Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Back in May, Climate scientist Ed Hawkins published a scary spiral graph which appeared to show global warming leaping out at you. As a homage to Hawkins’ effort, I created a similar graph, covering the last 10,000 years, rather than just covering temperatures since 1850. The effect of the longer timescale is quite different to the Hawkins original.
The source data is ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
The spiral graph is obviously more art than science, but it presents some interesting features. The radius of the circle is related to the temperature anomaly – warmer temperatures have a larger radius. The factors are obviously chosen for artistic impact – just as Hawkins’ factors were.
On a 10,000 year timescale the spiral graph does emphasise how cold modern temperatures are, compared to the rest of the Holocene – at least with regard to temperatures on the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Unfortunately the graph ends well before 2016 – the most recent row of the data series on which the graph is based corresponds to the early 1900s. Nevertheless, it would take a really radical warming event to match some of the natural temperature excursions which appear on the graph.
I considered consulting with Dr. Mann, to request his assistance with splicing unrelated temperature series, to plot more recent values, but Dr. Mann is probably busy with all his lawsuits.
The source code for the software which produced the graph is available here. Feel free to play with it and produce your own variations. A possible improvement might be to name the various temperature excursions (warm and cold periods). Let me know if you find any serious mistakes. The code was developed using Apple Xcode.
Bottom line, these things are hair splitting exercises vis a vis how close we are to the end of the interglacial. It’ not a matter of if but when (unless one is taking the anti-scientific view that the system is prone to run away and that some mythical hidden land-mine-like inflection point capable of completely overturning the millions years long Quaternary set up … yah, right!).
that some mythical hidden land-mine-like inflection point capable of completely overturning the millions years long Quaternary set up lurks …
In no work quoted in previous studies one can find the DATE for start of the
inception…. A Crucifix/Rougier paper (further up the blog) of 2009 is quoted,
in http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.3625.pdf, in
which they chatter about “prediction of the inception”, but they only provide, quote
the abstract: “”provisional results indicate peak glacial conditions in 60,000 years””…
Those simulators do not even know the DIFFERENCE is between PEAK and
INCEPTION…. really bad…..the title does not match the content…..
On the other hand, we at http://www.knowledgeminer.eu/climate-papers.html,
analyzed each single temp spike since 8500 BC…the paper series part 1-5 reached
1 AD, and part 6 and 7 will cover 1 AD to 2210 AD, the paper part 8 will cover
1640 AD UNTIL GLACIAL INCEPTION, which we define as the date, when global
temps will never exceed those of the LIA in the 17th century.
The papers will be ready until the years´s end. JS.
hmmm. Interesting. Given the jagged appearance of the goose-step march down towards a stadial period, it makes sense to define its inception (establishment). My questions are what triggers the beginning of the jagged slide down and do those triggers commence before the last warm decade is over. Are there signals in our current observations that tell us we are running out of net discharged heat (we are warmed by it) and need to switch to net recharge heat (we are left out in the cold by it)?
hmm. I just sent in a reply to J. Seifert and it disappeared.
Interesting. Yes, inception’s synonym is “establishment”. The establishment of a stadial period would need some kind of crossing mark of no return due to the jagged decent into colder periods between interstadials. Reconstructions are quite bouncy on the down slope.
My interest is in the switch to the down slope from a stadial at the top. And in particular, what might be the signals IN THE WARM peak itself that would tell us we are closer rather than farther from the edge of the down slope. A change in percentage of cloud cover? Clear skies allowing more heat to be absorbed by the oceans than evaporated, thus leaving us cooler on land? A change in the thermocline showing a diminution of heat in the top ocean layer (and what if it IS only the top layer and not the deep ocean that is important)? A change in the winds? We can still be warm while these things slowly or suddenly change simply due to the inertia of the system.
Would it not be surprising, let alone ironic, that the very things climate catastrophe believers warn us about, receding polar caps and warmer sea surface, are the very things that could tell us, and did to who/whatever came before us, that THAT is the warning signal of an impending edge to the downward slope.
… what might be the signals IN THE WARM peak itself that would tell us we are closer rather than farther from the edge of the down slope?
According to Tzedakis a reactivated bipolar seesaw might be such a signal.
Pamela, interesting your comment…we take the LIA temps as the highest temps for a
“point of no return” back to interglacial warmth, and define this temp level as beginning
of the new glacial……this is where “inception” begins, as I see it…..this will be described
in the paper Climate Pattern Recognition, part 8. However, from the top of the Holocene
warmth in the past, in the Late Holocene, an “initiation period of temps decline trend” can
be pinpointed. This initiation period of declining temps lies within the RWP, the declining trend
from there on is -0.4°C per millenium …..this is explained in detail in the paper Clim. Patt. Rec.,
part 6, which carries us from 1 AD over to 1150 AD. this paper will be available within the
next weeks at the usual address http://www.knowledgeminer.eu/climate-papers.html ….
.The following paper, part 7, ready as well, will take us to AD 2110, and the glacial inception
paper, part 8, various millenia beyond.
Consult this part 6 paper in which your questions are answered in detail. Cheers JS.
J.Seifert, wriggle matching is observation of non-parametized variables. Such pure forms of wriggle matching (which yours is not) is only the first step in exploratory science. That is your first mistake. Your second mistake is that you create papers out of over-parametized wriggle matching when you should be working on plausible mechanisms of direct correlations before writing your thesis.
Know this: Well-done mechanized results don’t require pages and pages. In fact, the length of your papers may correlate better with the implausibility of your paradigm more than anything else.
To correct your mistakes, start with non-parametized data series to see if correlation exists. Then before you jump to external plausible mechanisms, you must burn the midnight oil to unqualify internal mechanisms. Not an easy task. The journals are filled with INTERNAL teleconnected variables that cause this and that, even looping back to cause the cause. You must disprove within those paradigms (IE you can’t even consider your own yet) and THEN show that they cannot equal your paradigm. If its 50/50, your paradigm loses.
In summary, your papers are useless towards, and even degrade the discussion, the scientific discovery of internal versus external causes.
The problem is that weather (and climate) are analog processes without neat boundaries. Geological periods are geological concepts and have fixed boundaries assigned by geologists, ideally based on evidence, but even so, you run into disagreements. For instance the end of a glacial period – does it end the year after the glacial maximum, or when the climate has warmed to some specific – but arbitrary – point? Similarly, when does an interstadial end? I have a handy guide to Sierran Geology by Dr. Mary Hill that places the end of the LIA at 1900, about 50 years later than some other geologists. Again, relatively recently the beginning of the Holocene continues to be argued: http://www.stratigraphy.org/gssp/holocene.pdf. The authors point out that the beginning of the Holocene is associated with the end of the Younger Dryas rather than the end of the glacial maximum which varies from continent to continent. They place the start at 11,700 b2K (before AD 2000).
Hey, if it weren’t for Yidiots stirring up trouble, life could actually get pretty boring here on Earth, what with the lack of trends towards catastrophe and all. It would be more fun, though, if these Yidiots would, say, sponsor a BBQ or something instead.
Oh, and I had a “Spirograph” when I was young. It got boring, too, after a short while. But I did learn about gears.
Eric, that is a excellent. Now, if only someone, using Geocarb III data, would do one showing the downward spiral in atmospheric carbon over the Phanerozoic. In million-year steps you would need about 650 steps.