Guest post by David Archibald
This is a little bit amusing. In February, I had a post on the solar – sea level relationship which quantified the sea level fall to come to the end of Solar Cycle 25:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/quantifying-sea-level-fall/
The site “Skeptical Science” has to date carried two pieces in response to that February post: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why_David_Archibald_is_wrong_about_solar_sea_level.html
and http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why_David_Archibald_is_wrong_about_solar_sea_level_1B.html
My February post was 624 words and 6 figures. The Skeptical Science responses to date total 3,446 words and 17 figures. The relationship I found between solar activity and sea level is 0.045 mm per unit of annual sunspot number. The threshold between rising and falling seal level is a sunspot amplitude of 40. Below 40, sea level falls. Above that, it rises.
So let’s apply that relationship to the know sunspot record back to the beginning of the Maunder Minimum and see what it tells us. This is the result:
Figure 1: Back-tested Sea Level from 1645
The figure shows sea level falling through the Maunder Minimum due to the lack of sunspots and then fluctuating in a band about 60 mm wide before increasing rapidly from 1934. It then shows sea level peaking in 2003 before declining 40 mm to 2040.
That is pretty much in agreement with the data from the last 150 years, as per this figure combining coastal tide gauge records to 2001 and the satellite record thereafter:
Figure 2: Sea Level Rise 1850 with a Projection 2040
The glaciers started retreating in 1859, with sea level responding with a rise of 1 mm per annum up to 1930. There was an inflection point in 1930 with the rate of sea level rise almost doubling to 1.9 mm per annum. Sea level also stopped rising from 2003. So the back-tested model and the sea level record are in agreement for at least the last 150 years.
Jevrejeva et al (http://www.psmsl.org/products/reconstructions/2008GL033611.pdf) reconstructed sea level back to 1700:
Figure 3: Global Mean Sea Level Reconstruction since 1700
This longer term reconstruction shows the rise of sea level once the glaciers started retreating. It also shows the acceleration of sea level rise from the early 1930s. As Solanki noted in 2004, the Sun was more active in the second half of the 20th Century than at any time in the previous 8,000 years: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=25538 A sea level response to that would be expected.
In summary, the sea level trend fluctuations driven by the internal variability of the ocean-atmosphere coupled system were overprinted by higher solar activity from 1933 to 2003. The period of best fit within that, from 1948 to 1987, has allowed the solar component of sea level rise to be elucidated.
If thermal expansion and world temps are a major factor in sea level rise why are we not seeing a dip in the rate rise during the period of the last neg PDO 1945-1975 which also experienced a low sunspot cycle?
LazTeenager says:April 22, 2012 at 3:36 pm
“And I forgot to mentioning agricultural deltas. E.g. The nile delta and places like Bangladesh.”
It makes sense that river deltas will perfectly keep pace with gradual sea rise, as long as upriver conditions have not drastically changed.
@Mike Maxwell: there were very few (if any) sunspots observed during the Maunder Minimum, so surely that dip in sea level is due to that and the relationship David chose.
David: I am curious as to (a) why you continue to use the 0.045 figure without addressing my points on using the whole dataset and using a proper regression (Part 1B of my series covers this), (b) why your reconstruction shows slightly falling sea level prior to 1930 but your own tidal-gauge-based reconstruction (Figure 2) shows a continual increase, albeit slightly slower than recent, and (c) if you can comment at all on other reconstructions based off of proxies, such as by Kemp et al 2011 in PNAS, which doesn’t show a Maunder response as yours does:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/13/1015619108.full.pdf
@alex C: I’m asking where the sea level data comes from, not what the relationship is between the sea level measurements and sunspots. No citations are given. According to fig 1, the difference in sea level between 1646 and 1726 is on the order of 10cm (about 4 inches). Given the noise due to tides, waves, and so forth, that seems a very high accuracy to have measured the global sea level, or even the sea level in Great Britain (for example) back then.
An apparent correlation with sunspot activity would seem to explain little. In biological sciences an r^2 of 0.55 would spark some interest and perhaps prompt some further research. However, according to Alex C’s work at Skeptical Science the use of an extended time series lowers the r^2 to 0.12.
By the way, for once, the two Skeptical Science articles on this are well written, and the discussion is sensible. I susually find it a frustrating place, but in this case is certainly worth a read.
@markx: Thanks 🙂
@Mike Maxwell: I think that it is an artificial reconstruction based on sunspot data and the linear relationship David derived in his previous post (which I still contest, but anyway) – the sunspot data is available in Part 1 of my series, and what I did to replicate his figure is plot the monthly data in Excel and relate sea level (L) to sunspots (S) by L = (40-S)*0.045, to emulate David’s figures. I then used a trapezoidal Reimann sum (crude integration) to estimate the sea level, from the sea level rise. I haven’t uploaded the figure online but it matches Archibald’s well enough visually.
As to data prior to when that sunspot record starts though (my graph only goes until ~1750), I’m not sure where you might find that. I suppose Google might help, I haven’t looked into that yet because until this point it hasn’t interested me.
Argh, L = (S-40)*0.045. Sorry about the typo.
Jim says:
April 22, 2012 at 1:01 pm
I expect nothing. It is David Archibald who has claimed there is a correlation.
w.
Lief, I suggest your experience with dogs is zero. Some time ago our dog -a Samoyd, had gone in the paddock to round up some sheep. It must have startled a rabbit which ran. The dog caught up with it in 20 m jumped on it and killed. It was not interested in eating it. Recently, in our backyard we had a tree snake sunning itself. Our two dogs (a poodle & border collie) had no interest and I was able to pick up the snake and move it into the bush. The next day the snake was back but it moved and one of the dogs (probably the poodle) jumped on it and killed it. Many animals and have developed camouflage and learnt not to move.
Maybe you know something about solar radiation but you seem to have preconceived ideas. Maybe, your understanding is much less than you think.
LazTeenager says:
April 22, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Well, once again you’ve proven that you’re not following the story. The land area of Bangladesh in increasing, not decreasing … but then you were never one to let facts get in your way.
So you’ve foolishly believed Hansen and the IPCC, and now you have to pay the price.
w.
PS—BTW, why did you take the “y” out of your old alias, “LazyTeenager”? Are you slowly getting less lazy? Because if so, I’d advise you to use your new-found energy to Google some of your claims before embarrassing yourself with things like your howler above about Bangladesh.
Which of your claims should you check? Well, a good rule of thumb would be, the more you believe it, the less likely it is to be true …
The idiot in the corner still, for some reason or another, thinks plate techtonics or ‘mantle rebound’ or whatever still plays a factor in sea level. No doubt the solar panel that is our oceans will collect some energy.
Animals are mostly instinctual.
cementafriend says:
April 22, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Leif, I suggest your experience with dogs is zero.
You did not catch that my response was tongue-in-cheek. To underscore the absurdity of the original comment referring to dogs and decrying the ‘why’. The ‘why’ is why we do science. Without the ‘why’ we have nothing. Now, the ‘why’ may eventually be replaced by a better ‘why’. That is what we call progress. In the meantime, the old ‘why’ would have served us well. Even allowing us to find the better ‘why’.
David Archibald says:
April 22, 2012 at 4:06 pm
That’s the most pathetic excuse for bad work I’ve heard in a long while. Man up and do work that you are proud of, don’t settle for producing un-cited, un-calculated, un-falsifiable non-science just because you find no one else working in the area you are exploring. (And while you are doing that, you might consider other possible reasons why no one is currently working along your lines. It may not be because we’re all idiots except you …)
You go on to say:
Oh, my goodness, another victim of testosterone poisoning … hubris is not your friend, David. Wait until others recognize your brilliance, and then say “Aw, shucks, it was nothing”. Claiming that you’ve brilliantly solved the problems no one else has even noticed doesn’t look good.
Back to the science. We don’t really have very good figures on the 1930’s sea level, not a whole lot of stations have un-interrupted long-term records covering that time. Another problem is exactly how to put the individual stations together. Then there’s the question of land subsidence and how it should be treated. As a result, different investigators get different answers. Heck, even the same investigators have gotten different answers at different times. Here’s the estimate of Jevrejeva from 2006 …
I’m not sure what you are calling the “1930s inflection point in the rate of sea level rise”. To me it seems the rate of sea level rise (lower panel) is high in about 1880, drops until about 1910, and then rises pretty evenly after that … so where is this “sharp inflection point” in 1930 you are all on about discovering and explaining?
w.
PS—Your piece has not “nailed” anything. You have made un-verifiable and more importantly un-falsifiable claims, and now you have excused the shoddiness of your work with the excuse that the “good and the great” haven’t worked on the question … as if that makes any difference.
PPS—Here’s Jevrejeva’s analysis of the sea level by oceanic basin (op. cit.) …
What does your whiz-bang model say about this? Where is your vaunted “1930’s inflection point”? How come the Sun makes one basin rise and another fall in 1930? To misquote Shakespeare,
tallbloke says:
April 22, 2012 at 11:51 am
Agreed, Tallbloke. My breakover point is 40 but it is very likely to be able to get to a more precise figure than that. The average sunspot number from 1700 to 1933 was 43, and from 1993 to 2003, the average sunspot number was 74.5.
Going back to that Solanki, Usoskin et al paper of 2004, the average sunspot number over the last 11,400 years is 28.7. Over the last 8,000 years it has averaged 25.6. Quoting that paper, the average sunspot number of 75 since 1940 is 2.85 standard deviations from the 11,400 year average. The point of all this is that sea level settles at an equilibrium with sunspot number, otherwise it would be continually going up or down.
If the average sunspot number from 1700 to 1933 was 43, and sea level was just slopping about over that period, then the breakover number is going to be close to 43. It is only the 70 year burst at 2.85 standard deviations that enabled us to quantify the relationship with sunspot number.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 22, 2012 at 8:21 pm
we’re all idiots except you
Willis, there are many Einsteins pushing their stuff on this blog…
David Archibald says:
April 22, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Going back to that Solanki, Usoskin et al paper of 2004, the average sunspot number over the last 11,400 years is 28.7. Over the last 8,000 years it has averaged 25.6.
As long as you use numbers like that that very likely are simply wrong, it will only decrease interest in whatever brilliant research you think you are doing. Study this paper carefully:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler05nat_nature04045.pdf
“The reconstruction by Solanki et al. implies generally less solar forcing during the past millennium than in the second part of the twentieth century, whereas our reconstruction indicates that solar activity around AD 1150 and 1600 and in the late eighteenth century was probably comparable to the recent satellite-based observations. In any case, as noted by Solanki et al., solar activity reconstructions tell us that only a minor fraction of the recent global warming can be explained by the variable Sun.”
Or this one: http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler07qsr.pdf
“However, as the mean value during the last 55 yr was reached or exceeded several times during the past 1000 yr the current level of solar activity can be regarded as relatively common”
Or http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038004-Berggren.pdf
“ice core 10Be reflects solar Schwabe cycle variations, and continued 10Be variability suggests cyclic solar activity throughout the Maunder and Spoerer grand solar activity minima. Recent 10Be values are low; however, they do not indicate unusually high recent solar activity compared to the last 600 years.”
One of your ‘papers’ was once dubbed the ‘worst sun-climate paper ever’. This here one comes close.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Who’s a grumpy Willis this morning? But you started out laughing. I am afraid that the Lake Victoria observation was not an original observation of mine. I was using the data and methodology provided by an eminent hydrologist. This is a link to his figure:
http://www.waterpowermagazine.com/graphic.asp?sc=2058304&seq=3
@Leif
…and frisbees or sticks, tennis balls, rocks, etc. Pretty sure most dogs realize these items are not food. Some dogs seem just to like to “play” and/or get some exercise.
David Archibald says:
April 22, 2012 at 8:45 pm
Anecdote masquerading as science on WUWT always makes me grumpy, David, no surprise there.
So let’s see about your claim regarding Lake Victoria. It was in your own words, and it was your own claim, regarding your own graph, in your own post … but once it is questioned, suddenly you have nothing to do with it, you wash your hands of it, it’s someone else’s entirely …
I don’t care if the data came from God himself, David. If you remove the data that doesn’t fit your theory, you can’t claim success because your theory fits the rest of your data. But that’s exactly what you’ve done. You say:
You delete all of the data that doesn’t fit, throwing out a full forty percent of the entire dataset, and then you blithely declare that there is “no doubt” about the relationship? … sorry, David, but that dog won’t hunt.
w.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 22, 2012 at 2:38 pm
Alvin says:
April 22, 2012 at 2:24 pm
How does the rabbit know it does not like to be eaten?
Evolution working its magic. The rabbits that do not run get eaten and leave fewer [or no] descendants.
The dog? It just chases anything.
Hoping to catch its food.
————————————————
My dog chases cats only for the pure joy of the chase. Is that a good example of evolution?
Willis Eschenbach says: April 22, 2012 at 11:43 pm
“You delete all of the data that doesn’t fit, …and then declare that there is “no doubt” about the relationship? …
sorry, David, but that dog won’t hunt.“
And thus, Willis neatly ties up both threads of this debate!
> My dog chases cats only for the pure joy of the chase. Is that a good example of evolution?
Dogs no longer live in the wild. Dogs must now please humans to survive. Perhaps dogs chase cats because people expect them to.
I think here we have a problem not in the correlation from spot to mm but in the concept of an accurate correlation between sunspot number and total solar flux. Thank you, Lief, for the article on the offset in SSN reporting. I see where it could change the number presented but I don’t see where it would change the science presented.
So the question as to whether the sunspot actualization is a direct result or mechanical correlary of total solar radiation as opposed to a result of a separate interaction that happens to nearly correlate to total solar radiation is again raised. TMK this question has yet to be accurately answered and again drops us into a “belief” zone. The only thing we’ve proven so far about sunspots is they are a form of “noise” generated by the sun’s existence. They seem to be a system that releases energy at a higher rate than “normal” much like a heat-point in a pan of boiling water will produce a stream of bubbles. Quite a large sum of money has been spent in developing data streams of additional inputs to the earth’s magnothermal environment in the last few decades. With these new sources I believe we can begin measuring the ACTUAL interaction of the energy to the planet without having to resort to counting.
To those who are concerned about any inaccuracies in the counting of sunspots allow me to point out that there can be a very high consensus of accuracy in almost any qualitative deduction when training and explaination are involved. One need only to look at art history and humanities education to find that people CAN learn to be on precisely the same page as to qualitative deduction. We do it here on the internet literally by wrote.
To those of you who decided to (or neurotically reacted with) inaccurate allegory I would like to reply that you’ve not taken into account the color and hair length of either the vegitation OR the rabbits. Please present a more reasoned example next time!
prjindigo says:
April 23, 2012 at 7:00 am
Quite a large sum of money has been spent in developing data streams of additional inputs to the earth’s magnothermal environment in the last few decades. With these new sources I believe we can begin measuring the ACTUAL interaction of the energy to the planet without having to resort to counting.
Check out: http://www.leif.org/research/POES%20Power%20and%20IHV.pdf
“The threshold between rising and falling seal level is a sunspot amplitude of 40.”
Would that be Leopard Seals, Harbor Seals, or Seals of Approval?
One Saluki/Greyhound who deigned to live with us used to race deer across the fields for fun, no other critters around to match his speed. He certainly knew how to take them down, he’d spent considerable effort practising on me until he’d perfected the technique – I hadn’t realised what he was doing until he was successful – a quick imperceptible touch with his shoulder behind my knee and I dropped like a stone, sprawled on the grass. He thought it very funny as he lay down facing me waiting for me to recover.. 🙂