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
Further to my February 20, 2012 at 9:15 pm:
I should belatedly follow-up on my comment to Joel:
AND, in response to this moderator note therein to me:
Non sono sicuro. Non ho capito. (comparativamente, con parole semplice)
Consequently, it is probably more sensible to refer to developments in this uhhh conversation starting here at Anthony’s “reject site”:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/joel-shore-the-radiative-greenhouse-effect/#comment-18261
BTW, it is interesting that Joel has not responded to this:
http://bobfjones.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/linear-trends-on-noisy-data/
It shows that his claims of expertise in trend analysis, and the IPCC corruption of such to suit their agenda is {….}; insert suitable four letter word.
More from Joel Posted by TB @ur momisugly February 24, 2:46 pm:
This is pure obfuscation, on matters which I’ve specifically twice pointed out; arising from a BTW COMMENT of mine; should not be used to divert away from the simpler issues in my clearly identified enquiries to you. For a start, below is one short question that I quote from my last post here: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/joel-shore-the-radiative-greenhouse-effect/#comment-18361
…”How did you obtain exactly 5 Km.?…” (in the context of the effective radiation surface height in the atmosphere, and the link above)
Could you please clearly answer that simple question. (the one identified in bold and italics text in the line just above). See also Markus Fitzhenry @ur momisugly February 24, 5:53 am, suggesting 6 Km a la Hansen et al.
Joel Shore,
Further to my February 24, 6:12 pm, and my Email alerting you to it, I just want to make sure that when I re-quoted one very specific question thus:
…”How did you obtain exactly 5 Km.?…”
Context given; That there is still no confusion for you. Whilst I realise that you said the height was about 5 Km, you then went on to back-calculate the temperature of the surface using exactly 5 km to give an unqualified result of 287.5 K, just half a degree short of the desired 288K. Hai capito?
Bob_FJ: The calculation was meant to be illustrative. I did not claim that the effective radiating layer is at exactly 5 km; but I had to use something in the calculations, so I used that. And, I only quoted the resulting temperature to that many significant figures because I knew that if I just said the result was a greenhouse effect close to 33 K, someone would probably complain that it is really 32.5 K. (Besides which, you do want to keep enough sig figs to meaningfully compare to the case where you raise the level by 1 km.)
The “effective radiating layer”, as I have noted, is a single number that summarizes the actual complications of the real problem, which is that the level from which a photon can successfully escape to space is strongly-wavelength dependent and is a probabilistic thing, i.e., even at any given wavelength, there is a broad distribution of levels from which the photons that escape to space are coming from.
If you want to understand the details and exactly how accurately the models are able to reproduce the natural greenhouse effect, you will have to go to the literature. It is not something that I have studied in detail.
Joel Shore @ur momisugly February 25, 5:59 am
Thanks Joel for your courteous discussion in reply to mine. The only real difficulty I have with it is that you did not answer the core question:
…”How did you obtain exactly 5 Km.?…” (for the effective radiative surface height (H) in the contexts given)
Please note the first word in the question is HOW not WHY or anything else.
Note too that I had acknowledged that you had said H was about 5km, however you went on to use exactly 5Km to give an unqualified surface T of 287.5K. Hmmm!
Whatever your species of H that you prefer, they both have to be derived from somewhere, and the HOW of this is what I’m asking.
Of course I would like you to show error-bars or confidence levels or the like in your anticipated elaboration.