This paper Solar forcing on the ice winter severity index in the western Baltic region, was published yesterday in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. It suggests that the winter severity index over the past 600 years in the Baltic region of the Arctic is “strongly modulated” by solar activity over periods as short as one decade, or in other words, the 11 year sunspot cycle. Me, I’m not so sure, because this would likely have been observed before if the correlation were so strong. OTOH, there’s the recent story about the ice skating festivals on canals showing a correlation.
Solar forcing on the ice winter severity index in the western Baltic region
M.C. Leal-Silv V.M. Velasco Herrera
Abstract
The Sun is the fundamental energy sources of the Earth’s climate and therefore its variations can contribute to natural climate variations. In the present work we study the variability of ice winter severity index in the Baltic Sea since the 15th century and its possible connection with solar activity, based in a new method for finding and measuring amplitude-phase cross-frequency coupling in time series with a low signal/noise ratio, we suggests that the ice winter severity index in the Baltic Sea is modulated by solar activity and solar motion in several frequency bands during the last 500 yrs. According to our model a strong coupling between the decadal periodicity in the ice winter severity index time series and the secular periodicity of solar activity is present. We found that the ice winter severity index is strongly modulated by solar activity at the decadal periodicity. We also found that the 180 year periodicity of the Barycentre motion modulates the amplitudes of the decadal periodicity of solar activity and the Ice winter severity index. This method represents a useful tool for study the solar-terrestrial relationships.
Highlights
► We present a new method for assessing amplitude-phase cross-frequency coupling.
► We applied the cross-frequency coupling method to different time series.
► The ice winter severity index is strongly modulated by solar activity.
This is why the paper, data, metadata, and code need to be accessible to the public.
Did you drop by just to make unkind accusations? Or is this just another instance of warmer cherry picking?
Less than two dozen comments posted from a smaller group of people and you already know we are all of one like, one mind marching to one drum and not a serious question in the house? Yup, causation from assumed correlations combined with the assumptions of group think (AKA consensus in climate team terms), definitely a trait of the alarmists.
Shame on you. You definitely know better. Now, I’m reasonably sure a lot of us are hmming while reading this thread over lunch and wondering just how the data and math stack up on this. And as has been indicated, we’d like to hear from some of the solar experts, especially Leif. Not that I absolutely accept all of Leif’s statement’s; but I am not able to argue against his math and analysis, so I accept Leif’s logic until we can seriously test the sun. Long after I’m gone, I’m sure; but I can hope.
Obviously, we didn’t have satellites in 1600.
Could you please remove the reference to Arctic in your headline?
No part of the Baltic sea lies within the boundaries of the Arctic.
Pls goto Wikipedia and search for Arctic, they´ll serve you with two definitions none of which applies to the Baltic sea.
This bring me back once again to this article on HadSST3 adjustments:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/15/on-the-adjustments-to-the-hadsst3-data-set-2/#comment-188237
Figure 4 http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/hadsst3-cosine-fit1.png
shows that the difference between hadSST3 and the original ICOADS data can be characterised by the sum of 184 y and 67y cosine. The Fourier analysis also shows the Hadley processing stomps out any long term periodicity.
The dataset was not long enough to reach to 180 y cycles in the Fourier plot but the commentary notes:
” The presence of a longer periodic signal running strongly to the end of the graph, where it converges with the non-cyclic residual shows there is a cyclic variation of more than 160 years in duration. “
“Me, I’m not so sure, because this would likely have been observed before if the correlation were so strong.”
Google scholar brings up quite a number of papers on the solar cycle in relation to -NAO, QBO, and cold N. Hemisphere winters, I think the main problem with anything solar is one of acceptance. As for the Sirocko paper, in prescribing specifically solar minima, it overlooked several Elfstedentocht events and frozen Rhine winters, and some of the coldest European winters in the last 400yrs that all happened to be on solar cycle maxima. The clustering of cold events just after minima, and on and just after maxima is highly indicative of the low points in geomagnetic activity being the reason rather than an absence of spots. I can’t see how the analytical approach of the above paper helps either, when we can look at each cycle individually against the daily geomagnetic (or solar plasma speed) record.
“We also found that the 180 year periodicity of the Barycentre motion modulates the amplitudes of the decadal periodicity of solar activity and the Ice winter severity index.”
It can be easily shown that it has nothing to with barycentric motion by looking at suitable heliocentric analogues of the four Jovian planets. Such as 1838 and 1976, the weather/climatic conditions were completely different: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar
“in the Baltic region of the Arctic”
Where in the world is that? As far as I am aware the “Baltic region” lies entirely outside the Arctic. Seems a bit disingenuous.
You shouldn’t be so harsh on our host. One part of Baltic is just outside arctic circle
http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/images/arctic_map.gif
closest at 65.30’N
Steven Mosher says:
September 5, 2012 at 8:13 am
Wow.
Before anyone has the time to read the paper, request the data and code and do a proper skeptical audit, the skeptics here have already endorsed the conclusions…
group think.
Can’t speak for others, Steven, but my first comment in this blog was to question whether the data was capable of supporting the conclusion.
I’ll see your “group think” and raise you a “knee jerk”.
I’ll anti up. Assume much Steven? Makes an ass out of u and me. I am also not convinced to even a small degree regarding solar influence on temperature trends and oscillations of the kind referred to in this paper.
Persuasive voice is similar to what you have chosen to use in your comment. It is a lower form of debate. You are better off using the argumentative voice in science debate. Unless you did not intend to enter into science debate. Caustic remarks are seldom appropriate in such debate and makes me think your intent was not to advance a scientific discussion but a political point you wish us to believe in.
Vukcevic says…..
You shouldn’t be so harsh on our host. One part of Baltic is just outside arctic circle……closest at 65.30’N
Thats still 10 12 degrees from the western baltic referenced in the paper. I don’t see it as harsh at all to hold Anthony to the same standards as he holds everyone else to. His dedication to accuracy for particularly climate science is responsible for the popularity of this website, and will cause rethinks and revisions that further our understanding. But if he doesn’t hold himself to the same standards then he just looks hypocritical, to this reader anyway..
“””””…..Solar activity linked to Baltic winter severity…..”””””
Well I’d put my money on: ‘Baltic winter severity linked to Solar activity.’
But that’s just my opinion.
And as to that other donnybrook, I have always considered > +60 as the Arctic, and <-60 as the Antarctic.
If I mean Arctic or Antarctic circles, I say so.
“””””…..Mike Mellor says:
September 5, 2012 at 4:35 am
Counting sunspots is to my mind just a trifle archaic. We now have satellites that measure Total Solar Irradiance down to the last joule……”””””
No wonder they get it wrong. Joules is energy or work, and Irradiance is Watts per metre squared.
Is the Antarctic peninsula in the Antarctic ??
You wouldn’t know what a proper skeptic audit is. These ridiculous comments are why I stopped recommending his book. I can proudly say I never bought it.
with respect to the arctic discussion. Yes, if they considered the Gulf Of Bothnia (the eastern Baltic) I wouldn’t mind too much. But they consider the western Baltic and that’s a tiny bit below 60N.
Oh My! May wonders never cease. An article on WUWT with the B-Word in it 😉 (Bary…)
While I’d love to hop on the “Oh Boy!” band wagon, I notice one glaring issue. It says it has a link to the 180 year period of Bary…. motion. It may have nothing at all to do with that. In orbital mechanics there is a very large tendency to ‘orbital resonance’; so things like meteor storms and lunar / tidal cycles have periods that all “coordinate”. You can’t attribute “causality” only “coincidence with a chance of correlation”…
Oh, and I notice that Mosher, in a fit of “knee jerk”, lept of the cliff of conclusion…
So I’m happy to see the question of an orbital mechanics related correlation being given some air time; but it’s a very long ways from that to anything involving causality and even further to anything directly tied to the B-Word effect or the sun. (Best explanation I’ve seen so far for many of the cycles involves a lunar / tidal pattern:
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/3814.full
My more rampant speculations based on that paper here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/lunar-resonance-and-taurid-storms/
But THE key take away is that “things in space are coordinated” via orbital resonance. Just ’cause you get a ‘wiggle match’ to the sun, doesn’t mean it isn’t the Moon / tides doing the deed and on a very similar schedule…
Me? I’m not leaping off any “cliffs of conclusion” but more admiring all the views from the tops… and think this one is a mighty fine one. Needs no explanation for the solar TSI disconnect, no explanation for why weather results don’t always land on the B-word moments, yet does explain the 180 year cycle showing up and does explain the “coordination” with the major gas planet positions as they stir the orbital resonance pot… So it’s a tidy explanation.
Oh, and tides causing differential stirring of ocean currents and cold deep water is a very direct potential mechanism. Even gives a multiple of the 60 year PDO cycle as further ‘harmonic’ oscillation possibilities…
For some years we have known that one side of Antarctica has been massing ice while the other was losing ice, why on Earth wouldn’t the same be true of the Arctic? Seems like smoke and mirrors not to notice for instance that the Bering Sea has had “a positive anomaly” 4 out of the past 5 yrs.. I wonder if we are ignoring a similar pattern to that of Antarctica or not seeing it because of the land/ocean ice mix of the area, which would not be counted in the SEA ICE.