Guest post by David Archibald
The first prediction of the current climatic minimum was made by Hubbert Lamb 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 south-westerly 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 south-westerly 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 south-westerly 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 solid 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.
The most successful prediction of the current minimum, in terms of lead time and detail, was made by two researchers in the US later that decade. Using tree ring data from redwoods in Kings Canyon in California, in 1979 Libby and Pandolfi forecast that, “by running this function into the future we have made a prediction of the climate to be expected in King’s Canyon; the prediction is that the climate will continue to deteriorate on the average, but that after our present cooling-off of more than the average decay in climate, there will be a temporary warming up followed by a greater rate of cooling-off.”
In a Los Angeles Times interview, Libby and Pandolfi gave a more detailed forecast:
“The forecast is for continued cool weather all over the Earth through the mid-1980s, with a global warming trend setting in thereafter for the rest of the century – followed by a severe cold snap that might well last through the first half of the 21st century.”
“Both the isotope record and the thermometer record show neat agreement for the cold decades at the ends of the 17th and 18th centuries, when temperatures fell by 1-10th to 2-10ths of a degree.”
“More recently, the world has enjoyed an agricultural boom during the past 70 years or so. The Earth’s annual average temperature has risen by about 1 to 1½ degrees, about as much of an increase as the decrease during the Little Ice Ages, during this interval.
When she and Pandolfi project their curves into the future, they show lower average temperatures from now thorugh the mid-1980s. “Then,” Dr. Libby added, “we see a warming trend (by about a quarter of 1 degree Fahrenheit) globally to around the year 2000. And then it will get really cold – if we believe our projections. This has to be tested.”
How cold? “Easily one or two degrees,” she replied, “and maybe even three or four degrees.”
The remarkable thing about the Libby and Pandolfi prediction is that they got the fine detail right, up to the current day, which gives a lot of credence to their projection for the next fifty years.
In 2003, two solar physicists, Schatten and Tobiska, published a paper which included the following prediction: “The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder” type of solar activity minimum – an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity.”
The next prediction of the current minimum was made by Clilverd et al in 2006 using low-frequency solar oscillations:
Clilverd predicted that Solar Cycles 24 and 25 would have amplitudes similar to that of Solar Cycles 5 and 6 of the Dalton Minimum before a return to more normal levels mid-century.
A Finnish tree ring study (http://lustiag.pp.fi/holocene_trends1000_INQUA.pdf) followed in 2007 – Timonen et al. This is a portion of a figure from that study showing a forecast cold period starting about 2015 that is deeper and broader than any cold period in the previous 500 years:
Summary
Libby and Pandolfi provided timely warning of the current cooling more than thirty years ago, through the proper use of tree ring data. Given the enormous societal and financial consequences of that cooling, it would be good application of climate research funds to have a number of groups replicate and update the Libby and Pandolfi work.
References
Clilverd. M.A., Clarke, E., Ulich, T., Rishbeth, H. and Jarvis, M.J., 2006 “predicting Solar Cycle 24 and beyond” Space Weather, Vol. 4, So9005, doi:10.1029/2005SW000207
Libby, L.M. and Pandolfi, L.J. 1979, Tree Thermometers and Commodities: Historic Climate Indicators, Environment International Vol 2, pp 317-333
Schatten, K.H. and W.K.Tobiska 2003, Solar Activity Heading for a Maunder Minimum?, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 (3), 6.03
Timonen, M., Helema, S., Holopainen, J., Ogurtsov, M., Eronen, M., Lindholm, M., Merilainen, J and Mielikainen, K. 2007 “Climate patterns in Northern Fennoscandinavia during the Last Millenium” Xvii INQUA Congress
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.
izen says:
May 21, 2012 at 11:03 am
The most recent few years have been one of the longest and strongest cooler La Nina conditions.
I am sure that you would point out if I invoked the warming from an El Nino event as AGW.
See the graph below and note the following:
1. This last La Nina is NOT the warmest La Nina in the last 16 years.
2. The virtually flat line (slope = 6.85126e-05 per year) extends for a period of 15 years and 6 months since November 1996.
3. The flat line starts and ends with a La Nina so there was no cherry picking here.
4. CO2 went up steadily while the temperatures stayed flat.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1995/plot/rss/from:1996.83/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.83/normalise
Gail Combs (May 21, 2012 at 1:03 pm) asked/answered:
“Is the “Jury In” of course not.”
You’re wrong there Gail.
The following is ROBUSTLY OBSERVED:
Solar-Terrestrial-Climate Weave
http://i49.tinypic.com/2jg5tvr.png
The path of ignorance &/or deception has become untenable in the light of crystal clarity.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Gail Combs (May 21, 2012 at 1:03 pm) asked/answered:
“Is the “Jury In” of course not.”
You’re wrong there Gail.
The following is ROBUSTLY OBSERVED:
Solar-Terrestrial-Climate Weave
http://i49.tinypic.com/2jg5tvr.png
You keep on posting this figure which looks like my childrens´ game of connect-4 but dont explain what quantity is represented by the blue-red colour scale. What is it? Is it global temperature anomaly? What does the pattern mean or predict? Where does solar come in? I´m guessing that the direction of the diagonal red / blue connected lines implies warming or cooling.
4 in a row and its game over, change of direction?
sunsettommy says:
May 20, 2012 at 8:45 pm
John Kehr wrote a book which in part talks about the Milankovitch cycle in some detail and has stated that was are now in Autumn part of the cycle meaning the Interglacial period is almost over.
He make’s a good case to show that the Milankovitch cycle is real and operating on schedule.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/the-book/
He recently posted some revealing charts from his book here here :
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/chapters-1-3/
Scroll to near the bottom where he posted charts on the procession of the worldwide cooling that came in two main phases and also the Eemian temperature anomaly.
It is in later charters is where he shows that the Holocene is nearly over and that the planet has been cooling down for around 4,000 years.That each successive 1,000 years is cooler than the previous one just as it happened in other interglacial periods before it.
..
It is a darn good read!
Thanks – he does write well. It was the level headedness of the odd post here and there by engineers which helped me sort out the arguments when I first began looking at the discussions about backradiation, reminding me of stuff I’d been taught but hadn’t thought about for yonks.
==========
TRM says:
May 20, 2012 at 9:51 pm
So we are moving towards a climate zone 2 from the 3 where I currently live. Glad the University of Saskatewan has been researching these babies
http://www.fruit.usask.ca/haskap.html
I’m getting some for my yard this year. Even -7 Celsius doesn’t kill the open blossums. Talk about a tough plant (and tasty fruit as well).
And I’m just about to plant five blueberry bushes…
On my list now, I could practically taste them. Interesting area of research, I’ll have to explore this further.
It seems the Russian Academy of Science agrees with David Archibald’s post.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/05/21/scientists-of-the-russian-academy-of-sciences-global-warming-is-coming-to-an-end-return-to-early-1980s-level/
Paul Vaughan says:
May 20, 2012 at 4:00 pm
u.k.(us) (May 20, 2012 at 1:44 pm) suggested:
“Don’t be too hard on our fiery Irish lass.
We are all here seeking truth, as best we can.”
“Seeking” truth? Pamela ignores truth.
Her acidic spin is strictly inadmissible
“Inadmissable”? You sound like a Soviet apparatchik.
Pamela is pointing to something which I agree is a key part of climate dynamics, which is, (to temporarily borrow your own blogging prose style) the emergent neo-Hopf bifurcation pre-chaotic non-equilibrium / nonlinear pattern formation inevitable in an open system far from equilibrium which is dissipative with frictional damping causing pattern-forming tension between positive and negative feedbacks. The result, as any 2-year-old can see, is a probabilistic landsape of Lyapunov-stable stange attractors linked by thermodynamic saddles or valleys (or possibly tunnels). Glacial and interglacial are the two most obvious such attractors.
The earth system itself generates pattern at all timescales, as Pamela correctly observes. The ocean circulation has a millenial time period and holds most of the climate´s heat energy, providing the basis for long term nonequilibrium emergent pattern. However this does not rule out a role for solar and astrophysical forcing factors. Since atmosphere and ocean temporal variations are (obviously) weakly periodically forced nonlinear oscillations similar to the class of forced Belousov-Zhabotinsky spatially distributed thin film reactions, something is driving them (there are nonlinear oscillators that are totally self-driven but I dont think climate is in this category.)
So its not astrophysical forcing OR internal pattern dynamics, but both – a nonlinear oscillator (or set of such oscillators) periodically forced and balanced somewhere on the boundary between strong and weak forcing. Thats what makes wiggle-matching so frustrating but at the same time fun.
Thanks Mods – stars all.
Stephen Wilde says:
May 21, 2012 at 3:05 am
“The dependence is complicated, but the bottom line is the jet stream is weaker when there’s less ozone (it has to do with latitude-dependent temperature gradients across the upper atmosphere; those gradients are strong in winter and weak in summer). Ozone creation depends on UV from the Sun, which is weaker during a solar minimum. See where this is going? Weaker magnetic activity on the Sun means less ozone which means a weaker jet stream which means it meanders more, bringing cold air south in some places.”
Very much a reflection of my previous work but they have the sign of the solar effect wrong.
Ozone above 45km decreased to give cooling aloft when the sun was more active and is increasing now that the sun is less active.
See work by Joanna Haigh and others.
Furthermore I have pointed out that the weaker more variable jetstream MUST be accompanied by stratospheric warming and not cooling because that is what pushes the jets more equatorward as witness the events observed in shorter term ‘sudden stratospheric warming’ events.
So, the only scenario that fits observations is contrary to established climatology. The stratosphere must cool naturally when the sun is active and warm naturally when the sun is less active.
It is because established assumptioins were wrong (and still are) that it was necessary to have recourse to the theories about the CFC effects on ozone and the CO2 effects on stratospheric temperatures. Only with those theories could the observations be accounted for.
But if one simply reverses the sign of the solar effect above the tropopause it all becomes clear as to what is going on.
======
Thank you Stephen – and for your post in the last discussion. All still above my paygrade, but have been drawn into it through that Maya connection, and I’d really like to understand it so will follow up on your lead.
tonyb says:
May 20, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Many thanks. The CIA report has opened up another line of inquiry.
Ulric Lyons says:
May 21, 2012 at 1:27 pm
I don’t interpret that chart the same way as you.
The downward slope in the last section is only apparent as a result of the second of the two volcanic spikes artificially elevating the stratospheric temperature at the beginning of the final section. If one ignores that there has been little or no stratospheric cooling since the late 90s.
Furthermore I am not satisfied that that chart is adequately comparable with the charts in the 2009 paper that I linked you to.
Phlogiston if your going to say things like “The result, as any 2-year-old can see..” then perhaps you might not want to be so “ses·qui·pe·da·li·an” (it means given to using long words for anyone who doesn’t know) in the manner in which you post.
You might be spot on with what your saying, I can’t really tell, but very few people are likely to understand what your trying to communicate given the manner in which you’ve worded the entire post.
“The result, as any 2-year-old can see..” just makes you sound like an arrogant jerk.
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Gail Combs (May 21, 2012 at 1:03 pm) asked/answered:
“Is the “Jury In” of course not.”
You’re wrong there Gail.
The following is ROBUSTLY OBSERVED:
Solar-Terrestrial-Climate Weave
http://i49.tinypic.com/2jg5tvr.png
The path of ignorance &/or deception has become untenable in the light of crystal clarity.
_______________________________
Yes Paul we have OBSERVATIONAL DATA. That is why I linked to Dr Joan Feynman’s study of aurora and Nile river records “collected between 622 and 1470 A.D” If you look at the Millancovitch cycles we have not only a good wiggle match but a mechanism explaining the reasons behind the cycle.
However when we talk about the shorter term cycles the theories (physics) behind the observations is still being researched. There are at least four or five different ideas about how the sun and climate are connected floating around WUWT over the past few years. Henrik Svensmark’a Cosmic Ray/Cloud theory being the top contender at the moment with the most experimental data backing it up.
However you still have to account for the behavior of the oceans- AMO, PDO, ENSO… and the atmosphere, that is the jet streams, rossby waves…. And that does not include the influence of land masses. The uplifting of the Carribbean plate and the closing of the Isthmus of Panama is thought to have changed ocean circulation enough to have initiated the Ice Ages for example.
As I said it is still an infant science and darn complicated. We have learned a lot but there is still a lot more to learn. Spending thirty years stuck on CO2 as the “control knob” of climate was a real waste of time, effort and money.
phlogiston says:
May 21, 2012 at 4:34 pm
….Pamela is pointing to something which I agree is a key part of climate dynamics, which is, (to temporarily borrow your own blogging prose style) the emergent neo-Hopf bifurcation pre-chaotic non-equilibrium / nonlinear pattern formation inevitable in an open system far from equilibrium which is dissipative with frictional damping causing pattern-forming tension between positive and negative feedbacks….
________________________________
Yes, a darn complicated system with the oceans a key factor as well as the impact of solar variation and changes in the atmosphere all complicated by land masses and mountains and volcanoes… Darn hard to figure out what all the factors are much less what effects which and how much. And then you toss in oscillations…
Paul Vaughan posted the link to this 1997 paper weeks ago:
Very interesting 1997 paper – thank you Paul.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/12/tisdale-an-unsent-memo-to-james-hansen/#comment-983731
Paul Vaughan says: May 12, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Revised mainstream solar-terrestrial narrative coming your way soon?…
NASA’s hindsight’s 20/20?…
Dickey, J.O.; & Keppenne, C.L. (1997). Interannual length-of-day variations and the ENSO phenomenon: insights via singular spectral analysis.
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/22759/1/97-1286.pdf
See figure 3a & 3b (pdf p.24 & p.25).
Updated (with more recent data) & anomalized by day of year:
Solar-Terrestrial-Climate Weave
http://i49.tinypic.com/219q848.png
Gail Combs says:
May 21, 2012 at 7:18 pm
No truer words were ever spoken. And humanity will pay for it big time.
HenryP says: May 21, 2012 at 11:41 am
Allan MacRae says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/20/premonitions-of-the-fall-in-temperature/#comment-990620
Henry says
Personally I think the climate is on this curve:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/orssengo3.png
Thanks Henry – I hope to God you are right and I am wrong.
In your scenario. life goes on with some moderate net warming, and humanity and the environment will survive just fine.
In my scenario, there is an 80% probability that Earth is cooling, and a 40% chance that the cooling will be severe enough to reduce the global grain harvest.
Can you provide a reference that supports your predictive track record?
Mine is at http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
See our Rebuttal and the eight points we made in 2002. I suggest we score 8/8.
Paul and Pamela:
You can both be correct.
@phlogiston
See my reply to DirkH.
–
@phlogiston & Gail Combs
I sense your confusion loud & clear on how ENSO & multidecadal variations relate to the solar-terrestrial weave.
Put that aside for a minute and go back to the simple basics of the terrestrial year.
First, concentrate on understanding equator-pole gradients and their effects on semi-annual winds.
2m Temperature:
http://i55.tinypic.com/dr75s7.png
200hPa Wind:
http://i52.tinypic.com/zoamog.png
200hPa Wind — Polar View:
http://i52.tinypic.com/cuqyt.png
Zonal Wind Vertical Profile:
http://i51.tinypic.com/34xouhx.png
Let me know if you understand this much before we try to go any further.
The Libby and Pandolfi “prediction” does not make a falsifiable claim about the unobserved outcome of a statistical event, hence is not an example of a prediction.
Allan MacRae (May 21, 2012 at 8:21 pm) wrote:
“Very interesting 1997 paper – thank you Paul.”
You’re very welcome. It’s an important paper. The quality of discussion here would be much uplifted if everyone would take the time to carefully digest that paper.
—
@phlogiston
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/20/premonitions-of-the-fall-in-temperature/#comment-990337
David says:
May 21, 2012 at 6:55 pm
Phlogiston if your going to say things like “The result, as any 2-year-old can see..” then perhaps you might not want to be so “ses·qui·pe·da·li·an” (it means given to using long words for anyone who doesn’t know) in the manner in which you post.
You might be spot on with what your saying, I can’t really tell, but very few people are likely to understand what your trying to communicate given the manner in which you’ve worded the entire post.
“The result, as any 2-year-old can see..” just makes you sound like an arrogant jerk.
It was meant sarcastically, as I said at the top of the the post ” to temporarily borrow your own blogging prose style”. A dangerous thing to do in a blog, should have ended with /sarc off.
Paul Vaughan says: May 21, 2012 at 9:25 pm
Allan MacRae (May 21, 2012 at 8:21 pm) wrote:
“Very interesting 1997 paper – thank you Paul.”
You’re very welcome. It’s an important paper. The quality of discussion here would be much uplifted if everyone would take the time to carefully digest that paper.
__________
Agreed Paul.
A few thoughts:
The ~~4 year cycle in this 1997 paper is associated with a lag of atmospheric CO2 after atmospheric temperature T of ~9 months, and the rate of change dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with T. This CO2 cycle is caused by biological (photosynthesis, etc.) and physical (shallow water dissolution and exsolution) factors.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
Then there is the much longer ~~800 year lag of CO2 after T (as measured I ice cores), which I suspect is associated with the upwelling of deep ocean currents. Note that ~800 years ago was the Medieval Warm Period.
It appears that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
Each temperature cycle has its own CO2 delay, and its own approximate period (cycle time length).
There may also be one or more intermediate cycles between the above two (the late Ernst Beck believed there was), and other shorter cycles.
I think there is ample evidence of a daily localized cycle, driven by photosynthesis..
http://co2.utah.edu/index.php?site=2&id=0&img=30
The evidence suggests that varying atmospheric CO2 is not a cause of climate change, it is an effect.
I further believe that humanmade CO2 emissions are relatively small compared to natural daily, weekly, seasonal and millennial CO2 flux, and are probably insignificant in this huge dynamic system.
No small irony here – if I am correct, both sides of the rancorous “mainstream” global warming debate are wrong. Both sides assume that humanmade CO2 is the primary driver of temperature, and are only arguing about the amount of warming (climate sensitivity to CO2, feedbacks positive or negative, etc.). If I am correct, both sides of the mainstream debate have “put the cart before the horse”. I think Veizer (2005, GSA Today) already understood most of this.
The serious consequences of this debate are the debasement and corruption of science, the sabotage of electrical grid integrity by wind and solar power schemes, the huge conversion of food to fuel, and the squandering of a trillion dollars of scarce global resources on a non-issue. These unfortunate consequences can only be blamed on the warming alarmist side of the mainstream debate.
Regards, Allan
Paul Vaughan says:
May 21, 2012 at 12:45 am
DirkH (May 20, 2012 at 4:28 pm) commented/asked about Solar-Terrestrial-Climate Weave http://i49.tinypic.com/2jg5tvr.png “Fascinating, Paul – the checkerboard pattern repeats after 22 years (a full magnetic reversal cycle). What variable do you show? Simple temperature anomaly?”
Not temperature anomaly. Basically you’re looking at normalized lunisolar-neutralized Schwabe-extent semi-annual-grain global-WIND anomalies, which inform about the equator-pole temperature GRADIENTS which drive them.
If the wind anomaly is not lunisolar neutralised, do you still get the weave pattern? If not, then could the weave be an artefact of this correction?
Looks like May could come in at about 0.15C so falling again from last month. R Spencer’s binomial curve is looking very precise now
@Stephen Fisher Wilde says:
May 21, 2012 at 5:22 pm
” don’t interpret that chart the same way as you. […] Furthermore I am not satisfied that that chart is adequately comparable with the charts in the 2009 paper that I linked you to. ”
In your link the graph stops at 2006 and it is the same data.
Paul Vaughan says: @ur momisugly May 21, 2012 at 8:52 pm
….phlogiston & Gail Combs
I sense your confusion loud & clear on how ENSO & multidecadal variations relate to the solar-terrestrial weave.
Put that aside for a minute and go back to the simple basics of the terrestrial year….
_____________________________
I am glad you are explaining this to those of us who are having trouble following your thoughts. If you have not written this up and posted it as an article on WUWT Please, Please do. Remember that WUWT is a place where interested lay people with little science and math education can go to find things out about climate science. There is a large audience here who do not ask questions that we need to keep in mind as we write. (It is why I am willing to put both feet in my mouth.)
Having said that, see if I have the explanation of each of your graphs correct.
2 meter temperature
This graph is quite interesting because it shows the high temperatures are not over the equator regions but at 25N and 25S, only over land and not over all land either. It seems to be over the desert region of the USA SW, the deserts of north Africa and the dry area of Australia. India has hot dry summers with 80% of its rainfall during the few months of the Monsoon season and also sees very hot temperatures. South America and South East Asia do not get the very high temperatures. They also do not get as dramatic a wet and dry season as India. SE Asia gets hot & humid “dry seasons” (Effects of land clearing & mountains on summer rain fall/humidity => Thunderstorms??)
Windvector and isotachs @ur momisugly 200hPa
#1. Show the wind speed is highest at approximately 30N & 30S though it varies slightly.
#2. The strength of the wind builds as the season progresses.
#3. The strong winds switch from the northern to the southern hemisphere with the change in seasons.
Polar view of winds @ur momisugly 200hPa
Same as above but emphasises the stronger winds in the northern hemisphere and that the strong winds in the southern hemisphere seem to be centered on Australia. (hot dry desert thermals??)
Zonal mean, Zonal wind:
#1. Shows the variation in wind over the seasons
#2. The red shows strong downdraft? that is wind returning to the surface while the blue shows strong updraft?
#3. The updraft (blue) switches hemispheres with the seasons and moves towards the equator as the warm season advances.
#4. The down drafts (red) switch from the Arctic to the Antarctic with the switch in seasons.
#5. The winds also move up and down within the atmosphere so that the winds around the equinoxes are closer to the surface and the winds during the solstices are further up in the atmosphere.
This would all link to Willis’s Thermostat theory That is when the air temperature gets too hot thunderstorms build in the afternoon and dump heat to the upper atmosphere. I took a quick and dirty look at the summer storm formation on the east coast of the USA a couple years ago and found it was in effect up to about Fayetteville NC dropping in frequency from storms occurring 2 days out of 3 for Florida (Miami is 25.8 N) to 1 day out of 3 for Fayetteville NC.(35.0 N)