Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I hear a lot of folks give the following explanation for the vagaries of the climate, viz:
It’s the sun, stupid.
And in fact, when I first started looking at the climate I thought the very same thing. How could it not be the sun, I reasoned, since obviously that’s what heats the planet.
Unfortunately, the dang facts got in the way again …
Chief among the dang facts is that despite looking in a whole lot of places, I never could find any trace of the 11-year sunspot cycle in any climate records. And believe me, I’ve looked.
You see, I reasoned that no matter whether the mechanism making the sun-climate connection were direct variations in the brightness of the sun, or variations in magnetic fields, or variations in UV, or variations in cosmic rays, or variations in the solar wind, they all run in synchronicity with the sunspots. So no matter the mechanism, it would have a visible ~11-year heartbeat.
I’ve looked for that 11-year rhythm every place I could think of—surface temperature records, sea level records, lake level records, wheat price records, tropospheric temperature records, river flow records. Eventually, I wrote up some of these findings, and I invited readers to point out some record, any record, in which the ~ 11-year sunspot cycle could be seen.
Nothing.
However, I’m a patient man, and to this day, I continue to look for the 11-year cycle. You can’t prove a negative … but you can amass evidence. My latest foray is into the world of atmospheric pressure. I figured that the atmospheric pressure might be more sensitive to variations in something like say the solar wind than the temperature would be.
Let me start, however, by taking a look at the elusive creature at the heart of this quest, the ~11-year sunspot cycle. Here is the periodogram of that cycle, so that we know what kind of signature we’re looking for:
Figure 1. Periodogram, showing the strengths of the various-length cycles in the SIDC sunspot data. In order to be able to compare disparate datasets, the values of the cycles are expressed as a percentage of the total range of the underlying data.
As you’d expect, the main peak is at around 11 years. However, the sunspot cycles are not regular, so we also have smaller peaks at nearby cycle lengths. Figure 2 shows an expanded view of the central part of Figure 1, showing only the range from seven to twenty-five years:
Figure 2. The same periodogram as in Figure 1, but showing only the 7 – 25 year range.
Now, there is a temptation to see the central figure as some kind of regular amplitude-modulated signal, with side-lobes. However, that’s not what’s happening here. There is no regular signal. Instead of there being a regular cycle, the length of the sunspot cycle varies widely, from about nine to about 15 years, with most of them in the 10-12 year range. The periodogram is merely showing that variation in cycle length.
In any case, that’s what we’re looking for—some kind of strong signal, with its peak value in the range of about 10-12 years.
As I mentioned above, when I started looking at the climate, like many people I thought “It’s the sun, stupid”, but I had found no data to back that up. So what did I find in my latest search? Well, sweet Fannie Adams, as our cousins across the pond say … here are my results:
Figure 3. Periodograms of four long-term atmospheric pressure records from around the globe.
There are some interesting features of these records.
First, there is a very strong annual cycle. I expected annual cycles, but not ones that large. These cycles are 30% to 60% of the total range of the data. I assume they result in large part from the prevalence of low-pressure areas associated with storms in the local wintertime, combined with some effect from the variations in temperature. I also note that as expected, Tahiti, being nearest to the equator and with little in the way of either temperature variations or low-pressure storms, has the smallest one-year cycle.
Other than semi-annual and annual cycles, however, there is very little power in the other cycle lengths. Figure 4 shows the expanded version of the same data, from seven to twenty-five years. Note the change in scale.
Figure 4. Periodograms of four long-term atmospheric pressure records from around the globe.
First, note that unlike the size of the annual cycle, which is half the total swing in pressures, none of these cycles have more than about 4% of the total swing of the atmospheric pressure. These are tiny cycles.
Next, generally there is more power in the ~ 9-year and the ~ 13-14 year ranges than there is in the ~ 11-year cycles.
So … once again, I end up back where I started. I still haven’t found any climate datasets that show any traces of the 11-year sunspot cycles. They may be there in the pressure data, to be sure, it is impossible to prove a negative, I can’t say they’re not there … but if so, they are hiding way, way down in the weeds.
Which of course leads to the obvious question … why no sign of the 11-year solar cycles?
I hold that this shows that the temperature of the system is relatively insensitive to changes in forcing. This, of course, is rank heresy to the current scientific climate paradigm, which holds that ceteris paribus, changes in temperature are a linear function of changes in forcing. I disagree. I say that the temperature of the planet is set by a dynamic thermoregulatory system composed of emergent phenomena that only appear when the surface gets hotter than a certain temperature threshold. These emergent phenomena maintain the temperature of the globe within narrow bounds (e.g. ± 0.3°C over the 20th Century), despite changes in volcanoes, despite changes in aerosols, despite changes in GHGs, despite changes in forcing of all kinds. The regulatory system responds to temperature, not to forcing.
And I say that because of the existence of these thermoregulatory systems, the 11-year variations in the sun’s UV and magnetism and brightness, as well as the volcanic variations and other forcing variations … well, they make little difference.
As a result, once again, I open the Quest for the Holy 11-Year Grail to others. I invite those that believe that “It’s the sun, stupid” to show us the terrestrial climate record that has any sign of being correlated with the 11-year sunspot cycles. I’ve looked. Lots of folks have looked … where is that record? I encourage you to employ whatever methods you want to use to expose the connection—cross-correlation, wavelet analysis, spectrum analysis, fourier analysis, the world is your lobster. Report back your findings, I’d like to put this question to bed.
It’s a lovely Saturday in spring, what could be finer? Gotta get outside and study me some sunshine. I wish you all many such days.
w.
For Clarity: If you disagree with someone, please quote their exact words that you disagree with. It avoids all kinds of pernicious misunderstandings, because it lets us all know exactly where you think they went off the rails.
Why The 11-year Cycle?: Because it is the biggest cycle, and we know all of the other cycles (magnetism, TSI, solar wind) move in synchronicity with the sunspots. As a result, if you want to claim that the climate is responding to say a slow, smaller 100-year cycle in the sunspot data, then by the same token it must be responding more strongly to the larger 11-cycle in the sunspot data, and so the effect should be visible there.
The Subject Of This Post: Please do not mistake this quest for the elusive 11-year cycle in climate datasets as an opportunity for you to propound your favorite theory about approximately 43-year pseudo-cycles due to the opposition of Uranus. If you can’t show me a climate dataset containing an 11-year cycle, your hypothesis is totally off-topic for this post. I encourage you to write it up and send it to Anthony, he may publish it, or to Tallbloke, he might also. I encourage everyone to get their ideas out there. Here on this thread, though, I’m looking for the 11-year cycle sunspot cycle in any terrestrial climate records.
The Common Cycles in Figures 3 and 4: Obviously, the four records in Figs. 3 & 4 have a common one-year cycle. As an indication of the sensitivity of the method that I’m using, consider the two other peaks which are common to all four of the records. These are the six-month cycle, and the 9-year cycle. It is well known that the moon raises tides in the atmosphere just as it does in the ocean. The 9-year periodicity is not uncommon in tidal datasets, and the same is true about the 6-month periodicity. I would say that we’re looking at the signature of the atmospheric tides in those cycle lengths.
Variable-Length Cycles, AKA “Pseudocycles” or “Approximate Cycles”: Some commenters in the past have asserted that my method, which I’ve nicknamed “Slow Fourier Analysis” but which actually seems to be a variant of what might be called direct spectrum analysis, is incapable of detecting variable-length cycles. They talk about a cycle say around sixty years that changes period over time.
However, the sunspot cycle is also quite variable in length … and despite that my method not only picks up the most common cycle length, it shows the strength of the sunspot cycles at the other cycle lengths as well.
A Couple of my Previous Searches for the 11-Year Sunspot Cycle:
Looking at four long-term temperature records here.
A previous look at four more long-term temperature records.
Atmospheric Pressure and Sunspot Data:
Tahiti to 1950 and Tahiti 1951 on (note different units)
Darwin to 1950 and Darwin 1951 on (note different units)
Sunspots These are from SIDC. Note that per advice from Leif Svalgaard, in the work I did above the pre-1947 values have been increased by 20% to adjust for the change in counting methods. It does not affect this analysis, you can use either one.
For ease of downloading, I’ve also made up a CSV file containing all of the above data, called Long Term Atmospheric Pressure.csv
And for R users, I’ve saved all 5 data files in R format as “Long Pressure Datasets.tab”
Code: Man, I hate this part … hang on … let me clean it up a bit … OK, I just whacked out piles of useless stuff and ran it in an empty workspace and it seemed to fly. You need two things, a file called madras pressure.R and my Slow Fourier Transform Functions.R. Let me know what doesn’t work.
“I hold that this shows that the temperature of the system is relatively insensitive to changes in forcing. This, of course, is rank heresy to the current scientific climate paradigm, which holds that ceteris paribus, changes in temperature are a linear function of changes in forcing.”
The standard climate science view is not that the climate is insensitive to changes in solar forcing, but that no significant changes have happened. That, while the sun is indeed the energy source, it is a very steady source. So no stability mechanism need be postulated.
“no significant changes have happened”
OK, I can hear the protests – I mean no big oscillations in solar output in the period Willis is looking at.
I don’t know about the 11 year cycle having an effect on weather/climate, but it seems that a “bunch” of 11 year cycles with high sunspot activity makes for a warmer climate. Also when you get a “bunch” of 11 year cycles with lower sunspot activity you get an overall cooler climate:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/29/headlines-over-solar-cycle-25-and-potential-cooling/
Reblogged this on The Next Grand Minimum and commented:
Willis Eschenbach on another quest for the facts makes for some interesting reading, there may not be a 11 year solar cycle evident in the earths climate record. Any ideas, on what causes climate cycles if it is not the sun?
“ceteris paribus” Willis “Monkton” Eschenbach I presume.
I don’t see why there should be a visible 11 year cycle in temperature records or much else for that matter, I think the system is so complex and buffered that such brief changes in forcing that may be present in the 11 year cycle will not and should not show. Longer lasting changes however would seem to exist, the Dalton, the Maunder with the river Thames freezing. We might get to find out over the coming years.
Nick Stokes says:
May 24, 2014 at 1:46 pm
Dear heavens, save me from pettifogging lawyers. Nick, the standard view is exactly what I said it was—that changes in temperature are a linear function of the changes in forcing. If you don’t understand that, read up on the supposed “climate sensitivity”. It has nothing to do with the sun at all.
w.
Sunspots are not causing anything and don’t know of anyone who said they were. It is a proxy for the sun’s magnetic activity and not a particularly good one. Sunspots not linked to climate does not in anyway devalue a hypothesis of a non-irradiance based influence on climate from the sun.
Have you overlooked this, a correlation of sunspots and river flow and lake levels?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/22/solar-to-river-flow-and-lake-level-correlations/
J. Philip Peterson says:
May 24, 2014 at 1:58 pm
Thanks, Philip. That’s the claim … the citation you gave didn’t provide much more than speculation to support the claim, however.
And I still don’t understand how a long, say 60 or 80 year slow small change in the sun’s output could have an effect while a much smaller decadal change doesn’t have an effect. What is the mechanism?
w.
The 11 year sunspot cycle has a distinct trend “Heart beat” with regional UK and Ireland temperatures, for example, daily sunspot numbers for January correlate well with March minimum and maximum temperatures over the length of both records.
Alex E says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Thanks, Alex. I didn’t say sunspots caused anything. I said they moved in parallel with other phenomena. Here are my words:
What solar mechanism are you proposing that doesn’t move in synchrony with the sunspot cycle (or the magnetic double sunspot cycle, which is simply a sunspot cycle where the polarity reverses each cycle)? The TSI, the UV, the visible light, the magnetism, the solar wind, the galactic cosmic rays, all of those move parallel to the sunspots. So what phenomenon are you referring to, that doesn’t move in harness with the sunspot cycles?
Regards,
w.
Sorry if I’m missing something obvious but I wouldn’t expect an 11 year cycle in any series. The sun cycle averages 11 years, but isn’t always 11 years. I assume it is a memory-less process, so creating an 11 year cycle will sometimes coincide with the top of the cycle, but for some years could correspond with the bottom. I assume there is a way to back out the known historical cycles to see if a measure coincides; although I would have thought that ordinary correlation would be the way to measure it.
Sparks says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:18 pm
Seems doubtful, but I’ll bite. Which “regional UK and Ireland temperatures” EXACTLY are you referring to (links)?
w.
Willis Eschenbach says: May 24, 2014 at 2:03 pm
“Dear heavens, save me from pettifogging lawyers.”
No pettifog here. Your proposition is that a lack of sunspot cycle in the data supports a “dynamic thermoregulatory system”. I say that there was no significant change in forcing in the first place, so lack of observed response does not support thermoregulation.
Maybe the standard view is wrong. The solar cycle peaks could have a strong signal, and outside the peaks anything could happen, obscuring the signal of the peaks.
The earth takes a year (or so) to go round the sun, but the sun doesn’t know this and I suspect that it sings to a different rhythm to that of the earth.
MikeUK says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:06 pm
Nope. I analyzed the Parana River dataset here.
And what David Archibald did with the lake level data is hilarious. Here’s his money graph …
What he has conclusively proven in that graph is that if he throws out the one-third of the data that doesn’t agree with his theory, the remaining two-thirds will give a great fit to his theory … please tell me you aren’t impressed …
w.
Willis Eschenbach creates a straw man and than destroys it. Stick a feather in his hat.
Willis in search for the Holy Grail, it reminds me of the Babson task. Maybe an option is to correlate the dynamics of your thermoregulatory system to the solar cycle or ap-index. There must be somewhere, somehow a connection
Perhaps I missed something, but I always thought the Nile River studies were good evidence:
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/40231/1/06-1989.pdf?origin=publication_detail
Jim
If it ain’t the sun, then it must be that elusive “dark matter” shading the sunshine.
Willis, I’m always happy to see someone other than myself pi$$ off a bunch of people. 🙂
I think it’s obvious that since one has theory that CO2 is causing warming, that is this context, one say it’s the sun rather than CO2.
The idea that without CO2, earth would be -18 C is obviously ignoring the the sun.
Now, to prove that is a sun, you looking at small cycles of cooling and warming. Let’s be clear, CO2 has no rational basis for warming up to about 2 decade ago and the pause since then.
But solar activity appears to have been more active in 20th Century than 19th or 18th, and unlike weather, people who tend to be more scientific have been watching the heavens and the sun for a longer time. Though we have only had SOHO [launched “December 2, 1995 to study the Sun”- wiki] for relatively short period of time. And if solar activity is likewise less in 21 century there goo chance this affecting weather.
So, CO2 does not have cyclic warming/cooling aspect. But “climatic scientists” have been declaring a short period of weather was caused by CO2. But since CO2 emission continues and we see no further increasing of trend in warming, we can assume CO2 does not have the warming effect these idiots, thought it had.
Now everyone knows that there are cycles which connected to the world’s oceans.which cause short term changes in climate. And seems it’s these ocean cycles which the idiots were assigning
to increasing levels of global CO2.
So CO2 is not causal factior in these ocean cycles. And it seems it’s probably related to the Sun and “natural variability”.
This video does claim and suggest STRONG correlation between tree ring data and sun, and ALSO sea diatoms:
Willis can not see the forest through the trees. Many see the data/evidence very differently.
Willis Eschenbach do you see the difference AP between the previous and the 24 cycle? Changes have begun up for good since 2006.
ftp://ftp.gfz-potsdam.de/pub/home/obs/kp-ap/ap_monyr.ave
10-4 gbaikie.. just what i was thinking.. correlation witb sun and CO2 dont pan out.. this is a complex interaction that is as yet not proven in accordance with the scientific method.. its the weather, stupid!
DamDoc
“I say that the temperature of the planet is set by a dynamic thermoregulatory system composed of emergent phenomena that only appear when the surface gets hotter than a certain temperature threshold.”
A bit off topic. It would seem that this works great for curbing warming (a number of remedies available) but cooling is more open. If cooling reaches a certain level and the system has done everything to retard the cooling, it can run out of tricks (I guess it still has heat release from freezing up its sleeve, but that’s my point). Once there are no clouds allowing for max heating, then any cooling can go on getting cooler. Perhaps this is why we have interglacials that last only 10% of the several million years of an Ice Age. Your theory may be the whole package.
Roy Spencer says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:45 pm
Willis, I’m always happy to see someone other than myself pi$$ off a bunch of people. 🙂
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Made my day…..thank you!
w – I would look differently. As The Other Phil says, the cycle isn’t always 11 years. So in using regular cycles, you are handicapping yourself. I would give each date a solar cycle number (SCN), for example the date half-way through solar cycle 5 would be 5.5, and then look for periodicities in climate by SCN rather than by date. Even during the Maunder Minimum the solar cycles were identified, I think. Now I admit that if nothing shows up as a regular date-based cycle, it’s unlikely that much will be found this way, but nevertheless it should be a more accurate method.
There is another complicating factor, and that is that climate is a complex coupled non-linear system. That means that any factor affecting climate is unlikely to have a linear effect. Put simply, sometimes you’ll see it and sometimes you won’t. So the fact that a simple periodicity analysis doesn’t find it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
w – None of this is intended as any kind of criticism. I applaud your efforts, and if there is an effect then it is certainly possible that you may find it using your current methods. I also note carefully that you say that not finding it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’ll add one more suggestion : Herschel(?) identified a solar cycle in crop yields. Why not first see if you can replicate his findings, using SCN. ie, look at things like temperature and rainfall over just that period in the UK. If you do find something, even if it doesn’t map over the rest of time or over other places, at least it might be a useful clue from which further progress can develop.
So its not the sun. And it ain’t CO2. What in the world is it? C’mon Willis give us a clue…
Or is it just something that we should not worry about?
I went on a hunt for the 11 year cycle a long time ago, came up empty.
I also went hunting for a 7 year cycle. There’s a passage in Laura Ingles Wilder’s book The Long Winter (Big Winter? I forget), in which the local natives come to warn the settlers that every 7th winter is harsh, and every 3rd 7th winter unusually harsh, and this was to be the 3rd 7th winter. So I went hunting for 7 and 21 year cycles with little success, though my approach was no where near as sophisticated as Willis’.
The astronomer William Herschel, reading Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1801, was startled to notice a quasi-periodicity of approximately 11 years in the mean annual grain prices on the London exchange. He verified an anti-correlation between the sunspot cycle and the grain prices. More sunspots, warmer weather, more grain, lower prices: fewer sunspots, colder weather, less grain, higher prices.
One should also recall that from 1645-1715, when the Sun was at its least active in the past 11,400 years, the weather was indeed exceptionally cold on both sides of the Atlantic. The correlation may have been causative. Also, from 1925-1995, when the Sun was almost at its most active in the past 11,400 years, the weather was warmer than it had been since the Middle Ages. Now that the Sun is declining from that peak (1960, according to Hathaway), temperature has stabilized, and might be falling somewhat were it not for our influence.
Furthermore, Luedecke et al., late last year, showed that Fourier analysis on the ~60-year ocean oscillation cycle and on the longer de Vries cycle was able to reproduce global temperature change over the past 250 years with great faithfulness. The Luedecke analysis predicts a considerable drop in global temperature in the coming decades, perhaps moderated somewhat by our influence in the opposite direction.
One should not expect the ~11-year cycle to have a major influence on global temperature, owing to the homoeostatic effect of the two boundaries of the atmosphere: the near-infinite heat-sink that is the ocean and the infinite heat-sink that is outer space. Temperature will only change significantly if there is a sufficiently long period of persistently higher-than-normal solar activity (as there was during most of the past century) or lower-than-normal solar activity.
The significance of the now embarrassingly long period of no-warming over the past 17 years 9 months (RSS), or 13 years 4 months (mean of all five datasets), is that the warming effect from CO2 is insufficient to overcome the cooling effect of declining solar activity (the decline compared with 1960 is the steepest and one of the deepest in the past several hundred years) combined with the negative or cooling phase of the PDO and a recent decline in the Nino/Nina ratio.
Willis,
The number of sunspots reaches a maximum every ≈11 years, but successive maxima have spots with reversed magnetic polarity. Could there be a ≈22 year cycle?
First, I agree with you that thermoregulation is, over medium terms, a decade or so, wiping out other forcing effects. We can see short term kicks, such as volcanic activity, Forbush Decreases, short term changes in the solar wind, etc. http://notrickszone.com/2014/05/22/data-suggest-that-solar-wind-impacts-global-temperature/#comment-944818
But longer term changes can’t take place because thermoregulation, especially in the tropics, just over-ride them. That’s why the 11-year cycle doesn’t show up. It’s buried in the noise of the short term kicks.
And thank you for the solar wind data!
–Now that the Sun is declining from that peak (1960, according to Hathaway), temperature has stabilized, and might be falling somewhat were it not for our influence. —
The higher levels of CO2 could have slight effect in terms of stabilizing temperature, but I would not count on it very much though. It’s not an air bag, it’s car bumpers at best.
So I would say it could mitigate another Little Ice Age to some degree. But I do not believe it can stop glacial period from beginning [not that I believe we in danger of this].
It seems the best thing about higher CO2 levels is it helps plants grow- which is good if one is having a lot of crop failures due to colder global climate.
I learned in my classes in statistics that statistical results are like a lampposts, they light up only small areas, but they are very good to lean up against.
This in my view sums up this article.
Firstly sunspot number is a bad measure of solar activity. The 11 year solar cycle and other solar cycle are not of a fixed length, bit varies which makes standard statistical analysis dubious at best.
Earth’s temperature is much more affected by variations in solar magnetic variations than by sunspot numbers and Earth’s climate system is a non-linear chaotic system which involves many time lags effects.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 24, 2014 at 3:17 pm
One should not expect the ~11-year cycle to have a major influence on global temperature, owing to the homoeostatic effect of the two boundaries of the atmosphere: the near-infinite heat-sink that is the ocean and the infinite heat-sink that is outer space. Temperature will only change significantly if there is a sufficiently long period of persistently higher-than-normal solar activity (as there was during most of the past century) or lower-than-normal solar activity.
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…thanks
One small thing. Tahiti is not “nearest the equator” of the four stations cited. Darwin is, at 12.5 degrees south, Madras (Chennai) is 13.1 N, Tahiti 17.7 S and Nagasaki 32.8 N
There is an excellent correlation NOT with the 11yr sunspot cycle BUT with the 22yr magnetic cycle that strongly suggests “it’s the sun stupid”.
Climate follows Hale solar sunspot cycle http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/newell-climate-follows-hale-solar-sunspot-cycle/
Blue Sky says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:34 pm
Was there something unclear in my request, viz:
I have no clue what you think is a “straw man”.
w.
Roy Spencer says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:45 pm
Busted out laughing at that one, thanks, Dr. Roy.
w.
Willis, you don’t need to go to David Archibald to see links with South American river flow and the 11 year solar cycle:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.0414
“What solar mechanism are you proposing that doesn’t move in synchrony with the sunspot cycle (or the magnetic double sunspot cycle, which is simply a sunspot cycle where the polarity reverses each cycle)? The TSI, the UV, the visible light, the magnetism, the solar wind, the galactic cosmic rays, all of those move parallel to the sunspots. So what phenomenon are you referring to, that doesn’t move in harness with the sunspot cycles?”
==============================
The sunspot cycle doesn’t even move in synchrony with itself. it varies from 9 to 15 years, as you have indicated. You are asking why an indirect proxy with a variable frequency doesn’t have a sharp & clearly defined frequency response on climate. Why would it? Especially in a buffered system. It doesn’t make sense to me to ask why the 11 year cycle can’t be seen when we don’t even know why it varies from 9-15.
When Christensen and Lassen looked at the link between solar cycles and climate, they were looking at the length of the cycle. That sounds much more promising. If the solar activity that causes sunspots is in some kind of equilibrium point when the cycle is 11 years, then it stands to reason that factors that pull the sun out of that equilibrium could have a strong effect on climate.
Another is looking at UV. TSI varies little, UV varies quite a bit. Why not just look at that directly instead of through what is essentially a filter when you look at the 11-year cycle.
ps I still don’t know how to quote on this page. what is the command?
[Precede the text you want you blockquoted (indented and in italics) with (blockquote)
and end the selection with (/blockquote). Use < rather than parenthesis. .mod]
Jim Brown says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:38 pm
I’ve tried quite hard to replicate that study, but I’ve been unable to track down the data for both the maximum and minimum Nile river levels for the full period. I’ve found some data, here’s that analysis:
Note that there is no 11-year cycle in that dataset, at least. However, they’re using other data.
In addition, they claim that the finding of an 88-year cycle in the Nile data is probative of solar involvement … but I find no such 88-year cycle in the solar data.
If anyone has the full Nile dataset, I’m happy to take a look. Until then, it’s just anecdote.
w.
Joe D’Aleo has posted several graphs on Weatherbell that demonstrate a correlation between a longer solar cycle (eleven years is an average) and cooler temperatures and also cooler temperatures and a low AP index. (longer cycles and low AP go together) It costs $20 a month to read Weatherbell. I haven’t learned how to do much beyond type in WordPress. You can’t get to the link below without paying. Personally, I think its worth the money. Lots of good weather and climate information on weatherbell.com.
Joe Bastardi posts there too.
http://www.weatherbell.com/premium/joe-daleo/solar-cycle-24-peak-past—history%20says%20watch%20out%20though%20some-questions-remain/
Timo Niroma produced this graph of sunspot cycle lengths.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/niroma-ss-lengths.jpg?w=921&h=263
@ Alex E. Go to the WUWT Test [page], this will tell you how to do quotes and allow you to test them.
Ted Vaughn says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:55 pm
Either cite the “data/evidence” or go away. That’s just handwaving.
w.
In the Timo Niroma solar cycle graph, note the near absence of an 11 year solar cycle.
I think it is pointless to look at correlations with the 11 year cycle as a sort of smoking gun showing “it’s the sun stupid”. There may be evidence of energy imbalance associated with the 11 solar year cycle, but should this really be expected to show a linear relationship with global temp? The accumulation and release of (solar) energy in the oceans is inherently non-linear. There are imbalances between the tropics and extra-tropics. Between shallow and deep water. Between NH and SH. A 1C anomaly in the tropics will not release energy to the atmosphere at the same rate as 1C extra-tropical anomaly. The mechanisms by which oceans capture solar energy in the mixed layer are somewhat different the mechanisms which release it. Etc.
ren says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:58 pm
As I said above,
w.
Willis,
You can’t see the 100Hz AC if you stick a thermometer in the chicken soup coking on the hot-plate.
This doesn’t mean there is no oscillation of incoming energy, but the thermal inertia is acting as a low-pass filter…..
Also…. 0.5deg Celsius variation is significant for us humans, for our comfort. But looking at it in absolute terms, not much different between 300K or 300.5K ..about as much as in the Sun’s delta TSI ….me think.
(I hope my English is comprehensible enough…. apologize if it’s not, spell check struggle to understand my accent)
Mike Jonas says:
May 24, 2014 at 3:13 pm
Absolutely not. The solar cycles are irregular, and my method detects them quite well. As a result, I am NOT restricting myself to “regular cycles”.
“One should not expect the ~11-year cycle to have a major influence on global temperature, owing to the homoeostatic effect of the two boundaries of the atmosphere: the near-infinite heat-sink that is the ocean and the infinite heat-sink that is outer space. Temperature will only change significantly if there is a sufficiently long period of persistently higher-than-normal solar activity (as there was during most of the past century) or lower-than-normal solar activity.
The significance of the now embarrassingly long period of no-warming over the past 17 years 9 months (RSS), or 13 years 4 months (mean of all five datasets), is that the warming effect from CO2 is insufficient to overcome the cooling effect of declining solar activity (the decline compared with 1960 is the steepest and one of the deepest in the past several hundred years) combined with the negative or cooling phase of the PDO and a recent decline in the Nino/Nina ratio.”
Nicely put, Mr Eschenbach put in his place somewhat.
Honestly there can surely be no other cause of natural variability other than the sun, it, along with axial tilt/proximity cycles can be the only causes of variability once electromagnetic and volcanic earth-based anomalies are discounted as the system is heat driven.
But what do I know, I’m not a climate scientist, Mr Eschenbach it would be extremely helpful if you could respond to Monckton’s assertions and give us an alternative to what drives natural variability.
Cheers
Willis said:
“You see, I reasoned that no matter whether the mechanism making the sun-climate connection were direct variations in the brightness of the sun, or variations in magnetic fields, or variations in UV, or variations in cosmic rays, or variations in the solar wind, they all run in synchronicity with the sunspots.”
Here’s the last 50 years of solar wind speed, can we see the sunspot cycles?
http://snag.gy/r55Lr.jpg
Estimate where they are, then look here to check:
http://snag.gy/5XTIk.jpg
Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 24, 2014 at 3:17 pm
My dear friend Christopher, you are making a terrible mistake. “Nullius In Verba”, as the saying goes … have you actually looked at Herschel’s work?
I ask because have, and it’s not pretty. I suppose I should write up that piece of research as well, so many topics, so little time.
Herschel was guessing based on a very short dataset, and he himself realized that and said so at the time, viz:
I took a look at both the prices Herschel used, and then at the later English grain prices … care to guess what happened to Hershel’s theorized connection once we look at more data?
Yeah, you’re right. It disappears. Gone. Pouf.
Nullius In Verba, old friend, even the verba of William Herschel …
w.
Since my link to the Timo Niroma graph is awaiting moderation due perhaps to the name of the website I took it from. Timo found that the solar cycles peaked at 10.25 years and 11.9 years, with the stronger peak at 10.25, 11 years is a dip, not a peak.
I agree that “it’s the evidence, stupid.” But, it is not the 11-year cycle that is the evidence of interest. the long-term solar cycles, of which we know very little, are the subject of interest, at least to me. They may or may not be regular cycles.
It is well-known that climate gets very cold when the sunspots disappear for decades on end. We have, as far as I know, no proven, accepted causal mechanism why the absence of sunspots causes the Earth to cool. There is the cloud and cosmic ray hypothesis, with cosmic rays modulated by the sun’s magnetic field.
Do we actually need a proven, causal mechanism before it is prudent to act? We can look to the ancient past, when humans had no clue why the sun rose in the East and set in the West. They had no clue why it became cold each winter, but was warm enough to grow crops each summer. They (we believe, at least I believe) figured out the correlation, though. Warm summer equals “plant the crops, and food will grow.” Would it sound silly, to be in a village council meeting thousands of years ago, and argue that we should not plant crops in the Spring because there was no causal mechanism to guarantee the warm summer would follow?
In my May, 2012 speech to the chemical engineers in Southern California, I made the point that we have excellent correlations over hundreds of years that show weak sunspot cycles produce global cooling. In fact, we have evidence that very weak or non-existent sunspot cycles produce extreme cold. The opposite is also true: strong sunspot cycles produce warming, while modest sunspot cycles produce an intermediate temperature.. It is apparent, at least to me, that the late 20th century warming could be attributed to the combined warm ocean cycles with strong sunspot cycles – with no need for CO2 to be considered.
However, with reference to the 11-year sunspot cycle, there is indeed evidence. A 9 to 12 year cycle likely exists in the North Pacific Gyre, as reported by C. A. Perry, where one rotation of the gyre could take approximately 9-12 years. (Perry, Water Resources Division, USGS, Lawrence, Kansas USA). Perry showed that energy from TSI absorbed in the tropical ocean is released after roughly half of the 9-12 years onto the North American continent. My words, not Perry’s, a full cycle of the gyre would be the same as the 11-year sunspot cycle.
http://ks.water.usgs.gov/solar-irradiance-variations-and-regional-precipitations
Perry, C.A., 1994, Solar-Irradiance Variations and Regional Precipitations in the Western United States: International Journal of Climatology, v. 14, November 1994, p. 969-983.
You can’t see a 11yr cycle because your thermoregulatory mechanism irons them out, however just like an air conditioning unit, it only works when excess heat is supplied (summer) when long term lack of heating (maunder minimum) (winter) the AC stops controlling the temperature.
dbstealey says:
May 24, 2014 at 3:25 pm
It’s certainly possible, db … but I’ve seen no sign of a 22-year cycle either. That’s why I ran the analysis from 7 – 25 years, to catch any such cycles.
No catches to date …
w.
Willis, This study ( a guest post at Pielke by Prof Alexander) correlates river flow and sunspot cycles:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/climate-change-the-west-vs-the-rest-by-will-alexander/
Not saying I subscribe or not, just pointing it out.
Mick says:
May 24, 2014 at 3:59 pm
Thanks, Mick, but I’m not buying that explanation at all. The earth’s temperature swings on the order of 6°C peak to peak over the course of a year. Why would it not respond over an 11-year period?
Or to use your example, it’s as though the chicken soup IS responding to say 3,000 Hz, with a large response, but isn’t responding to the 100 Hz. That’s the puzzle.
w.
My view of this is that the historical record provides sufficient evidence to establish the Sun as the primary driver of climate,. The aggregate of the variations in solar activity over the longer haul are clearly the causative agent, amplified by ocean current variations (themselves an effect of solar activity) and the Earth’s orbital motion, and occasionally affected by volcanism. It is obviously much more complicated than just the 11-year sunspot cycle, but that complexity, with the intermittent non-correlation of some factors to temps does not mean the Sun isn’t the primary driver. It has to be, as the Earth does not emit more energy than it receives from the Sun (unlike the gas giant planets). Details of how the Sun drives climate still need to be worked out, but on a macro level it seems plain that the Sun is the primary force in climate change.
There is no way in hell that CO2 has anything approaching the forcing effect of changes in solar radiation.
The 11-year cycle may or may not have an effect on climate, but HAM radio (1.8MHz to 50MHz) enthusiasts certainly look forward to it.
Ok Willis;
One of the observations over the last few decades is waning sun spots and their magnetic output in the 0.6um band becoming much weaker while the 1.2um band has increased. While this does nothing to Total Solar Irradiance, it does change how the earths atmosphere affects it. At .6um water vapor has little effect yet at 1.2um it has a moderate effect of absorption and scattering,
Now this has not only affected the sunspots themselves but it affects general output for some reason. This would render the 11 year cycle mute, yet if the change in intensity (of differing bands) was large enough could result in cooling, warming, or glaciation. And all without a cycle being present.
Let the beatings begin.. I know they are coming..
Willis Eschenbach in response to J. Peterson: And I still don’t understand how a long, say 60 or 80 year slow small change in the sun’s output could have an effect while a much smaller decadal change doesn’t have an effect. What is the mechanism?
Indeed. No case for a mechanism has yet been supported by much evidence.
Forget about correlation. What is the mechanism by which sun spots would heat the Earth anyway? Otherwise I’m leaning toward the 22 year cycle.
It’s easy to see the solar cycles on earth. For instance, here:
http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/20/stories/2010072053280200.htm
Roger Sowell: It is well-known that climate gets very cold when the sunspots disappear for decades on end. We have, as far as I know, no proven, accepted causal mechanism why the absence of sunspots causes the Earth to cool. There is the cloud and cosmic ray hypothesis, with cosmic rays modulated by the sun’s magnetic field.
Do we actually need a proven, causal mechanism before it is prudent to act?
Act how, and invest how much money, labor and time? Your question is a counterpart to the question that “catastrophists” pose: with as much evidence as we have about CO2, isn’t it prudent to act now?
To me, prudence entails continued research into mechanism, and agricultural research, R&D on all possible sources of energy, and construction of better flood control and irrigation infrastructure. How about you? Shouldn’t “prudence” entail actions that are likely to be effective whether the Earth warms or cools overall?
That’s incidental to Willis’s difficulties in finding 11 and 22 year periods.
Willis, in response to Mick: The earth’s temperature swings on the order of 6°C peak to peak over the course of a year. Why would it not respond over an 11-year period?
Yeh. Why not?
Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 24, 2014 at 3:17 pm
I fear that I’m not seeing the logic in that claim, my friend. Temperatures “change significantly” over the course of a single year. Despite the presence of the “near-infinite heat sinks” of the ocean and outer space, the global temperature changes by 4°C or so over the course of the year. And the hemispheres swing much more than that, 6°C for the southern hemisphere and a 13°C swing for the northern hemisphere.
Since we get those large swings in a single year despite what you call “the homoeostatic effect of the two boundaries of the atmosphere: the near-infinite heat-sink that is the ocean and the infinite heat-sink that is outer space”, why would we not get similar swings from the 11-year solar cycle?
I’m still missing the underlying argument. Here’s the problem as I see it.
The sunspots, along with their allied phenomena (solar wind, TSI, galactic cosmic rays, etc.), vary much, much more during the 11-year cycle than they do over century-long periods.
So … since you claim that there is a big effect from a small change over a century, why would we see absolutely no sign of a much larger change over a decade? That’s the logical jump I can’t figure out.
My best regards to you, as always,
w.
PS—The peak in the recent sunspot activity was around 1960 or so, and it has decreased since then … whereas temperatures have generally risen since then.
???
Well.
There is one plot missing.
The plot that is missing is the day vs night vs temperature. Anywhere on the earth, if it is day,it is warmer than the same place at night which is always colder, all other things being equal.
That temperature spread, shown here for example;
http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~rjh/adelaide/adelaide-weather-l.html
Indicates what a strong influence solar radiation has and the time constant associated with the radiative effects. Pretty rapid.
The delta T is about 10C in 24 hours.
That is pretty high gain response. Also a pretty short time constant.
A “global warming” if there is one, has to overcome this demonstrable heat cycle. There is no other heat source or sink on that scale.
When there are no alternatives, the improbable must be possible, ergo, the Sun remains.
Willis Eschenbach is too hasty in saying I made a terrible mistake. I reported, correctly, the link between fluctuations in solar activity and grain prices found by Herschel, but went on to say, in terms and with reasons, that one should not expect the 11-year cycle to have much effect on global temperature. The terrible mistake lies in trying to find such an influence given the well-known homeostatic influences on global temperature that are self-evident in the ice-core records.
Per Strandberg (@LittleIceAge) says:
May 24, 2014 at 3:33 pm
Thanks, Per. I said it in the head post. I said it in a prior comment. I will say it again and again until people get it.
The sunspot cycles are indeed not a fixed length … and my method identifies the various cycles despite their variable lengths.
So the objection that the resulting effects on the climate might be of variable length won’t wash. My method will find them anyhow.
In any case, however, what would you propose as a “good” measure of solar activity?
w.
Alex E says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Sunspots are not causing anything and don’t know of anyone who said they were. It is a proxy for the sun’s magnetic activity and not a particularly good one.
Sunspots are a remarkably good proxy for solar magnetism. I just returned from the 4th Sunspot Number Workshop [in Locarno]. Pages 7ff of http://www.leif.org/EOS/Summary_SS4_Stenflo.pdf show a recent analysis,
On the issue of solar influence on climate, I would have to agree with Viscount Monckton and others who have pointed out that the thermoregulatory effect of the oceans would render any attempt to detect an 11 year cycle in temperature a dead end.
Those looking for a instantaneous response to TSI variation would be making the same mistake as climastrologists, ie: claiming that the oceans are a “near blackbody”. When you understand that the oceans are instead a “selective surface” you can see that any solar influence will be slow and long term.
Sunlight does not heat the oceans from the surface, but rather penetrates to depth, with UV-A still having the power of 10 w/m2 at 50m depth. It is the higher frequencies that vary most between solar cycles, and it is UV and SW that heat the oceans with SWIR having little effect and DWLWIR having no effect on ocean temperatures. As some of these SW wavelengths penetrate below the diurnal overturning layer, the oceans can accumulate energy over longer time periods.
The basics of climate on planet ocean are simple –
The sun heats the oceans.
The atmosphere cools the oceans.
Radiative gases cool the atmosphere.
When the correct mechanism of solar heating of the oceans is considered (NOT “near blackbody”), then the idea of searching for an 11 year solar temperature cycle is clearly a dead end.
Willis said
“The sunspots, along with their allied phenomena (solar wind, TSI, galactic cosmic rays, etc.), vary much, much more during the 11-year cycle than they do over century-long periods.”
Major Magentic Storms 1868-2007:
“Although not documented here, it is interesting to note that the overall level of magnetic disturbance from year to year has increased substantially from a low around 1900 Also, the level of mean yearly aa is now much higher so that a year of minimum magnetic disturbances now is typically more disturbed than years at maximum disturbance levels before 1900.”
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/geomag/image/aastar07.jpg
Annual number of magnetic storms:
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/images/image022.jpg
It seems clear that the strongest influence on temperature on the decadal time scale is ocean oscillations, which could simply be redistributing surface heat in a temporal manner, or they could have their own temperature forcing effects (Tisdale’s theory) so that they create a secular trend. Either way, so long as these effects are stronger in the short run than solar effect they will mask the solar effects unless/until we get solid data on ocean heat content over time. That is the only way to tell in the short run whether solar fluctuations are heating and cooling the climate system and we have only had even the beginnings of this data set for about a decade now.
Without a decent ocean heat content record we can only look at lower frequency surface signals: when solar activity is up for several cycles does it correlate with rising temperatures, and in looking backwards this is what we are stuck with. Here many studies HAVE found quite strong solar-climate correlations. I listed 2 dozen examples in the second section here (“a sample of the omitted evidence“), starting with Bond 2001, “Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene,” which found that:
I need to update that list, having since collected several dozen more examples, but I am not the only one collecting this stuff. Club de Soleil, for example, compiled a list of 71 research papers from 2013 alone that reported substantial evidence that climate variation is largely solar driven. The evidence for these lower frequency solar climate variations suggests that the higher frequency correlation must be there too, and must be masked by ocean oscillations.
Willis might also want to think about the possibility that, if there is a mechanism by which solar magnetic activity affects temperature forcings on earth, these mechanisms might alter the temperature setting of the climate system’s built-in thermostatic controls. Suppose, for instance that solar magnetic effects on cloud seeding or on the planet’s electrical circuit slightly alter how readily clouds form? Solar effects and thermostatic mechanisms are not incompatible, but these things are not going to be visible so long as ocean oscillations dominate. The only way to see them is if we can control for oscillations by looking at ocean heat content.
One of my fears is that if the ARGO ocean temperature monitoring system does start to show a falling ocean heat content then the system will be defunded before we can get a good look at this critical variable.
Lord Monckton of Brenchley aptly demonstrated the problem with signal analysis using data with unknown error and uncertainty years back. (I don’t recall the posting maybe His Lordship would kindly post a link? It is a classic problem of S/N ratio. Also if there was warming of 0.1C we still don’t have instruments today that can show that on a planetary scale AND we have no data to compare with that has sufficiently low uncertainty.
So… What % of signal variance for any of the solar plots is necessary to indicate an effect of 0.1C superimposed on a daily cycle of 10 C? Seriously, if it is a small input, then all of your plots lack sufficient precision to indicate the miniscule effect required. Therefore no conclusions can be drawn.
Well. The effect is invisible. Lost in the daily thermal tempest.
Willis: You are aware of Svensmark’s 2007 paper on the correllation (please note, I’m painfully aware that correllation is not causation, per see) between the change in cloud cover, world wide, versus a Forebush decrease (in Cosmic rays, due to a large solar flare). We TRUST you are aware that solar flares and the solar wind act as SHIELDING for the Earth cutting down the number of cosmic rays….and Svensmark’s cosmic ray/cloud seeding hypothesis. (“An Elegant Hypothesis, SLAIN by an UGLY FACT!” Huxley..
Willis, your simple but elegant research must show that the solar variation over the 11-year sunspot cycle is not sufficient (either in magnitude or duration) to trigger a sympathetic variation in earth climate equilibrium.
Put another way…. because the earth climate is not responding to the 11-year sunspot cycle (which we know is creating variable energy output) there must be some equally offsetting effect in the interface between the two systems.
Ulric Lyons says:
May 24, 2014 at 5:02 pm
Major Magnetic Storms 1868-2007:
“Although not documented here, it is interesting to note that the overall level of magnetic disturbance from year to year has increased substantially from a low around 1900
The level today is down to where it was in 1900:
http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
Temperatures are not.
The Aa index on which your plot was based has a calibration error in 1957.
Not exactly on point but interesting nonetheless. http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/21/605/2014/npg-21-605-2014.html
DaveR says:
May 24, 2014 at 5:13 pm
Put another way…. because the earth climate is not responding to the 11-year sunspot cycle (which we know is creating variable energy output) there must be some equally offsetting effect in the interface between the two systems.
No, the more likely reason is simply that the variation of the energy output is too small to have any significant effect.
Without any comment:
First things first:
Can anyone show me a planetary time vs AVE temperature plot WITH KNOWN ERROR BANDS for the last 1000 years?
Let us begin there.
Anyone? Crickets?
I know Willis is Anthony’s best mate, and I can tell that he’s a funny, intelligent and entertaining guy because I nearly always read what he writes…but this piece should never have been put up on WUWT. It’s basically opinionated garbage.
lsvallgard says..
No, the more likely reason is simply that the variation of the energy output is too small to have any significant effect…
——————————————————————————————————————–
I agree. That energy variation is not making it into the climate system, whether its too low in the first place, or being offset somewhere, the results is the same.
We know that the variation in solar energy from sunlight angle on the earth’s surface over the earths 1 -year orbit is sufficient to change the weather (=the seasons), but the variation in solar output over the 11-year sunspot cycle is not.
Therefore do we not have a crude upper and lower limit that can point to what the threshold energy variation is the change the climate?
As it may be, however, a simple regression of the tsi averaged over the previous 11 years against the hadcrut data since 1850 will give you a model that “explains” the hadcrut temperatures with an r-squared of 0.61 Since the 11 year average of the tsi is related to the 11 year average of the solar magnetic field, it does appear that the sun enters into things. I conjecture that whatever the physical response of the earth’s temperature field is, it is of a lower frequency than 1 per 11 years. Probably more of 1 per 40 years. D’Aleo also found that the TSI entered his regression model. You can play with this if you get the historical TSI series and the temperature data. For me, that sort of r-squared is sufficient to reject the null hypothesis that the sun has nothing to do with the temperature with some degree of confidence.
Sunspot activity may have an indirect effect via cosmic rays and cloud formation. Looking for a direct effect may not yield results. Look at neutron count data, set a threshold above which cloud formation may become a measure able feedback. Contact me via the wuwt moderators if you would like to get my hobbyist spreadsheet analysis of this Willis.
Leif said:
“The level today is down to where it was in 1900
Temperatures are not.”
It’s hardly as if global mean temperatures would drop back that quickly to 1900 levels after a century of warming. Though regional land temperatures since 2009 have been down to lows not seen since past solar grand minimums.
The mistake every study makes trying to correlate solar effects with climate is that the decouple solar changes from ocean cycles that store and ventilate heat in the tropics. The tropics absorb excess heat then transport it to the extra-tropics, so global trends will be a combination of El Nino, PDO and solar cycles.
Most major climate historical changes show a cosmogenic Be correlation. Such as Solar forcing of Holocene climate: New insights from a speleothem record, southwestern United States
Yemane Asmerom (2007)
In “A decadal solar effect in the tropics in July–August” van Loon and Meehl (2004) found “The large temperature differences between solar maxima and minima in the stratosphere, along with the consistent geographical patterns of tropical rainfall, vertical motion, tropopause temperature, and OLR suggest that the response of the climate system to solar forcing likely consists of a combination of dynamical-radiative air–sea coupling (Meehl et al., 2003), such that increased solar forcing produces higher tropical SSTs (White et al., 1997, 1998), intensified climatological precipitation regimes involving the monsoons and the oceanic precipitation convergence zones, and interactions in the upper stratosphere between ozone and UV that indirectly produce warming of the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (Shindell et al., 1999; Balachandran et al., 1999).
Wondering if anyone has looked for correlations between solar changes and oceanic current changes. Could variations in proportions of solar energy in shorter wave length bands (shorter than visible ?) be reflected in influence on temperature or ocean current speeds? (Posited solar influence may be difficult to separate from variations in geothermal (volcanoes, “black smokers”) and seismic energy inputs?)
Willis
Is there any correlation between global temperature and the mean of the sunspot numbers in this graph from Wiki ?
Wiki says..There is still a very poor understanding of the correlation between low sunspot activity and cooling temperatures During the period 1645–1715, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. The Spörer Minimum has also been identified with a significant cooling period between 1460 and 1550. Does this not support
the comment by Mick
Mick says:
May 24, 2014 at 3:59 pm
Willis,
You can’t see the 100Hz AC if you stick a thermometer in the chicken soup [cooking] on the hot-plate.
This doesn’t mean there is no oscillation of incoming energy, but the thermal inertia is acting as a low-pass filter…
And YES I am well aware of the Connolly influence on Wiki…
oops
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png
Link to Wiki
Test.
Matthew R Marler says:
May 24, 2014 at 4:40 pm
“…Your question is a counterpart to the question that “catastrophists” pose: with as much evidence as we have about CO2, isn’t it prudent to act now?”
I feel that is not an accurate reading of Roger Sowell’s original assertion;
“Do we actually need a proven, causal mechanism before it is prudent to act?”.
His example was based on observed and very regular occurrences that had/have therefore high (approaching 1) probability of being repeated. His point is only that you don’t need to know why before concluding that it will happen again.
The “catastrophists” have no such basis for their call to arms. (or if they have they are keeping it to themselves). Based on observation there is very low (and decreasing) probability, in a “business as usual” scenario, of man-made climate change that is beyond our ability to adapt.
I do however support the so called precautionary principle as long as it is applied to the recommended action as conscientiously as to the original trigger.
In other words; if you have concluded that it is prudent to act now, examine and explain (and thereby understand) – step by step – how your recommended action a) will produce the desired result and b) will not risk “side effects” that are potentially as or more damaging than the initial perceived problem.
“Doing something” just for the sake of it is rarely prudent. On that I think we would agree.
Leif said
“The Aa index on which your plot was based has a calibration error in 1957.”
It still seems to show a doubling of aa index days >=60 up to 1950:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/geomag/image/aastar07.jpg
The annual number of storms shows a very similar pattern:
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/images/image022.jpg
The various satellite measurements of TSI, which span something like three 11 year sunspot (half) cycles, suggest a 0.1% cyclic variation in TSI (roughly).
Well whoop de doo !.
As Leif has pointed out many times, if that were simply transformed via the Stefan-Boltzmann formula, into some supposedly “equilibrium” BB Temperature shift, that converts to about 72mdeg. C. Whoop de do again. Not enough to show up, even if that was a good theory, also given the annual cyclic change in SI. So nyet on TSI of known variations.
BUT ! back to a recent (not so long ago) Willis essay, on some observations of a Volcanic dimming incident(s) I believe made in Hawaii (shoot me if I’m wrong Willis) where for some months, there was a measured, very significant reduction (20-25% sticks in my mind) in the SURFACE solar irradiance; that decayed exponentially over a few months to a year or so (in that region) BUT, the local temperature anomalies showed no observable temperature change at all (in that region.
It was a striking demonstration that the weather / climate feedback loop, can squelch a host of solar irradiance variation, that happens over time intervals, that are clearly much longer than the thermal time constants.
Well the day night temperature cycle proves that the thermal response can be pretty darn fast, compared to a three month SI deprivation.
So that essay of yours Willis proved to me quite solidly, that there is a very active negative feedback, temperature regulating loop in play.
I don’t know how many times I have alluded to it, over the years; and Dr Roy, has put the stamp of academic respectability to it himself.
It’s called ….”””” CLOUDS “”””….
So the plasticine modelers keep saying they don’t understand how to model clouds (and they don’t).
So while I firmly believe the sun is the slightly variable power supply, that powers this inhabited wet rock; I would never expect to find the noisiness of that power supply to be able to overcome the more powerful regulatory processes of our oceans; due to our oceans consisting mostly of H2O molecules in the mostly liquid phase.
Dr Roy pegged it Willis, so give yourself a break, and save yourself the trouble of looking for a sun link.
Well, unless it suddenly goes out. And Willis, you know the heads down pose for dealing with the sun suddenly going out !
This post is one of the most silly I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t remember anyone saying that the 11 years cycles have enough change in radiation to produce an effect that isn’t masked by the planetary climate system. It has always been successive low cycles like the Mauder minimum. And even if the cycles aren’t readily visible, they are known to exist. They are there. So a better question to ask is how does the planetary climate system counter these changes in solar input so that we may understand if part of the “signal” is not masked causing some of the changes we’re seeing. I don’t think there exists much research in discerning the solar input signal from an attenuated system.
“Unfortunately, the dang facts got in the way again”
They often do. I’ve told you before,you should leave those things alone and stick to pure speculation.
Willis,
As always, lots of interesting food for thought in your post!
Willis Eschenbach says:
Okay, so…Now, you have identified a clear test of the dominant paradigm, but you haven’t gone as far as I think you could in putting your hypothesis versus the paradigm to the test. Why don’t you look and see if climate models forced with the changes in solar luminosity over the sunspot cycles show a strong response?
If you do see a significant response in the models but not in the real data, then it seems to me that you have a real potential challenge to the paradigm. If not, you are sort of attacking a strawman because if the models don’t predict a strong response, then the lack of a strong response hasn’t really provided any evidence against the paradigm.
If it isn’t Sun cycles that cause changes to the climate, what other causes could there be?
Astronomers say we are currently located inside a low-density zone that is about 10 times lower in neutral atoms than the average of 0.5 atoms/cc elsewhere in the Milky Way on average. So what effect would there be if the solar system passed through a denser medium, such as an interstellar cloud? Could a higher-density zone block some sunlight from reaching Earth or have some other effect?
After a search, I found the following comment at http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q1372.html:
“When the solar system enters such a cloud, the first thing that will happen will be that the magnetic field of the Sun, which now extends perhaps 100 AU from the Sun and 2-3 times the orbit of Pluto, will be compressed back into the inner solar system depending on the density of the medium that the Sun encounters. When this happens, the Earth may be laid bare to an increased cosmic ray bombardment.”
Could passing through a cosmic dust cloud have caused ice ages in the past? If increased cosmic rays cause more clouds, couldn’t that cause cooling and possibly account for past ice ages? I have no idea one way or the other. I’m just throwing it out there because I haven’t seen any mention of such a possibility.
Willis,
Spot the science error
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/01/spot-the-science-error/
Oh, I made a mistake. I thought Willis was completely aware of the Sunspot/Solar Wind/Cosmic ray connection. The “Cloud” experiments by CERN, the experiments with CLOUD CHAMBERS by Svensmark in his own lab, and the commensurate caculative basis, of course the MARVELOUS paper by Svensmark (http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/svensmark-forebush.pdf), AND the rather large number of other “correlative” work…which has been rather well laid out in the comments. If, dear…brillant and determined Willis,you are looking for some TSI/solar output, “direct” correlation between sunspots and the Earth’s weather, no…I would not claim there is one nore expect to find one. In point of fact, if you did….this would be of interest.
Willis, you can’t see the forest for the trees. If you look at the graph you presented here:
[deleted on submitter’s request]
Each 11+or- cycle (each one is a “tree”) doesn’t have an immediate effect, but the “forest” or grouping of them does. (at least for the last almost 300 years) (and well, if 3 to 5 makes a forest) Maybe the 3 warm periods and 2 cool periods shown are just a coincidence. Are there registered sunspot numbers that go back further in time, along with accurate temp records?
Oh great!!! my clipboard didn’t work – lol here’s the link I meant to attach:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/24/its-the-evidence-stupid/#comment-1645032
Sorry – mod can you delete that video??
Willis
Maybe you need to identify the natural frequency of the atmosphere oceanic system. If you drive a system at or near the natural frequency, you get noticeably responses. But if the earth’s climate system has a natural frequency of 3 or 55 years (strictly random suggestions) you won’t detect an obvious signal if driven by a forcing with an 11 year cycle. It will take much longer to show up. Thermal systems have very slow response times, especially those dominated by liquids like the Earths oceans.
Bill
Like my old boss said – you know just enough about the computer to be dangerous…
I wouldn’t expect to find any change reflecting the short 11 year cycle for a couple of reasons. First is that the solar radiation does not change enough for it to mean much. Secondly, it would be the lull between the cycles, not the peaks that would result in change and they are too short, generally, to show up. However, when one has a grand minimum, it might, because of the increase in GCRs over a much longer period of time.
In other words, I believe it takes several years of reduced solar activity to show up in the record, not just a year or two. I also believe that difference has to be over an extended period of time. A decade or more.
R. de Haan,
Thanks for the link. Is discussion about Piers Corbyn forbidden on WUWT now?
Hydrology & Hale Cycle
WJR Alexander finds that hydrology in Southern African region is driven by the ~ 22 year Hale Cycle, but not evaporation. See:
WJR Alexander et al., Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering Vol 49 No 2, June 2007, Pages 32–44, Paper 659
WJR Alexander & F. Bailey, Solar Activity and Climate Change – A Summary, Journal Energy & Environment Volume 18, Number 6 / November 2007 10.1260/095830507782088749
Alexander offers his entire life long collection of all hydrological records in the Southern African region to anyone who asks: WJR Alexander, Professor Emeritus, Department of Civil and Biosystems Engineering, University of Pretoria Email: alexwjr@iafrica.com
Your 4 long term atmospheric pressure stations are all in the tropics or close to the tropics.
Can you see the signal you are looking for if you choose places that are say 50-70N or S (where atmospheric pressure varies over a much bigger range)?
The earth is a low-pass filter with a cutoff frequency around 29 years.
Willis, many years ago I heard that sunspots correlate with vintage. Allegedly, the wine is better in years with lots of sunspots. You might find the cycle there. If you can get a generous research grant, I will be very happy to help you with the requisite research.
george e. smith says:
Well, it might prove it to you but it certainly doesn’t to me. I can think of a ton of issues with such a test. One is the huge thermal heat capacities involved…Places like Hawaii don’t have that strong a diurnal temperature cycle as is true of more continental climates. A second issue is the neglect of the fact that climate is far from a local effect, that is there is huge heat transport around the globe. You can’t just say, “Forcing is reduced here so it should be a lot colder here.” A third is you have to figure out the extent to which that change in solar radiation reaching the surface means less solar radiation being absorbed vs the extent to which some of that radiation that didn’t reach the surface was absorbed in the atmosphere (i.e., to what extent do the volcanic aerosols reflect radiation and to what extent do they block it by absorbing it).
But, another important thing is that you are making a big confusion between changes in forcing at the surface and top-of-the-atmosphere forcings. The book “Global Warming: The Hard Science” by L.D. Harvey has a nice calculation demonstrating how a large change in forcing at the surface will result in only a small temperature change (essentially because it is canceled out by changes in convection) while the same change in top-of-the-atmosphere forcing has a much larger effect because it involves the energy budget of the entire system and can’t just be counteracted by a change in convection.
Again, this is the sort of thing that could become a useful test if you actually used it to compare the response of the real world to the response of a climate model and showed that the real world behaved one way (suggesting the forcing didn’t have much effect) but the climate model behaved a different way (suggesting the forcing did have a strong effect). Then you would at least have some possible evidence that the climate models are overestimating the effect of the forcing.
Without this, you would again just be attacking strawmen, i.e., you would be claiming, “If the climate system worked in the way climate scientists claim it does then I would expect to see something different than what I saw” but without providing any evidence whatsoever to support the “I would expect to see something different” part of the claim.
Just because you can’t find an eleven year cycle in the climate doesn’t mean that the sun doesn’t affect the climate.
Others have pointed out that long periods of low or high solar activity do seem to have an effect. Judith Curry points out work by: Svensmark, Vahrenholt and Luning, and the NRC. http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/01/ipcc-solar-variations-dont-matter/
Here’s a quote from a NASA press release describing the NRC report:
lsvalgaard says:
May 24, 2014 at 5:16 pm
Ulric Lyons says:
May 24, 2014 at 5:02 pm
Major Magnetic Storms 1868-2007:
“Although not documented here, it is interesting to note that the overall level of magnetic disturbance from year to year has increased substantially from a low around 1900
The level today is down to where it was in 1900:
http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
Temperatures are not.
___________________________________________
The temperatures in 1900 were proceeded by 2 consecutive low solar cycles.
If Earth experiences 3 consecutive low solar cycles like the current one, Earth temps will be lower too..
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/images/image022.jpg
@ Matthew R Marler on May 24, 2014 at 4:40 pm
Your question to me is:
“Act how, and invest how much money, labor and time?”
My own view of the overall problem is that global cooling is the greater problem, and is imminently upon us. Man-made Global Warming is a myth based on very bad science and agenda-driven people. One of my most-viewed blog posts is of the speech I make on this. see Part III, Implications of this link:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/warmists-are-wrong-cooling-is-coming.html
What we could, and should do as “acts” include preparing for a much, much colder climate for decades on end. Much of the northern hemisphere’s infrastructure is not suited to prolonged cold.
In some respects, the climate cooling crisis will be sudden, and we will not have much time to prepare. In other respects it will be slow. The sudden aspect will be crop failures. The world has very little stored food and will be in crisis mode in roughly one year after the first major crop failure. Political upheaval will occur as hungry people act in violent ways. Medical treatment will be in short supply.
Slower aspects will be the need for more heating energy and improved transportation routes. Displaced populations from inhospitable colder climates to warmer areas will create massive shortages of housing, water, and other basic needs.
However, possibly the greatest danger and need for an “act” is preparing nuclear power plants from damage by floods and ice floes in the flood waters. This is an overlooked but very grim outcome of a sudden colder climate. The NRC has identified numerous nuclear plants that are downstream of dams that could have severe damage if the dam breaks. The risk assessment is low, in their opinion. However, ice dams on rivers also pose serious danger to nuclear plants downstream. When the ice dam breaks, great damage is done by the flood waters and ice. I have not found any NRC analysis of this danger.
:-}
Max Hugoson says:
May 24, 2014 at 6:42 pm
Not sure of your point there, Max. Since cosmic rays run in synchrony with sunspots, and since there is definitely a sunspot/solar wind/cosmic ray connection, and since all of those phenomena run in parallel with the 11-year sunspot cycle … given all that, just why should we NOT expect to find the 11-year cosmic ray/solar wind/sunspot cycle somewhere in the climate datasets?
w.
Charles Nelson says:
May 24, 2014 at 5:39 pm
Charles, I’ve provided lots and lots of math, data, computer code, logic, citations, and support for my ideas and claims.
You, on the other hand, have provided … well, nothing but your opinion. You haven’t even had the balls to quote what you disagree with, you just wave your hands and give us your oh-so-valuable opinion …
I know which one I call “opinionated garbage”. Come back when you can actually find and point out something wrong with my work.
Or not, I don’t care …
w.
Willis, perhaps a better explanation would be, “It’s the sunspots and PDO cycles, stupid”…
Over the past 163 years, there is a 100% correlation between 30-yr PDO warm/cool cycles and global temperature trends:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1880/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1880/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1881/to:1921/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1881/to:1921/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1922/to:1943/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1922/to:1943/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1944/to:1976/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1944/to:1976/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1977/to:2004/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1977/to:2004/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/trend
The strongest 63-year string of sunspot activity in 11,400 years occurred from 1933~1996 (Solanki et al) which matches the general 20th century global warming trend:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1933/to:1996/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1933/to:1996/trend
When the strongest 63-yr string of solar cycles in 11,400 years ended in 1996, so did the global warming trend:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.5/plot/rss/from:1996.5/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.5/normalise/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.5/normalise
If you superimpose the PDO warm/cool cycles over the sunspot cycles, the cool PDO cycles tend to negate/overwhelm the positive forcing effects of sunspots, while the warm PDO cycles tend to accentuate the sunspot positive forcing during strong solar cycles.
We also know that during the Little Ice Age (1280~1850) there were 4 Grand Solar Minimums (Wolf, Sporer, Maunder and Dalton), which likely explains why we had a Little Ice Age.
When the Wolf Grand Solar Minimum stated, the LIA started and when the Dalton Grand Solar Minimum ended, the LIA ended soon afterwards. During the end of the Wolf GSM (1280~1350), roughly 25% of Europeans died from famine and extreme cold.
Of course there isn’t a perfect fit between any single climate variable as nature is always fighting to find equilibrium. That’s why CAGW’s CO2 “tipping point” hypothesis doesn’t work (and as our very existence proves). Nature always tends to find a way to offset swings in either extreme, but she isn’t always successful, especially during long/cold Milankovitch cycles, which overwhelms the Earth’s energy budget for 10’s of thousands of years.
It’s all about entropy and the amazing and beautiful dance between time and energy… Unfortunately, CAGW has been disco dancing to the tune of CO2 for far too long and they look absolutely hilarious in their lime-green polyester leisure suits, and their music sucks.
We need more Mozart and less Bee Gees…
Keep up with your excellent posts, Willis! I always enjoy them as they make people think and question their assumptions.
Willis have you looked in to daily wind run readings over the 11 year cycle?.
I have but only started this using my weather station readings almost 4 years.
IE for Februarys avg per day. 2011=181.99km. 2012=194.41km. 2013=216.85km. 2014=218.11km.
And in Mays 2011=144.78km. 2012=150.28km. 2013=159.94km. 2014=165.75km per day.
Just a thought..
I read about 2/3 of the comments, and from the information in Willis’ post and the comments, it is my belief that you will never find a suitable “cycle.
In the first place, the sunspot cycle is not ~11 years, but varies considerably according to the graphs in the post.
Secondly, temperature, pressure, rainfall each have their own cycles.
Without getting any further involved, simply combining the additive effects of the cycles noted would result in a relatively chaotic overall “cycle”.
Even if powerful computing equipment could determine a cycle, daily changes in something as simple as construction activity would alter the computed “cycle”.
Over geologic time, the extremes of change in thins such as [plate] tectonics, sea level rise/fall, changes in ocean area and volcanism would ruin the most complex computations that could be imagined.
It is my opinion that the problem Willis encountered is essentially analogous to peeling an onion, albeit a very big one: as more is learned, there is even more that remains to be learned if one is to ever solve the puzzle.
I’m thinking thermostat effect. The sun’s activity has to remain elevated or depressed for some time before the increase or decrease triggers global warming or cooling. Kind of like the formation of thunderstorms and how they might continue even though the temperature has dropped below the level necessary to trigger a thunderstorm?
Willis
Your posts are always thought provoking, which I appreciate. Even the non-scientific ones.
I have three questions:
1. Isn’t the information always in the modulation rather than the carrier, regardless of the frequency of the carrier? There seems to be both amplitude and frequency modulation going on with the 11 year sunspot cycle. Perhaps the pertinent information is in the area under the curve (average power), rather than the peak of the signal.
2 I realize there is a very long record of sunspot activity, but is the number of visible sunspots really a good proxy for how much of the EME’s hit the earth? Of the sunspots that are counted, very few are pointed directly at us. The Earth is a very tiny target for the sun, so perhaps we should only be concerned about those that impact the earth.
3. What is required is how warm is the earth at any given moment. ignoring the “adjustments”, UHI and siting issues, is air temperature the best indicator of that? Is it appropriate to derive an average air temperature from min/max temperatures?
Had the article author been a real scientist, he would have understood that his arguments are as valid as the wellknown usage of valid but in sound fallacies proving the moon to be a cheese He would have known but that that doesn’t make a conclusion true. In other words arguments can one by one can be valid, but only if the premises for the arguments are sound it’s possible to draw conclusion . If not than reality wins over fiction.
If an argument is valid and its premises are true, the argument is sound. If an argument is not sound it is unsound. An argument can be valid even if its premises are false—but such an argument is unsound. For instance, the following argument is valid but unsound:
Cheese more than a billion years old is stale. The Moon is made of cheese. The Moon is more than a billion years old. Therefore, the Moon is stale cheese.
If all three premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true. The argument is valid despite the fact that the Moon is not made of cheese, but the argument is unsound—because the Moon is not made of cheese. Chapter 16, Propositional Logic, discusses validity and soundness in more detail.
The logical form of the argument just above is (roughly):
For any x, if x is A and x is B then x is C. y is A. y is B. Therefore, y is C. [+]
…….
An argument consists of a sequence of statements. One is the conclusion; the rest are premises. The premises are given as evidence that the conclusion is true. If the conclusion must be true if the premises were true, the argument is valid. A valid argument is sound if its premises are true. Valid arguments result from applying correct rules of reasoning. Examples of correct rules of reasoning include:
• A or not A.
• Not (A and not A).
• A. B. Therefore, A and B.
• A. Therefore, A or B.
• A and B. Therefore, A.
• A or B. Not A. Therefore, B.
• Not A. Therefore, not (A and B).
• Not (A and B). Therefore, (not A) or (not B).
• Not (A or B). Therefore, (not A) and (not B).
• If A then B. A. Therefore, B.
• If A then B. Not B. Therefore, not A.
Validity and soundness, Valid rules of reasoning paragraph in Chapter 2 Reasoning and Fallacies, stat.berkeley.edu
Some people calling themself scholars must have been asleep during Theories of Science lessons…….
I’m with Alec here. The sun is not heating the wheat in England or the rain in Spain. It is not heating the Nile (very much). It is heating the ocean and the land. The land pretty much blows it off the next night. The ocean stores it for…the ENSO cycle, the AMO cycle, maybe the PDO cycle. The net effect is that always the ocean heats the atmosphere somewhere, sometime with varying lags and spatial distribution.
I’ve been in Maui a few days pondering the trades wrecking havoc with a southwest swell. When we take a typical graph of an oscillation it is essentially one dimensional with time. So we are really in a four dimensional realm and only two are represented in the graph. We are trying to deconstruct a 4d signal from an unknown number of components in 2d.
What the trades are doing is introducing a chop with a much higher frequency than the southwest swell. The incidence is maybe 45 degrees north of the swell. Occasionally a large wave comes along that seems to be at an average of the competing angles.
You are right as far as you go. All we can do is watch and learn.
The solar magnetic cycle most certainly modulates planetary climate and we are going to have a front row seat to watch the cooling phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle. Willis you are plotting the wrong variables.
GCR at high latitudes is modulated by the solar heliosphere strength, extent, and density which lags sunspot count by two or three years.
Planetary cloud cover at high latitudes increases when GCR is high and decreases when GCR is low however as noted below solar wind bursts over ride GCR and can therefore if the solar wind bursts occur at solar minimum which they have make it appear the that GCR does not modulate planetary cloud cover.
Solar wind bursts (not the speed of the solar wind but rather the change in the speed of the solar wind) creates a space charge differential in the ionosphere which in turn removes cloud forming ions. The solar wind bursts are caused by both sunspots and low latitude solar coronal holes which last for two or three solar rotations. The coronal holes have for some unknown reason (the cause of coronal holes is not understood) been appearing in low latitude regions of the sun at the end of solar cycles which creates solar wind bursts.
The solar wind bursts by the process called electroscavenging remove ions from both high latitude regions and equatorial regions. Even when GCR is high if there are high solar wind bursts the GCR created ions are removed which causes a reduction in cloud cover in high latitude regions. The solar wind bursts late in the solar cycle make it appear that changes to GCR do not affect high latitude planetary cloud cover.
The change in charge caused by the solar wind bursts at the equator changes the number and size of droplets in the clouds which in turn changes the amount of upward long wave radiation that absorbed by the clouds. This mechanism amplifies El Niño and La Niña events.
As noted in the AGU conference Oct, 2013 the solar heliosphere density has reduced by approximately 40%. The reduction in the density of the solar heliosphere density has reduced the magnetic field intensity of the solar wind bursts. The solar wind bursts relative strength is measured by how much they effect the geomagnetic field in a three hour period (Ap). As noted it the short term change in the solar wind speed that controls how large the affect is (in addition the magnetic field strength of the wind burst itself.)
There is a fundamental error concerning the solar model which is the physical reason why the GCR mechanism has been inhibited for roughly 7 years. The fundamental error when corrected will have a profound effect on both cosmology, climatology, and geophysics. I will explain the details of this issue when there is unequivocal cooling.
This graph shows GCR at high a high latitude region. As the graph shows the GCR level is very high.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=27&startmonth=03&startyear=1975&starttime=00%3A00&endday=27&endmonth=04&endyear=2014&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
Persistent solar signatures in cloud cover: spatial and temporal analysis
Voiculescu & Usoskin 2012
“We have analyzed the coherence between the time variations of two solar proxy drivers, cosmic ray ionization and UV irradiance, on one hand, and low, middle and high clouds, on the other hand, in order to check the persistence of solar signal in cloud cover between 1984 and 2009. Coherence plaots show that for most of the selected regions cloud type varies in phase or anti-phase with solar activity, depending on cloud type and geographical region. The area where the confidence level is greater than 95% is large in many of the coherence plots, which can hardly be a random coincidence.”
Sounds like a heat transport effect to me but that’s just a guess. Don’t count solar out yet.
It seems to me that if I wanted to look for the signature of the eleven-year solar cycle in some other climate data, I would focus on high resolution and low noise data like atmospheric CO2. I would ask questions like: Does the magnitude of the seasonal fluctuation change at all on an 11-year cycle? I’m not a climate scientist, but it seems to me like the temperature records and other climate data are way too noisy to be able to find a tiny contribution from the solar cycle.
Solar power is a constant and large source of energy for the earth, so changes to climate will not be easy to measure. It seems unlikely that an 11 year cycle will be seen in any length of climate record due to the fact that noise in the system will be higher than the overall effect. the 11 year cycle is most likely modulating longer term cycles such as ENSO,PDO or AMO etc eg-
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n2/full/ncomms1186.html
the spectrogram in that (fig 5) shows an approx 60yr cycle which would fit.
the point is though that I never thought i would read this- “So no matter the mechanism, it would have a visible ~11-year heartbeat.” from willis. I just dont understand how one goes from the questioning to the assertive with so little actually known about the ‘mechanisms’ and how the sun affects our climate.
the only real evidence that stands up so far is that changes in the solar energy reaching the earth (in some form or another) directly affect our climate in relatively short periods of time (hundreds of years). it is up to us to find the hows and whys, not just declare that it cant be the sun, stupid!
Color me stupid, but why, Willis, are you using atmospheric pressure records instead of atmospheric temperature records?
William Astley says:
May 24, 2014 at 9:36 pm
The solar wind bursts relative strength is measured by how much they effect the geomagnetic field in a three hour period (Ap).
Apart from yuor musings being incorrect, e.g. as shown by the direct observations of Ap shows both a solar cycle and the lack of any trend over the last 170 years http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
Yep, can’t see any reason why you’d use atmospheric pressure records instead of temperature records. Care to redo with the proper sort of records?
Willis, how come dependent on the orbit and angle towards the sun, do we get season? Sunspots do have a degree of influence on rain and cloud formation. I see where you are coming from. Earth reflects heat into the lower atmosphere, UHI, but without clouds the heat is no kept down under then. See how deserts are hot during day and freezing during the night without clouds. And of course all living organisms can get sunburned.
I have no idea what your “periodogram” is, but the “11 year” cycle in it is rather small.
Why?
The 200 year period in your “periodogram” – whatever it is – is evidently much more powerful (integral under the curve).
I´d expect the climate responses to the 200 year cycle, rather than to the 11 year artefact.
alex says:
May 24, 2014 at 10:13 pm
I´d expect the climate responses to the 200 year cycle, rather than to the 11 year artefact.
So compare the climate now with that of 200 years ago…
I am out of town and away from my computer but I always thought this was an interesting correlation
http://climatechange.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003801
Willis says….”Why The 11-year Cycle?: Because it is the biggest cycle” and ….
“The earth’s temperature swings on the order of 6°C peak to peak over the course of a year. Why would it not respond over an 11-year period?”
I think you may be incorrect on both counts. We may not know what the biggest solar cycle is.
The 11 year period may not be of adequate length to measure an input that may take far longer to manifest in the atmosphere, and may last far longer then 11 years.
In my view the money quote in Monckton’s post was this…”One should not expect the ~11-year cycle to have a major influence on global temperature, owing to the homoeostatic effect of the two boundaries of the atmosphere: the near-infinite heat-sink that is the ocean and the infinite heat-sink that is outer space. Temperature will only change significantly if there is a sufficiently long period of persistently higher-than-normal solar activity (as there was during most of the past century) or lower-than-normal solar activity”
The GHE works on the principle of increasing the residence time of radiant energy in the earth’s atmosphere. (Some of the Energy that would normally escape to space via radiation is instead redirected back towards the surface, or is conducted to from additional GHG molecules to non GHG molecules.) While this energy stays longer, additional energy enters, thus more energy = warming. Basically warming or cooling comes down to the residence time of the energies involved.
In order to determine where to look for a solar affect on climate, it would be wise to know the residence times of disparate solar spectrum. Some of the solar energy can penetrate up to 800′ in the deep oceans. The residence time of solar energy is dependent on the wavelength of said radiant energy, and the materials it encounters. Some of that energy may well stay within the oceans for decades, or centuries. As such it may take decades or centuries to reach the atmosphere in order to manifest as a GAT.
Also remember it is competing with dozens of other GAT factors, all changing on different time scales, some cyclical, some not, but definitively existing within an inherently chaotic system. As such we may not be capable of determining one affect as, due to different factors rarely repeating on the same scale and cycle, any one affect may not manifest in the same way each time.
Willis, this rational approach of yours is only going to upset most of the followers of this site.
LT says:
May 24, 2014 at 10:22 pm
I am out of town and away from my computer but I always thought this was an interesting correlation
http://climatechange.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003801
==================================================================
It is interesting. As the Arctic atmosphere is composed of much lower energy then the tropics, it is logical to think it may be more sensitive to solar input. (Although I tend to think it is very sensitive to ocean currents.)
What is the arctic T based on in this chart?
In reading the above comments I notice many contrasting views, some showing support for different complicates aspects of solar factors, some showing inconsistency, much like Willis has showed with the projected volcanic affect, much like skeptics show with CO2, much like can be found with any one factor competing in a soup of different ingredients.
It is possible that major shifts in climate (other then those caused by one off or extinction events) mainly occur only when several strong factors all come together in harmonic resonance.
Willis: “So no matter the mechanism, it would have a visible ~11-year heartbeat.”
You need to look at 94-year trend to look earth’s response to the climate. 11-years is two short for the earth’s ocean to respond to the sun spot variation.
Charles Nelson says:
May 24, 2014 at 5:39 pm
Normally I wouldn’t do this but Mr Eschenbach has attempted to slight me by saying my lake level graph is hilarious. Well, it is someone else’s graph in the first instance. As for the evidence provided by that graph, as the Bible says “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” Mr Eschenbach has not been able to determine the physical basis of the Sun – climate relationship. In his mind, if he can’t do it, then it doesn’t exist. Also in his mind, that means that others who have provided evidence for the relationship are wrong, and fools for even attempting. But why, you would then ask yourself, did he feel compelled to go on the public record with this “garbage” post? A post which betrays a refusal to accept scientific reality in the form of the papers of Solheim et al, amongst hundreds of others?
lsvalgaard says:
May 24, 2014 at 10:16 pm
So compare the climate now with that of 200 years ago…
……………..
Yes, but the problem is we have only 400 years of direct sunspot observations and only 100 years of relatively good temperature measurements. This is barely too small to compare.
Anyway, any theory must have a predictive value. This means, we have to wait for another 1000 years or so…
David,
Forgive me I’m doing this from my iPhone and I can’t read the paper to find the source of the Arctic temperature but I believe this is the paper that the graph was lifted from
http://www.oism.org/pproject/GWReview_OISM150.pdf
Willis about 1990 I was on my schooner about 80 miles from la pas in baja the substellar point of a eclipse of the sun, it took about six minutes. My grandchilderen were with me, so I got them to measure the temperature change. As I recall we lost about 20 degrees F starting from about F. The birds settled down and the fish begain jumping. I would estimate the temperature fall to be around120 Degrees in say about 4Hr. Anyone saying the sun does not change the earths temperuature needs to spend a year above 60N or S by the following February or August they would have better understanding of weather.
From norah4you on May 24, 2014 at 9:24 pm:
At this point I may freely disregard the further scribblings of the comment author as a guano-infused appeal to authority, without merit.
Especially as since we are inundated with CAGW-hyping articles by “climate scientists” who clearly do not act as real scientists, the job title “scientist” bears far less of a correlation with actual performance as a real scientist when climate is involved.
The article author has published in peer-reviewed journals and has extensive experience in data analysis, often climate related, and is self-taught remarkably well. What are the comment author’s qualifications that enable and justify their complaining about his qualifications?
The solar cycle is not a perfect cycle. There are many causes that influence climate. Most of them are not perfect cycles or not cycles at all. The climate system is not linear. It’s quite hard to identify a ‘signature’ from the output.
Even what the ‘science’ does the ‘best’:
Effects(human_causes + natural_causes) = Effects(human_causes) + Effects(natural_causes)
is very wrong, because it assumes linearity where there isn’t.
If you draw a figure of the sun spots and the dates of the 11 cities skating race in Friesland, Holland, you WILL find a convincing graph for the sun spot cycle.
@Willis Eschenbach: Did you consider the 10-15 years of lag between changes of sun activity and climate? Did you consider other natural influences like AMO and PDO (and its positive/negative feedbacks like El Nino or the melting Arctic) which can easily change climate by up to a half degree Celsius independent of the actual sun activity? Guess not. Because There would be at least a small correlation between sun activity and climate if these factors are considered (trust me, I check the climate data and facts every day for more than 5 years, I know what I’m talking about).
By all respect, please check all possible facts before contradicting the solar influence on climate. The climate is very, very complex. It’s easy to tell somebody that a certain climate influence doesn’t exist, but it is hard to prove a climate influence because you have to correct ALL other influences first to be able to get the proof of the influence factor on our climate.
Piers Corbyn does long range weather prediction based on the solar magnetic field and weather records. Video here:
http://classicalvalues.com/2014/05/follow-the-evidence/
Let us assume, our climate is an oscillator with the eigenfrequency w0.
d^2T/dt^2 + w0^2*T = forcing
The solar forcing has two driving harmonics 11 years and 200 years.
Let us assume the eigenfrequency w0 is about 30 years (inverse).
Then the response to the 11 years forcing is
dT11 ~ forcing11/(w11)^2
the response to the 200 years forcing is
dT200 ~ forcing200/(w0)^2.
So that assuming the same forcing200 and forcing11 (that is not the case!), the relative temperature response is
dT11/dT200 = (w200/w11)^2 = (11/200)^2 = 0.003
According to his “periodogramm”, the 200 year period forcing is at least an order of magnitude stronger than that at 11 years. So that in reality
dT11/dT200 ~ 0.0001.
We estimate that dT200 is about 1 degree Celsius.
That means, the climate response to the 11 year cycle must be somewhere around 1e-4 degree.
You want to measure 0.0001 degree signal?
Don’t be silly.
Moderators: what did I say that got my message bounced?
[Nothing obvious, it was just waiting. .mod]
The problem with trying to directly correlate sunspots cycles with climate is that during each cycle when the sunspots go to 0, the value of tsi, AP index or neutron rates is not relative to prior sunspot cycles when sunspot counts are low. That is why cycle length or some other conversion of the proxy must be used to correlate with climate.
What I do here is quite simple, but people do tend to throw around terms of spectrum, envelope, and modulations without conviction and/or in erroneous ways. Here I was struck by the 11 vs. 22 year cycle as reminiscent of the well known (but often with a misunderstood 2:1 error) beating in mistuned musical instruments.
The possibility that a periodicity might be 11 years; or it might be 22 years with a “sign reversal” of some sort, leads to a comparison to a musical analog of beating, and then to amplitude modulation and “balanced modulation” (double sideband or just a multiplication). I don’t think for a moment that these lead to much insight regarding solar cycles, but even in the musical cases things can be misleading.
We understand that if one trumpet (for example) is playing A=440 Hz while a second trumpet is mistuned and is playing 442 Hz, that there is a “beating” at the difference frequency, which is 2 Hz, or two beat per second. Every musician believes this. To show this we might try:
Sin(A) + Sin(B) = 2 Sin[ (A+B) / 2] Cos[ (A-B) / 2 ]
Now we have a problem! This shows an average frequency (A+B)/2 = 441 Hz with amplitude controlled by (A-B)/2 = 1 Hz, not 2 Hz! We do hear two beats/second because each Cos has two amplitude lobes for each cycle. We only “perceive” the ENVELOPE at 2 Hz, but there is no 2 Hz in the Fourier spectrum. (Neither is there 441 Hz in the spectrum.) The only frequencies in the spectrum are A and B on the left side of the identity. And the polarity does flip every other lobe (inaudible in the example).
So, could the sunspot cycle really be 22 years, with every other 11 year lobe inverted (flipped magnetic field)? I guess so – hardly a new idea. Being in the envelope (the right side of the identity), neither a 11 years or a 22 years period need be present in the spectrum.
But this is way too simple. The trig identity shows just ordinary balanced modulation on the right side, but the actual SSN “envelope” does NOT resemble balanced modulation (the cosine). If anything, it resembles 100% amplitude modulation, which would not have a polarity reversal every other lobe. So it looks much more like the “power” (square) of the trig identity.
I know FAR too little about solar physics to even imagine a reality corresponding to this simple example. I just want to quantify the obvious toys is seen from the EE playground.
alex says:
May 24, 2014 at 10:57 pm
Yes, but the problem is we have only 400 years of direct sunspot observations and only 100 years of relatively good temperature measurements. This is barely too small to compare.
Tell that to all the people who claim that “it is the Sun, stupid”.
Willis,
Please explain any of your evidense of what you claim? Start with this one:
Can someone please explain the concept of “back radiation”, i.e. electromagnetic radiation (power transfer) in a direction of more intense electromagnetic field strength, at any frequency? Such concept is in opposition to all of Jimmy Maxwell’s equations. Such concept is also in defiance of Gus Kirchhoff’s laws of thermal radiation. In addition such flux, (power transfer) has never been observed, detected, or measured. Where does such fantasy originate and why?
Wow. 157 so far took the bait.
[??? .mod]
Whether solar activity affects the climate in shorter intervals? Of course it can be seen that in the cyclic temperature changes in the zone _. Us see changes in temperature in the zone _ above the equator since 1979.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_1979.gif
Can see a high temperature _ in the upper part _. The situation changes in the 80’s.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_1982.gif
Occurs rise in temperature in the central zone _. Temperature changes again in the 90’s. The temperature equalizes.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_1989.gif
Another change occurs suddenly in 2001. Temperatures increase _ in the upper zone and a decrease in the middle, which continues today. Thus, this period lasts for 13 years.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2001.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2014.gif
Please check it out.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/
It should be in the ozone layer. Sorry.
[snip – very far off topic – this tread is about solar cycles and weather data – mod]
Isn’t 11 years half the full cycle, give or take a year or two?
Even if the effect of the sun is 1%, that would account for a large portion of it, wouldn’t it?
There are now words, but perhaps this will do http://tinyurl.com/oyonhfq.
Willis: “Now, there is a temptation to see the central figure as some kind of regular amplitude-modulated signal, with side-lobes. However, that’s not what’s happening here. There is no regular signal. ”
What is the point of doing a spectral analysis if you are going to refuse to believe what it produces.
There are all sorts of variations in the time series which results in an irregular but obvious “cycle”. The point of spectral analysis is to see what makes up those irregular bumps.
The main power is clearly a well defined triplet plus the circa 21y which is obviously related. But with all the intermediate smaller peaks and sub-10y “noise” you will get an irregular result when it’s all added together.
That does not mean that “there is no regular signal. “. It means you’ve found a strong regular signal with notable apparently random noise.
Lief stated in your last look at this that this represented an amplitude modulation. Are you concluding that he’s become a victim of that awful condition, cyclomania, too?
You are doing some interesting work but you seem to have dug your heals in so hard on your conclusion that there is nothing cyclic to be found, that you refuse to accept it even when you prove it yourself.
regards. Greg.
Willis:
I do not know if there is or is not a Sun-climate relationship. I write to comment on a response you made to Lord Monckton’s comment on your article.
In his post at May 24, 2014 at 3:17 pm which is here Lord Monckton wrote
That concurs with the finding of Friis-Christensen and Larsen.
(ref Friis-Frris-Christensen, E & Larsen, K “Length of the Solar Cycle: An Indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate”, Science, 1991).
They found that the solar cycle length has an apparent relationship to global temperature.
Ii that finding is correct then the Sun’s variability has significant influence on climate but it would be expected that the ~11-year solar cycle would NOT have a discernible major influence on global climate because – as you say – there is no consistent 11-year cycle length.
The difficulty of your reply is stressed by an answer you provided to Mick in your post at May 24, 2014 at 4:20 pm which is here and includes this
The reason for the global seasonal temperature change is the different coverage of Northern hemisphere (NH()and Southern hemisphere (SH) by water (land is not as good a heat sink as water) so the seasonal variation is greater in the NH than the SH. This support’s Monckton’s claim of a great oceanic heat sink effect.
The seasonal variation is a constant length of 1 year so would not be seen as a variation related to solar cycle length. Indeed, any constant cycle would have no discernible effect on cycle length: and only VARIATIONS in cycle length(s) would have climate effects if Friis-Christensen and Larsen are right to some degree.
Please note that I am NOT saying either (or both) of you and Monckton is wrong: I am saying that your answers do not refute Monckton’s comment.
Richard
I’d be careful about dismissing correlations solely on the basis that there are periods when they don’t apply. Another effect may be slowly waxing and waning, such that the correlation is intermittent.
Greg Goodman says:
May 25, 2014 at 12:16 am
Lief stated in your last look at this that this represented an amplitude modulation. Are you concluding that he’s become a victim of that awful condition, cyclomania, too?
Just from the power spectrum you cannot tell what it is. From the physical process behind the spectrum one concludes that variation is an amplitude modulation. For Willis’s analysis it makes no difference what one assumes.
J Martin says:
May 24, 2014 at 2:01 pm
Exactly, we have a system responding to changes in multiple solar activities – TSI, UV level and wavelength, geomagnetic polarity, solar wind, solar flares etc – that affect the surface TSI through cloud formation and surface pressure via formation/destruction of ozone in the stratosphere that affect the position and strength of the jet Streams, buffered by ocean heat capacity and further complicated by heat distribution via ocean and atmospheric currents that are influenced by lunar Saros cycles, changes in the Earth’s electrical field, Stadium waves and other unknowns.
Joanna Haigh has a good review of these solar inputs and potential influences on climate
http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrsp-2007-2&page=articlesu11.html
So why would anyone expect to be able to pick out simple relationships between solar cycles and temperature in the short term (multi decadal) time frame even when they obviously exist on longer time scales. In his articles at ClimateEtc (essential reading for anyone interested in the analysis of climate change), Tomas Milanovic points out the futility of trying to model a complex spatio-temporal chaotic system using average global data like Hadcrut4 which is made up of disparate local data, especially when neither the mathematics not computing power exist to do so. He concludes
http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/23/how-simple-is-simple/#more-15591
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/15/ergodicity/
http://judithcurry.com/2011/03/05/chaos-ergodicity-and-attractors/
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/10/spatio-temporal-chaos/
[snip – very far off topic. This is a thread about solar cycles in weather data, we won’t divert to a Slayers diversion in this thread. -mod]
Interesting to see the lunar influence. A lot of people still seem to think the idea of atmospheric tides is a mental illness too. However, this could also be a consequence of SST changes. These 9 year cycles are clearly present in SST, as is the circa 13-13.5. I have no idea what that relates to but seeing it here in SLP tends to confirm that it is physically real.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/icoads_pds_9_grp.png
For some reason Nagasaki shows the strongest peak at circa 18y where as the more tropical sites are centred on circa 9 y. Probably latitude related, could be significant. Thanks.
Looking at your Tahiti plot you can see the same 10,11,11.8 frequencies that you found in figure 2. I’d suggest plotting the two together to verify or checking the numbers, but by eye it looks like something very close.
congratulations, I think you’ve found evidence of the illusive 11 year cycle… and it’s comparable to the lunar influence.
One thing to note, this is just spectral analysis splitting the peaks. The power of the modulated solar signal is the sum of those three peaks, so it’s quite significant.
Whether the temperature in the stratosphere above the equator can be attributed to the El Niño and La Nina? Of course I do.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_1997.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2007.gif
Willis: ” This, of course, is rank heresy to the current scientific climate paradigm, which holds that ceteris paribus, changes in temperature are a linear function of changes in forcing. I disagree. I say that the temperature of the planet is set by a dynamic thermoregulatory system composed of emergent phenomena that only appear when the surface gets hotter than a certain temperature threshold. ”
These two positions are not necessarily incompatible. (Just the weight and conclusions that are drawn).
I fully agree with you that the emergent systems in tropics closely regulate temps. I’m working on EBBE data that is showing very small sensitivity in the tropics. But even this can be a “linear function”.
Consider, tropical storms cause strong neg. f/b (locally non-linear). This counters (say) 90%-95% of the change in incoming radiation. That results in a small change in SST (which is still required to provoke the feedback, even if it’s very strong). There is no reason why this small result should not be linearly related to the disturbance. One key means to make a system linear is to add negative feedbacks (linear or not).
No one disagrees about the Plank feedback being the main linear feedback keeping things stable. In fact this is so taken for granted that climatologists often leave it altogether out when referring to feedbacks.
The argument is about whether hypothesised positive feedbacks reduce it, or non modelled feedbacks like tropical storms add to it, giving a very strongly stable system that is very insensitive to changes in forcing.
Your opposition to it being linear seems a little misplaced ( this is not the contention ) . You need to focus on the magnitude of the response , not spend effort contesting the linearity on the non-local scale.
Tahiti may be a first clue to establishing the scale of the effect in the tropics. I think you have a result.
From SAMURAI on May 24, 2014 at 8:28 pm:
Your call-out is in error. WFT goes “starting FROM this date” (inclusive) to “up TO this date” (exclusive). By going as you did from “to: 1880” for the first part to “from: 1881” for the second, you dropped a year. You ended up with 5 1-year gaps.
Also, by not specifying a “to” year for the last part, thus setting it to whatever is the latest month in the dataset, you’ve introduced the vagary of the annual cycle into the slope. Should have used “to: 2014” to get the last full year, 2013.
Here’s the proper call-out, with the trend line for the whole range:
[even longer WFT link]
db: Could there be a ≈22 year cycle?
Willis: “It’s certainly possible, db … but I’ve seen no sign of a 22-year cycle either. That’s why I ran the analysis from 7 – 25 years, to catch any such cycles.
No catches to date …”
====
Well there is a broad peak around 21 which probably reflects the 10,11,11.8 triplet . Since you are looking at non polarised data in SSN, you would not really expect to find 21-22 at all. The fact that this peak exists probably indicates a non linearity. It is broad and poorly resolved but likely to reflect the underlying magnetic processes.
KDK, when your trends don’t meet you have a problem. Shifting to 1910 works better. (No idea what a “call-out” is supposed to be though).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1880/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1880/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1880/to:1910/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1880/to:1910/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1910/to:1943/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1910/to:1943/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:1976/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:1976/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1976/to:2004/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1976/to:2004/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2004/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2004/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:2014/trend
Sadly WTF.org does not tell you what the fitted slopes are. By eye I’d estimate a very small increase in both the upward and downward trends. Whether that’s AGW, UHI or data figging at CRU is anyones guess. In any case it’s very small.
lsvalgaard says:
May 25, 2014 at 12:42 am
Greg Goodman says:
May 25, 2014 at 12:16 am
Lief stated in your last look at this that this represented an amplitude modulation. Are you concluding that he’s become a victim of that awful condition, cyclomania, too?
Just from the power spectrum you cannot tell what it is. From the physical process behind the spectrum one concludes that variation is an amplitude modulation. For Willis’s analysis it makes no difference what one assumes.
===
Thanks, indeed a power spectrum in just a first indication of a possible physical modulation.
More clearly , a triplet in the power spectrum is just a first indication of a possible physical modulation.
A greeting. Good job.
Because of the internal adjustments of the temperature on Earth would be better, instead of adjusting the cycles 11 to 11 years directly adjust it 11-15?
Moderator!
Where I left a simple comment it now says:
I was replying to this comment from “Will Janoschka”, that you have STILL let stand as of this writing, where they ask Willis to explain and justify back radiation, inherent Maxwell and Kirchoff law violations, that type crud.
I just gave them the links to Ira Glickstein’s “Visualizing the Greenhouse” series to explain back radiation.
And you HACKED my simple reply into looking like I was executing a full-blown thread hijack!
BAD Moderator! No cookie!
[Reply: Some moderators are not cut out for the job. ~Sr. Mod.]
Why do you expect Sun Spots to affect climate on Earth? Is it beacuse the total energy output from the Sun is proportional to the Sun Spots? I don’t know anything about it, that’s why I ask. I.e. I need a more basic primer on the proposed mechanism.
Willis
show us the terrestrial climate record that has any sign of being correlated with the 11-year sunspot cycles
The problem is you have already found it but can’t see it.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/periodicity-analysis-berkely-earth.jpg
Just for interest, the late John Daly refers to an eleven year cycle in temperature data in one of the ‘climategate’ emails from 1996.
A Fourier transform is a standard method of detecting periodicity in data.
From Greg Goodman on May 25, 2014 at 1:37 am:
Better address that to “SAMURAI”, as that was who I was replying to, and I was just correcting the call-out.
Your loss. A call-out is when you spec.
Especially unless you click the “Raw Data” link and actually look for the “#Least squares trend line; slope = [number] per year” entries in the plain text data file.
It also helps to look on “WoodForTrees.org” instead of “WhatsTheFibonacci.org” (short version, wtf.org). Unless you really want wtf.org, and want to know the values of slopes fitted to Fibonacci sequences. Which is its own issue.
Just from the variation of TSI with the solar cycle. one would expect a cycle variation [valley to peak] variation of global temperature of 0.07C. This is probably below the noise level so far, so no wonder it doesn’t show up.
Willis,
I like you too much to not to say that: “don’t get caught up in your (new) proficiency in R … it’s just statistics … quite different from a (rock) solid theory …”
“Adam says: May 25, 2014 at 2:03 am
Why do you expect Sun Spots to affect climate on Earth? Is it because the total energy output from the Sun is proportional to the Sun Spots? I don’t know anything about it, that’s why I ask. I.e. I need a more basic primer on the proposed mechanism.”
Thank you Adam. My thoughts exactly, but expressed more politely. Looking forward to an article here on the subject. Based on the current performance the homo sapiensophobes or even the more moderate anthropophobes are unlikely to address it anytime soon.
Looking for mathematical relationships to cast light on this puzzle is a valid approach but unless you know what you are looking for and just need the proof, it has a low success rate.
This is not my field but let me try to illustrate a different approach. There is anecdotal evidence that solar cycles can influence our climate. What solar variables might affect our climate and how have these changed with time?
TSI we know about, but what about changes in spectrum in terms of energy at each frequency? We know that UV changes very significantly and has implications for atmospheric chemistry. What about the solar IR output?
Svensmark is doing something similar when he looks at the way the solar wind may modulate cosmic rays and subsequent cloud formation. Does the composition of the solar wind change?
A post at NTZ looks at the possible effect of solar wind velocity.
Think of the sun as a body that throws everything at us from plasma to gravitational waves and I’m sure we think of all sorts of ways that its output can influence our complex climate. The problem is that our climate scientists have been preoccupied with a small molecule for the last few decades and haven’t got around to understanding the basics.
“Adam says: May 25, 2014 at 2:03 am
Why do you expect Sun Spots to affect climate on Earth? Is it because the total energy output from the Sun is proportional to the Sun Spots? I don’t know anything about it, that’s why I ask. I.e. I need a more basic primer on the proposed mechanism.”
SSN is an indication of solar activity. If an indication of this can be found in climate then you can start worrying about the mechanism. If you can’t find evidence of it, you don’t need to waste time looking a mechanism.
regarding richardscourtney says:
May 25, 2014 at 12:34 am
=================================================
Richard, I said much the same thing here, in my usual layman fashion. David A says:
May 24, 2014 at 10:33 pm
Re. LT says:
May 24, 2014 at 10:58 pm
==============================
Thank you for your response.
“Sunspot number: 130”
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=25&month=05&year=2014
They’re huge???????????
lgl says:
May 25, 2014 at 2:05 am
Willis
show us the terrestrial climate record that has any sign of being correlated with the 11-year sunspot cycles
The problem is you have already found it but can’t see it.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/periodicity-analysis-berkely-earth.jpg
Yes, there’s a suggestion of similar 10,11,12 peaks but not bang on (12 looks more like 12.0 than 11.8). Worth closer inspection.
Willis Eschenbach (May 24, 2014 at 4:01 pm) – I don’t dispute that your method finds solar cycles quite well. I am saying that to look for the effect of solar cycles it would be more efficient to use SCN instead of date. But more importantly I think the non-linear coupled nature of weather/climate means that an attempted replication of Herschel’s findings would be a very useful test, ie. looking at just that limited period of UK-only temperature & precipitation. It is very possible that any effect of solar cycles on weather/climate is inconsistent in both location and time. eg, just maybe Herschel was onto something genuine, but some other factor operated in sync with sunspots at that particular place-time but not at others. I don’t think you are likely to find everything all at once, but by addressing place-time subsets you may be able to pick up some vital clues.
Happy hunting.
Oh and Richard and Willis, I would add that during the SH summer the earth receives almost seven percent MORE insolation during those three months, but the atmospheric T is LOWER, for the reasons Richard mentioned. The fact that this increased insolation change (far greater then any anthropogenic GHE and far greater then any 11 year solar insolation change) manifests in the atmosphere to the OPPOSITE sign of the input, is actually a fairly strong indication of both the complexity of climate, and to the importance of the oceans.
sorry, please add to the last sentence…” manifests in the atmosphere to the OPPOSITE sign of the input, is actually a fairly strong indication of both the complexity of climate, and to the importance of the oceans” AS A LONG TERM DRIVER OF CLIMATE , meaning decades or longer.
“I never could find any trace of the 11-year sunspot cycle”
The cycle is 22 years long. Remember the suns magnetic field flips every 11 years, so it takes 22 years before you get back to the start point.
mwhite says:
May 25, 2014 at 3:31 am
The cycle is 22 years long. Remember the suns magnetic field flips every 11 years, so it takes 22 years before you get back to the start point.
The amount of energy that the Sun sends our way [in whatever form] varies with an 11-yr cycle. The ‘flip’ does not change that.
11 years is not long enough — I can’t believe what I just read. Find the sunspot chart at MSFC that shows back to the maunder minimum. Then find global warming, the mini ice age, and the pause in global warming on that chart. Find the Vostok Ice Core Data used to teach Yale students about the climate. Then find the industrial revolution on that chart.
This is one of the more misleading articles I have seen on solar activity… like something I’d find on climate.gov.
PS- hi Leif, thanks for having Willy put back the SPF data.
Solar cycle forcing is in the same category as CO2 forcing – measurable though tiny, and completely dwarfed into insignificance by the hydrological cycle and oceans.
Emergent phenomena are the negative system response to any forcing and they do indeed keep the system stable.
Thus observing a change in the pattern of emergent phenomena is all one would expect to see in response to a forcing element.
Over a single solar cycle the scale of the solar induced change in emergent phenomena is less than that from internal system chaotic variability and even over several solar cycles the solar effect is heavily modulated by a lagging ocean response which can be in or out of phase with that solar variability.
However, over the course of a century and longer we do see a change in emergent phenomena in response to solar changes in the form of variations in the net latitudinal positions of the jet stream tracks and climate zones.
We saw that from the MWP to the LIA to date and even in the changes observed since around 2000 when the jet streams became more meridional at a time of less active sun and the earlier warming trend came to a halt.
So the issue really is as to how and why those latitudinal shifts occur naturally.
It can only happen due to changes in the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles.
So no response from Willis to my previous comment…
Come on Willis, is the effective emissivity (NOT apparent emissivity) of water 0.97 or 0.67? Game changer, you know it. But you don’t know how to run the empirical experiment do you lukewarmer?
I do.
I have.
Utterly pwned Willis. And how….
The sun heats the oceans.
The atmosphere cools the oceans.
Radiative gases cool the atmosphere.
But you believe that the oceans are are a “near blackbody”. Therefore you cannot comprehend the solar influence on climate.
In reply to lsvalgaard
lsvalgaard says: May 24, 2014 at 9:55 pm
Apart from your musings being incorrect, e.g. as shown by the direct observations of Ap shows both a solar cycle and the lack of any trend over the last 170 years
William:
You are plotting Ap against what? Try plotting Ak (three hour average rather than Ap daily average) against planetary temperature changes for the last 30 years (Oh, you keep forgetting about the peer reviewed paper that did that and found a strong correlation.) Why is there no comment concerning GCR? I cannot figure you out. The planet has started to cool in the same high latitude regions that warmed in the last 70 years. The sun caused the high latitude warming in the last 70 years and the sun is now causing the high latitude cooling.
Planetary cooling has started. There is now record sea ice in the Antarctic for every month of the year. Arctic sea ice is predicted to recover to normal this summer. There is now a persistent cold anomaly over Greenland. As we are about to observed the El Niño event will be suppressed due to the lowest solar wind burst strength in roughly 100 years. (As the AGU solar updated noted the density of the solar heliosphere has dropped by 40% which is reducing the magnetic field strength of the solar wind bursts. Due to this change the solar wind bursts are have less affect. The solar wind bursts amplify El Niño events.)
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=27&startmonth=03&startyear=1975&starttime=00%3A00&endday=27&endmonth=04&endyear=2014&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
Once again about global warming and solar activity by K. Georgieva, C. Bianchi2 and B. Kirov
We show that the index commonly used for quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity and using this index leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity in the global warming in the recent decades. A more suitable index is the geomagnetic activity which reflects all solar activity, and it is highly correlated to global temperature variations in the whole period for which we have data.
In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied.
Solar Activity and Global Warming Revisited K. Georgieva, B. Kirov
The solar activity index commonly used for long-term studies is the sunspot number as it has the longest data record. But sunspots reflect only the solar activity originating from closed magnetic field regions. The regions of open magnetic field – coronal holes, sources of high speed solar wind and drivers of recurrent geomagnetic activity, are not accounted for in the sunspot index. It appears that in the last decades the impact of coronal holes has increased which can be explained by the increasing tilt of the heliospheric current sheet. This increased tilt means that the Earth encounters two high speed streams from coronal holes per solar rotation and higher geomagnetic activity. On the other hand, the tilt of the heliospheric current sheet is related to the galactic cosmic rays modulation, and galactic cosmic rays are considered key agents mediating solar activity influences on terrestrial temperature. Therefore, using the sunspot number alone as a measure of solar activity leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity for the global warming in the recent decades.
Evolution of the correlation between solar and geomagnetic activity
Kishcha et al. [21] examined the 23-year (in order to eliminate the solar cycle variation and the even-odd cycle differences) running correlation between aa-index and sunspot number, and found a linear decreasing trend, with a quasi-periodicity of 45-50 years superposed on it. They supposed that the cause of the variations in the so large magnetic activity correlation could be the variation in the time delay of the geomagnetic indices relative to the sunspot number. Further, they speculated that, dividing solar activity into sporadic (related to CME’s and hence to sunspots) and recurrent (related to high-speed solar wind from coronal holes), we can even neglect the sporadic sunspot related activity when comparing with the annual geomagnetic activity indices (William: The driving factor is the change in the solar wind speed which is proportional to the three hour geomagnetic index.)
http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/seminars/spring2006/Mar1/Bond%20et%20al%202001.pdf
Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene (William: Holocene is the name for this interglacial period)
Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links between Solar Activity and Climate By Brian Tinsley and Fangqun Yu http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
Greg Goodman says: May 25, 2014 at 3:16 am
“SSN is an indication of solar activity.”
Anything is possible depending on how SNN, solar activity and climate are defined. Irrespectively, if <0.01% variations in the total atmospheric gas composition are considered relevant, variations of similar magnitude in the sun's total output are surely analyzed with the same dedication, right?
I have enjoyed this discussion.
While I was absorbing the comments.
It occurred to me that the Chicken in the pot analogy may prove the point.
If the pot is sitting on an induction hob.
Is the quest for the energy forcing looking out instead of in.
What IF the earth it self is acting as an induction Hob?
Iron core rotating in a liquid magma.
Inside a magnetic field.
Just a Thought.
Obliged Twobob
William Astley says:
May 25, 2014 at 4:20 am
You are plotting Ap against what?
Against time for the past 170 years
Try plotting Ak (three hour average rather than Ap daily average) against planetary temperature changes for the last 30 years
I think the global planetary temperature does not change on a three-hour time-scale, but you seem to believe anything that you carefully select. As the Goracle says: “if you don’t know anything, everything is possible”.
Thanks for the SFT R-code Willis. This is definitely a useful addition to the toolbox. Primarily for it’s ability to deal with data having breaks like the Tahiti SLP.
I’ve just printed out the number from the SSN SFT to look at the detail. The “21” is at 21.06 to the resolution available. Now I wanted to look at the bump on the side of the central peak of the triplet. It’s at 10.58y.
Now that is half 21.16 which seems a credible match 21.06 peak . That leads me to wonder whether the 10,11,11,8 triplet is not something physically different from the 10.58/21 peaks.
Maybe this is another reason for the variable shape of the solar peaks. There’s a lesser signal at 10.58 that is drifting in and out of phase with the main 11 x 136 modulated signal.
Like I said, we should not be seeing signed magnetic period in the spectrum of the unsigned SSN data. My reading of this is that the non-linear part that is showing up, and does not have the modulation, has a slightly different frequency. 10.58 compared to 11.0
Perhaps lsvalgaard can comment on anything solar physics may know about that.
Greg Goodman says:
May 25, 2014 at 4:36 am
Perhaps lsvalgaard can comment on anything solar physics may know about that.
As far as we know, there is only one solar cycle [and it has an amplitude that seems to vary on a 100-yr time scale for poorly understood reasons, and ‘period’ that is not very stable]. We know of no other ‘cycles’ drifting in an out of phase, but one can, of course, always ascribe things to causes not known, in which case, anything goes. I would not call that science, though.
Willis (and Mike Jonas) — Sir William Herschel’s work on sunspots and wheat prices has been revisited. See
Pustil’nik, Lev, and Gregory Din. “Influence of solar activity on the state of the wheat market in medieval England.” Solar Physics 223.1-2 (2004): 1-2.
There’s a pdf of the paper at http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0312244&
This graph is total planetary polar sea verses time. As the graph shows polar sea ice has recovered. Polar temperatures and high latitude temperatures are colder due to the increase in low level clouds caused by the increased amount of ions created by the increased amount of GCR that is now striking the earth’s atmosphere in high latitude regions. (The GCR change has the greatest affect at high latitude regions as the due to the orientation and strength of the geomagnetic field.)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
Arctic sea ice, notice the recovery.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
Antarctic sea ice, note the Antarctic sea ice is not more than 2 sigma above the 30 year average for every month of the year.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
May 25, 2014 at 4:28 am
William Astley says:
May 25, 2014 at 4:20 am
You are plotting Ap against what?
Against time for the past 170 years
Try plotting Ak (three hour average rather than Ap daily average) against planetary temperature changes for the last 30 years I think the global planetary temperature does not change on a three-hour time-scale, but you seem to believe anything that you carefully select. As the Goracle says: “if you don’t know anything, everything is possible”.
William: What in the world are you talking about? I did not say to plot 3 hour planetary temperature. You do not understand the mechanisms.
The magnitude of Ak, the three hour change to the geomagnetic field, is correlated to how strongly the solar wind burst can remove ions from the atmosphere. The solar wind bursts create a space charge differential in the ionosphere which removes ions from high latitude and equatorial regions. A reduction in ions causes a reduction in low level clouds in high latitude regions which causes warming for roughly three to five days, for each significant event.
The number, magnitude, and time between solar wind bursts determines the affect the solar wind bursts have planetary cloud and planetary temperature.
In equatorial regions the reduction in ions changes cloud droplet size which in turn changes how much upward long radiation can pass through the cloud.
“lsvalgaard says:
May 25, 2014 at 4:49 am
As far as we know, there is only one solar cycle [and it has an amplitude that seems to vary on a 100-yr time scale for poorly understood reasons, and ‘period’ that is not very stable]. We know of no other ‘cycles’ drifting in an out of phase, but one can, of course, always ascribe things to causes not known, in which case, anything goes. I would not call that science, though.”
In other words, ACO2 driven climate change.
Willis Eschenbach says:
“Why The 11-year Cycle?: Because it is the biggest cycle, and we know all of the other cycles (magnetism, TSI, solar wind) move in synchronicity with the sunspots.”
Willis, ignoring my comments won’t make the facts go away. http://snag.gy/5XTIk.jpg
I did most of my research on sunspot cycles in a bathtub at age three. My mother put an end to my research, due to the size of the waves I generated, which is why I became a writer and not a scientist.
However, looking back, I recall you had to get the timing right. You had to slide forward as the wave went forward and slide back as the wave went back, or else your efforts would be counterproductive. If you made the exact same effort at the wrong time, you would expend the same energy but rather than increasing the wave you would negate the wave.
I figure the sun just doesn’t have its timing right. For one thing, it has to learn to be more regular. I’ve told it over and over to stick to a cycle of exactly eleven years, but the blame thing refuses to listen to me.
If it refuses to be regular, then it has to be more observant and wait for just the right time to slide forward.
Lastly, the sun has to be humble and understand there are other powers in play. This is analogous to there being more than one fanny sliding to and fro in the bathtub, however such symbolism approaches obscenity, so I think I’d better quit.
William Astley says:
May 25, 2014 at 4:55 am
William: What in the world are you talking about? I did not say to plot 3 hour planetary temperature. You do not understand the mechanisms.
You said “Try plotting Ak (three hour average rather than Ap daily average) against planetary temperature changes for the last 30 years”,
And your ‘mechanism’ is nonsense, so cannot be understood.
Ulric Lyons says:
May 25, 2014 at 5:02 am
“all of the other cycles (magnetism, TSI, solar wind) move in synchronicity with the sunspots.”
Willis, ignoring my comments won’t make the facts go away.
The solar wind speed also [as you show] varies with the sunspot cycle, just in a more complicated manner: http://www.leif.org/research/Climatological%20Solar%20Wind.png
lsvalgaard says:
“The solar wind speed also [as you show] varies with the sunspot cycle, just in a more complicated manner:”
Do you see a clear sunspot cycle pattern in the solar wind speed data here then?
http://snag.gy/5XTIk.jpg
You wont see much of an 11 year pattern in most records, because the large +ve to -ve amplitude variations and also the period is too short to show up in short term ocean-atmosphere temperature exchange trends. There is too much of a lag effect.
In other words, it’s like turning an air conditioner on and off every 10 seconds or so, but making it stronger each time, and then measuring the effect of this on the temperature of a distant part of a large room. Short term temperature fluctuations might not show up at all, or barely, because it takes time for the longer term heating or cooling trend to disperse through the air in the room. Short term effects are nullified, especially if the period is short and the amplitude variation large. (The oceans are even slower than air, with regards to heat dispersal/exchange).
What you might see however, is a warming or cooling trend over time as long as the overall trend is in one direction, which is also what one sees in the temperature record for the 20th century-a long term warming trend. You would also expect some delay, on the scale of decades, which is also what one sees-the temperature kept rising for several decades once sunspots trends stopped increasing (which also happened to correlate with a positive PDO).
lsvalgaard says:
May 25, 2014 at 4:49 am
Greg Goodman says:
May 25, 2014 at 4:36 am
Perhaps lsvalgaard can comment on anything solar physics may know about that.
As far as we know, there is only one solar cycle [and it has an amplitude that seems to vary on a 100-yr time scale for poorly understood reasons, and ‘period’ that is not very stable]. We know of no other ‘cycles’ drifting in an out of phase, but one can, of course, always ascribe things to causes not known, in which case, anything goes. I would not call that science, though.
=====
Thanks the quick out line of what is known of solar cycles.
” but one can, of course, always ascribe things to causes not known, in which case, anything goes. I would not call that science, though.”
Well surely science should start with observation , then analysis of the observations, then attempt to explain and eventually predict behaviour in advance if the explanations are accurate.
One has to initially ascribe an observed pattern to causes unknown , then seek the cause. Otherwise, dismiss it as a fluke of stochastic variability and ignore it.
What happens to this kind of detail in the spectra as a result the proposed corrections to observation would be interesting. Does the adjustment sharpen the spectrum, resolve previously unresolved detail, for example?
Ulric Lyons says:
May 25, 2014 at 5:20 am
“The solar wind speed also [as you show] varies with the sunspot cycle, just in a more complicated manner:”Do you see a clear sunspot cycle pattern in the solar wind speed data here then?
Yes. Especially when you have more than ten solar cycles to look at. The important features are a maximum before solar minimum and minima at solar minimum and often at solar maximum too. It is well-understood why that is.
If it’s not the sun, then why do ice-ages come and go with orbital variations?
Greg Goodman says:
May 25, 2014 at 5:24 am
What happens to this kind of detail in the spectra as a result the proposed corrections to observation would be interesting. Does the adjustment sharpen the spectrum, resolve previously unresolved detail, for example?
Perhaps. See e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/Lomb-Sunspot-Cycle-Revisited.pdf
Willis. I don’t see any reason to limit the resolution of the spectrum to monthly intervals. You’re fitting an analytic function. To accurately resolve where the various peaks lie, it would be useful to decrease the step.
Particularly down around five years the freq quantisation is a bit crude.
I’m trying to see what to change to achieve this but if you can suggest what to poke it would be helpful.
I have learned the hard way that any time you do an analysis of data, you really need to stop, write down your assumptions and draw a picture of your model. In this article you assume a frequency model and you want to compare frequencies of sun activity to climate features.
Why?
You have the data for sunspots and climate features. Compare them. There is no need to approximate quasi periodic data with frequency analysis to reduce all that lovely data to a frequency and phase angle and throw away all the wonderful information. Use the data!
Spreadsheets are wonderful for checking to see if your proposed analysis will work. Build a spreadsheet and create a parameter that tracks the historical solar activity precisely with some lag. Now add noise to magnitude and time lag. At least one year for the lag noise to simulate how the peak in solar activity is not synchronized with the earths orbit.. Now run your analysis on the parameter you created that does track solar activity. Can your analysis find the original magnitude and lag? How about after throwing in a couple volcanoes?
I have done this type of analysis checking at work and it really is useful. I was able to show that we had to measure the performance of a product to a minimum of one half its life to have a reliable measure of the expected lifetime due to measurement noise.
There’s an anti-correlation between sunspots and volcanic activity [1], shown by the observed last 400 years Little Ice-Age cooling (that started with the 1257 Samalas, Indonesia eruption) after continuous weak solar cycles, and vice-versa. Why does this happen? Cosmic rays’ muons (that rise on Earth when the Sun is weak) cause volcanic eruptions [2].
1: Jaroslav Strestik, Possible correlation between solar and volcanic activity in a long-term scale: Volcanic activity is usually higher in periods of prolonged minima of solar activity and vice versa. adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003ESASP.535..393S
2: Explosive volcanic eruptions triggered by cosmic rays: Volcano as a bubble chamber
Toshikazu Ebisuzaki, Hiroko Miyahara, Ryuho Kataoka, Tatsuhiko Sato, Yasuhiro Ishimine
sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X10001966
phlogiston says:
May 25, 2014 at 3:59 am
“Solar cycle forcing is in the same category as CO2 forcing – measurable though tiny, and completely dwarfed into insignificance by the hydrological cycle and oceans.”
Unlike CO2, solar activity provides the energy for the hydrological cycle and oceans that circulate around the planet regulating the planets temperature.
Sun spot activity that is 11 year cycle doesn’t show up as an exact match due to the climate being SLOWER to react to changes in solar energy effects due to our atmosphere, moisture and massive oceans.
Where we see a direct link between sun spots and cold cycles is when there are long time periods in multiple decades and centuries where solar sun spot activity is extremely low or non existent or very strong and energetic.
Anyone who thinks the sun isn’t the #1 driver of all planetary climates is crazy. All planets would be dead balls of ice if it weren’t for the sun!
Why bother? Everything is known to be caused by man and blessed are those who know the truth & correct the heretics. /sarc off.
lsvalgaard says:
“Yes. Especially when you have more than ten solar cycles to look at. The important features are a maximum before solar minimum and minima at solar minimum and often at solar maximum too. It is well-understood why that is.”
The variations in the timing and intensity of the highs and lows doesn’t make for a very clear 10-11yr cycle, especially in the last 50yrs:
http://snag.gy/r55Lr.jpg
Theory: the 11 year sunspot period should be reflected in the temp. record.
Observation: it is not.
Science says discard or modify the theory, climate science says modify the observations.
Science: believe only what you can prove.
Climate science: try to prove what you believe.
Piers Corbyn at weatheraction.com knows plenty about the 11 year 22 year and other solar cycles
David A:
Re your post at May 25, 2014 at 3:18 am which is here.
It was not my intention to ‘steal your thunder’ and I apologise if I did.
Richard
If it’s a chaotic system, why would there be a signal to be found at all?
Daily, the difference is HUGE, and swamps any competing factors; the yearly difference is also very large. If you’re gently swirling a marble in a bowl, but once a minute you give a size-10 jerk to one side, and once every ten minutes you give a size-1 jerk (additive) to that side, I expect you’ll see trending. But if every 90-150 minutes you add in a size 0.01-0.1 size twitch, are you really going to see any change in the path of the marble, which you can’t predict anyway?
If you start to slow down your swirling (twitches and all), the marble may still have enough momentum to continue a wild path, before it -eventually- calms down.
Every once in a while, of course, you’ll get a “Perfect Storm” which knocks the whole system into a different “attractor” (the marble gains enough momentum to fly completely out of the bowl; the climate enters some entirely different arrangement). This could even happen in a fairly quiet bowl.
Doesn’t mean the Sun isn’t driving climate; without the Sun, the marble doesn’t swirl at all. The shape of the bowl — and we’ve got a really complex bowl, here — does the rest.
Nice article, Willis. I think it excellently demonstrates the noncomputability of climate.
William Astley
In the polar regions in the ozone layer strongly operate changes of cosmic radiation (ionization of ozone, especially in the winter), but over the equator changes in the UV range (due to changes in magnetic activity of the sun) cause changes in the ozone. Thus, the air circulation during high and low solar activity is different due to changes in pressure. If the activity is low long enough, establishes a steady trend in the first air circulation in the stratosphere (eg, the polar vortex) and the troposphere. It seems to me that the more it you develop. Thank you.
In as much as I find the emergent phenomena regulation hypothesis compelling, I don’t see any reason why there would have to be a 11 year signal in the temperature record for there to be significant influence from solar variations on Earth’s temperature. In the same way I don’t seek AM stations on the FM dial, I don’t find the lack of evidence for instantaneous response to solar variation as compelling evidence for discounting solar influence all together. Just eyeballing the sunspot record it is at once obvious that there is a frequency modulation influence that sunspots represent a decent proxy for and simultaneously apparent that the sunspot proxy variation is not the only influence affecting Earth’s climate. The evidence as I see it says it’s not the sun, nor the CO2, nor the emergent phenomena alone but rather all these and much more that ultimately factor into the amalgamation of damped systems that are referred to as Earth’s climate.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13519
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/research-pages/potential-climatic-variables/
From Real Climate for example we have
“It has been known for some time that over a solar cycle, different wavelengths vary with different amplitudes. For instance, Lean (2000) showed that the UV component varied by about 10 times as much as the total solar irradiance (TSI) did over a cycle. This information (and subsequent analyses) have lent a lot of support to the idea that solar variability changes have an important amplification via changes in stratospheric ozone (Shindell et al (2001), for instance). So it is not a novel finding that the SIM results in the UV don’t look exactly like the TSI. What is a surprise is that for the visible wavelengths, SIM seems to suggest that the irradiance changes are opposite in sign to the changes in the TSI. – See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/10/solar-spectral-stumper/#sthash.PiyzpUkn.dpuf”
…where you can see the UV was measured to inversely vary with TSI (ie sunspots). Furthermore it varied more than expected. And that’s from only a little data.
So Willis is making big statements based on flimsy knowledge because how do we know some cycles have less UV and others have more UV on average and hence their impacts on climate are different even though the TSI itself is about the same?
This is where Leif chimes in and says the atmospheric ionisation proxy implies previously understood changes in UV but I’m sceptical. Why else would people be surprised at the actual amount of UV variability and its opposite sign to TSI when its actually measured?
Now, I’m not saying the sun IS responsible for any of the recently observed climate change but until we understand the significance of the changes within the spectrum and its impact on the various levels of the atmosphere, I’d say the jury is going to be out and you can argue all you like but its still based on assumption. The assumption that TSI is the best measure of solar variability wrt climate change.
“””””…..R Taylor says:
May 25, 2014 at 5:29 am
If it’s not the sun, then why do ice-ages come and go with orbital variations?……”””””
There have been many studies of this, and the conclusion is that the coming and going of ice ages with orbital variations, is caused by orbital variations that happen at the same time.
It’s not the sun; which knows nowt, about our orbital variations !