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.
Henry Clark says:
August 14, 2012 at 8:57 pm
“Because your entire post was irrelevant for the issue at hand.”
A favorite trick is to heap link upon link, dataset upon dataset, claim upon claim, etc until the true issue is completely blurred. I tried to go in small steps so there would be only a single question in each step to agree upon. In that way one can make progress through the swamp of obscurantism. So, back to http://www.leif.org/research/Abdussa1.png Have you seen this Figure before? Describe what you see.
Later in this decade is the real test for whether Dr. Abdussamatov is right or not
In fact we do not need to wait, we shall see [at the end of the exercise] that he is already wrong. But if you do not want to follow along you will not obtain enlightenment.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 9:31 pm
“In that way one can make progress through the swamp of obscurantism.”
I cross-check claims against such as the solar activity rise from 1.000 -> 1.032 -> 1.032 for the cycles from 1964 to 1996 A.D. seen in average relative inverted neutron counts, which was followed by decline to 0.995 and then, in this incomplete cycle, 0.942 so far.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 9:31 pm
“Describe what you see.”
Particularly notably, a major decline in peak sunspot numbers between cycle 22 and cycle 23 (which correlates with other data on how relative solar activity, in the metric mentioned earlier, dropped from 1.032 in cycle 22 to 0.995 in cycle 23).
Leif said:
“The very notion of dark matter and dark energy are indeed things we have recently learned.”
Well, we may have ‘learned’ that proposing them appears to solve a few puzzles if they are defined in certain specific terms but it is not yet clear to me that they actually exist. Something exists but whether those terms are appropriate remains to be seen.
In the meantime, proposing them is a bit of an appeal to magic is it not ?
The phonomena which they are currently used to ‘describe’ could still be the result of some different features of our universe.
Leif Svalgaard says
Since 1995 solar activity is lower.
Henry says
don’t you think it is interesting for me to have been able to calculate this from the fall in maximum temperatures?
(I give myself an ovation)
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
funny that you should also mention 1945.
Namely, my results suggest that from this time solar activity started increasing. Do you agree?
We are not imagining things when we say it is cooling. The official datasets must be wrong (CALIBRATION?) or they are being manipulated. I also feel that winter is longer here now. August used to be fine, but it feels like July. We had snow here in Pretoria (South Africa) for the first time that I have been here (36 years). Just be sure, it was snow I went outside to see and feel it happening.
Henry@Werner, Gail
Thanks Werner, an impressive peace of work! It clearly tells me that UAH must be wrong, which I already suspected for some time. There could be several causes and I most certainly don’t suspect it is Dr. Spencer’s fault. I briefly looked at the calibration procedure (Thank you Gail!) and it seems to me that using the cosmic backround as a reference point of 2.7K could be a point of discussion. How do we know that point is not changing by a few tenth’s with solar activity going down in the surrounding space? (since 1995, as we noted in my previous post)
This is an example of the plot Dr. Svensmark has presented as convincing evidence of a direct correlation between low cloud cover and cosmic ray flux. I have not found a site providing the source data for this plot. It seems to show a strong correlation between obviously filtered cloud-cover data and cosmic ray flux. Of course, one might argue that these plots share a common driver and nothing more.
As the Earth as a whole would act as a huge low-pass filter, perhaps sufficient to remove the eleven-year solar activity variation cycles, one might expect a ten or more year delayed response in the temperature record.
As the possibility of cloud seeding by cosmic rays has been experimentally confirmed, this graph indicates may be a close-coupling between climate and cosmic ray flux as modulated by galactic and solar effects and moderated by terrestrial inertia.
[“. . . The correlation between cosmic ray flux(orange) as measured in Neutron count monitors in low magnetic latitudes, and low altitude cloud cover (blue) using ISCCP satellite data set, following Marsh & Svensmark, 2003.”]
http://www.androidworld.com/Clouds_CosmicRays.jpg
Source(ScienceBits): http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate
The only other mechanism that I can think of for an enhanced (non-photon) solar effect on climate would be by energy or particles carried directly in the solar wind.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 7:36 am
I have published in some, including JASTP, so I don’t know what your problem is. BTW, IMO the quality of JASTP has, sadly, been declining lately.
Well of course Leif. JASTP was fine when it published your paper, but because it published Scafetta’s work its quality must be declining.
/sarc
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 8:49 am
tallbloke says:
August 14, 2012 at 8:09 am
Which isn’t asking for copies of other people’s email. Which you won’t get.
I suspect that I won’t get it, because there isn’t any. …there have been six citations of W&P, five by Scafetta and one by Callebaut et al. who states …The main conclusion is that in its essence: planetary influences are too small to be more than a small modulation of the solar cycle.”
Yes Leif. I have had email correspondence with Callebaut and de Jager too.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/the-influence-of-planetary-attractions-on-the-solar-tachocline/#comment-23693
See also:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/another-argument-against-planetary-influence-on-solar-activity-bites-the-dust/
Spector says:
August 14, 2012 at 11:51 pm
“http://www.androidworld.com/Clouds_CosmicRays.jpg
Source(ScienceBits): http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate”
Just to add to that:
To get some data in another way extending from 1964 to 2012, for twice as lengthy of a time period, I made a quick illustration of actually 9 km altitude humidity versus solar/GCR activity:
http://img218.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=27173_globalwarmingGCRsvshumidity_122_1193lo.jpg
I circled in purple the four peaks of atmospheric specific humidity and the corresponding four solar minimums which were peaks in GCR flux. Of course, it is somewhat messy, being real-world data with other influences and weather fluctuations on top, but one can see the general match-up even in the unfiltered raw data.
The top is from:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericSpecificHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
The bottom is from:
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=01&startmonth=01&startyear=1964&starttime=00%3A00&endday=30&endmonth=08&endyear=2012&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
CAGW movement supporters claim GCRs having any effect is proven impossible by post-2004 divergence between GCR trends and the “official” average cloud cover trend. But, by 2004 onwards, average global cloud cover trends reported by the ISCCP (headquartered at GISS) diverge from other metrics when cross-checked, in contrast to relationships before. Short of weird physics, the simplest explanation is that GISS started fudging their cloud cover dataset to counter theories against CAGW like the same GISS group definitely does with their temperature dataset (discussed in http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/part1-the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-181.php et cetera).
By the way, just in case you haven’t already seen them before, you might enjoy http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/05_afdelinger/sun-climate/full_text_publications/svensmark_2007cosmoclimatology.pdf and http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature-history-a-look-at-multiple-timescales-in-the-context-of-the-shakun-et-al-paper/ , and with, as usual on climate topics, a Russian publication on cosmic rays being good: http://rjes.wdcb.ru/v06/tje04163/tje04163.htm
edit:
There is a typo in the text of my prior comment, reversing minimums and peaks. The http://img218.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=27173_globalwarmingGCRsvshumidity_122_1193lo.jpg graph is better than its text description, though.
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 12:23 am
Well of course Leif. JASTP was fine when it published your paper, but because it published Scafetta’s work its quality must be declining.
Indeed, that is part of its malaise. Very perceptive of you.
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 3:19 am
I have had email correspondence with Callebaut and de Jager too.
And you have no qualms about showing that correspondence, so now we are awaiting a similar openness about W&P’s.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 14, 2012 at 10:33 pm
In the meantime, proposing them is a bit of an appeal to magic is it not ?
Actually not, as they are consistent with the known laws of nature. New particles are discovered all the time.
The phonomena which they are currently used to ‘describe’ could still be the result of some different features of our universe.
There is those weasel words ‘could be’. The phenomena are observed [gravitational lensing, acceleration of expansion] and no new ‘features’ need be considered.
Henry Clark says:
August 14, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Particularly notably, a major decline in peak sunspot numbers between cycle 22 and cycle 23
The relevant feature is the decline of the minimum value of TSI shown by the blue line in concert with a similar decline of the sunspot number. In Figure 2 http://www.leif.org/research/Abdussa2.png he highlights the TSI ‘deficit’. Now, both my own work and that of the PMOD team have shown that there is no deficit. This is why I said “there is no decrease” [in the minimum values], that is: TSI minima do not follow the blue line down.
So, as the next step we need to agree that minimum TSI has not decreased. That there is no ‘deficit’.
“Actually not, as they are consistent with the known laws of nature. New particles are discovered all the time.”
So what new particles constitute dark matter and dark energy ?
The whole point of speculating as to their existence is because observations on the face of it are not always consistent with the known laws of nature. You could be using the terms simply as a catch all for ‘whatever is causing the apparent discrepancies’ but I’d call that magic until you actually determine whether those specific terms have any descriptive meaning. The cause could be quite different from anything that a reasonable person would describe as dark matter or dark energy.
Henry Clark says:
August 15, 2012 at 4:46 am
To get some data in another way extending from 1964 to 2012, for twice as lengthy of a time period, I made a quick illustration of actually 9 km altitude humidity versus solar/GCR activity:
http://img218.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=27173_globalwarmingGCRsvshumidity_122_1193lo.jpg
Henry, you may be interested in the graph of Specific humidity near the tropopause vs Sunspot count I made a couple of years ago.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/shumidity-ssn96.png
Stephen Wilde says:
August 15, 2012 at 6:18 am
The whole point of speculating as to their existence is because observations on the face of it are not always consistent with the known laws of nature.
Dark matter is not a matter of speculation as to its existence. DM is observed by its gravitational effect. That is no different from deducing the existence of the planet Neptune from its effect on the orbit of Uranus. There are several candidates for what those particles are and one of the reasons for the LHC [of Higgs fame] is to search for those.
Dark energy is consistent with general relativity, in fact, is demanded by GR [in combination with the observation that the Universe is flat].
The cause could be quite different from anything that a reasonable person would describe as dark matter or dark energy.
But not from what a knowledgeable person would think.
You might progress from ‘reasonable’ to ‘knowledgeable’ by reading this very accessible piece http://www.leif.org/EOS/CosmicSoundWaves.pdf
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 6:44 am
you may be interested in the graph of Specific humidity near the tropopause vs Sunspot count I made a couple of years ago.
Except, the graph does not show the actual sunspot number count as should be obvious to everyone.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 15, 2012 at 6:18 am
The whole point of speculating as to their existence is because observations on the face of it are not always consistent with the known laws of nature.
The laws of nature are what demonstrates the existence of dark matter. Another good and accessible reference is http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_astro/dark_matter/
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 15, 2012 at 5:31 am
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 3:19 am
I have had email correspondence with Callebaut and de Jager too.
And you have no qualms about showing that correspondence, so now we are awaiting a similar openness about W&P’s.
Here’s the part that concerns you and Gough. [My Parentheses]
===========================
Dear Roger Tattersall:
We decline to enter the private exchange you reported to us concerning planetary influence on the sun. In our opinion the observational evidence for some kind of planetary effect is nearly overwhelming.
However, models of the effect are always open to question or improvement. We agree that the “the sun is in freefall” and said so in our paper. But this does not repeal the conservation of angular momentum or the tidal force for example. In due time, the merit of our model will be decided.
[Section redacted]
Sincerely,
Paul Patrone and Charles Wolff
===========================
So there you have it Leif. The merit of W&P’s model will be decided by scientists in the literature. Not in a knockabout internet argument started by your private exchange with Gough who can’t even be bothered to read the paper. Dirk Callebaut and Kees de Jager have made a half hearted attempt which cast a slur on any and all tidal hypotheses and falsely included W&P in a list of hypotheses they think they have refuted. It’s pretty obvious to me they didn’t read or understand W&P’s paper either.
What are you and Gough afraid of, getting your asses handed back to you on a plate? If you believe you and Gough have found a flaw in W&P’s work, then submit a properly written piece to the relevant journal. Otherwise W&P stands and you’re talking hot air.
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 7:45 am
“We decline to enter the private exchange you reported to us concerning planetary influence on the sun.”
So there you have it Leif.
Which makes your reply to my question “What did Wolff and Patrone say about Gough’s debunking of their paper”: They said they’d not had such a good laugh in a while and that there was no need to respond until Gough got his ‘criticism’ past peer review.
a blatant lie [as I thought]. Completely destroying any ‘credibility’ you might have thought you had.
What are you and Gough afraid of, getting your asses handed back to you on a plate? If you believe you and Gough have found a flaw in W&P’s work, then submit a properly written piece to the relevant journal. Otherwise W&P stands and you’re talking hot air.
We might do that at some point, although I doubt that that would make any difference to your cult.
HenryP says:
August 14, 2012 at 11:49 pm
It clearly tells me that UAH must be wrong, which I already suspected for some time.
Some sort of an adjustment should be coming in the next month of two. It is possible UAH has been too high over the last three years. On February 2, Dr. Spencer wrote: “Progress continues on Version 6 of our global temperature dataset. You can anticipate a little cooler anomalies than recently reported, maybe by a few hundredths of a degree, due to a small warming drift we have identified in one of the satellites carrying the AMSU instruments.”
See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/mean:36/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/mean:36/plot/rss/from:1980/mean:36/plot/uah/from:1980/mean:36/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/mean:36
UAH is the only one that shows the last 36 month mean as being warmer than any earlier time.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 15, 2012 at 7:58 am
tallbloke says:
What are you and Gough afraid of, getting your asses handed back to you on a plate? If you believe you and Gough have found a flaw in W&P’s work, then submit a properly written piece to the relevant journal. Otherwise W&P stands and you’re talking hot air.
We might do that at some point, although I doubt that that would make any difference to your cult.
Still blowing smoke Leif?
Let us know when your guru Gough gets around to actually reading the W&P paper and writing something he thinks worthy of submission for peer review.
Werner Brozek says:
August 15, 2012 at 8:07 am
HenryP says:
August 14, 2012 at 11:49 pm
It clearly tells me that UAH must be wrong, which I already suspected for some time.
Some sort of an adjustment should be coming in the next month of two. It is possible UAH has been too high over the last three years. On February 2, Dr. Spencer wrote: “Progress continues on Version 6 of our global temperature dataset. You can anticipate a little cooler anomalies than recently reported, maybe by a few hundredths of a degree
I think UAH is fine. What we are seeing is what I have been predicting on my blog for the last two and a half years. When the Sun goes quiet, heat comes out of the ocean and keeps the lower troposphere warm. Land is only a quarter of earth’s surface, and air isn’t very good at warming it. The increase in cloud as measured by the Earthshine project and ISCCP after 1998 means less insolation to the soil and oceans. The heat is coming up from the ocean depths.
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 10:57 am
Still blowing smoke Leif?
Just exposing your errors and lies, e.g. that Jose was at Los Alamos and that W&P actaully said in their email. But let that slide, as Steven Schneider once said: “it is OK to lie if it furthers the cause”.
Let us know when your guru Gough gets around to actually reading the W&P paper
Perhaps you didn’t read his note to me where Gough comments on specific items of the text:
“that Wolff and Patrone on p231 appear to claim …”
“the first paragraph of p. 232 …”
“in the last six lines of p.232”
“dismissal at the bottom of p.231”
But, as he says, after a while it becomes clear that the rest of the ‘fairy tale’ in the paper is not worth delving into. And for that reason it may not be worth wasting energy on a rebuttal [which you would not understand or accept anyway]. Or any need. Bad papers are soon and deservedly blissfully forgotten.
As Gough notes: “I have no advice to offer the authors that I believe they might take. What they should do is go back to the original publications of Rayleigh and Chandrasekhar and try to understand them. If they succeed, and if they are honest, they would then withdraw the paper.”
Perhaps they did not succeed…
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 4:31 pm
Jim G says:
August 14, 2012 at 3:10 pm
Stuck in the box irrespective of evidence which would indicate there was more to be learned. It has everything to do with an open or closed mind.
“As I said, every physicist want to prove Einstein wrong and is totally open on this point. There is no box other than the hard constraints of observations. The problem is that when extending a theory to explain puzzling things one is constrained to still have the new version explain everything the old one could. That is the hard part. And nobody has succeeded in doing so, but everybody wish in his heart that he could. What physicists do not buy is the argument that there are some unknown unknowns that we can shove stuff onto. In the old days, it was called ‘magic’. We don’t believe in magic and we do not believe in the notion that all it requires is an open mind. I don’r know any scientist who would close his mind to a chance of proving Einstein wrong. There is ALWAYS more to be learned. The very notion of dark matter and dark energy are indeed things we have recently learned. You would exclude that hard won knowledge? I would say: how wonderful things we are learning that we never thought of before.”
Not everyone is simply attempting to be the first to prove Einstein wrong. You are looking at the search for deeper knowledge as an egotist would and it is certain that some of that may be involved for some. Some are, however, simply trying to determine if there is MORE that might add to or modify what Einstein has discovered and thereby answer questions which relativity does not answer. Dark matter has not been “observed”, only inferred based upon what we do know about gravity, which may not be complete knowledge, What you are doing is taking the same position as those who would not listen to Einstein and clung to the Newtonian approximations of the day. An open mind says that relativity is the present day best approximation of what is going on but since it does not answer all of the questions, there may be more, and since dark matter has not been found or observed, but its postulation is using what we already do think we know to prove what we already think we do know, dark matter may not be the answer. Not a very encouraging course of logic. Also, relativity does not, I believe, call for an accellerating expansion, only an expanding universe (and here I may be open to correction, see “General Relativity and the Accelerated Expansion of the Universe”, Patrick Das Gupta) so dark energy is also in question. It may,however, according to some, be related to the potential quantum nature of space itself.
Your position on this issue is a perfect example of the old saying that ‘It is not what people don’t know that gets them in so much trouble but all of the things they do know that just ain’t so.’ In a single word, dogmatism. This said, I probably agree with you more on the issue of relativity, in general, than you might suppose, with the exception of dark matter and dark energy due to the “incestuous” sequential logical used to “prove” their existence.
I first read about solar cycles in John Gribbin’s book “The Strangest Star.” I thought that the science of solar cycles had been discredited and am fascinated to see it resurfacing. Gribbin has excellent instincts and is seldom wrong.
On the other hand…. climate change skeptics, if it starts cooling, don’t rejoice too soon. The warmists will only take the cooling as evidence that carbon emission restrictions were effective.
Off topic: snip acceptable. I love the tolerant moderation policy on WUWT. Opposing opinions are welcome. In fact every time there’s a new blog I look to see what James Abbott and barry have said. They never stoop to personal comments and maintain a high standard of debate. Gail Combs is another favorite.
Tallbloke says
Werner Brozek says: August 15, 2012 at 8:07 am HenryP says: August 14, 2012 at 11:49 pm It clearly tells me that UAH must be wrong, which I already suspected for some time. Some sort of an adjustment should be coming in the next month of two. It is possible UAH has been too high over the last three years. On February 2, Dr. Spencer wrote: “Progress continues on Version 6 of our global temperature dataset. You can anticipate a little cooler anomalies than recently reported, maybe by a few hundredths of a degree …
I think UAH is fine. What we are seeing is what I have been predicting on my blog for the last two and a half years. When the Sun goes quiet, heat comes out of the ocean and keeps the lower troposphere warm. Land is only a quarter of earth’s surface, and air isn’t very good at warming it. The increase in cloud as measured by the Earthshine project and ISCCP after 1998 means less insolation to the soil and oceans. The heat is coming up from the ocean depths
Henry says
HI tallbloke! Hi Werner! No doubt you are right about where the heat is coming from, when since 1995 the energy input to earth (ground) has been falling. It seems there is no one so far that has challenged the validity of my tables. From my table for means it can be calculated that “global” temps have dropped by about -0.2 degrees C or K since 2000. With current technology I would accept an absolute maximum error of 0.2 degrees K . Of course, because of various technical reasons, I believe my own data set is the best. That means most data sets must report between -0.4 to 0.0 from 2000. UAH is out. Not by a few hundredth. It is a little more, I am afraid.