My thanks to Roger Andrews, who sent me this guest post a little while ago and has been very patiently waiting for me to publish it. I had a good look around Bob Tisdale’s site before deciding to go ahead, to check he hadn’t already done the same thing. I can’t find anything directly comparable, so here it is. Hopefully Bob will join us in comments and let us know. Nicola Scafetta and others have shown a ~60-70yr pattern the motion of the solar system’s planets which we suspect is linked to this natural cyclic variation. It hasn’t been taken into account by climate models. The positive, warming phase of the oceanic cycles coincides with ‘global warming’ attributed to the increase in co2 by the IPCC. Ignoring the natural oceanic cycles amounts to something which in commercial law is known as ‘omitted variable fraud’.
A NEW CLIMATE INDEX – THE NORTHERN MULTIDECADAL OSCILLATION
Roger Andrews – March 28-2013
It’s widely recognized that weather and climate are strongly influenced by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) in and around the North Atlantic Ocean and by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in and around the North Pacific Ocean, if not globally. But as illustrated below the AMO and the PDO show quite different trends, giving the impression that North Atlantic and North Pacific ocean cycles march to the beat of a different drummer:
http://www.eoearth.org/files/111301_111400/111389/AMO_-_USGS.jpg
But in fact they don’t. The above comparison is misleading because the AMO and PDO measure quite different things (the AMO is derived from detrended North Atlantic SST anomalies and the PDO from the difference in SST between the west and east North Pacific). When we compare detrended North Pacific SSTs with detrended North Atlantic SSTs – i.e. apples to apples – we find that the +/- 60 year AMO cyclicity is present in the North Pacific as well as in the North Atlantic, as shown below (the plots below cover the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north of the Equator, use straight-line detrending and show both “corrected” and uncorrected SST data sets)
How much difference does this make? Well, right now it’s just another piece of information to plug into the equation, and the fact that I’ve been unable to find any mention in the literature of the AMO cycle existing in the Pacific Ocean suggests that it isn’t common knowledge. (It would be if anyone had published a “PMO” index to complement the AMO index, but no one has.)
A separate PMO index could of course be constructed, but with substantially the same cyclicity present in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific the SST data from both can be combined into a single “Northern Multidecadal Oscillation Index” (NMO). There are various ways of calculating this index and a range of outcomes is therefore possible, but here’s a preliminary version calculated from linearly-detrended ERSST v3b data from the Atlantic and Pacific between 25N and 60N, the latitude band ERSST uses to calculate the AMO:
As one would expect the NMO is very similar to the AMO, but it’s hemispheric in extent rather than confined to the North Atlantic (I say “hemispheric” because there seems to be no related Southern Multidecadal Oscillation. The oscillations occur almost entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and their amplitude decreases towards the Equator.)
Northern Hemisphere air temperatures show the same cylicity, with amplitudes again decreasing towards the Equator but with air temperatures tending to lead rather than lag SSTs. This has some intriguing implications that I might get round to presenting later.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Roger A: Thanks for this post. Is the left hand scale of the plots in Centigrade?
The present PDO graph resonates well with oscillations in Pacific salmon stocks as has been described in a catalogue of papers to date.
Research into the AMO along these lines into Atlantic white fish was developing promisingly well up to the early nineties but as far as I can discover was obliterated by the AGW scare. However a simplistic eyeballed corelation seems to hold up quite well to date.
My interest is in the collapse of Sea Trout and Atlantic Salmon numbers and I have been looking to the peaking and downturn in AMO for signs of fecundity increases that might promote some old fashioned original thought from funded researchers as the discredited AGW meme turns down.
I am not at all sure that this is very helpful.
Roger Andrews: As far as I can remember, I have not presented a Northern Multidecadal Oscillation (detrended Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperature anomalies). I did however suggest the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation…
…when discussing failed attempts to merge the AMO and PDO datasets:
Regards
[…] Click here to read the full article _____________________________________________ […]
Bob Tisdale said:
“I did however suggest the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation…”
Yes that is correct and I have been using the term ever since.
Bob suggested it as a more accurate term given that so many were incorrectly using the term Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) which is simply an artifact of regional pressure differentials.
As regards climate indices I long ago suggested that really one needs an index derived from the net state of all the ocean oscillations combined at any given time.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1302&linkbox=true&position=9
“We also need to identify all the separate oceanic cycles around the globe and ascertain both the current state of their respective warming or cooling modes and, moreover, the intensity of each, both at the time of measurement and in the future.”
May 21st 2008.
Note that at that time I was still referring to PDO rather than PMO as subsequently suggested by Bob.
The wave is heliospheric first and oceanic second.
Multidecadal climate waves perfectly match multidecadal heliosphere waves.
It seems that Antarctica & the circumpolar Southern Ocean have blinded most of the mainstream to this simplicity. There are exceptions, among them Svensmark, who addressed this in a publication.
Here’s another notable exception:
Marcia Wyatt hasn’t stopped there. Her insights are deepening and broadening. I’m confident we’ll be hearing more on such evolution one day relatively soon.
Meanwhile Nikolay Sidorenkov’s counsel about Antarctic ice is still on record for those willing to look at it. I understand that this is in-the-sights and coming into sharper, more-intent top-gun focus at NASA JPL.
How long before we start hearing:
“We knew it all along.”
?
Right up there with tide tables & defense.
We certainly need a sense of humor.
Regards
I think this is where the inadequacy of the PDO as an index came up:
back in 2009 and here is one of my comments:
“Stephen Wilde says:
April 29, 2009 at 1:32 am
So, what causes those 30 year phase changes ?
There is no mechanism whereby the much more rapid El Nino/ La Nina changes can cause such large background changes on that time scale.
We are now told that we cannot allocate the term ‘PDO’ to those phase changes because the PDO is simply an artifact arising from the SO and ENSO signals with no independent existence of it’s own.
I for one as well as many others have been using the term ‘PDO’ to refer to those 30 year phase changes in the Pacific so I think the best thing to do is either rename the phenomenon or change the definition of PDO.
There seems to be similar academic and media confusion between the more rapid SST changes and underlying multidecadal cycles in every ocean.
There are multidecadal phase changes in every ocean.
They have profound effects on global air temperatures.
They interact with each other and solar variations.
They seem to occur independently of changes in the air alone.
They render the effect of CO2, and other changes in the air alone, insignificant.
I nominate the term ‘Wildean Ocean Cycles’.”
It’s almost the same oscillation everywhere on this planet. AMO is not affecting anything. It’s the global multidecadal oscillation, here the detrended hadcrut4 compared with the (already detrended) AMO.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/plot/esrl-amo/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/detrend:0.755/plot/hadcrut4gl/detrend:0.755/trend
Take any part of the world (oceans, NH, SH, global land…) and you will find the same oscillating patten.
Edim: AMO is not affecting anything. It’s the global multidecadal oscillation
The globe is 3/4 ocean. The ocean temperatures affect land temperatures too.
If you look at southern hemisphere HAD4 data, you can still see it though, so I’d like Roger A to discuss that.
Using Edim’s plot but with SH rather than Global:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/plot/esrl-amo/trend/plot/hadcrut4sh/detrend:0.755/plot/hadcrut4sh/detrend:0.755/trend
Yes, the globe is 3/4 ocean. My point is that you can take ANY part of the globe, SH SST for example and you will find the ‘same’ oscillation.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/plot/esrl-amo/trend/plot/hadsst2sh/detrend:0.71/plot/hadsst2sh/detrend:0.71/trend
I bet you can take US or Chinese temperatures and you will find the very similar oscillating pattern and call it Chinese Multidecadal Oscillation (CMO). It’s the same oscillation everywhere.
Well, if you net them all out you can call it a global oscillation but it is clear that there are lagging effects from one ocean basin to another and each ocean basin modifies the signal differently as it passes through.
What we have here is varying solar input to the oceans altering ocean temperatures, travelling from equator to poles and in the process exiting to space with the temperature of the atmosphere being affected accordingly.
The varying solar input to the oceans being linked to global cloudiness changes forced in turn by solar variations in the way I described elsewhere.
TB:
Yes,Y scale is in degrees C.
Back with more later.
In the text I noted that “the oscillations occur almost entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and their amplitude decreases towards the Equator”. The graph below shows how the oscillations decrease with latitude. It plots the GISS surface air temperature data because there aren’t enough SST data to plot in the 64-90 (Arctic) latitude band or south of the 24-44S latitude band. The plots are separated to make them visible and each y-axis tick represents 0.5C.
Superimposed is the 60-year Saturn-Jupiter cycle peaking in 1940.
Interesting question as to whether it is sufficient for climate prediction purposes to limit an analysis to the northern hemisphere.
I suspect that there is still a corresponding oscillation in the southern hemisphere but much more diffuse due to the large ocean volume.
Still, given the dominance of water over air as regards energy capacity I’m sure that even a diffuse southern hemisphere oscillation would hve a climate effect.
It is true that the northern hemisphere climate is far more variable due to the larger land area.
There is evidence that the MWP and LIA were global being reflected in data from South America and other parts of the southern hemisphere so the northern hemisphere oceanic oscillation is not the whole story but it might be a good enough proxy for the whole globe.
My suspicion is that the planetary motions introduce cyclicity in solar behaviour which then affects our atmospheric circulation and in particular cloud amounts thus changing energy input to the oceans which skews ENSO between El Nino and La Nina for 30 years at a time then the effect filters through the ocean basins further modulating our climate zone distribution as it goes.
TB,
I think what is getting everyone is the concept of oscillation being an absolute repeating pattern, in a system that is in constant change.
Due to planetary tilting, this makes it difficult to assimilate that a pattern should be present…but then many factors are not included with the advent of decreased rotational velocity with latitude and increase of atmospheric density due to cold and different altitudes of atmosphere. Fresh water from salt water HAS a different density against gravity and motion differences.
Joe makes a good point in that there is loads of interference with the underlying repeating pattern from a wide range of internal system causes and intrinsic chaotic variability.
However, it doesn’t seem to stop it repeating, if the ice rafted debris and ice core data are anything to go by. Amplitudes change, and timing changes too, but the basic oscillatory pattern persists.
Bob Tisdale: Thanks for your input.
The Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation you presented in your graph shows your PMO running “in and out of synch”, as you put it in your original post, with the AMO. I think you put this interpretation on it because of the divergence in the 1930s, when Pacific SST anomalies run much lower than Atlantic SST anomalies, and indeed my three plots show more or less the same thing.
My memory is a little fuzzy on this and I can’t immediately lay my hands on the data, but I seem to recollect that the low SSTs coincide with an increased percentage of Japanese readings in the Pacific in the 1930s, i.e. they could be a bias effect. This would explain why the two records diverge over this ten-year period while tracking each other reasonably closely for the rest of the time.
But I don’t know for sure.
To respond to some earlier comments:
Edim: “It’s almost the same oscillation everywhere on this planet. AMO is not affecting anything. It’s the global multidecadal oscillation”.
TB: “If you look at southern hemisphere HAD4 data, you can still see it though, so I’d like Roger A to discuss that. Using Edim’s plot but with SH rather than Global.”
SW: “Interesting question as to whether it is sufficient for climate prediction purposes to limit an analysis to the northern hemisphere. I suspect that there is still a corresponding oscillation in the southern hemisphere but much more diffuse due to the large ocean volume.”
Here’s the latitude band plot for HadCRUT4. Again we see a large oscillation in the Arctic and maybe a barely-detectable trace of it in the SH, but I chose the adjective “Northern” because that’s where all the action is. (The amplitude is in fact so much larger in the Arctic that I’m thinking of renaming it the “Arctic Multidecadal Oscillation”.)
Which raises the question, why is it so much stronger in the Arctic? And to get around the stock response of “it’s because the Southern Ocean smooths things out” let me pose the question in a different way. Why is the amplitude of the oscillation so much larger in the Arctic than in the 44-64N latitude band just below it?
Ignoring the natural oceanic cycles amounts to something which in commercial law is known as ‘omitted variable fraud’.
Cries of ‘what variable’ from the usual quarters…
Roger Andrews says:…
Why is the amplitude of the oscillation so much larger in the Arctic than in the 44-64N latitude band just below it?
Hi Roger
Strong tectonic activity in the Arctic Ocean
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Arctic-NV.htm
Hi Vuk:
What exactly are the “geological records” you use to define the strong tectonic activity? (You can tell me, I’m a geologist 😉 )
“Why is the amplitude of the oscillation so much larger in the Arctic than in the 44-64N latitude band just below it?W
Because a wide band of warm water in the Gulf Stream is funnelled into the Arctic Ocean via Spitzbergen (now Svalbaard).
In effect the Atlantic variations are focused and amplified in the Arctic Ocean and the original source of the Atlantic variations is the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation which appears to be solar induced in the manner I have described elsewhere.
“The Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation you presented in your graph shows your PMO running “in and out of synch”, as you put it in your original post, with the AMO.”
It is the PDO that is out of sync with AMO. That is because the PDO is simply an artifact of regional pressure differences.
There is no adequate tracking of PMO but if there were I’m sure it would sync much better with AMO but with a time lag.
“However, it doesn’t seem to stop it repeating, if the ice rafted debris and ice core data are anything to go by. Amplitudes change, and timing changes too, but the basic oscillatory pattern persists.”
Absolutely. The shorter term modulating effects cause variations but do not override the background (solar induced?) oscillation.
“Superimposed is the 60-year Saturn-Jupiter cycle peaking in 1940.”
I have a problem with this, disputing the connection as more than co-incidental.
So far there is nothing significant in any external data with a particular problem that larger factors must not be missing.
In addition such a driver is chronometric and therefore must appear either directly or indirectly via strong modulation factors. I am not aware of such things in long data.
Reasonably phase also matters.
I welcome evidence to the contrary. Isn’t this one of the keys to getting external factors taken more seriously?
Tim:
Is that agreement or disagreement?
Roger Andrews says: April 15, 2013 at 6:08 pm
“Why is the amplitude of the oscillation so much larger in the Arctic than in the 44-64N latitude band just below it?”
‘Pump hunt’? 🙂
Boundary layer friction from an ice covered Pole differs to that from an ocean covered Pole. Atmosphere ‘vacated’ from the Polar Vortex would produce a low surface atmospheric pressure around the ‘vortex’, but atmosphere ‘pushed’ through the Polar Vortex from above (or ‘vacated’ less vigorously by the boundary layer) would produce a higher surface atmospheric pressure around the ‘vortex’.
A change in air mass throughput would also alter the latitude of the Polar Jet, as would WV loading (in theory).
The SH Pole isn’t the same configuration of Planar Centrifuge as the NH Pole. Thus, affects its Polar Climate Cell in a different way.
Best regards, Ray.
Roger Andrews says: April 16, 2013 at 12:30 am
“Tim:
Is that agreement or disagreement?”
IMHO, that was a ‘show me the data’ remark. 😉
Best regards, Ray.
How about ice albedo changes?
It’s a don’t know. (I’m notorious for this including with myself)
Roger Andrews (April 15, 2013 at 4:30 pm) wrote:
“My memory is a little fuzzy on this and I can’t immediately lay my hands on the data, but I seem to recollect that the low SSTs coincide with an increased percentage of Japanese readings in the Pacific in the 1930s, i.e. they could be a bias effect. This would explain why the two records diverge over this ten-year period while tracking each other reasonably closely for the rest of the time.”
Quite interesting — sounds worthy of a good deal more attention — maybe a Talkshop article sometime.
Roger Andrews (April 15, 2013 at 6:08 pm) asked:
“Why is the amplitude of the oscillation so much larger in the Arctic than in the 44-64N latitude band just below it?”
cold continentality (ice is continental)
In 44-64N there’s ocean (heat capacity) damping.
Looking by just latitude bands (as you have with your graphs) is somewhere to start, but if you stop there your insights are limited by the false assumption of longitudinal uniformity. The pattern goes down to at least 45S in the Pacific. I suggest a more detailed look with aggregation criteria based on flow patterns.
Regards
tchannon says:
“I have a problem with this..”
Me too, if the other planets are not excluded, then the cooler dips last century around 1910 and 1970 are not astronomically related.
Roger A: Which raises the question, why is it so much stronger in the Arctic? And to get around the stock response of “it’s because the Southern Ocean smooths things out” let me pose the question in a different way. Why is the amplitude of the oscillation so much larger in the Arctic than in the 44-64N latitude band just below it?
Why are you trusting GISS arctic air temperature all of a sudden? You know how it has been extrapolated from stations thousands of km away. I’d ask how GISS measured air temperature in the southern ocean and south atlantic and pacific all those years ago too. Thin data coverage. However, I agree with Paul Vaughan and Stephen, it’s to do with the proportion of land mass to ocean, and the circulation difference, and oceanic heat capacity.
Ulric: if the other planets are not excluded, then the cooler dips last century around 1910 and 1970 are not astronomically related.
You might not think the dips in solar activity around those times are astronomically related. I do. But I also think they are due to different astronomical configuration (and quite possibly mechanism) to the ~60-70yr oscillation.
The ’60 year cycle’ (currently more likely around 65 years) is probably a quasy-cycle , since its period is variable, thus unlikely to be purely astronomical (had a bit of a disagreement with Dr. Scafetta about this one).
In my view it is a product of cross-modulation between solar and the Earth’s magnetic fields ‘oscillations’ (my term ‘geo-solar’), both variable, but the Earth’s to a greater extent, due to the strong asymmetry in changes of the field at the two poles.
Dr. Scafetta found something similar in the N. H. aurora’s data, which indeed would reflect the changes in both magnetic fields (on that one I would agree).
‘Geo-Solar ‘cycle compared to the AMO and de-trended N.H. temps record:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
Zdravo Vukcevic,
I don’t see how it follows that, since the period of the quasi-cycle (~60 years) is variable, it’s unlikely to be purely astronomical. What do you mean by astronomical?
tallbloke (April 16, 2013 at 7:41 am) asked Roger Andrews:
“Why are you trusting GISS arctic air temperature all of a sudden?”
Yikes. I was suspicious because the shapes of the curves didn’t match what I’ve seen in my explorations, but I was in such a rush yesterday that I didn’t even look to see which data source Roger Andrews was using. I don’t trust GISS.
tallbloke (April 16, 2013 at 7:41 am) addressed Roger Andrews:
“However, I agree with Paul Vaughan and Stephen, it’s to do with the proportion of land mass to ocean, and the circulation difference, and oceanic heat capacity.”
…and geometric configuration. Bill Illis’ powerfully enlightening illustration is a classic:
TB,
I have a problem with Paul Vaughan’s graph…No tectonic-plate activity before 45 million years…
This is where I find time lines are blurred with water loss to space.
We use carbon dating BUT what if the material is underwater and is not being effected by atmospheric carbon?
You have deposits from dead animals in the oceans to give a carbon dating but atmospheric carbon dating is from the burning of materials or volcanic activity that drifts through the atmosphere.
Salt deposits are both on land and in the oceans. The composition of ice in space is virtually identical to our ocean composition.
If you experimentally star off with our planet underwater, all kinds of questions become answered from the composition of old volcanoes to our wobble being more stronger as the planet dries.
Ocean pressure strength is the only explanation to hold back the magma and form our crust until the energy is dissipated immensely.
Hi Vukcevic,
The Hale, multidecadal, & centennial geomagnetic cycles can easily be multivariately empirically traced to the sun, so I cannot accept your implicit assertion of independence & separability.
There’s currently a discussion over at Judy Curry’s that addresses complex correlation in the context of variable coupling. That’s where I’m going with the cross-recurrence foreshadowing I introduced in an appendix of the Solar-terrestrial volatility weaves article I’ve shared.
Variations in coupling strength should not be underestimated. That’s like disengagement suddenly jamming into gear. For example, look at what happened with the Chandler wobble as solar activity shot up across the reversed centennial solar asymmetry beautifully illustrated by Mursula.
The data spell the story out quite simply for anyone who knows enough about the spatiotemporal framework to hierarchically tune aggregation to bring the manifolds into focus. I’m fortunate that I had a lucidly brilliant sampling & aggregation mentor 2 decades ago in my landcape ecology days. I’m acutely aware that I cannot assume that others have been exposed to such powerful unconventional conceptual paradigms.
The complexity in ecology goes orders of magnitude beyond what we see in the climate discussion because beyond the physical constraints, ecology has to further cope with the myriad complexities of life, so it doesn’t surprise me at all that conceptual advances first arose in that field by virtue of necessity mothering invention. For anyone who thinks climate’s complex, with all due respect you have no idea how thoroughly paralyzing sampling & aggregation issues can be in ecology.
We’re not going to sensibly work out our differences of opinion with Scafetta by ignoring spatiotemporal coupling shifts.
Best Regards.
Paul Vaughan says:
April 16, 2013 at 11:28 am
Thank you for showing this graph which I would like to commen on and discuss.. Let just assume that the information basically is correct.
1. The prominet feature is that continetal drift opens and closes pathways for currents and that changes in ocean water pathways affect global climate.
2. The opening of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current seems to directly cool earth and the closing of it seem to warm earth.
3. Closing of the Panama istmus and the opening up of the Guft Stream in North Atlantic reaching arctic areas led to a drastic cooling.
A major point here is to observ and accept that the major shifts in water flows affects the steady state between absorbed solar energy flux to earth and the emission of IR energy flux leaving earth. However this fact does not help us very much when discussing shorter term climate variations in the time span 1000-10 years.
The graph tells that Milancovitch variations are prominent during the last 4 million years. This is not true even if they do exist and do influence climate. The problem is that there has to exist a physical process that exceed the +/- 3.5% solar insolation variations produced by Milancovitch variations. Glacial-interglacials have a major global cyclicity of about 100000 years and not a hemispherical one around 25000 years which should be there. It can be detected but only as a modulation of SH temperature variations (See my thesis Wind Controlled Climate).
Since it correctly has been pointed out that the regional temperature amplitude variations are highest in the Arctic on earth the question has been asked why.
The answer is found in a variable production of cold air in the Arctic creating cold air andg so called Mobile polar High (The concept termed by the late professor Marcel Leroux and investigation made by PhD Alexis Pommier). This production is very very probably influenced by celestial factors. Furthermore, we don’t understand how this physical mechanism works. What we do know is that Mobile Polar Highs are causing tremendous termoil in the atmosphere when they are big and when they are frequent. They create storms when moving from the Arctic (or Antarctica to a lesser degree) equatorwards. This production is far higher during glacials than during inter glacials which can be seen by salt and dust accumulation in ice cores both in Antarctica and on Greenland.
My simple point is that cold spells in climate is caused by a variable output of IR to space from Arctic areas in the first place and not by varying input of solar energy flux.arge scale atmospheric mass motion also affects global climate as do large scale variations in oceanic mass motion.
TB: “Why are you trusting GISS arctic air temperature all of a sudden?”
I’m using the GISS “meteological station only” air temperature series. I trust it a) because it hasn’t been heavily “corrected” (like HadSST3), b) isn’t an apples-and-oranges average of “corrected” SSTs and SATs (like HadCRUT4) and c) because I can replicate it from scratch using unadjusted records I selected myself. The only place it’s bad is in the Antarctic, but I don’t use the GISS Antarctic data.
“However, I agree with Paul Vaughan and Stephen, it’s to do with the proportion of land mass to ocean, and the circulation difference, and oceanic heat capacity.” Exactly how do these factors amplify the oscillation in the Arctic?
Hi RogerA: How many actual stations does GISS have in the high arctic?
Exactly how do these factors amplify the oscillation in the Arctic?
The Southern ocean circulates more freely and shifts heat north (don’t forget aphelion occurs in Austral summer and that is a 120W/m^2 difference in peak irradiance).
In the north the energy faces bottlenecks and blockages and gets stored in the ocean deep in complex ways which take time to balance. Hence the oscillation. In general, resistance to the passage of energy flow causes imbalance and ‘hunting’ around the mean. The Ocean has a long hysteresis factor, hence multi-decadal oscillation.
Roger Andrews says:
Hi Vuk:
You can tell me, I’m a geologist.
….
Hi Roger.
You sound like a tax inspector.
Edim says:
Zdravo Vukcevic, I don’t see how it follows …
Pomaga bog Edim,
I often say that to myself too, but still keep going on.
Paul Vaughan says:
Hi Vukcevic,
I cannot accept your implicit assertion of independence & separability.
Hi Vaughan
Neither could my local CP organizer (in ex-Yu), so I found myself living in UK.
Ps. Apologies for my impertinence, but it is a rare worm sunny spring afternoon in SW London, too good to squander behind the keyboard.
Hi Roger A: How many actual stations does GISS have in the high arctic?
Here are two plots I put together a few years ago showing temperature changes at individual GHCN stations between 1910 and 1940 (the warming phase of the oscillation) and 1940 and 1970 (the cooling phase) as a function of latitude.
There are effectively no stations in the Arctic with usable data north of 80N. However, projection of the data from lower latitudes suggests that if there were any they might show some very large temperature fluctuations.
It would be fascinating to see the above GMO graphs weighted for water volume in the SH and NH.
Just sayin’.
tallbloke says:
“You might not think the dips in solar activity around those times are astronomically related. I do. But I also think they are due to different astronomical configuration (and quite possibly mechanism) to the ~60-70yr oscillation.”
That sounds like you are saying that the dips in temperature and the dips in solar activity are two different things?
What astronomical similarities are you seeing around those two dates?
Ulric: I’m saying the astronomical cause of the ocean oscillation and the extra deep dip around 1900 compared to around 1970 are different. As several here are aware, the ocean oscillation isn’t much affected by a single solar cycle. But the atmosphere is.
tallbloke
The deeper dip back then for land temperatures was 1879-1892.
There is a stark contradiction between the SST peak around the 1880’s, and the RUTI data (and CET) that shows it colder in the 1880’s than the early 1900’s.
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/ruti/highlights.php
That alone invalidates the ~60yr “cycle”, and projections of it to 2030 for the next cold dip center are going to fail badly too, as the worst of the upcoming cold is before 2026.
It’s not as if a 60yr sine wave can be produced by three Ju-Sa synodic periods anyway, it is not physically possible.
Hans Jelbring (April 16, 2013 at 2:49 pm) wrote:
“My simple point is that cold spells in climate is caused by a variable output of IR to space from Arctic areas in the first place and not by varying input of solar energy flux.arge scale atmospheric mass motion also affects global climate as do large scale variations in oceanic mass motion.”
You know Hans, I have noticed when out on the inlet that there’s a BIG difference in how the sea couples to the atmosphere when I’m skiing on the ice in a -30C blizzard at night and when I’m kayaking in the exact same place through the ice flows in daylight during the spring break-up.
I think we have no choice but to accept that a lot of our southern neighbors & allies have never experienced it firsthand.
All the temperature does is “rot” the ice as we say. And then one day all it takes is the for the wind to come up ….and then the ice is gone – Only takes a few hours.
All the best!
Roger Andrews says: April 16, 2013 at 2:51 am
“How about ice albedo changes?”
Not much to see at the SH Pole, but the NH Pole sees frequent change and it’s well to note that ‘ice albedo’ is also pertinent to ‘surface friction’ and ‘turbulence’ at the boundary layer, as well as the ‘open ocean’ scenarios leading to low mass WV inclusion to the geostrophic flow.
Ten years ago I’d have linked to the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre, but it now seems that all our public money is hidden behind a ‘pay-wall’ (wiki’s the same for the ‘meteorological’ definition). Hence, an engineers description of ‘boundary layer’:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_layer
Ah! I just found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundary_layer
OK. Let’s take a look at the SH Pole with its comparable surface interference to the geostrophic wind direction with the NH Pole.
For the SH. The substrate is land mass with a covering of snow (and snow covered ice), thus, no warming from beneath by ‘oceanic thermal heat transport’, only subterranean warming by volcanism is possible. The ‘covering of snow’ implies that the ‘surface’ that interacts with the atmosphere at the ‘boundary’ is ‘smooth’ in the direction of the geostrophic wind, as the snow was deposited in this directional vector in the first instance.
This implies a ‘low drag’ boundary surface that doesn’t impart the energy of Earth’s rotational moment to the atmospheric geostrophic wind very well, and is evidenced by the turbulent coincidence/joining between the SH Polar Climate Cell and ‘Ferrel Climate Cell’ (which is more in rotational relationship with Earth’s rotational speed/vector). I would expect a weak, but ~unchanging, Polar Vortex here in the SH that, mainly, shows only forcing form summer/winter insolation.
For the NH. The substrate is oceanic surrounded by land mass with a varying covering of snow and ice (and snow covered ice), thus, warming from beneath by ‘oceanic thermal heat transport’ is evident, together with subterranean warming by volcanism. It’s very variable in comparison to the SH Pole and the two adjacent land masses of Asia and America have a tendency to ‘split’ the NH Polar vortex, leaving polar ‘highs’ at ~90 degrees longitude between each land mass (which tend to ‘migrate’ to other regions as ‘MPHs’ [Mobile Polar Highs]).
This implies a ‘variable drag’ boundary surface that vacates the lower region of the NH Polar vortex with a greater/enhanced effort exerted by the opposing land masses of America and Asia. I’ll leave it at that. 🙂
On analysis, the NH Pole is more vulnerable to ‘change’ than the SH Pole. Thus, it isn’t any surprise that any sensitivity towards a minor ‘Earth forcing’ shall be observed at the NH Pole before the SH Pole exhibits any indication of ‘change’.
Best regards, Ray.