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
To all those commenting that if you perform the cross-correlation using white noise you get a notch filter, well yes that is true. I posted several places with my concerns about that that. I think that was Lubos’ concern and why he rejected it. I asked David Evans. Unlike some commenters here, he is not rude and arrogant and is prepared to have a polite debate. I finally understood where he is coming from. David Evans is saying IF we assume temperature change is linked to TSI (in some unknown way) what would the transfer function look like? The answer is a low pass plus notch filter.
David is not saying he is correct. He knows he is invoking some unknown “Factor X”. David’s position is very clear because he states in the latest blog, proposing his prediction but says very clearly “If the criterion does not occur: Then the notch-delay solar model is falsified and it should be thrown away.”
He knows the model could be rubbish and disproven. The experiment is taking place as we wait, over the next 5 – 10 years. It could be interesting seeing how it plays out.
For those complaining about his filter being non-causal, this is not strictly correct. In his analysis he divided the amplitude spectra of input and output to estimate the amplitude spectrum of the transfer function (under his assumption), but he did not estimate the phase spectrum of the “transfer function” because it was too noisy. The notch filter is clearly going to be SEEN as zero phase based on this analysis ie non-causal. The notch filter could just be an artefact ie TSI is not in temperature signals (that was my objection). But IF you make the assumption it is a real filter, then to make it causal it needs a delay, which is about 11 years (between 10 and 20 years).
David is fully aware of the assumptions he is making. And as he says, “If the criterion does not occur: Then the notch-delay solar model is falsified and it should be thrown away.”.
That is a pretty honest way to present your work.
And the spreadsheet is coming very shortly, as David has said many times, so a lot of the complaints here look to me rather premature.
ThinkingScientist says:
June 28, 2014 at 11:02 am
He knows the model could be rubbish and disproven. The experiment is taking place as we wait, over the next 5 – 10 years. It could be interesting seeing how it plays out.
We don’t need to wait. As he uses incorrect input the model is already rubbish.
JJM Gommers says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/28/a-cool-question-answered/#comment-1671577
Henry says
Are you saying it is not cooling yet?
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
Check my comment here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/28/a-cool-question-answered/#comment-1671561
“The model has temperature falling out of bed to about 2020 and then going sideways in response to the peak in Solar Cycle 24.”
It will do on CET up to 2024, but not for global temperatures, there will more frequent El Nino, like through the coldest years of Dalton (1807-1817), and a renewed warm AMO. Global temp’s will creep down slowly, then briefly nosedive when the first stronger La Nina happens.
Should not forget about gamma radiation – the weaker the magnetic field of the sun rise GCR including gamma rays and muons, which strongly ionize the atmosphere to the surface itself.
ren says:
June 28, 2014 at 11:11 am
Should not forget about gamma radiation – the weaker the magnetic field of the sun rise GCR including gamma rays
You can forget about gamma rays. The cosmic ‘rays’ are not rays and in particular not gamma rays.
Mr Svalgaard should beware of the solecism of the expert – to assume that because he knows something he knows everything. He has disgracefully accused Dr Evans of being “almost fraudulent” in that, according to Mr Svalgaard, the TSI data he is using are incorrect.
Here is the unique resource locator of Dr Evans’ TSI graph:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/evans/graphs/prediction/total-solar-irradiance.gif
And here is the unique resource locator of the graph covering much the same period from Krivova et al, which appeared in IPCC AR5 (2013) and has been updated since by the SORCE Total Irradiance Monitor team, the originators of Mr Svalgaard’s graph:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/evans/graphs/prediction/total-solar-irradiance.gif
The two graphs appear to me to be strikingly similar. On the data, therefore, Dr Evans (who should not be underestimated) is correct and Mr Svalgaard, the supposed “expert”, is not only wrong but libelously wrong. An immediate and abject apology seems in order.
“X”, an unknown quantity, “Spurt”, a drip under pressure.
Next, I had a look at Mr Svalgaard’s graph of total solar irradiance from 2003. The graph is similar to that of the SORCE/TIM graph, except that Mr Svalgaard, without saying so and without explaining how, has inserted trend data imaginatively covering a recent gap of about nine months in the data from SORCE.
Now, it is not for me to say whether Mr Svalgaard’s reconstruction of the trend on the absent SORCE data is reasonable, for I am no drip under pressure. However, to refer readers to a link to a graph that has been tampered with, and without also referring to a link that explains the tampering, and to use the tampered graph as the basis for accusing a diligent scientist of “almost fraudulent” conduct while suppressing a graph from the same source that confirms the rightness of Dr Evans’ data in every material particular, does not fill one with confidence in Mr Svalgaard’s scientific judgment, still less in his probity.
To Mr Eschenbach and others who deplore the absence of mathematics in Dr Evans’ slowly-unfolding blog account of his unpaid researches over many years, I should explain that he agonized long and hard about how to release his results and concluded, with great regret, that attempting to publish them in the once-learned journals would be pointless. Therefore, he is first giving an outline of what he has done – and, from the number of hasty comments from the usual suspects condemning his work before they have seen the details, his outline has inspired more than a little terror in the camp of the Thermageddonites.
In due course, when he is ready, he will no doubt make all relevant details available. You can be sure that he will not be taking the Michael Mann or Phil Jones approach to disclosure.
Finally, to those who, like Mr Svalgaard, inappropriately and repellently suggest that Dr Evans has a “hidden agenda”, anyone who knows Dr Evans would at once dismiss that notion. First, he has been working unpaid on his theory for years. Secondly, he was once a Thermageddonite himself: he was lavishly paid to write carbon-accounting models for the Australian Government.
He was cured of the Thermageddonite affliction on learning that “Dr” Mann and “Dr” Overpeck and the IPCC had attempted to abolish the medieval warm period. On seeing what arrant nonsense was being published about that period, he resigned his comfortably-paid government post and decided to investigate at his own expense what he regarded as an outrageous abuse of the scientific method for profit.
He found,– as so many of us have similarly found – that the official story-line did not withstand scrutiny. And what possible “hidden agenda” could he have for declaring in advance not only that he expects a sharp fall in global mean surface temperature at some time between now and 2024 but also that if no such drop occurs his theory will have been falsified? That transparent approach is the approach of an honest scientist – an approach that Mr Svalgaard would do well to learn to emulate.
ThinkingScientist says:
June 28, 2014 at 11:02 am
Well said.
David Evans’s description is based on a ‘what if ‘ scenario.
If there is some solar influence other than TSI which is affecting Earth temperatures with a delay in the region of one solar cycle then that could explain a great deal.
That idea has the merit of being readily falsifiable within one solar cycle, maybe within 5 years or so from today.
I have put forward one possibility.
Svensmark has put forward another.
AGW theory is yet another.
Let us see how the cards fall.
Anyone who claims to know at present is an idiot 🙂
@ren
I am not disagreeing with you that global cooling will cause more clouds at the lower latitudes [since we are cooling from the top latitudes down] and that these clouds at the lower latitudes cause more deflection of sunlight and hence more cooling. So it is a chain of events.
Trenberth knew and recognized that ozone on its own is responsible for 25% of all that is absorbed and reflected back to space by the atmosphere. You will understand that if there is more of it [ozone], that there is more cooling?
Trenberth forgot and probably never knew that there are also other chemicals being formed TOA back radiating energy to space. Hence the term, “Trenberth’s missing energy”
….
Willis asserted: “You get the same result running his magic model against white noise instead of the global surface temperature.”
Alas it’s a deeper rabbit hole than that since their result includes a massive nuclear winter adjustment thrown in due to atomic testing, and this locks them in with a serious fluctuation added to any white noise test data. I also suspect that this is how they obtain their sudden plunge at the end, but that’s just an intuitive extension of having my BS detector already pinging so loudly. They even suggest nuclear radiation being itself at work, their only reference for this massive kludge being a brochure about the potential numbers out there for a real nuclear winter in the future. Climate modelers rely mostly on pollution-based aerosols to adjust for post 1970s cooling, but Evans uses nuclear testing instead. This also defeats your suggestion of early/late model testing or Motl’s suggestion of time reversing the record to retain its spectral character as differing test data since much of their variation is hard wired.
If a signal analysis algorithm from the mostly causual world of electronics can perfectly match any causually entrained pair of signals then why the nuclear testing adjustment at all? For a good match it’s not needed, by definition of using a transfer function as a “model.” Then I think of it as loading a spring so it eventually pulls the future down into a plunge.
That these most elementary criticisms were not proactively anticipated but now lead to hurt feelings and tribal clashes is a bit of a red flag too, since using a the very idea of using a signal matching algorithm as a physical model (that must invoke an unknown Force X since that provides an perfectly matching 11 year delay to cancel an 11 year input signal along with a speculative nuclear winter effect based on radioactivity) barely passes the laugh test since its a textbook example of arbitrary wiggle matching with a wrench thrown in to thwart testing.
Where were the proactive tests of uniqueness? Does the “nuclear option” provide a future plunge by biasing unknown Force X and does it also defeat tests of uniqueness with test data? Is this exercise helping to throw away the skeptical advantage of checking our own work like real scientists outside of climatology do? That they promote only a *future* test instead of a careful internal one is a gambler’s outlook with quite good odds given the sudden plunges every few decades in the main Greenland ice core:
http://oi61.tinypic.com/2cxbxw4.jpg
Skeptics are fatiguing of being marginalized, but grasping for oversimplified answers only adds to that marginalization.
@Lord Monckton
It seems both Willis and Leif are playing the devil’s advocate, probably to keep everyone [sceptic] on their toes?
“NikFromNYC says:
June 28, 2014 at 11:48 am”
That isn’t true at all.
David Evans was puzzled by the mid 20th century cooling and referred to the 1950s nuclear testing as a possible cause. Indeed I recall that being blamed for the cooling at the time.
Now, however, it is clear that the lower activity level of solar cycle 20 plus the negative phase of the PDO could have povided the explanation.
David’s offhand conjecture does not in any way derogate from his basic hypothesis.
“Trenberth knew and recognized that ozone on its own is responsible for 25% of all that is absorbed and reflected back to space by the atmosphere. You will understand that if there is more of it [ozone], that there is more cooling?”
Eh ???
More ozone means more warming and less ozone means less warmimg !!!
The presence of ozone in the stratosphere reacting directly with incoming solar energy is what causes the temperature inversion at the tropopause.
More ozone more warming and lower tropopause.
Less ozone less warming and higher tropopause.
Basic meteorology.
.
I have a list of solar parameters going forward that if achieved should have a significant impact on the climate, and sunspots is not one of them . Reason being look at all the different sunspot counts that are out there, and it is so subjective. I never seen a parameter with such a diversity of values.
This is why total surface of the sun covered with sunspots should be used as a guide for sunspot activity but then again solar flux corresponds quite well to area coverage of sunspots on the sun, and that is what I am going with as far as how active or not solar activity is.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
June 28, 2014 at 11:16 am
The two graphs appear to me to be strikingly similar. On the data, therefore, Dr Evans (who should not be underestimated) is correct and Mr Svalgaard, the supposed “expert”, is not only wrong but libelously wrong. An immediate and abject apology seems in order.
Nonsense. As I pointed out the most blatant error and the one on which the forecast hinges is the assertion that there has been a sudden and unprecedented drop in TSI in the 2003-2005 time frame. I showed that that is false.
Next, I had a look at Mr Svalgaard’s graph of total solar irradiance from 2003. The graph is similar to that of the SORCE/TIM graph
It is the SORCE/TIM data plotted every day [blue curve].
except that Mr Svalgaard, without saying so and without explaining how, has inserted trend data imaginatively covering a recent gap of about nine months in the data from SORCE.
The pink curve is simply the 27-day running average. The plotting program interpolates across data gaps, but that is totally irrelevant as you can remove that interpolation without any consequence.
David Evans is quoted: “If the criterion does not occur: Then the notch-delay solar model is falsified and it should be thrown away.”
O.K., anyone can bet this way who anticipates a downturn over the next few decades with any model they choose, but that plunge doesn’t prove the model is right even as it falsifies mainstream models. I’ve already provided my Greenland “model,” that climate even on century time scales is highly chaotic, and by probability alone, temperatures always plunge upon peaking. I don’t even need Force Y to make that claim. Now whose model will a future plunge better support, theirs or mine? They have one big advantage over me here: I have no causality to offer a test of uniqueness using test data but they do. So why aren’t they offering it upfront but instead concluding only that future tests are available?
lsvalgaard says:
ren says:
June 28, 2014 at 11:11 am
Should not forget about gamma radiation – the weaker the magnetic field of the sun rise GCR including gamma rays
You can forget about gamma rays. The cosmic ‘rays’ are not rays and in particular not gamma rays.
Cosmic rays are particles (mostly protons) accelerated to relativistic speeds. Despite wide agreement that supernova remnants (SNRs) are the sources of galactic cosmic rays, unequivocal evidence for the acceleration of protons in these objects is still lacking. When accelerated protons encounter interstellar material, they produce neutral pions, which in turn decay into gamma rays. This offers a compelling way to detect the acceleration sites of protons. The identification of pion-decay gamma rays has been difficult because high-energy electrons also produce gamma rays via bremsstrahlung and inverse Compton scattering. We detected the characteristic pion-decay feature in the gamma-ray spectra of two SNRs, IC 443 and W44, with the Fermi Large Area Telescope. This detection provides direct evidence that cosmic-ray protons are accelerated in SNRs.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6121/807
In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
June 28, 2014 at 10:28 am
This is a link to the latest visual picture of the sun. http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_4500.jpg
How many sunspots do you see? Do you observe pores (tiny sunspots) or sunspots.
There are six groups with a total of 11 spots, so the official sunspot number is 0.6*(10*6+11)=43, which is what SILSO [formerly SIDC] reports for today http://www.sidc.be/silso/home
Since the spots are smallish, they will not be weighted.
You can cut the crap about sunspot counts being manipulated.
William:
I would strongly suggest everyone have a look at the latest solar visual picture. (See link above.) How many sunspots do you count? Do you or do you not agree with Lief’s sunspot count above?
You have no explanation as to why the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots is decaying linearly, you have no explanation why sunspots are being replaced by pores, and you have no prediction as to what will happen next to the solar magnetic cycle. The sun will be spotless by late 2013, early 2014.
The planet has started to cool due to the sudden and abrupt change to the solar magnetic cycle which supports the assertion that some physical mechanism was inhibiting the solar magnetic cycle modulation of planetary cloud cover and the assertion that the solar magnetic cycle modulates planetary cloud cover.
The warming phase of the last 150 years and the enhanced warming phase of the last 30 years has happened again and again. The planet cyclically warms and cools, sometimes the cooling is abrupt. The forcing mechanism is the solar magnetic cycle. Name calling and emphatic statements will not change the physics of what happened in the past and what is happening now.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
Davis and Taylor: “Does the current global warming signal reflect a natural cycle” (William: Yes)
…We found 342 natural warming events (NWEs) corresponding to this definition, distributed over the past 250,000 years …. …. The 342 NWEs contained in the Vostok ice core record are divided into low-rate warming events (LRWEs; < 0.74oC/century) and high rate warming events (HRWEs; ≥ 0.74oC /century) (Figure). … ….The current global warming signal is therefore the slowest and among the smallest in comparison with all HRWEs in the Vostok record, although the current warming signal could in the coming decades yet reach the level of past HRWEs for some parameters. The figure shows the most recent 16 HRWEs in the Vostok ice core data during the Holocene, interspersed with a number of LRWEs. …. ….We were delighted to see the paper published in Nature magazine online (August 22, 2012 issue) reporting past climate warming events in the Antarctic similar in amplitude and warming rate to the present global warming signal. The paper, entitled "Recent Antarctic Peninsula warming relative to Holocene climate and ice – shelf history" and authored by Robert Mulvaney and colleagues of the British Antarctic Survey ( Nature , 2012, doi:10.1038/nature11391),reports two recent natural warming cycles, one around 1500 AD and another around 400 AD, measured from isotope (deuterium) concentrations in ice cores bored adjacent to recent breaks in the ice shelf in northeast Antarctica. ….
One item to remember is this period of below normal solar activity started in 2005 so the accumulation factor is coming into play.
Secondly it is not just solar activity within itself but the secondary effects associated with solar variability which I feel are extremely hard to predict as far as how strongly (to what degree)they may change and thus effect the climate in response to long prolonged minimum solar activity.
I strongly suspect the degree of magnitude change of the prolonged minimum solar activity combined with the duration of time of the prolonged minimum solar activity is going to have a great impact as to how EFFECTIVE the associated secondary effects associated with prolonged minimal solar activity may have on the climate. An example would be an increased in volcanic activity.To make it more complicated could thresholds come about? An example would be a changing atmospheric circulation pattern which may promote more snow cover/cloud cover and thus increase the earth’s albedo. How will the initial state of the climate play into it? An example of this would be the great amounts of excess Antarctica Sea Ice the globe has presently and how this might play out going forward under a very long period of prolonged minimum solar activity. Will climatic outcomes unknown come out of this?
Then one has to consider where the earth is in respect to Milankovitch Cycles (favorable )and how the earth’s magnetic field may enhance or moderate solar activity.
Given all of that I think at best only general trends in the climate can be forecasted going forward. I am confident enough to say in response to prolonged minimum solar activity going forward the temperature trend for the globe as a whole will be down. The question is how far down /how rapid will the decline be? I really do not have the answer because there are just to many UNKNOWNS. Further when you have unknowns in a system like the climate which is non linear, random and chaotic expect surprises.
lsvalgaard
Gamma rays, like muons and neutrons is part of the secondary radiation.
“For those complaining about his filter being non-causal, this is not strictly correct. In his analysis he divided the amplitude spectra of input and output to estimate the amplitude spectrum of the transfer function (under his assumption), but he did not estimate the phase spectrum of the “transfer function” because it was too noisy.”
Thanks, that’s something I forgot. IFAIR, he said it was “unreliable” not “too noisy”. An FT is a series of complex numbers, which can either be expressed as (x,y) or (magnitude, phase) . It is not clear how the magnitude can be regarded as reliable while the phase unreliable. That was not explained.
” The notch filter is clearly going to be SEEN as zero phase based on this analysis ie non-causal. The notch filter could just be an artefact ie TSI is not in temperature signals (that was my objection). But IF you make the assumption it is a real filter, then to make it causal it needs a delay, which is about 11 years (between 10 and 20 years).”
No. Dumping the phase then adding spurious fixed temporal lag which will represent a different phase for each component is yet another fudge. It in no way renders it “causal”.
“David is fully aware of the assumptions he is making. And as he says, “If the criterion does not occur: Then the notch-delay solar model is falsified and it should be thrown away.”.
…..
He knows the model could be rubbish and disproven. The experiment is taking place as we wait, over the next 5 – 10 years. It could be interesting seeing how it plays out.”
I think within that time frame we won’t need an alternative model to see whether AGW has even a grain of truth in it. However, I suspect this model will not last that long as it is. Some models don’t need more data.
His Lordship says: “He was cured of the Thermageddonite affliction on learning that “Dr” Mann and “Dr” Overpeck and the IPCC had attempted to abolish the medieval warm period. On seeing what arrant nonsense was being published about that period, he resigned his comfortably-paid government post and decided to investigate at his own expense what he regarded as an outrageous abuse of the scientific method for profit.”
Highly commendable. A large part of the problem today is that few in science seem to have that sort of cojones. Sadly, that does not fix the model.
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.
HenryP
Ozone is a strong greenhouse gas.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_AMJ_EQ_2014.gif
In fact, the step response of a physical notch filter must be causal. David Evans (for reasons that are very unclear – he originally said all notches were non-causal) chose a non-causal step response. He then further proposed to delay the response to make it causal (thus physical). But you can NOT make a non-causal step response become causal by using a delay unless the step response is finite duration (does not extend back to minus infinity), AND is symmetric about some center point (so that time reversal for the finite segment would not matter, since a delay does not reverse time). Neither special condition is a property of the step response David plotted in his Part II. Just engineering here.
greg Goodman says:
June 28, 2014 at 9:08 am
‘There is an 11y peak in the “input” and no 11y peak in the “output”.’
That would tend to make the result rather tautological.
FWIW, my prediction for the years ahead.