This post has been translated to German by Christian Freuer here.
By Javier Vinós
Fourteen years ago, a new climate myth was born. A grand solar minimum (GSM) was in the making that would not only reverse global warming but plunge the planet into a new Little Ice Age, surprising the warming alarmists and causing undue suffering. The time has come to bury that myth.
1. The origin of the myth
The deep solar minimum of 2008-2009 was a complete surprise to solar physicists. They did not know that solar activity could become so low because it had not occurred during the time of solar observations with modern instrumentation. In 2009, a solar scientist named Habibullo Abdussamatov published a paper in Russian in which he argued that the following years would see a major cooling based on the onset of a new GSM. His evidence was
- The low solar activity of the then ongoing solar cycle (SC) minimum 23-24.
- A bicentennial cycle in solar activity that supposedly decreased solar activity after 1600 and after 1800
- The pause in global warming since 1998
This prediction reached the West and became very popular, like any catastrophic prediction, actually. Articles about the arrival of a GSM proliferated on climate blogs, such as the one on WUWT: The ‘Baby Grand’ has arrived.
Other scientists, such as Livingston & Penn and de Jager & Duhau, joined Abdussamatov in 2009 in proposing the arrival of a GSM, though being more cautious about its climatic effects. It went so far as to threaten the global warming narrative at a time under assault from the Pause and Climategate. Thus, none other than Stefan Rahmstorf came to their defense saying that according to the models
“a new Maunder-type solar activity minimum cannot compensate for global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.”
(Feulner & Rahmstorf 2010)
2. 2012-2015, the myth’s golden years
After 2009 solar activity was slowly increasing, and it was clear that SC24 was a cycle the likes of which had not been seen in nearly a century. Many scientists were writing papers on an SGM, which had gone from hypothesis to serious possibility. Abdussamatov published new papers in English in 2012 and 2013.
In 2011, Swedish sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner published an article in one of the few journals still accepting skeptical contributions, Energy & Environment. He began with a bold statement:
“Around 2040-2050 we will be at a new major Solar Minimum. A new ‘Little Ice Age’ in the Arctic and northwestern Europe can be expected then,”
Nils-Axel Mörner, 2011
a claim for which he provided no evidence other than an extension of solar activity based on the sunspot record.
Two years later, Nils-Axel got 18 other researchers to participate in the first issue of a newly created journal, Pattern Recognition in Physics. It was a special issue on how the orbits of the planets might cause solar variations. It included a letter signed by the 19 researchers that constituted a frontal attack on the IPCC conclusions. Among the signatories were well-known researchers such as Willie Soon, Nicola Scafetta, Ole Humlum, David Archibald, Harald Yndestad, and Don Easterbrook, as well as some people active on the Internet, such as Tallbloke. The predictable result was the cancellation of the magazine by its publishers. The letter ended with a conclusion and two implications agreed upon by the signatories. The second implication is relevant here:
“Obviously, we are on the way to a new grand solar minimum. This casts serious doubt on the question of continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project.”
By then, lots of articles were being published about the coming GSM and its possible effect on climate (de Jager & Duhau 2012; Solheim et al. 2012; Anet et al. 2013; Steinhilber & Beer 2013). Multiple articles on the Internet made the myth very popular among climate skeptics and alarmists, attracted by the catastrophic nature of a new ice age.
3. Valentina Zharkova’s stardom.
It was in July 2015 when the myth jumped into newspapers around the world. A Northumbria University researcher, Valentina Zharkova, presented her solar model at a meeting, and the news release highlighted that it predicted a “60% drop in solar activity in the 2030s, to ‘mini ice age’ levels.”
The climate connection was not made by her, it was made by those who wrote the press release. Her paper (Zharkova et al. 2015), published that same year, included nothing about climate. She herself said:
“In the press release, we didn’t say anything about climate change. My guess is that when they heard about the Maunder minimum, they used Wikipedia or something like that to find out more about it.”
Valentina Zharkova
Her research was linked to climate change and the Little Ice Age only after the media coverage. However, she said that it made sense to her once the connection was made. She liked the attention. To this day, she continues to link her research on solar activity to climate effects. In a 2020 editorial for the journal Temperature (Zharkova 2020), she writes:
“This, in turn, can result in a decrease in Earth temperature of up to 1.0°C relative to the current temperature over the next three cycles (25-27) of grand minimum 1. The largest temperature drops will [occur] during the local minima between cycles 25-26 and 26-27.”
Zharkova, 2020
Irina Kitiashvili, a NASA researcher, also has a model that predicts SC25 will have about half the activity of SC24 (Kitiashvili 2020). The problem with the Kitiashvili and Zharkova models is that they are a complex linear extrapolation of the decreasing solar activity since SC21 in 1980.
4. 2018 turns the tables
A paper by Zharkova’s group in 2018 (Popova et al. 2018) pushed their model back 800 years and was harshly criticized by prominent Finnish solar researcher Ilya Usoskin (Usoskin 2018). He was a reviewer for the paper but his review was lost through the publisher’s system and subsequently published as a commentary. Usoskin stated with good reason that:
“it is impossible to make harmonic predictions for thousands of years based on only 35 years of data,”
Usoskin, 2018
and that the model output was contradicted by observations.
While the Maunder Minimum is where it should be, the Spörer Minimum, the largest GSM in thousands of years is missing in action, instead, she misleadingly labeled the period 1350-1500 as the Medieval Warm Period which took place at least 300 years earlier. Zharkova had joined the ranks of climate scientists willing to misrepresent the data to further their careers. Zharkova’s model is not worth the computer time it consumes. This is a sad reality for so many models today.
In 2018 the new solar minimum was arriving, and climate blogs published numerous articles about a coming GSM. A solar minimum is also the time when the solar polar fields reach their 11-year maximum values, which allows us to predict the strength of the coming cycle using the polar field precursor method. At a meeting in 2018, Leif Svalgaard made public his prediction that SC25 should have slightly more activity than SC24, not less.
5. January 2023 already has as much activity as February 2014.
February 2014 was the most active month in SC24, with 146.1 sunspots, and 166.2 solar flux units (sfu) in the 10.7 cm radio band, the other way to measure solar activity. January 2023 had 143.6 sunspots and 176.6 sfu, matching the activity of the most active month in SC24 (Figure 3).
The smoothed sunspot number used by SILSO to determine solar cycle onset, solar cycle end, and solar cycle maximum is delayed by 6 months due to smoothing. However, it consistently shows that SC25 is slightly more active than SC24 at the same distance from the minimum.
There is a long time left until SC25 ends, predictably around 2031-32, but it is no longer defensible to claim that SC25 will be much less active than SC24. Therefore, fears that a GSM will develop during the next solar cycles should end.
6. Solar spectral analysis knew it since 2006
Before this whole story started, before the polar field precursor method had a prediction for SC24, before anyone knew that a decline in solar activity was coming, in 2006 Mark Clilverd, along with other British and Finnish researchers, published a paper entitled “Predicting solar cycle 24 and beyond” (Clilverd et al. 2006). In this remarkable paper, they used a spectral method based on secular cycles in sunspot numbers to predict that cycles SC24 and 25 would have much lower activity than previous cycles, but would be followed by SC26 when activity would begin to recover (Figure 5).
Recall that in 2006 NASA scientists predicted a large solar cycle 24, larger than SC23.
Being the first to predict the current extended solar minimum as the expansion of only two cycles and giving the correct dates, it is only fair that this extended solar minimum is called the Clilverd Minimum.
I also did a simple spectral model of past and future solar activity in 2016, which I posted in a commentary on WUWT. The model was refined in 2018 for my book and appears in Chapter 13 (21st Century Climate Change). The variable modeled is the total number of monthly spots in a cycle from start to finish, since the maximum activity is a less reliable variable. It cannot predict the length of a cycle, so it assumes 11-year cycles (Figure 6). If a solar cycle is not precisely 11 years long, the shape of the cycle will be affected, but the overall solar activity should not be affected.
This model also predicted in 2016 that no GSMs should occur in the 21st century. In fact, it may be two to three centuries before humans experience a GSM again. Not a bad outcome if it turns out to be correct, as GSM have a very strong negative climatic effect (Vinós 2022).
Download the bibliography here.
Too soon to tell.
If it is too soon now to dismiss a GSM, imagine 14 years ago to say one was going to take place. The idea of a GSM now has never been based on evidence, and science should dismiss things that are not based on evidence regardless of timing.
Try telling that to the CAGW gamers
Zharkova’s reply
https://solargsm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/zharkova_reply2usoskin_jastp17.pdf ) and in the recent paper by Zharkova and Shepherd, 2022, MNRAS https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/512/4/5085/6552133?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false or pdf file https://solargsm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/zharkova_shepherd_mnras22.pdf .
Thanks for this excellent article, Javier.
As a layman, I dare not attempt to refute your argument, but my larger takeaway is that you still fall into the renegade camp of climate scientists that emphasize the importance of the sun’s role in global warming. That so many climate experts initially dismissed this contribution reminds us of the ignorance and arrogance that surrounds so much of climate science.
Yeah, really…. far too soon now and far too early then. The deep solar minimum of the 23rd cycle triggered a nomenclature change in the media from Global warming to climate change so cold or hot… ice or not… people were destroying the planet. Most of us will not live long enough before anyone has a good solid understanding of climate variation. Personally, warm is good.
We have it on a great number of investigations that the Gleissberg solar cycle is 87 years, on average. Given this, I predict that SC 25 will be the same as SC 17, close to SC 23. I gave that prediction a long time ago.
The Gleissberg cycle does not exist. Wolfgang Gleissberg’s description of his cycle is laughable by modern scientific standards.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/17/the-tip-of-the-gleissberg/
by Willis Eschenbach
Javier
There is a missing comment of mine to Bob Weber. All of you are confused by the fact that the GB cycle is not always constant. Looking at Tmax (global) it is a sine wave with a top and bottom (switch).
I can quote more than ten reports in favor of the Gleissberg
I show 2 reports
http://iie.fing.edu.uy/simsee/biblioteca/CICLO_SOLAR_PeristykhDamon03-Gleissbergin14C.pdf
https://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/17/585/2010/npg-17-585-2010.html
Doesn’t matter how many papers. The evidence does not support the existence of a Gleissberg cycle. It is not surprising that the Gleissberg cycle means a different thing for different researchers, because a c. 80 years cycle does not exist, neither in sunspots nor in 14C or 10Be records. When a periodicity appears in that band, wavelet analysis shows it is not stationary and hasn’t taken place for thousands of years. Not a good sign.
Javier
Please read the reports. It says:
For that perspective, we examined the longest detailed cosmogenic isotope record—INTCAL98 calibration record of atmospheric 14C abundance. The most detailed precisely dated part of the record extends back to 11,854 years B.P. During this whole period, the Gleissberg cycle in 14C concentration has a period of 87.8 years and an average amplitude of 1% (in 14C units). Spectral analysis indicates in frequency domain by sidebands of the combination tones at periods of 91.5 ± 0.1 and 84.6 ± 0.1 years that the amplitude of the Gleissberg cycle appears to be modulated by other longterm quasiperiodic process of timescale 2000 yea
Note the peaks at SC3, SC11 and SC19. Always 8x 11 years apart.
= 4 Hale cycles.
Anyway. What is missing here, if you want to give a comprehensive look at the sun, is data/ graphs on the magnetic field strengths of the sun. Because the lower the magnetic field strengths, the more of the most energetic particles are able to escape, and the more ozone, NOx en HxOx are being formed TOA. In turn, more of these components in the atmosphere prevent more UV coming into the oceans. That is what causes the ‘weather’ or ‘climate’, mostly. The sun is not the point, the point is monitoring the interaction of the sun with the atmosphere.
The GC was found last year in ~2.5 Ga banded iron formations:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00378-w
2470 million-year-old banded iron formation reveals a climatic oscillation consistent with the Gleissberg solar cycle
The GC has long been associated with drought in the US Midwest, India, Korea and elsewhere. From 2013:
Drought over Seoul and Its Association with Solar Cycles
We have investigated drought periodicities occurred in Seoul to find out any indication of relationship between drought in Korea and solar activities. It is motivated, in view of solar-terrestrial connection, to search for an example of extreme weather condition controlled by solar activity. The periodicity of drought in Seoul has been re-examined using the wavelet transform technique as the consensus is not achieved yet. The reason we have chosen Seoul is because daily precipitation was recorded for longer than 200 years, which meets our requirement that analyses of drought frequency demand long-term historical data to ensure reliable estimates. We have examined three types of time series of the Effective Drought Index (EDI). We have directly analyzed EDI time series in the first place. And we have constructed and analyzed time series of histogram in which the number of days whose EDI is less than -1.5 for a given month of the year is given as a function of time, and one in which the number of occasions where EDI values of three consecutive days are all less than -1.5 is given as a function of time. All the time series data sets we analyzed are periodic. Apart from the annual cycle due to seasonal variations, periodicities shorter than the 11 year sunspot cycle, ~ 3, ~ 4, ~ 6 years, have been confirmed. Periodicities to which theses short periodicities (shorter than Hale period) may be corresponding are not yet known. Longer periodicities possibly related to Gleissberg cycles, ~ 55, ~ 120 years, can be also seen. However, periodicity comparable to the 11 year solar cycle seems absent in both EDI and the constructed data sets.
Plus other climatic phenomena. From 2000:
THE SOLAR WOLF-GLEISSBERG CYCLE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE EARTH
ABSTRACT- The only continuous solar observations that extend over the important climatic time scale of decades to centuries are those of sunspots, yielding a measure of magnetic activity. There are evidences for the modulation of the amplitude of the 11 year solar cycle in a period of about 80 years known as Wolf-Gleissberg cycle. The Cycle seems to be fairly clear in the sunspot record and in its proxy measurements by cosmogenic isotopes. The cycle appears to show up in many meteorological parameters, suggesting that there may be an important sun/climate connection over long periods of time(Hoyt and Schatten 1997). The Solar Wolf-Gleissberg cycle stimulate solar forcing on terrestrial phenomena’s as evident from the pattern of Global temperature (both air and ocean temperatures). Solar Wolf- Gleissberg periodicity is marked in a wide range of terrestrial evidences since millions of years and is still at work. It is found that climatic fluctuations are induced at the turning points of such cycles. In order to solve this problem, it is found that there are three types of solar cycles occurring on the sun namely, those occurring during Maunder minimum anomalies that caused the very cold weather in the little ice age (1645-1715), normal sunspots and low amplitude (weak sunspots of longer duration) occurring in the shallow dip in between successive Wolf- Gleissberg cycles. The later ones also induce cooling of the air and sea surface temperatures. The key in understanding the cause and effect of those types of solar cycles lies in the fact that those low amplitude intermediate cycles rotate faster than the normal ones thus . Hoyt and Schatten (1997) argue that any change in solar rotation rate is a very persuasive indicator that the deeper levels of convection are varying, and hence there is a corresponding variation in solar luminosity and irradiance. Also there has been evidence of change of the daily equatorial rates and cycle length at the maximum of the last Solar Wolf-Gleissberg cycle around cycle 19. Climate fluctuations are known from, sharp rises or falls of lakes levels, temperature anomalies, change in the general wind circulation and droughts and flood- Hazards. Yousef(1995a) predicted the downturn of solar activity in 1997 with the start of weak low amplitude fast rotation and longer duration sunspot cycle 23. This is evidently confirmed by the sharp rise of lake Victoria level in 1997-98. Lean (2001) is also seeing a drop in the solar irradiance which might be the start of a longer term drop. Since that is the case, then 1997 is a year of climate fluctuation and a drop of global earth air and sea temperature is predicted soon similar to that happened during similar circumstances around 1800 and 1900, with increased El Nino and La Nina frequencies leading to wide spread flood -drought hazards and God knows best.
Miocene lake system, from 2012:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3617729/
An inexistent cycle cannot explain anything, and all sorts of frequencies are bound to appear in proxies. That doesn’t mean they are solar in origin. We can call every frequency with a name to add to the confusion. Let’s call the 250-year frequency Javier’s cycle. I like that.
What makes you think it’s nonexistent? Willis’ tendencious “analysis” of one study out of thousands?
The hundreds of geologists, chemists, astrophysicists, meteorologists and climatologists who have found the GC in a vast array of observations aren’t tools or fools.
Please state what you find wrong in any of the studies you’ve been shown. That they’re not all exactly 88 years isn’t a valid argument.
Of course the GC varies in duration, as do its underlying ~11-year cycles.
The planets affect the sun, for starters.
ENSO exists, but it’s a lot less regular than the GC, which probably affects it.
Granted, attributing a 55-year cycle to the GC might be a stretch, but that doesn’t falsify the hundreds of 80 to 90 years found in a host of observational data.
Let’s start with Gleissberg’s definition of his cycle. From my book:
Using just the maximum sunspot values (and discarding 99% of the data) is wrong, and applying a specific magical filter to reveal a hidden cycle is so silly that Gleissberg’s proposition should have been rejected flat out. But solar research has low standards.
I’ve not been able to find the GC through my analysis of sunspot data.
I’ve read and have copies of most solar papers on solar periodicities. Analysis of the evidence presented in support of the GC shows it is insufficient to even consider it a possibility.
I am not relying on Willis’ analysis. I just find the same by different methods: zilch.
What is the evidence that this cycle exists? It isn’t anywhere
Plot Tmax global in K / year against time, I.o.w K/ year2. If that is too much work, try doing that with a good station near the equator, like Hato in Curaçao. Tell me what you find.
Note the conditions of your sampling plan.
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2021/11/25/an-inconvenient-truth/
The Atmospheric cycle differs from the oceanic cycle.
Not likely Stephen. I made this plot for the 2020 Sun-Climate Symposium as part of my TSI threshold theory poster, which depicts solar cycle #25 predictions made through 2019. The lower left scatterplot of v2 SN and group sunspot numbers shows even small cycle #24 was still larger than the Dalton and Maunder Minima.
The Maunder Minimum was considered by Usoskin etal 2016, “Solar activity during the Holocene: the Hallstatt cycle and its consequence for grand minima and maxima“, to be the last true grand solar minimum. They defined objective and comparable criteria for these events.
These threshold values were for v1 SN; divide by 0.6 for v2 equivalent, ie, minima<33, max>92.
Today the 30y v2 SN average is 61.4, 180% above their grand minima threshold.
Note in the following plot, second panel, the dotted line for the GSM sunspot cycle level. At the current activity rate the likelihood of falling below the GS Min line remains very low for decades,
which doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Solar cycle #25 is following Dr. Leif Svalgaard’s prediction of just above SC #24.
Solar cycle #25 is not following Javier’s prediction from his Figure 6b, as his amplitude for #25 is too high, already busting the rest of his F4 period forecast.
At this point there’s no reason to think this solar epoch will be much different than cycles 12-16, which definitely were not part of a grand solar minimum.
Can someone define what a GSMin and a GSMax, is, exactly.
I think it is when the normal state of affairs (i.e. Gleissberg) is interrupted by the missing of a beat or a switch, in the belly of the sun, possibly an electrical one at that. IMO the (normal) switch must be thrown every 43,5 years by the arrival of enough centrifugal or gravitational power. The last time this happened was in 2013 or 2014 when we had the double pole switch. If we miss this connection with the planets you get stuck in extra cold or extra warm weather, respectively.
Revisiting the 87-year Gleissberg solar cycle | Bread on the water
It only happens every couple of 100 years (DeVries?) or so that we miss it and apparently we did not miss it in 2013/14.
What: The grand minima occur according to the aforementioned Usoskin etal 2016 thresholds (converted from v1 to v2 SN), when the 30-year v2 SN <33, and the grand maxima occur when the 30-year v2 SN >92. But I repeat myself.
Why: The successful polar precursor method of solar cycle prediction is a clue.
Why does it work? One can speculate: Maybe the polar fields near solar cycle minima are affected by the incoming cosmic ray flux, which is at a maximum during a solar minimum.
There might be a mutual solar-cosmic ray modulation, like mutual inductance of the polar magnetic fields, or possibly even direct material deposition onto the sun’s poles that starts the equator-ward plasma migration associated with the solar cycle progression that is involved in slow-pacing the solar cycles.
Under that condition, slowly modulating sunspot activity may just simply be following slow and variable modulating galactic cosmic rays that influence the sun’s magnetic dynamo externally. But that could be all wrong too…
Hi Bob
By my measurements the world started on a natural cooling cycle in ca. 1997.
Any warming from this date must be regarded as coming from earth itself (volcanic) or from mankind e.g. more CO2 = more green = more black = more heat is captured by the changing albedo
From other data which I looked at, I was able to figure out that the solar polar magnetic field strengths would have sort of come to a dead end stop in 2013/2014 (bottom); the same thing happened in 1971/1972 (top). It will now be climbing up again until ca. 2037 when things will be level again (like 1995) and the next dead end stop should be around 2057 (same as 1971/1972)
The next GSMax could happen around 2060, when we are on the peak of the GB wave with the wavelength of 87 and we miss the step down. Like I said, we did not miss the step up in 2013/2014. Javier is right. GSMin won’t happen, now.
But hey, that is just my opinion. Let me know if you get the same results.
Hello Henry. I’m just not sure about your future sunspot projections.
“…the solar polar magnetic field strengths would have sort of come to a dead end stop in 2013/2014.”
From the polar fields via Solen using Wilcox Observatory data:
http://www.solen.info/solar/polarfields/polarfields.png
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
“Any warming from this date must be regarded as coming from earth itself”
From what date, 1997? All the warming we’ve seen came from solar cycle activity above my decadal warming threshold of 95 v2 SN, whether you start in 1997 or some other date.
“The next GSMax could happen around 2060, when we are on the peak of the GB wave”
This is called ‘cyclomania’. Maybe someone’s guess will be right.
“…the world started on a natural cooling cycle in ca. 1997.”
I have made a few plots indicating equatorial ocean heat content might have peaked in the 1990s, but that’s not the whole world. The global SST has risen since 1997 up until the 2016 peak, so it’s hard to say a cooling cycle started when it’s been warming, right?
We are leaving the predictable solar cooling period (by me in my 2018 AGU poster) by entering the SC #25 solar warming phase, so I expect temps to rise as they did during 2011-2016 from high TSI.
There is comment here from me waiting for approval
It is up now.
Excellent article. A model that can best replicate past events is more likely to reasonably predict future events. This is something the IPCC has not yet shown, but Javier’s work is promising.
There is no evidence that 30 to 50 year periods of climate can be predicted. No model has done that since the 1970s. The simple prediction of extrapolating the past 30 to 50 year climate trend, as a prediction for the next 30 to 50 years, has failed miserably in the past 120 years.
Of course, climate cannot be predicted now. It is too complex and too chaotic. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. There was a time when the weather could not be predicted. Now weather predictions have become very useful. We will get better at predicting climate too. Nevertheless, this article is not about climate prediction.
The comment I responded to was about predictions.
Climate change (CAGW) is a prediction.
Your article WAS about a prediction, that you called a myth.
It’s hard to avoid the subject of predictions when discussing climate science, because wrong climate predictions are not science, and they have all been wrong.
There is no evidence long term climate predictions will ever become more accurate. That is speculation. Predicting the climate in the next 30 to 50 years may be just as difficult (impossible) as predicting whether or not it will snow one year from today in London.
Te primary lessons of climate change are how inaccurate predictions have been, and how useful they have been for gaining political power and control.
Wrong predictions based on hypotheses are also science. Science gets things wrong most of the time. Without all the failures science could not be so successful.
Accurate prediction of the future is not possible, but it doesn’t need to be accurate to be useful.
Imagine you are in 1920 and detecting warming after a cold period. Arctic ice is retreating. If you know about oceanic oscillations and their effect on temperature, you could say: “this period of warming is likely to last 25-30 years until the AMO changes.” That would have been possible with enough knowledge then. So while not accurate, it is possible to know what is most likely to happen to climate 30 years ahead. Getting climate change theory right is important.
Unfortunately not a sentiment I can share with you, in a world where I am required by law to believe those wrong predictions by people who say their morality supersede facts. A gentleman would keep his trap shut when in doubt, only charlatans holler their predictions to the widest audience.
There is a reason for the biblical injunction to execute a prophet after just one wrong prediction…
Wrong predictions are failed science. They have little or no value. although enough wrong predictions can lead to a logical conclusion: that humans can’t predict the future climate.
While a predictable AMO cycle could be useful for some regions, it could also be counterproductive. The predicted AMO effect could be offset by OTHER non-predicted climate change variables, creating false confidence in the AMO prediction.
For another example. it is easy to guess that added CO2 will impede Earth’s ability to cool itself by a small amount.
But OTHER variables can offset that CO2 warming effect, such as in the 1940 to 1975 period, when we had significant global cooling as CO2 rose (later “revised” to almost a flat trend).
In the 2015 to 2023 period, rapid CO2 increases were offset by OTHER climate change variables, resulting in a flat average temperature trend.
So even knowing what CO2 does would not often have correctly predicted the direction of the global average temperature trend.
With possible still unknown climate change variables and feedbacks, we seem far from being able to make accurate climate predictions for the next 30 to 50 years. with one exception, me.
In 1997 I predicted “The future climate would get warmer, unless it got colder.” That seemed to be a good summary of climate history. Today I will predict that future winters will be cold and future summers will be warm.
I still can’t figure out why it would be important to predict the future climate if humans have little ability to change it.
We should be:
— Thankful we live in an interglacial,
— Thrilled we also live in a warming trend, and
— Hopeful that warming trend did not end in 2015.
The primary problem with modern climate science, IMHO, is too many predictions, that almost always turn out to be wrong.
If one has to predict the climate in the next 30 to 50 years, the best prediction might be “Different than in the past 30 to 50 years” — perhaps a reversion to the mean prediction would be useful.
The best 24 climate science and energy articles I read today, including this one as number one, are listed at: Honest Climate Science and Energy
Actually, I totally agree with Javier and disagree with you. If science consists of only accurate predictions, then science would never advance at all. The scientific method has always consisted of a process wherein a review of observations by a scientists suggests a hypothesis. The researcher then devises and runs experiments to test the hypothesis, and potential alternative hypotheses, and if the results clearly support or deny the hypotheses, it is still a hypothesis. Similarly, when hypotheses are so well supported that they become theories, again, further testing is always necessary to either confirm or deny the theory, or to develop another better theory.
As Thomas Edison was famous for saying,
Referring to his numerous attempts over many years to develop his most famous inventions, including the electric light.
You are confusing experiments in the present with predictions of the future.
A failed experiment can provide data, and those data can provide knowledge.
A wrong prediction provides no data, and therefore very little, if any, knowledge
Wrong predictions = failed science
Right predictions = good science, or lucky guesses.
Thomas Edison did experiments, not predictions of the future. Every experiment provided data.
He did not succeed because he failed so many times first. He succeeded because he never gave up until he got the material science right.
“Accurate prediction of the future is not possible, but it doesn’t need to be accurate to be useful.”
Precisely the axiom upon which Socialism operates and fails causing millions of deaths and millions in misery and oppression.
This is the essence of Socialism: central economic planning and control based on ‘useful’ predictions. The planners and controllers imagine they can have enough knowledge of all the variables in a chaotic, dynamic system – an economy – to be able to predict outcomes, select best outcomes and plan and manage to achieve these.
This involves mass mobilisation of resources towards particular planned ends, it is inflexible and ALWAYS leads to misallocation of those resources.
Of course these ‘predictions’ are never going to be accurate but – shrugs shoulders – can be useful to control the masses and gain power and control.
And isn’t this precisely what is being done now with not necessarily accurate but ‘useful’ climate change predictions – power and control by a few over the masses?
By the by.
Our ancestors were in fact good at predicting weather by reading natural signs and from experience and folklore – their crops and lives depended on it… when to clear the land, when to plant, when to harvest.
But weather prediction is a 24 hour, contemporary phenomenon, so resources can quickly and easily be reallocated if wrong.
“Of course these ‘predictions’ are never going to be accurate but – shrugs shoulders – can be useful to control the masses and gain power and control.”
There is a ton of wisdom in that sentence.
Your analogy to socialism is ridiculous. We are talking about science here, not politics.
Accuracy is something that usually starts out rather low, no matter what it is one is measuring or predicting, and over time, as better information becomes available, and/or better tools to measure or predict, accuracy improves.
Mankind did not start out measuring distances in micrometers or in parsecs. But we can and do today.
It does when central planners use the predictions to obtain power and control over how resources are allocated. People suffer when central planners use incorrect predictions to make decisions that force adverse conditions on the poor and those who can not afford to follow the forced conditions.
Predictions should be accompanied with disclaimers when they are made based upon models that have not been proven accurate. Otherwise, leave the people to be free to choose their own actions based on unreliable predictions.
I’m talking science, not politics. If the chance of rain is 30% for a particular day at a particular location, that is not an accurate prediction, yet it is still useful to people to know what they can expect, versus if it is 90%.
So, yes, I will insist. A prediction doesn’t need to be accurate to be useful.
The “science” of climate change is very political.
In my opinion, 90% political (CAGW scaremongering) and 10% science (AGW).
It is particularly disturbing propaganda when predictions of more global warming are treated as bad news, when actual global warming from 1975 to 2015 was good news.
Based on anecdotes from past centuries, humans strongly prefer warming periods over cooling periods.
Actual warming from 1975 to 2015:
The warming was mainly in higher latitude nations of the Northern Hemisphere, mainly in the coldest six months of the year, and mainly at night (TMIN). Think of warmer winter nights in Siberia. How was that bad news in any way?
We live in the best climate in 5,000 years, and it is improving, assuming the pattern of warming from 1975 to 2015 continues in the future. Yet most people can still be frightened by predictions of climate doom, which have been wrong since the 1979 Charney Report.
Winters are warmer with less snow here in SE Michigan, compared with the 1970s. That’s good news climate change. Especially if the trend continues. We don’t need Ph.D. scientists to tell us tall tales of climate doom.
Don’t put too much faith in weather predictions. You’ll be disappointed. We just had a major weather prediction fail this past week. Supposed to get 3″ of snow and got about an 1/8″. If the weather forecast had just said “it’s going to be cold with a chance of snow” then *that* would have been a useful prediction. Instead the county spent who knows how much money spreading sand and de-icing fluid to no purpose at all. We, the taxpayers, paid for that, not the weather forecasters.
I can reproduce sunspots reasonably well by looking at the centripetal force on the sun.
The attached is my first effort with a 1 month time resolution. I am presently improving the time resolution to one week so the faster orbits are better resolved.
Sunspots are not the same period as Jupiter’s cycle. They are primarily driven by the conjunction and opposition of Jupiter with Saturn. The conjunction occurs every 19.8 years. The opposition at half period. So sunspots tend to have a cycle of more than 10 years but less than Jupiter’s 11.8 year cycle.
I have not gone back in time to recreate the solar minimum yet. But intend to look at it.
The reason I started this was to get a precise picture of the distance between Earth and Sun. The sun moves up to 0.01AU from the barycentre.
The other thing to know is that the SORCE data for TSI is distance corrected to 1AU. So is not the true ToA EMR. There is a distinct beat in the solar radiation due to the Sun’s orbit, which is mostly in opposition to Jupiter but does wobble about quite a lot.
The sunspots are a result of high cornering forces on the sun.
Top of the atmosphere solar energy can be measured with satellites. Why use the old, inaccurate proxy of sunspot counts?
I am not using sunspots. They were an outcome of recreating the orbit of the sun due to the gravitational forces from the planet. It was just an observation that they are linked to the rotational acceleration and deceleration caused by the planets.
As I noted above, the SORCE satellite data is distance corrected to 1AU. it is not true ToA EMR. The SORCE data confirms that the solar constant is close to constant – something that I have assumed. However I want accurate Earth-Sun distance so I can produce accurate data for ToA solar EMR.
There is no information on how the solar constant is distance corrected either.
Also the ephemeris for Earth is related to the barycentre of the solar system rather than the sun. So you need to know how the sun moves relative to the barycentre to get a reasonably accurate measure on the sun’s orbit. The Sun’s orbit can have almost as much impact as Earth’s orbit. So there is a distinct 11 to 13 year beat on the annual variation of ToA EMR.
Climate models do not make corrections for the sun’s orbit. They are also based on accumulated energy rather than instantaneous power. So wrong on two important factors.
The good temperature records exhibit the influence of the Sun’s orbit.
I doubt that. The Earth’s distance to the Sun changes by 5 million km, while the barycenter is most of the time within the Sun, which has a 700,000 km radius. The Earth’s orbit contributes more to the Earth-Sun distance changes.
No need for doubt. Just do the calculations..
The sun moves up to 0.01AU from the barycentre, Also the orbit is not regular. Earth can be as close as 0.01AU less or as far as 0.01AU more so a cumulate distance of almost 0.02AU. And the solar intensity is a inverse function of the distance squared. Earth’s orbital eccentricity has a total range of 0.032AU so adding or substracting 0.01 to that makes big difference. It causes a significant beat to ToA EMR.
The attached image only shows one lobe of three lobes that the sun can follow. This shows the movement of the barycentre relative to the sun. As you can see, the movement is much greater than the diameter of the sun.
All ephemeris data for Earth is related to the barycentre, not the sun. To be accurate, the movement of the sun must be taken into account.
I still see that the Earth’s orbit contributes more to the Earth-Sun distance changes.
Nevertheless, the impact of the change in distance is not what people would assume. The Earth is 3.8 ºC warmer at aphelion, when it is farther from the Sun, than at perihelion when it is closer. This is a fact almost never mentioned because it confuses people.
I agree with you that the calculations must take into account the real distance and not an idealized average.
But the NH has been moving “closer” to the sun for almost 2000 years now. It still has 9000 years to go before it gets to its closest. There has been substantial time lag to the now evident warming in the NH but it will accelerate tremendously over the coming millennia.
There will be significant areas of the North Atlantic hitting the 30C limit before the snowfall overtakes the snow melt.
For solar variation, land responds about twice as much in half the time as open ocean surface. The reason the NH is warmer for the lesser sunshine is because it has a much greater proportion of land than the SH. Clearly evident in the attached response curves.
I seriously doubt that. Precession is not the main driver of glaciations. As the tilt of the Earth increases the end of the interglacial approaches. The Holocene (MIS 1) is tremendously close to an average interglacial in orbital terms. Glacial inception should take place over the coming millennia, not accelerated warming. It should take place between 1500 and 4500 years in the future. But the cooling should start earlier. Still plenty of time for those retirement plans.
You can doubt it but precession IS the driver of glaciation. The last 4 cycles all began with the rising solar intensity of the NH in line with the precession cycle.
The conditions in the NH are all aligning for increasing snowfall. So far it has only overtaken melt on Greenland and Iceland due to their proximity to water. Siberia under the influence of the Northern Pacific should see growing permafrost within the next century. Japan had record snowfall this year.
Snowfall records are the future for the NH.
You two, get a room 😉
I wish my jokes were half as good as yours!
Thanks for the excellent reminder of historical cycles.
No, really!
I bet those sexy curves will turn out to be the girl next door, if only I could read the names…
That is because at aphelion it is NH summer. There is more land in the NH. Land ( damp rock ) has a lower specific heat capacity than water, so its temperature rises twice as fast as SST.
Temperature is not an extensive quantity: ie if you have twice as much hot water it is not twice as hot. What should be being averaged is thermal ENERGY, not temperature. Energy CAN be averaged and will tell you something about incoming and outgoing radiative flux.
This is why anyone competent in physics will tell you that “averaging” temperature is NOT PHYSICALLY MEANINGFUL. The entire AGW hoax is based on a fundamentally flawed metric which is not valid within the “basic physics” they pretend to base their ideas on.
The global average is a useful statistic only if the data are accurate. It is a statistic not a measurement. Your claim is wrong and almost every climate scientist on the planet thinks so, even the skeptics.
I consider the average temperature data worthless before UAH in 1979, and ARGO about 20 years ago. I trust the UAH volunteer compilers but am uncertain about the ARGO team.
Average temperature is one climate statistic. Not the entire climate. I doubt is less than a one degrees C. change is meaningful. But a 5 degree C, change would be.
No one lives in an average temperature, but a change in local temperatures (climate) could be important. Local temperature changes could harm or benefit people.
Appeal to authority , and consensus fallacies all rolled into one. If you do not understand why it is wrong and have no counter argument , best remain silent.
If you want to know the average temperature of the isle of Lesbos to plan you holidays, a temperature statistic may be fine. If you are pretending that you are detecting the change in temperature induced by a change in radiative transfer, you need to use REAL PHYSICAL quantities for your “basic physics”, not non physical statistics.
If your method is invalid, you do not even need to know whether the data corrupt since you have no valid way to use them.
Well said. Many here have pointed out this very thing.
If almost every climate scientist considers the global average temperature to be an important statistic, then it becomes an important temperature measurement statistic no matter what you claim. It’s you against the world. And you lose,
Any temperature measurements can be averaged, and the average can be tracked over time. That is a temperature statistic, not a heat statistic. So what?
HEAT is the form of energy which travels from one object to another. TEMPERATURE is a measure of the degree of hotness and coldness.
Heat is a measure of change, never a property possessed by an object or system. Therefore, it is classified as a process variable. Temperature describes the average kinetic energy of molecules within a material or system and is measured in Celsius (°C), Kelvin(K), Fahrenheit (°F), or Rankine (R).
Concerning the isle of Lesbos, the average temperature there may not even be useful to the people who live or visit there. The range of temperatures would be useful.
Phewww! Brother! I thought you don’t have good jokes?
Richard, it IS possible to transcend your Montessori schooling.. Your teachers lied to you when they put you through those little exercises where you and your impressionable peers determined the truth of a statement by majority vote.
Real life does not work that way… not for long, anyway.
I think we have some terms for unimportant things becoming very important to lots of people. “Fad” is one word that comes to mind. “Hysteria” is another.
JPL ephemeris will let you chose one of several different coordinate systems. You could chose solar centre coords. or get both earth and sun relative to barycentre and do a VECTOR subtraction.
You seem to be regarding solar trajectory around SSB as independent of Earths distance from the Sun. Don’t forget that E-M is basically orbiting the Sun , NOT SSB. As the sun does its three leafed clover trip, the E_M system follows it. You are not looking at random, independent changes.
By all means do a thorough calculation but I don’t think you will find the difference to be a significant change from the simple Earth orbit.
J is something like 1/200 the mass of the sun and at 5 AU, so has a small relative effect on Earth’s orbit. A little more on aphelion when JS are in opposition to the sun when J-E is 4AU. Nothing like the proportion you are suggesting.
The beat of the Sun’s orbit is evident in good temperature records. Attached is frequency analysis for just the satellite era of the Nino34 temperature.
People have tried to align sunspots and temperature but they have a shorter period than the Sun’s orbit, which is close to just opposing Jupiter with oscillations mainly from Saturn.
The temperature records display the beat around 11 years and 22 years. The longer term Nino34 from 1850 gives peaks at 11 years and 13 years.
I did a fair bit of freq analysis on SST about 10y back, ocean basin by ocean basin. There is a lot 9.1y which Scaffeta neatly shows is lunar. circa 11y periods were there but mainly in N.Pacific and N.Atl.
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/61/
One commonly occuring period was close to 13 years, which you also mention. I never worked out what that was about.
It’s strange that my NINO 3.4 graph does not look like yours. How are you doing your frequency analysis?
Just using the Fourier transform function in Excel.
OK. The trouble is with one button statistics is that you have no idea what it is doing and the software has not way to know if it is applying it correctly. Excel will fit a “trend” but if you have errors in the x variable, the result is wrong.
I have no idea what it’s doing either so I can’t say it wrong but I can’t say it’s right.
My plot was a power density (FT of the auto-correlation function ) of the rate of change of SST but I would still expect some large scale agreement on major longer period peaks.
I did the Fourier analysis after observing the underlying trend in the Nino34 temperature signal – the middle chart in the attached.
I have tested the Excel transform on signals I have generated and it does the job. I have never looked into how it gets its result.
FT algorithms and spectral analysis is quite a subtle task with lots of traps and caveats. There is NO one size fits all solution that could be attached to a button Excel. That is exactly the problem with them including such a facility. People have no idea what it is doing but have total confidence it is correct because the computer did it.
If you test it with some synthetic data which is periodic it may well look OK. What happens if you add a trend ? What if you have 3/4 of a long period cycle in the length of your sample ? What if your data have heavy autocorrelation ( like temperature data ) , does that need removing ?
If you get a strong 13y cycle in the long record and not in the short one that’s a bit troubling. That does agree more with what I got. Also the 10y peak you showed also has a poorly resolved 9y peak next to it, a strong period I found in many ocean basins. The 10 and 5y peaks are harmonics of your 40y sample length. That is a red flag they may processing artefacts.
Circa 9y ( 9.1 ) is a lunar periodicty. I think the reason no one gets a clear solar signal in climate data is it is a combination of solar and lunar influences and no one apart from Scaffeta is even looking for lunar. Without detecting lunar cycles the solar influence is garbled and gets falsely rejected. That is probably because most of those doing climate research are looking to dismiss solar anyway because they “know” what really controls our climate !
“Why use the old, inaccurate proxy of sunspot counts?”
Because sunspots are the bridge to the past. Further, the relationship between TSI and sunspot number became fairly well established during the TSI instrumental era.
TSI change is fairly linear with sunspot number until very high sunspot count, when the known sunspot darkening effect from large area sunspots takes over, driving TSI downward, such as during the circled PMOD TSI downspike:
PMOD was used as infill for the missing SORCE data. TSI significantly lags sunspots as shown in the inset plot, which can be used to reconstruct past TSI from sunspots.
Several TSI models are shown next with much agreement and several differences, all are proxy (sunspot and/or sunspot area) models. What we need is a solar cycle like #19 to establish the actual degree of linearity between sunspots and instrumental TSI.
Sunspots can change continuously and may last for only a few hours to days; or even months for the more intense groups.
Since July 1, 2015, the original Sunspot number data have been replaced by a new entirely revised data series. On this occasion, the data are presented in a new array of files, containing additional values that were not present in the original series.
Microsoft Word – Paper arXiv.docx (mpg.de)
Sunspot counts have been revised more than once. They are rough data with little correlation to average temperature reconstructions or measurements in the past 300 years.
How has sunspot activity changed over the past hundred years?
Records of sunspots show increased solar activity during the first 7 decades of the 20th century, likely tied to the peak of the last 100-year Gleissberg Cycle. Following that peak around 1960, solar activity declined. In fact, activity during the most recent solar cycle is among the lowest in a century.
Do sunspots make the Earth hotter or colder?
Sunspots have been observed continuously since 1609, although their cyclical variation was not noticed until much later. At the peak of the cycle, about 0.1% more Solar energy reaches the Earth, which can increase global average temperatures by 0.05-0.1℃..
Ho hum.
Next time put those cut and pasted comments in quotes with a source.
“At the peak of the cycle, about 0.1% more Solar energy reaches the Earth, which can increase global average temperatures by 0.05-0.1℃.”
This conclusion is the fundamental mistake in climate science, after assigning CO2 a major forcing role while neglecting Henry’s Law.
The ocean temperature increase from 2011 to 2016 happened due to TSI being above the decadal warming threshold that I established in 2014.
Sunspots are good enough TSI proxy to know the sun drives the climate:
Your thresholds mean nothing.
TSI divided over the planet gives an average of 340 Wm-2. Of this 29% is returned by albedo, so that leaves 242 Wm-2. A 0.1% variation of that is just 0.24 Wm-2. That is so ridiculously low that it should not produce any discernible effect on the global temperature.
The fact that the effect is discernible and of about 0.1ºC means that there must be an amplification mechanism. That mechanism is known to start at the stratosphere.
The stratosphere shows changes in spectral radiation 30 times bigger in the UV (3%), and amplification changes in the production of ozone of about 3%, resulting in temperature changes of 1 K with the solar cycle.
It is obvious that the solar effect on climate acts through the stratospheric pathway. Lots of evidence for that.
SST changes are just due to upwelling/downwelling responses to changes in atmospheric circulation.
It is the atmosphere, not the surface! It is the Sun, not CO2!
That’s interesting. Let’s see how it does over this cycle. It says SC25 should be less active than SC24, while the polar fields precursor method says it should be more active.
Very interesting Rick.
The solar equator rotates in about 27 days, so “monthly” averages will mess with the data, possibly producing nasty, long period aliasing. I suggest using daily data and doing correct data resampling if needed.
How are you calculating this “centripetal force on the sun”. Be careful with this concept of the “barycentre”. It is the centre of MASS of the SS. It does not “attract” anything! Many have made this mistake.
As Svalbaard is frequently pointing out the sun is in “freefall” ( Though he fails to point out this does not mean there are no tidal forces or internal stress).
I would expect tidal forces to be more significant in stirring up motion in the sun, and thus having an effect on surface activity. Tide raising forces are 1/d^3 , not inverse square law, so Saturn is a lot less significant. IIRC Venus is the second biggest player after Jupiter.
I’d be interested in more details in how you do this since the match with SSN is not bad. I’ll try to remember to revisit this thread later.
One of Scaffeta’s papers did some work on JS periods, though my recollection is fuzzy.
I am still looking for the best relationship. I work from the gravitational pull of the planets assuming circular orbits so there is some error there. The gravitational force is never really perpendicular to the path of the sun or through the barycentre. But the planets do move the sun about – mostly Jupiter.
The best correlation with sunspots is the in-line acceleration and deceleration rather than the centripetal force. So it is not cornering but rather braking and accelerating. And there appears to be a memory effect or response lag to the changing forces – maybe the core is sloshing about and not doing what the surface is doing.
I have explored many of the various ways the pull works on the sun trajectory and do not know if I have found the best yet. The chart above gave a 52% correlation just by setting two parameters once I got the planet orbits set and the corresponding initial conditions for the Sun’s orbit right. I start modelling from Jan 1900.
There is little doubt the sunspots are related to the gravitation pull changes but still exploring the actual cause. I keep thinking of Coriolis acceleration but that does not appear to be the case.
A key point is that the sunspots are driven by the planetary pull and the associated movement of the sun alters the distance to Earth. In my analysis, this is far more significant than the changes in TSI as the sun gets muscled about.
Thanks. I would suggest using JPL ephemeris. It’s basically command line driven and you get a nice big download full of numbers. I generally use text processing utility “awk” to dig out the bits I want.
Could you explain your “in-line acceleration and deceleration” in enough detail so I know what you are calculating? Your graph is close enough to convince me you are on to something but there is some detail you are not handling correctly.
Sometimes a time lag can be a result of using the wrong derivative of a variable, see discussion of correlation between d/dt(CO2) and SST. CO2 lags SST the derivative does not.
I’m pretty convinced that dynamo hypothesis is just dogma at this stage and needs to go away and die quietly.
I am working in a 2D inertial framework. I produce a velocity vector from the calculated force vector. I can then separate the components and look at the tangential and in line components. The tangential component is always positive. The in-line component accelerates and decelerates.
There is a solar cycle for each acceleration and deceleration but they are not symmetrical around the zero acceleration. I use a slower moving average to trigger the onset of sunspots for both positive and negative acceleration. The apparent noise in my signal is caused mostly by Venus. There is consequently a lot of noise that you can filter to produce a quasi monthly count.
I get a signal that looks close using centripetal acceleration by taking the square of velocity and dividing by the radius from the barycentre but it is sensitive to the starting coordinates as well as the initial velocity.
After looking at this in detail, I am confident that sunspots are associated with the gravitational forces. The JPL ephemeris might simplify things for me because the movement is very sensitive to initial velocity. Also I have to work out where all the planets are to start with.
That seems to confirm my earlier comment that Venus is a significant player. That is the case for tide raising forces because, despite its small mass it is so close in and wins a lot in the 1/d^3 calculation.
Running average is an awful LP filter. It will produce peaks from troughs and vice versa. https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/triple-running-mean-filters/
For the same reason do NOT use their BS monthly running mean SSN. They know it’s wrong and corrupts timing and size of peaks but chose to carry on doing that “because we always have”. Crap science.
Try gaussian or derivative of gaussian to detect zero crossing if you want that:
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/category/scripts/
I suggest you take the time to use JPL. You will have WAY more accurate data and no one will question the result. No sense in make a crude approximation when you have a free tool like that available.
You also have a 3D model and the Z component may matter in moving the surface around.
In case you don’t believe me, SSN was one of the examples I used in showing how crap running means are https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/triple-running-mean-filters/ssn_filters/
Look at the fuchsia line, that’s the running mean, and it totally corrupts where the peak is.
In the above I should have used the terms radial and tangential to be clear. I get the best result using the tangential acceleration and deceleration. This force has a direct influence on the angular velocity so they are linked.
The peaks in acceleration and deceleration do not align perfectly with the sunspots in my simple orbital model of the planets. I do not know if this is due to approximated planet orbits or some other modulation.
The attached is one of my working charts with my current generated ephemeris that shows the tangential force. There is significant disturbance from the smaller planets. It goes positive and negative. The positive peaks tend to be higher than the negative peaks, which is observed in the sunspot data. As you can see the peaks align well initially but there is a shift after the 1960 peak and the alignment shifts. Maybe if I use true planetary ephemeris rather than my simple circular motion for the planets I will get better alignment with just the tangential acceleration.
The force units on the RHS are based on units of mass – Earths, unit of time – weeks and unit of length – AU. That avoids having large or small numbers.
Thanks for the graph. From 1900 to 2020 you have 6 complete cycles of your tangential acceleration and 11 cycles of SSN minima. That gives periods of about 20y (19.8y ?) and 10.9y
When a supposed relationship goes from being in phase to out of phase it is a fairly good indication that they are not correlated at all.
You would be on much firmer ground using JPL data and again I suggest weighting the planets by 1/d^3 which will give Venus much more weight.
The tide raising force comes from the rate of change of gravitational force with distance, hence the inverse cube. Across the diameter of the sun that can be large difference and will lead to internal stresses which could stir things up and potentially cause surface turbulence.
“I’m pretty convinced that dynamo hypothesis is just dogma at this stage and needs to go away and die quietly.”
A question of first principles.
Segregating effects as:
1 – derived from celestial mechanics, be it barycenter, oscillatory, or any other mechanically derived
2 – the sun as a point source, perhaps as an isotropic radiator point source or whatever other non-dynamo aspect you’d postulate.
3 – any others deemed appropriate
Given that the sun’s magnetic polarity flips every ~11 year solar cycle, to what phenomenon would you assign the flip?
Irrespective of any effect, or consequences, on the earth, if the dynamo hypothesis dies early, or eventually, what might you point to as the cause of the characteristic magnetic behavior?
If it’s not a dynamo, or perhaps two, what would you speculate is the source of the magnetic flipping behavior?
correction: the Carrington rotational period of ~27d is for 26 deg N/S where most sunspots occur. Its equator moves a bit faster at 26.25d. Both are “synodic” as viewed from Earth not a static, top down, frame of reference you probably need to use for gravitational calculations.
I intend to follow this research as well as I can. This goes with the ENSO animation, the winter Gatekeeper and Vuk on my list of fun science.
RickWill will, I’m sure, learn to caption his graphs, though…
“…SORCE data for TSI is distance corrected to 1AU. So is not the true ToA EMR.”
SORCE and now TSIS TSI data include both 1AU (col #5) and “True TSI” (col #10), ie, TOA.
It has already been done. See Beyond Landschiedt.
http://landscheidt.info/
When you first pointed out that work it looked simplistic because it does not show all the noise on the velocity signal. They are only looking at the large planets. Venus, Earth and Mercury create higher frequency pulses.
But tying the angular momentum to create the beat to the velocity component is similar to what I did to get the result above. I have a lot more noise on my signal.
One aspect that is wrong in the Landscheidt web page is the reference to torque. It is either the wrong word for something that is being observed or a misunderstanding of the motions.
Gravity fields cannot produce a torque in objects. I went down a deep hole looking into torque and a completely different sun orbit but I got further away from recreating sunspots.
I think you are doing the same with the words “beat” and “noise”.
Ian Wilson wrote a paper on VEJ torque on the sun. IIRC, the idea is that the gravitational gradient of the planets raises tidal bulges in a similar way to oceans on Earth or distortions of the lunar crust by Earth’s gravitational gradient.
Why not ? Maybe something more convincing than an assertion would be helpful.
If V causes such a distortion in the Sun J can exert a differential gravitational pull on each “bulges”. This is similar to tidal pull of the moon on Earth which slows the Earth and transfers angular momentum to the moon, causing it to slowly increase it’s orbital distance. This seems fairly standard theory for E-M tides, so it should not be that controversial for the Sun.
Remember tides are basically horizontal displacements of matter, even if we have habitually measured them in terms of height change.
We are supposed to put faith in a model (Figure 5) that accurately predicted the last two cycles but that same model really misses the mark in replicating the 1800-1900 cycles. How many times has it been agreed that models that can’t reproduce the past can’t be trusted to predict the future? Might just be blind luck that the model lined up for cycles 23 and 24.
I haven’t asked for anybody’s faith. It should be clear from the article that scientists cannot predict solar activity more than half a cycle in advance, so there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Javier,
You were doing quite well until your mention near the end, of 2 or 3 centuries to the next GSM.
Respectfully, can I suggest the folly of forecasting without a credible mechanism? Past numbers alone are not enough.
Ric Will is reporting a possible mechanism of control. This needs more, related study by solar specialists, unless they have already exhausted this line of study. Geoff S
When the next GSM might take place is based on 14C changes and GSM distribution over the entire Holocene, and discussed in my book. It is not the subject of this article because the information is not contained in the short sunspot record.
Frequency analysis says GSM are more frequent close to the lows of the 1000 and 2500-year cycles in solar activity. We are at the high of the 1000-year cycle and about 400 years from the past low in the 2500-year cycle. This means the chances of a GSM over the next 2-3 centuries are much smaller than most people think.
Most solar specialists (like Leif Svalgaard) reject the possibility of an effect from the planets on solar activity and reject the existence of secular cycles despite the evidence because solar dynamo models do not allow for the existence of a memory in the Sun. They will not study what needs to be studied to clarify this issue.
solar dynamo models do not allow a solar dynamo to even come into existence. They quietly sweep that one under the rug 😉
There are no 1000 or 2500 year cycles in solar activity, GSM series occur on average every 863 years, as do series of more active solar periods, and also major solar storm events.
What RW is proposing has already been proposed. Years ago.
http://landscheidt.info/
This was the first article I read on Sunday and the first on my list of recommended climate science and energy articles today, at
Honest Climate Science and Energy
My only thought on the article was that if EVERY climate myth was refuted, we conservatives could start enjoying the current climate, which I believe is the best climate since the Holocene Climate Optimum ended about 5,000 years ago. Leftists would be very disappointed without their climate change boogeyman, however, so they would need another boogeyman to be happy.
Perhaps predicting an invasion of aliens from Uranus. That would be an exciting boogeyman. Although easily prevented by building more windmills and solar panels.
“Perhaps predicting an invasion of aliens from Uranus. That would be an exciting boogeyman. Although easily prevented by building more windmills and solar panels.”
Hemorrhoid cream works better !!
I’m glad someone gets my jokes, and then tops them.
Funny, Richard, but every fake crisis will need to be tied to something bad caused by burning fossil fuels. If aliens coming out of Uranus is going to be the story, that’s going to be difficult.
Politicians are profoundly stupid to be sure, but they need to have a simplistic idea that seems to “work” and can be explained in Kindergarten. You can’t just say easily solved with windmills and not have some cover story about why the aliens up in Uranus will be repelled by that.
Bird shredders and slaver panels are the most effective solutions to any fake crisis cooked up by the Malthusians since their true objective is the elimination of reliable energy, forcing a drastic reduction in population.
You can be more certain about their true motivations by observing that nuclear power is anathema to them. After all, it could stop the supposed CO2 problem without eliminating reliable energy. That would be like giving a machine gun to an idiot child, dontchaknow?
They also hold out hope for fusion power as the promise of limitless cheap power because they know it will never come to pass. Supporting it makes it look like they’re interested in reliable energy. They just have to go with unreliables for the time being.
And if you further doubt that, then why do they imply that fusion would eliminate (or sometimes they say reduce) the radioactive waste? Breeder fission reactors would certainly do that and more compared to fusion, but they pose the distinct disadvantage that they are feasible, and have already been demonstrated. They would eliminate the great boogeyman of nuclear waste so critical to neutralizing the risk that nuclear plants would continue to provide reliable power.
Now they need an explanation for why they are against breeder reactors and so they settle on the idea that omg, bad actors could steal materials to make bombs. Never mind that Porky Kim and the Norks already have nukes, and the Mad Mullahs of Persia probably just haven’t tested theirs yet, waiting until they have a sufficient stockpile. We could never secure our breeder reactors any more than we can keep terrorists out of the Navy’s nuclear submarines. Let’s be realistic, ok?
/rant
My jokes tend to get people riled up, rather than laughing.
Leftists politicians control CO2 to control people,
They don’t really care about aliens from Mexico or Uranus.
It is puzzling that so many people can be frightened by CO2, after many decades of brainwashing.
The irrational fear of CO2 and the tendency for violence may be two reasons actual aliens in UFOs do not try to contact humans — we are too primitive and too dangerous.
But they leave behind some great modern art in fields of crops to entertain us. Yet we are so stupid, most people falsely claim these 5 to 10-minute nighttime-created art, masterpieces are hoaxes.
Honest Climate Science and Energy: OFF TOPIC: Monday fun — My 13 favorite non-manmade crop circle photographs
Politicians … need to have a simplistic idea that … can be explained in Kindergarten
Assumes intelligence not in evidence.
If the system is chaotic, then it is a waste of resources to keep on trying to develop models especially computer models such as the long term weather predictions project that Lorentz was working on. Rather, resources are best allocated to short term cases where propagated errors are low and the model results are adjusted by actual monitoring data regularly in short time frame such as daily, weekly weather predictions. Weather predictions for the next four weeks or so have little reliability.
Many systems are chaotic on the small scale but they are not on the large scale. Glaciations are predictable based on orbital changes.
Climate change is the net result of all local, regional and global variables that affect the climate. There may be regular, short term cycles — 10 to 50 years long — that could be predicted.
They could help predict the climate in a 10 to 50 year period, if the cycles were regular and repeating. That’s being optimistic. The sunspot cycles are close to being repeating cycles, but they do not appear to be useful for climate predictions.
Really, well perhaps you can explain the change from Pongola/Huronian Ice Ages periods to the periods of the Sturtian/Marinoan and subsequent ice ages after a large gap?
Did we have a major shift in orbit?
Are we talking glaciations or ice ages here? They are completely different beasts. The glacial cycle is due to orbital variations. Who knows what causes ice ages? Tectonics appears to be a factor, but it is far from clear.
Currently the oceans cover 71% of the earth’s surface, 29% is land. What is the proportion of land in the northern hemisphere compared with the southern? What is the land distribution around the equator? How does this affect the precession of the earth’s axis? How did the presence of a super continent on one side of the earth affect anything? What is the effect of the widening Atlantic Ocean, which I know is tiny compared with the circumference of the Earth? If you’re going to try to recreate prehistoric conditions then these changes surely must be accounted for, as well as changes in the sun over its 4 billion year history no matter how apparently insignificant?
Slightly on a tangent, but there was a presentation aimed at children on the planets in the solar system (& beyond), and it stated that the high temperatures on Venus were due entirely to its thick blanket of carbon dioxide atmosphere.
You could point out that Mars has almost the same percent of CO2 in its atmosphere but is cold. So maybe CO2 isn’t the answer.
Even Stephen Hawkins believed Venus had a runaway greenhouse gas effect situation.
The very term “chaotic”, in the mathematical sense, implies an Attractor. The hunt is on for that attractor, and I for one put Sol as Suspect #1, as possible accessory to the main culprit: whatever sits at the centre of our galaxy…
Predictions, predictions, predictions…all I seem to notice is ice ages(and mini ice ages) start when temperatures are are high and ice ages finish when they are very low.
Planetary geometry cycles?
Check with RickWill about that. he thinks that’s why we have ice ages, the snow that forms the continental glaciers has to come from the North. So a warming Arctic is a bad thing.
Naive question, are the two Schwabe cycles that make up a Hale cycle symmetrical? https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac069e/pdf would suggest not, but it’s way beyond my understanding, there does seem to be lags between different parts of the cycle between the odd and even phases. If so does this impact on the model above?
No. Any two consecutive Schwabe cycles make a Hale cycle, as you can start the Hale cycle at any polarity inversion. The model is too simple and disregards Hale cycle. It is just a spectral interpretation of the sunspot record using the frequencies obtained from the analysis of 11,700 years of 14C records. It is just an educated guess that could prove better than the current methods that are akin to opening birds to look at their entrails, at least in terms of results.
The thing is if the model is in the ballpark, the only reason is the secular solar periodicities considered must be a real phenomenon, something that is being disparaged by most solar scientists.
As I’m typing on my phone, I have problems linking sites.
Look for “Landscheidt Minimum”, Theodor Landscheidt was the one predicting the last and the actual minimum at least in 2003.
“Beyond Landscheidt” is a good site to find more about his researches.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254703382_New_Little_Ice_Age_Instead_of_Global_Warming
At least that one…
Theodore Landscheidt was too open-minded for his own good. His embracing of astrology led him to be ill-considered a scientist. I’ve read him, which is an interesting read, but quite often I don’t get much out of it because his methods were obscure. Curiously, most of his recognition today comes from his astrology contributions.
First came his sun / climate research, that later he looked for astrology, why ever, doesn’t touch his scientific work. Your discrediting attitude is comparable to alarmist behaviour as f.e. Rahmsdorf, I absolutely dislike, not only for that.
https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Theodor-Landscheidt-2027258242
http://bourabai.ru/landscheidt/index.html
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/solar-physicists-finally-get-the-message-landscheidt-was-right-after-all/
I’ve not discredited anybody. I’ve stated well-known facts. I don’t care if he was religious or believed in astrology or aliens. I only judge him for his scientific contribution. He had interesting ideas and was on the right track for some of them and on the wrong track for others. Ultimately, his contribution was not significant, regardless of his personal beliefs.
I believe in what he found about solar activity and ENSO, but I’ve not been able to work out the basis of his method, which is pretty obscure.
That may be obscure to you, but the rewards he got show that he was accepted in the world of astronomy. (child of astrology btw.)
http://sharpgary.org/landscheidt.html
https://plasmaresources.com/ozwx/landscheidt/pdf/Sun-Earth-Men_116_p_1989.pdf
I have no idea if you read that:
The Golden Section: A Cosmic Principle
That may explain what you define as “obscure” 😀
That was the site I would originally link to:
Beyond Landscheidt
I always got the massage “Nonce is invalid”, what ever that means….
Ther you find also a lot of other sources
Landscheidt Papers
.
Thanks for the article, very informative, and covering a question I’ve had for a while. I hope it is well received. From the outside looking in the solar field seems to be particularly quarrelsome, with strong personalities and seemingly some history coloring present disagreements.
I did have a question about this part:
“in 2006 Mark Clilverd, along with other British and Finnish researchers, published a paper entitled “Predicting solar cycle 24 and beyond” (Clilverd et al. 2006). In this remarkable paper, they used a spectral method based on secular cycles in sunspot numbers to predict that cycles SC24 and 25 would have much lower activity than previous cycles, but would be followed by SC26 when activity would begin to recover (Figure 5).”
I was hoping someone familiar with the literature could help put this in context, perhaps Javier if you’re checking in on comments.
This does appear to be a fairly remarkable paper given the ability to predict well in advance across many cycles. My question is if the literature in ~2006 had many different predictions, and this one happened to get lucky so rise to prominence (collective shot gun effect), or were there relatively few groups predicting this far in advance at the time, so perhaps more likely that their method has utility going forward.
I have no reason to believe it is not the latter, but always on guard for the equivalent of a multiple hypothesis testing error when looking back at a body of literature.
Or perhaps the method Clilverd et al used has a fundamental / first principle reason it would be more successful than other attempts?
Thanks for any perspective you can provide.
Science is always quarrelsome, only usually not seen from the outside. Leif likes to say it is a blood sport. In Spanish, we typically say that the blood doesn’t reach the river when something doesn’t amount to much.
In 2008, when the solar minimum was being established, and the polar fields precursor method became available, NASA Goddard collected the predictions available, and William Pesnell published them:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11207-008-9252-2.pdf
These are NOAA’s sunspot numbers, not international numbers. The average of the predictions was way too high. In figure 1 Svalgaard’s forecast was close to the final result.
Clilverd prediction was in the ballpark, unlike most, but what is remarkable is that he produced it before polar field precursors could give an answer and that he also predicted SC25 was going to be low but of similar magnitude.
So yes, the predictions were all over the place. It looks like all those solar scientists were making random predictions hoping to win.
Why does this subset of science still come across like stock chartist voodoo or reading chicken bones? It’s also not a good idea to use consensus-by-committee forecasts under such conditions.
It is one of the many typical examples of bad “critical science”. It is all about speculative and usually wrong theory building, instead of addressing the real issues with the “science”. In effect it is a distraction from it, thereby in fact helping the flawed “consensus science”.
It goes beyond that. The way a problem is framed in science determines the type of theories that can be developed and if a complete solution can be found or not. This is typically expressed to say that in science looking for the right questions to ask is more important than looking for answers.
In solar-climate research, if the problem is framed in terms of changes in total solar irradiance, as most do including the IPCC, then it cannot be solved.
In climate change research, if the problem is framed in terms of radiative changes to the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere, it admits only one solution, changes to GHGs and aerosols.
Just by framing the problems differently, the first one can be solved and the second one admits more solutions. And that is what I am focusing on doing, asking the right questions, rather than looking for alternative solutions to the wrong questions.
“In solar-climate research, if the problem is framed in terms of changes in total solar irradiance, as most do including the IPCC, then it cannot be solved.”
You are wrong again.
“…if the problem is framed in terms of radiative changes to the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere, it admits only one solution, changes to GHGs and aerosols.”
You are right again.
The problem is you are not asking the right questions even though you think so.
The problem is reframed properly when irradiance is seen as warming the ocean and causing the ocean to then radiate heat, emit water vapor and CO2 into the atmosphere, causing the weather, all processes which are not included in your IPCC science.
The radiative forcing fiasco simply ignores the sun’s warming contribution to the ocean and the ocean’s warming contribution to the atmosphere.
The green GHG/CO2 line is a proxy for rising ocean temperature. How’s that for reframing?
Hell, I don’t know if I am asking the right questions. Nobody does. What I know is I am asking questions nobody but a handful of people is asking. And considering how many climate researchers there are, that is in itself surprising.
You have hit the squarely. The real problem with CO2 is no discernible experiments that might discover both mechanisms and their mathematical definitions.
I guess I can offer a couple of answers to questions you may not even have considered 😉
https://greenhousedefect.com/
Here are quotes from
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
“The IPCC and UNFCCC post modern science establishment’s “consensus” is that a modelled future increase in CO2 levels is the main threat to human civilization. This is an egregious error of scientific judgement. A Millennial Solar ” Activity” Peak in 1991 correlates with the Millennial Temperature Peak at 2003/4 with a 12/13 year delay because of the thermal inertia of the oceans. Earth has now entered a general cooling trend which will last for the next 700+/- years.
Because of the areal distribution and variability in the energy density of energy resources and the varying per capita use of energy in different countries, international power relationships have been transformed. The global free trade system and global supply chains have been disrupted.
Additionally, the worlds richest and most easily accessible key mineral deposits were mined first and the lower quality resources which remain in the 21st century are distributed without regard to national boundaries and demand. As population grows,inflation inevitably skyrockets. War between states and violent conflicts between tribes and religious groups within states are multiplying.
2 The Millennial Temperature Cycle Peak.
Latest Data (1) https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
Global Temp Data 2003/12 Anomaly +0.26 : 2023/01 Anomaly -0.04 Net cooling for 19 years
NH Temp Data 2004/01 Anomaly +0.37 : 2023/01 Anomaly +0.05 Net cooling for 19 years
SH Temp Data 2003/11 Anomaly +0.21: 2023/01 Anomaly -0.14 Net cooling for 19 years
Tropics Temp Data 2004/01 Anomaly +0.22 : 2023/01 Anomaly – 0.38 Net cooling for 19 years.
USA 48 Temp Data 2004/03 Anomaly +1.32 : 2023/01 Anomaly + 0.12 Net cooling for 19 years.
Arctic Temp Data 2003/10 Anomaly +0.93 : 2023/01 Anomaly – 0.72 Net cooling for 19 years
Australia Temp Data 2004/02 Anomaly +0.80 : 2023/01 Anomaly – 0.50 Net cooling for 19 years
Earth’s climate is the result of resonances and beats between the phases of natural cyclic processes of varying wavelengths and amplitudes. At all scales, including the scale of the solar planetary system, sub-sets of oscillating systems develop synchronous behaviors which then produce changing patterns of periodicities in time and space in the emergent temperature data. The periodicities pertinent to current estimates of future global temperature change fall into two main categories:
a) The orbital long wave Milankovitch eccentricity, obliquity and precession cycles. These control the glacial and interglacial periodicities and the amplitudes of the corresponding global temperature cycles.
b) Solar activity cycles with multi-millennial, millennial, centennial and decadal time scales.
The most prominent solar activity and temperature cycles are : Schwab-11+/-years ; Hale-22 +/-years ; 3 x the Jupiter/Saturn lap cycle 60 years +/- :; Gleissberg 88+/- ; de Vries – 210 years+/-; Millennial- 960-1020 +/-. (2)
The Oulu Galactic Ray Count is used in this paper as the “solar activity ” proxy which integrates changes in Solar Magnetic field strength, Total Solar Insolation , Extreme Ultra Violet radiation, Interplanetary Magnetic Field strength, Solar Wind density and velocity, Coronal Mass Ejections, proton events, ozone levels and the geomagnetic Bz sign. Changes in the GCR neutron count proxy source causes concomitant modulations in cloud cover and thus albedo. (Iris effect)
Eschenbach 2010 (3) introduced “The Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis – how Clouds and Thunderstorms Control the Earth’s Temperature”.
Eschenbach 2020(4) in https://whatsupwiththat.com/2020/01/07/drying-the-sky uses empirical data from the inter- tropical buoy system to provide a description of this system of self-organized criticality. Energy flow from the sun into and then out of the ocean- water interface in the Intertropical Convergence Zone results in a convective water vapor buoyancy effect and a large increase in OLR This begins when ocean temperatures surpass the locally critical sea surface temperature to produce Rayleigh – Bernard convective heat transfer.
Short term deviations from the solar activity and temperature cycles are driven by ENSO events and volcanic activity.
Fig 1 Correlation of the last 5 Oulu neutron cycles and trends with the Hadsst3 temperature trends and the 300 mb Specific Humidity. ( 5,6 )
The Oulu Cosmic Ray count in Fig.1C shows the decrease in solar activity since the 1991/92 Millennial Solar Activity Turning Point and peak There is a significant secular drop to a lower solar activity base level post 2007+/- and a new solar activity minimum late in 2009. In Figure 1 short term temperature spikes are colored orange and are closely correlated to El Ninos. The hadsst3gl temperature anomaly at 2037 is forecast to be + 0.05…………………………….
See also Figs 2 and 3
……………………………..
6. CO2 -Temperature and Climate.
The whole COP Net Zero meme is founded on the flawed assumptions and algorithms which produced the IPCC- UNFCCC model forecasts of coming dangerous temperature increases.
The “consensus” IPCC models make the fundamental error of ignoring the long- term decline in solar activity and temperature following the Millennial Solar Activity Turning Point and activity peak which was reached in 1990/91 as shown in Figure 1
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is .058% by weight. That is one 1,720th of the whole. It is inconceivable thermodynamically that such a tiny tail could wag so big a dog. (13)
Stallinga 2020 (14) concludes: ” The atmosphere is close to thermodynamic equilibrium and based on that we……… find that the alleged greenhouse effect cannot explain the empirical data—orders of magnitude are missing. ……Henry’s Law—outgassing of oceans—easily can explain all observed phenomena.” CO2 levels follow temperature changes. CO2 is the dependent variable and there is no calculable consistent relationship between the two. The uncertainties and wide range of out-comes of model calculations of climate radiative forcing (RF) arise from the improbable basic assumption that anthropogenic CO2 is the major controller of global temperatures.
Miskolczi 2014 (15) in “The greenhouse effect and the Infrared Radiative Structure of the Earth’s Atmosphere “says “The stability and natural fluctuations of the global average surface temperature of the heterogeneous system are ultimately determined by the phase changes of water.”
Also See AleksandrZhitomirskiy2022 Absorption of heat and the greenhouse gas effect. https://independent.academia.edu/AleksandrZhitomirskiy (16) which says:
“The molar heat capacities of the main greenhouse and non-greenhouse gases are of the same order of magnitude. Given the low concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, their contribution to temperature change is below the measurement error. It seems that the role of various gases in the absorption of heat by the atmosphere is determined not by the ability of the gas to absorb infrared radiation, but by its heat capacity and concentration. ”
Zaichun Zhul et al 2016 (17) in Greening of the Earth and its drivers report “a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated Leaf Area Index (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area from 1982 – 2009. ………. C02 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend.”
Policies which limit CO2 emissions or even worse sequester CO2 in quixotic CCS green-washing schemes would decrease agricultural food production and are antithetical to the goals of feeding the increasing population and bringing people out of poverty.
The tropical rain forests and tropical oceans are the main source of the atmosphere’s water vapor and the rainfall essential to life and agriculture on land. Potable and agricultural water supplies are now stretched to their limits in many areas because of the demographics of global population increase. Temperature limits and targets as set in the Paris Accords to ameliorate future temperatures are completely useless when formulating policies relative to adaptation to the actual real world problems. These require more local inputs for particular regional ecosystems delineated by coastlines, major river basins and mountain range limited intra-continental divides
” Policies which limit CO2 emissions or even worse sequester CO2 in quixotic CCS green-washing schemes would decrease agricultural food production and are antithetical to the goals of feeding the increasing population and bringing people out of poverty.:
So true, and so incredible, this is hard to believe after thousands of CO2 enrichment – plant growth experiments, of which I have read about 300 in the past 25 years. And the CO2 enrichment experiences of most greenhouse owners. After all those data and experience, it’s amazing that more CO2 in the atmosphere is demonized, rather than celebrated.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was established by The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972. Its mandate was to provide leadership, deliver science and develop solutions on a wide range of issues, including climate change. As a member of the United Nations Development Group, UNEP also aims to help the world meet 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Many of the consensus establishment’s doomsday CO2 “Jabberwocky ” scenarios originated in NASA’s James Hansen ‘s 1981 paper “Climate Impact of Increasing Carbon Dioxide” Hansen reviewed the data- bases, algorithms and forward projections of six simple General Circulation Models (GCMs) and said “The global warming projected for the next century is of almost unprecedented magnitude. On the basis of our model calculations, we estimate it to be 2.5°C for a scenario with slow energy growth and a mixture of non-fossil and fossil fuels…… .” if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more. We would set the planet on a course to drive the ice-free state, with sea level 75 meters higher.”
The Scientific Report of the 1985 UNEP organized meeting at Villach said: “….. unequivocal,statistically convincing detection of the effects of changing CO2 and trace gas levels on climate is not yet possible”
The Summary for Policymakers by contrast said
“As a result of the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, it is now believed that in the first half of the next century a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than any in man’s history”
but on the basis of this Summary report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up, not to examine to the basic science behind Hansen’s work but to examine the human contribution to global warming.
On a steamy June 23, 1988, Hansen testified to Congress that “Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet. . . . the dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is that they are working for ‘clean coal.’ . . .The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.” The reference to the Holocaust is clearly intentional.
Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky was an the march.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
The fearsome CO2 Jabberwocky and the Methane Bandersnatch have been used post Hansen 81 to drive policy for career advancement,political and financial ends.
The First IPCC Assessment Report 1990 – Policymaker Summary of Working Group I science section (13) stated: ” …The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.” In spite of this lack of empirical evidence the 1992 Rio meeting produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, later signed by 196 governments, and its Agenda 21 . Agenda 21 was designed as an action plan with the aim of keeping greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that was supposed to prevent dangerous man-made global warming.
“As a result of the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, it is now believed that in the first half of the next century a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than any in man’s history. ”
The claim was made that the UNFCCC actions proposed in Agenda 21 can control temperature by controlling CO2 levels.
This treaty is a comprehensive, politically driven, political action plan called Agenda 21 designed to produce a centrally managed global society which would control every aspect of the life of every one on earth.
It says :
“The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures”
Apocalyptic forecasts were used as the main drivers of demands for action and for enormous investments such as those in the new IPCC SR1.5 report and in the work of Nobel Prize winner Nordhaus who advocates a carbon tax .Nordhaus is quoted in the NYT as saying “If we start moving very swiftly in the next 20 years, we might able to avoid 2 degrees, but if we don’t do that, we’re in for changes in the Earth’s system that we can’t begin to understand in depth. Warming of 4, 5, 6 degrees will bring changes we don’t understand because it’s outside the range of human experience in the last 100,000 to 200,000 years.” -Total Jabberwocky.
The IPCC AR5 SPM says in Footnote 16 page 16 (15): “No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.”
CO2 now stands at around 419 ppm which is 0.0419%.of the Atmosphere.
And Methane, which Governments are all making a big fuss of now, is 1200 ppb, which is 0.00012%.
.
Norman,
Thank you for this. It is my understanding that the overall variations in solar irradiance are way too small to explain the temperature changes that have occurred on our planet since the beginning of time – which is why such arguments have failed to convince the general audience as being explanatory for ‘global warming’. You do allude to the Oulu GCR dataset and you also mention cloud cover, however, you do not mention that variations in cloud cover appear to amplify variations in solar irradiance by a factor of approximately 10…..to reach e.g. the 0.77 W/m2 increase from 2005 until 2019 that Loeb (2021) deduced from analyses of the Ceres datasets. For me, as a layman, it seems absolutely necessary that we discuss the impact that cloud cover has on global warming. The variations in solar irradiance are too small and ocean recirculation only serves as a time delay that redistributes heat. I’m happy to learn.
HT to Anthony for creating this site. This thread is a textbook example of what “Peer Review” should look like.
The solar cycle is a 22 year cycle – not 11 years – unless prepared to dismiss polarit, which may have sufficed in past. Polarity is critical to the composite magnetic results on solar irradiance, be it electrical, magnetic, or otherwise.
Contrasting consecutive 11-year cycles may not be appropriate relative to to 22-year contrasts, or comparing odd/even 11 year cycles.
Remove polarity and Zharkova’s hypothesis disappears.
Can’t do that!
All criticisms of Zharkova seem to not account for the fact that her hypothesis is predicated on a two-dynamo (possibly quad) assumption. With two waveforms of dissimilar frequencies, polarity cannot be ignored.
As commonly presented, and as Javier Vinós presents it, here, the 24/25 contrast, pales in comparison to 21/23/35 and 22/24/(26?). Additionally, all cycles shown indicate a radical drop in energy in consecutive cycle, consistent cycle-to-cycle, 21 to 25 (so far). The center peak, for Cycle 21, does not suffice to surpass total energy for Cycle 22 (area under the curve).
The curves show radical drop from 21 to 23 to 25 (so far), and from 22 to 24. Radical!
Whichever way you look at it, SC25 is less active than SC4 in Zharkova’s model. Let’s try not to move the goalpost one cycle further.
I suspect there is a typo in your text”SC25 is less active than SC4“, but the “modulus summary curve” is not applicable to Zharkova’s work.
============================
Zharkova’s model/claim is predicated on constructive/destructive interference.
Given two interacting dissimilar frequencies, destructive interference can create dynamic cancelling effects, a well established phenomenon.
As I understand it, her sunspot prediction is holding up better than any past models. Her first sin, as I understand it, is that she presented a mathematical model, in 2015, derived from whatever eigen vector analysis, without identifying why the behavior is what it is. Perhaps there were additional sins, because I do not understand why her mathematical model is not acceptable.
Whatever her greater sins, either the math is correct, or it’s not. The model is not render invalid because it may not hind-cast such events as major volcanic eruptions or large meteorites over centuries, or millennia.
With two, or more, frequencies, again, 21>23>25 and 22>24(>26?), and even though cycle 25 can be stronger than cycle 24, all the while the overall cyclical effect is diminishing. (The classical 11-year cycle graph does not suffice since it does not present the full phenomenon.)
The result is called a damped sine wave, or decaying sinusoid. The resulting composite sine wave is enclosed in a log-decay, as shown in the lower graph below. It need not be symmetrical about the X-axis. Notice that the lower half is closer to the zero line, and is a bit more linear than the top half.
That narrative argues that, as I stated previously, you’d group/contrast even and odd 11-year cycles separately, not compare 25 with 24.
The top graph shows two separate frequencies, the bottom combines the two. Impossible to get that from 11-year graphs which do not plot polarity.
Zharkova’s answers to usoskin unsubstantiated comments were given in the rpaper in JASTP with the replies to each comment (Zharkova et al 2018, https://solargsm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/zharkova_reply2usoskin_jastp17.pdf ). Also the situation with the current grand solar minimum and solar activity in cycle 25 are discussed in the recent paper by Zharkova and Shepherd, 2022, MNRAS https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/512/4/5085/6552133?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false or pdf file https://solargsm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/zharkova_shepherd_mnras22.pdf .
The conclusion is clear: the GSM is doing well, started from 2020 and progression as we predicted in 2015 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep15689.
Of course, it is doing well because is a no-show, thank God!
I fully agree with Ilya Usoskin’s arguments. I consider him one of the great solar scientists of our time.
So, it is wait and let’s see time. Reality trumps model and predictions. Premature burials are not very nice….
As of this cycle, inter cyclical solar activity has stopped decreasing, as figure 4 shows. I’m dancing on the GSM grave. It is a motive for celebration even for those of us that expected the outcome. GSM are really bad.
Javier ==> Hmmmm….not that much of a change — it is still wait and see…Not any different than 21 and 23. Although, if you/we are hoping there is to be no new GSM, then it does look hopeful, but definitely not certain — yet in any case.
“In fact, it may be two to three centuries before humans experience a GSM again.”
In fact the next two centennial solar minima, will be the longest sequential pair of grand solar minima for 3450 years, beginning from around 2095, and from around 2200. They can be mapped discretely cycle by cycle by their actual planetary ordering.
It is a great tragedy that all those who support the idea of lower solar activity past solar cycle 25, Zharkova, Morner et al, and even Judith Curry, are associating it with a colder AMO. They have it completely backwards, every other warm AMO phase is during a centennial solar minimum.
MODERATORS. Why do you trigger moderation because of successive edits? That is not really suspicious in any way. Spammers don’t typically waste time making changes. I came back to correct a typo and now it’s held for “approval”. Not helpful to any on-going dialogue !
grog – actually that is exactly what the spammers were doing. They would post a simple, benign response or message like “Exactly!” or “Good point” or “Great article”, then come back and edit it to their spam.
Also Zharkova et al, 2015 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep15689 wish to remind our prediction in 2015 (Fig. 2, bottom plot) of the solar activity in cycle 25 and 26. The figure shows that maximum of cycle 25 will be close to cycle 24 reaching about 80% of maximum in cycle 24 while the maximum of cycle 26 will approach only about 30% of the maximum of cycle 24. So far the max number of sunspots in cycle 25 (143) is 80% of the maximum in cycle 24 (163). The further time will show if this ratio will be maintained as well as we predicted.
I can only add that the polar jets with huge frosts and blizzards occurred in the northern hemisphere this winter in the US, Canada, UK and Russia and the summer snow and frosts in Australia in December 2022 are only the first warnings of more cold snaps to come after the Sun passes the maximum of cycle 25 in which it is now.
No. As I have said in the article, the maximum monthly sunspot number in cycle 24 was 146.1 in February 2014. The data is here and can be checked:
https://sidc.be/silso/DATA/SN_m_tot_V2.0.txt
So, the max number of sunspots in cycle 25 so far (143.6 January 2023) is 98.3% of the maximum in cycle 24. 10.7 cm solar flux has already gone in this cycle where it couldn’t reach in SC24.
There might be cold weather coming in the future, but that has nothing to do with Valentina Zharkova’s model being wrong. You better jump from her ship before it sinks.
The Myth is that you can predict a time series from first principles. That is mathematically impossible except for problems with trivially small chaos dimensions.
I’m a bit late, but thanks Javier for what I observe, your excellent work. I would assume Dr Svalgaard would agree in principle w/it. What impresses me about the current cycle is that both hemispheres have quite a bit of activity.
NASA / NOAA’s prediction of SC 25 having about the same amplitude and shoe as a SC24 seems to be tracking reality quite well so far:
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/the-sun-is-waking-up-right-on-schedule/
shoeshapeman, all this crap reminds me of the insanity around the Carrington Event.
NO ONE know who the hell Richard Carrington was until the past 30 years or so when NASA was threatened losing some funding and all of a sudden scrambled to scare the crap out of everyone with an EMP caused by a solar flare. Thus Carrington Event took over and all the right wingers got scared crapless.
Same people who doubted man-made global warming started talking EMPs.
Both sides get played so easily it’s embarassing.
Mini ice age signs: February 2023 – unusual snow and frost in Morocco and California (US)..
https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2023-02-24-about-5-meters-high—unusual-scenes-of-snow-in-southeastern-morocco.r1xJ3GyIAi.html
https://www.insider.com/california-snow-storm-blizzard-warning-rare-photos-2023-2
I lack the depth of knowledge required to reach a conclusion either way. Unlike a whole lot of people, I refuse to make things up.
Instead, I will say that I’ve been aware of Zharkova’s hypothesis. The reason: This website. I have always been skeptical of it, for the uneducated reason that I’m skeptical of all apocalyptic predictions. But I have never known enough to dismiss it, and that would include right now as well.
If I recall correctly, if her hypothesis is correct, we should start to see the beginnings of global cooling in the next 10-15 years. I tend to doubt the idea for the reason I just articulated, but you never know. With all due respect to Javier Vinoz, I don’t think he knows either. We shall see what we shall see.