372 thoughts on “Sunspots, Verse 25”

1. Sir Frederick was not just a great astronomer, but musician and physicist. He discovered IR light:

   http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/classroom_activities/herschel_bio.html

2. “It’s 38°F, or 6°C” … no, 38F is just 3C

   • Fixed, thanks. I hate typos.

     w.

     • If you were a climate scientist you would state that 38F is 3.333C (recurring) as they seem to be able to extract more precision than mere mortals.

       Many thanks for continuing to educate us.

3. Logically, increased UV emissions from the Sun MUST increase heating in the upper atmosphere. What is the lag time for that heating to affect the rest of the biosphere???

   • It seems, UV has influence.

     https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspa.2009.0519

     https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-012-9181-3

     https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241606149_Solar_forcing_of_winter_climate_variability_in_the_Northern_Hemisphere

     • If UV changes do not affect both Atomsphere and Ocean heat content there is something wrong with physics & climate science.

       • Does UV radiation completely enter into atmosphere ? No.
         It heats the thermosphere – TCI is the respective dataset, to find at spaceweather.com

         • The highest energy UVC is absorbed by ozone. Some UVB is also blocked by the atmosphere. UVA however reaches the surface and penetrates seawater.

         • “Curiosity killed the cat”, i.e. there is a degree of danger in an unnecessary investigation or experimentation.
           http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/UAH-SSN.htm

       • If it heats the upper atmosphere that indicates it is getting blocked, therefore less reason to expect it heat the troposphere.

         Chances of heat in the rarified stratosphere being communicated to the surface are near zero. That is not a problem with physics.

         What I would expect to see is times when the stratosphere cools, a few years after a major eruption, that some effect of this energy now entering the lower climate system may be seen.

         • While the thermsphere is strongly cooling b’cause of reduced UV, the complete atmosphere is shrinking, and expanding while the thermosphere is heating during increasing UV radiation.

         • Greg

           If the ozone captures incoming radiation then 50% of it will be emitted in the downward as direction as IR. That’s not to say it will reach the surface but some it will. The average distance travelled through the atmosphere is 1.8 times the thickness so some of it will add to downward radiation of IR.

           If it creates additional ozone, that alters the radiative balance too.

       • A C Osborn, it depends on the magnitude of the change (watts) how much the effect. Tiny magnitude change = tiny change. And upper atmosphere is not lower atmosphere. It’s been well known that sunspot activity heats & expands the high, extremely thin upper atmosphere (thin, which means it has almost insignificant heat-content).

     • Thanks, Krishna. Your second paper says that winters in Eurasia are colder when solar activity is low. However, this is not reflected in Figure 2 above. Admittedly this is the full year data, but if there is an effect in a quarter of the year, it should show up and it hasn’t.

       Also … the author for unknown reasons seems to think that Herschel was right.

       In the third paper they say “Here we drive an ocean-atmosphere climate model with ultraviolet irradiance variations based on these observations.” HELP! GET ME OUT OF HERE! Model results are MEANINGLESS for this question.

       The first paper was an overview of the science, and AFAICT, comes to the conclusion that nobody has shown much.

       w.

     • Krisha, I looked at the claim that in Eurasia the winters are colder when there is low sunspots. Berkeley Earth data says not true.

       

       I’ll add it to the head post.

       w.

       • I see there some dark blue parts in the northern part, norhern America and as it seems Europe

         • Krishna, since those are negative, it means the area was warmer, not colder as the study claims.

           w.

       • BEST? Surely you jest.

         What actual data do they have for high northern latitudes, and to what tortures have they subjected whatever observations they do have?

         • Hey, point to the dataset that you think I should use, I’m happy to oblige. As to Berkeley Earth, they use the records of something like 28,000 stations. You have more?

           w.

         • Again, I ask, how many stations, of what quality and duration in the Arctic and nearby regions?

           If I were doing it, I’d find the best high latitude stations I could, however few, and look at how their observations have been handled.

           BEST, like GISS, is anti-science fantasy not fit for purpose. HadCRU isn’t much better, if any.

         • Willis, my understanding is that datasets such as BEST have used various methodologies to produce their data, including homogenisation. I would therefore suggest finding a reasonable number of stations and use the original data as far as possible. That will not give a global view, but if you have a decent number of stations, surely any signal should appear?

         • Phoenix44 February 5, 2020 at 4:00 am

           Willis, my understanding is that datasets such as BEST have used various methodologies to produce their data, including homogenisation. I would therefore suggest finding a reasonable number of stations and use the original data as far as possible. That will not give a global view, but if you have a decent number of stations, surely any signal should appear?

           You’d think so, but I’ve looked at both individual and global data with no joy …

           w.

         • John Tillman February 4, 2020 at 2:13 pm

           Again, I ask, how many stations, of what quality and duration in the Arctic and nearby regions?

           If I were doing it, I’d find the best high latitude stations I could, however few, and look at how their observations have been handled.

           BEST, like GISS, is anti-science fantasy not fit for purpose. HadCRU isn’t much better, if any

           First, BEST is only one of more than two dozen datasets I’ve looked at.

           Next, I’m looking for global data. Hey, just had a thought, how about the UAH MSU lower troposphere temperature data? Hang on …

           …

           

           Same result as all of the others. Which is to say, no sign of a sunspot-temperature connection.

           Happy now?

           w.

   • The lag time is something that cannot be quantified without knowing all the other (significant) variables; which are not known and possibly may not be known.

     The lag time will vary & may ‘overlap’ other lag times depending on season, outside (cosmic) influence, and internal (geothermal, volcanoes, etc) influence. Seems overlapping lag times (if there be such) will be hard to parse out.

     (or maybe it is 15.8 months)

4. Willis, you’ve highlighted the data problem at the end of the tracks for the recurring debate on solar cycles. If there is a relationship between solar cycles and weather and it took groupings of three or more cycles to gin up the effect in oceans, would we be able to see it with periodograms given the small numbers of those groupings as data points?

   e.g. SC 12-16 vs. SC 17 – 23

   Perhaps a logit model would work if you can assemble more data.

   Not to rush you or anything but the world is in dire need of some answers.

   • RG, that’s why I took this tack. The Berkeley Earth data covers 70 years or so, which should reveal any longer-term effect.

     However … still looking.

     w.

     • Again I’ll direct you to Leif’s prediction slide no. 18 for the multi-cycle episodes in the past. It’s a major data challenge.

       https://leif.org/research/Prediction-of-SC25.pdf

5. Low solar does change the atmosphere compared to higher solar periods. The light spectrum coming from the Sun changes. There are more cosmic rays reaching the Earth during low solar and the two recent extended cold periods (Maunder and Dalton) were during extended low sunspot periods. So sunspots seem to have an effect.

   But 11 years is a very short time to register an effect on the Earth’s climate with all the feedback mechanisms in place especially with the ability of the oceans to moderate any effect. Looking for an immediate effect to me is a fool’s errand. Warm water created from an active Sun takes years to dissipate, but if an inactive Sun doesn’t replace it at the current level the overall trend will be down but slowly.

   We have gone through a period of a very active Sun and the oceans have warmed. As the Sun changes to a lower activity, one would expect them to cool. But as it took a while to warm, it will take a while to cool. Personally I think you need an extended period of inactivity to see the cooling and when the Sun becomes active again and the process repeats. Just my theory anyway.

   • “especially with the ability of the oceans to moderate any effect.”

     Seem sensible. It is said that CO₂ change lags about 800 years a corresponding atmospheric temperature change. Thus it would not surprise me if ocean temperature is first seen 800 years after corresponding TSI change.

     • Carl Friis-Hansen February 4, 2020 at 7:18 am

       “especially with the ability of the oceans to moderate any effect.”

       Seem sensible. It is said that CO₂ change lags about 800 years a corresponding atmospheric temperature change. Thus it would not surprise me if ocean temperature is first seen 800 years after corresponding TSI change.

       People keep claiming that somehow a change in the sun won’t show up in ocean temperature for years and years. But consider the annual changes. Here’s temperate North Pacific.

       

       Since due to changes in incoming solar the temperature can swing up and down by eight degrees in a single year, and changes by 3.7°C in a single month … why on earth would a sunspot signal not show up for 800 years?

       Sorry, not buying the “thermal mass” excuse.

       w.

       • Willis – You can’t dispute the skin temperature of the ocean can change significantly during the seasons in the mid and upper latitudes. You have Siberia and Northern Canada feeding arctic air over it for 5 months. The Chesapeake Bay goes from the upper 30’s F to mid 80’s from winter to summer.. but it is only at most 60′ deep with a couple of exceptions. Not a lot of mass there. But go off the eastern shore where it is much deeper and the water temperatures are 15-20 degrees warmer.

         The Gulf of Alaska has been exceptionally warm the past few years and is only now getting back to normal temperatures. It didn’t warm up due to the Sun in place, it warmed up from tropical water being pushed there. But once there it has survived two winters. What is the average water temperature off California during the year? Pretty consistent. Hint: https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/cwtg/cpac.html

         The shallow water right off North Carolina gets quite cold during the winter. You park an arctic air mass over it and the surface water will turn cold pretty quickly (but so will the air warm)., Go 40 miles off Hatteras and it is near 80. And from there to Africa it is toasty all year.

         I guess your point is that 800 years is too long. Well, yes. But if you have an heat source that is oscillating over 11 years radiating into a huge volume of water, you aren’t going to be heating it up very fast when it is hot nor watching it cool down very fast when it is not.

         • rbabcock February 4, 2020 at 11:23 am

           I guess your point is that 800 years is too long. Well, yes. But if you have a heat source that is oscillating over 11 years radiating into a huge volume of water, you aren’t going to be heating it up very fast when it is hot nor watching it cool down very fast when it is not.

           Why not? Seems to me it will heat up and cool down just as fast as it does in the graph, that is to say, with about a two-month lag. There’s no physical reason I can think of why monthly, yearly, and decadal changes in insolation would heat or cool differently.

           w.

         • Willis- how about the same graph for ocean temperature swings for 55 SOUTH 180 WEST?

         • rbabcock February 4, 2020 at 3:40 pm

           Willis- how about the same graph for ocean temperature swings for 55 SOUTH 180 WEST?

           We’re a full service website.

           

           w.

       • Willis, I agree you may see an immediate signal, but I cannot escape thinking of it in the same way as supplying a capacitor a varying DC volatage via a resistor.
         Lets say the time constant for the circuit is 500 years (66% of final voltage) you will see a very small voltage change on the capacitor every year, very small.
         Yes, the surface water will change temperature fast, but the propagation to the whole water mass takes time and “dilutes” the surface water temperature.

         Thus in the case of the sunspot cycle, I would guess it should be possible to see the fingerprint in the upper layers of the oceans. Then again differentiating this from ocean currents and vertical convection may be extremely difficult.
         The oscillation you present in graph, isn’t that the PDO?

         • Carl, we can clearly see both monthly and annual changes in ocean temperature due to changing insolation. As a result, I find it highly unlikely that we would not see the same on a decadal scale.

           In addition, look at the graphs—there is no effect visible on either the land or the ocean. So claims about the ocean, even if true, don’t explain a lack of effect on the land.

           w.

       • Willis, I see your point more clearly now.
         It may show how efficient the automatic thermostat is 🙂

         • Carl Friis-Hansen February 4, 2020 at 2:02 pm

           Willis, I see your point more clearly now.
           It may show how efficient the automatic thermostat is 🙂

           Thanks, Carl. That’s my theory exactly. The earth is no more responsive to slight changes in solar forcing than it is to slight changes in CO2 forcing. Why? Because the relevant emergent phenomena such as dust devils, the timing of the emergence of the daily cumulus field, and thunderstorms all have temperature thresholds controlling their emergence, and not forcing thresholds.

           w.

       • Interesting, and as the increase in energy from sun rise causes the temperature to increase by 10 C in a few hours, so the increased energy from CO2 takes immediate affect.

         There is no CO2 thermal lag either.

       • But do you think you are looking for a weak signal in a short time frame with a lot of other factors chaotically driving the system?

         For example, we know CO2 is a GH gas, we know it causes warming, but finding a correlation between CO2 and temperature, even over double the period you looked at, is impossible.

         We do know cosmic rays cause clouds, CERN not only demonstrated the mechanism, but cloud chambers taken up mountains respond to cosmic rays the way they do to other radiation, as you might have seen in your physics lab at school. And clouds are albedo…

         • Matthew, if there were a solar signal, it would have an ~ 11 year signal. Yes, lots of things can affect it … but it won’t just disappear.

           I’ve looked in several places for any cloud response to sunspot forcing … nothing. See here, here, and here for clouds in the US, Ireland, and Australia.

           Like I said … I’ve looked a whole lot of places for the sunspot signal without success. Heck, here’s a look at the long-term Scottish temperature versus everyone’s favorite, the Maunder and other solar minima.

           Once again … bupkis.

           w.

         • Kirkby stated that cosmic rays cause cloud condensation in the presence of biogenic vapors. He went on to say that in today’s atmosphere, due to pollution and sulfuric acid, that sulfuric acid is the primary means by which clouds are formed today.

           But…. that can only be true for the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere has only 10% of the world’s population and the air is pristine, not polluted.

           In the pristine southern hemisphere, cloud condensation nuclei are formed on biogenic vapors primarily from plankton. It is the southern hemisphere where cosmic rays are going to be the primary source of cloud formation. And the southern hemisphere is 80% ocean and much of the land is not accessible. So where are you going to get good
           temperature data in the southern hemisphere? You are not.

           If you want to disprove Svensmark’s theory, you are going to have to disprove it with data from the southern hemisphere where temperature records suck.

         • davidgmillsatty February 5, 2020 at 6:14 pm

           If you want to disprove Svensmark’s theory, you are going to have to disprove it with data from the southern hemisphere where temperature records suck.

           See above, where I do the analysis using the UAH MSU lower troposphere satellite data.

           w.

         • Do you really think 20 years of southern atmospheric and southern ocean data definitively answers the question? How about 150 years of data and particularly data taken at all depths of the ocean at many, many thousands of locations. The average depth of the oceans is about 10,000 feet and they cover 80% of the surface area of the southern hemisphere. Do you think that measurements from satellites are going to reliably measure this? Personally I think that is a f**king joke.

       • Something else that has a fairly regular seasonal change is poleward ocean heat transport.

       • Thank’s Willis.. now I see you pulled the old trick of changing the y-axis scale to make both graphs look equivalent. 🙂

       • But industrial gasses also seed clouds, couldn’t this hide the effect of sun spots?

         So lets say for a given humidity a cloud is formed by SO2, is there sufficient humidity left for the cloud to be made thicker by a cosmic ray? ie is there a saturation level, a cut off point such that the variation in cosmic rays is masked?

   • Not just moderate the effect, but provide their own influence. Given the short time frame of this particular analysis one could see any solar effects masked by the ENSO frequency and PDO/AMO timing. Add in volcano eruption effects and I suspect any small solar effects could easily be masked.

     • I’m sorry, Richard, but that’s just handwaving. Yes, it’s possible … but until you demonstrate that somehow ENSO and the rest totally counteract some putative solar signal in just the right way that the low and high sunspot times are exactly equal, I’m not buying it.

       w.

   • “Looking for an immediate effect to me is a fool’s errand.”

     Seems to me that over and above looking for immediate effects, Willis looks for periodicities with the same frequency as sunspots. That’s the Fourier and CEEMD analyses. Conceptually, that should — I think — show any periodicity similar to that of sunspots no matter what the lag. Actually, any periodicities at all as long as the sample time span is long enough to include a few cycles?

     • Yes. And I’m not clear why people think I’m looking for an “immediate effect”. When I break the solar signal into high and low times, each one is about 5-1/2 years long. That’s plenty of time for a lagged effect to show up.

       w.

   • Here’s a good link to part of a book by D.J. Easterbrook. It shows the correlation between low sunspot numbers during the Maunder Minimum and temperature.

     • commieBob, I fear that a) our knowledge of both sunspots and temperatures four hundred years ago is inadequate to support that claim, and b) there have been natural temperature and sunspot swings since forever. They’re bound to overlap at some point.

       w.

       • Actually, folks have been paying close attention to sunspots for the last 400 years.

         The best record of the behaviour of the Sun is available for the last four centuries thanks to the observations of sunspots with telescope. These observations allow us to know the number, position, and area of sunspots as well as some specific episodes like the Maunder Minimum, optical flares, etc. link

         • Per SILSO, we have records of daily spots since 1818, monthly spots since 1749, and annual spots since 1700. That’s 320 years, not four centuries.

           w.

         • The record has been extended back in time 1610, using earlier telescopic observations of the sun.

           https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml

         • Don’t know about you, but I find an uncited, unreferenced JPEG to be less than convincing …

           w.

         • NASA is lying, then? OK, could be. GISS does.

           But then I guess you haven’t been reading Dr. Svalgaard’s site. He says that the radioisotope record supports his group’s SSN reconstruction for over 400 years, ie to the beginning of telescopic observations.

           https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.07061.pdf

         • John Tillman February 4, 2020 at 5:08 pm

           NASA is lying, then? OK, could be. GISS does.

           Not sure why you conclude that NASA is lying. I certainly never said that, but hey, your beliefs are beyond me. All I said was that I don’t trust uncited JPEGs, but if you do, hele on …

           But then I guess you haven’t been reading Dr. Svalgaard’s site. He says that the radioisotope record supports his group’s SSN reconstruction for over 400 years, ie to the beginning of telescopic observations.

           https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.07061.pdf

           I just read your link, thanks. I find NOTHING in there about sunspot counts prior to 1700. So it does NOT support the uncited JPEG.

           w.

         • Willis,

           You must not have read The link. At the outset it says that the isotope record confirms observations for over 400 years.

           Your unwillingness to accept reality staring you in the face, when it disagrees with your fixed ideas and prejudices, is why it’s pointless to present you with papers.

           You’ll make up some lame, bogus excuse for rejecting the most sound statistical analysis.

           Please show me I’m wrong. Read the growing recent literature on solar cycle effects on the East Asian Summer Monsoon, at time scales from annual to multi-millennial, to include the quasi 11-year cycle.

           Here’s just one of dozens, looking at different intervals, using various statistical techniques and data, to include proxies, eg ostracod shells and caves.

           http://www.aloki.hu/pdf/1702_40674080.pdf

           I’d urge you to read up on the papers in just one meteorological and climatic phenomenon, if you don’t have time Or inclination to study the whole subject. The Indian Monsoon has a similar if older body of literature.

         • John Tillman February 4, 2020 at 7:22 pm

           Willis,

           You must not have read The link. At the outset it says that the isotope record confirms observations for over 400 years.

           Willis Eschenbach February 4, 2020 at 5:56 pm

           I just read your link, thanks. I find NOTHING in there about sunspot counts prior to 1700. So it does NOT support the uncited JPEG.

           w.

           John, I saw that. What I did NOT see is what I said above, anything about actual sunspot counts prior to 1700. If you can give me the page number where it says we have anything but very occasional and very intermittent individual sunspot counts pre-1700, that would be great.

           w.

   • Indeed rbabcock, but also …
     Some at NASA have identified a solar effect on our upper atmosphere.
     https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/15jul_thermosphere/

     Now I wonder how that really pans out in affecting our weather and climate?

     • Explanation to TCI
       I mentioned above

     • tom, as an amateur radio operator (H44WE) I’ve been aware since I was a kid that the ionosphere is affected by sunspots.

       However, despite extensive research, I haven’t found any surface weather datasets that show such a linkage.

       Still looking …

       w.

       • Hi Willis,

         You said “I haven’t found any surface weather datasets that show such a linkage.”

         So that got me thinking… I looked at your list of other sunspot posts to see if I could spot (ha ha) any weather phenomena that a) might plausibly be affected by variations in SSN but which b) you hadn’t covered.

         Lightning. You’ve not done lightning.

         So that’s it, the missing sunspot heat (and cold) is hiding in the lightning.

         Over to you, Sir!

         • Julian, that’s the best laugh I’ve had all week … however, if I had a long-term lightning dataset, I’d love to check it out. I say this because there are some indications that at least some lightning strikes are caused or facilitated by cosmic rays … go figure, huh?

           w.

         • Excellent! We’ve done it! Now all that’s needed is to find the data to prove it!

           With all good wishes

           Julian.

6. Willis, maybe a stupid question but shouldn’t the datasets be detrended for this type of analysis?
   Love your stuff btw.

   • Lee, on my planet the only stupid questions are the ones you don’t ask, because then you don’t learn …

     The answer is, since we’re dividing them into high and low sunspot months, that division occurs at both earlier lower temperatures and later higher temperatures. So there’s no need to detrend them.

     The CEEMD analysis breaks out the trend as a separate Empirical Mode, so there’s no need to detrend that either.

     w.

7. I have a layman’s question. Is there a correlation between eruptions VEI 3 or greater and sunspots? I have an unsophisticated awareness that volcanism produces huge numbers of earthquakes that hardly ever reach 5 and it would be nearly impossible to manage a data set of all of them. Another question please, is there any relationship between the frequency of VEI 3 or larger and earthquakes 6 and greater? If there is no relationship between Sunspots and VEI and VEI and +6 earthquakes then any discussion I would want to have would be moot. I am aware that heat from below the crust has been demonstrated to have minimal impact (global averages) on SST I am just not certain if those statistics are so flat that it misses anomalies during solar minimum. I simply don’t have the knowledge…as a climate hobbyist (climate science is a great hobby for social workers). Unfortunately, we do not have continuous gravitational variance monitoring. Would be an excellent variable to put in the mix. Thanks for you patience everything I have learned about climate and geology I learned reading WUWT and Jon Friman since 2008.

   • Laywoman’s question to go along with yours…As I’ve read it, the mechanism for volcanic eruption is increased cosmic rays that excite silica rich magma, not all volcanoes equally during lower solar activity. I’ve included an article link (albeit a little dated).

     https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1342937X10001966

     • Not to bring up Svensmark again, but geomagnetism, associated with solar magnesphere effects are reputed to have an effect on volcanism.

   • Jeff, I looked at that in a post listed above. Let me encourage people to look through the list of posts above before asking. Hang on … OK, there are actually two of them above, “Volcanoes and Sunspots“, and “Early Sunspots and Volcanoes“.

     w.

   • Would axis precessional forces change magma pressures and cause periodic volcanism resulting in hot plumes and “blobs” of warm water drifting off into the oceans?

     ironbrian

     • Ironbrain, I looked at that very question in a post called “Tides, Earthquakes, and Volcanoes”

       Like I said … I’ve looked a lot of places for a lot of things.

       w.

     • Given the vast influence of the sun’s gravity on the Earth, you would probably be better off looking at changes in the sun’s mass as an influence on the Earth crust. We all know how the Moon changes the shape of the Earth through gravity, and we theorise about the effects of both Jupiter and Saturn on their moons, so i would guess that changes in the sun’s gravity might affect the Earth.

       • Phoenix, the sun’s gravitational field is included in the tidal forces that I detailed in the post linked to just above.

         w.

8. So once again it appears that the “Science” is most definitely NOT settled

   Which is just as science always should be

   Thanks again Willis for your thoroughness

   • My pleasure, Jim.

     w.

9. OT – apologies Willis – I’ll read your post now.

   Mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare, who fought in the Congo and inspired the movie The Wild Geese, has died aged 100, his son has said.
   https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/mercenary-who-inspired-movie-wild-geese-dies-aged-100/ar-BBZCYBo

   Several decades ago, I was asked to participate in an business venture in which Mike Hoare was a principal. I declined. I regret that decision – I would have liked to know him. RIP Mike.

   • Mike Hoare was also a prominent character in one of W.E.B. Griffen’s Brotherhood of War novels, relating his role in the joint US-Belgian Operation Dragon Rouge to rescue civilian hostages trapped in the Stanleyville by the Simba rebellion in 1964. I don’t remember now exactly which novel in the series covered that episode, but it was either The New Breed or The Aviators.

   • I’ve read a bit about Mad Mike, some of his exploits were legendary.

     w.

   • That brings back memories. I had a cousin who joined the mercenaries and fought in the Congo. He spoke very highly of Mike.

10. Wills, on a separate issue – have you looked the effect of submarine volcanoes and hydrothermal vents ? I remember this was discussed here quite a few years ago and the conclusion was that there was too few to make a difference. But over the past few years, there has been an exponential increase in the discovery of thousands of new volcanoes and hydrothermal vents. And it’s now believed there are at least million and maybe as many as 10 million ! I think that is worth a look again. Millions of vents spewing 400 degree waters must have a pretty big impact on the climate. Also – last year there was submarine volcano near Madagascar (the Mayotte volcano) that went off, and in less than 6 months created a huge undersea volcano 800 metres high and 5km wide. If that had gone off on the surface, we would have called it a supervolcano.
    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/ship-spies-largest-underwater-eruption-ever

    • ggm, I’ve had this or similar questions asked of me when I was blogging regularly about sea surface temperature and ocean heat content. As far as I know, there are no long-term datasets on the output of submarine volcanoes and hydrothermal vents.

      If you know of one, please provide a link.

      Regards,
      Bob

      • No Bob, the data is shockingly bad. It sounds like we have very little idea what is down there and how active it is. But it seems logical that if there are a million+ submarine volcanoes and hydrothermal vents, then that would be adding a hell of a lot of heat into the oceans. Infact, could this be the main (or a major) source of the ocean’s heat.

        • Probably not the main source, or even close otherwise there probably would have never been a snowball earth a few times in the long term past. But I do think we have no idea how much additional heating that undersea vulcanism and hydrothermal venting of hot water does increase SST. And if that goes in some type of cycle that we don’t yet understand, then that throws a small monkey wrench into fully and completely understanding the majority of heating which mainly arrives via sunlight in its various frequencies. How all this works out in the end is going to be real interesting and geothermal heating via undersea processes might make some type of difference when we understand things better.

        • Seem to remember a piece by Bob many moons ago where this came up.

          Although it may be short term warming there was a very obvious plume of warm water emanating from Iceland and it was questioned.

          I tend to agree that we know far too little about submarine thermal activity but this monster…

    • How long have the volcanoes and vents been doing their thing?
      Maybe they mostly shut down and caused the Little Ice Age.
      Then, they started again and Earth warmed.
      Have they been doing more or less recently, say since Ford began making V8 engines?

      I find the issue interesting Earth Science. “Climate Science” — I don’t think so.

      • Huh? Now your claim is that volcanoes make the world warmer?

        w.

    • And even if the output is constant (which I doubt), the locations change over time, due to tectonic movement. The movement is not quick, but it certainly adds to the complexity fo what we try and model over long time periods,

11. Early in my personal search for knowledge this paper by Alexander was helpful: http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/solar-cycles/Alexanderetal2007.pdf

12. AMO anomalies shift in and out of phase with sunspot cycles, because the lows in solar wind speed/pressure do. With stronger solar wind conditions associated with colder AMO states, and weaker solar wind conditions associated with warmer AMO states.

    http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/esrl-amo/from:1880/mean:13/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1880/normalise

    And if you can open this it verifies an inverse correlation between solar wind speed and North Atlantic SST changes.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364682616300360

    • Ulric Lyons February 4, 2020 at 6:56 am

      AMO anomalies shift in and out of phase with sunspot cycles …

      Pick any cycle with a period from say 8 to 14 years. Unless it is actually driven by the sunspots, it will “shift in and out of phase with sunspot cycles”. Even a perfectly regular 11-year cycle does that. You found one that does. Color me unimpressed.

      w.

      • I am unimpressed with your irrelevant response. It’s not patently not a regular cycle. AMO anomalies inversely follow the sunspot cycle length for 3-4 cycles during the warm AMO phase, and then takes typically half a sunspot cycle to shift phase, and then directly follows sunspot cycle length during the cold AMO phase for a couple of cycles.

        • Ulric, every word that I said is true. Almost any cycle will act as you say the AMO acts, going into and out of phase with sunspots. I know you don’t like that, but its a fact, and calling it “irrelevant” doesn’t make it so.

          But heck, let me take a look at the two datasets … hang on …

          …

          OK, here are the spectra of the CEEMD of sunspots and the AMO:

          

          As you can see, although the AMO data has energy in a long-period cycle centered out at about eighty years, there’s no energy in Empirical Mode C3, the decadal mode where the sunspots have all of their power. Taking a closer look at Empirical Mode C3, we find the following:

          

          You can see why the AMO has little power in the decadal mode where sunspots have their power. It wanders all over the place, grows and shrinks, and varies in frequency. Yes, it goes into and out of phase with sunspots … but that’s a bug, not a feature as you claim.

          w.

          • It is irrelevant and a complete distraction, and a bug. AMO anomalies are locked to solar cycles, so it is not a case of a different length cycle drifting in and out of phase with solar cycles. And the phase transition periods are short. During the cold AMO phase, AMO anomalies are always the coldest close to sunspot minimum, because the solar wind is stronger there, and is the weakest at sunspot maximum as in 1969 and 1979-80. During the warm AMO phase, AMO anomalies are never the coldest around sunspot minimum, because the solar wind is usually weaker there.
            And if you want to split hairs about noise detail in the AMO anomalies be aware that there are lagged feedbacks from El Nino in many of the warm AMO pulses.

            http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/esrl-amo/from:1880/mean:13/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1880/normalise

13. Willis Eschenbach

    “Anyhow, the idea I had was to divide monthly gridded temperature datasets into months where the sunspots were higher than the median sunspot number for the period, and months where sunspots were lower than that media median. ” ?

    Great post Willis

14. I seem to remember a Brazilian analysis of river levels which correlated well will solaire output.

    • Also rainfall there, unsurprisingly.

    • Stephen, see “Sunny Spots Along The Parana River“, and “Noise Assisted Data Analysis“.

      w.

15. I disagree with your hypo Willis. The Sun-global temperature relationship is apparent but messy because the PDO (and AMO) and ENSO induce complications.

    See Sections 11 and 12 in this paper – re Shaviv and Soon.

    THE CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (CAGW) AND THE HUMANMADE CLIMATE CHANGE CRISES ARE PROVED FALSE
    By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc.(Eng.), M.Eng., January 10, 2020
    https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/the-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming-cagw-and-the-humanmade-climate-change-crises-are-proved-false.pdf

    • Willis’ periodogram shows a peak in SST at about 8.5y. This is likely 8.85y which is a lunar period.

      https://judithcurry.com/2016/01/11/ace-in-the-hole/

      Attempts to find a solar signal are notorious for drifting in and out of phase with SSN. That is because at best it is no stronger than the totally ignored lunar effects.

      • Greg, your cite says:

        “The circa 9 y peak is centred on 9.07 years. It is noted that this is exactly the mean frequency corresponding to 8.85 y and 9.3 y, both of which are lunar cycles. The 8.85 y period corresponds to the precession of the lunar apsides and 9.3 y is half the nodal precession period.”

        I have two problems with that. First, why would the gradual rotation of the main axis of the lunar orbit, or the precession of the ascending nodes, have any effect on any weather on the earth??? I see no conceivable way that could happen.

        Next, there are literally dozens and dozens of cycles related to the moon. Typical tidal prediction programs use up to 150! So if you take half of some period A and average it with some period B, you can match up with just about anything.

        w.

    • Allan, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that sorry excuse, “Really, the signal is there, honest it is, but it’s hidden by the PDO/NAO/ENSO/QBO/SOI/MEI/ETC” … sorry, not buying it. If the signal is there, it’s there, and if you can’t find it, that’s just science.

      w.

      • Willis – Repeating from above:
        “See Sections 11 and 12 in this paper – re Shaviv and Soon.” The figures depict their data. I find their data compelling, but a bit messy – kind of like nature.

        I’ve spoken with both Nir and Willie and also drank a lot of beer with Willie in Calgary, so I have confidence in their integrity. I also spent four hours talking shop with Willie and Sallie Baliunas in Boston this summer – malheureusement, it was too early for beer.

        I’ve also examined this specific problem in some detail, and the Pacific Ocean has a ~3-year period ENSO that occasionally erupts into a major El Nino (1998, 2016) that sheds a ton of heat and totally messes up the solar-temperature relationship, and the longer PDO does so as well. So there is not a pretty correlation for very good reasons, but the correlation is there.

        • Thanks, Allen. I looked at that a while ago. Just videos. Pass.

          Sorry, but I don’t do science videos. They generally don’t have citations. They move far too slowly. I can’t either skim them or search them. They’re too fuzzy to digitize the graphs. Also, I get sucked in by the passive medium and I find it affects my bad number detector and my critical thinking as a whole.

          I don’t like videos in general, and scientific videos are the worst.

          If you have links to actual science by either one rather than pretty pictures and uncited claims, posting them would be good.

          w.

          • yup. but hey have a few beers and the science is settled

          • Response for Willis:
            ___________________________
            Allan
            Sorry for the slow reply. I was traveling and only now cleaning my mailbox.

            Here are several papers:

            These are two papers that show that the amount of heat going into the oceans every solar cycle is huge (an order of magnitude more than just changes in the solar irradiance).
            Paper I: http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/%7Eshaviv/articles/CalorimeterFinal.pdf
            Shaviv, N. J. 2008. Using the oceans as a calorimeter to quantify the solar radiative forcing.Journalof Geophysical Research (Space Physics),113(A12), 11101.

            Paper II: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JA020732/abstract
            Howard, Daniel, Shaviv, Nir J., & Svensmark, Henrik. 2015. The solar and Southern Oscillationcomponents in the satellite altimetry data.Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics,120(5), 3297–3306. 2014JA020732

            This is a more recent graph using ocean heat content, showing exactly the same thing (though not in a refereed paper):
            https://twitter.com/nshaviv/status/1182704967242661891

            I also suggest you take a look at my blog post from last summer in which I discuss why the arguments against a strong solar forcing are incorrect.
            http://www.sciencebits.com/solar-debunking-arguments-are-defunct

            Cheers
            — Nir

          • ALLAN MACRAE February 14, 2020 at 5:47 pm Edit

            Response for Willis:
            ___________________________
            Allan
            Sorry for the slow reply. I was traveling and only now cleaning my mailbox.

            Here are several papers:

            These are two papers that show that the amount of heat going into the oceans every solar cycle is huge (an order of magnitude more than just changes in the solar irradiance).
            Paper I: http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/%7Eshaviv/articles/CalorimeterFinal.pdf
            Shaviv, N. J. 2008. Using the oceans as a calorimeter to quantify the solar radiative forcing.Journalof Geophysical Research (Space Physics),113(A12), 11101.

            Paper II: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JA020732/abstract
            Howard, Daniel, Shaviv, Nir J., & Svensmark, Henrik. 2015. The solar and Southern Oscillationcomponents in the satellite altimetry data.Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics,120(5), 3297–3306. 2014JA020732

            This is a more recent graph using ocean heat content, showing exactly the same thing (though not in a refereed paper):
            https://twitter.com/nshaviv/status/1182704967242661891

            I also suggest you take a look at my blog post from last summer in which I discuss why the arguments against a strong solar forcing are incorrect.
            http://www.sciencebits.com/solar-debunking-arguments-are-defunct

            Cheers
            — Nir

            Thanks, Alan. My problem with Nir’s work is that it is very difficult to replicate. I just started with the first paper. In Figure 4, he shows what he says is the average annual sea level rise from 24 tide gauges. So I get the 24 tide gauge records, and I take the first differences and I average them … and I get nothing at all like what he says. He says that the sea level rise varies between ~ +5 and -5 mm/year. The data from the 24 gauges, on the other hand, varies between +20 and -20 … so where do I go from there?

            So I looked at the second paper. It says that if we build a model with six tunable parameters, we can show that both solar and El Nino variations affect the sea level. Now, it’s well known that El Nino affects the sea level, so that part is a no-brainer. And as von Neumann explained, “With four parameters, I can fit an elephant, and with five parameters I can make him wiggle his trunk”.

            Finally, their data barely encompasses two sunspot cycles … and with two cycles of just about anything, you can find any spurious correlation you’re interested in.
            There are further problems with that paper, which I discuss below.

            So that paper doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

            Finally, the blog post that Nir references repeats the first two papers I just discussed, plus a third one. That one has no less than nine!! tunable parameters. Nine! Let me quote from Dyson’s comments:

            When I arrived in Fermi’s office, I handed the graphs to Fermi, but he hardly glanced at them. He invited me to sit down, and asked me in a friendly way about the health of my wife and our new-born baby son, now fifty years old. Then he delivered his verdict in a quiet, even voice.

            “There are two ways of doing calculations in theoretical physics”, he said. “One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating. The other way is to have a precise and self- consistent mathematical formalism. You have neither.”

            I was slightly stunned, but ventured to ask him why he did not consider the pseudoscalar meson theory to be a self- consistent mathematical formalism. He replied, “Quantum electrodynamics is a good theory because the forces are weak, and when the formalism is ambiguous we have a clear physical picture to guide us. With the pseudoscalar meson theory there is no physical picture, and the forces are so strong that nothing converges. To reach your calculated results, you had to introduce arbitrary cut-off procedures that are not based either on solid physics or on solid mathematics.”

            In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, “How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?” I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, “Four.” He said,

            “I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”

            With that, the conversation was over. I thanked Fermi for his time and trouble, and sadly took the next bus back to Ithaca to tell the bad news to the students.

            If you can’t fit the 20th century temperature with nine tunable parameters and a free choice of equation, you should go back to school. That is trivially easy.

            Sorry. I like Nir, he’s a good guy, but man, his science is simply not correct. I discussed the second paper he listed above in a post here, and I replied to his comments about my post here.

            So once again, as Gertrude Stein remarked … there’s no there there …

            w.

          • Thank you for your response Willis.

            Rather than hash this out here, let’s just agree to disagree. I have a lot of confidence in Nir and Willie and their work.

            Given the low solar intensity now, I expect some cooling, similar to what happened circa 2008-2009 at the end of SC 23. Global temperatures (UAH LT) remain moderately high, but we did experience a major crop failure in the Great Plains of the USA and Canada in the 2019 growing season, and record cold in the USA, Canada, India, etc.

            In 2002, I (we) predicted moderate global cooling to start by 2020-2030 based on low solar activity.

            As I have stated many times, I hope you are correct and I am wrong. Humanity and the environment suffer during cold periods.

            Regards, Allan

          • Allen, that works.

            Best to you and yours,

            w.

16. As others already pointed out: sun spots are just the symptom, not the cause. Also you should not expect temperatures to correlate to intra-cycle sun spots. Then I need to go back to a much older post..

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/23/maunder-and-dalton-sunspot-minima/

    “As you can see, there is very little support for the “solar minima cause cool temperatures” hypothesis in the CET. Just as in the Lamb winter severity data and the Berkeley Earth data, during both the Dalton and Maunder minima we see the temperature WARMING for the last part of the solar minimum. IF the cause is in fact a solar slump … then why would the earth warm up while the sun is still slumping? And in particular, in the CET the Dalton minimum ends up quite a bit warmer than it started … how on earth does this support the “solar slump” claim, that at the end of the Dalton minimum it’s warmer than at the start?”

    This quote is written under a chart that indicates ~0.7K cooling after the year 2000, which should give the answer anyhow. The Central England record shows a significant random variation (aka weather), where temperatures can move up or down against the prevailing trend. Since these variations obviously will not negate recent warming, why would they falsify the Maunder Minimum or the affiliated Little Ice Age? If you consider this aspect, the record is actually a good match with regard to the Maunder Minimum.

    Of course there are plently of witnesses of the Little Ice Age, like progressing alpine glaciers destroying villages, which did not go unnoticed or unrecorded, to name just one instance. But I guess that is not even at question.

    • Yet the three coldest periods were during the Maunder, Dalton, and Gleissberg solar minima.

      

      • Say what? That graphic doesn’t support your claim in the slightest. Average temperature in the “Dalton Minimum” is no different from the time on either side.

        w.

        PS—I put your graphic in-line for easier discussion.

        • There is nothing wrong with my claim in the slightest, one of the three coldest periods was patently during the Dalton minimum. I didn’t say anything about average.

          • Thanks, Ulrich, but if you want to say that the earth’s temperature was lower during period X, then you are absolutely talking about averages. A single cold spell doesn’t establish that.

            By your measure of single peaks, during the Dalton minimum, one of the four warmest peaks in the record occurred …

            w.

          • Your red smoothed line shows one of the three coldest periods in CET during the Dalton Minimum, between 1807 and 1817. The following warm peak wasn’t really in the Dalton minimum.

          • Ulric Lyons February 5, 2020 at 3:22 am

            Your red smoothed line shows one of the three coldest periods in CET during the Dalton Minimum, between 1807 and 1817. The following warm peak wasn’t really in the Dalton minimum.

            Ulric, if the Dalton Minimum is supposed to be cold, why did it start warming half-way through it? And yes, the following warm peak IS in the Dalton Minimum. You don’t get to change the time of the Minimum to fit your theories.

            I took another look at these elusive solar minima in a post called “Scottish Sunspots“. Here’s the money graph for that:

            

            Now, 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.

            So no, I’m not seeing the sunspot minima to temperature connection.

            Best regards,

            w.

          • “Ulric, if the Dalton Minimum is supposed to be cold, why did it start warming half-way through it? And yes, the following warm peak IS in the Dalton Minimum. You don’t get to change the time of the Minimum to fit your theories.”

            No the cold 1807-1817 is halfway through it, i.e. roughly between the peaks of solar cycles 5 &6. The idea (theory?) that the Dalton Minimum continues to around 1830 is incorrect. 1807-1817 is one of three coldest periods in CET according to your chart.

            “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.”

            The Wolf Minimum began around 1315 so your ‘money graph’ is counterfeit. Sporer as called was in fact two separate centennial solar minima, a very long one from close to 1425, and a shorter one from close to 1550. Which agrees with the temperature proxy.

            “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.”

            About 150 years before must have been a previous centennial minimum.

            “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.”

            Try looking at an instrumental temperature series rather than tree rings from Scotland, like CET, it has a slight warming trend from 1740 to the late 1700’s with the 1770’s being the warmest.

          • Ulrich, you claim that the Dalton is not what I’ve used. Heres the Encyclopedia Britannica on the subject:

            Dalton minimum, also called Modern minimum, period of reduced sunspot activity that occurred between roughly 1790 and 1830.

            And here’s what I’m using:

            

            If anything I’d say the Dalton should run longer, not shorter. But my point is, you don’t get to redefine the Dalton minimum so that it magically makes your theories work.

            w.

          • Ulric Lyons February 5, 2020 at 11:04 am

            Try looking at an instrumental temperature series rather than tree rings from Scotland, like CET, it has a slight warming trend from 1740 to the late 1700’s with the 1770’s being the warmest.

            First, in that post “Scottish Sunspots”, I compared the tree rings to the CET and they have good correlation.

            Next, why did I use the tree ring data and not the CET data? Well, because only one of the four solar minima (Wolf, Sporer, Maunder, Dalton) occurs during the time period of the CET.

            Finally, here’s the CET and the Dalton Minimum:

            

            Not seeing much of anything there …

            w.

          • Ulrich, here’s another look at the Dalton Minimum. I just went and got the daily temperature records of Stockholm, Sweden, from 1756 to 1858.

            

            Still not impressed.

            Also, I’m very skeptical of the CET because it is extensively spliced. There are no less than seventeen splices in the CET. Here’s a repeat of the graph of the 100 years I showed above, along with the nine splices in just that section.

            

            As you can see, there are two splices right in the area you claim demonstrates the temperature effect of the Dalton Minimum. So I’m sorry, but that’s very weak tea.

            w.

          • “Ulrich, you claim that the Dalton is not what I’ve used”

            I said “The idea (theory?) that the Dalton Minimum continues to around 1830 is incorrect.” I also think that including the second half of solar cycle 4 is ridiculous.

            Roughly between the sunspot maximums of solar cycles 5 & 6 is where most of the cold in Dalton minimum should be, the 1807-1817 period. That is when the solar wind was weakest. Page 11:
            https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a71c/9a8dc957a28064b9bda5d5e489ddf536fa67.pdf?_ga=2.203616336.1557254130.1581005629-1957606870.1581005629

          • Applying that theory to the Maunder Minimum, my findings on the planetary ordering indicate that the bulk of the cold for Europe should have been roughly between the sunspot cycle maximums at 1672 and 1705, which is what CET shows. Most of the 1650’s and 1660’s were warm to hot.

            https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat

            Many of the popular descriptions of the timing and duration of past centennial solar minima are assumptive and sloppy work, particularly with the Sporer Minimum.

        • Ulric, I give up. I showed you the Scottish data that contravenes your claim. I showed you the 9! splices in the CET that render it unsuitable for the use you are trying. I showed you that the Dalton minimum is NOT what you claim it to be.

          In response, you’ve ignored everything that I’ve said.

          So I’m gonna let this conversation end, we can part as friends and not keep talking past each other.

          Best regards,

          w.

          • On the contrary, the Dalton minimum is NOT what you or Encyclopedia Britannica claim it to be, and you’ve ignored everything that I’ve said. Tree ring proxy data from Scotland contravening CET instrumental data is a joke.

            The 1807-1817 decade was the coldest since Maunder, but it was followed by an equally cold period 1836-1845 in CET. Both of those cold periods show in multiple European temperature series:

            https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/slide02.png

          • Pass, thanks.

            w.

          • You cannot use specious start and end dates for the Dalton Minimum to prove anything. Ask Leif, he reckons the Dalton Minimum was over by about 1820. And as I said including the latter half of solar cycle 4 is ridiculous. The intelligent thing to do is to ask why specific parts of centennial minima see increased negative NAO/AO conditions, rather than blindly presume that the whole centennial minimum should be cold.

          • Ulrich Lyons:

            In view of your go-arounds with Willis regarding the Dalton Minimum, you need to read my Feb. 9 Post to John Tillman.

            In it I prove that there was NO cooling from sunspot activity during either the Maunder or the Dalton Minimums, the cooling was all caused by SO2 aerosol emissions from large volcanic eruptions.

          • And you fail to mention the cause of volcanic activity and seismic activity during solar minimum there is a direct correlation between low sun activity and CRF .

          • B d Clark:

            It is impossible to infer sunspot activity from any proxy measurements if there are any SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere, because they block or attenuate any incoming radiation either, solar or cosmic, giving the false impression that solar activity has decreased.

            Only visual records of sunspot activity would be acceptable, and it would have to be shown that they are not merely coincidental with increased volcanic activity During the Little Ice Age, for example, low temperatures were already being experienced ~40 years before the start of the Maunder Minimum.

            Can you provide a link to any visual records?

            We are currently in a period of low sunspot activity, and !record high temperatures are regularly being reported. Shouldn’t we be cooling, instead?

          • I asked you what triggers seismic and volcanic activity in solar minimums ,you avoided the question,I also gave earlier in the thread links to studies of observerd solar sun spots or lack of.to suggest ablanket of volcanic aerosols is nonsense and is not immediate, to suggest we are seeing warming is nonsense again, would you like to go down the path of Australian Bush fires is that your warming? Or shifts in the magnetosphere effecting every weather pattern on the planet, and the cause of? You pick!

          • You said “I asked you what triggers seismic and volcanic activity in solar minimums, you avoided the question”

            No, I attempted to answer it. Let me try again.

            Since the invention of the telescope in 1609, it has been possible to observe observe the number of sunspots on the face of the sun.

            According to Wikipedia, the Maunder Minimum spanned the cold years 1645-1715, with the 28 year period 1672-1699 having fewer than 50 sunspots.

            Thus, low sunspot activity began 27 years after the descent of the climate into frigid temperatures.
            due to large volcanic eruptions, which continued until 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age.

            The solar minimum was simply coincident with, and not the cause of, the extensive volcanism, so the answer to your question is that there is NO physical relationship between the two events.

            You also said “to suggest a blanket of volcanic aerosols is nonsense”.

            The plot of Central England Temperatures, 1650-1875, which I recently completed, shows essentially 100% correlation between lower temperatures and large volcanic eruptions around the globe, which could only be due to the spreading of their SO2 aerosols through the atmosphere. Even today, there is a world-wide haze of anthropogenic SO2 aerosols around Earth, except at the poles.

            With respect to the Australian warming, it is being caused by repetitive stalled High-Pressure weather systems, which allow the protective haze of dimming SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere to settle out within the stalled areas,, cleansing the air, and increasing solar insolation.

          • Your talking rubbish you have not answered the question of what causes volcanic and seismic activity during solar minimums ,not once have you addressed the point, instead you bang on about sun spots a completly different phenomenon, that you also clearly know nothing about, to surgest as you do that weak or enhanced solar magnetic fields have no effect on the earth ,is straight out of the global warming alarmist camp.

          • B d Clark:

            Are you not able to understand what I told you?

            Solar minimums (periods of low sunspot activity) are simply coincidental with periods of increased volcanism (the Maunder Minimum began 27 years BEFORE any decreased sunspot activity was observed, so the lack of sunspots could not have been responsible for the onset of cooling–or any other cooling not related to volcanism).

            Further, I have found no evidence of any warming or cooling that cannot be proven to have been caused by increased or decreased levels of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere. If solar magnetic fields have any effect upon the earth’s climate, it is so small as to be undetectable

          • Your still avoiding the question ,because you cant find a correlation many people and hundreds of papers have done so ,I toldyou to look back at a previous link, you have stated no sun spots could be observerd, did it cross your mind that there was none to observe , try reading this https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225794011_The_nature_of_the_solar_activity_during_the_Maunder_Minimum_revealed_by_the_Guliya_ice_core_record

          • I never asked you about Australia warming, I asked you to show any catastrophic global warming , in regard to Australia I asked you about the Bush fires which you again failed to answer, are you going to justify the Bush fires on global warming or not? Do you even understand why the Bush fires were so prolific this year ,but not in a historical sense. Your obfuscating every question I pose to you,typical warmest answers.

          • B d Clark:

            Yes, I DO blame the Australian Bush fires on Global Warming.

            The incidence of Stalled High Pressure Weather Systems is reported to increase with higher temperatures, and they generate the higher temperatures, cloudless skies, and lack of rainfall which is the cause of the Australian Bush fires.

            And, yes, I am a warmist, in the sense that our warming climate is being caused by man’s activities.

            HOWEVER, man’s activity that is causing the warming is the reduction in the amount of anthropogenic SO2 aerosol emissions into the atmosphere because of Clean Air activities (these aerosols have fallen from 136 Megatons in 1979. to 80 Megatons, or less, at this time, and the resultant cleansing of the troposphere is responsible for essentially all of the anomalous warming that has occurred since then.)

            There has been ZERO warming due to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is all a hoax!

          • Bush cant burn unless it reaches a temperature of over 300c theres no global warming that can cause a Bush fire to burn, humans enacting ridiculas policys of leaving dry dead organic matter on wood floors contribute to spreading of fires ,did you look up how many have been prosecuted for starting fires? You say atmospheric conditions started the fires ,ssee my point 1, atmospheric conditions are incidental to Bush fires not a causation ,
            A strong wind will fan a fire, that is not a causation , rain will put a fire out it’s not a causation of the fire but a causation of putting a fire out, your global warming analogy is flawed.

          • B d Clark:

            You are being nit-picking.

            The cloudless, dry skies of stalled high pressure weather systems provide the perfect environment for Bush burning, whether it is ignited by lighting strikes, or is intentionally set. Poor forest management practices exacerbate the burning, and they are fanned by the high wind velocities at the boundaries of
            Low and High pressure weather systems.

            Conversely, Bush fires are rare during the cooler, wetter temperatures associated with low pressure weather systems systems . Currently, the rain from a low pressures system has drenched the fires.

            There is no flaw in my reasoning that I am aware of.

          • Self diagnosis is never ones strong point 🤪

          • B d Clark:

            “Self-diagnosis is never ones strong point”

            Agreed!

            (I added that comment to see whether you might have a reasonable alternative explanation)

          • The copied text you wrote is interesting in fact I’ve been looking for such information

            “HOWEVER, man’s activity that is causing the warming is the reduction in the amount of anthropogenic SO2 aerosol emissions into the atmosphere because of Clean Air activities (these aerosols have fallen from 136 Megatons in 1979. to 80 Megatons, or less, at this time, and the resultant cleansing of the troposphere is responsible for essentially all of the anomalous warming that has occurred since then.)”

            Thankyou

    • … the retreating glaciers in most parts of the Northern Hemi-sphere are still larger today than they were in the early and/or mid-Holocene. link

      The alarmists will insist that things like the MWP and LIA weren’t global in extent. Glaciers say otherwise.

      • glaciers are not global

        • Mosher you are right. That CO2 attacks Australia than moved to CA to attack and narrowly misses the midwest.

          You are a bore

        • The only continent that lacks glaciers is Australia. link Glacier extent provides a better low pass filtered indication of global temperature than any other proxy I can think of.

          • The Australian tectonic plate includes continental Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and sundry other islands….effectively the Pleistocene continent of Sahul.
            If current sea levels were 50m lower, which they were and more during the Pleistocene, Australia [or Saustraliahul] would have glaciers.

    • Leitwolf February 4, 2020 at 7:29 am

      As others already pointed out: sun spots are just the symptom, not the cause. Also you should not expect temperatures to correlate to intra-cycle sun spots.

      I love this kind of statement, casually thrown out as though it were accepted scientific fact … look, the TSI/sunspots etc. vary MORE in the short term than they do in the long term. So if “Solar Roolz” why would that NOT affect the temperature?

      w.

      • Ok. First of all we know that sun spot cycles are in some way interconnected, they are not independent instances. We know there are times where there have been very few sun spots, cycle for cycle. And of course the opposite, that is a inter-cycle period of heavy sun spot activity, has been observed as well.

        Then there is a bigger picture. The sun is extremely hot, as we all know, though with an extremely cold “crust” if you will. Extremely cold in this context means less than 6000K, as opposed to millions of Kelvin in the Core, or the Corona.

        Btw. this brings up the interesting question if not a larger object falling into the sun could wipe out all life on Earth. The thing is, that major turbulences at the surface of the sun would to get the heat out way more effectively thus possibly frying Earth.

        Then we have the issue of measuring TSI. There is a well defined spectrum of solar radiation, or rather a spectrum on where it is usually relevant. The problem is, we all know the sun does not necessarilly obhere to such a definition. Solar storms can bring a lot of energy well beyond these spectra. And it is energy that is not just passing us by.

        Betelgeuse, a red giant, has dimmed to only a quarter of its “normal” brightness within the last months. Of course this star is no way comparable to our sun, yet it may serve as a reminder of what stars are and can be. They are not just bright life providing discs in the sky, but rather erratic monsters.

        These different perspectives may seem a bit lose and not connected. But nature does not readily provide us these connections, rather we have to find them. It is our job to connect these different perspectives into a conclusive picture, if we want to make sense of it.

        Sitting just there and insisting on a single perspective seems a bit simple minded. “I want my sun spot count to translate into surface temperature” is an order that will likely not be served. And yet, there seems to be a connection.

        PS. I am not really invested here. There is a much bigger story going on, the solar cycle/climate correlation is just a piece of the puzzle fitting in nicely.

17. How can any serious person use Berkely Earth or Giss data for any kind of scientific work unless it is Raw data only.
    It beggars belief to look for anything meaningful doing so.

    • Which data would you prefer to use?

      • What John said.

        w.

        • Willis we post raw as well.

          global not gridded

          • Thanks, Mosh. I’m still waiting for A C to tell me what he wants me to use in place of the Berkeley Earth gridded.

            w.

          • I have already told you.
            Max & min Northern Hemisphere either GHCN v3 or Hadcrut 3, not later and not GISS or Hadcrut4 beacuse they have adjusted even the so called raw data.
            Preferably Actuals and not anomalies, ie reproduce what zeke did here.
            https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/goddard-and-ncdc-methods-1895-2013.png

          • There were 2 other charts, but they are no lnger available, but I still have copies of them.

      • I said Raw data only.
        Not adjusted or gridded or anything else.

      • As well as that it should not be the daily average, but max & min, possibly not even an annual value but monthly or quarterly data.
        It should be the Northern Hemisphere, which is where the Ice Age and LIA shows up the most

        Because we don’t know how it starts or how it ends or when it shows itself.

        • A C, that’s non-responsive. The question was which dataset would you prefer to use, not which type of dataset would you prefer to use.

          w.

          • Read what he said again!
            “Which data would you prefer to use?”
            Not dataset.

          • Pick nits much? My point was that he was asking which data, not which type of data.

            You ever gonna get around to actually answering the question, or do you plan to keep tap-dancing?

            w.

18. the Maunder minimum occurred when the sun was minus any sun spots. The average earth temperature dropped two degrees with bitter winters. People skating on the Thames etc. Also Abdussamatov in Russia believes that the decline of the TSI is crucial and signals the beginning of another little ice age which will manifest itself increasingly over the next decade.

    • The average earth temperature dropped two degrees with bitter winters.

      Really? On what evidence do you base this assertion?

      People skating on the Thames etc.

      Which was possible several occasions during the Medieval WARM Period. The Thames froze over more often in the pre-19th century era because of the slow flow of the river which allowed water to freeze.

      Also Abdussamatov in Russia believes that the decline of the TSI is crucial and signals the beginning of another little ice age which will manifest itself increasingly over the next decade. >/i>

      I’m happy to have a sizeable wager on this outcome. I think Abdussamatov is wrong.

19. Here is a 42 minute video presentation by Nir Shaviv on the sun climate connection.

    • Nir Shaviv has explained why there is no short-term correlation to be found:
      Here is the quick summary from the comments on his blog:
      “The key point to understand is that earth has a finite heat capacity. This implies that the whole climate system is like a low pass filter. Modulations on the 11 year solar cycle are damped, leaving only 10 or 20% of the temperature variations that would have been seen if the system could have reached equilibrium. Over 50 years, it is of order 50%, and over a century, about 80%. This is all because it takes time for the oceans to heat and cool. The last 20% or so, are obtained only after waiting several centuries, letting the ice-caps adjust. – http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate#comments

      He goes into more detail on this point in this article:
      “The lack of correlation between the annual values is due to the fact that they are looking for an instantaneous linear relation, that is, they carry out a linear regression in the form
      T(t) = a F⊙(t) + b ln(p CO2) + … [ where F⊙(t) is the solar forcing ]
      However, the key point here is that Earth’s climate is a low pass filter. This means two things. First, the relation between the forcing and temperature changes and is not instantaneous (there is a lag and smearing because of the heat diffusion, primarily in the oceans). Second, the ratio between the forcing and the response on short time scales and the ratio between the forcing and the response on long time scales is different (because of the low pass filter behavior of the climate system, it damps response over short time scales). The ratio is a factor of around 3 to 4 between the 11 year response and the centennial response. As a consequence, the fit suppresses any solar contribution over long times scales because the short term variations due to the solar cycle will ruin the fit. So, any linear regression to the annual data is bound to fail.” – http://www.sciencebits.com/WorstBEST

      • Thomas Burwell February 8, 2020 at 5:32 pm

        Nir Shaviv has explained why there is no short-term correlation to be found:

        Here is the quick summary from the comments on his blog:

        “The key point to understand is that earth has a finite heat capacity. This implies that the whole climate system is like a low pass filter. Modulations on the 11 year solar cycle are damped, leaving only 10 or 20% of the temperature variations that would have been seen if the system could have reached equilibrium. Over 50 years, it is of order 50%, and over a century, about 80%. This is all because it takes time for the oceans to heat and cool. The last 20% or so, are obtained only after waiting several centuries, letting the ice-caps adjust.

        Mmm … the earth does finite heat capacity. However, I don’t understand why Dr. Shaviv thinks that this acts as a “low pass filter”. For example, the sun heats the finite-heat-capacity earth intermittently every 24 hours. And while the resulting temperature lags behind the sun because of thermal inertia, I don’t see how that qualifies as a “low pass filter”. What low frequencies are being passed, or conversely, what high frequencies are being filtered out, of the daily fluctuations in the sunshine?

        Next, he says:

        “The lack of correlation between the annual values is due to the fact that they are looking for an instantaneous linear relation, that is, they carry out a linear regression in the form
        T(t) = a F⊙(t) + b ln(p CO2) + … [ where F⊙(t) is the solar forcing “

        Huh? Who uses a linear regression to find a solar correlation? Certainly not me. Applying a cylical signal to an object with finite heat capacity does NOT change the frequency of the signal, only the amplitude. Because of that, it would be found by either Fourier or CEEMD analysis, which is how I look for the signal.

        w.

20. De Larminat attempted to use the recent Detection and Attribution technique to climate data.
    Surprisingly, according to his research work, solar activity is much more detectable in climate data than any other attempted cause.

    http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.arcontrol.2016.09.018
    Quote:
    Some indications tend to dismiss this hypothesis:
    –In the free identification, solar activity contributes to explain the medieval warm period and the little ice age. It is not so in forced identification (Fig. 9-d).
    – As a result, the error output visibly increases over these periods.
    –A significant cross-correlation (not shown here) appears between the solar activity indicator and the output error, sign of a causality not taken into account.

21. There is a solar cycle correlation to the Great Lakes water level with some exceptions
    to the rule.

    Scott McIntosh made reference to the cycle in an interview last fall.—>
    https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/weather/weather-colorado/polar-coaster-winter-forecast-may-be-related-to-the-terminator-sunspots/73-f6dbc45d-910a-40e6-aa11-408cb6887e79

    So far that prediction has been accurate. His observation about currents and storm tracks are apparent this
    cycle..

    Also the sediment studys of the ancient city Cahokia has a correlation to the solar cycle with some exceptions of the rule. Don’t give up looking….

    • Dan-O February 4, 2020 at 7:59 am

      There is a solar cycle correlation to the Great Lakes water level with some exceptions
      to the rule.

      Another of my favorites, “Variable X lines up with the sun, except when it doesn’t, which demonstrates a strong solar-variable connection”.

      Pass.

      w.

      • Because there are only singular drivers of events, when something does not mesh 100% perfectly, it proves it false. That is not how science works. Many times theories that are not 100% accurate at prediction are correct. Imagine if every theory about weather and climate were disregarded because the people disregarding them refused to look at how volcanic eruptions cause it to not line up on occasion?
        Nice “Science bro” thing you got going on there.
        I read your stuff, I almost never seem to feel like you are being fully honest.

        • Mendel reported the results of his pea breeding experiments which supported his conclusions, which have been confirmed. There are often good reasons for results not to be 100% in line.

          But Willis runs for the door and refuses even to look at good studies he deems unworthy for whatever made up, handy excuse, without reading the papers.

          • John Tillman February 4, 2020 at 4:23 pm

            But Willis runs for the door and refuses even to look at good studies he deems unworthy for whatever made up, handy excuse, without reading the papers.

            Oh, wonderful. Despite repeated requests, John Tillman doesn’t have the albondigas to give me two links to whatever solar study he thinks is best, and bizarrely, he thinks he can cover up his lack of huevos with ludicrous personal accusations against me.

            He claims I’m unwilling to look at solar studies, when I’ve given a close analysis to and published 25 of them so far, and he’s studied and published … well … sweet Fanny Adams, as the Brits say.

            Not gonna work, little Johnny boy. You can’t reach up far enough to even bite my ankles, much less land a blow. People here see right through your excuses and they point and laugh.

            w.

        • astonerii February 4, 2020 at 1:23 pm

          Because there are only singular drivers of events, when something does not mesh 100% perfectly, it proves it false. That is not how science works. Many times theories that are not 100% accurate at prediction are correct. Imagine if every theory about weather and climate were disregarded because the people disregarding them refused to look at how volcanic eruptions cause it to not line up on occasion?

          Oh, please, I never said that. If there is a reasonable physical explanation for a second driver I’m more than happy to entertain it. What I object to is the handwaving when things go into and out of phase with no explanation. At that point, the obvious conclusion is they are actually not in phase. And if someone thinks otherwise, they need to demonstrate it, not just claim it.

          Nice “Science bro” thing you got going on there.
          I read your stuff, I almost never seem to feel like you are being fully honest.

          assholerii, I’ll forgive you calling me a liar just once, by assuming that you haven’t had much experience with honest men. I am one. I tell the truth 100% as I see it. Call me a liar again, and your vote is cancelled with me foreve.

          w.

      • I view the weather/climate system as being a non-linear chaotic force.
        The Execs involved with Ag production are taking a risk management
        approach that is now looking very hard at what is happening with
        the very difficult weather conditions. And Space Weather is very much
        a part of that. Too much is at stake. They are pouring resources into
        new equipment to deal with the potential risks. Tell us why
        some of the correlations are missing–there is more to this than some
        simple alignment..

    • Dan-O February 4, 2020 at 7:59 am

      There is a solar cycle correlation to the Great Lakes water level with some exceptions
      to the rule.

      And another one bites the dust. Here’s the CEEMD periodogram of the sunspots and the Lake Superior water levels 1900 – 2019.

      

      The water levels have very little power in the decadal time period. Here’s what they look like:

      

      As you can see, the exceptions exceed the rule …

      w.

22. Hi Willis
    I’ve spent all morning thinking about this.
    Nah-I’m going to stay with the observation that the Little Ice Age was associated with the Maunder Minimum.
    I can’t refute this one and I don’t think anyone else can either.
    And for ages most knew that on the changes from ice expansions to interglacials that the temp swing of some 10C was more than the changes in the Sun’s output would suggest.
    Used to wonder about that one.
    Until Svensmark’s and later Shaviv’s work on cosmic rays, clouds and cooling.
    Makes sense to me.
    I’ve been “in the field” so to speak since completing my degree in geology and physics in 1962.
    And it has been essential to have an explanation of “Ice Ages” that is personally satisfactory.
    The initial inspiration was “IGY”. Yes, “International Geophysical Year”of 1957.
    Also, that was the year cartoonist Walt Kelly published “G.O. Fizzickle Pogo”.
    And I still have my original copy. According to the upper left corner–the price was “$1.”.
    It has been a fascinating trip.

    • READ MY DAMN POSTS BEFORE UNCAPPING YOUR ELECTRONIC PEN!!

      Sheesh … up above, there is a post called “Maunder and Dalton Sunspot Minima“. Tell me what I did wrong.

      w.

      • Wiilis
        I was posting my view.
        Not arguing with you nor trying to change your extensive article.
        Also expressing what a long and wonderful learning process it has been.
        And at each step in the advance of knowledge in climate since the early 1970s has been a personal revelation.
        Right up to the Cosmic ray story.
        No offense offered, non taken.

        • Thanks, Bob. You said:

          I’m going to stay with the observation that the Little Ice Age was associated with the Maunder Minimum.
          I can’t refute this one and I don’t think anyone else can either.

          I was pointing out that I have discussed it at length and if not refuted it, at least pointed out huge problems with it.

          Now, you’re free to ignore all of that and simply stay with your belief structure.

          But if you put that out, I’m gonna point out that you have NOT refuted a single one of my points.

          However, I regret my tone. It’s been a cranky day, people attacking me on email, John Tillman accusing me of running from the facts when I’ve done 25 studies of these very facts and he’s done jack-sh*t, no bueno.

          But you shouldn’t have to pay the price for that, and you have my apologies.

          w.

    • Problem is, we don’t know was causes the swings to and from glacials and interglacials. We have hypotheses and stuff, but we don’t really know. If you have a theory you like, more power to you, but it doesn’t make it any more right than aliens did it.

23. Layman here. Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get. As a layman, I never thought that a single cycle with low sunspot activity, or more precisely, low solar irradiance, would have much effect simply because of the climate inertia. 11 years is an awfully short period of time to have an effect on the oceans. I think your studies should concentrate on trends in solar activity. Probably at least 3 cycles of low, lower, really low activity and high, higher and really high activity. See if a long trend in one direction over a generation has an effect.

    Side note. This is why I throw out anecdotal accounts that start, “when I was a kid…”. Human lifespans are barely enough to see a trend versus a cycle. I grew up in Alaska and “when I was a kid”, we had a foot of snow on the ground by Halloween. In later years, after I had moved to the lower 48 for school, the Navy, etc., there were reports of no snow at Christmas, or not enough snow to start the Iditarod dog sled race. Then years later, no more lack of snow issues. Cycles. I think it is pretty normal for someone in their 40’s to expect that seasonal highs and lows where they grew up are different “now” than they were “then”. And by the time they are in their 60’s, it’s back to their childhood.

24. Can anyone tell me why I can’t see current Solar Data on the WUWT Solar Reference Pages?
    I can see pictures on the sum (current) but pretty much everything else is showing me old (2015 – mid 2019) data. Thanks.

25. Nice work Willis.

    Here is what I predict. I predict a bunch of people will tell you how you should have done the analysis.
    It is easy to find “problems” or sugestions, or “well I would have done x and y” blah blah blah.

    Its much hard to actually do the work.

    And here’s the thing

    Folks can believe in this influence of the sun ONLY AS LONG AS THEY NEVER DO THE WORK THEMSELVES

    Once they do the work… well they will find what you found

    nuttin

    • Have you read the vast scientific literature finding solar influences on WX and climate? Had you, you might be less dismissive of the work of hundreds (at least) of distinguished (some less so) meteorologists, climatologists, computer gamers, atmospheric physicists and chemists over the past 200 years.

      Here’s a good survey paper from ten years ago:

      https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009RG000282

      While its authors are in the climate consensus camp, they point out those effects which had been well demonstrated by 2010 and those suggestions less well supported.

      • John, there is indeed a vast bunch of studies out there. But I haven’t found a single one that stands up to close examination.

        So let me make you the offer I’ve made many times. Figure out which of that “vast” stack of papers you think demonstrates the sunspot-related effect most strongly, clearly, and irrefutably. Then post up TWO links here, one to that study and the other to the data as used in the study, and I’m happy to take a look at it.

        Caveats:

        • No reanalysis “data”. It’s not data as we commonly understand the term, it is the output of a climate model.

        • Surface datasets only. The effects of the sun on the ionosphere are well known … however, they don’t seem to translate to the surface.

        I await your TWO links.

        w.

        • There are scads in the study I cited. Any scientist trying to argue for no solar influence would have read all of them.

          That’s why scientific papers have literature sections.

          • John, I know there are “scads of them”. There are more bogus “scientific” solar studies out there than I could possibly read in a lifetime. And I don’t have a lifetime to waste.

            That’s why I asked, since you seem convinced that some of them are valid, to give me two links, one to the study that you think is the best, and one to their data.

            But heck, if you want to join the dozens and dozens of people who have run for the door when I’ve made this request in the past, I’m not stopping you.

            w.

          • Willis,

            The running is all yours. You refuse to educate yourself on the voluminous literature.

            Please read the survey I linked. It doesn’t cite bogus papers. Where issues have been raised with some studies, the authors address them.

            It is standard scientific practice to familiarize yourself with the literature on a specialized topic before contributing to it.

            Please put yourself through a course on the interdisciplinary topic of solar effects on climate and WX, rather than asking others to do your research for you.

          • John, if you don’t have the balls to name the study you think is best and expose it to public examination, DON’T BLAME ME. It just puts you in the long list of folks who have come up with some bogus excuse to not be willing to expose your beliefs to scrutiny. Your excuse is no more imaginative nor convincing than any of the others.

            w.

          • This comment and your subsequent one are classics.
            Classics in the sense that you make a claim, or dispute a claim, and then have the temerity to suggest that someone else should do the work. No one is buying your argument. If you think Willis is wrong, and don’t want to be simply accused of arm-waving, prove it. Prove it by doing the work. As you said the data is all out there. Should be easy for you.
            The ball is in your court, not Willis’.

          • Willis,

            You don’t have the guts actually to study the topic on which you’ve chosen to post.

            Why should I pick one, when there are hundreds? As always, you’ve been shown today many papers, which as usual, you dismiss without reading or simply ignore.

            Show some courage and read for once Javier and Joel’s links, which no surprise you’ve so far studiously avoided. They are real scientists and their links are to valid scientific papers.

            Please educate yourself by reading the papers in my link. Are you afraid of what you’ll find?

            It’s ironic that the sun drives tropical thunderstorms, yet you can’t find solar influence on WX and climate. That strikes me as strange.

            Please read what the scientist who understands atmospheric physics better than anyone alive has to say about the effect of the sun on Earth’s weather, climate, air and ocean circulation:

            https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/09/richard-lindzen-lecture-at-gwpf-global-warming-for-the-two-cultures/

      • ” WX”

        Is it too difficult to spell the word “weather”? Where does the X come from?

        • Morse code. See here.

          w.

        • Jeff, for someone who constantly bangs on about the proper use of words at the mere sight of a typo, you seem awfully ignorant of a very common abbreviation that’s been in use for well over a century, dating back to the days of the telegraph and Morse Code.

    • Thanks, Mosh. I keep waiting for someone to post up something solid that they’ve actually done and are willing to stand behind.

      So far, as you point out …

      nuttin.

      w.

26. Is it possible the effects of solar changes are on a delay? That seems more likely than an instantaneous effect. Some years ago I read about Dr David Evans working on something like that.

27. Ingenious methodology as usual, Willis. Probably a foolish question: are the numbers of high SSN periods ~equal to the numbers of low SSN periods in your samples?

    • Gary, as I mentioned above, the only foolish question is the one you don’t ask, because you won’t learn the answer.

      Yes, high/low numbers are ~equal because I’ve divided them at the median, rather than the mean.

      w.

28. “Does this mean that the sunspot cycle doesn’t affect surface weather?”
    But then you analyze global surface TEMPs. The important WEATHER is over LAND aka jet stream oscillation in North America and how that affects surface temperatures, especially regarding crops (and possibly cold spell energy shortages in those states stupid enough to hate fossil fuels). Does the solar cycle in some way effect jet stream oscillation?

    • BFL, I keep hearing this. But when I ask “How does one measure ‘jet stream oscillation’, and what are the units?” … crickets.

      w.

29. Willis
    I’ve played around with this too. I used the BEST data for monthly average highs, lows, and mid-range temperatures, and subjected the data to FFT decomposition. I was surprised to find only small peaks around the nominal 11-year solar cycle. However, there were stronger peaks centered around 21.3 years. Indeed, the 21.3-year peak was stronger than the 1-year peak, which, even for the whole Earth, should at least be reflecting the eccentricity of our orbit. Incidentally, the results for high and low-temperature series look a little different, suggesting that the lows may have a better correlation with the magnetic cycle.

    When I make some time, I’ll go back and look at data for just the northern hemisphere land temperatures. I think that should be more sensitive to variations than global and sea surface temperatures. In any event, with lots of competing influences, I think that it is noteworthy that the complete solar magnetic cycle appears to show up in the FFT analyses.

    • Thanks, Clyde. Look at my CEEMD analysis above. There is a broad area with some energy that stretches from about 18 to 25 years. But there’s no sharp peak at “21.3 years”.

      Next, you say “the results for high and low-temperature series look a little different, suggesting that the lows may have a better correlation with the magnetic cycle.” That’s true for any two datasets you might pick. One will correlate better than the other.

      The problem with the solar magnetic cycle is that the polarity flips when sunspots are at their peak. I’ve never figured out how to convert the sunspots to the equivalent strength of the heliomagnetic field. And we have only recent data measuring that directly.

      Do you have a citation showing long-term variations in the sun’s magnetic field?

      Best regards,

      w.

      • Willis
        You asked about long-term variations in the solar magnetic field. I wouldn’t expect such information to go back more than a few decades, at most.

30. This quote is written under a chart that indicates ~0.7K cooling after the year 2000, which should give the answer anyhow.

    1. The CET record shows significant annual variation but the 20 year mean temperatures (since 2000) exceed the Lamb reconstructed temperatures from the warmest period of the MWP.
    2. I can’t see any 0.7 degree cooling immediately after 2000 in the CET.
    3. It is almost certainly the case that Lamb (& the IPCC) used the CET in order to reproduce the MWP & LIA graphic. See Steve McIntyre’s post on this.
    4. Willis’ use of the CET was prompted by a readers suggestion that the CET demonstrated a link to solar activity (sunspots). It doesn’t.

    https://climateaudit.org/2008/05/09/where-did-ipcc-1990-figure-7c-come-from-httpwwwclimateauditorgp3072previewtrue/

    Of course there are plenty of witnesses of the Little Ice Age, like progressing alpine glaciers destroying villages,

    Right, so you’ve got some anecdotes about alpine glacier advance to ‘prove’ that the LIA was a global event.

31. Willis

    Very nice piece, thank you. I have studied some 2000 years of British climate, of which the last 700 years are in considerable detail as records become better and references relating to religion and superstition become less prevalent.

    I examined sun spots as part of a longer piece some 5 years ago entitled ‘the intermittent little ice age’ expecting to see evidence of the effects of sun spots on climate. Here is an extract;

    https://judithcurry.com/2015/02/19/the-intermittent-little-ice-age/

    “Whilst the various charts, such as Figures 6 and 7, together with Met office and other data referenced, demonstrate many individual cold years and more surprisingly perhaps, many warm ones as well, what can’t be discerned is one long uninterrupted block of blue representing very cold years extending from the beginning of the record and expiring sometime in the middle of the 19th century, thus matching the ‘official’ definitions of the LIA.

    So clearly the period wasn’t one monolithic cold era. Indeed, this occurrence of warm and very warm years amongst the cold and moderate ones clearly confuses our popular understanding of this period. (See 3.9 for the scientific definition) Whilst the era might be characterised as generally cold with many moderate to very warm spells, it might also almost be characterised as generally warm with many moderate to very cold years.

    Another notable feature is the sheer variability that can be observed in Figures 6 and 7, with the intermittent nature of genuinely cold years being juxtaposed in close proximity to years with a very different temperature profile. Any lengthy periods when the cold clearly predominated are rather limited.

    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.”

    So as you can see I am certainly in the ‘not proven’ camp as regards the direct impact of sunspots .
    What has better correlation is wind direction. Generally when it comes from the west (for the UK) it is often cloudy mild and wet. when it switches to the east it is often cooler and sunnier in winter and hotter and sunnier in the summer, this latter obviously warming up the oceans.

    Whether sun spot activity affects wind direct/jet stream etc I don’t know.

    tonyb

    • Thanks, Tony, that fits with my own research.

      w.

    • Climate is like the stock market. There are secular trends, with counter-and pro-trend cycles within the prevailing trend.

      It’s not surprising that the counter-trend cycles in cool periods are like the dead cat bounce rallies on short covering during bear markets. The early 18th century warming, coming out of the LIA depths of the Maunder, bounced higher and lasted longer than the late 20th century pro-trend cycle of the Modern Warm Period.

      The LIA was chiefly due to its four solar mínima, with counter-trend dead cat bounce warming cycles in between. The Medieval WP, by contrast, suffered just one shallow minimum. (Some would say the MWP had two minor mínima and the LIA three major.). The Modern WP has not yet endured even one minimum. Its counter-trend cooling cycles have been driven by normal oceanic and atmospheric circulations.

      The effect from even the biggest volcanic eruptions is too short-lived to matter. But the late 20th century warming was helped by the developed world’s cleaning up its air.

      • John Tillman (and others):

        “The LIA was chiefly due to its four solar minima

        As, I have previously pointed out to you, it is IMPOSSIBLE to determine any changes in solar irradiance by any kind of proxy measurements when there are interfering layers of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere (which were plentiful during the LIA) because of their attenuation of any incoming radiation, either
        solar or cosmic.

        Solar minima during the LIA is pure fiction!

        You also state that “the effect of even the biggest volcanic eruption is too short- lived to matter”

        I would remind you of the chain of 6 VEI5 eruptions of Tarawera in 1310, 1311, 1312, 1313, 1314, and 1315 whose cooling of the climate caused the death of an estimated 7,500,000 people in the Great Famine of 1315-1317. It mattered to those people, and they were only VEI5 eruptions.

      • John Tillman:

        I have just completed annotating the plot of the Hadley Center Central England Temperature (HadCET) data set, for the years 1660-1875, with the dates of all recorded VEI4?, VEI5, VEI6, and VEI7 volcanic eruptions within that period.

        This was done by enlarging their plot 400 times, which gave the horizontal axis a resolution of 1.2 years per millimeter. These years cover most of the Maunder Minimum and all of the Dalton Minimum.

        WITHOUT EXCEPTION, the dates of the sixteen VEi5-7 eruptions fell precisely on a downward temperature excursion, proving that it was caused by the cooling from volcanic SO2 aerosol emissions, rather than from any reduced sunspot activity.

        At least five of the VEI4? eruptions also coincided with a downward temperature excursion, with the result that all of the cooling shown on their plot from 1660-1775 was simply due to volcanic SO2 aerosols.

        Along with the impossibility of measuring solar activity at the Earth’s surface by any proxy measurements, this should destroy the hypothesis that reduced sunspot activity will result in cooler temperatures.

    • Tonyb:

      A question, if I may:

      The Hadley Centre listing of Central England temperatures shows the temperatures of the following years to be:

      1875 9.48 deg. C
      1876 9.53
      1877 9.19
      1878 9.26
      1879 7.44
      1880 9.10

      What do your records show?

32. There really aren’t a lot of choices for the origins of forcing’s that can explain the variation in temperatures we have observed during the Holocene. Variation in solar activity is certainly a possibility. There are lots of papers in the scientific literature that show a relationship between solar activity and surface temperatures. Below is one, though I don’t know that the entire paper has been translated.

    Periodicities of solar activity and the surface temperature variation of the Earth and their correlations ZHAO XinHua*, FENG XueShang*
    State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, Center for Space Science and Applied Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, ChinaAbstract：Based on the well-calibrated systematiCmeasurements of sunspot numbers, the reconstructed data of the total solar irradiance (TSI), and the observed anomalies of the Earth’s averaged surface temperature (global, ocean, land), this paper investigates the periodicities of both solar activity and the Earth’s temperature variation as well as their correlations on the time scale of centuries using the wavelet and cross correlation analysis techniques. The main results are as follows. (1) Solar activities (including sunspot number and TSI) have four major periodic components higher than the 95% significance level of white noise during the period of interest, i.e. 11-year period, 50-year period, 100-year period, and 200-year period. The global temperature anomalies of the Earth have only one major periodic component of 64.3-year period, which is close to the 50-year cycle of solar activity. (2) Significant resonant periodicities between solar activity and the Earth’s temperature are focused on the 22- and 50-year period. (3) Correlations between solar activity and the surface temperature of the Earth on the long time scales are higher than those on the short time scales. As far as the sunspot number is concerned, its correlation coefficients to the Earth temperature are 0.31-0.35 on the yearly scale, 0.58-0.70 on the 11-year running mean scale, and 0.64-0.78 on the 22-year running mean scale. TSI has stronger correlations to the Earth temperature than sunspot number. (4) During the past 100 years, solar activities display a clear increasing tendency that corresponds to the global warming of the Earth (including land and ocean) very well. Particularly, the ocean temperature has a slightly higher correlation to solar activity than the land temperature. All these demonstrate that solar activity has a non-negligible forcing on the temperature change of the Earth on the time scale of centuries.

    • I admire Willis’s work.

      But as mentioned upthread, solar cycles MUST affect weather and temperature, even if observations don’t show a correlation.

      • Here is how a correlation would be easily observed:

        Measure SST for months with high sunspot activity. Compare this to SST for the SAME months had there been low sunspot activity. Apples to apples.

      • Snape February 4, 2020 at 9:55 am

        But as mentioned upthread, solar cycles MUST affect weather and temperature, even if observations don’t show a correlation.

        Science at its finest. Assert a correlation while admitting that you have no evidence.

        Pass.

        w.

        • Willis,

          The evidence is physics based. SWIR has been shown to affect the temperature of a body that absorbs it. Only sometimes?

          What if I took a drink from a pint of beer and asserted the volume of liquid in the glass had decreased?

          Would you need me to take measurements before agreeing?

          • Snape, if you truly think those are equivalent to claiming that a variation of ±0.1% in solar output will have a detectable effect weather on the earth’s surface, you need to think again … if it truly were that simple, we wouldn’t still be debating it 300 years after Hershel.

            w.

        • Willis,

          I am saying that changes in solar insolation will have an effect on weather and temperature (basic physics), even when the effect cannot be detected. Here’s an analogy:

          Hershey is a member of the S&P. As such, it has an effect on the market. When Hershey’s stock is up it is better for the S&P than when Hershey’s stock is down. Basic math.

          So shouldn’t there be a correlation? Not necessarily. If Hershey was the only member of S&P, then yes, a clear relationship. As it is, there are over 500 other companies to muck things up. Almost zero correlation is actually observed between the performance of Hershey and the S&P.

          Effect, yes. Correlation, no.

          • Snape, that goes into the category of a difference that makes no difference.

            w.

          • “A difference that makes no difference.”

            Lol. Yes, that’s one way of looking at it.

            *******

            Suppose your house is a comfortable 70 F. You crank the thermostat to 80 F, but at the same time open a window, letting a cool breeze through. The temperature stays at 70 F.

            Which is more accurate?
            A) turning up the thermostat made no difference in temperature.
            B) turning up the thermostat prevented your house from cooling to 60 F.

          • Snape, first you claimed the solar change was there but too small to matter, like a change in one stock in the Dow Jones.

            Now you claim it’s big but counteracted by some mystery force.

            Make up your mind.

            w.

          • Ok.
            I really am impressed by your work, BTW.

          • Thanks, Snape, your kind words are appreciated.

            w.

    • Nelson, I can’t find the paper. SciHub doesn’t have it.

      Pass.

      w.

33. Here is an old post from the Reference Frame blog that addresses the issue.

    https://motls.blogspot.com/2004/09/sunspots-correlations-with-temperature.html

    • It is old – from 2004. Some of the points made in the article are now known to be wrong. The F-C & L Solar Cycle length and temperature has completely broken down.

34. The lack of a correlation between sunspot activity and sea surface temperature found by Eschenbach may not indicate that sunspots do not affect the climate or weather, but may only reflect the fact that the oceans have a huge heat capacity, and that any response in sea-surface temperatures to sunspot activity (a relatively small percentage of the normal solar radiation intensity) will necessarily be slow, over a matter of months or years, and the response may be delayed, with a large phase shift and/or damping coefficient.

    There does seem to be some correlation between the Maunder Minimum and the relatively cold climate at that time, which was noted over land. Dry land has a much lower heat capacity and a lower albedo than the oceans, so that air temperatures over land may be much more responsive to sunspot activity (or lack thereof) than sea surface temperatures.

    It is also possible that mankind’s ability to measure sunspot activity and measure temperatures over large land masses was more limited during the 1700’s than now, so that the older data may have a larger margin of error than more recent data (if they are not massaged or fudged by global-warming advocates).

    If there is a correlation between sunspot activity and the climate, it would more likely be found over land than at the surface of oceans.

    • Steve Z February 4, 2020 at 9:32 am

      The lack of a correlation between sunspot activity and sea surface temperature found by Eschenbach may not indicate that sunspots do not affect the climate or weather, but may only reflect the fact that the oceans have a huge heat capacity.

      See above.

      w.

35. In your Reynolds image, I see the two sea areas that generate heavy seas regularly (50 foot waves) both have +0.4 SST readings (off west coast of US/Canada and off west coast+ of Australia). Could this have any relevance to your search for correlation?

    Those are not shown using the Berkeley Earth data, so that likely reduces any possible meaning from Reynolds data.

    And, those high seas areas likely have their cause in the wind over long distances, so probably even less relevance to Reynolds data.

36. If some argue that the warming (or some of it) experienced during the 20th century is due to human activity, then it is incumbent upon those who make this claim to EXPLAIN the Medieval Warm Period; a several hundred year warm period that occurred hundreds of years before the commencement of the Industrial Revolution.

    My point is that all ( one? two? five? 50? 100? ) the warm periods that occurred before, say, 1850, could NOT have been due to human activity and must therefor have been caused by factors external to human activity. These “factors” – whatever they are – where significant enough to shift the earth’s climate from warm to very cold to warm. to very cold to …..and so on; climate shifts far more extreme than we have witnessed over the last 120 years.

    What could these factors be?
    Volcanic activity?
    Variation in the Sun’s activity?
    The magnitude of cosmic rays impacting the earth?
    ????
    ????

    There is no doubt that those historical (near historic and in geologic time historical) external influences that have DETERMINED earth’s climate are still extant and their influence is far more significant than factors introduced by human activity.
    Think about it; nobody predicts – irrespective of human influence on climate – that a new ice age is impossible.
    In fact, it is safe to say that in the future there is a very high probability of another ice age.
    So, if human introduced CO2 (an atmospheric TRACE gas and essential to all living things on earth) is going to burn up the earth than the AGW proponents should be 1000% confident in predicting an new ice age will never again occur on earth.
    Of course, they will never predict this because they will be revealed as crazy and it would call into question their veracity.

    Lastly, the only chart I have seen of CO2 vs. time (going back millions of years) shows today’s level of CO2 to be in the bottom decile of CO2 levels. Assuming this chart is correct (and I have zero idea if it is or not) one can argue we are in a CO2 drought.

    It’s great that researchers put forth all their physics and mathematical analyses of climate behavior, but it appears to me at least, that in doing so, basic and fundamental questions are never addressed.

    • What could these factors be?
      Volcanic activity?
      Variation in the Sun’s activity?
      The magnitude of cosmic rays impacting the earth?

      Simples, one of the turtles moved.

    • John Tyler:

      You ask “What could these factors be? Volcanic Activity?”

      Bingo!

      The Medieval Warm Period, for example, was caused by very low levels of volcanic activity, and consequently, very low levels of dimming SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere.

      There were many VEI4, VEI5, and VEI6 eruptions during the following Little Ice Age, with Megatons of volcanic SO2 aerosol emissions circulating in the atmosphere from the eruptions, albeit with warming periods between eruptions spaced far enough apart to allow their aerosols to settle out roughly 3-5 years, or more)

37. My interpretation of the lack of correlation in the data being examined is that it may be as simple as looking at the wrong data.

    We see from Willis’s analysis, and that of other people, that there is no discernable 11 year pattern in global temperatures. We also see that there is a ~11 year cycle of sunspot activity. What I think we can infer is that the “normal” sunspot variation has little to no effect.

    However, we have evidence of cold periods occurring, and observational evidence that these coincided with periods of low sunspots.

    I think it possible that there is another solar cycle, maybe regular, maybe not, which is not the same as the sunspot cycle, but has a side effect of suppressing the sunspot cycle, and probably having other effects in irradiance and spectral distribution of radiated energy.

    Since we don’t have hard data going back several centuries, data analysis is not going to help detect these. Since we (or at least I) don’t have a clue about what the cause might be, modeling isn’t going to help much either.

    This may be one of those things that with current data (and knowledge) limitations, the cause and effect are unknown, and possibly unknowable.

38. Thanks Willis Eschenbach. That is quite impressive. Or I’m least I’m impressed. So many people just don’t seem to be able to do that.

    That is so many people, most people, seem unable to recognize when the data isn’t supporting their belief.

    I already had a pretty high opinion of what you are doing. I’m thinking particularly of your discovery of the very clear feedback, semi-negative, between clouds and temperature in the tropics. Unfortunately that just hasn’t got the attention in the wider world that it should have. That should have been published, or republished, in Nature or in Science or a comparable journal. That it wasn’t is an indictment of the field of climate science.

39. Conclusion? Once again, I’ve looked for a solar signal and found none.

    Does this mean that the sunspot cycle doesn’t affect surface weather?

    Nope. It just means that I haven’t been able to find one. Might be out there, but I’m up to 25 places or so that I’ve looked without finding it.

    You might not be looking the right way. Alfred Wegener said the continents moved in 1912, yet the scientists did not believed it and it took 50 years to demonstrate.

    One of the problems is the way you assume solar variability should affect weather. What the evidence supports is that low solar activity shifts the atmospheric state towards more meridional facilitating a bigger loss of heat at the poles. The effects accumulate over time and are bigger when the Quasibiennial Oscillation is easterly, so a big effect is only noticeable after several decades of low solar activity. Others are doing it more correctly than you:

    Kobashi, T., Box, J. E., Vinther, B. M., Goto‐Azuma, K., Blunier, T., White, J. W. C., … & Andresen, C. S. (2015). Modern solar maximum forced late twentieth century Greenland cooling. Geophysical Research Letters, 42(14), 5992-5999.

    The way you are looking at the problem just makes sure you cannot find the solution. It is a lot more complex than just comparing two variables and claim success or failure.

    • There are older QBO studies in my link to the 2010 survey above.

      I hope that Willis will read the more recent paper you cite.

      • I’ll take a look. However, I need to point out a couple of things before I do.

        • Greenland is less than half a percent of the surface of the planet. If you can’t find some half-percent of the surface that correlates with solar, I’d be shocked.

        • Greenland has less thermostats per square metre than just about any place on earth.

        • The solarmaximum forced cooling? How does that work?

        Now, I’ll go read it … hang on …

        …

        Yeah, it’s as I feared. Here’s the graph corresponding to their Figure 1.

        

        Now, you’d be tempted to say that the 1/2% of the globe that is Greenland is an anomaly … until you look down by Antarctica and you see the same thing in reverse, anomalous warmth. Are we supposed to believe that that is due to solar effects as well? There’s just as much evidence for that as for the Greenland claim.

        And here’s Figure 2 from above, rotated 180° to show Greenland:

        

        As you can see, there’s NO affect of the sunspot cycle on Greenland.

        Finally, I simply don’t buy the argument that the long-term effect is visible, but not the 11-year effect. That’s akin to saying “Well, we see a solar effect on an annual basis, but not on a daily basis.” That’s absolutely not true about the sun.

        And I’m endlessly skeptical of claims built on paleo records that are not visible in modern records. I know of no reason why that should be the case.

        Finally, they’ve verified their results by comparing them to Moberg et al., 2005 and “Moberg Mann et al., 2008” … yeah, that’s totally legit. If they agree with Moberg and Mann, you can guarantee that they’re wrong. The mere fact that they use those means that they are not interested in the slightest in science. For details on those pieces of junk, see here and here.

        Regards to all,

        w.

    • Heh, hard to believe he thinks it is that simple.
      ====================================

    • Willis has his emergent phenomenon hypothesis based on convective changes which of course equates to rainfall over the continents. A temperature effect so small it actually shows up as increased or decreased rainfall as it is convection changes as the real regulator that keeps Earth’s temperature largely stable and confined to a narrow range.

      For example Central Europe:
      https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330818342_Influence_of_solar_activity_changes_on_European_rainfall

      Or the The Loess Plateau of China:
      https://www.hindawi.com/journals/amete/2017/9823865/

      • I hope that Willis addresses your and Javier’s links rather than for the dozenths of times running for the door.

        According to Dr. Spencer, the tropical thunderstorm hypothesis was proposed long before Willis. He just thought he invented it because he has never formally studied atmospheric physics in the systematic way the subject requires.

        • Dr. Spencer was 100% wrong. He’s one of my scientific heroes, but in this case he didn’t do his homework. See my post here for the truth about this, rather than foolishly buying in to the total bullshit that John Tillman is spreading.

          As to “addressing Joel’s links”, hadn’t seen that yet, but I’m happy to look at them.

          …

          OK, checked out the first of Joel’s links. I cannot find their data. They claim that it is in the Online SI … but that link is circular, just going back to the paper itself. If Joel can find the data, I’ll go forward with that one.

          …

          Same problem with the second link. The supposed link to the data says:

          This site can’t be reached
          
          www.escience.gov.cn’s server IP address could not be found.
          
          DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

          Again, if Joel can provide a link to the data I’m more than happy to take a look.

          Let me comment, however, that regarding that second study, building a case based on 9 rainfall stations in an area that is only around one hundredth of one percent of the surface of the planet is … well, not surprising. There are no less than 7,232 such parts of the planet, and you can be damn sure that in more than one of those you’ll find some kind of correlation with solar variations. And their claimed correlation is very weak.

          w.

          • Hope you do read all the links.

            I’m spreading the facts. Dr. Spencer is right. You’re wrong. As my link to Dr. Lindzen’s lecture shows, tropical thunderstorms are a commonplace. Students study them in Meteorology 101.

            You only imagined you discovered something because you never studied elementary atmospheric science.

          • John, Dr. Roy foolishly claimed that a) my hypothesis was the same as Ramanathan’s, and b) I hadn’t acknowledged Ramanathan.

            Ramanathan’s hypothesis was that in the area of the Pacific Warm Pool, something developed that he called a “super greenhouse effect”:

            Ramanathan used ERBE data to show that water vapor in this area traps even more infrared radiation than expected, in a “super greenhouse effect.” This finding led him to question how these ocean temperatures remained remarkably stable despite the super greenhouse effect.

            So his hypothesis was that in a very small area of the Pacific, a “super greenhouse effect” traps infrared radiation.

            My hypothesis had nothing to do with either a “super greenhouse effect” or the Pacific Warm Pool. My hypothesis is that emergent climate phenomena act all over the planet to maintain the average planetary temperature within a fairly narrow range, e.g. ± 0.3 °C over the 20th century.

            And if you truly think those two are the same, you’re dumber than you act.

            Regarding giving credit to Ramanathan, Dr. Roy was wrong about that as well. I don’t owe him credit for my theory, as it is totally different from his. But where I’ve referred to his theory, I absolutely gave him credit.

            I was sorry that Dr. Roy had gotten so far off the rails. He’s one of my scientific heroes, and one of my friends, but unfortunately he didn’t do his homework on that one.

            John, you’re letting your insane hatred of me overcome your good sense. As I said before, if you don’t want to simply point out the solar study you think is best, that OK—bizarre, but OK.

            But going off on spittle-flecked rants against me because you don’t want to take on a simple task? Not a good look on you …

            w.

          • It wasn’t just Ramanathan. Dr. Spencer also points out that nothing is more commonplace in meteorology than homeostatic effects. He credits God for that, but that’s beside the point.

            Please get a basic textbook and study it. You’ll see tropical rainstorm formation discussed.

            Or, as I suggested, read Dr. Lindzen’s address.

            Pointing out facts doesn’t indicate insane hatred. Do you also imagine that Dr. Spencer (with whom I agree on his specialty) and Nikolov and Zeller (with whom I don’t) harbor insane hatred of you?

            https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/nikolov-zeller-reply-eschenbach/

            They too question your grasp of math and physics.

          • John, Dr. Roy called me the “sharpest citizen scientist I know”. And he put up an entire post about my work entitled “Giving Credit To Willis Eschenbach”

            When he says that about you, let me know.

            Until then, keep up the whining and bitching to try to distract from the fact that you don’t have the hair to point out your favorite solar study. Nobody’s getting fooled by that, but it’s hella funny to watch.

            w.

          • One of the sharper knives in the chest still can’t carve out the sun’s role, but not for lack of trying. It’s a tough and knotted plastic medium, with no easy spindle to pull out to simplify the task.
            =============================

40. Have you reviewed the study by Professor Valentina Zharkova, whose solar dynamo model succesfully predicts past cooling periods? I would like to see your comments on her study.

    • LINKS! I don’t go on a snipe hunt for anyone. In the past, I used to do that. I’d go and at the end of an hour or two of searching, I’d find it. Triumphant, I’d return with it, only to have the person say “No, I meant the other Zharkova study”. So I don’t do ‘dat no mo’ …

      w.

      • I was going to ask about this, too. The GWPF’s latest newsletter contains a link to “video of Prof Valentina Zharkova’s GWPF talk on ‘The Solar Magnet Field and the Terrestrial Climate’. Here’s the link to the video from 2018:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_yqIj38UmY&t=3s&utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=830eb221a5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_02_04_03_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-830eb221a5-20163885&mc_cid=830eb221a5&mc_eid=31832528ac

        It’s 1.5 hrs long, so I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but it seems interesting and worth looking into. The note under the YouTube video describes it (in part):

        Professor Valentina Zharkova gave a presentation of her Climate and the Solar Magnetic Field hypothesis at the Global Warming Policy Foundation in October, 2018.

        Principal component analysis (PCA) of the solar background magnetic field observed from the Earth, revealed four pairs of dynamo waves, the pair with the highest eigen values are called principal components (PCs). . .

        Prof Zharkova was quoted extensively in a Sun article, quoted in the GWPF newsletter:

        “The Sun is approaching a hibernation period,” Professor Zharkova, who has published multiple scientific papers on solar minimums, told The Sun.

        “Less sunspots will be formed on the solar surface and thus less energy and radiation will be emitted towards the planets and the Earth.”

        Solar minimums are part of the Sun’s natural life cycle and occur once every 11 years. However, 2020’s minimum promises to be an especially chilly one.

        That’s because it marks the start of a rare event known as a Grand Solar Minimum, in which energy emitted from the Sun drops even more than usual.

        These only occur once every 400 years or so. Most of the effects will be harmless. . .

        In her talk, she says that, unlike the predictions by the IPCC crowd of disaster a century from now, her prediction of an imminent Grand Solar Minimum this decade can be falsified soon.

        I don’t recall if there are links to her papers in the video.

41. Don’t overestimate the power of correlation. It is essentially a linear operator, and, as such, it may not detect strongly non-linear effects. For example, take an alternating current and a rectifier. The positive half-wave of a sine input perfectly correlates with the output. The negative half-wave perfectly anti-correlates. Overall, the correlation is a cold zero.

42. Your not looking in the right places (who would of guessed)

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/maunder-minimum

    http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1978A%26A….66…93W

    https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0004-637X/830/2/140

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.05191&ved=2ahUKEwjG6aGU0LjnAhUCi1wKHZxiCp4QFjAPegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw2s3n0QWxU_X0ot5d4v6z3V&cshid=1580844649357

    It would seem theres a lot of folk who disagree with you,

    • “Your not looking in the right places (who would of guessed)”

      Your elementary school English teacher sure would have guessed.

      • B d Clark February 4, 2020 at 11:40 am

        Your not looking in the right places (who would of guessed)

        Oh, piss off with the snark. When you’ve posted up 25 analyses of faulty papers, THEN you can rag on me. Until then, STFU with the ugliness. You haven’t earned the right.

        Meanwhile, figure out which of those papers you think demonstrates the sunspot-related effect most strongly, clearly, and irrefutably. Then post up TWO links here, one to that study and the other to the data as used in the study, and I’m happy to take a look at it.

        Caveats:

        • No reanalysis “data”. It’s not data as we commonly understand the term, it is the output of a climate model.

        • Surface datasets only. The effects of the sun on the ionosphere are well known … however, they don’t seem to translate to the surface.

        I await your TWO links.

        w.

        • Eschenbach

          Your not reading what’s put in front of you, you have deteriorated into a defensive corner with no analysis of what’s put in front of you. Every ones wrong but your right a, that includes the authors of links and people who have replied to you. Its suspicious that amount of writing you have done regarding sun spots ,TSI ect ect, and you resort to foul language, your basically saying every paper every scientist on this subject is wrong and your right. Which is impossible, I accused you of having a hidden motive before, I see no reason to change my mind.
          Come on man you tube presenters have a better grasp of the sun and its effects than you.

          • Thanks, BD. I’m not at all surprised that you won’t put your money where your mouth is. Everyone talks big like you, but then when I ask them to point out the best study they know, almost every one has come up with an endless string of excuses just as pathetic as yours. John Tillman has done just that, excuse after excuse. Others have just ignored my request.

            From the way you and the others run when I make this simple, easy-to-fulfill request, you’d think I was asking y’all to sacrifice your firstborn rather than provide a couple of links. Pathetic.

            Next, I’ve NEVER said, “Every ones [sic] wrong but I’m right.” I’ve been right, others have been wrong. Heck, I’m likely the only climate blogger to have two posts, one called “Wrong Again”, and the other called “Wrong Again, Again” … when I’m wrong, I admit it right out in public. It’s one of the reasons that so many people trust what I say, because they know if I’m wrong I won’t hide it or deny it. I admit it out in the midday sun.

            And as to “you tube [sic] presenters have a better grasp of the sun”, I’ve put up 25 studies of mine, and so far you haven’t pointed to one single scientific error in any of them. Where are your 25 studies so we can see just how much you know?

            Look, if you don’t want to stand behind your claims by linking to one study and its data, that’s fine.

            But that’s on YOU, not me. Don’t include me in your ridiculous excuses, I have nothing to do with your choices.

            w.

          • All you have done eschenbach is dismiss papers presented to you , you accuse others of not presenting credible evidence, when you dont analyze the above papers in the first place, your language is defensive ,flippant, your very broad denial is insulting to the authors.

          • B d Clark February 5, 2020 at 2:02 am

            All you have done eschenbach is dismiss papers presented to you , you accuse others of not presenting credible evidence, when you dont analyze the above papers in the first place, your language is defensive, flippant, your very broad denial is insulting to the authors.

            That’s it? That’s your latest pathetic excuse for not wanting your favorite study to be exposed to the light? Because I’m a bad man?

            Funny thing is, you might not have noticed, but I predicted that joke of an excuse yesterday, viz:

            Willis Eschenbach February 4, 2020 at 9:48 pm

            Thanks, Clyde. You say:
             

            Willis
            It is interesting that no one has taken you up on your challenge! Perhaps because they can’t?

             
            Nope, no way. It’s because of [insert your favorite excuse here, today’s favorite seem to be “Because Willis is a bad man”]
             
            w.

            Yeah, B d, run towards the door with that ludicrous and sad excuse, that’s totally legit, and I’m sure nobody will notice your lack of albondigas …

            w.

          • You have been called out by numerous posters on here yet you refer to me again, that’s very telling eschenbach,EG minipulated a graph ,you could not even read and give a proper analysis of the links I provided.
            Every single link posted on here in reply to you ,you have belittled ,and or ignored.

          • B d Clark February 5, 2020 at 9:56 am Edit

            You have been called out by numerous posters on here yet you refer to me again, that’s very telling eschenbach,EG minipulated a graph ,you could not even read and give a proper analysis of the links I provided.
            Every single link posted on here in reply to you ,you have belittled ,and or ignored.

            Pass. Come back when you grow a pair and are willing to provide a link to the one study you think is best and a link to the data used. Tough task … NOT.

            w.

          • So still not reading the links I provided, still no understanding of sun cycles and spots, hint read the many links provided for you.

43. Ambient heating…. “It’s the core and it’s mantel…stupid” is obviously absurd but it’s not the sun that is heating the earth’s crust. It takes a year for solar heat to penetrate 10 meters of crust and the record temp is only 158F at a desert and the mantel is extraordinarily hot. No mantel heat and well drillers would but hitting super-cold permafrost very quickly. And the jury is out regarding ambient mantel heating of the oceans. If the mantel can heat 30 kilometers of crust, the mantel can certainly heat some ocean water. We are just scratching the surface on submarine volcanism….can’t even detect them nor the multitude of of earthquakes 3 and under that could happen in a year. This question may demonstrate my weak laymanship, but does anyone know if there is a relationship between the variability of cosmic rays and radiogenic heating in the mantel? (effect of cosmic rays on the decay chains of uranium-238 and thorium-232, and potassium-40. ) Thanks Jeff

    • The geothermal energy is highly variable in space and also in time, making estimates difficult. When I was younger, the accepted average was 70 mW/m2, today it is closer to 100 mW/m2 (that’s milliwatts per square meter). The Earth is getting some 340 W/m2 of solar energy on average.

44. Willis,

    You are without doubt the Grand Master of digging out data and your analyses of data are legendary. I am among your biggest fans in that regard. My approach is quite different. I use long-term geologic data (isotope data from ice cores, solar data, temperature measurements, etc). In a perfect world, our different approaches would lead us to similar conclusions. But they don’t and the puzzling question is why not?

    I just published a book “The solar magnetic cause of climate changes and origin of the Ice Ages,” based on analyses of all warm and cold periods over the past 800,000 years, and stumbled upon what must be the cause of the Ice Ages and other climate changes. I looked at oxygen isotope temperatures, deuterium temperatures, CET temperatures, sunspot numbers, total solar irradiance, production rates of beryllium-10 and radiocarbon, and cosmic ray intensity for every warm and cold period (for which data is available) in the past 800,000 years. The data is truly remarkable˗˗EVERY cool period without exception was characterized by low sunspot numbers, indicating low strength of the sun’s magnetic field, and high production rates of beryllium˗10 and radiocarbon, indicating high intensity of cosmic rays. EVERY warm period was coincident with high sunspot numbers and low production rates of beryllium˗10 and radiocarbon. The book is available on Amazon.

    At the end of the last Ice Age, several abrupt climate changes occurred, going from full glacial to full interglacial back to full glacial and then back to full interglacial with transition times of only a century or so. What is most astonishing about these abrupt, intense periods of cooling and warming is that abrupt changes in the production rate of 10Be are exactly coincident with all of the sudden changes in climate. This remarkable parallelism of abrupt 10Be and 14C production, indicating increases in cosmic rays, and sudden, intense climate changes can only mean that the climate changes were the result of the increase in cosmic ray intensity.

    So, Willis, what would you say about the statistical probability of exact coincidence between every climate change (including Ice Ages and Interglaciations) without exception and spikes in beryllium-10 production over the past 800,000 years?

    Mother nature is presently conducting a great experiment that will likely prove (or disprove) the concept I elucidated in my book, ie. the sun’s magnetic field controls the Earth’s climate. The sun has just entered a Grand Solar Minimum (GSM), much like the Dalton Grand Solar Minimum from 1790 to 1820. Temperatures are beginning to decline and cosmic radiation is increasing. So, I am predicting that the next several decades will be severely cold and snowy, just like the last GSM. Nature will be the judge of the correctness of this concept.

    Will all best wishes,

    Don

    • Willis, I support, Don’s comment:

      There is no physical explanation for any of the large past climate changes and there is cosmogenic isotope changes at all of them. For example for the Younger Dryas 12,900 year ago abrupt cooling at which time there is the largest change in C14 in the Holocene record, nor is there an explanation for the 8,200 year ago cooling event or the other smaller warming periods that are followed by cooling periods in the paleo record.

      As this paper notes something is cyclically changing the Greenland ice sheet temperature (just like we are observing).

      http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017115.shtml
      Timing of abrupt climate change: A precise clock by Stefan Rahmstorf

      Many paleoclimatic data reveal a approx. 1,500 year cyclicity of unknown origin. A crucial question is how stable and regular this cycle is. An analysis of the GISP2 ice core record from Greenland reveals that abrupt climate events appear to be paced by a 1,470-year cycle with a period that is probably stable to within a few percent; with 95% confidence the period is maintained to better than 12% over at least 23 cycles.

      This highly precise clock points to an origin outside the Earth system; oscillatory modes within the Earth system can be expected to be far more irregular in period.

      This is a constrained problem, there is the sun and there is the earth.

      There is unequivocal observational evidence of strange changes to the earth in the last 30 years which we have found that cannot explain with current assumptions about the earth and the sun.

      For example:

      We know whatever is moving the large ocean plates all over the planet, is changing in real time, leading temperature changes on the planet by two years.

      There is a sudden increase in mid-ocean earthquake frequency two years before the 1997/1998 and 2015/2016 El Nino events.

      … and the geomagnetic field abruptly changed (the change started in 1994) and continue to change (north magnetic pole drift velocity suddenly increased by a factor of 5 and remained at the high rate for the entire warming period) at the same time, the mid-ocean earthquake frequency increased by 300% .

      Mid ocean earthquake frequency increased by a factor of 300% at the start of the warming (1994) and stayed high for the entire warming period.

      https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access-pdfs/the-correlation-of-seismic-activity-and-recent-global-warming-2016update.pdf

      The Correlation of Seismic Activity and Recent Global Warming: 2016 Update

      The Correlation of Seismic Activity and Recent Global Warming [1] (CSARGW) demonstrated that increasing seismic activity in the globe’s high geothermal flux areas (HGFA) is strongly correlated with global temperatures (r=0.785) from 1979-2015.

      Namely, increased seismic activity in the HGFA (i.e., the mid-ocean’s spreading zones) serves as a proxy indicator of higher geothermal flux in these regions. The HGFA include the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the East Pacific Rise, the West Chile Rise, the Ridges of the Indian Ocean, and the Ridges of the Antarctic/Southern Ocean.

      Equally important, the HGFA seismic frequencies accurately predicted the unusually powerful 2015/2016 El Niño, one of the strongest on record (Figure 2). As illustrated in CSARGW, jumps in HGFA seismic activity can amplify an El Niño event, a phenomenon referred to as a SIENA or a Seismically Induced El Niño Amplification [1]. Accurately predicting two of these amplified El Niños (i.e., the 2015/2016 event plus the1997/1998 episode) is an important outcome of the HGFA seismicity/temperature relationship.

    • Temperatures are beginning to decline

      Really? Where?

      • Globally. Earth has been in a cooling trend at least since February 2016, the peak of the Super El Niño, which was insignificantly warmer in UAH satellite observations than the 1998 Super El Niño. Hence no statistically significant warming in 22 years, despite steadily rising plant food in the air. And a cooling trend for the past four years.

        • John Tillman February 4, 2020 at 3:55 pm

          Globally. Earth has been in a cooling trend at least since February 2016, the peak of the Super El Niño

          From Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog …

          

          Cooling from 2016 to mid 2018, warming since then.

          w.

      • Temperatures have been declining slight for the past 15 years and since 2016 have been declining more rapidly. You can find the data in my book.

        • Don, see above.

          w.

        • Don, the average surface temperature for the month of January was the third warmest in over 40 years, behind only February and March 2016, so I guess that does mean it’s getting cooler.
          https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-january-2020

        • Where does the data in your book come from – and why can’t you provide a link to the data?

    • Don Esterbrook:

      You stated “EVERY cool period without exception was characterized by low sunspot numbers”

      As I pointed out in my earlier post to John Tillman, Feb. 4 9:27 pm, it is IMPOSSIBLE to determine sunspot activity from the Earth’s surface by ANY proxy measurement if there are any volcanic SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere.

      They intercept much of any incoming solar or cosmic radiation and give the FALSE impression that the sun’s output has changed.

      When present, they also cool the Earth’s surface, affecting all biologic proxies.

      Willis is entirely correct when he can find no climatic effect from sunspot activity.

      • Burl Henry February 6, 2020 at 7:19 pm

        Willis is entirely correct when he can find no climatic effect from sunspot activity.

        I also find very little climatic effect from SO2 activity, even in volcanic amounts. See here for the details.

        w.

45. Speaking of Sunspots:

    The sun is currently spotless again:
    http://www.solen.info/solar/images/AR_CH_20200203_hres.png
    And also by ftp download from SWPC, the current quiet sun can be seen in SWPC’s latest 02/04/2020 1339 UTC synoptic map:
    ftp://ftp.swpc.noaa.gov/pub/synoptic_maps/202000204_1339_NL053.jpg

    My solar AR sunspot hypothesis predicts this quiet this will change dramatically o/a 13 February, so that starting on Valentine’s Day (2/14/2020) some significant spots with possible delta character (60-70% probability) with first activity around Carrington longitude 245º (Carrington longitude is at roughly -90º Heliographic longitude today, i.e. the eastern limb wrt to Earth) , and then by another Southern Hempisphere AR about 90º eastward at Carrington longitude 335º (more Earth facing at that time ~16 Feb).
    Feb 14th to Feb 16th they will grow in spot# with some polarity mixing (“delta” character), and become active flaring ARs, albeit still B and low C-class Xray flares due to the still incipient early stage of SC25.

    This prediction is based on a 125-130 m/s flux tube average rise speed through the solar convective zone and a modestly strong trigger on 29 January 2020.

46. Willis,

    The is really solid work and I hate to just dump stuff into your in-basket but …

    If the “sunspot hypothesis” is true, wouldn’t the correlation be between sunspots and the first derivative of temperature, not temperature itself? That is, when sunspots are low, we’d see temperatures falling, and their minimum would be at the end of the low sunspot period. Then as sunspots increased, we’d see temps rising. This would yield no correlation between sunspots and temperature as the two would be effectively 90 degrees out of phase.

    The other thing that might be significant is if the impulse response of global temps is too slow to show much impact within a single solar cycle’s window. If so, we might need the current weak cycle to continue to get a significant effect.

    • My thoughts exactly!

    • Frederick Michael February 4, 2020 at 12:45 pm

      Willis,

      The is really solid work and I hate to just dump stuff into your in-basket but …

      If the “sunspot hypothesis” is true, wouldn’t the correlation be between sunspots and the first derivative of temperature, not temperature itself? That is, when sunspots are low, we’d see temperatures falling, and their minimum would be at the end of the low sunspot period.

      Mmmm … yes and no. When the sun comes up in the morning the world starts to heat up. Is the solar correlation with temperature, or the first derivative of temperature?

      Well … it’s with both. When the first derivative of temperature goes up, it is because the temperature is going up.

      w.

      • My point is that if you compute the correlation, you’d see it mainly in the first derivative. The same applies to the seasonal variation. There’s a phase lag because, in the differential equation, the solar input is driving the first derivative of temperature, not the temperature itself. In the case of water temperature, the phase lag is almost 90 degrees – September has the warmest oceans where I live. Thus, you’d see almost no correlation between ocean temp and solar activity (in your hemisphere) even though the sun is the driver.

        To analyze the relationship between sunspots and global temps, look first to the first derivative of temps. You may not find a correlation there either but not finding it in the absolute temperature isn’t conclusive.

        • Frederick, this illustrates why my intention is to always run the numbers first. I just went to look at solar input vs temperature in the northern hemisphere.

          Correlation of solar and temperature, 0.84

          Correlation of solar and first derivative of temperature, 0.74

          w.

          • Hmmm. Thanks for being so responsive, especially on a thread that’s a few days old.

            Gotta admit that surprises me. Are you analyzing hourly, daily, seasonal, what? I can see this if you’re looking at the temp variation over the day/night cycle, but the results would be different if you looked at the seasonal pattern. The “inertia” effect is larger then, and larger still if you look at water temps.

            In any case, I think I’ve taken too much of your time and don’t deserve any more. My guess is that we’ll only see a solar effect of global temps if this current minimum runs really long, and that’s looking less likely of late. The Thermosphere Climate Index and the 10.7 cm flux (on Spaceweather.com) haven’t yet gotten as low recently as they got in 2009. Meanwhile solar cycle 25 is already showing signs of life.

          • Monthly, but the principle should be the same.

            When the sun suddenly increases from say C to D, temperature rises from say A to B. At the exact same time the first derivative goes from zero to (B-A). Not sure why the derivative would correlate better.

            w.

47. The Ocean does not remain static…waiting for its temperature to be measured to a 1/100th part of a degree.
    Nor does the atmosphere for that matter. One only has to consider clouds and surface winds. Yesterday the thermometer on my porch read 35˚C…today 21˚. Right now, Eastern Australian conditions are being strongly influenced by cold water in the Indian Ocean; cold dry air from Antarctica resulting in cloudless hot days.
    Whilst I fully admire efforts to turn this complexity into numbers I feel it is beyond the capacity of mathematics.
    I am reminded of PID controllers which are used in industrial processes. Even in a relatively simple system, where a limited number of conditions and variables are known and can be governed precisely; managing the feedback loop is far from simple. I therefore suggest that searching for a connection between Sunspots and Earth Climate…on this timescale, with the data we have available… is not likely to produce a useful result.

48. Years ago I read an article in Scientific American (I belive!) that described the Hudson Bay Company’s records of Snowshoe hare and Lynx catch. This had an 11-year cycle in sync with the sunspot cycle. This was before SA shed its scientific agenda, so i think it must have been at least before year 2000. The connection to the solar cycle was the snowdepth where the hare outran the Lynx.

49. I remember reading this analysis a while ago that seemed to show that there was a delayed effect of sunspot number on temperature. I’m not sure if it is accurate but for what it is worth the link is below.

    https://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/solar-cycle-length-sunspot-count-and-temperature-an-insurance-pricing-analysis/#more-503

    and an update

    https://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/may-2009-sunspot-update/

50. Willis,

    SSN Climate connection is a very well-established branch in climate science. Many top scientists are working in this area and there are many published papers in international journals. I expected people to do some little groundwork before making such a post.

    • Thanks for all your links.

    • SSN Climate connection is a very well-established branch in climate science.

      Evidence for a connection is weaker – and getting steadily weaker.

    • Mark February 4, 2020 at 1:51 pm Edit

      Willis,

      SSN Climate connection is a very well-established branch in climate science. Many top scientists are working in this area and there are many published papers in international journals. I expected people to do some little groundwork before making such a post.

      Are you insulting by nature or do you work at it? I just posted up links to the 25 studies I’ve done of those “many published papers”, and you accuse me of not doing groundwork???? How many studies have you posted up on the subject?

      But if you’re so sure, let me make the same offer to you that John Tillman is running from. Figure out which of that vast stack of papers you think demonstrates the sunspot-related effect most strongly, clearly, and irrefutably. Then post up TWO links here, one to that study and the other to the data as used in the study, and I’m happy to take a look at it.

      Caveats:

      • No reanalysis “data”. It’s not data as we commonly understand the term, it is the output of a climate model.

      • Surface datasets only. The effects of the sun on the ionosphere are well known … however, they don’t seem to translate to the surface.

      I await your TWO links.

      w.

51. Tomorrow the stratosphere will hit West US at full power.
    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/gif_files/gfs_o3mr_150_NA_f012.png

52. Hi Willis
    I posted a response to your reply to my post.
    Conclusion was:
    No offense offered nor taken.
    B

    • Bob, many thanks, you are a gentleman indeed.

      w.

      • Willis

        While Sun Tsu said “My enemy’s enemy is my friend,” it doesn’t always work out that way. I wish all here could be a little more congenial and diplomatic. But, I can appreciate that you get tired of being attacked for presenting evidence. You don’t deserve it.

        I appreciate your creativity and hard work. Please keep it up and don’t let the petty sniping wear you down.

53. During the solar minimum , the rate of mixing layers in the equatorial Pacific is low.
    Niño 4 varies in a small range from July 2018.
    https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadisst1_nino4a_2018:2020.png
    https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/solar-cycle-sunspot-number.gif?time=1578334801000
    Very weak solar wind. Niño 4 index remains high.
    https://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/monitor.gif
    https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino4.png

54. A Dr. Rob Baker of The University of New England insists that the Indian Ocean Dipole is correlated with sunspots.

    I download a 2009 paper that characterises IOD behaviour since 1846 using a proxy. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/8607

    But still haven’t got around to looking for a correlation.

55. Willis,

    Great post!

    I’m not ready to give up the ghost just yet that the ball of blazing fire is still hiding some secrets from us… 😉

    We may yet discover a correlation between temperature changes and changes in the magnetic fields of the Earth, the Sun, and/or the Milky Way (per your “heliomagentism” above). It would not be all that surprising to discover, for example, that cycles of those electromagnetic fields periodically combine and amplify (or diminish) cosmic/solar radiation over the course of the galactic year (or during one or more periods of the sun’s oscillation across the galactic plane). Those amplified forces may alter our atmosphere or SST more significantly than our limited observations currently imply. No?

    • “…may alter our atmosphere or SST more significantly than our limited observations currently imply. No?”

      Willis: “Does this mean that the sunspot cycle doesn’t affect surface weather?

      Nope. It just means that I haven’t been able to find one. Might be out there, but I’m up to 25 places or so that I’ve looked without finding it.”

      He could check another 25 but it seems even that would not disolve the calcified opinion of some people. One thing is pretty clear: the affect of solar variation on modern warming is highly likely to be negligble and those who persists in blaming it for causing modern warming are clutching at straws.

56. “Charged particles and magnetic fields influence each other. So when the solar wind, which is made up of charged particles, blows past Earth’s magnetosphere, the shape of the magnetic field changes from the dipole magnetic field – shown on Earth’s Magnetosphere page – to a plasma-swept magnetosphere that looks more like someone’s hair got blown in the wind. This interaction between the Sun’s plasma wind and Earth’s magnetosphere is known as the Sun-Earth Connection”
    https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/auroras/sun_earth_connect.html

57. @John Finn
    ‘SSN Climate connection is a very well-established branch in climate science.’

    Evidence for a connection is stronger – and getting steadily stronger day by day.

    • But it does not want to be quoted.

    • Mark February 4, 2020 at 3:47 pm

      @John Finn

      ‘SSN Climate connection is a very well-established branch in climate science.’

      Evidence for a connection is stronger – and getting steadily stronger day by day.

      ENOUGH WITH THE HANDWAVING AND UNSUPPORTED CLAIMS!!!

      Figure out which of those papers you think demonstrates the sunspot-related connection most strongly, clearly, and irrefutably. Then post up TWO links here, one to that study and the other to the data as used in the study, and I’m happy to take a look at it.

      Caveats:

      • No reanalysis “data”. It’s not data as we commonly understand the term, it is the output of a climate model.

      • Surface datasets only. The effects of the sun on the ionosphere are well known … however, they don’t seem to translate to the surface.

      I await your TWO links.

      w.

58. On a lighter note, some may enjoy reading the story “Solar Constant” by Murray Leinster about sunspots, climate change, and climate engineering: http://baencd.freedoors.org/Books/Planets%20of%20Adventure/0743471628__13.htm.

    Oh, yes, in case you didn’t recognize the author…it doesn’t take place on Earth.

59. Willis, Another very un-Mannly effort.

    How Dare You?

60. Willis, a thought-provoking article. Thanks!

    Since you mention your (un)affection for typos, perhaps you might fix the one in the middle of your fifth paragraph: ‘where sunspots were lower than that media. ‘ … should have been ‘where sunspots were lower than that median.’

    Regards

    • Thanks, Steven, fixed. We know that it’s a typo because in 2020, there’s nothing lower than the media …

      w.

61. Who should I believe? Willis or this story from the UK Express?
    “ warning: Earth could be hit by MINI ICE-AGE as Sun ‘hibernates’“

62. Willis, sorry you didn’t find a correlation. Perhaps you need to torture the data like AGW people. You can’t believe the results they get. What you can’t get by persuasion might be got with brute force. Just trying to be helpful 🙂

63. @Willis

    There are numerous papers showing the solar influence on surface data!!

    This is a very well-written review and heavily cited.
    Gray, L.J., J. Beer and M. Geller, et al. (2010), Solar influences on climate. Rev. Geophys., 48, RG4001, doi: 10.1029/2009RG000282.

    • Mark February 4, 2020 at 7:38 pm

      @Willis

      There are numerous papers showing the solar influence on surface data!!

      I love folks saying this as if I didn’t know it. I just haven’t found one that stands up to close examination.

      The bizarre part is that folks like you are well aware that there are even more numerous papers claiming that CO2 is the secret control knob that rules the temperature … and you don’t believe them.

      But bring out any solar paper, and you fall over in adoration. Look, if most of the CO2 papers are nonsense, and they are, then why is it so hard for y’all to believe that most of the solar papers are the same?

      So let me make you the offer I’ve made many times. Figure out which one of the papers in that “well-written review” you think demonstrates the sunspot-related effect most strongly, clearly, and irrefutably. Then post up TWO links here, one to that study and the other to the data as used in the study, and I’m happy to take a look at it.

      Caveats:

      • No reanalysis “data”. It’s not data as we commonly understand the term, it is the output of a climate model.

      • Surface datasets only. The effects of the sun on the ionosphere are well known … however, they don’t seem to translate to the surface.

      I await your TWO links.

      w.

      • Willis
        It is interesting that no one has taken you up on your challenge! Perhaps because they can’t?

        • Thanks, Clyde. You say:

          Willis
          It is interesting that no one has taken you up on your challenge! Perhaps because they can’t?

          Nope, no way. It’s because of [insert your favorite excuse here, today’s favorite seem to be “Because Willis is a bad man”]

          w.

          • Wow… and you’re not even orange. 😉

    • This is a very well-written review and heavily cited. ….

      … but provides very little support for a significant global effect on surface temperatures. You should, perhaps, read it yourself.

64. @Willis

    There are so many papers about the solar influence on surface climate. It is a surprise that you have not gone through any of those. To name a few: Dr Harry van Loon published many papers on Sea Level Pressure and Sea Surface temperature observation data. Dr White (1997) published one of the great paper on Sea Surface Temperature. Most of the solar climate scientists are aware of their pioneering work those used surface data.

    • Mark, is there something about providing two links to the paper you think is the best that is mystifying to you?

      w.

65. Willis, I must admit I find your faith in the Berkeley dataset very naive. In Australia, it is well known the BOM have cooled the past and ‘disappeared’ almost all previous high temperatures through each iteration of their so-called high-quality data. Jo Nova has published many articles about this on her website.
    I doubt we are the only country to make data agree with ideology. As such, I suspect that you could not prove anything from all your effort.

    • Ann February 4, 2020 at 9:42 pm

      Willis, I must admit I find your faith in the Berkeley dataset very naive.

      Ann, I must admit that I’m tired of people ignoring my clear request to QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE REFERRING TO!!!

      Come back when you find a quote where I said that I have “faith in the Berkeley dataset”.

      I’ll wait, but since to my knowledge I’ve never said anything even remotely resembling that, it’s likely going to be a long wait … meanwhile, can I tell you how tired I am of people accusing me of saying things I never said?

      w.

66. Willis , I know videos move a little slow for you ,but others may get a clearer picture on solar wind and Earths electromagnetic defences.
    

    • And what is your conclusion from this?

      Solar forcing might explain some weather events on earth.

      Does it explain the positive century- long trend in surface temperatures? – NO.

67. Willis,

    I’d like to make you aware of something that’s been occurring to the Jetstream since late November, 2019. I’ve no sure idea if this is related to a solar influence but it may be. I’ve commented a few dozen times on this since late November. Here are some links to my earliest comments soon after I first noticed it, then a couple more recent ones.

    November 28, 2019 at 3:55 pm
    http://joannenova.com.au/2019/11/midweek-unthreaded-105/#comment-2230752

    December 2, 2019 at 9:13 pm
    http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/abc-discovers-data-on-facebook-showing-wet-rainforest-has-not-burned-once-ever-or-at-all-in-tens-of-millions-of-years/#comment-2234995

    Here’s a comment I made when I found this same effect was developed within the southern-hemisphere’s Summer Jetstream flow – only much more so:

    December 4, 2019 at 3:33 pm
    http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/midweek-unthreaded-106/#comment-2235743

    December 12, 2019 at 10:00 pm
    http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/midweek-unthreaded-107/#comment-2239504

    Then two more recent remarks where the suspected cause becomes more tangible:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/weekend-unthreaded-292/#comment-2250447

    http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/weekend-unthreaded-295/#comment-2263009

    As a result I’m considering what initiating mechanism could lead to sinking stratospheric air detectably doing this within the past 3 months? I’m entertaining the view that an external influence operating over several decades may be implied. I can’t see what else could have produced it.

    I’m not expecting you to buy into it – of course – this is just to show you what’s been occurring (still is, not fading in the least) and that the development is without clear mechanism to trigger sinking of such stratospheric air into the lower-troposphere. If your interested enough feel free to question, debunk, contribute, make counterfactuals, point-out other possibilities. I’d appreciate that (or anyone else).

    Personally, I’ve found this recent jetstream behavior to be the most stunning emergence I’ve ever noticed, it’s begging for a mechanism which explains ultimately how this is happening, as it looks like an external process may be necessary here.

    • WXcycles
      “Personally, I’ve found this recent jetstream behavior to be the most stunning emergence I’ve ever noticed, it’s begging for a mechanism which explains ultimately how this is happening, as it looks like an external process may be necessary here.”

      “Moscow and Beijing have reportedly joined forces to carry out heating experiments above Europe and modify an important layer of the atmosphere for a possible military application, according to Chinese scientists.”
      https://www.newsweek.com/china-russia-modified-atmosphere-europe-military-application-1262349

      https://www.globalresearch.ca/does-the-us-military-own-the-weather-weaponizing-the-weather-as-an-instrument-of-modern-warfare/5608728

      • gimme a break

68. Did you know that in the Southern Hemisphere we are 3% closer to the sun in our summer than the Northern Hemisphere summer. Of course that makes us 3% further away from the sun in our winter than the Northern Hemisphere winter. There is a climate story in there somewhere.

    • The southern hemisphere (SH) perihelion – along with maximum obliquity and the large expanse of SH ocean area – explain the interglacial periods (Holocene, Eemian, etc) but does not explain the global temperature variations during the interglacial. Global temperature long term trend is downwards – as is the obliquity angle.
      refer
      https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/04/paleoclimate-cycles-are-key-analogs-for-present-day-h………… 2019/04/26

69. Willis, or you not noticed that during the solar minimum, circulation of the Eastern Pacific is like during La Niña, and on the West Pacific as during the El Niño?
    https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadisst1_nino12a_2018:2021.png
    https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino12.png
    https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadisst1_nino4a_2018:2021.png
    https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino4.png

70. Waves in the stratosphere play a major role in winter weather, and the temperature in the stratosphere depends only on high-energy radiation.
    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t100_nh_f00.png
    https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/gfs/2020020500/gfs_T2ma_us_1.png

71. A massive stratospheric hit in the west of the US.
    http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/webAnims/tpw_nrl_colors/namer/mimictpw_namer_latest.gif
    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z70_nh_f00.png

72. @Willis

    Further to your comments relating to solar influence on climate using observational data:
    1. Gray et al (2010) mentioned many papers that used observational data. Anyone can figure it out. All those papers are published in peer-reviewed top international journals. Hope you would have been one of those peer-reviewers. Gray et al is cited 921 times and I believe you are not in that list. There are many (repeat many) papers that used observational data. Even recent time, I saw many solar related papers those used HadSLP data and HadSST data, NOAA SST data etc. Anyone can publish papers refuting those work and you are very welcome! We are eagerly waiting for that. Commenting is easy but to publish you need to convince referees. Here is the full reference to those two papers I mentioned earlier.

    1. van Loon, H., G.A. Meehl, and D.J. Shea, (2007), Coupled air-sea response to solar forcing in the Pacific region during northern winter, J Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 112, D02108, doi: 10.1029/2006JD007378.

    2. White, W. B., J. Lean, D. R. Cayan, et al. (1997), Response of global upper ocean temperature to changing solar irradiance, J. Geophys. Res.-Oceans, 102(C2), 3255-3266.

    Anyone can question anything but for questioning a well-establish branch of science you need to have a certain basis. There should be one specific chapter in IPCC report about all solar direct and indirect influence.

    • The Gray paper does not support a significant relationship between solar activity and recent climate change.

      For example, this from Section 6.3

      [160] The most obvious mechanism for solar variations affecting the Earth’s climate is due to the change in heating of the Earth system associated with varying TSI.

      and this from Section 6.3

      A value of 0.24 W m−2 solar radiative forcing difference from Maunder Minimum to the present is currently considered to be more appropriate. Despite these uncertainties in solar radiative forcing, they are nevertheless much smaller than the estimated radiative forcing due to anthropogenic changes, and the predicted SC‐related surface temperature change is small relative to anthropogenic changes.

      There is absolutely nothing in the paper, or presumably any of the references cited in the paper, which can explain 20th century climate change.

73. This article and the subsequent string of comments sent me back to look at Herschel’s original paper, which deserves a second look.
    My trigger was the comment above that his data was pre-1701, a century before the paper was published. In the relevant part of the paper he draws on observation across five periods during 1650-1713 when contemporary observers recorded low numbers of sun spots. Hershel recognises the limitations of their observations, both with regard to the equipment available to them and the regularity with which they made observations. Regarding wheat prices, he is clear that these can be influenced by more factors than the size of the year’s harvest, and also that more weather factors (e.g. winds and rain) influence the harvest than the strength of the sun alone. The prices he noted during these low sunspot periods ranged from 37s 1d to 63s 3d the bushel (for simplicity I give the prices in shillings and pence only, rather than in £sd).
    I could not see where he concluded from this analysis that he had found any evidence of a correlation between solar activity and grain prices.
    It is only at the end of the paper that he notes that, having recorded (by regular observations using his own, state-of-the-art equipment) very little sunspot activity during 1795-1800, there had been a marked increase in numbers between then and his writing this paper of 1801, and that he hoped that this would be lasting and would lead to greater warmth and better crop yields.
    So, where was he wrong?

74. Thanks Willis — your usual good work. Agree w/your inclinations on the subject.

75. @John

    As you mentioned the most obvious mechanism of solar influence as TSI is mentioned in Gray et al. That contribution is nominal and surprisingly only that nominal contribution of the sun is included in the IPCC document!

    Gray et al. discussed a lot about mechanism involving UV variability. It changes 6-8% in solar min to max years. It is one of the main mechanism through which the sun influences the earth. There are large dynamical variability, circulation change, jet movement, the strength of polar vortex, all are shown to be linked with UV variability in the upper stratosphere. All those papers are referred/discussed in Gray et al.

    Other indirect influences of the sun also come via modulating AMO, PDO, ENSO, NAO etc.. Many papers discovered and analysed those links. As expected it would not be very simple and linear. How that solar climate link was modified in the recent period is also attended in many recent papers. Those indirect influence of the sun gave additional global warming in recent periods. e.g. Sun NAO has a very strong positive connection in recent periods in all observational data. It was not present in the earlier period. All those indirect influences of the sun and the impact on recent temperature rise should be considered in detail.

    Also, the sun via modulating Galactic Cosmic Ray influences cloud formation. It has a huge impact on global temperature.

    Now you see, the sun is not only causing day and night, seasons, Indian Summer Monsoon, etc. but it is the main controller of our climate. How little we know about it!

    That is the reason I mentioned including a new chapter in IPCC report on solar direct/ indirect influence on climate. Its indirect contribution to recent global temperature rise is much much higher than mentioned in that report. More and more study is required to address that important area of climate science.

    • Gray et al. discussed a lot about mechanism involving UV variability. It changes 6-8% in solar min to max years. It is one of the main mechanism through which the sun influences the earth.

      Right – and the temperature change between solar min and solar max is ~0.07 deg C.

      Willis has used sunspots as a proxy which encompasses all solar parameters – TSI, UV, etc. It really doesn’t matter what the mechanism is – the TOTAL effect is clearly small. Solar variability may be responsible for some regional weather events but there is nothing which indicates that it has anything to do with 20th century warming.

      We went through all this in 2008 when it became clear that SC24 was going to be a weak cycle. Numerous posts and comments on this blog included predictions of imminent cooling which never materialised.

      Forget solar variability . The only issue up for debate now is Climate Sensitivity to 2xCO2. It’s quite probable that climate scientists have over-estimated future warming.

76. Willis,
    was just falling over two findings:
    New Science 22: Solar TSI leads Earth’s temperature with an 11 year delay
    Lots of things will fall into place — as befits a potential paradigm step forward. For decades, people have been looking to see if the Sun controlled our climate but the message was perplexingly muddy. In the long run, solar activity appears linked to surface temperatures on Earth. (Solar activity was at a record high during the second half of the 20th century when temperatures were also high.) But when we look closely, firstly the solar peaks don’t exactly coincide with the surface temperature peaks, and secondly, the extra energy supplied during the solar peaks is far too small to do much warming. So how could changes in surface temperature be due to the Sun?

    The second was a different view of TSI:
    TSI 1AU and TSI true earth
    TSI true earth means TSI at earth distance with a much greater variability.
    Maybe s.th. worth looking at ?
    Unfortunately the time serie is a rather short one.

77. @John

    It seems you could not follow what I said. I am not forgetting solar variability as it is the most important driver of climate. Solar influence is a complex issue and not as simple and linear as you suggested.

    • Solar influence is a complex issue and not as simple and linear as you suggested.

      And yet it is often claimed that there has been a clear & obvious solar-climate correlation over several millenia.

      You say that it is a complex issue. Indeed, the Gray paper, despite considering all the scientific evidence, can find no significant solar effect. As things stand, therefore, the NULL Hypothesis (no solar effect) has not been rejected.

78. Mark: to reply to a comment, please click the “Reply” button placed at the very bottom of the comment. It is a new tool available to you. So, instead of “@John” in a new comment, you can reply to John’s comment directly. Does it seem too difficult?

79. Willis,

    As I understand the basis for your temperature data, you use the Berkley Earth gridded land and ocean data. Here is how they describe the data.

    “During the Berkeley Earth averaging process we compare each station to other stations in its local neighborhood, which allows us to identify discontinuities and other heterogeneities in the time series from individual weather stations. The averaging process is then designed to automatically compensate for various biases that appear to be present. After the average field is constructed, it is possible to create a set of estimated bias corrections that suggest what the weather station might have reported had apparent biasing events not occurred. This breakpoint-adjusted data set provides a collection of adjusted, homogeneous station data that is recommended for users who want to avoid heterogeneities in station temperature data.”

    What has always bothered me about this approach is that by ‘homogenizing’ the data, it is not longer ‘real’ data but what they think the data ‘should’ be. Therefore, I’ve never trusted the Berkeley data. I’m wondering if the raw data would give a different result. How does the Berkeley data compare with satellite data over their period of overlap?

    • Don, lots of folks scream about “adjusted” data. However, there’s a real problem with the raw data.

      As one of many examples, many stations moved from somewhere near downtown to the outskirts, or to the nearby airport.

      So … what would you propose we do with the data? We can use it as it is, but it’s bound to have a large jump (discontinuity) on the date of the move. And if we throw out all of those stations, we will have very few stations left. So … how should we adjust for that?

      A number of methods have been used. They all have pluses and minuses.

      However, no matter what your answer might be, we’ve left the world of raw data and we’re in the world of “adjusted” or “homogenized” data.

      Not an easy question by any means.

      Best to you,

      w.

      • Don, I got interested in your question, viz:

        How does the Berkeley data compare with satellite data over their period of overlap?

        So, as you might imagine, I did the exercise. Here’s the graphic showing average temperatures over the period. Since they were each anomalies around different periods, I’ve set each of them as anomalies around their mean. As a result, the overall difference is zero, and individual area differences are accurate.

        

        Interesting. First, Berkeley Earth’s land is warmer and the ocean is cooler than with UAH.

        Next, the largest differences are in the areas of sea ice. I suspect that this is a difference in what temperature is used. You have two choices—air temperature over the ice and sea temperature under the ice. My guess is that the Berkeley Earth dataset is using sea temperature, where the UAH is obviously air temperature.

        Overall, I’d say that’s a pretty good fit.

        Having said that, the trends are different …

        

        I must also add that among a number of major datasets (RSS MSU, UAH MSU, Berkeley Earth, JMA, HadCRUT, and GISS LOTI), the UAH MSU data has the smallest trend.

        w.

        • Willis
          You remarked, “First, Berkeley Earth’s land is warmer …” UHI contamination?

      • We have little choice but to work with adjusted or homogenized data, but it should be treated for what it is. It’s our best guess, not too much more than that.

        Taking the data and then wielding it as if it’s a scientific, social and political truth that cannot be questioned has brought us to the current state of affairs.

80. I agree with Willis but I live in hope that an explanation will be found. I am not too hung up on finding correlation or an eleven year cycle and of course, sunspots are the proxy, not the trigger.

    The sun interacts with our planet by means of its magnetic field, a whole spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, the solar wind and also modulates the impingement of interstellar materials such as cosmic rays and the dust of comets. Although the TSI is nearly constant, some parts of the spectrum, e.g. microwave and UV vary in amplitude throughout the cycle more than other frequencies.

    If we speculate about how these solar effects interact with our planet then atmospheric chemistry is an obvious factor. There is knowledge of UV-ozone interactions but little known about the effect of the solar wind. These extremely high speed, high energy particles seem to do very little, something I find difficult to accept. Again, if we speculate on how interactions with the atmosphere could affect climate, then cloud formation is the most obvious candidate. Svensmark is a leading promoter of this thinking. It would also be a very effective candidate, modulating the direct solar warming of the land and oceans.

    As we consider the lack of correlation and periodicity, the circumstantial evidence shows that climate effects tend to occur when there has been a series of weak (or strong) solar cycles. This implies a build up or prolonged depletion before an effect is seen. This could be a threshold effect. These are common in the biological world but I cannot see one here. A time lag such as one involving the temperature inertia of the oceans is much more likely in a climate context.

    A TSI type phenomena or cloud coverage change could store and accumulate a positive or negative trend in ocean temperatures that are not measurable until after the solar changes that caused them. Due to the interactive nature of our climate this could be more complex than a simple time lag. For example, any ocean effect would be overlaid on the existing ocean currents and oscillations.

    I hope that Willis finds time to reflect and comment on these thoughts because he has the skills and ingenuity to find ways of doing the analysis.

81. Willis,

    Thanks for running the other data–interesting.

    When stations are moved, the data obviously have to be adjusted or treated as a new site. Those kind of adjustments aren’t what I worry about. I do worry about (1) the kind of ‘adjustments HadCRUT makes to bias the data–for example, they didn’t like the 1945-1977 cooling, so they simply erased it with ‘adjustments,’ and (2) in large areas that have no temp data at all (Arctic, Antarctic, Africa, and central South America) temp data is arbitrary made up and used as if it were actual measurements over major areas of the globe. So you can get any global temp you want by just making up whatever temps you want for these areas. I don’t know what the Berkeley group uses for the four major areas with no temp measurements, but I suspect they also make it up.

    Best to you,

    Don

    • Thanks, Don. You’ve overlooking a very simple problem when you say “in large areas that have no temp data at all … temp data is arbitrary made up and used as if it were actual measurements”. The problem is that 99.99% of the planet has no temp data. Each temperature station is valid for maybe fifty feet in every direction, and beyond that is the unknown …

      What’s your plan for dealing with that? Berkeley Earth defines a “temperature field” based on latitude and elevation, and compares that with individual stations. I took a look at this method here.

      But it’s a problem no matter how many stations there are in an area.

      w.

      • I fully agree, Willis. I guess we can only ‘do the best we can with what we have at the time’ (FDR WWII). I wonder what the data would look like if we applied no temp values at all to the Arctic, Antarctic, Africa, and central South America. That would make a restricted ‘global temp’ but at least it would (might) be free of overt bias. Maybe it’s pointless to talk about a single number for global temp.

        dje

    • Good that you are discussing that point.

      Recently I was checking some temperature data of Sunderbans India using ERA-Interim. I was surprised to see that all the stations in that remote locations have an abrupt jump in temperature since 2013. Interestingly there were no trends of temperature for a long period covering 1979-2013. Hence I agree that there could be a question of manipulation of temperature in remote locations where there are not enough observation.

      Do not you think all those remote locations need to be investigated thoroughly? How those remote locations are contributing global average temperature could be a burning topic.

82. I read a paper on Herschel’s linkage between sunspots and wheat price that demonstrated it was correct, until international trade in wheat interfered with and then destroyed the linkage. Any study that ignores that trade is bound to say that Herschel was wrong.

83. Willis,
    I have read your 24 earlier posts and the present addition.
    I think the Svensmark theory of the galactic cosmic ray input into the Earth’s atmosphere causing variations in the nucleation of low level clouds is both controversial and unproven.
    I have also put the line through some 6 claims of alleged Earth Sun inter-relations that are said to play a role in the climate listed in other works discussing this subject e.g.
    Schwab, Hale and Gleissberg périodicities,
    LOD,
    Lunar Nodal Cycle,
    Bond Cycle etc.
    There are too many suppositions and statements like ‘the D-O cycle may be in response to solar forcing’, etc.
    I did pause however over one paper.
    I am mindful of your direction-
    (1) nominate the unpaywalled paper and (2) give the exact data set which the authors rely on.
    The paper is Neff et al 2001 which is unpaywalled. I don’t have the data set of the authors.
    However you may be able to dispose of this one quickly.
    Neff et al 2001provides evidence from paleo climate records for a link between varying cosmic radiation and climate.
    Using samples from a cave in Oman, Middle East, these authors showed that a close correlation exists between radiocarbon production rates ( driven by incoming cosmic radiation which is solar modulated ) and rainfall( as reflected in the geochemical signature of oxygen isotopes)
    If it all hangs on the dataset, don’t bother but it was intriguing.

    • Herbert, the general problem that I have with the paleo based on beryllium and carbon isotopes is that the rate of deposition of those seems to be weather-dependent. So they are not, as is often claimed, a simple measure of the activity of the sun.

      Do you have a link to the Neff et a. paper?

      Thanks,

      w.

      • Willis,
        Thanks.
        The Paper is “Strong Coherence between Solar variability and the Monsoon in Oman between 9 and 6 kyr ago,’ U.Neff et al, Nature 411, 290-293,(2001).
        Interesting list of References, from Lamb to Overpeck.
        Let me know your thoughts.

        • Herbert, my first question without even reading the paper is, if the coherence is so strong, why do the authors have to look back six THOUSAND years to find the evidence?

          Next, I see that they say that they are using the “Delta14C record from tree rings, which largely reflects changes in solar activity”. But in fact, we have little actual observational evidence that that is true. See my post called “The Cosmic Problem With Rays“.

          Next, they say “The delta18O record from the stalagmite, which serves as a proxy for variations in the tropical circulation and monsoon rainfall …” I’ve never heard that claim. ∂18O is widely used as a temperature proxy, not a rainfall proxy.

          Finally, we have reasonable records of the temperature in Oman. Hang on … OK, here’s the CEEMD analysis:

          

          No sign of a solar connection. Here’s a scatterplot of Oman temperature versus sunspots:

          

          So … we have absolutely no correlation of temperatures and sunspots now, but we’re supposed to believe that there is a correlation between ∂18O (generally a temperature proxy) and temperature 60 centuries ago? …

          Pass …

          w.

          • Willis,
            Thanks.
            Well, that leaves 0 remaining compelling claims of Earth Sun inter-relations affecting climate.
            As you say, although it does not mean that no such relationship exists, it’s just that there are no papers that stand up to scrutiny establishing the relationship!

84. Willis. you said:

    “Undaunted, I continued to look for correlations [between the Earth’s temperature and sunspot activity, and I’ve done so from time to time ever since. At this point, I’ve looked in more than 20 places, & found no correlation.”

    I would like to respectfully suggest to you that you are looking at the wrong celestial object when it comes to changes in the world’s mean SSTs. I believe that you should be looking at (the tides of) the Moon rather than the Sun.

    Given the minimum requirement of at least 5 – 10 cyles per data set length for reasonable time series spectral analysis, your CEEMD of the BEST data (spanning ~ 70 years) would have trouble detecting temperature cycles much longer than 7 – 14 years. Hence, the main long-term cycles that you detect in the temperature records are the ones with periods of 9.1 years and possibly a bi-decadal component.

    If you use a much longer SST temperature record e.g. The SST data set extracted from ERSST Version 3 which is a monthly record with {a} global coverage at 2° × 2° grids for the period of January 1854 through December 2007. This longer temperature record allows you to extend your spectral analysis to ~ 15 – 31 years.

    Such an analysis has been done by Chen et al. (2009) who find that:

    Ref: Ge Chen Baomin Shao Yong Han Jun Ma Bertrand Chapron, 2009, Modality of semiannual to multidecadal oscillations in global sea surface temperature variability, Journal of Geophysical Research. Oceans, Vol 115, Issue C3.

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009JC005574

    “Among the dozens of potential IDO [Inter-Decadal Oscillations] modes in global SST variability (some have been identified by previous investigators during the past two decades), four of them are, in many aspects, critical: The sub-decadal mode at 9.0 years, the quasi-decadal mode at 13.0 years, the interdecadal mode at 21.2 years, and [possibly] the multidecadal mode at 62.2 years.”

    I believe that the four IDO modes that they find are all related to well known lunar tidal cycles. These are:

    9.0 years –> the lunar forcing cycle of 9.1-years (i.e the harmonic mean of half the 18.6-year Draconic cycle and the 8.85-year Anomalistic Cycle)
    13.0 years –> the pseudo period formed by the difference between the 31.0-year half Perigean New/Full Cycle and the 18.03-year Saros Cycle (such that 31.0 – 18.0 years = 13.0 years).
    21.2 years –> possibly the 20.37-year extreme Perigean lunar tidal cycle
    62.2 years –> possibly the full 62.0-year Perigean New/Full Moon tidal-cycle.

    Norman Treloar (2002, 2017, 2019) and Nikolay Sidorenkov and I (2012, 2013, 2018, 2019) have published a number of papers outlining the case for a lunar tidal explanation for the observed variations in the world mean temperatures.

    • Ian Wilson February 6, 2020 at 5:05 am

      I would like to respectfully suggest to you that you are looking at the wrong celestial object when it comes to changes in the world’s mean SSTs. I believe that you should be looking at (the tides of) the Moon rather than the Sun.

      The problem is that there is absolutely no trend in the tides, and they repeat on an ~51-year cycle … and neither of those is true about the temperature.

      w.

85. I’m not sure why we would try to disprove the connection between our sun and climate but there it is in black and white. The pile of speculation, and pure guesses is pretty deep.

    Why not try to prove that cold weather here on earth causes a lack of sunspots? Just reorganize some of the techno-babble.

    If we are going to stop the climate crazies articles like this are not the way forward. The sun and our climate are inextricably linked. This is a fact that is easily understood. The Maunder minimum occurred during the Little Ice Age. Another fact.

    We live in an era of sound-bytes. Sophistry is not going to win.

    • Jay Ayer February 6, 2020 at 5:20 am

      The sun and our climate are inextricably linked. This is a fact that is easily understood.

      My 25 analyses say they are not. Or more precisely, if they are, I cannot find where. If you think they are, you need to demonstrate it, not just claim it.

      w.

      • Willis ‘My 25 analyses say they are not’.
        25 is not good enough for such a claim.

        • 25 is more than enough – unless you can provide one which shows that there is a clear solar-climate link.

86. John, in this thread there are mentions of many such papers. If you do not accept that is your problem.

    • Please provide a link to the best one that you have read.

    • There aren’t any. Mark provided a link to the Gray papers which has reviewed at all the available evidence and cannot find anything other than a small temperature change due to TSI variability.

      https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009RG000282

      See here

      The most obvious mechanism for solar variations affecting the Earth’s climate is due to the
      change in heating of the Earth system associated with varying TSI. These are found to partially explain the variations in the temperature of the oceanic mixed layer, but even in this case, it appears that modulations in the ocean‐atmosphere sensible and latent heat fluxes are needed to explain the observations,

      and here

      A value of 0.24 W m−2 solar radiative forcing difference from Maunder Minimum to the present is currently considered to be more appropriate. Despite these uncertainties in solar radiative forcing, they are nevertheless much smaller than the estimated radiative forcing due to anthropogenic changes,

      Forget the sun and focus on the magnitude of the climate response to increasing GHGs. That’s the only issue for debate.

      • Mr Finn you said
        “Forget the sun and focus on the magnitude of the climate response to increasing GHGs. That’s the only issue for debate.”

        The problem is that if you apply the same kind of analysis to CO2 v Global temperature, CO2 fails at the first hurdle,
        It cannot be isolated from natural causes.
        Unless you believe scientists that say the late 20th century warming cannot be explained by anything other than CO2. Which is patently false.

      • John Finn February 7, 2020 at 2:52 am

        There aren’t any. Mark provided a link to the Gray papers which has reviewed at all the available evidence and cannot find anything other than a small temperature change due to TSI variability.

        Folks, this is exactly why I ask people for two links, one to the paper and one to the data, for the best study that they know of. Otherwise, we just end up with people like the good Mr. Finn waving his hands at some big pile of studies and saying the answer is in there somewhere.

        I see the same behavior on the other side, where they wave their hands at the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report and say they answer is in there somewhere.

        And neither of those answers is worth a bucket of warm spit.

        Look, this is not a hard ask. Figure out the study you think is the best, and send me a link to the study and the data. Anything else is totally worthless and totally uninteresting to me.

        Best to you,

        w.

87. Camp and Tung argue there is a spatial pattern and a phase lag to the response to the solar cycle. “Using NCEP reanalysis data that span four and a half solar cycles, we have obtained the spatial pattern over the globe which best separates the solar-max years from the solar-min years, and established that this coherent global pattern is statistically significant using a Monte-Carlo test. The pattern shows a global warming of the Earth’s surface of about 0.2 °K, with larger warming over the polar regions than over the tropics, and larger over continents than over the oceans. It is also established that the global warming of the surface is related to the 11-year solar cycle, in particular to its TSI, at over 95% confidence level.”
    Solar-Cycle Warming at the Earth’s Surface and an Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity.
    Ka-Kit Tung and Charles D. Camp
    http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.75.1288&rep=rep1&type=pdf

88. Martin,
    It seems there is no point in making any comment in this thread to make Willis, John Finn/ Curious George convinced. Inspite of all the proof they will keep on blabbering I did not see any proof.

    Hence we need to focus our attention from such silly conversation to actually understand more and more on solar-climate science. Anyone reading this thread will figure out how complex this branch of science is and above all how important it is. Hence obviously only a very top class scientist can pinpoint this area. If someone analyses in details they will be able to figure out some excellent solar climate scientists. There are still some top solar climate scientists according to whom Science is their top priority and not politics.

    • Paul February 7, 2020 at 5:25 am

      Martin,
      It seems there is no point in making any comment in this thread to make Willis, John Finn/ Curious George convinced. Inspite of all the proof they will keep on blabbering I did not see any proof

      Say what? NOT ONE OF YOU, INCLUDING YOU, PAUL, HAS SENT ME TWO LINKS TO THE STUDY YOU THINK IS BEST.

      However, I’m still here. And since you seem to think you’re an expert in these matters, how about you step up to the plate and give me your two links? What are you waiting for?

      w.

      PS—In general, you can’t “prove” anything in science. So if you think you are providing proofs … you aren’t.

89. Willis,
    A trend in the Earth’s mean temperature can just be a long-term cycle in the world’s mean temperature e.g. the ~ 2300 year Hallstatt (Bray) cycle. Viewed on a short time scale e.g. decades to centuries. the longer cycle can appear to be a slow trend (either upward or downward).

    The lunar tides are most effective when they act in resonance with the seasonal cycle (i.e. multiples of the tropical year). I have never heard of a stable 51.0-year lunar tidal cycle that is associated with the alignment of peaks in the strength of the lunar tides at the same point in the seasonal cycle.

    The alignment of the lunar perigean New/Full Moon tidal cycles with the seasonal year [when viewed in a frame of reference that is fixed with respect to the precession of the Earth’s obliquity, corrected for the slow drift of the Perihelion of the Earth’s orbit] has a 416.0-year cycle. This twice the length of the 208-year de Vries Cycle. The widely recognized 59.75-year Perigean New/Full Moon tidal cycle plays a key role in establishing the 208/416 year lunar tidal cycle.

    28.75 + 31.0 years = 59.75 years
    59.75 + 28.75 years = 88.5 years (Gleissberg cycle)
    88.5 + 59.75 years = 148.25 years
    148.25 + 59.75 years = 208.0 years (de Vries cycle)

90. Apologies if already posted, but the irony is too good to pass. If solar is not and issue why does this article claim worse warming when clouds DISSSPPEAR ?!!
    https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-clouds-are-the-key-to-new-troubling-projections-on-warming?fbclid=IwAR3xdZ3bdmnv8IOgrvzjEZ6CdDkZwH0W7gj8yRkI7d-BuNMPfQhY9X7F0yE

91. The solar cycle does indeed cause a very predictable pattern of warming and cooling in the tropics. In this study, I took the HADSTT3 tropics data all the way back to 1850 and found a significant relationship. Every solar cycle is broken down into a 3 wave pattern. The length of each wave is approximately 3.6 years or 1/3 solar cycle. The la nina down beat occurs on a 3.6 year delay from the solar min. (indicated by yellow line) When the solar cycle is longer, shorter, these cycles expand / compress. Other longer period cycles such as the Yoshimura 60 year cycle are superimposed on top of this wave pattern. Each proxy location also has a predicable pattern of strength. For instance wave 1 of 3 goes from low, mid, high, mid, low etc. 2 of the waves are in sync, and the 3rd is offset by 1 1/2 solar cycles. It’s all there for you guys if you are willing to look for it with an open mind. https://www.facebook.com/100000276969216/posts/2979081735444363/?d=n

92. Don’t let it grow a manic obsession. The man from the 3rd stone from the sun:

    https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tFP1zcsNjAtLk8pyDZg9JLNyszNVMhIzUspyqxQyE3My0xWSEktKEotLs7MzwMAVgsP5Q&q=jimi+hendrix+manic+depression&oq=Jimmy+hendrix+mani&aqs=chrome.

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