Guest essay by David Archibald
A couple of years ago the question was asked “When will it start cooling?” Of course solar denialists misconstrued this innocent enquiry. There is no doubt – we all know that lower solar irradiance will result in lower temperatures on this planet. It is a question of when. Solar activity is much lower than it was at a similar stage of the last solar cycle but Earthly temperatures have remained stubbornly flat. Nobody is happy with this situation. All 50 of the IPCC climate models have now been invalidated and my own model is looking iffy.
Friss-Christenson and Lassen theory, as per Solheim et al’s prediction, has the planet having a temperature decrease of 0.9°C on average over Solar Cycle 24 relative to Solar Cycle 23. The more years that pass without the temperature falling, the greater the fall required over the remaining years of the cycle for this prediction to be validated.
The question may very well have been answered. David Evans has developed a climate model based on a number of inputs including total solar irradiance (TSI), carbon dioxide, nuclear testing and other factors. His notch-filter model is optimised on an eleven year lag between Earthly temperature and climate. The hindcast match is as good as you could expect from a climate model given the vagaries of ENSO, lunar effects and the rest of it, which gives us a lot of confidence in what it is predicting. What it is predicting is that temperature should be falling from just about now given that TSI fell from 2003. From the latest of a series of posts on Jo Nova’s blog:
The model has temperature falling out of bed to about 2020 and then going sideways in response to the peak in Solar Cycle 24. What happens after that? David Evans will release his model of 20 megs in Excel in the near future. I have been using a beta version. The only forecast of Solar Cycle 25 activity is Livingstone and Penn’s estimate of a peak amplitude of seven in sunspot number. The last time that sort of activity level happened was in the Maunder Minimum. So if we plug in TSI levels from the Maunder Minimum, as per the Lean reconstuction, this is what we get:
This graph shows the CET record in blue with the hindcast of the notch-filter model using modern TSI data in red with a projection to 2040. The projected temperature decline of about 2.0°C is within the historic range of the CET record. Climate variability will see spikes up and down from that level. The spikes down will be killers. The biggest spike you see on that record, in 1740, killed 20% of the population of Ireland, 100 years before the more famous potato famine.
I consider that David Evans’ notch-filter model is a big advance in climate science. Validation is coming very soon. Then stock up on tinned lard with 9,020 calories per kg. A pallet load could be a life-saver.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery, 2014).
UPDATE:
For fairness and to promote a fuller understating, here are some replies from Joanne Nova
HISTALP long records show about the same thing until they get “corrected”.
Rob R says:
June 29, 2014 at 3:25 am
If David and Jo are as good as their word it will not be long before the full excel-based model is released (including full code and data). At that point both of you will be free to dissect it and/or run it with whatever data-set you choose or prefer.
Regardless of that, the data going in is grossly in error, so what does it matter if we have the code [the correct data we already have]. It matters not one bit.
Rob R says: “Once released there will be plenty of predators ready to rip into it. I hope David has braced himself for the event.”
I think most of the major flaws have already been pointed out. Those are not going to evaporate when the code gets released. They have so far published SEVEN “Big News” threads on this. It’s pretty ridiculous suggesting no one should comment “yet”.
I’m really not that interested in looking at how he coded this mistaken analysis into a spreadsheet.
Hopefully David Evans will be taking advantage of the open science approach he opted for and will be considering how he can address the major issues.
“Rob R” says I should not defend what Dr Evans says until it is made public. But Dr Evans’ TSI graph has been made public; it is transparently similar to the Krivova reconstruction on the SORCE/TIM website that Mr Svalgaard regards as authoritative enough to draw his own data from; and, therefore, Mr Svalgaard’s allegation that Dr Evans has knowingly used incorrect TSI data is demonstrably false.
I do not know enough of the relevant mathematics either to defend or to attack Dr Evans’ method. What I do know, from my many discussions with him during his long and often wearisome years of work on his method, is that he has taken good care to consult experts in all of the relevant fields before going public. As I have said before, it would not be wise to underestimate him. Indeed, his work has been paralleled by many other groups using Fourier analysis on the solar data. Some of them have published their results in the learned journals.
What is new is that he has not only discovered a notch-filter that appears in multiple datasets (and the fact that it appears in so many datasets provoked at least one of the eminent scientists whom he consulted to sit up and take notice); he has also devised a more precise form of Fourier transform, which seems better than most at filtering out the vast quantities of noise in the climate data. In addition to this – which is well above my pay-grade, so I cannot say whether the world of science will adopt it – he has many other interesting surprises and results to come. I suspect that the peculiar savagery of the attacks on him stems from a guess on the part of his attackers that he may have come upon a particular result that they will find as uncongenial as they will find it undeniable. In that guess, they may be right. Time will tell.
In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
June 28, 2014 at 12:20 pm
William Astley says:
June 28, 2014 at 12:11 pm
The sun will be spotless by late 2013, early 2014.
At late 2013, early 2014 is when we observed the ‘second peak’, with average sunspot numbers around 75. Hardly spotless.
William:
Correction:
Based on observations and a physical model of the solar magnetic cycle, the start of spotless days will occur by late 2014 or early 2015, the sun will be spotless by sometime in 2015. (See current solar)
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_4500.jpg
The prediction the start of spotless days in 2013 was based on observations of the solar northern hemisphere. There were days in 2013/2014 when there were no sunspots in the solar northern hemisphere. The solar southern hemisphere is for some unknown reason lagging the northern hemisphere.
The hypothesis which I have outlined in this forum that the magnetic flux tubes are formed at the solar tachocline is the ‘standard’ solar model. As the magnetic flux tubes are buoyant and there is no physical means to hold them down in the convection zone, the solar specialists proposed that the magnetic flux tubes are formed in the solar tachocline (The tachocline is the name for the region that separates the solar convection zone and the solar radiative zone). The magnetic flux tubes grow (the seed for the magnetic flux tubes is a residue of the sunspots from the last solar cycle) in the tachocline amplified by the rotational difference between the convection zone and the tachocline. When the magnetic field strength of the amplified magnetic flux tube reaches the maximum value for current tachocline conditions they are released. The magnetic flux tube then rise up to the surface of the sun picking up rotational motion from convection motion in the convection zone. The movement and expansion of the magnetic flux tube in the convection zone explains what is observed in the movie Lief showed of a specific large sunspot. The sunspot in the movie moves about in a complex motion as it dissipates the angular moment the expanding magnetic flux tube picked up as it rose up through the convection zone.
The tachocline mechanism explains the butterfly pattern. The seeds require time to be amplified as they move through the tachocline and there is insufficient time for the high latitude regions to form a magnetic flux tube that has sufficient strength to be released (the tachocline may also change by latitude). The tachocline mechanism provides an explanation as to why the solar barycenter motion by the large planets correlates with solar long period changes. The motion and relative change in motion of the sun disturbs the tachocline region (creates oscillations in the tachocline which takes time to dissipate) which affects the release of the magnetic flux tubes. The tachocline mechanism explains why large sunspots are being replaced by pores.
The tachocline mechanism also explains why sunspots will be concentrated in certain regions of the sun and why the sunspot distribution is asymmetrical comparing one side of the sun to the other. The reason for the variance is differences in the tachocline.
Leif has provided no logic or observational evidence for a competing mechanism which he prefers for some unknown reason. Leif has provided no explanation as to why the magnetic field strength of the newly formed sunspots is decaying linearly and has no explanation as to why large sunspots are being replaced by pores.
There was an increase in sunspot numbers as the lagging southern hemisphere produced multi pores rather than large sunspots. As the magnetic field strength of the magnetic flux tubes continues to weaken the flux tubes are being torn apart in the convection zone and there is nothing left to form a pore. What is forming is a large region of high magnetic field strength.
As the solar wind and coronal holes continues to strip magnetic flux off of the sun and there will be no strong concentrated magnetic flux to move down back into the tachocline to form the seed for the next solar magnetic cycle, it appears the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted and will therefore require a different mechanism to restart.
Observational evidence to support the assertion that the solar magnetic flux tubes are formed at the tachocline and that the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted would be a spotless sun (before the normal solar minimum) and a gradual reduction of solar large scale magnetic field. Based on current observations the sun will be spotless by sometime in 2015.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
June 29, 2014 at 5:36 am
Rob R says I should not defend what Dr Evans says until it is made public. But Dr Evans’ TSI graph has been made public; it is transparently similar to the Krivova reconstruction on the SORCE/TIM website that Mr Svalgaard regards as authoritative enough to draw his own data from; and, therefore, Mr Svalgaard’s allegation that Dr Evans has knowingly used incorrect TSI data is demonstrably false.
The SORCE/TIM data is correct since 2003 and contradicts Mr Evans demonstrably false assertion that there was a sharp drop in TSI in the 2003-2005 time. On the contrary, TSI is now higher than at any time in the SORCE/TIM record, so Mr Evans has spliced the SORCE/TIM data incorrectly to the observations covering 1978-2002. The ‘data’ before 1978 is not based on observations but on incorrect and obsolete reconstruction. That the 2000 Lean reconstruction is invalid is well-known [even Lean agrees with this] so Mr Evans is either incompetent or deliberately using invalid ‘data’ without having done his due diligence. The Krivova reconstruction suffers from the same problem as Lean’s obsolete one: invoking a background based on the flawed Group Sunspot Number.
In all, it matters not what the code is, the ‘data’ is already so grossly in error that the prediction of a severe drop in temperature is worthless as is also the contention that the model [based on the incorrect data] explains the temperature in the past. As to whether Mr Evans did what he did knowingly, I’ll go with the assumption that he knew what he was doing. If not, then there is even less reason to take him seriously.
William Astley says:
June 28, 2014 at 12:11 pm
“The sun will be spotless by late 2013, early 2014”
William Astley says:
June 29, 2014 at 5:52 am
the sun will be spotless by sometime in 2015.
You sound just like one of those people who predict the end of the world at a certain time, and then when it doesn’t happen, predict yet another future date, and then yet another, etc.
The rest of your comment is nonsense mixed in misunderstood snippets.
I’m sick to death of Willis’ endless repetitions of his bleat about David Evans not yet having released all the data. I’m sick to death of his likening David’s slow release of privately funded data to Mann’s and Jones’ blatant refusal to release their publicly funded data at all. It all sounds like the petulancy of a toddler throwing a tantrum. Having enjoyed so many of Willis’ posts in the past I am quite upset by this. I’m also disappointed in Leif’s responses.
I thought I could enjoy a grown up discussion here. Thank goodness for some of the more thoughtful and gracious posts on here. FWIW…I think the possibilities David is putting forward are fascinating and I await developments with interest; whatever the eventual outcome.
William Astley says
it appears the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted and will therefore require a different mechanism to restart
Henry says
I am finding your comments interesting. I don’t know much about the processes on the sun but I did figure out that something has to turn back in 2015 or 2016 : did you see my comment here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/28/a-cool-question-answered/#comment-1672201
?
I also determined that such change every 44 years happens always exactly 7 years after direct opposition of Saturn and Uranus
it seems to me you know why? Could you perhaps just clarify that again to me?
I am puzzled about it since the total of the mass of the planets is rather small compared with the sun
Annie says:
June 29, 2014 at 6:20 am
I’m sick to death of his likening David’s slow release of privately funded data to Mann’s and Jones’ blatant refusal to release their publicly funded data at all.
Mr Evans does not have ‘privately funded data’. but [mis]uses publicly available data.
TSI is not important. It is the variation within TSI whereby relatively more energetic particles are released that immediately react with the gases from our atmosphere…
When the sun is brighter, earth gets cooler
When was the peak of the last solar cycle?
Are we at the peak of the current solar cycle?
What is the difference in TSI between those two peaks.
2003 to 2005 is a diversion.
Leif said “We don’t need to wait. As he uses incorrect input the model is already rubbish.”
Once everything is published, you’ll be able to enter your own TSI data into the model and advise us of the results. Until then I’d like to know where you expect temperatures to be in say 2035, pick your own figure and date(s).
Greg said http://s1136.photobucket.com/user/Bartemis/media/tempproject_zps16578eaa.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
Not unreasonable given a business as usual aproach from that big bright yellow thing in the sky. But business as usual would seem to be an unlikely expectation at present.
The difficulties that people faced during the Dalton and more especially the Maunder, will be very different today. We have central heating, better houses, better clothes, tractors, grain dryers, genetic crop capability, we can build snow removal equipment for farmers if needed and so on. Also we have very prudently and far sightedly boosted the ability of our farmers to grow food for us by adding extra co2 to the atmosphere in time for the expected possible cooling, should it occur, but if it doesn’t then who cares, continued warming will be beneficial, though the CAGW politicians will have destroyed our economies by then.
We might see some population culling here and there, as pensioners within the UK are forced to make an impossible choice between heating and eating for instance, but otherwise I wouldn’t expect a dip in temperatures to have a catastrophic impact, though I would hope that some of the more extreme CAGW fanatics find themselves on the scrap heap.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
June 28, 2014 at 9:43 pm
Kadaka, everyone had been doing so good and you had to go and feed the troll 😉
And as for the big brouhaha between the big heads, I love it. It’s one of the reasons I keep coming back. Big heads with big minds bring about big passion. And a little name-calling never hurt anyone, as long as the discussion continues.
JDN says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/28/a-cool-question-answered/#comment-1672210
henry says
Good point actually. I am not sure what measuring sensors can measure everything? Also, the way I understand it, TSI is measured TOA. What we perhaps should measure is irradiation at sea level – no clouds. That will give the information we need.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
June 29, 2014 at 5:16 am
Actually, the reconstruction on the SORCE/TIM website to which I had provided a link was, as I had previously stated, by Krivova et al.
No, not ‘actually’. The SORCE/TIM website used to [up to a few weeks ago] show Lean’s reconstruction. Now the website says:
“This historical TSI reconstruction is based on Wang, Lean, and Sheeley ( “Modeling the Sun’s Magnetic Field and Irradiance Since 1713″, ApJ 625:522-538, 2005 May 20), which was used for solar forcings in the 2007 IPCC estimates.”
So, no Krivova. But all that is irrelevant because Mr Evans claims to have used Lean 2000 as you can see in the upper left corner of his plot: http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/evans/graphs/prediction/total-solar-irradiance.gif
I had also previously stated that the record went back some 400 years
There is no ‘record’, only reconstructions.
The TSI data on this official website is visibly strikingly similar to the TSI data in Dr Evans’ graph.
Not at all. You are confused between versions and websites and have not done your homework. Here is an overlay of Mr Evans graph and the current LASP graph http://www.leif.org/research/Monckton-Flaw-1.png not strikingly similar. But all that does not matter, in the upper left-hand corner you can see that Mr Evans used the Lean 2000 reconstruction. If you want to play with the Big Boys, you better get your story straight.
from which Mr Svalgaard himself took (and then doctored) the graph on the basis of which he challenged Dr Evans’ assertion that solar activity had recently been declining.
The graph was produced by me from version 16 of the SORCE/TIM data and not doctored in any way [you here make a serious and libelous accusation – to speak in a language that is not above your pay-grade]. The pink curve is simply the running mean placed to make the run of the blue data curve easier to see: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-since-2003.png
As for those who think I ought not to have made an issue of this, let them understand that the real battle in which we are all engaged is a battle to restore the use of reason to scientific discourse. At present, the world’s governing class has discovered that, thanks to the near-universal scientific and mathematical ignorance to which generations of State-controlled education has reduced the populace, it can manufacture scientific scare stories as justification for a vast centralization of power in the hands of new supra-national bodies elected by nobody.
And here you display your agenda and bias. The way to win the battle is not [as you advocate] to use bad science and heated, unconsidered rhetoric [viz. you comments], but to ruthlessly weed out attempts to do so [as I have embarked on here]. Time for you to crawl back into your hole. You are hindering the good fight.
Bill Illis says:
June 29, 2014 at 7:05 am
When was the peak of the last solar cycle? about 2000 or 2001
Are we at the peak of the current solar cycle? pretty much
What is the difference in TSI between those two peaks
We don’t know precisely..
2003 to 2005 is a diversion.
Was introduced by Evans as his [flawed] justification for a serious drop in temperature, so thank him.
J Martin says:
June 29, 2014 at 7:08 am
Leif said “We don’t need to wait. As he uses incorrect input the model is already rubbish.”
Once everything is published, you’ll be able to enter your own TSI data into the model and advise us of the results.
Will do, but it doesn’t matter as far as Evans’ claims right now [based on wrong input] are concerned. They are already worthless.
Until then I’d like to know where you expect temperatures to be in say 2035, pick your own figure and date(s).
Have no idea and that should go for everybody else too.
His lordship says:
“What is new is that he has not only discovered a notch-filter that appears in multiple datasets (and the fact that it appears in so many datasets provoked at least one of the eminent scientists whom he consulted to sit up and take notice)”.
That is highly unlikely, much more likely an artifact of his method, showing up on every input. I don’t mean to be rude, but if you get a “notch” every time at the exact frequency (11 years per cycle) of your input then it is a schoolboy and career-ending error not to think “artifact” rather than “physics”.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
……..
Dr. S tends to adjusts extent of required accuracy so as to be able to negate anything that it is not his liking, and this certainly it is not.
Example:
– Dr. S : What you find by mixing oranges and apples is some artificial period which is about the average of 27 and 28.5 days.
– vukcevic: …as an average of 27.85 days is an ‘excellent’ number.
– Dr. S. No, it is misleading and meaningless. Just like saying that the average speed of a man walking and a jet-liner is 300 miles/hour
Dr. S. fortifies his contra argument by comparing difference of less than 1% to one of 10,000%.
At that point, I walked away.
Lord Monckton, your argument is falling on the deaf ears, he has a whole pack of dogs in this race, and is not going to let your one even leave the trap, let alone run, or god forbid win.
David Archibald said “as far as I know, there are only two models with predictive ability that are still in the game – mine and David Evans”
Abdussamatov is perhaps still in the game, but could be falsified quite soon as he predicted cooling from about 2014, Tallbloke, Tim Channon, have produced models that are also still in the game as far as I am aware, I think there are others as well, including the model from the financial statistics world. Pattinson sort of did and said he could perhaps have done more, iirc.
All the GCM / IPCC models produce warming which has been consistently and very visibly falsified for 18 or so years now and so these are not in the game, though they could perhaps re-enter the competition if they took note of actual measured atmospheric moisture content declining trends instead of making assumptions that moisture content is increasing.
Might we get a Greg Goodman projection one day ?
J Martin says:
June 29, 2014 at 8:21 am
Abdussamatov is perhaps still in the game, but could be falsified quite soon as he predicted cooling from about 2014
He has been falsified already. See slide 37 of http://www.leif.org/research/Another-Maunder-Minimum.pdf
cynical scientst said in part June 29, 2014 at 12:07 am:
“…The notch filter idea isn’t that complex. Personally I wish he had avoided the term as it makes people think of it far too concretely. He is using the terminology of signals processing and all he is saying here is that the 11 year frequency in TSI isn’t showing up in the output (temperature)….”
and
“… Even if you simply disconnect the input from the output, you can model that disconnection as a filter. …”
Except for the fact that you should never call a disconnect a “filter”, Cynical is making very good observations and corresponds to one of my major objections voiced variously in the “7-Part + Lubos” posting over at Jo’s site.
Here is my point. If you were to enter a room and find the light bulb NOT glowing, would you suppose that someone had arranged to provide a cancelling current of exactly the right frequency, the right amplitude, and 180 degrees out of phase to cancel an original supply? This would constitute a notch, a (s^2 + 1) Laplace numerator for a transfer function. Or – would you guess first that the switch was off!
J Martin says:
June 29, 2014 at 8:21 am
Abdussamatov is perhaps still in the game, but could be falsified quite soon as he predicted cooling from about 2014
Henry says
here is the thing
despite earth’s capacity to store energy, and use it when required, when you look at energy coming in [through the atmosphere], it is either cooling or warming. There is no middle way.
Hence, you can see from the official data sets [ and from my own] that is was warming until around 2000 and it started cooling from 2002. There is no pause, really. It is globally cooling or globally warming.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2015/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2015/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2015/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2015/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
Do you understand that we are globally cooling already?
From HenryP on June 29, 2014 at 3:47 am:
Not quite.
My Proposal to examine a possible solar/terrestrial correlation:
It is said there is a connection between solar activity and terrestrial temperatures, they should rise and fall together, if there is a lagged response then solar activity shall lead. It is recognized the oceans have a significant dampening effect on temperature variations.
Therefore we shall examine three regions presumably more likely to be affected quickly by solar variation: global land-only, North Hemisphere land-only, and the tropics defined as 30°N to 30°S. We are examining rates of annual variations, International SSN to Hadley Center/Met Office temperature indexes, to see if a change in solar activity results in a similar change in terrestrial temperatures.
All charts are from WoodForTrees. Whole years are specified, from 1950 up to 2014, the start date avoiding the pre-1947 (or pre-1945) proposed SSN correction issue. Monthly values are converted to annual by the Compress function. Annual values are converted to annual rates by the Derivative function which yields the first differences. Due to the small temperature variations, the temperature rates are scaled by x200 for clarity.
SSN and CRUTEM4 variance-adj. land global mean:
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/sidc-ssn/from:1950/to:2014/compress:12/derivative/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1950/to:2014/compress:12/derivative/scale:200
Results: There are some large peaks and some large troughs that line up in the same year, but not many. While searching for lag, among the nearby similar large features it is noted either could be leading. There is no clear correlation thus a possible connection is not evident.
There may a correlation in a broad sense, as circa 1965 and the end of data circa 2013 could be minimums of variance variability with a maximum of variance variability possibly circa 1990, the midway point. But there is insufficient data to consider a possible approx. 100 year cycle in variance variability.
SSN and CRUTEM4 variance-adj. land NH mean:
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/sidc-ssn/from:1950/to:2014/compress:12/derivative/plot/crutem4vnh/from:1950/to:2014/compress:12/derivative/scale:200
Results: With its higher percentage of land than the global amount, North Hemisphere should have a more obvious response. Instead it appears there is even less of a possible correlation thus again a possible connection is not evident.
The variance variability similarity is again present, possibly stronger, but the recent minimum could have been circa 2005. Again, insufficient data to determine possible cycle.
SSN and HADCRUT4 tropics (30S-30N) mean:
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/sidc-ssn/from:1950/to:2014/compress:12/derivative/plot/hadcrut4tr/from:1950/to:2014/compress:12/derivative/scale:200
Results: Having higher annual insolation in this region may yield a more noticeable response but it is confounded by the oceans and the frequent cooling effect of precipitation events, namely thunderstorms. There is no obvious matching of similar peaks or troughs, lined up or lagged. A possible variance variability correlation is not obvious. No correlation, no connection.
Conclusions: There are no clear or obvious correlations between the annual rates of solar variation and terrestrial temperatures within the selected time range and regions examined. There may be a correlation of variance variability, larger changes in solar activity yielding larger swings in temperatures. More data is needed to determine the possibility of a multi-decade cycle of solar variance which yields a similar cycle of terrestrial temperature variance.
J Martin says:
June 29, 2014 at 8:21 am
David Archibald said “as far as I know, there are only two models with predictive ability…..
……
J. Martin
David Archibald is wrong.
Here is one more .it is the CET based, it has been mentioned on the WUWT, Climate etc and RealClimate blogs.
The CET is already on the way down, as the graph shows. (see the link)
Extrapolation from only 3 principal components tends to exaggerate some of the min/max values; thus range of 1960-70s temperatures are projected for 2030s, followed by a nearly full recovery some 30 years later.