Guest essay by Dr. Norman Page
Most climate warming alarmists have recently realized that it is now counterproductive to attribute every and all extreme weather events (even cold snowy winters) to global warming and try to project a judicious objectivity by applying the cliché “weather isn’t climate” to both sides of the climate wars. In fact weather is an almost instantaneous slice through the climate space-time phase space and certain patterns will occur more frequently on a cooling rather than a warming world.
The basic principles are very simple. On a cooler Earth the temperature gradient from the tropics to the Arctic Circle is steeper.
![FS_km5000.sm[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/fs_km5000-sm1.jpg?quality=83)
This increased gradient creates instability and the jet stream swings further North and South as opposed to its more West – East path during warmer periods. According to the season, blocking highs may develop with colder, drier, air penetrating further South and warm moist air reaching further North. There can be enormous temperature and humidity contrasts in the narrow boundary between these masses as warm air is sucked in from the Gulf. Conditions along such a boundary are ideal for developing the wind shear necessary for the tornado swarm development seen recently in Oklahoma.
The blocking highs also push hurricanes to the east so that hurricanes like Sandy are more likely to occur.
Note that Sandy was not a powerful Hurricane in fact it came ashore as a tropical storm. The big storm surge was the result of its long path over open water while a real cooling signal was seen in the development of blizzard conditions in the NW quadrant. This classic weather pattern is shown for today 6/02/13 in Figs 1 and 2 and occurs more often during a cooling phase of the PDO and is often triggered by an E Pacific La Nina cooling, as seen in the 6/01/13 SST anomaly map Fig 3 (h/t to The Weather Channel).
It is worth noting that the pattern seen in Fig 1 is also ideal for steering any Atlantic Hurricane which develops this season in a Sandy type direction.
Fig1
Fig2
Fig3
By contrast on a warmer world tropical SSTs are higher EL Ninos more common and more powerful category 4 and 5 hurricanes e.g. Katrina and Gilbert can develop. Their path is more E-W so that they more frequently hit the Gulf Coast or even Central America.
More generally, a cooling earth is a drier earth because the winds pick up less water vapor from the cooler oceans. In the USA the cool waters off the West Coast (Fig3) will lead to more generalized droughts in the Center, West and SW and when combined with more frequent late and early frosts and snows food crop production will be threatened. What rains do come will paradoxically come from storms leading to flash flooding further restricting food production. In California itself the south will be dryer with more forest fires while in the North more of the rains will come as snow so that increasing snow pack will ameliorate the overall dryer conditions.
Most of the ideas expressed above were included in the post “”30 Years Climate Forecast” in June 2010 on my blog at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com and revisited in June 2012 in the post “30 Year Climate Forecast -2 year update.”
There has been no net warming since 1997 with CO2 up over 8%. The SSTs show a cooling trend since 2003.
The problem with the IPCC and MetOffice Climate models is that, apart from the egregious structural errors in the specific models, (assuming that CO2 is the main driver when it clearly follows temperature and adding water vapor as a feedback onto CO2 to increase the sensitivity) climate science is so complex that the modelling approach is inherently incapable of providing useful forecasts for several reasons; for starters the difficulty of specifying the initial conditions with sufficient precision. All the IPCC model projections and the impact studies and government policies which depend on them are a total waste of time and money.
The only useful approach is to perform power spectrum and wavelet analysis on the temperature and possible climate driver time series to find patterns of repeating periodicities and project them forward. When this is done it is apparent that the earth entered a cooling phase in 2003-4 which will likely last for 20 more years and perhaps for several hundred years beyond that. For the data and references supporting this conclusion check the post “Climate Forecasting Basics for Britains Seven Alarmist Scientists” and several earlier posts on Climate Forecasting and Global Cooling especially “Global Cooling – Climate and Weather Forecasting” from 11/18/13.
Here is a summary of the latest forecast based not on the particular events referred to above but on the data and references linked in the series of posts on the climatesense-norpag site.
It is not a great stretch of the imagination to propose that the 20th century warming peaked in about 2003 and that peak was a peak in both the 60 year and 1000 year cycles. On that basis the conclusions of the posts referred to above were as follows.
- Significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
- Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22.
- Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
- Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
- Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
- General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
- By 2650 earth could be back to the depths of the little ice age.
- The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and help maintain crop yields.
- There are some signs in the Livingston and Penn Solar data that a sudden drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures could be imminent – with a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.
How confident should one be in these predictions? The pattern method doesn’t lend itself easily to statistical measures. However statistical calculations only provide an apparent rigour for the uninitiated and in relation to the IPCC climate models are entirely misleading because they make no allowance for the structural uncertainties in the model set up. This is where scientific judgement comes in – some people are better at pattern recognition than others.
A past record of successful forecasting is a useful but not infallible measure. In this case I am reasonably sure – say 65/35 for about 20 years ahead. Beyond that, inevitably, certainty must drop.
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Of all the online ‘discussions’ I’ve had, the most “blank stare” and non sequitor responses I’ve ever received were on this very topic when attempting the explain cold/dry versus warm/moist air masses driving weather events in conjunction with the concept that global warming happens more at the poles than the tropics. A warmer earth should, in general, bring fewer not more extreme weather events.
Eustace Cranch says:
June 5, 2013 at 6:03 am
Patrick says:
June 5, 2013 at 2:29 am
Here in Aus on SBS news tonight, one of the Oklahoma tornado broke all records. It was the widest ever at 4.5km wide.
Widest *ever*? How do we know the width of a tornado in 1936, 1925, 1896…?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
widest ever at 4.5km wide??? (4 miles is = 6.44 kilometers)
The tornado was so strong it drove straw through telephone poles. You could still see the path where it leveled everything a half decade later.
murrayv says:
June 5, 2013 at 8:28 am
I think Vukcevic’s projection is right for the coming bottom, but fails to take into account the ca 1100 year cycle and the Jose cycle for his projection from there on.
Thanks for the expression of confidence, but time will tell. In the CET extrapolation I used only periods below 100 years, since I think it is necessary to have at least three full periods for a particular frequency to be considered at least semi-permanent feature. Thus, both Jose and 1100 cycles even if they exist can’t be validated from the CET data with the required degree of confidence.
Pochas – Take a look at the Christiansen et Al methods. They say
“The proxies are of different types and of different resolutions (annual, annual-to-decadal,
and decadal) but all have previously been shown to relate to local or regional temperature. We use a reconstruction method, LOCal (LOC), that recently has been shown to confidently
reproduce low-frequency variability. Confidence intervals are obtained by an ensemble pseudo-proxy method that both estimates the variance and the bias of the reconstructions.
The two-millennia long reconstruction shows a well defined Medieval Warm Period, with a peak warming ca. 950–1050AD reaching 0.6 C relative to the reference period 1880–1960.” AD.
This is why I place some confidence in their reconstructions.
Good thread, with input from various posters we can piece together some plausible dynamics with solar influences which also include terrestrial cycles. There is no doubt that this topic is complicated. The simplistic, opportunistic method of matching model predictions to past weather is demonstrably faulty. The increase in positive AO in the 80’s and 90’s, for example, was “predicted” by models in the early 2000’s. The current negative AO excursions are now also “predicted” by models along with handwaving about sea ice.
As near as I can tell, the models flipped from +AO to -AO with a 2005 paper with some rather speculative modeling. The rhetoric got ramped up with the 2009/10 negative AO causing east coast (DC and surroundings) snowstorms. The obvious motivation was the need to explain increased snowfall to gullible politicians. The sea ice anomalies explanation was especially implausible considering the sea ice boundary is always somewhere and shifting it is not going to alter the dynamics of the flow.
One point of disagreement with the OP, I don’t think meridional flow is some sort of feedback from warming or cooling, dictated by the temperature gradient. The causes of perturbations in the flow are much too complex to be considered feedback. All weather is local and the average gradient, like the average global temperature and average humidity does not matter in the least to any of the weather. The gradient from the perturbations overwhelms the averages.
I too have looked at history to ‘forecast’ the future – see http://meteosoft.wordpress.com/
I’ve identified the following long term ‘cycles’ (ignoring the more chaotic short term oscillations):
6000 Yr – peak circa 1200BC and a trough circa 1800AD
1100 Yr – the Minoan (1100BC), Roman (1AD) and Medieval (1600-1800AD) warm periods
64 Yr – PDO/AMO
21 Yr – Hale Cycle
Add a small temperature increase for CO2 (0.0052 degC / Yr) and you get (as an Excel function):
Public Function GlobalTempAnomBase8110(Year As Integer) As DoublePi = 3.1415926
GlobalTempAnomBase8110 = (0.5 * Cos(Pi * (Year + 1000) / (6000 / 2)) + 0.31) +
(0.5 * Cos(Pi * Year / (1100 / 2)) - 0.3) +
(0.15 * Sin(Pi * (Year - 4) / (64 / 2)) - 0.04) +
(0.04 * Sin(Pi * (Year - 4) / (21 / 2)))
If Year > 1944 And Year < 2136 Then
GlobalTempAnomBase8110 = GlobalTempAnomBase8110 + 0.0052 * (Year - 1944)
Else If Year >= 2136 Then
GlobalTempAnomBase8110 = GlobalTempAnomBase8110 + 1
End If
End Function
This formula, when plotted against the 10 year moving average of the global temperatures (excluding GISS which I don’t trust!), I get a correlation coefficient of 0.989, which is an excellent fit.
This additional temperature increase was anchored to 1°C in 2136, as it is assumed that more efficient, cheaper, non-fossil fuel energy sources would be widely used by then.
Rob
Meteosoft – You havent looked at History too closely if you think the MWP was 1600 – 1800.
Dr Norman Page says:
June 5, 2013 at 6:53pm
“You havent looked at History too closely if you think the MWP was 1600 – 1800”
Oops, and thanks…
Meant:
1600-1800AD of course was the LIA
Rob
Dr. Norman Page claims that Sandy came ashore as a tropical storm.
Not true – Sandy came ashore as an extratropical storm, a Nor’Easter.
Also, Sandy’s strongest sustained winds as determined by the
National Hurricane Center (often extrapolated from winds at levels
other than the standard 10 meters above surface) were slightly
above hurricane force. And unusually, on the left side of the storm,
south of the center, over water and in an offshore direction.
There was 1 measurement of 75 MPH sustained wind (1 minute
average), at 18 meters above an island surface. There was 1
other measurement at a lower elevation that translates by usual
rules to 78 MPH. So, there is fair chance that spotty 74-plus MPH
sustained winds occurred at 10 meters above land.
It could be correct that Sandy was no longer capable of achieving
hurricane-qualifying winds 10 meters above land when Sandy made
landfall. But the National Hurricane Center made a determination
that this was occurring over water in an unusual part of the storm.
That may be related to the storm having gone through a transition
to an especially strong extratropical type storm.
I forgot to mention a couple sources:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL182012_Sandy.pdf
(especially towards the bottom of page 5)
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/SANDY.shtml?
especially:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/al18/al182012.public.030.shtml?
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/al18/al182012.update.10292255.shtml?
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/al18/al182012.update.10300002.shtml?
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/al18/al182012.public.031.shtml?
Notable: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/al18/al182012.fstadv.030.shtml?
This says hurricane force sustained winds were confined to south of
the center at 7 PM, an hour before landfall.
Forecast for a few hours after landfall (2 AM) was max sustained
winds 1 knot above “hurricane qualifying”, and confined to the southeast
quadrant of the storm.
The intervals between the Roman , MWP, and the current warming look closer to a 900 year cycle than they do a 1k cycle. The trick is how far along are we on any given cycle.
ferd berple says: June 5, 2013 at 6:58 am
Volker Doormann says:
June 5, 2013 at 6:18 am
A better approach is taking the real astronomical geometry of all the solar tides:
=============
So, we calculate tides very much the way we calculate horoscopes, by using the position of the sun, moon and planets in the sky in relation to historical observation. Who’d have thought. Astrology delivering a more accurate prediction than science.
I do know very well, that Anthony would not have any astrology discussion his blog, and do respect that.
For clearness of the subject I would like say some words.
To predict the long term *) global climate tides from the solar tides as an effect from neighbour couples, it needs not only the heliocentric ecliptically positions of the objects, it needs also the strength of the solar tide effect. This is very easy, because one can show that the strength function follows a simple 1/f² law; the ~900 year period of Little Ice Ages shows a bigger effect in the global temperature (~ +-2.0 K) than effects from the inner Jupiter couples (~ +-0.1 K).
*) To predict the short term global climate, the solar tides have to modulated with the strong oscillations of the ocean streams resulted from the resonating earth axis frequency (Chandler) and its sub harmonics with the Jupiter frequency of 0.08432 y-1 (10:1, 5:1, 5:2, 10:3).
The geometry of the solar tides controlling the terrestrial global climate is based on astronomy and its laws given by Johannes Kepler and Simon Newcomb. The strong coherence of the geometry with the global temperature, plus the 1/f² law for the strength, suggest that there must be a physical mechanism between, and this holds as scientific argument also, if the kind of mechanism is unknown till now.
These points are scientific arguments using the astronomical solar synodic tide functions as base. Beside other trigonometry gymnastics of mathematic terms detached from any real geometric structures, this, my behaviour is unique, because it is the only method with a real geometric astronomy structure as base. No fantasy cycles named after authorities in discovering cycles of years with variations of 50% or greater.
Thank You.
V.
“Gail Combs says:
June 5, 2013 at 1:43 pm”
It’s not unusual for the pro-AGW MSM in Aus to not get their history and facts correct. It’s an election year, SBS is an alternative Govn’t propaganda outlet to the usual ABC. An election year and far to many Aussies are falling for the alarmist “carbon driven climate change” tripe broadcast each and every day.
If my memory serves, I have seen images of that event. One that sticks in my mind was a picture of a 4X2 section of wood had punctured both walls of a front tyre and then in on through the firewall into the engine bay, all driven by the storm.
Dr Norman Page says:
June 5, 2013 at 12:15 pm
“The uncertainty lies in whether we are at the peak of a millenial cycle or not – right now it sure seems reasonably plausible looking at the Christiansen reconstruction.”
I’m not sure about extracting anything conclusive from proxy reconstructions. Loehle 2007 and 2008 has proxy peaks and valleys all over the place, largey missing the dark ages minimum and putting the MWP peak as early as 880. Historic records suggest a real dark ages (migration?) minimum in the 6 century and also suggest that the MWP optimum was probably later, more likely late 11th century.
Also see : http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/holocene.pdf
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/holocene_temperature_records_show_millennial_scale_peroidicity.html
The analyses of several different proxy records of past temperatures provide a large set of apparent cycles that seem to group into a near 1000 year cycle and a near 1500 year cycle.
All values presented (extracted by the method of analysis from the data presented) for the near 1000 year cycle are 1000 (faint), 1030, 1067, 1089, 1152, 1190, 1200 and 1230 years. The authors find a 1013 year mean without saying exactly how. The average of the values given above is 1120 years. Excluding the questionable 1000 year case, the median value is 1089 years. Using the extremes a value could be inferred of 1130 +- 100 years. Perhaps 1100 years would be the best estimate to use.
For the near 1500 year cycle we find mentions of a possible 1339 year case and more likely 1408, 1436, 1470, 1479, 1486, 1527, 1552, 1571, 1650, 1660, 1667, and 1681 year examples. The authors find a 1525 year mean. Using all of the above I find a 1533 year mean, or excluding the doubtful 1339 years, a mean of 1549 years. Using all of the values, the median is 1527 years and the range would be 1510+-170 years. Excluding the 1339 case the range would be 1540+-140 years. If we leave out the 4 values greater than 1600 which seem rather anomalous we are left with a mean of 1491.
Given the margin of error on any of the estimates, the simple original value of 1500 years seems good enough.
We seem to have 2 possible cycles, 1100 years and 1500 years.
The authors also find 2 groupings for the date of the MWP peak. The first is AD 798, 833, or 948, giving a mean about AD 860. The second group is AD 1036, 1047, 1088 and 1138 giving a mean of 1077. The latter value seems more consistent with most other findings. The range for this group would be 1087+-51 years. Probably AD 1100 is a good value to use. Was there an earlier peak near AD 860?? . Loehle 2007 finds the main peak about 880-900 and the second lower peak about 1000.
Using AD 1100 for the MWP and adding 1100/2 = 550 years would put the bottom of the LIA at AD 1650. Other estimates seem to place it closer to 1670-1680. The next long cycle warm peak would be about 2200, but not likely before 2150 (1650+500).
Murray
Norman
I agree with you that a cooler climate may mean more storms than warmer climate .Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to tornadoes in the US, In the case of Strong to Violent Tornadoes F3+ , there was a strong cluster of these between 1954 and 1974. Of the 21 years in this period, 16 out of 21 had colder than normal spring and the years with the most strong tornadoes had colder than normal spring [with the exception of 1974]. This year is following the same pattern with April and March below normal temperatures and the tornado count is up. I have not seen the figures for May yet , but again strong tornadoes happened in this month. With colder years being projected for the next several decades, there is a greater probability of many more cooler springs and more stronger tornadoes as well like the 1950-1970’s
Meteosoft says: June 5, 2013 at 6:22 pm
I too have looked at history to ‘forecast’ the future – see http://meteosoft.wordpress.com/
Meteosoft, your calculation is very interesting. I agree that we are notb yet at theb warm peak of this long cycle, and that the next bottom is about whare you show it. However, I doubt theb 6000 year cycle. I think you are seeing a long cooling trend since the holocene optimum. A similsr trend shows up in the Eemian. Also you might consider the Jose cycle of very near 180 years. There is probably also a Deep Grand Minimum solar cycle of about 360 years – See “Climate and Solar Regularities” at http://www.agwnot.blogspot.com.. Murray
Tornadoes are rare on the Canadian Prairies but they do occur occasionally and they have happened when temperatures are unseasonably cool. The Regina Cyclone of 1912 with 28 deaths, the Kamsack tornado in 1944 with 2 deaths and even the extensive tornadoes experienced in 2010 share one thing in common. They were preceded by cooler daytime temperatures than those that are more commonly experienced for that time of year. Perhaps it is anecdotal but I would entirely agree with the premise that a cooler than average year is more likely to produce a tornado as opposed to a hotter drier year, especially in the Canadian Prairie region of North America.