By Andy May
“Consensus” scientists do not believe that solar variability, internal climate variability (in this model simplified to the ~67-year stadium wave), or volcanism influence net global warming or climate change since 1750, yet considerable evidence exists that these factors have an impact. I’ve previously built a model of the HadCRUT5 global average temperature (see here) from seven known climate and solar cycles using multiple regression and was reasonably successful.
In this attempt, I utilize the six best documented solar/climate cycles in listed Table 1 and the stadium wave climate-only interior variability cycle to create a multiple regression model of HadCRUT5.
When using many series to build a multiple regression model one is always confronted with von Neuman’s joke that with four arbitrary parameters he can fit an elephant. Further, all these series are serially correlated, which weakens the computed statistics of the resulting fit, such as R2. However, none of these series are “arbitrary parameters.” Except for the stadium wave and Log2_CO2 they are observed solar and climate cycles that share the same period and are in phase with one another. All are well supported with multiple lines of evidence. Thus, they are quite constrained and not arbitrary.
While they are not arbitrary in the von Neuman sense, they are not independent of one another. Probably the solar dynamo is behind all of them, but the mechanism Sun → climate is not understood for any of them except possibly for the Hale Cycle and the Barycenter. The solar dynamo is quite complex, especially in the longer term.
The stadium wave has no associated solar cycle and seems to be wholly internal variability, it has a period of roughly 67 years and correlates well with global average temperature (May & Crok, 2024). Internal climate variability is poorly understood and simply choosing the stadium wave to represent it is probably a vast oversimplification, but it is the best I can do. For a good up-to-date discussion of the components of internal variability I recommend Marcia Wyatt’s excellent report on circulation patterns (Wyatt M. , Circulation Patterns: Atmospheric and Oceanic, 2020). The report is paywalled, but a slightly different earlier version of the same report can be downloaded here.
The whole point of including the stadium wave is to account for the variable lag in emitting received solar radiation to space. Most solar radiation is received in the tropics, more than they can emit to space. As a result, some of the radiation received in the tropics must be transported to higher latitudes which emit more energy than they receive, especially in the winter months. Atmospheric and ocean circulation patterns change the timing of this tropics-to-pole energy transfer. A longer time to emit absorbed solar energy causes the planet to warm and a shorter time causes it to cool. Earth is never in thermal equilibrium except briefly by coincidence and the thermal energy residence time in the ocean/atmosphere climate system is constantly changing but seems to have roughly a 67-year cycle. The 67-year cycle overlies a longer secular trend of change, that longer trend could be due to solar cycles or CO2 or both. See figure 2 in May & Crok as an example.
There are no measurements from space or in the atmosphere that support the hypothesis that additional CO2 (man-made or otherwise) will cause global warming, but there are lab measurements, correlations, and climate models that support the hypothesis. CO2 has some effect, but how much is anyone’s guess at this point. We try and use multiple regression to derive a value below.
Critical Solar and Cycles
In this section we briefly describe each of the six well documented solar cycles listed in Table 1 that have a demonstrated impact on Earth’s climate and provide references for them.
Bray/Hallstatt Cycle
Roger Bray used glacial advance and retreat records to identify an approximately 2400-year climate cycle originally called the “Hallstatt” cycle (Bray, 1968). Although originally discovered by its effect on Earth’s climate there is an associated solar cycle that is in phase with the climate cycle and has the same period as discussed here. A more technical discussion of the solar Bray/Hallstatt Cycle is presented by Ilya Usoskin et al. here (Usoskin, Gallet, Lopes, Kovaltsov, & Hulot, 2016). A low in the Bray Cycle played a role in creating the very cold period from about 1650-1715AD during the Little Ice Age.
Eddy Cycle
The roughly 1000-year Eddy Cycle was named by José A. Abreu and colleagues (Abreu, Beer, & Ferriz-Mas, 2010). They note that John Eddy identified and documented periods of very low solar activity that corresponded with colder climates on Earth, like the Little Ice Age (Eddy, 1976). The 1000-year climate cycle can be seen by combining the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 800 to 1250AD with the Little Ice Age (roughly 1300-1850AD). Solar proxies find a 1000-year solar cycle that is in phase with the climate cycle as pointed out by John Eddy, see figure 5 in (Eddy, 1976). More on the Eddy Cycle can be seen in Javier Vinós’ book (Vinós, 2022), Chapter 8, page 123 here. The powerful Bray Cycle and the Eddy Cycle both had lows between 1470 and 1680 which undoubtably contributed to that extremely cold time during the Little Ice Age. For more on the Little Ice Age see (May & Crok, 2024) and here.
De Vries Cycle
The De Vries Cycle is also often called the Suess Cycle after Hans Suess (Suess, 1955) and (Sonett & Suess, 1984). Like most cycles it was first discovered in climate proxies, especially tree ring records, and it has a period of 193-209 years. The matching solar cycle is probably related to a beat period between the fundamental Hale Solar Cycle and the rosette-like motion of the Sun around the solar system barycenter (Stefani, Horstmann, Klevs, Mamatsashvili, & Weier, 2023).
Feynman Cycle
It was always recognized that some sort of solar cycle existed with a period between 50 and 150 years and the mysterious poorly defined cycle was usually called the Gleissberg Cycle. Meanwhile a climate cycle with a length of about 100 years was also observed. Eventually Joan Feynman nailed down what is now called the ~100-year Feynman Solar Cycle in 2014 (Vinós, 2022, p. 129) and (Feynman & Ruzmaikin, 2014). We use a period of 105 years for the Feynman Cycle. The Feynman climate and solar cycles have the same period and are in phase.
Hale Cycle
The 22.14-year Hale Cycle is a very prominent solar cycle that is formed by a 22-year fundamental period of solar magnetic activity. It encapsulates two solar cycles that are marked by reversals of the solar magnetic field. Thus, one Hale cycle sees a reversal of the magnetic field and then a return to the original polarity. The Hale Cycle is closely related to the 22-year southwestern U.S. drought cycle (Mitchell, Stockton, & Meko, 1979).
Solar Barycenter rosette
The Sun tracks a complicated rosette-like motion about the solar system barycenter that takes 19.86 years (Stefani, Horstmann, Klevs, Mamatsashvili, & Weier, 2023). Any climate cycle associated with this is buried, or possibly shared, with the Hale Cycle.
Other Natural Climate Cycles
Stadium Wave
What we call the Stadium Wave Cycle or oscillation is a very strong global climate cycle that has a period of about 67 years (Wyatt & Curry, Role for Eurasian Arctic shelf sea ice in a secularly varying hemispheric climate signal during the 20th century, 2014) and (Wyatt M. G., 2012c). It is composed of many climate oscillations that propagate in an organized fashion across the Northern Hemisphere and affect the climate of much of the globe. It is not clear if this oscillation is related to a solar cycle.
CO2
CO2 as a factor that influences climate was first properly described by Svante Arrhenius in his book Worlds in the Making (Arrhenius S. , 1908), but he also discusses it in an earlier paper (Arrhenius S. , 1896). Even before Arrhenius’ attempt to quantify the atmospheric CO2 concentration’s impact on the climate, the idea that CO2 can affect Earth’s climate was also discussed, although in a less quantitative way, by Fourier (Fourier, 1824), Tyndall (Tyndall J. , 1861) and (Tyndall J. , 1859), and Langley (Langley, 1884). None of these earlier writers suggested that atmospheric CO2 concentration “controlled the climate,” as the IPCC proposes in AR6 and previous reports (IPCC, 2021, p. 179), (Lacis, Hansen, Russell, Oinas, & Jonas, 2013), and (Lacis, Schmidt, Rind, & Ruedy, 2010). They also did not believe that human CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions were responsible for almost all the warming Earth has experienced since 1750 as claimed by the IPCC in AR6, page 961, figure 7.7.
None-the-less, CO2 and other greenhouse gas concentrations probably do influence the average atmospheric temperature, however the idea that they somehow “control” the global average surface temperature and climate change is highly doubtful.
Figure 1 is a plot of all the series discussed in this post.
Discussion
If we use the top seven series listed in table one, that is everything but CO2, and regress against HadCRUT5 we get the result shown in orange in figure 2. If we then regress everything, including CO2, we get the blue dashed line in figure 2. The two lines are nearly identical.
Now, that is interesting! The fit with the climate/solar cycles only and the fit with CO2 and the same cycles are nearly identical. We need more information to make sense of this. Below are the statistics of the two regressions.
Table 2 shows the statistics of the regression with no CO2. The derived coefficients are on the left, and the mean and standard deviation of each series are shown and then the normalized coefficients. We can see that the Bray and Eddy Cycles are the most important series, and they slightly oppose one another since they have different signs. All the “P” values are good. The standard errors for the Bray and Eddy Cycles are a bit high, but that may be because their coefficients have opposite signs.
In Table 3 we show the statistics for the regression that contains CO2.
Table 3 contains a lot of new and valuable information. In Table 2 the normalized coefficients show that the Bray and Eddy Cycles dominated the regression, but in Table 3 it is CO2, by a long way and the P values for both Bray and Eddy have become unacceptable. CO2 has essentially replaced the strong Bray and Eddy Cycles and knocked them out. Removing those two cycles results in the De Vries cycle becoming unacceptable with a P value of 0.37, so I also removed it, and the result is shown in Table 4.
In Table 4 all the P values are acceptable and CO2 dominates the regression. For all practical purposes the adjusted R2 from all three regressions are identical at about 0.85. The “adjusted R2” is corrected for the number of predictor variables and the number of observations. In all these cases the regular R2 is nearly identical to the adjusted R2.
Figure 3 compares the no CO2 case to the case described in Table 4.
Conclusions
As usual in climate science (and statistical analysis) you can take away whatever you like from this analysis. Statistics and climate science are similar in this way, you can always generate a lot of discussion around either of them and still know nothing.
CO2 makes no difference if all the climate/solar cycles are used, but CO2 can replace the most powerful Bray, Eddy, and de Vries solar/climate cycles. Objectively, one could point out that solar cycles (including the Milankovitch cycles) have driven climate change as far back as we can trace them with proxies and historical records, so why would we think CO2 is driving climate if adding it to the regression makes no difference?
On the other hand, CO2 can replace the very powerful Bray, Eddy, and de Vries cycles and get the same result. As usual, this analysis just shows we have no clue what drives climate change, but isn’t that what we’ve been saying all this time?
One can look at these plots and statistics and conclude that the impact of CO2 on climate is zero, or they can conclude it is 100%. This study is inconclusive by itself. However, it also shows that well-known solar cycles, combined with internal variability can explain recent global warming; CO2 is not required to explain it.
As with all purely statistical studies, this regression model is unsuitable to use in forecasting or hindcasting, the large coefficients in tables 2 to 4 show that. The value of the study is only to demonstrate that CO2 is not necessary to explain recent warming.
This post looks at the problem “does CO2 control global warming?” from a statistical perspective. To see how experts in climate science look at it from an atmospheric physics perspective it is worth reviewing the excellent 2014 American Physical Society workshop on climate change hosted by Steve Koonin. It is discussed and summarized here.
This post is the result of many email conversations with Charlie May, who contributed substantially to the ideas and models presented herein.
Download the bibliography here
Download the Regression statistics here.
Download the data used and the plots here.
Seeing as how nature has a 99.99% head start (relative existence of earth to mankind), it’s going to be hard to catch up.
You seem to have left out a couple of “biggies” when it comes to HadCrut surface temperatures.
Urban warming, and homogenisations and other agenda driven “adjustments”.
I have previously written about the problems with HadCRUT5. In this case I used it because it is the most “current” version of the Hadley record. One thing at a time.
Many of us have long understood that CO2 in the lab is a temperature elevating atmospheric component. We also understand that in the wild CO2 is overwhelmed by H2O and other contributors. We also don’t ignore natural contributors.
Your first sentence is an assumption. I have long been looking for definitive proof of this, but I haven’t found it. There is talk about absorption ( I don’t deny this), but this does not automatically mean that there is a temperature increase.
Just review the specific heat capacities (Cp) for the various molecules. Increasing CO2 (doubling from 400 ppm to 800 ppm for example) does cause a non-zero effect which shows up in the 6th decimal place in the % values.
Thereby decreasing temperature and not increasing, by the tiniest amount.
The two classic papers showing that carbon dioxide and water vapor absorb IR (heat) and warm are:
Tyndall, J. (1859). On the transmission of heat of different qualities through gases of different kinds. Notices of the Proceedings at the Meetings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 3. Royal Institution. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Hxc_AQAAMAAJ&rdid=book-Hxc_AQAAMAAJ&rdot=1
Tyndall, J. (1861). On the absorption and radiation of heat by gases and vapours, and on the physical connexion of radiation, absorption, and conduction. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 22, 169-194.
It’s a matter of terminology. The term ‘radiation’ did not appear until 1890 or so. Up until that time, they used ‘heat’ for ‘radiation.’
These days you would not say heat for radiation. Unless you are prepared to be laughed at. Times change and meanings change. We have words now that they didn’t have before.
I’m not denigrating Tyndall. One needs to know what he meant with the term ‘heat’. Was it temperature change or radiation?
The key being “in the lab.” In the real world, no.
In the lab, at 100%, CO2 can be demonstrated to have a Cv different from air, a value that when mixed would cause an insignificant, but not zero, effect.
Cp is different to Cv. Cp is the equivalent of ‘open’ atmosphere, not one constrained in a vessel.
We have not had satellites up for the entire cycle of a SINGLE sine-wave of the AMO.
When the global warming modelers state that increasing CO2 is the only possible explanation for the observed warming, I realize that these people are not actual, truly skeptical scientists.
They are merely purveyors of a narrative, and must have some ulterior motive to reach “rock-solid” conclusions when it is not yet possible to do so.
Paid shills of the One World Order socialist movement. Soros comes to mind.
Andy, why don’t you try these frequencies and see how they compare?
Harald Yndestad https://www.climateclock.no/ might have you add the Metonic and Callipic Lunisolar tidal cycles.
Climate change is simply a change in atmospheric circulation patterns sufficient to neutralise a thermal effect from any or all destabilising influences.
Those changes in circulation patterns regulate the speed at which energy escapes to space so as to maintain the atmosphere suspended off the surface indefinitely.
Thus, all variables can be accounted for and the system as a whole remains stable.
Sorry Stephen, but there’s just too much evidence to claim that climate change is driven by weather or stochastic disturbances, if that’s your meaning. Weather is driven by climate change, which is driven by the motions of the planets (and earth’s moon). Planetary motions modulate both solar output, and earth’s orbit.
Over periods from 10-10kyears, climate is driven almost entirely by changes in solar activity. Over 100kyear periods, earth’s orbit also plays a role, though not as much as many assume. I posted a harmonic model earlier because that’s what Andy used, but over the last century we can use sunspot data directly to predict climate about a decade into the future. This isn’t a spurious correlation.
This isn’t my best long-term model because it doesn’t account for a certain dynamic behavior. Changing periods are modeled by average periods. but even with a three-cycle harmonic model I can largely reproduce the last 800,000 years. This plot shows a 3-cycle harmonic model plotted against the EPICA Dome C temperature reconstruction. One term relates to obliquity. The other two largely to solar modulation, though eccentricity may be involved. I can add a precession term, but that just adds a bit of detail.
So yes, all of the variables can be accounted for, but only when you take into account the planetary motions.
The only relevant factors are the amount of energy absorbed from the sun, the mass of the atmosphere and the strength of the gravitational field. They set the baseline temperature which is preserved indefinitely by convection changing to neutralise any effect from destabilising factors. Weather variability is a result of variations in the convective response to other factors and not a cause.
The planetary motions do affect the amount of energy absorbed from the sun by varying the distance from the sun so to that extent you are right.
Also, solar variations affect the amount of energy absorbed by altering global cloudiness via effects on the patterns of global convective overturning which mimics the effect of a change in distance from the sun.
Any thermal effects from our emissions are neutralised by changes in convection but the scale of such changes is not large enough to be discernible from natural variability.
“The only relevant factors are the amount of energy absorbed from the sun, the mass of the atmosphere and the strength of the gravitational field.”
The atmosphere is insignificant relative to the heat capacity of the oceans. This is why many models fail — the time-constant of the response is too short. The time-constant of the response to solar forcing is measured in decades. This is also why my sunspot model can predict more than a decade into the future. It has nothing to do with extrapolation, and everything to do with a delayed response to solar forcing. I expect (current spike excluded) that we’ll see flat, or more likely slightly declining temperatures for the next decade. The harmonic models predict cooling until 2050.
Climate change is driven by weather.
Climate change is the multi-year time average of weather.
This is a good debate.
Andy,
Your input data spreadsheet shows (?log) CO2 varying from 0.98 units in 1860 to 1.05 units in 2022. Is this enough variation from a constant value of say 1.0 to permit its use as a variable?
By coincidence, I am in the middle of a related study which is stalled because I cannot find annual or monthly observations of CO2 to input into correlation coefficient calculations before Mauna Loa.
What is the best source of 1860-1960 digitised atmospheric CO2? Geoff S
I interpolated the NASA yearly dataset here:
data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/ghgases/Fig1A.ext.txt
Thanks, Andy, but is there enough true observation before Mauna Loa to validate the curve you used; and is there enough true variability to use it as a variable? All of the pre-ML numbers sit within the uncertainty bounds if you include data like Beck reported. Geoff S
Why would you want to include Becks polluted urban and lowland co2 observations?
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
Probably the data gets worse with time, so does the temperature data. We just must use the best data we can find. In reality, the 170 years that I used is much too short for a decent model, so I used the longest period I could. The data before 1900 is pretty bad, but I felt I needed to include it.
I’m really curious about your investigation. Will you post the results of it here?
Yes, if WUWT accept it. Geoff S
Great post. I’ve long wanted to collect a list of things to use to show people that whenever they read “climate change” in the news and then a reference to CO2 that there’s more to consider that news media just can’t include in the story that there are other effects to consider. This list along with all the other things like UHI, crappy data, etc. will be a useful reference.
Natural Climate Change Factors – Andy May
____________________________________
Let’s see, global temperature since 1850 is up around
a degree or so and here we have a post with seven or
so scenarios about that, and you know what?
1. More rain is not a problem.
2. Warmer weather is not a problem.
3. More arable land is not a problem.
4. Longer growing seasons is not a problem.
5. CO2 greening of the earth is not a problem.
6. There isn’t any Climate Crisis.
The people pushing this warming climate is
a problem crap are following a well known
propaganda technique:
If you control the language, you control the argument
If you control the argument, you control information
If you control information, you control history
If you control history, you control the past
If you control the past you control the future. –
Big Brother, 1984
And you are falling for it.
‘And you are falling for it.’
To whom (is that correct?) does ‘you’ refer to?
This is EXACTLY the pattern that has been used since the 1980s to take over society, starting with “political correctness”.
What a surprise.
This is EXACTLY the pattern that has been used by the left, since the 1980s, starting in higher “education”, to take over society, starting with “political correctness”.
What a surprise.
“One can look at these plots and statistics and conclude that the impact of CO2 on climate is zero, or they can conclude it is 100%”
Paul Linsay concludes zero:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQt_I-RvGF4
Trigger warning:
This video is bound to provoke a rabid response from a certain proprietor of a “honest climate and energy blog” and self-appointed arbiter of truth.
“the impact of CO2 on climate is zero, or they can conclude it is 100%”
Both false claims are made by stupid people who are science deniers
The typical response is :
1) Strictly limited to the “Name Calling (and/or Abuse)” level of Paul Graham’s “debate pyramid” (attached below)
2) Contains zero “supporting evidence”, i.e. references or links to published scientific papers, for their position(s)
3) Contains zero “counter-examples” [ ditto ] in an attempt to “thoroughly debunk” the opposing position(s).
.
Oh look, the “self-appointed arbiter of truth” has already responded.
How well did I do in my “predictions” ? …
The false statement about CO2 doing nothing ignores all 127 years of evidence that CO2 does affect the climate.
It does not deserve a polite response.
Your claim, AS USUAL, IS THAT A CO2 DENIER CAN ONLY BE REFUTED BY A COMMENT THAT IS THE EQUIVALENT OF A SCIENTIFIC PAPER. Perhaps needing peer review too?
Any CO2 claim you prefer is considered to be true unless proven wrong.
But science does not prove or disprove anything.
Science collects evidence to support theories.
The 127 years of evidence collected about CO2 is MORE than enough to claim CO2 is a greenhouse gas that does affect the climate.
Over 99% of scientists agree. But you prefer to ignore them
Ignoring evidence does not make it disappear.
Clearly you didn’t watch the video, but he has published a paper too:
https://tomn.substack.com/api/v1/file/02098f46-f503-46ca-9ff8-6b26e0cc206b.pdf
Why not ‘peer review’ it yourself. One caveat though, you have to produce evidence of anything you claim he has wrong. But that would require that you read it, so I am not optimistic.
Unfortunately you once again demonstrate your lack of basic English comprehension.
I have never asked you, or anyone else, to write “the equivalent of a scientific paper” in a WUWT comment.
I have only ever asked the equivalent of “Citation(s) please”.
I have, often repeatedly, asked you for just one single reference to a scientific paper supporting your bald assertions.
Similarly, when you belittle others for their “stupidity”, I (and others) will often ask you for just one single reference to a scientific paper than may, just may, not just act as a “counter-example / refutation” but may even provide the “correct” answer.
Very occasionally you do manage it, but it’s worse than extracting teeth or having multiple root canals (without anaesthetic).
.
Questions arising from genuine bafflement :
Why do you (plural !) think that abusive name-calling is the “best” way to persuade people that you are correct ?
Why would you (or anyone else) think that posting “You are wrong [ full stop, hit the ‘Post Comment’ button ]” amounts to a “persuasive” argument ?
.
I’m not “ignoring” anything of the sort.
I agree that CO2 is indeed a greenhouse gas. Happy now ?
That statement is also the entire “97% consensus position” … not “All life on Earth will go extinct by next Monday ! ! !” …
Note also that increasing CO2 levels will affect the climate system … to a completely unknown degree, see “The Butterfly Effect” as well as all of the specifically dated computer model “projections” that have failed up to now (e.g. Professor Peter Wadhams on Arctic sea-ice, several times).
Well, as usual RG comes out w all guns blazing, enough to simply ignore him. My main point when in conversation w normal, climate science naive people is to say that, given the small temperature variations of the atmosphere nobody can faithfully calculate the precise influence of each variable AND separate it from natural variability. Given that assertion people can and do use a kind of Occam’s razor and attribution technique but that brings it even further away from anything reliable. I usually end up by saying that most literature about ‘climate’ is based on a construct of assumptions and hypotheses that cannot be proven or pinned down, let alone end up in a reliable theory. Only rough estimates, no matter how precise the datapoints and heuristics. And linearity is hard to find on short timescales. With Co2 in mind we can reliably assert that the uncertainty about its effect is very big. I think that is what Andy was saying. Let people free to assess and state their views. That kind of diversity is good and proper. RG is a shameless beligerent child, not welcome at the table with the grownups. Do you argue w a child like that? I don’t think you should. Given his history i dont know why he is still allowed to keep insulting people of good faith..
99%. Right.
AM, a most interesting analysis. Your figure 2 has high qualitative importance. I focus on three segments
Temperature rose significantly from ~1915-1945. Even the IPCC (specifically AR4 WG1 SPM fig 4) admitted this was ‘purely’ natural variability because there was insufficient change in CO2 ‘forcing’ for it to be contributory. Your various cycles provide one possible causal explanation for why this natural variability exists. The Arctic stadium wave alone provides observational but not explanatory evidence.
In the period ~1945+1975, CO2 rose sufficiently to be a warming contributor, but the surface didn’t warm. The only plausible explanation is offsetting natural cooling for whatever reason. Again, your analysis provides a possible causal explanation.
In the period thereafter, both explanations (without/with CO2) rose together, in a statistically indistinguishable way. Your further analysis says could be only one, or only the other. I would suggest probably some of both, which your ‘on/off’ methodology cannot easily distinguish.
What this does do is put the lie to IPCC conclusions from climate models, which assume only ‘control knob’ CO2 plus feedbacks after 1975. Natural variability did not magically stop in 1975. Nor can IPCC now erase its AR4 SPM conclusion, which you elegantly demonstrate in your Fig. 2.
Rud,
Have you attempted the correlation of pre-Mauna Loa era CO2 with some form of global temperature? Geoff S
Weather is chaotic and if it is chaotic on large enough time scales you will get long aperiodic oscillations capable of explaining the observed changes with no change in forcing. The aperiodic oscillations are due to the interplay of constant forcing and a strong nonlinear negative feedback.
The averages of chaotic oscillators also oscillate (called strange statistics) and climate is average weather so we expect climate to oscillate and this is just what we see.
Perhaps the Bray, Eddy, and de Vries cycles influence CO2, and therefore it is possible to substitute CO2 for the Bray, Eddy, and de Vries cycles in the regression calcs and get similar results.
Understand (I hope) where you are coming from, but don’t think possible. The issue is the roughly estimated deep thermohaline return time. Fastest is 800 years, slowest is 1200 years. Is fundamental to ocean CO2 absorption/atmospheric return. So all time scales well outside of AM’s.
There’s a lot of water in the upper levels of the oceans. Couldn’t it be possible that this is involved on much shorter time scales?
I sense some irony here.
It’s more food for thought than irony: I happen to think that the increase in CO2 over recent decades was primarily man-made, but if you look at those three cycles and CO2 in the ‘Figure 1’ chart above, with a suitable time delay for de Vries, then they actually correlate rather well – as expected from the article. It would be tempting to wonder whether a rather lower proportion of the recent CO2 increase than I had thought was man-made (I had thought about 95%), but I’ll resist the temptation for now.
You need to be careful of CO2 behaviour using concepts like Henry’s Law that are classically derived from experiments where the pool of CO2 is limited. In open oceans (figuratively) if you strip CO2 from a thin upper layer, there are more layers below to contribute after mixing. I am not aware of any studies to mimic this, but there might be some. Geoff S
Don’t forget the portion that is the echo of the Medieval Warm Period (subtract 800 years from 2024 and that’s where you are), as shown in the ice core reconstructions.
All the solar cycles are based mainly on the incompetent proxies of sunspot counts that grossly exaggerate tiny changes of top of the atmosphere TSI. This has been known since the 1970s
The only precise measurements of solar activity are satellite observations of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI).
Is the TSI actually meaningful as it averages across the entire EM spectrum doesn’t it? Are there measurements for individual wavelengths or wavelength ranges?
Spot on. Some wavelengths penetrate the ocean to a depth of 100 meters and have a huge, but delayed, effect on ocean temperature and heat content. Some very short UV wavelengths have a huge effect on the stratosphere, which affects circulation patterns. All these wavelengths vary by different amounts through a solar cycle.
CO2 emits in a narrow range that cannot even penetrate the ocean surface and has little effect on the stratosphere, except to cool it.
Our measurements of TSI are not very accurate and the recent reconstructions of TSI from the raw satellite data are the subject of furious debate. See Connolly et al., 2024:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad7794/meta
Story Tip.
Queensland dumps pumped hydro con job.
Staggering cost of dumped hydro energy storage project revealed
Andy,
When you do these calculations, what value for the concentration of H2O in air do you use? Since 71% of the earth’s surface is covered with H2O, it dominates the greenhouse effect. Do you average world value of 70% RH?
I now inform you that all these climate model calculations have this fatal flaw: the assumption that there is a uniform distribution of the mass of CO2 in air. Consider the following calculations:
At the MLO in Hawaii the concentration of CO2 is 422 ppmv in dry air. One cubic meter of this air has a only 0.839 g of CO2 and has a mass of 1.29 kg at STP. If this air is heated to 20 deg. C, the concentration of CO2 is still 422 ppmv, but the mass of one cubic meter is 1.20 kg. The mass of CO2 in this air of lower density is 0.780 g. At 30 deg C one cubic of the air has mass of 1.16 kg and now contains 0.75 g of CO2.
For these rough calculations, the air pressure is 1 atmosphere and the RH is 0.0%.
In humid tropical air water vapor can lower the concentration of CO2 by up to 5%
I doubt that climate modelers take the above into account for their calculations.
We really do not have to worry about CO2, because there too little of it to heat the large mass of the air.
Good points, but this was a purely statistical study. No physics involved.
MLO publications state that including H20 will lower the CO2 concentration by up to 10%.
You got a ref for that data? Post it here and I’ll check back.
Which has nothing to do with the actual mechanism by which CO2 warms the atmosphere which is absorption of IR radiation from the surface.
CO2 does not cause warming of air. Shown in the graphic (See below) are the plots of temperatures in Death Valley from 1922 to 2001. In 1922 the concentration of CO2 was 303 ppmv 9 (0.595 g CO2/cu. m. of air), and by 2001, it had increased to 371 ppmv (0.729 g/cu. m. of air), but there was no corresponding increase in the dry desert air. The reason is simple: there is too little CO2 in the air. On the basis the empirical data, it is determined that CO2 does not cause warming of air in this arid field site.
NB: The graphic was obtained from the late John Daly’s website:
“Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at: http://www.John-Daly.com.
At the end of site click on the tab: “Station Temperature Data” to access temperature data from weather station in various locations around the
world.
Indeed. And then there is the issue of convection vs radiation. Which is the bigger factor? Nobody really knows, they just pretend they do. Fine by me.
“does CO2 control global warming?”
Dunno you’ll have to ask the Sahulis about that-
Lost continent ‘unlike anything found today’ discovered off the coast of Australia
“As we face an uncertain future together, deep-time Indigenous knowledge and experience will be essential for successful adaptation.”
I don’t make this stuff up! These people are experts with letters after their names.
There was no solar cycle in the past 50 years that could have caused any global warming after 1975.
May is just an old fool still using the incompetent proxy of sunspot counts to pursue his anti-CO2 bias.
The warming after 1975 was caused by more greenhouse gases and more sunlight reaching earth’s surface though the less polluted atmosphere with fewer clouds. Also a small increase from increased UHI.
There was no change in top of the atmosphere TSI per satellite measurements.
There is zero evidence of warming caused by changes in ENSO or changes of volcano heat output
The usual BeNasty commet that follows my comment will be science denying baloney
Did read my comment? There is too little CO2 in air to cause global warming.
Please enter the term “psychological projection” into your favourite Internet search engine.
.
NB : The comments of “bnice2000” are often of exactly the same tenor as yours.
Both of you should be aiming for level 3 (or higher) instead of limiting yourselves to level 7, “Name Calling (and/or Abuse)”.
There is a difference between the two people. RG just called Andy May an ‘old fool’. BeNice indeed lowers himself to namecalling but i don’t think he insults reputable scientists who publish well written papers. RG does it all the time. Attacking Andy like that is beyond contempt. He needs to be banned. RIGHT NOW. Anyone with me?
Andy, can you make a forecast to 2050 to that your regression can be validated in the future? How does the regression perform if you only use the last 75 years and test it on the first 75 years and vice versa?
No, as pointed out in the text:
“As with all purely statistical studies, this regression model is unsuitable to use in forecasting or hindcasting, the large coefficients in tables 2 to 4 show that. The value of the study is only to demonstrate that CO2 is not necessary to explain recent warming.”
So just another von Neuman elephant then?
No, as explained in the text:
But still no predictive power for the next 25 years? Please explain.
Easily. While the data I used to construct the cycles is solid, it is not enough, there is more involved in climate change than just these drivers.
Scroll up and read my comment to Phil that I just posted. Temperature data from Death Valley shows that CO2 does
cause warming air.
BTW: Do you know how to obtain temperature data from US data files? I would like to get the temperature data for the 1922 to 2023 interval from the Furnace Creek weather station, but I don’t know how to do this.
If the plots remain fairly flat, then we have confirming data that CO2 does not warming of air.
‘Andy, can you make a forecast to 2050 to that your regression can be validated in the future?’
Not a reasonable request. One could easily justify an estimate of, say, heating oil prices based on crude oil prices, but that just shifts the problem to forecasting the latter.
How does the regression perform if you only use the last 75 years and test it on the first 75 years and vice versa?
This is a reasonable request. In forecasting, it is important to hold out the most recent data to test the efficacy of an estimated model. Only if the model passes this test is it justifiable to use all the data to re-estimate the model’s parameters.
Why would a regression over 175 years with harmonics not have a predictive skill for the next 25 years, when the claim is that the harmonics are the underlying mechanism of the observation?
I didn’t make that claim. I fully understand that while these cycles are drivers of climate change, they are not the whole story. Likewise, CO2 is a component, but not the whole story, which was the point of writing this post. I showed that CO2 alone can be replaced by three of the cycles and improved by the others. I do not have the answer, I just know what the answer isn’t. A glance at the coefficients shows that the model is not predictive, and it doesn’t have to be predictive to tell us what we need to know, that CO2 is not the whole story.
The only factor that causes significant climate change is changes in ozone production and distribution. For example, if the amount of ozone in the tropics decreases then the temperature of the tropospheric troposphere in the tropics increases because water vapor absorbs increased UVB radiation. Secondly, ozone is a diamagnetic and distributes according to the geomagnetic field which affects the circulation in the stratosphere and in the winter in the pattern of the polar vortex.
 
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/data_service/models_compass/polarnorth.html
Ireneusz,
While I agree that ozone production and concentration is a very important factor in climate change, I do not agree that it is all of it. Other factors also matter, for example cloud cover (how that changes is anyone’s guess at this point), the solar frequencies that strike the ocean surface (solar variability + cloud cover?), and probably GHG concentration to some unknown degree. This does not include Earth’s orbital parameters which obviously matter.
Ozone changes are directly related to solar flares, and the magnetic field of the solar wind affects the distribution of ozone in high latitudes, which affects the circulation of jet currents. Of course, there are also orbital factors that act for thousands of years, but changes in ozone bring rapid and unusual changes that are poorly predictable.
Look at the circulation over the Atlantic.
Polar vortex over Russia and Kazakhstan.
https://www.sat24.com/pl-pl/country/ru
I object to using data which we know is falsified. Using the Hadcrut or whatever it’s called when we know the data has been massaged to correspond with CO2 concentration – gives the false data credibility. We must all reject the falsified data, and work to ostracize anyone associated with it’s creation.
When the temperature adjustments plotted against CO2 concentration forms a straight line, the fix is in, and the final adjusted data is false. They all do it, and it is not science, it is blatant propaganda.
Since 450mya there was a full blown glaciation with ten times today’s atmospheric CO2 level, I think we CAN conclude that CO2 “drives” nothing.
What a heap of bs…
There are no “non-consensus” scientists.
This is not a matter of belief
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
These are either just made up by you and Vinós and whoever or they are actually existing but only have marginal effect on climate (like the sunspot-cycles).
This is hilarious. You deniers are always keen on coming up with something, anything that may save your sorry axxes. Of course you have no idea on how the solar dynamo can affect climate.
This is not just without evidence, we have evidence against it. The idea that this warming is the result of newly resurfacing heat absorbed decades ago is ridiculous. We have a firm accounting of energy storage, transport, absorption and emission in the climate system. This amount of heat (that, by the way, can only come from the deep ocean with resurfacing water) is – of course, nowhere to be found.
Actually there are. We know the spectrum of the upwelling radiation and its change in time and it perfectly matches the calculated predictions.
This is completely irrelevant here. BTW that was even before we had the proper understanding of the actual processes here. That came with Quantum Mechanics.
IPCC didn’t claim that in AR6, page 961, figure 7.7.
It’s not usual.
Pls speak only in your name.
Except for the Milanković cycles we have negative evidence for this claim (ie. we have evidence against them). You and your ilk have been hunting for anything that you can point out as a possible cause making up cycles or claiming miraculous effects for actually existing ones if their periods help you “explaining” climate change.
This is hilarious. Some of your cycles are just the reification of the effects of CO2, ie. made up, some of them are just happened to have a similar period of the temperature diagram you used for this exercise so you kept it. In this way, it is no wonder that adding CO2 to the regression makes no difference. You essentially chose some effects of CO2 combined with some other phenomena that happened to be supporting you. Without even a single hint how those would affect climate. Congratulations.
We?
Andy. And you support him.
Nice construct. Anything that concerns Co2 and the climate is of course well known, tried and tested, unrefutable and supported by ‘overwhelming evidence’, right?😆.
Pull the other one..oh, you already did. Quantum mechanics, the stick you beat with? Your tone is what gives you away, like with all the Co2 proponents. It’s like you have just stepped on their toes. Immediate beligerence. Pavlovian..
Well, this is what the scientists say.
Yep. When you attribute this effect to Arrhenius (the latest) and you even mention Fourier… This is an indirect but quite clear attempt to incite some doubt in the thing. Arrhenius was the first to describe. Now we understand it.
Evidently I stepped on your toes. Do you have anything of substance? This is lame so far.
“This is what the scientist say”. Ok, i know where you are coming from.
Bringing in Arrhenius in fact undermines your case. He is not the Galileo he is made out to be.
Again, using ‘quantum mechanics’ as an argument is another indication of forcing the argument by sticking on an assumed mechanism.
I did not mention Fourier.
The ‘step on your toe’ remark is taken backwards. Those who are confronted by facts that cast doubt on the ‘Co2 forces x’ immediately start shooting as if caught doing something nasty by being nasty themselves as a reaction. I called it Pavlovian. Ie, Richard Greene et al.
I get the feeling you used some AI function and cherry picked what you needed..
Im going to disengage now just as i have w RG.
Yep. From science.
You deniers have a great talent not to comprehend. What I’m telling you is that Arrhenius is completely irrelevant. He was first to describe the process that we understand much-much better nowadays.
And we needed qm for the above.
But Andy did. I’m primarily reacting to his bs. You’re just the secondary bs-slinger here.
That’s what you would like to think.
Yep. And it’s well deserved. We don’t like anti-science behaviour. In the long run it’s very dangerous. Flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers like you are clowns but dangerous clowns.
If you look into the details, it turns out that he is your friend.
Neither. For that matter, I’ve never used AI. BTW you still didn’t react in substance. I can only see empty bsing.
Good on you. Cut and run when you lost.
“The stadium wave has no associated solar cycle and seems to be wholly internal variability, it has a period of roughly 67 years and correlates well with global average temperature (May & Crok, 2024).”
The AMO is the greatest solar forced negative feedback in the climate system. Every other warm phase of the AMO is during a centennial solar minimum, so in theory the mean AMO frequency should be 54-55 years, which is exactly what what millennial scale AMO proxies show. Where the variable intervals between centennial minima are longer, the AMO phases also have to be longer. Such as with the 130 years between the late 1800’s Gleissberg minimum and the current centennial minimum, giving a 60 year cycle and a 70 year cycle.
Longer solar cycles, centennial minima mean astronomical length 107.914 years, grand solar minima cycle mean length 863.311 years. The Eddy cycle is too long, the Bray cycle does not exist in solar variability.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682616300360
Fully anti-phase with grand solar minima series every 863 years, are the higher solar periods. In the GISP2 ice core series, and every fourth one is stronger, from around 6200 BC, 2750 BC, and 700 AD, and being the three coldest GISP2 periods in the Holocene.