Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In a recent interchange over at Joanne Nova’s always interesting blog, I’d said that the slow changes in the sun have little effect on temperature. Someone asked me, well, what about the cold temperatures during the Maunder and Dalton sunspot minima? And I thought … hey, what about them? I realized that like everyone else, up until now I’ve just accepted the idea of cold temperatures being a result of the solar minima as an article of faith … but I’d never actually looked at the data. And in any case, I thought, what temperature data would we have for the Maunder sunspot minimum, which lasted from 1645 to 1715? So … I went back to the original sources, which as always is a very interesting ride, and I learned a lot.
It turns out that this strong association of sunspot minima and temperature is a fairly recent development. Modern interest in the Maunder sunspot minimum was sparked by John Eddy’s 1976 publication of a paper in Science entitled “The Maunder Minimum”. In that paper, Eddy briefly discusses the question of the relationship between the Maunder sunspot minimum and the global temperature, viz:
The coincidence of Maunder’s “prolonged solar minimum” with the coldest excursion of the “Little Ice Age” has been noted by many who have looked at the possible relations between the sun and terrestrial climate (73). A lasting tree-ring anomaly which spans the same period has been cited as evidence of a concurrent drought in the American Southwest (68, 74). There is also a nearly 1 : 1 agreement in sense and time between major excursions in world temperature (as best they are known) and the earlier excursions of the envelope of solar behavior in the record of 14C, particularly when a 14C lag time is allowed for: the Sporer Minimum of the 16th century is coincident with the other severe temperature dip of the Little Ice Age, and the Grand Maximum coincides with the “medieval Climatic Optimum” of the 11th through 13th centuries (75, 76). These coincidences suggest a possible relationship between the overall envelope of the curve of solar activity and terrestrial climate in which the 11-year solar cycle may be effectively filtered out or simply unrelated to the problem. The mechanism of this solar effect on climate may be the simple one of ponderous long-term changes of small amount in the total radiative output of the sun, or solar constant. These long-term drifts in solar radiation may modulate the envelope of the solar cycle through the solar dynamo to produce the observed long-term trends in solar activity. The continuity, or phase, of the 11-year cycle would be independent of this slow, radiative change, but the amplitude could be controlled by it. According to this interpretation, the cyclic coming and going of sunspots would have little effect on the output of solar radiation, or presumably on weather, but the long-term envelope of sunspot activity carries the indelible signature of slow changes in solar radiation which surely affect our climate (77). [see paper for references]
Now, I have to confess, that all struck me as very weak, with more “suggest” and “maybe” and “could” than I prefer in my science. So I thought I’d look to see where he was getting the temperature data to support his claims. It turns out that he was basing his opinion of the temperature during the Maunder minimum on a climate index from H. H. Lamb, viz:
The Little Ice Age lasted roughly from 1430 to 1850 … if we take H. H. Lamb’s index of Paris London Winter Severity as a global indicator.
After some searching, I found the noted climatologist H. H. Lamb’s England winter severity index in his 1965 paper The Early Medieval Warm Epoch And Its Sequel. He doesn’t give the values for his index, but I digitized his graph. Here are Lamb’s results, showing the winter severity in England. Lower values mean more severe winters.
So let me pose you a small puzzle. Knowing that Eddy is basing his claims about a cold Maunder minimum on Lamb’s winter severity index … where in Lamb’s winter severity index would you say that we would find the Maunder and Dalton minima? …
Figure 1. H.H. Lamb’s index of winter severity in England.
As you can see, there is a reasonable variety in the severity of the winters in England. However, it is not immediately apparent just where in there we might find the Maunder and Dalton minima, although there are several clear possibilities. So to move the discussion along, let me reveal where they are:
Figure 2. As in Figure 1, but with the dates of the Maunder and Dalton minima added.
As we might expect, the Maunder minimum is the coldest part of the record. The Dalton minimum is also cold, but not as cold as the Maunder minimum, again as we’d expect. Both of them have warmer periods both before and after the minima, illustrating the effect of the sun on the … on the … hang on … hmmm, that doesn’t look right … let me check my figures …
…
…
…
… uh-oh
…
…
Well, imagine that. I forgot to divide by the square root of minus one, so I got the dates kinda mixed up, and I put both the Maunder and the Dalton 220 years early … here are the actual dates of the solar minima shown in Lamb’s winter severity index.
Figure 3. H.H. Lamb’s England winter severity index, 1100-1950, overlaid with the actual dates of the four solar minima ascribed to that period. Values are decadal averages 1100-1110,1110-1120, etc., and are centered on the decade.
As you can see …
• The cooling during the Wolf minimum is indistinguishable from the two immediately previous episodes of cooling, none of which get much below the overall average.
• The temperature during the Sporer minimum is warmer than the temperature before and after the minimum.
• The coldest and second coldest decades in the record were not associated with solar minima.
• The fastest cooling in the record, from the 1425 decade to the 1435 decade, also was not associated with a solar minimum.
• Contrary to what we’d expect, the Maunder minimum warmed from start to finish.
• The Dalton minimum is unremarkable in any manner other than being warmer than the decade before the start and the decade after the end of the minimum. Oh, and like the Maunder, it also warmed steadily over the period of the minimum.
Urk … that’s what Eddy based his claims on. Not impressed.
Let me digress with a bit of history. I began this solar expedition over a decade ago thinking, along with many others, that as they say, “It’s the sun, stupid!”. I, and many other people, took it as an unquestioned and unexamined “fact” that the small variations of the sun, both the 11-year cycles and the solar minima, had a discernible effect on the temperature. As a result, I spent endless hours investigating things like the barycentric movement of the sun. I went so far as to write a spreadsheet to calculate the barycentric movement for any period of history, and compared those results to the temperatures.
But the more I looked, the less I found. So I started looking at the various papers claiming that the 11-year cycle was visible in various climate datasets … still nothing. To date, I’ve written up and posted the results of my search for the 11-year cycle in global sea levels, the Central England Temperature record, sea surface temperatures, tropospheric temperatures, global surface temperatures, rainfall amounts, the Armagh Observatory temperatures, the Armagh Observatory daily temperature ranges, river flows, individual tidal stations, solar wind, the 10Beryllium ice core data, and some others I’ve forgotten … nothing.
Not one of them shows any significant 11-year cycle.
And now, for the first time I’m looking at temperature effects of the solar minima … and I’m in the same boat. The more I look, the less I find.
However, we do have some actual observational evidence for the time period of the most recent of the minima, the Dalton minimum, because the Berkeley Earth temperature record goes back to 1750. And while the record is fragmentary and based on a small number of stations, it’s the best we have, and it is likely quite good for comparison of nearby decades. In any case, here are those results:
Figure 4. The Berkeley Earth land temperature anomaly data, along with the Dalton minimum.
Once again, the data absolutely doesn’t support the idea of the sun ruling the temperature. IF the sun indeed caused the variations during the Dalton minimum, it first made the temperature rise, then fall, then rise again to where it started … sorry, but that doesn’t look anything like what we’d expect. For example, if the low spot around 1815 is caused by low solar input, then why does the temperature start rising then, and rise steadily until the end of the Dalton minimum, while the solar input is not rising at all?
So once again, I can’t find evidence to support the theory. As a result, I will throw the question open to the adherents of the theory … what, in your estimation, is the one best piece of temperature evidence that shows that the solar minima cause cold spells?
Now, a few caveats. First, I want to enlist your knowledge and wisdom in the search, so please just give me your one best shot. I’m not interested in someone dumping the results of a google search for “Maunder” on my desk. I want to know what YOU think is the very best evidence that solar minima cause global cooling.
Next, don’t bother saying “the Little Ice Age is the best evidence”. Yes, the Maunder occurred during the Little Ice Age (LIA). But the Lamb index says that the temperature warmed from the start of the Maunder until the end. Neither the Maunder’s location, which was quite late in the LIA, nor the warming Lamb shows from the start to the end of the Maunder, support the idea that the sun caused the LIA cooling.
Next, please don’t fall into the trap of considering climate model results as data. The problem, as I have shown in a number of posts, is that the global temperature outputs of the modern crop of climate models are nothing but linear transforms of their inputs. And since the models include solar variations among their inputs, those solar variations will indeed appear in the model outputs. If you think that is evidence for solar forcing of temperature … well, this is not the thread for you. So no climate model results, please.
So … what do you think is the one very best piece of evidence that the solar minima actually do affect the temperature, the evidence that you’d stand behind and defend?
My regards to you all,
w.
[UPDATE] In the comments, someone said that the Central England Temperature record shows the cooling effects of the solar minima … I’m not finding it:
As you can see, there is very little support for the “solar minima cause cool temperatures” hypothesis in the CET. Just as in the Lamb winter severity data and the Berkeley Earth data, during both the Dalton and Maunder minima we see the temperature WARMING for the last part of the solar minimum. IF the cause is in fact a solar slump … then why would the earth warm up while the sun is still slumping? And in particular, in the CET the Dalton minimum ends up quite a bit warmer than it started … how on earth does this support the “solar slump” claim, that at the end of the Dalton minimum it’s warmer than at the start?
The Usual Request: I know this almost never happens, but if you disagree with something that I or someone else has said, please have the common courtesy to QUOTE THEIR EXACT WORDS that you disagree with. This prevents much confusion and misunderstanding.
Data: Eddy’s paper, The Maunder Minimum
Lamb’s paper, The Early Medieval Warm Epoch And Its Sequel
Berkeley Earth, land temperature anomalies
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“Ulric Lyons says:
June 24, 2014 at 7:07 am
Steven Mosher said:
“If you point to a purely local record ( like CET) then you’ve havent made the case.”
CET tracks the NAO really well, that’s not local, and the NAO tracks the short term solar variability far better than any global mean that is hugely damped, and with major negative feedbacks in the form of oceanic modes working in opposition to the solar signal.”
1. Tracks really well? not science.
2. NAO is not the planet.
You havent made the case.
“the two graphs diverge with the fall of the soviet union when thousands of weather stations across Russia went permanently off line. Remove a lot of cold stations and the potential exists to create an artificial warming, that cannot be explained by any other mechanism except CO2, because they only looked for CO2.”
WRONG.
one reason you must ALWAYS use anomalies. We use anomalies because if you dont then dropping “cold” stations will bias the answer. However, if you translate absolute temperature into anomalies then you will NOT bias the answer when you drop cold stations.
That in fact is provable.
Any of you statistical wizards out there ever tried, or are aware of, any AID types of analysis done upon the hodge podge of variables believed to effect global temperatures? All I seem to find are time series and regressions, mostly single variable, or graphical representations with multiple time series of one variable at a time. Perhaps an AID approach could discriminate among the factors causing ups and downs in temperatures. Just a thought.
Steven Mosher says:
“…You use the data as given to create the best explanation given the data. …”
Yes. Of course. I am simply making the point that no definitive result can be rendered with the data set in question. On another issue, There is no attributional of error or measurement uncertainty on any of the graphs which I always find troubling. I expect that a real graph would be a region rather than a line, and the region would be dark at higher certainties and faint gray at the edges.
Why is this important to me?
In a single earth day, where the sun varies negligibly in its solar output, the earth surface AIR temperature can vary over 30 C. So we know the effect of turning the sun off and on. We know its time constant.
To discover fractions of a degree change in decades form a solar flux variation superimposed on this signal would mean that you would have to be able filter out that very robust effect.
These analysis methods, by virtue that they are devoid of consideration of the measurement precision or certainty, must be no more that graphic ideation. Which I guess is ok for a start.
Steven Mosher says:
The null is not the basis of understanding or investigation or interpretation.
In fact, it is.
The Null Hypothesis is used to obtain an understanding of whether or not the current global climate and temperature is normal and natural, or whether it is unusual and unprecedented.
The Null Hypothesis makes it clear that current climate parameters are not unusual, or unprecedented. Everything observed today has happened before, and to a much greater degree: global T has been much higher, and also much lower before human emissions were a factor. Arctic ice cover has essentially disappeared a few thousand years ago, during the present Holocene. Sea level rise has been greater than now. Extreme weather events happened more frequently in the past. And so on.
Kevin Trenberth wants to get rid of the universally-accepted climate Null Hypothesis, and replace it with his own fabrication, which would force skeptics, in effect, to have to prove a negative. Skeptics would have to prove that global warming is natural, with Trenberth’s default Null being the assumption that global warming is man-made. That isn’t science. That is witchcrtaft juju, and it would negate the Scientific Method. Fortunately, Trenberth is getting no traction with his latest doctrine.
As we see, the Null Hypothesis has caused great consternation among climate alarmists. It holds their feet to the fire, and they don’t like it. So they want to either disregard it, or move the goal posts far down field.
But this is science. The Null Hypothesis has never been falsified, and that fact effectively deconstructs the entire alarmist narrative. That’s why Trenberth is going basllistic. He cannot accept anything that derails his gravy train.
They will probably try to get rid of the Scientific Method next.
Regardless of the sniping and knicker twisting, the thread has been invigorating.
WRT LIA volcanic activity that can 1) trigger, 2) sustain and 3) enhance cooling, I have been perusing research related to ENSO perturbations following an intense stratospheric equatorial volcanic pyroclastic explosion with multiple pulses (of which the Samalas Volcano shows evidence of). The evidence of ENSO disruption is building in the research community. But they are not there yet in terms of full understanding. So there is room for speculation. I do know this: ENSO processes are still poorly understood and have yet to be successfully modeled. Ask Bob Tisdale about that one. The dynamical models run too hot, and the statistical models are impaired by a lack of analogue years to draw from. To be sure, this scenario of mine is speculation for little ice ages, not for normal weather pattern variations such as we see currently. Nonetheless, I speculate:
The Trigger: Using Bob Tisdale’s explanation of how equatorial warm and cool pools of water are subsequently circulated and distributed throughout the globe, demonstrating current, serial, and lagged teleconnections with far flung large oceanic/atmospheric systems such as the AO and AMO, I speculate that stratospheric class equatorial volcanic eruptions can reduce solar insolation to the point that an El Nino event is initiated which discharges heat into the atmosphere, causing further cloudiness and disrupting subsequent opportunities for clear sky La Nina conditions to the point that adequate oceanic recharging is not sufficient to keep the planet within an average temperature band. Eventually the cooler, circulating upper layers of the oceans cool the land surfaces, thus causing temperature decrease on a global scale.
The Sustainer: With continued tropospheric and stratospheric veiling (it takes a while for super volcanos to quiet down), equatorial recharge continues to be damped, further enhancing the cooling oceans. I surmise this is why the comparatively sudden cooling is preceded by a very nicely warmed environment due to continued discharge of stored heat into the air (which also explains why some areas are warmed by an eruption before getting cold). But it is a potentially dangerous set up for sudden cooling when the oceanic source of the land heat is gone.
Once this onset phase has been initiated and likely sustained as the veiling continues with additions of aerosols as the large volcano continues to burb and gurgle, it likely eventually triggers other systems to go into their cool mode (see final note below), causing especially severe flora and fauna devastation from mid-latitudes to the poles.
WRT the Little Ice Age, evidence is building for an earlier initiation of that event. It is being found in high latitude flora kill dates that demonstrate a decided turn towards much colder temperatures of a rather sudden nature occurring before global temperatures demonstrate a steep dive. This is important and makes sense. Prior to global temperatures taking a steep dive, it is likely that freezing conditions started earlier and at higher latitudes. This has been confirmed, which is why the initial date of the LIA is being pushed further back from where it has been historically set. This makes complete sense. Ice Ages big and small come from the North and have to travel quite a ways before the Thames freezes over. The various systems have to be triggered which then cascades over time into lower latitudes. Yes, it is sudden in the time scale used here in that it may take a couple hundred years or less before global temperature proxies show it as a clear signal.
All this is to say that the most recent research related to the Little Ice Age trigger is showing hard evidence that things started dying from cold waaaayyyyy before the solar Maunder Minimum when the Sun was just fine and working like a trooper. This earlier kill date meshes with my speculation (and one that is appearing in the literature more and more) that a super event such as an equatorial stratospheric eruption in 1257 could have been that trigger as well as the sustainer.
The Enhancer: Imagine if it had happened during a normal weather pattern variation that was already on the cold side. Yikes!
lsvalgaard says:
“SC15-16 were on par with SC12-13 and the smallest cycle in that era was SC14 in the 20th century.”
SC15-16 had slightly higher SSN, and a higher Ap index.
SC23-24 would be the next minimum and yet the temperatures now are higher than ‘ever’”
CET has taken a sharp downturn from SC24.
Dennis
“Before you throw Lamb under the bus, you need to read his entire book, “Climate History of the Modern World”.
So, the reason you believe is because Lamb wrote a book?
or read this book and you will believe?
Im not getting the scientific argument here
What data suggests that Lamb was right?
Did lamb make an argument connecting the solar minimum and global cooling?
Did Lamb RULE OUT other causes.?
Folks are forgetting this last step
It is not enough for warmists to show a relationship between C02 and warming. They also have to show that it other causes are ruled out. How many times have we seen this argument?
well the same challenge awaits those who want to claim its the sun stupid
And there is more. Notice what Willis is pointing out in the limited records we have. There is no clear relationship, during minimums the temperature also goes up. Now, look at the C02 versus
temperature in the past 15 years. C02 has gone up and temperature has stayed flat.
A) how many of you conclude from this disconnect that c02 is not the cause of warming.
If you do, then what do you make of the disconnect between solar staying flat and the
temperature going up? goose meet gander.
B) note the special pleading.. “yes there is a disconnect BUT.. xyz might explain the disconnect.”
Now, consider the arguments about C02.. yes there is a disconnect but the heat is hiding
in the ocean. goose meet gander.
It’s pretty clear that two groups of thinkers fall into the same argumentative patterns.
those groups would be 1) its C02 dammit. 2) its the sun stupid.
Those two groups do the exact same things when asked for evidence. They point to papers they never read or audited. They engage in special pleading when the data and their theory are at odds.
Just an observation.
Dr. Strangelove says:
June 24, 2014 at 12:13 am
Doc, don’t bother. Konrad did an experiment which has convinced him that the emissivity of seawater is ≈ 0 in the thermal infrared, and like Peter Parker’s spider bite, it has given him a mysterious power which enables him to ignore all other scientific results on the subject.
And no, Konrad, this is not an invitation to discuss your idee fixé, nor is it the thread for that. Please, let’s stick with solar minima, thanks.
w.
William Astley says:
June 24, 2014 at 12:40 am
Thanks, William. To date, neither the RSS nor the MSU satellite temperature data show cooling. Their trends have been ≈ 0 for a decade and more.
What satellite record of global temperatures are you referring to that shows the cooling in real time?
w.
***
Konrad says:
June 23, 2014 at 8:32 pm
It should also be noted that UV-A still has the power of ~10 w/m2 at 50m depth.
***
10 W/m2? The solar-cycle TSI variance is a mere ~1.5 W/m2. I realize UV varies more than TSI, but are you sure that much gets to the surface? Most UV is absorbed in the thin stratosphere.
If UV decreases during solar minimums more than TSI, solar IR must increase to mostly compensate (to get to the ~1.5 W/m2 change), and solar IR is not significantly absorbed in the stratosphere and mostly gets to the surface. That seems to suggest slightly more W/m2 are penetrating the atmosphere & reaching the surface during solar minimums.
The proposals about ozone absorption affecting jet streams, etc, are not convincing to me.
“In fact, it is.
The Null Hypothesis is used to obtain an understanding of whether or not the current global climate and temperature is normal and natural, or whether it is unusual and unprecedented.”
Did netwon do science?
what was his null
Did einstein do science?
what was his null.
When foucault postulated that the earth rotated, and built his pendulum to demonstrate this
what was his null?
when rotengen discovered X rays what was his null?
In none of these cases and countless others, there was no null.
A Null is not foundational to doing science. it is a tool. merely a tool
Now, on to your “null”
Is the current temperature “normal” or unprecedented?
1. That is not a proper null
A) normal is undefined’
B) unprecedented is undefined.
2. Assuming a working definition of normal ( normal = the full envelope of temperatures earth has seen since forming) we see the following
A) todays temperature falls WITHIN the bounds of normal.
B) it is warmer now than in 1850.
3. Science tries to explain 2B. That is. science seeks the BEST explanation for the very normal
rise in temperature since 1850. One does not have to show that a phenomena is abnormal
to explain it.
Its like this. I note that your kids are smaller than mine. your daughter is 5 foot 2, mine is 5 foot
11. Both fall within normal bounds. neither is a giant. neither is a midget. We do not stop
explaining simply because a phenomena is “normal” ( which is not actually a scientific concept)
we try to explain why my daughter is taller than yours. A good start to explaining that would be genetics. Does genetics explain it all? probably not.
The 9400-year record contains 26 Grand Minima (GM) similar to the Maunder Minimum, most of which occurred as sequences of 2 – 7 GM with intervals of 800 – 1200 years in between, in which there were no GM.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013SoPh..286..609M
Pamela Gray says:
WRT the Little Ice Age, evidence is building for an earlier initiation of that event… This earlier kill date meshes with my speculation (and one that is appearing in the literature more and more) that a super event such as an equatorial stratospheric eruption in 1257 could have been that trigger as well as the sustainer.
That makes sense to me. Something caused the LIA, and it wasn’t the usual suspects. It is an anomaly that produced one of the coldest episodes in the 10,700 year Holocene. As the planet emerged from the LIA, CO2 coincidentally rose for a small part of that time. That spurious correlation was enough to generate the climate alarm industry, and we are finally starting to emerge from that, too.
Trond Arne Pettersen says:
June 24, 2014 at 12:41 am
Thanks, Trond, always happy to see someone running the numbers for themselves.
However, do me a favor. Use the same method on a straight line with a trend. What you’ll find is a U-shaped diagram that looks almost identical to the accumulated average that you have for HadCRUT4.
Does this mean that HadCRUT4 is related to a straight line, or that there is a causal relationship?
No … it just means that you’ve neglected to detrend your data before taking the cumulative sum.
The other problem with your analysis is that you are using the old sunspot data. The new data is available on Leif Svalgaard’s site here, it’s the first link.
Best regards,
w.
“a super event such as an equatorial stratospheric eruption in 1257 could have been that trigger as well as the sustainer”
Tony Brown would be the best person to ask, you may well find that summers in NW Europe were normal to warm in the decade following 1258.
Ulric Lyons says:
June 24, 2014 at 9:53 am
CET has taken a sharp downturn from SC24.
What is important is the global temperature. Now you are claiming that CET is not a good measure for the global temperature.
Anthony only you can decide that . You have to evaluate if they are in error or not based on all the data you have access to and take it from there. I have access to that same data and from my point of view they are both going strongly against what the majority of all the latest research is pointing to.
I know you feature David Archibald and that gives some balance to your site. Maybe more of that slant of an article will help bring more balance if they(Leif and Willis) are to stay as main posters on your site. Balance is so important especially in this crazy field.
I had sent you a nice article yesterday which was a study done on the temperature variance from 1680 to 1780 that was never posted. I could send so many studies showing or collaborating the same conclusions exactly the opposite of what Willis/Leif keep trying to convey..
They have no answers while they dismiss everything right out of hand.
Anthony think about what I am saying. I have talked to some in the climate field about you and they all had good things to say.
Good luck next month in the climate summit. take care
lsvalgaard says:
“What is important is the global temperature.”
What is important is cold in the regions that are known to have been cold during Maunder and Dalton etc. Global mean surface temperature could easily rise initially due to ENSO and AMO responses.
“Now you are claiming that CET is not a good measure for the global temperature.”
As we can see since 2010, it can be a poor measure in the short term.
Willis Eschenbach says:
June 24, 2014 at 10:18 am
Thanks for the reply again Willis. If the straight line had a negative trend it would sure not be U-shaped. But, the point is that the trend is similar for both TSI and temperature. But I don’t say for sure that there is causal relationship, but I find it (more than) interesting that the graphs have such a likeness in profile, and also that the change of direction is exactly at the same point of time. And the average is for the chosen period, 1850 until present for both. And, yes, it is Leif new numbers: http://www.leif.org/research/SSN-HMFB-TSI.xls
Thanks Ulrich, but I have a satisfactory answer from my literature review. Here is just one example of evidence of an extreme change in weather post 1257 in Europe. There are others, including mass graves.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.agu.org%2Fbooks%2Fgm%2Fv139%2F139GM16%2F139GM16.pdf&ei=m7mpU6m8HIGjyATh7oKQBw&usg=AFQjCNGsxjyLp5pW6afi2jYpUpDqqBXcdQ&bvm=bv.69620078,d.aWw
lsvalgaard
You’re making a mistake talking about global temperature. The decrease in solar activity means the strong temperature fluctuations associated with anomalimi atmospheric circulation. Check the temperature in Antarctica.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/mspps/np_images/amsua_ts_des.gif
Steven Mosher:
You continue your attempt to redefine the scientific method with your post at June 24, 2014 at 10:08 am where you ask and assert
I refer you to my above post at June 24, 2014 at 8:17 am which is here because it answers each of your questions and explains your errors when it says
Some cases that you cite as a question are ambiguous (e.g. which work of Newton?) but in each case the Null Hypothesis was that the considered system did not experience a change unless there was evidence of a change. This must be true because it is a fundamental principle of empiricism; indeed, it leads to the assumption that the same physical laws exist throughout the universe.
All of the scientific method is a tool
(and I have resisted the temptation to add an ad hom. for amusement).
Your lack of understanding of such basics of the scientific method goes a long way to explaining your many strange comments on WUWT.
Richard
@Pamela Gray
There are apparently numerous reports of crop failure and famine in 1258, though one cold year is not sustained cooling.
William Astley says:
June 24, 2014 at 12:40 am
WIlliam, this is exactly why I asked you for the one study that you are willing to stand behind … I cannot even replicate their simple results. Take a look at their figure S1-c, and tell me if you think there is a 0.5 correlation between ∂18O and temperature. I took one look at that and said “no way, their claim is way out of line”.
So I digitized their data, and yes indeed, the correlation is much smaller, only 0.29.
Finally, they run off and check the relationship between 14C and ∂18O in the Maunder … but they didn’t check the more modern relationship where they would actually have observational data to cross-check.
In any case, since the temperature-∂18O correlation is very weak in modern times (r2 = 0.08, n=35, NOT statistically significant), I fear that the study is useless. If you can’t show the claimed relationships have statistical significance today, why should we believe them for a period 400 years in the past?
If that’s the study you’re standing behind, William, I fear you just lost all credibility. However, I doubt if you put that up there to stand behind, so your credibility is intact, I reckon you just tossed it at the wall in the hopes it would stick.
It didn’t …
I say again—I’m not interested in something that you found with some google search. I want the study that in your best judgement is bulletproof, the study that doesn’t fall apart like this one did at the first analysis.
w.