Guest post by David Archibald
My papers and those of Jan-Erik Solheim et al predict a significant cooling over Solar Cycle 24 relative to Solar Cycle 23. Solheim’s model predicts that Solar Cycle 24, for the northern hemisphere, will be 0.9º C cooler than Solar Cycle 23. It hasn’t cooled yet and we are three and a half years into the current cycle. The longer the temperature stays where it is, the more cooling has to come over the rest of the cycle for the predicted average reduction to occur.
So when will it cool? As Nir Shaviv and others have noted, the biggest calorimeter on the plant is the oceans. My work on sea level response to solar activity (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/quantifying-sea-level-fall/) found that the breakover between sea level rise and sea level fall is a sunspot amplitude of 40:
As this graph from SIDC shows, the current solar amplitude is about 60 in the run-up to solar maximum, expected in May 2013:
The two remaining variables in our quest are the timing of the sunspot number fall below 40 and the length of Solar Cycle 24. So far, Solar Cycle 24 is shaping up almost exactly like Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum:
The heliospheric current sheet tilt angle has reached the level at which solar maximum occurs. It usually spends a year at this level before heading back down again:
Similarly, the solar polar field strength (from the Wilcox Solar Observatory) suggest that solar maximum may be up to a year away:
Notwithstanding that solar maximum, as predicted from heliocentric current sheet tilt angle and solar polar field strength, is still a little way off, if Solar Cycle 24 continues to shape up like Solar Cycle 5, sunspot amplitude will fall below 40 from mid-2013. Altrock’s green corona emissions diagramme (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/08/solar-cycle-24-length-and-its-consequences/) suggests that Solar Cycle 24 will be 17 years long, ending in 2026. That leaves twelve and a half years of cooling from mid-2013.
From all that, for Solheim’s predicted temperature decline of 0.9º C over the whole of Solar Cycle 24 to be achieved, the decline from mid-2013 will be 1.2º C on average over the then remaining twelve and a half years of the cycle. No doubt the cooling will be back-loaded, making the further decline predicted over Solar Cycle 25 relative to Solar Cycle 24 more readily achievable.
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“biggest calorimeter on the plant is the oceans”
You might want to fix that typo to make reuse of the text more pleasant.
Reblogged this on evilincandescentbulb and commented:
Question: Shall prospects of global cooling be considered a disaster too?
Answer: Note: Nikola Scafetta believes that, “The partial forecast indicates that climate may stabilize or cool until 2030-2040.” Scafetta’s forecast is based upon, ‘physical mechanisms’ and ‘the phenomenon of collective synchronization of coupled oscillators,’ such as for examples, ENSO effects and solar activity. Qing-Bin Lu believes that, “a long-term global cooling starting around 2002 is expected to continue for next five to seven decades.” Humanity will adapt and global cooling need not necessarily be considered a disaster for everyone. Even so there will be many challenges, as for example, Canadian wheat production. And, there always is the possibility of disaster. Walter Starck noted that if only humans really were able to heat the globe, “and it helps to prevent another ice age, this would be the most fortunate thing that has happened to our species since we barely escaped extinction from an especially cold period during the last ice age some 75,000 years ago.”
http://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/answer-key-to/
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 13, 2012 at 4:29 am
It hasn’t cooled yet and we are three and a half years into the current cycle. The longer the temperature stays where it is, the more cooling has to come over the rest of the cycle for the predicted average reduction to occur.
Or rather, that the prediction is already rapidly proving wrong.
However, we keep getting the word that UHI temps have polluted the average temperature change, and are not a measurement to which we depend to make. In the last century having had a more active sun followed by an increase in global temp, would we not expect that if Mr. sunshine takes a nap that there would follow over time less warming/more cooling?
Furthermore, in reading news from outside the US mainstream media that ignores anything like what happen last winter in SE Europe etc. And as another mentioned happening in Australia, S. Africa, etc. Maybe the old timers in Alaska fishing industry who claim last winter Bering Sea ice was more than they had ever seen should be a consideration as well. Just these little examples that are outside the “lab” that have real time effects on life.
All the “experts” have a scattering of reasons for their “but” arguing. BUT … so do the folks who experience changes in weather where they live a life time. Do the local lakes freeze over in winter? Nope… did they 60 years ago yep. Simple real life observations. BUT… 🙂
According to “tonyb”…
“According to the Met Office the UK has been cooling since the year 2000. Our temperature anomaly is now the same as during the 1730′s”
According to the Met Office:
CET average temperature in the 1730s: 9.86
CET average temperature since 2000: 10.26
CET average temperature for 2011: 10.70, the second warmest on record after 2006.
Which UK does “tonyb” live in?
It wouldn’t surprise me if it doesn’t cool, or cools very little and for a short period of time. If the amount of warming we get from CO2, black carbon, tropospheric ozone, and methane is toward the low end of projections — perhaps even close to Richard Lindzen’s projections — we are still in a warming world. Unless the solar influence is quite a bit larger than most of the solar community think, then to me it would make sense that cooling due to the current solar cycle might not be enough to cool the earth, but might be enough to cancel warming for a few years, everything else equal. That may be what we have been seeing the last few years.
Everything else may not be equal. Real data is the only thing that matters to me at this point. We haven’t seen warming for about 15 years. Arctic sea ice is now lower than during the previous low period, 2007. Chinese sulfate emissions have been steadily increasing. The PDO switched modes about 15 years go. Lots of moving parts. I don’t want to prejudge, let’s just see what happens going forward.
Leif, could the solar cycle be forward skewed; can the tail drag out?
cooling in Alaska, Anchorage, is worrying. Check my tables.
The cooling of 0.9C: global, global land, continental USA, mid-central-north United States?
The ratios of regions to global is economically and socially of greatest signficance. The multiplier going up in the Arctic is 3.5 to 5.0 X the alleged global rate right now; the cooling should be of a similar nature.
Your earlier work was focused on New Haven, New Hampshire, I believe, invovling a 2.4C drop (I could be mistaken in the detail) locally. Globally it was much less. Is this the 0.9C you are writing about?
David Archibald, HenryP & Leif Svalgaard:
Thanks. I always enjoy these reasoned discussions. You all provide some food for thought.
Cheers and may it be the temp you want where you are for water or snow skiing.
I say cooling is on it’s way already.
“The Summer That Wasn’t” – here in Germany.
I know, I know – Weather is not Climate. Tell me about it when I mount snow tires on my car in September…
Let’s hope it doesn’t start cooling soon as it would be devastating for the poor frogs whose decline was previously blamed on global warming.
Thank you, David Archibald, always enjoy your writings.
K.R. Frank
Now I know this may sound daft but if any cooling due to low sunspot activity is taking place then surely it’s to do with Svensgard’s extra cloud cover; but is this actually happening?
Also if it is and average cloud cover increases doesn’t this too trap heat thus initially making the world warmer or sustaining in a more even temperature which is what the satellite data has been showing over the last 12 years a kind of levelling. Of course the key to this is whether according to still yet unproved theory a quite sun increases cloud cover. If cloud cover has increased I would then suggest heat trapping until a critical point is reached where the oceans lose their heat due to lack of shortwave heating and eventually the heat drains although heat loss was slowed down due to those very same clouds that prevent or slow ocean heating. And surely if all this tripe I’m suggesting were true then there could be a very long (relative to our human impatience) stalemate heating budget situation where less is going in but less is also going out.
But hey what do I know.
It could turn out that the warmist and the coolists don’t know what the hell they are talking about
aaron says:
August 13, 2012 at 7:55 am
Leif, could the solar cycle be forward skewed; can the tail drag out?
Cycle 5 is very ill-defined [not enough observation] and the large ‘opening spike’ is likely not real. The general rule is that for low cycles, the rise time is long, and the ‘tail’ is correspondingly short. So cycle 24 is not going to be 17 years long. More like 12 or 13. So only 9 years to go. The North Pole is reversing polarity right now and the South Pole perhaps in a year or so. Here is a recent talk about polar field reversals http://www.leif.org/research/Asymmetric-Solar-Polar-Field-Reversals-talk.pdf The text for each slide is here http://www.leif.org/research/Talking_Points_for_Asymmetric_Reversals.pdf
When will we have the data to test this hypothesis? Do we have to wait until 2050?
Henry@jose
Now, can you bring me the calibration certificate of the thermometer that they used in 1730?
MiCro says (on August 13, 2012 at 6:52 am), “I’ve commented for about the last year, that melting arctic ice would expose more warm waters that originated in the tropics to frigid polar sky’s and would make an effective cooling system, similar in design to an automotive cooling system that’s thermostatically controlled.”
Now that is one of the more interesting comments I’ve read in a while.
What you’re describing is a “negative feedback” mechanism. One of the alarmists’ major arguments for an unstable climate (high “climate sensitivity” to “forcings”) is that reduced albedo of the sea from melting arctic ice would cause increased absorption of sunlight (a “positive feedback”), and accelerated global warming. But does that make sense?
If we ask, “what part of the globe should that cause to warm?” the answer is obviously, “the part with the reduced albedo, of course – i.e., the Arctic Ocean.” But, will reduced ice cover really warm the thus-exposed water? Reduced albedo works both ways: it reduces emission as well as absorption, and a layer of ice insulates the water below, preventing the agitation that transports heat to and from the surface.
Does someone here know the answer to this question: what are the heat flows for open Arctic Ocean water during the summer (which is mostly daytime)? Does heat gained from absorption of sunlight exceed heat lost from longwave radiation emitted? Or are ocean currents, moving water from warmer latitudes, the only reason that Arctic Ocean water ever warms at all, even in the summer?
In other words, is reduction of Arctic sea ice in a warmer world a net positive feedback mechanism (due to increased sunlight absorption), or a net negative feedback mechanism (due to increased radiative heat loss, per MiCro’s observation)?
Or maybe the prediction is wrong 🙂
The warmist crowd can move back into their caves.
It kinda already started, but the real thing (very rapid cooling) will start when the solar cycle starts declining (after 2014/2015). By 2020 we will have 30 years of no warming.
Here is a clear and fair comparison of SC24, SC14 and SC5.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SC24-14-5.htm
vukcevic says:
August 13, 2012 at 10:18 am
Here is a clear and fair comparison of SC24, SC14 and SC5.
Since we know very little about SC5 [not enough observations], it is impossible to make a ‘fair’ comparison.
DaveBurton, Clouds will complicate the feedbacks for the Arctic just as they do elsewhere. More open water means more evaporation which means potentially more clouds which means less sunlight reaching the ocean surface. Or more open water means more evaporation which means more rain in the summer and more snow in early winter which means less overall clouds and more sunlight reaching the ocean surface. This kind of handwaving has already been used to justify greater NH snowfall in the recent past. However, I believe that the reality is complex enough that I don’t think one can simply stare at the ceiling and say exactly what will happen. We need to know a lot more than we already do.
daveburton says:
August 13, 2012 at 9:45 am
” One of the alarmists’ major arguments for an unstable climate (high “climate sensitivity” to “forcings”) is that reduced albedo of the sea from melting arctic ice would cause increased absorption of sunlight (a “positive feedback”), and accelerated global warming. ”
You might enjoy this paper:
http://sun.iwu.edu/~gpouch/Climate/RawData/WaterAlbedo001.pdf
Basically, above 70-80 degrees Lat, a lot of the incoming solar energy gets reflected, not absorbed by water. You can see this as glare on wet surfaces.
I don’t know how to quantify whether the feedback is positive or negative in the long run, but I suspect it’s a lot more difficult to answer than what the warmest would have us believe.
David,
“Solheim’s model predicts that Solar Cycle 24, for the northern hemisphere, will be 0.9º C cooler than Solar Cycle 23. It hasn’t cooled yet and we are three and a half years into the current cycle. The longer the temperature stays where it is, the more cooling has to come over the rest of the cycle for the predicted average reduction to occur.”
1) What is the standard deviation on the 0.9° C reduction forecast. Obviously the r^2 isn’t 1, so there are some error bars. Are we currently within those error bars ?
2) At what point in time do you consider the forecast to be a bust ? The reality might be more complicated – just as temps aren’t just about CO2, they may not also be just about the sun & these complications could lead to a bust in forecast – which isn’t the end of the world – just a good learning opportunity to try to develop a better model, which is in contrast to those chanting the CO2 mantra – there is no desire on that side of the argument to improve the model – just a desire to use their current model to control people’s behaviors.
Looking fwd to your thoughts on these 2 questions.