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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David and Jan-Erik’s cooling predictions are for surface temperatures, which historically have been predictable by the preceding solar cycle. There are two ways to account for that predictive power. It could be that the heat content of the planet starts dropping immediately when solar activity falls but it takes a while to be detectable thanks to “lags” in the system (signal dampening by the ocean heat-sink presumably), or it could be that the current solar cycle predicts something about what is going to happen to heat-content during the next solar cycle (or a combination of the two).
Hence David’s attention to sea level as an ocean calorimeter. If only we had a decent measure of current heat content, we’d have a much clearer picture of what is going on. In this post David is not looking at lags, or ocean dampening, but is looking at what is likely to happen with the sun during cycle 24. But if he is right, aren’t the effects on surface temperature still going to be dampened, so that their most visible effect on surface temperatures is seen during solar cycle 25?
I’m not reading too much into the lack of cooling at present. It’s hard to read anything into the vagaries of surface temperature when they are primarily determined by ocean fluctuations. The end of warming is already pretty strong confirmation that solar variation is at least as powerful driver of climate as CO2. If there is anything to read so quickly into the lack of cooling, I would say it provides a modicum of support for Nir Shaviv’s estimate that solar variation and CO2 have similarly sized effects on climate.
Hard to imagine that the world could be so lucky. All the predictions that CO2 will cause dangerous global warming are based on the assumption that ALL late 20th century warming was caused by CO2, indicating a very high climate sensitivity. If half of it was caused by the sun then all that scary multiplying-up of CO2 forcing effects disappears and the only thing in prospect is the benign warming seen during the Roman Optimum and the MWP, while at the same time CO2 would still be powerful enough a warming agent to provide us effective control over planetary temperature. We can stave off the next descent into glaciation just by continuing to release stored CO2 into the atmosphere, which we can easily do at least for the couple hundred years it will take us to advance technologically to the point where we can stave off glaciation by putting some giant reflectors into orbit to give us as much sun as we want.
Yet another Goldilocks coincidence in favor of our blessed blue marble? If so, I’d call it a modicum of evidence that there really is a God.
Lawrence beatty says:
August 13, 2012 at 9:04 am
All good points but I think the answer is as follows:
i) A quieter sun seems to cause more meridional jets in the mid latitudes with larger polar air masses developing at the expense of smaller equatorial air masses. In the process I suspect that the net latitudinal position of the jets and all the climate zones shift equatorward. I have proposed a possible mechanism previously. Svensmark’s cosmic rays are unlikely to be the cause, I think they are just a coincidental proxy for other mechanisms but there may be a small contribution. More likely is differential effects on ozone concentrations at different heights in the atmosphere which alter the vertical temperature profile.The gradient of the tropopause height changes between equator and pole to allow latitudinal sliding of the climate zones beneath the tropopause.That alters the rate of energy flow from surface to space.An entirely negative system response which serves to ensure long term system stability whatever the forcing mechanism. The baseline is set by atmospheric pressure at the surface but that is for another day.
ii) Either way, the effect is to increase the length of the lines of air mass mixing to produce more clouds globally. There is evidence that there have been more meridional jets and increased global cloudiness with higher global albedo since around 2000.
iii) As you say, clouds both insulate and reflect but insulation only slows the rate at which energy is lost from the system (primarily the oceans) whereas reflection denies energy to the system altogether so over enough time the cumulative effect is net system cooling.
iv) That solar effect on albedo skews the net thermal effect of the ENSO process towards warming El Ninos if the sun is active and towards cooling La Ninas if the sun is inactive. Changes in albedo have most effect either side of the equator where the ENSO phenomenon is generated.
iv) The logical implication is that a quiet sun encourages net system cooling by increasing global albedo for less energy into the oceans. An active sun does the opposite.The only remaining issue is as to the length of the lag times. On the basis of the 1997/8 El Nino having caused the 2007 Arctic ice loss about ten years seem right.I expect the effect of trhe recent solar minimum with the record negative Arctic Oscillation to show its full effect in about 8 years time.
I think David is correct in general terms but the precise values need to be ascertained from future observations. I would be surprised if he is exactly correct but he is surely on the right track.
Alec Rawls says:
August 13, 2012 at 11:05 am
David and Jan-Erik’s cooling predictions are for surface temperatures, which historically have been predictable by the preceding solar cycle.
Not so: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%20Length%20Temperature%20Correlation.pdf
HenryP says:
August 13, 2012 at 8:01 am
cooling in Alaska, Anchorage, is worrying. Check my tables.
_________________________
Beat me to it. The record snowfall is not melting out: Accuweather.com: Endless Winter for Alaska’s Mountains This Year
Given the oceans act as a giant hot watter bottle, I would not expect to see cooling temperatures from a quiet sun to be evident short term.
NASA: Quiet Sun Means Cooling of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
The Graphs in the article of the “Energy emitted by the upper atmosphere as infrared (IR) radiation in 2002 (top) and 2008 (bottom)” are interesting since they show a decrease with Nitric Oxide (NO) as the IR emitter in one set of graphs and CO2 as the IR emitter in the other set of graphs.
Here is one for Vukcevic if he has not seen it already: NASA: Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field Discovered
Leif Svalgaard says, August 13, 2012 at 9:22 am
Interesting slide on page 25. Here is an extract from SDO HMI today:
http://s7.postimage.org/tvvkqjyaz/South_Pole.png
Hard to tell with the south pole tipped away from us at the moment but do you really think it’ll take another year for it to switch? Looks to be happening fairly quickly.
HenryP says:
August 13, 2012 at 9:44 am
Henry@jose
Now, can you bring me the calibration certificate of the thermometer that they used in 1730?
_______________________
Spoken like a true chemist.
Posted on August 13, 2012 by Anthony Watts
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.
There is a stable solar sun spot clock of 11.196 years which is modified in its frequency by an unknown mechanism. Shifts to lower frequencies results in decreasing temperatures and vice versa.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sun_shift_buent.gif
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/shift_ssn_comp1.gif
The Solheim method uses the solar sun spot number function and has a time resolution of about 11 years. Using solar tide functions the time resolution can be refined to two month:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/uah_gl_july_2012.gif
However, it’s the Sun.
V.
MiCro
I have been trying to tell AGW proponents for some years that warm water surfaces at the North Pole where the sun is weakest are going to accelerate system cooling rather than warming.
The extra sunlight into the water in high summer will be more than offset by more heat loss to the air in spring and autumn. Indeed even in high summer the heat loss from the exposed water might exceed the extra energy in from sunlight.
My favourite analogy is the speed at which a bald man can lose body heat when going without a hat in cold weather.Any extra light on his head will count for nothing.
I see the current low levels of Arctic ice as draining energy from the currently warm north atlantic more quickly whilst at the same time the available replacement energy from equatorial regions is being depleted by increased global cloudiness skewing ENSO in favour of cooling La Ninas.
I expect a drop in global air temperatures as soon as the cooling of the north atlantic combines with the cooling observed in parts of the equatorial oceans.
Many are suggesting a noticeable impact within 2 years and I think that is a reasonable estimate but the oceans are a big energy store so it could be up to another 8 years for the main event. That is just a guess though, it might well be sooner.
AJB says:
August 13, 2012 at 11:18 am
Hard to tell with the south pole tipped away from us at the moment but do you really think it’ll take another year for it to switch? Looks to be happening fairly quickly.
One can debate what ‘reversal’ means. My definition is that all the old polarity at all longitudes must be replaced by new polarity, and a year to go looks reasonable judging from previous reversals.
“If there is anything to read so quickly into the lack of cooling, I would say it provides a modicum of support for Nir Shaviv’s estimate that solar variation and CO2 have similarly sized effects on climate.”
I’m doubtful that they are anywhere close to similar.
If one looks at the size of the climate zone and jetstream shifts from MWP to LIA and LIA to date they appear to be in the region of 1000 miles latitudinally.
I accept that in principle more CO2 from human emissions should cause a system response but on what scale ?
The climate zones moved poleward when the sun was active and seem now to be moving back equatorward with the less active sun.
Our CO2 emissions seems to have made no difference to the change in trend since around 2000.
If forced to guess I’d say that our emissions might shift the system up to a mile as compared to the 1000 mile shifts from sun and oceans.
During ice age / interglacial transitions I suspect shifts of well over 1000 miles latitudinally.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 13, 2012 at 4:10 am
Altrock’s green corona emissions diagramme… suggests that Solar Cycle 24 will be 17 years long, ending in 2026.
In his presentation at the SPD meeting in June 2012, Altrock suggests:
“the maximum smoothed sunspot number in the northern hemisphere ALREADY OCCURRED at 2011.6 ± 0.3″ making cycle 24 short.
On average, the solar cycle splits such that the rise time is a bit under two thirds the length of the fall time. However, all bets are off for cycles 24/25. There may not be a clear minimum between them. We may not be in a position to argue about it for many years, since it may not be clear whether cycle 24 had a long low double peak, or whether it merged into cycle 25. The anomalous trailing hump on the cycle(s) preceding the Dalton MInimum may be the nearest analogue, though I would expect the split to be more even this time. Our definition of a solar cycle is based on past experience. But as any investment company will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future trends. Expect the unexpected.
Gail Combs says:
August 13, 2012 at 11:15 am
NASA: Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field Discovered
…”At first I didn’t believe it,” says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction.”
This is just the usual NASA hype. No alteration is needed. That the magnetosphere opens up when the magnetic field in the solar wind turns southwards was predicted by Dungey in 1961 and proven by in-situ measurements in 1968.
David Archibald says:
“So when will it cool? As Nir Shaviv and others have noted, the biggest calorimeter on the plant is the oceans. ”
… yes, but measurements therefrom are noisy and somewhat uncertain due to instrumentation issues (as discussed frequently in these WUWT pages).
A much more reliable calorimeter is on-board the SORCE space-craft. It also has had “calibration” issues, but these have been successfully addressed according to the experts.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/
Total solar irradiance (TSI) only varies (in luminosity) by 0.07% between solar minima and maxima (with more variance in shorter EUV wavelengths).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_solar_irradiance#Solar_irradiance
So, based on this direct solar observation, why should we expect more cooling at the minima?
Henry@lawrence beatty
Nothing “daft” if you come here to find out something.
I have come to believe that the effect of more or less clouds and cloudiness may sort of cancel each other out, if there is more or less of it. During the day, when there is “more” clouds you do get more deflection of sunlight. But during the night, it traps more heat. So which effect is more?
Studying my own results,
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
I think the effect of more or less clouds is minor.
There is a clear natural relationship, parabolic, nogal, when you plot the change in maxima in degrees C per annum against time. Checking my current zero point on the x-axis I find that earth has started getting less energy from the sun around 1995 and checking my zero point on the y-axis (2012) I find that it is currently cooling by about -0.08 degree C per annum on the maxima. The nature of the graph for means is one that lags a bit on the graph for maxima: earth has a store where it keeps its energy and a lot of that energy only comes out a bit later. I would generally agree with the available datasets like RSS, UAH, Hadcrut3 and Hadsst2 that maximum energy output by earth must have been a few years after 1995. But it will soon pick up on that fall in the maxima. In fact, I think it is happening already. There is simply less energy coming through. I am surprised that nobody has picked it up yet. I am still studying the reasons, but the Sun-UV-ozone cycle and/or the shrinking of the atmosphere, either way, creating (relatively) more ozone in the upper atmosphere, is the most likely cause for the cooling.
My results also seem to indicate that it is not one single sun cycle that brought us here, in a cooling zone. We were warming from about 1944 to 1995. We are now cycling back and (I gather) around 2045 we will be back where we were in 1945. Those old enough will remember that the winter of 1944 was bitterly cold. In Europe they called it the “hunger” winter. Many people lost their lives, not (only)because of the war, but because of the cold and the lack of food….
“why should we expect more cooling at the minima?”
Because something other than raw TSI affects global cloudiness and albedo which in turn affects the amount of energy received by the oceans and the oceans affect tropospheric energy flows.
Quiet sun more clouids / active sun less clouds.
tallbloke says:
August 13, 2012 at 11:36 am
Our definition of a solar cycle is based on past experience. But as any investment company will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future trends.
Tell that to Archibald. I count four ‘may be’s in your comment. Too many weasel words for my taste.
Your example is flawed, as solar cycles are based on physics while investments are not.
I would expect the split to be more even this time….Expect the unexpected.
So your expectation is not based on anything.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 13, 2012 at 11:55 am
Quiet sun more clouds / active sun less clouds.
Observations show otherwise: http://climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.gif
Stephen: Thanks for the estimate of the relative size of solar and CO2 effects in your ozone driven model. As for Shaviv’s estimate of similar sized solar and CO2 effects
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117711007411
I don’t put much stock it it. High correlations between GCR and global temperature go back many thousands of years (many millions in Shaviv’s study), while Shaviv’s estimate of solar vs. CO2 effects is only based on the last 100 years of instrumental data.
We have to be realistic about direct link between solar cycles and global temperatures
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-GT.htm
Sun has its cycles, the Earth has its cycles too, question is:
Can sun trigger Earth’s interior non-synchronous oscillations?
I think it can:
Ap -volcanic index: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-VI.htm
Earth’s core – global temperatures: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
I have nearly finished an article which will attempt to explain how this might work.
HenryP says:
August 13, 2012 at 11:45 am
“During the day, when there is “more” clouds you do get more deflection of sunlight. But during the night, it traps more heat. So which effect is more?”
My studies of the difference in Daily Rising temps minus Daily Falling temps (follow the link in my name) shows very little difference between the two.
In fact if anything, periods where there’s a little more cooling, temperatures seem to go up.
The potential cooling of 1.2C applies mostly to the North Atlantic region and Norway , the area of study by Jan- Erik Solheim et al. Globally the temperature decline will be less as we saw with the global atmospheric temperature decline during the last three low solar cycles between 1878 and 1913 when the global averge annual anomalies [HADCRUT 3]dropped from about oC to- 0.2C to about -o.6C to -0.8C , a drop closer to about 0.6 C . On the other hand isolated years and certain inland areas may cool faster and the 1.2C for these areas may be about right or even higher. The start of the cooling in my opinion is not dependent at all on the current solar cycle but by the lagged timing and amount of heat already put into the oceans during the latter phases of solar cycle #23. There may be no major new atmospheric cooling until the global SST starts to drop also in a more constant pattern[ like betwen 1880-1910.] The global SST is again rising this year but was dropping between 2002 and 2011. My best guess for the cooling to pick up again is probably 2015 when AMO may again go negative or cooler.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 13, 2012 at 11:56 am
solar cycles are based on physics
Solar cycles are the human interpretation of observed phenomena. No-one, especially including you, knows what the physics is yet. Which is why there are as many opinions about the Sun’s physics as there are solar physicists.
So your expectation is not based on anything.
You’re wrong about that too. When I said “expect the unexpected” I was referring to your assumption that cycle 24 will be short because there has been a lull in activity after mid 2011 which you believe to be ‘solar maximum’.
My own expectations are based on the solar-planetary theory, which has proven itself better able to make predictions of solar activity than the dynamologists can.
Leif,
Thank you for this link:
http://climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.gif
I’ve been using the Earthshine project and I see that the high level clouds in your link follow that dataset.
High level clouds appear to have been declining up to about 2000 and then started to increase.
I would suggest that until 2000 solar activity was at a sufficiently high level on average to cause a slow decline in high clouds but around 2000 the level of activity fell below the necessary threshold and since then high clouds have been increasing.
As for the precise details of the changing relationship between cloud heights and cloud quantities it would appear that that remains uncertain but going by the Earthshine project the net effect has been declining albedo until 2000 but increasing albedo since.
Just as I said 🙂
Gail Combs says
HenryP says:
August 13, 2012 at 8:01 am
cooling in Alaska, Anchorage, is worrying. Check my tables.
_________________________
Beat me to it. The record snowfall is not melting out: Accuweather.com: Endless Winter for Alaska’s Mountains This Year
Henry says
Hi Gail, I think they are still very optimistic if they think that it (the heavy snow cover on Anchorage mountains) is only for one year. My results show a clear continuous cooling trend there. If I were living there, I would seriously consider packing my bags. Because we have not even seen the worst yet, not for a long, long, time….I reckon only in 2045 will we see warming coming back again.
(On the Norwegian arctic the trend is different because -I suspect- they pick up some heat from the increased condensation due to the cooling of earth, going in that direction, in general; that also seems to apply to the USA east coast)
Stephen Wilde says:
August 13, 2012 at 12:40 pm
High level clouds appear to have been declining up to about 2000 and then started to increase.
Other cloud enthusiasts follow Svensmark and claim that the effect is in the low clouds, so you claim they are all wrong.