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’
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Johannes Herbst writes at: http://klimawandler.blogspot.de/
In terms of TOA an imbalance of power measurements needs to be integrated over time to produce an _energy_ imbalance. And that is what would lead to a change in temperature.
I don’t think it is knit picking (and was not intended to be ) to use the correct terms in science.
Differential calculus probably would not exist if they were interchangeable.
Adding to what
rgbatduke says at:
February 9, 2014 at 12:23 pm (speaking to the readers at large, but most specifically to)
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:49 am (as he continues his ‘discussion” with)
lsvalgaard says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:36 am (and several other replies above)
Both of you are correct. Please continue, but note that you both must address the difference between:
A (possible) symptom of heat (is the number of sunspots actually related to the levels of TSI being received here on earth), or are sunspots only a (in phase/out-of-phase/in-a-different-phase-completely) symptom of whatever solar currents/fields/cycles are (perhaps) also changing TSI over time,
or sunspots not affecting TSI over time? (The latter appears to be Leif’s position.)
Lief’s earlier statements are that TSI IS directly related to solar fusion levels, but that those 10^36 fusion events creating today’s “total heat output” from the sun happened many hundreds of thousands of years past, and thus, whatever changes in TSI are measured on a daily/weekly/monthly basis have been blended over those tens of thousands of years, and are thus NOT proportional to the nbr of sunspots being observed on a day-to-day basis.
To illustrate using your earlier example up-thread of the the water pot being heated by a cycling on-off heater switch. If that switch on-off cycle is changing heat inputs substantially below the thermal capacity of the water+pot+heating coil thermal mass, you can never measure the theoretical “change” in temperature of the water by a thermometer in the water. Further, if you used a IR thermometer “capable of “instantaneous” detecting the change in the temperature of the pot outside the water (and much closer to the change in the heat input to the coil) you’d STILL never be able to detect the change in heat input. The coil would change temperature in close relation to the electric on-off current, but it too would have a distinct thermal lag, and would “never” cool down to room temperature in any realistic case. Further, if the water were changing state, neither the pot nor the water would change temperature: both would stay proportional to 100 C (212 F), NOT to the changing (but hotter) electric coil below the pot.
So, who is “right”? Well, both of you. At different times of the month.
Look at real-world thermal delays:
During a solar eclipse, the air temperature drops within minutes of the loss of sunlit heating. That IS the actual thermal lag. Of air, at one spot.
But, over a day’s times, the earth’s overall air temperature lags sunlight peak about 2 hours in the afternoon since the entire earth surface at that spot holds heat, and releases heat far slower than does air.
The coldest part of the day, however, is NOT 2 hours after sunset, but about 2 hours before sunrise. Again, NOT air-delay, not surface heat up delay either.
But, over a year’s time, the coldest months (Northern hemisphere) are late January – early February, two months after the minimum light is received in late December. The hottest months are July-August, two months after the solar maximum.
For some reason – yet unknown – the earth’s climate seems to show a 1000 year cycle, a 200 year cycle, and a shorter 60-68 year cycle all on top of each other. Do any one (or all of them?) relate to any solar cycle? Nothing seems obvious at this point, but, then again, which solar fusion or solar current/magnetic cyclical change is the “proper” one affecting the earth’s temperature 2000-2015?
Thus, you need to use any and all of these delays to make your points. Not a mythical pot on a mythical stove.
Bart says:
February 9, 2014 at 12:29 pm
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.
Correlation is a necessary but not sufficient for causal relationship. If the cause does not give rise to an effect that is observed, then there is no relationship.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 12:30 pm
Why it takes over a day to explain basics like that
Because your ideas do not hold. You are arguing that if I put my finger in hot water and I find that it is too hot [my finger warms up] causing me to take my finger out of the water, my finger would still continue to warm up.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 12:36 pm
I don’t think it is nitpicking (and was not intended to be ) to use the correct terms in science.
I have tried to make you do that for some time now. TSI is a measure of the energy we put into the system every second.
RACookPE1978 says:
February 9, 2014 at 12:41 pm
Leif’s earlier statements are that TSI IS directly related to solar fusion levels, but that fusion creating today’s “total heat output” from the sun happened many hundreds of thousands of years past, and thus, whatever changes in TSI are measured on a daily/weekly/monthly basis have been blended over those tens of thousands of years, and are thus NOT proportional to the nbr of sunspots being observed on a day-to-day basis.
This is correct, but on top of that very steady energy flux there is a tiny [much smaller than 1 percent] variation in TSI caused by magnetic effects on the surface [more magnetism = more energy output] and that variation is proportional to the number of sunspots.
lsvalgaard says:
February 9, 2014 at 12:42 pm
Your entire post here should be embarrassing to you, but it won’t be. Not worth my time.
Bart says:
February 9, 2014 at 12:51 pm
Your entire post here should be embarrassing to you, but it won’t be. Not worth my time.
Perhaps it would be worth your time to learn something about energy inputs to systems [and pots]:
http://www.ahsd.org/science/siwak/chem1H/Chapter5/ChemQuest5Answers.pdf
It is elementary enough that it should not cause you problems.
rgbatduke says:
February 9, 2014 at 12:23 pm
Thank you for your comment. It is unfortunate as we nit-pick analogies and similes and simple differences, that each of the nits we are attempting to “analice” move around and multiply so quickly in so many different directions. 8<)
Certainly a single capacitor model is dead wrong and very misleading.
Rather, would we not have to use a nested capacitor model, each capacitor in the nest charging or discharging proportional to the difference in charge (temperature) to its neighbors, charging and discharging at different rates through different resistors in each connection in and out of each node, charging and discharging at different rates proportional to the contact area, contact method, weight and thermal capacity of each surface on earth?
Sure the top-of-atmosphere heat input would vary near-instantaneously as TOA varies over the year from 1314 up to 1408 watts/m^2, but every measured response from there until doomsday would have a different response time. Air temperature, water temperature (at the equator, half-way up the coastal currents, at the top of the Gulf Stream or Japanese current, down the west coast, across the pacific, around the Antarctic continent …. Then further delays down into the deep currents at the top of water, deep beneath, then in the rising/mixing zones.)
Throw in land delays, sea ice and land ice, and lake water delays, inland sea delays (Mediterranean for example).
RGB : “… 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.”
I’ve already stated I would not chose a land-sea hybrid dataset for this but since that is what was under discussion I linked the power spectrum of hadcrut4:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=121
In view of the attenuation of dT/dt the circa 21 signal looks quite strong.
Greg says:
February 8, 2014 at 6:40 pm
So what? The Saros cycle is not 18.631 years in any case … according to NASA, its 18 years, 10.82 days, or 18.03 years, so you can toss out your whole equation …
w.
PS—You’ve never provided any citation for your claim that there is an “interference frequency” at the average of the frequencies of two signals …
LS: “I have tried to make you do that for some time now. TSI is a measure of the energy we put into the system every second.”
Yes and we have a “shortcut” for that, the correct term is …. power.
Willis: PS—You’ve never provided any citation for your claim that there is an “interference frequency” at the average of the frequencies of two signals …
I did provide you with a link to the trig and added it to the “triplets” page as a ref.
Addition of two cosines is mathematically INDENTICAL to a modulation. The modulation freq is half the difference and the “modulee” or “carrier” in radio terminology is half the sum ( AKA the average).
“…so you can toss out your whole equation …”
The Day paper you linked to above uses 18.6 as did Keeling and Whorf. Perhaps you could explain where they are going wrong.
Bart says:
February 9, 2014 at 12:29 pm
So … you say that if Greg claims that the sun is affecting the climate, the burden of proof is on Leif to show that it DOESN’T affect the climate?
Sorry, but that’s blaming the victim … if Greg wants to assert that the sun affects the climate, he has to provide a) a hypothesis, and b) the evidence to back it up. So far he’s done neither. Waving his hands at various numbers and beat frequencies doesn’t do it. The burden is on Greg to provide such a hypothesis and such data.
And of course, once Greg does actually come up with a hypothesis and supporting data, as you point out, THEN it will be up to us to falsify it … but since to date he has not proposed such a hypothesis, there’s no burden on anyone.
If he does so, of course, at that point you would be 100% correct that “failing to find a direct 0th order correlation between temperature and TSI does not establish that there is no cause and effect relationship.”
However, the fact that in general scientists have failed to find it ANY statistically significant relationship of ANY kind between TSI and temperature, or between sunspots and temperature, despite people searching for hundreds of years to try to find one, certainly should give you and Greg pause in your certainty …
w.
Seriously Willis, before getting so strident and accusative, try reading up a bit. I’ve given a couple pointers and I’m sure you find your way to wikipedia without my help.
There’s plenty to keep you entertained if you lookup “amplitude modulation” “sidebands” and in acoustics “beats” is the same thing rectified. This is not some kind fo Tallbloke homespun numerology, it’s basic physics.
Greg Goodman says:February 9, 2014 at 1:46 pm
You’re asking the wrong guy. I pointed you to the NASA source of the data, which they give to the nearest hour … and the NASA source shows exactly how it is calculated. Perhaps you could explain to us where they are going wrong …
w.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 1:39 pm
LS: “I have tried to make you do that for some time now. TSI is a measure of the energy we put into the system every second.”
Yes and we have a “shortcut” for that, the correct term is …. power.
What is important is to use the term ‘energy’ per unit time and to think in terms of energy in and energy out, not ‘power in’ and ‘power out’. The correct term in thermodynamics is ‘energy’, e.g. http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/biobookener1.html for the correctness-challenged.
Leif:
Whilst I accept that TSI is a measure of the incoming power TOA generically, the power received by a spot on Earth is not that simple.
The true ‘incoming power’ on almost all days (other than the Equinox and the currently directly under the Sun points) is not a simple ‘half wave rectified sine wave’. It is some form of ‘rectified sine wave with a DC offset’.
This does make the calculation somewhat more complicated.
If we assume that (clear sky throughout the 24 hours) the ‘drain’ to cold is a descending curve then the much used Min + Max / 2 = Average is along way from true as well (other again than at the Equinox, etc.).
Willis: ” if Greg wants to assert that the sun affects the climate”
It’s not an “assertion” it pretty bleeding obvious that “the sun affects the climate” it where all the energy comes from. If you want to put words in my mouth , try to get them right.
I’ve said here and in the MSL thread that I think the effect is small if there but that the usual simplistic tests are not sufficient to prove there is not a link. Since most people, even our esteemed professor seem incapable of grasping the point, there are a lot of possibly false negatives flying around.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=759
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=121
There is certainly some signals that that could be solar periodicities and a strong 9.x that would cause a phase crisis in SSN vs SST and screw up simplistic attempts at correlation testing.
If others could discuss the scientific questions rather then belligerently trying cover up early gaffs and their ignorance by being pigheaded and inflammatory, more progress could be made on understanding the data and much time and effort saved.
Have you worked out how to do a lagged correlation (aka autocorrelation function) plot in R yet?
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 1:43 pm
Sorry, I must have missed your link to the trig, perhaps you could post it again. Remember that I asked for a citation to something other than your own work.
Restating it doesn’t help, it still makes no sense. You haven’t even defined a “modulation”, except to say that modulation is defined as the addition of two cosines, which doesn’t help. That’s why I asked for a citation to something not written by you, as your claims and your terminology are sometimes less than clear.
Thanks,
w.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 2:24 pm
I’ve known how to use the R acf() function for a few years now … what’s your point?
w.
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 2:21 pm
It’s not an “assertion” it pretty bleeding obvious that “the sun affects the climate” it where all the energy comes from.
Indeed, or perhaps you mean ‘power’…
Anyway, there is a solar TSI-related effect of the order of 0.1 degrees and with no measurable lag, but the real issue is whether the Sun is a MAJOR driver of climate on the timescale of centuries and it is not, e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/Nagoya-Lean-2012.pdf
BTW, note slide 3 showing the Earth’s Energy Budget [not power] labelled with W/m2
“Restating it doesn’t help, it still makes no sense.”
go back to my triplets article discussed above. NUSW site gives you pics. The maths link provided the idenity, I explain in some detail how it works. So does WP. I’ve given you search terms….. What more do you wnat, do I have to pop over for a beer and read it to you? come on.
Looking at the Indian Ocean it seems that its just 18.6 / 2 , no sign of 8.85 mixing in . Not much evidence of solar periods there, which goes along with the idea of tropics being resistant to changes in insolation.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=774
Greg Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 1:57 pm
You say that “modulation” is INDENTICAL [sic] to the addition of two cosines.
Wikipedia, on the other hand, confirms what I thought, which is that amplitude modulation is done by an equation of the form (1 + cos(signal)) * cos(carrier).
So all your handwaving doesn’t help. I have a ham radio licence, Greg, I’m not ignorant of AM or sidebands … I’m still waiting for your link to someone’s explanation of how you get an “interference pattern” with a frequency that is the average of the two frequencies being combined.
And as a musician, I use acoustic beat frequencies to tune my guitar, and I know very well how to calculate them … and they do NOT have the frequency of the average of the two underlying frequencies as you claim above when you average 8.85 and 9.3.
Instead, the beat frequency is the DIFFERENCE, not the average, of the underlying frequencies.
w.
“Anyway, there is a solar TSI-related effect of the order of 0.1 degrees and with no measurable lag”
I would expect a fast settling effect on shallow water. It’s like the small capacity part of the pot analogy. That would have minimal lag and thus equilibrate fast enough to be a direct correlation to power. That does not preclude a longer response in deeper reservoirs that would have significant lag, dependant on the time constant it may correlate better with integral, ie accumulated energy. That is where latter half 20th high activity could still be with us.
That is the point I was trying to make originally, global SST may take a while to drop back to 1900 levels even if get two low cycles, having been pumped up for the last 50 years. The idea of the 0.1 degree superficial effect may not be all there is. It really is too simplistic to expect one straight, fast resolving signal to tell the whole storey.
With respect to RGB’s comments, yes one needs to be careful how far one pushes the resistor-capacitor type analogies.