatures will fall unto 2050 AD. Out of a time span of 1800 years+ it is possible to analyse the relevant temperature frequencies and their strength’s, especially because the main frequency of 913.5 years is twice found in the data. But as I have argued, the main job of climate science is not to make (correct) predictions, the main job is the produce knowledge based on real elements of nature.
The anomalies P+L have predicted, easy also could be calculated from the solar tide functions of the planets:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/hadc_ghi6_1000.gif
But the difference is that these functions are accurate known from astronomy laws of planets for the next 1000 years, and the knowledge ends not in 2050 AD:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/lockwood_vs_ghi_4.gif
What I like about Lamb’s forecast is that it is pure wiggle-matching and based on detailed work.
I think wiggle-matching is a serious part of empiric search of unknown elements in nature. I did such job to find the elements of the tensor elements of a magneto-optic garnet twenty years ago, and in the same manner I have wiggled out the strengths of the up to eleven planetary functions involved in the global temperature profile. But again, these heliocentric frequency functions have a basis in the real moving objects in the solar system. As a result it is possible now to verify the A. Moberg et al. data and the cold years around 535/536 AD in high time resolution as this graph shows:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_6_lockwood_2.gif
The point is whether the conclusion is based on well known facts or not. This is a lack also in the philosophy of N. Scarfetta; there is no logical connection from a (sinusoid?) 60 year cycle to a structure in nature; it could be a ‘Ignoratio elenchi’ : “The fallacy of Irrelevant Conclusion consists of claiming that an argument supports a particular conclusion when it is actually logically nothing to do with that conclusion.”
V.
“..climate cycles can be relied upon to continue to the end of time.”
There were warm decades centered at 1630, 1730, 1830, 1930, so roll on SC25 !
Hubert Lamb’s son is my MP and I have mentioned more than once to Norman Lamb that his father must be turning in his grave at the antics of the UEA CRU/Jones et al.
Pamela Gray says:
What does, “I don’t see an exponential rise in ppm of CO2” mean? You have actually taken the numbers and carefully compared it to an exponential? Here is a link to a news story about researchers who apparently have: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/27/carbon-dioxide-rise.html
RE : IPCC -1990-figure-7c – S McIntyre investigated . . . http://climateaudit.org/2008/05/09/where-did-ipcc-1990-figure-7c-come-from-httpwwwclimateauditorgp3072previewtrue/
Proabably a better read that the wiki!
Re: “I don’t see an exponential rise in ppm of CO2″. It can be checked. I opened up this link ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt Then I put the data into MSExcel, plotted it, and then used the Add Trendline facility to get the following.
Linear Trend:
y = 1.459x – 2548 (R^2 = 0.9782)
Exponential Trend:
y = 0.0866 e^0.0042x (R^2 = 0.9834)
So the exponential is slightly better than the linear. But I’ve still got to work-out whether the difference amounts to anything.