Ian H. Bryce writes at Jo Nova’s website:
The thing that intrigued me about the maximum temperatures is the high peaks, which occur at the peak of the odd solar cycles, and four other times, when we had strong El Nino events. (Most recently, three in four years) It is interesting to note that we did not have the Super EL Nino in 1998!
One wonders when our climate scientists graph global mean temperatures for tens of thousands of stations worldwide, that they “miss the wood for the trees.” I contacted the BOM some time ago about this phenomenon, but I have not had a reply yet. (Surprising?)
Read the entire fascinating article at Jo Nova’s website.
UPDATE: Willis finds some serious problems and posts in comments:
Not sure why I usually end up being the one to rain on the parade, but I’ve accepted my lot in life. Here is the Echuca data plotted against the peaks of the solar cycles, as measured by sunspot counts.
A couple things of note. First, he has misidentified the Cycle 11 peak, it happens earlier. Second, he is very vague about the timing of the cycles. Yes, the high years occurred during those cycles, but if we look at the actual peak year of each cycle, some happen two years before the peak temperatures, some three years before, some four years before, and some show no relation at all to the peak temperatures.
Sorry … but that’s the real data, and the sunspot/temperature correlation doesn’t hold up in the slightest.
SOURCES:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
David Archibald says:
June 25, 2012 at 3:43 pm
…………..
Absolutely, effect of the magnetic cycle is under-rated.
Paul Vaughan says: June 25, 2012 at 9:13 pm
………..
Hi Paul
Dickey and his colleagues did lot more research since 1997, by 2006 he may have found out that his calculations are good but conclusions could be wrong, and by 2009 that a revision may be necessary.
Great thing about WUWT is that you can post about the solar magnetic cycle, get ridiculed, and then there are host of people who have observed some kind of link. I have a bit more data recently; will be putting it all together. Hopefully with some ‘help’ from our resident experts it may become apparent if there is anything to it or not.
Vuk
More to the point is an ability to project your graph (posted a few minutes ago) into the future and tell us all what the climate will be doing over the next five years.
Will it continue downwards as in the UK to its current level which is the same as the 1730’s?
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Or will the temperature trend up again so I can grow my tomatoes outside-something that has been impossible over the last five years. We need to know
tonyb
It looks to me like the sun spot maxima plotted in Willis’ graph partition it into a series of noisy impulse responses (the low frequency response is pretty obvious and definitely not a linear trend). Is there a possible forcing function that looks like an impulse? Spike in incoming solar energy? Abrupt change in spectrum of incoming energy? Magnetic field shift?
Willis, I like your graph better. Remove the 100 year cycle and you see that each odd cycle peak plucks the temperatures like a string, with an exponential decay afterwards.
@Willis Eschenbach (June 25, 2012 at 11:25 pm)
Another fine display of ignorance.
On my wiggle and spectrum test I tend to disagree with Mr. Eschenbach’s conclusion.
Solar magnetic (Hale) cycle looks like a good winner with score 4:2
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Echuca.htm
If all circumstances were known the score could be even higher.
Just a reminder to new readers that the “11 year solar cycle” is just an average. These are the actual cycle lengths. There are 9 cycles shorter than 10.5 years, 9 cycles longer than 11.5 years and only 5 cycles within the 10.5 – 11.5 year range.
No L SSN
1 11.0 87
2 9.0 106
3 9.2 154
4 13.6 131
5 12.1 47
6 12.9 46
7 10.6 71
8 9.6 138
9 12.5 125
10 11.2 96
11 11.7 139
12 10.7 64
13 12.1 85
14 11.9 66
15 10.0 104
16 10.2 78
17 10.4 110
18 10.1 152
19 10.6 190
20 11.6 105
21 10.3 155
22 9.8 158
23 12.1 120
After a bit of excel manipulation I can ‘see’ a correlation!
in http://www.marinesim.eu/echuca_from_1882.jpg the chart shows the temp and sun spot count plotted from 1882.
I amplified the temperature to force any cyclic variation to be more easily visible by using:
=C2*20-350 ie multiplying the temperature by 20 and subtracting 350. This increased the temperature rage and kept in on the graph with the sun spots.
Asking Excel for a trend line (2nd order polynomial) for both temperature and sun spot count gave the the two black curves.
They appear to be the inverse of each other separated by approximately 21 years.
I accept my failings and that this is not a stats exercise, but a fishing expedition to see if there was even a hint of a relationship between these two plots.
The excel sheet is here: http://www.marinesim.eu/echuca_with_polynomial.xlsx
vukcevic says:
June 26, 2012 at 4:47 am
On my wiggle and spectrum test I tend to disagree with Mr. Eschenbach’s conclusion.
Solar magnetic (Hale) cycle looks like a good winner
It is not correct to use a ‘signed’ sunspot number where every other cycle is plotted upside-down. That sleight of hand produces a 22-year peak in the spectrum even if there is none in the data
Before anyone dismisses the Eucha result, please read the following post at my blog:
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/singular-spectral-analysis-of-summer.html
That was Echuca of course (damn typos)!
You might want to look at Thresher (2002) as well:
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY
Int. J. Climatol. 22: 901–915 (2002)
Royal Meteorological Society.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.768/pdf
SOLAR CORRELATES OF SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE
MID-LATITUDE CLIMATE VARIABILITY
RONALD E. THRESHER
Leif Svalgaard says:
It is not correct to use a ‘signed’ sunspot number where every other cycle is plotted upside-down.
It produces damn good results which line up perfectly with climate and Earth’s field spectra, so in such cases it is correct, even if dictum is ‘sun doesn’t do it’.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NH-SH.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Echuca.htm
vukcevic says:
June 26, 2012 at 8:37 am
It produces damn good results which line up perfectly with climate and Earth’s
Any claim of ‘perfect’ correlation is suspect.
techheadted says:
June 26, 2012 at 1:50 am
It looks to me like the sun spot maxima plotted in Willis’ graph partition it into a series of noisy impulse responses (the low frequency response is pretty obvious and definitely not a linear trend). Is there a possible forcing function that looks like an impulse? Spike in incoming solar energy? Abrupt change in spectrum of incoming energy? Magnetic field shift?
____________________________
This might help.
So we are using sunspots as a proxy for the faculae which are the phenomenon that actually increase the solar irradiance.
The graph included in the article shows the TSI can vary from about 1364.5 to 1367.5 w/m2 on a daily basis and about 1 to 2 w/m2 average over the year shown. NASA then go on to say “. However, such short-term variation has little effect on climate.
If you follow the link below the graph where they say “(Graph by Robert Simmon, based on data from ACRIM III)” you come to this very interesting graph: Total Solar Irradiance Monitoring Results: 1978 to Present (2012) be sure to read the discussion of the error below the graph. The article at that link goes on to say
Interesting how NASA’s take on the same data is different than ACRIM3’s take….
tonyb says: June 26, 2012 at 1:30 am
……..
Hi Tony
To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from the errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future. P.
i.e. get a greenhouse and a gas burner just in case.
Willis, Leif
You’re pathetic
http://virakkraft.com/Echuca-max-temp-sSSN.png
After further analysis I consider this temperature data set is of special scientific value.
My congratulation to the author Mr. Ian Bryce for the find and the joannenova.com blog for bringing it to our attention.
I shall write short article with my findings and post links at both joannenova.com and WUWT
lgl says:
June 26, 2012 at 11:45 am
So your claim, according to your graph, is that sometimes the solar cycle leads the Echuca temperature, meaning that the sun drives the Echuca temperature.
And sometimes the Echuca temperature leads the solar cycle, meaning that the Echuca temperature drives the solar cycle.
And that sometimes, like say in 2000, neither one has anything to do with the other.
Impressive …
w.
PS—Perhaps you could post your data, so that folks could see just what it is that you have done. To take just one example, is the “11 year average” a standard average, a Gaussian average, centered, trailing, what?
PPS—What is “pathetic” is posting a graph without any clue as to how it was calculated or the source of the data.
The daily peak temperature does not occur at noon, it occurres later in the day, sometimes many hours after the peak of the sun’s most direct rays. Does that mean there is no correlation between daytime temps and the daily solar cycle?
You have one “el-nino” peak, at around 1915, that creates a peak before the solar peak. Other than that is is very much like “daytime temp peaks” that tend to occur in the afternoon.
Russ R. says:
June 26, 2012 at 12:27 pm (Edit)
Russ, if the daily peak in temperatures occurred before the peak in daily solar insolation, as it does for a couple of the solar cycles in Echuca, it would definitely mean that there was no correlation between daytime temps and the solar cycle. On a daily basis, of course, that never happens … but in Echuca it does.
In addition, the peak daily temperature always occurs about the same time of day, that is to say, the lag of temperature with respect to solar is stable. But when the solar cycle leads the Echuca temps, the lead is all over the map, from one to four years. Not encouraging.
w.
To further illustrate why I think we’re looking at a coincidence, I went to find the nearest temperature station to Echuca with records going back to the 1800s. It turns out to be a town called Deliniquin, which is 70 km (40 miles) from Echuca. Here’s that record:
DATA SOURCE
Solar data as above
As you can see, there’s no correlation at all with the solar cycle. You can repeat this process as often as you like. Sure, every once in a while you’ll find what looks like a correlation … but as I pointed out above, if you look at a dozen sites, your odds of finding a statistically “significant” correlation at the 95% level are about 50/50 by random chance alone … color me unimpressed.
w.
I have seen the high for the day, occur at midnight, or any other hour of the day. The weather patterns on any individual day, can make it seem like the sun plays a minor role, if fronts and cloud cover are mixed in with the “good data”. Just like el-nino, and other “circulation patterns”, can obscure the pattern we are interested in, when the observation period is too short.
re: Deliniquin – shows the same problem with rampant Co2 generation prior to 1900. The roo’s must have been tearing up the outback, in monster SUVs. 😉
I would think there is a measurement problem prior to 1910, or some other reason for the high temps. After that, every 20 years or so another peak, at or just past the odd solar maximum.
Still it is too short of observation period to draw firm conclusions. It is much like trying to forecast today’s weather based on the weather for the last week, and the average for this day of the year. It is better than nothing, but not by much.
Gail Combs says:
June 26, 2012 at 9:08 am
Thanks Gail, Very helpful. Looks like there are a couple places to look for an “impulse” signal, changes in irradiance due to formation of sunspots and faculae (changes in magnitude and/or spectrum), changes in charged particle density in the atmosphere (due to changes in solar wind and/or changes in earth’s magnetic field density).
techheadted says:
June 26, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Looks like there are a couple places to look for an “impulse” signal, changes in irradiance due to formation of sunspots and faculae (changes in magnitude and/or spectrum), changes in charged particle density in the atmosphere (due to changes in solar wind and/or changes in earth’s magnetic field density).
None of these show a clear 22-year cycle.