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.
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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.