by Javier Vinós & Andy May
“These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s.” Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson & Sergey Kravtsov (2007)
4.1 Introduction
While the study of weather variability has a long tradition, the science of climate change is a very young scientific topic, as attested to by the 1984 discovery of the first multidecadal oscillation, the primary global climate internal variability phenomenon, by Folland et al. The impact of this fundamental feature of the global climate system was discovered ten years later by Schlesinger and Ramankutty (1994), after modern global warming had already been blamed on CO2 changes, illustrating the risk of reaching a consensus with insufficient understanding of the topic at hand. The Pacific (inter) Decadal Oscillation (PDO) was discovered three years later (Mantua et al. 1997; Minobe 1997). The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) was not named until just two decades ago (Kerr 2000).
Prior to the 1980s, it was generally thought that climate changed so slowly as to be almost imperceptible during the span of a human lifetime. But then it became clear that abrupt climate changes took place during the past glacial period (Dansgaard et al. 1984), Dansgaard–Oeschger events demonstrated that regional, hemispheric, and even global climate could undergo drastic changes in a matter of decades. The problem was that modern climate-change theory was built around gradual changes in the greenhouse effect (GHE) and did not have much room for abrupt, drastic, global changes that could not be properly explained by changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) radiative forcing.
The first explanations for glacial Dansgaard–Oeschger events involved drastic changes in meridional transport (MT) by the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). AMOC is part of the global conveyor theory that tries to explain the flow of heat through the Earth’s oceans. The AMOC explanation, better known as the salt-oscillator hypothesis (Broecker et al. 1990), falls short however, as there is no evidence that the AMOC has undergone the abrupt and drastic changes required to produce the events. The current theory on MT is based on what is known as the Bjerkness compensation hypothesis, where changes in one of MT components (the oceanic or the atmospheric) are compensated for by similar changes of the opposite sign in the other. Current interpretations of the Dansgaard–Oeschger phenomenon are based on rapid sea-ice changes taking place at the Nordic seas that abruptly released a great amount of ocean-stored heat under the sea-ice (Dokken et al. 2013).
Dansgaard–Oeschger events have turned out to be a glacial-world phenomenon with little applicability to Holocene conditions, but it is clear that abrupt climate changes are a reality that requires an explanation. Studies of Holocene climate change have identified at least 23 abrupt climate events (Fig. 4.1e; Vinós 2022) during the past 11,700 years (about two per millennium on average). They are well reflected in several proxies of different nature and identified as such in the paleoclimatic literature. From their different climatic signatures, it is clear that these events cannot respond to a single cause. Yet modern climate-change theory has left us with only two possibilities, changes in radiative forcing produced by changes in atmospheric GHGs, or volcanic activity. These simple processes cannot explain them all. Changes in CO2 can be ruled out as a cause, since from 11,000 years ago to 1914 it remained between 250 and 300 ppm, and decadal to centennial oscillations in CO2 have only varied a few ppm according to ice cores. Volcanic forcing presents a problem, because its Holocene evolution has been opposite to temperature evolution. It was stronger when the planet warmed and weaker when it cooled, reaching a minimum c. 3,000 years ago, so it cannot be a strong driver of centennial temperature change. In fact, the Little Ice Age (LIA), the most recent abrupt climate event prior to modern global warming, cannot be explained by CO2 or volcanic forcing. According to the GISP2 ice core volcanic sulfate record (Fig. 4.1c; Zielinski et al. 1996), volcanic activity was above average between 1166–1345 AD, but was below during most of the LIA, only becoming elevated again towards the end of it, in the 1766–1833 AD period.
Fig. 4.1 Abrupt climate change during the Holocene. a) Black curve, 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) Purple curve, Earth’s axis tilt (obliquity) in degrees. c) Red curve, Holocene volcanic sulfate in the GISP2 ice core in parts per billion summed for each century in BP scale (rightmost point is 0–99 or 1851–1950), with quadratic trendline (thin red line). Data from Zielinski et al. 1996. d) Light blue curve, CO2 levels as measured in Epica Dome C (Antarctica) ice core. Data from Monnin et al. 2004. e) Light grey bars, abrupt climatic events during the Holocene determined from ice-rafted petrological tracers (Bond et al. 2001), methane changes (Blunier et al. 1995; Kobashi et al. 2007; Chappellaz et al. 2013), Dead Sea level changes (Migowski et al. 2006), δ18O isotope changes in Dongge Cave (Wang et al. 2005), North Levant precipitation changes (Kaniewski et al. 2015), and dolomite abundance changes in Gulf of Oman eolian deposition record (Cullen et al. 2000). Dark grey boxes at bottom give their approximate dates in ka. After Vinós 2022
Modern climate theory has a problem explaining abrupt climate change and has developed a vague explanation that uses concepts from chaos theory about thresholds that are crossed and tipping points that are reached when a forcing gradually increases over a noisy chaotic background. The problem is that there is no evidence for the existence of such thresholds and tipping points other than the existence of the abrupt climate changes that they try to explain. Theoretical positive feedbacks are also invoked, but the general climate stability that has been life-compatible for the past 450 Myr indicates that it is a system dominated by negative feedbacks. As is usually the case with a troubled paradigm, it takes refuge on the least known aspects of climate, like the importance of the poorly measured themohaline circulation for climate change, finding some support in general circulation models, but not on the evidence, that suggests AMOC is a lot more stable than previously thought (Worthington et al. 2021), and does not appear to depend much on deep water formation (Lozier 2012).
Besides abrupt climate events that took place centuries or millennia ago, current climate also undergoes rapid regime shifts every few decades. The regime shift concept was developed in ecology to explain rapid transitions between alternative stable states, mainly in grazing ecosystems. Lluch-Belda et al. (1989) used the concept to explain the alternation between sardine and anchovy regimes simultaneously in several of the world oceans, possibly in response to climate change. Their data showed that at least two shifts between sardine and anchovy regimes had taken place during the 20th century prior to the 1980s.
4.2 The climate shift of 1976-77
At the 1990 7th Annual Pacific Climate Workshop, Ebbesmeyer et al. (1991) presented a study demonstrating that in 1976 the Pacific climate had undergone a step change in 40 environmental variables, including air and water temperatures, the Southern Oscillation, chlorophyll, geese, salmon, crabs, glaciers, atmospheric dust, coral, carbon dioxide, winds, ice cover, and Bering Strait transport. The changes suggested that one of Earth’s largest ecosystems occasionally undergoes abrupt shifts. Nicholas Graham (1994) analyzed the abrupt changes that took place in the boreal winter circulation over the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and in the coupled ocean/atmosphere system of the tropical Pacific and concluded that these changes resemble a muted, quasi-permanent El Niño, that began when the coupled ocean-atmosphere system did not recover fully from the 1976-77 El Niño, and were best described as a change in the background climate state. In addition, mid-latitude winter boreal circulation became more vigorous, with a southward excursion of the westerlies, significant changes in geopotential heights and sea level pressure, accompanied by a southward migration of the Aleutian low-pressure center in winter.
Examination of past climate and fishery data from the North Pacific by Mantua et al. (1997) and by Minobe (1997) led to the identification of a 50–70-year climate oscillation that was named the Pacific (inter) Decadal Oscillation (PDO; Mantua et al. 1997). Regime shifts in the PDO were identified in both articles c. 1925, 1947, and 1977. The pan-Pacific coordinated changes in climate and ecological variables were apparent in many sea-surface temperature (SST) and sea-level pressure (SLP) indices, like the Southern Oscillation Index, defined by Gilbert Walker in the 1920s, and known since the 1960s to track atmospheric El Niño-linked changes in the Walker circulation. Mantua and Hare defined the PDO as the leading principal component of an empirical orthogonal function of monthly SST anomalies over the North Pacific (poleward of 20°N; Mantua & Hare 2002). As changes in SLP lead changes in SST by about two months, Shoshiro Minobe (1999) focused on SLP, using the North Pacific Index (Trenberth & Hurrell 1994) that tracks seasonal SLP changes in an ample region of the North Pacific centered on the Aleutian Low. Using this index, Minobe showed that there were two oscillations causing climate shifts. The major oscillation, already identified, had a period of c. 55 years. It affected SLP variability during both winter and spring atmospheric circulation, and presented shifts at c. 1922/23, 1948/49 and 1975/76 (Minobe 1999). The minor oscillation had a period of c. 18 years, and only affected winter circulation. Three periods of the minor oscillation (i.e., shifts at c.1923/24, 1946/47 and 1976/77) nearly coincide in time and sign with pressure changes of the major oscillation (Fig. 4.2).
Fig. 4.2 Multidecadal and bidecadal oscillations in the North Pacific. a) The wavelet-transform coefficient of the winter North Pacific index as the area-averaged sea-level pressure anomaly (hPa) in the region 160°E−140°W, 30−65°N. It is a three-dimensional representation of the time domain (1899–1997, X-axis), the frequency domain (periodicity, Y-axis), and the amplitude of the changes (color scale, hPa) of the pressure changes in a region centered in the Aleutian Low. Blue color indicates a deeper Aleutian Low associated to PDO positive phases. The thin black-solid, black-dashed and grey contours indicate the significance at the 95, 90 and 80 % confidence levels, respectively. From Minobe 1999. b) The phase and amplitude sine wave of the diurnal lunar nodal cycle K1 tidal constituent (thick black line, left scale) has been overlaid to show that both the phase and period of the bidecadal component in the instrumental record is that of the 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle. After McKinnell and Crawford (2007). c) Vertical lines, dates of Pacific climate regime shifts identified by Mantua et al. (1997)
The North Atlantic also presents a multidecadal oscillation, the AMO, and a bidecadal one (Frankcombe et al. 2010). The relationship between the bidecadal and multidecadal oscillations remains unclear. A subharmonic relationship is unlikely despite their coupling. In the North Pacific they have a different seasonal dependency, and in the North Atlantic the bidecadal oscillation is best seen in subsurface temperatures, while the multidecadal one affects mainly surface temperature and Arctic deep-water salinity (Frankcombe et al. 2010). McKinnell and Crawford (2007) propose that the North Pacific bidecadal oscillation is a manifestation of the 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle in winter air and sea temperatures. This lunar cycle strongly affects the magnitude of the lunar diurnal tide constituent (K1) and is synchronized in phase and period to the bidecadal oscillation. In Fig. 4.2 increasing K1 (upward sinusoidal) is associated to decreasing SLP (blue colors) and decreasing K1 to increasing SLP. According to McKinnell and Crawford, the bidecadal component of variability association to the 18.6-yr lunar nodal cycle appears in proxy temperatures of up to 400 years in duration. A tidal cause for the bidecadal oscillation certainly provides an explanation for the subsurface temperatures effect in the North Atlantic. Tides provide over half of the energy for the vertical mixing of water in the oceans.
The work of Schlesinger and Ramankutty (1994) made clear that multidecadal variability had a global effect on temperature, that also displayed a c. 55–70-year oscillation when detrended. Interdecadal oscillations have been described in most oceans, including the Arctic, affecting a variety of climatic phenomena including SST, SLP, sea subsurface temperature, salinity, sea-ice, wind speed, sea-level, and atmospheric circulation. It was necessary to take a global view integrating all this natural variability into a single hypothesis of global multidecadal internal climate change. That is what Marcia Wyatt accomplished when she developed the “stadium-wave” hypothesis in her thesis (Wyatt 2012). She identified a multidecadal climate signal that propagated across the Northern Hemisphere through indices of a synchronized network (Fig. 4.3). While Wyatt could not identify the nature of the signal, or the cause of its period of c. 64 years, Wyatt and Curry (2014) identified the Eurasian Arctic sea-ice region as the place where the signal was first generated. As we saw in Part III, this is the main gateway for atmospheric winter meridional transport into the Arctic (e.g., see Figs. 3.6 & 3.8b), to which sea-ice is very sensitive.
Fig. 4.3 The stadium-wave hypothesis. 20th-century signal propagation through a 15-index-member network. Selected indices are a sub-set of a broader network. Four clusters of indices are highlighted (±I through IV). Each cluster is termed a “Temporal Group”. Peak values of Group indices represent stages of climate-regime evolution. From Wyatt and Curry 2014
Clearly a hemispherically synchronized multidecadal variability in the ocean-atmosphere coupled system takes place in the NH during winter. Most modern global warming has also taken place since 1976 in the NH during the winter months (Fig. 4.4). It is obvious to anybody endowed with independent thinking that the climate shift that affected the NH winters since 1976 and the global warming that mainly affected the NH winters since 1976 must be causally related. At the very least, natural multidecadal variability must be responsible for an important part of the global warming experienced in the 1976–2000 period. Yet by the time multidecadal warming and climate regime shifts were known to climatologists (in the 1990s–2010s), modern climate theory had already played a trump card assigning the 1976 climate shift to aerosols. As Tsonis et al. (2007) state:
“The standard explanation for the post 1970s warming is that the radiative effect of greenhouse gases overcame shortwave reflection effects due to aerosols. However, … the observations with this event, suggests an alternative hypothesis, namely that the climate shifted after the 1970s event to a different state of a warmer climate, which may be superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend.”
Despite knowing this, modern climate theory has refused to incorporate the effect of climate shifts, that are poorly reproduced and never predicted by models. This sets the theory up for failure as the same trump card cannot be played again when the next shift comes. Can the proponents of modern climate theory ignore a new shift? Or will they recognize the theory’s shortcomings, after committing western economies to a profound decarbonization?
Fig. 4.4 Hemispheric seasonal rates of warming. Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere average temperature anomaly for December-February (continuous), March-May (long dash), June-August (short dash), and September-November (dotted) for the 1970–2000 period. Data from Jones et al. 2016
4.3 Despite everybody looking at climate the 1997–98 shift went unnoticed
The failure to incorporate climate shifts to the modern climate theory is one of the reasons the climate shift that took place in 1997–98 (97CS) was not noticed and properly described. Another reason is that many of its effects were erroneously assigned to the increasing radiative forcing from GHGs climbing levels and used to raise the level of climate alarm. As the 1976 shift changed the NH climate to a warmer state (Tsonis et al. 2007) by increasing the rate of warming (Fig. 4.4), the 97CS did the opposite and changed the climate state by reducing the rate of warming. Embarrassingly, it was not climate scientists who noticed this change, since it did not fit their biases with regard to increasing levels of GHGs, but a geologist and paleontologist skeptical of modern climate theory who first reported it: “There IS a problem with global warming… it stopped in 1998” (Carter 2006).
After the pause in global warming was identified, hundreds of articles were published on it in scientific journals and a great controversy erupted over its reality, with some authors denying its existence (Lewandowsky et al. 2016) and even altering the official datasets to reduce its significance (Karl et al. 2015), and other authors asserting it as a real phenomenon that needed an explanation (Fyfe et al. 2016).
The pause controversy was a third factor obscuring recognition of the 97CS despite clear evidence of its existence. This factor, together with the absence of climate shifts in modern climate theory and models, and the incorrect attribution of its effects to increasing GHG forcing, kept the obvious conclusion out of the mainstream. Lluch-Belda et al. (1989) identified global sardine and anchovy regime shifts suggesting a climate change cause. These fishery shift points were later identified as Pacific climate shift points that had global teleconnections (Mantua & Hare 2002). Chavez et al. (2003) reported in the journal Science that a new multidecadal regime shift in Pacific fisheries had taken place in the mid-1990s. The warm “sardine regime” had changed to a cool “anchovy regime.” The authors advised (obviously to no avail) that these large-scale, naturally occurring variations should be taken into account when considering human-induced climate change. The 97CS continues to be unrecognized by climate scientists. The next shift will probably occur in the late 2020s to early 2030s. It would be shameful if climate scientists, at that time, are still unprepared for the change, and do not recognize multidecadal variability contribution to modern global warming.
4.4 How the climate shifted globally at the 97CS
Science is so specialized and compartmentalized these days that nobody has pulled together all the evidence that confirms the 1997-98 global climate shift. A shift that is obviously unexplained by changes in GHGs levels and modern climate theory. Solar activity changed from high at solar cycle (SC) 22 to low at SC24 (Fig. 4.5a, black line). This change can be better appreciated in the great decrease in the antipodal amplitude magnetic index (Fig. 4.5a, red line), that measures geomagnetic disturbances caused mainly by the solar wind, to centennial low values. We have already mentioned the famous pause in global warming (Fig. 4.5b), that can be better characterized as a reduction in the rate of global warming after the mid-1990s, and is still ongoing despite its interruption by the strong 2015–16 El Niño, after which no more warming has taken place, as of the middle of 2022.
At the 97CS, a predominantly Niño frequency pattern in ENSO turned into predominantly Niña, as determined by the cumulative multivariate El Niño index (MEI v.2). The summed index showed an increasing trend during the previous climate regime, peaked in 1998, and shows a declining trend after (Fig. 4.5c, black line). Warm water volume at the equator decreased in variability (Fig. 4.5c, red line), and strongly negative anomalies in the warm water volume, that used to happen once a decade, stopped after 2000. A westward shift in atmosphere-ocean variability in the tropical Pacific took place at the 97CS, characterized by a decrease of ENSO variability that coincides with the suppression of subsurface ocean temperature variability and a weakening of atmosphere-ocean coupling in the tropical Pacific. The shift manifested as more central Pacific versus eastern Pacific El Niño events, and a frequency increase in ENSO, linked to a westward shift of the location of the wind-SST interaction region (Li et al. 2019). The changes in the tropical Pacific atmosphere-ocean coupling had a reflection in the stratosphere. Global (60°N-S) stratospheric water vapor decreased abruptly in 2001 (Fig. 4.5d). Simultaneously, the tropical tropopause cooled (Randel & Park 2019), indicating that a step change in the tropical troposphere-stratosphere coupling also took place.
Fig. 4.5 Manifestations of the big climatic shift of 1997–98. Nearly simultaneous changes in climate related phenomena took place globally between 1995 and 2005. a) Oct–Jan sunspots (thin black line) and 11-yr average Oct–Jan sunspots (thick black line). Solar activity decreased from high (108 sunspots 1980–1995) to low (54 sunspots 2005–2015). Data from WDC–SILSO. Antipodal amplitude (Aa) geomagnetic index 13-month average (red thin line) and 11-year average (red thick line) measuring magnetic disturbances caused mainly by the solar wind. Data from ISGI. b) Global surface average temperature anomaly in °C displaying the 1998–2013 pause in warming. From MetOffice HadCRUT 4.6 annual data. c) Cumulative multivariate ENSO index v.2 changed from increasing to decreasing in 1998, indicating a shift in the ENSO pattern. Data from NOAA. The change was also reflected in a strong reduction in the warm water volume anomaly (WWVa) variability at the equator (5°N–5°S, 120°E–80°W above 20 °C), where after 2000 negative values of –1 are no longer reached. Data in 1014 m3 from TAO Project Office of NOAA/PMEL. d) Stratospheric water vapor monthly anomaly at 60°N–S, 17.5 km height, from solar occultation data (black line), and microwave sounder data (red line) in ppmv. The 2001 shift is confirmed by radiosonde tropopause temperature measurements. After Randel & Park 2019. e) Monthly (thin line) and yearly (thick line) 90°S–90°N cloud cover anomaly (%). Data from EUMETSAT CM SAF dataset, after Dübal & Vahrenholt (2021). f) Ensemble mean annual Hadley cell intensity anomaly (in % from the mean) for the NH from eight reanalyses (black line), and ensemble mean annual-mean Hadley cell edge anomaly (in ° latitude) for the NH from eight reanalyses (red line). From Nguyen et al. 2013. g) Average annual change in length-of-day (ΔLOD) in ms, inverted (up is a shortening in LOD due to Earth spin acceleration). Data from IERS LOD C04 IAU2000A. h) Yearly increase of the 10-year running mean of the ocean heat content (black line), and annual mean Earth energy imbalance obtained as the difference between the incoming solar radiation and the total outgoing radiation (red line). Both in W/m2. After Dewitte et al. 2019. From Vinós 2022
At the 97CS, low cloud cover decreased (Fig. 4.5e; Veretenenko & Ogurtsov 2016; Dübal & Vahrenholt 2021), while the albedo anomaly reached its lowest point in 1997 and started increasing (Goode & Pallé 2007), due to increasing high and middle altitude cloud cover. During the 1995–2005 period a tropicalization of the climate took place and the tropics expanded as the Hadley cells increased their extent and intensity (Fig. 4.5f; Nguyen et al. 2013). The atmospheric angular momentum decreased causing the speed of rotation of the Earth to increase, reducing the length of the day by 2 ms (Fig. 4.5g). All these changes altered the energetics of the climate system. The Earth’s energy imbalance, the incoming solar radiation minus the total outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) measured by the CERES system, started to decrease, (Fig. 4.5h, red line; Dewitte et al. 2019). The global energy change at the 97CS resulted in a change in trend in the ocean heat content (OHC) time derivative (Fig. 4.5h, black line; Dewitte et al. 2019). This change indicates OHC started to increase more slowly, which dismisses claims that the missing heat resulting from the pause in warming was going to the oceans (Chen & Tung 2014).
These are some of the global climate variables that display a rapid change at, or soon after, the climate regime shift identified by Chavez et al. (2003) as a transition from a “warm” sardine to a “cool” anchovy regime, the opposite of the 1976 shift that was identified during the 1990s. Twenty-five years after the recognition of climate shifts, the 97CS has not been acknowledged by modern climate science. That the 76CS has been recognized and the 97CS has not is a strong sign that modern climate theory is an obstacle to climate change understanding and is causing scientists to dismiss facts that the theory cannot explain.
4.5 The Arctic shift and polar amplification
When the global climate shifted in 1997–98, the Arctic climate was strongly affected. In Part III, when reviewing how heat is transported during the winter to the Arctic, we mentioned that little Arctic amplification had taken place by 1995 despite two decades of intense warming, echoing the words of Curry et al. (1996): “The relative lack of observed warming and relatively small ice retreat may indicate that GCMs are overemphasizing the sensitivity of climate to high-latitude processes.” At the 97CS, Arctic amplification increased greatly and suddenly, but displayed a striking seasonality. Arctic summer temperatures are not increasing (Fig. 4.6a, black line). Any increase in net heat transported in summer to the Arctic is in a great part stored, by warming the ocean and melting ice and snow, until the arrival of the cold season when it is returned to the atmosphere, by the reverse process. Winter surface temperature shows a very pronounced increase since c. 1998 (Fig. 4.6a, red line).
The effect of the 97CS on Arctic sea-ice extent was spectacular. Between 1996 and 2007 September Arctic sea-ice extent decreased by a whopping 45 % (Fig. 4.6b), leading to fears among experts that it had entered a death-spiral (Serreze 2010). But after 11 years of loses Arctic sea-ice adapted to the new regime and 14 years later September Arctic sea-ice extent was higher than in 2007. Since sea-ice loss was used as a poster child of enhanced greenhouse warming and Arctic amplification, and used to raise alarm and money, it cannot now be properly attributed to the 97CS without losing face. The reduction in Arctic sea-ice was accompanied at the 97CS by an increase in Greenland meltwater flux (Fig. 4.6c, black line), and a decrease in Greenland ice-sheet mass balance (Fig. 4.6c, red line), that display the same dynamics of rapid change in the years after the climatic shift followed by a stabilization to the new regime levels.
Fig. 4.6 Manifestations of the big Arctic climatic shift of 1997–98. a) 80–90°N summer (JJA, black line), and winter (DJF, red line) temperature anomaly (°C). Data from Danish Meteorological Institute. b) September average Arctic sea-ice extent (106 km2). Data from NSIDC. c) Greenland freshwater flux (black line, km3). After Dukhovskoy et al. 2019. Greenland ice-sheet mass balance (red line, Gt). After Mouginot et al. 2019. d) The Arctic Ocean Oscillation (AOO) index that reflects the alternation between sea-ice and ocean anticyclonic circulation (blue bars) and cyclonic circulation (red bars). After Proshutinsky et al. 2015. e) Number of NH blocking events per year. After Lupo 2020. f) Winter (DJF) latent energy transport across 70°N by planetary scale waves, in PW. Thin line, annual; thick line, 5-year moving average. After Rydsaa et al. 2021. From Vinós 2022
Since the 97CS is unrecognized, scientists cannot explain many of the altered climatic parameters. This is true of the Arctic Ocean Oscillation index (AOO; Fig. 4.6d), defined by Andrey Proshutinsky (2015) as the oscillation between cyclonic (anti-clockwise) and anticyclonic (clockwise) ocean circulation in the Arctic Beaufort gyre, with a period of 10–15 years. The problem is that during the 97CS the oscillation stopped and the system got stuck in the anticyclonic regime, which leads to freshwater accumulation in the Arctic. 1996 was the last cyclonic AOO year, as of late 2022. Proshutinsky has no explanation and the index stopped being updated in 2019, however he became worried that the increasing Beaufort gyre freshwater accumulation is a “ticking time bomb” for climate. The accumulation may lead to a salinity anomaly in the North Atlantic with a magnitude comparable to the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1970s, that traveled the sub-polar gyre currents from 1968 to 1982 and may have contributed to the early 1970s cooling.
Additional unexplained changes in the Arctic climate at the 97CS include the increase in winter blocking events, particularly in the NH (Fig. 4.6e). We also reviewed, in Part III, how blocking conditions stop the normal westerly zonal circulation at mid-latitudes during winter. They have two outstanding effects. They stabilize weather patterns for days over the same location, leading to extreme weather events in temperature and precipitation; and they also greatly increase MT towards the Arctic since they deflect cyclones poleward. It is clear, but not explained, that MT towards the Arctic increased at the 97CS, and this is the underlying cause of many of the changes observed afterward in the Arctic climate. Evidence for the increase in winter heat and moisture transport into the Arctic comes from the increase in planetary-scale latent heat transport (Fig. 4.6f), while synoptic scale latent heat transport decreased during winters, but increased during summers (Rydsaa et al. 2021). The increase in winter heat and moisture transport into the Arctic leads to higher cloud formation, which shifts the strongest radiative cooling from the surface to cloud tops, which are frequently warmer in winter due to temperature inversions. At the sea-ice border, winter heat intrusions cause a temporary retreat of the ice margin, leading to enhanced heat loss by the ocean until the ice forms again (Woods & Caballero 2016).
Arctic amplification has turned out to be mainly a cold season phenomenon that started between 1995–2000 for reasons unknown to most climate scientists and models. Arctic amplification is dependent on changes in MT, and the rate of Arctic amplification appears to be opposite to the rate of global warming.
4.6 Climate regimes as a meridional transport phenomenon affecting planetary energetics
From the effects of climate shifts it is evident that they affect the global MT system, and particularly the boreal winter MT. As we reviewed in Part III, ENSO is a way of extracting surplus heat from the deep tropics that exceeds the regular oceanic transport system. At the 97CS this need decreases as the Brewer-Dobson circulation (BDC, the stratospheric MT) becomes more active driving more heat out of the deep tropics, causing a cooling at the tropical tropopause that results in more stratospheric dehydration. Also, meridional wind circulation becomes stronger at the expense of zonal circulation resulting in Earth’s rotation acceleration and Hadley cells expansion. As meridional moisture transport to the poles is enhanced with the increase in meridional wind circulation, cloud cover decreases in the low and mid-latitudes, and increases in the Arctic.
In the Arctic the effects of climate shifts through changes in MT intensity are even more evident. At the 97CS, MT to the Arctic was enhanced all year round, but more strongly during the cold season. The rise in heat and moisture advection from lower latitudes results in a reduction in sea-ice cover that augments ocean heat loss, and increases cold season (but not summer) surface temperature. The main effect of winter warming is to increase the radiative loss to space. As we saw in Part III, the Arctic in winter is very special in terms of GHE. The atmosphere is extremely dry, so there is little water vapor GHE. Cloud cover is also quite low during the winter, and the increase in CO2 has the effect of increasing radiation to space from warmer, higher CO2 molecules (van Wijngaarden & Happer 2020).
When there is an intense intrusion event of moist warm air into the Arctic in winter the usual result is a temperature inversion, and despite increased downward longwave radiation, radiative cooling continues from the top of the inversion or the clouds until the advected moisture is either precipitated or exported back to lower latitudes. In essence, more heat transported to the Arctic in the winter must result in more heat lost to space. This conclusion contradicts one of the basic pillars of modern climate theory that states that MT is not a climate forcing since horizontal transport does not affect the amount of energy within the climate system, and therefore is not a cause for climate change. This is the most fundamental of the many mistakes of modern climate theory, as it assumes the top of the atmosphere behaves similarly in terms of GHE everywhere. It does not, as the GHE is very weak at the polar regions, particularly during the long cold season. Transporting more heat from a region of high GHE to a region of low GHE results in more heat being lost at the top of the atmosphere without a compensating gain elsewhere. A change in the intensity of MT towards the winter pole results in a change in the planet’s energy budget as we have shown (Fig. 4.5h).
Fig. 4.7 Arctic region outgoing longwave radiation change. Thin grey line, 7-month average of the monthly mean OLR anomaly in W/m2 from interpolated OLR NOAA dataset. Thick black line, 5-year average of the cold season (Nov–Apr) mean. Thick black dashed line, 5-year average of the summer (JJA) mean. Grey box highlights the Arctic shift in OLR between mid-1996 and late 2005. The time of the Pinatubo eruption is indicated. Data from KNMI explorer (http://climexp.knmi.nl/select.cgi?field=noaa_olr). From Vinós 2022
OLR in the Arctic is higher during the summer than during the cold season as could be expected from the near permanent summer insolation and higher surface temperature. However, at the 97CS OLR increased a lot more during the cold season than during the summer (Fig. 4.7). Clearly MT became stronger, particularly during the boreal winter. Increased summer transport resulted in more energy storage through enhanced summer melting. Winter refreezing of the melted water returns the summer energy to the atmosphere, only to be lost to space through radiative cooling. Now we understand why Arctic amplification is a winter phenomenon that is not related to global warming, and in fact is where the energy for the “Pause” is going. Arctic amplification is not a GHG effect, but a MT effect that results in planetary cooling. The pause is continuing because Arctic amplification is ongoing. When the pause ends the Arctic should cool and sea ice should grow. As stated previously this could happen by late 2020s to early 2030s, when the next climate shift occurs.
4.7 Meridional transport modulation of global climate
To analyze the multidecadal changes in MT since 1900, the 1912–2008 period has been subjectively divided in three phases of 32 years. Although the different modes of variability do not shift simultaneously (hence the name stadium-wave), the phases so defined describe periods of alternating prevailing conditions in MT well. Starting in the Arctic, where the PV strength determines the polar stratosphere-troposphere winter coupling, the Arctic oscillation (AO; Fig. 4.8a, grey line) is the leading mode of extratropical circulation variability in the NH (Thompson & Wallace 2000). To act as a North-South seesaw of atmospheric mass exchange between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, the AO requires a correlation between its three centers of action —the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific sectors. The Arctic-Atlantic correlation is known as the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO), and is strong, but the Arctic–Pacific linkage is weaker, casting doubts about the AO being a true annular mode. However, the Aleutian Low and the Icelandic Low have a negative correlation from one winter to the next since the mid-1970s (Honda & Nakamura 2001). This Aleutian–Icelandic seesaw appears to depend on the propagation of stationary waves and varies in strength with changes in PV strength (Sun & Tan 2013). By calculating the Jan–Feb cumulative AO (Fig. 4.8a, grey line) we can see that until c. 1940 positive AO values (i.e., strong vortex conditions) prevailed, but in the 1940–1980s period negative AO values were more common, only to change back afterwards. The Aleutian–Icelandic seesaw confirms the changes in PV strength with its 25-year moving correlation (Li et al. 2018; Fig. 4.8a black line). When the PV is strong, the mass and heat exchange between the mid-latitudes and the Arctic is smaller, as the PV acts as a barrier to meridional circulation.
Fig. 4.8 Multidecadal climate variability and meridional transport. a) Black line, Aleutian Low–Icelandic Low seesaw 25-year moving correlation as a proxy for polar vortex strength. After Li et al. 2018. Grey line, cumulative winter (Dec–Feb average) Arctic Oscillation index. 1899–2002 AO index data from DW Thompson. Dept. of Atmos. Sci. CSU. Thompson & Wallace 2000. b) Black line, 4.5-year average of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index. Data from NOAA unsmoothed from the Kaplan SST V2. Grey line, cumulative 1870–2020 detrended cold season (Nov–Apr average) North Atlantic Oscillation index. Data from CRU, U. East Anglia. Jones et al. 1997. c) Cumulative PDO. 1870–2018 detrended annual average cumulative PDO index from HadISST 1.1. Data from NOAA. Black dots mark the years 1925, 1946, 1976 and 1997 when PDO regime shifts took place (Mantua & Hare 2002; see Sect. 11.4). d) Black line, zonal atmospheric circulation index, cumulative anomaly. After Klyashtorin & Lyubushin 2007. Grey line, 1900–2020 inverted detrended annual ∆LOD. Data in ms from IERS. e) Detrended 1895–2015 annual global surface average temperature, 10-year averaged. Data from Met Office HadCRUT 4.6. f) Dashed line, 8.2–16.6-year band-pass of the monthly mean total sunspot number. Data from WDC–SILSO. Grey line, 6.6–11-year band-pass of the monthly AMO index. Black line, inverted 20-year running correlation of the band-pass sunspot and AMO data. Black dots as in c, showing their position with respect to solar minima. From Vinós 2022
The AMO measures SST anomalies that reflect the strength of MT over the North Atlantic. Positive AMO values indicate warm water accumulation due to reduced MT and strong PV conditions (Fig. 4.8b, black line). The NAO is the sea-level pressure dipole over the North Atlantic, and part of the AO. Not surprisingly, its detrended and cumulative value is very similar to that of the AO, but also shows some correlation to the AMO SSTs (Fig. 4.8b, grey line). The decades-long NAO trends cannot be explained by general circulation models as they do not incorporate multidecadal MT regimes. Models consider NAO indices white noise without serial correlation (Eade et al. 2021). Without properly representing MT, climate models cannot explain climate change. Over the Pacific sector, the PDO also measures SST anomalies. A positive PDO indicates warm water accumulation over the equatorial and eastern side of the Pacific, an indication of reduced MT, which moves heat out of the equator and towards the western Pacific boundary so the Kuroshio current can move it northward and transfer it to the atmosphere. The detrended cumulative PDO values (Fig. 4.8c) show that the phases of increased or decreased Pacific MT roughly coincide with those of the Atlantic. Climatic and ecological shifts in the Pacific identified in 1925, 1946, 1976 and 1997 (Mantua & Hare 2002) coincide with times when the PDO shifts from predominantly positive to negative or back (Fig. 4.8c black dots).
The meridional wind circulation is how most of the tropospheric MT is carried out and increases in MT imply increases in meridional circulation and corresponding decreases in zonal circulation. The atmospheric circulation index is a cumulative representation of the yearly anomaly in zonal (E–W) versus meridional (N–S) air-mass transfer in Eurasia (Klyashtorin & Lyubushin 2007). Periods when the NH PV has been stronger and MT over the North Atlantic and North Pacific sectors has been lower (grey areas in Fig. 4.8) coincide with periods characterized by predominant zonal-type anomalies, while periods of weaker PV and higher MT present predominant anomalies of meridional-type (Fig. 4.8d, black line). These persistent changes in predominant atmospheric circulation patterns produce changes in the transfer of momentum between the atmosphere and the solid Earth–ocean affecting the Earth’s rotation speed, measured as changes in the length of day. Periods of increasing zonal circulation correlate with an acceleration of the Earth and a decrease in ∆LOD (inverted in Fig. 4.8d, grey line) while periods of decreasing zonal circulation correlate with a deceleration of the Earth and an increase in ∆LOD (Lambeck & Cazenave 1976). Changes in the rate of rotation of the Earth integrate global changes in atmospheric circulation that support the global effect of MT changes. We must remember at this point that changes in Earth’s rotation rate respond to changes in solar activity (see Fig. 2.5).
Multidecadal changes in MT are the cause of the multidecadal oscillation known as the stadium-wave, and all its manifestations. SST changes in the AMO and PDO are a response to changes in the global atmospheric circulation. A reduction in atmospheric meridional circulation and the corresponding increase in zonal circulation mean less poleward energy transport, and since annual incoming energy is near constant and ocean heat transport is only partially dependent on wind-driven circulation, more heat accumulates at each latitudinal band, but particularly at NH mid-latitudes. This is because sea surface transfer of energy and moisture to the atmosphere is highest at NH mid-latitude ocean western boundaries (Yu & Weller 2007). Land and sea surface heat accumulation resulting from a reduction in MT produces the stadium-wave effects and an increase in the global temperature. When the global average surface temperature anomaly is detrended, periods of reduced (increased) MT correspond to warming (cooling) with respect to the trend (Fig. 4.8e). The modern climate theory explains the 1940–1975 hiatus as due to an increase in aerosols, and the 1976–2000 warming as due to the increase in anthropogenic emissions. These explanations, incorporated into climate models, are untenable in light of the evidence (Tsonis et al. 2007). Although an anthropogenic warming trend is unquestionable, it is evident that the shifts in MT regimes dominate the surface temperature response.
The causes behind the multidecadal stadium-wave changes in MT are unknown. The c. 65-year oscillation is non-stationary. Proxy reconstructions indicate that the AMO had a shorter periodicity and less power during the LIA and a longer periodicity and more power during the Medieval Warm Period (Chylek et al. 2012; Wang et al. 2017). Solar activity modulation of ENSO and Earth’s rotation changes were shown in Part II (Figs. 2.4 & 2.5). As both are a manifestation of MT strength, it is possible that internal variability and external solar forcing are responsible for the current periodicity and strength of the stadium-wave. Alternatively, internal variability in MT might be responding to the warming trend imposed by anthropogenic and natural causes, mainly the increase in solar activity associated with the modern solar maximum. The four climate shifts identified in the Pacific during the 20th century (Mantua & Hare 2002) took place 1–3 years after a solar minimum (Fig. 4.8c & f, dots; solar cycle, Fig. 4.8f dashed line), and the two grey areas and middle white area in figure 4.8, representing alternating MT regimes, span three solar cycles between solar minima. It has been shown that the Holton–Tan effect (see Part I), that relates the tropical QBO phase to the strength of the PV, through planetary wave propagation, is stronger at solar minima (Labitzke et al. 2006), and that the Holton–Tan effect weakened substantially during the 1977–1997 period of reduced MT (Lu et al. 2008). This implies that during winter at solar minima the stratospheric tropical-polar coupling, and the stratospheric-tropospheric coupling are stronger, and they might constitute an appropriate time for a coordinated shift in MT strength that takes effect during the ensuing solar cycle. We shall see if future climate shifts also take place immediately following solar minima. This is the basis of our projection that the next climate shift could take place around 2031–34.
If solar minima are the times when MT shifts occur, one interesting correlation may provide an explanation for the cause of the c. 65-year oscillation pacing. The AMO has a 9.1-year strong frequency peak that is also found in the PDO (Muller et al. 2013). This frequency is readily appreciated in a 4.5-year averaged AMO index as decadal bumps (Fig. 4.8b, black curve). The origin of this conspicuous AMO trait has not been adequately researched, but Scafetta (2010) convincingly proposes a lunisolar tidal origin. The difference in frequency between this reported 9.1-yr tidal cycle and the 11-yr solar cycle is such that they change from correlated to anti-correlated (i.e., constructive to destructive interference) with a periodicity that not only matches the AMO, but is exactly synchronized to it (compare black curves in Fig. 4.8b & f). One can speculate that a constructive or destructive interference between the effect of oceanic and atmospheric tides on the tropospheric component of MT and the effect of the solar cycle on the stratospheric component of MT might result in the periodical change in MT strength that produces the observed climatic shifts. In support of this hypothesis two intrinsic components of c. 4.5 and 11 years are found in the Fourier analysis of the daily NAO autocorrelation series (Álvarez–Ramírez et al. 2011). The 11-year component is phase synchronized to the solar cycle except during solar minima, indicating that NAO predictability increases with solar activity, and became strongly anti-correlated during the 1997 solar minimum, when the 97CS took place. A c. 65-yr climate oscillation that depends on solar activity would explain both the changes in intensity and periodicity over the last centuries as solar activity has been changing. Its 20th century intensity and periodicity are the result of the modern solar maximum, and the non-stationarity of the natural multidecadal oscillation would be linked to solar activity multidecadal variability.
It can be argued that multidecadal oscillations in the climate system should average to zero over multiple periods. Similarly, other factors known to affect MT, like the QBO and ENSO average to zero in similar or shorter timeframes. However, AMO reconstructions show that its values and amplitude have increased greatly over the last two cycles, since about 1850 (Moore et al. 2017). This change in the c. 65-year oscillation suggests that MT is important in modern global warming, since it coincides with the strong melting of glaciers and increase in sea-level rise that started around 1850 and precedes the strong increase in CO2 emissions after 1945 (Boden et al. 2009). Solar activity affects MT and does not average to zero even in very long timeframes because it presents centennial and millennial cycles (Vinós 2022). There has been a long-standing scientific debate about whether there is an important effect of solar activity on climate. Sunspot records show that the average number of sunspots increased by 24% from the 1700–1843 to the 1844–1996 period (see Fig. 1.6). Solar variability is clearly involved in MT variability (see Part II). The effect that solar variability has on MT, and the effect that MT has on the planet’s energy imbalance (Figs. 4.5h & 4.7) settles the controversy on the solar activity effect on climate.
In the next part of this series, the hypothesis of how solar variability affects MT will be presented. It has been named the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis because solar activity modulates the amount of heat that is transported to the poles in winter, and through it the planet’s energy budget, constituting the main climate change modulator on centennial to millennial timescales, as suggested by paleoclimatological evidence.
Exciting, but please, can we have a summary for someone who has not a PhD in climate physics?
I am just a humble chemical engineer.
Sorry, demonstrating something very complex that goes against the accepted consensus requires complexity, because of the nature of the evidence and the interrelations and inferences that have to be made. Otherwise it is dismissed as just opinion. These articles have been written with a level geared for readers of this blog with a fair knowledge of climate complexity. I made an effort to explain things, but it reaches a point where the articles get abusively long.
Andy and I are working on a simpler version for people with less knowledge of how the climate works, but it will take some time. In the meantime I recomend following the headings and trying to understand the figures to get a pretty good idea of what the evidence shows.
Reputable sources are being used and referenced.
https://judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/VinosMay-Bibliography.pdf
Perhaps you are unable to understand them, too.
People were taught CO2 alarmism, but no one ever even tried to teach them any kind of physics, let alone any actual climate physics? Has it not been clear that has been the case?
Kalle … not that you asked me, and I’m no climate scientists either, but from what I get, in a nutshell, this hypothesis says that the global climate is controlled by the speed of movement of energy through the system. It is well known that a whole lot more heat is released at the poles than is received and that the heat gets there via atmospheric and ocean currents (Meridional Transport). This hypothesis presents evidence that solar, as well as oscillations, volcanoes, ENSO, etc all impact the rate of MT, and thus the speed and quantity of energy transport to the poles. Slower MT equals a warming globe, whereas faster MT equals a cooling globe. The solar aspect is related to UV energy in the Stratosphere, not Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) as claimed by the IPCC.
As I mentioned on the Part V, prediction is the Platinum Evidence that a hypothesis “may” be correct. The CO2 guys are saying we are all going to fry due to GHGs (been saying that for 40 years, and it just hasn’t happened yet). This hypothesis, according to Javier in Part V, tends to suggest that the low solar cycles of 24 and 25, coupled with an increase in atmospheric wave propagation as evidenced by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation going cool, will result in either the globe staying the same as it is or even cooling.
Hope I live long enough to see it.
Judith,
Figure 4.6 is missing. Instead Figure 4.7 is repeated. Thank you.
Abbreviations and glossary:
https://judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/VinosMay-AbbrevGlossary.pdf
Bibliography:
https://judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/VinosMay-Bibliography.pdf
In the meantime, Figure 4.6 can be seen here:
https://i.imgur.com/1ukK3b6.png
Fixed
Pingback: The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (IV). The climate shift of 1997 - News7g
There seems to have been a shift to cooler surface conditions in the Pacific in the late 1990’s. Tsonis et al 2007 and the follow on paper – Swanson et al 2009 – used a network of climate indices to identify synchronicity in the Earth system. ‘A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts’. What will climate shift to next? I would not rule out cooler conditions intensifying as in a lot of the past millennium.
https://psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei/img/meiv2.timeseries.png
Nonetheless.
https://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.HTML
“There seems to have been a shift to cooler surface conditions in the Pacific in the late 1990’s.”
The shift was global and affected the Arctic particularly, as the evidence presented demonstrates. There are over 20 climate variables presented and referenced in the article to demonstrate it.
The question is why aren’t there hundreds of scientific papers on the 1997 shift? Why is it unknow to most climate scientists despite so much climate scrutiny? Why is something so big and global being ignored while “ad hoc” explanations are being offered for each variable?
These are hard questions for climate science.
The Pacific state can easily be identified in global atmospheric temps – multidecadal and longer period shifts have been on science’s radar since the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976/77. Although it seems the Pacific Ocean isn’t on your radar. Before that with hydrological, oceanographic, hydrodynamic, biological and other studies showing Earth system change at all scales. I started studying climate shifts around 1990. If climate shifted after 1998 it may persist for a bit yet. That would make me so right for so long. This solar cycle terminator La Nina helps. Albeit if lower tropospheric temps keep rising.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233871224_Geomorphic_Effects_of_Alternating_Flood-_and_Drought-Dominated_Regimes_on_NSW_Coastal_Rivers
I belatedly understood around 2009 that shifts were internally generated in interacting changes in ocean and atmosphere circulation, ice, cloud, dust, vegetation…
‘If as suggested here, a dynamically driven climate shift has occurred, the duration of similar shifts during the 20th century suggests the new global mean temperature trend may persist for several decades. Of course, it is purely speculative to presume that the global mean temperature will remain near current levels for such an extended period of time. Moreover, we caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing. However, the nature of these past shifts in climate state suggests the possibility of near constant temperature lasting a decade or more into the future must at least be entertained. The apparent lack of a proximate cause behind the halt in warming post 2001/02 challenges our understanding of the climate system, specifically the physical reasoning and causal links between longer time-scale modes of internal climate variability and the impact of such modes upon global temperature.’ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008GL037022
‘If as suggested here, a dynamically driven climate shift has occurred… Moreover, we caution that…
Blah blah blah; genuflection to the Church of Unredeemable Global Warming.
I’m afraid 21st century global warming will not be up to expectations.
I anticipate surprises – but not by much on a centennial scale. But the troposphere is still warming and you can’t keep a good fact like that down. I wouldn’t try.
Let’s just say that the warmer the world is, the more energy it emits and the harder it becames to warm it further. However it becomes easier to cool. It is a basic physics principle. That’s why climate looks cyclical. Once it reaches a certain point it tends to go in the opposite direction for another period of time.
Adding more CO2 will do very little if the rest of the climate system conspires against further warming.
All those predictions of a lot of warming in the 21st century are going to fail spectacularly. I would expect a little more warming in the 2040-2070 period and that is it.
You might be so good as to name that basic physics principle.
Yes, it is called 2nd law of thermodynamics. The sun is providing the same amount of energy, and the Earth will tend to maximize its entropy and minimize its enthalpy for that amount of energy. As it warms, more and more processes will be recruited to act in the opposite direction. One of the reasons linear extrapolation does not work.
The planet will try to reach an energy equilibrium at TOA through the Planck nonlinear feedback. No mystery, no obfuscation and no recruitment needed. The Planck feedback plays catchup as climate shifts deterministically but unpredictably – within broad physical limits of physical subsystems – as small signals are amplified through global energy cascades. Why not CO2?
The subsystems – cyrosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, biosphere and lithosphere – interact at diverse timescales to produce emergent climate states. Between states it’s all tempest and maelstrom when not becalmed. .
“The planet will try to reach an energy equilibrium at TOA through the Planck nonlinear feedback.”
This is obviously false or there would not be glaciations and interglacials for the same amount of incoming energy from the sun. The idea of an equilibrium at the TOA is a myth. A human mental construct. The proof is that nobody can cite any period of time when the planet was not warming or cooling. If such mythical period does not exist, the equilibrium at TOA does not exist.
Following the arguments here, some notable/fundamental observations:
“–or there would not be glaciations and interglacials”
and
” for the same amount of incoming energy from the sun.”
and
“– it is called 2nd law of thermodynamics”.
So the heat source is fixed; and so is the heat sink (2nd law). That leaves the question of energy ‘residence time’ within the system. Likely it is not the working fluid, but the mode of transport from incoming to outgoing. (No mechanical work done in changing momentum; a plain throttling process).
Javier has an answer: “As the inclination of the planet decreases, and its axis becomes more vertical with respect to the ecliptic, the end of the interglacial approaches.”
But: “For the past 2 million years no interglacial has survived long after obliquity decreased below 23º.”
No. That was/is extrapolation of a curve fitting exercise for a polynomial, and is plain speculative. An exponential fit for the period considered might have been better. There is sound evidence that obliquity cycled erratically within the last 8k years. Plus various proxies indicating same. System generally unstable.
‘In 1864, John Tyndall presented measurements of the infrared emission by a platinum filament and the corresponding color of the filament.[3] The proportionality to the fourth power of the absolute temperature was deduced by Josef Stefan (1835–1893) in 1877 on the basis of Tyndall’s experimental measurements, in the article Über die Beziehung zwischen der Wärmestrahlung und der Temperatur (On the relationship between thermal radiation and temperature) in the Bulletins from the sessions of the Vienna Academy of Sciences.[4][5]’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law
If energy out equals energy in some climate state then it’s maximum entropy at that time whatever the climate state is and however transient. The principle is physics. The climate state is seen in detailed if limited observation.
“If energy out equals energy in some climate state”
It doesn’t. Energy in is never equal to energy out. It is a false assumption to simplify a complex process. The planet is too complex and has no way of returning the same energy it receives. How the planet maintains a certain imperfect thermal homeostasis is not well known. Some scientists pretend they do know, they don’t. Obviously, models cannot model what nobody knows.
The change in planetary heat and work is energy in minus energy out.
d(w&h)/dt = energy in – energy out
The rate of change is equal to zero at least twice a year.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/argo-200m.jpg
They wrote:
Prior to the 1980s, it was generally thought that climate changed so slowly as to be almost imperceptible during the span of a human lifetime. But then it became clear that abrupt climate changes took place during the past glacial period.
The Vikings rapidly realized the climate was rapidly warming, they moved to Greenland to take advantage of a good life there where not many others would bother them. Then the climate rapidly cooled and killed and pushed them out at the end of the Medieval Warm Period as the climate dropped rapidly into the Little Ice Age. Only those who had never studied history believed climate change was always slow. These things were known 500 and a thousand years ago. Maurice Ewing and William Donn wrote about these things seventy years ago in the 1950’s.
They wrote:
will they recognize the theory’s shortcomings, after committing western economies to a profound decarbonization?
Their theory has no shortcomings, it is not about climate science, it is about destroying western civilizations and it is working to accomplish their goals.
They wrote:
Science is so specialized and compartmentalized these days that nobody has pulled together all the evidence that confirms the 1997-98 global climate shift. A shift that is obviously unexplained by changes in GHGs levels and modern climate theory.
So, none of the “so called”, man-made, warming by CO2 emissions, or anything else, is really understood!
They wrote:
That the 76CS has been recognized and the 97CS has not, is a strong sign that modern climate theory is an obstacle to climate change understanding and is causing scientists to dismiss facts that the theory cannot explain.
So, none of the “so called”, man-made, warming by CO2 emissions, or anything else, is really understood!
They wrote:
Proshutinsky has no explanation and the index stopped being updated in 2019, however he became worried that the increasing Beaufort gyre freshwater accumulation is a “ticking time bomb” for climate.
They keep listing things they do not understand, again, nothing about climate change is settled, other than the history and data showing that it is clearly self-correcting and not likely to ever go out of bounds.
They wrote:
Arctic amplification has turned out to be mainly a cold season phenomenon that started between 1995–2000 for reasons unknown to most climate scientists and models. Arctic amplification is dependent on changes in MT, and the rate of Arctic amplification appears to be opposite to the rate of global warming.
Clearly they do not know, they do not even have a clue!
They wrote:
We must remember at this point that changes in Earth’s rotation rate respond to changes in solar activity (see Fig. 2.5).
OK, earth rotation rate was faster during major warm periods while solar activity went through all its changing cycles, multiple times.
OK, earth rotation rate was slower during major cold ice age periods while solar activity went through all its changing cycles, multiple times.
Earth rotation rate responds to something much more powerful than solar activity, such as the inertia of earth changing as the mass balance between ocean water around the equator is traded off with mass balance of ice much more near the spin axis.
They wrote:
The effect that solar variability has on MT, and the effect that MT has on the planet’s energy imbalance (Figs. 4.5h & 4.7) settles the controversy on the solar activity effect on climate.
Solar variability has cycled multiple times through all of its changing cycles, during warm and cold periods and also during major warm and major ice age periods, no one has ever settled the controversy as to why the solar cycles have sometimes correlated with changing climate but much more often that that, have not correlated with changing climate.
NO, THIS HAS SETTLED NOTHING, LESS THAN NOTHING!
They wrote:
the amount of heat that is transported to the poles in winter, and through it the planet’s energy budget, constituting the main climate change modulator on centennial to millennial timescales, as suggested by paleoclimatological evidence.
Ever since the continents blocked the flow of ocean currents around the equator, the warm tropical currents have been diverted into polar regions, flowing into the Arctic Ocean and around the Antarctic Content. Tropical currents in the polar regions, remove sea ice and ice shelves and promote evaporation and snowfall and sequestering of ice on land in polar regions. Evaporation and snowfall persists until the ice on land is pushed into the turbulent salt-water currents where it chills the water, like in our salt-water and ice that chills ice cream in our ice cream makers. The sub freezing water causes the formation of sea ice, turning off the evaporation and snowfall and sequestering of ice with IR out that was necessary for forming the snowfall, such that it snows on Greenland and Antarctica, not rain.
Ice flows into the tropical currents and keeps them freezing cold until the land ice is depleted, then it warms and evaporation and snowfall resumes, rebuilding the land ice. The thermostat setting is the temperature sea ice thaws and forms. This is stable and self-correcting causing the alternating warmer and colder polar regions that are well known in history and is clearly evidenced in ice core records.
“The Vikings rapidly realized the climate was rapidly warming, they moved to Greenland to take advantage of a good life there where not many others would bother them.”
By no means. The Norsemen that moved to Greenland were fooled and trapped into a very hard existence at the limit of their adaptability. The name Greenland was a misnomer, a publicity stunt. When climate conditions deteriorated they were forced to kill their animals and make their life even harder. When communications with Iceland stopped nobody got out. They were killed by climate change. There was no concept of climate then. It was all weather.
“They keep listing things they do not understand, again, nothing about climate change is settled, other than the history and data showing that it is clearly self-correcting and not likely to ever go out of bounds.”
That, I am not in agreement with. It is not self correcting, because as a system it goes to extreme limits (it has limits, yes). In ‘Control’ science it is known as ‘bang-bang’ control, from one limit to another. The last two millennia were not so bad (maybe also partly due to the extreme darkness of the dark-age). But in earlier cycles there were times when it was just terrible. Not just the climate, but also the geological changes that came with it, in places making life just untenable.
But I tend to agree, “Clearly they do not know, they do not even have a clue!”.
“but in the 1940–1980s period negative AO values were more common”
Not in the 1970-80’s, especially not with the NAO in those decades, positive was more common. With that error, and by using a cumulative winter only index, you get the whole plot backwards and have negative NAO/AO associated with a colder AMO, instead of positive NAO/AO driving a colder AMO as in the real world.
The solar correlation with the AMO only makes any sense if you look at the solar wind, It is colder when the solar wind is stronger and is driving positive NAO/AO regimes.
Ulric,
We are talking about the Jan-Feb cumulative AO in Figure 4.8. Anyway, the relationship between the NAO and AO is complicated and depends upon what time period you are referring to.
As I said it’s not true for the AO in the 1970-80’s, just 1977-1981 and 1987-88 had a negative AO regimes, similar to the NAO. The AO/NAO are not physically cumulative, plus the other season do actually matter.
“Anyway, the relationship between the NAO and AO is complicated and depends upon what time period you are referring to.”
I can handle complexity, what have you got on that?
“The difference in frequency between this reported 9.1-yr tidal cycle and the 11-yr solar cycle is such that they change from correlated to anti-correlated (i.e., constructive to destructive interference) with a periodicity that not only matches the AMO, but is exactly synchronized to it (compare black curves in Fig. 4.8b & f).”
Scafetta numerology. AMO anomalies are locked in phase with solar cycles during a cold AMO, and locked anti-phase with solar cycles during a warm AMO, with a transition of around half a solar cycle as the AMO shifts from warm to cold and from cold to warm. All because the major lows in the solar wind shift from sunspot maximum during a cold AMO, to around a year past sunspot minimum during a warm AMO.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/esrl-amo/from:1880/mean:13/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1880/normalise
It looks to me like there is no actual measurement of solar wind, it looks like data and correlations are used to determine a solar wind and then that solar wind is used to calculate or correlate with the data that was used to come up with it in the first place.
If CERES is a measure of solar wind, it has stayed in the same bounds, no major excursions as in the correlations you wrote about.
I’ve quoted this paper in response to an editorial in today’s Australian newspaper.
The first explanations for glacial Dansgaard–Oeschger events involved drastic changes in meridional transport (MT) by the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
–
Changes in the AMOC caused warming and freezing events over the last 80,000 years.
–
Or did warming and freezing events over the last 80,000 years cause changes in the AMOC?
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“with air temperatures over Greenland rapidly warming 8 to 15°C (Huber et al. 2006). ”
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Obviously did not cause any rise in CO2 levels of 80 to 300 ppm which certainly should have occurred with long lasting temperature changes of this magnitude in the ice records?-
–
First conclusion ice CO2 records must be wrong.
Perhaps the CO2 permeates the ice more than thought?
Perhaps in the years when the CO2 was high the ice layers never formed to be trapped to measure?
–
Second is that simply increasing the solar output variability in past millennia or the cloud cover changes in albedo that would be altered by formation of large glaciers might be all one needs to explain the recurrent homeostasis.
As Renee Hanson has shown copiously (in WUWT) with leaf stomata and Greenland ice core data, Antarctic ice core data is often wrong or heavily “adjusted” to fit the IPCC consensus
You need to look both vertically and sideways. A geologist always needs some color. Yellow warms, blues cool. The cycles clearly are visible,
https://imgur.com/a/XckO4e9
Thanks Renee Hannon!
Very interesting. Climate change research is coming of age, despite the massive obstructions to its progress occasioned by the rise and enforced dominance of the AGW theory of global warming. Re. the link between solar activity and EL Nino/La Nina dominant phases and oceanic shifts, I wrote about an interesting paper in April 2021.
https://climatecontrarian.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/solar-variability-climate-link-research-comes-in-from-the-cold/
The paper itself is here:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020EA001223
It identifies well defined solar cycle terminators (Hale cycle) which correlate with oceanic shifts, particularly those occurring 1976-78 and 1997/98 when ENSO flips from a predominantly La Nina state to El Nino and vice versa. I think it is no coincidence that since September 2020, we have experienced a relatively rare ‘triple dip’ La Nina event (currently ongoing and probably responsible for the rather embarrassing turnaround of the fortunes of coral along the great barrier reef).
Thanks for mentioning the paper by Leamon et al. “Termination of Solar Cycles and Correlated Tropospheric Variability”.
It’s quite remarkable how they show the link from solar cycle ‘terminators’ and the onset of La Niñas.
Jaime and Gabriel, Javier has also written about Leamon’s work and his own work on the La Nina/solar connection here:
https://judithcurry.com/2019/09/01/enso-predictions-based-on-solar-activity/
The bibliography refers to an earlier Leamon paper from 2017.
My head is swimming…but in a good way. There is a tremendous amount of research to digest. You have brought together in one place and in a coherent way much work by climate scientists over several decades. I have read some of these papers, but with years passing in between, it’s hard keep the findings organized into a cohesive whole. You have helped to do that. You have also given me much more reading material.
One of my first impressions when I took a deep dive into global warming over a decade ago was that it seemed as if the IPCC got ahead of itself on the preeminent role of CO2. I likened it to the judge, in the very first moments of the case, telling the jurors, even before either prosecution or the defense said anything, that he had found the defendant guilty and it was the jury’s responsibility to come up with the reasons for his decision.
My subsequent research has only reinforced that first impression.
Your work in this series solidifies even more that impression.
I look forward to the next installment.
The first article was the hors d’oeuvre, the second was the savory soup, the third an appetizer. This one is the salad (lots of things, no doubt). Next will be the main course, and the sixth, the dessert.
Bon appetit!
I am with you! Even so I just skimmed over this chapter.. on top of the very convincing complete story there are so many details.. For example the Earths´ axis shifted by about half a degree in the last 10k years!? (I guess it is nutation!?)
It is the change in obliquity caused by the torque exerted by the gravitational pull from the Sun and the Moon on the equatorial bulge of the Earth, with a minor contribution by the planets.
As the inclination of the planet decreases, and its axis becomes more vertical with respect to the ecliptic, the end of the interglacial approaches. For the past 2 million years no interglacial has survived long after obliquity decreased below 23º.
The IPCC believes this time will be different. How foolish is that? We still have 1-4 millennia to find out.
Quite simply, the climate shifts in ’76 and ’97 were powered by high solar irradiance during SC21 and SC23, respectively.
The sea surface temperature history indicates it is super-sensitive to solar activity. However, people mistakenly look at the declining sunspot number as ‘proof’ the sun wasn’t involved in ‘global warming’. The issue isn’t whether sunspots declined, but whether they were as a TSI proxy high enough for warming. They were.
http://climate4you.com/images/SunspotsMonthlySIDC%20and%20HadSST3%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1960%20WithSunspotPeriodNumber.gif
The modern maximum in sunspot activity from 1935-2004, when the sunspot number averaged 108.5, was a period when high TSI warmed the ocean which largely melted the sea ice over time.
The tropical ocean leads the Arctic with poleward heat transport. Whatever the MT atmospheric influence on sea ice melt, it depended on tropical ocean heat content increasing first.
https://i.postimg.cc/wvpjhQjj/Nino3-leads-NH-Sea-Ice-Extent.png
https://i.postimg.cc/NFMz8jGN/98-ENSO-and-TSI-SC23-Cycle-Onset-El-Nino.jpg
“the climate shifts in ’76 and ’97 were powered by high solar irradiance during SC21 and SC23, respectively.”
That explains nothing.
You’re ‘projecting’ Javier.
Both SST increases from ’76 and from ’97 correlated with sunspot activity and TSI increases during their respective solar cycles. The upward SST trend is related to OHC accumulation from sunspot activity exceeding 95 SN for many cycles.
The 1976 shift was correctly identified by Nicholas Graham (1994) as affecting Northern Hemisphere winter atmospheric circulation. Climate shifts involve a host of atmospheric phenomena as has been shown in the article. The shifts are atmospheric driven, not surface driven. Changes in sea level pressure precede by two months changes in sea surface temperature.
Saying that the shift takes place at 95 sunspots explains nothing of that.
The “bottom up” hypothesis is bogus. Your hypothesis is bogus. you are just ignoring or refusing to learn a mountain of evidence contradicting it. I have nothing further to say to you.
Javier, the shifts and trends are two different things, the shift is related to ocean’s super-sensitivity to the rapid rise of the solar cycles as I had said, and the trend is related to the time sunspots exceeded 95 SN.
Saying that the shift takes place at 95 sunspots explains nothing of that.
Javier you continually gaslight me. I did not specifically say the shift takes place at 95 sunspots. You mixed up what I said.
I said, “The upward SST trend is related to OHC accumulation from sunspot activity exceeding 95 SN for many cycles.”
That is separate and different than what I had said about the shift, as you quoted me, “the climate shifts in ’76 and ’97 were powered by high solar irradiance during SC21 and SC23, respectively.”
Obviously your animus is getting in the way of your analytics.
If you can’t figure out the meaning of my two sentences here, then it is no surprise at all that you can’t figure out why I’m right .
“The shifts are atmospheric driven, not surface driven. Changes in sea level pressure precede by two months changes in sea surface temperature.”
Javier – wrong again inverted thinking.
The Eastern Pacific Sea Level Pressure and South Oscillation Index both lag the Equatorial Heat Content by two months, as does the Central Pacific Outgoing Longwave Radiation, the Oceanic Nino Index, the MEI, and Nino34 SST.
Therefore those two SLP indices are at best concurrent with Nino34 SST, so SLP doesn’t precede SST as you said, where it matters at the tropics, although you can probably find a few patches of SST north or south that will lag equatorial SLP.
https://i.postimg.cc/nhXWr5GN/Ocean-Indices-lag-Eq-OHC.png
Bob inverts the largest negative feedback in the climate system.
Late 1976 into 1977 and from 1995, saw weakening solar wind states, driving warmer ocean phases, via negative NAO conditions. This is why we normally see increased El Nino conditions and a warmer AMO during centennial solar minima.
Ulric can you provide **any evidence** for your claim?
Of course, see the current warm AMO, well it’s during the current centennial solar minimum. See the late 1800’s warm AMO, well that was during a centennial minimum too.
So, it appears the climate models (all of them?) have been falsified. If they don’t reproduce the mentioned cycles or quasi-cycles, then they aren’t “projecting” climate.
The climate models basically only capture the GHG warming… and they generally over-state that by a factor of two. Aerosols just aid and abet the use of higher GHG ECS. So take the climate model forecast, divide by two, and the resulting error is “everything else” that we don’t understand or choose not to pursue. Simplified, yes, but basically accurate.
And, how does this fit in?
NASA Sees Arctic Ocean Circulation Do an About-Face
Nov. 13, 2007
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-sees-arctic-ocean-circulation-do-an-about-face
Note: 2007 marks the pause in decreasing Arctic sea ice summer min.
James Morison was a co-author of Proshutinsky in some papers up to 2014 (see Fig. 4.6d), but since about 2012 he has been defending that Arctic Ocean circulation depends mainly on the Arctic Oscillation, and Beaufort Gyre conditions are less important. He is probably right and it makes sense. This does not affect the changes observed in the Beaufort Gyre.
Here you have a paper on what is discussed in that article:
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/climate/files/morison_etal_2012.pdf
And a more recent one about how he sees Arctic Ocean circulation:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/phoc/51/4/JPO-D-20-0190.1.xml
Javier, If the MSU/AMSU data is to be believed, there was a shift in the Stratospheric data around 1994-95. HERE’s some plots of the TLS from UAH and RSS, with a filter I’ve been working on.
I think that both the UAH and RSS Lower Tropophere temperature results are flawed over the Arctic, the result of an increasing fraction of open waters and melting on the surface of the sea-ice. The data for sea-ice shows that the “area” product is declining faster than the “extent” product, which I suggest shows the increase in surface water. If so, the finding of a greater temperature increase in Winter vs. Summer may also be flawed.
As far as I know, the Danish Meteorological Institute uses OSI SAF and EUMETSAT data, and the ECMWF operational atmosphere model, not UAH or RSS data.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n_anomaly.uk.php
Winter warming events like the one analyzed in Fig. 3.8 by Woods & Caballero 2016 correspond very well to DMI data, so I have no reason to doubt that evidence.
https://i0.wp.com/judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Fig-3.8.png
I have trouble distinguishing the shift you mention in the figures provided.
I see now what you mean,
Stratospheric temperature has the reverse profile to surface temperature. As surface temperature reduced its rate of climbing at the mid 1990s, the stratospheric temperature reduced its rate of declining. That is the expected pattern and that is why I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in your figure.
This should clarify the issue for others:
https://climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Vertical%20temperature%20profile%20of%20the%20atmosphere;%20satellites
Interesting, thanks!
I pointed this out 10y ago.
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/uha_tls/
https://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/uha_tls.png
The two peaks in TLS were due to Mt. Pinatubo and El Chicon. AS WERE THE FOLLOWING DROPS. That implies that the inverse effect at the surface : late 20th c. warming, were also largely due to natural effects , not AGW.
The initial rise in TLS is due to aerosols blocking sunlight and heating lower stratosphere. These persist about 3-4 years. The sulphate aerosols also destroy ozone. Once they clear the stratosphere is less opaque and more solar energy reaches the surface.
NOAA says Mt P caused a drop of 5-8% in global ozone !!
We see here that even the famous Montreal Protocol was a climate scam. There were two specific natural events which destroyed ozone. Instead the UN drew a straight line through all the data , declared a “trend” at incorrectly attributed it to CFCs.
“with a filter I’ve been working on.”
I would be very concerned about the end effects of your filter. The third panel is ramping up, the forth is flat. You are padding the end of the data, which will always introduce spurious results.
What type of filter is this?
Greg Goodman, No, the filter isn’t padded at the end, in fact, the filter loses the last 3 months wrt the original data. The filter I used is something I thought to try and isn’t like the other common smoothing filters. Not being an expert in digital filters, I can’t say if it’s a new approach or not. The results do track along with original series, for example the peak from El Chichon has a nearly identical date.
The original data is taken straight from the UAH and RSS web sites, so any apparent “ramping up” is also in the original. The RSS data is cooler than the UAH, since RSS uses an earlier base period, which is warmer than the later period which UAH uses.
How does your filter work ? I know of two basic types; convolution filters which are basically a weighted running average and recursive filters where formular is applied to each data point in turn. Then there is odd stuff like kalman filters I have not used.
Greg, As I noted, I’m not going to reveal the details of the filter. I’ve been interested in the subject, perhaps after I did poorly on Prof. Kalman’s course post grad school. I really need to go to the library or the Net to dig deeper into the subject, since I may have merely “re-invented the wheel”.
“As I noted, I’m not going to reveal the details of the filter. ”
Actually you did not say that, but fair enough if you think you something original. I’m pointing out you have a problem at the end of the data you probably need to look at. The third panel ramps up at 45 deg. the fourth is flat. That does not seem credible.
Greg, The third panel is for the tropics, while the fourth is for the Southern Hemisphere. The second panel for the Northern Hemisphere does show an ending blip up, one which is less steep in the plot than the one for the tropics. Also, remember that they are plotted with different Y axis ranges. With that in mind, I do think it’s rather strange that the global data has less intense short period variation than the tropics, and it’s even more strange given that the NH and SH data both exhibit stronger variation.
I’ll go back and check the spread sheet again, just to be sure I plotted things correctly.
” Between 1996 and 2007 September Arctic sea-ice extent decreased by a whopping 45 % (Fig. 4.6b), leading to fears among experts that it had entered a death-spiral (Serreze 2010). But after 11 years of loses Arctic sea-ice adapted to the new regime and 14 years later September Arctic sea-ice extent was higher than in 2007.”
Exactly what I’ve been pointing out for years, including on this site.
Is the Arctic sea ice ‘spiral of death’ dead?
https://judithcurry.com/2016/09/18/is-the-arctic-sea-ice-spiral-of-death-dead/
Inter-decadal Variation in Northern Hemisphere sea ice
https://judithcurry.com/2013/09/16/inter-decadal-variation-in-northern-hemisphere-sea-ice/
Glad you are paying attention.
Yep, you got the precedence on that. I didn’t see it until 2016, and that thanks to Tony Heller. But I didn’t get interested in climate until late 2014.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/07/evidence-that-multidecadal-arctic-sea-ice-has-turned-the-corner/
Exactly what I’ve been pointing out for years…
Has there been a similar increase in the yearly average during that same period as well?
?????
From Wiki “Sea ice area
To estimate ice area, scientists calculate the percentage of sea ice in each pixel, multiply by the pixel area, and total the amounts. To estimate ice extent, scientists set a threshold percentage, and count every pixel meeting or exceeding that threshold as “ice-covered.” The National Snow and Ice Data Center, one of NASA’s Distributed Active Archive Centers, monitors sea ice extent using a threshold of 15 percent.[2] ”
So if ice breaks up and disperses over a larger area, is that an increase? I’m not so sure.
Accountants had a saying: ‘Dead cat bounce’. (the bounce of a dead cat dropped from some height, an allegory to the the final move to junk status).
Is that what the ice increase really is? Just asking.
Thanks, I see you used by date of minimum analysis there too. Pilke Sn. seemed to like that one. https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/figure-5.png
Judith published that article here too but I can’t find it now.
Ah, yes that graph was in my “death spiral ” article as you correctly linked over at WUWT, Thanks.
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Javier & Andy,
With thanks, I am still digesting your considerable detail.
As a small aside, for Australia the T data for the 1970s shift from the BOM is affected by metrication from degrees F to C in late 1972.
Colleague Chris Gillham details this on his web hosting.
http://www.waclimate.net/round/
Here is but one extract.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/rounding.jpg
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Somewhat off-topic:
@ https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/818414 [peer=reviewed]
we find,
“In the process, conditions become unfavourable for sardine again, especially so in that their larvae are dispersed towards nutrient-poor parts of the ocean.” &
” Adult anchovy [skip] larvae have more chances to find favourable conditions again.”
Current definitions challenge my memory; did I miss a memo?
‘When this synchronous state is followed by an increase in the coupling strength, the network’s synchronous state is destroyed and after that climate emerges in a new state.’ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2007GL030288
This and other asinine superfluities can be found in the study quoted at the start of the post. Don’t get me wrong. If it was up to me they’d get a Nobel Prize. That’s climate science for you. And other asinine superfluities. When I quoted this paper just above it was genuflection at the alter of AGW.
A synchronous state in complex systems theory? What an asinine…
An important point, many of the largest AMO warm bursts are a response to El Nino episodes, with around an 8 month lag from the El Nino December peak. See Aug 1998, Aug 2005, Aug 2010, and Aug 2016:
https://psl.noaa.gov/data/correlation/amon.us.data
Finding correspondences between phenomenon in the Earth’s globally coupled flow field is neither surprising or difficult. Climate shifts every decade or so in energy cascades propagating around the planet. Climate trundles along until changes in boundary conditions accumulate and the system transitions to a new state. Or it is nudged across by an external forcing. Here it is wrapped up by Marcia Wyatt in a bow. Remembering that transitions are limited to the states possible for the interaction of physical components. The system can’t go out of bounds that for life on Earth are daunting enough. The T^4 term in the S-B law puts the brake on both warming and cooling.
https://www.wyattonearth.net/thestadiumwaveoverview.html
Wyatt and Curry put the origin of the cascade in West Eurasian sea ice (Greenland, Barents, and Kara Seas). I’d put the origin with planetary rotation spinning up polar vortices and ocean gyres. Whether the vortices are more zonal or more meridional is a function of internal dynamics – that may be modulated by more than one aspect of solar variability. In high northern latitudes occasionally helping foster runaway ice sheet growth. In the Pacific there are booms and busts in biology and immense global climate impacts. Satellite observation shows it to be the locus of albedo changes that allow more energy into a warming planet.
Kravtsov et al 2018 – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6 – married climate models to reanalysis product and say that half recent warming may be anthropogenic. This is a change in planetary boundary conditions caused by people and who really knows where it leads. At this point sane people look for rational policy options.
Anomalies of mean European cloud cover, 1983-2020.
https://climate.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/inline-images/C3S_ESOTC20_cloud_Fig1_branded.png
Is that a climate shift we see after 1998?
That is the same data plotted in Fig. 4.5e, the EUMETSAT CM SAF data.
Everybody is looking at climate data and nobody is seeing the 1997 climate shift. It is everywhere in the data. Astounding!
The CO2 hypothesis is making climate science regress. A very sad state of things.
I don’t think modern climate science theory supports the notion that horizontal heat transport doesn’t change the climate. I only see that in things like blog comments and I don’t recall ever seeing it in the literature. I think that is just a public relations gimmick meant to keep the unwashed masses from worrying their little heads about it so they can receive the static free message that CO2 controls the climate.
“I don’t think modern climate science theory supports the notion that horizontal heat transport doesn’t change the climate. I only see that in things like blog comments and I don’t recall ever seeing it in the literature.”
Do you have a reference where it says that horizontal heat transport does change the global climate? I’ve read a lot and never found a hint for that.
Climate science these days is quite limited to what models say. If models confirm evidence, it is accepted without question. If models refute evidence, it is the evidence that is questioned, and not the models.
Horizontal heat transport has no problem changing climate regionally in models, but to change global climate models require a change in the radiative balance through a change in cloud cover or through a change in albedo. Those are unknown to happen to models unless very extreme unrealistic conditions are forced. After 100 years of forcing a winter weak stratospheric westerly jet, Kunihiko Kodera et al. 2016 were able to cause important climate changes, but it was due to a change in albedo.
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/16/12925/2016/
Clearly the models have no clue that MT can alter the TOA flux. This is because MT is the least well known most fundamental climate variable, and the wrong assumptions have been made.
The entire climate science building has weak foundations.
You attempt to change the rules when writing
“Do you have a reference where it says that horizontal heat transport does change the global climate?”
Now you want it to change global climate. How large is the heat transport required to change regional climate much less global
“You attempt to change the rules when writing”
Your opinion only. It is obvious to anybody that if you transport energy from one region to another you reduce the energy in one and increase it in the other. The article very clearly states that horizontal transport is zero if integrated over the entire surface. Scientists appear to believe that horizontal transport cannot change the global average surface temperature. They are wrong.
“Do you have a reference where it says that horizontal heat transport does change the global climate? I’ve read a lot and never found a hint for that”
Astounding ignorance.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/4073/panama-isthmus-that-changed-the-world.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/4073/panama-isthmus-that-changed-the-world.
Exactly, meridional transport changed the climate then, and it is changing the climate now. CO2 is just a second order factor.
Haha.
Rather than acknowledge your profound ignorance of climate science, when presented with it you swerve direct to claiming it proves you right – without so much as a pause for breath!
That’s quite some chutzpah there Javier
“Rather than acknowledge your profound ignorance of climate science, when presented with it you swerve direct to claiming it proves you right – without so much as a pause for breath!”
You wish I was so ignorant. A great deal of the sixth part goes about changes to meridional transport over the past 50 Myr. The effect of the Panama gateway closure is mentioned in the text and graphically. This has been written since July. The references for it were included in the bibliography file uploaded in July.
The Panama gateway closure effect on transport constitutes support for my hypothesis that solar activity affects climate by modulating meridional transport, because it makes meridional transport, not CO2, the main climate change driver.
I understand you are dying to find faults in me or my hypothesis, but you will have to look elsewhere, not in my knowledge of the effects that transport changes during the Cenozoic had on its climate changes.
Just bizarre.
You now claim simultaneously you’ve ” never found a hint for that” in the literature *and* that it’s in the next part.
Consistency not a strong point.
If you want anything you write to be taken remotely seriously
(1) submit to peer review literature
(2) cut the hubristic nonsense about seeing things no-one else does and
(2) take out all the conspiratorial digs at actual scientists.
“You now claim simultaneously you’ve ” never found a hint for that” in the literature *and* that it’s in the next part.”
Your problem is that you are referring to tectonic-change driven climate changes that took place millions of years ago as if that could be the answer to my question about scientists considering changes in MT as a cause of part of the recent climate changes. IPCC AR figures show it is not considered to have contributed or reduced modern warming. So the answer is no. The consensus does not consider recent changes in MT as cause for recent changes in climate.
“(1) submit to peer review literature.”
It has already been peer-reviewed prior to its publication. The rest is my business only. I am entitled to my opinions.
“It has already been peer-reviewed prior to its publication”
Nonsense.
No screed full of conspiratorial digs would ever survive peer review.
“The easiest person to fool is yourself”
“(2) cut the hubristic nonsense about seeing things no-one else does ”
The machine learning NN discovered a heretofore undiscovered pattern. These things do see no one else does. Can’t blame a machine for hubris.
One actually can:
> “We don’t know exactly what. They switched it on and immediately they started losing literally $10 million [£6.4m] a minute. It looks like they were buying high and selling low many, many times per second, and losing 10 or 15 dollars each time. And this went on for 45 minutes. At the end of it all they wound up having lost $440 million [£281m].”
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19214294
Sure, you can start with one of my favorites “why ocean heat transport warms the global mean climate”. I like that one because it uses the NASA GISS model and thanks Lacis for his assistance.
https//:onlinelibrarywiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0870.2005.00121.x
https://onlinelibrarywiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0870.2005.00121.x
That’s no good so let me try this one
http://www.water.columbia.edu/files/2011/11/Seager2005OceanHeat.pdf
Interesting, thank you.
I call your attention that the article says this:
“Stone (1978) argues that the fundamental constraint is that the total poleward heat transport remains fixed, such that changes in AHT and OHT compensate each other, a case also made by Bjerknes (1964) and demonstrated by a number of modelling studies (Manabe et al., 1975; Clement and Seager, 1999; CohenSolal and Le Treut, 1997).”
If total poleward transport doesn’t change, it cannot change the climate. This article does not consider climate change by total transport change. The rest of the article deals exclusively with OHT under “an unrealistically large 100% change in OHT.”
This article does nothing to dispell my notion that scientists do not consider that the climate is changing due to changes in transport, because they consider total transport constant, and when integrated, null. I discussed in the previous article why the Bjerknes compensation hypothesis must necessarily be wrong.
And the Bjerknes compensation does not make sense because a more active meridional transport by the atmosphere is due to a more active meridional atmospheric circulation, that must drive a more active meridional wind-driven ocean circulation that is responsible for a big part of ocean transport. Do we have to believe that the thermohaline circulation has to slow down to compensate for both increased atmospheric and wind-driven circulation? Where is the evidence?
“Given the dependence of the mean temperature of the planet on the partitioning of the total HT between the atmosphere and ocean…” is a pretty clear indication they do think it is important how the heat is transported. In a model you would get progressively less change for each 10% of ocean heat transport you added so you can’t just look at the total and assume a 10-20% change couldn’t explain all the warming we have experienced even with this model and just like CO2 some models are more sensitive to changes in ocean heat transport changes than others are. The North Atlantic is losing OHC.
‘In 1964, Jacob Bjerknes proposed that large anomalies in the atmospheric heat transport should be balanced by opposing variations in the oceanic heat transport (Bjerknes 1964); a process later named Bjerknes compensation (BC). This comes about by assuming that the top-of-the-atmosphere fluxes and the ocean heat content are approximately constant, and consequently the total energy transport in the climate system should also be approximately constant.’ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-016-3447-2#:~:text=If%20the%20total%20heat%20transported,scenario%20now%20called%20Bjerknes%20compensation.
Neither TOA power flux or ocean heat content are constant. But if they were – Bjerknes must be correct. This is the simplest of geophysics.
“you can’t just look at the total and assume a 10-20% change couldn’t explain all the warming we have experienced”
Even if we accept the premises of the article, which I don’t, the evidence should make the proposed mechanism work towards cooling:
“Recent evidence alone, showing a slowdown of the shallow meridional overturning circulation (MOC) and thus reduced OHT in the tropical Pacific since the 1970s, consistent with the observed surface ocean warming (McPhaden and Zhang, 2002), highlights that this is not purely an academic matter.”
Less OHT -> cooling.
Even though they claim the hypothetical mechanism works by increasing the greenhouse effect, the truth is that in a warming planet with polar amplification and a reducing latitudinal temperature gradient, a reduction in OHT is both implied and observed. If they are right, and they don’t have the evidence, it is a negative feedback. It is curious, to say the least, that they will not mention that in the article. It cannot be an oversight.
Figure 4.7 demonstrates an abrupt, almost sudden increase in OLR at latitudes where AHT completely overwhelms OHT, as the article says. It demonstrates an abrupt increase in AHT in just a few years, as the energy cannot be generated there, nor transported by the ocean. The change in energy at the TOA is very significative, c. 6 W/m^2, compared with the puny changes in CO2 forcing over a few years.
I remain skeptical that the sudden increase in AHT shown in Fig. 4.7 was matched by a sudden decrease in OHT, as the Bjerknes compensation hypothesis demands.
“Neither TOA power flux or ocean heat content are constant. But if they were – Bjerknes must be correct.”
Since they are not (Fig. 4.7), Bjerknes and all his followers are wrong.
Assumption gives way to observation ideally. By his assumptions and the 1st LoT – Bjerknes was correct. That was 1964 ffs. There is now a better understanding of how TOA flux and ocean heat is not constant.
That’s correct. We should be in the process of cooling. The loss of ocean heat content could be the first step. We will all find out together.
It should be cooling based on what is happening in the Atlantic. The paper you referred to from the paper I referenced has more to do with upwelling than it does poleward heat transport plus the paper states that it has pretty much recovered back to the 70s levels.
“The paper you referred to from the paper I referenced has more to do with upwelling than it does poleward heat transport”
I was citing from Herweijer et al. 2005 that you referenced. It is an interesting paper, and the authors propose that changes in the AHT/OHT partition can produce changes in surface temperature. They seem to purposely avoid talking about cooling, and focus only on warming, despite warming necesitating more OHT, not less. In any case it refers only to how the models see transport, not how it happens in real climate. The effect observed in models, after pushing the system unrealistically, is due to changes in latitudinal moisture redistribution. I remain skeptical that effect could happen in real climate, since evaporation depends a lot more on wind speed, air humidity, and sea level pressure, than it does on SST.
As I said and quoted at the beginning of Part III, the problem is that nobody understands well enough how transport is accomplished, how baroclinic instability is translated into storm tracks and intrusion events, and therefore it is not possible for models to know it either. In the end the assumptions are coded into the models and the scientific method does not work over assumptions, as they are not tested, but assumed to be correct.
Nothing wrong with being skeptical but the question you asked me was if there was literature showing that horizontal heat transport changes climate. That paper is just one of many arguing ocean heat transport changes the climate dating back at least as far as 1982. In other words horizontal heat transport changing the climate is main stream science and claims that it can’t from climate scientists are disingenuous.
Steven, I am genuinely interested in papers dealing with this question, but remember that the statement that initiated this subthread was:
“I don’t think modern climate science theory supports the notion that horizontal heat transport doesn’t change the climate.”
The fact that there are papers dealing with this question does nothing to dispell the notion that modern climate science theory doesn’t support that changes in horizontal heat transport change the climate.
For the same token there are hundreds of papers that support the notion that solar changes cause important climate changes, yet that is not what modern climate science theory supports.
The position of modern climate science theory with regard to the transport-climate question is clearly stated in the Assessment Reports. And can be seen in AR5 SPM Fig. 1.9
https://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figure_1.9.png
Meridional transport must be included within natural internal variability. Natural internal variability contribution to the observed warming for the period 1951-2010 is estimated at 0.0ºC by IPCC authors.
So what I say in the article is correct. Modern climate theory does not consider meridional transport has been a cause for climate change during the period of recent warming.
Similar figures to that one, dismissing internal natural contributions, had been presented for all the warming since pre-industrial times (1700), both in IPCC’s AR and in other official reports.
Articles dealing with changes in transport causing changes in climate are as contrarian as papers dealing with solar changes causing changes in climate.
There is a big difference between arguing it didn’t contribute and arguing it can’t contribute.
” The difference in frequency between this reported 9.1-yr tidal cycle and the 11-yr solar cycle is such that they change from correlated to anti-correlated (i.e., constructive to destructive interference) with a periodicity that not only matches the AMO, but is exactly synchronized to it (compare black curves in Fig. 4.8b & f).”
From sunspot maximum in 1917.6 to sunspot maximum in 1969.6 is 52 years, and five sunspot cycles. My work explains why there should be 10.4 year length sunspot cycles between centennial solar minima. Your other signal in 4.8f has seven envelopes in the same 52 period, each at ~7.428 years.
Study this chart carefully, AMO anomalies are always colder near sunspot minimum during a cold AMO phase, and never colder near sunspot minimum during a warm AMO phase. The transition between phases is fast, in around half a solar cycle. Your idea of two cycles producing constructive to destructive interference is illusory.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/esrl-amo/from:1880/mean:13/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1880/normalise
Maybe 6 envelopes if the small double peak in the 1930’s is one and not two, that makes 8.666 year intervals, which is still shorter than 9 or 9.1. The chart does not agree with what is being described.
Greg, There’s a new paper out today in Scientific Reports regarding the effects of the fires in Australia back in 2020:
“Australian wildfires cause the largest stratospheric warming since Pinatubo and extends the lifetime of the Antarctic ozone hole”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-15794-3
They used the RSS data, which shows a distinct spike for 2020. My graphs also show a spike at that time. BTW, I checked my graphs again and they appear to be OK.
‘We compare top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative fluxes observed by the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) and simulated by seven general circulation models forced with observed sea-surface temperature (SST) and sea-ice boundary conditions. In response to increased SSTs along the equator and over the eastern Pacific (EP) following the so-called global warming “hiatus” of the early 21st century, simulated TOA flux changes are remarkably similar to CERES. Both show outgoing shortwave and longwave TOA flux changes that largely cancel over the west and central tropical Pacific, and large reductions in shortwave flux for EP low-cloud regions. A model’s ability to represent changes in the relationship between global mean net TOA flux and surface temperature depends upon how well it represents shortwave flux changes in low-cloud regions, with most showing too little sensitivity to EP SST changes, suggesting a “pattern effect” that may be too weak compared to observations.’ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL086705
Models can be forced to reproduce TOA power flux. That means that models can do a reasonable job of approximating the curl and vector of planetary heat transport. The next steps are to integrate observation systems into initialised decadal scale projections using machine learning and AI.
Science has been at this for centuries. But that is nowhere near enough for self proclaimed gatekeepers of truth who figure that they can divine it from misunderstood first principles and eyeballing graphs. That they call evidence. It may be evidence of something but it cannot support the Wily E. Coyote superstructure built over it with narratives and handwaving. There are a host of epic sceptic failures – and these are not self correcting.
Change and uncertainty are still the central facts of climate – something at odds with faux sceptic certainty. I’d ask if they knew that climate shifts – the observed pattern effect – are spatiotemporal chaotic tipping points – but I know the answer to that.
99 comments on the wall – if one should accidentally fall. I like to play slick and loose with language. But I am a stickler for scientific nomenclature. It’s a fine line and my work as a science and technology communicator required making it as simple as possible. As an engineer I was required to build economic and socially responsible solutions. In climate this is modular nuclear engines, 21st century land and water management – as an environmental scientist I have been working at that for a long time – and for pities sake build resilient infrastructure.
We are, however, for the purpose of this discussion – looking for decadal cloud variability. Hell – I was writing on decadal cloud variability here more than a decade ago. I’ll get back to that. These are two sources of dramatic shifts in Earth climate. Fluctuations in northward heat transport in the Atlantic Ocean – and of course the coupled atmosphere.
A big change was shoaling of the Isthmus of Panama.
Suspiciously around the time of initiation of Pleistocene climate extremes some 2.58 million years go. The mid-Pleistocene transition from some 41,000 year to about 100,000 years I read somewhere could be the result of plate tectonics and changes in the resonant frequency of the ocean. Climate reached a tipping point.
This is the temperature based Tripole Index for the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (Henley et al, 2015, the reference can be found on the NOAA page.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/maptpiipo.sm_.png
https://psl.noaa.gov/data/timeseries/IPOTPI/
When the vast area of the tropical and subtropical Pacific is warmer there is less low level cloud and more energy enters the spatiotemporal chaotic Earth system. And vice versa. A phenomenon observed from surface and space. It’s a nonlinear bistable phenomenon ( e.g. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4973593) such as we should all be used to by now. This is the source of some of the 0.5K cooling to the LIA. It was about half of recent warming – giving AGW a run for it’s money over the past 40 years.
e.g. Clement and Burgman (two of my favourite climate scientists) 2009 – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26692146_Observational_and_Model_Evidence_for_Positive_Low-Level_Cloud_Feedback
What happens next nobody knows. There was a transition dome 5,500 years ago from generally cooler to generally warmer Pacific states – in a period of slowly increasing solar intensity. Let’s hope it’s a bit cooler in a solar Grand Maxima this century through nonlinear feedbacks – North Africa needs the rain. Word is – it’s powered by the polar annular modes driving wind and currents north and south in the Pacific. It’s been called the gyre hypothesis.
In the south.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-52.83,-85.84,335
At the surface in the north the footprint of the vortex is less distinct – going higher in the earthnullschool simulation and it resolves into the Arctic Vortex. The jet stream is at its edge at the top of the troposphere.
Spot the coinkedink – correlation it is not – between the proximate cause of the mid Holocene transition to a dryer Sahel -and cosmic ray intensity in the 9,400 year isotope record.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/moys-2002-2.png
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/isotope-9400-e1659732607560.gif
“There was a transition dome 5,500 years ago from generally cooler to generally warmer Pacific states – in a period of slowly increasing solar intensity.”
Low solar promotes El Nino conditions.
5,500 years ago is a very particular date.
See file:///C:/Users/c%20r%20sant/Downloads/A_major_widespread_climatic_change_around_5300_cal.pdf
At higher latitudes abrupt cooling. At low latitudes abrupt warming, and the desiccation of the Sahara.
From link “Despite apparent contradiction
between progressive insolation changes and abruptness of
events in many records at 5600–5000 cal. yr BP, model
experiments have shown the ability of gradual insolation for-
cing to produce abrupt climatic oscillations owing to the
non-linear sensitivity of the climate system when crossing
threshold values (deMenocal et al., 2000”
And earlier “Among potential causes of the climate reversal at 5600–5000 cal. yr BP, orbital forcing—“.
What is evident at or around that time is an obliquity change recorded in design dimensions of megalithic calendars, a reduction. 5509BP has a planetary (plus moon) alignment conducive of abrupt change.
The Moy et al proxy evidence shows a transition from a cool eastern Pacific (La Nina like) to a warm state (El Nino like) some 5,500 years ago. Consistent with a drier North Africa expected in El Nino like conditions. And all the proxies say that cooler Pacific conditions prevailed in low solar activity in the past millennium.
e.g. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/26/3/jcli-d-12-00003.1.xml
The Moy et al proxy shows the strongest El Nino conditions of the last 5500 years during grand solar minima period.
“4.5 The Arctic shift and polar amplification”
There is NO SUCH THING as “polar amplification”.
The two polar sea ice sheets tend to grow and shrink almost in anti-phase.
https://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/ant_arctic_melting2.png
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/ant_arctic_melting-3/
Something I had missed above; that is fig 4.1. I had issues with that, but today these issues are ‘hotted up’. It is an example of how we deceive ourselves.
The object of my ‘ire’ is curve b) the “Purple curve, Earth’s axis tilt (obliquity) in degrees.” It is drawn to a scale that deceptively follows the ‘proxy temperature’ while ignoring the cliff drop-off at 10k yrs.
Looking again at the ancient measurements for links to the Eddy yr173 stuck out. The effects were substantiated by increased glacier melt and lake sedimentation surge; see https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Standardized-values-of-DBD-dry-bulk-density-K-potassium-Ti-titanium-and-Si_fig6_270293211 (paper Arctic Holocene glacier fluctuations reconstructed from lake sediments at Mitrahalvøya, Spitsbergen)
At year 173CE of the historical records of obliquity measurements there is a recorded measure – twice in a matter of probably 24hrs; at the solstice days- of outlier measurements varying by nearly 0.2 degrees abrupt increase (the data point; the full extent of the change could be more). Proxy temp shows an upturn at that point. Planetary alignment were conducive at that year. It also coincides with an Eddy cycle peak.
Mentioning Eddy, the Eddy root at 5k2 _the piora oscillation- shows a sharp spike in SO4. The geological record there is terrible.
“At year 173CE of the historical records of obliquity measurements there is a recorded measure – twice in a matter of probably 24hrs; at the solstice days- of outlier measurements varying by nearly 0.2 degrees abrupt increase”
The pull from the sun and the moon prevent abrupt changes to the Earth’s axis tilt. It is easier to accept that your data is faulty.
Yes, it is easier to accept that the data is faulty. That is precisely what has happened for the last century. We have been fed ‘simple bs’ because it was easier to accept.
Yet several researchers before us had questioned the dogma, because they did not accept to sing from the official hymn sheet in the face of contrary evidence.
And yet we/I keep stumbling on evidence contradicting the official narrative. Evidence counts, not pretty theory.
Javier, it was you pointing to Eddy cycle peaks and roots as time of great change. A lot has surfaced since then to prove you correct and that it is all real.
“The pull from the sun and the moon prevent abrupt changes to the Earth’s axis tilt.” On the contrary, planetary alignments with Jupiter, and the moon in between sun and earth, are great disturbing torque sources. Those torques change in amount and direction rapidly with certain situations, the moon especially so.
This link surfaced early this year. It gives the matter an other additional twist
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ab5365/pdf
See conclusion, para 3. (note: inclination to a point source of heat).
I love it. Supercomputer simulation of the solar system n-body problem. Thanks. N-body orbits shift in state space and are strictly unpredictable over more than short arcs (approximated as a straight line) and limited times. The math of that was done by Poincare in his 3-body Hamiltonians a century ago. There are cruder approximations of solar system orbits.
Earth has momentum and a large external force is required to perturb it. A meteor might do the trick. Dynamics of a water planet pulled this way and that are interesting. Internal resonant harmonics maybe. Shifting balances of water and ice perturbing planetary spin dynamics perhaps. Shifting winds and currents changing the length of day – interacting with land and water waves – could be.
The problem with the climate “debate” – more a tower of babel laboured over for sometimes as long as 10 minutes on the internet – is that gatekeepers don’t know how to have fun. The fun of science is learning provisional things about the world – provisional on empirical validation – to inspire new speculation.
“Earth has momentum and a large external force is required to perturb it.” This is very likely a wrong concept.
See link here: https://www.gamingdeputy.com/the-earths-rotation-is-accelerating-and-it-just-broke-a-record/
See how the LOD varies. Note that the shortest days 2020, 2021, 2022, were all at the new moon, ie the moon is between sun and earth. The previous year was at full moon.
Possibly an axial+precession shift, a gyro response to gravity vector change. With S,J and V in-line expect more. Note that before is not same as after, meaning that tilt change can last for much longer. Again this is the evidence.
Shift the shape some and a different dynamic evolves. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-l-SbCFhL0
Judith,
I’m lost here. I’m a good bean counter, but mainly good at adding up numbers in columns and rows.
I’ve read all these articles with fascination, but have had to let my eyes glaze over whole paragraphs while I look for clauses/paragraphs which I can still only barely understand.
Many commentators seem so confident either way, perhaps complacently, that I don’t understand where the majority view can possibly be.
This whole “hypothesis” (excuse me if I use the wrong term) is fascinating, and completely logical. BUT, I need an expert steer to tell me where this all sits (or should sit) in climate science today.
From the little that I understand this appears to be a 2-way naked emperor situation; either Javier is right, and the climate “establishment” wrong, or vice versa. OR, there is a compromise, which would reconcile the establishment with Javier’s (or with the recent Ian Plimer et al “Climate Declaration”).
A “top level” summary would be most useful, if you or one of the other denizens could provide.
Gratefully,
Steve Brown
Where the tone is stridently anti-science – I’d go with climate science. Judith has put it at about 50/50 AGW and natural. The past 40 years sure look like it. Emissions taking though 2 multidecadal regimes – 1976 to 1998 and 1998 to date (?) – with atmospheric temperature relentlessly increasing through both.
https://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
Comparing and contrasting quality sources is a key skill.
According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.” https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8703/la-nina-and-pacific-decadal-oscillation-cool-the-pacific
NASA image by Jesse Allen, AMSR-E data processed and provided by Chelle Gentemann and Frank Wentz, Remote Sensing Systems. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey, adapted from a press release from NASA JPL.’
Josh Willis is still with the JLPL. He starts a recent CalTech Watson climate lecture at minute 18.00.
Emissions taking off…
Thank you for an excellent reference:
https://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
Have you looked at channel C11, -0.362K/decade?
Yes – so?
“While the study of weather variability has a long tradition, the science of climate change is a very young scientific topic, as attested to by the 1984 discovery of the first multidecadal oscillation, the primary global climate internal variability phenomenon, by Folland et al.”
Thereby misdirecting climate climate science for decades, by calling it internal variability.
“The global energy change at the 97CS resulted in a change in trend in the ocean heat content (OHC) time derivative (Fig. 4.5h, black line; Dewitte et al. 2019). This change indicates OHC started to increase more slowly,”
Looks like it increased faster from 1995, probably due to the decline in low cloud cover:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/oceans/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/GRAPHS/meantemp_0-2000m.png
The last two AMO envelopes at 60 and 70 years are unusually long. The long term mean is around 55 years, because every other warm phase happens during a centennial solar minimum.
Even though Javier’s hypothesis is observation based, he is up against a tech giant when it comes to presenting it to the public.
A Google study finds that training people to recognize misinformation makes them more resistant to it. However, what is one of the “red flags” used to ID it? One is “use of conflicting explanations.” However, any alternative scientific explanation of something like “climate change” will necessarily be a “conflicting explanation.” It appears they are training people to ignore genuinely true information if that information goes against the popular explanation. Tricky.
The researchers found that psychologically “inoculating” internet users against lies and conspiracy theories — by pre-emptively showing them videos about the tactics behind misinformation — made people more skeptical of falsehoods afterward, according to an academic paper published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday…. The users were taught about tactics such as scapegoating and deliberate incoherence, or the use of conflicting explanations to assert that something is true, so that they could spot lies. Researchers tested some participants within 24 hours of seeing a pre-bunk video and found a 5 percent increase in their ability to recognize misinformation techniques.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/08/27/0211210/google-study-finds-psychological-inoculation-can-improve-resistance-to-misinformation
Javier Vinós & Andy May, thanks again for a good essay.
Thanks for the great and well cited read. Fascinating stuff!
Anything on the shift and the relationship of sea ice, deep water brine currents and phytoplankton?
Judith, I missed a SUMMARY of the report for this mere philosopher to comprehend in plain English. Do I assume it doesn’t’ ‘look good’ for the carbonates ?
How about –
You are very clever, climate scientists, very clever, but it is cycles all the way down.
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Fascinating stuff. Eagerly awaiting your book to release on Amazon.
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