Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach [See Update At End]
In a recent post, Anthony published Leif Svalgaard’s new paper showing 9,000 years of reconstructed solar activity.
Svalgaard paper: Reconstruction of 9000 years of Solar Activity
In the discussion, someone pointed out that the “Maunder Minimum”, a time of very low solar activity, corresponds with the coldest decade in a long-term reconstruction of summer temperatures in Scotland. Their temperature reconstruction is based on a group of pine tree-ring records spanning 800 years. Their graph is shown below:
As you can see, the period around 1690 is extremely cold. This was put forward as support for the idea that sunspot cycles affect the temperature. The idea is that when sunspots are low, temperatures are low as well. And the year 1690 is during the Maunder Minimum, a time of low sunspots.
However, as you may know if you follow my work, I like to take the largest look at the longest data that I can find. So rather than build a theory based on one decade of cold temperatures lining up with one sunspot minimum, I decided to compare the two graphs shown above. I first “standardized” both datasets, meaning that I set each of their averages to zero and each of their standard deviations to one. That allows us to compare them directly. Here is that result:
Now, the commenter was indeed correct that the low temperature in 1690 was during the Maunder Minimum.
However, the other minima do not line up with much of anything. The Wolf Minimum occurred during not just a warm period, but during the warmest period in the record. Similarly, the Sporer Minimum occurred during the warm period just before the drop to the “Little Ice Age” of the 1600s.
Then we have the Maunder Minimum. Temperatures started dropping about 150 years before the start of the Maunder Minimum, and during the first hundred years of dropping temperatures the sunspots were increasing. So obviously, the sun was not the cause of the drop in temperature.
Next, although the Dalton minimum occurred during a cold period. temperatures started dropping some seventy years or so before the start of the Dalton minimum … and temperatures warmed from the start to the end of the Dalton Minimum.
Finally, in recent times, you can see that sunspots started decreasing about 1980, while temperatures have risen during that time.
I leave the reader to draw the obvious conclusions regarding sunspots and Scottish temperatures …
[UPDATE] Some folks in the comments have said that the Scottish pine series is just as bad as many of the other tree ring series, such as those abysmal creations of Michael Mann et ilk …
However, this doesn’t appear to be the case, viz:
So while it is true in general that trees are not thermometers … when handled properly, they do appear to do a reasonable job of recording thermal variations.
w.
PS—When you comment, please quote the exact words that you are referring to, so that we can all understand what you are discussing.
Tree-mometers from the past… hah!!!
They make good firewood and violins. That’s ‘Bout all.
Joel.
Yes, tree rings are far from ideal as temperature proxies, although cooler is also often associated with drier and windier.
But better proxy data show that globally, solar minima are associated with colder weather and climate.
For instance:
The ‘Little Ice Age’ in the Southern Hemisphere in the context of the last 3000 years: Peat-based proxy-climate data from Tierra del Fuego
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959683614551232
The so-called ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA) of the 15th to 19th centuries ad is well-attested from much of Europe and from some other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. It has been attributed to solar forcing, associated with reduced solar activity, notably during the Spörer, Maunder and Dalton solar minima, although other causes have also been proposed and feature strongly in recent papers. Detection of the LIA in some proxy-climate records from the Southern Hemisphere is less clear, leading to suggestions that the LIA was perhaps not a global phenomenon. Resolving this issue requires more data from the Southern Hemisphere. We present proxy-climate data (plant macrofossils; peat humification) covering the past three millennia from an ombrotrophic mire (peat bog) in Tierra del Fuego, southern South America, but focus our discussion on the period traditionally associated with the LIA. During parts of this time, the mire surface was apparently relatively dry compared with much of its 3000-year record. It was reported earlier that a particularly dry episode in the mire coincided with the 2800 cal. BP ‘solar’ event (since identified as a Grand Solar Minimum), which was attributed to solar-driven changes in atmospheric circulation, and more specifically to a shift in position of the Westerlies. Parts of the LIA record show a similar shift to dryness, and we invoke a similar cause. The shifts to and from dry episodes are abrupt. These new data support the concept of a global LIA, and for at least the intense dry episodes might reinforce the claim for solar forcing of parts of the LIA climate.
I leave the reader to draw the obvious conclusions regarding sunspots and Scottish temperatures …
I do not see any data of Scottish temperatures , just tree growth. I thought Briffa’s data blew that one out of the water , decades ago ( before it got cropped to “hide the decline” ).
A paper this year reconfirmed the appearance of alternating warm and cold intervals in Arctic sea ice extent. During the Holocene Climate Optimum, which ended about 5 Ka, it practically disappeared in the summer.
Today’s extent has pulled back slightly from during the LIA, but it still far above that of prior warm intervals, such as the Medieval, Roman and Minoan WPs.
Please see especially the last graph, from the 2018 study:
http://www.climatedepot.com/2018/08/16/new-arctic-study-finds-spring-sea-ice-melted-2-months-earlier-than-today-during-roman-medieval-times/
Glaciers paint the same picture. For New Zealand, max extent came ten to 15 years after the end of the Maunder. During the 17th century, alpine villages were famously threatened by the glaciers advancing under solar minimum conditions.
The wood for Stradivarius violins grew during the Maunder Minimumm and it has been hypothesized that this led to its superior tonal qualities.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1125786504700314
Taphonomic,
That hypothesis has stood up well.
Dendochronologists have also been called upon to date a variety of musical instruments.
No.
From your link.
Wood used for lutherie, including violins varies in annual wood growth rings per inch (2.54 cm) of wood. Ten growth rings per inch is normally considered poor quality for lutherie purposes.
Fourteen or more growth rings per inch (2.54 cm) is when wood for instruments is believed to be reaching desirable quality.
Twenty or more growth rings per year may be considered “master” quality wood.
Antonio Stradivari lived from 1644 through 1737.
Ignoring Antonio’s years of apprenticeship or journeyman, that places his earliest best instruments as occurring after 1670.
Instruments made by Antonio have been identified with as few as 12-14 growth rings per year but often greater. Heartwood is preferred with sapwood being avoided. This removes approximately two inches (5 cm) of the most recent growth before the tree is felled and split.
The sapwood is not discarded, instead it is used for reinforcement and tentallones, especially where an instrument’s corners are glued.
At 12 growth rings per year, trees harvested in 1670 would have 5.8″ (14.7 cm) of wood grown during the 1600s, with two of those inches unusable for a violin’s main sound plates.
At 20 growth rings per year, trees harvested in 1670 would have 3.5″ (9 cm) of wood grown during the 1600s. And two of those inches are unusable for instrument tone plates.
At one f the smallest instruments Antonio constructed, a violin requires a thoroughly aged tonal plate 5.5″ (14 cm) to 6″ (15.2 cm) in width. Even these are split thinner, jointed then glued together to form the top and back plates.
Add in the two inches of sapwood, and the tree harvested for wood needed to grow a minimum of 90 years for the lower quality 12 growth lines per inch (2.54 cm) and 150 years for better quality wood with 20 or greater growth lines per inch (2.54 cm).
That places tree growth periods as:
Tree harvested; 1660.
Tree Growth, 12 annual rings per inch (2.54 cm); 1570 – 1660
Tree growth, 20 annual rings per inch (2.54 cm); 1510-1660.
N.B. that the heartwood for the better quality wood grew before the Maunder Minimum started to get cold!
Violins were the smallest instruments. Violas, Bass violas, Guitars, etc. all required much larger wood.
Thoroughly aged often meant a decade or more.
Looking at the science abstract again;
Once again, gross assumptions are promoted to causation.
If, the Maunder Minimum theory is correct, then Antonio Stradivari’s students, apprentices and journeymen would have produced the finest instruments. Even besting Antonio’s instruments.
Historically, Antonio Stradivari and many contemporary, past and current luthiers have availed themselves of opportunities to search old dry wood piles for suitable wood for their instruments. i.e. any opportunity to find quality wood for instruments was used to full advantage.
Carleen Hutchins did a lot of work investigating what makes for good tone quality in wood. Long term aging proved beneficial, the longer the better. But, a luthier’s skill proves paramount!
John Tillman commented on a recent post in which Anthony published Leif Svalgaard’s new paper. In his comment, John pointed out that the Maunder Minimum corresponded with coldest period in the temperature record, which John took as evidence that solar minima lead to cold periods. Someoneposted a rebuttal to that comment. Their premise was that the same tree ring series that John had used as evidence would falsify the theory. They claimed that in particular, the Wolf minimum corresponded to the highest temperatures in John’s proxy record. After some back and forth with John, they posted a chart comparing the original tree ring series to the Central England Temperature record.
Just summing up! 🙂
Willis,
You’ve used an old dating of the Spörer Minimum (Eddy, 1976). As the revised sunspot curve shows, its’ now dated from c. AD 1420 to 1570, if not indeed from 1400. The Scottish data confirm what had already been observed in China (Jiang & Xu, 1986), ie that the period 1430-1520 (starting slightly before the traditional date of the Sparer) was indeed colder than average there, but the period 1520-1620 (the second half of the minimum) was warmer than average.
On the Spörer Minimum
In this paper we have examined the real behaviour of solar activity during the period AD 1400–1600. The results are as follows: (1) the distributions of the 20 naked-eye sunspot records are inhomogeneous. There are 2 sightings in the 15th century and 18 sightings in the 16th century; (2) the distributions of auroral records are similar to sunspot. There are 33 records in the 15th century and 315 records in the 16th century; (3) the climatic fluctuations in China shows that the period AD 1430–1520 was cold while the period AD 1520–1620 was warm. These facts clearly demonstrate that the Spörer Minimum, if it extended from AD 1460 to 1550, could be a specious results and it, if its extent was AD 1400–1510, is a real feature of solar variability in that time.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00651121
Similarly, there is a lag in the response in Scotland to the Wolf Minimum, with the cooling occurring after its onset. So cooling happened in each of the minima, ie the Wolf, Spörer, Maunder and Dalton, but not always during the entire period of low solar activity.
The same correlation is found in observations from around the world.
Thanks, John. You say Sporer is from 1420 to 1570. I used 1460 to 1550. That’s a difference that makes no difference. It’s still occurring during the warm period prior to the temperature drop down to the Little Ice Age.
Next, your paper defines the Sporer Minimum based on the claim that “the climatic fluctuations in China shows that the period AD 1430–1520 was cold while the period AD 1520–1620 was warm” … circular reasoning much? You define the minimum based on the climate and then claim the minimum causes the climate …
Also, whenever anyone starts talking about “a lag in the response”, I shake my head. Absent some real observed understood physical mechanism that can cause a 50-year lag in warming due to solar variations, that just sounds like special pleading. No other solar cycle (daily, annual) causes such a lag.
As to your claim that “cooling happened in each of the minima”, given that the minima are ~ 50 – 100 years long, it would be surprising if some cooling did NOT happen at some time during a minimum.
w.
Willis,
Not circular reasoning, but an observation. The fact is that during each of those solar minima, earth cooled.
Naturally, there are other things going on in the climate system besides solar activity, and still other factors which modulate insolation and other effects of the sun.
But, as noted, all over the planet, all or parts of major solar minima are associated with cooling. It could be a coincidence, but there are well supported mechanisms by which periods of low sunspots plausibly could lead to global cooling, and to changes in oceanic and atmospheric circulations which would produce drier conditions in some latitudes and wetter in others.
Any complex, non-linear chaotic system can show a “lag”, or perhaps more properly a cumulative response to a small initial input.
Thanks, John. I have a number of problems with your comment.
First, you say Sporer is from 1420 to 1570. I used 1460 to 1550. That’s a difference that makes no difference. It’s still occurring during the warm period prior to the temperature drop down to the Little Ice Age.
Next, your paper defines the Sporer Minimum based on the claim that “the climatic fluctuations in China shows that the period AD 1430–1520 was cold while the period AD 1520–1620 was warm” … circular reasoning much? You define the minimum based on the climate and then claim the minimum causes the climate …
Also, whenever anyone starts talking about “a lag in the response”, I shake my head. Absent some real observed understood physical mechanism that can cause a 50-year lag in warming due to solar variations, that just sounds like special pleading. No other solar cycle (daily, annual) causes such a lag.
As to your claim that “cooling happened in each of the minima”, given that the minima are ~ 50 – 100 years long, it would be surprising if some cooling did NOT happen at some time during a minimum.
w.
Willis,
Not special pleading, but again, an observation.
Different regions are affected differently by the effects of lowered solar activity. As noted for instance with the Fuegian peat bog study, a generally cooling Earth moves precipitation bands around. It’s not just lags, but changes in flow patterns.
So that parts of the solar minima in some areas show different effects shouldn’t be a surprise or taken to invalidate the conclusion that solar minima affect climate.
>> First, you say Sporer is from 1420 to 1570. I used 1460 to 1550. That’s a difference that makes no difference. It’s still occurring during the warm period prior to the temperature drop down to the Little Ice Age.
That warm period was already over. There was a short return to warmer weather before proper start of the LIA in ca 1650, but the MWP ended by ca. 1425.
The cold period started again shortly after 1400 as we can tell based on Greenland.
The Western Settlement was abandoned sometime between 1350 and 1375 (with stragglers until 1400), the Eastern (southern) Settlement closer to 1425 or even as late as 1450, but in fact we have very little after 1400. Sure a few may have survived on seal flesh & otherwise living as Inuit
The last record of a marriage is from 1408. The last known bishop left ca 1378, but we also have a report of at least one other bishop who probably died ca 1418 due to an attack by Skraelings.
It is true that the pope instructed the Icelanders to provide the Greenlanders with a new bishop as late as 1448, but that never happened.
By the early 15th century the diet has already changed dramatically and people are leaving.
” In the late settlement period in the fi rst half of the 15th century AD, however, up to about 80% of the food of some Norse Greenlanders was of marine origin (Fig. 1; Arneborg et al. 1999, Lynnerup 1998). ”
https://nyheder.ku.dk/alle_nyheder/2012/2012.11/nordboerne_i_groenland_maeskede_sig_i_saeler/Norse_Greenland_Dietary_Economy_ca._AD_980_ca._AD_1450.pdf
By that time farming & the warm period for Greenland is over.
That (c.1425) marks the proper end of the MWP. There was a cold period and thereafter a temporary return to warmer weather before the LIA starts.
>> “the climatic fluctuations in China shows that the period AD 1430–1520 was cold while the period AD 1520–1620 was warm”
Same for Europe AFAIK. Cold starts 1425 (and MWP is over), warm again by? 1550, then start of LIA ca 1650.
Of course some studies show the MWP end even earlier, but at least the Greenland situation is exactly dateable via documents.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
In any case I very much doubt that one could qualify the period after 1425/1450 ‘warm’. Never seen that in any of those studies. And earlier end of MWP (late or even mid 14th century) perhaps, but not later than mid 15th.
Lake Neuchatel in Switserland gives the typical picture (follow this link http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_neuchatel.php in case the picture does not show):
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/images/l1_neuchatel2.gif
Look, a three minute lag with the same input! 🙂
The problem here is interpreting tree rings as temperature proxies. They are not. They are also rainfall proxies and fertilization proxies. For example, if a herd of deer froze to death and died in a forest, they would fertilize the soil and result in more growth even if the weather was colder or drier. In order to use tree rings as temperature proxies you have to locate a spot where you believe that temperature is the ultimate constraint on growth. Altitude is not a good indicator, either since CO2 fertilization can greatly influence treeline and water loss (more CO2 means fewer stoma which results in better drought tolerance).
Tree rings are fairly useless as temperature proxies except at the very margins of forest growth a extremely high latitude (tundra margins).
Crosspatch,
In the comments to Leif’s presentation, I commented that the 1690s were the coldest decade of the LIA and Maunder Minimum in the CET. Willis objected to the CET’s reconstruction of temperature, so I cited both the Scottish study and another from New England, supporting the conclusion that that decade was indeed unusually cold, as also was the first decade of the 18th century.
After the Maunder ended, the world warmed rapidly. The early 18th century warming in the CET was greater in amplitude and lasted longer than the late 20th century warming. Adjustments to the CET might have changed that however. I haven’t checked lately.
But in any case, when the sunspots returned, so too did warmth on Earth.
Correct. After M&M’s demolitions of tree ring proxies for temperatures, why anyone would revisit this discredited territory is beyond me.
I am pretty sure the whole “hide the decline” debacle shows the problem. Either Mann’s modern temperatures are not just wrong but going in the wrong direction, or trees are a rubbish proxy.
Maybe some of both?
The analysis of Willis clearly demonstrates that temps and sunspots are two
different shoes, which do not fit…..
But this is not the whole story: Take the 9,000 yr Wu graph and focus onto
all maximum peaks of the 9,000 yr reconstructed SN, and compare those peaks to the temps of GISP2, Alley 2004 …and you will recognize that all SN peaks are placed in such a way that all temps always DROP after each SN high peak.
Willis, check it out.
This contradicts Willis and the Scottish temp graph.
The temps since 1600 AD do not follow the SN number, rather Earth orbital
parameters, see: Part 8 in Climate patter recognition (1600 AD .2050 AD) in http://www.knowledgeminer.eu/climate-papers.html
Hi Willis. Always enjoy your writings, but I do have a slight gripe with your statement:
So obviously, the sun was not the cause of the drop in temperature.
One CAN say “the SUNSPOT COUNT was not the cause of the drop in temperature.” The sun varies in ways some of which we are just beginning to understand ( ex: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09426 ). I don’t think we even have a firm grasp on what changes even the known variations of the sun causes within the biosphere ( to say that the sun’s changes has zero effect would be ignoring Newton’s third law), so it’s premature to say the sun isn’t the cause.
We also don’t have a grasp on how the oceans deal with the insolation they recieve. How long does it take for solar energy to be released, once absorbed? Trying to correlate land temperatures to solar activity requires complete understanding of oceanic processes if it is to be valid.
Certainly tree ring are affected by other factors than just temperature, so they are the poorest proxy one can choose, unless one desires something easily “fudgeable”…
Pop Piasa – October 29, 2018 at 8:54 am
Right you are, Pop Piasa.
And a good place for the novice to begin their “understanding” is with the Gulf Stream.
Those Solar irradiated “warm” waters originate in the Gulf of Mexico and then flow around Florida and all the way up the east coast of North America and then across the North Atlantic where it still has sufficient thermal (heat) energy to keep parts of norther Europe from “freezing” up solid during the Northern Hemisphere winters.
The near-surface temperature in Scotland is directly affected by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. So, the big question is, …… iffen the lack of Sunspots causes a “cooling” of the near-surface atmosphere, how long would it take before the “cooled down” waters of the Gulf of Mexico start causing a “cool down” of the Scottish near-surface air temperatures? Five years, 25 years, 100 years, 500 years?
“The Gulf Stream is typically 100 kilometres (62 mi) wide and 800 metres (2,600 ft) to 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) deep” …… which means there is a humongous amount of “warm water” that will take quite awhile to cool down enough to start effecting air temperatures in northern Europe.
–Finally, in recent times, you can see that sunspots started decreasing about 1980, while temperatures have risen during that time.
I leave the reader to draw the obvious conclusions regarding sunspots and Scottish temperatures … —
Well, I don’t think sunspots are a control knob.
In terms of any kind of control knob, I would have to pick the Milankovitch cycles- but they don’t really work as control knob but most of time they have pattern and they could cause large variation in global climate.
And what mean by large variation, they seem to control the ocean average temperature.
And in our icebox climate, the average ocean temperature has range of about 1 to 5 C. And currently the average ocean temperature is about 3.5 C.
The average temperature of ocean is another strong control knob. If average ocean is 2 C, that is glacial period. If 4 C that is interglacial period- or can’t be a glacial period.
The average ocean temperature is control knob of the average ocean surface temperature. Our current average ocean temperature is about 17 C.
Now, ocean of 3.5 C doesn’t make the average ocean surface 17 C, but rather, it might keep in a range of say 16 to 18 C. Or to have average surface temperature of 15 C, it seems the ocean would need to about 3 C or colder.
So what makes earth average temperature of about 15 C, is average ocean surface temperature of about 17 C and average land surface air temperature of 8 to 11 C.
And currently our average land surface air temperature is about 10 C- a century ago is seems to have been around 9 C and a few centuries ago would be 8 C [or cooler].
If ocean surface temperatures increase from about 17 C to 18 C, it will have large effect upon average land temperature- say range of a global average land surface temperature of 10 to 13 C.
But average ocean or average ocean surface temperature has little effect upon the tropics [ocean surface or land surface air]. The tropics tends to have fairly constant average temperature and it’s 40% of earth surface area. Or this quite different than the greenhouse effect theory would indicate, where idea seems to suggest tropics must warm or cool in order to effect global average temperature {hotspot at tropics, etc].
So I think sunspots are most going to effect regions outside of the tropics and it’s not a control knob. And generally no sunspots for decades is mostly about weather effects and average land surface temperatures, and basically any effect of any kind require centuries to change global average temperatures, which tied to average ocean temperatures [it would take a long time to warm or cool our 3.5 C ocean].
From such a view, I do see a relationship regarding sunspots and the Scottish temperatures.
G,
Milankovitch cycles affect insolation, ie how solar output strikes the planet. The orbital and rotational mechanical cycles do clearly affect Earth’s climate system.
Both in glacial and interglacial intervals, there are also climatic effects deriving directly from variation in solar radiation and magnetic flux. There probably isn’t a single control knob on climate, but the climatic effects of solar variations aren’t trivial, and show up in the proxy records.
Warming since the PDO flip of 1976-77 hasn’t been out of the ordinary, and the trivial drop in sunspots since late in the last century hasn’t yet reached levels which historically have shown important climatic effects. Should they keep dropping, we might suffer a Dalton Minimum grade cooling, but we’re a long way from Maunder levels, when the sun was spotless not for part of one ~11-year cycle, but for decades.
The Modern Warm Period since the end of the LIA Cold Period should last at least another century. Let’s hope it does, anyway. Some think that the alternating centennial-scale cold and warm intervals are getting shorter, heading into the next big ice age in a few thousand years (or so, if, as Javier argues, the Milankovitch axial tilt cycle rules), which would be a bad thing.
Of course UK [and Scotland] are in an oceanic climate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_climate
One should more temperature change [regarding sunspots] in non oceanic climates. Like say, most of Canada.
The only point that Willis is making is that the colder spells do not always neatly line up with low sunspot numbers.
He has been told repeatedly that the reason would be oceanic thermal inertia which sometimes supplements and sometimes offsets solar influences.
Yet he pretends persistently that no such mechanism has ever been suggested to him.
Any attempt a pretending a single variable will explain climate will quickly fall apart. Be it CO2, SSN or anything else.
The closest I’ve seen to date in Vuk’s lagged geomagnetic plot, but I don’t recall seeing and data to reproduce/validate his graphs.
If you are saying OHC acts as a damper , it should be possible to apply a suitable ( asymmetric ) kernel to SN to account for it. If you are saying ocean heat has its own variability then some data for how to combine the two would be needed to back up the claim.
Here is what happens if you apply an exponential decaying kernel to the latest SN messenger.
Greg, I uploaded data file for you on my website and said so in reply to your relevant comment. I may have taken it down after few days or at least I said I would do. Since I am away from home for the most of next month if file isn’t still there get in touch during the last week of November and I’ll email it to you.
Dr. Archibald asked for source, I told him how to get data ( see his last SSN review), he never came back so my next comment there needs a /sarc added.
BTW, here is link to graph GG referred to:
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CT4-GMF.htm
That’s not how I read it. My reading is that Willis believes tree ring are a valid proxy for temperatures. I stand to be corrected, but that’s what I see.
My thoughts. First, the growing season in Scotland is only May to September, so tree ring proxies are not representative of average annual temperatures. Scotland sits in a zone where mild maritime winds mix with colder arctic air in the north, and coninental air in the east. Our weather is largely dictated by jet stream flctuations, and moderated by the relatively mild North Atlantic Drift, or \gulf Stream. Our weather is highly variable, and by weather I mean daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, yearly, and even on decadal scales. For exampe, we had a long run of mild winters in the 1990s and early 2000s, which helped convince many people (who should have known better), that we were experiencing global warming, even though summer temperatures during these decades were if anything cooler than average. The 1690s were indeed a disastrous decade for many parts of rural Scotland, where a run of cold summers and failed harvests led to mortality of 1/3rd of the population directly from starvation or malnutrition related diseases. Iirc, volcanic activity in Iceland has been blamed for at least two of these summers. I would suggest that it is mostly random natural variabilty in the Scottish pine cone proxies, where any solar signal will be lost in the noise. I would also suggest that any measurable climactic effect of sunspot cycles is much more likely to be found in tropical/mid latitude cloud cover data.
lapogus – October 29, 2018 at 1:15 am
No surprises there, according to this temperature proxy graph, …… the 1690’s was the coldest part of the LIA.
Willis
Scotland? Sun? Naaaahhhh…….
(Disclaimer: I spent a week home in the Campsie hills this summer. 25°C and glorious sunshine, it didn’t last).
According to Paul Holmwood on notalotofpeopleknowthat Scotland is the only place in the UK where rainfall has increased during our ‘AGW’ period. I would question that as I’m not sure how much more rain could fall in Scotland without entirely obliterating the week long summer it occasionally gets.
🙂
LOL, my thoughts exactly. Scottish sunshine is an oxymoron 😉
HotScot,
A whole week? Vermonters have long claimed that Summer comes on July 4th and leaves on July 5th! At least it doesn’t stick around long enough to wear out its welcome. But, then there was the year that New England didn’t have a Summer, when it started snowing again in June.
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/vermont/year-without-summer-vt/
Did Scotland experience anything similar?
HA, when I fist moved to upstate NY they told me they only had two seasons, ….. winter and 4th of July.
>> I leave the reader to draw the obvious conclusions regarding sunspots and Scottish temperatures …
Uhm, that those are not temperatures?
But a mixture of various other influences + a bit of temperature?
https://climateaudit.org/2018/10/24/pages2k-north-american-tree-ring-proxies/
+97
Looking from eye, there are 7 periods that correlate and 4 that do not. The chance of getting 7 heads out of 11 coin throws is about 15% or 1 in 6. Since you would have claimed a “relationship” if it had been anti-correlated or correlated, then the chance of claiming a “relationship” is 2 in 6. If I then factor in the “Ned” type selection of different graphs, periods,etc – the fact people try numerous metrics to try to find one and only report those with some kind of “fit”, the result is close enough to chance that it is not significant.
As for the 1690s – there’s a very expensive book called “the ill years” in which it gives various accounts of the deaths in Scotland with estimates of around 1/3 to 1/5 of the population dying. One illustration of this is that dead bodies were just left lying in the street.
The direct result was to cause Scotland to wish to join with England and create the greatest empire the world has ever seen. But for obvious reasons, Scottish nationalists (who hate the English) now ignore the 1690s which was the greatest calamity in recorded history in Scottish. That’s because it can’t be blamed on the English.
Instead nationalist go on about the so called “Highland clearances” – a period after Scotland joined with England and so the “genocide” as the SNP call it can be blamed on the English. How I could only find one death securely linked to the clearances (and that went to court). And to prove this “genocide” is baloney during the clearances the Highland population grew.
The 1690s was a real disaster for Scotland and undoubtedly responsible for the desertification of many places (which are usually blamed on the later “highland clearances”). But the reason the 1690s mass deaths have been obliterated from normal history in Scotland is because it isn’t politically convenient to nationalists in academia. In other words, like Global Warming “science” academia is yet again telling lies because it doesn’t fit their politics.
As if “weather” drives civilization, the big lie of the 21st century. Robert Dundas, the hated Lord Advocate of Scotland, whose clearances of the Scottish Highland population inspired the phrase “sheep eat men”.
The only answer to such sophistry is Rober Burns :
What force or guile could not subdue
Thro many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hirling traitor’s wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour’s station;
But English gold has been our bane –
Such a pacel of rogues in a nation!
– Robert Burns
Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation
—
There is a parcel of rogues right now trying to remove Trump and restart the jolly British Great Game of Mackinder again.
A good test of this kind of thing is flip the proxy and see whether it still “appears” to correlate.
…But for obvious reasons, Scottish nationalists (who hate the English) now ignore the 1690s which was the greatest calamity in recorded history in Scottish. That’s because it can’t be blamed on the English….
Oh, they could if they tried. For instance, I have seen the failure of the Darien scheme blamed on the lack of support from the English. Briefly, the Scots wanted to emulate the English, who were establishing trading colonies at this time, and decided to move into a Spanish area in South America. The English warned them against it, and said that they could not support them because they did not want a war with Spain.
The Scots went ahead, and were duly beaten back by Spain, losing all their money in the process. Enraged at their losses, they then claimed that the English SHOULD have supported them, and went and hanged three English sailors that they found in Leith….
You style yourself as “sceptical”, Mike, which is strange, given that you haven’t been nearly sceptical enough of your own perspective on and “knowledge” of this little bit of the planet, its people and its past.
Again, for a layman, it seems that sunspots is a good way and anything concerning tree ring proxies is just rubbish,and at most, “nice to know”. After all ,the whole mess is partly going on because of just one Yamal tree that happened to have a rotting reindeer close by…. Svalgaard seems to have something so clearly visible here that we can be having some real cooling in the next decade. Just like the Russians predicted.
Hi Willis
A couple of years ago I wrote an article I termed ‘the intermittent little ice age’ as this period was not one of constant cold, but was often highly variable
https://judithcurry.com/2015/02/19/the-intermittent-little-ice-age/
We do have instrumental records for CET covering this period (but not scotland in any depth) and I carried out a reconstruction back to 1538 so encompassing other cold periods
I think the evidence on sun spots is equivocal to say the least. I made this comment within my article
“The effect of sunspots on the climate is contentious. Looking at the data in Figure 8, it appears that the impact of the second half of the Sporer minimum on temperatures is difficult to discern. The Maunder minimum however appears to largely coincide with colder years, whilst the Dalton minimum is more mixed. However, there had been many cold years prior to the onset of these sunspot minimums and cold years returned after they had finished, so the relationship appears unproven and may be coincidental, where there is some correlation.”
I am dubious about Scottish pine records , there is a short growing season and of course they tell us nothing of the winter. Summers were often hot after a severe winter and vice versa. As a proxy I think trees are a better measure of likely precipitation than anything else and reflect the local micro climate.
Anyway, I tend to believe the sun spot scenario is overplayed
tonyb
That would be my guess…..the tree rings are screwed….shift them over and it’s a perfect match
“and of course they tell us nothing of the winter.”
Have you never heard of frost rings?
Frost rings can’t tell you for how long or how low……
Trees stop growing when it’s too hot or too cold….rings can’t tell you for how long, how high, how low
Frost is a great measure of how low.
The only place that I know of where one can find a “frost ring” is during the winter time, on the seat of an “outhouse” (outside toilet).
It’s best that you guys quit using Merriam-Webster or equivalent for your “go-to” expert, to wit:
I believe an “insect ring” is more believable than a “frost ring”. A massive outbreak of insect larvae, such as the Gypsy Moth, can defoliate thousands of acres of forest.
But REMEMBER, once the defoliation has occurred, … you hafta wait until next Spring before any new “leafing out” will occur. That’s because trees produce their buds at the end of summer, usually in August, ….. to wit:
Sunspot “cycles” dont affect temperature. (They are not cycles FYI stop calling them that)
What affects temperatures is solar process iterations. Sun spots are one factor of the combine solar process iteration.
Sun spots do not tell us much about the total solar activity through each iteration of solar processes.
OK so it is interesting, and worth looking at, though looking at Sun spots are some sort of top level indicator of what the sun is and is not doing to earth’s temperatures is silly.
We need to understand what is happening along with sun spots, and the TRUTH is we largely have no idea bar theoretical and hypothetical ideas, with not so strong evidence to support them. Just because there are no better ideas, that does not mean the existing hypothesis and theories are even remotely correct.
Yes I am not contributing to an answer, but I am contributing to ruling out nonsense and looking at sun spots alone, to try find a magic link to temperatures is fools gold.
Lastly, to claim the sun is or is not driving temperature anomalies, is dopey, because we categorically do not know enough to make assertions of any weight whatsoever, this scientism is doing my head in.
“Sunspot “cycles” dont affect temperature” << was meant to be in "". Sun spots are a feature, stop using features to try derive causes
Ego doesn’t enter into the equation here.
We have strong, statistically significant evidence of solar warming since the Maunder Minimum by using sunspots and solar cycles.
We can know the sun rules the climate with absolute certainty now.
What we can’t know is if the cosmogenic reconstruction spliced onto the known sunspot record is valid.
It seems some like to use data of unknown reliability to draw their conclusions against solar forcing rather than by understanding how the sun warms/cools with the better data of the modern era.
My system is an objective data driven verified method that works with modern data.
There was a large discrepancy over time in the solar output during the Modern Maximum, compared to the previous period coming out of the mid 1800’s:
We have good data now to make definite assertions that carry weight in favor of solar forcing, discernible via sunspot numbers since the LIA.
The sun’s magnetic field controls the sunspot activity, ‘features’ as you say, and TSI:
To make a point re my previous post.
When will scientists start to learn to say “I have no idea” or “we just dont know enough yet” when that is the truth of the matter? That is where we are re Sun and temperatures, and yet show me a paper that says “we don’t know, this is a best guess”
Ego in science, is a massive problem
A very good impression of Sir Isaac Newton of the Royal Mint with his :
“But hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses [hypotheses non fingo],” ordained Sir Isaac in the Principia’s infamous General Scholium. “...[F]or whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and our sea.”
It is quite amazing to see Newton impressionarios in the 21st Century, more than one such here.
…When will scientists start to learn to say “I have no idea” or “we just dont know enough yet” when that is the truth of the matter?….
At exactly the same time when saying that they have spent a lot of money on research and they are no further ahead does NOT disqualify them from further grants.
At the moment we give free taxpayer’s money to scientists who can come up with persuasive cases for spending it. The money is conditional on the scientists delivering SOMETHING. Until we change that funding process the scientists will continue to claim that they are delivering – no matter what their research actually finds…
And no way is it “Settled Science”.
MJE
I thought Mann had to “hide the decline” because his tree rings did not line up properly with known temperatures. Would this not put into question the use of tree rings as a proxy? What is it about Scottish pines that make them reliable? Why not use CET data?
Yes, that’s what Jones dubbed “Mike’s Nature Trick ” ™ , except that it was Briffa’s data he was screwing around with , not his own.
I’m rather surprised to see Willis say :
… at the end of an article which does not have any temperature data but only a “reconstruction” based on tree rings.
the significance of SUNSPOTS is that from them escape UV radiation. No sunspots = no UV radiation. Upper atmosphere heating due to increases in Ultra-violet radiation is a factor in global warming. There may be some “lag time” for the heating of the upper atmosphere after a period of low, or no, solar ultra-violet radiation.
“No sunspots = no UV radiation.”
Less, not “no”.
“Upper atmosphere heating due to increases in Ultra-violet radiation is a factor in global warming.”
Nothing to do with GW. The heating of the stratosphere a tad more via UV in higher sunspots has no effect on surface temps.
Just normal cyclic behaviour via interaction with O3.
“There may be some “lag time” for the heating of the upper atmosphere after a period of low, or no, solar ultra-violet radiation.”
No lag, except where in the Earth’s shadow … as is the case in the NH polar night.
Reduced UV then impacts the equatorial belt and lessens the delta T from there to the pole (Stratospheric Jet) and hence the strength of the Strat polar vortex.
This along with other bottom-up factors can lead to SSW’s (sudden stratospheric warming) events that lead to polar air excursions to more southern latitudes.
However warmer air is also drawn up into the Arctic and is just the movement of energy in the climate system. Not a net cooling.
A question. Does the variation in sun spots/UV show up in the so-called ozone hole?
good question r2dtoo. ren would be the man to ask.very intermittent commentator though,and doesn’t often answer questions,more makes statements.
That the the second half of the seventeenth century and the 1690’s in particular was an exceptionally cold interval is known from a large number of historical sources, as is the very abrupt amelioration after 1715. I particularly recommend Ladurie’s “Times of feast, times of famine” and Lamb’s “Climate history and the Modern World”, both written at a time when climate history was still a science, one by a very eminent historian and one by an almost equally eminent climatologist.
So it is not a matter of Scottish tree-rings at all. There is even an instrumental series that goes that far back, the famous CET (Central English Temperature). The less well-known Uppsala series starts in 1722, so it is too short for the 1690’s minimum, but it does show the very warm interval following in 1720’s-1730’s.
The very cold interval around 1810 (The Dalton minimum) is attested in several instrumental series (e. g. CET, De Bilt, Berlin, Uppsala, Stockholm, St Petersburg, Torneå) as well as a vast number of historical sources.
tty:
“The very cold interval around 1810 (The Dalton minimum)”
This was caused by a VEI6 volcanic eruption circa 1809 (unknown location, identified by high sulfate levels in ice cores).
As were ALL of the other minimums.
I dispute that one can calculate the VEI rating of an eruption at an “unknown location” from an ice core at a known location.
How do you get from there to a sweeping generalisation about “ALL of the other minimums “?
Greg:
The sulfate levels in the Ice cores were typical of other known VEI6 eruptions, allowing the estimate to be made (reportedly 818 ppb, in this instance).
The ONLY cause of decreased temperatures is increased amounts of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere, primarily of volcanic origin.
( As I have pointed out elsewhere, all proxy measurements of changes in solar activity are actually due to changing levels of volcanic SO2 in the atmosphere, which intercept much of the incoming cosmic radiation that forms the C and Be isotopes,and giving false impressions that solar activity has changed )
Burl,
The effects of volcanic eruptions vary greatly depending upon their location, not just their magnitude measured in cubic volume of ejecta. The amount of S released also is important.
But not even the mightiest Holocene eruptions have affected climate for decades, as do solar minima.
‘John Tillman:
“But not even the mightiest Holocene eruptions have affected climate for decades, as do solar minima”
1. No, but strings of large volcanic eruptions, as happened following the Roman Warming period, and during the Little Ice Age affected temperatures for decades.
2. The alleged “solar minima”cooling was actually due to volcanic eruption cooling, rather than any change in solar output.
Burl,
1) There weren’t really more large eruptions per century during the LIA or Dark Ages Cool Period than during the Roman, Medieval and Modern Warm Periods. The VEI relies on mass of ejecta rather than S molecules, so is only very roughly indicative of climatic effects, but here are the numbers of VEI 6 and 7 eruptions per AD century, based upon that index (earlier centuries perhaps not as well sampled; period dates approximate):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Quaternary_volcanic_eruptions#1_to_1000_AD
Roman WP (began BC)
1st: two 6
2nd: none discovered or recorded
3rd: one 6, one 7 (AD 230 +/-16)
4th: none discovered or recorded
5th: one 6
Dark Ages CP
6th: one 6 (540 +/- 100, so possibly in RWP)
7th: one 6
8th: two 6?
9th: none discovered or recorded
MWP (some would assign 901-950 to DACP)
10th: one 6 (930 +/- 200!), one 7 (969 +/1 20)
11th: none discovered or recorded
12th: none discovered or recorded
13th: one 6, one possible 7 (1257)
14th: none discovered or recorded
LIA
15th: one 6, one possible 7 (1452-53)
16th: two 6
17th: two 6
18th: two 6
1H 19th: one possible 6, one 7 (Tambora, 1815)
Modern WP
2H 19th: one 6 (Krakatoa, 1883)
20th: three 6
Now I guess you could look at VEI 4 and 5 eruptions to try to make a case for more S compounds in the air of cool periods, but those typically produce pretty small amounts, which rain out locally, rather than be injected high enough in the atmosphere to circle the globe. And I’m not sure that there actually were more, for example, in the LIA than MWP.
2) Variations in the solar cycle before telescopic observations can be reconstructed using 14C and 10Be isotopes, as shown by WEA and Leif’s work.
PS: I assigned the VEI 6 eruption of Mount Churchill, Alaska to the 7th century, based upon its central date of AD 700, but it’s also ±/- 200 years. Similarly the possibly VEI 6 eruption of AD 800 +/50 on New Britain was assigned to the 8th century.
“at a time when climate history was still a science”
If we want to understand climate history we would be better off reading old newspaper reports than reading tree rings.
Thanks to all for the good commentary on this subject.
Tty,
Besides instrumental and proxy data, we also have historical documents in order to reconstruct climate.
As you note, it has long been observed that low sunspot numbers coincide not only with cool intervals but with the Four Horsemen of the Solar Minima: famine, war, pestilence and societal collapse.
The Wolf Minimum has been assigned both to the Medieval Warm Period and the LIA. It should surprise no one that, starting from peak MWP warmth, it took a while for the cooling effect of this relatively minor solar minimum to kick in. The Spoerer was not only deeper and lasted longer, but hit in an already cooling world. That goes double for the even deeper and longer Maunder. The rapid recovery on the 18th century made the impact of the less dramatic Dalton even less severe.
The Wolf struck during the “worst century” (in Europe and many other places), the 14th, which began with the Great Famine, continued with start of the Hundred Years’ War, followed by the Black Death. In Europe, society didn’t collapse, but proto-Protestants challenged Catholic orthodoxy in England (Lollards) and Hungary (Hussites). Had climate not recovered in the second half of the 14th century, Christian Europe might have suffered collapse, comparable to that which struck during the Dark Ages Cool Period, following the Roman WP, or that of the Greek Dark Ages, after the Minoan WP.
Elsewhere in the world, civilizations did collapse, leading to folk migrations comparable to the barbarian invasions of Europe during the Dark Ages.
PS: Christian Europe didn’t completely collapse during the Dark Ages, either, but it contracted. That many Germanic invaders were already Christian, albeit heretical, helped. Then came the pagan Norse and Muslim Arab and Berber raiders and invaders. Neverheless, Eastern and Western Christendom recovered and expanded during the High Middle Ages, while Zoroastrian Sassanian Persia succumbed totally to Islamic conquerors from the Arabian Desert.
Put another way, the initial effect of a solar minimum will be modulated by the background climatic state or conditions under which it starts. Among a variety of other modulating factors, in addition of course to its own duration and depth.
Willis
Shift the temperature record back 150 to 200 years eyeballing it looks interestingly close, not that I think it means anything.
Craig
However, the other minima do not line up with much of anything….
Looks like they line up perfectly to me….when you consider how inaccurate tree rings are the further you go back…and also spots
It’s not that the tree rings don’t show it…..it’s that it’s almost impossible to get the dates right
I see two wiggly lines, no trends in either, and no cause effects in either.
Willis …. thank you for proving there is no Global Warming at all over the last 800 years, errr … at least if there was any global warming, it bipassed Scotland.
Scotland sits in the upper latitudes surrounded by water and its climate on a macro scale is primarily determined by the North Atlantic (NA). Since the predominant wind direction is west, when the NA is warm, Scotland is warmer. When the NA is cold, Scotland is colder.
Aside from the water moderating its climate and since Scotland sits so close to the Arctic, if you get blocking in the winter, the polar jet can drop south of it and the temperatures can get brutal. A northeast flow off the Arctic over snow covered land in January at 55N is not Miami.
With the satellite era, we now can get a very good idea of where the large warm and cold pools reside across the world’s oceans. And we also are getting a pretty good idea of how these pools can influence where the persistent highs and lows form during the winter, which directly influences the polar jet patterns especially in winter. We also know the wavelengths of light from the Sun changes when it is active or not, which also influences heating of the oceans.
Since the oceans are so big, contain 99% of the stored heat and takes a lot more time to heat up a degree than the air above it, if you increase or decrease the heating of the oceans from the Sun, it’s going to take quite a bit of time before you see it. Then you have to move the heat out of the lower latitudes into the upper ones to change the winds to form the resultant highs and lows.
So if get into a period of decreasing solar cycles, the oceans are heated less during each cycle’s low point. Allowing for feedbacks to further moderate the process I would think it would take some time to see the cooling. Since pulses of warm water would still come out of the tropics, there would be times of milder winter weather if the polar jet flattens. It would be a downtrend but not a very smooth one.
So is it plausible that reduced solar activity resulted in the longer minimums? I think yes but you aren’t going to produce two graphs that overlap showing it. There is going to be a lag and the lines up or down are going to be ragged.
Looks to me like tree rings are not a good way of determining past temperature. Why would we think they were?
The width of tree rings have more to do with the available water than temperature. Altitude, place, and sunlight. I don’t see how anyone can draw a conclusion about temperature from the width of tree rings. Did they compare the northern range of pine trees with the southern most range of the pine trees? Did they compare the highest level in altitude with the lowest? Hot and dry conditions will not expand the width of tree rings, while cooler and wetter will. That is not to say that trees will grow when the temperature goes below the temperature range for growth. But there is a range. And there are multiple ranges for trees to obtain growth. You can have years of temps during the growing season of near 100 F but little water, just enough to keep the tree alive. The width of the rings will be smaller. While the summers at 90 F or 80 F and wetter, the tree rings will be larger.