by Javier
A possible mechanism for the effect of solar variability on climate, whereby solar variability acts over the stratospheric pressure system transmitting the changes top-down, and over ocean temperatures bottom-up.
Summary: In part A, we established the existence of a ~ 2400-year climate cycle, discovered in 1968 by Roger Bray. In part B, we confirmed Bray hypothesis that the climate cycle correlates with a ~ 2400-year cycle in the production of cosmogenic isotopes, that corresponds with clusters of solar grand minima at times of abrupt cooling and climate deterioration. Now we discuss a possible mechanism for the effect of solar variability on climate. Proxy evidence, instrumental era measurements, and reanalysis, suggests that solar variability acts over the stratospheric pressure system transmitting the changes top-down, and over ocean temperatures bottom-up. Low solar activity appears to induce a contraction of the Hadley cells, and an expansion of the polar cells, steepening the Equator-to-Pole temperature gradient, decreasing global temperatures and changing wind and precipitation patterns. A persistent North Atlantic oscillation negative phase intensifies the effects over this particularly sensitive region.
Solar variability effect on climate
In part B, we answered the objection that the cosmogenic record is likely to be contaminated by climate and therefore is more of a climatic record than a solar activity record. The available evidence rules out that objection showing that the cosmogenic record, when adequately corrected for geomagnetic and climatic effects, reflects mainly solar activity.
The second objection that opponents of the solar-climate theory raise is that there is no known mechanism by which small changes in TSI could cause an important effect on climate. This is actually a non-sequitur fallacy, because it assumes that the climatic effect must be due to changes in TSI when there is no evidence of it. The effects of the climatic Bray cycle shown by the reviewed proxies provide ample evidence of the mechanism involved, that is confirmed by instrumental measurements, reanalysis data, and climate modeling (reviewed by Gray et al., 2010).
Solar variability is higher at the short-wave part of the spectrum, as UV can change during the 11-year solar cycle by as much as 100%. Even though it constitutes a small part of TSI, UV radiation has specific effects in the stratosphere and the oceans. UV radiation of different wavelengths at different heights both creates and destroys ozone in the stratosphere, at the same time warming it. The changes in ozone are difficult to track, because they are affected by ozone transport within the stratosphere and to the troposphere, and by chemical processes that destroy ozone from volcanic eruptions and anthropogenic emissions, but the measured changes in total ozone during the solar cycle are on the order of ~ 3% (figure 65 A). This is 30 times more variation than for TSI during the 11-year solar cycle. As the stratosphere has a very low density, the changes in ozone are accompanied by significant changes in its temperature profile that can be of 0.5-1 °K in the tropical stratosphere for the solar cycle, and by changes in pressure that alter the geopotential height of the tropopause (figure 65 B). As ozone is unequally distributed latitudinally these changes alter both the temperature and pressure gradients between the equatorial and polar stratosphere. The pressure changes are transmitted all the way down to the surface altering the tropospheric pressure distribution and strength. The process is affected both by seasonality and stratospheric oscillations, like the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation. A higher probability of winter blocking days over the North Atlantic during periods of low solar activity has been demonstrated by several authors. This has the effect of increasing the probability of very cold events, like the 2010 Northern Europe snow storm at the solar cycle 23-24 minimum.
Figure 65. Stratospheric effects of solar activity changes. A). Deseasonalized, area-weighted total ozone deviations from five datasets for the latitude bands 25°S- 25°N. The solar flux at 10.7 cm is shown in the upper graph as a proxy for solar variability. Source: M.P. Chipperfield et al., 2007. WMO Sci. Asses. Ozone Depl. 2006. B). Time series of the 10.7 cm solar flux (light gray, dashed line) and of the annual mean 30-hPa heights (medium gray, thin solid line) and their three-year running means (heavy solid line) in geopotential km for the gridpoint 30N/150W. Source: K. Labitzke 2001. Meteorol. Z. 10, 83-90.
The changes in the meridional pressure gradient induce a global atmospheric reorganization, but since after a few years the direction of the change reverts with the solar cycle, the effect of the 11-year solar cycle on the weather is negligible. However, when the level of average solar activity changes over a period of several decades, the atmospheric reorganization advances, becoming noticeable first and causing important changes in the climate later. One of the effects of the changes in the meridional pressure gradient is to cause changes in the meridional temperature gradient (also Equator-to-Pole Temperature Gradient, EPTG; Soon & Legates, 2013). The importance of this gradient cannot be overstated, as it acts as the thermodynamic engine of the planet’s climate, and its periodic changes with the Milankovitch obliquity cycle correlate with the glacial cycle and had been proposed as its causative agent (figure 16; Raymo & Nisancioglu, 2003). Soon and Legates (2013) have shown that the EPTG has been decreasing during periods of surface warming and increasing during periods of surface cooling (figure 66), and convincingly link them to changes in average solar activity.
Figure 66. The meridional temperature gradient. Annual-mean EPTG over the entire Northern Hemisphere (°C/°Latitude; thin line) and smoothed 10-year running mean (thick line) from 1850 to 2010. The values are expressed as anomalies from the average for the 1961-90 period. The scale is inverted, since the average EPTG is strongly negative, positive anomaly values reduce the gradient (warmer Pole and/or colder Equator) while negative anomaly values enhance it (warmer Equator and/or colder Pole). Periods of global warming result in a decrease of the EPTG. Source: W. Soon & D.R. Legates 2013. J. Atmos. Sol.-Terr. Phys. 93, 45-56.
It is known that at least since 1979 the Hadley circulation has been expanding poleward at a rate of 0.5-1 °Lat/decade in both hemispheres (Hu & Fu, 2007). The cause is uncertain and both ozone changes and GHGs have been proposed. Models indicate that the expansion could have been taking place for most of the 20th century. Sadourny (1994), using modeling, ascribed to solar activity decrease a contraction of the Hadley cell and associated monsoon systems as causing agents for the climatic changes that took place during the Maunder Minimum. The expansion of the Hadley circulation currently observed coincides with the decrease in the EPTG (figure 66) and is a logical explanation as it supposes an expansion of the tropics.
At the ocean surface UV radiation decreases to about 3-5% of TSI, but it can penetrate water as readily as the visible range and is more energetic, so a few meters into the oceans, UV radiation might be responsible for about 7-10% of the ocean warming produced by solar radiation and it can change a few percentage points during the solar cycle. A close correlation between subsurface water temperatures and TSI has been reported south of Iceland between 818-1780 AD (Moffa-Sánchez et al., 2014). SST at the North Atlantic has also been decreasing since 2006, coinciding with the decrease in average solar activity.
With all this information from the instrumental era, and the information reviewed from proxy records covering past lows of the Bray cycle, an attempt can be made to explain the effect of prolonged low solar activity on climate change.
When the time for a new low in the solar Bray cycle approaches, solar activity starts to decrease, but it does so mainly at the lows of the 208-year de Vries cycle that become more pronounced due to its modulation by the Bray cycle. The probability of a SGM increases and when it finally takes place it can be of the Spörer (~ 150 years) or Maunder (~ 80 years) types, with a higher tendency to produce a cluster of SGM spaced about 200 years, according to the de Vries cycle. Solar activity goes to minimum values at the SGM and the changes in the stratospheric ozone, temperature and geopotential height induce an atmospheric reorganization characterized by the weakening of the stratospheric polar vortex, the progressive expansion of the polar cells and the contraction of the Hadley cells, and as a result a steepening of the EPTG that increases the amount of heat lost by the planet. This reversible process of atmospheric reorganization is cumulative and proceeds very slowly. This explains why the 18th century, with a solar activity level similar to the 20th century had a different climate. The 20th century expansion of the Hadley cells and reduction of the EPTG were built upon the levels reached over the previous two centuries.
The contraction of the Hadley cells at the SGM explains the southward displacement (weakening) of the monsoons associated with the Hadley circulation (figure 54 f), and the decrease in wind strength at the Santa Barbara basin that increases precipitation (figure 54 e). The expansion of the polar cells explains the increase in wind strength over Iceland (figure 52 d), that appears to depend on Milankovitch forcing. With the expansion of the polar cells there is an increase in polar circulation driven by the strengthening of the Siberian high, that produces an increase in salt deposition over Greenland (figure 52 a & b).
In the North Atlantic the decrease in pressure differential causes the atmosphere to enter persistent NAO negative conditions (figure 52 e) as shown in figure 67. This causes the Icelandic low and the Azores high to be in a weak state more often, reducing the strength of both the Westerlies and storm tracks and causing them to move southward. Precipitation levels increased in Central (figure 54 a), and Southwestern Europe (figure 54 c). The weakening of the Westerlies reduces the contribution of fresh cold subpolar gyre waters to the NAC that becomes warmer and saltier (figure 53 b). The Jet stream pushes southward, cooling Northern Europe and Northeast North America, and warming Greenland unless very cold Arctic conditions dominate. The warming of the NAC (figure 53 d) increases precipitation over Ireland (figure 54 d) and Norway (figure 54 b), while colder winter conditions induce glacier expansion at a global scale (figure 51). The warmer saltier NAC prevents the shutdown of the NADW that experiences a decrease (figure 53 a), due to the AMOC reduction in response to weaker Westerlies. Glacier growth, colder conditions, and the advection of warmer waters to the Arctic, favor an increase in drift ice both North of Iceland (figure 53 c) and in the North Atlantic (figure 55 f).
Figure 67. Summary of the climatic effects associated to the lows of the Bray cycle. Global effects are mediated by the contraction of the Hadley cells and expansion of polar cells that steepen the meridional temperature gradient causing global cooling. The contraction also restricts monsoon patterns, causing drier conditions in sub-tropical latitudes. El Niño conditions become infrequent, altering precipitation patterns. The North Atlantic realm is pushed into persistent AO/NAO negative conditions that are characterized by weak Iceland low pressure and Azores high pressure centers. This decreases the strength of the Westerlies that take a more southern path changing precipitation patterns over Europe, and causing blocking conditions over the Atlantic that allow Arctic cold air to drift southward. The contribution of cold fresher subpolar gyre waters to the North Atlantic Current (NAC) decreases, becoming warmer and saltier, and increasing winter precipitation over northern Europe causing glacier advances. A strong Siberian high brings colder conditions over northern Eurasia and increases polar circulation over the Arctic and Greenland, increasing the amount of southward drift ice. Greenland experiences an inversion as masses of cold air are displaced towards northern Europe and North America. NADW labels North Atlantic deep-water currents. Black dots are the location of some of the proxies discussed in the text that display a clear ~ 2400-year periodicity.
The global effects of the atmospheric reorganization induced by prolonged low solar activity are thus multiplied because this condition pushes the North Atlantic atmosphere-oceanic system into a persistent NAO negative condition. The hydrological effects of the Hadley cells contraction are mainly zonal in both hemispheres. However, the cooling effect of the increased EPTG is global and propagates over nearly all the oceans (figures 55 c, d, e, & 56), resulting in global cooling (figure 55 a). The climatic effects of low solar activity over the North Atlantic realm are particularly intense (figure 67). This is the reason why scientists argue over the regional versus global extent of the MWP and the LIA. The North Atlantic is a hot spot for planetary climate variability during both the glacial (D-O cycle) and interglacial periods.
The solar-climate debate has been long but not fruitful so far. Astrophysicists and instrumental-era climatologists are entrenched in the low energy changes in TSI as an argument against the connection. But the stratosphere is very rarefied and little energy is needed to alter it significantly. Afterwards the climate system provides the rest of the energy by oscillating to a different state through internal variability. The EPTG is a crucial element that determines how much work the energy does on its way out of the planet (figure 68). For essentially the same solar output, as far as we know, the EPTG has determined if the planet is in an icehouse, as currently, or in a hothouse as during the Eocene. Finally, the North Atlantic Oscillation amplifies the climatic response, turning a slow change in solar output into the cold winters of the Maunder Minimum. The paleoclimatologists are correct in sticking to the evidence that solar variability, when prolonged, has a disproportionate effect on climate change, and in the end, they will win the debate. Astrophysicists are looking to the wrong solar system body to learn about the history of the sun. It is best recorded here on the Earth. The sun might not have a memory, but it is subject to multi-millennial cycles whose cause will have to be elucidated. Recognizing the existence of those cycles is an important first step.
Figure 68. Pole-to-pole temperature gradients for the planet. Pole-to-pole temperature curves representative of climatic conditions ranging from Extreme Hothouse to Severe Icehouse. The numbers along the right side indicate the corresponding global Mean Annual Temperature for each curve (modern MAT is 14.3°C). The number along the left side of the curve is the tropic-to-pole temperature gradient, or how quickly the surface temperature cools as you approach the pole. Polar temperatures for each of the seven pole-to-pole temperature curves are also listed (modern Antarctica is -50°C). The average temperature at the Equator, kept constant in the graph for convenience, has also changed through time, but a lot less than the rest of the planet. The curves for each hemisphere are independent. Current climate is described by curve 7 for the southern hemisphere and curve 6 for the northern hemisphere. We are now in Ice House conditions. Source: C.R. Scotese 2015. PALEOMAP Project.
Conclusions
5) The solar activity Bray cycle appears to act on climate both through changes in the stratospheric pressure system that are transmitted downwards to the troposphere causing an atmospheric reorganization, and through changes in the amount of energy warming the oceans.
6) Proxy evidence, instrumental era measurements, and reanalysis support the idea that lows in the Bray cycle and prolonged below average solar activity cause a contraction of the Hadley cells, and an expansion of the polar cells, steepening the Equator-to-Pole temperature gradient, decreasing global temperatures and changing wind and precipitation patterns.
7) In the North Atlantic region, in addition, the Arctic and North Atlantic oscillations enter a persistent negative phase during the lows of the Bray cycle, causing an intensification of winter climatic effects and making this region particularly sensitive to low solar activity. This explains why the Little Ice Age, while global, was particularly strong over Europe and North America.
Acknowledgements
I thank Andy May for reading the manuscript and improving its English.
Bibliography [link]
Moderation note: As with all guest posts, please keep your comments civil and relevant.
The previous Nature Unbound articles are also available as pdf documents at:
https://sabercathost.com/4Df5/Nature_unbound_1.pdf
https://sabercathost.com/4Qvo/Nature_unbound_2.pdf
https://sabercathost.com/4Xly/Nature_unbound_3.pdf
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Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
“a few meters into the oceans, UV radiation might be responsible for about 7-10% of the ocean warming produced by solar radiation” cannot be correct. At the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum (400 nm), one meter of water absorbs 99.995%. Water absorbs shorter wavelengths (UV) even more strongly. It absorbs longer wavelengths in the visible much less. (See J.D. Jackson “Classical Electrodynamics.”) Such a glaring error makes one skeptical of this entire series.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/UVB/Images/z10uvb.gif
Ultraviolet B (UV-B) radiation reaches different depths in ocean water depending on water chemistry, the density of phytoplankton, and the presence of sediment and other particulates. The map above indicates the average depth UV-B penetrates into ocean water. At the depth indicated, only 10 percent of the UV-B radiation that was present at the water’s surface remains. The rest was absorbed or scattered back towards the ocean surface. (Image courtesy Vasilkov et al., JGR-Oceans, 2001)
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/UVB/uvb_radiation3.php
“Open ocean (including open Mediterranean Sea) is characterized by a high penetration of UVR. For example, in the Atlantic Ocean, Z10% 305 nm, Z10% 340 nm and Z10% DNA can reach 17, 38 and 12 m, respectively (26,42; Tables 2 and 3).”
Tedetti, M., & Sempéré, R. (2006). Penetration of ultraviolet radiation in the marine environment. A review. Photochemistry and Photobiology, 82(2), 389-397. Link
Shouldn’t you check your facts, which is precisely what you are accusing me of not doing, before throwing s*** on the entire series?
This is incorrect. Here is a figure on radiation transmission into the ocean. Short wavelengths (UV, visible) are transmitted deeper into the ocean, with the IR wavelengths absorbed in the top few mm. Go to this site, download lecture 11, then see figure 11.1 (this is from my text, Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans)
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/Courses/6140/lectures.html
@Javier 11:52AM. I did check my facts, but clearly not well enough. I apologize for my error.
OK. No problem. I am sure my work is not free of errors, but I have put quite a lot of work in trying to avoid them, and I am willing to correct any error found. Apparently some people think I am guilty of misrepresenting data and have no problem in saying so without presenting the evidence. An accusation difficult to sustain since the data is referenced.
A simple observation is that I can see the bottom of a 2 meter deep blue swimming pool quite clearly showing that visible light at short frequencies isn’t absorbed 99.995% in the first meter. Not much help re UV absorption but a further comment is that spectroscopy shows materials generally absorb at certain but not all frequencies (see CO2 absorption in air) and that while some UV might be stopped it is hard to imagine that all frequencies and energies are stopped.
There are a heck of a lot of UV frequencies in sunlight.
pool water is not saline and is filtered to keep it clean. Transmission of EM waves is severely impeded in a conductive medium like saline water. The opacity due plankton and all the rest of life in the oceans makes it very different from your pool.
The above appears to be a restatement of my work here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
It is not. I am not claiming anything of this as originally mine. While I am aware of your work, I am also aware of the published works of others on the top-down atmospheric mechanism of the effects of solar variability on climate that precede yours. In particular the works of Karin Labitzke, Ka-Kit Tung, Lesley Grey, Johanna Haigh, Michael Lockwood, Indrani Roy, Drew Shindell, Harry Van Loon, Hua Lu, and others. It is difficult to claim authorship of an hypothesis that has been around since at least 1999. See for example:
Shindell, Drew, David Rind, Nambeth Balachandran, Judith Lean, and Patrick Lonergan. “Solar cycle variability, ozone, and climate.” Science 284, no. 5412 (1999): 305-308. Link
This article has over 600 citations according to Google scholar.
What I am writing is the current understanding, according to the scientific literature, about one of the leading hypothesis on the effects of solar variability on climate. Of course I am putting it in my words and matching the hypothesis to the paleoclimatic proxies showed in part A.
My version is distinguished by the requirement that an active sun depletes ozone in the mesosphere and the ozone starved air flowing down from above the poles then allows stratospheric cooling above the poles when it descends through the polar vortices into the stratosphere.
That allows tropopause height above the poles to rise, the Hadley cells expand and the climate zones shift towards the poles.
The establishment view is that human ozone destroying chemicals caused the ozone decline but I believe that to be wrong because my version accounts for the MWP and LIA whereas the establishment view does not.
If you are now saying that the ozone effect is solar induced and not human induced then you are indeed restating my hypothesis.
Shindell et al only suggest a partial effect from solar influences on stratospheric ozone leaving the primary causation as the effect of human emissions. Your above post suggests most if not all the effect as solar induced which is where you overlap with me but without identifying the cause as an active sun depleting ozone in the mesosphere and upper stratosphere when the consensus view is that an active sun increases ozone throughout the atmosphere.
Shindell et al also suggest that an active sun increases ozone in the lower stratosphere so as to lower the tropopause there and push the climate zones poleward. They entirely miss the solar induced decline in ozone higher up and above the poles which happens at the same time and thereby facilitates the poleward shift.
If you wish to differentiate your above post from my work them presumably you are just restating those establishment views?
Stephen, I am not a climate scientist, and since this is not my field, I refer to the published bibliography to see what the presented evidence actually supports, and see if a more comprehensive view can emerge from the results of multiple authors. Whether it is the differential balance of ozone, Rossby gravity planetary waves, or some other mechanism, actually responsible for the influence of the stratosphere over the polar vortex and the troposphere it is not for me to determine. I leave that for the scientists researching the stratosphere-troposphere dynamics. They are highly intelligent people with a much more profound knowledge of their subject.
More here from 2012:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/stephen-wilde-climate-description-now-underpinned-by-utc/
and as readers at WUWT will know I have been referring to the importance of changes in the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles for several years.
Stephen Wilde is absolutely correct when he says “as readers at WUWT will know I have been referring to the importance of changes in the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles for several years.”.
“El Niño conditions become infrequent, altering precipitation patterns. The North Atlantic realm is pushed into persistent AO/NAO negative conditions..”
Negative AO/NAO is directly associated with slower trade winds. So you will find that El Nino episodes and conditions increase through the most negative AO/NAO periods of solar minima.
“A higher probability of winter blocking days over the North Atlantic during periods of low solar activity has been demonstrated by several authors. This has the effect of increasing the probability of very cold events, like the 2010 Northern Europe snow storm at the solar cycle 23-24 minimum.”
Because the slowest solar wind period was a year or so *after* the sunspot minimum of Dec 2008. The solar wind has a far stronger effect on polar ozone levels than the few percent you are looking at in the tropics. The effects of slower solar wind on the NAO/AO overwhelmed the opposing effects of higher UV around the sunspot cycle maxima of 1969 and 1980.
I am interested in the statement that UV can vary by up to 100% over a solar cycle.
If I recall correctly, SORCE data shows almost no variation in UV wavelengths from 2003 to 2016. That’s a substantial part of a solar cycle.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/sorce/sorce_ssi/
[I’m travelling with negligible computer power, so although I have the link, I can’t check the data]
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Werner_Schmutz/publication/236212525/figure/fig1/AS:393454686359556@1470818315888/Fig-2-Relative-contribution-of-the-UV-200-400-nm-visible-400-700-nm-near-IR.png
Fig. 2. Relative contribution of the UV (200–400 nm), visible (400– 700 nm), near-IR (700–1000 nm) and IR (1000–2430 nm) ranges to the TSI change over the solar cycle as derived from measurements and models described
Ermolli, I., et al. “Recent variability of the solar spectral irradiance and its impact on climate modelling.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 13.8 (2013): 3945-3977.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/3945/2013/acp-13-3945-2013.pdf
A little known fact is that only part of the spectrum varies in phase with the solar cycle, and actually part of the spectrum (1000-2430 nm) appears to vary in opposite phase to the solar cycle. Although UV is a small part of the TSI, it is the part that shows a biggest variation with the solar cycle.
Javier – Thanks for the reply. It’s weird that SORCE apparently shows the greatest movement for UV. I’ve put it in my diary for Oct to check it out.
You say that SST has been decreasing in the N Atlantic from ~2006. I suspect that the same factors have been operating in both hemispheres, because I noticed that a lot of cloud moved N off Antarctica around 2000. Sorry, again I can’t get at the data to give a precise date or details. It’s possible that the S hemisphere change would not be picked up in SST as readily in the N hemisphere, because of various differences between S and N (eg. upwellings, currents and current temperatures, winds, etc). Another note in my diary for Oct!
Javier – I’ve located a bit more on SORCE data. See figure 5 in
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/30/sun-cloud-ocean-update/
There’s very little year-to-year variation at all wavelengths, if I have plotted them correctly. A bit of variation is just visible below 400nm, but it looks unlikely to be as high as your charts indicate. NB. I’m not trying to say that you or I are right or wrong, just trying to understand all the data.
The figure 5 does show that UV (<~400nm) supplies a considerable proportion of the energy in solar radiation. I do think that the light that penetrates the ocean is key to climate. UV from ~200-400nm does penetrate water, but I doubt that this is the important factor, especially as UV is heavily scattered by the atmosphere. More likely that UV directly or indirectly affects cloud formation or latitude, and that it's the clouds that ultimately control how much solar energy enters the ocean. Again, I'm not looking for right or wrong, just trying to understand the system.
Mike,
The solar irradiation variation between a solar minimum year and a solar maximum year is about 0.1%. 1365.5 vs 1366.5 W/m2. You probably can’t see that in a zero bound chart. You would probably have to plot the year differences, not the totals.
Javier, it seems that you are misreading the graph on which you base your claim. The y axis is dSSI / dTSI so it is the proportion of the change in TSI that is invovled in each band, NOT the change of flux at that wavelength.
Taking the red SORCE lines visible and LWIR change in the opposite direction to UV, so UV changes are close to 200% of the total change in TSI.
That does not tell you what the absolute UV is nor does it give you the percentage change in UV relative to its absolute value.
Javier
Another informative article.
” The second objection that opponents of the solar-climate theory raise is that there is no known mechanism by which small changes in TSI could cause an important effect on
climate.”
I see that quite a bit in climate science. Because we don’t understand the universe in its entirety doesn’t mean that things beyond our comprehension are not happening. There are many surprises in store for future generations. Correlations may turn out to have causative relationships but for completely different reasons than what we now think is possible and would be thought of as totally paradoxical.
How large in amplitude is the Bray cycle compared to the 11-year cycle? Because we know the effect of the 11-year cycle is about 0.1-0.2 C, as seen in the global surface temperature record. This goes with a TSI change of about 0.2 W/m2, and so is in line with normal forcing sensitivities at 0.5-1 K/(Wm-2).
Jimmy seems to use average incident insolation – as far as I can make out as he never cites anything worthwhile. I’m not clear that it is as simple as that.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030207/full
See figure 1.
There appears to be a Scwabe cycle effect on surface temperature of 0.2K – but it is not clear that all changes in the terrestrial system are accounted for.
Like all of Jimmy’s impressions of science – far too simplistic.
While Jim may be too simplistic here, i do like his math… A change of .2C during the 11 year cycle would translate to about 1.6C for a half way to doubling of CO2. And we haven’t seen anywhere near that kind of sensitivity. (so one would think that there are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in Jim’s philosophy) One has to wonder what all the forcings are from the solar cycle, because the earth sure seems far more sensitive to the sun than it does to CO2…
Absolutely
The solar sensitivity appears to be 2-3 C per equivalent CO2 doubling. A doubling of CO2 is worth about twenty times the min to max change in the 11-year cycle. This helps you scale what we are talking about when you compare CO2 to solar wiggles like this. The Bray cycle is nothing like 20 times a solar min to max difference. Therefore doubling CO2 is much more important.
It’s double that assuming it is all TSI changes. Utter nonsense.
In terms of forcing it is TSI. What else do you have coming from the sun?
Jimmie, it’s in the way that you use it…
The important thing is how Earth systems respond and modify the global energy budget.
“Since irradiance variations are apparently minimal, changes in the Earth’s climate that seem to be associated with changes in the level of solar activity—the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice age for example—would then seem to be due to terrestrial responses to more subtle changes in the Sun’s spectrum of radiative output. This leads naturally to a linkage with terrestrial reflectance, the second component of the net sunlight, as the carrier of the terrestrial amplification of the Sun’s varying output. Much progress has also been made in determining this difficult to measure, and not-so-well-known quantity.” http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Goode_Palle_2007_JASTP.pdf
It doesn’t fir into your meme set – does it Jimmy dear.
That’s the way Milankovitch cycles work, so it is fairly standard stuff you are saying there. The albedo (mainly sea-ice area at first) responds to orbital changes that are not actual forcing changes, but create a forcing change (albedo). How do the Bray cycles affect the radiation balance?
Apart from this, we are still in the negative part of the 2400-year Bray cycle that dipped at the LIA, but have record warm temperatures now. How come? Is there perhaps some other factor being neglected that is more important?
Global warming is relevant. The Bray cycle is not relevant to it – much too small an effect. It’s CO2 which is at already ten times a solar cycle forcing. You want to compare the sun? Do it in those terms just for relevance, otherwise its just apples and bananas.
http://m.imgur.com/yvrMXFy?r
Here’s some actual data. As can be seen, higher solar activity correlates with warming, lower with cooling… The entire breadth of the eighteenth century saw about .3-.4C of warming. Solar activity in the 20th century was higher for a slightly longer period time with SC21-23 near the end being among the highest three cycles in a row of record. And if, as says Javier, the ‘process of atmospheric reorganization is cumulative’ and it was ‘built upon the levels reached over the two previous centuries’, that (and perhaps other such forcings) would go a long way in explaining 20th century solar warming…
Skeptics see patterns in the weirdest random noise, yet dismiss the obvious one.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1950/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.01/offset:-3.2
Jim, your embarrassing attempt at curve fitting makes you look dumb (so don’t look dumb… ☺). Any two curves if they are trending higher can be fitted to one another. If both temps and carbon growth weren’t happening to both be trending higher, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. (we’d be out playing golf instead) So, your graph has no meaning. Furthermore, you once again have failed to give the entire picture in your little graph by omitting early 20th century warming. So i will do it here for you (because i’m sure that it just slipped your mind)…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1900/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.01/offset:-3.2
Lastly, i hope your comment here is not directed at the graphed relationship between solar activity and temperature reconstructions. The correlation is THERE. What more do you expect? (and what value do you find in coming across like a warmist troll?)…
(to be sure, when it comes to curve fitting, it’s one thing to fit two curves that don’t look alike as you have done. It’s quite another to fit two curves, when after having done so, the two curves DO look alike. Regardless of any relationship between co2 and rising temperatures, yours, that is — fitting the keeling curve to giss, will always be just simple curve fitting)…
fonzie, there is a physical basis to the CO2-temperature fit too, but your people want to ignore that part in favor of hair-brained curves which only work if you look at them sideways with one eye closed, and ignore the downward trend at the end. In fact 75% of the warming and CO2 increase have occurred since 1950, so it is expected that the upward curve occurred after this time. The CO2 forcing change is already ten times larger than the 11-year solar cycle change, but your lot are not having any of it. Just dismissed. Can’t possibly be true even if the numbers behind the theory work. Unbelievable stuff.
“The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Earth radiation budget (ERB) is determined from the difference between how much energy is absorbed and emitted by the planet. Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-012-9175-1
As I said – complications are not part of lil Jimmies lexicon.
RIE, as I have said before, the thing about CO2 is it is a steady increasing forcing, not random fluctuations that self-cancel. So far they add up to 3 GJ/m2. That leaves a mark, and that is why it has warmed and why there is a remaining imbalance. CO2 is a thumb on the scale and the pressure is only increasing.
Cancel out? Whatever you say Jimmy dear. Like all of Jimmy’s impressions of science – far too simplistic.
I mean that 3 GJ/m2 is quantitatively enough to explain both the warming and imbalance by itself. No one is surprised by this except the skeptics who continue to be dumbfounded like you that just steadily increasing GHGs can do such a thing.
Jimmy’s 3GJ/m2 is the average ‘forcing’; over a century or so. The reality is that energy is gained and lost – any warming or cooling is caused by the difference. Jimmy’s numbers are usually useless and this is pointless in the extreme.
These people – must be the opposite of skeptic – either deny low frequency variability or say it cancels out over whatever period you care to contemplate. Utter nonsense.
Curry has recently said that Jimmy provides substantive commentary. I find it difficult to imagine that simplistic memes and habitual references to the intellectual problems of skeptics is substantive.
3 GJ/m2 is the cumulative forcing from CO2 alone, not the average. It is easily enough to account for the warming we have seen so far and the imbalance that remains. If you are looking for other explanations you first have to say why this 3 GJ/m2 doesn’t have an effect. This is where the skeptics usually fall down.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/08/07/nature-unbound-iv-the-2400-bray-cycle-part-c/#comment-855843
a question for Robert Ellison (or anybody actually):
The planetary energy budget. can we or can we not measure the energy coming in and going out, and so arrive at a net figure, which we can then plot against CO2 levels to see if there is any correlation ? tks.
Changes are measured with relatively high precision – but the problem of absolute values is one of calibration. Useful to know as it shows which components – shortwave or longwave – are changing.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/02/18/21st-century-climate-data-gives-new-insight/
jimd > CO2 is a steady increasing forcing .[] So far they add up to 3 GJ/m2 [] that is why it has warmed and why there is a remaining imbalance/
Are we talking directly measured fact or conjecture/models here ?
The residual can be measured possibly better than the individual large canceling terms. The residual is mostly the rise rate of the ocean heat content which has averaged about 0.5 W/m2 for a few decades. This means the forcing exceeds the warming response, and that all the warming so far still lags the forcing. The forcing is dominated by CO2 which is also well measured since the 1950’s, so most would agree with its strength over time. Other GHGs add to it and aerosols subtract from it. The total is less certain than the CO2 part mainly because of aerosols.
Jimmy is talking back of the envelope calculation based on invalid assumption. But it is ocean heat that counts.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/argo-to-december-2016.jpg
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/wong2006figure7.gif
RIE, at least you are on board with this. That is a start. It has implications for the imbalance.
https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content700m2000myr.png
You seem to have lost some fine detail there Jimmy.
It’s climate. Decadal trends are what counts.
What would seem to be pertinent is the quality of the data
You have to see past your cognitive dissonance when looking at these plots. You may not want the oceans to be warming like the observations show, but that is your own problem. What is it to you if they are?
No Jimmy – your problem is that – in the Argo data using the Scripps climatology – oceans haven’t warmed notably this century. It is consistent with net radiant flux at toa.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/ceres-net-13-month-running-average.jpg
Data shows that shortwave variability in low frequency climate regimes is relatively important. Unlike you – I have no idée fixe – I just follow the data and you have very little to show.
You can go to climate4you or NODC sites to see what the up-to-date OHC measurements are. You decided not to believe them but also have no alternative estimates from anyone, so this is why it only appears as wishful thinking on your part.
The Argo ocean graph is clearly labelled climate4you. But you can go to CERES data products – might help you – probably not.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4-0_anom_toa_shortwave_flux-all-sky_march-2000tojanuary-2017-1.png
Yes, yours was not global and also not up to date. climate4you has more relevant ones, and NODC is their source, which you want to dismiss, so first you have to figure out what you believe for OHC.
https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
If you want CERES and OHC, take a look at this paper.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00294.1
Ole Humlum’s source – btw – is http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/Marine_Atlas.html
It certainly was global – and current through December 2016.
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/statusbig.gif
I have just updated the Argo grid data in my copy of the Argo Global Marine Atlas. It tells me available data is through to 31 December 2016. At any rate – a few months make negfligible difference to the interpretation.
But the source of warming in the last couple of years is most obviously the change in cloud seen in the shortwave plot from CERES data.
“The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Earth radiation budget (ERB) is determined from the difference between how much energy is absorbed and emitted by the planet. Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-012-9175-1
It is the complications you are incapable of appreciating Jimmy dear.
RIE, climate4you goes through June 2017, but you will be disappointed in the update. The larger dip in 2016 resulted from the El Nino and I think it fooled you for a while there.
It seems clear that the largest component of ocean warming in the past couple of years- after the earlier cooling – was cloud changes associated with warm SST in the Pacific. The small dip in 2016 doesn’t seem all that relevant to anything.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4-0_anom_toa_shortwave_flux-all-sky_march-2000tojanuary-2017-1.png
The critical issue seems to be where the Pacific state is going next.
For the last 10 years the 0-1900 m OHC warming rate is consistent with a net input of about 1 W/m2. This is how a sustained imbalance plays out as expected.
My bad – I have updated to June 2017. Warming in the past couple of years is dominated by shortwave changes in the global energy budget at toa. This is how natural variation due to changes in ocean and atmosphere circulation plays out.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/lin2.jpg
The CO2 levels are contributing 2 W/m2 to the net at this point. What isn’t being offset by surface warming is going into the OHC.
Changing ocean energy content is the result of changing energy losses at the surface. But the point is what else is happening.
Energy gains too, remember.
Increased IR down reduces energy losses from the surface. Are you imagining that the ocean skin mixes into lower levels?
You seem to be saying IR changes can’t warm the water by reduced net emission. You get less surface cooling on cloudy nights. That’s the net IR difference doing that.
As I said Jimmy dear – back radiation educes energy losses. I was merely correcting your sloppy description. You want to play word games? Not interested.
It certainly does! Case in point 2 W/m2 sustained and growing from CO2, and the ocean warming at equivalent to 1 W/m2 for the last ten years. Hard to ignore how CO2 could contribute to that.
You endlessly repeat simple memes garnered from blogspots and are incapable of self correcting. It is bizarre.
2W/m2 – btw – is a theorectical value that assumes no change in surface temperature. It is very clearly not a physical reality. But just because greenhouse gases change radiative properties of the atmosphere does not mean there is nothing else happening. There you have about 30 years of catch up – and climate blogspots of any ilk will not help. Except perhaps Marcia Wyatt’s – if you had the intellectual capacity and drive to understand rather than merely superficially interpret in the light of your memes.
The fact is that the surface hasn’t warmed enough to counter that 2 W/m2 and, yes, there is still 1 W/m2 going into the ocean in the last decade because of the remaining excess. You throw up a stadium with with an amplitude of 0.1-0.2 C and its 60-year self-canceling pseudocycle, as though it has some relevance. In those last 60 years other bigger effects have come into play and we are 0.8 C warmer now. Going forwards several more degrees are expected from the further increasing forcing and the stadium wave fades into even deeper irrelevance by comparison. Solar cycles likewise.
It is not known that the atmosphere has not warmed sufficiently – it is an assumption. Your ocean warming assumption is clearly erroneous. The stadium wave is not a cycle – it is a chaotic, global spanning system involving shifts in climate state space – if you understood anything at all. You use the Tung and Zhou estimate of AMO warming and cooling and assume repetitive warming and cooling cycles. Not so – nor is the source of natural variability exclusively the AMO. Residual warming in the latter part of the 20th century was 0.4 degrees C – and hardly likely to be exclusively anthropogenic. The future evolution of temperature is utterly unpredictable using any available methodology – in the next few decades at least it is likely at most to be 0.1 degrees C/decade. We seem likely to likely to lose the natural component of 20th century warming this century. All you have is a string of assumptions intended to buttress a preconception.
The real problem is the dynamic sensitivity associated with the synchronised chaos of the stadium wave. It is chaotic in the physics sense – but you remain utterly clueless.
You can tell Marcia Wyatt that the stadium wave is not a cycle. It is displayed as a 60-year cycle in their diagram. That’s your argument to have with the other skeptics. I call it a pseudocycle to distinguish it from a true cycle. Also, you can tell Lewis and Curry that the remaining imbalance is not positive. That’s another argument you need to have with other skeptics like the ones you have with the its-all-solar people. I just give you the viewpoint of the IPCC consensus on these things. The skeptics are in disarray with a disjointed smorgasbord of ideas as numerous as the number of them.
There is a quote from Marcia Wyatt below – it is quite evident that it is you who do not understand.
Warming and cooling results from an energy imbalance – but your assumption – despite the evidence – that it is all greenhouse gases is an absolute nonsense.
The problem with this entire post and everything you say is that everthing is narrative – and there is no room for the weasel words of the limits of scientific knowledge.
“Although it has failed to produce its intended impact nevertheless the Kyoto
Protocol has performed an important role. That role has been allegorical. Kyoto has permitted different groups to tell different stories about themselves to themselves and to others, often in superficially scientific
language. http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/mackinder/pdf/mackinder_Wrong%20Trousers.pdf
I generally find that people who babble on about the IPCC consensus don’t have enough scientific chops to find their own arses in the dark.
It is not all greenhouse gases. Aerosols subtract a fair amount, the sun has a negative contribution since 1950, volcanoes may also be negative.
Aerosols seem overwhelmingly warming.
http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/pr176.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50171/abstract
The Sun stayed active until late in the 20th century and has declined a little since.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/files/2011/09/TIM_TSI_Reconstruction-1.png
OK, if you’re right it’s worse than we thought. However, that’s just black carbon. How about sulfates and volcanoes? They cool. What is the net? Most likely very negative. So when you say aerosols overwhelmingly warming: not so much.
Volcanoes are a short lived cooling??? And did you even read the abstracts? Certainly you haven’t read the reports. Ignorance is bliss aye?
The papers are old enough that AR5 accounts for more black carbon. Hence
http://www.realclimate.org/images/ipcc_rad_forc_ar5.jpg
… and you’re not saying anything new. Perhaps this is one part of the IPCC forcing you agree with, right?
The Bond paper missed the deadline – and no one has come to terms with the mixing ideas of V. Ramana et al. The latter suggests a very useful approach to reducing warming.
It didn’t miss it. I just checked. The value in their graph is not much different from that paper. By now most people know that reducing coal helps in several ways. That is old news.
Far from claiming it’s new – I simply claimed that you got it wrong. Glad to help on such elemental things – but you still should put it in a rational policy mix and try to move on to more interesting science. As opposed to habitual prevaricating and dissimulating.
The net effect is negative, especially when you factor in their effect on clouds. See the IPCC diagram. This is what I was referring to, and you got it wrong.
I didn’t claim it was new – just that you got it wrong. Put it in a rational policy mix and move on to more interesting science.
“When the principal effects of short-lived co-emissions, including cooling agents such as sulfur dioxide, are included in net forcing, energy-related sources (fossil fuel and biofuel) have an industrial-era climate forcing of +0.22 (−0.50 to +1.08) W m−2 during the first year after emission. For a few of these sources, such as diesel engines and possibly residential biofuels, warming is strong enough that eliminating all short-lived emissions from these sources would reduce net climate forcing (i.e., produce cooling).”
It is clear that you have a limited understanding of even the basics – and that seemingly garnered form blogspots. More complex ideas escape you entirely.
More and wider reading of the scientific literature – with greater appreciation of the limits of scientific understanding – and less commenting on blogs is advised Jimmy dear.
Your final conclusion seems to be the IPCC forcing diagram I linked and started with. Full circle. I got you there finally.
“This study appears to point to the inadequacies of current satellite instruments and algorithms to observe aerosols at the level needed to convincingly determine aerosol indirect effects on convective clouds. At this point, further investigation by satellites would not be as useful as improving ground-based measurements of aerosols in the vicinity of a radar with the ability to obtain full life cycles of convective clouds or implementing a larger-scale field study involving the collocation of ground-based radars with aircraft equipped with aerosol sensors. The satellites used in this study only view a snapshot of these clouds, making causality impossible to ascertain. Modeling studies point to aerosol effects on cloud lifetime. Observations are critical to verifying these modeling studies, but current observational networks are inadequate to answer these important questions. The initial suppression of rainfall may be countered by heavier rainfall later in the life of a storm, so observing the full life cycle of these clouds is critical to determining the total aerosol indirect effect (Rosenfeld et al. 2008; Stevens and Feingold 2009; Koren et al. 2012). Collocation of aerosol sensors that can resolve aerosol size and composition with cloud and precipitation radars are necessary to make strides in this field. Additional measurements of cloud droplet size distribution and drop size distribution would also help verify the microphysical effects of aerosols on clouds.” https://judithcurry.com/2017/08/07/nature-unbound-iv-the-2400-bray-cycle-part-c/#comment-856095
Your devotion to the IPCC is noted but you should stop relying on the IPCC forcing summary. It seems a first order approximation from models for a large part at best.
There are a number of different influnces – apart from the unvalidated indirect effect. Organic carbon comes primarily from biomass burning. Aerosols tend to warm over Asia and cool over North America – given different pollution controls. Indirect effect are so uncertain that ignoring the model based estimates of the IPCC seems a better idea. My solution is to install particulate controls (see Bond et al), reduce nitrous oxide and ozone emissions and use low sulphur fuels such as Australian coal.
Your final conclusion seems to demonstrate that your purpose is point scoring on skeptics rather than an attempt to understand science. Understanding science requires wide reading and comparing, contrasting and evaluating sources. Not repeating the same silly memes – as articles of faith and without understanding the nature of science and the uncertainties involved – over and over from the potted version of science that is the IPCC report. Go to the source Jimmy dear and try to understand. You are of course decades behind the curve – so a little humility and frequent reviews of assumptions aids comprehension. Devotion to an infallible source – not so much.
You often quote papers, but we find that you don’t always believe them verbatim when pushed. Why just quote them with no comment about which parts you think are true and which are not? Papers are papers. None are absolute truths because there are many papers with grey shades of those opinions. At least the IPCC does not suffer from one-paper syndrome that so many skeptics do, which is why I go with it.
What an exceedingly eccentric idea. I do not believe the quotes from hundreds of papers I use to provide unambiguous sources in the authors own words? The usual criticism from simple minded true believers is that I don’t understand what I quote or that I am selectively quoting.
I have read IPCC reports and have spent considerable time going back to original sources. In earlier times it was an educational resource until my understanding diverged from what was said in the relevant chapters.
I prefer these days not to waste time with the IPCC text and go to original and recent – unless it is an old favourite that has stood the time test – sources. I haven’t read more than a couple of paragraphs of AR5. I suggest that you go to original sources –
both cited by the IPCC and identified in searches – and compare to the IPCC text. Critical review is the soul of science.
I suggest you go to textbooks and popular books on climate change where you can find out about the way CO2 has affected climate in the past, and maybe then you will stop denying the basics of climate change, such as how large forcing changes really have had effects and what a large forcing change doubling CO2 is. The papers’ authors you quote don’t challenge the history of the science, they build around the edges of it, while you appear to dismiss any forcing ideas that descended from Arrhenius and Callendar and are now textbook stuff.
You’re a real hoot Jimmy dear. I was university instructed in physics, maths, chemistry, hydrodynamics, hydrology, environmental economics, ecology and much else. Sounds excessive I know – but it is what an engineer wit a masters in environmental science does.
I get nothing from popular literature or blogspots. I have read Pierrehumbert “Principles of Planetary Climate” – and my thoughts were were that the math was all too obvious but neglected far too much of the hyper complex Earth system.
That there is a greenhouse effect seems unmissable – and demonstrated on a global scale. Harries (2001) used snapshots through narrow apertures of radiative emissions from Earth at different times. It is essentially a measure of increased photon scattering in the atmosphere at the relevant frequencies.
https://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/321/Harries_Spectrum_2001.pdf
The authors I quote – including the NAS, IPCC, James McWilliams, Tim Palmer, Julia Slingo, etc, etc – often espouse a different fundamental science that derives from Poincare and Lorenz.
“Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence, future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected.
The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.” https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/2
Even now it is still way over Jimmy’s head.
The forcing change from the last glacial max to now was some 25W/m2 shortwave forcing and a 2W/m2 from carbon dioxide. I suppose we could could quibble – and add some anthropogenic forcing. But order of magnitude – this is the sort of Fermi problem engineers are trained in. The warming was of course some 5 degrees C as a global average- yet Jimmy is expecting 3 or 4 degrees – based on models – from some 4W/m2. I expect nothing of the sort – and nor are models remotely reliable.
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis.
Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.” IPCC TAR 14.2.2
They are talking here of course about perturbed physics models – and not the IPCC opportunistic ensembles. As James McWilliams put it.
“Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation (see ref. 26).”
The dynamic sensitivity discussed by a clutch of illustrious climate scientists in the 2002 NAS report is the fly in the ointment.
“If as suggested here, a dynamically driven climate shift has occurred, the duration of similar shifts during the 20th century suggests the new global mean temperature trend may persist for several decades. Of course, it is purely speculative to presume that the global mean temperature will remain near current levels for such an extended period of time. Moreover, we caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing. However, the nature of these past shifts in climate state suggests the possibility of near constant temperature lasting a decade or more into the future must at least be entertained. The apparent lack of a proximate cause behind the halt in warming post 2001/02 challenges our understanding of the climate system, specifically the physical reasoning and causal links between longer time-scale modes of internal climate variability and the impact of such modes upon global temperature. Fortunately, climate science is rapidly developing the tools to meet this challenge, as in the near future it will be possible to attribute cause and effect in decadal-scale climate variability within the context of a seamless climate forecast system [Palmer et al., 2008]. Doing so is vital, as the future evolution of the global mean temperature may hold surprises on both the warm and cold ends of the spectrum due entirely to internal variability that lie well outside the envelope of a steadily increasing global mean temperature.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL037022/full
Add to this that the data shows considerable variation in shortwave forcing in the satellite era demonstrating the something else happening with albedo.
So while we acknowledge greenhouse gas forcing – the climate system is a lot more complex than Jimmy dear can process.
It is however the new consensus. The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
You have to give it to Jimmy though – he is a persistent little climate energizer bunny.
OK, so net 25 W/m2 does grab your attention and much of that was water vapor and albedo feedbacks to a relatively weak orbital forcing. With fossil fuel burning and methane we could reach 8 W/m2 in the next century which is tripled by H2O feedback with positive additions from albedo and greening to something in the 20’s. We have the ability to control whether we force 2 W/m2 or 8 W/m2 just from policies. Policies make a significant difference to climate. Maybe, seeing it this way, you agree that we can significantly affect the climate based on what we do and we are not arguing after all.
Enough is enough Jimmy dear. These sort of wild numbers are just nutty. As people keep saying – climate is a wild beast but you keep trundling on oblivious. This is not just hyperbole – the idea is the most modern and powerful in climate science and has profound implications for the evolution of climate this century and beyond. Whatever the cause – global hydrological and climate variability – extreme drought, extreme floods and extreme temperature changes such as has not been seen in the past century – will occur again. The next climate shift seems likely within a decade – and the scope and direction are intrinsically unknowable.
I would be the last to suggest that there isn’t more uncertainty in a system with the internal dynamics of Earth’s climate – and much more scope for severe and rapid change than a 2 degree warming target – amidst other impossible things – implies. The solution, such as it is, is to build prosperous and resilient communities. As the biblical Joseph tells us – to avoid catastrophe in the times of need requires a wise and honest person to manage things in the times of abundance. Global economic growth provides resources not just for the technological innovations on electricity (26% of global greenhouse gas emissions) and liquid fuels (13%) that are inevitable but also to fuel the creative destruction of capitalism that transforms productive systems. The other sources of greenhouse gases, and black carbon, are a messy human problem of management of the global commons. They are solved by the most modern theories and models of human behaviour in the broader context of development, population, technology, agricultural production and environmental conservation and restoration.
You avoided what I asked. We control whether the forcing is 2 W/m2 or 8 W/m2. Do you favor aiming more for the 2 to stabilize the climate in more known territory, or to ignore the problem and drift towards the unprecedented 8? This is the central question here, and you always just equivocate on it. I don’t expect you to answer this time either. Skeptics just don’t.
I would say the amplitude of the Bray cycle is somewhere about 0.3-0.5°C. The important thing, however is that they are long lasting changes. You might have a warming from a big El Niño of 0.5°C in a monthly mean, but only 0.3°C in a yearly mean, and nothing at all in a decadal mean, and that doesn’t even show in the proxies. The Bray cycle causes several centuries of cooling, and the effects pile up.
Tunnel vision much?
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
Probably 90% of the climate change shows up within twenty years. Centuries make a small percentage of further difference unless we are talking about vegetation and glacier area changes that increase the sensitivity more slowly. For example, with CO2 doubling you may get 3 C in decades, but 4 C in centuries.
Cloud and – less so – ice changes are much quicker and unless you have data on that – you are pulling it out of your arse Jimmy Boy. Your usual science by narrative.
Clouds are a fast response. What do you mean?
And yet clouds vary over decades at least with ocean regimes.
e.g. https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/clementetal2009-e1495514802715.png
Exactly. The oceans govern the time scale, not the clouds.
Oceans influence cloud cover and clouds modulate the energy budget. The system is global and the whole exceeds the sum of the parts.
“Climate is ultimately complex. Complexity begs for reductionism. With reductionism, a puzzle is studied by way of its pieces. While this approach illuminates the climate system’s components, climate’s full picture remains elusive. Understanding the pieces does not ensure understanding the collection of pieces. This conundrum motivates our study.” Marcia Wyatt
As with the sun, the ocean has many time scales. Any apparently regular cycles are illusory. Given 13k years of data, the odds are that you will find a multi-thousand year cycle by lining up some dips and ignoring others. These are pseudocycles.
Solar cycles are pseudocycles in the sense they do not behave according to the definition of cycles, but that doesn’t mean they are not real and they have real causes too. Their study is critically important if we want to understand climate change as it is clear they contribute.
The best example is the Schwabe cycle. It is also a pseudocycle, as it can go in period from 9-14 years and in amplitude (sunspots) it can go down to zero and disappear during the Maunder minimum.
The Schwabe cycle has a small climatic effect, but the effect of the solar cycles is proportional to their periodicity. We are now in a centennial cycle low (extended minimum) and the evidence supports its climatic effect is much larger.
A pseudocycle is one that is fit to past data that has no predictive value. Care is needed before assuming another event 2400 years later. It could just as easily not occur. Someone should do the statistics to determine whether a record with some kind of pseudocycle can occur from random chance.
Well, we are assuming another 11-year cycle will take place after this one, and it is not a sure thing, since they did not take place during the Maunder period. It seems we have learned to live with that type of uncertainty regarding solar cycles.
The odds would be more than 90%. The 11-year cycle is much more certain especially as it can be seen continuously evolving between cycles, unlike this 2400-year thing that has completely diverse behavior between very local dips. I am very skeptical.
We know not of fundamental differences between solar cycles. It is just a question of perspective. The 11-year cycle is short enough to have been observed several times by the same people.
However during the Maunder Minimum solar astronomers were puzzled over the multiple reports on sunspots when they could see none.
Lack of perspective is a very common problem. Many scientific hypotheses are a product of the particular circumstances of the time. It is not surprising that a global warming hypothesis is favored during a global warming period. If the world was cooling we would be looking for an opposite hypothesis. That is simply a bias. We unconsciously try to match hypotheses to what we experience, disregarding the many thousands of years of past climate data. People function in the same way. A hot summer and everybody is convinced of global warming, followed by a cold winter and everybody becomes convinced of the opposite. Science is a constant fight against scientist biases. A fight that is most often lost than not.
The sun is less active in this cycle than it has been in 100 years. This does not fit with record temperatures a degree warmer than 100 years ago. It is no coincidence that record GHG levels coincide with record temperatures. There’s physics that says it must be that way. You have dismissed the carbon cycle physics which also explains variations in paleoclimate over the last billion years. Hundreds of ppm of CO2 do make it significantly warmer. The evidence is there.
Most authors find a lag of ~ 10 years between long term solar changes and climate effects. You will just have to be more patient with the current Eddy minimum.
As things are, Nature has her ways, and has placed a big El Niño for the delight of climate alarmists, but already half of the rise from July 2014 to February 2016 has been undone. I expect the entire rise will be undone in due time, and when that happens the solar correlation with temperatures is going to look a lot better than the CO2 correlation.
There is evidence that CO2 causes warming, but calculating how much is based on shaky assumptions. You take assumptions for fact, and as Mark Twain famously said:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
The effect of a forcing change decays over ten to twenty years with most of it occurring earlier and gradually less adding with time. Therefore most of the effect of the last long minimum has already been seen., and now the maximum is already reversing it. You don’t seem to believe that GHGs have a large effect accounting for 33 C in the earth’s surface temperature, because that same explanation is used to explain what doubling CO2 does. This effect is well outside your topic here, but much more important. Doubling CO2 is equivalent to a 1% solar increase, but the sun is steady to 0.1%.
You start with a phrase that you cannot demonstrate and that clearly cannot be applied to different forcings that have different time constants, and then proceed from them building assumption over assumption as if they were turtles holding the Earth.
Neither you, nor nobody else knows the effect of doubling CO2. Even the assumption that each doubling produces the same effect looks invented.
It’s the response function. With a step forcing there is an immediate fast response mostly from the land surface and the top shallow ocean layer, then a slow response from the deeper ocean and positive feedbacks. Most skeptics dismiss the possibility of positive feedbacks doing much, but maybe you have some important ones that kick in later, which you would need to explain to the other skeptics. With climate sensitivity, the transient response is fairly quick and about 2/3 of the equilibrium response that determines the long-term limit. Again, it is fast then slower with time. Nothing operates slow then fast a few decades later unless we are talking about tipping points, which I think you are not.
The solar sunspot cycle in the Maunder minimum:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1993A%26A…276..549R
You have dismissed the carbon cycle physics which also explains variations in paleoclimate over the last billion years. Hundreds of ppm of CO2 do make it significantly warmer. The evidence is there.
Total BS, it was colder and warmer when it did not correlate with CO2 in most of the last billion years. Present data when you make these wild statements about the correlation of temperature and CO2. There is no real data to support your wild statement.
Probably 90% of the climate change shows up within twenty years. Centuries make a small percentage of further difference unless we are talking about vegetation and glacier area changes that increase the sensitivity more slowly. For example, with CO2 doubling you may get 3 C in decades, but 4 C in centuries.
Bill Gray said the system responds, any warming from CO2 would be countered with more rain and snow that would limit the temperature changes.
Javier: I expect the entire rise will be undone in due time, and when that happens the solar correlation with temperatures is going to look a lot better than the CO2 correlation.
“Expect”, eh? Would you go so far as to “predict”?
Predicting global average temperatures has proved to be very difficult. Nearly everyone that tried has failed. The pause was completely unexpected. All those that predicted cooling have failed so far.
I went as far as to predict that 2015 would be “peak warmth” for at least a decade. As the peak was in February 2016 we could say that 2015 ± 1 will be quite accurate if the rest is correct. I still think that the conditions look right for the 2016 peak average temperature not being surpassed at least before 2026, perhaps quite a lot longer.
This prediction does not depend on emissions scenarios, volcanic activity, or ENSO activity, as I think it is solid enough to accommodate any changes encountered.
I am pretty sure you have been here before Jimmy. You use an average ‘forcing’ to ‘calculate’ extra energy inputted to the system over the 20th century. The question you are incapable of answering is why bother?
And no – greenhouse gas forcing does not explain all 20th century warming.
It is more than enough. You need aerosols to bring it down to the observed warming. Have you not been paying attention to the papers on sensitivity based on observed forcing factors? Lewis and Curry have one example that you could look at as a primer.
Lewis and Curry used AR5 forcing. I am much more interested – over decades – in low frequency internal variability.
“In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.” IPCC, AR4, 3.4.4.1
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/temp-and-solar-activity.jpg
But going over the same notions again and again is beyond tedium.
Their key finding was that, given their own choice of parameters, even a low sensitivity could explain all the warming. It doesn’t really leave room for anything else to contribute.
But something else is happening that the IPCC – just above – called low frequency natural variability. Read closer Jimmy dear.
Low frequency and low amplitude.
Can’t bothered with yet again Jimmy dear. You start with a La Nina in 1950 and finish with an El Nino (with a drought artifact bullet in the surface record. That’s more than half the just there. I am inclined to think it is self deception rather than deliberate misdirection on your part. For many it is deliberate misdirection.
Maybe you’re talking about this one. 75% of the warming and 75% of the CO2 have been added since 1950. They look as related as the scientists say they are, but skeptics think it is some kind of way to trick them by just showing them the raw observations. Much cognitive dissonance ensues because it’s not even models here.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1950/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.01/offset:-3.2
You start with a La Nina in 1950 and finish with an El Nino – with a drought artifact bullet in 2016. Not much of it is attributable to CO2. It is largely just manipulated of end points of dodgy and partial data to create a false impression. CO2 and surface temp are not close to the whole picture of climate whatever you imagine – or graph at wood for dummies –
Jimmy dear.
So start in 1952, an El Nino year, and that doesn’t affect Jim’s point.
But totally destroys RIE’s
Start at the highpoint of the early century warming – finish with the high point of the late century warming and get rid of the hopelessly obsolete surface record after 200 when then there is better and more comprehensive data.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/02/18/21st-century-climate-data-gives-new-insight/
There’s much sanguine speculation, but very little solid science here. Figure 66 shows only the EPGT for less than two centuries. That is but an eyewink in the life of the purported Bray cycle. And there’s no truly convincing, cross-spectral evidence showing consistent out-of phase behavior with respect to surface temperature or coherence with changes in average solar activity.
Not sure what you refer to. Figure 66 is from Soon and Legates, inverted. They don’t need me defending their work. You can read their work and form your own opinion. Here is a link:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7308/0c51950117704f84ef0abbc2349ba548a4ce.pdf
However the relationship between the latitudinal temperature gradient and changes in the average temperature of the Earth are totally uncontroversial in the literature. It is the basis of Arctic amplification, and due to the well known and accepted fact that the tropics show very little change in temperature. Scotese’s curves were done with educative purposes as part of his atlas, as scientists usually don’t even discuss things that are widely accepted.
The relationship between temperatures and the Bray cycle was established in part A where an entire chapter is dedicated to the question. The relationship between solar activity and the Bray cycle was established in part B, and that is the subject of the entire part. You can find part A and B in the recent posts list at the right above.
My concern is with bona fide grasp of physical reality, not with what may be “widely accepted” in the fledgling field of “climate science,” whose physical reasoning, jury-rigged methods of analysis and standards of proof are all-too-often risible. BTW, “Arctic amplification” of temperature variability is not due to any gradient per se found along a meridian [sic], but to the basic fact that a fixed energy change produces greater temperature change in colder air.
Cross-spectrum analysis is the rigorous means of establishing frequency-dependent relationships between time-series; it’s been used extensively in advanced geophysical research for decades, but is found virtually nowhere in your references. That you’re “not sure what [I] refer to” here leaves the impression that you’re merely a student of the descriptive narrative found in the literature. I’m trying to address the analytic aspects of scientific evaluation of physical evidence.
Yes John,
You have left clear in the previous part your opinion that based on the evidence available one cannot conclude the existence of a Bray cycle (or periodicity). However that is not how science proceeds, based on one person’s opinion. Instead the judging role is left to:
– Expert peers that review the work and experienced editors that decide on its merit.
– The entire field that over time ignores or cites and builds new research on top of the results presented by a work.
While the method does not always guarantee a constructive scientific progress in the short/mid term, we are still waiting for a better one.
For my part it is my opinion that enough evidence exists for a ~2400 year climatic and solar periodicity for at least the last 20,000 years, and with indications that it may have existed for millions of years. My opinion is obviously worth the proverbial 2 cents, like yours, but there is the evidence for others to decide on the matter too.
There’s a categorical difference between how academic papers get published nowadays and how scientific discoveries are made that prove their worth when far more than academic reputation is on the line. The latter require not just a bright idea, but indisputable empirical evidence. Personal opinion has nothing to do with this. Where’s such evidence to support the far-reaching speculation by Soon and Legates? Don’t resort to the rationalization that because the paper got published, the evidence must be there.
When you blithely sweep aside the very specific technical objections I raise by constantly appealing to the purported authority of peer review in a highly dismal “science,” it becomes evident that bona fide geophysical discovery remains terra incognita in your experience.
For my part it is my opinion that enough evidence exists for a ~2400 year climatic and solar periodicity
The Roman warm time and the Medieval warm time and the Modern warm time and the cold times in between promote a ~1000 year cycle and just totally ignore the ~2400 year climatic and solar periodicity. This was Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere was out of phase with this. Each hemisphere is internally regulated with the ice cycles as the dominate regulator.
Another interesting article. Well laid out, although I remain unconvinced. The oceans obviously have a great deal to do with climate. It is difficult to see how small solar changes impact oceans.
UV averges 3% of total solar irradience energy at the surface. A 100% variation over a typical solar cycle is from 2% to 4%. That swing does not have IMO enough energy difference to account for much of anything climate wise even with unexplained nonlinear amplifications. Climate cooled out of MWP. We dunno why. It has warmed out of LIA. We dunno why. The rise in GAST anomaly from ~1920-1945 is essentially indistinguishable from the rise ~1975-2000. Yet AR4 WG1 figure SPM.4 made clear the former period was mainly not GHE related; there simply was not a sufficient rise in GHG. Proof of unexplained natural variation on time scales that ‘fit’ neither the solar cycle nor the Bray cycle. The observation does, however, explain why CMIP5 runs hot. See recent guest post ‘Why Models Run Hot’ at WUWT for details.
Consider the effect on global cloudiness arising from the change between zonal and meridional jet stream tracks. That is how small solar changes affect oceans.
Longer lines of air mass mixing in the meridional scenario create more clouds and the oceans cool.
If it was easy we would not be discussing it, but there are plenty of ways. Let’s consider just one. Solar changes impact stratospheric winds. Due to the stratospheric-tropospheric connections, they also impact tropospheric zonal winds. Sea surface temperature depends on wind strength that controls vertical mixing and upwelling/downwelling rates.
Have you considered the 1000 year solar periodicity?
100 AD was warm, 1100 AD was warm, 2100 AD is going to be warm.
600 AD was cold, 1600 AD was cold.
The Bray cycle is the longest solar periodicity that can be unambiguously identified and tied to climate changes. Shorter solar periodicities will be considered in a future article if our hostess has some more patience left for me. Next one will be about the controversial 1500 year “oceanic” cycle.
So, all of this discussion has not considered one solar influence that may contribute additional energy into the ocean atmosphere system. I propose that there ia a solar induced geomagnetic induction effect, during periods of high solar wind variability, that directly deposits significant amounts of energy into the climate system. The greater the rate of change, and the more frequent the events, the greater the energy deposition. This affects all elements of the Earth, ocean and atmosphere, that have finite conductivity.
This effect has not been researched significantly if at all. Please comment, but don’t dismiss it until there has been some research into it.
I am a geophysicist that is involved in other matters. However, I do occasionally monitor for telluric influences, and have become very curious about magnetotelluric influences on the climate.
There is plenty of research into the magnetotelluric effects on the power grids, and it can be massive. It’s Maxwell’s Equations at work.
let me know your thoughts.
Allan,
The proposition that geomagnetism influences the climate is not new. I don’t know if you have researched the literature on that. See for example:
Courtillot, Vincent, et al. “Are there connections between the Earth’s magnetic field and climate?.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 253.3 (2007): 328-339.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5d0a/404c024f1e293fa12c97af1af89c5084914c.pdf
This work was heavily criticized by:
Bard, Edouard, and Gilles Delaygue. “Comment on “Are there connections between the Earth’s magnetic field and climate?” by V. Courtillot, Y. Gallet, J.-L. Le Mouël, F. Fluteau, A. Genevey EPSL 253, 328, 2007.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 265.1 (2008): 302-307.
http://ecologiesurleweb.free.fr/docs/Docs_infos/Warming/Bard2007_Comment.pdf
I consider more productive the investigations on the relationship between changes in the speed of rotation of the Earth and climate changes. I will be talking a little about that in a future article.
While we cannot discard that geomagnetic changes could have an influence on climate change, so far the evidence appears from tenuous to nonexistent. I do my best to stick to the evidence and try to avoid subscribing to hypotheses that lack significant evidence support. Even then I am seen as too adventurous by many.
There was a deep solar minimum from the early 1100’s, with very low temperatures according to a number of regional proxies. The chronicles of Michael the Syrian notes savage Near East frosts and a number of occasions that the river Euphrates froze. 2100 will be in the early stages of a long solar minimum, longer than Maunder.
There was a deep solar minimum from the early 1100’s, with very low temperatures according to a number of regional proxies. The chronicles of Michael the Syrian notes savage Near East frosts and a number of occasions that the river Euphrates froze. 2100 will be in the early stages of a long solar minimum, longer than Maunder.
Cold times are times when ice extent is more, warm times are times when ice extent is less, This is cause and not result. The river froze when ice extent was high, it did not freeze when ice extent was low. Solar activity causes small changes and it really does not matter much in the long cycles that don’t always match the solar cycles.
Have you considered the 1000 year solar periodicity?
100 AD was warm, 1100 AD was warm, 2100 AD is going to be warm.
600 AD was cold, 1600 AD was cold.
Have you considered that ice extent was high when it was cold, ice extent was low when it was warm? Have you considered it snowed more when it was warm and it got cold as the ice advanced? Have you considered it snowed less when it was cold and the ice depleted and retreated?
It appears you have not studied the ice core data.
Herman,
Discussions about what is cause and what is effect based on correlations in science can be endless in the absence of demonstrative evidence.
You are proposing an opposite cause/effect relationship to what is accepted by nearly all. It is up to you to demonstrate it by means different than correlation.
Temperature is clearly regulated in bounds, that must be internal self regulation, that would not result from external forcing. it snows more when oceans are warm and thawed, it snows less when oceans are cold and frozen. This is Occam Razor Simple. Ice is increased in warm times and ice is depleted in cold times, this always correlates properly with temperature.
Herman says: “The river froze when ice extent was high, it did not freeze when ice extent was low.”
The river may freeze in one winter and not in others regardless of whatever ice extent.
Climate cooled out of MWP. We dunno why. It has warmed out of LIA. We dunno why.
Duh, it snowed more in the warm period and then ice extent increased to make it colder. It snowed less in the cold period and ice depleted and retreated. This is recorded in the ice core data and is Occam Razor Simple.
“…and over ocean temperatures bottom-up,” must mean from the bottom of the stratosphere, up– and, not bottom of the ocean, up.
Additionally, I would like to observe that my hypotesized geomagnetic climate influences would deposit more energy in the high northern and southern latitudes where the Earth’s geomagnetic field has high angles of incidence. Also, the hypothesized induction effect would be a whole body effect on the oceans where the metal content is low and the magnetic permeability is nearly one if not exactly one. The effects are likely complex and highly geometry dependent.
I know that this is overly simplistic, and no single event would have a significant climate influence, but repeated and frequent events could build a cumulative effect over time. As you all know, oceans are massive heat reservoirs, and once energy is added, it takes time to dissipate it
Perhaps it is badly expressed, but the bottom-up hypothesis is from the surface of the ocean to the top of the troposphere with possible effects also in the stratosphere and mesosphere.
We have a solar signal – which is modulated through the terrestrial system.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/isotope-9400.gif
Now we may view this signal as composed of harmonics of various frequencies. I regard that as a theoretically incorrect procedure – and one that doesn’t give any clue about where climate is heading. There are two problems. As to which harmonic is the critical one right now – and the impact of anthropogenic changes to the system. Three if we count the mid-Holocene transition as a complicating factor on much larger timescales.
One view is that the solar magneto is modulated by the movement of the solar system barycentre about the sun’s interior. This is chaotic in couple of ways. The planetary orbits are chaotic – changing appreciably over 1000’s of years. How this translates in the fluid interior of the Sun through waves and eddies is also necessarily chaotic. Then there is the chaotic response in the Earth system that ampllfy very small insolation changes. But then Javier doesn’t believe in ‘my’ thresholds and regimes.
The pertinent questions – as opposed to mooted long term ‘cycles’ – are what role natural variability played in late 20th century warming and how the variability played out in specific physical mechanisms and where it might go next. We may then be in a better position to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic influences.
Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state. In their network math – the indices are measures of nodal variability on a global spanning networked system and not isolated systems in themselves. Let’s stress this – it is a single global, complex and dynamic system.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
The surface temperature changes are caused by ocean/atmosphere energy dynamics – but also by what seems to be cloud changes anti-correlated with sea surface temperature – e.g.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/clementetal2009-e1495514802715.png
The surface temperature changes may be related to UV variability influencing the polar annular modes – and thus sub-polar gyres and Pacific upwelling especially. I have an idea that this will lead this century to a cooler Pacific, more cloud and a cooler planet. However – it is strictly unpredictable and we may be surprised by changes – possibly extreme – at either end of the warm to cool spectrum. This despite the narratives of monsters of impossible certainty.
Who other than the True Believers of global warming alarmism are forced to argue against a holistic view of the world?
“A number of studies have shown that the inner solar system is chaotic,
Earth climate has never been chaotic during the past fifty million years, it has evolved in bounded cycles for fifty million years. The bounding changed, as continents drifted and changed ocean currents, causing more and more warm water to flow into polar regions and support more ice on land that promotes more cooling.
I guess, time-past is the only thing we can be somewhat certainty about even though there is little eternal agreement as to what actually happened in the past but, reason tells us anyone who pretends to know what will happen in 100 years is a charlatan, e.g.,
…Mercury is perched on the threshold of secular chaos….
so, perhaps it’s not likely “to be ejected from the solar system’ but my guess is that it probably is more reasonable to believe it won’t happen anytime soon if it hasn’t happened in a billion years. Like Mercury spinning off into the ether, there’s nothing we can do about it any more than we can change the Earth’s climate, even though it has become reasonable of late of concede humans have some effect.
Your considerations are irrelevant. A similarly complex pattern emerged from the study of tides at different locations, that even after knowing the causes could not be predicted from first principles. Decomposition of the tidal signal after a sufficiently long observation interval into its harmonic constituents at each location allowed the first accurate tide predictions. Lord Kelvin constructed the first machine to integrate the tidal harmonics (with time up to 40 different periodicities). Those machines allowed to know in advance the tides at the beaches of Normandy on the D-day.
The procedure has been demonstrated to work.
“A number of studies have shown that the inner solar system is chaotic, with a Lyapunov time scale of about 5 million years. This 5 million year time scale means that while one can somewhat reasonably create a planetary ephemeris (a time-based catalog of where the planets were / will be) that spans from 10 million years into the past to 10 million years into the future, going beyond that by much is essentially impossible. At a hundred million years, the position of a planet on its orbit becomes complete garbage, meaning that the uncertainties in the planetary positions exceed the orbital radii.”
In the n-body sense – the orbits of the planets in the solar system are largely determined by the mass of the Sun. Chaos theory suggests that Earth’s the system is pushed by greenhouse gas changes and warming – as well as solar intensity and Earth orbital divergences – past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation. Predicting climate is much more like predicting weather than tides.
Predicting climate is much more like predicting weather than tides.
Predicting climate should be replicating forward the climate cycles of the past that keep repeating. warm periods follow cold periods and cold periods follow warm periods and temperatures have been bounded in the same bounds for ten thousand years, this is the new normal climate.
“Chaos theory suggests” and “the planet responds”
It snows more when oceans are warm and thawed.
it snows less when oceans are cold and frozen.
The temperature the water freezes and thaws is fixed, with some change depending on salt in the water.
Earth temperature is self correcting and regulated in bounds.
People want to relate temperature to forcing from the sun, but temperature is self regulating and it depends on the freezing and thawing of sea ice. When the oceans are warmer, the sea ice is gone and ocean effect snowfall rebuilds ice on land. When the oceans are colder, the sea ice prevents ocean effect snowfall and ice on land depletes. This is Occam Razor Simple.
Temperature depends on the global energy content. That’s simple – more energy in the system and the world is warmer – and vice versa. When it gets warmer ice – both on land and sea – melts. A positive feedback.
The pertinent questions – as opposed to mooted long term ‘cycles’ – are what role natural variability played in late 20th century warming and how the variability played out in specific physical mechanisms and where it might go next. We may then be in a better position to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic influences.
The temperature is well inside natural historic bounds. There is no way to determine manmade influence because temperature has not changed from what the past natural cycles should be doing right now.
Greenhouse gases do have an effect on the energy dynamic of the planet – no getting around it with words.
Greenhouse gases do have an effect on the energy dynamic of the planet
What would your null hypothesis be…?
I’m going to go out on a limb here are propose a null hypothesis of sorts that could actually be tested–e.g.,
Remove fall the CO2 from a greenhouse and we’d no longer have a greenhouse but we’d still have a hot house.
As I said – you can’t get around this with words.
“Remove all the CO2 from a greenhouse and we’d no longer have a greenhouse but we’d still have a hot house.”
That’s actually very easy to do, just use a caulking gun and seal the greenhouse, the plants will then remove all the CO2.
But the global greenhouse effect works by limiting the radiation leaving the earth, rather than restricting convection like an actual greenhouse.
Heat transfer by conduction, convection and radiation.
It’s like limiting heat loss from a steam pipe in a power plant, you support the pipes off of things that the heat can conduct with, you wrap the pipe in insulation and here you have two kinds of insulation thermal and reflexive.
CO2 works like reflexive insulation.
Reblogged this on ClimateTheTruth.com.
I am going to jump in when he gets to Part W.
Is that when we pick up the chalk and start outlining all the dead bodies caused by the modern world’s venting of atmospheric CO2 in the parts per million we’ve seen over the last half-century?
:-)
😊 – so that’s how it’s done
Javier
Another great post – thank you..
I am in general agreement and endorse your conclusions regarding the Bray Cycle.
As you clearly identify the mechanisms that control circulation and heat / energy distribution from mid latitudes are not well understood i.e. what drives the Bray cycle during warmer and cooler periods.
The fact that the EPTG reduces during an active cycle is confirmation that the atmospheric transport mechanisms becomes more pronounced, over and above the natural thermal movement from equator to poles. Heat has that effect. Heat is pressure.
While the CAGW crowd are in denial, it will be eventially identified that most of the warming effects since 1979 are the result of increased atmospheric circulation. Heat relocated. While recent papers have started to identify this is occuring it has not been suitably qualified or quantified.
Great work, and easy to read which is most important
Hi Ozonebust,
I agree that the exchange and transport by the atmosphere of heat, pressure, and momentum, considered in terms of energy transfer are critically important to understand climate change.
As scientists work with data it is only quite recently that the data and the means to analyze it are available. Previously only sparse temperature and wind speed data was available, and although some reconstruction of the atmosphere can be done with that it is not of sufficient quality to extract long term conclusions. We must forgive many people for fixating on temperatures. If all we have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Warming occurs when ice extent decreases. Cooling occurs when ice extent increases. This is what actual data indicates. Ice extent is not a result of temperature change, ice extent is a cause of temperature change.
Other stuff pushes temperature around but ice extent always correlates, the other stuff sometimes correlate.
Pingback: The Effects of the Bray Climate and Solar Cycle | Andy May Petrophysicist
Global temperatures still high but in the range with still no signs of a breakout to the upside which has now been going on for some 20 years.
If AGW was real and the true climate driver the global temperature average at this late date would be higher then .28c for July 2017 ,and this is against the backdrop of a neutral Enso much less no La Nina.
On the other hand global temperatures for what I am saying are still high and the low solar conditions(although they just started this year) have yet to have a impact.
Again my low solar/climate play is low solar will result in a higher albedo/lower sea surface temperature scenario, hence lower global temperatures.
Global ocean temperatures still high .359c last check.
One item I am not sure of is, are there low average solar average parameter values that will bring the climate to some sort of threshold? If so what are they exactly .
If true the global cooling IF it comes as a result of low solar it will be more in a step like fashion rather then a slow gradual cooling fashion.
I would say thus far the climate is not cooperating with the views of either side that being steady global warming or global cooling. It is neutral.
Time I hope will tell.
Global temperatures are not higher than the Roman or Medieval temperatures. It is warm now because it is supposed to be warm now. Natural bounding of temperature “TRUMPS” CO2 and everything else.
Another unknown is how deep and long will this minimum be between solar cycle 24 and 25?
All the solar/climate connections Javier said I agree with but I think one or two important ones were left out.
One is the galactic cosmic ray cloud coverage tie in and another is the AP index.
When the AP index is very low cooling takes place in the high latitudes in winter and sudden spikes in an otherwise low AP index environment could trigger an increase in geological activity. A low AP index being associated with an increase in galactic cosmic rays.
The kind ,location of major volcanic activity will impact the climate differently.
Major volcanic eruptions high in SO2 and taking place in the high latitudes will cause the most impact as far as global cooling is concerned and atmospheric circulation patterns are concerned.
Cosmic rays are a bust, they don’t affect climate.
Javier, I eagerly await your posts, and the ensuing discussions. Thank you, and thanks to JC.
Javier presents a great case for solar/climate relationships
Pingback: The Effects of the Bray Climate and Solar Cycle | Watts Up With That?
I think duration of time for low solar activity to have an effect upon the climate is much less in duration of years then what Javier suggest.
More importantly I think if low average value solar parameters reach critical low values it could drive the terrestrial items that control the climate to threshold levels which reorganize the climate system of the earth.
There has to be a level of low average solar parameters and duration of time of these values that could accomplish this. I do not know exactly what they are but certainly Maunder Minimum levels if not Dalton seem adequate.
I also think the geo magnetic field plays a role because it can enhance or modify given levels of solar activity, especially when it comes to galactic cosmic rays and the AP index, which I think could influence cloud cover (albedo) and volcanic activity, both of which could impact the climate in a rather quick fashion.
This is why I am of the opinion when the climate changes it is in step like fashion not slow gradual fashion.
Maybe this current very low solar activity will show some clues of everything that has been talked about by Javier and others , if it last long enough and gets weak enough. I hope so.
Very cool.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
I used my girl friend’s computer and forgot to log myself in so the previous post is from Salvatore Del Prete not Ava Porter.
Sorry for the confusion. Thanks.
I guess she is not happy with you logging in with her fb page.
You know, while I was reading the comment I was thinking, gosh! she sounds exactly as Salvatore and says the exact same things. It gave me the chills to think that you were creating a school of thought ;-)
but Javier we essentially agree. Your presentation is great!
LOL
this was a lot of complicated stuff.
climate temperature bounding is Occam Razor simple
.
About 2000 years ago, there was a Roman Warm Period and then it got cold. About 1000 years ago, there was a Medieval Warm Period and then it got cold. That was the Little Ice Age. When Oceans are warm, Polar Oceans thaw, snowfall increases and rebuilds ice on Greenland, Antarctic and Mountain Glaciers. Ice builds, spreads and makes earth cold again. Snowfall decreases and the Sun removes ice every year until it gets warm again. It is warm again now because it is supposed to be warm now. It is a natural cycle and we did not cause it. CO2 just makes green things grow better, while using less water. The alarmists scare us so they can tax and control us.
I’ll get to the 1000-year cycle in due term. There’s no point in confusing people mixing things up that can be properly separated.
In general the thrust of Javier’s presentations I think are in the ballpark. My criticism would be his insistence of rigid fixed term solar cycles like the Bray or Eddy cycle of 2450 and 1000 years.
The so called Bray cycle should have a low point of around 600 years as seen in the LIA, these clusters of grand minima are important but Javier in Part B reduces the window for Bray lows to a much smaller window than 600 years. This allows cherry picking and reduces confidence greatly.
Also solar proxy records vary, and depending on the author, year and proxy type can contradict each other. Choosing one older solar proxy record and then trying to find grand minima clusters that are much shorter than the LIA is not solid evidence for a 2450 year solar cycle.
When looking over multiple solar proxy records the evidence suggests the Bray cycle varies between 2100 and 2600 years, so it is more of a pseudo cycle but still important, but we cannot expect the climate record and solar record to align precisely. Proxy records are vague by nature (and evolving over time) and solar influence is not the only driver of climate.
“The changes in the meridional pressure gradient induce a global atmospheric reorganization, but since after a few years the direction of the change reverts with the solar cycle, the effect of the 11-year solar cycle on the weather is negligible. However, when the level of average solar activity changes over a period of several decades, the atmospheric reorganization advances, becoming noticeable first and causing important changes in the climate later”
In realty atmospheric reorganisation occurs at weekly scales. like in March 2013 when the jet stream was around 1000 miles south of normal for the time of year, and then returned to normal within a week. In a single cycle in a solar minimum there can be a large increase in the frequency and intensity of negative NAO/AO episodes, punctuated regularly by neutral and positive episodes. As seen with the large seasonal temperature variability in CET through solar minima.
“Soon and Legates (2013) have shown that the EPTG has been decreasing during periods of surface warming and increasing during periods of surface cooling (figure 66), and convincingly link them to changes in average solar activity.”
There has been a decrease in solar for over two decades.
“SST at the North Atlantic has also been decreasing since 2006, coinciding with the decrease in average solar activity.”
The AMO is very warm, it was warm in the late 1800’s solar minimum, and I guess it must have been warm in the Dalton Minimum to cause the reported Arctic sea ice loss 1815-1817.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/from:1990
“The probability of a SGM increases and when it finally takes place it can be of the Spörer (~ 150 years) or Maunder (~ 80 years) types, with a higher tendency to produce a cluster of SGM spaced about 200 years, according to the de Vries cycle.”
Spörer was two separate solar minima, from the 1430’s, and from around 1550. Maunder gave a negative NAO regime largely from 1672 to 1705, just three cycles peak to peak. That’s a triplet. I think the de Vries signal in solar minima is illusory.
“El Niño conditions become infrequent, altering precipitation patterns. The North Atlantic realm is pushed into persistent AO/NAO negative conditions..”
Negative NAO is directly associated with slower trade winds and hence increased El Nino.
“Finally, the North Atlantic Oscillation amplifies the climatic response, turning a slow change in solar output into the cold winters of the Maunder Minimum.”
It’s the noise in the solar signal directly driving the monthly to seasonal scale NAO anomalies. The colder winter periods are each discretely solar driven.
“In the North Atlantic region, in addition, the Arctic and North Atlantic oscillations enter a persistent negative phase during the lows of the Bray cycle, causing an intensification of winter climatic effects and making this region particularly sensitive to low solar activity.”
There is no evidence of any persistent negative NAO outside of each solar minimum.
Javier presented his solar/climate case so well. This is the best I have seen.
My questions and comments are the following:
how extreme /duration do solar parameters have to be in order to achieve a climatic effect?
are terrestrial items ever driven to climatic thresholds due to extreme low solar activity?
how about the role of the strength of the geo magnetic field acting as a agent for given solar activity?
giv
how real is the galactic cosmic ray /cloud formation theory and for that matter the solar/volcanic connection at least major volcanic connections?
I think low solar equates to an increase albedo /lower sea surface temperature hence global cooling. In addition the initial state of the climate has much to do with how much given solar effects may change the climate.
Land/ocean arrangements as an example and Milankovitch Cycles for the big climatic picture.
Javier what is your opinion on the increase in albedo due to very low solar activity?
I think the answer lies in what is being discussed but it is elusive and hard to say this will do this if this happens.
This is why I hope maybe this protracted low solar period at least the lowest since the Dalton Solar Minimum ended(2005- now) might give us some clues sooner rather then later.
What I am looking to see if this may be so are a more meridional atmospheric circulation , lower overall sea surface temperatures , an increase in global cloud cover /major volcanic activity, and at least some global cooling as a result.
Thus far the signs are not there but it is early and I think within a year or so from now some signs might start to show , but thus far the climate is stuck in neutral although it is on the warm side .
As I speak overall sea surface temperatures +.372c above means and global temperatures pretty much +.2 to +.4 c above 30 year means according to satellite data which is the only data I will use.
Warm can not deny that.
Lots of questions, Salvatore. I’ll try to respond to them.
Most researchers find a delay of ~10 years between significant changes in solar activity and global/regional broad climatic parameter changes. The extended minimum we are experiencing (Eddy minimum) is very mild, the mildest extended minimum within the telescope era, so no extreme climate changes can be expected. It should serve however as a test of the real effect of solar variability on climate if scientists correctly attribute the effects.
I am not very keen on the idea of thresholds. A lot of things that appear as threshold transgressions looking from the distance, like interglacials, would probably look like progressive linear effect of the forcings involved and the feedbacks recruited if we could examine them close up.
The effect of the geomagnetical field on climate is as far as I know entirely conjectural at the time.
I don’t think Svensmark’s hypothesis is correct for two reasons. The evolution of cosmic ray intensity on Earth is due 80% to geomagnetic field evolution and 20% to solar modulation, and the climate evolution does not look at all like the geomagnetic field evolution that actually goes in the wrong direction. Cosmic rays do not distinguish between solar or geomagnetic modulation. The second reason is that the CLOUD experiment has failed to find evidence supporting the effects that Svensmark’s hypothesis requires. It was worth the try though.
The solar/volcanic connection looks to me conjectural and not too well supported by long term data. An indirect effect due to increase in glacier ice load and isostatic movements cannot be ruled out, but that is a very far from making a case.
Surface albedo has a very small contribution to planetary albedo. The bulk of the work is done by the clouds and we have no idea what the clouds do. This is a huge black hole in our understanding of Earth’s climate and due to it every theory and projection should be considered tentative until we understand clouds. Of course that doesn’t bode well for policy basis.
Despite heavy protestation, rushed database adjustments, and an unfair use of El Niño effects, the warming of the planet has essentially stopped since 2003. Something has applied the brakes since CO2 is still going up and its effect is instantaneous. If you are in control of a vehicle nobody else can brake it. If somebody else can brake it you are not in control of the vehicle. They can’t get out of this problem arguing natural variability without admitting then that natural variability must be at least as strong as CO2 forcing, and that spoils the party.
The warming has not stopped.
Show your work.
The warming has stopped except for El Niño warming. You are in deep trouble. Start working on your CV.
January 2001 to July 2014 data from ECMWF ERA interim database here:
https://climate.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/repository/Temp_maps/Data_for_month_7_2017_plot_3.txt
Monthly adjusted ERA-Interim 2m temperature anomalies (K) relative to 1981-2010
http://i.imgur.com/lMdlh0u.png
The trend shows no warming, nada, zero, zilch.
Typo: From January 2002 to July 2014.
Thanks
Jesse Jackson: “The pause…done killed… the cause.” The … are pauses. That’s how Jesse talks.
> From January 2002 to July 2014.
Why start and stop there?
January 2002 was decided by Nature. That’s about when the warming after the big La Niña ended and the pause started. July 2014 was when the quasi El Niño of 2014 that preceded the recent big El Niño started.
With the exception of El Niño warming, most of the 21st century shows no warming.
Please don’t blame Nature for your editorial choices, Javier.
I like the idea of quasi El Niño. Does a QENSO exist? If not, let’s put it on the map.
Wealth and fortune awaits us.
2014 El Niño was declared by Japan, and very close to being declared by Australia and USA. Niño 3.4 reached +1°C by the end of 2014 and that was reflected in global temperatures. The 2015 El Niño started from already elevated temperatures.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/nino3_4.png
https://twitter.com/nevaudit/status/895457697407086592
TOKYO (Reuters) December 10, 2014 – Japan’s weather bureau said on Wednesday that an El Nino weather pattern, which can trigger drought in some parts of the world while causing flooding in others, had emerged during the summer for the first time in five years and was likely to continue into winter.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-elnino-japan-idUSKBN0JO0I620141210
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014%E2%80%9316_El_Ni%C3%B1o_event
No warming for most of the 21st century outside El Niño. Global warming was a 20th century phenomenon. You are just late to know.
It shows 0.23 C warming relative to the baseline period centered on 1995. That’s not nothing. It also covers a period of net solar decline from the 2002 max to the much weaker max in 2014.
Are you suggesting that the zero trend for that period is due to declining solar activity?
Plus natural variability in the ocean behavior. There were no large El Ninos and it was La Nina dominated for a while there. GISTEMP also does this.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2014/mean:1
But taking a longer period, it does this.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/mean:12
Well temperatures are decreasing since February 2016 so let’s give them a little more time to see where they end. Good chance they go back to the 0.238° average in 2002-2014 ERA. The lack of warming is going to kill your favored hypothesis.
Yes, they kept saying that after 1998. It didn’t return. The trend continued as it will now.
Compare and contrast, JimD:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2000/mean:12
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2002/mean:12
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2002/mean:12/to:2014
Hmmm. Big hmmm.
> The lack of warming is going to kill your favored hypothesis.
Take a look at this, Javier:
https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/895671518637600768
Imagine it’s a stock.
Would you short sell it, and if so, how much are you willing to lose?
Short sells are not taken on a very long term usually but to take advantage of a short pronounced fall. Temperatures are right now an excellent short as 2017 is going to be colder than 2016, and 2018 is very likely to be colder than 2017.
2019 is less certain, but I will still bet on it being colder than 2018.
When was the last time we had three colder years in a row?
Thanks, Javier. Let’s hope you’re right.
To answer your question:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1940/compress:12/to:1959
“The conclusion by Soon and Legates (2013) that “increase in solar radiation has caused an increase in both oceanic and atmospheric heat transport to the Arctic in the warm period since the 1970s, resulting in a reduced temperature gradient between the Equator and the Arctic”, is discussed, and a different explanation of the results is proposed here.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136468261500022X
I would suggest that stronger solar wind, especially through the 1970’s, and through the 1980’s, increased positive NAO/AO, driving a cold AMO and Arctic, and weakening solar wind since the mid 1990’s has increased negative NAO/AO, driving a warm AMO and Arctic.
http://snag.gy/PrMAr.jpg
Ulric
The paper is paywalled, what are the conclusions of your link regarding causation
Thank you
It looks like an internal circular argument that won’t allow for an AMO and Arctic cooling phase.
https://sci-hub.cc/10.1016/j.jastp.2015.01.012
Actually they base their alternative explanation in albedo changes, and obviously GHGs, however they can only talk about the 1998-2007 period as they lack albedo data prior to that, and they use only earthshine measurements from 1998 to mid-2000. I consider earthshine measurements quite unreliable as they give quite different results from other techniques.
All in all it looks curious that this comment got approved two years after the original paper, almost without data and not contradicting any of the original data, just the interpretation. If you try to do that with an article defending the official CO2 hypothesis no way in hell it would be published.
Thank you both
What we have is explanation and counter explanation – the equator to pole temperature gradient is modulated by solar variability – or by greenhouse gases and solar variability.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/temp-and-solar-activity.jpg
There are quite obvious links between the Sun and climate – as there are between greenhouse gases and climate. Disentangling the links using the traditional notions of reductionist science is not possible.
“Climate is ultimately complex. Complexity begs for reductionism. With reductionism, a puzzle is studied by way of its pieces. While this approach illuminates the climate system’s components, climate’s full picture remains elusive. Understanding the pieces does not ensure understanding the collection of pieces. This conundrum motivates our study.” Marcia Wyatt
The collection of parts is chaotic involving thresholds and abrupt change at all scales from turbulence in the atmosphere to millennial scale hydrological variation. No amount of motivated thinking by Javier that – up close – these changes would appear linear rather than chaotic changes the data.
“Unlike common random series like those observed, for example, in games of chance, hydrologic (and other geophysical) time series have some structure, that is, consecutive values of hydrologic time series depend on each other. A special kind of dependence observed on large timescales was discovered by Hurst half a century ago and has been known by several names such as long-range dependence, long-term persistence, or simply the Hurst phenomenon. Since then, it has been verified that this behavior is almost omnipresent in several processes in nature (e.g., hydrology), technology (e.g., computer networks), and society (e.g., economics). The consequences of this behavior are very significant because it increases dramatically the uncertainty of the related processes. However, even today its importance and its consequences are not widely understood or are ignored, its nature is regarded as difficult to understand, and its reproduction in hydrologic simulation is considered a hard task or not necessary.” Koutsoyiannis, D. 2005. Hydrologic Persistence and The Hurst Phenomenon. Water Encyclopedia. 3:210–221.
So what are these mysterious, persistent, non-random processes in weather and climate and where do they originate? It is indeed a difficult idea.
*”Modern hydrology places nearly all its emphasis on science-as-knowledge, the hypotheses of which are increasingly expressed as physical models, whose predictions are tested by correspondence to quantitative data sets. Though arguably appropriate for applications of theory to engineering and applied science, the associated emphases on truth and degrees of certainty are not optimal for the productive and creative processes that facilitate the fundamental advancement of science as a process of discovery. The latter requires an investigative approach, where the goal is uberty, a kind of fruitfulness of inquiry, in which the abductive mode of inference adds to the much more commonly acknowledged modes of deduction and induction.” https://hydroclimate.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/debates-hypothesis-testing-in-hydrology-pursuing-certainty-versus-pursuing-uberty/
So we have a system that is not susceptible to reductionist science – and another science that sacrifices certainty for fruitfulness. The former leads to mad – or at least far too simplistic – theories in which some phenomenon or other dictates the evolution of climate – at least in the narrative – the other is much more interesting.
The bottom line of Hurst phenomenon is that the climate system may be much more susceptible to extreme change than any quasi-linear expectations suggest.
“There are quite obvious links between the Sun and climate – as there are between greenhouse gases and climate. Disentangling the links using the traditional notions of reductionist science is not possible.”
It is possible, with the teleconnection response to the sign of forcing change. Declining solar has increased negative NAO since the mid 1990’s, while rising GHG’s should increase positive NAO.
So which one is dominating is self apparent.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-3-5-6.html
The effect on the AO/NAO of greenhouse gases is one of these very uncertain things.
“Many simulations project some decrease in the arctic surface pressure in the 21st century, as seen in the multi-model average (see Figure 10.9). This contributes to an increase in indices of the Northern Annular Mode (NAM) or the Arctic Oscillation (AO), as well as the NAO, which is closely related to the NAM in the Atlantic sector (see Chapter 8). In the recent multi-model analyses, more than half of the models exhibit a positive trend in the NAM (Rauthe et al., 2004; Miller et al., 2006) and/or NAO (Osborn, 2004; Kuzmina et al., 2005). Although the magnitude of the trends shows a large variation among different models, Miller et al. (2006) find that none of the 14 models exhibits a trend towards a lower NAM index and higher arctic SLP. In another multi-model analysis, Stephenson et al. (2006) show that of the 15 models able to simulate the NAO pressure dipole, 13 predict a positive increase in the NAO index with increasing CO2 concentrations, although the magnitude of the response is generally small and model dependent. However, the multi-model average from the larger number (21) of models shown in Figure 10.9 indicates that it is likely that the NAM index would not notably decrease in a future warmer climate. The average of IPCC-AR4 simulations from 13 models suggests the increase of the NAM index becomes statistically significant early in the 21st century (Figure 10.17a, Miller et al., 2006).”
Although models do show an increase in polar surface pressure with a lower solar activity – modulating the global Earth system. e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535
This of course does not mean that there are no greenhouse gas effects.
Didn’t close the bold properly… “more than half the models..” As I I have been saying – this is hardly strong evidence.
It makes it clear that rising GHG’s have nothing to do with increased negative NAO/AO. I don’t think your criticism is justified.
My criticism of models? Or just that it isn’t strong evidence of anything – let alone that greenhouse gases are irrelevant?
“let alone that greenhouse gases are irrelevant?”
From the premise that they are relevant, the sign of NAO change in response to rising GHG’s is critical.
Climate is clearly controlled by natural cycles. Earth is just past the 2003+/- peak of a millennial cycle and the current cooling trend will likely continue until the next Little Ice Age minimum at about 2650.See the Energy and Environment paper at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X16686488
and an earlier accessible blog version at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-coming-cooling-usefully-accurate_17.html
Here is the abstract:
“ABSTRACT
This paper argues that the methods used by the establishment climate science community are not fit for purpose and that a new forecasting paradigm should be adopted. Earth’s climate is the result of resonances and beats between various quasi-cyclic processes of varying wavelengths. It is not possible to forecast the future unless we have a good understanding of where the earth is in time in relation to the current phases of those different interacting natural quasi periodicities. Evidence is presented specifying the timing and amplitude of the natural 60+/- year and, more importantly, 1,000 year periodicities (observed emergent behaviors) that are so obvious in the temperature record. Data related to the solar climate driver is discussed and the solar cycle 22 low in the neutron count (high solar activity) in 1991 is identified as a solar activity millennial peak and correlated with the millennial peak -inversion point – in the UAH6 temperature trend in about 2003. The cyclic trends are projected forward and predict a probable general temperature decline in the coming decades and centuries. Estimates of the timing and amplitude of the coming cooling are made. If the real climate outcomes follow a trend which approaches the near term forecasts of this working hypothesis, the divergence between the IPCC forecasts and those projected by this paper will be so large by 2021 as to make the current, supposedly actionable, level of confidence in the IPCC forecasts untenable.”
The forecasts in Fig 12 of my paper are similar to those in Ludecke et al.
It is well past time for a paradigm shift in the forecasting methods used by establishment climate science. The whole dangerous global warming delusion is approaching collapse
Ludecke etal also emphasizes the importance of the Millennial Cycle and support my forecasts of a coming long term cooling .
Harmonic Analysis of Worldwide Temperature Proxies for 2000 Years
Horst-Joachim Lüdecke1, *, Carl-Otto Weiss2
The Open Atmospheric Science Journal
ISSN: 1874-2823 ― Volume 11, 2017
Year: 2017
Volume: 11
First Page: 44
Last Page: 53
Publisher Id: TOASCJ-11-44
DOI: 10.2174/1874282301711010044
“Abstract
The Sun as climate driver is repeatedly discussed in the literature but proofs are often weak. In order to elucidate the solar influence, we have used a large number of temperature proxies worldwide to construct a global temperature mean G7 over the last 2000 years. The Fourier spectrum of G7 shows the strongest components as ~1000-, ~460-, and ~190 – year periods whereas other cycles of the individual proxies are considerably weaker. The G7 temperature extrema coincide with the Roman, medieval, and present optima as well as the well-known minimum of AD 1450 during the Little Ice Age. We have constructed by reverse Fourier transform a representation of G7 using only these three sine functions, which shows a remarkable Pearson correlation of 0.84 with the 31-year running average of G7. The three cycles are also found dominant in the production rates of the solar-induced cosmogenic nuclides 14C and 10Be, most strongly in the ~190 – year period being known as the De Vries/Suess cycle. By wavelet analysis, a new proof has been provided that at least the ~190-year climate cycle has a solar origin.”
The paper also states “……G7, and likewise the sine representations have maxima of comparable size at AD 0, 1000, and 2000. We note that the temperature increase of the late 19th and 20th century is represented by the harmonic temperature representation, and thus is of pure multiperiodic nature. It can be expected that the periodicity of G7, lasting 2000 years so far, will persist also for the foreseeable future. It predicts a temperature drop from present to AD 2050, a slight rise from 2050 to 2130, and a further drop from AD 2130 to 2200 (see Fig. 3), upper panel, green and red curves.”
The EPA therefore has available for immediate use, if it so chooses,a forecasting method which is not based on the bottom up approach of the IPCC modellers which is inherently useless.
As to the sun climate connection in particular, my paper linked above says”
“The connection between solar “activity” and climate is poorly understood and highly controversial. Solar “activity” encompasses changes in solar magnetic field strength, IMF, GCRs, TSI, EUV, solar wind density and velocity, CMEs, proton events, etc. The idea of using the neutron count and the 10Be record as the most useful proxy for changing solar activity and temperature forecasting is agnostic as to the physical mechanisms involved. Having said that, however, it seems likely that the three main solar activity related climate drivers are the changing GCR flux – via the changes in cloud cover and natural aerosols (optical depth), the changing EUV radiation producing top down effects via the Ozone layer, and the changing TSI – especially on millennial and centennial scales. The effect on observed emergent behaviors i.e. global temperature trends of the combination of these solar drivers will vary non-linearly depending on the particular phases of the eccentricity, obliquity and precession orbital cycles at any particular time convolved with the phases of the millennial, centennial and decadal solar activity cycles and changes in the earth’s magnetic field. Because of the thermal inertia of the oceans there is a varying lag between the solar activity peak and the corresponding peak in the different climate metrics. There is a 13+/- year delay between the solar activity “Golden Spike” 1991 peak and the millennial cyclic “Golden Spike” temperature peak seen in the UAH6 data at 2003 in Fig. 4. It has been independently estimated that there is about a 12-year lag between the cosmic ray flux and the temperature data – Fig. 3 in Usoskin (28). “
My two cents worth. Most extrinsic and anthropogenic climate theories will eventually found to be entangled in the confounding factor monster. And she’s a biggin! Until we understand our own solar absorbing liquid storage battery, we cannot rule out 75% of the planet being responsible for its own cycles. I long for the old days when the first encountered pathology must first be ruled out as the cause. The first encountered pathology in climate science is found in a 5th grade science book: The Water Cycle chapter.
Pamela you are in denial and your thoughts about solar not being a key factor in climate determination are absurd.
Javier has presented a great comprehensive case with very sound reasoning not to mention the historical climatic record which shows beyond a doubt there is a solar/climate connection.
Solar drives the intrinsic terrestrial items you claim determine the climate of the earth .
Watch the global temperatures from this point in time moving forward as they move lower how far I do not know but they will be going down in response to the current very weak solar conditions which are in place.
Until we understand our own solar absorbing liquid storage battery, we cannot rule out 75% of the planet being responsible for its own cycles.
Absolutely true, Ceteris paribus–
” Until we understand our own solar absorbing liquid storage battery, we cannot rule out 75% of the planet being responsible for its own cycles. ”
Until we understand everything we cannot rule out unicorns.
Here is a clue. The Ocean is not a prime mover.
Most climate change is internally generated.
“What defines a climate change as abrupt? Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.” https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/3#14
Again -astonishing how you missed dem unicorns.
Stephen, I call BS on that one. Of course oceans are a prime mover! Especially in concert with their teleconnected friends: All the parts and pieces of the atmosphere.
Prime mover means the same thing as Causa sui.
Dat lucky old sun is the prime mover. The oceans is da flywheel.
You are correct Mosher. In this age of advocacy science, the prime mover is the adjuster’s pencil and eraser. Trumps every physical contender.
The two big flaws in AGW theory are absence of a lower equatorial tropospheric hot spot, and the forecast about the evolution of a sustained positive AO/NAO which if anything for the past decade or so has been trending more negative. In other words a more zonal atmospheric circulation.
Those two items are the basis for this theory in large measure and when the basics for a theory are wrong the theory is wrong.
AGW theory is on borrowed time which will soon be running out.
I would say CO2 has a zero climatic impact that is the evidence thus far and that the climate although it may appear to be random in nature is governed by the sun.
Remember the sun is the driver of the climate and any changes in the driver of the climate no matter how slight will have an effect.
Then you dismiss the absurdity involved in the puny amount of energy available from these slight solar variations to show up in an intrinsically noisy planet, instead thinking it magically possible. You might as well admit that the action of butterfly wings will change the direction of the winds.
I am going to throw a ball to the opposite side and I rarely do that. Consider that at the top of the atmosphere UV comprises 3 to 5% of total watts/m2 (total solar irradiance TOA 1361 watts per square meter) with some of that UV not making its way to the surface and some of it staying intact depending on which part of the UV spectrum does that and where you are standing (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/UVB/uvb_radiation3.php), the idea that the energy available in CHANGES in UV over time having some kind of climate effect is a butterfly wing theory. It is an implausible mechanism.
So it seems to me that if basic solar cycle changes in TSI w/m2 cannot be robustly observed in either satellite or ground level sensors, not in weather patterns, and not in climate patterns, certainly much smaller UV percentages of the solar spectrum will not either.
Now here is the ball. The action of anthropogenic CO2 has a better calculated mechanistic driver basis than the solar driver theory does. If you can’t beat their theory, you are dead in the water. And this statement is in spite of the fact that I have yet to see intrinsic factors robustly elliminated in the AGW theory.
Please check my statements of TSI and UV as these are just off the top of my head memories of measurements.
You are a classic example of the 0.1% mentality. The problem is that you have already been proven wrong and you don’t even know it, because your mentality prevents you from finding out what you don’t know.
It was demonstrated by Karin Labitzke and Harry van Loon in 1987 and 1988 that the Quasi Biennial Oscillation and the solar cycle display synergistic effects to determine stratospheric temperatures and geopotential height. The result caused a huge controversy but has been confirmed since every time. It was shown later that the QBO-solar cycle relation determines the strength of the polar vortex and the frequency of the sudden stratospheric warmings. In years with low solar activity the polar winter vortex tends to be disturbed and weak when the QBO is easterly, but deeper and undisturbed when the QBO is westerly. In years with strong solar activity, however, westerly phases of the QBO are associated with disturbed winters, whereas easterly phases of the QBO are accompanied by deep and undisturbed polar vortices.
You might know the importance of the polar vortex in winter temperatures over the northern hemisphere.
Karin Labitzke was one of the greatest experts on the stratosphere. She directed the Berlin group from the late 60’s and she passed away in late 2015. Her findings are important and should not be belittled. She did a lot more for the understanding of the solar influence on climate than Jack Eddy.
Lindzen and Holton in 1968 had the insight to propose gravity waves as the cause that generated and maintained the QBO, at a time when they were not well understood. They became famous when their model was confirmed.
Today it is believed that during the northern hemisphere winter gravity waves originated from convection and meteorological phenomena propagate upward, and if the QBO is easterly and solar activity low they propagate northward through the stratosphere causing sudden warming events and the disruption of the polar vortex, but if solar activity is high they dissipate and the polar vortex remains strong.
The system is more or less balanced between QBOe, QBOw high-SC, and low-SC, but when solar activity gets stuck in low a disequilibrium takes place. The chances of weak polar vortex and winter blocking days increase, driving down average winter temperatures.
What you and your mentor of the 0.1% mentality can’t understand is that the stratosphere is so rarefied that the energy needed to change its state is very small, and its coupled effect within the rotating atmosphere with the troposphere recruits other forces like the momentum brought by the QBO and gravity waves to change the climatic balance. In a system so complex like climate, the existence of non-linear effects should be expected not discounted. The energy to effect the changes is put by the Earth, not the Sun.
Most people look for easy answers to complex issues. They are likely to settle for the wrong answer.
Javier, I would not put my eggs in the QBO/Solar connection. Recent published studies are beginning to question that proposed link. Why?
Weather pattern variations data from down below are not lining up nicely at all. Further, not everything that happens in the stratosphere propagates down. Extrinsic solar driven changes there more often than not, stay there. However, things that happen in the troposphere can invade the stratosphere, as do Rossby waves for example.
Thanks Javier, I was aware of the QBO influence on the polar vortex but not the anti phasing during low and high solar periods, perhaps I will have another look at this area.
But you also highlight how long we have known about this connection in the literature, which goes well beyond the hand waving exercise of Stephen Wilde who claims to own this arena. (Pathetic)
Pamela & Svalgaard keep pushing the energy factor and refuse to accept the chemical component of solar variability. Their views are so similar I sometimes wonder if they are the same person?
Pam, it has all been put forth by Javier it can not be any clearer yet you are not able to understand.
All of the planets so called noise in the end is governed by given solar activity. A change no matter how slight will cause the terrestrial items which you say control the climate to change. The problem Pam is they are all subject to what the sun is doing.
The reason why it is hard to quantify is because as Javier said most of the time the sun is in it’s normal 11 year sunspot cycle so things tend to get cancelled out . It is only when the sun enters an extended period of prolonged solar quiet that things start to build upon one another.
I have demonstrated many solar/climate connections.
As far as anthropogenic CO2 it has nothing to stand on accept your imagination. This period of time in climatic history is NOT even close to being unique! In fact it is one of the more stable periods of time in the climate.
As far as sea surface temperatures versus solar activity it has been demonstrated that when sunspot numbers are less then 40 oceans cool and when over 40 they warm.
Also the next chart I will be sending shows a climate correlation due to solar way greater then you will ever be able to come find for CO2.
Then again you are in denial of data.
Let me type my last sentence again.
The next chart which is below shows a climate correlation due to solar much greater then a climate correlation you will ever be able to find due to CO2.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-modeling-ocean-oscillations.html
That is what the data shows, pretty clear to me.
The graph displays autocorrelation and nothing more. Statistically inexcusable to say that such a method shows a climate connection between solar and ocean.
Pamela Gray: Statistically inexcusable to say that such a method shows a climate connection between solar and ocean.
It will be interesting to see whether any of these seemingly adventitious solar relationships are ever predictive of future developments. Paraphrasing Andy May from WUWT, when is the statistical evidence too strong to ignore? I feel like we are in a kind of Limbo.
matt, do you know what autocorrelation is? It is when the cycles of one thing are integrated into the cycles of another thing and then the two data strings (one a soup of data with part of the other IN IT!) are compared. They autocorrelate because they have data from the dependent variable IN THE INDEPENDENT variable.
Pamela Gray: matt, do you know what autocorrelation is?
Of course. Check out my reference to Kass, Eden and Brown, posted at WUWT in the thread following Andy May’s essay on Javier’s work. Sometimes “absence of evidence” is “evidence of absence” — but with low power statistical methods, it isn’t much evidence. What we have here are statistical methods that have high type 1 error rates and high type 2 error rates.
More type 3 – the right answer to the wrong question.
Well, great, can one of y’all please explain it to me? (sometimes what pam sez don’t make a lick o’ sense to ‘the fonz’)…
Afonzarelli,
Autocorrelation is the transfer of an error from a period to the next. When correlating two series with positive serial correlation and an independent variable that grows over time it can have the effect of boosting the goodness of the fit and the regression coefficient. Paleoclimatic data that contains seasonality is specially prone to it. It is a well known basic source of error in time series correlation analysis so it is usually tested even if it is not reported.
Quiet often a scientific article is the work of years, and only a tiny fraction of the tests performed on the data makes it to the limited space available. Referees of the work can and often do request to see the result of those tests. For outsiders when considering a result, like the presence of the ~ 2400 year cycle, that has been reported multiple times in the literature for over 4 decades by many scientists working separately, it is safer to assume that the work has been done properly, than the opposite. Science is auto-correcting, and results based on poor statistics tend to be non-reproducible and largely ignored a few years later. But when people have embraced a point of view, it is often the case that no amount of science will make them change it.
Autocorrelation is the correlation of a time series with itself. High autocorrelation simply means that the data point are not independent.
Too much data smoothing is the cardinal sin – it will give you a correlation that looks perfect for vaguely covariant data series. As in the graph under discussion. Hardly strong evidence.
I do suggest that covariance – and a scatter plot using all available data – is probably a better jumping off point. Temperature and cloud for instance.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/cloud-temp.jpg
I also suggest that the worst offenders pretend to know more than they do and babble on about irrelevancies – sometimes on the omnipotence of science. As we all should remember – scientific self correction proceeds one funeral at a time.
Robert I Ellison: the right answer to the wrong question.
Care to elaborate? In this instance, what is the wrong question? How is something the right answer to it?
I like my formulation better: any not yet elucidated mechanism by which the Sun may have produced the recent (post 1885) warming is likely to have a small effect, compared to the large effects of the known mechanisms of solar activity, internal dynamic processes, and irreproducible (random?) variation; in that case, the statistical methods available to date will have low power. Javier’s approach of correlating separate autocorrelated time series has a known high type 1 error rate.
Autocorrelation within a single series is another method to detect periodicities. In fact some of the statistical methods used to predict the amplitude of solar cycle 24 sent to the prediction panel were based on autocorrelation within solar data. They did better than some predictions with a more physical basis.
Matthew,
One distinct possibility is that low solar variability was mostly responsible for the LIA. The return to more normal solar activity, and the end of the LIA, allowed a return to warmer conditions, with current global warming being in part its final stage. One important error then would be to place our reference at pre-industrial times, when the climate was abnormally cold.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/the-real-cause-of-climate-change-over-the-last-millennium/
More data on solar/climate connections and correlations.
There is so much data out there.
More autocorrelation. Inexcusable.
We must agree to disagree.
Pamela Gray August 10 @11:42am
“…if basic solar cycle changes in TSI w/m2 cannot be robustly observed in either satellite or ground level sensors…”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/TSI-est-of-climate-sensitivity2.gif
The above graph of Dr Spencer is detrended data, smoothed three years (to average out el nino/la nina) with pinatubo cooling removed. Since 2 of the 4 solar mins in this particular series had very large el ninos, it might have been prudent to remove them both as well, producing a number closer to .2C…
http://m.imgur.com/yvrMXFy?r
One would think that the above graph, courtesy of javier, would fit the definition of “robustly observed” as well…
Clouds increase and decrease in step with and following SST and wind associated with changing ENSO processes. Therefore you must be saying that the minute changes in solar parameters are able to bring about, for example, one of the most powerful processes on Earth: El Nino. So what is the amplifier? There has to be one to get a butterfly to beat its wings that fast and to metamorph into a much bigger butterfly.
“Specifically, as the tropics warms in association with ENSO, cloud fraction profiles exhibit an upward shift and reduction in peak coverage, a structure that is remarkably well diagnosed by conv.”
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/Zelinka_HartmannJGR11.pdf
The sun would merely be the trigger for the whole el nino process. As the sun goes from max to min, easterly walker cell trade winds slacken due to a lessening of the pressure differential along the equator. This allows the warm sea surface waters that have piled up (and sunk down) in the western pacific to flow back eastward. This interruption of the THC also causes the cessation of cold water upwelling in the eastern pacific, thus walker cell trade winds cease. As a result, ocean vertical mixing is curtailed and the ocean fails in its usual heat sinking capacities…
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/01/what-causes-el-nino-warmth/
I have read his work many times. No where does he say that solar max to min triggers El Nino. Quote his words if you think he does.
exactly false
http://plasmaresources.com/ozwx/landscheidt/pdf/SolarActivityControlsElNinoAndLaNina.pdf
i just put the spencer link in at the end there. (wasn’t implying that he did say that) You were implying the butterfly effect. So, i replied by saying that the sun is merely the known trigger mechanism for the whole process, a process that spencer lays out fairly well. (the link would be an answer to your question ‘So what is the amplifier?’) We do know that el ninos are triggered by a reduction in walker cell trade winds. And those winds do weaken with a reduction in SSTs, which more often than not, follow the solar cycle. i’m not sure any of this is pertinent to my original comment (@3:07pm). i was just trying to say that since those el ninos represented anomalous warming, they should probably have been taken out of the temperature series when ascertaining the solar impact (on global temps from min to max)…
My reply just got lost to cyber space. (hoping that word press/ moderation is not as horrifyingly bad here as it is over at wuwt… ☺) i just put the spencer link in at the end there, not implying that he did say that. His post is merely an answer to your question ‘So what is the amplifier?’. If my comment ever shows up, it will have more to say…
Javier, thank you for the essay.
Ripples in space/time cause the QBO? I think Javier means Rossby – otherwise known as planetary – waves that are the result of planetary rotation. Although I suppose gravity waves could be another mad theory.
Pamela seems to have hit the nail on the head again.
“Since irradiance variations are apparently minimal, changes in the Earth’s climate that seem to be associated with changes in the level of solar activity—the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice age for example—would then seem to be due to terrestrial responses to more subtle changes in the Sun’s spectrum of radiative output. This
leads naturally to a linkage with terrestrial reflectance, the second component of the net sunlight, as the carrier of the terrestrial amplification of the Sun’s varying output.” http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Goode_Palle_2007_JASTP.pdf
A linkage may be UV/ozone chemistry in the atmosphere changing surface pressure at the poles – e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535 – this modulates storm tracks in both hemispheres and spin up or not the sub-polar oceanic gyres.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1257637017685891
Many up to to date researchers use the Southern and Northern annular modes terminology rather than the more ambiguous term polar vortex. They are a surface phenomenon loosely linked to polar vortices higher in the atmosphere. The NAM and SAM influences storm tracks, winds and currents in both hemispheres. Rather than a driver of climate as such – they bias the system to more or less upwelling in the Pacific – both in ENSO and the PDO regions – and to a cooler North Atlantic and reduced poleward transport of warm water.
Smeed et al ( https://www.ocean-sci.net/10/29/2014/os-10-29-2014.pdf ) use the accumulated NAO index – the NAO is the NAM in the Atlantic sector – and relate this to the AMO and AMOC. Accumulation is simply the running total of the index.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/smeed-fig-71-e1501702526549.png
Solar variability is not strictly periodic – nor is it predictable. I expect surprises. The clearest example I can give of the potential for surprises is the mid-Holocene transition to higher activity that triggered an abrupt transition in the Earth system. Could a transition to lower activity trigger a return to a cooler Pacific and a greening of the Sahel? On the other hand – solar activity may just continue in a more active state this century.
The confounding variable is that we are changing the radiative properties of the atmosphere (e.g. https://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/321/Harries_Spectrum_2001.pdf ) with little understanding of the climatic, hydrological or biological consequences.
I consider all of Javier’s ruminations to be of no value – and much of the commentary to be be mad theories that are indulged by Judith Curry for reasons of her own. There is nothing here to suggest that quasi-periodicity in solar variability allows for fine scale climate predictability.
But clouds are anti-correlated with SST – and Pamela at least is right –
again – about this fundamental climate variable. As well as on the need for butterflies to explain climate.
I agree with Javier who has sound comprehensive thoughts and even provable data.
I have reached many of the same conclusions completely independent of Javier ‘s studies.
He expresses it the best better than I can.
Yes I’m sure that is unexpected Salvatore. Let me try to explain it better. The Earth is an isolated system in the physics sense. It tends towards equilibrium – which is when there is maximum entropy. Most climate change is generated internally. In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’
The system is chaotic in the physics sense leading to the idea of thresholds and abrupt change – and this is superimposed on any small and slow change in insolation. The solar signal itself is quasi-cyclical – e.g. 2200 to 2600 years for instance – one can detect harmonics but these are all very approximate – and perhaps more important is the lack of explanation for divergent data.
None of this improves predictability of the system. We may think that solar activity will decline in short order – but this is an unknown from either first principles or cyclomania – and the internal response remains unpredictable. Some recent work suggested a 0.5 degree C drop in temperature with a decline to Maunder conditions – but I suspect that there are broad bands to this estimate on both cool and warm ends of the spectrum. And presumably this is all superimposed on warming from anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
Yes – solar activity modulates cosmogenic isotopes – for quite evident reasons – and yes – there does appear to be climate connections. But this is far too simplistic and it doesn’t mean that either there is no greenhouse gas warming or that it makes climate more predictable this century.
Here’s a much better discussion. https://www.nap.edu/catalog/13519/the-effects-of-solar-variability-on-earths-climate-a-workshop
Let ‘s watch and see what takes place , everyone has a different take even those of us who believe in solar/climate connections.
Well you might try reading the NAS report in the interim.
I am pretty much on board with Javier.
RIE,
What is the the precise and semi-quantitative process by which oceans are heated so that cloud can interact?
People everywhere are saying that IR from the sky cannot penetrate oceans enough to heat them adequately.
Geoff
Satellite data shows oceans warming from less cloud.
In earlier instrumentation –
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/wong2006figure71-e1502611755496.png
And in more precise data.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4-0_anom_toa_shortwave_flux-all-sky_march-2000tojanuary-2017-1.png
Th latter shows up in the ocean warming of the past couple of years.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/lin2.jpg
Cloud is anti-correlated with sea surface temperature – which is especially significant in the ENSO and PDO regions. There are a couple of consistent satellite data sets as well as COADS observations of cloud from ships.
This is the pointy end of the mechanism Javier is missing. It starts with UV/ozone chemistry modulating surface pressure at the poles. This pushes storms and winds more or less into lower latitudes – which spin up or not the sub-polar ocean gyres. More (less) flow in the Californian and Peruvian Currents facilitate (inhibit) cold eastern Pacific upwelling. The result is multidecadal ocean regimes that modulate cloud and climate.
IR is stopped dead at the few hundred micron thick ‘skin layer’. Oceans heat with shortwave – but increased warmth in the atmosphere slows the flux of energy from ocean to atmosphere and more heat is retained in the ocean. Considering heat flux from the interior – some 0.06W/m2 – and the slow rise in greenhouse gas forcing -1E-9W/m2 – the oceans and atmosphere simply stay a little warmer and energy equilibrium is restored in quick order.
RIE,
Thank you for the pictures, of which I am well aware.
My question was about processes and mechanisms, semi-quantitative if possible.
Do you have any mechanisms, or are you reliant on correlation = causation?
Geoff.
You haven’t redeemed yourself have you. You ask a silly question and I do my best to reply. Precise and semi-quantitative? Cloud interacting? IR not penetrating oceans to heat them adequately? Mechanisms for freaking what?
“You haven’t redeemed yourself have you. You ask a silly question and I do my best to reply. Precise and semi-quantitative? Cloud interacting? IR not penetrating oceans to heat them adequately? Mechanisms for freaking what?”
RIE:
Thanks for reminding me again of what a nasty, arrogant POS you are…. and while the likes of you deign to scatter your oh, so clever pearls of wisdom on here, whilst similarly polluting threads with your ad homs and spitefulness towards the likes of Jim D and JCH in particular, and now Geoff it seems ….. I will stay way.
Oh, and also Mr Oh, so clever… You matter not a jot re the empirical science.
Neither do I and neither does this Blog.
But what gets my goat is demagogues like you having a forum unchallenged by way of not calling out your vile attitude to anyone who deigns to disagree with your tablets of stone, handed out so magnanimously to us.
We are all of course honoured that you can spare the time to come here and instruct us.
Oh, and BTW: for Geoff.
Of course LW “heats the oceans”
It does so in a way similar to what GHG’s do in the atmosphere – by causing the oceans to cool more slowly. By reducing the DeltaT in the topmost mm’s.
https://moyhu.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/can-downwelling-infrared-warm-ocean.html
You might of course realise ( iffen your ego were a tad smaller) that I will not give you the satisfaction of coming back to read your reply – it would of course be in the same vein as all others … and as I said at the start it’s the main reason I no longer post on here.
Maybe, just maybe, Dr Curry will read this and take note, and take some action re moderation.
I do not hold my breath however.
Ta Ta
It’s a bit odd that he thinks my ego is stroked by anything he does or doesn’t do. It that projection. The typically over the top reaction suggests something beyond simply his progressive urban doofus hipster agenda. According to Tony I am a typical Trump acolyte with a big swinging dick syndrome. You have to seriously wonder where all this biliousness is coming from.
Sherrington asked a question – a seemingly climate neophyte puzzling on how IR warms the ocean. This is of course something that has been canvassed on websites for many years and that we all know the answer to. I responded with the answer in good faith but the snark in reply suggests there was another purpose in mind. It was a silly question so I called it.
The Wong et al graph shows in some detail the net radiant flux at TOA compared to ocean heat. Net radiant flux consists of an increase in emitted IR – planet cooling – and a more than offsetting decrease in reflected SW. Wong et al use the annual series of ocean heat of Joel Norris – rather than the 5 year averages of earlier XPT data. It shows with some precision that ocean warming late last century was dominated by a cloud cover reduction.
The Argo data I plotted yesterday from the Argo Global Marine Atlas software and associated database. The CERES data I recently updated as well – you can convert figures simply using volume and heat capacity – but again the dominant cause of recent ocean warming was cloud changes associated with a warm surface in the Pacific.
From experience I doubt that Sherrington is conversant with any of this. It is certain that I am not answering any more of his questions.
RIE, your wiggles didn’t answer Geoff’s question. Your usual answer is just wiggles. Put numbers in and you find that the ocean temperature change you showed requires 1 W/m2 to be sustained to warm it at that rate. Your SW wiggles are nothing like that, so you have to look beyond the clouds to some background forcing imbalance, like the well known one from GHGs, for example.
Wong shows 1.5W/m2 = the CERES data shows more than 1W/m2 SW change since 2013. I don’t deal in imaginary wiggles Jimmy dear.
The average required in the decade since 2007 to explain the ocean temperature change is 1 W/m2. Your graph has nothing like that as an average. It mostly hovers around zero.
It is such a large change over a short term that it dominates. Do the real numbers for a change.
The energy or temperature change is an integrated effect of the W/m2. Get the units right. The average since 2007 needs to be 1 W/m2 for that energy change.
“With this final correction, the ERBS Nonscanner-observed decadal changes in tropical mean LW, SW, and net radiation between the 1980s and the 1990s now stand at 0.7, – 2.1, and 1.4 W/m2 , respectively, which are similar to the observed decadal changes in the High-Resolution Infrared Radiometer Sounder (HIRS) Pathfinder OLR and the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) version FD record but disagree with the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Pathfinder ERB record. Furthermore, the observed interannual variability of near-global ERBS WFOV Edition3_Rev1 net radiation is found to be remarkably consistent with the latest ocean heat storage record for the overlapping time period of 1993 to 1999. Both datasets show variations of roughly 1.5 W/m2 in planetary net heat balance during the 1990s.”
You are complaining that Wong et al got the units wrong? It is the variation in the instantaneous flux – and you integrate all you like.
RIE, your comparison of those two graphs gets the units wrong. It is apples and oranges. Also I don’t call it climate unless it is at least decadal. Have you ruled out that the solar max at the end of your series and its consequent positive cloud feedback are a factor in the shortwave there?
You are in deep and irrational denial Jimmy dear. The CERES data is in the same units of power flux as the Wong et al graph. Necessarily. The change is evident – and any notion of it not being ‘climate’ is utterly irrelevant. It is a short term energy change that is a substantive part of recent ocean warming seen in the Argo data.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/energy-in-e1502816419321.jpg
Solar variability certainly added to it – I tend to ignore it as incident insolation changes are relatively minor. And it is not global warming is it?
RIE, I was referring to the ocean temperature, of course. I will requote myself because it now looks like you misunderstood right from the beginning.
“Put numbers in and you find that the ocean temperature change you showed requires 1 W/m2 to be sustained to warm it at that rate. Your SW wiggles are nothing like that, so you have to look beyond the clouds to some background forcing imbalance, like the well known one from GHGs, for example.”
Jimmy dear you certainly are a persistent little energizer bunny.
The rate of energy inflow needed to heat a 1900m deep column of water 0.04 degrees C over 5 years is an average of 1.92 J/m2/s – that is of course a power flux of 1.92W/m2.
The CERES SW data ranges over the same period by twice that. Nuts to you and your apparent difficulties with basic power conversion.
Your well known imbalance is nothing but overly simplified assumption based on attributing all ocean warming to greenhouse gases. Based on real data downloaded from NASA (that you want to dismiss as wiggles) – the assumption is not even remotely true.
And jimmy dear – it was of course the ocean temps I posted.
It is 0.04 degrees over ten years and that requires 1 W/m2. That means your average has to be 1 W/m2 over 2007-2017. It isn’t – not even close. Go ahead and estimate your 2007-2017 average.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/lin2.jpg
In exactly the same period as decreases in reflected SW. Nuts to you,
Clearly you are not looking at the CERES graph you posted because that average for the last ten years would be less than 0.1 W/m2.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/energy-in-e1502816419321.jpg
…and why are your two plots so different from each other. This one shows cooling at the end. The other one shows cooling in the middle.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4-0_anom_toa_shortwave_flux-all-sky_march-2000tojanuary-2017-1.png
This seems to be neophyte nonsense Jimmy dear. The incoming flux you were twittering about I showed and said that I generally ignored it as having minor energy implications. Check back. The SW graph shows less reflected SW – and thus warming.
RIE, I said, for 1900 m of ocean to warm 0.04 C since 2007 requires an average heating of 1 W/m2 since then, right? Your graph only shows that the net solar component is far from sufficient when you average it since 2007. It spends most of that time hovering around zero while the ocean was warming substantially at the same time.
Like the graph shows – ocean warming declined from 2004 and then started rising after 2011. Given the Wong et al graph it seems that oceans in 1998/99 were warmer still than 2004. The interesting question is why?
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/lin2.jpg
As usual you are a fanatic who fails to understand the basics – such as the interpretation of toa power flux just above – refuses to take responsibility for error and like all your fellow fanatics simply construct more silly narratives to obscure the picture. The change in sw forcing at toa is sufficient to account for most warming over the last few years. I can’t begin to say how tedious all this baby physics is. There are much broader and more interesting aspects to the real climate science that continues to go way over your head.
Here’s one that Ole Humlum thoughtfully overlaid a 13 month running mean on. And no it isn’t updated to 2017.
https://wordpress.com/post/watertechbyrie.com
Saves you having to squint. Crazy.
You still have your quantitative fail. You need a sustained 1 W/m2 to warm the ocean that much. Can you even understand? 300MJ/m2 when integrated over time. Can you integrate your figure over time, or do I need to help you? How many MJ/m2 do you get since 2007?
You won’t understand and this is pointless. I have said the same thing from the beginning and you keep shifting and wiggling and trying to obfuscate away from the actual energy budget of the ocean with numbers.
This is the Humlum graph. You cannot apparently interpret graphs or understand even the notion of an almost 4W/m2 decrease in reflected sw at the same time as recent ocean warming. I’ll give you a clue because obviously don’t have on – it is to with sea surface temperature in the eastern tropical Pacific.
Repeating your errors endlessly doesn’t make them less wrong just more tedious.
Humlum graph.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/new-argo.jpg
Oceans warmed at an average rate of 1.92W/ms from 2012 to 2016 – as I have said just above. Your problem is the fanatical insistence that nothing else is happening in the climate system. Nuts to you.
RIE, what is the average of your CERES graph after 2012. You hope it is 1.92 W/m2 but it is not even close. Now I predict you’ll say you don’t believe CERES anyway and will show a different wiggle.
Jimmy’s ‘numbers’ are some of the most frightening over simplifications ever to emerge on the interweb. But the endless repetition and the continuing claims that I unable to understand simple heat capacity or power calcs is just part of how climate fanaticism plays out. It seems clear that I would not have passed my engineering exams if I were so limited.
Climate fanaticism is a deep seated psychological aberration closely allayed to the 5% urban doofus hipster syndrome. And responding to this repetition of elemental non-facts just raises my commenting rate inordinately and wastes my time. Without adding anything to serious and substantive discussion of the far broader science of climate. It also pollutes the threads with what is at the end of the day far too much confused and pejorative rhetoric. I may as well perhaps be adding to an impression that Jimmy has far more credibility than he deserves to be credited with.
Thanks for playing – as they say – but all good things come to an end Jimmy dear.
RIE, your uncertainty extends to your own mathematics and use of graphs for anything quantitative. Sorry for your problem. Read again what I wrote. I am sure everyone else was able to follow along, and maybe someone else can explain to you how a warming of the ocean corresponds to a required input of energy larger than what you plotted from CERES.There are other terms you missed that cause surface warming. It’s no mystery.
Tony Banton,
Thanks for your reply. RIE does not seem to know who I am.
If the atmospheric CO2 delayed the rate of ocean cooling, then we would expect to see it.
For example, if you look at the graph of Argo shallow temperatures, they qualitatively seem to be cooling seasonally at the same rate even though Mauna Loa shows a 10% increase in CO2 from 370 to 410 ppm peak between 2004 and 2017. The change might be there, just hard to see in the data. Or maybe, the ARGO accuracy is inadequate for this purpose, which I have long been following.
Whatever line of investigation one takes into the mechanism – as opposed to the subsequent observations – the answer is unsatisfactory from one reason or another, from CO2 sensitivity possibly being zero, to atmospheric heat sinks not having the physical capacity to handle the postulated energy change.
Geoff.
Now this is funny. Tony Banton and Geoff Sherrington are from opposite ends of the climate spectrum. Neither of them seem capable of comments that are not complete nonsense. This latest from Sherrington is a case in point. Seasonal cooling disproves global warming – seems to be the message.
The first differential global energy equation is.
Δ(H&W)/dt = energy in – energy out + energy from the mantle + heat of combustion
Where heat and work in the Earth system is the result of the accumulated difference between energy in and energy out. if energy in is greater than energy out – the energy content of the planet increases – and vice versa. This is just the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. The net imbalance is estimated using ocean heat changes.
“The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Earth radiation budget (ERB) is determined from the difference between how much energy is absorbed and emitted by the planet. Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-012-9175-1
I have studiously studied the complications for many years. Net radiation at toa is up warming by convention – unlike Jimmy’s amusing confusion on the shortwave data. Opposite signs – although it is hardly encouraging that he gets this wrong and expects to be taken seriously. Ah – the life of a climate blogsite warrior!!!
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4-0_anom_toa_net_flux-all-sky_march-2000tojanuary-2017.png
It has been a little warmer in recent years as the net is dominated by less cloud with cooling in higher IR emissions.
But if you want to know why Argo seasonally varies you need to look at the raw data.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4-0_toa_net_flux-all-sky_march-2000tojanuary-2017.png
Data is king in science but the world of climate blogsites is replete with motivated narratives purporting to prove one thing or another – with a handwave to data at best.
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Javier has chosen anonymity wisely.
(beats the heck out of standing in the unemployment line… ☺)
Javier this is the best article study I have ever read about solar/climate connections and I learned much from this, it really help further my understanding.
You are so correct on all of your conclusions.
http://theweathercentre.blogspot.com/2014/05/positive-qbo-beginning-to-weaken-may.html
Some basic qbo info.
It looks like blocking this winter if negative qbo low solar correlation holds true.
You are not the only one expecting a cold NH winter. Let’s see what happens.
The system is poised to get warmer. The North Pacific is warming up. The North Atlantic is warming up. The equator is warm. August daily anomalies are about to scorch, and this pattern shows no sign of breaking. NE Canada and NE USA may be cold, but the NH is shaping up to have a warm fall and start of winter.
WRONG
I am clueless about what the temperature will be in 2018. The same goes for 2019, 2020 and 2021. I’m even more clueless about the core causal agent.
But given the lack of actual precision in measuring the global temperature and the error bars that should be placed on any number (versus those blithely used with such intellectual arrogance), I’m not sure I would put a penny on any bet as to what all the computer generated temperature data sets will say.
In reality, the global temperature might be going down each year for the next 10 years by .01C. With such spurious global coverage and lack of true precision in our measuring devices, the data sets might produce warming of .01C each year and no one would ever know. You are betting against the House and the House runs the slot machines, the craps tables and the roulette wheel. JCH and Mosher and others are in with the House. The odds are that, regardless of reality, Javier and Salvatore, in spite of their fine work, are going to be found wrong, not that they will be wrong but that everything in the system to determine right versus wrong is stacked against them.
For both of you, given the incredible tight range of global temperatures for thousands of years , I’m surprised you would venture any prediction for a particular year in such infinitesimal terms. There is not much leeway between +0.01C and -0.01C. But that is the range that could determine if you are right or wrong and whether JCH and Mosher get to gloat.
This is nothing against your work. That is another debate. I just don’t think that any year or even decade is enough time to validate or falsify your work. A century maybe. And that is maybe.
I see what you are saying but let’s see if the global temperatures start to go down as measured by satellite data the only reliable not biased data.
If they do as CO2 continues to rise it will be another nail in AGW theory.
A couple of weeks ago in a thread here at CargoCult Etc. I suggested the system was poised for warming for the rest of this year. angech suggested it was about to get so cold that 2017 would end up 5th warmest. That would require exceedingly low monthly anomalies for the rest of the year.
So August has now ignited. It is going to get very warm through the 19th. A monthly anomaly the mid 80s is possible:maybe higher. The North Pacific is warming. The North Atlantic is warming. The equator is warm. So the earth will be very very warm in 2017. ACO2 is above 400 ppm.
That’s reality. The mumbo jumbo is all the talk about accuracy and implied deviousness, etc. It’s plain silly. Global cooling is the cargo plane the witchdoctors have told the natives is about to land on their fake airstrip.
I have not predicted any cooling, Cerescokid. Just that it will be many years, perhaps 10 or more, before we surpass 2016 temperatures. For several reasons I belief we are in a climate optimum that should outlast us all. You don’t expect significant cooling while in an optimum.
JCH specialises in examining the entrails of the surface temperature like some ancient oracle – completely without benefit of an explanatory hypothesis. Sadly for him – and quite apart from the angry little hipster syndrome – short term changes in atmosphere temperature are dominated by ENSO and the PDO. This is to global warming as a fish is to a bicycle – strictly useless as a meaningful metric.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/12-8-2017-rss.jpg
It is not all that hot – because the warm conditions in the eastern Pacific are a spent force. Warm water surging east hits the margin and dissipates north and south. There is not enough energy left in the west to form another El Nino any time soon. The recharge stage of ENSO will need a couple of years of La Nina.
The central Pacific is showing signs of upwelling and the coastal zone is cooling. I have been watching for signs of another La Nina Modoki – such as caused such havoc over the last Austral summer where I live – and in California. It seems more likely now – from 30 years of watching these things – that a full blown La Nina will form in the Austral spring. The north east is cooling as well. At some stage feedbacks to surface cooling kick in and the system evolves rapidly. Then they will call it weather.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.8.10.2017.gif
I have cautioned JCH on the difficulties of ENSO prediction – even with models – not to be dissuaded he has been preaching a hell and damnation El Nino since the La Nina Modoki faded. As it does in April/May.
He continues to be wrong – but if he sticks to his guns he will be right one day. Still got sfa to do with global warming.
I am not sure what he is claiming on the basis of examining the entrails.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_July_2017_v6.jpg
What does seem clear is that challenging these type elicits a stream of rage induced vitriol.
Thanks
Maybe it’s elementary jargon, but except for dynamic effects the pressure is the weight of the air above, so I have a lot of difficulty following what’s supposed to be happening to cause pressure changes.
Yeah – me too.
“The mechanism for these changes is via a stratospheric pathway, a so-called ‘top-down’ mechanism, and involves altered heating of the stratosphere by solar ultraviolet irradiance. Anomalous temperatures in the region of the tropical stratopause give rise to changes in the subtropical stratospheric winds, in geostrophic balance with the modified equator-to-pole temperature gradient. This signal then propagates poleward and downward and is amplified by altered planetary wave activity8 before being communicated throughout the depth of the troposphere in the Pacific and Atlantic basins14.”
It is supposed to modulate surface pressure at the poles – with high (low) pressure pushing storms more (less) storms and cold wind into lower latitudes.
The geopotential height is a manifestation of pressure, and changes in geopotential height with the solar cycle have already been demonstrated, as I showed in Part B.
More plausible connections have been drawn between Sauterne prices at auction and the apperance of comets in the sky. Anonymous reviewers have there place in vetting science but anonymous authors generally signal works of the imagination.
“A topic ripe for further study is external forcing. What is its role in the stadium-wave ? Solar is suspected as a player (Wyatt 2012) – its tempo and magnitude of variability at the helm. Exactly how, remains the question.” Marcia Wyatt
It has long been suggested that ENSO is a stochastically forced resonant system. That is – that a random external variable biases the system to one state or the other and then feedbacks and resonance kicks in that determine the evolution of the system. The origin of variability in the Pacific is more or less upwelling in the eastern Pacific. The most modern suggestion is that sub-polar oceanic gyres in both hemispheres spin up or not due to modulation by the Northern and Southern Annular Modes (NAM and SAM) – that are related to the polar vortices but are surface pressure phenomenon that are the actual pathway to cold winters where we live in both hemispheres. This winter I swear I could sense the Antarctic in the winds, cloud and ocean currents around me. Living on the Tropic o Capricorn – I can be sanguine about it. The beat at a base tempo of 20 to 30 years may be due to solar UV variability in the ~22 year Hale cycle. It is part of a connected, global spanning system
“Our strategy was to evaluate collective behavior within a network of climate indices. Considering index networks rather than raw 3-D climatic fields is a relatively novel approach that has its own advantages — such as potentially increased dynamical interpretability, along with apparent increase of signal-to-noise ratio, and enhanced statistical significance — at the expense of detailed phenomenological completeness. In particular, the climate indices may represent distinct subsets of dynamical processes — tentatively, “climate oscillators” — that might, however, exhibit various degrees of
83 coupling (Tsonis et al. 2007). As these indices also pertain to different geographical regions, we directly address the question of the global multidecadal teleconnections. Using fairly standard multivariate statistical tools, we aim to characterize dominant mode of climate co-variability in the Northern Hemisphere and provide rigorous estimates of its statistical significance, namely: What are the chances that the low-frequency alignment of various regional climatic time series, alluded to in an impressive suite of previous climate studies (see section 1), is, in fact, random?” http://www.wyattonearth.net/images/1WKT_2012_author_manuscript.pdf
With such a wealth of chaotic oscillators as nodes on a globally networked system – connections are to be found everywhere and attempts to arbitrarily isolate one chaotic oscillator and nominate it as the causal agent of internal variability is an exercise in futility. Throw away correlation and reductionism – embrace a new network math of synchronised chaos and a far less certain but much more fun science of uberty.
( https://hydroclimate.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/debates-hypothesis-testing-in-hydrology-pursuing-certainty-versus-pursuing-uberty/ )
In general – a declining solar activity may bias the Earth system to a cooler state – when and how much is unknowable. But then we must also anticipate a warming bias due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. There is nothing here to gainsay that and it all seems pretty much a colossal waste of time. I could be on Facebook or streaming video. Actually – I went to the ‘Village Festival’ this morning – and ended up knee deep in doofus hipsters. Most instructive.
I realise that most of you don’t have a clue what Marcia is on about. I am therefore drifting off in stream of consciousness for my own amusement and you may simply sail away on Salvatore’s leaky boat.
Where you are wrong is your assertion that some how greenhouse gases have a warming effect on the climate when there is no evidence of that.
This period of time in the climate being no way unique, the climate having been much warmer in the past with lower greenhouse gas concentrations and the basic assumptions of AGW THEORY are not present that being a lower tropospheric hot spot and the evolution to a more positive NAO.
The test in on in my opinion and I say the low solar currently being experienced will be sufficient to bring global temperatures back to 30 year means by next summer. We shall see.
In addition the warming late last century can be attributed to high solar activity, lack of major volcanic activity, the ration of El Nino’s to La Nina activity, the positive PDO , urban heat island effects and land usage changes in some cases.
As you are in the boat with Javier – you should ask him if greenhouse gases are warming or not.
Re: “the basic assumptions of AGW THEORY are not present that being a lower tropospheric hot spot”
I already know you don’t honestly care about evidence, so I’m instead making this comment for the sake of the people you’re trying to trick.
The hot spot has been found multiple times. If you want to show that for yourself, then go here:
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/testdap/timeseries.pl
Select the tropics (latitude: -30 to 30), select 1979 – 2016, select “anomaly”, plot it as a timeseries line plot, and then compare temperature near the surface (“2m air temperature”) and air temperature at 300mb (part of the tropical upper troposphere). Do this for the following re-analyses that cover atmospheric temperature:
NCEP/NCAR R1 (NCEP-1), NCEP/DOE R2 (NCEP-2);
NCEP/CFSR;
ERA-Interim;
MERRA, MERRA-2;
JRA-55
I’m not cherry-picking re-analyses, since Curry and Christy cite ERA-Interim, Christy cites MERRA-2 and JRA-55 as well, Pielke Sr. cites NCEP-1, and Watts cites NCEP-2:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/01/assessing-atmospheric-temperature-data-sets-for-climate-studies/
https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-115-SY-WState-JChristy-20170329.pdf
https://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-278b.pdf
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/303/5665/1771.2
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/04/what-stratospheric-hotspot/
If the hot spot is real, then the warming (i.e. the “slope” number at the bottom of the page when you make the graph) should be greater at 300mb than at 2 meters for each of the analyses; i.e. the upper tropospheric warming should be amplified relative to near-surface warming in the re-analyses.
That hot spot appears for EVERY RE-ANALYSIS I mentioned above, with the exception of MERRA-2 (which has a number of issues, such as not reproducing the 300mb temperature spike expected for the 1997/8 El Nino).
Anyway, here are some other sources showing the hot spot:
In satellite data:
#1 : “Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends”
#2 : “Temperature trends at the surface and in the troposphere”
#3 : “Removing diurnal cycle contamination in satellite-derived tropospheric temperatures: understanding tropical tropospheric trend discrepancies”, table 4
#4 : “Comparing tropospheric warming in climate models and satellite data”, figure 9B
In radiosonde (weather balloon) data:
#5 : “Internal variability in simulated and observed tropical tropospheric temperature trends”, figures 2c and 4c
#6 : “Atmospheric changes through 2012 as shown by iteratively homogenized radiosonde temperature and wind data (IUKv2)”, figure 1 and 2
#7 : “New estimates of tropical mean temperature trend profiles from zonal mean historical radiosonde and pilot balloon wind shear observations”, figure 9
#8 : “Reexamining the warming in the tropical upper troposphere: Models versus radiosonde observations”, figure 3 and table 1
In re-analyses:
#9 : “Detection and analysis of an amplified warming of the Sahara Desert”, figure 7
#10 : “Westward shift of western North Pacific tropical cyclogenesis”, figure 4b
#11 : “Influence of tropical tropopause layer cooling on Atlantic hurricane activity”, figure 4
#12 : “Estimating low-frequency variability and trends in atmospheric temperature using ERA-Interim”, figure 23 and page 351
And the hot spot is not a fingerprint of CO2-induced warming; it comes with any significant surface warming in the tropics, especially warming of the tropical oceans:
“In the tropics, moist thermodynamic processes amplify surface warming […]. Such tropical amplification occurs for any surface warming; it is not a unique signature of greenhouse gas (GHG)-induced warming, as has been incorrectly claimed (Christy 2015).”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0333.1
Figure 12.5 on page 707:
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-12.PDF
A few other points:
1) The RSS tropospheric warming values in paper #3 are spuriously low. That accounts for why the RSS hot spot in paper #3 is smaller than the UW hot spot and NOAA hot spot. This spuriously low trend was corrected by the RSS team in:
#13 : “Sensitivity of Satellite-Derived Tropospheric Temperature Trends to the Diurnal Cycle Adjustment”
The corrected RSS trend is shown in figure 4B of paper #4. With that correction, the magnitude of the RSS hot spot is between the UW hot spot and the NOAA hot spot.
2) Of the radiosonde data-sets, only HadAT does not show a post-1970s hot spot. That result should be taken with a grain of salt however, since the HadAT team strongly recommends that researchers not rely on just the HadAT data-set. Instead, they recommend that researchers use other radiosonde data-sets as well, along with the RSS analysis:
#14 : http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadat/index.html
3) The ERAI re-analysis underestimates lower troposphere warming, as acknowledged in paper #12 and in:
#15 : “A reassessment of temperature variations and trends from global reanalyses and monthly surface climatological datasets”
That accounts for the dip in lower tropospheric warming for ERAI in papers #9, #11, and #12.
4) The NCEP-2/NCAR re-analysis has a history of under-estimating tropospheric warming, as discussed in:
#16 : “Response to Comment on “Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes””
So apply some skepticism to the NCEP-2/NCAR trends in papers #9 and #11.
5) In addition to stratospheric cooling and the other fingerprints you mentioned, mesospheric cooling and thermospheric cooling are also observed signatures of CO2. Here are some sources on this:
#17 : “A model estimate of cooling in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere due to the CO2 increase over the last 3–4 decades”
#18 : “Evidence of CO2-induced progressive cooling of the middle atmosphere derived from radio observations”
#19 : “Ozone and temperature decadal trends in the stratosphere, mesosphere and lower thermosphere, based on measurements from SABER on TIMED”
#20 : “Why CO2 cools the middle atmosphere-a consolidating model perspective”
#21 : “Effect of trends of middle atmosphere gases on the mesosphere and thermosphere”
#22 : “How will changes in carbon dioxide and methane modify the mean structure of the mesosphere and thermosphere?”
I cover all this further here:
http://blamethenoctambulantjoycean.blogspot.com/2017/07/myth-tropospheric-hot-spot-does-not_21.html
The negative phase of the stadium wave has already taken place. It was barely a blip, and the next one will be even less of a blip. The surface is hot. Cooling periods, like Jun-July 2017 will be short lived; August 2017 is snapping back in a big hot hurry; the cooling of the rest of 2017 that was predicted here at CargoCult Etc. just a couple of weeks ago has been murdered by meek little old ENSO neutral; because climate sensitivity is not low. Get used to the pattern; it’s your future.
Funny how a biased stance will cloud reality which is things at best from your point of view are neutral, much less cooling.
Certainly not warming.
“A topic ripe for further study is external forcing. What is its role in the stadium-wave ? Solar is suspected as a player (Wyatt 2012) – its tempo and magnitude of variability at the helm. Exactly how, remains the question.” Marcia Wyatt
From Robert the above.
Javier explained it in detail , not to mention the historical climatic record unlike for CO2 which does show a solar/climate relationship.
This article Javier wrote on solar /climate relationships is explained so well and if this does not convince one, nothing will.
Robert Ellison , I have to say your post are very informative and I do agree with much of what you have to say, but not everything.
This is a great article and thread . I am saving this whole thing for a very long time.
Javier thinks they might be to some extent, we do not agree on everything 100%.
I say when the basic premises a theory is built on are wrong the theory is wrong.
If and until this period in climatic history becomes unique AGW theory as far as I am concern has nothing to stand on.
bye bye LIA
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170404084420.htm
You have not comprehended a thing Javier has said. It figures.
Do you subscribe that, Steven? Because every glaciologist is very clear that the LIA corresponds to the highest extent in global glaciers. We have to ignore an entire field with very solid evidence to rewrite history.
Javier
You will be aware of LE Roy’s great book ‘ times of feast times of famine.’ also the work by such as Lamb and groves many of whom I cite in my article, they thoroughly researched glacier movements.
I have also stood on various glaciers and seen the records in the local churches town halls and museums of farms overwhelmed and subsequent reductions in church tithes, only for the land to reappear again many years later and for taxes to be levied once more . I have also walked over the places where roman mines existed only to be covred in ice by the LIA .
If Steven has no interest in anything prior to 1700 it is little wonder he has no knowledge of the Lia. It is an extremely well documented period. The LIA the MWP, the Minoan warm period ( much in evidence in my neck of the woods with extensive bronze age remains ) the roman warm period etc all help to put the present into its proper historic context.
Tonyb
Yes, Tony. Lamb I have read. Others through cites, and your interesting articles. The LIA is very well documented in Europe. Those that deny history make a fool of themselves. And the data on glaciers is global.
Nobody is denying history.
Mosh
Fortunately my analysis of the LIA is a lot more detailed than Prof Lockwood’s and contains many more interesting graphics.
https://judithcurry.com/2015/02/19/the-intermittent-little-ice-age/
The point is that it was intermittent and the name LIA is a misunderstood term, even apparently by Prof Lockwood. No+ one has ever compared it to a real ice age in its intensity.
In 1939 Matthes had written in a survey on behalf of a Committee on Glaciers for the American Geophysical Union ‘we are living in an epoch of renewed but moderate glaciation ‘a little ice age’ that already has lasted about 4000 years’.
.
As I noted in my article
“This leads us back to the theme of this paper which questions whether the LIA, as it is popularly-if not scientifically- characterised, is misunderstood and misnamed? The answer must be Yes. A prolonged era of rapidly changing temperatures with some notable periods of cold interspersed with some notably warm periods-neither of them especially extended- suggests the term LIA is a misnomer. (See 3.9 to see how the term was originally used in a scientific context). The climate variability from hot too cold with every variation in between throughout the record is noticeable, as is the rapidity with which these different climate states occur. As Brian Fagan noted:
‘The pendulum of climate change rarely paused for more than a Generation.’
This half a degree variation is plainly not correct as far as CET goes.
What is the most interesting aspect is that a general warming can be determined for some 350 years (see figure 5 in article) so the current warming needs to be seen in that context as being a staging post of increasing warmth, not the starting post.
tonyb
Mosher and others want to dismember the MWP as well since it creates the unfounded illusion of the current warming as being unprecedented. Sorry, there are too many peer reviewed with citations to both to fall for this smokescreen. Why don’t they call Al to see what he thinks. After all he didn’t take 10 seconds to call Larsen iceberg a result of AGW. No wonder no one listens to them anymore.
I have no interest in anything before 1700.
what IS interesting is how people standard of proof changes WRT temperatures at eariler times.
Of course you don’t since that is where the big enchilada sits to provide a better perspective on this current warm period. It is easier to convince the unwashed without the messy questions about previous warm periods. In the final analysis it doesn’t matter what you think. It only matters what reality is and reality is not your friend.
As is so often the case with cold hard truth, it also hurts.
You shouldn’t be reading this series in the first place, then.
JCH,
Let’s turn Lockwood’s words around:
“On the whole the Current Global Warming is a manageable upturn in climate concentrated in particular regions, even though places like the UK had a larger fraction of warm winters. Our research suggests that there is no single explanation for this, that warm summers continued much as they do today and that not all winters were warm.”
Nobody denies anything.
Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity?
M Lockwood1,2, R G Harrison1, T Woollings1 and S K Solanki3,4
Published 14 April 2010 • IOP Publishing Ltd
Lockwood et al say yes.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001/meta
But it seems far more than a regional phenomenon.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/pages-2k-temps.jpg
Global temperature changes require a modulation of the global energy budget. I am largely ignorant of the detailed dynamics of the northern hemisphere and Atlantic Ocean system – but it appears that no one has yet posited a viable mechanism for energy budget modulation – as opposed to shuffling energy around the Northern Hemisphere.
It is however part of a global system and answers may be found there. The long term problem involves ice feedbacks. Short term modulation of climate involves cloud changes in response to changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation.
To solve the riddle requires a global overview – a departure from an American and Euro-centric mindset that seems so prevalent.
Javier ,I am interested in, what would it take to change your mind about us being in a climatic optimum. You could very well be correct but I am curious and interested on what might change your mind if anything? Thanks.
JAVIER SAYS BELOW
I have not predicted any cooling, Cerescokid. Just that it will be many years, perhaps 10 or more, before we surpass 2016 temperatures. For several reasons I belief we are in a climate optimum that should outlast us all. You don’t expect significant cooling while in an optimum
Salvatore,
Given the rate of temperature change registered in proxies, the evidence to convince me that the optimum has ended would take longer to accumulate that we are expected to live. So I don’t think I can be convinced. 400 years of warming have placed us in a blessed optimum.
Thanks. You have to keep doing these articles. I learned much from this.
Judith Curry,
I have written in your thread Climate etc. ( https://judithcurry.com/2017/05/02/nyes-quadrant/#comment-848558 ) as a summary: ”As anthropogenic CO2 emissions do not dominate the CO2 content in atmosphere, and as even total content of CO2 in atmosphere does not dominate the climate temperature, the influence of CO2 from fossile fuels – and even from other anthropogenic CO2 sources – is so minimal that it cannot be distinguished from zero. This means that cutting of anthropogenic CO2 emissions from any anthropogenic source is unnecessary and causes only losses.” Thereafter the key question is how can we adapt ourselves, well enough, to the ‘unbound’ nature.
The problem experienced by me, conserning the climate warming believed to be caused by man-made CO2 emissions, is how to make this complex be understandable more easily than in the link above.
A further quotation from a comment of my own: ‘ Judith Curry’s statement ”how much warming is caused by humans is THE key issue of debate” is the most urgent one in the order of priority to be solved. The quicker the better that all the potentially unnecessary funding for man-made warming can be replaced by funding for the research on the main key question: how do we learn to adapt ourselves to natural climate changes and extreme weather events.’ (https://judithcurry.com/2017/07/03/what-is-red-teaming/#comment-853393 )
At first we have to solve the anthropogenic share in the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere. Instead of the hypothetic, circular argumentation on human caused CO2 content in atmosphere used in the climate model calculations adopted by IPCC, we have to understand the natural law, according to which the CO2 content in atmosphere is controlled together by both all CO2 emissions from sources to atmosphere and all absorptions to sinks from atmosphere: CO2 content in atmosphere, together with some potential CO2 emissions and CO2 absorptions, is striving for such a level, which makes dynamic balance between all CO2 emissions from sources to atmosphere and all CO2 absorption from atmosphere to sinks be possible. If the emissions are more than absorptions, the CO2 content in atmosphere is increasing, but if they are less, the CO2 content in atmosphere is decreasing.
”Recently the CO2 content in atmosphere has increased about 2.2 ppm a year. As the total amount of CO2 emissions to atmosphere has then contained only about 4 % CO2 from fossile fuels, in this yearly increase of 2.2 ppm in the atmospheric CO2 content there has been only about o.o88 % CO2 from fossile fuels, at the most.” (https://judithcurry.com/2017/03/20/discussion-thread-improving-the-interface-between-climate-science-and-policy/#comment-842716.)
More repetition from my earlier texts to make the issue easier be understood by even politicians as laymen:
In my commen https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/10/the-new-climate-denial/#comment-838229 I have further written:
”In the same way as [water from] a small ditch has only minimal influence on lake flooding compared to all the amount of water coming to lake, the small amount of 4 % CO2 from fossile fuels in the total CO2 emissions to atmosphere has only minimal influence on total increase of CO2 content in atmosphere. This proves that CO2 from fossile fuels has recently conrolled only about 4% of the total increase of recent CO2 content in atmosphere at the most”; https://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-198992. In the same comment I have proved that warming of sea surface water in oceans – especially on the areas where sea surface CO2 sinks are – dominates the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere.
At second we have to solve the share of warming caused by the total increase of CO2 content in atmosphere. In my link https://judithcurry.com/2017/07/19/stealth-advocasy-a-survey-of-weathercasters-views-on-climate-change/#comment-854996 I have proved: ” – – – trends of increase of CO2 content in atmosphere follow trends of climate temperature and not vice versa i.e. according to geological observations during last 100 million years in 10 million years periodes CO2 contents in atmosphere have followed changes of climate temperture; during glacials and interglacials trends of CO2 content in atmosphere have followed trends of temperature changes in climate; and the last nearly two decades prove that CO2 content in atmosphere has been increasing by lag after climate warming. This all should make anyone true that climate sensitivity – i.e. warming of climate as CO2 content in atmosphere is doubling – is so minimal that it can not be distinguished from zero.” And because the share of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the total increase of CO2 content in atmosphere is minimal, it is unreasonable to try to mitigate climate warming by cutting man-made CO2 emissions.
At third we have the problem, how we can learn, well enough, to adapt ourselves to potential, natural threats of climate changes and extreme events of weather.
A very interesting addition to the debate. Does the annual very slight rise in CO2 correspond to the greening phenomenon on Earth? Has this event repeated itself at the peak of every interstadial period? It seems it might. When something causes the jagged stair-stepped fall to a stadial period, CO2 lags by quite a bit, remaining high for a good portion of the initial slide. Is that because the “un-greening” of the Earth takes a bit of time? Which would explain the continued presence of additional CO2 in the atmosphere until the plants and animals that are forcing this, succumb to the cold.
There is around 10 times more C tied up in the biosphere and less continental aridity now than at the last LGM (IPCC AR4 WG1, Ch 6).
“Lower continental aridity during the Mid-Pliocene” https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-3-2.html
“10% – 33% less terrestrial carbon storage at the LGM compared to today (300-1000 GtC less C in biosphere at GCM compared with preindustrial 300 GtC)” https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-4-1-4.html
This demonstrates life thrives during warm times and struggles during cold times. It also seems inconsistent with the meme that 2C global warming would be dangerous and must be avoided at all costs.
Correction:
“10% – 33% less terrestrial carbon storage at the LGM compared to today (300-1000 GtC less C in biosphere at GCM compared with preindustrial 3000 GtC)”
Exact quote:
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-4-1-4.html
Temperature records, as commonly used in time series, are not always a good way to confirm or deny heating or cooling. Objective measures like number of frost days, dew point T, number of days each year above 100F or another target figure, or even Tmax adjusted for daily local rainfall effects are rather more suitable in some cases, like when they are available.
To illustrate, In Australia Sydney and melbourne house nearly half of the population and thus are giving us more, longer and hotter heatwaves each year. So the officials say, usually using a Tmean time series to illustrate.
To the contrary, using a days hotter than XXX index, here are the so-called dangerous warming profiles for Sydney and Melbourne, using official BOM data. Geoff
http://www.geoffstuff.com/century_days_sydmelb.jpg
Geoff, this is very useful. It is the kind of analysis which can provide a comprehensive description of the climate and its changes (if any) at real locations.
It is the exact opposite of the throwing away of information inherent in manufacturing a single number to represent the temperature of the earth. How such a measure ever became influential in climate work is beyond me.
Statements such as this “…low energy changes in TSI…” suggest a fundamental lack of appreciation for the relation between power and energy. TSI is a power thing. Its time-integral is required to determine energy. Energy divided by effective thermal capacitance is temperature. To get to the change in temperature (anomaly), consider the time-integral of the anomaly of TSI, with respect to a long term average of TSI, as a proxy, TSI and SSN are closely correlated. Application of this using SSN results in a close match with measured average global temperatures (98% 1895-2015). http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
“You avoided what I asked. We control whether the forcing is 2 W/m2 or 8 W/m2. Do you favor aiming more for the 2 to stabilize the climate in more known territory, or to ignore the problem and drift towards the unprecedented 8? This is the central question here, and you always just equivocate on it. I don’t expect you to answer this time either. Skeptics just don’t.” Jimmy D
Quite apart from Jimmy dears nutty numbers – I often wonder just what it is that I am skeptical of. I think I have worked it out.
“Well … I mean, it’s going to be pretty hard to devastate the Earth to the point we can’t live on it. But if we’re ever going to get this thing solved, we’re going to need an international group that has a lot of authority. It’ll have to be like the Fed, but to manage carbon. That would mean we’d all have to give up a lot of our sovereignty, but I think that’s the only way it would happen. It couldn’t be the U.N., because the U.N. doesn’t have the power. They’d have to be able to penalize, they’d probably have to have an army, because cheating would be very, very lucrative…
I’d say it’s one chance in a thousand. I mean, we may get to that. Maybe China will get so powerful that it can start to dictate. That’s what we need. Our democracy is shot, I think. It just doesn’t work.” http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/man-who-coined-global-warming-on-worst-case-scenarios.html
So yes I am very skeptical of these sorts of nutty ruminations. And Jimmy’s question I have answered long ago. The old framework of targets and timetables enforced by treaty and sanctions has failed dismally.
“The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts. This new approach recognizes that continually deadlocked international
negotiations and failed domestic policy proposals bring no climate benefit at all. It accepts that only sustained effort to build momentum through politically feasible forms of action will lead to accelerated decarbonization.
If this new era is to be led at all, it will be led primarily by example, not global treaty. The Copenhagen Accord is one of essentially voluntary actions among major emitters. The accord perpetuates the conceit that international negotiations will ultimately include legally binding emissions reduction targets, but in reality, the emissions targets will be unenforceable and thus constitute aspirational goals, not binding limits. That reality became ever clearer at UNFCCC negotiations in Cancún in December 2010. The substantive parts of the Copenhagen Accord are the new multilateral agreements to invest in new energy technology, slow deforestation, and build disaster resilience — far better grounds for global cooperation than unenforceable emissions targets and timetables.” http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_pragmatism_innovation
With COP21 in Paris in late 2015 – the world has definitively chosen to access whatever energy resource is needed to facilitate economic growth and development. COP21 locked in an increase in energy emissions of 3.7 billion metric tons by 2030. If you are looking for ‘solutions’ to emissions it will have to come from elsewhere. The substantive progress that came out of Paris was the French ‘4 pour mille’ initiative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBeCHZNf2L4
Jimmy is a recalcitrant like all of his ilk. He eschews rational ways forward – energy innovation, building resilience and no-regrets emission reductions – in favour of imposition of a world government and dismantling of democracy and capitalism. The cost of that is far too high for most people. Jimmy is part of the problem – not the solution.
Again you prefer to quote other people’s views instead of stating your own. You quoted Wally Broecker who is a Paris skeptic like you. What about your quote from the Breakthrough Institute, for or against that? Why? From the end part, I gather that you agree with Wally that Paris doesn’t go far enough to solve the problem, which it seems therefore you recognize needs to be solved. I think it is too early to tell for Paris because they will re-evaluate their position every five years as technology advances, and they will see what works and what doesn’t, but maybe you wanted a carbon tax or more financial commitment to renewable R&D or a shift to nuclear or something else. What CO2 level are you fine with by 2100? Alternatively, how many GtCO2 would you think we can safely emit by then? Do the numbers you choose require a reduction in global per capita emissions and a change of direction in the energy policies of various countries? These are the questions I am interested in that get too little discussion here.
Dismantle the UNFCCC. Dismantle the UN. Embrace economic growth, release the creative force of capitalism, innovate on low cost and abundant energy.
I don’t give a rat’s arse about energy emissions. There’s not a huge future for oil, gas and coal – but what future there is needs to unfold according to fundamental economic principles. Prices will rise with demand and scarcity. Fracked gas has decades before it basically just stops flowing. Fossil oil production has peaked and will decline. Coal has 60 years reserves at current use.
Innovation will drive technology – and markets will freely and rapidly adapt – with higher productivity – to changing technology.
Global wealth creates prosperous communities in vibrant landscapes and the ‘problem’ of greenhouse gases evaporates. Ironically – whether or not there is a greenhouse gas problem is utterly irrelevant. We have wasted decades pursuing Jimmy’s sort of nonsense – while solutions to the real issues of people and environments go begging.
Jimmy’s monomania has led him definitively down the rabbit hole. Enough is far too much. It is much more than time for a different path.
You are hoping that fossil fuel companies will cease developing resources into proven reserves just through lack of profitability compared to renewables. What if they apply their own technology advances and exploration to developing a further 5k to 10k GtCO2 into energy they can sell? This is only a factor of 2-3 times the current proven reserves and those resources exist in various forms. Should this be discouraged or just allowed as part of the free market ideal that does not care about consequences? Someone has to care about consequences. That’s where the science and UN come in. Note that 5k-10k GtCO2 get us 5-7 W/m2 of forcing or 4-6 C of warming when you work it out. Your hope is that they don’t develop those resources and just go renewable instead. Maybe they will, but it will be because of international pressure, not economics.
That is something the Breakthrough Institute disagrees with Jimmy dear. I agree with them on this – that’s why I quoted it.
i am not technology agnostic – I don’t really care whether it is renewable. Just whether it is cost-competitive.
And Peter – you fail to show that extreme and abrupt climate change is not possible. Guessing doesn’t count.
The free market is myopic. Their time horizon is based on the hoped for career length of the CEO. This is somewhat like politics operates too with election cycles. These are not optimal for solving long-term problems. You need some forward thinking and strategical plans. There are some nations, cities and industries, that you would dismiss as green, that have such plans, because they believe the scientific evidence and care about the future.
Economically the world is locked into a growth cycle – despite any and all reservations and interventions. A high growth planet brings resources to solve people and environment problems. The clearest way to economic growth is markets – and the biggest risk is market mismanagement.
The global economy is worth about $100 trillion a year. To put aid and philanthropy into perspective – the total is 0.025% of the global economy. If spent on Copenhagen Consensus smart development goals such expenditure can generate a benefit to cost ratio of more than 15. If spent on the UN Sustainable Development Goals you may as well piss it up against a wall. Either way – it is nowhere near the major path to universal prosperity. Some 3.5 billion people make less than $2 a day. Changing that can only be done by doubling and tripling global production – and doing it as quickly as possible. Optimal economic growth is essential and that requires an understanding and implementation of explicit principles for effective economic governance of free markets. So what are these laws of capitalism?
https://watertechbyrie.com/2016/03/11/all-bubbles-burst-laws-of-economics-for-the-new-millennium/
There are plenty of my words available Jimmy dear. and yes we know where you are coming from. Whining about capitalism and democracy and hoping that your Procrustean version of climate science can serve as a stalking horse for societal and economic transformation.
Fossil fuels have overstayed their welcome and are being gently pushed out the door. The world is on to them and what they do to the climate. The jig is up, and anyone thinking of energy investment is looking in a different direction. You may deny that science had anything to do with this state of affairs for them, but it has. That whole debate is now in the past (except for in the good old US, of course, whose quaint fossil-fueled congress has other ideas).
America will continue on a gas to nuclear pathway – indeed as canvassed in the Obama energy transition plan. And will ramp up ‘negative emission’ technologies for many very good reasons.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/us-soil-conservation.png
From a very recent report from an ASEAN energy research group. The rest of world is more focused on HELE technology – again for very good reasons.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/hele.jpg
Most of the energy growth will be in non-OECD countries – and most of that will be fossil fuel powered.
http://energypost.eu/hydropowers-big-splash-word-energy-council-projects-decades-strong-growth/
Renewables are mostly hydropower.
“Amidst all the excitement about the growth of wind and solar power, it is easy to forget that by far the largest source of renewable energy is hydroelectricity. In 2013, hydropower capacity grew by 40 GW, more than wind or solar. And global capacity, notes the World Energy Council in a report released today, as part of the World Energy Resources series, is expected to double to 2,000 GW by 2050.” http://energypost.eu/hydropowers-big-splash-word-energy-council-projects-decades-strong-growth/
You may read as many dreamy green blogs as you like Jimmy dear – but the disjunct between your fantasy and reality is mildly alarming.
I agree with this.
The meme that GHG emissions and global warming are dangerous is pure speculation. Empirical evidence does not seem to support the meme.
Not the right video at all.
“You are hoping that fossil fuel companies will cease developing resources into proven reserves just through lack of profitability compared to renewables. What if they apply their own technology advances and exploration to developing a further 5k to 10k GtCO2 into energy they can sell?” Jimmy D
I didn’t specifically mention renewables – they are far from being cost competitive at this stage. Nor can it currently support the development needs of industrializing economies.
I am not opposed to technology of any kind in principle. My concern is what works. Nor am I in the practice of predicting future technologies. Over decades it is likely that gas and High Efficiency Low Emission coal technology will remain the generation technology of choice for most of the world.
“More than one billion people globally lack access to electricity, and billions more still burn wood and dung for their basic energy needs. Our High-Energy Planet, a new report from an international group of energy and environment scholars, outlines a radically new framework for meeting the energy needs of the global poor.
According to the authors, the massive expansion of energy systems, mainly carried out in the rapidly urbanizing global South, is the only robust, coherent, and ethical response to the global challenges we face, climate change among them. The time has come to embrace a high-energy planet, they say…
A recent analysis from the Center for Global Development, for instance, estimates that if $10 billion were invested in renewable energy technology in sub-Saharan Africa, then 30 million would gain access to electricity. If the same amount of money was given to gas-fired generation, it would supply around 90 million – or three times as many people.” https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/our-high-energy-planet
However – development of further fossil fuel resources is increasingly expensive as low cost resources are exhausted. Global energy demand will increase by 350% this century. The cost of these resources will rise. This is not a matter of allowing or not allowing exploitation of the remaining resource – it is an inevitable result of fundamental market dynamics.
The 5% solution – the population of urban doofus hipsters – is no solution at all. The urban doofus hipster vision involves narratives of moribund western economies governed by corrupt corporations collapsing under the weight of internal contradictions – leading to less growth, less material consumption, less CO2 emissions, less habitat destruction and a last late chance to stay within the safe limits of global ecosystems. And this is just in the ‘scholarly’ journals. You can see where Jimmy is coming from. And why they fantasize about UN armies invading profligate emitters – or of Chinese takeovers.
If nothing better comes along – I suggest a plan B.
http://www.insidesources.com/advanced-nuclear-energy-power-americas-future/
“To provide [electricity] in today’s world, an ‘advanced reactor’ must improve over existing reactors in the following 4-core objectives. It must produce significantly less costly, cost-competitive clean electricity, be safer, produce significantly less waste and reduce proliferation risk. It is not sufficient to excel at one without regard to the others.” Dr. Christina Back, Vice President, Nuclear Technologies and Materials for General Atomics, May 2016 testimony before the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the status of advanced nuclear technologies.
See – all bases covered Jimmy dear. And yes I agree with Christina Back.
Renewables are decreasing in price and will undercut coal soon enough. Combustion engines will also become a thing of the past in a few decades. African countries can’t afford today’s renewables unless you help them, but in the future it will be the cheapest way to go. I don’t think you really want Africa to go nuclear. Remember this is a multi-decade reduction in fossil fuel burning that also prevents running into that depletion wall at full speed. Current proven reserves will run out by 2100 at today’s emission rates, and that is after switching to coal as a last resort after the gas and oil are gone. They run out sooner if we continue to increase emissions. That’s the non-reduction scenario. It only shows how important the phase out is, and how we should be starting now if you want to save some natural gas for Africa, for example. You come by a different route to the same page. Phase out fossil fuels, phase in non-fossil and renewables, and do this by 2100.
Africa has lots of gas – but absolutely I want Africa to go nuclear. Small modular reactors are the perfect solution – allowing implementation without the need for continent spanning grid infrastructure.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1182638705185723
I’m pretty into technology – and I love the idea of electric cars. If you look at this – check the links. Especially Steampunk Girl. What started me thinking down this track was Steampunk Girl’s post of a 1931 Bugatti Type 51 Dubos Coupe. That would work too. So poised – so elegant – so sexy. Both Steampunk Girl and the Bugatti.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/993036974145898
I am quite into technology. What started me thinking down this track was Steampunk Girl’s post of a 1931 Bugatti Type 51 Dubos Coupe. If you look at this be sure to check the links.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/993036974145898
Seems to have showed up twice – if you see this Juith please delete the bottom one.
We might remotely be on the same page Jimmy dear – if you drop taxes and subsidies.
Subsidies for new industries are a way for a country to compete: wind, solar, electric and fuel-efficient cars, that’s where the money is. China and Germany can do it, so why not the US. I might think you Aussies are trying to destroy American competitiveness with ideas like that, but Trump is also of that mindset. Countries will put tariffs on US exports to make up for Paris. It’s like America threatening to tie one hand behind its back. The competitors will be happy.
I forgot what an economic heathen you are. What you suggested would be classified as ‘dumping’ by the WTO. Something Trump is quite right about China on. His trade policies are generally rubbish – but so were Bernie’ and Hilary’s. America doesn’t need sabotaging – you do quite well by yourself.
“A salient characteristic of many modern industries is the large fixed cost of entry. Such costs may be due to significant investments in R&D or to the need for expensive and highly specialized capital equipment. Typical
examples of such industries are the aircraft industry and the pharmaceutical industry. In such a set-up, average production costs decline the more units each company produces and the relevant industries are therefore referred to as decreasing cost industries or industries characterised by increasing returns to scale.” https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/anrep_e/wtr06-2c_e.pdf
Subsidizing entry costs and eqipment investment has some virtue. But this applies equally well to fossil fuel energy exploration, commercialization of new nuclear designs, etc. A small hypothecated tax has been proposed by many for this purpose. For the purposes of a civil and working democracy – if you have the numbers so be it. Operational subsidies are a different kettle of fish. Economies and consumers never get out from under operational subsidies. We subsidized cars for decades before finally giving the industry a mercy killing by pulling the plug.
Subsidizing can be done through tax incentives or tax breaks. There are many creative ways to subsidize without dumping. Buying incentives are another popular one, especially for electric vehicles and domestic solar panels. These increase the domestic market for the products which can help the industry’s growth which may extend overseas.
You have of course never seen a subsidy you didn’t like. The objective for business is to build a sustainable business model for a post subsidy world.
The government should help their national businesses any way they can, especially to compete on the world stage. Trade deals, subsidies, tax breaks, all part of just being a good government on behalf of the people, even companies. If they don’t because of some libertarian principles, they have to be aware the most other countries are not so libertarian and will take advantage.
Creative ways to subsidize and pretend it doesn’t amount to dumping is called cheating, yimster. And lest us know what countries are putting tariffs on us for Paris. We will retaliate the crap out of them. You are clueless, yimmy.
DM, the other Paris countries have choices who to import from. The US, not so much. They are painting themselves into an ideological corner on this one.
We can always count on you to show your ignorance, yimmy. Name one country that would benefit from getting into a tit-for-tat tariff war with the largest market in the world.
The UK could choose to trade with Europe rather than the US once they have Brexited for example. Maybe even China, Japan and Australia can provide them with what the US could. So many other choices from within the Paris agreement. Trump probably doesn’t even want the US to compete with affordable electric cars or renewable technology on the world market, so they take themselves out of the running too.
John Parmentola suggested federal assistance to reduce the risk of developing this technology to manageable levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kOeFHNpqV0
Once we get to commercial deployment – we deserve that it stands on it’s merits. The alternative has far greater risks for growth, jobs, productivity and welfare than benefits. You are either an honest trading nation or you are in the dirt. The 5% progressive urban hipster doofus ideologues have no idea of rational constraints on government. But I suggest that starting a trade war is in no ones interest.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2016/03/11/all-bubbles-burst-laws-of-economics-for-the-new-millennium/
Federal assistance often takes the form of starter money. Some ideas take off and others don’t. Unlike venture capital, it is a shame that the government can’t then reap the benefits of their successes.
There’s a big world outside the US, donnie. They can grow and manufacture things too. The US is a net importer.
Yes, the U.S. is a net importer. We are the biggest customer in the world. Now name one country that would benefit from getting into a tit-for-tat tariff war with the U.S. It is foolish to think that countries are going to shun doing business with the U.S. over our ditching of the phony Paris climate bull–snip– non-binding “accord”. And if some foolish countries choose to do so, we will get along fine without their crap.
They can do business and US consumers end up paying the tariff that Trump slaps on imports. Not going to be popular.
Fed is forecasting 3.7% GDP growth this quarter, little ignorant yimmy. You let us know when the Paris non-binding BS accord pipsqueak countries start to attack us with trade boycotts. You little dreamer.
It might be tariffs rather than boycotts.
I will help you again, little yimmy. The purpose of raising tariffs on U.S. goods would be to discourage buying of said U.S. goods by raising the cost to consumers. That is to effect a form of boycott. They are going to punish us for ditching that BS Paris non-binding crap. Let us know when it starts.
Our coal exports have been up 60% for the first half of the year. UK +175% and France +100% biggest increases in imported U.S. coal. When we finish some more pipelines, oil and gas exports will soar. The Euro welfare states will be very appreciative of having a substitute for Putin’s energy. I guess they will be putting tariffs on widgets and dohickeys.
Why would you want the government to benefit, yimmy? Do you mean the government employees? They are well paid and secure in their cushy positions. Maybe you are clumsily referring to us taxpayers, or more likely you are not really concerned with taxpayers but with those who don’t pay taxes. Bless your little bleeding heart. If businesses helped out by gubmint subsidies succeed they presumably will pay taxes and create jobs for taxpaying workers. But most everybody knows that government is not good at meddling in the economy and picking winners.
You should stick with reciting your climate catechism. When you talk about the important stuff, like policy and economics, you are getting in way over your head.
If the government benefits, that goes towards revenues and you get less tax. Sounds good to me.
I suppose David Springer will castigate me for making too many – off topic – comments and recommend virtual flogging. I found the discussion with Jimmy dear going down interesting – to me at least – rabbit holes. What it revealed to me was the cultural underpinnings of climate belief – on both sides. For me climate was an accident. I read sections of the first assessment report – decided that the atmospheric physics was plausible and that the solutions were technological. Then I went back to rainfall regimes in eastern and northern Australia. As narratives emerged of global warming switching the Pacific after 1976/77 into a permanent El Nino state – with permanent drought in Australia – cognitive dissonance set in as I knew it had happened many times before. I decided to wait and see if it shifted back – which it did in 1999/2001. Shortly after that I realized that there were global temperature implications – and that it was far too late to change careers.
Belief or not follows the ideological divide. On one side there are independent, freedom loving, rational thinking classic liberals – on the other urban doofus hipsters.
But let me try to redeem myself.
Tomas Milankovic posted here on spatio-temporal chaos. The post caused a bit of a stir in stadium wave circles at the time. I will refer to it as I go. Here’s the link. https://judithcurry.com/2011/02/10/spatio-temporal-chaos/
“There are scientists who equate chaos to randomness. I’d put that category at 90%.
There are scientists who equate chaos with Lorenz. They have seen the butterfly attractor picture one day or the other. They know that chaos is not randomness but not much more. I’d put that category at 9%.
There are then scientists who know what is chaos and really understand it. I’d put that category at 1% and much less for the climate scientists.
The chaos one could and should we be talking about as far as climate is concerned is spatio-temporal chaos.” Tomas
To paraphrase Richard Feynman – I think I can safely say that nobody understands spatio-temporal chaos.
5) The solar activity Bray cycle appears to act on climate both through changes in the stratospheric pressure system that are transmitted downwards to the troposphere causing an atmospheric reorganization, and through changes in the amount of energy warming the oceans.
“What is known as chaos theory and often associated with Lorenz was actually discovered by Poincare 100 years ago and it is TEMPORALchaos. It is a paradox, but chaos was first discovered by Poincare in a Hamiltonian system which has been considered for centuries as the perfect deterministic clockwork – the celestial mechanics. Poincare has proven that a gravitational 3 body system was chaotic and unpredictable. Actually it is not even predictable statistically (e.g you can not put a probability on the event “Mars will be ejected from the solar system in N years”).” Tomas
The solar system is far from the perfect celestial clock – yet it is all integrated into solar activity. It can be accounted for in the first differential global energy equation,
Δ(heat and work)/dt = energy in – energy out
The change in work and heat in the terrestrial system is equal to energy in less energy out. The first problem of Javier’s framing is that energy in is theorized to be modulated by the music of the spheres. In the more modern framing – this cannot be strictly periodic but exhibits shifts between states that cannot be predicted and may vary tremendously. Tomas argues that we may hope that the system is ergodic – all states are revisited over a long enough period – but this is not guaranteed.
6) Proxy evidence, instrumental era measurements, and reanalysis support the idea that lows in the Bray cycle and prolonged below average solar activity cause a contraction of the Hadley cells, and an expansion of the polar cells, steepening the Equator-to-Pole temperature gradient, decreasing global temperatures and changing wind and precipitation patterns.
The second lesser problem with Javier’s framing is that no physical mechanism of modulation of energy out has been definitely identified. Listing symptoms is not a diagnoses. Given the satellite data – such seem to exist and involve the modulation of water vapour in the atmosphere and cloud. The problem is identifying how this evolves in the spatio-temporal chaos of Earth climate.
“The biggest difficulty comes from the fact that we lost this convenient finite dimensional phase space. That’s why almost nothing transports from temporal chaos to spatio-temporal chaos. There are no attractors, bifurcations and such. The whole mathematical apparatus has to be invented from scratch and it will take decades. To know the state of the system, we must know all the fields at all points – this is an uncountable infinity of dimensions. As the fields are coupled, the system produces quasi standing waves all the time. A quasi standing wave is a spatial pattern that oscillates at the same place repeating the same spatial structures in time.”
The short term alternative to the imponderable challenge of spatio-temporal math is network math. ‘Considering index networks rather than raw three-dimensional climate fields is a relatively novel approach, with advantages of increased dynamical interpretability, increased signal-to-noise ratio, and enhanced statistical significance, albeit at the expense of phenomenological completeness.’ Marcia Wyatt This is a math that gives an overview of shifts in the infinitely dimensional state space and gives clues about the timing at least of shifts of standing waves in the system. It is all useful in evolving a more correct theoretical framing of the coupled systems.
7) In the North Atlantic region, in addition, the Arctic and North Atlantic oscillations enter a persistent negative phase during the lows of the Bray cycle, causing an intensification of winter climatic effects and making this region particularly sensitive to low solar activity. This explains why the Little Ice Age, while global, was particularly strong over Europe and North America.
These are examples of quasi standing waves in the system. It is the case that UV/ozone chemistry is being traced through atmospheric pathways – and I have copied the general understanding of this somewhere above – which modulate surface pressure at the poles in the Northern Annual Mode. This serves to shuffle energy around the northern hemisphere – but not necessarily to change the energy budget of the planet. The latter is all a bit nebulous – but as the global energy equation shows global temperature changes require changes in the energy terms on the RHS. I am not saying it isn’t there – just that it hasn’t been definitively identified.
“You can see spatio-temporal chaos if you look at a fast mountain river. There will be vortexes of different sizes at different places at different times. But if you observe patiently, you will notice that there are places where there almost always are vortexes and they almost always have similar sizes – these are the quasi standing waves of the spatio-temporal chaos governing the river. If you perturb the flow, many quasi standing waves may disappear. Or very few. It depends.” Tomas
I tingle when Tomas gets all poetical. The effect of solar variability may be the equivalent of perturbing flow in the mountain river. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases may likewise perturb the flow. How many quasi standing waves will this influence? It depends.
Tomas Milanovic – I checked the spelling but then forget to correct.
Apparently many scientists have lost their way regarding average global climate.
It is pretty well accepted that greenhouse gases (ghg) absorb infrared (IR) radiant energy being emitted from the liquid and solid surfaces of the planet. It should be apparent that there must be some elapsed time between when a molecule absorbs a photon and when it emits one because if the elapsed time was zero, there would be no way to tell that the photon had been absorbed. This elapsed time is called the relaxation time for the molecule. Relaxation time for CO2 molecules has been measured and is about 6 microseconds.
Conduction of heat in a gas, sometimes called thermal diffusion, results as molecules bump into each other. This jostling of molecules is observed as temperature and pressure and is accurately described by the well-known Kinetic Theory of Gases. Calculation of the time between collisions has determined that contact between atmospheric molecules at sea level conditions occurs, on average, at about 0.0002 microseconds. Thus it is about 6/0.0002 = 30,000 times more likely that the energy and momentum in a photon will be converted into heat energy and shared with the molecules which surround the molecule that absorbed the photon. The process of photon absorption producing temperature increase is called thermalization. Water vapor (WV) is a ghg. A common observation of thermalization is that humid nights cool slower than desert nights. Thermalized energy carries no identity of the molecule which absorbed it.
Emission of IR from the planet surface is in accordance with the Stephan-Boltzmann (T⁴) law. Emission of radiation from gas molecules is quite different and depends on the energy level of individual molecules. The energy level of individual molecules is determined probabilistically and complies with the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of molecule energy which favors lower energy molecules.
Emission of photons by molecules occurs only at discreet wavelengths which are characteristic for each molecule species. Every discreet emission wavelength is accompanied by the capability to absorb at the same exact wavelength. At sea level conditions, the discreet absorb/emit wavelengths are slightly broadened into bands. WV has 170+ emission bands at lower energy than the one emission band for CO2 and there are about 35 times as many WV molecules as CO2 molecules. As a consequence, energy absorbed by CO2 is effectively thermalized and rerouted to WV with the end result that CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
The only thing countering the temperature decline that would otherwise be occurring is the increasing trend in water vapor. (WV is a ghg. ‘Otherwise’ results from the net effect of ocean surface temperature cycles which have been in decline since about 2005 and declining solar activity (a proxy for earth warming/cooling) which has been declining since 2014 and dropped below ‘breakeven’ in early 2016.) Average global atmospheric water vapor has been measured and reported by NASA/RSS since 1988 and shows an uptrend of 1.5% per decade. WV has increased about 8% since the more rapid increase began in about 1960.
Links to source data and graphs showing this are at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
Unfortunately, a detailed knowledge of individual molecules does not predict the behaviour of huge numbers of interacting molecules e.g. turbulence.
“This reversible process of atmospheric reorganization is cumulative and proceeds very slowly. This explains why the 18th century, with a solar activity level similar to the 20th century had a different climate.”
For temperatures in England, 1730 was no different to 1930, though 18th century summers were on average slightly warmer than in the 20th century. Rainfall shows no trend.
This very slow atmospheric reorganisation idea is just a narrative bred from the assumption of a sinusoidal variation in solar activity over 2450 years. Far from the reality of the fast rate of North Atlantic Oscillation regime change into and out of the Maunder Minimum, let alone through it. Major GSM clusters occur as events, a quasi-periodicity of 2450 years may exist, but there is nothing to say that it constitutes a discrete cycle and that other quasi-periodic strings of major GSM such as Eddy must hence be independent cycles. The assumed relative strength of Bray versus Eddy lows is hyperbole to fit the cyclic narrative, attested by the intensity of the cold-dry periods around 2200 BC and 1200 BC, especially the latter. Predicting the next GSM can only be achieved with knowledge of what caused all previous events. Virtual cycles can offer no certainty on the timing of the next low, and the idea that these cycles should cause highs at the same pitch is based upon an imagined sinusoidal form, which is evidently specious. The idea that it should all conform neatly to such cycles can certainly take a strong grip on the mind, even without evidence as to their origin. It’s a sciencey sounding way of packaging it though.
Not really. It is based on the published evidence that an expansion of the Hadley circulation has been taking place since the 1970’s and likely for the entire 20th century. The speed of the expansion has been measured at 1 latitude degree per decade. Such slow continuous expansion of the Hadley circulation supports the idea of a very slow cumulative atmospheric reorganization.
That sounds like a feedback to the mean atmospheric state from changes in ENSO and the AMO. North Atlantic Oscillation conditions change rapidly and lead the ocean modes. The long term hysteresis is all in the oceans and not in the atmosphere. And with the increased negative North Atlantic Oscillation associated with low solar driving a warm AMO and increased El Nino conditions, the sign of forcings versus response will be the reverse of what is being assumed.
RIE,
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1203/1203.1289.pdf
Kramm & Dlugi reply to Hansen et al (2001)
“However, this does not automatically mean that the surface temperature must increase, as suggested by Eq. (1), to re-establish a planetary radiation balance at the TOA, characterized by Eq. (18), as already pointed out by Ramanathan et al. (1987) and now argued by Hansen et al. (2011) in a similar manner:
»The basic physics underlying this global warming, the greenhouse effect, is simple. An increase of gases such as CO2 makes the atmosphere more opaque at infrared wavelengths. This added opacity causes the planet’s heat radiation to space to arise from higher, colder levels in the atmosphere, thus reducing emission of heat energy to space. The temporary imbalance between the energy absorbed from the Sun and heat emission to space, causes the planet to warm until planetary energy balance is restored.«
This argument is physically incorrect because none of these flux terms on the right-hand side of Eq. (12), i.e., (1 A S4 −α − E a0 ) , H , E, and ∆FIR , depends on the globally averaged surface temperature. Furthermore, there is no constant ratio between H E + on the one hand and ∆FIR on the other hand (see Table 1). A reduction of ∆FIR by F may easily be compensated by H and/or E to fulfill the requirement of the energy flux budget (19). The same is true in case of any other of these flux terms. Note that even the Bowen ratio B HE = is not constant (see Table 1). The uncertainty inherent in the determination of these fluxes is so large that F may be assessed as noise in the energy flux budget for the Earth’s surface (e.g., Kramm and Dlugi, 2009).”
The toa balance problem is discussed by Kopp & Lean 2011. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL045777/full
How can one excuse discussions where 0.1 Wm-2 is significant, given the 15 Wm-2 spread of the primary data?
http://www.geoffstuff.com/toa_problem.jpg
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