The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (II). Solar activity unexplained/ignored effects on climate
by Javier Vinós & Andy May
“The complicated pattern of sun-weather relationships undoubtedly needs much further clarification, but progress in this field will be hindered if the view prevails that such relationships should not be taken seriously simply because the mechanisms involved in explaining them are not yet identified.” Joe W. King (1975)
2.1 Introduction
As showed in Part I of this series, the early 1980s saw a reversal in the consensus about an important sun-weather effect. The adversarial academic environment resulted in very few scientists dedicating their research efforts to this subject. Despite these difficulties, important advances have been made regarding the sun-climate effect. Lack of interest and disregard for a competing climate change mechanism hypothesis by mainstream climatologists has resulted in these advances being ignored. They remain under-cited and unknown to most supporters and skeptics of the CO2 hypothesis. More importantly, they are not discussed in most climate papers, they are simply ignored.
These advances refer to climate phenomena that typically are not properly included in climate models due to lack of knowledge of how they happen or what causes them. They are not, or only weakly, reproduced by models, yet in most cases they can be detected in climate reanalyses where the models are constrained by a huge number of real observations.
Importantly, no hypothesis for a sun-climate effect can be correct if it cannot explain or accommodate the relationship between these phenomena and solar variability. The sun-climate relationship, at present, represents a black hole in modern climatology that keeps growing without anybody seeing inside it.
2.2 Effects on temperature and paleoclimatology
Paleoclimatology is the only subfield in climatology where a belief in an important sun-climate effect is considered. This is because the data obtained from proxy climate records of the Holocene often display a clear association with solar activity data obtained from proxy solar records. When one of us (JV) researched the climatic effects of the 2500-yr sun-climate cycle discovered by Roger Bray in 1968 (Fig. 2.1), he quickly found 28 articles studying proxies that clearly displayed this cycle (Vinós 2022). Of those, 16 (57%) explicitly state that changes in solar activity are likely the cause of the observed climatic changes, and only one explicitly rules the solar connection out. We are talking about profound global climatic changes of the distant past, similar in magnitude to the Little Ice Age (LIA) or modern global warming. Most paleoclimate researchers studying them conclude they were caused by changes in solar activity. Modern climatology cannot explain them since they took place at times when greenhouse gas radiative forcing changed very little.
Fig. 2.1. The Bray 2500-yr solar and climate cycle. Major Holocene subdivisions: The stratigraphic subdivisions are on top. The biological subdivisions are immediately below, showing a c. 2500-yr spacing (after Ammann & Fyfe 2014). Classical subdivision based on temperature at bottom. a) Climate data (black curve), a global temperature reconstruction from 73 proxies (after Marcott et al. 2013; with original proxy dates and differencing average), expressed as distance to the average in standard deviations (Z-score). b) Solar data (blue-purple curve), IntCal13 radiocarbon calibration curve used to convert radiocarbon dates (vertical, not shown) into calendar dates (horizontal). After Reimer et al. (2013). The curve deviates from linearity during solar grand minima. The Spörer, Homeric, Sumerian and Boreal 1 grand minima (blue ovals) are separated by multiples of c. 2500-yr, marking the lows of the Bray solar cycle B-1 to B-5, except B-4. These lows have been identified in radiocarbon data back to B-9 at 20,500 BP (Vinós 2022). c) Human population data (red thick curve), summed probability distribution of anthropogenic radiocarbon dates from Britain and Ireland as a proxy for human population. Red thin curve is a fitted logistic model of population growth and plateau. After Bevan et al. (2017). Significant downside population deviations generally match the lows of the 2500-year Bray cycle of solar activity (wide vertical blue bars labeled B-1 to B-5). Pink bars, 8.2 and 4.2 kyr abrupt climatic events (ACE).
The 2500-yr sun-climate Bray cycle constitutes a good example of the effects of solar variability on paleoclimatology, as it produces the most dramatic climate cycle observed in the Holocene. In terms of solar activity, it is defined by a sequence of Spörer-type grand solar minima that last 200 years and display a 20‰ increase in radiocarbon, spaced at 2500 ± 200 years with only a gap at c. 7,700 BP in the last eight periods since 20,500 BP (Fig. 2.1b; Vinós 2022). In terms of climate, all the lows of the cycle are marked by periods of severe climate deterioration lasting over a century and reflected in multiple proxies, of which the LIA constitutes the most recent and the coldest example of the Holocene (Fig. 2.1a). In terms of the effects on human societies of the past, the Bray cycle lows are marked by periods of upheaval, population decrease (Fig. 2.1c), and civilization collapse, followed by societal advance afterward in response to a difficult situation.
The correspondence between past solar activity and past climate at the centennial and millennial timescales has caused authors like Rohling et al. (2002) to say:
“In view of these findings, we call for an in-depth multi-disciplinary assessment of the potential for solar modulation of climate on centennial scales.”
Magny et al. (2013) write:
“On a centennial scale, the successive climatic events which punctuated the entire Holocene in the central Mediterranean coincided with cooling events associated with deglacial outbursts in the North Atlantic area and decreases in solar activity during the interval 11700–7000 cal BP, and to a possible combination of NAO-type circulation and solar forcing since ca. 7000 cal BP onwards.”
Hu et al. (2003) express:
“Our results imply that small variations in solar irradiance induced pronounced cyclic changes in northern high-latitude environments. They also provide evidence that centennial-scale shifts in the Holocene climate were similar between the subpolar regions of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, possibly because of Sun-ocean-climate linkages.”
Those three articles, between them, have 50 co-authors, among them some of the most respected in paleoclimatology. Either our current understanding of the sun-climate effect or our current understanding of paleoclimatology is wrong, as they are incompatible. In science when in doubt go with the evidence. Paleoclimatology has the evidence, while our current understanding is based on computer models that reflect programmers’ ignorance and biases.
The increase in solar irradiance during the 11-yr cycle is about 1.1 W/m2. The expected surface warming for such a change in energy is only 0.025 °C and therefore below detection (Wigley & Raper 1990). Temperature data and reanalysis consistently show that the solar signal in global temperature is c. 0.1 °C, four times larger than expected from the energy change alone (Lean 2017) thus the need for amplifying mechanisms. A very small energy increase from the sun is expected to result in a very small evenly distributed temperature change at the surface. This is not what happens. The change in surface temperature manifests itself in an unexplained, but significant, regional and hemispheric variation and some regions cool when more energy is coming from the sun (Fig. 2.2). These differences can only be attributed to significant dynamic changes in the atmosphere and oceans when the solar output varies by only 0.1%.
Fig. 2.2 Solar effects on temperature and paleoclimatology. a) Surface temperature change map during the 11-year solar cycle on a 5×5° grid from the 1996 solar minimum to the 2002 solar maximum using multiple regression. A pattern of discontinuous Southern Hemisphere mid-latitude warming is indicated by circles. The main western boundary currents in the Northern Hemisphere are indicated by arrows. Examples of climate change responses to increasing solar activity obtained from paleo evidence or long climate records are superimposed at their location. b) Zonally averaged change in surface (black line) and 20 km height (red line) temperature (without a cosine area adjustment for latitude). After Lean 2017.
While the global average surface temperature increase with the solar cycle is of only 0.1 °C, at 60°N it reaches 0.4 °C (above 1 °C at some areas). This general pattern of increased surface warming in the Northern Hemisphere extra-tropics and reduced warming in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere produced by increasing solar activity is not unlike the observed surface warming during the past 50 years. The surface temperature effect over North America confirms Currie’s (1993) finding that the solar effect on temperatures is opposite on both sides of the Rocky Mountains (see Part I). Another feature of solar induced warming is a pattern of alternating Southern Hemisphere (SH) mid-latitude warming and minimal change or cooling with a spacing of c. 7000 km (Fig. 2.2a circles). They are a tropospheric-ocean phenomenon, and are more conspicuous at 5 km altitude (see Lean 2017) and probably reflect the global wavenumber-4 atmospheric wave whose importance for SH climate has been recently observed (Chiswell 2021).
This solar modulated atmospheric wave-train phenomenon could be related to the baroclinic annular mode (Thompson & Barnes 2014). As the atmosphere is intrinsically unstable, large-scale periodic atmospheric variability is very rare outside the tropics, as most atmospheric phenomena display red noise characteristics. One of the few examples is the baroclinic annular mode, a 25–30-day oscillation in the SH extratropical eddy kinetic energy associated with variations in the amplitude of vertically propagating waves, that has important effects on regional climate. The strong periodicity in the baroclinic annular mode, that coincides with the solar rotation period, together with the wavenumber-4 pattern over the 11-yr solar cycle, are suggestive of the baroclinic annular mode being modulated by changes in solar activity.
Lon Hood has demonstrated that solar UV peaks modulate another atmospheric oscillation, the Madden–Julian Oscillation. Daily changes in Madden–Julian Oscillation amplitude are modulated by UV changes, with their amplitude increasing following UV minima. This amplitude modulating effect is greater during the winter and spring and is strongest during the easterly phase of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (Hood 2018). Given that the solar rotation period is close to one month, in the four solar cycles for which there is satellite data there are c. 500 solar rotations, allowing a much better statistical evaluation of the short-term solar effect on climate.
Another feature of the surface temperature pattern associated with the solar cycle is the warming displayed at the extra-tropical western boundary currents, particularly in the NH (Fig. 2.2a, arrows). These are preferred sites where energy is transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere (Yu & Weller 2007). The incoming energy difference associated with the solar cycle is very small, but the change in ocean-atmospheric energy flux at those sites suggests that oceanic-atmospheric dynamic processes are regulated by changes in the solar cycle. Finally, the surface temperature pattern is essentially the reverse of the near-tropopause (20 km; Fig. 2.2b) pattern, except at NH high latitudes. Surface temperature changes are not the result of direct changes in TSI, since they are regionally very diverse and four times higher than the TSI energy budget allows. This suggests that the contrasting surface and tropopause zonal temperature patterns arise from troposphere-stratosphere coupling.
Not only the surface, but also the upper ocean displays a puzzling quasi-decadal change in temperature of c. 0.1 °C. White et al. (2003) analyzed the global tropical diabatic heat storage budget and found that the anomalous heating of the upper layer of the ocean to the depth of the 22°C isotherm yielded a value of ± 0.9 W/m2, that is nearly an order of magnitude larger than the surface radiative forcing of ± 0.1 W/m2 associated with the solar cycle (solar radiative forcing is ΔTSI/4 x 0.7). Even more, the quasi-decadal temperature change in the upper ocean is phase-locked to the solar cycle, something that modern climatology cannot explain.
The near total lack of interest by modern climatologists in the sun-climate effect neglects the abundant evidence from paleoclimatology and recent climate variations that correlate with the solar-cycle. This reveals our poor knowledge of the solar effect on climate change. We are all born ignorant, but some scientists choose to remain so regarding the sun-climate question.
2.3 Effects on the polar vortex
As reviewed in Part I (Sect. 1.6), it has been known since 1980 that the QBO modulates the strength of the polar vortex (Holton & Tan 1980). Seven years later, Labitzke (1987) discovered that changes in solar activity affected this modulation. It was the first solid, indisputable and climatically relevant sun-climate effect found in a 180-year-old quest. It also explained why the quest had been so difficult, as the effect is non-linear (not proportional to the total irradiance difference) and indirect, depending on the direction (QBO phase) and strength of the equatorial stratospheric winds.
The North Pole stratospheric temperature that Labitzke measured reflects the state of the polar vortex. A strong polar vortex is surrounded by strong winds, keeping inside an area of low pressure, low geopotential height (height of a given pressure), and low temperature due to radiative cooling. Higher temperatures denote a weaker and/or displaced polar vortex. When the polar vortex becomes weaker and/or displaced during the winter (i.e., higher North Pole stratospheric temperature), warmer air enters the Arctic, pushing the colder air below towards lower latitudes. A warmer North Pole with a weaker polar vortex indicates more severe winters in mid-latitudes. A higher frequency of colder winters in northern mid-high latitudes was a feature of the LIA.
Labitzke’s data showed that stratospheric North Pole temperature correlation to solar forcing depends on QBO state. During easterly QBO years stratospheric polar temperature is lowest when solar activity is highest, and highest when solar activity is lowest. The opposite occurs during westerly QBO years (Fig. 2.3a). Since the lowest easterly-year and highest westerly-year temperatures are similar, the largest temperature differences for the two different QBO states take place during solar minimum years. The average winter North Pole stratospheric temperature difference between both QBO phases during solar minima is an astounding 20 °C (Fig. 2.3b). The winter climatic effect of low solar activity over ample regions of the North Hemisphere is clearly disproportionate to the total irradiance energy difference. Difference that becomes irrelevant over the North Pole during the boreal winter, when it is in constant darkness.
Fig. 2.3 Effect of solar activity on winter North Pole stratospheric temperature. a) Black curve and light grey area, winter (DJF) 10.7 cm flux average and standard deviation between Dec. 1955 and Feb. 2013, a proxy for solar activity, adjusted to an 11-year solar cycle. Colored curves correspond to winter temperature at 30 hPa (stratosphere) over the North Pole calculated as the average of the three more centered values among DJFM monthly average temperatures (outlier discarded) and plotted according to the position in the 11-year solar cycle. Dark-red thick curve is the temperature for winters when the QBO presented average DJF values lower than –5.8 ms–1 (negative values denote easterly wind) corresponding to QBOe (easterly). Dark-red thin curve is the quadratic regression. Light-blue thick curve is the temperature for winters when the QBO presented average DJF values higher than 1.1 ms–1 (positive values denote westerly wind) corresponding to QBOw (westerly). Light-blue thin curve is the quadratic regression. b) Scatter plot of 30 hPa winter North Pole temperature, determined as in (a) versus tropical 30 hPa winter wind speed, for years with very low solar activity, corresponding to years 9 to 11 in the solar cycle as defined in (a), and indicated in the graph. Dark-red-filled dots are QBOe/temperature values used for the same color curve in (a). Light-blue-filled dots are QBOw/temperature values used for the same color curve in (a). Black thin curve is the quadratic regression. Strong El Niño years are indicated. Data on North Pole stratospheric temperature from the Institute of Meteorology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Data on 10.7 cm solar flux from the Royal Observatory of Belgium STAFF viewer.
According to Peixoto and Oort’s (1992) important book Physics of Climate, the unusually high correlation between solar activity and sea-level pressure or surface temperature over extensive areas of the NH, when the QBO phase is considered, appear to explain an important fraction of the total interannual variability in the winter circulation. But solar activity is not the only factor affecting polar vortex strength, it also depends on the QBO through the Holton-Tan effect (see Part I, Sect. 1.6) and on El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). El Niño years destabilize the vortex, and tropical volcanic eruptions stabilize the vortex which produces a warmer northern mid-high latitude winter.
Since Peixoto and Oort (1992), modern climatology appears to have forgotten about the important solar effect on the polar vortex and winter circulation. Dennis Hartmann’s Global Physical Climatology (2nd ed. 2016) does not mention Labitzke or her finding of a solar effect on winter circulation, and even fails to mention the polar vortex (not in the subject index). Surprisingly, it is the same situation with the more specialized An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology (5th ed. Holton & Hakim 2013). Let’s remember that James Holton (1982) reviewed the possible physical mechanisms of the solar variability effect on climate via a dynamic atmospheric coupling, so it isn’t as if he didn’t know about it. Modern climatology is deliberately ignoring what is known about the sun-climate effect.
2.4 Effects on El Niño/Southern Oscillation
The solar effect on ENSO is absolutely unrecognized by modern climatology. A recent review on ENSO complexity by 45 prominent ENSO experts (Timmermann et al. 2018) completely fails to mention any solar implication despite the abundant bibliography on the subject (Anderson 1990; Landscheidt 2000; White & Liu 2008; Wang et al. 2020; Leamon et al. 2021; Lin et al. 2021). Deser et al. (2010) analyze the power spectrum of the Niño-3.4 (5°N–5°S, 170–120°W) SST time series and only mention the 2.5–8 years range, completely ignoring the distinct 11-yr peak in the series (Fig. 2.4b).
One of the authors (JV) recently studied the association between increasing solar activity and La Niña conditions in the Niño-3.4 region Oceanic Niño Index (ONI). A Monte Carlo analysis showed that the La Niña occurrences, which took place during times of rising solar activity (from 35 to 80 % of the ascending phase of the solar cycle), between 1950–2018, have only a 0.7% probability of being due to chance, demonstrating that ENSO is modulated by solar activity (Vinós 2019; 2022). The recent La Niña conditions since 2020 after the December 2019 solar minimum can only have reduced the already low probability that the association is due to chance.
The solar-ENSO modulation is uncovered by a simple frequency analysis of ENSO modes. ENSO displays three temporal modes: El Niño (warm mode), La Niña (cool mode), and Neutral. The ENSO system is usually considered to be an oscillation between El Niño and La Niña modes due to their opposing temperatures. This view appears to be incorrect. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center classifies ENSO winter modes (year corresponding to January) according to SST data in the Niño-3.4 region (Domeisen et al. 2019). Using this classification, it is trivial to demonstrate that La Niña years strongly anti-correlate to Neutral years, not El Niño years (Fig. 2.4a) for the 1960–2020 period (1962–2018 shown using a gaussian filter).
Fig. 2.4 ENSO modes and solar activity.a) Frequency of Niña years (medium blue thick line) and Neutral years (light brown thick line) in a 5-year centered moving average (gaussian filtered) between 1962–2018 showing almost perfect anti-correlation for the entire period. Small boxes are the ENSO mode classification after Domeisen et al. 2019, with dark red boxes for Niño years, and same color as curves for Niña and Neutral years. Asterisks mark strong Niño and Niña events with ≥1 °C anomaly in Oceanic Niño Index. Fine grey line is the number of yearly sunspots. b) Power spectrum of the 1900–2008 Niño-3.4 SST anomaly time series after Deser et al. 2010. An arrow marks the 11-year frequency peak that might correspond to the solar cycle effect. c) Dec–Feb average warm water volume anomaly above the 20 °C isotherm between 5°N–5°S, 120°E–80°W. Data from TAO Project Office of NOAA/PMEL
Los Niños typically take place every 2–3 years (range 1–4 years), so there are always 1–3 Niños in a 5-year period. La Niña and Neutral years are more variable, as there can be 0–4 of each in a 5-year period. The strong anti-correlation between La Niña and Neutral years indicates ENSO has been profoundly misunderstood and even its naming is incorrect, as it should be La Niña/Southern Oscillation. Analysis of the warm water volume in the equatorial Pacific (Fig. 2.4c) indicates that energy tends to accumulate during Niña years, and it is released during Niño years, with Neutral years somewhere in between. Energy tends to accumulate in the equatorial Pacific, one of the major solar energy entry points into the climate system. The ENSO system oscillates between accumulation (Niña years) and inefficient distribution (Neutral years). When the system accumulates excess energy, Los Niños occur to efficiently spread the excess through the rest of the climate system.
The La Niña/Neutral oscillation is phase locked to the solar cycle (Fig. 2.4a). El Niño frequency is also affected by the solar cycle, as other authors have noted (Landscheidt 2000), but not so strongly, and the occurrence of Niño years slightly perturbs the Niña/Neutral fit to the solar cycle. This solar effect on ENSO explains the 11-year frequency peak in the Niño-3.4 SST power spectrum. It also explains why multidecadal periods of high solar activity, like the modern solar maximum, tend to display less Niñas, and why the period of reduced solar activity since 1998 has displayed more frequent Niñas with less negative warm water volume anomaly values. Coinciding with the Pause in global warming, warm water volume anomalies have significantly fewer negative values, reaching less than one fourth of previous negative values (Fig. 2.4c). El Niño is the odd one out in the Niña/Neutral oscillation, which explains why El Niño comes in different flavors (Central Pacific versus Eastern Pacific) and displays an enormous variability during the Holocene (Moy et al. 2002), with Niño activity very reduced during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. El Niño flavor, frequency, and intensity respond to the requirements of the poleward meridional energy transport process.
One can only wonder that, if modern climatology wasn’t so blind to the sun-climate effect, the solar modulation of ENSO would be common knowledge and discussed in reviews like Timmermann et al. (2018) and Domeisen et al. (2019). It is embarrassing, and an indication that modern climatology has lost its way, that it has taken a molecular biologist to notice.
2.5 Effects on Earth rotation
Solar activity affects the Earth’s speed of rotation. The effect is small, but it has been measured since the advent of atomic clocks in the late 1950s. This solar effect has been noticed periodically by researchers, reported, ignored, and forgotten, only to be noticed again by another researcher believing it was an original discovery. The first report appears to be by René Danjon in 1962. In 1971 Rodney Challinor, with 14 years of data, related the annual changes in the length of day (LOD) to the sunspot cycle. He suggested that changes in the global atmospheric circulation induced by solar activity changes might be responsible for the effect on Earth’s rotation rate (Challinor 1971). Jan Vondrák (1977) and Robert Currie (1980) also rediscovered the solar-Earth rotation relationship. In the 1990s Daniel Gambis (Gambis & Bourget 1993) and in the 2000s Rodrigo Abarca del Río (Abarca del Río et al. 2003) continued the studies on the solar-Earth rotation relationship. More recently Le Mouël et al. (2010) and Barlyaeva et al. (2014) investigated possible mechanisms of this relationship.
Fig. 2.5 Modulation of the semi‐annual LOD variation by the solar 11-year Schwabe cycle. a) Monthly ΔLOD for the 1962–2018 period. The inset shows two years of data with four semi–annual components corresponding to northern (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH) winters. b) Black curve, left scale, 3-point smoothed amplitude of the NH winter change in ΔLOD from weekly data after 31-day smoothing. Lower values indicate a larger change in the Earth’s rotation speed. Red curve, right scale, solar activity as determined by 10.7 cm flux (solar flux units, gaussian smoothed). Dotted curve, right scale, Fast Fourier Transform with a 4-yr window of the time derivative 0.5-yr component of LOD, 30-month smoothed, after Barlyaeva et al. 2014.
It has been demonstrated that, for periods of time between 14 days and 4 years, changes in the atmospheric angular momentum (AAM) of the troposphere and stratosphere account for over 90% of the changes in LOD (Rosen & Salstein 1985), as the Earth’s rotation rate must adjust to keep the total momentum of the Earth system constant. Seasonal variation in ∆LOD has been known for decades to reflect changes in zonal circulation (Lambeck & Cazennave 1973). The biennial component of ∆LOD reflects changes in the QBO (Lambeck & Hopgood 1981), while the 3–4-year component matches the ENSO signal (Haas & Scherneck 2004). The 2015–16 El Niño produced a ∆LOD excursion reaching 0.81 ms in January 2016. A very close fit between the semi-annual component in ∆LOD and solar activity should not be expected given these other causal agents.
The link between changes in ΔLOD, changes in AAM, and solar variability is very straightforward, and necessarily must go in the direction “solar → atmosphere → rotation.” The momentum of the Earth system is conserved at the scales involved and it is not possible that changes in the speed of rotation of the Earth affect solar activity. A relationship between multidecadal changes in ΔLOD and changes in climate was proposed by Lambeck and Cazenave (1976). Without considering a solar implication, they reported on the similarity between the trends of numerous climate indices for the past two centuries and changes in ∆LOD. In particular, Lambeck and Cazenave noted that LOD variations correlate well with the global temperature and with ground pressure, both of which are indicators of global wind circulation. They concluded that periods of increasing zonal winds correlate with an acceleration of the Earth while periods of decreasing zonal circulation correlate with a deceleration of the Earth. They found a lag of 5–10 years in the climatic indices. Their result has been reproduced multiple times (e.g., Mazzarella 2013).
Fig. 2.6 Decadal band pass filtered times series of the sunspot number (red) and (B) the annual amplitude modulation of the AAM; and (C) the inverted semiannual amplitude modulation of the AAM. From Abarca del Río & Gambis (2011).
The AAM can be reconstructed back to 1870, and its decadal changes in the annual and semiannual components (related to the annual and semiannual components of ∆LOD) display a correlation with the 11-yr solar cycle. Interestingly the correlation between the annual component and the sunspot number underwent a phase shift c. 1920 (Fig. 2.6B). This is a time when multiple sun-climate correlations inverted (see Part I, Fig. 1.3), discrediting sun-climate correlation studies. We do not know what causes these inversions in the climate response to solar activity and probably we will not know until a new inversion takes place, since we need to know what happens in the stratosphere during them. They appear to occur every 80–120 years (Hoyt & Schatten 1997). However, we can conclude two important things from the existence of these sun-climate inversions. First, that solar activity affects climate through its effect on atmospheric circulation (AAM), not through differences in total irradiance. And second, when the solar effect on the annual component of the AAM shifts phases, the solar effect pattern on surface temperature and precipitation inverts. The simultaneous occurrence of the phase shift in AAM (Earth rotation) and the sun-climate pattern inversion at c. 1920 demonstrates that these shifts are an intrinsic feature of the sun-climate effect.
Since the solar effect on Earth’s rotation rate and global atmospheric circulation are deliberately ignored by modern climatology, they are not included in general circulation models. This allows the IPCC to wrongly conclude that solar variability has no significant effect on climate change since 1850. The reality, however, is that a great part of the climate change that has taken place during the 20th century has been due to the modern solar maximum.
2.6 Effects on planetary waves
In 1974, Colin Hines proposed that the sun-climate effect could be accomplished by modulating the planetary waves propagation properties of the atmosphere, and James Holton agreed that such mechanism was viable, but objected that little evidence existed for it at the time (Hines 1974; Holton 1982). This was not entirely correct. Geller and Alpert (1980) not only demonstrated the viability of the Hines mechanism but showed that changes in the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) emissions, by changing the stratospheric thermal structure, could be responsible for changes in the mean zonal wind, resulting in inter-annual variations in stationary planetary wave patterns that could induce very significant changes in regional climate. Their modeling results not only quantified the magnitude of the expected effects but indicated that the tropospheric planetary wave response to solar-induced changes in the zonal mean state of the stratosphere ought to be regional, very evident at some longitudes and latitudes, and absent in others (Fig. 2.2).
Waves in the atmosphere (Fig. 2.7) are oscillatory motions that result from a balance between the inertia of a parcel of air that has been set in movement and a restoring force. These oscillatory motions produce periodic changes in atmospheric variables (pressure, geopotential height, temperature, or wind velocity) that may remain stationary or propagate horizontally or vertically. Atmospheric waves transmit energy and momentum without material transport of air parcels to remote regions on time scales much shorter than the transit time for air parcels. The momentum and energy are fed into the background flow as the wave dissipates or breaks, altering it. Most weather disturbances are associated with one or more types of atmospheric wave (Holton 2003).
Fig. 2.7 Examples of atmospheric waves. a) Atmospheric waves made visible by Saharan dust over the northwestern coast of Africa. Credit: NASA. b) Atmospheric waves caused by the Tonga 2022 eruption that circled the globe captured by NOAA’s GOES-West satellite IR channel. Tonga is located at the bottom left of the image. Credit: Mathew Barlow. After Duncombe (2022)
Vertically propagating planetary (Rossby-Haurwitz) waves are generated by flow over continental-scale topography, by continent–ocean heating contrasts, and by nonlinear interactions among transient tropospheric wave disturbances. Their restoring force is the potential vorticity latitudinal gradient induced by the Coriolis parameter due to planetary rotation. Planetary waves zonal wavenumber is an integer designating the number of waves around a latitude circle, thus at 60° a wavenumber 1 planetary wave has c. 12,000 km meridional scale. The vertical propagation of stationary planetary waves requires the presence of mean westerly winds of speed lower than a critical value, in what is known as the Charney–Drazin criterion. In practice, zonal wavenumbers 1–3 account for over 96% of wave propagation into the extratropical stratosphere, and this happens only in the winter hemisphere.
Small changes in solar UV energy can cause big changes in the energy and momentum delivered by planetary waves to the stratosphere. These are then reflected in changes in the troposphere, through the stratosphere-troposphere coupling, as suggested by Hines (1974), and shown by Geller and Alpert (1980). This process constitutes the basis of the “top-down” mechanism of sun-climate effect. This process or mechanism bypasses the problem of the small change in solar energy output during the solar cycle, as the energy to affect climate is provided by planetary waves, which alter the global atmospheric circulation in regionally diverse patterns. Kodera and Kuroda (2002) showed that with the arrival of winter, the stratospheric circulation changes from a radiatively controlled state to a dynamically controlled state, and the transition is modulated by solar activity, with the solar maximum prolonging the radiatively controlled state. This modulation affects the strength of the stratospheric sub-tropical and polar night jets, and the Brewer–Dobson circulation.
Perlwitz and Harnik (2003) provided evidence that planetary waves reflected in the stratosphere on certain winters had a tropospheric effect. Nathan et al. (2011) showed that the zonally asymmetric ozone field was very important in mediating the effects of solar variability on the wave-driven circulation in the stratosphere. The study of planetary waves in the stratosphere is recent and difficult to carry out. Powell and Xu (2011), using two reanalysis datasets and satellite microwave sounding unit observations, constructed a planetary wave amplitude index for the 55–75°N stratosphere and showed that it was associated with the Arctic Oscillation. They found substantial shifts in the stratospheric state due to changes in wave amplitude and pattern anomalies. The main ones were associated with a 2-year oscillation that was in phase with the solar cycle. During solar maxima planetary wave amplitude was reduced, while during solar minima changes in the meridional temperature gradient and vertical wind shear lead to an increase in planetary wave amplitude (Fig. 2.8). The detected solar cycle effect may account for 25% of the variability in wave amplitude (Powell & Xu 2011).
Fig. 2.8 Variability in the 55–75°N stratospheric planetary wave amplitude shows the alignment of its biennial oscillation with the solar cycle, displaying maximal amplitude variation during solar minima.
The Powell and Xu (2011) finding provides direct observational evidence for the Geller and Alpert (1980) study. In their study, Geller and Alpert showed that a 20% change in the mean zonal flow at 35 km height or lower would be the required order of magnitude to produce the observed interannual variability in the tropospheric wave pattern at middle and high latitudes. The finding by Powell and Xu that the solar effect might explain 25% of stratospheric wave amplitude indicates that the UV solar effect, coupled with ozone variability, can explain the important sun-climate effect on winter atmospheric circulation first detected by Labitzke and van Loon (1988).
2.7 Conclusion
This part (2nd of the series) demonstrates the existence of a wealth of knowledge about the sun-climate effect, laboriously produced by scientists that have not received proper credit for shining light on what is probably the most complex, most controversial problem in climatology. This knowledge provides sufficient clues about the sun-climate effect mechanism.
It is no longer acceptable to say that solar variability in total irradiance is too small to have a significant effect on climate, when there is so much evidence that variations in total irradiance are not how solar variability mainly affects climate.
It is no longer acceptable to say that indirect effects of solar variability are too uncertain since their mechanism is unknown when clear evidence for the mechanism is published and ignored.
It is no longer acceptable to only consider changes in total irradiance in model studies and then declare that the modern solar maximum did not contribute to modern global warming.
It is no longer acceptable to reject a sun-climate effect based on the lack of a simple correspondence between surface temperature and solar activity, when evidence suggests that the solar effect on climate works through changes in atmospheric circulation.
If it remains acceptable, then we are building the foundations of climate change science on a false premise that prevents us from understanding it. It will set back the scientific advancement of climatology by decades, just as the refusal to accept the evidence for continental drift set geology back four decades. And it will have huge repercussions for the reputation of science, as most climatologists provide a justification for expensive socioeconomic policies while ignoring an important, well-documented, solar-climate connection.
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This is all very very simple. The oceans are warming, CO2 and 15 micron back-radiation won’t warm water. What warms water? High energy short wave visible radiation between 0.4 and 0.7 micron. Air currents have altered the clouds above the oceans allowing more warming visible radiation to reach them. It has nothing to do with CO2.
“This is all very very simple.”
It is very simple co2islife. The ocean warms from strong sunshine at decadal timescales when solar activity is above 95 SN; a more active sun is the reason for climate changes. Clouds are a byproduct. There are fewer clouds during La Nina, more during El Nino. What makes the difference is the solar cycle influence on the tropical ocean, driving on average a 1°C ENSO region step change (first link) between solar minimum and maximum years (second link).
https://i.postimg.cc/7hvjBJz5/Solar-Cycles-and-Tropical-Step-Changes.png
The odds of this happening are 1.9(10^11):1 over 9 solar cycles.
The Modern Maximum in solar activity from 1935-2004, when sunspot activity averaged 108.5 SN for 70 years, drove ocean warming via high TSI:
https://i.postimg.cc/6qdgF6VY/ERSSTv5-and-Sunspots-since-1854.png
the super el ninos are all correlated with a reduced cloud albedo. It is the effect of more direct sun light in the tropical and subtropical oceans, which is produced by a reduced cloud albedo. This reduced cloud albedo is caused by the elimination of ice clouds (cirrus) by direct evaporation of ice to waterdamp caused by more UV when the O3-layer is getting thinner as it is the case actually. Less Cirrus means less diffuse light and more direct light and more UV in the oceans. So it is mainly a warming the ocean effect, caused by more UV and less indirect diffuse light, which is mostly warming the water clouds (near IR). The question is, what has reduced the Ozon-layer, when (as written in part 1) more sunlight is causing more O3 and a warmer stratospheric temperature. Thus is it the sun minimum, that is causing more UV through the ozon-layer? And how UV-peaks and the amounts of direct sun light are correlated.
Links to bibliography, abbreviations and glossary:
https://judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/VinosMay-Bibliography.pdf
https://judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/VinosMay-AbbrevGlossary.pdf
Did the authors consider large volcanic eruptions as the causes for temperature variation?
The effect of volcanic eruptions is discussed in future parts. But it must be considered that the largest eruption in 100 years, the 1992 Pinatubo eruption, had very little effect on temperature.
Great article Javier. But you and everyone else have missed the multidecadal cooling of the stratosphere from large SO2 eruptions. Stratospheric Temp Trend is flat outside of boom and bust SO2 injections that presumably strip H2O (since it exits as H2SO4 and can cause nucleation of water, and cant be easily replaced due to the inversion) The drop in stratospheric temp directly preceded the subsequent 5% decrease in cloud cover that lead up the 98 El nino and step up in temp as a result. Of course the Recent Hunga Tonga eruption has done the opposite, injecting huge amounts of H20 into the stratosphere. If we step up in stratospheric temp then I predict a corresponding decrease in troposphere. This appears to join up with UV/Stratosphere, with cloud cover becoming decoupled from the 11 year cycle post pinatubo. Graph of Stratospheric temp showing permanent step down in temp after each eruption https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/state-climate-2011-stratospheric-temperature
Sun-climate links are an active area of research. On the other hand greenhouse gas science is reasonably well known – despite the usual suspects heroically rewriting the laws of physics. Complex dynamical systems have their own inscrutable rules but enough on that.
The rational response is economic growth and nuclear power, better land and water management and more resilient infrastructure for whatever nature throws at us.
Billions of dollars has been spent to enforce greenhouse alarmism, this has prevented the “well known” greenhouse gas science from being honest and prevented any expectation of it being accurate.
https://judithcurry.com/2022/08/07/the-sun-climate-effect-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-ii-solar-activity-unexplained-ignored-effects-on-climate/#comment-978391
“heroically rewriting the laws of physics”
No laws of physics were harmed in the making of the articles.
Good suggestions. Not going to war with Russia and China, just because they are Russia and China, would also have helped.
We would rather trade than fight. But China and Russia have a different agenda. Tremble and obey? Well no – we forge strategic alliances. But it is a worry. .
‘Part one of Sky News Australia’s documentary – China Rising – delves into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s mission to topple the United States and become the world’s greatest superpower.’
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/china-rising-tremble-and-obey-xi-jinpings-era-of-biding-time-is-over-part-1/video/1f61cb44eff89b0b0c494a44b90db765
This article, like most climate articles, focuses on short term, immediate correlations between forcing and temperature, those do exist and they are very pronounced.
That said, the same cycles of forcing occurred during thousands of years of consistently warmer times in major 30 thousand year warmer periods, such as, 105 to 145 thousand years ago and then major colder periods from 100 to 20 thousand years ago. The forcing that has been discussed, be it greenhouse gas or sun-climate differences are not enough to explain the large differences in temperature. The correlations are not consistently different, in the right directions, to explain anything meaningful.
Climate science, on the alarmist and skeptic sides, must look to understanding the climate system’s long term internal responses to external forcing. For one major example, ice accumulation in and around the polar regions is always more, according to ice core records in warmer times and colder times with ice that advanced and spread during the cooling always followed warmer times. YET, ice is never studied as a forcing factor, only as a result. Ice is not even in the static energy balance charts that are presented by alarmists or skeptics.
Climate changes in longer term, hundreds and thousands of year cycles, this is internal response, all the forcing currently studied is static forcing and is not changing with thousand year frequency or hundred thousand year frequency.
This article is no better than the alarmist, CO2 studies, based on flawed theory and models, known to be flawed because they always have made forecasts that failed.
“This article, like most climate articles, focuses on short term, immediate correlations between forcing and temperature”
Another one who hasn’t read the article or hasn’t understood it. A lot of people displaying their prejudices when presented evidence that doesn’t fit their preconceptions.
https://judithcurry.com/2022/08/07/the-sun-climate-effect-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-ii-solar-activity-unexplained-ignored-effects-on-climate/#comment-978397
Excellent article and fascinating summaries of existing studies. As evident for your analyses and conclusions, the knowledge of the 3 dimensional nature of our atmosphere is critical to understanding weather and climate.
Danish scientist physicist Prof. Henrik Svensmark and his team at Copenhagen Technical University had found the solar fingerprint on Earth’s climate variability. Israeli Prof. Nir Shaviv gave a helping hand to Prof. Svensmark in realising the proof of this solar fingerprint on our climate.
Satellite observations reveal a more significant source of low cloud variability. One that may be influenced by some aspect of solar variability. So cross correlation is a problem. Svensmark followed the wrong lead. That matters little if one learns something from research.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL086705
I have not found evidence that Svensmark hypothesis is correct.
It was directed to the authors as a general comment. During my career as a meteorologist, I found those who didn’t see and understand the 3 dimensional nature of the atmosphere had more troubles making forecasts. For example, many still see the troposphere is a near-solid boundary. And then when you talk about planetary waves, you lose even more folks, because it can be hard to comprehend entities that are invisible — except when clouds exist — and then it’s only a partial picture.
Now if we can just get the graphic artists at the Weather Channel to demonstrate these sun-earth cycles in 4 dimensions, then maybe the public at large would better realize the true nature of climate change — and not CO2.
Javier and Andy – Many thanks for this excellent food for thought. One thing that has intrigued me is how global cloud cover continued to decrease all the way to 2017 (the end of ISCCP cloud data [*]) in spite of “the period of reduced solar activity since 1998” as per your article. I would have expected some evidence of a change in direction of solar activity to show up in cloud data. Maybe there is a significant time lag, eg. because clouds are driven by ocean?? I would welcome your take on this.
[*] See Figure 1 in https://wjarr.com/sites/default/files/WJARR-2022-0478.pdf
We discuss about cloud changes in Part IV.
“Even more, the quasi-decadal temperature change in the upper ocean is phase-locked to the solar cycle, something that modern climatology cannot explain.”
AMO anomalies reverse phase with respect to solar cycles, when the AMO shifts from warm to cold, and from cold to warm. The only solar metric which can account for that is the major lows in the solar wind shifting from cycle maximum, as in 1969 and 1980, to around a year past cycle minimum after the mid 1990’s.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/esrl-amo/from:1880/mean:7/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1880/normalise
Solar plasma temperature and pressure:
https://snipboard.io/98bEAF.jpg
Excellent paper, much to digest, thank you again.
What it means is that according to the digital reality of the government’s climatists there is less go than a 2.5% chance the real world really exists.
See my Blog-post at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
“The End of the UNFCCC /IPCC Global Warming Meme is Confirmed by the Arctic Sea Ice.
1.The Millennial Global Temperature Cycle.
Planetary orbital and solar activity cycles interact and combine to drive global temperatures. Because of the thermal inertia of the oceans there is a 12+/- year delay between these drivers and global temperature. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.058% by weight. That is one 1,720th of the whole atmosphere. It is inconceivable thermodynamically that such a tiny tail could wag so big a dog. The Oulu galactic cosmic ray count provides a useful proxy for driver amplitude.
The statements below are supported by the Data, Links and Reference in parentheses ( ) at https://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2021/08/c02-solar-activity-and-temperature.html
A Millennial Solar Activity Turning Point (MSATP) was reached in 1991/2.The correlative temperature peak and Millennial Temperature Turning Point (MTTP ) was in 2004 as also reported in Nature Climate Change Zhang, Y., Piao, S., Sun, Y. et al. Future reversal of warming-enhanced vegetation productivity in the Northern Hemisphere. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2022) .(Open Access)
Because of the thermal inertia of the oceans the UAH 6.0 satellite Temperature Lower Troposphere anomaly was seen at 2003/12 (one Schwab cycle delay) and was + 0.26C.(34) The temperature anomaly at 06/2022 was +0.06C (34).There has been no net global warming for the last 18 years. Earth passed the peak of a natural Millennial temperature cycle trend in 2004 and will generally cool until 2680 – 2700……….”
For the sun climate connection scroll to Fig,2
“Fig 2 Correlation of the last 5 Oulu neutron cycles and trends with the Hadsst3 temperature trends and the 300 mb Specific Humidity. (28,29)
The Oulu Cosmic Ray count shows the decrease in solar activity since the 1991/92 Millennial Solar Activity Turning Point and peak There is a significant secular drop to a lower solar activity base level post 2007+/- and a new solar activity minimum late in 2009.The MSATP at 1991/2 correlates with the MTTP at 2003/4 with a 12/13 +/- year delay. In Figure 2(5) short term temperature spikes are colored orange and are closely correlated to El Ninos. The hadsst3gl temperature anomaly at 2037 is forecast to be + 0.05”
4 Effects on El Niño/Southern Oscillation
A lot to dissect here.
First up it should be Associations with, not Effects on.
If one wishes to discuss effects one needs mechanisms, not associations.
Nonetheless I expect to find the mechanisms either mentioned or already discussed in this series of articles and am sorry if I have missed or overlooked them
“The solar effect on ENSO is absolutely unrecognized by modern climatology.”
Why?
200 years of looking for obvious and abstruse links have not worked.
Perhaps there is no association because there are no cycles of sun energy variation associated with. Flips in magnetic fields and sunspots.
Sad but true.
A recent review on ENSO complexity by 45 prominent ENSO experts (Timmermann et al. 2018) completely fails to mention any solar implication (the distinct 11-yr peak in the series (Fig. 2.4b).)
Why?
I see you link to some possible cycles but only over an 80 year period.
What do the 80 years before 1960 show, one wonders and hopefully will have explained.
The statistics quoted and the possibilities also seem fraught, more next post
Science is above all an activity and an attitude, held by a community of like-minded investigators, who are passionately driven by their desire to discover truths about the world. In order to pursue this inquiry, it is actually necessary to have uncertainty about the world, not to suppress it.’ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016WR020078
I have just understood how close you are to the to the spirit of scientific enquiry. Well done.
ENSO is best understood as a stochastically forced nonlinear oscillator. It’s a start. Let’s look at some ENSO proxies. The first is the Moys Holocene South American lake sediment proxy. The hypothesis is that it rains more in South America in El Nino. Well yes it does. Then curiosity kicks in and the record can be interrogated.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/moy-2002.png
It has continuous, high resolution coverage over 11,5000 years. It shows periods of high and low El Nino intensity and frequency alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There was a chaotic bifurcation some 5500 years ago associated with the drying of the Sahel. Comparing it to the isotope record it happened during a transition form low to high solar activity. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high El Nino intensity associated with the demise of the Minoan civilisation. It shows ENSO variability considerably in excess of that seen in the modern period.
Tessa Vance and colleagues have some fabulous results from salt content in a Law Dome ice core. It is correlated to Australian rainfall. It is obvious why – negative SAM spin up the South Pacific gyre initiating La Nina. It agrees with coral proxies, flood deposition, cyclone frequency… SAM is being touted as a way to improve ENSO predictability. That’s not simple as it not a forcing as such but merely biases the system to one state or other.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/vance2012-antartica-law-dome-ice-core-salt-content.jpg
The clincher is that the ENSO beat changed from 5 to 7 years to 2 to 5 years. after 1900 at the start of the modern peak in El Nino frequency. The wrinkle is that periodicity of the PDO is the same as the period of alternating decadal ENSO patterns. The common periodicity in both the north and south suggests a common stochastic forcing and what fits that bill is the sun and the Mansurov effect.
Will this 1000 year period between drinks in South America repeat? Buggered if I know but colour me dubious. I’ll wait and see. I have started on a longevity diet.
Javier | August 8, 2022
“First up it should be Associations with, not Effects”
“In the case of the sun, causality is easy to address as no change in the Earth’s climate could ever affect solar activity.”
Not sure what you mean here, no one was talking about the earth climate affecting the sun.
Causualty of the sun cycles affecting the earth’s climate is the issue, proof of the cycle affecting the suns energy output is needed badly.
angech:
“… proof of the cycle affecting the suns energy output is needed badly.”
Have you, angech, seen Dimitris Poulos’ research?
“My groundbreaking discoveries on solar wind, solar cycles and activity and climate variability, enhanced with more documentation and detailed description of the physical mechanisms involved, documenting how solar activity drives climate, how sun spots and solar wind form and why ice ages occur”
Link:
https://dimispoulos.wixsite.com/dimis
“First up it should be Associations with, not Effects”
In the case of the sun, causality is easy to address as no change in the Earth’s climate could ever affect solar activity.
Then I don’t understand you either.
“proof of the cycle affecting the suns energy output is needed badly.”
The evidence for the sun’s energy output changing with the solar cycle is widely known and accepted. See for example:
https://oxfordre.com/climatescience/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228620-e-9
This post shows excellent research presenting evidence of associations and possible mechanisms of solar links to climate. The most interesting take away for me is the compelling evidence is of a bias against exploring solar effects after 1980 among the mainstream of the field. The conclusion most easily draws from that is their fear that finding solar-climate links would dilute the message of AGW and be feared to be used in attempts to debunk it.
Yet, why should they fear when the solar cycle effects can only change climate in an 11-year interval and thus not threaten the AGW hypothesis? The answer is that any solar influence could lead to the slippery slope of doubt. After all, if the 11-year cycle has outsized influence on annual weather then there may be longer cycles, like the 2500-year cycle, that have large but yet unexplained mechanisms.
However the central threat, the thought-crime that might necessitate career cancellation or worse, is one that connects a solar influence to the pronounced 50-70-year cycle we see in the climate record. Is that coming? I am anxious to see.
‘The Sun provides the energy required to sustain life on Earth and drive our planet’s atmospheric circulation. However, establishing a solid physical connection between solar and tropospheric variability has posed a considerable challenge. The canon of solar variability is derived from the 400 years of observations that demonstrates the waxing and waning number of sunspots over an 11(-ish) year period. Recent research has demonstrated the significance of the underlying 22 years magnetic polarity cycle in establishing the shorter sunspot cycle. Integral to the manifestation of the latter is the spatiotemporal overlapping and migration of oppositely polarized magnetic bands. We demonstrate the impact of “terminators”—the end of Hale magnetic cycles—on the Sun’s radiative output and particulate shielding of our atmosphere through the rapid global reconfiguration of solar magnetism. Using direct observation and proxies of solar activity going back some six decades we can, with high statistical significance, demonstrate a correlation between the occurrence of terminators and the largest swings of Earth’s oceanic indices: the transition from El Niño to La Niña states of the central Pacific. This empirical relationship is a potential source of increased predictive skill for the understanding of El Niño climate variations, a high-stakes societal imperative given that El Niño impacts lives, property, and economic activity around the globe. A forecast of the Sun’s global behavior places the next solar cycle termination in mid-2020; should a major oceanic swing follow, then the challenge becomes: when does correlation become causation and how does the process work?’ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020EA001223
Indices mark nonlinear oscillation in a spatiotemporal chaotic system. The fractal geometry of spatiotemporal chaos show that each point in the system is coupled to every other point as we unpack Navier-Stokes into uncountable governing equation.
The ritual denunciations of science is – however – getting more than a little tedious. It degenerates into quite weird blogoscience and the strange thing is that it never changes or evolves. It feeds into a delusion that it debunks AGW physics and abrupt climate change. That’s when changes in inputs triggers climate state transitions. Pretty much like indirect solar effects. .
The effect of solar activity on the Earth rate of rotation has been discovered and reported multiple times over the past 60 years, and not a single one of them it has been shown incorrect.
There is only one interpretation for that evidence. Solar activity affects the balance between zonal and meridional atmospheric circulation. As that balance is hugely important in atmospheric circulation, that makes the solar effect hugely important.
This effect is not isolated, but it is confirmed by all the other effects reported in this article.
You can ignore it all you want but it won’t go away and it will prove you wrong.
I led with polar annular modes – with gyres spun up by wind that deflects westward nearer the equator. This has implications for upwelling in the eastern margins of the Pacific importantly – with Bjerknes feedback kicking and global consequences. Unlike yours – this is an actual physical mechanism that has explanatory and potentially predictive power for a major climate subsystem. Try to keep up.
That’s in addition to modulating the LOD.
Javier and Robert, I did not mean to start a fight. I think everyone can agree that all persons have bias and all scientists are persons. It should even be fair to point out that political regimes can influence bias dynamics with the dole of money and power to the ones who propose the politically sought scientific conclusions.
That should be set aside, however, when scientists debate the presentation of evidence of a specific scientific point. It is very difficult to gain acceptance of ideas even with the most diligent research and skilled presentation.
I think there is strong evidence of some AGW. I think there is much stronger evidence of abuse of the theory by using it to assign blame to political enemies for every bad storm, flood, drought, wildfire, extinction threat or hot, muggy summer day.
But we are all ultimately on the same side.
“The conclusion most easily draws from that is their fear that finding solar-climate links would dilute the message of AGW and be feared to be used in attempts to debunk it.”
It is even admitted:
“climate change sceptics have seized upon putative solar effects as an excuse for inaction on anthropogenic warming.”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-012-9181-3
Climate scientists researching putative solar effects are feeding the enemy. See Robert Ellison’s reaction when presented with dozens of scientific articles showing evidence for a solar effect on climate, most of it unknown to him. Rejection without consideration. Closed minds do not foster scientific advance.
What you’re doing is muddying the waters to so little effect it’s just background noise. The physics of AGW is supported by modern observations from dozens of different platforms incorporating marvels of technology. The climate change battalion is all of the global scientific institutions, the liberal press, governments, major scientific journals, etc. Opposed is a ragtag collection of a few marginalized cheer leaders for curmudgeons with crude and eccentric theories they insist is the true science. That AGW interacts with natural variability in unpredictable ways in a system that is sensitive to small changes is just one more nail in the coffin of contrarian ideology. And apart from anything else – I was following the evidence of indirect solar effects decades ago. You are a bit late to the party – and to imagine that I am upset by you with your compendium of dated science is ludicrous. The question now concerning me is whether the recent Pacific conditions is a state transition following the latest Hale cycle termination.
I like to solve problems – economic growth and nuclear power, better land and water management and resilient infrastructure. AGW is irrelevant – it all makes sense regardless. Contrarians are standing in the way waving at bugaboos.
Robert:
” The climate change battalion is all of the global scientific institutions, the liberal press, governments, major scientific journals, etc. Opposed is a ragtag collection of a few marginalized cheer leaders for curmudgeons with crude and eccentric theories they insist is the true science.”
“The physics of AGW is supported by modern observations from dozens of different platforms incorporating marvels of technology. ”
Yes, that is why it is so difficult to convert your opinion, Robert!
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
You haven’t convinced anyone Christos. For good reason.
Speaking as a ragtag here, You’re quite right that the physics of AGW is utterly non-controversial. Which few of us ragtags are arguing, of course.
What is the sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of concentrations of CO2? We don’t know. Are clouds a net contributor or not? We don’t know. Etc., etc.
Those most invested in the politics of AGW from a ‘consensus’ point of view wave those and other questions away as if they are immaterial.
The physics of AGW is only a part, and sadly too small a part, of the controversy surrounding human contributions to climate change.
Sensitivity to a doubling of greenhouse gases is some 5 degrees C – paleoclimate data and not models. It likely involves a tipping point in marine boundary layer stratocumulus cloud cover.
Nobody is “standing in the way” of anything. Farmers have be improving farming, using less fertilizer, water, and chemicals, without any need for a catastrophic global warming meme. They don’t need any help or assistance from “progressives.”
Farmers take money from government all the time. It should be laser focussed on leaving the resource in better shape for future generations. A key to securing food supplies.
The government knows best, see Sri Lanka.
Mr. Ellison, sensitivity at 5C is not what the IPCC says. They offer a range and say their preferred value is 3C. I must say that I thought hysterical values went out of fashion a few years ago. I’m somewhat dismayed that they still circulate.
The simple calculation is based of paleo climate date. It is explained in the Tapio Schneider video.
Think I’ll stick with the IPCC range, but thanks anyhow.
Go for it Thomas. I might just note that Tapio Schneider’s number is about the median value of CMIP6 results.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/cmip-6-1.png
Robert:
“You haven’t convinced anyone Christos. For good reason.”
Robert, do you think the plus 150 ppm (parts per million) of additional CO2 rise in earth’s atmosphere since the preindustrial era may cause any temperature rise of the earth’s global surface area?
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Javier notes a difference between models and reanalysis products. Comparing them suggests that Internal variability – to get the nomenclature correct – is as much as 0.3 C warming in the past 40 years. That’s not a science failure – nor does science neglect decadal variability.
https://www.osti.gov/pages/biblio/1567550
On the other hand there is contrarian blogoscience. That’s identified by a dogmatic but impossible certainty.
Robert CAGW is falsified because water vapour positive feedback violates minimisation of energy principles (Gibbs free energy principle, a derivative of the 2nd law) A thermodynamic system moves towards its lowest energetic level (equilibrium) and from there resist any forcing (negative feedback). Water vapor positive feedback is in violation of this because an increase in heat (sensible heat energy) is supposed to induce and increase in humidity (latent heat energy) which is in violation of energy minimisation. The way you get positive feedback is by cannibalisation of one energy source by another so that the total energy in the system is still minimised. Ie the glacial cycle appears to alternate between the glacial (High kinetic low sensible heat energy) and the interglacial (high sensible heat low kinetic energy) A similar process occurs in El Nino, with energy cycling between different states in turn. Of course you cannot just assume this is correct or applicable, which is why we test with observational evidence. CAGW is supposed to produce a upper tropospheric hot spot due to constant relative humidity resulting in increasing H20 that causes warming. The observations show that relative humidity is clearly not constant, with H2O decreasing in the upper troposphere and the thermal hotspot absent in both Satellite and radiosonde data. Decreasing humidity in the upper troposphere means negative feedback and invalidates CAGW. Additionally the 2.5W increase in OLR due to decreasing clouds occured as an impulse and thus can be used to measure equilibrium climate sensitivity. Its neutral to slightly negative by my rough estimates. (2.5W from decreased cloud caused 0.4 Deg C increase in temp)
“CAGW is falsified because water vapour positive feedback violates minimisation of energy principles (Gibbs free energy principle, a derivative of the 2nd law) A thermodynamic system moves towards its lowest energetic level (equilibrium) and from there resist any forcing (negative feedback). Water vapor positive feedback is in violation of this because an increase in heat (sensible heat energy) is supposed to induce and increase in humidity (latent heat energy) which is in violation of energy minimisation.”
Very interesting comment, Robert. I agree that systems tend to their minimum free energy by increasing their enthropy, decreasing their enthalpy, or both. The climate must behave in the same way.
I have long defended that the water cycle, with all its changes of state, stabilizes the climate system by acting opposite to changes. Its possible role to keep free energy low is an interesting take.
What stabilises the planetary nonequilibrium thermodynamic system is the Planck feedback. The negative feedback pushes the system towards maximum entropy – energy in equals energy out. But it is always playing catch up to dynamic physical changes in ice, cloud, atmosphere, dust biology… Moreover the system internal components interact in dynamically complex ways to produce states of multiple transient energy equilibria. Regimes and abrupt transitions evident in geophysical series.
I would appreciate the authors indicating whether they have found anything incompatible with the hypothesis that I have been promulgating for several years now.
Solar variability alters the ozone creation/destruction balance in the mesosphere. Probably via wavelength and particle changes rather than TSI. The polar vortex in the stratosphere (not the one around the poles in the troposphere) brings mesospheric air down towards the polar tropopause so that the amount of ozone above the polar tropopause varies with solar activity.
When the sun is quiet there is more ozone in the polar stratosphere which becomes warmer and pushes the polar tropopause downwards and forces tropospheric polar air outwards. A warmer stratosphere pushes the tropopause down and a colder stratosphere allows it to rise. More ozone means warmer because ozone absorbs incoming solar shortwave energy.
That forcing of polar tropospheric air outwards causes wavier jet stream tracks which involve more clouds due to longer lines of air mass mixing.
Increased global cloudiness reduces solar energy into the oceans which alters the ENSO balance in favour of more La Ninas.
More La Ninas are an indicator of a cooling world.
The opposite process occurs when the sun is active.
As far as I can see that process fits the extensive observations described by the authors.
Low solar promotes negative North Atlantic Oscillation conditions (meridional jet stream), which is directly associated with slower trade winds and increased El Nino conditions. Negative NAO drives a warmer AMO, which reduces low cloud cover. See UK sunshine hours increase from 1995 with warm AMO phase:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/actualmonthly/17/Sunshine/UK.gif
There are several hypotheses for a solar effect on climate. Without being exhaustive, the “top-down”, the “bottom-up”, David Evan’s “Notch delay”, yours based on ozone, Bob Weber’s based on TSI, and Svenmark’s cosmic ray effect on clouds. Obviously they cannot all be correct, even if they all contribute to the effect, as they all claim to be the main one. Now the “Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis” is proposed.
It is not our job to show the rest of the hypotheses wrong, just to defend that the evidence better supports mine. The WGK-h is an extension of the “top down”, as it assumes it as a first step. Everything in the “top down” hypothesis is in the WGK-h. The “top down” is the hypothesis with the best evidence support, including data, reanalyses and models.
Regarding your hypothesis, ozone over the Arctic in fall and winter is there because of transport, as insolation goes down. Mesospheric air is extremely rarefied, as the Mesosphere contains very little atmospheric mass.
Then we have the problem of how is ozone warmed above the poles when there is no sunlight.
And finally winter ozone above the Arctic strongly declined in the 1985-2005 period. If more ozone means warmer as you say, then less ozone should be cooler.
Calvo, N., Polvani, L.M. and Solomon, S., 2015. On the surface impact of Arctic stratospheric ozone extremes. Environmental research letters, 10(9), p.094003.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094003
Hello Javier and thanks for responding.
I haven’t yet fully absorbed your WGK hypothesis and will consider it further with a view to seeing how it differs from mine which is also a top down mechanism.
As regards mine, you mention some points which I ought to answer.
i) Mesospheric air contains very little mass but within the descending stratospheric polar vortex it gets denser as it descends and so by the time it gets into the lower stratosphere it matches the density of the stratospheric air.
ii) High up in the mesosphere there is no lack of sunlight over the poles so the sun can still affect the ozone creation/destruction balance and then the ozone warms adiabatically as it descends towards the tropopause.
iii) The period 1985 to 2005 was a period of active sun so my hypothesis would expect less ozone during that period with a cooler lower stratosphere, a rising polar tropopause and more zonal jets with reduced global cloudiness and an ENSO balance in favour of El Ninos. All of which were observed. I understand that the ozone has recovered somewhat since then which is what I would have expected.
Solar activity has weakened since 1995, and a more zonal circulation will drive a colder AMO and increased low cloud cover.
some more comments:
“High up in the mesosphere there is no lack of sunlight over the poles”
This is not correct. The lack of sunshine affects NO at their peak between 62-68 miles high, so it should affect ozone.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/wallops/2020/nasa-sounding-rocket-observing-nitric-oxide-in-the-polar-night
“then the ozone warms adiabatically as it descends towards the tropopause.”
As every other gas, and ozone is very rare in the atmosphere and much more so in the polar atmosphere, where it is c. 350 Dobson units in winter on average. Without sunlight the ozone is not special.
“The period 1985 to 2005 was a period of active sun”
The period 1955-1975 shown in Fig.1 of the paper linked did not have low activity, and the period 1955-1965 was the most active in100 years, so it should have even less ozone and it didn’t.
As I said it is likely that the ozone in the winter Arctic stratosphere responds to differences in transport more than it does to solar activity.
Some more responses:
i) The descending polar vortex gets its air from lower latitudes so your point about transport would be correct. The necessary sunshine would be provided in those lower latitudes.
ii) Rarity isn’t the issue. What matters is variations in the amount however small.
iii) I don’t expect instant measurable responses in ozone amounts to solar variability. As you say, transport is a relevant factor and the turnover of the Brewer Dobson circulation in the stratosphere is very slow. I would expect at least a full solar cycle and possibly two to register a change in trend from ozone depletion to ozone recovery. Solar cycle 20 was less active than those before and after and showed more meridionality during the fears of cooling at that time. Since 2000 with declining solar activity we have had increasing meridionality, some stratospheric ozone recovery, a slight recovery in global cloudiness, a cessation of the previous warming and recently a tendency towards more La Ninas.
According to ships logs the Little Ice Age was very stormy with greater meridionality than today and the Mediaeval Warm Period was more zonal than in our recent warming spell with storms running way to the north of the UK which led to prosperity in the Scottish Isles and regular itner island transport in smaller boats than could be used today.
Timing is also affected by internal ocean cycles which can work with or against any solar trend from time to time.
SW
“Solar cycle 20 was less active than those before and after”
Not so for the solar wind:
https://snipboard.io/98bEAF.jpg
Probability.
A weakness of Willis recently in these pages.
Now compounded.
“ One of the authors (JV) recently studied the association between increasing solar activity and La Niña conditions in the Niño-3.4 region Oceanic Niño Index (ONI). A Monte Carlo analysis showed that the La Niña occurrences, which took place during times of rising solar activity (from 35 to 80 % of the ascending phase of the solar cycle), between 1950–2018, have only a 0.7% probability of being due to chance, demonstrating that ENSO is modulated by solar activity (Vinós 2019; 2022).
Which of the multiple issues to address first?
Only an 0.7% probability of being due to chance?
Only?
So 99.3% certain?
Yet this is for only those La Nina’s taking place during a very wide swathe of the ascending phase and for a very specific 68 year time interval.
And done by repeated computer runs (Monte Carlo) of the same input data and assumptions.
Let’s put it this way.
Both El Niño and La Niña occur during solar cycles .
They are large scale events .
They need a lot of heat input.
They did not only occur during that specific time period but have been occurring in a documented fashion for thousands of years .
So why not show that this is also true for thousands of years of data if it is 99.3% certain?
In a period of rising solar activity you can have an El Niño
1-3 in that 5 years (11 year cycle), La Niña 0-4 and neutral 1- 4.
Meaning that close to 2 in 5 El Ninos also occur in that 5 year window of opportunity .
So the same conditions guarantee a 99.3% chance of La Niña but a 40 % chance of El Niño?
Not to mention the 20- 80 % chance of neutral conditions?
I do not think that 99.3% chance can mean what you claim it means.
“Yet this is for only those La Nina’s taking place during a very wide swathe of the ascending phase and for a very specific 68 year time interval.”
Not at all. The 35-80% of the ascending phase in the solar cycle lasts on average 12.7 years, that is 10% of the solar cycle, and only one ENSO year. It is always a La Niña for the 68 year period. The Monte Carlo study shows the extreme difficulty of getting those ONI values by chance.
And if 68 years is too short for you, then you can dismiss most of modern climatology, that has been established with a shorter period (satellites since 1979).
“So why not show that this is also true for thousands of years of data”
Because that is the span of the ONI database. If the ONI database does not go back thousands of years it is because the data is not so good before 1950.
Logical phallacy of demanding impossible evidence or perfection:
https://www.seekfind.net/Logical_Fallacy_of_Argument_by_Demanding_Impossible_Perfection__Unfalsifiable_Claims__Demanding_Impossible_Evidence.html#.YvEN-3bP3IU
“In a period of rising solar activity you can have an El Niño
1-3 in that 5 years (11 year cycle), La Niña 0-4 and neutral 1- 4.
Meaning that close to 2 in 5 El Ninos also occur in that 5 year window of opportunity .
So the same conditions guarantee a 99.3% chance of La Niña but a 40 % chance of El Niño?
Not to mention the 20- 80 % chance of neutral conditions?”
It is clear that you did not read/understand the study you are critizicing.
lasts on average 12.7 months. That was a typo. It is one and a half years in the 11 year solar cycle.
Ulric
I know we differ on this issue but I refer to the balance between El Niño and La Niña events over decades rather than the presence or absence of either. It is possible to have a couple of weak El Ninos offset by a single strong La Niña and vice versa.
Any reduction in low cloud cover in one place as a result of a negative NAO would be more than offset by increased clods from wavier jets.
A wavier jet stream is because of negative NAO, which drives a warmer AMO and which reduces low cloud cover. It’s the AMO controlling low cloud cover not the NAO.
The wavier jets are global and in both hemispheres so I’m not convinced that a negative NAO is the cause. AMO might reduce low cloud cover regionally but not globally.
The atmospheric circulation pattern is not regional, as the NAO is a regional aspect of the Northern Annular Mode. NAM and SAM don’t regularly change in unison so the jet streams won’t either.
Javier is absolutely correct in that the alarmist climatologists ignore solar cycles. As Javier mentioned, if you plot the Bray and Eddy cycles, you can clearly see the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and even the Modern Warm Period. And then when you also add in the DeVries and Gleissburg cycles much more becomes evident. Too bad the Weather Channel doesn’t show this.
You can trace the Eddy cycle back in time for the past 8000 years. Particularly the roots, times of collapse. 300bce Phoenician/Greek; 1300bce Aegean (sea people); 4k2 event – the Akkadian/Sumerian collapse; 3200bce; and on. Eight cycles between ~6150bce and ~1715ce.
“The increase in solar irradiance during the 11-yr cycle is about 1.1 W/m2. The expected surface warming for such a change in energy is only 0.025 °C “
Yet
“Temperature data and reanalysis consistently show that the solar signal in global temperature is c. 0.1 °C, four times larger than expected from the energy change alone.”
Here one is postulating a second 4 fold amplification of the sun’s effect very similar to the amplification effect attributed to GHG.
Incredible.
Let us be quite clear here. a 4 fold amplification of temperature is part of the GHG theory with water vapour ( major GHG) but without clouds).
The reason the earth warms that 33C or whatever.
It is not clear here whether the “expected surface warming “is with or without the expected amplification or even 4 times larger if it was already factored in
This is therefore a plug in a factor approach as used in climate models which I am not happy about.
–
In theses sentences below the solar output variation is mentioned as only 0.1% when it should be less 1.1 W/ 1364 W%
“The change in surface temperature manifests itself in an unexplained, but significant, regional and hemispheric variation and some regions cool when more energy is coming from the sun (Fig. 2.2). These differences can only be attributed to significant dynamic changes in the atmosphere and oceans when the solar output varies by only 0.1%”
“This is therefore a plug in a factor approach as used in climate models which I am not happy about.”
It is not our goal to make you happy. Those calculations are in the bibliography provided for you to study if you are so inclined. Were you to find any error in them you should address the authors of the articles.
Javier
“ It is not our goal to make you happy.”
I am always happy when people put a lot of work into an idea and present it. Many thanks to you and Andy May.
I am critiquing your ideas, not criticising them.
A bit hard to see that when on the receiving end.
Would you care to explain the reason for the 4 fold amplification in specific terms or does it come up later?
angech,
I am happy with critique and criticism. They are the essence of science and the reason why we post this here instead of just publishing it. So I do not complain that you engage in them, instead I am grateful to you for doing so. Nevertheless battles of ideas sometimes get rough though rarely bloody, particularly over the internet.
Not sure what 4x you refer to. There is one 4x derived from the near-spherical geometry of the Earth versus the discal geometry of the incoming radiation. So TSI is divided by 4 when calculating global average solar forcing, and multiplied by 0.7 to account for the 30% albedo. I don’t like that practice of averaging the sun over the dark side, but it is how it is done.
There is another 4x that derives from observations. Knowing the temperature of the Earth to a certain approximation, and TSI, and based on current knowledge of Earth’s energy budget, it has been calculated how much TSI (or solar forcing) should change to produce a certain change in temperature. This calculation has been done many times, and I refer to the bibliography for more details. The observation of temperature change during the solar cycle is four times larger than the calculation of what the temperature change should be for the measured change in TSI.
Since the effect is 4 times larger than the cause, an amplification mechanism is implied. The question is why do we detect something that should be undetectable? This is non-controversial in modern climate science. If you think otherwise it is not me who you should address.
angech:
“The reason the earth warms that 33C or whatever.”
Earth’s mean surface temperature is 288K.
Earth’s mean surface temperature varies only a very little around the 288K, due to solar variability and due to orbital forcing.
Earth’s mean surface temperature never warms up 33C.
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos this is embarrassing.
You know what is meant by saying it warms up 33C.
This is the difference between an earth without atmosphere and an earth with atmosphere.
Please stop pretending the atmosphere is not important
angech, the difference between an earth without atmosphere and an earth with atmosphere is not 33C.
I mean by that, that Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t warm Earth’s surface by 33C.
The Earth’s theoretical blackbody effective temperature Te =255K is a mathematical abstraction. It doesn’t have any physical analogue on the actual Earth’s surface temperature.
By claiming Earth’s atmosphere being capable to warm Earth’s surface 24 hours on average 33C, please explain how much Earth’s atmosphere warms Earth’s surface at midday hours.
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
You can calculate ECS from this. The 1.1w/m2 solar variance is divided by 4 (=0.275w/m2) and results in 0.1 deg C warming then the 3.7w/m2 forcing from CO2 would cause 1.35 Deg warming. Ie essentially neutral feedback. Similar value as for cloud forcing.
“In theses sentences below the solar output variation is mentioned as only 0.1% when it should be less 1.1 W/ 1364 W%”
So, your complain is that people should use 0.08% instead of 0.1%?
How ridiculous. Have you heard of rounding? Have you heard that it is not the same amount for every cycle?
Javier.
I have heard of rounding.
“people should use 0.08% instead of 0.1%”
In this particular case yes, of course.
The error is 20% of the claim.
80% is quite different to 100% .
Not ridiculous at all.
And you know that.
Fix it.
“it is not the same amount for every cycle?
You mean some of the error could be 10% and some could be 40%?
You have an obligation to use the mathematics correctly when putting up propositions.
My concern was actually directed to the x4 claimed amplification of the solar energy without addressing the mechanism.
“Not ridiculous at all.”
It is an amount different for every solar cycle. And I disagree that it is important to go to the second decimal digit when it is c. 0.1%.
We have different opinions on that. That’s fine.
Thank you Javier and Andy,
This is an excellent series and much appreciated. Only a small amount of solar energy change is required to set a multitude of climate dynamics in motion.
Jim Steele | August 8, 2022
“Only a small amount of solar energy change is required to set a multitude of climate dynamics in motion.”
–
The same is true of butterfly wings, but which butterfly, one may ask.
The butterfly wing story makes extraordinary claims with zero evidence. People like to believe in fairy tales.
There is plenty of evidence that the UV change during the solar cycle affects the dynamical state of the stratosphere during winter. PLENTY. It is not even argued.
A holistic detective agency.
Everything is connected.
No one is arguing that solar energy change on the one hand or UV change affecting the stratosphere occurs.
It happens all the time.
The fact that one can find solar energy change, UV effects and butterfly wings ie events and associations in general, does not imply that the convoluted maths needed to achieve complex linkages can be simplified to an actual, visible and meaningful event chain.
When the differential change is so small.
Great ideas require great proofs. Stan Lee.
You may notice from my above comments that I have produced a suitable event chain which seems to be working.
“The increase in solar irradiance during the 11-yr cycle is about 1.1 W/m2. The expected surface warming for such a change in energy is only 0.025 °C and therefore below detection (Wigley & Raper 1990)”
First, why use a 30y old estimate made before the TSI industry matured?
Second, it’s wrong. Cycles net changed SST anywhere from 0.1°C -0.3°C:
http://climate4you.com/images/SunspotsMonthlySIDC%20and%20HadSST3%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1960%20WithSunspotPeriodNumber.gif
Solar cycle #24 TSI was responsible for a ~0.6°C rise from 2008 to 2016; the ~1 yr lags shown with annual data are really on the order of months:
https://i.postimg.cc/K88JNykw/Figure-16-SC24-v-SST.jpg
HadSST3 during SC24 exhibited growth with rising TSI and particularly after 2013 when annual TSI exceeded my decadal sun-ocean warming threshold. Then it declined with declining TSI, predictably.
Now we await a SST increase from SC #25, as I predicted back in 2018. During this solar cycle, temperatures will likely increase to and exceed the 1.5°C ‘limit’, as I expressed here in a comment several months ago.
The stratosphere is known to contract and cool into the solar minimum with some effect, but whatever it does, it doesn’t warm the ocean. TSI does that.
” The climate change battalion is all of the global scientific institutions, the liberal press, governments, major scientific journals, etc.”
The liberal press, governments and scientific journals slavishly follow the “global scientific institutions.” Which are slavishly beholden to governments. Which have a dog in this hunt (carbon taxes and social control), Government funding goes to those whose confirmation bias is known to favor the AGW hypothesis. All others need not apply. The unanimity of these institutions therefore proves nothing, necessarily. … Civilians (i.e., the press) naturally question the validity of industry-funded research and give credence to government-funded research; both however are agenda-driven, and neither deserves blind acceptance. All science is after all provisional.
That said, I agree with Mr Ellison that it doesn’t so much matter which statistical interpretation of climate dynamics turns out to be more correct: what matters is mitigation of the anticipated effects of warming, imho primarily sea level rise. I agree with Michael Shellenberger’s conclusion (“Apocalypse Never”), that nuclear power should be ramped up to supply the electric vehicles which are (probably) going to comprise a significant percentage of transport in future. I agree with professor Vaclav Smil’s analysis (“How the World Really Works”) that shows “renewables” cannot be relied upon to sustain and expand prosperity and material progress on a global scale, and that deleveraging industrial economies’ dependence on fossil fuels in the near term would condemning developing nations to economic stasis or worse — this is immoral.
Again, the solution is mitigation, not abdication to green extremists with their absurd threats of a “planetary emergency.” The warming “emergency” is strictly our own problem: the biosphere is resilient. It has adapted to much warmer temperatures than these many times since the onset of the Pleistocene.
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How many thousands of times have I said this? Climate scientists are making this way too difficult. The fact that the climate scientists haven’t embraced this concept proves they aren’t looking for the real answer.
How can a non-Climate Scientist identify the real explanation? How can a non-climate scientist look at the data and reach this common sense explanation? You literally have to try not to see the obvious to not see that this is the explanation for the warming.
Cloud modulation of shortwave radiation and greenhouse effect forcing has largely been the determining factor in the global warming of the last 45 years. Not CO2.
https://notrickszone.com/2022/08/08/scientists-the-global-warming-since-1985-cannot-be-attributed-to-co2-forcing/
The blurb on turbulence shows why computer models can’t model climate. It’s on you to show that the “physics” irrefutably shows there will be one or more catastrophes due to man-made CO2. You can’t and you know it.
It’s just someone trying to keep a clean thread. Take the hint.
There is vanishingly little doubt that the greenhouse is verified science. That’s got nothing to do with turbulence.
Comparting climate models with reanalysis products show that it is about half of the recent warming. Such a system is capable of rapid and extreme change.
e.g. https://history.aip.org/history/exhibits/climate/rapid.htm
I meant to include the greenhouse effect as seen from space. Empirical science.
https://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/321/Harries_Spectrum_2001.pdf
I have modelled hydrodynamics for decades. I know how it works. These things are elaborate hypotheses – but there are exciting developments in the works involving data assimilation, machine learning and AI.
This couldn’t be clearer. The change in ocean heat is approximately equal to 90% of the difference between incoming and outgoing energy. There are a number of factors to be seen in the energy dynamic. A prominent feature is warming since 1976 even while solar activity fell.
http://climate4you.com/images/SunspotsMonthlySIDC%20and%20HadSST3%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1960%20WithSunspotPeriodNumber.gif
The question now is whether the current state of the Pacific is a state transition following the 2020 Hale cycle terminator. Or is it just another wiggle waggle – a scientific term attributed to Richard Feynman. The central Pacific was decidedly cooler prior to 1900. Cooling to a new LIA is indeed possible with a cooling that is an order of magnitude less than warming from a doubling of greenhouse gases. Fermi calculations – based on paleoclimate data – all the way down.
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/
But Richie is right. If you want sane policy you need to be able to frame it and sell it politically. Instead dyed in the wool sceptical curmudgeons cling to the delusion that one day people will wake up and realise that their tower of babel blogoscience is the absolute truth. Yeah right.
BTW – there is a feedback in marine stratocumulus cloud cover over the Pacific that is anticorrelated to SST. This is where half of the added energy since 1976 comes from.
“A prominent feature is warming since 1976 even while solar activity fell.”
You are misinterpreting this like most others do because you and they haven’t thought to ask the question, “How much solar activity is just enough to keep the temperature the same?”
How much in sunspot number, Robert? 95 SN.
The great climate shift of 1976/77 was driven by strong solar cycles >95SN.
I don’t think so. I’m inclined to think that upwelling in the eastern Pacific – the origin of warm and cool patterns – is driven by gyre circulation in both the north and the south. Pet theories about SSN notwithstanding.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/pacific-gyres.png
The question to be asked is what spins up these turbulent flows. The latest Pacific Oceanwiggle waggle after 2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006)Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmich et al (2007) suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947).
And if we don’t ignore solar-climate links – it may be related to the By component of the interplanetary magnetic field.
e.g. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL061421
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There are no cycles. The multi-harmonic concept is an inadequate mathematical model of solar evolution. This demolishes the theoretical foundation of the entire series.
‘Earlier it was common to describe sunspot activity as a multi-harmonic process with several basic harmonics (e.g., Vitinsky, 1965; Sonett, 1983; Vitinsky et al., 1986) with an addition of random noise, which plays no role in the solar-cycle evolution. However, it has been shown (e.g., Rozelot, 1994; Weiss and Tobias, 2000; Charbonneau, 2001; Mininni et al., 2002) that such an oversimplified approach depends on the chosen reference time interval and does not adequately describe the long-term evolution of solar activity. A multi-harmonic representation is based on an assumption of the stationarity of the benchmark series, but this assumption is broadly invalid for solar activity (e.g., Kremliovsky, 1994; Sello, 2000; Polygiannakis et al., 2003). Moreover, a multi-harmonic representation cannot, for an apparent reason, be extrapolated to a timescale larger than that covered by the benchmark series. The fact that purely mathematical/statistical models cannot give good predictions of solar activity (as will be discussed later) implies that the nature of the solar cycle is not a multi-periodic or other purely deterministic process, but random (chaotic or stochastic) processes play an essential role in sunspot cycle formation (e.g., Moss et al., 2008; Käpylä et al., 2012).’ https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2013-1
Robert I. Ellison | August 9, 2022
“There are no cycles.”
Sun spot cycles do seem to be well documented.
The 11-year sunspot cycle is actually half of a longer, 22-year cycle of solar activity. Each time the sunspot count rises and falls, the magnetic field of the Sun associated with sunspots reverses polarity; the orientation of magnetic fields in the Sun’s northern and southern hemispheres switch.
How can you say there are no cycles?
Well I have said that – but in this instance it was Usoskin. It’s the difference between continuous and discontinuous functions. Not a subtle distinction when the rubber hits the road.
Ellison implies the Sunspot cycle is due to ‘discontinuous’ functions, then present a video on the three body problem? Ridiculous. It may be impossible to analytically solve the three body problem, but the motion of each body is continuous as is the force of interaction, usually gravity. It’s annoying that this sort of response is allowed to stay on the thread.
Poincare is often regarded as the originator of chaos theory. The three body – solved with Hamiltonian equations over finite time steps – is a simple demonstration of a truth that eludes Jim.
You may rest assured, Ellison, that asteroids continue to exist as they move from one allowed eccentricity region to another. My reaction to all this is “so what?” and what does it have to do with Sun spots or any putative effect of the Sun on Earth’s climate?
I really want to help you out here Jim.
‘For physicists, predicting the motion of two massive objects, like a pair of stars, is a piece of cake. But when a third object enters the picture, the problem becomes unsolvable. That’s because when two massive objects get close to each other, their gravitational attraction influences the paths they take in a way that can be described by a simple mathematical formula. But adding a third object isn’t so simple: Suddenly, the interactions between the three objects become chaotic. Instead of following a predictable path defined by a mathematical formula, the behavior of the three objects becomes sensitive to what scientists call “initial conditions” — that is, whatever speed and position they were in previously. Any slight difference in those initial conditions changes their future behavior drastically, and because there’s always some uncertainty in what we know about those conditions, their behavior is impossible to calculate far out into the future.’ https://www.livescience.com/three-body-problem-solution
Why are you continuing with this irrelevant discourse?
RIE
There are sun spot cycles
We also have night and day cycles on the earth despite the earth being a part player in a much bigger than 3 object problem
Like a good karate chop a single Poincare exception could end the sunspots and send us spiralling away from the sun with altered rotation.
Most of us here on earth will expect the sunspots to keep recurring cyclically and for day to follow night despite the Damocles sword.
Perhaps you could return to orbit on these discussions as well?
‘I’ll keep trying to understand the how it really works. Chaotic systems have regimes and transitions. It doesn’t change the past or the future – but it does explain quasi-periodicity better than multi-harmonics.
‘Stated simply, a terminator is the event that marks the hand-over from one sunspot cycle to the next. It is an abrupt event occurring at the solar equator resulting from the annihilation/cancelation of the oppositely polarized magnetic activity bands at the heart of the 22 years cycle; that is, there is no more old cycle flux left on the disk. Put another way, a terminator is the end of a Hale magnetic cycle. This annihilation appears to globally modify the conditions for magnetic flux to emerge—principally causing the rapid growth of the magnetic system at midsolar latitudes that will be the host for the sunspots of the next sunspot cycle. Our companion paper (McIntosh et al., 2019, hereafter M2019) highlights the terminators that took place at the end of solar cycles 22 and 23, illustrating that a significant, step-function-like, change in the Sun’s radiative proxies took place at the same time over a matter of only a few days. In their analysis, M2019 demonstrate that terminators were visible in standard proxies of solar activity going back many decades—as many as 140 years to the dawn of synoptic H-α filament and sunspot observations. Dikpati et al. (2019) suggested that the most plausible mechanism for rapid transport of information from the equatorial termination of the old cycle’s activity bands (of opposite polarity in opposite hemispheres) to the mid-latitudes to trigger new-cycle growth was a solar “tsunami” in the solar tachocline that migrates poleward with a gravity wave speed (∼300 km s−1).’ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020EA001223
Robert I. Ellison is continuing his thread-bombing (21 of 86 comments = ~25%).
Most of his comments include abuse and rudeness. He should stop abuse and rudeness and restrict his comments to discussion of relevant facts only!
Peter wants to shoot the messenger. It’s not true either. I earnestly endeavour to follow the blog rules – and Judith is the arbiter of that.
“Robert I. Ellison is continuing his thread-bombing (21 of 86 comments = ~25%).”
I always come to the conclusion that it is best not to engage him and let him give his unending vacuous discurse. Comments section red noise comes to mind.
lol – whether Javier engages or not on the modern and sophisticated science I always draw on does not matter. His thesis is not tenable. I merely draw attention to that fact.
The comparison of these two indicated the existence of unidirectional causal coupling from solar activity to seismicity on Earth, and a radial basis function regressor showed accuracy improvements in the largest magnitude prediction of next days by 2.6%–17.9% in the odds ratio when sunspot distances were included.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/5.0096150
‘Orbital resonance phenomena in the Solar system appear on a diverse range of timescales. Orbital resonances are the source of both stability and chaos, depending sensitively upon parameters and initial conditions. This fundamental conclusion and an understanding of its implications is leading a resurgence in the field of celestial mechanics, with import for planetary science in general.’ op. cit. 😘
“The solar effect on ENSO is absolutely unrecognized by modern climatology. “
One way of looking at ENSO is as a relatively straightforward way of assessing the change in energy from the sun over. 12 hour period each Pacific day.
In other words as a proxy for the amount of sunlight reaching the earth in 12 hours.
A better understanding could be reached by using the cloud cover factor for the ENSO regions.
Instead of worrying about the actual ocean temperatures the change in temperature and pressure would relate to the change in intensity of the sun.
This sort of study which Javier and Andy could do with their data would be most rewarding.
The work of Dr Theodor Landscheidt isn’t mentioned here. He wrote 2003 a paper which shows that only the sun “controls” our climate. A report on this paper is found here:
https://electroverse.co/new-little-ice-age-instead-of-global-warming-dr-landscheidt/
It is mentioned twice:
“The solar effect on ENSO is absolutely unrecognized by modern climatology. A recent review on ENSO complexity by 45 prominent ENSO experts (Timmermann et al. 2018) completely fails to mention any solar implication despite the abundant bibliography on the subject (Anderson 1990; Landscheidt 2000; White & Liu 2008; Wang et al. 2020; Leamon et al. 2021; Lin et al. 2021).
“El Niño frequency is also affected by the solar cycle, as other authors have noted (Landscheidt 2000),”
Sorry!
I read:
This work, Published in 2003, just a year before his death, Landscheidt’s research is standing the test of time, and is still largely on course to be proved correct.
The paper’s abstract begins:
‘Analysis of the sun’s varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC’s speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8C
within the next hundred years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected.’
——————-
I write:
It is clear, when someone publishes in 2003 that a coldest phase will be in 2030, that gets wronger and wronger each year closer to 2030.
‘Earlier it was common to describe sunspot activity as a multi-harmonic process with several basic harmonics (e.g., Vitinsky, 1965; Sonett, 1983; Vitinsky et al., 1986) with an addition of random noise, which plays no role in the solar-cycle evolution. However, it has been shown (e.g., Rozelot, 1994; Weiss and Tobias, 2000; Charbonneau, 2001; Mininni et al., 2002) that such an oversimplified approach depends on the chosen reference time interval and does not adequately describe the long-term evolution of solar activity.’ Ilya G. Usoskin
They use an oversimplified and dated paradigm and employ it to undermine science and scientists. When challenged – I evidently provoke them – they insult and berate. If I respond to all of the ideologically motivated fringe nonsense then the comment count goes up and they whine about thread bombing. Lucky I have a sense of humour.
Javier’s foundational conceit is that he can predict the evolution of the sun through these newly rediscovered clockwork harmonies of the spheres. He cannot and the whole thing collapses in disarray.
Javier didn’t cite Vitinsky.
The idea is based transform that decomposes a signal into component sine waves that are regarded as the natural harmonics of the system. Or you simply assume that the system signal can be usefully decomposed into strictly periodic cycles and eyeball it in.
… based on Fourier transforms…
The devil is in the details. One can superimpose a sin wave with a lower amplitude chaotic signal, and there will exist both periodicity and chaos. Not saying sun spots are that, although you could also sum a phase modulated quasi-periodic signal on a chaotic one. Many possibilities exist, but only one reality.
No you can’t and making stuff up doesn’t mean you can. Stick to your knitting Jim.
Wavelet analysis of sunspots detrended show 2-5 year ENSO events. The 11 year event is not completely removed, but the scatter shows the variations and range. https://imgur.com/a/uZteRy9
Sorry Renée, I can’t follow you.
You are doing a wavelet analysis of the sunspot series. Which trend are you removing?
What is the connection between a wavelet of sunspots and ENSO? A wavelet of sunspots shows periodicities in sunspots, right?
Good to see the first post up at WUWT as well with Leif commentating there.
Usual divergence of views.
Plus some extra commentary by our hosts.
Some commentary suggests articles like this are designed to negate the CO2 GHG effects by providing other reasons for global warming.
This comment
“It is no longer acceptable to say that solar variability in total irradiance is too small to have a significant effect on climate, when there is so much evidence that variations in total irradiance are not how solar variability mainly affects climate.”
Does not work.
Either irradiance (radiance) is important or not.
The fact that the radiance is important is obvious.
The fact that the more radiance the more effect should be obvious as well.
It is the increase in solar irradiance that heats up the earth.
To say that a small change is more important than a large change is plainly wrong.
Worse, to say that a small change at any time of the year (winter in this case) is more important than a large change is wrong.
Basically the second part says exactly that,
variations in total radiance that effect the earth’s climate are not how variations in total irradiance that effect the earth’s climate work.
My head hurts.
It is the change in irradiance that is small. The change in cloudiness from altered jet stream behaviour is larger in terms of effect.
Stephen,
The more credence one gives small changes the more altered responsiveness the system has and the bigger the swings that can occur.
With Javier’s assessment of very small changes causing large variations we would have RIE’s climate chaos on steroids.
So no..
The climate is reasonably stable as it responds slowly to a very large amount of fairly constant solar energy including UV.
UV changes larger than supposed take place by the mere act of elliptical orbits, ozone changes and normal variation in sun output unlinked to sunspots.
Ultraviolet radiation from the sun briefly goes up by factors of thousands during solar flares,” said Todd Hoeksema, a solar astronomer at Stanford University.25 Jan 2012
* caveat there are more solar flares during sunspot activity.
“The more credence one gives small changes the more altered responsiveness the system has and the bigger the swings that can occur.
With Javier’s assessment of very small changes causing large variations we would have RIE’s climate chaos on steroids.”
There is a supposition built in there of which you are probably not aware. If that supposition is not true then your whole corollary is untrue.
How does your finger act when you want to call the elevator? It is a very small change, yet the elevator does not appear to be particularly chaotic. Even an earthquake might not result in the elevator moving, yet your finger light pressure does it. The elevator will not respond until your finger pressure reaches certain point. Once it does, applying more pressure will not result in more response.
Careful with assumptions, they are everywhere.
Huh? That’s a very weird elevator analogy. Chaos is chaos because it behaves like members of the broad class of chaotic systems. It is diagnostic and not deterministic. If an elevator sometimes stayed on the 4th floor – and sometimes moved between the 8th and the 15th at a great pace – it would be a fault with the elevator.
My comment has nothing to do with chaos.
You haven’t said anything about elevators that I can recall.
https://judithcurry.com/2022/08/07/the-sun-climate-effect-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-ii-solar-activity-unexplained-ignored-effects-on-climate/#comment-978619
Focus on major modes of climate variability in and look for cloud changes. It helps if you know from satellite data where energy dynamics are changing.
https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62
Then we can look at how.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4973593
It’s all hocus pocus otherwise.
“articles like this are designed to negate the CO2 GHG effects by providing other reasons for global warming.”
It doesn’t matter to me if most global warming is done by CO2, the sun, both or none. I have no skin in that game. I am only interested in the science. I started in 2014 from a position of total acceptance of the consensus explanation, as I was coming from a different scientific discipline. After checking the science behind, it soon became clear to me that the IPCC claims were scientifically untenable in light of the evidence. I didn’t think it was the sun. The LIA-Maunder minimum association looked to me unconvincing and a N=1 statistic. I changed my mind when I read deeply into the paleoclimatology bibliography. The sun emerges from there as a main climate change driver. It is impossible that it has stopped being so.
As a scientist, I will never deny the evidence, even if it means it kills my hypothesis. Along my career most of my working hypotheses turned out to be wrong (as they should, nature is more complex than our imagination), so I learned to be skeptical of my own hypotheses, something that very few people learn. I don’t get attached to my hypotheses. As Thomas Huxley said in 1870, “the great tragedy of Science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact, which is so constantly being enacted under the eyes of scientists.” It is better if you accept your hypothesis might be wrong from start.
Whether my hypothesis turns out to be mostly correct or mostly wrong will be determined by others. Totally correct I am sure it will not be. What I find is that it has a lot more explaining power than the competing CO2 hypothesis, and that is a good sign.
“The fact that the radiance is important is obvious.”
This is where most people went wrong. The TSI change with the solar cycle is only 0.1%, too small to change the system energy budget significantly and drive climate change.
The UV part 200-310nm of the spectrum is only 1% of TSI energy, and it varies by 1% with the solar cycle (10 times the variation in total energy)
So the UV change that drives the solar cycle effect on climate is only 0.01% of the total energy delivered by the sun. The other 0.09% of the energy change is irrelevant in terms of climate change and has no detectable effect.
The sun is an important climate change driver due to a 0.01% change in the total energy from the UV part of the spectrum.
Energy is the base of everything, but the solar effect is not about the amount of solar energy, but its dynamical effects in the Earth’s atmosphere. The Earth’s climate system contributes 99.99% of the energy for the solar effect on climate. A change in the frame of reference (i.e. thinking out of the box) is required.
I became aware of decadal changes in Australian east coast rainfall in 1990, traced it to Pacific states – Mantua with his PDO and many others analysing the frequency and intensity of ENSO+PDO with coral, tree or other proxies. Physical oceanography connects this with the polar annular modes. On which the By component of solar magnetism might act.
I stopped reading IPCC publications in 2007. There is a lot of good science – far too much for a single person to assimilate – but I don’t need summaries.
As I have said, however, Javier needs to study some Earth System Science. I’m dedicated to reviewing my assumptions.
As said,
Solar activity varies.
By more than 0.1% for short periods of time..
Two different sides of the mirror, measured sun output directly.
Measured climate effects have failed to show, over 200 years , that sun spot cycles consistently increase and decrease solar output over the 11 year cycle and that attempts to see an 11 year cycle have failed.
Further the postulated changes from UV magnified are supposed to cause long lasting cycle changes, yet these are specific to only a few esoteric areas. If genuine enough to exist in easily detectable form all the other parameters should show these signs and temperature changes as well.
The fact of the matter is pressure cannot change much by itself.
The driver is temperature from Sun energy.
Clouds are an important modifier of how much sun energy can get through.
Oceans, hence ENSO respond to extra energy input by warming and increasing atmospheric pressure.
This in turn enables not only more CO2 to physically outgassing from both the oceans and all other water on in in the surface but speeds up the equilibrium response that allows more CO2 to be held in the air..
Henri’s law is one small part wrongly used for just the oceans forgetting that the whole planet breathes CO2 into the atmosphere from both ocean and earth substrate and higher temperatures, even 1C lead to a much inherent level of CO2 supportable in the atmosphere than 10 to 20 ppm.
Working this out could be done by Andyy and Javier and others if they drop the inconsequential and concentrate on the thermometer that ENSO forms by its percentage changes in heat variation daily.
The records are there. With cloud cover and satellite sun out put properly linked a proxy of sun output daily through ENSO variation linked to global temperature is possible.
Perhaps Roy Spencer could do it.
“attempts to see an 11 year cycle have failed.”
No idea what you are talking about. Any reference for the non-existance of the solar cycle?
“Working this out could be done by Andyy and Javier and others if they drop the inconsequential and concentrate on the thermometer that ENSO forms by its percentage changes in heat variation daily.”
If you think this is important, why don’t you do it?
An 11 year sunspot and magnetic field solar cycle certainly exist.
I’m with you on that.
An 11 year cycle of solar energy output?
First up there are only 44 years of satellite data to use.
From several different satellites.
The last lot of which was not recording 24 hourly for years at the end.
Problems overlapping the data sets.
Problems of daily fluctuations occasionally greater than the minute amount of increase claimed.
I tell you what.
Put up the 44 year records
Notarise the reliability per year.
Put up the only solar cycles, 4, I guess to draw inferences from and show us the cycle implicit in the sun output compared to the sunspot cycle
We will both be in agreement if you are right.
Robert I. Ellison is thread bombing – AGAIN!!!.
29 of 133 comments = 22%
And most include personal attacks – as usual
Oh for God’s sake learn a new tune.
In this near real time animation – based on observations and not Wily E. Coyote blogoscience – we can see winds blowing cold water up the coast in the Peruvian current enhancing upwelling – responding to a wavier polar annular mode. This is the origin of ENSO decadal patterns. The Californian Current drives the PDO.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/level/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-145.13,-17.38,335
Closed Raleigh-Benard convection cells persist for longer over cooler ocean than warmer – before raining out from the centre to leave open cells with a lower domain albedo. Cool oceans have more cloud cover and vice versa. That’s the mechanism for much of the decadal solar energy modulation.
https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/87000/87456/pacificocean_tmo_2016032.jpg
https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/87000/87456/pacificoceandetail_tmo_2016032.jpg
Most of this post and pretty much all of the comments are hocus pocus. I guess that’s what Peter considers insult. Given the characterization of anyone who disagrees with contrarian groupthink as a religious zealot – it seems what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. What’s the name for that?
I’ve always thought that the Humboldt current is the real driver of ENSO. Of course it’s under atmospheric influence also – and vice versa. Atmosphere and ocean are the chicken-egg of climate – take your pick.
Yep – the Humboldt current is on the upwelling region – the Peruvian Current is the western arm of the South Pacific gyre.
Whoops – eastern arm.
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The La Niña/Neutral oscillation is phase locked to the solar cycle (Fig. 2.4a).
ENSO is phase-locked to the annual cycle.
Solar cycle? That’s not so clear from fig 2.4a.
Ref:
Tziperman E, Cane MA, Zebiak SE, Xue Y, Blumenthal B. Locking of El Nino’s peak time to the end of the calendar year in the delayed oscillator picture of ENSO. Journal of climate. 1998 Sep;11(9):2191-9.
“Solar cycle? That’s not so clear from fig 2.4a.”
Look only at the Neutral years curve (light brown curve) and the solar cycle (fine black curve).
Everybody forgets the Neutral years, as if they did not carry the same amount of information.
Javier | August 11, 2022
“Look only at the Neutral years curve (light brown curve) and the solar cycle (fine black curve).
Everybody forgets the Neutral years, as if they did not carry the same amount of information.”
Throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Also known forever as a Ghergis.
Integrity is important .
That is why selective use of data to achieve a result you want is frowned upon.
A theory is a theory in entiro.
You cannot choose and pick which data set you get to use.
Unless of course you want to do your own sub theory.
“ Look only at” is not science.
Lack of information is in itself information.
Choosing no information as the basis of an argument is disingenuous
“You cannot choose and pick which data set you get to use.”
What the hell are you talking about? I analyzed the frequency of the three ENSO modes. La Niña and Neutral show very good anticorrelation. You can see that in the figure if you bother. They both follow the solar cycle, but since they anti-correlate, the ENSO mode that becomes more similar in the aspectof its frequency to the solar cycle is Neutral. Neutral years are more abundant when solar activity is high, and less abundant when it is low.
Seriously, you have a problem when you analyze the language instead of the data in a science blog. Would you care to look at the data? It is a very easy analysis, you can repeat it yourself if in doubt.
‘The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm. While this is widely accepted, there is a relatively poor understanding of the different types of
nonlinearities, how they manifest under various conditions, and whether they reflect a climate system driven by astronomical forcings, by internal feedbacks, or by a combination of both. In this paper, after a brief tutorial on the basics of climate nonlinearity, we provide a number of illustrative examples and highlight key mechanisms that give rise to nonlinear behavior, address scale and methodological issues, suggest a robust alternative to prediction that is based on using integrated assessments within the framework of vulnerability studies and, lastly, recommend a number of research priorities and the establishment of education programs in Earth Systems Science. It is imperative that the Earth’s
climate system research community embraces this nonlinear paradigm if we are to move forward in the assessment of the human influence on climate.’ https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/pep/Rial2004.NonlinearitiesCC.pdf
Earth system science is nowhere near as simple as Javier believes. Simple correlation – eyeballed or not – is the wrong paradigm to apply.
Turgid verbiage.
We begin instead with physical laws – the equations of motion for rotating. stratified, incompressible flow.
https://steemitimages.com/DQmR1QGXuufM9qxzAq3HCj58bypefGdXCu8d4tg4iWBmokW/ql_cabab8b787814b85ffa0071d15a3f2bf_l3.jpg
Robert I. Ellison | August 11, 2022
“The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: “
Nothing non linear about night and day, or the seasons.
You could say parts of the Earth’s climate system are but the parts Javier is talking about do have sensible cycles or ranges.
You are right in the general and wrong in the specific because you also choose and pick your data sets.
Javier | August 11, 2022 at 7:51 pm |
“You cannot choose and pick which data set you get to use.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Analysing the data used , the language used and the theory being put forward.
The idea of finding correlation is considered as proving a theory.
The idea of finding anti correlation, to me, indicates that the opposite of the theory, it’s converse, might be true.
Hence, if you are correct on Premise 1 “There is an increase and decrease in the amplitude of energy from the sun over 11 year cycles”
and on Premise 2. “This small amount of energy change is able to be amplified at certain times of the year (specifically winter?) and at certain levels in the atmosphere at those times creating further amplification (through cloud formation perhaps?) leading to a more marked increase in time over earth surface temperatures than the sun energy alone could cause”
The “Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis of sun-climate effect (Vinós 2022).”
You have to be clear on all your assertions.
They have to fit together.
Anti correlation is different to opposites.
El NIno and La Niña are opposites
Neutral is not one mode but two modes, coming off an El Nino or coming off a La NIna with quite different initial conditions which have to be taken into account and not combined into a single ENSO mode.
Anticorrelation, if it occurs as you say is a concern, a bug not a feature.
Say Surface Temperature globally goes up during El Niño.
Does this mean you are saying Surface Temperature goes up during La Niña?
That would be my idea of an anti correlation.
The least you might think about is multiple regression – but that doesn’t explain emergent behaviour – a fatal flaw.
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/img/styles/figure3_3-992@2x.png
‘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 very fact that the search is for amplification of a tiny signal within the planetary system says something about emergent behaviour. And of course there is nothing that suggests that anthropogenic forcing cannot be amplified or damped by positive and negative feedbacks. Oh wait…
BTW – if you are looking for internal amplification of a tiny solar signal – that’s what nonlinear means.
“ENSO is phase-locked to the annual cycle.”
They don’t seem to know why, as the annual cycle has little effect on the equatorial band.
I believe I have the answer to that too.
A lot happens in a year.
The sun sinusoids between tropics, and insolation oscillates between perihelion and aphelion.
Inclined rotation imparts torque to the oceans.
Plenty of straightforward insolation and momentum based periodic forcing.
Not enough coffee yet. ENSO evolution is influenced by seasons as the Intertropical Convergence Zone moves north or south. Phased locked is a bridge too far no matter how much eyeballing is done.
The current La Nina seems likely to intensify in the Austral spring.
‘I believe I have the answer to that too.’
Not without physical oceanography.
https://www.youtube.com/user/taichiatduke
Paleoclimatology is the only subfield in climatology where a belief in an important sun-climate effect is considered.
One of the most striking such palaeo climate solar associations is the precession Milankovitch cycle, which manifests itself as highly visible striping in many rocks worldwide.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334660470_Detection_of_Strong_Precession_Cycles_from_the_Late_Pliocene_Sedimentary_Records_of_Northeastern_Tibetan_Plateau
Javier
Erl Happ has developed a full theory of climate agency via solar UV, involving ozone, jet streams etc. Is your winter gatekeeper model consistent with Erl’s ideas? He also emphasises that TSI is not the important thing but the UV component and top-down mechanisms:
https://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/climate-changes-oh-so-naturally/
Well it may originate in the troposphere in response to the By component of the IMF.
Solar wind-driven geopotential height anomalies originate in the Antarctic lower troposphere – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL061421
“Erl Happ has developed a full theory of climate agency via solar UV, involving ozone, jet streams etc.”
Anybody that looks into the top-down mechanism effects of the solar cycle in the winter atmosphere is bound to find them, as Karin Labitzke pioneered.
For over two decades, Yuhji Kuroda and Kunihiko Kodera have been publishing studies jointly or separately analyzing those effects using chemistry enabled atmospheric models and reanalysis. Thay have studies on the annular modes, the North Atlantic oscillation, and the stream jets. Other people are seeing effects on atmospheric blocking and storm track position. What Erl Happ describes is not different.
In model experiments where the effect of the 11-yr cycle is prolonged for decades, they describe a situation similar to the LIA:
Kodera, K., Thiéblemont, R., Yukimoto, S. and Matthes, K., 2016. How can we understand the global distribution of the solar cycle signal on the Earth’s surface?. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 16 (20), pp.12925-12944.
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/16/12925/2016/acp-16-12925-2016.pdf
” Model integration of 100 years of strong or weak stratospheric westerly jet condition in winter may exaggerate long-term ocean feedback.
…
It is generally believed that changes in the solar UV produce regional effects in the troposphere, but have little impact on global mean temperatures (e.g. IPCC, 2013). However, this is not completely true for centennial solar variations. The effect of long-lasting weaker stratospheric polar vortices on tropospheric climate can be seen in the numerical experiment presented above. Figure 14 shows annual mean surface air temperature differences between weak and strong stratospheric westerly polar-night jet experiments averaged over the last 50 years, as in Fig. 13. Note that the results of this experiment are more comparable with an extended period of extreme
solar minimum (Maunder Minimum-like) conditions. The Earth’s surface cools down remarkably. Global mean temperature decreases by about 0.5 K, although total solar irradiance is unchanged. This global cooling is originally caused by the weakening of the stratospheric polar vortex, which induces more frequent cold surges resulting in a larger snow cover extent in mid-latitudes. As a consequence, the Earth’s albedo increases and the radiative balance changes without change in the TSI.”
As you can see these hypotheses have been around for some time and have failed to make an impact. Obviously, there is a strong resistence to accept significant solar effects. One of the problems is the energy budget. To produce a climate change the energy budget must be affected. In the paper mentioned this change is assigned by models to albedo. The models are wrong, as usual, and it is not very convincing besides requiring that for decades something that is intrinsically variable, like jet strength, does not change.
The problem is that models don’t understand meridional transport, so the answer cannot be found through them. Nevertheless, Kodera, Kuroda, Matthes and others have greatly advanced our knowledge of the atmospheric mechanisms involved in the solar signal. No comprehensive hypothesis for a solar effect on climate can be built ignoring the relevant bibliography. A lot of things have to be taken into account, and simple answers will not solve this complex problem. The skeptic blogosphere has been trying for decades to confront the simple answer “CO2 did it” with other simple answers, like the sun, clouds, cosmic rays, tropical convection,… and failing. The good news is that the simple answer “CO2 did it” is also wrong, as it could not be otherwise.
Javier
“ The problem is that models don’t understand meridional transport”
Could you expand on that a little. I apologize if I missed it before.
Yeah – where do the Navier-Stokes PDE go wrong?
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535
“Could you expand on that a little.”
We will in the next part in a few days. Meanwhile the quote at the top of that part:
“The atmospheric heat transport on Earth from the Equator to the poles is largely carried out by the mid-latitude storms. However, there is no satisfactory theory to describe this fundamental feature of the Earth’s climate,”
Barry, L., Craig, G.C. and Thuburn, J., 2002. Poleward heat transport by the atmospheric heat engine. Nature, 415 (6873), pp.774-777.
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring08/atmo336s1/courses/fall08/atmo551a/BaroclinicHeatEngineNATURE.pdf
What trust can you put in a model of something that is not understood?
One of the salient problems of the climate debate is that nearly everybody think they know more about climate than they really know. Even among climate scientists the level of bibliographic knowledge is appalling. Pitiful sub-science.
The more one knows, the more one knows that doesn’t know.
“The more one knows, the more one knows that doesn’t know”
That is absolutely the truth. The older I get the more that makes so much sense.
I look forward to the rest of the series.
> That is absolutely the truth. The older I get the more that makes so much sense.
Lol. Do you remember how confident you were about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, and in what basis you were so confident?
If you’ve become more circumspect about what you know as you’ve aged, I can only imagine what you were like when you were young.
Joshua | August 12, 2022 at 10:24 am |
You’re back!
So good to see you.
Can you say something outrageous, please.
You are the quintessential A.E.Neumann.
You never grow up or age.
Those are compliments by the way, so you don’t have to thank me.
J
Good to have you back after such a long hiatus. There has been daily chatter wondering where you were. Some have speculated that the voluminous skeptics evidence finally got to you and you went into hiding, and in fact, surfaced elsewhere with a different moniker proselytizing for the realists side.
Since you have been away you probably haven’t seen that tax revenue, as a result of the Trump tax cuts, continues their explosive run to record levels. While they have been in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the so called “stick it to the rich, make the bast…s pay their fair share” Biden bill has been analyzed and millionaires taxes will go up by only $2 billion in 2027 from $1 trillion in current law.
But I digress. To more current events. You misinterpreted what I was talking about on Trump being re-elected. I was talking about 2024. Which reminds me of the talk in Grange Halls across America, there is the belief that Trump laid a trap for the FBI, and purposely leaked surreptitiously, intelligence that he had some hot stuff at his mansion. The FBI took the bait and look what we have.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FZwCojHWIAE6mpl?format=jpg&name=medium
On the other side of the aisle, the usual collusion hoax pinkos, are up in arms believing that Trump had Robert Oppenheimer’s original papers and was turning Mar a Lago into a Manhattan Project style nuclear factory.
Glad to report. Business as usual.
Polar surface pressure drives variation in the strength of the polar westerlies – and the location of the polar jet stream. Polar and subpolar surface pressure are the basis for the SAM and NAM indices. The surface pressure correlation is with the By component of the IMF (Lam et al 2014).
https://climateadaptationplatform.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/climate-adaptation-jet-streams.jpg
So we have what is about 0.5 degrees C cooling to the MM at most driven in part by a very small solar signal and amplified internally through unspecified
physical pathways. Do you get that it’s a nonlinear feedback? My problem is why an order of magnitude larger forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gases doesn’t have nonlinear feedbacks?
This is a spectacular contrarian own goal.
I’d forgotten that I wrote this – https://watertechbyrie.com/2016/07/14/working-backwards-from-enso-variability-to-solar-causality/
Science was getting there decades ago – but of course Javier has discovered a new world that demonstrates the incompetence of climate science.
Are 22 year patterns evident as well as 11yr?
Ryan Maue sees 2000 as an analogue year to 2022, which would coincidentally also put us in roughly the same phase of solar cycle and polarity.
2000 also had a very late start to hurricane season which ended up being moderately high activity.
https://mobile.twitter.com/aaronshem/status/1558198575946932225
Coincidentally, I was born another 22 years earlier during a record snow storm. I wonder what the ‘78 hurricane season was like.
Transitions from El Nino to La Nina have been noted at terminations of aperiodic solar cycles. The La Nina following the 2020 termination seems to fit the pattern. I suspect that – if real – it is a resonant planetary response to a faint solar beat.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020EA001223
Mind you I suspect that there are no climate cycles at all – even the 20 to 30 year convention as heretical as that might seem.
‘Importantly, however, both reconstructions appear predominantly positive–neutral and exhibit muted/insignificant spectral features at decadal to multi-decadal scales, suggesting neither reconstruction exhibits quasi- or true periodic variability.’ https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00359-z
Robert I. Ellison | August 13, 2022
–
“Mind you I suspect that there are no climate cycles at all”
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As an apostate you might have to leave the temple.
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It would be better to qualify your statement as I suspect that some perceived climate cycles are not cycles at all.
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Even there you have a problem.
Is a cycle not a cycle because it only lasts a short time?
One could say that cycles, defined as being recurrent events usually within boundary conditions are always observable to your chagrin.
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You can state it, as you have with other definitions when you fall outside the consensus, as not being applicable to the particular type of world or scenario you are considering.
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However you would be of better use to the debate by proving whether or not the variations postulated for the cycles postulated have enough oomph or kick to move the dials of cyclicity a couple of discernible iotas.
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How do you see negative correlation as a positive idea?
I relied only on data and analysis from Tessa Vance and Co.
angech relies on narrative waffle – a one way trip down the rabbit hole.
CAN YOU SPOT THE DFIFFERENCE?
Aaron check your birth certificate
I was born in a cross-fire hurricane
And I howled at my ma in the driving rain
But it’s all right now, in fact, it’s a gas
But it’s all right. I’m Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Very quiet hurricane season, until I posted that.
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“Since the effect is 4 times larger than the cause, an amplification mechanism is implied.”
Did I miss something or its in the 3 parts coming. I thought you had identified a correlation and not a cause at this point?
You surely have identified a lack of engagement with solar cycles on the part of mainstream ‘science’ when these cycles have been long identified and correlated with more than negligible effect. But it surely seems to me that you would see the irony in your presentation that you suspect an amplification of solar effect just as models tout an amplification of the ’cause’ they have identified in CO2.
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