Guest essay by Johannes Herbst
There is a much discussed graph in the blogosphere from ‘Tamino’ (Grant Foster), which aims to prove that there is no delay or pause or decline in global warming.
He states: Twelve of sixteen were hotter than expected even according to the still-warming prediction, and all sixteen were above the no-warming prediction:
Let’s get a larger picture:
- We see the red HADCRUT4 graph, coming downwards a bit from 1960 to 1975, and inclining steeper beyond 2000, with a slight drop of about the last 10 years.
- We see a blue trend, rising at the alarming rate of 0.4°C within only one decade! This was the time when some scientists started to worry about global warming.
- We see the green trend, used by the blogger Tamino in the first graphic, rising less than 0.1°C per decade.
- Below we see the Sunspot Numbers, pulsing in a frequency of about 11 years. Comparing it with the red temperature graph, we see the same pattern of 11 years pulsing. It shows clear evidence that temperature is linked to the sunspot activity.
Tamino started his trend at high sun activity and it stopped at low activity. Therefore the weak increase during 18 years.
Which leads us to the question: How long should a time be for observing climate change? If we look at the sunspot activity and the clear pattern it produces in the temperature graph, the answer is: 11 years or a multiple of it.
Or we can measure from any point of:
·high sun activity to one of the following
·low sun activity to one of the following
·rising sun activity to one of the following
·declining sun activity to one of the following
to eliminate the pattern of sunspot numbers.
Let’s try it out:
The last point of observation of the trend is between 2003 and 2014, about 2008. But even here we can see the trend has changed.
We do not know about the future. An downward trend seems possible, but a sharp rise is predicted from some others, which would destroy our musings so far.
Just being curious: How would the graph look with satellite data? Let’s check RSS.
Really interesting. The top of both graph appears to be at 2003 or 2004. HADCRUT4 shows a 0.05°C decline, RSS a 0.1°C per decade.
A simple way for smoothing a curve
There is a more simple way for averaging patterns (like the influence of sunspots). I added a 132 months average (11 years). This means at every spot of the graph all neighboring data (5.5 years to the left and 5.5 years to the right) are averaged. This also means that the graph will stop 5.5 years from the beginning or the end. And voila, the curve is the same as with our method in the previous post to measure at the same slope of a pattern.
As I said before the top of the curve is about 2003, and our last point of observation of a 11 years pattern is 2008. From 2008 to 2003 is only 5 years. This downtrend, even averaged, is somehow too short for a long time forecast. But anyway, the sharp acceleration of the the 1975-2000 period has stopped and the warming even halted – for the moment.
Note: I gave the running average graph (pale lilac) an offset of 0.2°C to get it out of the mess of all the trend lines.
If Tamino would have smoothed the 11years sun influence of the temperature graph before plotting the trend like done here at WFT, his green trend would be would be the same incline like the blue 33 year trend:
Even smoother
Having learned how to double and triple smooth a curve, I tried it as well on this graph:
We learned from Judith Curry’s Blog that on the top of a single smoothed curve a trough appears. So the dent at 2004 seems to be the center of the 132 month’s smoothed wave. I double smoothed the curve and reached 2004 as well, now eliminating the dent.
Note: Each smoothing cuts away the end of the graph by half of the smoothing span. So with every smoothing the curve gets shorter. But even the not visible data are already included in the visible curve.
According to the data, after removing all the “noise” (especially the 11 year’s sun activity cycle) 2004 was the very top of the 60 years sine wave and we are progressing downwards now for 10 years.
If you are not aware about the 60 years cycle, I just have used HADCRUT4 and smoothed the 11 years sunspot activity, which influences the temperature in a significant way.
We can clearly see the tops and bottoms of the wave at about 1880, 1910, 1940, 1970, and 2000. If this pattern repeats, the we will have 20 more years going down – more or less steep. About ten years of the 30 year down slope are already gone.
One more pattern
There is also a double bump visible at the downward slopes of about 10/10 years up and down. By looking closer you will see a hunch of it even at the upward slope. If we are now at the beginning of the downward slope – which could last 30 years – we could experience these bumps as well.
Going back further
Unfortunately we have no global temperature records before 1850. But we have one from a single station in Germany. The Hohenpeissenberg in Bavaria, not influenced from ocean winds or towns.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Temperaturreihe_Hoher_Pei%C3%9Fenberg.PNG
Sure, it’s only one single station, but the measurements were continuously with no pause, and we can get somehow an idea by looking at the whole picture. Not in terms of 100% perfection, but just seeing the trends. The global climate surely had it’s influence here as well.
What we see is a short upward trend of about ten years, a downward slope of 100 years of about 1°C, an upward trend for another 100 years, and about 10 years going slightly down. Looks like an about 200 years wave. We can’t see far at both sides of the curve, but if this Pattern is repeating, this would only mean: We are now on the downward slope. Possibly for the next hundred years, if there is nothing additional at work.
The article of Greg Goodman about mean smoothers can be read here:
Data corruption by running mean ‘smoothers’
==================================
Johannes Herbst writes at: http://klimawandler.blogspot.de/
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 9:45 am
Indeed, which is what I’ve been saying all along. So when you said :
“…. thus the humble TSI is a good shorthand for the energy received. ”
‘every second’ being understood as well as explicitly stated several times, I was fundamentally correct. You seem to agree with that, although you try to wiggle out of the box you put yourself in.
So now we are agreed that TSI [and it’s SSN proxy] are POWER terms, there would be no reason to expect surface temps [ a clumsy proxy for heat content ] to correlate directly with TSI.
Thus lack of such direct correlation is not an argument for refuting the presence of an effect unless we make some undeclared assumptions about the system response,
Which is where we were about a day and a half ago.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 9:57 am
So now we are agreed that TSI [and it’s SSN proxy] are POWER terms, there would be no reason to expect surface temps [ a clumsy proxy for heat content ] to correlate directly with TSI.
As TSI is a measure of the energy we receive per second there are lots of good reasons to believe that surface temps [heat content] should correlate with that amount of energy going into the system every second.
Thus lack of such direct correlation is not an argument for refuting the presence of an effect unless we make some undeclared assumptions about the system response,
You make some undeclared assumptions about the system response when you claim that in spite of no correlation there still is an effect. And that is where we were and probably will still be going forward.
LS says
No, not mainly. The variation of TSI measured in Watt/M^2 is much larger than that of EUV in the same unit.
Henry says
the unit in W/m2 does not matter
The extra E-UV produces more ozone /peroxides/nitric oxides
which deflect more irradiation to space in stead of to earth (into the oceans)
HenryP says:
February 9, 2014 at 10:10 am
the unit in W/m2 does not matter
So you agree that you were wrong when you said that the variation in TSI has to do with EUV:
HenryP says:
February 9, 2014 at 9:31 am
there is a variation within TSI mainly to do with the E-UV
That is all.
HenryP says:
February 9, 2014 at 9:31 am
there is a variation within TSI mainly to do with the E-UV
What you meant to say was that the EUV varies with the sunspot number, so no reason to drag TSI into it in this regard.
lsvalgaard says:
February 9, 2014 at 10:05 am
“As TSI is a measure of the energy we receive per second there are lots of good reasons to believe that surface temps [heat content] should correlate with that amount of energy going into the system every second.”
So, when you put a pot of cold water on the stove to boil, it should start boiling right away?
“You make some undeclared assumptions about the system response when you claim that in spite of no correlation there still is an effect.”
Assumption of time lag and other diffusion dynamics are reasonable assumptions, and should be the default position from which to start.
HenryP, clouds do much more reflection than ozone and don’t need to be “seeded” by anything to do that job. But first things first. The null hypothesis has not been rejected by you. To reject it, regardless of your replacement theory, you must show that known intrinsic atmospheric/oceanic teleconnections that drive weather pattern changes (IE climate change) under short term and long term time spans does not observationally match and offers weak or no mechanistic explanations. Can you refute the null hypothesis without referring to your solar suggestion? My money would be on “no”.
Bart says:
February 9, 2014 at 10:29 am
So, when you put a pot of cold water on the stove to boil, it should start boiling right away?
I think you will have a hard time making that idea stick, but if you turn the heat on for a minute, off for minute, on for a minute, off for a minute, ad infinitum, and after a while measure the temperature every 5 seconds you will find that there is a one-minute variation of that temperature.
Assumption of time lag and other diffusion dynamics are reasonable assumptions, and should be the default position from which to start.
As long as the assumptions are not stated explicitly there is nothing to start from.
If solar enthusiasts are heralding their replacement theory as being right, I will throw out a specific challenge they should be able to easily handle. Refute intrinsic parameters in this article. Show me where their argument is weak.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.1204/pdf
lsvalgaard says: “You make some undeclared assumptions about the system response when you claim that in spite of no correlation there still is an effect. ”
I’m going the apply the Willis principal . If you want to criticise something I wrote , quote my words not your paraphrasing of what you chose to read into them.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 10:51 am
I’m going the apply the Willis principal . If you want to criticise something I wrote , quote my words not your paraphrasing of what you chose to read into them.
I am not criticizing what you wrote, I am explaining in terms you might understand [by using words from your comment] how your ‘argument’ cuts both ways.
“I think you will have a hard time making that idea stick, but if you turn the heat on for a minute, off for minute, on for a minute, off for a minute, ad infinitum, and after a while measure the temperature every 5 seconds you will find that there is a one-minute variation of that temperature.”
1. OK, now would you expect that variation to be in phase with the switching of the heat source , or lagged?
2. If you cut the heat definitively, would you expect the temperature to drop to the temperature before heating : straight away, after one minute or after some considerably longer period that depended on the volume of water?
“you claim that in spite of no correlation there still is an effect. ” Quotation please.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:03 am
“you claim that in spite of no correlation there still is an effect. ” Quotation please.
Quote: “lack of such direct correlation is not an argument for refuting the presence of an effect.”
Granted that the piling on of negatives [lack, not, refuting, unless] makes it hard to parse, but you seem to be saying that if there is no correlation there could still be an effect, that the lack of said correlation does not mean that there is no effect. That you say this implies [to me] that you believe there is an effect, otherwise your comment makes little sense, but you can clarify what you mean, if possible.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:01 am
1. OK, now would you expect that variation to be in phase with the switching of the heat source , or lagged?
I expect that the moment I turn of the heat, the pot will begin to cool [no lag], and the moment I turn the heat back on, the pot will begin to warm.
2. If you cut the heat definitively,
Does not apply as for the pot analogy to make sense it must match the atmosphere heated by the Sun for billions of years in the past and for billions of years in the future.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:03 am
Your argument is sound. You do not need to convince Leif, even if you could, and even if you did, he would never admit it.
Leif is not expert in frequency domain analysis, and his points on that front are meaningless. Best to just walk away.
Bart says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:32 am
Leif is not expert in frequency domain analysis
I am, on the other hand, an expert in the physics of the Sun and the Earth and Solar-Terrestrial Relationships.
Best to just walk away.
That might, indeed, be better for this whole thread.
lsvalgaard says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:36 am
“I am, on the other hand, an expert in the physics of the Sun and the Earth and Solar-Terrestrial Relationships.”
And, when you opine on topics within your expertise, I pay attention. When you go off on tangents into areas where you are clearly not exceptionally qualified, not so much. Your dispute with Greg Goodman, who is well qualified within his area of expertise, is one such instance.
Quote: “lack of such direct correlation is not an argument for refuting the presence of an effect.”
OK so you’ve now realised what I did say was not the same as you reported. It’s not “piling on” , it’s mathematical logic. Lack of correlation is not a sufficient condition to preclude the presence of an effect.
1. The rise will likely be close to 1-exp and the cooling will be like exp decay. In the conditions of a large mass and little losses it will be nearly a triangular ramp. That will mean the response is 90 degrees out of phase with the timing of the heating cycle. Will losses there will be a phase lag of less the 90.
And I’m sure professor that you already know why and don’t need to waste my time explaining. It’s because it is the _integral_ of heat input. In the lossy case an exponentially weighted integral.
2. If you cut the heat definitively,
Does not apply as for the pot analogy to make sense it must match the atmosphere heated by the Sun for billions of years in the past and for billions of years in the future.
OK so you want your pot to be oscillating around a dynamic equilibrium state. That’s fine.
So let’s modify (2) into cutting the heat to 1/3 the power with the same duty cycle. Would you expect it to establish a new dynamic equilibrium level : straight away; after one cycle or after some period of time that depended upon the mass of water in the pot. ?
Bart says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:48 am
Your dispute with Greg Goodman, who is well qualified within his area of expertise, is one such instance.
As with you, to a guy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The issue is whether his [or yours] expertise is applicable to the system at hand. And it clearly is not.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:49 am
Lack of correlation is not a sufficient condition to preclude the presence of an effect.
You are [according to Bart] an expert of cause and effect. I did not paraphrase you, but used words you might understand to explain that lack of correlation is not indicative of an effect [effect being defined as an observable being correlated]. I would rather put it like this: correlation is a necessary condition for an effect, but is not sufficient for a causal effect.
That will mean the response is 90 degrees out of phase with the timing of the heating cycle.
I think you have never tried to heat a pot. When heating stops, warming stops and cooling starts. When heating starts, cooling stops and warming starts again. There is no lag. The obvious assumption [and one that likely make the analogy meaningless] is that the pot in very thin in the vertical direction.
2. If you cut the heat definitively,
Does not apply as for the pot analogy to make sense it must match the atmosphere heated by the Sun for billions of years in the past and for billions of years in the future.
Gods, I don’t know if I want to put my nose in the middle of this, but since a lot of this is nit-picking perhaps I can escape with just pointing it out or trying to make a statement everybody can agree on.
a) The Earth is an open system, in approximate thermodynamic balance — not equilibrium — between a hot sun and cold outer space.
b) TSI is a measure of the power received from the sun. In any sort of quasi-equilibrium state, power in from the sun is balanced by power lost to outer space, and naively the rate of power loss to outer space should be monotonically related to the temperature. However, the system is really never in that sort of equilibrium, which is why temperatures actually countervary with actual top of atmosphere insolation, which is the relevant power (variation in the solar constant being an order of magnitude smaller, IIRC).
c) The Earth can hardly be respresented by a simple linear (e.g. capacitance) model — a single layer model like that presented in Grant Petty’s book. Or rather, it can, but if it is the agreement between the model and reality is going to be extremely poor. The effects of noise and internal variability are at least commensurate historically with any systematic variability due to changes in TSI if not one or more or orders of magnitude greater. True, integration over time can turn a small change into a large temperature difference but only in a way that depends on many, many negected details of the model system.
d) Comparison with things like boiling water on a stove or heating a house in winter both are and are not relevant. In order to determine the time constants of any sort of variation one has to have a knowledge of things like heat capacity, whether or not the variation in input energy alters convective patterns discretely — even the water on the stove can have nonlinear transitional behavior that is counterintuitive when one changes the driving temperature difference. Then there is latent heat and heat capacity, where the temperature becomes more or less constant independent of short-timescale variation of the heat source once it is boiling. It doesn’t do anyone any service to oversimplify this to make a point, either way.
None of this is attempting to weigh in on whether or not solar activity is a good proxy for climate. I think Lief’s remarks there are already pretty much on the money, and quibbling over TSI being energy or power is only relevant if one can somehow show that the forcing involved (either way) is sufficient to explain some gross feature of climate evolution. By itself there is nothing like a convincing correlation between solar state and climate, but solar state might be a co-factor in more complex processes. Might be being the important phrase here, with the burden of proof very much on anyone wishing to assert that it is.
Is that fair enough?
rgb
rgbatduke says:
February 9, 2014 at 12:23 pm
“The Earth can hardly be respresented by a simple linear (e.g. capacitance) model…”
Probably, but it is a useful analogy nevertheless to make qualitative assessment of what is possible.
“Might be being the important phrase here, with the burden of proof very much on anyone wishing to assert that it is.”
The burden of proof is on the other side. The bottom line is that failing to find a direct 0th order correlation between temperature and TSI does not establish that there is no cause and effect relationship.
I could add to (1) that with a very small mass and large losses the temperature would rapidly reach a maximum after each change in heat power input and the phase lag would be small but non zero. That is similar to the 0.5g of Al example I used earlier.
In this new case there would be a strong correlation. In the case of the large mass and triangular form and 90 degree phase lag, the correlation would be near zero.
However, in the latter case dT/dt would be near to a square wave and would be nearly in phase with the power cycle and show strong correlation.
The more general situation, in between the two extremes, will be intermediate responses with varying degrees of correlation to both the power input and its integral. and various phase lags.
So to relate this to TSI, the expected response time and phase lag depends upon the heat capacity of the “pot” . In reality there will be several such reservoirs with different connectivity. hence different time constants and complicated by feedbacks possibly more complex than the radiative and evaporative losses from the pot.
Then there’s the question of the correlation being destroyed by a near frequency (like the 9.x year cycle) even if there is a direct SSN in-phase signal.
In conclusion:
So the absence of direct correlation result is not much help since it does not preclude a large capacity system with a slow response approaching quadrature with the driver or the correlation being masked by other variables.
Which is why I said:
Quote: “lack of such direct correlation is not an argument for refuting the presence of an effect.”
Why it takes over a day to explain basics like that to professor of solar physics is just another of those things to “reflect on” , I guess.
RGB, thanks for the input.
Yes its complicated. A clear correlation would be convincing but lack of one is not sufficient to be convincing evidence of a negative.