Guest essay by H. Luedecke and C.O.Weiss
We reported recently about our publication [1] which shows that during the last centuries all climate changes were caused by periodic ( i.e. natural ) processes. Non-periodic processes like a warming through the monotonic increase of CO2 in the atmosphere could cause at most 0.1° to 0.2° warming for a doubling of the CO2 content, as it is expected for 2100, within the uncertainty of the analysis.
We find that 2 cycles of periods 200+ years and ~65 years determine practically completely the climate changes. All other cycles are weaker and non-periodic processes play no significant role. ( See Fig. 4 )
The ~65 year cycle is the well-known, much studied, and well understood “Atlantic/Pacific oscillation” ( AMO/PDO ). It can be traced back for 1400 years. The AMO/PDO has no external forcing it is “intrinsic dynamics”, an “oscillator”.
Although the spectral analysis of the historical instrumental temperature measurements [1] show a strong 200+ year period, it cannot be inferred from these with certainty, since only 240 years of measurement data are available. However, the temperatures obtained from the Spannagel stalagmite show this periodicity as the strongest, by far, climate variation since about 1100 AD.
The existence of this 200+ year periodicity has none the less been questioned, doubting the reliability of temperature determinations from stalagmites. ( Even though the temperatures from the Spannagel stalagmite agree well with the temperatures derived from North Atlantic sedimentation; and even though the solar “de Vries cycle”, which has this period length and agrees in phase, is known for a long time as essential factor determining the global climate. )
A perfect confirmation for the existence and the dominant influence of the 200+ year cycle, as found by us [1] and with it the definite proof of absence of CO2 influence on the climate, is now provided by a recent paper [2] which analyses solar activities for periodic processes.
Fig. 1 Spectrum of solar activity showing the 208 year period as the strongest climate variation
The spectrum Fig. 1 ( Fig. 1d of [2] ) shows clearly a 208 year period as the strongest variation of the solar activity.
Fig. 2 ( Fig. 4 of [2] ) gives the solar activity of the past until today, as well as the prediction for the coming 500 years. ( This prediction is considered possible due to the ( multi-) periodic character of the activity. )
Fig. 2 Solar activity from 1650 to present ( measurement, solid line ) and prediction for the coming 500 years ( light gray: prediction from spectrum, dark gray: prediction from wavelet analysis ). Letters M,D,G denote the historical global temperature minima: Maunder, Dalton, Gleissberg
The solar activity agrees well with the terrestrial climate. It shows, in particular, clearly all historic temperature minima. Thus the future temperatures can be predicted from the activities – as far as they are determined by the sun ( the AMO/PDO is not determined by the sun ).
The 200+ year period found here [2], as it is found by us [1] is presently at its maximum. Through its influence the temperature will decrease until 2100 to a value like the one of the last “little ice age” 1870.
The wavelet analysis of the solar activity Fig. 3 ( Fig. 1b of [2] ) has interesting detail. In spite of its limited resolution it shows ( as our analysis of the Spannagel stalagmite did ) that the 200+ year cycle set in about 1000 years ago. This oscillation appears, according to Fig. 3, regularly all 2500 years. ( The causes for this latter 2500 year periodicity are probably ununderstood at present.)
Fig. 3 Wavelet analysis ( showing which oscillations were active at which time ) of solar activity. The dominant oscillations (periods between 125 years and 250 years) are clearly recognizable and recurring every 2500 years
Summarising: the analysis of solar activity proves the existence and the strength of the 200+ year periodicity which we found from historical temperature measurements, as well as from the Spannagel stalagmite data. This 200+ year cycle is apparently the one known as “de Vries cycle”.
This solar “de Vries cycle” together with the AMO/PDO determine practically completely the global climate of the past ( Fig. 4 ). This rules out any significant influence of CO2 on the climate. The latter is not surprising in view of the small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and its weak infrared absorption cross section (also in view of the various proves of NEGATIVE water feedback ).
Fig. 4 ( Fig. 6 of [1] ) Measured temperatures ( black ) and constructed from the strongest 6 Fourier components ( red ). The Fourier analysis yields the 200+ year cycle for the main excursion: the drop of temperature from 1780 to 1870 and its subsequent rise to the present. This cycle was confirmed by the stalagmite data [1] and is again now confirmed by the solar activity [2] . One can see that the temperature is determined essentially by the 200+ year cycle superimposed with the 65 year cycle.
Fig. 5 Predicted global temperature of “official” models ( red ) and real ( measured ) global temperature ( green ), arbitrarily adjusted to agree at 1980. Source: Met Office
The present “stagnation” of global temperature ( Fig. 5 ) is essentially due to the AMO/PDO: the solar de Vries cycle is presently at its maximum, around which it changes negligibly. The AMO/PDO is presently beyond its maximum, corresponding to the small decrease of global temperature. Its next minimum will be 2035. Due to the de Vries cycle the global temperature will drop until 2100 to a value corresponding to the “little ice age” of 1870.
One notes that in Fig.5 the curves were adjusted to agree at 1980. Correctly they should agree for preindustrial times. Such correct adjustment would probably increase the discrepancy between models and reality further substantially.
One may note, that the stronger temperature increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, which is “officially” argued to prove warming by CO2 is essentially due to the AMO/PDO.
References:
[1] Multi-periodic climate dynamics: spectral analysis of long-term instrumental and proxy temperature records. H.Luedecke, A. Hempelmann, C.O.Weiss; Clim. Past. 9 (2013) p 447
[2] Prediction of solar activity for the next 500 years. F.Steinhilber, J.Beer; Journ. Geophys. Res.: Space Physics 118 (2013) p 1861
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Note: By publishing this, I offer it for discussion and consideration, I don’t explicitly endorse its methodology or conclusion as I have seen a number of curve fitting and cyclical exercises before that are able to extract cycles and then hindcast fit those cycles. This may be one of those instances, so I urge caution in consideration of the claim. On the plus side, I did find this Nature SR article that shows a 208 year cycle (Seuss cycle) in Indian Monsoon data., and of course we know that there is a 65 year cycle in the AMO as outlined here. – Anthony
Dr N.Page: ” We have every reason to suppose that the next thirty years from about 2000 will be the cooling part of that quasi cycle.”
And what do you estimate the amplitude of that cycle to be ?
Greg Just look at the Forecasts for Global and NH temps at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com . If we cool by about 0.5 by 2035 about half of that would be due to the 60 year cycle and the rest to the 1000 year cycle.
Yes, I had a look at you page. It interesting but I see ~2K in 1000y, that’s about 0.04 by 2035. ~60y amplitude is abou 0.1K , that 0.15K max not 0.5. How do you get there?
Government scientists couldn’t find any warming so the simply manufactured it: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/government-scientists-coudnt-find-any-warming-so-they-simply-manufactured-it/
Greg Look at Fig 6 Global The simplest working hypothesis is that the warming of about 0.5 from 1970-75 until 2003 -5 will simply reverse. I assign about 0.25 to each cycle. As to the 1000 year cycle look at the shape of the curve in Fig three it is quite a sharp peak at 1000 so likely will drop off quickly from 2000. By three thousand I would expect a warm peak but probably slightly cooler than the current peak because of the precession cycle,
“The simplest working hypothesis is that the warming of about 0.5 from 1970-75 until 2003 -5 will simply reverse.”
That seems no more justified than assuming the warming will continue unabated. Many will say that is “the simplest working hypothesis”.
“…quite a sharp peak at 1000 ”
The “sharp” peak is about 200 years wide, not 20.
“I assign about 0.25 to each cycle.”
Amplitude or pk-pk ?
Greg – not at all – we are now on the downslope of both cycle peaks.
No – you’re looking at the moving average peak look at the annual data the peak is about 18 – 20 years . The current “hiatus” is about 16-17. We are due a sharper drop in 3-4 years.
Amplitude.
“I assign about 0.25 to each cycle.”
>> Amplitude or pk-pk ?
“Amplitude.”
How do you arrive at that for the millennial cycle? It’s clearly <2K pk-pk which , as I said, gives 0.04 by 2035..
There does seem to be a temporal coincidence in phase of several cycles around Y1k in that reconstruction and I suspect a similar coincidence of peaks may explain a large amount of the Y2k bump. Whether it is the same combination of peaks and will produce the same drop seems a leap of faith but not necessarily incorrect.
The Christiansen reconstruction seems to be the combination of 17 cycles. The logical step if you want to take that approach is to continue the reconstruction.
There are a series of peaks and troughs in the ice core record but they are far from being regularly spaced, so a purely periodic argument looks weak. It does show that the current peak (sadly missing from your figure 4) is not "unprecedented".
I think there is a degree of Mosh's "finding what you want to find" here but it is not more (or less) speculative than expecting continued rise.
Moderator,
Thank you for clearing that up – I will stay within the set limits in future.
It seems the paper in ref [1] managed to find the original data for the HISPALP project. I have only been able to find the “homogenised” version. Despite claims to the contrary, the original data not longer seems to be readily available
I also note that one of the authors on the homogenisation paper is a certain P. Jones. I suppose it is safe to assume that he threw away the original data once he had processed it, or is still in possession but would rather illegally destroy than let anyone else see it.
The description of the data says that as much as 1K “bias” was removed from the early part of some of the long records. OH DEAR, more cooling the past to ensure the “data” fits the model.
As I found here, hadSST3 removes about 2/3 of the variability from the early part of the ICOADS SST data:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/15/on-the-adjustments-to-the-hadsst3-data-set-2/
So that presumably accounts for the difference in what I was able to get and what is plotted in ref [1].
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=742
Ulric Lyons says:
December 18, 2013 at 7:59 am
“Looking at the AMO at a yearly noise scale it is well apparent that it is warmest when the solar forcing is at its weakest, the same time as there are strong El Nino’s:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Amo_timeseries_1895-2008.svg ”
Your AMO index link, which I’ve seen before, shows the AMO dropping down to average relatively low near the start of the 20th century, followed by rise with it high during the 1930s through 1950s, followed by a downturn with it relatively low in the 1960s-1970s, and then rising again during the 1980s-1990s.
The solar activity record such as http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_Part6_SolarEvidence_files/image023.gif shows solar forcing to also average relatively low near the start of the 20th century, followed by rise with it high during the 1930s through 1950s, followed by a downturn with it relatively low in the 1960s-1970s, and then rising again during the 1980s-1990s.
The preceding is far more so than the opposite. For instance, although there are a few blue noise-like negative spikes of the AMO during the high solar activity 1930s-1950s, overall the AMO is a mountain of nearly pure red (positive, high) in your plot link then.
With that said, the end of a solar cycle can correspond to triggering of an El Nino soon after the ocean heat input of the solar maximum has recently ended, like evidence of a negative feedback backlash temporarily opposing the change (such as the 1997-1998 El Nino which went off during the solar minimum which was at the end of high solar activity cycle 22, with a spike in the AMO then). That timing distinction doesn’t eliminate the overall picture in terms of the pattern in decadal averages but can be seen at annual resolution, amounting to a noteworthy aspect of the climate system (as in effectively a negative feedback with temporary overshoot; one article here once suggested somewhat similar for a major volcanic forcing’s aftermath as well).
The overall trends in the AMO, though, are as can be illustrated by adding some highlights to your plot link in the following while comparing to solar forcing meanwhile:
http://img131.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=23392_sun_amo_122_190lo.jpg
Greg as to uncertainty I say “How confident should one be in these predictions? The pattern method doesn’t lend itself easily to statistical measures. However statistical calculations only provide an apparent rigor for the uninitiated and in relation to the IPCC climate models are entirely misleading because they make no allowance for the structural uncertainties in the model set up.This is where scientific judgment comes in – some people are better at pattern recognition than others. A past record of successful forecasting is a useful but not infallible measure. In this case I am reasonably sure – say 65/35 for about 20 years ahead. Beyond that, inevitably ,certainty must drop.”
The chief uncertainty as far as I’m concerned is the period of the 1000 year cycle which probably floats about from 950 – 1050 as cyclic resonances come and go so the solar peak may be delayed
until 2050. I believe e.g. .Scafetta shows a peak about 2060.
The observation favouring an earlier cooling comes from the unprecedented decline in solar activity and relatively high neutron count near the cycle 24 maximum.
Greg I’m confused by your 2 degree Pk-Pk statement do you mean peak- trough.? From pk – pk on detrended cycles would be very little.
Greg says:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/17/solar-amo-pdo-cycles-combined-reproduce-the-global-climate-of-the-past/#comment-1504570
“15 y runny mean “smoother” has a negative lobe at 1.43*15=10.5 years. Any variation of that period will leak about 20% amplitude through the filter and be INVERTED. ”
plenty of energy in that part of the spectrum, including the anticipated Schwabe cycle.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=745
Having already noted that their DFT was not a valid analysis of the spectrum, it is interesting to note that the power density shown above shows much better agreement with the long periods in the stalactite record.
In particular 32,38 and 73 seem to be almost perfectly matched.
Henry Clark says:
“The overall trends in the AMO, though, are as can be illustrated by adding some highlights to your plot link in the following while comparing to solar forcing meanwhile:
http://img131.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=23392_sun_amo_122_190lo.jpg”
That is a bogus solar chart, solar cycles 12-14 were low, and who says you have the most relevant solar metric anyway? I would be looking at the Ap index.
The strongest solar warming phases last century pushed the AMO far into the negative range. Warming stopped from 1998 and the positive AMO phase returned:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Amo_timeseries_1895-2008.svg
And there would be hysteresis from shifting large volumes of water about that would affect inter-decadal AMO trends, but that has nothing to do with the real time solar forcing.
Ulric Lyons says:
December 19, 2013 at 9:55 am
“That is a bogus solar chart”
That solar plot is from a Soon 2005 paper as shown at http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_Part6_SolarEvidence.htm .
Solar activity being relatively low in the early 20th century compared to later, rising to be high during the 1930s-1950s, dipping during the subsequent global cooling scare, and rising/high during the 1980s-2000s until starting to have somewhat substantial downturn by the 2009-2010 solar minimum and beyond … is a picture both illustrated there and in quite a number of other ways.
That is seen in the history of sunspot counts, solar cycle lengths, cosmic ray counts, etc.
For instance, adding another plot from http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/geomag/image/aassn07.jpg to the prior comparison to the AMO meanwhile gives the following:
http://img180.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=15253_more_sun_amo_122_662lo.jpg
Ulric Lyons says:
December 19, 2013 at 9:55 am
“solar cycles 12-14 were low”
You state that as if such is an argument in favor of your position, but it isn’t. Solar cycles 12 to 14 (which were from 1878 to 1913) are shown in the plots as lower solar activity than later in the 20th century. As the preceding link also shows, the AMO was on average falling meanwhile, fitting what I have been pointing out.
Another plot of AMO history, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Atlantic_Multidecadal_Oscillation.svg from van Oldenborgh et al, shows the AMO as having sometimes lesser values meanwhile than in your link, but something they both have in common is showing the AMO as declining during that relatively low solar forcing time.
Ulric Lyons says:
December 19, 2013 at 9:55 am
“The strongest solar warming phases last century pushed the AMO far into the negative range.”
In contrast to your claim, in reality:
The strongest solar warming periods last century were during the late 1920s through the 1950s (with the AMO rising/high meanwhile) and during the 1980s-1990s (with the AMO rising meanwhile and with it being high by the subsequent maximum of solar cycle 23 afterwards). That is as illustrated by the graphs at
http://img180.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=15253_more_sun_amo_122_662lo.jpg
… along with the references given (and many others).
While the plot of the AMO in your link (which supports my points) ends in 2008, the low 2009-2010 solar minimum and the somewhat weak current solar maximum will be followed likely by a major downturn in solar forcing soon, a coming Grand Minimum. If so, the AMO index (among other temperature indexes including global average temperature itself) will decline later this decade and beyond.
Anyway, your methods of attempting argument are getting worse, as common in internet arguments when someone gets stuck trying to defend or distract from a bad position rather than honestly just admit what was wrong with it.
Henry Clark says
“You state that as if such is an argument in favor of your position, but it isn’t.”
Yes it is, your purple arrow indicates solar activity was higher around 1880:
http://img180.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=15253_more_sun_amo_122_662lo.jpg#
With a low solar cycle 12 it obviously was not higher around 1880, and one of the lowest Ap index episodes in the whole series is at around 1879-1881.
“In contrast to your claim, in reality:
The strongest solar warming periods last century were during the late 1920s through the 1950s (with the AMO rising/high meanwhile) and during the 1980s-1990s…”
You’ll have a hard job showing where the warming through the 1950’s was, as for the warming from 1970 to the late 1990’s, that’s when the AMO was in the negative:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Amo_timeseries_1895-2008.svg
“If so, the AMO index (among other temperature indexes including global average temperature itself) will decline later this decade and beyond.”
No the lower solar activity will give more negative NAO/AO episodes, the resultant jet stream displacement will ensure greater northerly transport of warmer sea water, and more positive AMO conditions will be maintained, just like through the weaker solar cycles 12-14.
“Anyway, your methods of attempting argument are getting worse, as common in internet arguments when someone gets stuck trying to defend or distract from a bad position rather than honestly just admit what was wrong with it.”
Lets see if you can admit your error with your purple arrow then, if not, your insinuations are projections.
For your information: In their explanation of the so-called greenhouse effect Link and Luedecke (2010, http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/uploads/media/Treibhauseffekt_Lue_Li.pdf) claimed that doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would lead to an increase of the Earth’s surface temperature of 1.1 K. In their paper entitled A NEW BASIC ONE-DIMENSIONAL ONE-LAYER MODEL OBTAINS EXCELLENT AGREEMENT WITH THE OBSERVED EARTH TEMPERATURE Link and Luedecke (2011, IJMPC, http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0129183111016361) concluded:
“Our model yields a change in the surface temperature of the Earth of roughly 1.1 K for an additional radiative forcing of 3.7 W/m^2 – caused for instance by a hypothetical doubling of the present CO2 concentration in the atmosphere - which is in good agreement with the appropriate
IPCC value, if no feedback amplification (or attenuation) is considered.”
First of all, the computation of this 1.1 K differs from that of 2010. Second, it is not a model result because the model of Link and Luedecke contained three unknowns, but only two linear independent equations exist. This means that their model is unsolvable. Their “excellent agreement” is based on the fact that Link and Luedecke inverted the value of the emitted infrared radiation of about 396 W/m^2, calculated by Trenberth et al. (2009) , by applying the power law of Stefan and Boltzmann. Thus, Link and Luedecke obtained the result that Trenberth et al. (2009) used as an input.
It should be noticed that Bruce B. Hicks, former Director of the Air Resources Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) stated in a book review two decades ago (Boundary-Layer Meteorol. 1990; 53, 297-302):
“Some papers report on models that are developed, adjusted to fit a set of observations, and then ‘validated’ by comparison against the same data set. As a scientific community, we should urgently work on setting an appropriate punishment for those convicted of this crime.”
Note that the results of Link and Luedecke (2011) illustrated in their Figures 2 and 3 are arbitrarily wrong.