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
rishrac. Your post makes no sense.
I am taking the idea that co2 increases temperature by retaining heat at face value. What’s so wrong with consulting the IPCC chart showing the increase in co2 and the increase in temperature? If the temperature is suppose to be currently higher than it now, all things being equal, then the qualifying idea is that it is in fact getting colder, what ever the cause.
Ulric Lyons says:
June 25, 2014 at 5:09 pm
“He provided the evidence for solar minima to cause cold spells in his own post”:
He also explained, adequately I thought, why that data didn’t provide much proof of causation.
It is also data form a single area of the earth. Now, if all other areas of the earth showed a cold spell at the same time that would tend to be more convincing. There are just too many confounding variables for the CET data to be proof of anything other than too many variables to draw a valid conclusion. I am sure most of those commenting here that have actually done much research have jumped to conclusions based on insufficient data they later found to be false. I could generate a thousand separate random data sets and expect some of them to correlate with virtually any unrelated thing I selected. The important thing to me is that Willis attempted without success to find evidence of an 11 year signal in a lot of other more recent data. While 11 years is much shorter than the Maunder minima period, any effect would probably still be detectable in recent much larger volume of data. Willis never said there was no effect, only a statistically insignificant one in the CET data and the other more recent data he looked at. While there is much data indicating the temperature of the stratosphere is affected by sunspot activity, his skepticism about there being a meaningful effect on surface temperatures seems justified.to me. But that is just my opinion.
Let us say that solar minima, lets say, the 11 year sunspot cycle, do not change temperature noticeably (because of the totally boring, like, data that doesn’t show it). Let us also say that there are regulatory mechanisms on earth that keep the temperature stable. And let us also say that, minus these regulatory mechanisms, the 11 year sunspot cycle would change temperature. Can we detect a change in one or more of these regulatory mechanisms, say cloud cover, or thunderstorm onset in the tropics, that has an 11 year cycle? Does anything in climate follow the sunspot cycle?
Note that really, it would not be 11 year cycles like clockwork, but would follow minimas and maximas whatever their length. Say, you would see some change in something during solar minima, whenever that may occur. Might be hard to see in past records.
@ur momisugly rishrac on June 25, 2014 at 6:10 pm:
If you knew about Willis Eschenbach’s writing, you would notice he takes “conventional wisdom” and puts it to the test. If it’s commonly accepted, he’ll want to know why and he’ll check the data.
Here he’s continuing examining why it’s thought solar variations noticeably affect Earth global temperatures. He looked for the well-known sunspot cycle, couldn’t find it, can’t find it in the presented “evidence”. So now he’s widened the search to much-longer phenomena, solar minimums, and seeing if there’s the oft-mentioned planetary cooling.
So what he’s saying is, if you have evidence solar minimums have cooled the Earth, this is your shot, give him the best piece of evidence you got.
Steven Mosher: “Willis asked for one dataset link – the best example that shows an 11 year cycle. That way he would only have to look and comment once. I can understand his request.”
Lets review his request which no believer has seen fit to answer
“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?”
He is asking for the BEST ONE PIECE of temperature evidence that shows
solar minima cause cold spells.
reading through this thread, nobody has done it.
Just so. My argument about other details should not obscure my agreement with Willis Eschenbach on his main point.
rishrac says:
June 25, 2014 at 6:23 pm
“I am taking the idea that co2 increases temperature by retaining heat at face value. What’s so wrong with consulting the IPCC chart showing the increase in co2 and the increase in temperature?”
Because the IPCC chart not only shows correlation but causation. The CO2 change lags the temperature change indicating the temperature change causes the CO2 change rather than the other way around. This lag is easily seen in the graph more than 100,000 years ago when the CO2 levels remained near their high peak while the earth fell into an ice age. The CO2 levels didn’t fall much until we nearly reached the lowest temperatures. At other times the lag is not so apparent and the ice core data must be consulted.
Mosher writes “you are skeptical of the evidence he gives, but offer NONE of your own.”
Thats because there is only about 7 years worth of SIM data which shows more variation than expected. I cant offer data because there is none. But I can offer scepticism on using what could be the “wrong” data to be making the claim the sun cant be responsible.
Mosher also wrote “here the thing. Most of you believe this because you were told to”
In this case I can see a hole in the theory and hold my scepticism against that. Nobody told me to believe anything. In fact people like Leif have their own “beliefs” about what the sun has likely done and they hold that the sun doesn’t impact on the climate (much if at all)
What’s your excuse for believing the sun doesn’t impact (much) on the climate when you know there are still unknowns? Bias maybe?
Yah, even I got that. And I don’t know mathematics from Appomattox.
milodonharlani says:
June 25, 2014 at 10:55 am
Gosh, milodon, I can’t thank you enough for finally responding to my request for the one study that you think is the best indication of the sun’s powerful influence on the climate … actually, I had looked at this study the last time it was brought up.
I do find it kind of odd, though.
Folks, after much thought, milodon has finally produced what he thinks is the linchpin, the piece of research that will be the solidest evidence of the 11-year cycle … tree rings.
Yep. Tree rings. The signal doesn’t show up in the temperature, it doesn’t show up in sea levels, it doesn’t show up in river flows … but according to milodon, there it is in the tree rings. Chilean tree rings.
And how many trees were analyzed to bring out this solar effect?
Well … um … not to put too fine a point on it, they analyzed one tree.
One.
Tree.
I find this astounding. After all his faffing about, milodon has finally revealed the secret best evidence, the data to convince the unbelievers, and it is …
One.
Chilean.
Tree.
milodon, I gotta say … if that’s your best evidence, I can certainly see why you fought so hard to keep it a secret.
Now, what did the One Chilean Tree show? Well, according to the authors, the following significant periodicities (at the 95% levels) are present in the tree rings. Here are those periods, in years:
2.03 yrs.
2.3
2.6
2.7
4.0
4.3
6.3
10.7
13.1
17.5
20.9
38.0
140
Well, there you have it, folk. Clear proof … of … cycles of some kind or other at a host of frequencies in the One ChileanTree.
Let me pause here and ask you two questions, milodon. I’m not asking for evidence, just your best guess about the following:
1. Is this the only tree the authors have analyzed? and …
2. If the authors had found a second tree showing the solar signals, would they have included it in this study?
Seriously? One tree?
And while it is certainly tempting to say that a 10.7 year cycle in the One Chilean Tree is solar … what causes the 17.5 year cycle, or the 6.3 year cycle, or the 2.7 year cycle? Maybe the 10.7 year cycle is nothing but four of the 2.7 year cycles.
Not only that, but most inconveniently, the One Chilean Tree shows no effect from the Maunder minimum … the ring width of the One Chilean Tree didn’t even twitch for the Maunder. Not a wiggle. Nor did it notice the Dalton minimum. Not a bit.
Anyhow, here’s a part of the discussion of the solar effect, from the authors:
I love that logic.
IF we assume that the cause of ring width variation in the One Chilean Tree is solar,
… it means that the length of the solar cycle can be calculated from the variation in the ring widths, and
… that shows that the length of the solar cycle was different back then. And from that they conclude … nothing. The line of inquiry stops.
These guys are classic. Here’s another:
So … the 5.1 year harmonic before the Maunder is clear evidence of the solar effect, but the lack of the 5.1 year harmonic after the Maunder is not evidence that the effect is not solar.
Ourboros wept … not only that, but if 5.1 years is the second harmonic, the fundamental frequency is 10.2 years. How does 10.2 years fit into anything? I love these guys. Any cycle between about 9.5 and 13 years is automatically a “solar cycle” …
Anyhow, in no particular order, here are the other problems in the study of the One Chilean Tree:
Internal Variability:
The authors say:
They took a “chosen radius” and made a series of measurements of tree ring width along that radius. This is a fairly standard procedure, corresponding to the more common method of using a “corer” to extract a sample of ring widths along a given radius. Here’s a graphic to show the problems with that method:
Now, note the two sections, a wide one entitled “What is falsely believed to be the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ “, and a narrow one entitled “Actual ‘Medieval Not-So-Warm Period’ “. If you follow the rings around the tree, you’ll find that both the wide and the narrow sections are the same rings. They’re just wider in one section than another. I’m sure you can see the issues with this.
Normally, this kind of variation present in any individual tree is dealt with by taking cores of a large number of trees and averaging them. The fact that the authors have not done so, but have limited themselves to the One Chilean Tree, is … well … revealing.
Data:
The data for the One Chilean Tree isn’t archived anywhere … bad scientists, no cookies.
Code:
The code for the analysis of the One Chilean Tree is also not archived. Ditto. No data, no code, no science.
Autocorrelation:
One of the problems with this analysis is that they claim that there are no less than 13 cycles which are significant at the 95% level … riiiight. Anyone who has done much analysis will find that very difficult to believe. The most likely answer is that the authors have not considered the pernicious effects of autocorrelation on significance … a lack of understanding that is sadly common in climate science, where a statistician is far too often seen an un-necessary addition to a team of geniuses intent on Saving The Planet From Thermageddon™.
Lack of an Internal Check:
Unlike many studies, they had the entire cross-sectional disk of the tree. As a result, the obvious test of their results would have been to pick a different radius along which to make their ring width measurements. If they have done this, I don’t find it mentioned.
Alternately, they may have measured it along a number of radii and not mentioned it, the description is a bit vague on that … but if that’s the case, they should have shown the corresponding analyses of the individual radii as well as the average results.
Misunderstanding of results:
In doing this kind of analysis, I often take a look at the results for subsections of the data. In their case, to their credit, in addition to the overall results I listed above, they’ve divided the data into pre-Maunder, Maunder, and post-Maunder, and looked for cycles significant at the 95% level.. Here are those results, showing what they say are all of the 95% significant cycles in years:
Pre-Maunder Cycles
3.2 yrs
5
32.7
So … before the Maunder, they don’t find any significant solar cycles. However, although they report the result, they never ask the obvious question …
Why not? Why no solar cycles before the Maunder? Does anyone believe that there were no sunspot cycles before the Maunder? And if the trees didn’t respond to them then, why would they respond to them now?
Maunder Cycles
2.1 yrs
3.1
3.9
Same deal. They ask no questions … questions like, why would a change in solar input make the 5-year and 32.7-year cycles disappear? Were they secretly solar cycles?
Post-Maunder Cycles
2.1 yrs
2.3
3.1
3.5
4.8
6.3
9.3
13.3
21.3
93
140
Again, they’ve reported the results, but they don’t ask the questions. What happened to the 11.7 year solar cycle that appears in the full analysis? What happened to the 3.9 year cycle that was prevalent in the Maunder? And are all the new cycles that appeared actually solar cycles … and if not … what are they?
For me, these variations between the sections of the data are clear evidence that the cycles are probably NOT driven by the sun. They are also evidence that their “95% confidence levels” are probably … well … let me call them “very optimistic”. I also deduce from those results that there are no truly significant cycles in the tree rings … but of course, without the data I can’t actually check that.
Anyhow, there you have milodon’s very best, most solid evidence for the existence of an 11-year signal in climate … the very questionable analysis of the One Chilean Tree.
Now, milodon keeps saying that he is “doing my research for me”. Consider his oh-so-difficult contribution to this analysis—he provided a link to the study.
Did he do the analysis above that shows the problems with the study? Well … if so, he’s hiding his light under a bushel.
Did he present any independent research at all into the study or the results of the One Chilean Tree? Well … no.
Did he bother to actually read the study and think about it?
Well, I hope the answer is no, because he seems like a pretty smart guy. So if he did actually read it, and despite having read it he still recommended it as the best evidence for the 11-year solar cycles … well, like I say, I hope he didn’t read it.
So is he “doing my research for me”? Near as I can tell, he’s not even doing his own research …
My best to everyone, and please … if you are planning to recommend a study as being strong, valuable evidence for the claimed 11-year cycle (or for the claimed Maunder-temperature connection), please read the study first, and then apply your best critical thought to it before recommending it. Take a lesson from milodon … not pretty.
And on a lovely coastal evening with the fog blowing inshore past my house, my best regards to everyone,
w.
PS—I see this as one of the problems with anonymity. Milodon’s foolish actions will never affect whoever he actually is. His reputation will not suffer, his friends won’t know, there’s no price to pay for his words, ever.
Whereas for me, I have to live with my errors and mistakes. And as a result, I actually read and think hard about the studies I’m analyzing, or promoting as good science, so that people won’t be laughing at me for years … but for milodon, he can walk away at any time, disown his words, change his alias, come back as someone else, there are no consequences. So he can make his foolish claims and put forwards his junk study, and his employer and his friends and relations will be none the wiser …
LT says:
June 25, 2014 at 12:13 pm
Put your money where your mouth is, I will bet you 200 dollars US that in ten years TSI will be at least 1 watt/Square Meter below the last minimum.
I hope I live long enough to collect.
Ulric Lyons says:
June 25, 2014 at 1:55 pm
Most of the rise we see over the last 300 years occurred since 1988
When solar activity has been decreasing.
Alec Rawls says:
June 25, 2014 at 1:03 pm
It is quite simple: solar activity climbed dramatically years ago to a level where it been for the past 300 years and temperatures have been climbing ever since.
Alec Rawls says:
June 25, 2014 at 1:03 pm
It is quite simple: solar activity climbed dramatically 300 years ago to a level where it been ever since while temperatures have been climbing ever since.
Willis says:
“We don’t see a significant 11-year cycle in the climate data anywhere. Despite that, when there are two small 11-year cycles in a row (e.g. the “Dalton Minimum”), it’s supposed to cause a detectable depression in the temperature … how does that work?
An averaged response to shorter periodicities with large amplitudes.
Try this. You turn an air conditioner set to cooling on and off relatively quickly (the 11 year cycle), with a large amplitude variation (i.e. the air con on and off). This up and down temperature variation will not be picked up by a thermometer located on the other side of the room, because it takes too long for these short term temperature changes to disperse through the room. What you might get over a slightly longer period, is a down ‘averaged’ trend, such as the Dalton Minimum, but without the shorted cycles showing up. The earth has too many other cycles/ and thermal dispersion time lags etc for shorter cycles to necessarily show up in the data, but you may get general trends, such as the various Dalton, Maunder Minimums etc.
Note also the Dalton occurred around the time of large volcanic eruptions, further complicating the picture.
Not a very well explained answer, but again, I think there are too many background cycles coupled with lag effects etc to make definitive statements such that ‘there isn’t a good correlation between solar cycles and temperature’, such as the statement above. Averaged cycle responses can account for the Dalton Minimum.
Legatus says:
June 25, 2014 at 6:56 pm
An interesting question, legatus. Here’s what I see as the difficulty.
I have shown in several ways that the main throttle control for the planet is the timing of the emergence of tropical clouds. The problem is that this is a very, very sensitive and powerful throttle. The onset of clouds is typically around 10:30 in the tropics. It reduces solar input by something on the order of 400 W/m2.
This means that if the onset time changes by 1 hour, we get something like 400 W-hrs/m2 of change in energy for that day, which works out to something like 16 W/m2 averaged over the 24 hours in the day. Of course that’s only where we get thermally produced cumulus clouds, so the global average change might be something like 5 W/m2 for an hour’s change in cloud emergence time.
Assuming for the moment that there is no mysterious “amplification” of the TSI signal, the TSI change over the 11-year period is something on the order of a quarter of a W/m2. This would be offset by a shift in the cloud onset time of about 3 minutes … so even if there is some “amplification” that say triples the effect, it would be offset by a shift of 9 minutes in cloud onset time … and as far as I know, we have no datasets for average cloud onset times in the tropics with anything like that kind of accuracy.
So the general answer to your question is that small shifts in cloud onset time make a very large difference in the amount of energy entering the system.
Next, the control system is distributed, and only emerges in response to local conditions. So any changes in forcing (either from solar variations or anything else) will NOT be met by a global three minute change in cloud onset time. Instead, wherever on the planet that extra heat ends up, there and only there will there be a large, but likely short-lived change in the cloud onset time … and how would we be able to reliably detect that?
Finally, it is not only the onset time of the clouds that is of importance. The onset time of thunderstorms is perhaps even more important, because they both control the throttle (cloud reflections) and also function as giant air conditioners that quickly cool the surface. In addition, there is a further state of organization (multiple thunderstorm lines stretching horizon to horizon) that occurs when the temperature gets even higher. Finally, in addition to onset time, the number/density of cumulus, thunderstorms, and squall lines is a part of the control system as well.
Next there are things like dust devils, the forgotten emergent phenomena. Their onset times and numbers are part of the control system.
Of course, there’s the El Nino pump, that kicks in whenever the Pacific overheats and pumps warm water to the poles, as well as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that alternately impedes and assists that poleward movement.
Where in that shifting, locally governed, globally distributed system of overlapping emergent phenomena would we find a signal of a small shift to control a small change in solar input? It’s a very hard puzzle, a difficult signal to tease out … but I continue to look.
All the best, thanks for the question.
w.
“At other times the lag is not so apparent and the ice core data must be consulted.”
The lag relationship is seen in recent SST vs CO2 data too. The short-term variations show shorter lags. This was noted by Allen McRae , Ole Humlum and others.
If you plot SST and CO2 you get a circa 9 month lag. If you plot d/dt(CO2) you see it in phase:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=720
This shows at least a partial temp causes CO2 rise relation in recent data.
Costa Pettersson has estimated about 50/50 human vs outgassing: see false-alert.net
lsvalgaard says:
June 25, 2014 at 7:56 pm
Alec Rawls says:
June 25, 2014 at 1:03 pm
It is quite simple: solar activity climbed dramatically 300 years ago to a level where it been ever since while temperatures have been climbing ever since.
====
That would suggst a very slow centennial scale adjustment, which is not impossible if deep oceans are implicated.
However,
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=981
tau=5y would settling to 95% in about 15y. Sadly SST records are a bit short to see the major minima.
As you pointed out solar activity has been dropping for a while. There is a divergence since about 1985-1990.
This does not fit well with CO2 growth since at least 1960 but it could be a factor. As could increased transparency of the stratosphere once intial aerosols have settled out.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=902
From Willis Eschenbach on June 25, 2014 at 8:39 pm:
When the data mongers gather and present their methods, from old to self-created “new and revolutionary”, for teasing out small signals from the body of data, I think of what happened when professionals tried to tease out a bullet from the body of James Garfield. The results can be remarkably similar.
konrad: “Energy absorbed below the overturning layer can accumulate, and it is the shorter frequencies that penetrate to these depths. It is also these frequencies that vary most between solar cycles. It is notable that surface UV has increased ~ 10 – 20% in the last 30 years, but stabilised since the mid 1990s –
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/uv-exposure.html
It should also be noted that UV-A still has the power of ~10 W/m2 at 50m depth. ”
===
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=955
1.8 W/m2 of water penetrating SW is more that a 2xCO2 IR (that doesn’t) : without hypothetical positive feedbacks presumed for IR
That SW is not accounted for in current models and will thus get spuriously attributed to the nearest variable which is riseing long term. Guess what that may be.
Willis likes cumulative integrals, here’s one:
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/tropical-feedback_resp_ci.png?w=843
Derivation here:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=884
Greg Goodman says:
June 25, 2014 at 9:04 pm
That would suggest a very slow centennial scale adjustment, which is not impossible if deep oceans are implicated.
As a watt is a watt, that would apply any kind of forcing: CO2, volcanoes, albedo changes, Jupiter shine, etc. I don’t think that fits with what most people would believe.
“As a watt is a watt, that would apply any kind of forcing:”
Well a watt is a watt, but a LWIR is not a SWUV.
Putting to one side arguments about whether well-ventilated water can be warmed by incident IR, it will only heat the immediate surface and will be subject to negative feedbacks. Evaporation, convection, tropical storms etc.
Volcanoes and albedo will affect SW, CO2, not so much ( not sure about your Jupiter shine ).
So simplistic statements like a watt is a watt and all forcing are created equal are probably inaccurate and misleading.
TimTheToolMan says:
June 25, 2014 at 7:33 pm
Thanks, Tim. But … who is making the claim that the sun can’t be responsible? Certainly not me. I’m very cautious about what I claim, and that’s not among the things I’ve said.
What I have said is that despite my best efforts, using every tool at my disposal and looking a very, very wide variety of datasets, I have not been able to find any sign of the 11-year sunspot/magnetism/gcr/solar wind cycle. That is a very different claim.
In addition, I’ve invited the readers who think I’m using the wrong tools or the wrong datasets to use their own best tools and datasets to demonstrate their claims are true. To date, nobody has been successful in that quest either.
Finally, I’ve said that I am totally unimpressed by the data that Eddy used to make his claims about the cold Maunder at the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA), and that I don’t find any kind of solar footprint in the Dalton. In particular, in both of them the temperatures start rising long before the corresponding solar cycles start rising … highly unlikely that it’s caused by solar. In addition, it’s warmer at the end of the Dalton than at the start … how can that be if the lack of sun is the cause? And it’s clear that the LIA is NOT from the Maunder, it occurs way too late in the LIA to be the cause.
But no, I’ve never said the sun can’t be responsible … among other things, you can’t prove a negative, and I’m too smart to try to do so.
Regards,
w.
Greg Goodman says:
June 25, 2014 at 9:55 pm
So simplistic statements like a watt is a watt and all forcing are created equal are probably inaccurate and misleading.
Probably not, as the Earth’s energy budget is counted solely in watts:
http://www.leif.org/research/Earth-Energy-Budget.png
see http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/radiative-climate-forcing
Regardless of whether you understand this, your ‘scale adjustment’ would apply to any energy absorbed.
TimTheToolMan says:
June 25, 2014 at 7:38 pm
Tim, I’m not Mosh, but I think you missed his meaning. He’s saying that neither you nor most of the readers have done what I’ve done, to actually look at the data. Instead, you believed it because, well, that’s what “science” said, and so it went unquestioned.
You’re right, nobody told you to believe anything. But Mosh is making a different distinction, between believing something because you’ve looked at the data, and believing something because other people believe it.
Mosh’s point is that regarding the question of solar minima and cold, that you and I and others didn’t look at the data. I’m definitely included in that, see my comment in the opening of the head post:
That’s the distinction Mosh is pointing to.
w.
Someone said, and Leif did not object : “The sun was unusually weak and the climate was unusually cold but they have no relation, just coincidence.” It’s about time that was cleared up.
Later, Dr Norman Page says:
and Leif responded:
Finally. The TSI level does not seem to drop below 1365.5 W/m2, ever, even during the grandest of minimums. And the max TSI is only about 1 W/m2 above that. The bottom line is that the sun’s output is remarkably constant. What we call solar activity is just a superficial variation. The fusion or whatever it is just keeps on going, sunspots or no sunspots.