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.
@Willis Eschenbach
Here’s the data I used.
http://thetempestspark.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/stornoway-nov-ssn-v-mar-tmin-1875-2009.xls
Well, Pamela, why should the oceans do that even if they could? Without an external driver, the excursions would peter out.
============
Just a small nit. The “can’t prove a negative” statements are annoying. The lack of logic mars an otherwise nice article and calls into question the logical ablity of the presenter.
The more I read, the more I am appalled.
It is disheartening to read so many offerings here devoid of basic scientific understanding regarding several key factors, but especially regarding what is an Earth factor and what is a non-Earth factor of temperature trend.
Earth’s [axle] rotation, its orbital wobble, its volcanoes, its massive layered oceans and their currents, its teleconnected massive layered atmosphere and large and small scale pressure systems, and its land masses are all intrinsic Earth factors. Quite powerful ones to be exact. Shine a steady SWIR heat source on such a living, dynamic system and you will get all kinds of variations.
That commenters here so readily ignore, or worse are confused by such factors in preference to tiny gnat’s ass hairs gnaws at my teacher’s brain.
Kim. Your comment is one of those that heightens my disappointment here. Unbelievable lack of basic science regarding Earth’s physical systems.
Pam, you’re obviously an expert scientist, funny I’ve never seen you post any of your work. Maybe I missed something.
DR says:
May 24, 2014 at 6:54 pm
R. de Haan,
Thanks for the link. Is discussion about Piers Corbyn forbidden on WUWT now?
I don’t know, probably for the same reason Ron Paul never made the Presidency.
Corbyn, a Dragon, denies any CO2 effect and that goes against another consensus which is connected to the green house effect.
I think the green house effect is BS.
richardscourtney says:
May 25, 2014 at 6:18 am
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
============================\
Quiet the opposite. Rather I consider it a compliment to myself if I notice the same thing you do.
As to stealing my thunder, well it appears to have been at the most a small pop in a cap gun.
However I did once get suspended from riding the Disneyland Matterhorn ride for shooting off a party popper. When I explained that they only contained something like .009 grams of gun powder, and were legal I was released.
ferdberple says:
May 25, 2014 at 7:16 am
Because we discover more data and uncover errors in past treatment.This is the way it has always been done and will continue to be done in the future.
Willis: Which sea level pressure did you use? If you used the computed sea level pressure
which is “corrected” for the ambient temperature, and the 12 hour before ambient
temperature, you may run into a problem due to the synthetic “R-value” correction which
becomes part of the computation. This value is derived to correct for deviations between
low elevation stations and higher elevation stations, which sample at a lower ambient
air pressure. Such a “r-value” correction can cause real problems, as it includes a
smoothing process based on surrounding stations in the mountains
(homoganization anyone?) to get a much smoother map plot.
I would suggest that you use “Altimeter Settings” as your pressure reference, as
they are based on the “Standard Atmosphere,” and can be computed back to true
station pressures (at the altitude of the measuring station) without any diurnal
temperature correction/r-value corrections applied.
A case in point. Many here have mentioned- or alluded to- the Maunder Minimum as their solar theory-supporting basis for their mechanism. Really? If you do that, you will have, apparently without your knowledge, disproven your solar speculation. Again, what lack of knowledge regarding Earth’s physical systems and history!
Greg, any standard high school Earth Science textbook presents a treatise on basic Earth systems. There is no need for plagiarizing on my part. Granted, the new editions have chapters on global warming-related greenhouse gasses and presents the basic calculable warming premise well enough but fails to consider Earth’s complex response to such relatively tiny changes in total ppm of greenhouse gasses such as we have seen in the past 100 years. These chapters especially fail to consider that warming response in the context of an extremely chaotic system capable of mimicking such temperature rise due to other wholly intrinsic and natural factors.
Thank you willis.
Let me make a general observation. In years of observing this debate skeptics generally fall into these camps.
1. I have nothing to prove. I doubt all. These folks will just criticize all and any theory. These folks are consistently skeptical. Well, for the most part. There will always come a time and place when they espouse “some’ belief in something. At this point you have them. Why? because when you examine
the BASIS for this belief you will find that in this place they accept the kinds of evidence they doubt
in other places. The simplest example is people who doubt reconstructions until they find ones
they like. or people who deny appeals to authority and then quote feynman, even the ironic
“science is belief in the ignorance of experts” thats my favorite self defeating appeal to authority.
or you will find people who reject climate models, but then use reanalysis data. Or refuse to believe
papers from Mann because there is no code and data, but accept papers they like where the authors practice science in manner more closed than mann. In short, no one I have met is consistently skeptical
of everything. But we knew this centuries ago: skepticism cannot be lived.
2. Skeptics who believe that “its something else” This is known as ABC. Anything But C02. In
some cases they have a “theory” its the ocean, its the sun, etc. In these cases you will find
( as you do here ) that the evidence for their theory is scant. They rely here and there on bits
and pieces or just general ideas. The sun drives the temperature from day to night, from season
to season, therefore it must drive from decade to decade and century to century. These theories
are shallow and brittle and one dimensional. they aim at explaining temperature only, when
a theory of the climate needs to explain everything. in short, they try to replace a theory that aims at completeness ( current climate science) with a theory that explains one feature,one low dimensional feature: global temps. From an explanatory power perspective a theory that can only explain one low dimensional feature has less utility than one that explains more. Getting global temps correct is not enough. You need to get the regional patterns right, the diurnal range right. You need to succeed
on daily time scales, monthly, seasonal, ect. You need to get features correct OUTSIDE your
input data. For example: If I build a theory ( say a GCM) that uses historical temps to guide
its development, Then I need to test outside that feature: Does it get rain right? sea surface salinity?
average wind speeds? If a theory of the climate ( say the sun did it or the system is self regulating) is
built on, or refers to, or is trained to temperature, then it must predict features beyond temperature
or it has missing physics. That is why when scafetta build a model of temperature, my question is
“what does you model predict for the land/ocean contrast?” what does it predict for changes in temperature at the stratosphere? What does it predict for el nino frequency. With a GCM back theory
we can ask all these questions. yes the models are built upon and refer to temperature data. That is why
the best tests are those that look at features not “baked in” to the temperature.
We are left with this.
There is one theory that aims at completeness. As incomplete as it is, as imperfect as it is, it is the only game in town. There is no consistent doubting of it. That is, no one has demonstrated the ability to consistently doubt it. At some point they express a belief in something else. And the evidence for what they chose to believe is always less secure, less comprehensive and more narrow than the evidence
for the existing paradigm which they reject. In short, their skepticism is selective and biased. It is never rigorous and consistent.
Further folks who have tried to replace the theory have failed. failed miserably.
Science has two movements: a critical movement and a constructive movement. It is not enough to
criticize the existing theory one must at some point replace it with a better theory: better in all regards.
Pressure wouldn’t be expected to correlate with 11-year cycle sun spot activity.
In a static atmosphere, the pressure on the surface is just the weight of a vertical column of air divided by the cross-sectional area of the column.
There is no reason in standard physics that sun spots would modulate this.
Willis, I managed to establish that you can get a more detailed spectrum:
theanswer=c(rep(0,runstart-1),sapply(seq(runstart,runend,by=0.25), ….
however, the output then needs scaling and it seems to offset the freq spectrum by 1/8 . “go figure”. That why I refuse to do battle with R.
I dumped the data out a text file and plotted it, rescaled, in gnuplot and it matches nicely and fills in the detail instead of clunky angular peaks.
It may be worth doing the higher res just in the shorter periods to avoid slowing down and already slow process but it gives good results.
If you manage to get it to do that cleanly in R , please post an update. This is a useful tool.
9 Year lunar cycle…
Do you mean the 19 year cycle?
I can offer a 19 year summer rainfall region cycle which is evident in Southern Africa – excluding Cape Town. The winter rainfall area which includes Cape Town has a 10 year cycle for which there is 400 years of data. The 10 year ‘drought cycle’ is visible by using time series analysis. It is a sine wave.
Konrad says:
May 24, 2014 at 5:01 pm
Thanks, Konrad. First, that’s not what Christopher said, he didn’t mention thermoregulation.
Next, the oceans don’t prevent a 1 year cycle in temperature, why would they prevent an 11-year cycle?
w.
So let me dissect Kim’s comment: “Well, Pamela, why should the oceans do that even if they could? Without an external driver, the excursions would peter out.”
Point 1: Her first question is rather silly. It’s like asking why does grass grow or not. She should know because the reasons are basic Earth Science knowledge she should possess. The oceans will absorb, under static clear sky conditions, whatever the Sun provides, especially at the equator with the Sun directly overhead. Measure that absorption each time under the same conditions and you will get the same result. However, any change in intrinsic Earth bound factors will change solar insolation which of course changes how much the ocean absorbs. Intrinsic factors include trade winds and related pressure systems driving short and long term cloudiness, seasonal axil tilt, long term orbit wobble, and changes in short and long term clear sky conditions related to aerosols. These factors let in and reflect away SWIR such that the oceans discharge and recharge energy.
Point 2: Her second comment about not having an external driver is equally silly. I hope beyond hope that not a single person here considers turning off the Sun to be a valid part of their argument regarding temperature trend drivers here on Earth.
There have been no solar cycles between 10.6 and 11.2 years since records began, according to Wikipedia – although the mean is 11.1 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_cycles
::sigh:: Look guys yes it is clear that the sun has a role in climate and weather. IE if you turned it off the earth wouldn’t do so well. That said its effects appear to be well and truly integrated into the climate mechanism in a way that minor variations from sun spots don’t make obvious changes.
This doesn’t mean that there is nothing to be found it just means we haven’t figured out where such might show up. Willis did a good job of showing the current data doesn’t reflect a correlation to sun spot activity. What he hasn’t claimed is that the sun doesn’t play a role just that he hasn’t found where beyond providing energy to fuel the entire system that role is.
Again it appears that the sun is such a huge factor in powering things that minor changes in it’s output are not easily reflected in the earths climate system. Likely because the earths system has been running for quite some time and minor fluctuations have smoothed out.
It is also possible that ocean oscillations are not just randomly masking solar-cycle effects but are systematically masking them. This could happen under Curry’s “stadium wave” theory if the wave is being pulsed by the solar cycle and the timing is such that the surface temperature wave is anti-phase with solar max.
I seem bent on misspelling axle by typing axil. Too bad my fingers don’t have little brains in each tip.
[The effect has affected your spelling. ~mod]
joeldshore says:
May 24, 2014 at 6:36 pm
Thanks, Joel, always good to hear from you.
Actually, I didn’t design this as a “clear test of the dominant paradigm.” And it is not a very good test for that. I’ve shown elsewhere that the models are just linear transformation machines, merely transforming and lagging their inputs and as such are not chaotic in the slightest.
See, the dominant paradigm merely says that the response to forcing will be linear. And given the size of the swing in TSI, that’s very small, barely enough to affect the temperature. So it’s not the best test of the prevailing paradigm. In addition, a number of the models don’t include the solar variations.
Instead, I designed this as a test of the “It’s the sun, stupid!” paradigm, which says that there is a large unknown amplification factor that amplifies the solar variations to the point where they DO significantly affect the temperature.
Perhaps the best test using the climate models of the current paradigm would be to look at what happens when the forcing goes up over a period of time, and compare the model results to the real world temperatures … oh, wait … we just did that, and the current paradigm failed most spectacularly …
In any case, with that as prologue, here’s the periodogram of the CCSM3 climate model forcing and response. It’s the only one I can find where the ~10-year solar swing is visible in the forcing … and as you might imagine, since the GCMs merely linearly transform and lag the data, it’s visible in the responses, the two periodograms are quite similar in the 2-20 year range …
Best regards,
w.
Steven Mosher says:
May 25, 2014 at 9:28 am: [ “1. …2. …” ]
Steven, where am I? I believed in AGW in the late ’90’s. The planet seemed to be confirming it. But I changed my mind based on more recent data. Now I strongly question that CO2 has more than a minuscule effect on global T.
Where are you, Steven? Based on truly scanty evidence, you are still a firm believer that CO2 is the major cause of global warming.
You don’t like it that global warming has stopped. That disrupts your “theory” [which is really only a conjecture, due to the lack of measurable supporting data].
You are not the least bit skeptical. You just know that CO2 is the most important forcing. But as Willis has written, real world evidence shows that CO2 is only a 3rd-order forcing. It is swamped by seond- and first-order forcings.
If you go by empirical measurements, there is very little data showing that human emitted CO2 does what you believe it does. I think CO2 has a minor effect on T, but that effect is too small to sort out from natural variability.
The reason I am skeptical of the carbon scare is because Planet Earth is telling us that CO2 simply doesn’t matter. At most, it adds a few tenths of a degree of beneficial warmth. So where are folks like me in your classification system?
Alec, okay. So prove it. “Anti-phase” and/or “systematically masking” should show up in the observations. And I am talking about the observations that matter. To me that means that the 11-year solar cycle TSI effect on Earth’s temperature observations doesn’t matter. It is mathematically calculable but not directly observable in nature.
Here is the rub folks. Most, if not all, of these solar theories depend on some kind of Earth-bound huge amplification(s) effect(s) strong enough to carry the tiny solar initiation signal through to the much larger temperature trend. And the fact that there is no discernable observable pattern (when reliable and valid statistical analysis is done to the collected observations) working back to that solar parameter, seals the deal against the speculation. Add to that a high rate of missing plausible mechanisms, and I am about to give up and give in to this gnawing feeling that somewhere along the line, science instruction has failed.