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.
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 !
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.
===================
say what! Willis somewhere along the line I missed this information. We have a 4C annual fluctuation in temperature globally every year and people have their nickers in a knot over a 0.7C fluctuation over a century?
question 1: what causes the global average to change 4C during the year?
question 2: statistically, if we see 4C variation in a signal in 1 year, what sort of variation could be expected in 100 years?
question 3: what effect does the assumed probability distribution have on question/answer 2?
William Astley
The ice around Antarctica will increasedespite temperature jumps above the Arctic Circlesince steadily falling temperature of the southern ocean. This is due to the strong low-pressure systems that occur around Antarctica, when pressure rises above the polar circle. This reduces the access of solar energy beyond the polar circle. The same happens in the north. We’ll see this clearly in July in the stratosphere over the Antarctic.
as I recall, the most compelling evidence is that less sunspots correlate with longer solar cycles and lower global temperatures, and more sunspots correlate with shorter solar cycles and higher global temperatures.
what I have trouble with is seeing how this would show up as a fixed length signal in the temperature data. maybe it would, but this seems to me to be accidental at best.
when something shows correlation to a change in the cycle length why would it to also show correlation to a fixed cycle length of similar period? I’m having trouble visualizing how this would work.
One major contribution of sunspot CMEs, that are Earth directed, are the effects on the Earth’s plasmasphere CO-ROTATION, sub-rotation and super-rotation. There are also effects on atmospheric INFLATION rates/durations from heated,charged particles, raising and lowering of all atmospheric constituencies over the sunspot cycle are seen. Looking at the graphs from Ulrich’s post is pretty obvious then that the amount/strength/duration of geomagnetic activity is a major player for temp/climate..
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/images/image022.jpg
Causes of variability in plasmasphere rotation rate: IMAGE EUV observations (Invited)
2010
Galvan, D. A.; Moldwin, M.; Sandel, B. R.; Crowley, G.
…IMAGE EUV observations demonstrate that the plasmasphere usually does not corotate as assumed in simple convection models, even at low L shells. The prevailing hypothesis states that plasmaspheric subcorotation is due to enhanced auroral zone Joule heating which drives equatorward thermospheric winds. As the neutral thermospheric material moves to lower latitudes, it grows farther from the Earth’s spin axis and turns westward to conserve angular momentum. This induces a westward motion in the ionosphere (a subcorotation), which produces a change in the corotation electric field that maps out to the plasmasphere, causing a subcorotation there as well…
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFMSA33C..03G full not available
Length of day (LOD/rotation) is also affected by the above, which is seen in the sunspot cycle. Its periodicity is on the up and down swing of the cycle. A bicycle hee hee.. The rising sunspot cycles over the last century we added time to our LOD. Now we are seeing the first slow down as evidenced in the arctic, with the little ice age persistent pattern.. may be..
wheel in the sky keep on turning
Where did I leave off reading up there..oh ya Astley
The Aa index on which your plot was based has a calibration error in 1957.
=================
we seems to have a lot of corrections to the past in climate science.
and how do we know the past is wrong? because it doesn’t match the predictions of theory. a compelling circular argument by which current science can never be wrong. until it becomes the past. at which point it becomes wrong.
William Astley
When it comes to the amount clouds due to the higher ionization by GCR, it is sufficient to take a look at satellite.
http://www.sat24.com/image2.ashx?region=world&time=false&index=1
Willis, 3 points:
1) The AMO is a 66 year cycle. You should be looking for a 66 year cycle.
2) Recently it has been discovered that while TSI doesn’t fluctuate much, the UV component does. We don’t have enough data to check that out.
3) If Nick Stokes agrees with you, you are on the wrong track.
Good stuff Willis. What a superb post and discussion – classic WUWT. Got to dash – got a plane to catch.
Uh huh. I’m no expert on any of this stuff, but I have noticed some things about the sun’s ability to influence temperatures. Mostly I’ve noticed that when the Sun’s rays are blocked (either at night or by cloud cover) it gets cooler. I live in the mid latitudes, but this principle seems to hold when I’m visiting the tropics or the Arctic. I’ve also noticed that just small changes in latitude or in seasonal variations that change the angle of the Sun’s light, also seem to influence how warm or cold it becomes. Taking these things into consideration, when I hear, “It’s the Sun, stupid,” it seems like common sense. If it is not the Sun, itself, then I have to conclude that it has to do with whatever facilitates or inhibits the amount of radiation the Earth receives from the Sun.
@Willis Eschenbach
…
I’ve created this graph this morning to show you the general idea and where to look for a trend between solar activity with regional UK and Ireland temperatures.
http://thetempestspark.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/stornoway-nov-ssn-v-mar-tmin-1875-2009.gif
I’ve used Monthly values of temperature and sunspot numbers for this example.
1.Blue is Greenwich sunspot numbers for November.
2.Green is Stornoway temperatures for March.
3.Both trends have a moving average of 11.
Notice how the temperature trend has a lower amplitude following successive weaker solar cycles and a higher amplitude following successive stronger solar cycles.
All of the various commenters’ sun theories alluded to (and I say that term disparagingly because of the commenters’ deplorable lack of valid and reliable data) fail to do the most important first thing. You must rule out intrinsic drivers having enough capacity to store sufficient energy to create and destroy short and long term temperature change. First, destroy that source. Tell me how it cannot be the source. Tell me our oceans have not the capacity to store energy and release it in varying amounts over varying time scales. Disprove that and you will have my attention.
@Willis Eschenbach
Here the data I used.
http://thetempestspark.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/stornoway-nov-ssn-v-mar-tmin-1875-2009.xls