# The Great Climate Shift of 1878

Guest essay by Jeffery S. Patterson

My last post on WUWT demonstrated a detection technique that allows us to de-noise the climate data and extract the various natural modes which dominate the decadal scale variation in temperature. In a follow-up post on my blog, I extend the analysis back to 1850 and show why, to first-order, the detection method used is insensitive to amplitude variations in the primary mode. The result is reproduced here as figure 1.

Figure 1a – First-difference of primary mode Fig 1b – De-trended first-difference of primary mode

We see from Figure 1b that once de-trended, the slope of the primary mode has remained bounded within a range of ± 1.2 °C/century over the entire 163 year record.

The linear trend in slope evident in Figure 1a implies a parabolic temperature trend. The IPCC makes oblique reference to this in the recently releases AR-5 Summary for Policymakers:

“Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850 (see Figure SPM.1). In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years (medium confidence).”

True enough, but that has been true since at least the mid-1800s. The implication of the IPCC’s ominous statement is that anthropogenic effects on the climate have been present since that early time. Let’s examine that hypothesis.

Up to this point I have been using de-trended data in the singular spectrum analysis (SSA) because de-trending helps to isolate the oscillatory modes of the climate system from the low-frequency trend. We are now interested in the characteristics of the trend itself. Figure 2 shows the SSA trend extracted from the raw Hadcrut4 northern hemisphere data.

Figure 2 – SSA[L=82,k = 1,2] on Hadcrut4

We see the data oscillates about the extracted trend with approximately equal peak –to-peak amplitude until about the year 2000. More about this departure later. The really interesting characteristic of the trend is revealed when we look at the first-difference (time derivative of the red curve of figure 2), shown in figure 3.

Figure 3 – First difference of extracted trend

Any engineer will instantly recognize this shape as the step-response of a slightly under-damped 2nd order system as described by equation 1.

(1)

where a is the step-size, b the offset, w the natural frequency, z the damping factor and t the offset in time at which the input step occurs. is the unit step function which is zero when its argument is negative and unity elsewhere.

A parametric fit of (1) to the data of figure 3 is shown in figure 4.

Figure 4 – Parametric fit of (1) versus data

I know what you are thinking. That fit is too perfect to be true. It must be an internal response of the SSA filter. We can test that hypothesis by integrating equation (1) and comparing it to the unfiltered data.

Figure 5 – Indefinite integral of (1) versus data

We see the resulting integral fits the unfiltered data, with the residual exhibiting the same oscillatory behaviors as before. The integral of (1) yields eqn. 2 below:

(2)

I know what you’re thinking. We’ve said all along that the AGW signature would show up as a step in in the slope of the de-noised temperature data, precisely what we see in figure 4. Is this the AGW smoking gun? If we plot figure 3 and the raw data on the same graph we see the real smoking gun.

Figure 6 – First-difference of extracted trend versus data

Around the year 1878, a dramatic shift in the climate occurred coincident with and perhaps triggered by an impulsive spike in temperature. As a result, the climate moved from a cooling phase of about -.7 °C/century to a warming phase of about +.5°C/century, which has remained constant to the present. We see that this period of time was coincident with a large spike in solar activity as shown in figure 7.

Figure 7 – Solanki et al, Nature 2004 Figure 2. Comparison between directly measured sunspot number (SN) and SN reconstructed from different cosmogenic isotopes. Plotted are SN reconstructed from D14C (blue), the 10-year averaged group sunspot number1 (GSN, red)

Virtually all of the climate of the last century and a half is explained by equation (2) and the primary 60+ year mode extracted earlier as shown in figure 8b.

Figure 8 – Primary mode SSA[L=82,k=3,5] vs. residual from eqn.(2) (left) Fig. 8b – eqn. (2) + primary mode vs. hadcrut4

As others have observed, this 60+ year mode plotted in figure 8a is highly correlated to solar irradiance.

#### Figure 9 – This image was created by Robert A. Rohde from the data sources listed below

2. International sunspot number: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/ftpsunspotnumber.html

Note that the reconstruction due to Solanki et al shown in figure 7 disagrees with figure 9 in terms of present day solar activity. The temperature record clearly tracts Solanki, but I’ll leave that controversy to others.

The residual from Figure 8b, shown in Figure 10, shows no trend or other signs of anthropogenic effects.

Figure 10a – Residual from primary mode Figure 10b – Smoothed histogram of residual

A similar analysis was done on the sea-surface temperature record. The results as shown in Figure 11:

Figure 11 – SST (red) vs. Hadcrut4 (blue)

We see the land temperatures follow the ocean surface temperature with a 4-5 year lag.

Conclusion

The climate record of the past 163 years is well explained as the integral second-order response to a triggering event that occurred in the mid-to-late 1870s, plus an oscillatory mode regulated by solar irradiance. There is no evidence in the temperature records analyzed here supporting the hypothesis that mankind has had a measurable effect on the global climate.

## 289 thoughts on “The Great Climate Shift of 1878”

1. Doug Proctor says:

When you look at the types of analyses done by the IPCCers, do you see anything like this (or similar statistical analyses)? Surely there must have been a bunch of statistical analyses done on the temperature data (or even, shockingly, the tree-ring data)?

A friend said that the saddest thing about getting old was that everything was so obvious, all the lies, evasions, sleights-of-hand. He was right: the most obvious thing was that those with reason to not think deeply tend not to do so.

2. Mark Bofill says:

Jeffery,

Very interesting, and thanks.

Around the year 1878, a dramatic shift in the climate occurred coincident with and perhaps triggered by an impulsive spike in temperature. As a result, the climate moved from a cooling phase of about -.7 °C/century to a warming phase of about +.5°C/century, which has remained constant to the present.

Coincidentally, late 1800’s are about when the oceans started to rise, so that makes tentative sense.
But do you feel comfortable talking about an impulsive spike in temperature that’s caused a constant warming to the present? What does that really mean? What’s the mechanism, how why what? Might be I’m just a simpleton, but I think this idea needs a little work.

3. J. Bob says:

Instead of using the HadCRUT, why not try the same method on longer term records such as Central England (CEL), Debuilt & Uppsalla data sets.

Over all very interesting & thought provoking,

4. Mark Bofill says:
October 4, 2013 at 7:46 am

But do you feel comfortable talking about an impulsive spike in temperature that’s caused a constant warming to the present? What does that really mean? What’s the mechanism, how why what? Might be I’m just a simpleton, but I think this idea needs a little work.

Look at figure 6. The dotted line is exactly coincident with an impulsive spike in temperature. The climate has memory (lots of it) an so integrative behavior is to be expected (if we intergrate an impulse we get a step). However, I think the most likely physical explanation is that the triggering caused a shift to a new chaotic regime. See for example Tonis et al, A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts

5. Steven Burnett says:

I have [] been waiting for someone to apply process control analysis and methodology to the trend. I [will] have to digest further but I agree it looks like a step change. Raw data looks like first order and the cleaning may give the impression of a second order. I have also been waiting for someone to apply this analysis to the claims regarding warmest decade etc. All of which while true, represent a strawman [] argument. Yes the world is warmer the question is why.

6. Mark Bofill says:

Jeff, thanks, I see what you’re saying now.

7. Crispin in Waterloo but really in Yogyakarta says:

I for one am impressed and congratulate you for skill and insights. I did recognise the damping. I am remembering the damped response curve provided by Willis a few months ago. What is take to be happening is that there is a very large and long spike-dampening cycle with a much shorter one that is based on the sunspot cycle (was it). I mean solar variation of course. All this rather puts an underscore below the words, ‘it’s the sun!’

8. Jimmy Haigh. says:

So what happened in 1878?

9. Jimmy Haigh. says:

End of the LIA?

But what caused that?

10. “When you look at the types of analyses done by the IPCCers, do you see anything like this (or similar statistical analyses)? Surely there must have been a bunch of statistical analyses done on the temperature data (or even, shockingly, the tree-ring data)?”

What you see when you look at the “analyses” is a pile of darts, several dartboards, and a room full of chimpanzees. And of course the sea level dartboard is labeled “Sea Level: +2 feet, +4 feet, and +6 ft” and the global temperature dartboard is labeled “+2 degrees, +4 degrees, and +6 degrees”.

Sadly, they recently had to remove the “catastrophe” dartboard, since the Gorepanzee had learned that he got a treat every time he grabbed a dart, ran up, and stuck it into the “SHARKNADO” section of the that board. It just was getting too embarrassing.

11. Gerard says:

So if there is a step change around 1880 in the solar data that has to be corrected as Leif is arguing and there is a step change too in the temperatures like Mr Patterson is saying in his guest essay wouldn’t it be more logical to skip the correction and have temperature and solar data in harmony?

12. DayHay says:

Leif, what is your best guess for a curve? Looks like 90-100 year cycle, or no cycle at all?

13. Gerard says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:14 am
So if there is a step change around 1880 in the solar data that has to be corrected as Leif is arguing
There is no 60-cycle in the corrected data and no step up change. If anything solar activity fell off a cliff to the very low cycles 1878-1934.

14. Grumpy Old Man says:

Jimmy, From Fig 7 it seems to indicate that the sun really grew legs and got going. Good post. I’m impressed but I would like to see some thoughts from Anthony and Willis. They will always make you think twice about correlation. (And Isvalgaard has a different point point of view).

15. MJPenny says:

It was in the late 1800’s that coal use started picking up worldwide. It could be that soot from coal burning started having an affect on the melting of ice and snow around then.

16. RC Saumarez says:

Very inresting.
I have a slight reservation about SSA, which follows on from my comments on your last post.
Quite recently, there waas a post here that claimed that maximum likelihood regression resulted in a sinuois and a cubic trend. What worries me is whether either of these are unique representations of the data. Again, it stems from the idea of orthogonal decomposition and the space that one represents the signal in. For example the residual trend is not orthogonal to the oscillatory first order signal in the sense of its inner product and this suggests that decomposition is not unique.
I’m not trying to be pernickety, but there are several ways the temperature signal can be represented as the sum of different functions, all of which have very little, and roughly normally distributed residual error.
Your analysis, which is very interesting, suggests a step function which may, or may not, be related to changes in solar irradiance. However, this is only one representation of the signal and if there are other ways of representing it with comparable accuracy, which is best, or right and why?

17. Jimmy Haigh. says:

I quote Jack Eddy:

“Were God to give us, at last, the cable, or patch-cord that links the Sun to the Climate System it would have on the solar end a banana plug, and on the other, where it hooks into the Earth—in ways we don’t yet know—a Hydra-like tangle of multiple 24-pin parallel computer connectors. It is surely at this end of the problem where the greatest challenges lie.”

As much as I respect Dr Svalgaard, I reckon Jack Eddy had it right…

18. DayHay says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:18 am
what is your best guess for a curve? Looks like 90-100 year cycle, or no cycle at all?
100 year pseudo cycle.

Jeff Patterson says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:19 am
“There is no clear 60-yr period in solar irradiance [or its magnetic field which drives TSI]”
Have a look at this http://icecap.us/images/uploads/OC20.png

So? Look at TSI before 1900. Repeat: there is no 60-yr cycle in TSI.

19. Gerard says:

@leif
“There is no clear 60-yr period in solar irradiance [or its magnetic field which drives”
If you calculate the solar minima back from 2008 to 1878 it appear to be around 65 years so three Hale cycles per half climate cycle. Don’t ask me about the logic behind that three cycles i just look at the data.

20. Jimmy Haigh. says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:26 am
“—in ways we don’t yet know—”
As much as I respect Dr Svalgaard, I reckon Jack Eddy had it right…

Absolutely, he said we don’t know [even if we wish it were so].

21. Gail Combs says:

A bit more on the solar-climate possible connection

ON A COMBINED INFLUENCE OF LONG-TERM SOLAR ACTIVITY VARIATIONS AND GEOMAGNETIC DIPOLE CHANGES ON CLIMATE CHANGE
O.M.Raspopov1,3, V.A.Dergachev2, E.G.Guskova1
1
St.Petersburg Filial of Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere, and Radiowave
Propagation of RAS, St.-Petersburg, Russia,
Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute of RAS, St.-Petersburg, Russia,
Polar Geophysical Institute of Kola SC of RAS, Murmansk, Russia

Abstract:
The influence of variations in galactic cosmic rays (GCR) on climate change has been analyzed for the time intervals of thousands and tens of thousands of years. It has been shown that in the last millennium quasi-two-hundred-year variations in the GCR intensity (variations in the cosmogenic 14C isotope concentration in dated tree rings) modulated by solar cyclicity (the ~210-year cycle) correlated well with climate change (temperature and precipitation variations). The correlation coefficient between variations in GCR and climate parameters for different regions of the Earth has been found to range from 0.58 to 0.95. Analysis of variability in the concentration of the cosmogenic 10 Be isotope (that also reflects the GCR flux variability) in Greenland ice for the time interval from 20,000 to 50,000 years ago has revealed that the 10Be concentration is modulated by the quasi-two-hundred-year solar cycle. Comparison of variations in the cosmogenic 10Be isotope concentration with changes in the magnitude of the virtual axial dipole moment (VADM) of the geomagnetic field has shown that the envelope of the 10Be concentration amplitude correlates well with the VADM variations. Thus, it can be concluded that long-term solar activity and geomagnetic dipole variations exert a combined influence on the GCR fluxes that enter the Earth’s atmosphere and affect the climate. A decrease in the geomagnetic dipole leads to an enhancement of the total GCR flux on the one hand and an increase in the depth of modulation of the GCR fluxes caused by solar activity variability on the other hand.

22. chris y says:

/sarc on
Muller says it is all due to CO2. There was apparently an impulsive spike in atmospheric CO2 around 1878. This clearly shows up in the dead certain ice core records as a small wiggle in the anthropogenic emissions of about 1 Billion tons/yr of CO2 at that time (we think). This catastrophe has become inexorably worse, with the current 30 Billion tons/yr of CO2 emissions causing temperatures to, well, it’s hiding in the abyss.
/sarc off

23. Gerard says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:30 am
Don’t ask me about the logic behind that three cycles i just look at the data.
Then look again: http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Magn-Flux-Schrijver.png
The dominant cycle is ~100 years. That is the one that counts. If you do spectral analysis of the series you find power at 100, 67, 54, and 44 years, all are subharmonics of the 11-yr solar cycle.

24. If solar activity fell off the cliff, would that have resulted in more cosmic rays, and hence more water vapour, and hence a heightened greenhouse effect?

25. david dohbro says:

Jeffery, great analyses. My recent post is in line with your much more complex and thorough work: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/01/if-climate-data-were-a-stock-now-would-be-the-time-to-sell/#more-94942

your figure 8 and 9 and the 60+ yr cycles you mention are also observed in my data analyses, and are also in line with Roy Spencer’s recent post on 30yr period in ENSO cycles: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/09/on-changing-enso-conditions-the-view-from-ssmi/

coincidence? I don’t think so.

26. Richard M says:

Consider volcanic activity. Krakatoa in 1883 is very close. What if this opened up some undersea lava sources that increased the warming of the PWP. This warming then gets spread over the planet during ENSO events.

27. david dohbro says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:39 am
your figure 8 and 9 and the 60+ yr cycles you mention are also observed in my data analyses
There is no 60-yr cycle in Figure 9, nor in solar activity on longer time-scales: : http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Magn-Flux-Schrijver.png
The dominant cycle is ~100 years. That is the one that counts.

28. lsvalgaard says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:28 am
So? Look at TSI before 1900. Repeat: there is no 60-yr cycle in TSI.

There certainly is a 60+year cycle quasi-periodic mode evident in the data that has persisted over the entire modern record. Whatever its cause, it certainly is not anthropogenic and so its provides no support to the AGW hypothesis. If it doesn’t surprise you that the entire modern climate record can be reproduced with great fidelity by a simple 2nd order differential equation and a sine wave, it should.

29. Jeff Patterson says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:45 am
There certainly is a 60+year cycle quasi-periodic mode evident in the data
There is a 60+year cycle in climate which is very clear, but no clear 60+cycle in solar activity:

The dominant cycle is ~100 years. That is the one that counts.

30. Gary Pearse says:

A paper in Nature 2004 by Scripps scientists note this change. They used records of the HMS Challenger from the 1870s, etc., to note a warming that exceeded what has occurred during the last 50 years.

“”The significance of the study is not only that we see a temperature difference that indicates warming on a global scale, but that the magnitude of the temperature change since the 1870s is twice that observed over the past 50 years,” said Roemmich, co-chairman of the International Argo Steering Team. “This implies that the time scale for the warming of the ocean is not just the last 50 years but at least the last 100 years.”

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/1858

There’s our mysterious step -up and it was stronger than that of the past 50 years, which is supposed to have been “unprecedented” (95% confidence? sarc/off). Surely it couldn’t have been human CO2 emissions back then.

31. lgl says:

Leif

No, the dominant cycle is ~200 years

32. Gail Combs says:

The following quotation taken from the Box 9.2 of the IPCC Working Group I Report.

In summary, the observed recent warming hiatus, defined as the reduction in GMST trend during 1998–2012 as compared to the trend during 1951–2012, is attributable in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in external forcing (expert judgment, medium confidence). The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle.

33. Walt The Physicist says:

May be we all should get advice from the Penn State researchers of the Center for Climate Risk Management that perform an interdisciplinary integrated assessment modeling research as part of a $2 million grant from the Department of Energy. … or may be research staff of the Penn State newly opened Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk lead by a retired rear admiral. … or ask participants of the Climate Strategies Forum/ October 14-17 in Washington DC held by the Association of Climate Change Officers… 34. vukcevic says: There is no clear 60-yr period in solar irradiance [or its magnetic field which drives TSI But there is in the geo-solar magnetic field http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm or to be more precise 65 year pseudo-cycle (ooh yes, the pseudo-science one might say) 35. lgl says: October 4, 2013 at 8:50 am No, the dominant cycle is ~200 years Nonsense: http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Magn-Flux-Schrijver.png http://www.leif.org/EOF/Lomb-Sunspot-Cycle-Revisited.pdf : “the period around 100 years remains with the modulation by this period obvious in a visual examination of a plot of the modified sunspot number data.” vukcevic says: October 4, 2013 at 8:53 am “There is no clear 60-yr period in solar irradiance [or its magnetic field which drives TSI” But there is in the geo-solar magnetic field There is no such thing as the geo-solar magnetic field, as you have been told a zillion times. 36. Jean Parisot says: Any way to migrate this technique to historic 10Be and ice data, I’m not really concerned about warming – but a way to look a past cooling event, would be cool. 37. lgl says: Leif Solar activity didn’t start in 1650 (or 1700) 38. Scott Basinger says: Dr. Svalgaard is highly likely to be correct. If you’re correct on the 60 year cycle, something else is causing it. You’re barking up the wrong tree. 39. lgl says: October 4, 2013 at 9:17 am Solar activity didn’t start in 1650 (or 1700) Correct, our actual data begins with the large cycles 200 years before the Dalton Minimum… 40. The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says: Excuse me asking what might be a dumb question, but if the surface temps lags the SST then can’t we just always know what the surface WILL be in a few months by looking at the SST? And on that point, does anyone know a website that shows a graph including current SST? Thanks. 41. This Patterson approach is an excellent method of deconvolving the natural modes in the temperature data.. It has been obvious for some time that the SSN is not the most useful measure of solar activity and its relation to climate and that the Be10 flux is a much better proxy for solar “activity” in relation to climate. For example Patterson’s Fig 3 above matches very well the NGRIP 10 Be concentration trends ( when inverted ) seen in the top record of Fig 1 in http://www.eawag.ch/forschung/surf/publikationen/2009/2009_berggren.pdf This same record also matches the general temperature trends seen for comparable times in Fig 7 (taken from Christiansen http://www.clim-past.net/8/765/2012/cp-8-765-2012.pdf ) in the latest post at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com which goes on to give an estimate of the timing and extent of the coming cooling. It is not a great stretch to propose that the break at about 1880 is an expression of the final (peak) warming phase of the 1000 year solar cycle inferred from the temperature record of the last 2000 years . See also Fig 6 in the link to my blog given above. 42. CaligulaJones says: I believe there has been more science in this thread than in the entire IPCC corpus. As a non-engineer, you lost me at “Any engineer will instantly recognize this shape as the step-response of a slightly under-damped 2nd order system as described by equation 1.” But believe it or not, I can actually follow this… 43. The 60 year internal ocean oscillation provides the basic sine wave pattern. Any trend in solar activity then superimposes a trend from one sine wave peak to the next or one sine wave trough to the next. An increasingly active sun causes peaks to gain height from one to the next. A decreasingly active sun causes troughs to gain depth from one to the next. 44. vukcevic says: The dominant cycle is ~100 years. That is the one that counts. Agree! It is governing cycle of all major observed sunspot cycle anomalies, http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/100yearCycle.htm btw. first time calculated from the astronomic data in 2003 (by Vukcevic) published in 2004. 45. Dr Norman Page says: October 4, 2013 at 9:48 am It has been obvious for some time that the SSN is not the most useful measure of solar activity and its relation to climate and that the Be10 flux is a much better proxy for solar “activity” in relation to climate. For the past 220 years the SSN and the Be10 Flux are in good agreement. We have just re-evaluated that at two recent workshops. For example Patterson’s Fig 3 above matches very well the NGRIP 10 Be concentration trends Here you show that you are a bit confused. The 10Be concentration is not the same as the 10Be flux. The concentration depends on the deposition which in turns depend on the climate [good circular argument there], while the flux depends on the production [the sun]. You see: the 10Be is mostly generated elsewhere than in the polar caps and are brought up to the ploes by atmospheric circulation. It is estimated that at least half the 10Be variation found is caused by fluctuations of the climate. 46. vukcevic says: October 4, 2013 at 9:56 am btw. first time calculated from the astronomic data in 2003 (by Vukcevic) published in 2004. Has been known for a hundred years… 47. Bart says: RC Saumarez says: October 4, 2013 at 8:24 am “What worries me is whether either of these are unique representations of the data.” Yes, that is always the danger. Richard M says: October 4, 2013 at 8:42 am I was going to mention that. A stretch, but I have always been fascinated by the power of that blast since reading The 21 Balloons as a kid. 200 MT is a helluva punch. A little off in the date, but maybe some other geological shift occurred previous which then led to the explosion…? 48. Never mind 10Be, cosmic rays, magnetic flux, solar wind, sunspot number et. al. The best proxy for the solar effect on climate could well be the average net latitudinal position of the ITCZ in any given year. First, though, we need to ascertain the position of the ITCZ at which the global energy budget would be balanced. 49. MattN says: “So what happened in 1878?” My first thought was the Carrington Event, but that was 1859. 50. MattN says: Between Willis and Jeff, WUWT is bringing the heat today… 51. vukcevic says: You see: the 10Be is mostly generated elsewhere than in the polar caps and are brought up to the poles by atmospheric circulation. It is estimated that at least half the 10Be variation found is caused by fluctuations of the climate. Agree again. There is a good match between Greenland’s data for 10Be end the CET http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be-2.htm as both are strongly affected by the Arctic’s jet-stream Dr. S (100year cycle) Has been known for a hundred years Indeed, but not calculated numerically from another ex-SSN source of data, which raises possibility of an association to the rest of the solar system’s dynamics. 52. Leif – I’m not confused – re the point I’m making – as you must obviously know the NGRIP 10Be flux record in the Berggren Fig 1 shows the same relationship to Patterson Fig 3 as the concentration record. Also you know quite well that at various times the 10 Be and SSN records are not similar e.g Maunder minimum. 53. Joe Born says: Jeff Patterson: “If it doesn’t surprise you that the entire modern climate record can be reproduced with great fidelity by a simple 2nd order differential equation and a sine wave, it should.” I don’t know whether it should surprise me or not; by my count there are are eight parameters in that mix, not counting the DC offset. 54. Richard M says: Bart says: October 4, 2013 at 10:14 am Richard M says: October 4, 2013 at 8:42 am I was going to mention that. A stretch, but I have always been fascinated by the power of that blast since reading The 21 Balloons as a kid. 200 MT is a helluva punch. A little off in the date, but maybe some other geological shift occurred previous which then led to the explosion…? I had similar thoughts. Also, given the strong El Niño in 1878 it could be the date is skewed by this event. What might have been just a large bump gets added in. If the explosion created a crack in the ocean crust a lot of heat could flow out. I’ve always wondered about the PWP. Many believe it is the result of the trade winds (SOI), but maybe it is the cause. 55. Joe Born says: Me: “by my count there are are eight parameters in that mix, not counting the DC offset.” Sorry, miscounted. Should be nine. 56. Jim Brock says: Simplified: In an interglacial period (like now) it keeps getting warmer….until it doesn’t, and we have another ice age. 57. Here’s an idea: around 1880, the American bison herds were slaughtered almost to extinction. The sudden loss of millions of large ruminants possibly had an effect on the climate. 58. vukcevic says: October 4, 2013 at 10:26 am (100year cycle) Has been known for a hundred years Indeed, but not calculated numerically from another ex-SSN source of data, which raises possibility of an association to the rest of the solar system’s dynamics. Your ‘calculation’ is just numerology. Brown in 1900 used the same constants and method and found a different result [61 years!] http://www.leif.org/EOS/1900MNRAS-Borwn-Sunspot-Tides.pdf , but the crown of all numerology is still Harrison’s: http://www.leif.org/research/Numerology.pdf Can you beat R^2 = 0.999,995? 59. lgl says: October 4, 2013 at 9:17 am Solar activity didn’t start in 1650 (or 1700) Correct, our actual data begins with the large cycles 200 years before the Dalton Minimum… And this puts Dr. L.S. into the “dissembling information category”. Can we REALLY SAY OUR RECORDS begin with large cycles 200 years before the DALTON, based on sparse, “cottage industry/hobby” observations of sunspot numbers with no uniform basis to measure them? I’d say MODERN observations of the solar cycles (radio, Xray, sunspots with a criteria, flares, etc) begin at the END of the 19th century and are not completely refined until the ’50’s or ’60s. Making or implying anything BETTER than that is more smoke than the Chinese are making right now. 60. Dr Norman Page says: October 4, 2013 at 10:30 am Leif – I’m not confused – re the point I’m making – as you must obviously know the NGRIP 10Be flux record in the Berggren Fig 1 shows the same relationship to Patterson Fig 3 as the concentration record. You are very confused, as the concentration record is heavily influence by climate, rather than the Sun. And you used flux and concentration in your response as if they were the same thing. And the flux and concentration records or rather different [and not at all like your Fig. 3] Also you know quite well that at various times the 10 Be and SSN records are not similar e.g Maunder minimum. Which is irrelevant for your thesis back to 1850. There are plausible reasons for the discrepancy during the Maunder Minimum, e.g. the Livingston & Penn effect. 61. CaligulaJones says: “Roger Sowell says: October 4, 2013 at 10:44 am Here’s an idea: around 1880, the American bison herds were slaughtered almost to extinction. The sudden loss of millions of large ruminants possibly had an effect on the climate.” A point I’ve tried to make to environmentalists for years: if millions of cattle farting now are a danger, you have to at least “back out” the millions of slaughtered bison to get a net, not a (pardon the pun) gross figure… 62. Max Hugoson says: October 4, 2013 at 10:59 am Can we REALLY SAY OUR RECORDS begin with large cycles 200 years before the DALTON, based on sparse, “cottage industry/hobby” observations of sunspot numbers with no uniform basis to measure them? Yes we can, as Galileo was a very careful observer: http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/sunspot_drawings.html animation: http://academo.org/demos/galileos-sunspots/ Modern sunspots are also counted with small telescopes, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-37mm.png 63. Michael D says: This is a fascinating analysis building on statistical estimation theory, Jeffrey, but just as fascinating to see the global-think in the comments as experts propose explanations and new details. The 1878 el Nino event appears to be particularly relevant. Jeffrey, in your dataset the time to the left of the 1878 apparent step in the forcing function is worryingly short. For full confidence in the analysis I would want the time period to the left of 1878 to be longer than the natural frequency w, which as you say is (just barely) observable to the right of the step response. Do we have any options for getting more data (even proxy data?) to the left of what you have now? 64. Leif whether the Berggren 10 Be concentration and flux records (when inverted ) from 1850 – 2000 are similar to each other and to the Patterson Fig 3 I’m quite happy to let readers judge for themselves via the link I provided earlier. I never said there was no reason for the discrepancy between SSN and 10 Be data – just that it existed – and is significant if you are looking at lower frequency cycles. 65. There is a question about the usefulness of a model which, like this one, is not predictive. For the purpose of controlling a system, one needs a predictive model. 66. Dr Norman Page says: October 4, 2013 at 11:19 am I never said there was no reason for the discrepancy between SSN and 10 Be data – just that it existed – and is significant if you are looking at lower frequency cycles. The discrepancy [and there is one ~1895] in the modern data is due to errors or problems with the cosmic ray data, possibly caused by Krakatoa’s eruption in the 1880s. But apart from that short glitch the 10Be and the SSN agree quite well for the past two hundred+ years. You are doing yourself a disservice by so desperately trying to attach yourself to the flimsy cosmic ray data [and non-existent 60-yr cycles in TSI] rather than sticking with the atmospheric stuff. 67. This is exactly the case, and as the prolonged solar minimum continues to exert itself as this decade proceeds, the temperature trend will once again be down. These average solar parameters once attained will result in a temperature decline avg. solar flux sub 90 avg. solar wind sub 350 km/sec avg. ap index sub 5.0 Euv flux avg. sub 100 avg. cosmic ray count per minute north of 6500 imf sub 4.0 68. Philip Dean says: For details of the weather in 1878-1879 look at John Kington’s ‘Climate and Weather’ Collins New Naturalist (2010) pages 371-372. Notable volcanic activity, the winter 78-79 was one of the coldest with temperatures comparable to the 1690s, and cold enough for incipient glaciation in the Scottish highlands, 1879 was one of the coldest on record with one of the wettest summers on record. 69. JimS says: @ Jim Brock, who said: “Simplified: In an interglacial period (like now) it keeps getting warmer….until it doesn’t, and we have another ice age.” Actually, an interglacial starts off very warm, and steadily declines in temperature, if this present interglacial is an example: There are warming and cooling periods throughout an interglacial, as the above link shows. As this present interglacial has progressed, the warm periods are not warming as much, and the cooling periods are getting ever more cool. Eventually, we will go into a severe cooling period that won’t end until in about 85-90,000 years. 70. Pages 43-46 are very intersting ,in the above study. Totally in opposition to Leif’s continuing insistence of no solar /climate connections. 71. G. Karst says: “Cleopatra’s Needle” was erected in 1878. Obviously it’s not connected – but it does seem iconic… marking the year. GK 72. YES, solar minimums – like the one now looming – CAN cause ICE AGES, say Swiss scientists 73. Joe Born says: October 4, 2013 at 10:30 am Jeff Patterson: “If it doesn’t surprise you that the entire modern climate record can be reproduced with great fidelity by a simple 2nd order differential equation and a sine wave, it should.” Joe Born :I don’t know whether it should surprise me or not; by my count there are are eight parameters in that mix, not counting the DC offset. Your implication that any arbitrary data could be fit to eq (1) with anything but the trivial zero-slope line passing through the mean is incorrect. The a,b, and tau parameters are scaling, offset and time localization parameters which do not effect the transient behavior which starts at t=tau and ends when the response settles to its final value. In between the response the is determined by just to parameters, the natural frequency, w and the damping factor zeta, and must match the data at every point. That’s approximately 120 equations and two unknowns. The is one and only one point in the entire temperature record which meets the criteria. That tau is exactly coincident with the onset of an impulsive event provides strong empirical support for the conclusion that we’re observing a real 2nd order climatic response. But while we’re on the subject, how many unparameterized variables are present in a typical GCM? 74. YES, solar minimums – like the one now looming – CAN cause ICE AGES, say Swiss scientists By Robert On October 3, 2013 · 9 Comments …. “It may well be that actually humanity will find itself battling cold rather than heat in the generations to come.” Could it be an ice age now? ——————————————————————————– A quiet sun (NASA) “Solar physicists think that the Sun is about to enter a “grand minimum”, a prolonged period of low activity,” says this article by Lewis Page. “The current 11-year peak in solar action is the weakest seen for a long time, and it may presage a lengthy quiet period. Previously, historical records suggest that such periods have been accompanied by chilly conditions on Earth.” “The “Little Ice Age” seen from the 15th to the 19th centuries is often mentioned in this context. “IPCC-leaning scientists, however, say that the Little Ice Age couldn’t have been caused by solar variability – not even solar variability combined with sky-darkening volcanic eruptions – as the effects would have been too weak. “That school of science would often suggest that the Little Ice Age was actually caused by a sequence of unusually powerful North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) atmospheric phenomena – or, in other words, that it was just a blip: rather like the current 15-year hiatus in global warming. A Berne university statement issued just last week says that in fact the Little Ice Age most certainly could have been triggered by variations in the Sun. The Berne group has shown that the comparatively minor effects of changes in the Sun are actually amplified seriously by feedbacks on Earth. Little Ice Age driven purely by strong and frequent volcanic eruptions and reduced solar radiation Climate researchers at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Some of the article I agree with ,with the exception that a more -NAO/AO were in the mix, while this article says they were not a necessary component for a prolonged weak solar period to bring about the Little Ice Age. Other then that I think this article is on sound ground. Very well could be an explanation. 75. Leif and many others continue to predict solar cycle 24 activity to high as is evidence by the recent data. Example avg. solar flux for Sep. 102.5 ap index around 5.4 76. Neil Jordan says: Re Gary Pearse says: October 4, 2013 at 8:50 am There is another lesson to be learned from the HMS Challenger expedition, because one of its missions was to investigate the mysterious “Bathybius” that had taken on the same aura as today’s “Immaculate Convection” of heat hiding in the ocean depths. For example, see Bathybius in “Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories” by Simon Winchester. Link to Page 135 here: http://tinyurl.com/pprl4a8 “…None of these islands existed; they were as ephemeral and illusory as Atlantis. As was one further and final oceanic peculiarity that gripped the Victorian maritime mind for a short while: a supposed protoplasmic form of early life, an ur-slime. This was dredged up by the survey frigate HMS Cyclops [in 1857] and handed over to an initially not very interested T.H. Huxley, the paleontologist whose eventual coinage of the words agnostic and Darwinism indicates his strongly rationalist views. But rationalism failed him when, ten years after being handed the samples, he came back to look down the microscope at this jelly-like ooze: he became irrationally excited by it, promptly gave it a name (Bathybius haecklii – in honor of the German evolutionist who coined the word ecology) and declared it to be a primordial life-form that would surely carpet the seafloors everywhere. “Six years later there came an outbreak of public embarrassment as another biologist performed some very basic chemical tests on the slime and discovered that Bathybius was not a life-form at all, but a simple chemical reaction in the test tube between seawater and the preserving alcohol. Perhaps, bleated later supporters of Huxley – who after all, was a great man in his field, a giant of his times – it could have also been caused by a seasonal taint of plankton bloom. But most sided with facts, and so in very short order the Bathibius that never lived was officially killed off. With mordant dignity Huxley renamed it Blunderibus, admitted his folly, thus recaptured his reputation in an instant . . . “The Bathybius mystery having been solved meant that when HMS Challenger left the dockside in Portsmouth just before Christmas of 1872, she was less on a mission to discover the undiscoverable and correct the misconception of ages, and more on a scientific jamboree the likes of which had never been known, and which has seldom been repeated since.” More details about Bathybius are in “Deep-Sea Biology” ed. by G.T. Rowe. Link to Page 26 here: http://tinyurl.com/os9xjau “Bathybius had a short but significant life. After accepting its existence (with some reservations), Thomson wrote to Huxley from the Challenger on June 9, 1875, explaining that Buchanan had discovered Bathybius to be merely an inorganic precipitate caused by adding alcohol to seawater (Huxley, 1875). Huxley gracefully accepted his error. Despite this, the story has lived on as an example of the uncritical errors that may be made even by great scientists…” 77. Dr Norman Page says: October 4, 2013 at 11:40 am <i.I say ” Furthermore it is clear that the cosmic ray intensity time series reflected in the 10Be data is the best proxy for “solar activity “ You may say so, but that does not make it true [c.f. Lincoln’s dog with five legs]. For example, the cosmic ray modulation [as shown by 10Be data] was larger during the Maunder Minimum than in the 20th century, see panel 2d of Berggren’s paper. Would you say that solar activity and TSI, and temperatures were larger during the Maunder Minimum than during the 20th century? See also slides 16-20 of http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Svalgaard12.pdf for a wider perspective. 78. Bryan S says: You know it’s interesting. If you look at the climate records of Minneapolis, which go all the way back to 1820 (one of the earliest records for this region), you see a warming trend from 1820-1840, then a long cooling trend from 1840-1877 when there is a sudden increase in temperatures. After the super warm winter of 1877/78 (warmer than anything before or since by a long shot), it never got as cold as it was prior. If you Google winter of 1877/78, you’ll find a write up about it by the University of Minnesota. The average temps that winter were consistently 15-20F above normal from mid November to April. Insects were reported by February, dusty roads prevailed around Christmas, and prairie fire smoke was present throughout the winter. It was not only the warmest winter ever, but was particularly cloudy. It is believed a very strong El Niño event took place that led to the warmth. The winters following were not particularly cold until the famous winter of 1880/81. There was a curious resemblance to 1877-1881 in 1997-2001… three very warm winters capped by a nasty one, which began with a strong El Niño event… and it now appears a step increase in temperatures occurred in Minnesota after 1997, similar to that of 1877/78. Find the Minneapolis data here: http://www.climatestations.com/minneapolis/ it’s a treasure trove of weather history for the center of the North American continent. 79. Bart says: I think I may order one of the books on the Krakatoa event. There may not be any connection, but I am curious now about the larger picture, and how connected it may be with other events of the time. There must be a lot of info to fill all the pages which have been written about it. 80. Bart says: Previous post in reply to Richard M says: October 4, 2013 at 10:36 am 81. Leif’s assertions about cosmic ray modulation during the Maunder Minimum are strictly his opinions and by no means the consensus. Many studies run couinter to his including the paper I just sent. 82. Paul Vaughan says: Thanks david dohbro (October 4, 2013 at 8:39 am) for linking to “Roy Spencer’s recent post on 30yr period in ENSO cycles: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/09/on-changing-enso-conditions-the-view-from-ssmi/ where Roy Spencer concludes: “The fact that it has taken so long for the mainstream climate research community to ‘discover’ the importance of ENSO to multi-decadal climate is very troubling to me. There is no other explanation for them not seeing what was staring them in the face, except the political influence the IPCC and its supporters in government have had on the climate research community, in effect paying them to downplay the role of natural climate variations until nature could no longer be ignored.” 83. vukcevic says: lsvalgaard says: ……………. Numerology you say. Well, may be I did beter class of numerology than Ernest Brown or this guy Sturrock. lsvalgaard says: Fat-fingered today: http://www.leif.org/EOS/1900MNRAS-Brown-Sunspot-Tides.pdf ………………………… No problem, found the link anyway. Just finished reading ‘unskilled and unaware’ link. It says: Although our emphasis has been on the miscalibration of incompetent individuals, along the way we discovered that highly competent individuals also show some systematic bias in the self appraisals. D & K strikes in both directions, one might say. 84. Interplanetary magnetic field during the past 9300 years inferred from cosmogenic radionuclides Steinhilber F, Abreu-Castineira JA, Beer J, McCracken KG Journal of Geophysical Research – Space Physics, Vol. 115, No. A01104, 2010 doi:10.1029/2009JA014193 Abstract We have reconstructed the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), its radial component, and the open solar magnetic flux using the solar modulation potential derived from cosmogenic 10Be radionuclide data for a period covering the past 9300 years. Reconstructions using the assumption of both constant and variable solar wind speeds yielded closely similar results. During the Maunder Minimum, the strength of the IMF was approximately 2nT compared to a mean value of 6.6nT for the past 40 years, corresponding to an increase of the open solar magnetic flux of about 350 %. We examine four cycles of the Hallstatt periodicity in the IMF with a mean period of ~ 2250 years and amplitude of ~ 0.75nT. Grand solar minima have largely occurred in clusters during the Hallstatt cycle minima around the years -5300, -3400, -1100, and +1500 AD. The last cluster includes the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minima. We predict that the next such cluster will occur in about 1500 years. The long-term IMF has varied between ~ 2nT and ~ 8nT, and does not confirm a proposed floor (lower limit), with a minimum around the year -4600 and a maximum around zero AD that may be of solar origin, but with also may be due unknown long-term changes in the atmospheric effects or geomagnetic field intensity. MORE PROVE OF MAJOR DIFFERENCES IN OPINIONS. 85. Sparks says: Is there a 72 year cycle in the climate data or SSN? I’ve noticed that this matches the Axial precession of earth, one complete precessional cycle takes a period of approximately 26,000 years or 1° every 72 years. the maximum of the last glacial period was approximately 22,000 years ago, in four thousand years the Axial precession will have completed one complete cycle which lands in the middle of the last glacial period. So could the maximum of the next major glacial period be only 4 thousand years away? and if so, we must be entering a major glacial period now. 86. Joe Born says: Jeff Patterson: “Your implication that any arbitrary data could be fit to eq (1) with anything but the trivial zero-slope line passing through the mean is incorrect. The a,b, and tau parameters are scaling, offset and time localization parameters which do not effect the transient behavior which starts at t=tau and ends when the response settles to its final value. In between the response the is determined by just to parameters, the natural frequency, w and the damping factor zeta, and must match the data at every point. That’s approximately 120 equations and two unknowns.” I’m not actually too well-versed in the statistics of times series, so my comment was more of a question than an implication: I’d like to get some sense of the probability. In that connection, my count has now risen to ten. The six parameters I now count to specify a second-order-system response are amplitude, decay rate, natural frequency, initial value, initial first derivative, and time of inception (your tau). The sinusoid parameters are, of course, amplitude, frequency, and phase. You’re probably right that including one or the other of the amplitudes (but not, I think, the ratio of those amplitudes) makes too aggressive a count. I had already thrown out offset. Furthermore, if there is some specific-date physical event you’re attempting to prove triggered the transient response, I could warm to the proposition that tau should be thrown out, too. But surely it’s an overstatement to say that with the remaining parameters you “match the data at every [one of 120 points]” ? Didn’t you only get close? I’ll need to get smarter on statistics before I can actually calculate that probability from the residuals’ magnitudes, but it seems to me that they should be taken into account, no? Judging from all the buzzwords that get thrown around on this site, my guess is there are several habitues who could creditably compute that. 87. Robuk says: lsvalgaard says: October 4, 2013 at 11:15 am Max Hugoson says: October 4, 2013 at 10:59 am Can we REALLY SAY OUR RECORDS begin with large cycles 200 years before the DALTON, based on sparse, “cottage industry/hobby” observations of sunspot numbers with no uniform basis to measure them? Yes we can, as Galileo was a very careful observer: http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/sunspot_drawings.html animation: http://academo.org/demos/galileos-sunspots/ Modern sunspots are also counted with small telescopes, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-37mm.png Perhaps two counts should be published, one using small telescopes similar to Galileo and the other using modern high res scopes. SPOT OF BOTHER Wolf widely traveled between the 1860s until his death in 1893 using his small telescope with which he saw on average of 40% fewer sun spots compared to the large telescope in Zurich. 88. Leif re your 12:02 comment – you say ” Would you say that solar activity and TSI, and temperatures were larger during the Maunder Minimum than during the 20th century” You seem to have misunderstood my earlier comment in some way. I’m saying exactly the opposite I say that the various high cosmic ray counts during the various temperature minimums in Steinhilber -shown in Fig 9 the http://climatesensenorpag.blogspot.com post referred to earlier reflect minimums in the solar magnetic field strength. Looks pretty obvious to me. 89. London247 says: Echoing CaliguaJones earlier commnet the appeal of the WUWT is the open mindness and reasonalble and informed discussion. What happende din 1878? Carrington event too early 1859 Krakatoa too late 1883 The influences on the Earths climate are numerous. The predominant factor is the Sun. But the sun travels through space. There are no obvious siginficant meteor showers or comets around this period. The contribution made by cosmic rays in cloud formation ( as has been pointed out previously by more eminent informed contributors) is siginficant. ( it is the basic principle of the cloud chamber – no dust to form water droplets). So is the cause celestial, Solar or terrestial? Or a combination of factors ? This is the issue I have with the IPCC attributing all climate change to a single trace gas. It is a lot more complicated than they believe or can model. My only observation that is that in the 1870’s steamships were beginning to supplant sail ( sorry Willis) and smoke particles over the oceans had a signficant effect. However this theory requires a negative feedback( as soot particles would create more clouds, increasing albedo) so unlikely. 90. FrankK says: obnoxious – what wonderful word. Now why did that come to mind ? 91. Joe Born says: October 4, 2013 at 1:20 pm In that connection, my count has now risen to ten There are five parameters w,z,tau,a,b. b is independent and is simply the mean for t<tau. The final value is also independent and is equal to a-b. That leaves w,z to control the transient behavior. Joe:But surely it’s an overstatement to say that with the remaining parameters you “match the data at every [one of 120 points]” Well yes, a slight exaggeration but the point is that the fit is with-in the experimental accuracy of the data involved and highly constrained, not under-constrained as you post implied. Try it out on some random data, you won't get close unless the data comes from a second-order process whose parameters match your fit. 92. Brian H says: Edit: “clearly tracts Solanki” tracks Robuk; So the step change was an equipment change? 93. jorgekafkazar says: Steven Devijver says: “Earth was hit by a ginormous coronal mass ejection in 1859 that did not deflect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 Where would this affect the Earth? Primarily from the eastern US to asia? And at what level? How would the effect (if any) be distributed between land and sea? Would the ionosphere bear the brunt of the CME? What effect would this have on tropospherical temperatures? 94. AndyG55 says: I have to say, I have a real problem with you using HadCrut 4 pre-1979 to analyse or to extract data or patterns from ! We KNOW its been highly adjusted, and is most certainly not representative of real temperatures. 95. Barry Cullen says: Terry Oldberg says: October 4, 2013 at 11:19 am There is a question about the usefulness of a model which, like this one, is not predictive. For the purpose of controlling a system, one needs a predictive model. ___ THe only people who want control the system (and make money trying to by taking it from us) are the alarmists. 96. Gail Combs says: Jim Brock says: October 4, 2013 at 10:43 am Simplified: In an interglacial period (like now) it keeps getting warmer….until it doesn’t, and we have another ice age. >>>>>>>>>>>>>> No it doesn’t the interglacial warming peaks after the solar insolation peaks and then declines gradually until it hits the circumstances that tip it into the cold climate regime. GRAPH As Doctor R.G. Brown has been at pains to point out we are looking at a chaotic system with ‘Strange Attractors’ More on Strange Attractors http://www.stsci.edu/~lbradley/seminar/attractors.html The real question is what are the circumstances that tip us from glacial to interglacial and back and what causes bond and D-o abrupt climate change events. Instead politicians and bureaucrats have spent trillions on trying to hang the human race using a beneficial trace gas. 97. Richard M says: Bart, I’ve been thinking about Krakatoa as well. I’ve come up with a storyline. Not likely to be true, but an example of a plausible combination of events that demonstrates just how complex climate could get. Let’s assume the planet was cooling when two separate events occurred. First, a slow buildup of a super volcano located around Krakatoa. Since most of the volcano was under water a lot of heat was transferred into the Pacific ocean during this growth. This slowed the growth of the volcano to centuries. At around the same time the Maunder minimum occurred sending global temperatures plunging. This might have led to the onset of the next glacial period except for the heat being added to the system through the super volcano. Due to its location the energy was added to the natural ENSO cycle causing an enhancement in amplitude This was just enough to prevent the glaciation. This continued until the 1883 eruption. In fact, the 1878 super El Niño was probably due to the last throes of the buildup. With the eruption the heat being added to the PWP ended but with enough already in place to continue enhanced ENSO amplitudes and allowing the heat to be spread around the planet over the next 130 years. This could explain the following reconstruction. http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/news/press_releases/2011/1100_years_ElNino.pdf It would be difficult to determine whether something like this occurred after so many years. 98. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 4, 2013 at 12:09 pm Leif’s assertions about cosmic ray modulation during the Maunder Minimum are strictly his opinions and by no means the consensus. Unfortunately, it is the current consensus that there is significant cosmic ray modulation during Grand Minima. I didn’t come up with that idea [wish that I did though]. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 4, 2013 at 12:25 pm Steinhilber F, Abreu-Castineira JA, Beer J, McCracken KG: MORE PROVE OF MAJOR DIFFERENCES IN OPINIONS. We just finished our workshop on this: http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf Note that Steinhilber, Beer, Solanki, and McCracken were participants. The general consensus [which we are writing up as we speak] is that there is no large long-term variation the past several hundred years. And that there was significant modulation during Grand Minima. Even the Berggren paper that was linked to says that: “Periodicity in 10Be during the Maunder minimum reconfirms that the solar dynamo retains cyclic behavior even during grand solar minima” Robuk says: October 4, 2013 at 1:34 pm Wolf widely traveled between the 1860s until his death in 1893 using his small telescope with which he saw on average of 40% fewer sun spots compared to the large telescope in Zurich. The ‘large’ telescope in question is still small, with opening only 80 mm [3 inches]. Dr Norman Page says: October 4, 2013 at 1:50 pm referred to earlier reflect minimums in the solar magnetic field strength. That is the point, there is no good evidence that the magnetic field strength was particularly low, in fact there is evidence that it was significant: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Eddy/2007SP_praire.pdf “The historical eclipse observations described here seem to require the presence of even the bright network structures, and thus of substantial solar photospheric magnetism during at least the last decade of the Maunder Minimum. Hence, the red-ﬂash observations would argue against a climatologically important decrease in TSI during that period of time”. And certainly not back to 1850s or even 1830s. Here is the best reconstruction we have of the field strength: http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf Figure 10. Looks pretty obvious to me. As Yogi Berra said: “if I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it.” TImothy Sorenson says: October 4, 2013 at 2:59 pm Even you have cited http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/lean1995.pdf which provides empirical evidence of a underlying approx 60 year 5 w/m^2 variation cycle. Not even Lean believes that old, obsolete reconstruction. Here is a more modern one: http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Magn-Flux-Schrijver.png “[1] Variations in the total solar irradiance (TSI) associated with solar activity have been argued to influence the Earth’s climate system, in particular when solar activity deviates from the average for a substantial period. One such example is the 17th Century Maunder Minimum during which sunspot numbers were extremely low, as Earth experienced the Little Ice Age. Estimation of the TSI during that period has relied on extrapolations of correlations with sunspot numbers or even more indirectly with modulations of galactic cosmic rays. We argue that there is a minimum state of solar magnetic activity associated with a population of relatively small magnetic bipoles which persists even when sunspots are absent, and that consequently estimates of TSI for the Little Ice Age that are based on scalings with sunspot numbers are generally too low. The minimal solar activity, which measurements show to be frequently observable between active region decay products regardless of the phase of the sunspot cycle, was approached globally after an unusually long lull in sunspot activity in 2008–2009. Therefore, the best estimate of magnetic activity, and presumably TSI, for the least active Maunder Minimum phases appears to be provided by direct measurement in 2008–2009. The implied marginally significant decrease in TSI during the least active phases of the Maunder Minimum by 140 to 360 ppm relative to 1996 suggests that drivers other than TSI dominate Earth’s long-term climate change. Citation: Schrijver, C. J., W. C. Livingston, T. N. Woods, and R. A. Mewaldt (2011), The minimal solar activity in 2008–2009 and its implications for long-term climate modeling, Geophys. Res. Lett. , 38, L06701” 99. @ Lewis P Buckingham from October 4, 2013 at 2:00 pm, re American bison near-extinction. ” You would expect the pasture to rebound and absorb CO2 reducing atmospheric CO2 and causing cooling, if you think CO2 is the main driver of climate. But that did not happen” I recognize that CO2 can absorb and emit radiant heat energy. I also maintain that physics must be consistent to be a real phenomenon. The arbitrariness of warming and non-warming between adjacent counties, and adjacent cities, cannot be explained if CO2 is the cause of atmospheric warming. How does CO2 know which cities are to warm, and which are to be ignored? I’m no botanist, but it seems likely that the sudden absence of bison would allow the grasses to grow just so much, and then no more. It seems the bison’s grazing, and fertilizing with manure, would have stimulated grass growth. This is what happens in modern day ranching. However, it must also be realized that decomposition of millions of bison carcasses and gases produced from that process would have added a short-term burst of those gases into the atmosphere. 100. kevstest says: A fascinating post and much clearer that any IPCC efforts. Any proof pointing to a 50-70 year climate cycle affecting world production is most welcome. My long term stock market analysis convinces me that there are external cyclical drivers. I have proved for investment grade shares the market is not random walk but price is a function of earnings, corporate size, liquidity and (insignificant) noise.Liquidity has both short term and long term components. There appears to be a cycle of about 50-70 years period which drives general global economic activity. The simplest mechanism I have proposed for years is more sun yielding better agricultural production and general prosperity. The economic boom and bust affect may be explained by the initial prosperity boost fueling natural aspirations which ultimately exhaust ability and resources, with a succeeding generation without the memory of the past failed attempt, retrying again on the next cycle. 101. Leif Don’t you think that the Cosmic Ray peaks shown in the Fig9 C.D referred to earlier and associated with temperature minimums are de facto evidence of reduced solar field strength.? 102. Matthew R Marler says: My last post on WUWT demonstrated a detection technique that allows us to de-noise the climate data and extract the various natural modes which dominate the decadal scale variation in temperature. Do those modes represent physical processes that will continue into the future? 103. Matthew R Marler says: Figure 3 – First difference of extracted trend I am happy to see more estimation of derivatives. Murry Salby has done interesting work with derivatives (wrt time) of CO2 and global mean temperature. As before, the big unknown is whether any of the model results tell us anything about the physical processes or make reliable predictions about the near future. 104. Matthew R Marler says: The climate record of the past 163 years is well explained as the integral second-order response to a triggering event that occurred in the mid-to-late 1870s, That should stimulate someone to find out what it was. If you have a large enough parameterized family of functions (and we have zillions now, more than anybody can count), and an extant data set that has been repeatedly analyzed, then you can find a function that fits the low-frequency variation (long term trend) and another that fits the residual (short-term oscillations). Your model result contrasts nicely with Vaughan Pratt’s model result. At least one of you will soon be proved wrong. 105. Dr Norman Page says: October 4, 2013 at 6:57 pm Don’t you think that the Cosmic Ray peaks shown in the Fig9 C.D referred to earlier and associated with temperature minimums are de facto evidence of reduced solar field strength.? Give the link again. 106. Dr Norman Page says: October 4, 2013 at 6:57 pm Don’t you think that the Cosmic Ray peaks shown in the Fig9 C.D referred to earlier Your blog does not exist: “Sorry, the blog you were looking for does not exist” 107. Anything is possible says: lsvalgaard says: October 4, 2013 at 7:54 pm Dr Norman Page says: October 4, 2013 at 6:57 pm Don’t you think that the Cosmic Ray peaks shown in the Fig9 C.D referred to earlier Your blog does not exist: “Sorry, the blog you were looking for does not exist” ============================================= I’m getting it OK, Dr. Svalgaard. Try this : http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.co.uk/ 108. Anything is possible says: October 4, 2013 at 8:40 pm http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.co.uk/ Thank you. wonder what was wrong with the link. Anyway, the answer is ‘no, Fig. 9 C and D do not correctly depict the solar magnetic field [nor the actual cosmic ray intensity’ Figure 2 of http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf and Figure 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf are better representations of the field. Or even http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Magn.Flux-Schrijver.png The salient point is that in each century 18th, 19h, and 20th the field rises to about the same level:The 1870 maximum on par with the 1958 maximum and with the 1780 maximum. Plus that the dominant period the past 300 years has been about 100 years, not 60 years, so whatever periods are found in climate do not match what the sun has been doing. 109. bw says: hadcru4 is data?? I don’t think so. Contaminated and manipulated. The 1930s were warmer than current temps. Simply plot realistic temps on a realistic Y-scale. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/scale:4/plot/rss-land Post 1979 RSS satellite data plotted overl BEST data shows the discrepancy 110. Matthew R Marler says: Your model result contrasts nicely with Vaughan Pratt’s model result. At least one of you will soon be proved wrong. Pratt’s “sawtooth” ocean oscillation curve fit comports very closely to the SSA’s non-trend major modes (k=3,4,5,6}. See http://wp.me/a2xhN5-4u I have a number of problem with Pratt’s analysis. Note the divergence of the residue after 1950. Compare that to figure 10a above. Also his model fails after 1995 due to the wide filter he is using. Thus he makes no predictions regarding the so called pause. 111. @Vukcevic: On another thread (several, but one recently) you have pointed out the correlation between geomagnetic variation and weather changes. I’ve often wondered “How?”…. A speculation: I’ve seen many correlations between lunar / tidal effects and weather cycles. Might not tides in the molten earth where the magnetic field is generated cause variations in the geomagnetic field? You might want to do a correlation comparison of geomagnetic data with tide data and lunar tidal forces and see if there’s a match. http://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/3814.full does a great job of laying out the case for lunar tidal driving of ocean currents / weather. (peer reviewed paper too…) referenced in: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/lunar-resonance-and-taurid-storms/ @Leif: You continue to speak to TSI as relatively invariant, but make no mention of the drop in UV that happens as the sun goes quiet. It looks like a redistribution of WHERE the components of TSI end up as they shift more “red-ward” matters to how the climate system reacts. Add in synchronous tidal effects from lunar activities (all kept coordinated via orbital resonance effects) and “things add up”. Yet no one thing will be demonstrably the whole thing. It resolves the “sun did it with planet cycles” vs “TSI is not enough” via “the Earth does it as the spectrum shifts while the moon stirs the oceans in sync with the planet orbits” and can end some of the “does so / does not” bickering… Endlessly saying “TSI doesn’t change enough” is not very enlightening. Rather like saying “The fall didn’t kill him” when it was the sudden stop at the end… The two are very different, but driven by the same initial events… It would be more helpful to understanding to cast a broader net. IMHO. Per “What happened in 1878?”, it looks to my eye like it is rather near point “b” in this graph: from the above paper. One of the marked “cold maximum” points. 1974 marked as “C” being another one (as is 1787 “B”). FWIW, point “c” in about 2040 is also so marked. “A time-series plot of Wood’s values of γ (Fig. 1) reveals a complex cyclic pattern. On the decadal time-scale the most important periodicity is the Saros cycle, seen as sequences of events, spaced 18.03 years apart. Prominent sequences are made obvious in the plot by connected line-segments that form a series of overlapping arcs. The maxima, labeled A, B, C, D, of the most prominent sequences, all at full moon, are spaced about 180 years apart. The maxima, labeled a, b, c, of the next most prominent sequences, all at new moon, are also spaced about 180 years apart. The two sets of maxima together produce strong tidal forcing at approximately 90-year intervals. ” So it looks to me like it was an inflection point in the lunar / tidal forces changing how the oceans flow and mix cold water to the surface. At a new moon, being a lower case letter, so we ought to expect something similar to happen in about 2040 (after a long period of cooling that started in about 2000 (not labeled in the graph, but at the bottom of a dark “V” shaped of the plotted lines, at the ‘hot inflection’ point). 1920-30 is also near the bottom of one of those dark hot “V”s… These changes in cold ocean mixing to the surface then drive changes in ENSO / La Nina / El Nino (vis Tisdale) that lead to all the meridional / zonal changes and shifts of cloud bands pointed out by Stephen Wilde and all the rest. It is a “natural ocean cycle” but driven by a lunar metronome… that is itself moving in time to a planetary orchestra via orbital resonance. (That also stirs the sun and causes it to change output… but not via TSI, via color shifts; that might only correlate, or might be a partial additive driver along with GCR et. al.) It all beats together, so correlation can not be used to prove causality nor can “not enough” be used to disprove partial causality in a chorus of synchronized actions. It will be very hard to prove how much each part matters. Personally, I think the lunar / tidal is most direct (and likely tides in the spinning interior of the Earth explains the magnetic correlation) and the sun just a ‘bit player’, but with some impact. Then much of the rest being “elaboration” of the basic changes. But that, too, is speculation. But: that 1878 is near to on top of point “b” on the graph is not speculation. It’s a fact. 112. E.M.Smith says: October 4, 2013 at 10:48 pm You continue to speak to TSI as relatively invariant, but make no mention of the drop in UV that happens as the sun goes quiet. The UV varies simply with the sunspot number. Figure 9 of http://www.leif.org/research/Rudolf%20Wolf%20Was%20Right.pdf shows how UV varies. You can’t tell that apart from the sunspot number, so UV does not vary in a mysterious way, it simply varies like TSI, like F10.7, like sunspots, or inversely like cosmic rays. 113. @Leif: And as that UV fades and blues diminish with more reds and infrareds; more of the TSI causes prompt evaporation of the ocean surface and less goes meters into the deep. That change in where the energy is deposited and how much evaporation it promptly causes matters to weather. Similarly, NASA saw a shrinking of the total atmospheric height as less UV caused a cooler stratosphere; that then is closer to the poles when it starts to descend in the Night Jets (and, IMHO, is part of the cause of the more “loopy” jet stream in this mode and colder polar weather). In short, just saying “TSI” ignores where on Earth the different spectra end up and what they do when they get there. Distribution of energy can be as important as how much of it. (Though I still think Lunar Tidal ocean mixing is the lions share. But with no numbers measured on that it becomes speculative wishing…) 114. Greg Goodman says: Jeffrey, I like the method, though like RC Saumarez, I’m a little mistrusting of all the SSA/EOF craze. Damped 2nd order is interesting. Also note that it is clearer in SST. I would further suggest that you try running the analysis on ICOADS SST as well as HadleySST based ‘products’. I looked at their processing and found the ‘corrections’ to be speculative at best. That does not necessarily mean wrong but removing more than half of the variability from more than half the record makes me baulk at it. http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/15/on-the-adjustments-to-the-hadsst3-data-set-2 There is a problematic glitch in ICOADS around WWII but your method will be little disturbed by that.I think. I suspect Hadley’s correction to that adds as big an error as the one it aims to remove. Someone else mentioned Krakatoa which was my first thought. http://legacy.earlham.edu/~bubbmi/krakatoa.htm Apparently most of the island disappeared into a 6km under water caldera. This was a volcanically active era so it may have included considerable under-water activity too. In fact that would be “very likely” TM. It is clear that temperature records show an acceleration rather than a linear rise. Much of that acceleration is to negate the later 19th c. cooling trend. This is the bit Hadley felt was ‘bias’ in the data and set about removing 67% of it’s amplitude. I would be interesting to see how this affects you fitted 2nd order response. Does it move the starting date? 115. Greg Goodman says: To reduce the possibility that this is just an artefact of the SSA, you should try fitting to the least processed data possible. Assume you have correctly identified the 60 cycle and subtract it from the original dataset. Then fit your 2nd order to what’s left. The regression should take care of the noise. Do you get parameter values that are close to what you found fitting to the SSA model? 116. Greg Goodman says: BTW, there are several errors in your text where you describe the data in the right hand plot as “de-trended” when it isn’t. 117. Greg Goodman says: How much of what ‘kicked in’ in 1880 was Hadley ‘bias corrections’? This is what the overall adjustment looks like for hadSST3. Maybe the fit will be enhanced , I don’t know. But since those adjustments have a very similar scale and form to what you’re fitting, I think your need to check . ICOADS is available for KNMI, it should be easy to repeat using icoads sst. It should be interesting. 118. vukcevic says: E.M.Smith Thanks for the links. No doubt that tidal movements have an impact but papers I have looked at (e.g. Keeling and Ray) come to opposite conclusions, and my knowledge in the area is (and elsewhere) limited. Regarding the magnetic field, probability of solar connection appears to be strong, based on analysis of raw geomagnetic data (illustration 2 for the AMO & 3 for LOD in http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm ) However when the smoothed version of the same data are used, most of the information is lost. Assumption is that the Earth’s field changes slowly so smoothing is used to eliminate short term changes which are mostly induced by the geomagnetic storms. Often these are not negligible e.g. 2nd Oct2013, effect lasts from few days up to 2-3 months (see here), it is registered by the geomagnetic stations, with the signal deviating from the slow trend of the earth’s core field. Dr. S may dispute above, but the indisputable evidence is there. 119. Kelvin Vaughan says: CaligulaJones says: October 4, 2013 at 11:14 am A point I’ve tried to make to environmentalists for years: if millions of cattle farting now are a danger, you have to at least “back out” the millions of slaughtered bison to get a net, not a (pardon the pun) gross figure… Don’t forget the 7,000,000,000 humans farting. I blame the fast food and the cola companies! 120. wayne Job says: Nice to see you here EM, Leif gaurds the solar blogs to correct what he feels is wrong thinking. Have you read the stuff put out by the Russian scientists on the International space station, they have been doing some serious solar watching and measuring. Abdussamaton is the main man I think. Regards Wayne 121. Greg Goodman says: No Wayne I haven’t , have you? … 122. Philip Mulholland says: “So what happened in 1878?” My first thought was the Carrington Event, but that was 1859. Maybe we now know the time-lag of the Earth’s climate response to an event of this type. 123. E.M.Smith says: October 4, 2013 at 11:09 pm And as that UV fades and blues diminish with more reds and infrareds; more of the TSI causes prompt evaporation of the ocean surface and less goes meters into the deep. That change in where the energy is deposited and how much evaporation it promptly causes matters to weather. All that is good and well, but completely irrelevant because the variation of UV over time simply follows that of the sunspot number and TSI. 124. E M Smith said: “Similarly, NASA saw a shrinking of the total atmospheric height as less UV caused a cooler stratosphere; that then is closer to the poles when it starts to descend in the Night Jets (and, IMHO, is part of the cause of the more “loopy” jet stream in this mode and colder polar weather).” Recent observations suggest that the stratosphere warms above 45km and towards the poles when the sun is less active. Also that it cools above 45km and towards the poles when the sun is more active. Conventional climatology (and Leif Svalgaard) claims that the entire atmosphere warms when the sun is active and cools when it is inactive but that doesn’t seem to apply to the mesosphere (above about 45km) where the response seems to be reversed. The reason must be that an active sun actually destroys ozone rather than creating it above 45km and towards the poles. The reverse sign change in the mesosphere then seems to influence the sign of the stratosphere response as a whole with the main effect towards the poles. We need that reverse sign response to explain the equatorward surges of cold surface air when the sun is less active because to push surface air equatorward from the poles the height of the tropopause above or around the poles must fall and that implies a warming stratosphere rather than a cooling stratosphere above the poles. If a quiet sun were to reduce ozone above the poles to cool the stratosphere there then the tropopause height would increase above the poles and the jets would become less loopy and more zonal as the air circulation was pulled poleward. That is not what actually happens. That is a feature of my New Climate Model which appears to have ‘gone over the heads’ of most readers. 125. E M Smith said: “And as that UV fades and blues diminish with more reds and infrareds; more of the TSI causes prompt evaporation of the ocean surface and less goes meters into the deep.” So less UV and more longer wavelengths at a time of less active sun would provoke more evaporation but then that evaporation create a more buoyant equatorial troposphere which would push tropopause heights up and force the jets and climate zones poleward. That results in less loopy more zonal jets whereas in fact we see the opposite. Therefore I have to conclude that it is the top down effect on tropopause heights near the poles that is dominant and not the equatorial evaporative response to less UV and more of other wavelengths. 126. Joe Born says: Jeff Patterson: “There are five parameters w,z,tau,a,b. b is independent and is simply the mean for t<tau. The final value is also independent and is equal to a-b. That leaves w,z to control the transient behavior." Thank you for your response. My lack of familiarity with the SSA technique and the press of other matters have conspired to prevent me from yet providing an adequate reply. Against the possibility of returning to this again, I'll lay away this summary of what I understand you to say. If we're looking in the data for evidence of anthropogenic effects, that evidence must lie in some difference between the way data acted after the human activity and the way they did before. For the "way they did before," you use SSA–of which I don't profess to have anywhere near an intuitive picture–to tease a set of orthogonal basis functions from the detrended temperature record and retain the pair that, with the trend, explains most of the record. This is the way you look at "what they did before" (my words, not yours). I might add that I don't think you are uncomfortable with the proposition that this "way they did before" may be descriptive only of a relatively small swatch of more-secular behaviors. Now, you've observed a spike in the solar-activity data and hypothesize that its effect can be modeled as the response, to an impulse occurring at the time t = tau of the spike, of the linear time-invariant system characterized by q4 dy^4 / dt^4 + q3 dy^3 / dt^3 + q2 dy^2 / dt^2 + q1 dy / dt + p0 y = p3 dx^3 / dt^3 + p2 dx^2 / dt^2 + p1 dx / dt + p0 x, where dy^3 / dt^3 and dy^2 / dt^2 are both zero at t = tau, q1 = q0 = p2 = p1 = 0, and q1 / p0 equals your a-b, i.e., equals the difference between the trends before and well after the spike. This leaves only q3/q1 and q2/q1 as free parameters. (I know I've imposed a change of variables on you, but my experience is that stating my understanding in different but what I think are equivalent terms is more likely to betray any misapprehensions under which I may be laboring than a mere repetition of the words a concept's discloser has used.) As a test of whether finding a such a system would be mathematically likely, you suggest attempting it repeatedly on random data. But I'm not sure what random data I'd use. Specifically, your assumptions suggest to me that you propose superimposing (presumably, red) noise on the sum of at least an initial-trend ramp b t u(t) and some oscillatory component. But, to throw out one of the parameters, you imposed the constraint of a terminal trend, so I think the signal upon which the noise should be superimposed is the sum of the oscillatory component and not just the initial ramp but also the ramp (a-b) t u(t – tau). And the noise's variance should equal that of the signal that results from subtracting that sum from the real-world data, right? Also, I would need to reflect on the justification for so many constraints on the type of (time-invariant linear) system assumed. I re-emphasize here that I'm not really implying anything, because I haven't had a chance really to think things through. But if I do get a chance, these are questions that I still need to ponder. 127. beng says: *** Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 5:24 am Therefore I have to conclude that it is the top down effect on tropopause heights near the poles that is dominant and not the equatorial evaporative response to less UV and more of other wavelengths. *** The amount of watts in UV variance is insignificant compared to the overall watts in TSI, and TSI energy manifests itself as heat almost entirely at the surface. The sparse stratosphere does not “drive” weather — weather is driven by convection from the surface upward. The stratosphere height changing altitude (it does that because it is so sparse) doesn’t affect the troposphere significantly. 128. beng says: *** E.M.Smith says: October 4, 2013 at 11:09 pm *** EM, I don’t accept that solar magnetic cycles have any significant effect on climate — the amounts of energy variance are just too small. However, there was something you posted on your site that explained an interesting graph I saw many yrs ago. The graph showed the outgoing IR spectrum from orbit at 3 sites. The tropical & extratropical spots showed what one would expect — a decided, cold “notch” at the CO2 absorbing/emitting frequency. However, the same notch for the Antarctic site was the opposite — it was a “warm” notch! Didn’t make sense. However, when you pointed out that polar regions are often under temp inversions, it made sense. There, the radiating layer of CO2 (~40,000 ft altitude) was actually warmer than the surface due to the inversion! In that situation, CO2 is actually operating as an anti-GHG, radiating at a higher temp (& thus cooling) than it would without CO2. Wonder if the models take that into account? (rhetorical) 129. beng The height of the tropopause and especially the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles is critical to the pattern of convective overturning beneath it. There would be no tropopause if there were no direct interaction between ozone and sunlight creating the temperature inversion. Changes in the temperature of the stratosphere immediately above the tropopause are enough to alter the entire global air circulation pattern in the troposphere. 130. Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 8:51 am Changes in the temperature of the stratosphere immediately above the tropopause are enough to alter the entire global air circulation pattern in the troposphere. since you never mention actual data [numbers[ I keep forgetting what your grand thesis is. Observations show that the temperature in the lower stratosphere just above the tropopause is lowest at solar maximum [when we have most UV and most warming] and highest at solar minimum [when we have least UV and least warming]: http://www,leif.org/research/Temp-Strat-30hPa-1979-2011.png From your past comments I predict you will claim that this is just what you expected and that all data always confirm your ideas. 131. lsvalgaard says: October 5, 2013 at 9:01 am 132. Leif, I don’t mention numbers because the data is not available. I do however refer to direction of trend which is good enough for diagnostic and falsification purposes. You have previously asserted that an active sun warms the entire atmospheric column whilst a less active sun cools it. That is the established viewpoint. Now you confirm that an active sun cools the relevant region and an inactive sun warms it. Whether you like it or not that is indeed part of my proposition, as you well know. Thank you. 133. And, Leif, your chart shows that the cooling stratospheric trend stopped around 2000 which is exactly when I first noticed the jets start to become more meridional as I have been stating in public since 2008. 134. @Joe Born October 5, 2013 at 6:37 am Joe, you’ve got this all wrong. We extract the trend using standard SSA analysis. We are interested in how the slope of the trend varies over time so we differentiate. We notice the result appears to be the step response of a second order system which generically is described by equation 1. We verify our suspicion by doing a parametric fit of equation 1 to the data. Once we verified that indeed a good fit is obtained, only then did we look for the “trigger” coincident with the tau found by the fit. Your differential equation seems to be describing some sort of Lagrange optimization but regardless of the inner workings of the fit algorithm, the gradient search doesn’t add degrees of freedom, it just finds the optimum settings of the knobs, of which here there are five, three of which are irrelevant to the transient behavior. Hope this helps. Jeff 135. Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 9:47 am I don’t mention numbers because the data is not available. I just showed you the data… I do however refer to direction of trend With no data how can you discern the trend? You have previously asserted that an active sun warms the entire atmospheric column whilst a less active sun cools it. That is the established viewpoint. Wrong. It is not only the sun that plays a role. CO2 causes cooling, different at different levels. Now you confirm that an active sun cools the relevant region and an inactive sun warms it. So, you maintain that more ozone cools the stratosphere. Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 9:50 am And, Leif, your chart shows that the cooling stratospheric trend stopped around 2000 From 2000 on the cooling continues as if evident from my chart: http://www.leif.org/research/Temp-Strat-30hPa-1979-2011.png I was correct in my prediction that no matter what the data shows, they ALWAYS support your wrong ideas. 136. Leif: Thank you for the data. I had not seen it before. With that data one can see the trend. You previously said that the sun warmed the entire atmospheric column when the sun is more active. You attribute the cooling trend to CO2 which places you firmly in the AGW camp. An active sun appears to reduce ozone towards the poles (and above 45km) without the need to invoke an effect from CO2. Your chart shows a dark line which clearly stops declining around 2000. What are the two colours meant to represent? Other sources show a cessation of stratospheric cooling since the late 90s despite increasing amounts of CO2. The idea (which you share with AGW proponents) that our CO2 cooled the stratosphere appears to have been falsified. 137. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 5, 2013 at 10:18 am The article shows that Leif’s conclusions have been superseeded by others doing similar studies. The article shows that hey are agreeing with me [that is the consensus bit]. Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 10:22 am You attribute the cooling trend to CO2 which places you firmly in the AGW camp. Cooling is AGW? Your chart shows a dark line which clearly stops declining around 2000. What are the two colours meant to represent? I very carefully show what the colors mean: pink is at 50 hPa, blue is at 30 hPa. That you ask shows that you do not pay attention. Other sources show a cessation of stratospheric cooling since the late 90s despite increasing amounts of CO2. The cooling is different at different altitudes The idea (which you share with AGW proponents) that our CO2 cooled the stratosphere appears to have been falsified. The two trend lines [dashed] show steady cooling, the stratosphere now about 2 degrees cooler than in the early 1980s. Just as predicted by CO2 cooling. 138. The article state the IMF filed at the end of the Maunder Minimum is estimated to be 1.80nt plus/minus .59 nt which is considerably lower then the florr proposed by Svalgaard and Cliver of 4.0 nt Everybody read it ,it is in blcak and white. 139. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 5, 2013 at 10:37 am No the article shows they are NOT agreeing with you. From the article: “[1] Svalgaard and Cliver (2010) recently reported a consensus between the various reconstructions of the heliospheric field over recent centuries. This is a significant development because, individually, each has uncertainties introduced by instrument calibration drifts, limited numbers of observatories, and the strength of the correlations employed. However, taken collectively, a consistent picture is emerging. We here show that this consensus extends to more data sets and methods than reported by Svalgaard and Cliver, including that used by Lockwood et al. (1999), when their algorithm is used to predict the heliospheric field rather than the open solar flux.” ” Hence the average open solar flux during the Maunder minimum is found to have been 11% of its peak value during the recent grand solar maximum.” In the three years since then, Lockwood and Owens have realized that they were wrong on this last bit. Remember that they both are members of my team: http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf And are engaged with me to write up the newest consensus as we speak. 140. In the meantime solar flux avg(102.5) and ap index(5.4) for Sep,. running much below Leif’s predictions of 120, and 10 respectively for period AUG. 06- DEC. 31 ,2013 As solar cycle 24 continues to be much weaker then Leif , and others suggest. 141. That article you sent does not suggest otherwise, and is concerned with post Maunder Minimum data. 142. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 5, 2013 at 10:37 am No the article shows they are NOT agreeing with you. On the floor: Crooker and Owens [same Owens] http://www.leif.org/EOS/Crooker-Owens-2011.pdf write: “Possible evidence for a ﬂoor value to heliospheric ﬁeld strength has been presented by Svalgaard and Cliver (2007, 2010) using long-term historical records and by Owens et al. (2008) and Crooker and Owens (2010) using measured CME rates over the past solar cycle. An update of the results presented in the latter two papers is shown in Fig. 2. Carrington-Rotation-averages of CME rate and heliospheric ﬁeld strength are plotted against each other covering the period from the last solar minimum in blue to the recent minimum in red in the left panel. If the loss of ﬂux is accomplished by opening closed loops in ICMEs through interchange reconnection, then the heliospheric ﬁeld strength should depend upon how many CMEs are fed into the heliosphere. The points in the left panel of Fig. 2 are consistent with this view, although the scatter is broad. When binned by CME rate, in the right panel, a clearer pattern emerges. Evidence for a ﬂoor value to the heliospheric ﬁeld strength is the fact that the hyperbolic tangent curve ﬁt to the points intersects the B axis at a ﬁnite value for zero CME rate. That value is ∼3.8 nT, comparable to the lowest averages plotted in the left panel.” And within the error bar comparable to our value. It is amazing how you squirm. 143. The conclusions are Leif your guess is a guess nothing more,nothing less and this grand solar minimum is going to prove you either correct or wrong. I SAY WRONG. 144. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 5, 2013 at 10:48 am That article you sent does not suggest otherwise, and is concerned with post Maunder Minimum data. It was meant to show that Owens and Lockwood are on my team re-evaluating the issue. 145. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 5, 2013 at 10:52 am I SAY WRONG. who cares what you say… 146. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 4, 2013 at 12:33 pm Interplanetary magnetic field during the past 9300 years inferred from cosmogenic radionuclides Steinhilber F, Abreu-Castineira JA, Beer J, McCracken KG Journal of Geophysical Research – Space Physics, Vol. 115, No. A01104, 2010 doi:10.1029/2009JA014193 Abstract We have reconstructed the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), its radial component, and the open solar magnetic flux using the solar modulation potential derived from cosmogenic 10Be radionuclide data for a period covering the past 9300 years. Reconstructions using the assumption of both constant and variable solar wind speeds yielded closely similar results. During the Maunder Minimum, the strength of the IMF was approximately 2nT compared to a mean value of 6.6nT for the past 40 years, corresponding to an increase of the open solar magnetic flux of about 350 %. We examine four cycles of the Hallstatt periodicity in the IMF with a mean period of ~ 2250 years and amplitude of ~ 0.75nT. Grand solar minima have largely occurred in clusters during the Hallstatt cycle minima around the years -5300, -3400, -1100, and +1500 AD. The last cluster includes the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minima. We predict that the next such cluster will occur in about 1500 years. The long-term IMF has varied between ~ 2nT and ~ 8nT, and does not confirm a proposed floor (lower limit), with a minimum around the year -4600 and a maximum around zero AD that may be of solar origin, but with also may be due unknown long-term changes in the atmospheric effects or geomagnetic field intensity. yet another study suggesting a floor of 2nt during the Maunder Minimum. 147. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 4, 2013 at 11:42 am Salvatore Del Prete says: September 24, 2013 at 11:20 am http://books.google.com/books?id=vUtSluaODqYC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=the+11+year+solar+cycle+continued+during+the+maunder+minimum&source=bl&ots=g4qt3JnWMQ&sig=URAhIGZWdOjfuRpPj4w6ZRNnSx8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y-09UtWKFuaHygHOiYCYDg&ved=0CC8Q6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=the%2011%20year%20solar%20cycle%20continued%20during%20the%20maunder%20minimum&f This study supports much more solar variablitiy then some would lead us to believe. Great study. There are so many this is endless, but I will stop here. I have proved my point, which is they all guess and don’t know.. 148. Stephen like the AGW crowd, Leif is going to believe only the data that applies to his way of thinking, and if it should run counter it will be ignored or taken as false. We know better. Stephen take a look at the studies I just sent which shows their is no real answer as to how variable the sun might have been during the Maunder Minimum in contrast to now. I THINK THIS GRAND MINIMUM WILL ACHEIVE THESE SOLAR PARAMETER LOW AVERAGES solar flux sub 90 ap index sub 5.0 solar wind sub 350 km/sec euv index sub 100 cosmic ray count per min. north of 6500 imf 4.0 nt or lower solar irradiance off 015% or more If acheived the temp. response will be down due to these primary solar efects and all the associated secondary effects. This following sub-solar activity in general which started in earnest during year 2005. 149. Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 10:58 am First you say that my graph agreed with you, now you changed your tone: Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 9:47 am Now you confirm that an active sun cools the relevant region and an inactive sun warms it. now you changed your tune: Looks like I need to counter what appears to be disinformation from Leif As I said: no matter what the data shows you will ALWAYS claim that the data supports your view. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 5, 2013 at 10:55 am Interplanetary magnetic field during the past 9300 years inferred from cosmogenic radionuclides Steinhilber F, Abreu-Castineira JA, Beer J, McCracken KG Note that these people are members of my team and participating in the re-assessment. The paper you cite is already obsolete in this rapidly progressing field spear-headed by my research and leadership. 150. Bart says: Richard M says: October 4, 2013 at 4:40 pm Worth pursuing, IMHO. Beneath the pimple, there may have been a nasty boil (every pun intended). 151. Leif not convincing, because even the article you sent suggest no one really knows. which is my point. This grand minimum will clear up things one way or the other. I will wait and see what actually takes place. 152. Stephen is consistent in what he is saying which is a quiet sun will produce a more meridional atmospheric circulation pattern due to a decrease in temp. contrast in the stratopshere between high latitudes and lower latitudes, due to ozone distribution changes ,which is backed by strong evidence to support this is indeed the case. He is saying the polar vortex will weaken but expand under this condition which is correct. 153. Salvatore. I think the solar change up to now has only stopped the surface warming trend with perhaps a slight cooling since around 2005. If the sun stays quiet we should then see a drift towards surface cooling as you suggest and the cause will be reduced solar energy into the oceans as a result of a more meridional global air circulation pattern which gives more clouds and higher global albedo. La Ninas will strengthen relative to El Ninos for a gradual but irregular decline in air temperatures. Leif thinks our CO2 caused the stratospheric cooling of the late 20th century when in fact it was the sun which at certain levels destroys more ozone when it is active as opposed to the established view that an active sun creates more ozone. The sign of the ozone response to solar changes reverses above 45km and towards the poles as we can clearly see from observed stratospheric temperature changes. Leif even admitted that an active sun within a single cycle causes cooling in the lower stratosphere above the tropopause in high latitudes but refuses to accept the logical implications of that observation. If he accepts such a link within a single solar cycle he should also accept it across multiple cycles but no, he simply defaults to the belief that CO2 was responsible for the lower stratospheric cooling at high latitudes despite evidence to the contrary. 154. Leif the current quiet solar period in 2009-2010, (much more active then the Maunder Minimum in contrast) , has already produced a IMF field lower then your floor of 4.0 nt. 155. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 5, 2013 at 11:13 am Leif not convincing, because even the article you sent suggest no one really knows. which is my point. Because of the diverse views earlier, I called for the workshop [involving all actors] to re-examine the issue. As a result we have now come to a new realization with much closer agreement [of course along the lines I suggested some time ago], so although it is correct that nobody knows we have now a well-founded and reasoned idea of what has happened in the past and what will happen in the future, and I expect that when the Maunder-type minimum I and colleagues are predicting rolls around we will be able to solidify our conclusions. 156. Stephen you are on the correct path and again it is the realtive difference in temp in the stratosphere ,rather then if the stratodssphere has warmed or cooled overall that really counts. 157. Leif, your graph does agree with me. The blue line shows stratospheric cooling ceased at that level around 2000. The pink line shows signs of levelling off. The other source that I linked you to clearly shows the cessation of stratospheric cooling as per my hypothesis. On your chart you just draw a straight line downward across the whole chart without paying attention to the inflection point. That is cherry picking and wholly misleading in the broader scheme of things. 158. Leif again this current solar grand minimum should clarify many things among them being a solar/climate connection or connectoins and just how variable or not the sun really is. Time will tell, but as of now NOBODY REALLY KNOWS. and studies that reach different conclusions over short periods of time make for more uncertainty not less. 159. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 5, 2013 at 11:21 am Leif the current quiet solar period in 2009-2010, (much more active then the Maunder Minimum in contrast) , has already produced a IMF field lower then your floor of 4.0 nt. nonsense, the lowest valuer in 2009 was 3.93 nT with is well within the error bar on the 4.0+/-0.2 nT that we propose. Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 11:23 am Leif, your graph does agree with me. As i say: every graph by anybody ALWAYS agrees with you. 160. Leif , many even if those you mention should change, still hold the view that the Maunder Minimum had a IMF around 2nt. Time will tell. 161. Salvatore said: “It is the relative difference in temp in the stratosphere ,rather than if the stratosphere has warmed or cooled overall that really counts.” That is right. What matters is the gradient of the slope of tropopause height between equator and poles. Changing that allows the jets and climate zones to slide latitudinally beneath the tropopause which alters total cloudiness and global albedo. It is a matter of the net balance between solar creation of ozone above the equator and below 45km and the solar destruction of ozone above 45km above or around the poles. That creates the necessary see-saw of tropopause height gradient between equator and poles depending on whether the sun is quiet or active. And it is a matter of chemistry involving ozone rather than TSI. 162. Exactly my point 3.93 nt and the solar activity quiet period during that time was much less in duration then during the depths of the Maunder Minimum, suggesting a lower floor of 3.93 nt during the Maunder Minimum, was/is very possible, if not likely. 163. Leif, if your chart had showed the lower stratosphere at those latitudes warming at a time of active sun then that would have been a problem for me so your assertion is false. Similarly if the stratosphere had continued cooling at the same rate or faster to date then your belief about the effect of CO2 would have held up. Since neither happened my hypothesis is correct and yours is wrong. Or don’t you believe in data? 164. Salvatore Del Prete says: October 5, 2013 at 11:30 am Leif , many even if those you mention should change, still hold the view that the Maunder Minimum had a IMF around 2nt. The people on my team are the world experts on this [you quoted them], so if some other people still cling to the wrong notions, too bad for them [and for you if you cling with them] Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 11:36 am Or don’t you believe in data? You believe that ANY data by ANYBODY ALWAYS supports your view, I take a less dogmatic approach. 165. Leif said: “You believe that ANY data by ANYBODY ALWAYS supports your view, I take a less dogmatic approach.” That is clearly a false and unworthy allegation. My hypothesis is replete with opportunities for the real world to falsify it. One of them would have been a warming stratosphere at high latitudes with an active sun but it didn’t happen. I have listed some of them for you on more than one occasion previously but you persist in your defamations. In contrast, you still think that our CO2 cools the stratosphere despite a cessation of stratospheric cooling at certain levels some 15 to 20 years ago whilst our emissions increased substantially. Pots, kettles and the psychological strategy known as projection come to mind. 166. Pamela Gray says: If it is a long Maunder instead of a shorter version, my hunch is that global climates will feel the affects of a colder cyclic weather pattern variation driven by intrinsic oscillatory convergence but it will again be blamed on a “cold” (sic) sun. Unrelated oscillations can occur together and often do. Only the ones that were catastrophic led gullible people to kill virgins so the god of the [fill in the blank] would behave. The fact that modern people say that two events are linked by sciency-sounding causation does not make the unsupported link any better than when virgins were sacrificed to please an angry god. I think my projection is extremely likely. 167. Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 11:59 am I have listed some of them for you on more than one occasion previously but you persist in your defamations… Pots, kettles and the psychological strategy known as projection come to mind. Now, that I would call defamation, but I have a thick skin and have seen worse, perhaps you eventually will improve in the defamation-department. 168. Pamela Gray says: October 5, 2013 at 12:04 pm Unrelated oscillations can occur together and often do Global temperatures have long been correlated with the price of a US postage stamp, so perhaps it is time to get rid of the Postal Service… to stop global warming and save the planet. 169. david dohbro says: Isvalgaard, I must clearly have missed something since the text states: “Virtually all of the climate of the last century and a half is explained by equation (2) and the primary 60+ year mode extracted earlier as shown in figure 8b. Fig 8 – Primary mode SSA[L=82,k=3,5] vs. residual from eqn.(2) (left) Fig. 8b – eqn. (2) + primary mode vs. hadcrut4 As others have observed, this 60+ year mode plotted in figure 8a is highly correlated to solar irradiance. [fig 9]” Hence, where is your 100yr cycle coming from, and do you have references to back it up? 170. david dohbro says: October 5, 2013 at 12:25 pm As others have observed, this 60+ year mode plotted in figure 8a is highly correlated to solar irradiance. [fig 9]” Since fig.9 only covers 30 years it is hard to claim that the 60+ year mode is correlated. Furthermore we have no data for TSI before 1977, so any comparisons must be with an artificial reconstruction based on the sunspot number. The dominant ‘cycle’ of the sunspot number is 100+ years as is evident to the eye: http://sidc.be/sunspot-index-graphics/wolfaml.php Hence, where is your 100yr cycle coming from, and do you have references to back it up? One can also use more sophisticated signal processing to show that there is the 100-yr cycle so clearly visible to the naked eye, e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/Lomb-Sunspot-Cycle-Revisited.pdf “the period around 100 years remains with the modulation by this period obvious in a visual examination of a plot of the modified sunspot number data”. There are also smaller, less dramatic subharmonics at 67, 54, 170, and 44 yrs, but they only create small second-order effects. The one that matters is the 100+ year cycle. You can also see it here: http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Magn-Flux-Schrijver.png You don’t really need references to see something with your own eyes. 171. There does seem to be a 100 year ‘pulse’ in solar activity set within the millennial cycle that gave us the Roman Warm Period, Dark Ages, Mediaeval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and the Modern Warm Period. Temperature matches quite well too with low solar activity and cool temperatures near the beginning of each century from the early 1700s followed by higher solar activity and warming up through the subsequentcentury. So what we have is the basic millennial cycle containing 100 year ‘pulses’ of activity or ‘pauses’ if one prefers and then the 60 year internal ocean oscillation lying beneath those longer term solar variations. The net effect is upward temperature stepping from one 30 year oceanic positive phase to the next when the sun is becoming more active across multiple cycles and downward temperature stepping from one 30 year oceanic negative phase to the next when solar activity is declining across multiple cycles. Leif has previously pointed out that (according to his latest revised solar activity charts) the sun may have been as active or nearly as active during the 18th century as it has been recently and in fact the bulk of the 18th century was warm too but it cooled off towards the beginning of the 19th century as the sun became less active again. The 1812 disaster in Russia for Napoleon was during that cooler period of less active sun at the beginning of the 19th century. So however much Leif manages to flatten the historical trend for solar activity the residual solar variations still correlate with temperature changes on Earth. 172. Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 1:05 pm Leif has previously pointed out that (according to his latest revised solar activity charts) the sun may have been as active or nearly as active during the 18th century as it has been recently and in fact the bulk of the 18th century was warm too but it cooled off towards the beginning of the 19th century as the sun became less active again the 1860-1870s were active years on par with the 1975-1995 high activity…We see this in sunspot numbers, geomagnetic activity, and cosmic ray modulation. 173. Stephen Wilde says: October 5, 2013 at 1:05 pm The 1812 disaster in Russia for Napoleon was during that cooler period of less active sun at the beginning of the 19th century. and the 1942 disaster in Russia for Hitler was during that cooler period of less active sun in the middle of the 20th century… 174. @Wayne Job: Not followed it yet. Talked to Habibullo at Chicago and he said they were going to do measurements of solar diameter as he thinks changes in it are an important observable correlated with solar changes of output. I suppose that’s what they are doing “up there” now. For the discussion of UV and stratospheric changes, I’ll be using bits / pointing at this paper: http://www.nwra.com/resumes/baldwin/pubs/Baldwin_Dunkerton.pdf It is “jargon rich” and not as explanatory as I’d like, but you work with what exists… It claims to find and lay out a mechanism by which variation in solar output, in particular UV, modulates surface weather; via several intermediary steps that are a bit hard to follow (thanks to the jargon rich nature…). I “took the liberty” of condensing that to “stratosphere cools when UV drops” so as to not post an entire paper and a few dozen pages of commentary when desiring to really just say “UV through stratosphere and ocean interactions modulates weather”. Could that simplification be wrong? It certainly is. All simplifications are. But they are still useful. (Do we really need Einstein’s relativistic terms on the “wrong” simplification of Newtonian mechanics?) What I think it is saying is that the more equatorial stratosphere cools but the polar descending zone can have some Sudden Stratospheric Warming events (due to descent / compression, not UV changes) as that global stratosphere descends at the poles. (That descent increasing Rossby Waves and doing other stuff to ground weather as well). Could I have the sign backward on stratospheric warming / cooling at some particular altitudes or latitudes? Almost certainly, since I think it goes in different directions in different places (though the jargon rich “explanation” is a bit hard to figure out for sure). I don’t think that matters in a blog post comment. With that said: Anyone wishing “the full Monty”, read the paper. If you understand it, please, let me know where some of the more obtuse parts have something interesting to say. I’m going to put some of my attempts at understanding here, with small quotes, but I’m more than happy to have clarifications and corrections if I’ve got something wrong. @Leif: Those folks say UV variations cause weather variations. You say UV varies with sunspots and TSI. OK, so connect those two and it says variations in sunspots and TSI correlate with changes in weather on the surface. Thanks for confirming that… ;-) Submitted to J.A.S.-T.P. Special Issue (Prague Workshop), 30 December, 2003. Abstract. Observations and modeling studies support the hypothesis that solar cycle/ ozone interactions create temperature and wind anomalies in the tropical upper stratosphere near 1 hPa. During extended winter, interactions with planetary-scale Rossby waves draw low-latitude stratospheric wind anomalies poleward and downward through the stratosphere. Although the details of how the solar cycle affects stratospheric winds are not well understood, solar influence on surface climate would likely involve interactions with stratospheric Rossby waves and the coupling of the lower stratospheric circulation to near Earth’s surface. Here we provide an overview of stratosphere-troposphere dynamical coupling. We also discuss dynamical mechanisms that might communicate stratospheric circulation anomalies downward from the stratosphere to the troposphere and surface. […] Solar irradiance also varies slightly over an 11-year cycle as the sun’s magnetic activity alters its energy output. Although the total energy output of the sun varies by only ~0.1% over the solar cycle [Fröhlich and Lean, 1998], radiation at longer UV wave2 lengths increases by several percent. Still larger changes—a factor of two or more—are found in extremely short UV and X-ray wavelengths. For the past 200 years this fairly regular cycle has inspired researchers to link solar-cycle variations to variations in weather and climate. Ultimately, most of the proposed links came to naught because the relationships were specious. […] Since 1987 there have been four developments which provide evidence in favor of a solar influence on the atmosphere: Strong statistical relationship in the data record. Labitzke’s [1987] discovery was followed by several papers which expanded on the original result [van Loon and Labitzke 2000; Labitzke, 2004, this issue]. Strong correlations are seen year-round between the solar cycle and stratospheric geopotential heights and temperatures in both hemispheres, irrespective of the phase of the QBO. Only during northern late winter does the QBO appear to modulate the direct correlation with the solar cycle [Dunkerton and Baldwin, 1992]. Variations approximately in phase with the solar cycle are also seen in satellite records of global temperature in the lower troposphere, the North Atlantic Oscillation, surface temperature, and upper ocean temperature. Solar-ozone mechanism. As noted above, the UV spectrum varies by several percent over a solar cycle. Since UV radiation is absorbed by ozone in the stratosphere, the concentration of ozone varies with the intensity of UV radiation. This radiativephotochemical mechanism effectively amplifies the solar cycle through a positive feedback with the ozone concentration, apart from dynamical feedbacks. Ozone variations have a direct radiative impact on the stratosphere and troposphere, and observations of temperatures are broadly consistent with the expected radiative forcing.  Model simulations consistent with observations. Mechanistic models and general circulation models (GCMs) with interactive ozone and solar-cycle variations in UV show effects broadly similar to the observations [e.g., Matthes et al., 2003]. Model simulations demonstrate that “small perturbations are reinforced over long periods of time, resulting in systematic changes to the stratospheric circulation” [Arnold and Robinson, 1998]. A cumulative influence of external forcings over the course of a winter season was seen in the stratosphere’s response to equatorial QBO [O’Sullivan and Dunkerton, 1994]. Dynamical mechanism to amplify solar effects. Observations [Kodera et al., 1990] and models show that circulation anomalies in the upper stratosphere move poleward and downward through wave-induced momentum transport. Anomalously weak winds in the polar vortex during stratospheric warmings are seen to move downward through the stratosphere, often penetrating the troposphere and reaching Earth’s surface. The same is true of anomalously strong winds. This dynamical mechanism—which is really a combination of mechanisms involving planetary-wave forcing, induced circulation and possible feedback between planetary and synopticscale waves—could maintain and energetically amplify the stratospheric solar signal (or another signal such as the QBO or volcanic eruption) and communicate this signal to the troposphere. These four developments provide evidence that the 11-year solar cycle has an effect on the lower atmosphere, and merit further study in this area. Now, as I read that, it is saying that UV decreases, so ozone decreases, so the ozone derived heating decreases, which implies to me a cooling stratosphere. It also says that ends up with the stratospheric layer headed off to the poles and descending faster, so I’d expect compression heating at the poles along with a push to a loopier jet stream. There’s a lot more in that paper about other oscillations and all. How that relates to a simple “buoyancy” argument, I have no idea. My point on ocean surface heating was about prompt evaporation and the resultant increase in rain (which we have seen… it is raining a lot in many places around the planet). How to “correct out” that precipitation and turn that into a change in meridional vs zonal flow? Good luck with that… Note, too, that “cooling” and “heating” are ambiguous to temperature. I can have a cooling stratosphere with increasing temperatures if that cooling (less energy due to less UV deposition) air is descending (having compression raising temperatures). So does cooling mean “less energy being delivered from absorption of UV” or does it mean “temperature dropping”? Unfortunately, English is often ambiguous on heat vs temperature and the article is not much better. Often avoiding direct references to temperatures or “heating” vs “cooling”. So, in a Humpty Dumpty mood: Cooling, as I was using it, meant “less energy being absorbed from UV”. Less energy in, things are cooler. I was not addressing what might happen to a given parcel of air in the following hours, days, or weeks as it might descend and suffer compression heating. As I read that article, it seems to me to imply instantaneous lower temperature with statements like “Ozone variations have a direct radiative impact on the stratosphere and troposphere, and observations of temperatures are broadly consistent with the expected radiative forcing.” “Direct” usually meaning “same sign”. Then again, it isn’t clear about what “expected” is, so who knows…. (Frankly, while nice to know, my interest is just in the fact that there IS a “direct” connection from solar UV to surface weather. If it has sign inversion a few times along the way as various obscure things happen, so what? But it would be nice to have it fully elucidated.) With statements like the following, it is pretty clear that ANY simplification put into a single sentence, or even a few, is going to be “wrong”, as things have many moving parts and lots of linkages. The indirect mechanism works through modulation of upward-propagating planetaryscale Rossby waves, and would be effective only during the extended winter season (October-April) when the stratospheric polar vortex is westerly [Charney and Drazin, 1961] and planetary-scale Rossby waves propagate into the stratosphere. The stratospheric zonal flow is changed where the Rossby waves break, and the altered winds affect subsequent planetary wave propagation from the troposphere. Observations show that changes in the strength of the polar vortex move downward through the stratosphere, and the surface pattern looks like the leading mode of variability, called the Arctic Oscillation [Thompson and Wallace, 1998]. The total effect on the atmosphere may be a superposition of direct and indirect effects [Lean and Rind, 2001]. But connect and link it does… Observations support the hypothesis that the 11-year solar cycle modulates ozone concentrations and ozone heating in the tropical upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere [Hood, 1997; Hood and Soukharev, 2000], with approximately a 1K temperature change with the solar cycle. Now, to me, it looks like more UV gives more ozone and thus more “ozone heating” of the tropical upper stratosphere. Less UV then ought to give less “ozone heating” and a cooler tropical stratosphere. (Not talking about descending polar stratosphere here…) The paper goes on into a whole lot of detail about how various waves and such interact and move the energy around (and change meridional or zonal patterns – and it isn’t just buoyancy…) One small (and more approachable) sample is: Observations provide evidence that the strength of the northern polar vortex is affected by solar-induced circulation changes near the tropical stratopause. Labitzke [2001] found that the strength of the polar vortex at 30 hPa during November-December differs significantly between high solar flux and low solar flux years. Kodera and Kuroda [2002] found that the stratospheric response originates in the tropical stratopause region, and propagates poleward and downward through the winter. This propagation mechanism involves the interaction of planetary-scale waves with the zonal mean flow, so that the net effect is to draw wind anomalies poleward and downward through the stratosphere [Dunkerton, 2000]. I’ll leave off quoting more of it at this point. So, my points are simply these: Solar UV variation has a direct and measured impact on high altitude changes and surface weather. It is ozone mediated to some extent. It looks, to me, like it is “direct” with more UV and more ozone meaning more heating (in the tropics) but likely inverted with the stratospheric winds then causing descending air masses at the poles to heat (but blowing out some nice Rossby waves and making a more “loopy” jet stream when UV is low). The particular behaviours that lead to a “loopy” jet stream are way more complex than just “more down at the poles, more up at the equator”, but involve a lot of jargon that I’ve not waded through yet. (How a QBO enters into it? Equatorial waves vs planetary waves vs rawinsonde observations? This is stuff for Anthony and meteorologists to translate…) One example more, though: An analogy is sometimes made with the QBO itself, in which equatorial waves systematically create and draw mean-flow anomalies downward [Lindzen and Holton, 1968; Holton and Lindzen, 1972; Plumb, 1977; Dunkerton, 1997]. Notwithstanding the differences between the tropical QBO and extratropical case described above—such as the role of planetary Rossby waves, and back reflection of these waves to the troposphere—both phenomena share a key ingredient in that wave, mean-flow interaction acts to maintain the anomaly during the course of its downward propagation over several density scale heights. Our understanding of the interaction between tropical wind anomalies and the circulation at higher latitudes is incomplete. A major impediment is the lack of observational data for the tropical and subtropical upper stratosphere. Operational rawinsonde observations typically extend only to near 10 hPa. Some idea of their latitudinal coverage can be obtained from Dunkerton and Delisi [1985]. Rocketsonde observations extend into the mesosphere, but ended more that ten years ago, and were acquired at stations 8 degrees or more off the equator. Balanced winds derived from satellite temperatures, beginning in the late 1970s, are problematic but reasonable results can be obtained for the zonal mean flow [Delisi and Dunkerton, 1988; Dunkerton and Delisi, 1991]. And on it goes… Hard to decode, but it’s pretty clear that what happens is not adequately captured with descending air at the poles and rising at the equator as model drivers; nor with a simple “warms” or “cools” for the stratosphere as a whole. OK, I’d tried to use a shortcut to avoid a diatribe, and ended up needing to post a diatribe anyway. Sometimes you just can’t win… Hopefully this has not obscured the message / observation that: 1) Solar variations in TSI are much greater in UV. 2) UV variations changes Ozone, and through that, stratospheric heating. 3) That, then, changes surface weather with lower UV making more rain, more “loopy” jet stream, and overall cooling of the surface over time. Exact mechanism far more complicated than can be put into a comment, so ALL comments about them will be too abbreviated and wrong on details. Yet can still illustrate what the ‘net effect’ would be. In particular, which part of the stratosphere matters when saying “warms” or “cools” and disambiguating “gains net energy” from “temperature rises” matters. With LESS energy gain at the tropical stratosphere, the polar descending stratosphere can have compression heating, despite less total energy in the air and an over all lower atmospheric height from an overall lower energy (so lower temperature prior to any compression heating with loss of altitude). Less UV, cooler surface weather. Lots of moving parts in between. 175. E.M.Smith says: October 5, 2013 at 3:17 pm Those folks say UV variations cause weather variations. You say UV varies with sunspots and TSI. OK, so connect those two and it says variations in sunspots and TSI correlate with changes in weather on the surface. What is means is that if there is no good correlation of climate with sunspots or TSI, there is also no good correlation between UV and climate. 176. E M Smith says “With statements like the following, it is pretty clear that ANY simplification put into a single sentence, or even a few, is going to be “wrong”, as things have many moving parts and lots of linkages.” This is certainly true. I would suggest that any participant in this thread would do well to study carefully all the impressive amount of data and the arguments in Erl Happs various post and pdfs on this topic i e dissecting the very complicated relationship between climate and solar activity. In particular I would ask Stephen if his conclusions differ in any significant respects from Erls and would be interested to hear what comments Leif may care to make. In my opinion Happs has pretty well nailed it. See for starters http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/ and then http://www.happs.com.au/images/stories/PDFarticles/TheCommonSenseOfClimateChange.pdf 177. @Beng: I’m pretty sure the main “driver” is lunar / tidal modulation of ENSO / La Nina – El Nino. Solar just a small effect. (Though the cited paper does claim to find an effect and elucidates a mechanism). IMHO, any time you see “driven by ENSO” or “ocean cycles”, one ought to prepend “driven by lunar tidal changes”… That nobody much seems to take a look at that pnas paper cited in my first comment (complete with nice graphs / pictures ;-) is a bit sad. I think it explains so much, so easily, and so easily tested. But folks don’t want to think it could be as simple as “moon variation in tides” and certainly don’t want to hear “your favorite hobby horse moves in sync with this larger driver so isn’t as important as you think” even when one adds “but it still matters some…” Oh Well… The stratosphere gets down to near /at ground level during the dead of the polar night. I think that matters. Perhaps a lot… Lets a big IR window open in the dark… 178. Greg Goodman says: October 5, 2013 at 12:07 am To reduce the possibility that this is just an artefact of the SSA, you should try fitting to the least processed data possible. Assume you have correctly identified the 60 cycle and subtract it from the original dataset. Then fit your 2nd order to what’s left. The regression should take care of the noise. Do you get parameter values that are close to what you found fitting to the SSA model? Thank you for that and your other helpful suggestions. The re-analysis you suggested above can be found here: Followup: The Great Climate Shift of 1878 Best JP 179. Greg says: Thanks Jeff . Since this thread is supposed to be about your analysis rather then UV (which is all very interesting too) here’s a link to your two results from your site: It looks like fitting directly to the data as I suggested shows critical damped response rather then under-damped. Whoever designed this system made a damned good job of it. ;) 180. Greg says: E.M.Smith says: “IMHO, any time you see “driven by ENSO” or “ocean cycles”, one ought to prepend “driven by lunar tidal changes”… ” Indeed. Circa 9.1 cycle reported from different data by Scaffeta and BEST (land SAT) is lunar. Unfortunately it seems to get removed by Hadley processing from the SST record. See appendix here: http://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/61/ E.M.Smith says: “The stratosphere gets down to near /at ground level during the dead of the polar night. I think that matters. Perhaps a lot… Lets a big IR window open in the dark…” Thanks, I was not aware of that. This may go some way to explaining why -/ve feedback from the IR emission side of the albedo change seems to dominate the +/ve f/b from reflection of incoming solar. Up to 2007 it may have been reasonable see ‘accelerating melting’ over the limited period of detailed observations. Post 2007 disproves the idea of a dominant +ve f/b: http://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal-variation-in-nh-sea-ice/ 181. Joe Born says: Jeff Patterson: “Once we verified that indeed a good fit is obtained, only then did we look for the “trigger” coincident with the tau found by the fit.” Thanks a lot for that clarification. As to my equation, on the other hand, I’m afraid I was a little obscure; it was my way of reminding myself how much of a jump you made to see the second-order system. It’s true that the shape you see there is reminiscent of an underdamped second-order system, and your equation (1) would indeed be a solution to $q_2 \frac{d^2 y}{dt^2} + q_1 \frac{d y}{dt} + q_0 y = u_{-1}(t - \tau)$ (where your$\omega = \frac{\sqrt{q_0 q_2 – q_1^2/4}}{q_2}\$)
without the -b. But from what I’ve been told in the past by people who I think know this stuff I think the presence of the -b implies memory that kicks the order up a notch, and the fact that the purported stimulus is an impulse rather than a step kicks it up yet another notch. Hence the ugly left-hand side of my last response’s equation.

I nonetheless take your point that not all the resulting coefficients should be treated as tweakable parameters, and the right-hand side of my previous comment’s equation’s was probably gratuitous. Still, many shapes we see remind us of many equations we’ve seen, and I’ve yet to shake the nagging suspicion that we may be seeing bunnies in clouds.

182. Joe Born says:

I’ll try that last comment’s LaTeX again:

$q_2 \frac{d^2 y}{dt^2} + q_1 \frac{d y}{dt} + q_0 y = u_{-1}(t - \tau)$ (where your $\omega = \frac{\sqrt{q_0 q_2 – q_1^2/4}}{q_2}$)

183. Joe Born says:

Sorry about my ineptitude with the LaTeX, but it worked on the test page.

184. Paul Vaughan says:

“[…] there is no good correlation of climate with sunspots or TSI, there is also no good correlation between UV and climate.”

Exactly wrong.

185. Paul Vaughan says:
October 6, 2013 at 5:12 am
“[…] there is no good correlation of climate with sunspots or TSI, there is also no good correlation between UV and climate.”
Exactly wrong.

It seems that nothing can shake the faith of a true believer.

186. Paul Vaughan says:

@ E.M. Smith
Moon only stirs.
Sun drives.

187. Paul Vaughan says:

Leif: Observations show you’re wrong in the most egregious sense possible. Don’t waste any more of my time.

188. Paul Vaughan says:
October 6, 2013 at 5:36 am
Don’t waste any more of my time.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. go away.

189. Leif said:

“No, the 18th century was brrr cold [colder than the 19th, 20th, and 21st].”

Apparently not, see here:

though admittedly that chart shows Septembers but they are reasonable proxies for overall warmth being the time when the oceans reach maximum temperatures.

“and the 1942 disaster in Russia for Hitler was during that cooler period of less active sun in the middle of the 20th century…”

There was nothing special about the winter of 1942 (unlike 1812). Hitler thought it would all be over before winter and equipped his troops for speed rather than for cold.

The cooler period in the 29th century didn’t come along until the slightly less active cycle 20.

In this thread I’m finding Leif’s contributions rather more unreliable than usual.

190. beng says:

***
Stephen Wilde says:
October 5, 2013 at 8:51 am

beng

The height of the tropopause and especially the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles is critical to the pattern of convective overturning beneath it.

There would be no tropopause if there were no direct interaction between ozone and sunlight creating the temperature inversion.

Changes in the temperature of the stratosphere immediately above the tropopause are enough to alter the entire global air circulation pattern in the troposphere.
***

Stephen, the height of the tropopause is controlled by the amount of convection underneath and the resultant Hadley cell structures. High at the equator, low or even absent at the poles. The convection is a direct result of the amount of absorbed surface heat (sensible and latent) there. Little to no surface-absorbed heat at the poles (especially in winter), little to no tropopause height.

Nothing to do w/UV, ozone, and such above the tropopause. The climate still worked when there was no oxygen (or ozone) for much of the earth’s history.

191. Richard M says:

The 1878 El Niño could have had an influence on temperature but not on energy. If it injected a surge of water vapor into the atmosphere it would cool the planet temperature while keeping enthalpy constant. Sure enough, the planet cooled over the next 30 years, And then, as the water vapor content fell the global temperature would slowly increase. This was what weather balloons found in the latter half of the 20th century. At present time the water vapor content has slightly increased and global temperature started cooling.

With variations due to ocean cycles this might explain the temperature record without much of a need to change the total energy of the atmosphere.

192. Beng.

The inversion at the tropopause puts a lid on upward convection.

Without that lid ,convection would go up much higher due to the pressure reduction with height constantly refreshing the uplifting process.

That lid is present due to ozone reacting directly with incoming solar shortwave and the temperature of the stratosphere directly affects the height of the tropopause.

It is true that the vigour of convection is a contributing factor to tropopause height.because it can push up against that ‘lid’ but it is ozone that put the lid there in the first place.

When there was no ozone (or a different amount of ozone) the circulation would have shown a different configuration.

193. beng says:

***
E.M.Smith says:
October 4, 2013 at 11:09 pm

@Leif:

And as that UV fades and blues diminish with more reds and infrareds; more of the TSI causes prompt evaporation of the ocean surface and less goes meters into the deep.
***

I agree. That’s why I’ve been saying that IR from GHGs can’t be significantly stored, and thus the transient and equilibrium climate responses to GHG changes is practically instantaneous (maybe a few months for full response). Responses from SW changes can be stored, and do have longer time-lags. But CO2 or any other GHGs don’t contribute to that storage, and heat-in-the-pipeline doesn’t occur directly from their actions.

194. Paul Vaughan says:

@ beng (October 6, 2013 at 7:23 am)

so we’re looking at equator-pole gradients of column integrals — thanks for the useful notes — helps with conceptualization of observed phasing & spatial pattern of equator-pole ozone & GPH gradients at annual & Schwabe timescales — so ozone & cosmic rays = symptoms not cause — field of differential velocities beneath (that will never sit still for temperature measurments) but GPH integrates across = beautiful

195. JP says:

” If it is a long Maunder instead of a shorter version, my hunch is that global climates will feel the affects of a colder cyclic weather pattern variation driven by intrinsic oscillatory convergence but it will again be blamed on a “cold” (sic) sun. ”

@Pamela Gray,

The beginning of the LIA preceeded the Maunder Minimum by 300 years. Most climate scientists put the beginning of the LIA with the 1315-1320 famine in Europe. The coldest decades of the LIA occured during the Maunder Minimum, but the negative temp trends preceeded the MM by 3 centuries. There have been some attempts to coorelate the De Vries Cycle with climate. But, I don’t think anything definitive has been settled.

196. Stephen Wilde says:
October 6, 2013 at 7:11 am
“No, the 18th century was brrr cold [colder than the 19th, 20th, and 21st].”
Apparently not…though admittedly that chart shows Septembers

Cherry picking, when data for the whole year is available. Check the GLOBAL reconstructions by Logle, Moberg, Lundquist, etc.

There was nothing special about the winter of 1942
except that 1942 was a very cold winter.

The cooler period in the 20th century didn’t come along until the slightly less active cycle 20
Nonsense: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/web_figures/hadcrut4_annual_global.png cooling started during the highest ever solar cycles 18 and 19 in the 1940s and 1950s.

197. Stephen Wilde says:
October 6, 2013 at 7:11 am
“No, the 18th century was brrr cold [colder than the 19th, 20th, and 21st].”
Apparently not…though admittedly that chart shows Septembers

Cherry picking, when data for the whole year is available. Check the Northern Hemisphere reconstructions by Lohle, Moberg, Lundquist, etc. http://www.leif.org/research/NH-Temperatures.png

198. Leif the data shows clearly that the Maunder Minimum temperatures and the Dalton temperatures were clearly cold periods.

Leif will probably deny the LITTLE ICE AGE

199. In the mean time Leif can,t even predict solar activity one or two months in advance.

His wrong prediction made Aug. 6 stated the solar flux would avg.120 and the ap index 10 for the period Aug. 06-Dec. 31,2013. WAY OFF, Solar Flux aveage for Sep. was 102.6 and Ap index was 5.4

Even worse for Leif ,the very quiet solar conditions are continuing as I write this.

Further the 2nt IMF during the Maunder Minimum has more support then less support and will likely prove to be true and verifed as this solar minimum continues to evolve.

200. Exactly Stephen , all the data shows what you have depicted in the chart you sent ,that I just resent. That is 100% certainty.

201. Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 6, 2013 at 10:43 am
the data shows clearly that the Maunder Minimum temperatures and the Dalton temperatures were clearly cold periods.

As JP points out:
JP says:
October 6, 2013 at 7:59 am
“The beginning of the LIA preceded the Maunder Minimum by 300 years.”
And Wilde’s cherry picked temperatures do not single out the Dalton minimum as particularly cold

Anyway, the eruptions of Mayon [1814] and Tambora [1815] caused temperatures to drop.

As usual, you are squirming uselessly, reciting obsolete mantras, and bringing nothing to the table.

202. Stephen between you and me I want Leif ,and others to continue to deny solar climate/connections and less solar variability. For if they agreed ,then we would have nothing to argue and prove.

We will be proven correct ,they will be proven wrong and it will be very very soon.

203. Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 6, 2013 at 10:49 am
In the mean time Leif can,t even predict solar activity one or two months in advance.
Nobody can [except the nuts that can predict it thousands of years in advance].

204. Leif that is the point ,you keep saying with certainty there are no solar /climate connections, you down play the Maunder Minimum and Dalton Minmium solar variability and temperature impacts with certainty, and now you say no one can even predict solar matters one or two months in adavance.

It sounds like you are not being consistent.

Right or wrong I am consistent and I will not DEVIATE from my stance of solar/climate connections and the average solar parameters that are needed to bring about the connections.

I stand by that and the solar variabilty issue , which is solar variabilty is much greater then you keep trying to convey.

All of this will be resolved in the very near future.

AGAIN AND IF WRONG I HOPE YOU BRING IT OUT

solar flux avg. sub 90
solar wind avg. sub 350 km/sec
solar irradaince avg. off .015% or more
ap index avg. 5.0 or lower
cosmic ray count avg. north of 6500 per min.
euv flux avg. sub 100
imf avg.4.0 nt or lower

If these solar parameteer averages are met going forward into this decade the temperature trend WILL BE DOWN.The amount of sub-solar activity prior to these conditions being reached later this decade is now sufficent in duration of time.

Easily falisfied if wrong.

205. Volcanos as I have been saying if you read my previous post are one of the secondary items associated with a prolonged solar minimum period. I have sent many studies that lend support to this thinking.

206. Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 6, 2013 at 11:12 am
you say no one can even predict solar matters one or two months in advance.
It sounds like you are not being consistent.

We can predict 10 years in advance, but not two months. Nothing special there. I can predict that next July [in northern hemisphere] will be warmer than the coming November.

I will not DEVIATE from my stance
Cult members and other nuts also will DEVIATE from the given truth, no matter what happens. And Stephen will take ANY outcome to be consistent with his views. Such people are very low on my pole.

207. Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 6, 2013 at 11:14 am
Volcanos as I have been saying if you read my previous post are one of the secondary items associated with a prolonged solar minimum period
Sure, the volcanoes erupting 50 years before sunspot lows were controlling the Sun. I am sure you can find papers that claim that too. And even people dumb enough to actually believe that.

208. Leif , soon everthing you say as oppossed to what Stephen, and I suggest will be able to be actually observed in real time as this prolonged solar minimum continues and we will have answers to the extent of solar variability and to the extent of how solar variabilty impacts the climate.

209. Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 6, 2013 at 11:17 am
http://www.spaceandscience.net/id69.html
VOLCANO INCREASES ASSOCIATED WITH PROLONGED SOLAR MINIMUM PERIODS

The guy who runs this outfit [Mr. John Casey] is a well-known certified fraud and caters for people dumb enough to be hoodwinked by his nonsense.

210. Leif, the point is I have taken a stance and that is one of my secondary effects like it or not, right or wrong. That is ONE of my secondary effects in the solar climate connection puzzle. MINE..

211. Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 6, 2013 at 11:22 am
we will [soon] have answers to the extent of solar variability and to the extent of how solar variabilty impacts the climate.
Perhaps it will be opportune to wait selling the fur until the bear has been shot.

212. Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 6, 2013 at 11:24 am

It must be lonely at the top crying in the wilderness.

213. Leif , you will be proven wrong, I will be proven right, that is my prediction. Time will tell,if I am wrong you can say I told you so. Until then it is wait and see.

214. Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 6, 2013 at 11:37 am
Until then it is wait and see.
You can wait in solitary silence then.

215. Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 6, 2013 at 11:37 am
if I am wrong you can say I told you so.
I would never stoop that low…

216. Greg says:

Lief, thank for your many informative posts here but don’t feel obliged to reply to every idiotic comment by Salvatore del….

It’s easy enough to skip comments starting with Salvatore del… , but then I have to read yours to see whether you have something useful to say or just another reply to Salvatore del Silliness.

217. Greg says:
October 6, 2013 at 12:31 pm
Lief, thank for your many informative posts here but don’t feel obliged to reply to every idiotic comment by Salvatore del….
Having brought up four unruly children [‘chips of the old blockhead’] I know it is hopeless, but perhaps my comments may be informative to others nevertheless.

218. Greg says:

Paul Vaughan says:
@ E.M. Smith
Moon only stirs. Sun drives.

Very poetic. Do you have more than poetry to substantiate that declaration? I’m not against such a proposition, so can it be proven?

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=542

second derivative attenuates very long variation, 4y and 6y LP filters have zero at those periods.

What is left is the decadal scale variation. In post WWII period where data is most reliable it seems clear the major periodicity is circa 9 years.

Avoiding the known WWII glitch in ICOADS and using the peaks annotated on the graph gives 9.05 years for the obvious decadal variation.

This is compatible with Scafetta and BEST derived periods of 9.1 +/- 0.1 year

This may be a blurring of two separate lunar cycles of 18.6/2 (eclipse cycle) and 8.8425 lunar perigee precession : (1/9.3 +1/8.85)/2 = 1/ 9.07 , or either one given the precision of the data and analysis.

Scafetta showed how such a periodicity in the earth orbit is due to the presence of the moon.

A solar influence could be at play on 50-100 year time scale but presence of circa 11y is not evident.

219. Leif said:

“And Stephen will take ANY outcome to be consistent with his views.”

Incorrect. I have pointed out various events that would invalidate my hypothesis if they were to occur.

and Leif said:

“Cherry picking, when data for the whole year is available. Check the Northern Hemisphere reconstructions by Lohle, Moberg, Lundquist, etc. http://www.leif.org/research/NH-Temperatures.png

Lets take a step back and look at Leif’s whole year chart. Note that it is a reconstruction rather than the actual temperature recordings from Hadcrut that I referred to.

Nonetheless there is a big step up of temperatures in the 18th century which correlated with increased solar activity.

As evidenced by Leif”s contributions here he will not take ANY data inconsistent with his views.

220. I said:

“The cooler period in the 20th century didn’t come along until the slightly less active cycle 20”

Leif said:

“Nonsense: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/web_figures/hadcrut4_annual_global.png cooling started during the highest ever solar cycles 18 and 19 in the 1940s and 1950s.”

But Leif forgets the effect of the negative PDO which started to cool the air a little before the start of low cycle 20 and which then amplified the cooling effect of low cycle 20.

It has always been my contention that we must consider both the top down solar effects AND the bottom up oceanic effects.

221. Stephen Wilde says:
October 6, 2013 at 1:46 pm
As evidenced by Leif”s contributions here he will not take ANY data inconsistent with his views.
by definition that is so, as the data drives my views.

222. Stephen Wilde says:
October 6, 2013 at 1:52 pm
But Leif forgets the effect of the negative PDO which started to cool the air a little before the start of low cycle 20 and which then amplified the cooling effect of low
A little? enough that people back then [I was there] worried about the looming ice age. So, you are saying that PDO overwhelms the Sun. Very likely, IMHO. The Sun does have an influence, all of 0.1 C, and the Sun never ‘cools’ anything, just warms a little less. But again we are lacking NUMBERS. How much did the PDO do and how much did the Sun do? Without numbers it is just hand waving.

“But again we are lacking NUMBERS. How much did the PDO do and how much did the Sun do? Without numbers it is just hand waving.”

We have no current means of knowing.
But it isn’t CO2 to any significant degree.

I said:

“As evidenced by Leif”s contributions here he will not take ANY data inconsistent with his views.”

Leif replied:

“by definition that is so, as the data drives my views.”

Then why do you not seem to ‘see’ the data that is inconsistent?

Are you not currently the most dogmatic contributor here?

224. Leif said:

“A little? enough that people back then [I was there] worried about the looming ice age.”

I was there too.

The ice age scare developed by the mid 70s after a few years of negative PDO being supplemented by lower cycle 20.

The negative PDO on its own wouldn’t have caused much concern if it had been offset by a more lively cycle 20.

One way or another solar variations alter global air circulation and albedo. The effect is strongly modulated by the oceans but if the solar changes are maintained they feed through the ocean oscillations into a temperature step change from one positive or negative ocean phase to the next.

It is a complicated dance but it is there.

225. Stephen Wilde says:
October 6, 2013 at 2:02 pm
We have no current means of knowing.
Yet you draw conclusions and base speculation of something you don’t know.
But it isn’t CO2 to any significant degree.
Which is an irrelevant red herring [the fallacy known as ignoratio elenchi]. It is also not the Martians playing with our climate.

Are you not currently the most dogmatic contributor here?
When it comes to the data being king, I readily confess.

226. Stephen Wilde says:
October 6, 2013 at 2:08 pm
“A little? enough that people back then [I was there] worried about the looming ice age.”
I was there too.

But were you active in the Sun/Weather/Climate debate then? As I was [being part of the group that revived the field]: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Sun-Weather-Climate.pdf

227. “Yet you draw conclusions and base speculation of something you don’t know.”

Observations of trends and inflection points is sufficient for the basic diagnosis.
Detailed measurement and accurate apportionment needs more time and more data.

“But were you active in the Sun/Weather/Climate debate then?”

I’ve been in the field but not the debate since the 50’s when I first became a weather/climate enthusiast as a child.

I have however followed the debate and observed the data as a reality check.

Maybe, rather than reviving anything, you helped to divert and negate the progress that had been ongoing as a result of the work of H H Lamb and others.

We need to get back to that and consider it all afresh from first principles and observations.

http://www.leif.org/EOS/Sun-Weather-Climate.pdf

which is a very interesting publication from the 70s which looks strangely familiar to me.

I might even have read it at the time.

So why was all that work apparently abandoned?

With new data and modern techniques we should be able to have a new look at the issues raised.

I think the main omission was a recognition that the jets and climate zones shift latitudinally as a negative system response to any forcing element that seeks to make system energy content diverge from that set by the strength of the gravitational field, atmospheric mass and ToA insolation.

But note that system energy content can be altered in the short term by internal ocean oscillations and by solar induced changes in global albedo. Both those influences mimic changes in ToA insolation by affecting the proportion of ToA insolation absorbed at the surface (especially by the oceans).

In the end however the jets and climate zones will shift to eliminate the effect.

At the time the book was written little was known of internal ocean oscillations or of long term latitudinal climate zone and jet stream shifting. Nor was much known about the different effects of solar changes at different levels in the atmospheric column and at different latitudes.

It is the effects of those phenomena interacting together that I now bring to the table.

I have incorporated them into my New Climate Model and if anyone has better ideas I’m happy to hear them.

229. Greg says:

Stephen Wilde says: “We have no current means of knowing.
But it isn’t CO2 to any significant degree.”

230. vukcevic says:

lsvalgaard says:
October 6, 2013 at 2:15 pm
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Sun-Weather-Climate.pdf
….
Chapter 3.4 Sunspot Cycle and Atmospheric Electric Parameters
is relevant to the thread above ‘Using a climate model to map global atmospheric conductivity’

231. Stephen Wilde says:
October 6, 2013 at 2:23 pm
Maybe, rather than reviving anything, you helped to divert and negate the progress
You are not paying attention. I was a reviewer [page vii] of that book and working [along with colleagues at Stanford] with the founder of NCAR [if you know what that is] Walter Orr Roberts. Our work on the Vorticity Area Index revived the whole field which had in the 1950-1960s been killed by the outstanding Soviet meteorologist Monin. Our papers form a significant input [e.g. section 4.3] to the book: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Sun-Weather-Climate.pdf

So why was all that work apparently abandoned?
Because, as so often is the case, with more and better data the correlations reported [and mostly accepted at the time] have turned out to be spurious.

232. Greg says:

lsvalgaard says:
October 5, 2013 at 10:53 am

Salvatore Del Prete says:
October 5, 2013 at 10:52 am
I SAY WRONG.
who cares what you say…

====
lsvalgaard cares apparently, He’s spent about half this thread arguing the toss with him. I long since stopped even reading posts that begin with “Salvatore Del….”

233. Geoff Sherrington says:

Jeffrey,
Your figure 3, the first difference trend, has a resemblance to a feature at Mt Coolum on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, especially if you fill in the plain level that this photo misses. It was the first I found to show the shape.

The point is that we often invoke “correlation is not causation” when making criticisms of work by others. The topic seems to arise again when you talk of a response curve for an underdamped perturbation, as familiar to engineers. I know what you mean, many non-engineers might not, but I still felt moved to raise this because there are other possible shapes like it in nature.
The suggestion is that curve matching is a better story when there is some explanation of possible causation.
Please take this as a gentle reminder, one not meant to detract from the body of your work as blogged here.

234. David Cage says:

I remember a group of signal analysis engineers doing this about twenty years ago and showing it to some climate scientists who told them more or less to F*** off and go back to fixing washing machines. The were not happy since they had given their time free of charge to get data for them for the acid rain which they got no credit for the work at all.

235. Greg said:

Not so because the first phrase related only to ascertaining the relative contributions of PDO and Solar.
Obviously neither of those influences involve CO2.

Leif said:

“with more and better data the correlations reported [and mostly accepted at the time] have turned out to be spurious.”

Then it is time to reopen the whole issue because what seemed spurious could well turn out not to be so in the light of oceanic oscillations, latitudinal climate zone shifting and differential heating of the atmospheric column from solar variations.

Those factors could not have been adequately explored at the time.

236. Paul Vaughan says:

Only the darkest of dark agents of ignorance &/or deception aggressively deny what earth rotation and global atmospheric angular momentum records show. It’s a black & white observation, easily verifiable dozens of ways. It’s shameless political distortion and/or shameful functional innumeracy whenever anyone tries to paint an observation so simple and so crystal clear as a shade of grey. Dismissing this observation &/or trying to paint it uncertain grey untenably asserts violation of the law of large numbers &/or the law of conservation of angular momentum. The solar-climate discussion is so grievously corrupt that authority devilishly refuses to acknowledge 1+1=2. Sensible folks: Draw a line here. Anyone crossing this line is corrupt in the most egregious sense possible. This isn’t the kind of thing you discuss, negotiate, or argue about. When you say 1+1=2 and someone persistently disagrees, you know the person is f**d up &/or playing games and that you have on your hands an intractable scenario. The way you deal with the person changes fundamentally.

237. Greg says:

David Cage says:
I remember a group of signal analysis engineers doing this about twenty years ago and showing it to some climate scientists who told them more or less to F*** off and go back to fixing washing machines.

===
LOL, Yes, that was when most objective science seems to have stopped on climate.

238. Paul Interesting picture showing the great climate shift of 1978 (See Happs) Would appreciate more info re its origin and how and by whom it was it was constructed.

239. Paul Vaughan says:
240. All very mysterious. Would appreciate a plain English explanation of the patterns seen in the original link and the significance of the boundaries between them. Thanks.

241. Geoff Sherrington says:
October 7, 2013 at 12:17 am

The point is that we often invoke “correlation is not causation” when making criticisms of work by others. The topic seems to arise again when you talk of a response curve for an underdamped perturbation, as familiar to engineers. I know what you mean, many non-engineers might not, but I still felt moved to raise this because there are other possible shapes like it in nature.

Thanks for the gentle reminder which we all need from time to time but I think it is misplaced here. The observation is not as you say, that the perturbation is under-damped, but rather that the climate itself responded to some as yet unidentified perturbation in a way that is well-modeled by an under-damped, second-order system. That that normalized response can be reduced to equation form governed by just two parameters, and that that parameterized equation matches the observed data over a century time span, and that two separate forms of analysis performed on two separate data sets gives the similar result (see http://wp.me/p2xhN5-4C) makes mere coincidence dubious in my view. But in any case, the observation about the transient behavior is interesting and may provide a clue to mechanism but it is not really the main point.

Such a response requires a triggering mechanism and there happens to be a candidate event but I was careful to point out that the start of the observed step in slope was “coincident with and perhaps triggered by an impulsive spike in temperature.” We haven’t showed that that event was the cause (it is after all at the output out the system, not the input). Something may have caused them both, or they may be unrelated. Either way, it is an empirical fact that the slope of the temperature anomaly shifted in 1878. That the transient part of that shift seems to be second order may be a piece to the puzzle, or that too may be mere coincidence (although it is hard to ignore that match). But even if that shift isn’t related to the coincident impulsive event and was instead due completely to anthropogenic CO2 (that has doubled in concentration every 29 years since), the sensitivity to that forcing must be exceedingly small. In a hundred years (3 doublings) the trend (with the PDO+AMO oscillations removed) only went up by .5K giving a sensitivity of .16 K/per double- 1/20th of the IPCC’s “most likely” value.

My intent with these articles was not to provide a climate model. That fascinating work must be done by those trained in it’s dynamics. My intent is to show that the null hypothesis w.r.t. CAGW can not be rejected with anything close to the confidence the IPCC proclaims. They can’t have it both ways. If AGW was detectable at the turn of the last century, the climate sensitivity to it must be exceedingly small. If on the other hand, the climate sensitivity is as large as they claim but not detectable in the background variation until the middle of the last century, then it would be easily detectable now, as I showed in my previous article. see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/26/detecting-the-agw-needle-in-the-sst-haystack/

Best regards,
JP

242. The Greg’s and Leif’s of the world are always correct. Enough of that foolishness.

243. Stephen what you have to keep in mind are some have an agenda and are not interested in seeking the truth.

244. Stephen, Leif made specific solar predictions for the rest of this year for solar cycle 24, so far they are much to high. The upshot being his thoughts and predictions from solar variability to solar /climate lack of connections are nothing more then speculation on his part .

I have furnished many studies (very recent ) that run counter to what he keeps trying to convey.

For my part I am very confident that indeed solar rules the climate, and this will be proven before this decade ends.

245. The above points out the big degree of uncertainty that exist about how variable the sun may or may not be.

246. Greg says:

Jeff: “But even if that shift isn’t related to the coincident impulsive event and was instead due completely to anthropogenic CO2 (that has doubled in concentration every 29 years since), the sensitivity to that forcing must be exceedingly small. ”

Ahh, I’ve just got what you meant. I left comment on your blog but didn’t realise where the mistake was. It’s no good saying human emissions have doubled in x years and thinking that provides the doubling time ignoring what was already in the atmosphere.

It’s the latter that affects climate, not raw emissions. That has not even doubled once yet since pre-industrial. Expected to be double circa 2050-2060.

Also suggesting that CO2 may also be responsible for stopping the late 19th c. cooling rather assumes that cooling is what climate would be doing without AGW. That is not representative of the state of ‘natural’ climate, it was just inter-decadal variation.

If you put that on the back of AGW you’ll probably double sensitivity in the process.

247. Greg says:

Before Hadley got hold of the data and started playing with their buckets the 19th c. had larger variability than 20th. c. They just cut it in half.

In fact variability in 20th c. was less. One could suggest that is the blanket effect of CO2, but not at the same time as playing the ‘unprecedented’ game.

248. Those engaged in the solar wars here (all well as everyone else) may be interested in this update. I’ve convolved the system response described by equation 2 above with the daily sunspot number (taken here as the input to the climate system described by eqn 2) and reproduced the SST anomaly from 1850 until 1980 (at which point the system kernel edge effects begin to dominate). Pretty interesting.

249. 1sky1 says:

This entire series of posts relies upon connecting three naive premises:

1. HadCRUT4 provides genuine indication of “global average temperature.”

2. Orthogonal decomposition of the time series “denoises” the signal, which
is assumed to be simply a sum of periodic components and a linear trend.

3. There are “natural modes” of temperature variation, akin to those of a
second-order dynamic system, revealed by such decomposition.

The author seems unaware that there were no time-series of SST recorded at
any fixed station at sea before the advent of weather ships in the middle
of the last century. The various SST time series that extend further back
in time are manufactured by using the low-order principal components of
extremely sparse and temporally scattered observations made by ships of
opportunity, using very different sampling equipment. Moreover the land
station records throughout most of the continents are heavily corrupted by
UHI.

Empirical orthogonal decompositions, which underlie SSA, are far
from unique and merely decompose the available record into mutually
orthogonal mathehmatical components that have no particular physical
meaning. Lacking any reliable determination of the actual signal, there is
no analytic criterion for distinguishing it from “noise.” What can be said
on the basis of the (first-order) differential equations governing
thermodynamics is that any periodic temperature signal requires a periodic
driver. Once the annual and diurnal cycles are suppressed in decimating the
data into yearly average values, there is no credible periodic driver to
justify the 2-nd premise.

Finally, the appeal to “what every engineer will recognize as the response
of second-order system to a step” is an appeal to scientific ignorance.
In situ temperature variations lack the “natural modes” of response of
second-order systems incorporating a restoring force; the underlying heat
has to be dispersed or dissipated. Meanwhile the power spectra of GISP2
isotope data reveal wide-band multi-CENTENNIAL variations ~3 times more
powerful than the fairly narrow-band ~60yr oscillations. It is these
oscillations that most likely produce what is mistakenly taken to be as
“trend.”

250. @1sky1 says: October 7, 2013 at 5:28 pm

If you are convinced adaptive filters, of which SSA is a class, can not dramatically improve the signal-to-noise ratio you should throw your cell phone away- it doesn’t work. And if the climate response is not well modeled by the equation derived above, what is you explanation for the fact demonstrated here, that SST = SSN convolved eq2 ?

251. Greg says:

Hi Jeff, I had not seen your SSN convolution on first reading there. It starts to deviate around 1950, which is when the Hadley Centre’s speculative adjustments start to phase in a 0.5 deg C cooling. Whatever way you try to model climate this down step is a problem.

If you model later period (like IPCC model calibration concentrates on) then your model fails badly pre-WWII. This is shows in Bob Tisdales latest article :

http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/figure-22.png?w=640&h=441

If you try fit harmonic functions like Scafetta and others, this dip can never be made to fit properly.

My examination of frequency spectrum showed this “correction” made significant changes to frequency spectrum between earlier and later periods that are very similar without the step.

Now your analysis with a 2nd order function also trips on this down step.

I’m as starting to think that Folland’s Folly and Hadley Centre’s insistance on maintaining this “correction” in one form or another for the last 30 years maybe one of the biggest barriers to our getting any understanding of long term climate change.

252. Greg says: October 8, 2013 at 12:11 am
It starts to deviate around 1950…

To my eye it deviates abruptly at sample 125 which is 1975 (t=0 is 1850). The kernel used in the circular convolution is eqn 2a, time shifted to place the step in eq1 at t=0 and discretized to 70 samples to capture the majority of the transient behavior. Using circular convolution removes the causality requirement- we can start at “negative time” by rotating the kernel which just time shifts the output. I’ve chosen this lag to align the output with the steep rise in temperature between 1910 and 1940, effectively removing the kernel delay so as to make the correlation obvious to the eye. This rotation moves all of the filter’s edge effects to the end (in essence we’re using the time from 1975 to 2012 to pre-charge the filter, which is why the step transient starts in 1975). All of the data after that is bogus.

253. Greg says:

1sky1: “The various SST time series that extend further back
in time are manufactured by using the low-order principal components of
extremely sparse and temporally scattered observations made by ships of
opportunity, using very different sampling equipment. ”

Thanks you. I had not been able to find any kind of detail on the icoads processing. Do you have a link to some doc on that?

254. @Greg
I’ve added a standard zero-padded convolution (puts filter effects at the beginning) compared to your corrected data on my blog. It produces both the early 20th century dip and matches current warming quite well. Very interesting.

255. 1sky1 says:

Jeff Patterson;

Your conceptualizations are patently derived from work with man-made systems, which scarcely provide guidance to what is happening in the geophysical setting. SSA relies entirely upon empirical orthogonal function decomposition of a data series, Since all of the decomposed “modes” are mutually orthogonal, there is no solid analytic basis for declaring higher-order ones to be “noise.”.That is a far cry from how adaptive filters operate in cases where something is known of the spectral composition of both signal.and noise.

If you apply Kalman.filters to any geophysical time-series you’ll find that, contrary to your presumption, the predictive power of the lower-order modes is lackluster, at best. It’s a rookie mistake to assume that the lower-order modes can be reliably extrapolated. Had you followed up on my previous suggestion to split HadCRUT4 into three 54-yr segments, you could have seen this for yourself. As it stands, you fall into the common trap of believing that you have discovered something intrinsic about the physical system, as opposed to merely a mathematical curve-fitting “explanation.” Even your modest “trend” of .05K/decade would imply an ice age at the time of the MWP.

256. 1sky1 says:

Greg Goodman:

Can’t help you with particulars of ICOADS processing, but insofar as the manufacture other SST times-series is concerned, they rely upon the standard technique of PC analysis. I’ve seen a few technical reports on this many years ago, but can’t locate one on the web.

257. Greg Goodman says:

1sky1 says:

Jeff Patterson;

Your conceptualizations are patently derived from work with man-made systems, which scarcely provide guidance to what is happening in the geophysical setting.

===

There is no reason that the basics of systems analysis should not be applied to natural systems as well as man-made. In fact that it exactly what has been missing in the last 30y or climatology.

Most work seems stuck at high school level of fitting linear trends to everything and we think we are getting really clever if you try a linear relaxation model akin to a trivial RC circuit.

Running means seem to be de rigour as far as frequency filtering goes and mulitvariate (linear) regression is sufficient to prove ( or disprove ) the influence of a driving force.

That Jeff’s analysis is “conceptualizations are patently derived from work with man-made systems” would seem to be a step in the right direction. Such ‘man made systems’ got several teams to the moon and back with less computer power than is available in an iPhone.

If climate scientists tried to apply some of the centuries worth of engineering experience we have rather than splashing around in the kiddies pool and making it up as they go along we may not have had to deal with Mann’s hockey stick and woefully inadequate models.

258. Greg Goodman says:

1sky1 says:

Greg Goodman:

Can’t help you with particulars of ICOADS processing, but insofar as the manufacture other SST times-series is concerned, they rely upon the standard technique of PC analysis. I’ve seen a few technical reports on this many years ago, but can’t locate one on the web.

===

The problem is not with ICOADS processing but what Hadley does with it to make hadSST3 and derivatives. That is not PC as in principal components but more like PC as in politically correct.

The processing is outlined in Brohnan 2006 and seems based on applying distorting running mean filters in a loop until the result “converges”, as well a some rather speculative “corrections”.

That has come to be regarded as the ‘gold standard’ of surface temperature records.