Guest Post by Javier
It is a well-known feature of climate change that since 1850 multiple climate datasets present a ~ 60-year oscillation. I recently wrote about it in the 7th chapter of my Nature Unbound series. This oscillation is present in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), Arctic Oscillation (AO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Length of Day (LOD), and Global (GST) and Northern Hemisphere (NHT) temperatures, with different lags (figure 1).
To me this oscillation is not a cycle because prior to 1850 it had a more variable period and it is not well identified in LIA records. Since the origin of this oscillation is unknown, models have a hard time reproducing it and it is all but ignored by the IPCC. It is a big oscillation with an amplitude of ± 0.3 °C in NHT (0.1-0.2°C in GST; figure 2). While the long-term temperature trend is unaffected by it, there is a large effect on the 30-year trends. If this oscillation is considered, most of the climate alarmism vaporizes.
This oscillation was first detected by Folland et al. (1984) in global SST and nighttime marine air temperature records, and later correlated to precipitation records in the Sahel (Folland et al., 1986). The multidecadal oscillation was isolated by Schlesinger and Ramankutty (1994) in the global mean instrumental temperature record, as a 65-70-year northern hemisphere periodicity, and attributed to internal variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system. It was termed the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) by Kerr (2000). Scafetta has published several articles on it since 2010 (Mazzarella & Scafetta, 2012, for example). Among skeptics it has been featured prominently, for example here at WUWT:
In favor:
Scafetta on 60-year climate oscillations. Anthony Watts
New paper in GRL shows that a 60-year oscillation in the global tide gauge sea level record has been discovered. Anthony Watts
Claim: Solar, AMO, & PDO cycles combined reproduce the global climate of the past. Guest essay by H. Luedecke and C.O.Weiss
Models overestimate 60-year decadal trends. Guest essay by Clive Best
Against:
The Elusive ~ 60-year Sea Level Cycle. Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
It can be reasonably postulated that the famous pause is nothing more than the manifestation of the recent end of the ascending phase of the 60-year oscillation.
On examination of figure 2 we observe two prominent peaks at 2016 and 1876, separated by 140 years and thus at a similar point in the AMO oscillation. Both also took place at the end of a solar cycle. Perhaps the 1876 and 2016 El Niño events can be considered analogs, but clearly the 1876 peak shows a bigger NHT deviation and a much stronger effect on AMO.
We may remember that as the time the Challenger Expedition took place. It was the first fully scientific oceanographic expedition and one of the most successful ones. Among its achievements we can count (Steven Varner):
– The birth of oceanography as an independent scientific field.
– The first systematic plot of currents and temperatures in the ocean.
– A map of bottom deposits that has not been changed much by more recent studies.
– An outline of the main contours of the ocean basins.
– The discovery of the mid-Atlantic Ridge (which baffled scientists at the time).
– The recording of the 26,900 feet (8,200 meters) Challenger Deep, a new record ocean depth, in the Mariana Trench.
– The discovery of 715 new genera and 4,717 new species of ocean life forms.
– The discovery of prodigious life forms even at great depths in the ocean (refuting earlier hypotheses of lifeless bottoms).
The expedition departed England in December 1872 and returned in May 1876.
Recently scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US) and the National Oceanography Centre (UK) took the data from the Challenger expedition and compared it to the Argo data from the same locations 135 years later (Roemmich et al., 2012). The warming observed was consistent with current knowledge, but they found something very interesting:
“The 0.33 °C ± 0.14 average temperature difference from 0 to 700 m is twice the value observed globally in that depth range over the past 50 years, implying a centennial timescale for the present rate of global warming.”
In other words, the warming for the first half of the period (mostly natural) is about the same as for the second half (including the anthropogenic contribution). They conclude that the warming rate of the oceans has not accelerated with the addition of anthropogenic GHGs.
For at least 4 years (1872-1876), and during all the time the Challenger was at sea, the world was experiencing La Niña conditions. It is also probable that 1871 was a La Niña year, making it one of the longest La Niña periods in recorded history.
Most people have the idea that La Niña means cooling and El Niño means warming when it is just the opposite. When strong La Niña conditions dominate, the Pacific accumulates more and more thermal energy due to higher insolation produced by the reduction of clouds due to lower evaporation. The planet thus acquires more thermal energy in the Pacific Ocean subsurface. Then it suddenly exploded in 1876 producing the largest known El Niño in historic times. A monster El Niño right in the middle of the pre-industrial IPCC baseline period (1850-1900). This puts to shame the notion that pre-industrial climate was more congenial. It was a complete catastrophe. Terrible multi-year droughts took place in Brazil, India, China, European Russia and many other places, claiming the lives of an estimated 20-50 million people, or at the time ~ 3% of the world’s population. The world’s worst natural disaster ever (not counting pandemics). We can’t even imagine it. China lost 13 million people. In India the death toll is estimated at 5.5 million, with 58.5 million people distressed by hunger. This occurred while the British colonial government exported food and reduced relief help, due to criticisms of excessive expenditure, prompting modern accusations of a colonial genocide.
So that is the human meaning of the spike at the left of figure 2. The 1876-78 El Niño was so big that it spread over all the oceans, causing a corresponding spike in the AMO. Afterwards AMO and temperatures started going down and the world recovered. El Niño accomplished its mission of releasing the excess energy accumulated during the La Niña years.
Looking at AMO data we can see that it has another interesting decadal periodicity. It is so clear that it is visible in unsmoothed monthly data, but it is better seen with a 4.5-year moving average (figure 6).
The decadal periodicity is also present in hemispheric and global temperatures, and, in an article in 2009, Anthony Watts with Basil Copeland defended a lunisolar influence behind it:
Anthony and Basil used HadCRUT3 global data, but since AMO and temperature are so correlated (see figure 1) and AMO has less noise, I am going to stick to AMO.
The decadal periodicity in AMO has a frequency of 9.0-9.1 years (Manzi et al., 2012; figure 7)
Due to its periodicity, it has been suggested numerous times that the 9-year peak corresponds to a Lunar tidal frequency. The nodes where the orbit of the Moon crosses the Earth’s ecliptic are two points where a maximal alignment of the Moon-Earth-Sun takes place. They half rotate around the Earth every 9.3 years producing higher tides at that period when they reach optimal alignment. Also, the elliptical orbit of the Moon rotates around the Earth, placed at one of the foci, every 8.85 years. Higher tides also take place when the perigee-apogee axis is properly oriented towards the Sun. The closeness of these two periods suggests that a 9.1 period could result from their interaction.
Scafetta (2010) ingeniously demonstrated using the JPL ephemeris that the speed of the Earth around the Sun is perturbed by the presence of the Moon at a frequency of 9.1 years (figure 8).
Although this does not demonstrate that the 9-year periodicity in AMO is due to the Moon, it does build a case. The effect of the Moon’s gravitation on atmospheric tides and oceanic tides has enough energy to produce the observed effect. Half of the vertical mixing in the oceans is due to tides, and the other half to wind. In addition, tides affect oceanic currents by sloshing huge amounts of water from one place to another. The expected effect is that stronger tides should produce cooling by enhancing the upwelling and mixing of colder, deeper water. It is important to realize that the tidal forcing is thus inverted with respect to AMO temperature anomaly, and higher tidal forcing should produce temperature troughs (for example in figure 6), not peaks.
Some people have suggested that longer cycles could be the result of a modulation between lunar and solar cycles. For example Greg Goodman (climategrog) in a comment in 2014:
“If we do the same process with 9.08 and 10.4 it gives a modulation frequency of 143 years so the “beat” period of each bulge in amplitude is 71.5. So, it is possible for an interplay of lunar and solar forces to produce the kind of long cycles seen in the climate record.”
Prior to that, in 2011, Clive Best explored in an article in his blog the possibility that the 60-year oscillation was produced by the combined effect of both the solar variability and the tidal variability: A 60-year oscillation in Global Temperature data and possible explanations.
Alas, he couldn’t find convincing evidence:
“There is no single astronomical effect which can explain the 60-year time period. I have looked into the possibility that a superposition of both the 11-year solar variability and the 18.6 year lunar tide could produce the observed 60 year oscillation. There is no convincing evidence that this is the case.”
So, I decided to revisit the 60-year oscillation to see if it is possible that the modulation between the 9-year frequency in AMO and the 11-year solar cycle could be responsible for the emergence of the 60-year oscillation through constructive and destructive interference. In principle the period of the beat from a 9-year period (T(1)) and a 10.9-year period (T(2)) is too short. T(beat) = 1 / (1/T(1))–(1/T(2)) = 52 years
However, since the solar cycle is quite variable I decided to plot it anyway. The result is most interesting (figure 9).
The non-stationary correlation between the two cycles produces a periodicity that is compatible with the ~ 60-year periodicity in AMO. Periods of high correlation between the 9-year AMO and 11-year solar periodicities correspond to cold 60-year AMO periods, while periods of high anti-correlation correspond to warm 60-year AMO periods.
Mechanistically, times of high correlation between the 9-year AMO and 11-year solar periodicities correspond to times when the highest tidal forcing (AMO cooling) coincide with the times of lowest solar activity (solar minima), which could explain why the AMO displays cooling. Times of high anti-correlation between the 9-year AMO and 11-year solar periodicities correspond to times when the highest tidal forcing (AMO cooling) coincide with the times of highest solar activity (solar maxima), which could explain why the AMO does not display cooling.
The irregularity of the 11-year solar cycle period could explain why the ~ 60-year oscillation is also irregular, and the low level of solar activity during the LIA could also explain why the 60-year oscillation is not apparent or weaker at that time.
Regardless of the 60-year oscillation being due or not to the modulation of a lunar tidal 9-year cycle and a solar activity 11-year cycle, the observation of the interplay between these two cycles leads to two conservative predictions that do not rest on any hypothesis. As we are in a period of high anti-correlation and as Solar Cycle 25 increases its activity over the next 5-6 years the AMO should experience a decrease associated with its 9-year periodicity, putting additional downward pressure on surface temperatures.
The second prediction has been proposed multiple times: the downward phase of the ~ 60-year AMO oscillation should cause a reduction in global temperatures of ~ 0.1-0.2 °C over the next 20-30 years, all other things being equal.
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An analogous pacing from Milankovitch cycles and the glacial-interglacial cyclicity took decades for acceptance.
A 120-135 year pacing on the multidecadal stadium waves (Ocean heat release oscillations, beat frequency) similarly will take decades for mainstream acceptance. First though, the CO2 climate change fever must break for the patient (science) to get well enough to study this contarian idea.
Before the corruption of climatology by CACA into “climate science”, ie GIGO computer gaming, real scientists also recognized the reality of multidecadal, multicentennial and multimillenial cycles. On the centennial scale were the well supported Holocene Optimum, Egyptian Warm Period, Minoan WP, Roman WP and Medieval WP, with intervening cool periods of similar length, such as the LIA following the Medieval WP and the Dark Ages CP before it.
I would like to see something on earth-tides as a possible influence. E.g. how high are they, and combined with sea-tides could they act as a kind of pump to drive tectonic movement?
Some 5 yrs ago here, hype was high on the lack of landfalling hurricanes and I warned that it would be better to predict a return of the 1950s busy big hurricanes decade in the coming several years to blunt the hype that was sure to arise on the other side. Alas, my effort to stop the 30yr 1/2 period of duelling hypes was unsuccessful.
The problem with this is that the IPCC set the standard “century” as 1906-2005. In AR4 they then said warming was 0.74 C over that century (with error bars).
One look at the detrended HadCRUT 3 graph in Scafetta 2010 that Javier cites shows that the chosen endpoints of that “century” are right at the bottom of one cycle and right at the top of the next cycle. So an artefact of ~0.3 C is included in that 0.74 C of “warming”.
Yet the IPCC and the GCM modellers do not take away that artefact. If they did so their derived value of ECS would perforce fall by 40%.
If the IPCC was scientifically grounded they would instead use a model validation period of 120-130 years, encompassing 2 full cycles. But they don’t.
This alone is enough to show the mendacity of the climateers.
Using AD 1850 to 1970 or ’80 as the baseline would show very little warming across it (despite some warm cycles in between cool ones), but than a small, natural amount from the PDO flip of 1977.
Bruce,
couldn’t agree more.
Joel in So. Arizona.
The AMO clearly shows as it has increased Arctic ice has declined.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/from:1979/normalise/plot/esrl-amo/from:1979
Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago?
“Sea level rose by 6 cm during the 19th century and 19 cm in the 20th century. Superimposed on the long‐term acceleration are quasi‐periodic fluctuations with a period of about 60 years.”
https://https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008GL033611
Long-term climate change and main commercial fish production in the Atlantic and Pacific
“Approximately 50–70 year simultaneous cycles were observed in stock dynamics of the main commercial species, ACI and ERVI.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165783698001313
There is a oscillation that warms for a few decades, then cools or becomes stable for a few decades then warm or becomes stable, then cools for a few decades, then repeat it all again with a slight variation. This pattern is seen everywhere and it’s difficult to ignore it.
Well, yes of course. I made this graph some time ago.
It works better if you use the non-detrended AMO, as sea ice extent is not detrended. When sea ice extent goes below ~ 5 million km2 it is at the mercy of weather storms, and the correlation breaks down.
If I am correct, when SC25 sunspot counts start to go up, and the 9-year AMO cycle goes down, summer Arctic sea ice extent should increase, much to the surprise of those that believe the ice is melted by CO₂, like Tamino. That should be 2020-2025.
Javier,
Summer Arctic sea ice extent has already started up. It bottomed out in 2012, and hasn’t made a lower low since then. From 1979 to 2012, there was no five year interval without a new, lower low record.
Yes Chimp, but the increase since 2007 is not statistically significant, so I prefer to say that it is not melting. 2012 was a year with a couple of freak storms at a bad time, so I consider it to be a weather result. Everything points to the regime shift having taken place in 2006-7.
Javier,
All three of the low years, 2007, 2012 and 2016 had late summer cyclones, piling up or scattering the ice floes. IIRC, there were two in 2012.
While you’re right that the trend has been almost flat since the low of 2007, the five years 2007-11 averaged lower than 2013-17. ie the lustra before and after 2012. The comparison is even more pronounced for the lustrum 2008-12 v. 2013-17.
Summer lows, million sq km.:
2007: 4.155
2008: 4.586
2009: 5.119
2010: 4.615
2011: 4.344
2012: 3.387
2013: 5.054
2014: 5.036
2015: 4.433
2016: 4.137
2017: 4.636
Yes Chimp, If you look at the graph above, you will see that when the ice extent reaches 5 million km2 or less, it no longer responds to AMO but to weather. Therefore when dealing with those years their statistics have little connection with years >5 million km2. Therefore you cannot conclude much except that it is not melting further. When the summer ice extent remains consistently above the 5 million mark we will be able to say with confidence that it is increasing.
Chimp April 26, 2018 at 4:52 pm
“low years, 2007, 2012 and 2016 had late summer cyclones”
The storms broke the “ice arches”, especially on the Nares Strait in 2007, allowing ice to flow out of the Arctic, to lower Latitudes, and melt in warmer waters.
The 2007 event has been studied, and published.
Javier
always good to hear your ponderings, thanks
whilst I firmly hold on to my belief in the longer term solar weather cycles
namely Gleissberg, deVries , Eddy and Bray
whereby IMO the amount of UV that comes through the atmosphere varies [and the UV is what warms the oceans, mostly],
as widely proven before,
e.g.
tables 2 and 3
http://virtualacademia.com/pdf/cli267_293.pdf
and which variations in solar irradiance I have been able to correlate to variations in the balance of weight in our solar system, e.g. the position of the planets,
I find your proposition of a lunar influence that causes either more or less ‘mixing’ of the oceans’ water very plausible. The more mixing you get, from the cold bottom to top, the less steam you get, and I could imagine that this would affect the weather in a major way.
My thinking is that this lunar influence works like either a brake or accelerator, also perhaps preventing fast /vast changes in the climate as we know it.
Must also say to Marie that my data sets show no warming in the SH, over the past 40 years and if the CO2 does anything here where I live it would seem to be cooling rather warming the atmosphere…..
“On examination of figure 2 we observe two prominent peaks at 2016 and 1876, separated by 140 years and thus at a similar point in the AMO oscillation. Both also took place at the end of a solar cycle.”
El Nino conditions were building from late 1876, but the main peaks are 1877-78 and 2015-16, separated by 138 years. The 69 year component is a quadrature series of the inner three gas giants.
1878 was about a year before SC12 minimum, and 2016 was just under two years past SC24 maximum.
California had very similar weather patterns through those years. Drought in 1877 killing most of the sheep. Big floods in 1878 following the super El Nino, and huge wildfires in 1879 from all the regrowth.
“Looking at AMO data we can see that it has another interesting decadal periodicity. It is so clear that it is visible in unsmoothed monthly data, but it is better seen with a 4.5-year moving average (figure 6).”
?w=640&h=266&zoom=2
That’s a very elastic decadal periodicity, between 1918 and 1980 it shrinks down to about 7.75 years.
Or even a 7 year periodicity between 1918 and 1960.
If these many proposed overrinting internested ‘cycles’ were clear cut, no one would be reasonably disputing findings.
Many, if not most, can’t ‘see’ almost any such meta ‘cycles’ in the processing noise, in what is loosely still being termed ‘data”™, beyond those contrived from arcane questionable filtering methods and cummulative error dominated layering, then overlaying a curve the author imagines is a clear reprentation of sonething ‘obvious’, which others can’t see, or detect.
This weather cycle stuff is not climate, anyway, actual global climate variation is recorded in palaeodata, that requires a minimum of about 250 years to show an unambiguous cbange of global CLIMATE trend.
All the rest of it is noise.
The whole of climate scence (which is inately historical, not current or recent) has fallen for the silly alarmist’s nonsense, that genuine climate change can be plotted on shorter time scales than 250 years. Nay, 30 years!
No, you can’t, and don’t.
That capacity doesn’t exist. All we have done is plotted weather ‘cycle’ noise and argued that the imagined (possibly present) persistant cycles are climate TRENDS.
No, they are not. As even your cyclic-trends’ trend, is still just more weather noise, not climate change.
All you are doing is playing within the climate trend NOISE, from observations of rising out of the Little Ice Age, and then ‘predicting’ where the noise will go next, and naively and totally falsely calling that “climate science”.
It is NOT.
It is ambiguous, because it is the noise!
Wheather the noise consists of overlapping, overprinting, nested identifiable noise-makers, is irrelevant, as it’s still just netting-out to noise, not palaeodata time scale signal. Because climate change is a totally different beast, and it is NOT driven by the noise, in our weather record—current, nor recent.
There could be a solar driving mechanism, some are hopeful, and made their predictions. So let’s see if the predictions go as envisaged, from also predicted (via mostly overprinting noise-generating cycles) of a ‘quiet Sun’.
Hotter in 2025?
Same in 2025?
Cooler in 2025?
Sun playing along?
Maybe we find out something if a quiet sun coincides with a cooling phase, within the near-term net noise ‘trend’ (cycle if you prefer) … or maybe that was going to happen anyway, irrespective of the sun being on holidays at same time. Doh!
Yeah, we will have resolved nothing, I suspect, just more noise outcomes to bias arguments about the next tale about the noise moves … with DATA™.
I’m just happy to see if it cools next decade. It would be nice. But if your claim is that’s ‘global climate change’ signal—well it still isn’t, it’s still just noise, and I for one will make commical, riske mirthy remarks about your blithering silly assertions about climate change.
Global climate-change occurs on a different time scale to you.
I don’t care if you don’t like that, but geohistorical palaeodata is where global climate-change SIGNAL is actualy visible and found. The ONLY place you can detect it, or ever will, within your life time.
100% of the climate-change signal record, is PRE-INDUSTRIAL
No, the UN IPCC does not have ANY industrial age climate change signal—they are simply commited ignoramouses, or else playing out a concerted international fraud, else both.
All the kerfuffle about ‘records’ from analogue or digital sources, terrestrial of space based, is all ultimately irrelevant noise, also.
All we have done so far is to get really good forecasting the noise, in fine detail, on time scales relevant to the life CYCLE of an ant.
We are still centuries away from unambiguously detecting a modern-era climate change SIGNAL, let alone definitively concluding human modernity made a difference to that signal.
I agree that what we see on a sub-decadal scale is noise. There is no filtering out noise from signal at that scale.
The climateers (aka, govt climate scientists) on the other hand want us to believe inter-annual noise and < 20 year records are due exclusively to a trace gas increase. Absurd in the extreme.
And nobody disputes the existence of the ~ 60-year oscillation. That is why it is called the Atlantic Multidecal Oscillation (AMO). Well, nobody reasonable. Unreasonable people like Willis will dispute it because he doesn’t want to see it.
What scientists are researching and discussing is what causes it, not its existence, because scientists, unlike Willis, accept facts.
Javier April 28, 2018 at 4:31 am
I give you again Figure 5 from Chimp’s link, which I discussed above:
These are the various pseudocycles related to the AMO in the 50 to 100 year range. Yes, there is a 60-year oscillation somewhere in there … along with a 78 year, an 83 year, a 100 year, a 92 year, and about any length of oscillation you might choose. Or as Chimp’s link says:
So no, Javier, there is not A 60-year oscillation, that’s a foolish simplification of a complex system. Instead, there are a number of pseudocycles of various cycle lengths that appear and disappear at random … so freakin’ what?
w.
So you say, but I don’t believe you. Do you have any evidence that those proxies are well behaved proxies that represent the AMO?
I see how you reach your conclusions. But that has nothing to do with science.
Your arguments are too simple and science ignores them. The 11-year solar cycle and the glaciar cycle are also pseudo-cycles. They change both in period and amplitude. Imagine what it was trying to see sunspots in 1715 that have been described by previous researchers when there were none for years and years. And an interglacial can come 30 kyr or 100 kyr after the previous one, and they can be warmer than the Holocene or colder.
All climatic cycles are pseudocycles. Even the seasons are pseudocycles. They can come late or early and can be significantly warmer or colder. Do you remember hearing about the year without summer? Even when the forcing is regular and exact, the resulting periodicity is a pseudocycle due to the response of the chaotic climate system.
All you are accomplishing is demonstrating everybody that you don’t have a clue about climate.
A slight correction to an otherwise excellent article.
Javier,
La Ninas are associated with periods where the world’s mean temperature cools. You are correct in pointing out that La Ninas represent a period when thermal heat is being recharged in the climate system (via sunlight being absorbed in the top layers of the eastern equatorial Pacific ocean). However, this heat is stored in the ocean during these epochs and it does not prevent the actual global temperature from declining.
El Ninos are associated with periods where the world’s mean temperature warms. These are the periods where the thermal energy that has been stored by prior La Ninas is redistributed to the extra-tropical regions by El Nino events.
Ian, I take a more global view. The thermal energy from isolation accumulated at the tropical subsurface does come out eventually and affects very much the weather and climate of the planet. How the planet climate evolves is a balance of the energy that enters the planet from the Sun and the energy that leaves the climate system both to space and to the deep ocean. Many people have noticed jumps in average temperature taking place at certain times. They identify those jumps with strong El Niño events when in reality they come after strong La Niña events due to the distribution of the thermal energy acquired. That the big El Niño of 2016 was not followed by a strong La Niña is what gives me hopes that we won’t see a jump in temperatures this time, the same it wasn’t seen after the 1877 El Niño. If temperatures go down enough after El Niño and before the next strong La Niña the baseline actually decreases instead of going up.
As surface dwellers we have ENSO backwards. We see the energy coming in and temperatures going down during La Niña and the energy going out and temperatures increasing during El Niño. What happens next is determined by the energy exchange, not by the temperature.
Yup.
====
It is often seen as backwards because warming the atmosphere with El Nino is an energy loss from the oceans. The confusion has always been our general reference to the atmosphere and not energy content changes in the ocean. Ice ages have been found to have frequent strong El Nino’s in proxy records. In reality this makes sense because this energy transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere been an energy loss, is required to build up the glaciers for increased precipitation. (snow)
Exactly, Matt. And during the Holocene Climatic Optimum it was just the opposite and there were no El Niño events, despite (or because) the world was warmer than now.
WXcycles says
This weather cycle stuff is not climate, anyway, actual global climate variation is recorded in palaeodata, that requires a minimum of about 250 years to show an unambiguous cbange of global CLIMATE trend.
sic
Henry says
!That is a good observation. Nevertheless, the longer term studies clearly show the DeVries en Gleissberg cycles/ as indicated in my previous comment.
e.g.
https://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/17/585/2010/npg-17-585-2010.html
However, I suspect that [varying] vegetation is in reaction to 1) [varying] UV and 2) [varying] ambient T
Agreed?
now:
1) comes from the top (sun/atmosphere)
2) comes from the bottom [oceans, i.e. ‘weather’]
So, it is not strange for anyone to except both the solar- and the terrestrial oceanic cycles?
so, it is not strange for anyone to except both the solar- and the terrestrial oceanic cycles?
sorry
[English is not my home language and the speller check did not pick this up…]
\\
should be
so, it is not strange for anyone to accept both the solar- and the terrestrial oceanic cycles?
Javier April 27, 2018 at 2:48 am
Hey, YOU were the one who claimed it was there in the global surface air temperature. Then, when I showed that in fact it wasn’t there, suddenly it’s all about “recent noise” making it “unrecognizable” …
So you bust me for referring to a phenomenon that YOU brought up as an example?
Javier, you claim that the putative 60-year cycle “shows up in so many phenomena” … so once again, I’ll make the same offer that I’ve made to so many people. Give us two links, one to the best study that you think unequivocally establishes the 60-year cycle in some surface phenomenon, and the other link to the data that they used. Then we can actually have something to discuss.
I tried discussing the GSAT that you claimed above showed the 60-year cycle, and you showed up with handwaving to explain why I shouldn’t really examine that data … so I ask again, where is the best evidence, Javier?
However, like so many before you, I rather suspect that you’ll invent some bogus excuse to not give us the two links. I’ll be interested to see if you invent some new excuse, or whether it’s one of the same stale ones that others have used.
Your move …
Best to all,
w.
I already know your game. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
If you want to play, here is the AMO data, as if you didn’t know how to find it already.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/amon.us.long.data
Go ahead, show us your statistical magic. Let’s see what you come up to deny the undeniable that everybody recognizes, that it presents a 60-year periodicity.
Javier April 27, 2018 at 10:39 am Edit
Perhaps this is a “game” to you. Me, I’m just trying to understand the mysterious world we are privileged to live in. Nor do I try to “fool” anyone.
Thanks, Javier. Here is the long AMO data, with the peaks and the troughs identified.
Let me start by saying that identifying a putative 60-year cycle in 151 years of data is a fool’s errand. As you can see, at most we have the peaks and troughs of one and a half cycles …
I’m sure that with sufficient handwaving you can convert intervals of 43, 18, 34, and 44 years into a sixty-year cycle … however, I have great faith in the readers to see through that kind of nonsense.
w.
What? Not even a frequency analysis? Boo!
2017-1856 = 161
161/66 = 2.44
As I said, a joke. You are so biased that it is pathetic. Go play with your numbers now. Let people have their own opinion on the matter without insulting their intelligence.
Willis,
Please see my link below for the past 8000 years worth of AMO cycles. Here it is again:
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1186
You are playing into his hands, Chimp. You are acting in good faith and he is not. Many of us already know that. For all I care he can run his own searches and say what he wants.
Javier,
It appears that you’re right. No amount of actual data can change Willis’ wrongly made-up mind. It’s a religious belief with him, not science. His vehement ad hominem and dismissive attacks on those with whom he disagrees, insulting not only their intelligence but honesty, shows the power of his faith, not of his reason.
He even misses the simple point, because blind to it, that the ~60-year AMO cycle must be measured from trough to trough or peak to peak, not trough to peak, which is a half cycle. Had Willis grasped this simple fact, then his arithmetic would have produced:
1878 to 1939 = 61 years.
1939 to 1999 = 60 years (or 2007, but not 2018).
The link and graph I provided discovered an average period over many cycles of 62 years. But he’s ignoring me, because I’m not of his blind faith.
Willis is impervious to physical reality.
The nice thing is that we are all not going anywhere any time soon (we hope). And before too long the recent noise will be in the rear view mirror. Barring anything unusual, we should be able to see the pause, and thus the sixty year cycle, resume. (if we’d all be patient, then perhaps we’ll learn something new)…
Willis’s AMO ‘trough’ at 1921, that’s funny. If we look carefully there are three cold troughs in each of the last two cold AMO phases. 1904, 1914, 1924, and 1974, 1984, 1994, all close to sunspot cycle minimums. That indicates an AMO envelope of 70 years.
Calling that an AMO cold phase at 1861 is bogus, it’s just some seasonal cold anomalies between 1862 and 1864.
Yogi,
AMO cycle with a period of about 62 years:
Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1186
http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/SixtyYearCycle_files/image005.jpg
HadCRU’s GASTA reconstruction of the past is worse than worthless. But in any case, your cooked book graph is of alleged global surface T, not of the AMO.
That is not my “cooked book graph”, it’s what Willis posted earlier. The point is that the AMO was pretty warm 1856 to 1861 so it wasn’t a full cold phase in 1861.
Yogi,
Sorry for not saying your use of Willis’ cooked book graph.
Please see the graph I posted for how the mid-19th century cool phase was derived. There are always outlier years, with hot spikes during cool phases and cold spikes during warm phases.
Chimp April 27, 2018 at 5:37 pm
“Cooked”? DRAW IT YOURSELF AND YOU’LL FIND THE SAME THING! What on earth about that is “cooked”? I used the HadCrut4 data, applied a gaussian average to find the peaks and troughs, and identified them.
The fact that you don’t like the results doesn’t entitle you to lie about what I did, that’s just slimy. If you don’t like it, draw it yourself, but don’t whine and lie and try to bite my ankles. That just makes you look like a bad loser.
w.
PS:
Given Willis’ familiarity with the Climategate emails, I don’t know how he can rely upon any product of the HadCRU gnomes. Or imps.
Their “record” of recent GASTA is constrained by the satellites, but they’re free to force the past to bend to their ideological will.
Willis,
Surely you’re aware that Jones “lost” the “data” upon which his reconstruction of the past was based. How then can I possibly draw it myself.
HadCRU’s “data” are not science, since they can’t be checked for repeatability.
How anti-scientific and gullible can you get?
Here are ten climatic data sets showing ~60-year cycles:
http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/SixtyYearCycle.htm
Actually 11, but i’m counting only actual observations of nature, not models.
Javier on April 27, 2018 at 1:33 pm
“What? Not even a frequency analysis?”
—-
I was looking forward to an explanation for the lack of a 60 year cycle from you Javier, but you’ve squibbed it again and run away from it.
Why not just address what Willis’s graph shows? What are you scared of? Why not just face the death of the myth if it’s just not there in the data?
Apparently you didn’t read my article:
“To me this oscillation is not a cycle because prior to 1850 it had a more variable period and it is not well identified in LIA records.”
Willis graph doesn’t show anything. The oscillation is in the data that he has refused to analyze. Anybody can see it, and Charles May just plotted it.
And I am neither scared nor running away. You just beat Willis to the most misguided comment.
Are we curve-fitting ‘adjusted’ data™ again?
The plot of the actual data, you know, the one Willis posted, you have again avoided discussing it.
You seem to always prefer to adjust the observations to what you want, as though your preferred product™ trumps the actual data set, apparently reality didn’t know what it was doing and got it all wrong—anything but compelling.
“To me this oscillation is not a cycle because prior to 1850 it had a more variable period and it is not well identified in LIA records.”
There are two main reasons for the variability. The Jovian quadrature series behind the 69 year component, slips after four steps of 69.05 years, and then instead does a 41.5 year step, to complete the very stable grand synodic Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus cycle of 317.7 years. So the AMO warming from 1995 corresponds to an AMO warming from 1677.
Secondly, the weakest parts of solar minima drive AMO warming, and either cause additional warmer AMO periods, or reinforce the warm phases in the 69/318 year series. The latter holds true for the Gleissberg and current solar minima, they are almost in phase with the 69 year component.
You are again missing the mark. I have posted the actual data in the figure 6 of the article. Have you tried reading it before commenting?
The actual data shows the oscillation. That is why it is called the Atlantic Multidecadal OSCILLATION.
“The actual data shows the oscillation. That is why it is called the Atlantic Multidecadal OSCILLATION.”
—-
Yes, oscillation—not “CYCLE”.
Oscillations occur in noise, until they alter and dissipate.
Good article. I have found that NINO1+2 has a 9 year frequency which is driven by a combination of the 18.6 and 8.8 lunar cycles and if you take the 18.6 lunar cycle and divide it by 8 you get the QBO frequency. So lunar solar tidal cyclical influences can be seen all over.
To those willing to see with open eyes and mind.
Chimp
I took the challenge with the AMO (Kaplan) that either Javier or Willis brought up. I am analyzing it now. It is not finished but I am clearly identifying a 62 year cycle in the measured data.
In the interim I would ask those to look at my earlier post and the analysis of H4 and seal level data. A 67 year cycle is so prominent in the H4 data. Ray Charles could spot it.
I will furnish the results when done. Just keep in mind I have not figured out how to post pictures so all you get is a link to my one drive. I think because I am hampered this way no one bothers to look.
Go back and look at what I posted. It will be worth your time. It is controversial, no doubt, but if further explanation is needed I am prepared.
Thanks Charles. I will.
The link I posted with ten different ~60-year cycles includes sea level.
http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/SixtyYearCycle_files/image002.jpg
But always good to have more eyes and brains take a look at and analyze the data.
Chimp
It took a while to get a solution. The data are quite noisy which accounts for the lower correlation coefficient. This is lower than what I usually get. There are 90 sinusoids in the result. I highlighted the 62.75 year cycle that does trend with the data. There is a 60-year cycle,.
Again, I apologize for not being able to post pictures.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcOCv5oysTyNv1y0Q
Thanks for the link.
Looks beautiful. Well done.
Chimp April 27, 2018 at 2:43 pm Edit
This is hilarious. They’re diagnosing a 55-year cycle in a hundred years of climate data or less … no reputable statistician would advise such a foolish action. As your previous link demonstrated, these cycles come and go, appearing and disappearing without reason. Finding a cycle and a half means nothing.
w.
PS—No, they didn’t find a 60-year cycle, they merely measured the amplitude and phase of a best-fit 55-year cycle.
Willis.
Please read the whole paper rather than just looking at the graph. Thanks for the hilarity!
Willis,
Since, as usual, you’re ignoring my link to a summary of ten 60-year cycles, here is what the link says about the MSL paper:
A 2012 paper (Chambers et al, “Is there a 60-year oscillation in global mean sea level?”, Geophysical Research Letters Vol 39 [http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL052885.shtml] ) states: “We examine long tide gauge records in every ocean basin to examine whether a quasi 60-year oscillation observed in global mean sea level (GMSL) reconstructions reflects a true global oscillation, or an artifact associated with a small number of gauges. We find that there is a significant oscillation with a period around 60-years in the majority of the tide gauges examined during the 20th Century, and that it appears in every ocean basin. Averaging of tide gauges over regions shows that the phase and amplitude of the fluctuations are similar in the North Atlantic, western North Pacific, and Indian Oceans, while the signal is shifted by 10 years in the western South Pacific. The only sampled region with no apparent 60-year fluctuation is the Central/Eastern North Pacific. The phase of the 60-year oscillation found in the tide gauge records is such that sea level in the North Atlantic, western North Pacific, Indian Ocean, and western South Pacific has been increasing since 1985–1990. Although the tide gauge data are still too limited, both in time and space, to determine conclusively that there is a 60-year oscillation in GMSL, the possibility should be considered when attempting to interpret the acceleration in the rate of global and regional mean sea level rise.”
IOW, the signal is there. Instead of pooh-poohing out of hand their finding, why not do what a real scientist would and look at a longer series of sea level readings or proxies. They’ve made their statistical case for the period of observation. Were you a scientist instead of a true believer apostle, you’d find evidence confirming or not their conclusion.
Then you’d go on to the other nine phenomena in my link. But since you’ve already punted on looking at the 8000 year record of the AMO, I’m guessing that you’ll just stick to your old time religion and shine any actual science on.
Charles, you need to upload your figures to an internet service that allows linking. I suggest Imgur for example:
https://imgur.com/
Once uploaded they give you a link that you can post.
Javier
Thanks so much for publishing the figure. I remember you made the same suggestion on how to post figures but I was still not able to figure it out.
Lately there has been some ugliness on this website that is getting too personal. I wanted to weigh in on that and I don’t want to make it personal.
In a comment Willis used the term something like “mystical cycle”. I will choose to argue with that.
I have 35 years of experience in rotating equipment. When I first started we did not even have desktop FFT analyzers. We used sine wave filtering to get the measurements we needed. I can remember the first desktop FFT analyzer I ever saw, the Nicolet 444. It was like a gift from God.
In all those years when the FFT analyzer identified a discreet peak with a significant S/N ratio it was always real. In all those years I never found or dealt with a mystical cycle. It was up to me to come up with a physical explanation for it and mitigate it with design improvements. The FFT never lied to me once.
I have seen it on this website and others that the first thing you should do is come up with a physically based mathematical model of the system. I would argue against that. The first thing you should do is analyze the measured data so that it may benefit you in determining what needs to be in your physical model. That is the way it worked for us. Find out what is in there and then come up with the physical explanation.
Perhaps, I need to furnish this as a basis for why I have been so interested in signal analysis. I am reluctant but here it is. The rotating equipment I worked went into submarines. I am not giving anything away but in a documentary on one of the history channels they presented a show on submarines. In the show they gave a comparison of one of the older classes of submarines idling at the dock and one of the newer classes passing by at 20knots. The boat at the dock was more detectable.
As I said, in all those years I never had to deal with a mystical cycle. They were all real and I had to mitigate them.
Willis, I read and enjoy your articles too but could you at least leave a crack in the door to entertain cycles?
Charles May – we can see what look like cycles. How complicated are all the factors which result in the peaks and troughs? The factors within specific parts of their cycles – are also influenced by all the other cycles.
I am not exactly sure how to answer your question. In a comment I posted not too long ago I mentioned that in 35 years on rotating equipment I never had to deal with a mystical cycle. If the FFT identified it, it was real and for me to come up with an explanation as to where it came from and what to do about it.
What I am giving you here is the AMO with the use of only nine cycles. I used 90 in my previous graph. With as few as nine cycles I think I still captured the essence. I came up with those nine cycles by sorting the 90 cycles on the absolute magnitude of the amplitude. I am giving you the graph and the table of frequencies. I still have the problem with pictures. I apologize.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcP7gIivE97kDfxIQ
The red line is all nine cycles combined.
Here is the table.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcQVrQzrzuBFZxg7w
Maybe some of them will have meaning to you. Even with all this there can still be detective work to do. With the original 90 cycles we might have AM modulation going on. What is the carrier frequency and which cycles are the sidebands? Not easy.
Colored by my experience all frequencies identified by FFT should be treated as real unless you can show otherwise. I never got a false indication from an FFT.
Charles May April 28, 2018 at 8:26 am
Charles, see my discussion of pseudocycles <a href="https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/26/the-60-year-oscillation-revisited/comment-page-1/#comment-2802483"above … yes, they exist. Here’s a graph of the AMO related cycles for the last 8,000 years, Figure 5 from Chimp’s link:
I’m sure that you can see the problem. The AMO “cycles” appear and disappear without rhyme or reason, so they are useless for understanding, hindcasting, or forecasting the climate. Do they exist? Sure. Are they useful? No.
As a result, I find the chasing of such pseudocycles to be a joke. Yes, we have a cycle and a half of something near a 60-year period in the recent AMO … so freakin’ what? How does that advance our understanding of what’s going on? We can’t use it to hindcast the past or forecast the future, so what good is it?
Best regards,
w.
Willis
I am going to acknowledge what you presented with a slightly different take. Let’s say those frequencies do change over time but even by your own graphs some of them existed for thousands of years. Gee, I would be delighted if we could get an accurate prediction of climate temperature by the year 2100. We can’t.
I worked in the nuclear navy and started when Rickover was alive. I don’t think anyone would be willing to say to him that the way the GCMs perform that he can base his reactor designs on their output. Can they even show us when the next El Nino will occur? What purpose do they serve if natural variability is not properly modeled.. They are unsuitable for predictions.
In a way I am showing the way things are now. They exist. Somehow or someway an existing model should be able to identify them or account for them.. Maybe they won’t exist 1000 years from now as you have shown. You are pushing the ideal and maybe we can’t have that now. Perhaps if a physical model would reveal their presence now it might also predict changes in them later.
I am aware of the recent changes in ECS proposed by Lewis and Curry. 1.66 is an improvement. However, I read Dr. spencer’s review and to me he furnished a telling statement.
“If indeed some of the warming since the late 1800s was natural, the ECS would be even lower.”
Bingo..
Dr. Spencer included this graph in one of his earlier posts.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcR6dJptD12M3V5FQ
Willis, go look at my earlier post in my analysis of the H4 data. I came up with a low value of ECS because I included natural variability and the answer comes close to the Spencer graph.
Willis, you are a hard ass but maybe it is time to accommodate incremental improvement. It would be great if any model could exhibit the behavior you documented. Maybe just some incremental improvement that approximates natural variability might be the way to go for now.
Presently, we seem to be looking for a model to reliably predict temperature 100 years from now. We simply don’t have that. Let’s cooperate and get there together.
Willis,
You appear to have a problem with simple maths. 2017-1856 = 161 years. We have 2.5 periods of the oscillation, not one and a half as you keep saying.
Willis Eschenbach April 28, 2018 at 10:40 am
As I keep trying to help you grasp, knowledge of oceanic oscillations is invaluable in oceanography, climatology, fisheries biology and many other disciplines. That will be true even if in future the oscillations change frequency from about 60 years to 50 or 70 for a complete cycle.
Perhaps the most important oceanographic and climatological discovery of the 1990s, if not a longer interval, was the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, found by a PNW fisheries biologist. It allowed us to understand that the slight, late 20th century warming occurred primarily because of the PDO flip of 1977, not because of CO2, which had been rising since the 1940s, while the world cooled profoundly.
It’s beyond me how you can keep d@nying that climatic cycles are of no use in studying climate, just because your faith says that they don’t exist, but if they do, they’re irrelevant because their periods might change. But of course the hours in a day change, too. And the height of tides. And earth’s orbit. Yet those are valid and important cycles, which also underlie climatic cycles of various periods, such as glaciations and oceanic oscillations.
Chimp: “But of course the hours in a day change, too.”
..
No they do not.
There are 24 hours in a solar day, and there are 23 hours 56 minutes and 3.45 seconds in a sidereal day. These values do not change unless a “leap second” is added to the year for the angular momentum transferred to the moon.
Paul,
Days have been getting longer ever since the formation of the moon, which is receding from earth.
Tides Recorded The Moon’s Retreat From Earth, Shorter Earth Days
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1996-07/UoA-TRTM-050796.php
Nine hundred million years ago, the day was only about 18 hours long.
I’m surprised you’re unaware of this fact.
PS:
As I noted, the length of the year also changes. In the Proterozoic Eon, years were 481 days long, largely as a result of shorter days.
Chimp: “I’m surprised you’re unaware of this fact.”
..
I’m surprised you’re unable to read English. Try doing so where I posted: “unless a “leap second” is added to the year for the angular momentum transferred to the moon.”
….
PS Technically, nine hundred million years ago there was 24 hours in a day, because a “day” is defined as the time interval between successive solar noon’s. It may have been 18 “hours” relative to today’s LOD, but I suggest you look up how a “day” is defined.
..
In other words, nine hundred million years ago, the length of the day was 24 hours, with each hour having 45 of today’s minutes.
Paul,
You mentioned angular momentum from the moon, but didn’t follow through to conclude that that effect means that Earth’s rotation has changed over time.
IMO it’s better to say that a day used to last 18 of our current hours. Granted, an hour is now defined as 1/24 of a day, but minutes are also defined as 1/60 of an hour, so you gain nothing by counting in modern minutes over modern hours. But your approach works too.
PS: In using modern hours as the referent, I was following the conventional practice of scientists who study Earth’s orbital history:
Late Proterozoic and Paleozoic Tides, Retreat of the Moon, and Rotation of the Earth
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/273/5271/100
The tidal rhythmites in the Proterozoic Big Cottonwood Formation (Utah, United States), the Neoproterozoic Elatina Formation of the Flinders Range (southern Australia), and the Lower Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation (Alabama, United States) and Mansfield Formation (Indiana, United States) indicate that the rate of retreat of the lunar orbit is dξ/dt ∼ k2 sin(2δ) (where ξ is the Earth-moon radius vector, k2 is the tidal Love number, and δ is the tidal lag angle) and that this rate has been approximately constant since the late Precambrian. When the contribution to tidal friction from the sun is taken into account, these data imply that the length of the terrestrial day 900 million years ago was ∼18 hours.
1) AGAIN, I’m surprised you cannot read English.
..
Chimp posted: “You mentioned angular momentum from the moon”
..
I did not. I posted: ” the angular momentum transferred TO the moon”
…
Big difference between “to’ and “from”
..
2) You post: “to conclude that that effect means that Earth’s rotation has changed ”
…
I apologize for the fact that you didn’t understand what adding a “leap second” meant. What adding it means is that the rotation has slowed enough for the precise atomic clocks to get out of sync with the delta between solar and sidereal time.
C. Paul Pierett April 28, 2018 at 4:37 pm
It is obvious that you didn’t draw the proper conclusion that the day has changed over time. Otherwise you wouldn’t have made the pointless comment that you did.
After the formation of the moon, earth’s day was six modern hours. You totally missed this salient fact. Your subsequent comments trying to suggest that you were aware of this fact are pathetic, lame attempts to cover your tracks.
Sad.
Willis did an interesting analysis of Ireland rainfall and I had a look at that data as well.
?w=599&h=578
For me, it works like the pendulum of a clock, beating again on the Hale-Nicholson cycle.
Putting that aside,
it seems to me that there is a periodicity of 55 years?
I am not why the picture does not show?
I don’t know why the picture does not show.
The figure must end in .png .jpg or .gif so WordPress knows it is a figure
Thx.
“So, I decided to revisit the 60-year oscillation to see if it is possible that the modulation between the 9-year frequency in AMO and the 11-year solar cycle could be responsible for the emergence of the 60-year oscillation through constructive and destructive interference….
The non-stationary correlation between the two cycles produces a periodicity that is compatible with the ~ 60-year periodicity in AMO.”
Sounds just like a Piers Corbyn job, only much worse as there is no regular 9-year frequency in the AMO, so you can discard the lunar tidal ideas. What your chart band-pass signal shows is roughly 10-year AMO peaks between 1868 and 1918 and 10-year peaks between 1960 and 2010, but only 7-year frequency peaks between 1918 and 1960.
“Mechanistically, times of high correlation between the 9-year AMO and 11-year solar periodicities correspond to times when the highest tidal forcing (AMO cooling) coincide with the times of lowest solar activity (solar minima), which could explain why the AMO displays cooling. Times of high anti-correlation between the 9-year AMO and 11-year solar periodicities correspond to times when the highest tidal forcing (AMO cooling) coincide with the times of highest solar activity (solar maxima), which could explain why the AMO does not display cooling.”
It’s simply because the solar wind strength runs anti-phase to the sunspot cycles during the cold AMO phase, where it is the weakest by sunspot cycle maximum and stronger by each minimum. During the warm AMO phase the solar wind has been strongest just after each sunspot maximum, and the weakest around a year after each cycle minimum. No need for any other cycles.
OK. We discard the lunar hypothesis that we know is based on real cycles and has sufficient energy to produce the effect, and instead we accept your Jovian circle quadrature for which there is nil evidence and no idea how it could exert an appreciable effect. Or the solar wind hypothesis, that is tied to the solar periodicity that doesn’t match the AMO periodicity.
A clear step ahead.
“OK. We discard the lunar hypothesis that we know is based on real cycles and has sufficient energy to produce the effect”
As I pointed out, there is no regular 9-year signal in the AMO anomalies.
“Or the solar wind hypothesis, that is tied to the solar periodicity that doesn’t match the AMO periodicity.”
Yes it does, and it’s what produces the phase reversals. And it shows that the AMO functions as negative feedback to solar variability.
No it doesn’t. The correlation between those two series is appallingly low. Prove me wrong.
The real appalling thing here is your claim that your figure 6 shows a 9-year AMO periodicity.
If you had understood that the solar wind switches from in phase to anti-phase with respect to sunspot cycles with the shift from warm to cold AMO phase, then you would have understood that the AMO-SSN correlation should also reverse phase at the same time.
The warmer AMO peaks during a cold AMO phase are at sunspot cycle maxima, while during a warm AMO phase, the warmer peaks are around sunspot cycle minima. Which is the most simple proof of there not being any regular decadal or 9.0-9.1 year AMO periodicity, because the phase changes interrupt the regularity of the warm peaks.
The decadal periodicity of AMO has been published as 9-year multiple times, so I am not claiming anything. Just reporting it. You are the one making claims about Jupiter with zero evidence.
You claimed your fig 6 shows an “interesting decadal periodicity”, it doesn’t. Again:
What your chart band-pass signal shows is roughly 10-year AMO peaks between 1868 and 1918 and 10-year peaks between 1960 and 2010, but only 7-year frequency peaks between 1918 and 1960.
So you are perverting the evidence to suit your 9-year narrative.
I am not perverting anything. This has been published multiple times by different authors. For example:
“A strong peak is observed in the AMO at 0.110 ± 0.005 cycles/year, corresponding to a period of 9.1 ± 0.4 years, at the 98.3% confidence level.”
Muller, R. A., Curry, J., Groom, D., Jacobsen, R., Perlmutter, S., Rohde, R., … & Wurtele, J. (2013). Decadal variations in the global atmospheric land temperatures. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 118(11), 5280-5286.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jgrd.50458
You are the one making unpublished claims and baseless accusations. Just noise as usual.
“and instead we accept your Jovian circle quadrature for which there is nil evidence”
You’re on the wrong comment thread, I was discussing the planetary series (not circle) elsewhere, which I do have evidence for. The done thing is to ask for what evidence I may have, rather than to declare that there is none before you could possibly know that there is none.
Well, there is absolutely no evidence in the planetary articles published so far, and I really doubt you are the only person in the planet to have evidence and not publish it.
Confirmation bias then. Your fig 6 does not show what you claim it does. And your interpretation of the periodiogram analysis (fig 7) is also biased, the 10.1 band is almost as strong as 9.1, and the shorter periods in the AMO signal between 1918 and 1960 are showing in the labeled 5-8 year range.
Your link:
“Although the 9.1 year peak in the AMO has high statistical significance, it contains only 30% of the spectral power; for this reason, its presence is not evident to the eye in Figure 3 or 4.”
So you imagine it in your graph.
And fig 3 does not include the period 1918-1960 where the frequency alters.
Not evident to the eye in unsmoothed data, quiet evident in 4.5-year averaged, as I have showed.
In fact I have shown that your 4.5 average has roughly 10-year AMO peaks between 1868 and 1918 and 10-year peaks between 1960 and 2010, but only 7-year frequency peaks between 1918 and 1960.
Shown? Roughly? Just by saying it? I have pointed to two published frequency analysis that say AMO has a 9.0-9.1 frequency. Where is your frequency analysis that says otherwise?
Javier
Perhaps, this will help. In my earlier plot I used 90 cycles with this I only used the nine most prominent cycles.
A 9.1- year cycle is among them.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcVytlVnD1RtyMBQw
Here is a table of the nine cycles I used.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcQVrQzrzuBFZxg7w
I hope this helps.
Thank you Charles. The periodicity is in the data. As every climatic cycle it does present some variability in period and amplitude, but it is quite clear.
“Where is your frequency analysis that says otherwise?”
Right there in your graph that you are willfully blind to. No not roughly in fact, but very close to a 10 year periodicity between 1858 and 1918, that’s definitely not 9.1. Then your red trace shrinks down to a mean 7 year periodicity between 1918 and 1960, and then returns to a 10 year periodicity from 1960 onward.
You can’t perform a frequency analysis on band pass-filtered smoothed data. The result is full of artifacts. If you choose a slightly different filter you get a different result. I see you have no idea on these things.
The AMO is most definitely tied to sunspot cycles and not a 9-year cycle. During the cold AMO phase, the AMO peaks are at sunspot maximum, and the troughs at sunspot minimum. During the warm phase, the larger peaks apart from 1948 are close to sunspot minimum, there are NO cold troughs around sunspot minimum during a warm AMO phase. Which is the obvious evidence for the phase reversal between the AMO and sunspot cycles between warm and cold AMO phases. Around sunspot maximum during a warm AMO the response is somewhat messy, hence the extra peaks between 1918 and 1960.
Another graph without frequency analysis or correlation. Your fantasies wouldn’t get published anywhere.
That’s rather bitter, you are just being insulting because you have no argument. The fact that the AMO is never cold at sunspot minimum during its warm phase proves my points whether you like it or not thanks.
The only one that has gotten personal here has been you, comparing me to Piers Corbyn.
If you have read the article you would see that the existence of alternative explanations to the solar-AMO relationship means you haven’t proven anything. That’s probably why you are attacking it. It shows your emperor has no clothes.
No that’s not getting personal, his is remarkably similar to what you propose, modulation of lunar and solar cycles producing a ~60 year signal. Yours being much worse as there is no regular 9.1 year signal in the AMO. While you saying ‘Your fantasies wouldn’t get published anywhere’ is definitely getting personal, it’s hearsay, which is typically a projection.
Because the AMO always peaks warm at sunspot minimum during its warm phase, and always cold at sunspot minimum in it’s cold phase, it must be tied to the solar cycle, so a regular 9 year AMO signal is not physically possible. Get over it.
No, yours is much worse because you are inventing straw man and the attacking me with them, because I do not say anywhere that the signal is regular. What I say is exactly the same that at least two articles say, that the frequency of the signal is 9.0-9.1 years. You invent that I say it is regular and then attack me for not being so.
Unlike me, you have not demonstrated anything you have said and you have not showed any bibliographic support for what you say. You are comparing me to other people and inventing what I say and then you complain that I say that your stuff is not publishing quality. Well, tough luck. Don’t come criticizing if you don’t like being criticized. Write your own posts with your own Jovian theories instead of using other people posts to promote them.
“Looking at AMO data we can see that it has another interesting decadal periodicity. It is so clear that it is visible in unsmoothed monthly data, but it is better seen with a 4.5-year moving average (figure 6).”
Drivel, your 4.5yr ave changes frequency between 1918 and 1960 and you won’t admit it.
“Unlike me, you have not demonstrated anything you have said”
More drivel, you cannot argue against what I have demonstrated as it’s true.
You keep insisting. The periodicity has been calculated by others in several publications with the main peak at 9.0-9.1 years. Nobody but you have said that the periodicity should be regular like a clock.
You haven’t demonstrated anything. All you have said is unsupported. Like saying that the AMO depends on Jupiter. Repeating it many times won’t change that.
“The periodicity has been calculated by others in several publications with the main peak at 9.0-9.1 years.”
They state that it is not visible to the eye, but you claim “It is so clear that it is visible in unsmoothed monthly data”. You are deceiving yourself.
“Nobody but you have said that the periodicity should be regular like a clock.”
Tides are.
“You haven’t demonstrated anything. All you have said is unsupported.”
I have demonstrated that the AMO must be tied to sunspot cycles, the evidence supports my claim. You can’t argue against it so you called in a fantasy out of spite. And what have you demonstrated? that you can’t even read your own graphs, and nothing else.
So what. There is no 9-year tidal cycle. The tidal connection is a proposed hypothesis that does not rest on a tidal cycle but two, and therefore it does not require the same degree of precision. As usual you are raising straw men.
You have not done such thing except in your mind. All you have done is to show a graph where it can be seen very clearly that there is no correlation between the Sun and AMO. Your explanation for that lack of correlation apparently resides in Jupiter.
“The tidal connection is a proposed hypothesis that does not rest on a tidal cycle but two, and therefore it does not require the same degree of precision.”
That still won’t account for your AMO signal shrinking down to a mean 7 year periodicity between 1918 and 1960.
“You have not done such thing except in your mind. All you have done is to show a graph where it can be seen very clearly that there is no correlation between the Sun and AMO.”
It’s not in my mind that the AMO is always warm at sunspot minimum in its warm phase. and cold at sunspot minimum in its cold phase. The explanation for the phase reversal is in my first comment.
“Your explanation for that lack of correlation apparently resides in Jupiter.”
Grow up.
Must say
our family is having such a lovely barbecue here
burning wood from an old tree that gave me a lot of hassles,
adding our bit to try and prevent the next ice age….
and we laughed at anyone not believing in ‘cycles’
;;;
day/solar
month\ lunar
year/ solar
SC’s: 11, 21, 87, 210, ca1000, ca1500 [cycle years, that we know of]/ solar
and then we still have the elephant in the room,
[come down 1 or 2 km into a gold mine here and meet him]
which has been moving north east lately, much faster than what it moved in the century before,
no wonder the ice is melting in the arctic….
anyone, please challenge me ?
Chimp April 28, 2018 at 11:12 am Edit
Of course there are cycles, Chimp. Day/night cycles, annual cycles, sunspot cycles, Milankovich cycles, lunar cycles, there are a lot of them. And because they are real cycles which are regular and predictable, they are useful in understanding the past, the present, and the future.
But LOOK AT FIGURE 5 ABOVE. It’s from your very own link. I call those “pseudocycles” because unlike the day/night, annual, sunspot, Milankovich, or lunar cycles, they appear, disappear, and change frequencies unpredictably and without rhyme or reason.
As a result, they do not help us either hindcast, forecast, or understand climate. Yes, they are real … but so what? What use are they?
w.
Of what use is it to know the varying cycles of tides? As a mariner, you could probably come up with some uses.
Knowing that the AMO has for a very long time now had a 62-year cycle is similarly useful in predicting future climate, and in trying to sort out the natural signal in the warming and cooling cycles of the Modern Warm Period. It and other oceanic oscillations, such as the PDO and ENSO, clearly affect climate, and did so during the LIA, Medieval WP and earlier in the Holocene.
The signal of the AMO is also present in glacial as well as interglacial epochs. That over long intervals the AMO might change its period doesn’t mean that knowledge of its fluctuations isn’t valuable.
The D/O cycles in glacial intervals and Bond cycles in interglacials are similarly useful in trying to work out natural variation. That their causes might be complex, hence difficult to predict with precision, doesn’t make them worthless. As with the glacial cycle, celestial mechanics are a big part of these climatic cycles and quasi-cycles, but also variation in solar activity, which is to some extent predictable.
Teasing out natural variation and its causes is essential to furthering real climatology and liberating it from CACA.
Chimp April 28, 2018 at 11:29 am
Oh, please. We can predict the tides for fifty years from now. If you think you can predict the AMO fifty years from now, you’re fooling yourself. There is a difference between real cycles and pseudocycles, and the AMO (which as your link says has varied unpredictably between 50 and 100 years) is a pseudocycle.
w.
Charles May April 28, 2018 at 11:23 am
Yes, and some of them only last for fifty years, some last 150 … and even if a cycle lasts 2000 years, we might be at year 1995 of the 2000 years, and it might just have shifted from a 55 to a 65-year cycle … I’m sure you can see the problem.
w.
Willis
I understand where you come from and it just looks to me like a judgment call. I now something is there now and if I exclude its influence that is an error of omission. On the other had if it dies in a few decades I will have to address it then.
From your charts I have my doubts that this will be understood anytime soon. I think you can grasp the reason for my judgment to include it. Do I knowingly want to exclude something that I know is present now. Tough, tough, tough.
Charles May April 28, 2018 at 1:40 pm
Thanks, Charles, but I have no clue what you mean by include or exclude “its influence”. Give me an example of a practical analysis where you might either include or exclude the “influence”, and explain what the consequences might be in either case. Bear in mind that people in this very thread have claimed that the cycle length is anywhere from 55 to 70 years, so in your example please include both the 55 and the 70 year cycles separately so we can judge the “influence” of each of those …
Regards,
w.
Willis
In a way maybe I changed the subject and it may be something you are more familiar. However, when I see outputs of the computer models the seem to run through stop signs. Maybe, I am looking at the wrong graphical output. How come they seem incapable of even identifying an unmistakable physical phenomenon like an El Nino either hind casting or looking forward do they serve any utility whatsoever.
I guess what I was trying to say if I wanted to physically model the AMO and it failed to reveal a cycle that is known to exist in the present then its results are invalid. I would not choose to bypass the prediction of that cycle.
I guess the best illustration of this I got into a comment fight on Clive Best’s website with my cyclical analysis on one of the Nino regions. They told me I had not physical basis for the cycle. That is correct, but what I was try to tell them is that the cycle is real and they are the ones responsible for uncovering the physical basis and include it in their model.
Recall the way I worked. The FFT would identify the peak and its frequency. It was then incumbent upon me to research and find the physical basis for it. I did in every case.
Before attempting to construct a physical climate model were there any efforts to interrogate the measurements to sense what needs to be modeled and included?
I used to work in Aerospace too. Every once in a while I would go the library and read Aviation Week and Space Technology. Sometimes I read the reports on aviation disasters. In many cases it was pilot error and the pilot not believing his instruments.
Treat your measurements like gold. Learn everything you can from them. The cyclical analysis work I do is my attempt at that.
Charles, I asked for “an example of a practical analysis where you might either include or exclude the “influence”, and explain what the consequences might be in either case. It seems I wasn’t clear. I meant an EXAMPLE, not a description.
By that, I mean an actual analysis of something where you’ve included the influence and what happens when you don’t include it.
Me, I’ve that that game a lot without success. Yes, as long as you are in-sample you can fit a cycle of some sort to the data. But when you start extending that into the future … well, you can guess what happened.
The only way to test such a theory, of course, is to divide your data in two, determine the cycles in the first half, and then extend them to forecast the second half and see what happens.
That’s the kind of example I’m looking for.
Thanks in advance,
w.
Javier, when I plot the HadCrut annual global data I also see a ~67 oscillation on the 15 to 20 year centered average of the data. I also see a 10-11 year cycle if you detrend this data with the 15 year centered average. I’d be interested in your thoughts. Sorry this is 2 days late, I can’t keep up with all the WUWT posts and comments.
Renee, I confirm the 67-year cycle. See below:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcNaJZfn3OY-bPOuw
Thanks Charles for the confirmation. I’ve also run a Fourier-analyses on the AMO record and it appears to be controlled by an approximately 67-year long oscillation with major AMO peaks about 1875, 1942, and maybe around 2010.
Hi Renée,
The 11-year signal that you are picking there is likely not to be significant. It cannot be the solar cycle because the temperature variation associated to the solar cycle is too small to be detected that way. It is probably a mixture of signals and noise. The two main signals in that range are the ~ 9-year AMO periodicity, and the ENSO signal, that averages around half of it (2-7 year periodicity). If you use NH temperatures instead of global, the ENSO signal decreases and the AMO signal increases.
The ~ 60-year oscillation is real and significant. As it moves from one part of the climate system to another it does not keep a constant period and it presents different lags. It appears to originate in the North Atlantic region, so AMO is an earlier and purer manifestation. Its origin is unknown, and I just presented a hypothesis in the article, but there are others. It is generally considered internal variability of oceanic origin.
You might want to take a look at this article:
Muller, R. A., Curry, J., Groom, D., Jacobsen, R., Perlmutter, S., Rohde, R., … & Wurtele, J. (2013). Decadal variations in the global atmospheric land temperatures. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 118(11), 5280-5286.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jgrd.50458
Javier April 28, 2018 at 12:11 pm Edit
Here’s Yogi’s graph of the AMO:
You’ll have to point out the two and a half cycles in that … since it is still increasing at the right end, that cycle is obviously not finished … which leaves us with a cycle and a half, perhaps two if you stand across the room and squint.
My point remains. Anyone attempting to diagnose a putative 60-year cycle in 161 years of climate data is a statistical newbie … my rule of thumb is that you need at least four cycles, and I’ve seen oscillations that lasted for five cycles and then changed entirely. See here for an example.
w.
Yet the oscillation was identified in the 90’s and continues 20 years later.
Once more your postulates are falsified by the evidence.
Javier commented on The 60-year oscillation revisited.
Oh, wake up and learn to read. That’s not what I say. That’s what Chimp’s link entitled “Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years” says. Go argue with them.
w.
Willis,
As has been pointed out above, the fact that the periods of some cycles change over time doesn’t mean that the cycles aren’t real phenomena or that they’re useless in studying climate change. In fact, without studying them, climate cannot be understood. The cyclic oceanic oscillations such as the ENSO, PDO and AMO are real, d@ny them as you might.
Most cycles in nature change their periods. The time period of Earth’s day and year change, as do the Milankovitch cycles. In the universe, change is the norm. But that doesn’t mean that days and years, eccentricity and precession, aren’t real cycles. Same goes for such climatic phenomena, arising in part from such underlying cycles, as oceanic oscillations, monsoons, warmer and cooler intervals, aren’t cycles.
The PDO flip of 1977 is what started the late 20th century warming cycle, not CO2, which had been rising since the 1940s, as the world cooled dramatically. Natural variation can’t be understood without knowledge of cyclic climatic phenomena, in their present periodicities.
Chimp
What you said here meant a lot to me.
“As has been pointed out above, the fact that the periods of some cycles change over time doesn’t mean that the cycles aren’t real phenomena or that they’re useless in studying climate change. In fact, without studying them, climate cannot be understood. The cyclic oceanic oscillations such as the ENSO, PDO and AMO are real, d@ny them as you might.”
I am retired. I am spending too much time on this. However, all the Nino regions show clearly cyclical behavior. I analyze all four Nino regions and MEI. Here is what I show for MEI when fitted with cycles.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZYSPT-Fe6GA7TIq5w
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZYTL6xrLTpRr1ie7A
Charles,
I’m glad that you have found my comments helpful in your quest for understanding.
You have done more and better work on this topic than I, however.
Thanks for your good work, so well executed in the best spirit of true science.
I was somewhat reluctant to send this. Here goes.
We certainly have gone through plenty of discussion of cycles and pseudo-cycles. In leaving this aspect I would like to support Chimp in a way. If we can’t talk about cycles we really don’t have much to talk about.
What I want to get to is the interrogation of the data we have and what we have learned or not learned from that. Recall that in what I did through the years I had no computer models. Everything resulted from interrogation of the measured data and gaining a physical understanding from that. It was all cut and try based on experimentation.
I will give you an example of interrogation and we won’t have to talk about cycles.
I do have cyclical models for all four Nino regions. Let’s look at a portion of the record.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcSI4TDn4sqfUuHXw
The El Nino in 1982 is just as strong as the one that occurred in the late 90s or the one we recently went through. Now let’s look at the UAH data that covers this period. It has been my impression that UAH gave more prominence to El Nino events than the H4 data. I think you will see that.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcT9tG7sQhoo9RpfA
So where is the 82 El Nino in the UAH data? Because you know an El Nino happened in 1982 you might be able to fool yourself that in 1982 there is an incipient condition. This illustrates the point I am making. Learn everything you can from your measured data.
So here is the question that Lt. Columbo might ask of you. We had two strong El Nino events that showed up in the UAH measurements but an equally strong El Nino in 1982 did not. Is there a physical reason for that? If that can be explained, then you have gained knowledge of the climate.
I am at the point that the output of the climate modes should be rejected due to their insufficiencies. Many have brought up the fact that they fail to include natural variability. Maybe the models meet the standards in academia but if we had flown to moon based on the performance of the climate models we would have a lot more dead astronauts. What they yield should be deemed unacceptable. They must do better.
Charles
I also find your comments intriguing and absorbing
Here I plotted the Hadcrut4 versus UAH and RSS
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/to:2019/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/to:2019/trend/plot/rss/from:1975/to:2019/plot/rss/from:1975/to:2019/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1975/to:2019/plot/uah6/from:1975/to:2019/plot/uah6/from:1975/to:2019/trend/plot/none
and I find the correlation unbelievable…..
Remember that in 1982 the sats were still in its infancy and they had to be frequently ‘adjusted’ . In fact, it was recently reported here on WUWT that UAH was not even in the orbit that they thought it was….never mind the [partial] destruction of whatever it is that they use to measure [by the sun’s harmful rays]. Hence so many new versions. We are now on version 6….So what did they use to ‘re-calibrate’ ? Well, if I look at the above graph it seems obvious: they used HadCrut4////???
The problem that I have with Hadcrut 4 is that this is a set of hundreds’ of stations, not balanced to zero latitude. So, it is terribly biased towards the NH.
If they properly balanced that set they would find that there has been zero warming here in the SH and 0.024K/annum warming in the NH [my findings]
giving me overall warming of 0.012K/annum since 1975
Somehow, everyone got that right – more or less – which is also truly amazing-
except for the fact that my findings of course prove there is no AGW…….
Never mind that, my data set also shows that cooling has started, on average, since about the beginning of the new Millennium, as expected, taking into account the relevant cycles.
I did not think of looking at RSS. I gave up on them when they manipulated the data to make the pause go away. I lost interest in them. I don’t like cheaters. I did consider them a month or two ago. I will go back and check if the 1982 El Nino did reveal itself in the RSS data. Why was the lower troposphere decoupled from the El Nino at that time?
Maybe you did not notice but I did put the pause line back in the UAH data in anticipation of dropping temperatures. BTW, the start point is not cherry picked I actually did calculate the slope for each point to the end. Presently the start point resides where the slope is minimum. I demand that the pause line be at least 10 years long.
I am getting to the busy time of the month. I anticipate new UAH, H4 and Nino region data any time now. I analyze them each month. I do not make projections from the satellite record. It is too short. I do show the H4 global temperature declining until close to the end of 2018. We shall see.
HenryP
I went back and checked RSS. In this time frame I was analyzing RSS data and then stopped. The reason is clear. It is sort of covered up but the green line is the earlier data.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkPliAI0REKhgZcUNWtRwUs-5XCs_A
There is at list a hint of an El Nino in 1982.
Al though not applicable to this particular instance. I like what James Delinpole said about climate cheaters:
“And the fourth problem is that the alterations are largely due to modeled data, generated in lieu of missing thermometer data – which they are losing at an alarming rate. Almost half of NOAA’s monthly US temperature data is now fake. Their handling of data would make even Enron accountants blush.”
I get a chuckle.
PS: As a part time resident of South America, your mention of anchovies reminded me of this:
https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2018/03/29/perus-anchovy-fishing-about-to-start-positive-cycle-says-exalmar-ceo/
Had you bothered actually to study the PDO, which you claim to know so well because of a brief career as a “commercial fisherman”, you’d have learned that science can indeed predict fisheries based upon the PDO, about which you are obviously totally ignorant, contrary to your baseless assertion of expertise,
Chimp, once the PDO has shifted we can tell what fish are going to come in to an area or leave an area.
My point was simple—we cannot predict when the PDO is going to shift.
And yes, Chimp, despite your puerile sneering, I’ve studied the PDO extensively. Heck, read what I wrote above—I said that the PDO controls where the anchovies school up. It’s no surprise to me, I ALREADY SAID THAT and now you bring out a link that says just what I said … pathetic. Your desire to make me wrong has overthrown your reading ability.
Here’s an entire post I wrote about the PDO … have you ever written one about the PDO? If so, now would be the time to break it out …
w.
PS—I note that your link didn’t mention the PDO even once …
Willis,
It doesn’t matte that we can’t predict in which month or year the PDO will shift. What matters is that we know that it will and can watch for it.
How strange that you claim to have written about the PDO, yet steadfastly d@ny that there are climatic cycles.
What do you suppose causes the PDO and the other oceanic oscillations which you claim don’t exist?
Please try to preserve a shred of credibility and stop digging your hole ever deeper.
Yes, that is exactly what you are doing. You have used that figure 5 as an argument against the AMO oscillation, without ever showing that it has any relationship with the AMO oscillation.
Such a lack of rigor. As it has been shown here, when you go into anti-cycle/anti-solar mode you switch to tunnel view and all objectivity be damned.
@ur momisugly Willis, Minister of Statistical Reality- First, i want you to know i do appreciate your pointing out my limited data isnt quite up to orthodox research standards. As an undergraduate i worked in the Geomagnetics and Electrical Geophysics Lab at UT austin, so i have an understanding of a research environment. While today the recent data only support AMO oscillations, we should still publish them as such, for placeholders. Mabe 5 yrs from now some researcher will discover why they arnt beautiful, sinusoidal, cycles.
I attended a few drag races in Austiin, and at the end of running the various classes, there was a category called, ‘Run Whut Ya Brung’. Thats where garage experimenters tried new stuff; different port an polish on carbs, different linkage on four barrels, different timing, spark gaps, etc. Thats how progress happens. Not always rigorous, heh.
Sandy, Minister of Falling Skys
and Wolves at Door
Chimp April 28, 2018 at 3:33 pm
What “oscillations” are you talking about? As far as I know there is no 60-year cycle in the ocean. And how is such knowledge “invaluable”? Give us two or three “invaluable” things that we know from some 60-year ocean cycle, I have no idea what you’re referring to.
As a commercial fisherman on the Pacific coast whose very livelihood was affected by this change, I can assure you that I likely know more about the PDO than you ever will … but:
a) the PDO is NOT a 60-year cycle, and
b) we don’t know when it will flip again.
So it’s great for hindcasting but useless for forecasting. It helped us to understand why the sardines left and the anchovies came into the Monterrey Bay fishery made famous in “Cannery Row”, which is where I was fishing back in the day. So it was of intense interest to me.
However, it was useless for predicting when the anchovies were going to leave and the sardines were going to come back again … which bummed out my Italian shipmates greatly, they wanted the sardines to return, and nobody could tell them when it would happen despite knowing about the PDO.
I’m not denying one damn thing. Nor am I saying that true cycles don’t exist, that’s a lie you keep repeating as though repetition will make it true. Because those tidal and orbits oscillations are true cycles, we can predict e.g. the length of the day for any spot on the earth for thousands of years into the future. The same is true for the height of the tides and the earth’s orbit. This makes those cycles useful. Here’s an example.
When I ran a shipyard on a remote Pacific island back in the day, I couldn’t get tide tables. No phone, no internet. The government made the tide tables … but in best South Pacific fashion, they didn’t produce them until September or so … and I needed them desperately starting on January 1 of the year so I could know when I could get ships up on to the slipway.
So I made my own tide tables. How? BECAUSE I NOT ONLY KNOW SUCH CYCLES EXIST, I KNOW HOW TO USE THEM. I took the previous year’s tide tables, and input them into Excel … boooring. Then I laboriously figured out the ten or so underlying cycles that combined to make up the tidal swings, and I extended them into the following year.
So you can cut out the crap about how I deny cycles. That’s just the voices in your head. I am more than happy to use all kinds of real cycles, because they can be used to understand the present and to predict the future.
However, the same is not true of your mythical nice even 60-year AMO pseudocycles, AS YOUR OWN FIGURE 5 AMPLY DEMONSTRATES.
w.
Willis,
You still willfully fail to understand.
How can it possibly escape your ken that knowledge of the PDO, AMO, ENSO and other oceanic oscillations is of critical to understanding the natural variability of Earth’s climate system? I cite the PDO in particular, since its flip accounts for the late 20th century warming. CO2, not so much.
We don’t need to know precisely when oscillations flip to learn from them the strength of natural climatic variations. The important point is that the oscillations, not CO2, control atmospheric warming and cooling cycles.
Your d@nial of these cycles and the solar activity behind them means that you can never understand climate.
To summarize: first you claim that there are no cycles and that solar activity has no effect upon climate. Then, when shown that cycles indubitably exist on every time scale, you retreat by saying that they’re not really cycles because they might not always have the same period. When shown that this applies to essentially all natural cycles, to include the day and year, but doesn’t mean that cycles don’t exist, you retreat to the blatantly false, indefensible position that not knowing exactly when a cycle might end renders knowledge of their existence useless. When shown that discovery of the PDO was critical in understanding the late 20th century warming, you resort, as usual to ad hominem attacks. It’s all about you, all the time.
As I said, each of your anti-scientific positions has been destroyed in detail.
Also, I doubt that you know more about the PDO than I do, unless you’ve fished for salmon off the coasts of OR, WA, BC and Alaska almost every year of your life since age 12. And have studied the marine biology of the region, to include a biology degree from Stanford. And your cousin is the UW colleague of the guy who discovered the PDO.
But at least I’m glad that you now accept the physical reality of the PDO, which has a period of about 60 years, according to D’Aleo:
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=http%3A%2F%2Ficecap.us%2Fimages%2Fuploads%2FATMOSPHERIC_CIRCULATION.doc
And within the PDO are 18,6-year cycles:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008GL036880
Time‐series of Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) reconstructed from tree‐rings in Western North America is found to have a statistically significant periodicity of 18.6‐year period lunar nodal tidal cycle; negative (positive) PDO tends to occur in the period of strong (weak) diurnal tide. In the 3rd and 5th (10th, 11th and 13rd) year after the maximum diurnal tide, mean‐PDO takes significant negative (positive) value, suggesting that the Aleutian Low is weak (strong), western‐central North Pacific in 30–50°N is warm (cool) and equator‐eastern rim of the Pacific is cool (warm). This contributes to climate predictability with a time‐table from the astronomical tidal cycle.
But keep imagining that you know a lot about cycles the existence of which until yesterday or today you d@nied.
@ur momisugly Chump,
You are quite dishonest, and frankly hollow but mildly pompos.
It is you who falsely merely CLAIMed that Willis “d@ur momisuglynies” climate cycles exist, which is patently a stupid and baseless accusation, without truth or merit.
You do that simply to avoid Willis’s reasonable request to explain as to how future movements of AMO benefits global climate forecasting?
Two or three EXAMPLES—show your working.
And oscillations in weather-noise (i.e. NOT CYCLES) are in fact pseudo-‘cycles’, just as described by Willis, and others, whether you like it or not.
They’re the WX equivalent of virtual particles—and no, you can’t build a material forecast out of them either.
Now, how do ephemeral oscillations predict the climate future again?
It’s simple, quit all your high fallutin squirming and skunking out people and just PUT UP—OR SHUTUP.
Thank you.
Irregular ~60-yr oscillations indeed appear quite persistently for millennia in a great many climate-related proxy time-series (see: http://i1188.photobucket.com/albums/z410/skygram/graph1.jpg). It’s a mistake, however, to assume that are all manifestations of the same coherent physical process, differing only via phase shifts, as depicted by the astrological wheel of the fanciful “stadium wave” conjecture in Figure 1. Incisive cross-spectrum analysis reveals surprisingly weak coherence between the AMO and the PDO, with significantly different spectral structures for those phenomenological indices Thus we should speak of “multi-decadal oscillations” in the plural, not the singular, and refrain from attributing them to any particular physical mechanism purely on the basis of mutual presence of such oscillations. As the earlier-referenced spectral plot shows, there are many long-term oscillations other than that of the ~60-yr quasi-periodicity
Yes, the AMO and PDO are both multidecadal; their names are merely semantical differences. The ENSO however is subdecadal as to the sex of the Christmas babies, but also multidecadal as to the preponderance of one sex over the other.
The differences between the AMO and the PDO are NOT “merely semantical.” These oscillations manifest clearly different spectral structures and are only weakly coherent in the multi-decadal range of frequencies. BTW, to include the preponderance of “one sex [of ENSO stage] over the other” in that wider multi-decadal range is to confuse Fourier decomposition with signal envelope behavior.
We need a multi-millenial Holocene approach to the 60-yr cycle question…There
is a clear and exact 62-yr cycle with cycle peaks counting backwards from 2004
– 1942 – 1880 – 1818 and so forth for 8,000 yrs. You may check this by taking the
GISP2 temp time series and enter this exact 62-yr cycle peak series into a
GISP2 graph, which contains ALL GISP2 measurement points.
Indeed, there are certain long time stretches, when peak tops do not appear.
Those are times of extraordinary temp drops or extraordinary temp increases,
which have a stronger signal, overwhelming the relatively mild and weak 62-yr
cycle signal. To judge it as a steady, clear cycle, can be proven by that all 62-yr
cycle peaks always appear in their correct series sequence position without fail,
once those times of overwhelming extraordinary temp drops or increases abate.
The best 62-yr peaks are visible in times of rather steady temp periods
Norman Page is right to place the cycle top onto 2004 and other authors already
determined the 62 yr. length, to make it obsolete to talk about an only 60 yr. cycle..
We also have to take mega-volcanic activity into account, which drop temps for one to
two decades thus wiping out or interfering with various 62 yr cycle peaks, as the 1818
peak wiped out by the 1815 Tambora eruption, or the 1886 Krakatoa eruption, which
produced a following GMST temp low….to confuse as cycle low…..
Willis knows that all, yet he produces graphs which are not volcano eruption adjusted in
order to smokescreen the Holocene 62 yr temp cycle on purpose.
More on the 62 yr cycle see:
http://www.knowledgeminer.eu/climate-papers.html …. the latest part 8 concerning
1600 – 2050 AD and from part 1 on starting in 8,500 BC.
JS. .
Pictorial, time-domain approaches in determining the cyclical properties of real-world, random signals leave much to be desired analytically. While indeed there’s a peak at ~61 yrs (= 2000/33) in the power spectrum of GISP2 Holocene data that I referenced, it accounts only for ~10% of the total variance in the long-term (transdecadal) baseband of frequencies. Although the peak is relatively narrow, indicating a quasi-periodic oscillation of some predictability, it’s clearly surpassed in power by somewhat shorter variations in the range of four decades, and even more strikingly by multi-centennial and quasi-millennial oscillations. The latter are quite wide-band and provide little predictive capability.