Seven Different Methods All Yield The Same Result: Cooling Ahead!

Natural Cycles
by Ed Caryl

Solar and ocean cycles indicate that cooling times lay ahead over the coming decades.

One argument against the CAGW hypothesis is the influence of natural cycles controlling weather and climate. In nature, there are many phenomena that are cyclic.

Figure 1. This is solar cycle variation 1975 to 2005, the recent solar maximum. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The sunspot cycles are particularly obvious. Do these cycles influence the earth’s climate? Here is a table of documented cycles. They range from the shortest cycle found in sunspot numbers, 3.7 years, to the ice-age repeat-time of 100,000 years.

Table 1. This is a list of known cycles and data sources. The links are to the source documents. The background colors suggest related cycles.

The problem with pinning down the exact lengths and relationships of these cycles are two-fold. First, the signal is noisy…very noisy. Some of the noise is due to measurement inaccuracy, and some due to the fact that the real signal is noisy and chaotic. Second, there is modulation present on the signals; they vary a great deal in frequency and amplitude. Some of the modulation is regular, producing predictable effects on the main frequency (the “side-bands” noted in Table 1), and some is noisy and unpredictable.

The sunspot Schwabe cycle varies from 8 to 14 years. The thousand-year long cycles also vary by hundreds of years. But there are still patterns one can see in the lengths. The 3.7-year cycle is one-third of the 11.1-year Schwabe cycle. The 22-year Hale cycle is two Schwabe cycles. The wet/dry cycles observed in the western U. S. and other places are one Schwabe cycle or two Hale cycles. The AMO is three Hale cycles. The Gleissberg cycle is four Hale cycles. These are all related to the sun’s magnetic cycles.

The longer period cycles are also sun cycles; the periodicity is reflected in carbon-14 and other isotopes detected in ice cores, tree rings, and other sources. The primary periods seem to be 210, 420, 710, 1500, and 2200 years, with variation around each of those lengths caused by frequency and amplitude modulation, the shape of the waveform, and “beats” with the Hale cycle. (When you mix two frequencies you get third and fourth frequencies that are frequency 1 minus frequency two and frequency 1 plus frequency two). The Suess/deVries cycle is the spacing between the various named solar minimums: Dalton, Maunder, Sporer, etc. The longer 420-year cycle is twice the 210-year cycle. The 710-year cycle is a half-D-O/Bond event cycle and one-third the Hallstatt cycle.

Do we see these cycles in climate? Yes, of course. As mentioned above, wet/dry cycles, the AMO, and the cooling during solar minimums, are well known. The 200-year cycle discussed in the Lui et al paper, and here, is seen from Tibet to Antarctica. The D-O and Bond event cycles are climate-warming cycles that occur during ice ages and in interglacial times like the present. S. Fred Singer thinks that the recent warming was a Bond event. So does the Chiefio. So does this author. But the warming is over. Vahrenholt is correct, though he may have not gone far enough in his predictions.

Can predictions be made? Where are we in these on-going cycles? Nicola Scafetta uses the cycles from the 20 – 22-year Hale cycle and the 60 to 66-year AMO cycle to predict
much less warming in this century that the IPCC predicts. Dr. Scafetta makes passing mention of the longer cycles but does not factor them into his prediction. We are 210 years from the Dalton minimum of the early 19th century, and 400 years from the Maunder minimum. We are due.

Predictions for solar cycle 25 have it at Maunder minimum levels with a sunspot count under 10. This is a Grand Minimum. The solar cycle length is also getting longer. There seems to be a relationship between solar cycle length, sunspot number, and global temperature. If this relationship holds, we will see cooling of 0.5°C or more in the coming
decades.

This cooling has already begun in the Atlantic Arctic and interior continental areas. See Temperature History – Part 2 and BEST Fails to Account…, Figure 10.

Habibullo I. Abdussamatov of the Pulkovo Observatory in Russia predicts a reduction in Total Solar Irradience (TSI) of 0.5% by the mid-21 st century and another Little Ice Age lasting until 2100. S. Duhau and C. de Jager of the University of Buenos Aires and the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, respectively, also forecast a Grand
Minimum in exactly the same time frame and “of the long type”.

Matthew Penn and William Livingston say that sunspots will disappear completely by 2016 to 2022, due to the magnetic fields reducing to a point to low to reveal them.

Counting Vahrenholt and Lüning, the above are seven predictions by seven different methods. All predict cooling in the coming years.

Some of the temperature trend predictions are for cooling to begin in 2014. After examining many temperature records all over the world, I believe that the cooling has already begun.

Figure 2. This is the annual global temperature trend for 2010 to 2011, Note in the upper right corner a figure indicating a global cooling of 0.12°C. Source GISS.

Figure 2 shows a global cooling year over year for last year of 0.12°C. Much of that is Canadian Arctic, Southern Russia, Africa, South Asia, Oceana, and the Eastern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The Arctic Ocean has yet to accumulate ice to cool Northern Siberia late in the melt season, so that region still shows warm. This will soon change. Next year the cold will come to Europe and Russia earlier because there will be more and earlier ice in the Arctic Ocean. This will become more pronounced in future years. Don’t sell your thermal underwear!

 

23 responses to “Seven Different Methods All Yield The Same Result: Cooling Ahead!”

  1. Ulrich Elkmann

    Seven different cycles all point in the same direction.
    Reminds you of the old Robert A. Heinlein story, “The Year of the Jackpot”.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_the_Jackpot

  2. DirkH

    Good summary, Ed. But: It’s Gleissberg, not Gleissburg. [Thanks Dirk – corrected, except for the one in the table – PG] Also, one could add Otto Landscheidt’s predictions, which are based on barycentric arguments. Solar physicists often dispute that, saying there is no plausible physical mechanism, but here is one paper that proposes a mechanism:

    Rotating medium als possible explanation for Landscheidt’s predictions
    http://www.wbabin.net/files/4354_leplae4.pdf

    1. Ed Caryl

      I saw Landscheidt’s paper, and the discussions of it, and decided it was a bit to controversial. So I left it out.

    2. Ed Caryl

      “Rotating Medium”??? Sounds like the “ether”. Doesn’t pass the smell test.

      1. DirkH

        Think interplanetary gas. No mystical particles.

  3. Verity Jones

    Good work aummarising all this Ed. Do you think it is worth adding an eighth method – previous sunspot cycle length – in the light of the Solheim et al paper highlighted at WUWT yesterday? Paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.1954v1.pdf
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/quantifying-the-solar-cycle-24-temperature-decline/

    It may be unproven but it has predictive value and it too predicts cooling. Serious cooling.

    1. Ed Caryl

      Verity,
      It is worth adding. It is independent of the Strum paper, and done in a different way. They all come to the same conclusion: 0.5 degrees C global cooling, with more in the northern hemisphere. I see signs at many inland and northern stations that the cooling started 5 to 8 years ago and has been and will be faster than the predictions. Elsewhere, the cooling is being slowed by water and UHI.

      Ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times! I apply this to “The Team”.

  4. Icarus62

    Anyone hoping to see a slowdown or even a pause in the global warming trend is likely to be sorely disappointed. Palaeoclimate shows us that the cooling influence of reduced solar irradiance is minimal – we get substantially more from volcanic stratospheric aerosols but of course even that is minor compared to anthropogenic forcings. The forecast is still for a great deal more warming – 5 to 8°C of global warming, perhaps 10 if we really go all out and burn all the plausibly extractable fossil fuels.

    1. Mindert Eiting

      Icarus62: join the charity bet on this website. Will it become warmer or cooler the next decade?

    2. Ed Caryl

      Icarus,
      Climate bet above. Put your money where your mouth is…

    3. DirkH

      “The forecast is still for a great deal more warming – 5 to 8°C of global warming”

      Forecast? IPCC consensus climate scientists do not deal in the forecasting business, Icarus. They only do projections. You should know the difference. If you don’t: Read the IPCC AR4.

      1. Icarus62

        It’s a forecast on the basis of the most likely scenario, which is that we burn most of the fossil fuels we can get our hands on, without any significant emissions reductions. The only way to avoid large global warming is to reduce our emissions virtually to zero in the next couple of decades, and clearly that’s not going to happen. There is too much profit to be had and we can’t run global civilisation on wind turbines and solar panels – we won’t stop using fossil fuels, because we can’t. Hence we’re heading back to the hotter climate state of millions of years ago. Perhaps the most pertinent question is how much more carbon we can get out of the ground and burn before the devastating effects of climate chaos cause a sufficient collapse of global civilisation to substantially reduce emissions for us.

        1. DirkH

          Double fallacy; first, you completely block out any new information presented to you – what will CO2 do next year, play catch-up to make good for the last 15 years where it didn’t warm the planet? After all it has a warming target to meet at the end of the century!

          Second – We could easily run our civilisation on Wind and Solar. It would be ludicrously expensive, so we would have to reduce our standard of living, and you can see in Greece what happens when people are forced to cut back on their standard of living. But it would be possible – the EROEI of solar is 3 in Germany, that’s barely sufficient to maintain a culture, the EROEI of wind is about 16; that’s comfortable.

          Can a civilization survive with an intermittent power source like that? Of course. We probably can’t immediately build enough storage to maintain our luxuries around the clock, but we surely can build enough storage for vital parts of our infrastructure, like hospitals or critically important factory processes. Hydrogen synthesis is commercially available with an efficiency of 85%.

          Oh, and another fallacy: You still assume that rising CO2 concentrations have a causal relationship with temperatures. This has been ruled out:
          http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/beenstock/Nature_Paper091209.pdf

          1. Icarus62

            I literally laughed out loud at the ‘paper’ you linked to – “… and AGW is refuted”. Hilarious!

          2. DirkH

            I notice that you can’t offer a factual rebuttal.

  5. JC Smith

    Yes….where ARE my longjohns? Global cooling coming. Here’s a couple “global cooling” heads that got cut off:

    1) John McClean’s prediction that 2011 would be the coolest year since AT LEAST 1956. Yes….he got his head cut off with that prediction. http://www.skepticalscience.com/mclean-exaggerating-natural-cycles.html

    2) Joe Bastardi: What happens when a weatherman drinks the Koch Brothers kool-aid? He makes a prediction in September 2010 that arctic sea ice extent for 2011 will jump above the levels of 2005. Unfortunately for Joe (and the Kocheads), weather can’t be bought like politicians. Arctic sea ice extent continued its long term downward move. Here is Joe’s infamous youtube clip from Sept of 2010 where he is calling for a “late start to the ice melt season” in 2011.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xHT5U6vsAY

    The denyers keep lining up, and get their head handed to them.

    1. DirkH

      JC, what’s your explanation for the frozen-over Danube? How did Antropogenic Global Warming do that? You seem to be a better weather expert than Joe Bastardi. Please explain!

  6. Doug Cotton

    Here is a simple proof in 10 easy steps why the Greenhouse Effect is a physical impossibility.

    (1) The IPCC claim that radiation from a cooler atmosphere slows the rate of cooling of the (warmer) surface, thus leading to a greenhouse effect.

    (2) The “rate of cooling” is a 24 hour worldwide mean, so wherever the Sun is warming the surface (any sunny morning) the rate of warming would have to be increased by whatever process is slowing the rate of cooling.

    (3) Thus extra thermal energy must be added to the surface by such radiation in order to increase the warming rate in the morning and slow the mean rate of cooling calculated from both day and night rates.

    (4) Now the Second Law of Thermodynamics relates to heat transfer which is not the same as energy transfer. Radiated energy can be two-way, but heat transfer between two points is always one way and it is invalid to split such heat transfer into two opposite components and try to apply the Second Law to each. Physics doesn’t work that way.

    (5) Hence, the surface cannot warm faster in the mornings due to such an imaginary heat transfer, because that would be clearly breaking the Second Law no matter what. Nor can it slow the rate of cooling because of (4). And in general you would expect the same process to happen whether the surface is warming or cooling.

    (6) So, those photons from the cooler atmosphere are not being converted to thermal energy in the warmer surface, as Prof Claes Johnson proved in Computational Blackbody Radiation.

    (7) Hence the effect of the photons being either reflected or scattered is that there is no impact on the surface at all.

    (8) It is also clear that there is no significant transfer by diffusion or conduction from the atmosphere to the surface because the surface absorbs more solar insolation than the lower atmosphere, and we observe that the atmosphere is generally cooler and even cools faster at night than the surface.

    (9) So it really does not matter even if extra thermal energy is trapped higher up in the atmosphere because it does not affect what we call climate, and any such energy cannot make its way back to the surface, except possibly an insignificant additional amount in precipitation.

    (10) Hence there is no valid physical way in which backradiation or absorption by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause a significant atmospheric greenhouse effect.

    If I haven’t convinced you, read this paper Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf

    Doug Cotton
    http://climate-change-theory.com

    1. Icarus62

      Doug, sorry but that’s illogical. It’s patently obvious that if you reduce the radiation of a planetary body escaping to space then the surface will warm up sufficiently to restore the radiative equilibrium – otherwise the body would continue to gain heat forever, and become infinitely hot, which is clearly a nonsense in terms of thermodynamics.

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