Sun and Clouds are Sufficient

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

In my previous post, A Longer Look at Climate Sensitivity, I showed that the match between lagged net sunshine (the solar energy remaining after albedo reflections) and the observational temperature record is quite good. However, there was still a discrepancy between the trends, with the observational trends being slightly larger than the calculated results. For the NH, the difference was about 0.1°C per decade, and for the SH, it was about 0 05°C per decade.

I got to thinking about the “exponential decay” function that I had used to calculate the lag in warming and cooling. When the incoming radiation increases or decreases, it takes a while for the earth to warm up or to cool down. In my calculations shown in my previous post, this lag was represented by a gradual exponential decay.

But nature often doesn’t follow quite that kind of exponential decay. Instead, it quite often follows what is called a “fat-tailed”, “heavy-tailed”, or “long-tailed” exponential decay. Figure 1 shows the difference between two examples of a standard exponential decay, and a fat-tailed exponential decay (golden line).

Figure 1. Exponential and fat-tailed exponential decay, for values of “t” from 1 to 30 months. Lines show the fraction of the original amount that remains after time “t”. The “fatness” of the tail is controlled by the variable “c”. Line with circles shows the standard exponential decay, from t=1 to t=20. Golden line shows a fat-tailed exponential decay. Black line shows a standard exponential decay, with a longer time constant “tau”. The “fatness” of the tail is controlled by the variable “c”.

Note that at longer times “t”, a fat-tailed decay function gives the same result as a standard exponential decay function with a longer time constant. For example, in Figure 1 at “t” equal to 12 months, a standard exponential decay with a time constant “tau” of 6.2 months (black line) gives the same result as the fat-tailed decay (golden line).

So what difference does it make when I use a fat-tailed exponential decay function, rather than a standard exponential decay function, in my previous analysis? Figure 2 shows the results:

Figure 2. Observations and calculated values, Northern and Southern Hemisphere temperatures. Note that the observations are almost hidden by the calculation.

While this is quite similar to my previous result, there is one major difference. The trends fit better. The difference in the trends in my previous results is just barely visible. But when I use a fat-tailed exponential decay function, the difference in trend can no longer be seen. The trend in the NH is about three times as large as the trend in the SH (0.3°C vs 0.1°C per decade). Despite that, using solely the variations in net sunshine we are able to replicate each hemisphere exactly.

Now, before I go any further, I acknowledge that I am using three tuned parameters. The parameters are lambda, the climate sensitivity; tau, the time constant; and c, the variable that controls the fatness of the tail of the exponential decay.

Parameter fitting is a procedure that I’m usually chary of. However, in this case each of the parameters has a clear physical meaning, a meaning which is consistent with our understanding of how the system actually works. In addition, there are two findings that increase my confidence that these are accurate representations of physical reality.

The first is that when I went from a regular to a fat-tailed distribution, the climate sensitivity did not change for either the NH or the SH. If they had changed radically, I would have been suspicious of the introduction of the variable “c”.

The second is that, although the calculations for the NH and the SH are entirely separate, the fitting process produced the same “c” value for the “fatness” of the tail, c = 0.6. This indicates that this value is not varying just to match the situation, but that there is a real physical meaning for the value.

Here are the results using the regular exponential decay calculations

                    SH               NH

lambda             0.05             0.10°C per W/m2

tau                2.4              1.9 months

RMS residual error 0.17             0.26 °C

trend error        0.05 ± 0.04      0.11 ± 0.08, °C / decade (95% confidence interval)

As you can see, the error in the trends, although small, is statistically different from zero in both cases. However, when I use the fat-tailed exponential decay function, I get the following results.

                    SH               NH

lambda             0.04             0.09°C per W/m2

tau                2.2              1.5 months

c                  0.59             0.61

RMS residual error 0.16             0.26 °C

trend error       -0.03 ± 0.04      0.03 ± 0.08, °C / decade (95% confidence interval)

In this case, the error in the trends is not different from zero in either the SH or the NH. So my calculations show that the value of the net sun (solar radiation minus albedo reflections) is quite sufficient to explain both the annual and decadal temperature variations, in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, from 1984 to 1997. This is particularly significant because this is the period of the large recent warming that people claim is due to CO2.

Now, bear in mind that my calculations do not include any forcing from CO2. Could CO2 explain the 0.03°C per decade of error that remains in the NH trend? We can run the numbers to find out.

At the start of the analysis in 1984 the CO2 level was 344 ppmv, and at the end of 1997 it was 363 ppmv. If we take the IPCC value of 3.7 W/m2, this is a change in forcing of log(363/344,2) * 3.7 = 0.28 W/m2 per decade. If we assume the sensitivity determined in my analysis (0.08°C per W/m2 for the NH), that gives us a trend of 0.02°C per decade from CO2. This is smaller than the trend error for either the NH or the SH.

So it is clearly possible that CO2 is in the mix, which would not surprise me … but only if the climate sensitivity is as low as my calculations indicate. There’s just no room for CO2 if the sensitivity is as high as the IPCC claims, because almost every bit of the variation in temperature is already adequately explained by the net sun.

Best to all,

w.

PS: Let me request that if you disagree with something I’ve said, QUOTE MY WORDS. I’m happy to either defend, or to admit to the errors in, what I have said. But I can’t and won’t defend your interpretation of what I said. If you quote my words, it makes all of the communication much clearer.

MATH NOTES: The standard exponential decay after a time “t” is given by:

e^(-1 * t/tau) [ or as written in Excel notation, exp(-1 * t/tau) ]

where “tau” is the time constant and e is the base of the natural logarithms, ≈ 2.718. The time constant tau and the variable t are in whatever units you are using (months, years, etc). The time constant tau is a measure that is like a half-life. However, instead of being the time it takes for something to decay to half its starting value, tau is the time it takes for something to decay exponentially to 1/e ≈ 1/2.7 ≈ 37% of its starting value. This can be verified by noting that when t equals tau, the equation reduces to e^-1 = 1/e.

For the fat-tailed distribution, I used a very similar form by replacing t/tau with (t/tau)^c. This makes the full equation

e^(-1 * (t/tau)^c) [ or in Excel notation exp(-1 * (t/tau)^c) ].

The variable “c’ varies between zero and one to control how fat the tail is, with smaller values giving a fatter tail.

[UPDATE: My thanks to Paul_K, who pointed out in the previous thread that my formula was slightly wrong.  In that thread I was using

∆T(k) = λ ∆F(k)/τ + ∆T(k-1) * exp(-1 / τ)

when I should have been using

∆T(k) = λ ∆F(k)(1 – exp(-1/ τ) + ∆T(k-1) * exp(-1 / τ)

The result of the error is that I have underestimated the sensitivity slightly, while everything else remains the same. Instead of the sensitivities for the SH and the NH being 0.04°C per W/m2 and 0.08°C per W/m2 respectively in the both the current calculations, the correct sensitivities for this fat-tailed analysis should have been 0.04°C per W/m2 and 0.09°C per W/m2. The error was slightly larger in the previous thread, increasing them to 0.05 and 0.10 respectively. I have updated the tables above accordingly.

w.]

[ERROR UPDATE: The headings (NH and SH) were switched in the two blocks of text in the center of the post. I have fixed them.