By Jim Steele
The Great Famine of the 1870s resulted in 50 million deaths from drought-induced mass starvation across South America, Africa, and Asia. It was an all-natural climate event during colder times with lower CO2 concentrations and those drought-causing climate dynamics are still in play today. To understand if the world could again suffer such a drought, it helps to view climate change from a 10,000-year perspective starting with the African Humid Period. During the Holocene Optimum the Sahara was covered with lakes and rivers and abundant wildlife as depicted by the rock art of the many African societies that thrived in the Sahara (graphics B & C). Then around 6,000 years ago it turned to desert.
In the tropics, rainy and dry seasons alternate depending on the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ- graphic D). The ITCZ is seen in satellites as a narrow band of clouds where world’s greatest amounts of precipitation fall. The ITCZ is very sensitive to solar heating. During the northern hemisphere’s summer when the sun’s strongest rays move northward, so does the ITCZ. As the sun migrates southward, so does the ITCZ and its band of rains.
A 40,000+ year cycle of the changing tilt of the earth’s axis, referred to as obliquity, also determines how far north and south the suns strongest rays will migrate. Ten thousand years ago the tilt was at a maximum and the ITCZ migrated further north than today, bringing more moisture to the Sahara (graphic F; ITCZ average northern location=yellow dashed line). As the tilt decreases to its minimum, the ITCZ moves southward (graphic G). Thus, as the ITCZ migrated southward, the rains decreased enough over the Humid Sahara to turn it to a desert. The axis tilt will continue to decline for another 10,000 years. Another orbital cycle, precession, contributed to the ITCZ southward migration by causing the southern hemisphere to slightly warm while the northern hemisphere slightly cooled.
Research has also found that as the ITCZ moved southward over the past 6000 years, El Nino activity has increased. El Nino events caused extreme drought in southeast Asia in 1998, as well as in southern Africa such as was recently experienced in 2023-2024. Likewise, the Great Famine of the 1870s coincided with the strong El Nino of 1877-1878, while the ITCZ was at its most southward location (graphic E).
The Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1900 AD coincided with sunspot minimums. The reduced solar heating caused the ITCZ to contract further towards the equator. That altered atmospheric circulation to bring drought to the tropics and the Great Famine of 1870 as well as colder temperatures to North America and Eurasia. It also brought the northern rain-belts further south, bringing heavy snowfall and growing glaciers. Manchuria suffered famines not from drought but from cold winters. Growing glaciers in the Swiss Alps destroyed farmland and towns.
The last 150 years has witnessed the ITCZ migrating northward as sunspots exhibited a maximum, bringing a warm rebound from the LIA (graphic E). Small changes in solar irradiance are not enough to warm the climate directly. However small changes in solar irradiance affects the ITCZ which then has global impacts that can have bigger warming effects.
Small changes in solar irradiance are not enough to warm the climate directly. However small changes in solar irradiance affects the ITCZ which then has global impacts that can have bigger warming effects. The ITCZ is the driver of the Hadley circulation that drives circulation changes from the equator to the poles (graphic H). A southward migration of the ITCZ causes a weakening of the polar vortex and the polar jet stream. In turn that allows cold air that is normally contained in the Arctic to flow southward and cool North America and Eurasia. A strong polar vortex that constrains cold air transport causes a warming global temperature. The decrease in sunspots during the Little Ice Age, as well as since 1990s coincides with a weaker vortex and winter cooling across sub-polar regions.
The Hadley circulation, driven by the ITCZ strength and location, creates a tropical rain-belt, a mid-latitude dry belt or the desert-latitude belt, and a sub-polar rain-belt. (graphic I; blue more precipitation vs red more evaporation). As the ITCZ moves southward so does the regions of dryness and rainfall. Accordingly, as the ITCZ brought drought to tropical regions, it simultaneously brought heavy snow fall and devastating glaciers to the sub-polar rain-belts.
People must understand, anomalous droughts and floods, anomalous cold and heat, are the natural consequence of the earth’s natural circulation patterns and solar variations. Similar to El Nino effects, weather changes can bring both floods and droughts. Likewise, the ITCZ migration brings warmer tropics and colder sub-polar regions. These natural dynamics do not claim that there is no greenhouse effect. However, those dynamics simply reveal how much natural climate dynamics affect our lives, global temperatures, and weather extremes. Anyone arguing CO2 is driving all the climate changes and all the extreme weather events are either very ignorant of these weather dynamics, or dishonest grifters trying to manipulate your support for their political agenda! The greatest Climate Injustice of all will happen if the world’s under-served people are denied the inexpensive energy from fossil fuels that best allows them to deal with natural climate extremes!
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“Small changes in solar irradiance are not enough to warm the climate directly.” and
“A strong polar vortex that constrains cold air transport causes a warming global temperature.”
You’re totally wrong Jim, but I can understand that you and many others here and at Dr. Curry’s site are just victims of propaganda most recently promulgated by Javier Vinos.
The ocean warmed because TSI was above the decadal ocean warming TSI threshold I had established back in 2014/2015, confirming my empirically based sun-climate system works.
I cannot estimate if you are right or wrong but i do know you should not call Vinos’s work ‘propaganda’ and then call Curry et al victims of this. It implies bad faith. Unless you dont know what propaganda actually means. And if you simply state that x=wrong (and i am right because of …) what do you think that indicates? It indicates you are acting as an arrogant arsehole. Is that clear enough for ya?
I would say sorry but sometimes you have to call it as it is..
I am also sorry that I have to tell it like it is, because I can’t count on you or the others to do it.
Propaganda is stating the same thing over again like Vinos has done regularly, the false idea that the polar vortex changes the climate and warms the ocean. His articles are in bad faith because he’s used my Modern Maximum without attribution and by misusing it, misapplying it.
I am at a loss as to how skeptics would allow this unethical scientific misconduct to stand.
It is Javier Vinos who is the real aggressor here who acted like an arrogant arsehole by taking something he didn’t develop and didn’t properly cite and by him using it to tell his climate stories, while rejecting my 2018 work proving solar irradiance is the climate changing agent. On top of all that he didn’t even prove his point about global warming, he just hand-waved his way around it, he couldn’t calculate anything to back up his claim.
I am at a loss for how it turns out that so many active commenters here forgot about my Modern Maximum calculations that were originally posted here with great regularity from 2014-2016 at WUWT right as the v2 sunspot number reconstruction data was available, that are in my 2018 AGU poster where I showed solar irradiance was/is responsible for global warming.
As for me defending my work and comparing it to his story, that is what we skeptics have always done, and if you think any I’m different than others in that regard, you’d be wrong.
Bob,I am totally baffled that you think ONLY you are the person to have observed that increased TSI happened as the sunspots increased from the lows of the Maunder Minimum to the 1990s. That is egotistical.
You think you know things that you don’t know, Jim, just like Javier.
What you said is pure 100% high-grade gaslighting. I never said ‘I was the only one‘ to think any such thing, you said it, not me. I never said that Jim.
Go ahead and be baffled, but be baffled for the right reason, like why you think a thing like that that isn’t true should be said and used against me.
You’re actually projecting Jim, it is you who is the eqotistical one, as your conventional wisdom cannot be challenged.
I have every right to be here and offer my input and criticize what is said. If you can’t handle the truth then maybe you should quit writing here, go fishing, or do something else with your onery self.
Since 2018 I’ve spent over 10 large going to science meetings to help us all out of this jam, helping all sides of this debate, getting actual climate and solar scientists interested, not just skeptics, and the only thanks I get here where I started out, are my ideas get stolen, misused, and people don’t care about that and then stick their fingers in my eye when I defend myself over it.
I want you to explain to me and everyone here why I shouldn’t expose it all.
Could the five people who downvoted me please summon the courage to write back and support why you think Jim should be able to gaslight me over things I didn’t say?
Why are any skeptics condoning such dishonest tactics?
Mr. Weber: I don’t use downvotes, can’t speak for them, but your bitter, vindictive comments attacking Vinos again indicate that you have lost perspective. Your attack-mode comments are evidently not persuasive “because you can’t count on commenters here” to do what? Attack Vinos??!!
It’s up to (or down to) -17 now, and counting.
A lot to be said about polar vortex role in weather and climate via pressure induced movement of mass.
https://reality348.wordpress.com/
Yes, the polar vortex is a temporary and often strong mechanism that can change the weather for short time periods, but it is not a climate driver per se as it can’t warm the ocean, which is where global warming really starts.
Bob, It troubles me that your posts have become so egocentric. You claim only you, and no one else, have the correct analyses. You seem so infatuated with yourself, I’ve stopped reading most of your replies.
No they’re not egocentric, they are informative, they fill knowledge gaps. Unfortunately I have to use the word “I”, something out of character for me really.
It is you and others who are infatuated with a very bad unsupported idea.
If you’ve decided to remain a victim of propaganda by ignoring me that’s your call, but I will not stop calling this out.
I’m sorry to say Jim but you act like Javier settled some science when he didn’t.
Bob, just curious .. why was there a sea surface warming 2019-2020 when the TSI was below your warming limit?
Thanx for asking George, it is a good question.
The warming you mentioned peaked in 2019/2020, and declined into 2021, but as you can see it didn’t warm up very much compared to the decadal SST step driven by the increase in solar cycle #25 irradiance taken in 2023/2024.
That shallow warming was due to the extreme levels of tropical (and ocean) surface insolation associated with the solar minimum driven La Niña state of relative cloudlessness, a predictable condition dependent on solar cycles.
Here I go using the “I” word again, but I wrote a poster for both the 2020 and 2021 AGU meetings regarding the extent of this solar-induced state of cloudlessness effect and the subsequent effect this high intensity sunshine had on health during the 2020 pandemic.
Here is one image from that work that shows the TEMIS UV Index anomalies accumulated significantly worldwide in 2020. The UVI is partially a proxy for the degree of cloudiness.
This should help you see that my system is based on irradiance/insolation that is modulated by clouds, clouds that are modulated by solar activity, where insolation without a TSI boost doesn’t warm the ocean as much as with TSI, but can warm the land very much in the summer, which gets to the issue of droughts during La Niña, also a subject of those AGU posters.
Your reply here has nothing informative to offer. Your first reply is “You’re totally wrong Jim,” but you don’t address a single point I presented. Instead you launch into a vendetta against Javier Vinos alleging he acts in “bad faith because he’s used my Modern Maximum without attribution and by misusing it, misapplying it.” and “It is Javier Vinos who is the real aggressor here who acted like an arrogant arsehole by taking something he didn’t develop and didn’t properly cite and by him using it to tell his climate stories, while rejecting my 2018 work proving solar irradiance is the climate changing agent.”
So, WTF does your whining have to do with the science I presented.
Gentlemen, gentlemen –
no fighting in the war room.
“no fighting in the war room”
Good one! 🙂
WTF Jim, I already told you once about the two points you were wrong about, so what are you whining about?
Why don’t you explain why what Javier did wasn’t unethical or in bad faith?
You do know he was challenged to respond to this for years and still hasn’t.
Don’t you believe in giving credit to the original author for science findings?
Don’t you think I have every right to demand accountability where the issue started and continues to this day, at this website?
You do not see that a double standard has been enforced on skeptics by Javier, that he has lowered the bar for himself and raised the bar for me by sheer repetition of unsupported claims.
Jim, since you haven’t mustered any arguments to my queries, I guess I can safely assume you absolutely know that I am absolutely right.
Maybe you’re unknowingly blinded to this, so here is the latest example of Javier intentionally gaslighting me at Dr. Curry’s site, where he said directly to me:
“You simply ignore the problem of the small amount of energy in relative terms (0.1%) that solar variations display.” and “You simply ignore the problem, so everybody ignores your hypothesis.”
He knows I don’t ignore the problem as it was taken into account in my oft-posted image using Jim Hansen’s Planetary Temperature Equation, which is just a modified S-B equation, he knows it because I’ve shown it to him many times and asked him to respond, which he never did.
He knowingly lied directly to me on Dr. Curry’s site about my own work.
So you see Jim, the man is playing me, and I’m not playing. Get it?
Iknow anyone arguing “ you absolutely know that I am absolutely right.” is a total egomaniac, and est ignored
Jim I feel sorry for you as I am not an egotist, I’m hard working & dedicated, and many real scientists have encouraged my work and expect me to continue and be a public presence for it, which is why I compare and contrast my work with other’s ideas, no matter who.
But who is the real egotist here?
Who is the one who wrote numerous grandiose articles claiming he alone knows how the sun changes the climate (without numbers!)?
Who wrote books and made YouTube videos about it before ever attempting to publish in a peer-review journal?
– It’s not me, it’s the arrogant egotist you are following, the one who has proven to have a primal need to be at the center of attention.
And there it is, I’ve never sought the spotlight, so I’m not an egotist nor an egomaniac.
As you’ve given no rational counter, you must know I’m right.
When two people independently come to similar conclusions based on observation of the same reality, that should not be particularly surprising.
I don’t need to have read Copernicus to have the insight that the earth rotates while the sun and stars are relatively stationary. We only need to have the insight that it’s improbable that uncountable celestial objects move in perfect concert around the earth when the same observation can be explained by one object rotating.
There can be the appearance that one or the other were influenced by the other’s work. I don’t know the facts in your dispute with Javier Vinós, but I can tell you with absolute assurance that your approach is ineffective and unpersuasive.
“When two people independently come to similar conclusions based on observation of the same reality, that should not be particularly surprising.”
We have not come to similar conclusions as his locus of control is the polar vortex. We are not talking about the same thing as his theory has no energy discussion, so he hasn’t even realistically solved anything, and why isn’t that clear to everyone after all this time, and why don’t people care about that?
There’s a fine line between similar conclusions and similar claims. He made similar claims unsupported by energy calculations, that superficially look the same as mine, but aren’t because mine has the essential energy component, and my mechanism is not the polar vortex. It’s apples and oranges.
Javier has been free-riding on my work. There is no other work in the world other than mine with the 1935-2004 Modern Maximum with the conclusion it caused global warming, the same claim he made, but he didn’t create it or prove it, and he ignored the energy.
“There can be the appearance that one or the other were influenced by the other’s work.”
My Modern Maximum calculations was directly communicated to Javier Vinos in WUWT comments long before he started talking about it himself. The evidence is in the archives here.
The CO2 crowd are thoroughly convinced, brainwashed even to the point that no amount of counter evidence is persuasive or interesting to them. We are at the same point with this subject.
your approach is ineffective and unpersuasive.
That seems to be awfully common
From papers published in the first 10-15 years of the 21st century and the latter part of the 20th century and with my limited understanding, there seems to be a possible causal link between ultraviolet radiation levels, ozone levels and temperature through various interactions.
Haigh, J.D., 2007. The Sun and the Earth’s climate. Living reviews in solar physics, 4, pp.1-64
Haigh, J.D., 2003. The effects of solar variability on the Earth’s climate. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 361(1802), pp.95-111.
Beer, J., Mende, W. and Stellmacher, R., 2000. The role of the sun in climate forcing. Quaternary Science Reviews, 19(1-5), pp.403-415.
Reid, G.C., 1995. The sun‐climate question: Is there a real connection?. Reviews of Geophysics, 33(S1), pp.535-538.
Sofia, S., Demarque, P. and Endal, A., 1985. From Solar Dynamo to Terrestrial Climate: Fluctuations in the energy produced by the sun may help to explain short-term changes in the earth’s climate. American Scientist, 73(4), pp.326-333.
This is a very informative article that clarifies the incidences of a fluctuating climate and their causes and results. Chances are good that the eco-alarmists won’t read it or accept the conclusions because it undermines their theories of the current climate “crisis” being strictly a result of human activity, particularly fossil fuel use.
Except for the points I made earlier, this was a good article.
If you think climate change has decimated societies, just wait and see the decimation to be caused by climate hysteria. Economies ruined, mobility severely restricted, resources misdirected to bogus technologies owned by cronies of politicians, people driven into poverty because the elite thinks they should be deprived of cheap and plentiful energy, people freezing to death because they can’t afford high energy bills, people starving because global food markets are disrupted, … It’s only just begun.
I agree Toby, that’s why I concluded with “The greatest Climate Injustice of all will happen if the world’s under-served people are denied the inexpensive energy from fossil fuels that best allows them to deal with natural climate extremes!”
Reportedly, “human ancestors went through a severe population bottleneck with about 1280 breeding individuals between around 930,000 and 813,000 years ago.”
They could have used a few natural gas stoves.
I keep hearing about this bottleneck but don’t believe it. By then humans were spread across much of the planet. I can’t imagine how anything could have effected all of them to slash the population. I think this widespread belief is based on insufficient data.
Here is a link that discusses the bottleneck. PBS did a documentary on it years ago and blamed it on a super volcano. Mitochondrial dna doesn’t lie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck
Well, maybe mitochondrial dna isn’t as well understood as they think- like the way the climate isn’t as well understood as some climate scientists thing. I still say the human population was very widespread and it’s unlikely anything could have drastically reduced population worldwide. That fact seems more significant that genetic theories. And I don’t claim to be a scientist – just my intuition which I bet will be shown correct at some future point.
You may say it, but the archeological record does not support it.
There were species from the genus homo scattered over Africa as well as parts of Europe and Asia, but they weren’t modern humans. Our direct ancestors were still in Africa at the time.
Also no record of any relatives of humans in either Australia or the Americas.
“If you think climate change has decimated societies, just wait and see the decimation to be caused by climate hysteria.”
And the “solutions” to Climate Change the climate hysteria enabled.
It takes a special kind of twisted mind to take a photo of a British genocide and whitewash it with contrarian crap.
Well done, Jim!
Disclaimer: Nobody was harmed by the use of this historical photograph but the usual trigger happy triggered should take to the mattresses with a Bex handy.
Wow! Willard! I have not seen that name for a few years. Previously the name Willard was infamous for posting hateful, dishonest posts denigrating all skeptics. So I must warn you, you might be assuming a tainted name, especially when you suggest the Great Famine was simply a product of British colonialism and genocide. The great famines were drought-induced mass starvation across South America, Africa, and Asia. Indeed there are arguments British colonialism exacerbated the famine in India, but the famine and droughts were far more wide-spread.
Then again, perhaps you are the same old hateful, dishonest Willard. So are you then trying to argue that earlier climate change didn’t cause famines because it was cold and CO2 was low??? and so it was all due to British colonialism? [stifled snicker]
How dare you breach copyright and the regular modus operandi of the doomsters with this stuff when it’s strictly for frightening kiddies with the dooming when they’re not blowing them up in the classroom. Where is your context man?
Maybe he’s trying to channel Capt Willard (Martin Sheen) from Apocalypse Now.
(Seems appropriate for a calamatist)
But perhaps you should read the book “Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World” by Mike Davis before claiming that the British weren’t responsible for the deaths of millions.
I have an it’s the biggest pile of rubbish I’ve ever experienced in print form. Written by a confirmed Anglophobe and marxist, his book simply distorts the truth to further his own misguided anti capitalist beliefs
“the biggest pile of rubbish I’ve ever experienced in print form”
Just the sort of thing you would expect Izzy to swallow whole.
Says the guy who has just defended a journal peddling Ayurvedic crap.
> I have an
Sure, Jan.
> So are you then trying to argue
Still putting words in mouths, Jim?
I’m saying that you’re using a photograph that comes from authorities who perpetrated a genocide to argue for natural variability. Not that it’s that surprising. You always do.
You’re a one trick pony.
ROTFLMAO I must be perfectly exposing the alarmist’s bad climate points. Thus the alarmists bring out their biggest dishonest scumbag Willard to denigrate me.
You had one job, Jimmy Boy – finding a photograph that does not represent the best example of where can lead genocidal policies.
You faled.
I award you no point, and may God have mercy on your soul.
How exactly did British colonialism cause famine in S. America.
Take your ignorant hatred and peddle it somewhere else.
Is that related to the photography, Mark?
The only twisted mind around here is yours. Please explain how British colonialism caused a famine in 1870s South American and elsewhere
Glad you asked.
Through systematic racism and oppression of trans children of colour! By perpetuating heteronormative patriarchal religious stereotypes!
Liberate las Malvinas!
Isn’t it obvious man?
Probably, people all over the world, were so terrified of the British beasts, they stopped farming. /s
The only contortions are yours, Mr. David Guy-Johnson.
Please explain how your silly request is related to my comment.
Would it have been better had he used a photo of abandon Southwest Indian villages caused by climate change around 1200 AD? The point is the same.
https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/incredible-remains-of-stunning-ancient-native-american-village-carved-out-of-cliff
Yes, mk, it actually would have. Do you have any photos of people starving?
Yeah, the increase in crop yields and arable land has been devastating.
“The Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1900 AD coincided with sunspot minimums. The reduced solar heating caused the ITCZ to contract further towards the equator. That altered atmospheric circulation to bring drought to the tropics and the Great Famine of 1870, as well as colder temperatures to North America and Eurasia.”
The Great Famine was 1876-78, very early in the Gleissberg solar minimum,which is not really considered as being part of the LIA. 1879 was at sunspot cycle minimum, that’s when it got proper cold in northwest Europe, despite the massive warm pulse to the AMO in 1878 which fueled regional droughts, along with the super El Nino. Winter 1876-77 was very mild wet and stormy for the UK, while it was very cold in the northeast US, both just like in early 2014, because of a northeast Pacific warm blob.
The California pattern was strong drought 1876-77 because of the warm blob, big El Nino rains in 1878, then massive wildfires in 1879.
Very nice Jim.
OT, but speaking of decimation…
Germany May Sales Of Electric Cars Plummet 30.6% Compared To Year Earlier (notrickszone.com)
In Roman times, up to about AD 400, North Africa was the grain supplier for Rome and its empire. An endless stream of ships bulked with grain left North African ports like Carthage on their way to Rome’s port at Ostia.
Then one day the ships stopped coming.
when the Vandals arrived in Africa?
I’m pretty sure the Vandals never made it to Africa.
they did
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandal_Kingdom
They got to Spain, then cross over. And they helped bust up the Romans in Africa.
“… Sahara was covered with lakes and rivers and abundant wildlife…”
Something like 50 times in the last million years! All without ICE vehicles and your home furnace emitting that evil “carbon pollution”.
Mr. Steele, years ago PBS presented a series called “Connections”. It was hosted by James Burke.
In it he put forth that one of the reasons the Sahara turned to desert was as the glaciers melted that pulled the rain northward.
PBS also had a documentary about the Sahara showing borehole from Atlantic with evidence of desert dust with a 20000 yr cycle.
Enjoy your posts. Thanks.
Studies of the flora and fauna suggest the Sahara Desert has contracted and expanded many times over the past 2 million years. During the last glacial maximum 15,000 years ago the Sahara was a larger desert than now, so I doubt the melting glacier theory. But the ITCZ was further south than today.