Guest essay by David Archibald
There were two papers published in 2013 that, when considered together, paint a bleak picture of North American climate and agriculture for the rest of the century and beyond. Firstly from the abstract of “Multidecadal to multi-century scale collapses of Northern Hemisphere monsoons over the past millennium”1 by Asmerom et al.:
“Late Holocene climate in western North America was punctuated by periods of extended aridity called megadroughts.” And “Several megadroughts are evident, including a multicentury one, AD 1350–1650, herein referred to as Super Drought, which corresponds to the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. Synchronicity between southwestern North American, Chinese, and West African monsoon precipitation suggests the megadroughts were hemispheric in scale. Northern Hemisphere monsoon strength over the last millennium is positively correlated with Northern Hemisphere temperature and North Atlantic SST.” And “the megadroughts, including the Super Drought, coincide with solar insolation minima, suggesting that solar forcing of sea surface and atmospheric temperatures may generate variations in the strength of Northern Hemisphere monsoons.”
So droughts in North America are coincident with solar insolation minima. We already know of the cause and effect relationship between solar cycle minima and East African rainfall. West African drought has been found to be linked to Atlantic sea surface temperatures2.
With that knowledge, all we need to predict the timing of the next megadrought in North America is a long term solar activity forecast. That was also provided in 2013 by Steinhilber and Beer3. They predict a deep low in solar activity starting straight away and continuing for 150 years. This is Figure 4 from that paper:
Figure 4 from Steinhilber and Beer – Prediction of solar activity on the left axis and total solar irradiance on the right axis. M, D and G refer to the Maunder, Dalton and Gleissberg minima respectively. The lighter grey band is based on FFT (fast Fourier transformation) and the darker grey band is based on WTAR (wavelet decomposition using autoregression). As the paper demonstrates, amplitudes of solar activity are better predicted by the FFT method than by the WTAR method.
In effect, Figure 4 predicts a megadrought for North America from at least 2050 to 2200. Generations of people will experience what a Dalton Minimum is like, all their lives. In the meantime it will get colder and drier. In terms of the effect on agricultural productivity, productivity of corn production in the Corn Belt falls by 10% for each 1°C fall in annual average temperature. The Corn Belt also moves south by 144 km for each 1°C fall in annual average temperature. Soil quality declines to the south of the Corn Belt though so farms won’t be as productive. For example, one hundred years ago Alabama had four million acres planted to cotton. Today only 1.3 million acres are devoted to all agricultural crops. Unable to compete with the Corn Belt as it is now, a lot of acreage in Alabama has reverted to pasture and woodland.
A fall in annual average temperature of 2.0°C might decrease production by 20% and the southward move to poorer soils might decrease production by 10% (purely a guess, but I do have a botany major). What drought might do on top of all that is a 30% fall for a total decrease in production in the range of 50% to 60%. Two big corne states, Illinois and Indiana, had corn production falls of 30% in the 2012 drought year:
The US could then feed 600 million vegetarians instead of the current 1.2 billion vegetarians. Food that we would want to eat will become expensive with wide price swings. That is what these two papers are saying about what the future holds for us.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014).
References
- Asmerom, Y. et al., 2013, “Multidecadal to multi-century scale collapses of Northern Hemisphere monsoons over the past millennium” PNAS vol.110 no. 24 9651-9656
- Shanahan, T.M et al., 2009 “Atlantic Forcing of Persistent Drought in West Africa” Science, Vol. 324 no 5925 pp. 377-380
- Steinhilber, F. and Beer, J., 2013, “Prediction of solar activity for the next 500 years” Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, vol. 118, 1-7
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increase of co2 should increase the yield offsetting the loss from other causes.
we have seen an 11% increase of greening around the world in the most arid regions because of an increase of co2.
Data from the Great Plains of North America suggest that prior to 1500 dust bowl type droughts were the norm rather than once in a century occurrences. The high plains were covered in rolling sand dune fields and the tall grass prairies were short grass and semi arid. Fortunately for us, humans have seemingly adapted or invented and innovated our way through everything thrown at us thus far and since the rate at which we are doing so is increasing exponentially I don’t see us faltering just because of a little drought.
For those who believe in AGW but still have the ability to think and read (very few I fear) I see an
“Oh Sh’t” moment. Burn more stuff!!!
Weak solar cycles are nothing to be alarmed about, we maybe looking at a sequence of lower solar cycles to come (or maybe not), so during this period the thinking caps go on, therefor any climate papers that “Jump the shark” on this issue before the facts are in should be frowned upon severely.
Remember the point that solar physicist Leif Svalgaard made about how this is the weakest solar cycle anyone alive today has ever experienced?
Well, it’s true, and furthermore no one alive today with our level of technology has ever observed and studied such a weak solar cycle. This is new ground and new science. enjoy! 🙂
Exactly in the same areas of increased ionization creates a blockade polar vortex at an altitude of about 23 km.
http://oi57.tinypic.com/30u39e0.jpg
http://oi59.tinypic.com/2qa4tu0.jpg
Archibald’s hypothesis has a 2C drop in north-central US. That’s about a 1C global drop. He compares to Dalton of early 1800s. But Dalton was earlier in LIA recovery of temps. The next half century is an apple to his orange
A global drop of 0.4C would be extreme. A 0.6 drop in Iowa is proportionately reasonable. This would return us to the earlier part of the 20th century.
I am a climate skeptic but I find Archibald’s thesis alarmist and better for sales of his book than for planning.
With CAGW as an example, we should be mindful that arguments to “raise awareness” or “stimulate discussion” are opposed to reasoned consideration. Catastrophic global cooling deserves as much skeptical thinking as catastrophic global warming.
Average counts of neutrons in Oulu exceeds 6300.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/monitor.gif
We feel this in California albeit for different reasons. We are not very dependent on the Monsoon here (in fact Monsoonal moisture is often a negative for our ag community). However the same forces that kill off the Monsoon make the NE Pacific cold, especially off our immediate coast. That is morphine for mid latitude systems in this part of the world.
Interesting, while the MSM hype a short sharp heat event in California, there are two evil fingers of Arctic Air, pincers of doom, into the middle of North America. Some really, really cold temperatures today especially in the Intermountain Region as well as the Great Lakes and Mid South.
It seems you guys are still not getting it.
I can feel (here in Africa) that the sun is sharper/hotter/lighter
It is the weakening solar magnetic fields
http://ice-period.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/sun2013.png
causing cooling by allowing more energetic particles to escape which in turn cause more ozone, peroxide & others to be formed TOA (to protect us) .
More of these substances TOA cause more light to be deflected to space….causing global cooling,
if you can predict what the solar magnetic fields will look like for the next 4 decades you are on your way to finding the truth…
Think of the Hale Nicholson cycle..
Excuse me, I just have to smile at this “food for fuel” stuff. It is true that a significant portion of our corn crop goes for animal feed; however, that is not its only use, and substantial portions are used for ethanol, oil extraction, dextrose production & other industrial uses.
Also, please realize that operators of confined animal feedlot operations (CAFOs) have many options to these feed crops. Cattle are basically walking fermenters and are being fed many waste products including dried chicken crap (poultry litter) with government approval, see: http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G2077
Our rendering industries produce tons of alternative feed materials, including hydrolyzed feather meal, which are high in nutritional value and lower in cost than corn or soybeans: http://www.americanproteins.com/hydrolyzed-meal.htm
Even many industrial waste products end up in our livestock, including waste food products, food processing residues etc. See “Moo Can Chew” about recycling chewing gum wastes in cattle:
http://www.engconf.org/pastconf/9akpre.html
I once testified to the USDA and FDA about the practice of some operations to feed their processing wastewater biosolids into cattle, which is pretty gross because of the chemical contamination aspects (wastewater coagulants and polymers). This violates AAFCO guidelines.
Folks, know your topics.
“This may wake up the CO2 bunch to the fact that models are not scientific proof of anything.”
***
Fat chance.
CRS, DrPH says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:41 am
Excuse me, I just have to smile at this “food for fuel” stuff.
_____________________
Please elaborate. The rest of your post has good info, but what “stuff” are you describing?
I find it absurd to be making predictions this far out, unless they are treated as speculative theories. Solar scientists only started getting a better grip on the current weak cycle in the last decade so it’s crazy to plot a prediction to the year 2500.
To me, this weakens the credibility of any good information based on connections that are legit.
There is a lot more speculating going on here too, which includes the shifting of major crop growing regions if global cooling occurred. One side is already stating that climate disruption is happening around us, including “corn farmers in Iowa” as Obama claimed last week.
Clearly, that side is conditioning everyone’s brain to imagine a future world with catastrophic global warming(and hypnotizing minds into thinking they live in it right now).
Since creatures and plants on earth have almost always done much better with warming than cooling and we are planning to spend trillions on preparing for the biologically better outcome, it’s a good thing to get minds thinking about the consequences of the risk that would truly create widespread catastrophic hardship……..global cooling.
The big problem (for me) is that when you make it part of a forecast out to 2500, it’s sounds even less credible than using a greenhouse gas predicting catastrophic global warming to the year 2100.
At least we can agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas with some warming effect(beneficial so far) and the disagreement is over how much future warming will occur from it.
On the sun, I find it hard to believe that many scientists would go much farther than the next few cycles and even then, with low confidence.
Another way to put it. We know that CO2 levels have increased every year for many years and there is little disagreement about humans burning fossil fuels as the reason and that CO2 will continue to go up for a lengthy period……….unless we take extraordinary measures to cut down on emissions.
On the sun. The geomagnetic field and sunspot cycle only recently plunged and its hard to explain what the underlying cause is (what started it) and to apply a principle of understanding of that cause to project the effect very far out……..especially 500 years from now.
Mike Maguire says
……..especially 500 years from now.
Henry says
Agreed. Good comment. This post is absurd. They must rather look at the next few decades.
to quote from
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
It really was very cold in 1940′s….The Dust Bowl drought 1932-1939 was one of the worst environmental disasters of the Twentieth Century anywhere in the world. Three million people left their farms on the Great Plains during the drought and half a million migrated to other states, almost all to the West. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/dust_storms.shtml
I find that as we are moving back, up, from the deep end of the 88 year sine wave, there will be standstill in the change of the speed of cooling, neither accelerating nor decelerating, on the bottom of the wave; therefore naturally, there will also be a lull in pressure difference at that > [40 latitude], where the Dust Bowl drought took place, meaning: less weather (read: rain). However, one would apparently note this from an earlier change in direction of wind, as was the case in Joseph’s time. According to my calculations, this will start around 2020 or 2021…..i.e. 1927=2016 (projected, by myself and the planets…)> add 5 years and we are in 2021.
Danger from global cooling is documented and provable. It looks we have only ca. 7 “fat” years left……
WHAT MUST WE DO?
We urgently need to develop and encourage more agriculture at lower latitudes, like in Africa and/or South America. This is where we can expect to find warmth and more rain during a global cooling period.
We need to warn the farmers living at the higher latitudes (>40) who already suffered poor crops due to the droughts that things are not going to get better there for the next few decades. It will only get worse as time goes by.
We also have to provide more protection against more precipitation at certain places of lower latitudes (FLOODS!), <[30] latitude, especially around the equator.
Last winter was very cold, windy, and dry, dry, dry. We got all of about five inches of snow all winter. As a result there are scads of evergreens standing dead in everyone’s landscaping; I lost about half of what I had planted. Other places are worse off.
Usually, when we get a bout of cold weather there is a lot of snow I can use to cover my planting — but not last winter.
[snip – show a citation, and I’ll publish it. You simply stating it as such while lecturing people is just more of your usual drive by crypto comment leaving the reader trying to figure out where you are getting your information. I’m tired of it. – Anthony]
The data disagrees with you. I will trust the data over models every day.
Here in Central MN, last Summer was a disappointment for farmers. Not enough heating degree days. Statewide and in neighboring WI, median farm income was $44K.
If they don’t get into their fields soon they might as well blow this season off.
For comparison here are forecasts of the timing and amount of the coming cooling taken from my blog at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2013/10/commonsense-climate-science-and.html
“It has been estimated that there is about a 12 year lag between the cosmic ray flux and the temperature data. see Fig3 in Usoskin et al
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005ESASP.560…19U.
With that in mind it is reasonable to correlate the cycle 22 low in the neutron count (high solar activity and SSN) with the peak in the SST trend in about 2003 and project forward the possible general temperature decline in the coming decades in step with the decline in solar activity in cycles 23 and 24.
In earlier posts on this site http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com at 4/02/13 and 1/22/13
I have combined the PDO, ,Millennial cycle and neutron trends to estimate the timing and extent of the coming cooling in both the Northern Hemisphere and Globally.
Here are the conclusions of those posts.
1/22/13 (NH)
1) The millennial peak is sharp – perhaps 18 years +/-. We have now had 16 years since 1997 with no net warming – and so might expect a sharp drop in a year or two – 2014/16 -with a net cooling by 2035 of about 0.35.Within that time frame however there could well be some exceptional years with NH temperatures +/- 0.25 degrees colder than that.
2) The cooling gradient might be fairly steep down to the Oort minimum equivalent which would occur about 2100. (about 1100 on Fig 5) ( Fig 3 here) with a total cooling in 2100 from the present estimated at about 1.2 +/-
3) From 2100 on through the Wolf and Sporer minima equivalents with intervening highs to the Maunder Minimum equivalent which could occur from about 2600 – 2700 a further net cooling of about 0.7 degrees could occur for a total drop of 1.9 +/- degrees
4)The time frame for the significant cooling in 2014 – 16 is strengthened by recent developments already seen in solar activity. With a time lag of about 12 years between the solar driver proxy and climate we should see the effects of the sharp drop in the Ap Index which took place in 2004/5 in 2016-17.
4/02/13 ( Global)
1 Significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
5 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and help maintain crop yields .
9 Warning !! There are some signs in the Livingston and Penn Solar data that a sudden drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures could be imminent – with a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.”
With the threat of starvation and limited food supply, I guarantee that there will far fewer vegetarians and vegans.
“Looking hundreds of years ahead the greenhouse effect could become a serious problem.”
Good grief, if only he hadn’t felt the need to say that. Aliens from outer space could become a serious problem too.
David, firstly, thanks for your post. Always good to see other contributors work.
However, I have some difficulties with your claims.
First, the main work that you cite by Asmerom et al relies entirely on the rather pathetic work of Moberg. Moberg is famous in certain circles for refusing to reveal his data to Steve McIntyre … and now, simply because it fits your hypothesis, you claim that Moberg’s work is jes’ fine???
I have a rule of thumb in these matters which states …
As a result, as soon as Moberg’s work comes up in a list of references for some study, I toss the study in the trash. Moberg disowned it by not providing the data, it’s just advertisement at that point and not science of any sort.
The Asmerom work also depends on the reconstruction of past TSI values from 10Be values. As I showed here, these have large problems. And Leif Svalgaard provided these two references in total agreement with my findings.
In addition,the Asmerom work depends on flawed reconstructions of past sunspot activity. As Leif Svalgaard has repeatedly pointed out, pre-1949 sunspot numbers have been underestimated by about 20%. Or to be more precise, the counting method changed in 1949, and as a result, the counts prior to 1949 need to be adjusted to conform with the modern counting method.
Taken together, these cast very serious doubt on the Asmerom work. I would never consider citing it myself, on my planet it’s not science in any form.
Next, you point to a “Prediction of Solar Activity For The Next 500 Years” by Beer and Steinhilber … seriously? Well, I guess you are being serious, but seriously? Five hundred years? We can’t predict solar activity two cycles out, and these jokers say they can predict it for half a millennium? Give me a break.
In any case, I took a look at their cited work, which is here. They first made a reconstruction of the “solar modulation potential” back to 9400 BC. Then they did a Fourier transform of the data, and a wavelet transform of the data, and used that to forecast the next 500 years of the solar modulation potential.
They have only provided the most minimal testing of their method, by comparing it to white noise … white noise? Srsly? And since that appears to be their idea of “testing”, I would have discounted the paper entirely on that basis alone. They also only tested by calculating the “r” value, and not the statistical significance of that “r” value. I’d junk the study on that basis alone.
Next, they seem entirely innocent of knowledge of the effect of autocorrelation on the significance of statistical results. I suppose that may be related to the fact that they have not provided any tests of statistical significance at all … another reason to send the study to the circular file.
Next, they only tested their method against their own reconstruction of the “solar modulation potential”. Remember that the “solar modulation potential” is a measure invented by one of the authors (Steinhilber). It supposedly has some relationship with TSI. But as near as I can tell, the authors never tested their method against real solar data … say what? Another reason to put the study in the circular file.
Next, they keep referring to their reconstruction of the solar modulation potential as “data”. It is nothing of the sort. Near as I can tell, no actual solar data appears anywhere in their study.
Next, in a fit of terminal insanity, they’ve used 22-year running means on their “data”. here’s their description:
Here, they’ve combined two bad methods into one. The first bad method is the use of running means. The second is their choice of periods. They are sampling a signal which varies above and below 22 years, and they are sampling it every 22 years. That’s the worst sampling period imaginable. I did an analysis of another study that made the identical two mistakes in my post “Sunny Spots Along The Paraná River“, you should read it to see how their method turns even valid data into garbage.
Next, the reconstruction that they are trying to pass off as “data” is only one of several such historical reconstructions. In fact, there is little agreement on the past levels of solar magnetism. See the WUWT post here for a discussion.
Finally, I’ve never seen any reports of successes using either Fourier transforms or wavelet decomposition methods to predict the future evolution of chaotic systems. If that approach worked, people would be using it to predict everything from the stock market to sunspots to next month’s weather. Since they are not, I have to say that the odds of predicting 500 years of solar activity by Fourier analysis are zero.
David, note that up to this point I’m not taking a position on your underlying hypothesis. I’m saying that the evidence you’ve presented is … well, let me call it absolutely unconvincing.
Moving forwards, as to your underlying hypothesis. This is that weaker solar activity means colder and dryer conditions. Since the strength of the TSI and the strength of the Sun’s magnetic field vary on an 11 or 22 year basis, the simplest way to test this theory, one that doesn’t involve sketchy 9,000 year reconstructions that they are passing off as “data”, is to look for 11/22 year cycles in either temperature or precipitation. After all, if the earth’s climate responds to variations in solar magnetic intensity in the long term, since climate is just the average of weather, this long term response has to be the result of instantaneous responses in weather to the short run variations in solar strength.
However, despite people (including myself) looking very hard for such 11 or 22-year cycles in temperature and rainfall for the last couple centuries, I’ve never seen one single convincing example of such an 11-year or a 22-year cycle in temperature or precipitation. I’m not saying such evidence doesn’t exist … I’m just saying that I’ve never seen it.
And lacking that direct evidence despite centuries of searching, if you then claim that such a relationship exists in the long term but NOT in the short term, I fear we’re well into the zone where “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
And not only are we in that zone, but the evidence you’ve provided doesn’t even rise to the level of ordinary …
Sorry for the straight talk, David, but I have an obligation to view claims from both sides of the climate chasm using the same rules and standards. I hold that the Moberg study is simply an advertisement for their views, because they refused to release their data. As such, on my planet neither side of the debate gets to use it to buttress their claims.
And you need to seriously think about the history of predictions of just the next solar cycle alone, before you are so trusting of a 500-year prediction of future solar activity.
Best regards, keep up the good work,
w.
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says: May 14, 2014 at 5:06 am
It IS a fact that (like it or not) if the whole world went veggie, we actually would have enough land by some margin (if all the animals bred for meat were slaughtered first, of course). This isn’t airy-fairy stuff, the studies have been done again and again – it takes an awful lot of land to produce meat for consumption.
________________________________
And i am calling BS on that. There are many regions where arable agriculture is impossible. The English fells, for one.
You would have to invent a machine that could crop upland grass and turn it into protein. Preferably a self-replicating machine, to make it cleaper. And then you would have to find a name for that machine.
I would suggest “sheep”.
Willis Eschenbach says:
May 14, 2014 at 12:05 pm
Remember that the “solar modulation potential” is a measure invented by one of the authors (Steinhilber).
I don’t think we should make any great ‘science’ out of the Steinhilber and Beer prediction.
As Dr. Svalgaard will confirm (has done on so many occasions) and even his 7 year old grandson spotted it, sunspot cycles show a centennial quasi-periodicity somewhere between 100 and 105 years.
Let’s use 103 year period as a fundamental, than calculate its two sub-harmonics as T1=2×103, T2=5×103 and cross modulation product at (T1+T2)/2, add three Cosines in ratios of 3:2:2 respectively, the result is here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/S-V-prediction.htm
As it can be seen, the agreement with Steinhilber and Beer prediction is a reasonable one. To be fair any fundamental period between 100 and 105 years would produce very similar result.
Have Steinhilber and Beer produced great work of science? I dare say not.