My Thanks once again to Roger Andrews for making the effort to follow up on some of the ideas presented on this blog and address interesting issues concerning solar activity levels and Sea Surface Temperatures (SST’s). In Part I we looked at comparisons of cumulative and instantaneous Total Solar Insolation (TSI) with SST and possible spaces into which other climate factors such as co2 might fit.
In this post, Roger picks up on comment from contributor David about one of the diagrams in the SST analysis pdf which accompanied Part I.
THE SOLAR-SST RELATIONSHIP – THE PLOT THICKENS
In the previous thread on this topic I referred to a graph that showed a cyclic relationship between SSTsand surface air temperatures, but it was buried deep in an attachment, and only a few people (notablyDavid) seem to have seen it. Nevertheless, it shows some very interesting features, so here it is again:
SSTs and air temperatures record about the same amount of overall warming since 1880, but theICOADS-GISS difference plot shows them oscillating around each other over the intervening period,with the sea surface warming relative to the air for about 50 years and then cooling relative to the airover the next fifty. The oscillations are regular enough to be fitted closely (R=0.89 for unsmoothedICOADS-GISS, R=0.96 for smoothed) using a sine curve with a period of 110 years and an amplitudeof 0.63C.Is this periodicity real or is it just an artifact of the data? If it’s an artifact of the data it’s a very curious one. Biases and random errors could of course give a result like this, but it would require a ratherunlikely combination of the two to do it.So let’s assume the periodicity is real. What might cause it?
The prime suspect is again the sun, and arecent paper by Komitov et al. (http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1011/1011.0347.pdf) convenientlyidentifies a 110-120 year cycle in the solar record over the last few hundred years. Might this cyclecorrelate with the 110-year cycle in the SST-air temperature data?To check this I first compared the SST-air temperature difference against smoothed Lean TSI. I got theresults shown in Figure 2. They weren’t all that encouraging.
Then it occurred to me that this wasn’t a fair comparison because ICOADS-minus-GISS is effectivelydetrended while Lean TSI isn’t. So I detrended Lean TSI between 1810 – the Dalton minimum – and2000, shifted it to simulate a 12-year lag in temperature response, replotted the comparison, and got theresults shown in Figure 3:
Figure 3 also gives R=0.89 for unsmoothed and R=0.96 for smoothed ICOADS-GISS, and Lean TSIgives R=0.94 relative to the Figure 1 sine curve. Repeating the comparison using sunspot counts, theAA geomagnetic index and Svalgaard TSI gives substantially the same results.So now we have a new wrinkle. Not only do solar cycles influence absolute temperatures, they alsoappear to control the temperature differential between the sea and the air.Anyone care to speculate? (David: Your comment from the previous thread would be a good startingpoint for discussion if you would like to re-post it here.)
Download the pdf of this post here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Hi
using a sine curve with a period of 110 years and an amplitude of 0.63C. Is this periodicity real or is it just an artifact of the data? If it’s an artifact of the data it’s a very curious one.
No it is not artefact. It is one of the components of the Sunspot spectrum:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSA.htm
It is a fundamental period in these graphs of mine.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MagAn.htm
(118+97)/2 =107.5
Hi
using a sine curve with a period of 110 years and an amplitude of 0.63C.Is this periodicity real or is it just an artifact of the data? If it’s an artifact of the data it’s a very curious one.
No it is not artefact. It is one of the components of the Sunspot spectrum:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSA.htm
It is a fundamental period in these graphs of mine.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MagAn.htm
(118+97)/2 =107.5
Vukcevic
Thank you. Your numbers match the estimates for this solar cycle given in the Komitov paper, which are:
Zurich series: 95.5 years
Group sunspot number: 110.5 years
Simulated AA geomagnetic index: 108.5 years
Simulated sunspot number: 121.5 years
Hi Roger,
Another piece of the puzzle which needs fitting into place which might shed some light. I made this discovery last year.
Specific humidity near the tropopause as measured by radiosonde since 1948 and re-analysed by NCEP (red) correlates well with solar activity (green)
Looks to me like increased water vapour in the upper atmosphere when solar activity is high causes more atmospheric warming which reduces cloud (maybe with some help from the Svensmark effect). This increases the amount of solar energy reaching the sea surface. Yes?
ISCCP data and Palle et al show a decrease in cloud from 1980 to 1998 and an increase after then too, more support for this hypothesis I think.
Tim Channon has just sent me a spectra chart for the Lean TSI reconstruction. There’s your ~100 year period. The ~170 year period is provocative too. Hmmm.
With a correlation as good as this even the IPCC cabal of climate scientists would have to be in denial to ignore it – good stuff Roger!
Don’t forget there is also the 200y(ish) solar de Vries quasi-cycle…
1410-1500 cold – Low Solar Activity(LSA?)-(Sporer minimum)
1510-1600 warm – High Solar Activity(HSA?)
1610-1700 cold – (LSA) (Maunder minimum)
1710-1800 warm – (HSA)
1810-1900 cold – (LSA) (Dalton minimum)
1910-2000 warm – (HSA)
2010-2100 (cold???) – (LSA???)
I suspect that the mechanism for the solar link to climate isn’t monotonic, rather it is the influence of the many small changes observed in solar output which produces the ‘amplification’ effect…
Here’s my starter for 10…
Amount of thermal energy radiated due to varying TSI.
Changes in the ‘spikiness’ of TSI delivery
Changes to wavelength of TSI – (inc UV)
Changes to interplanetary magnetic field
Changes in cosmic rays
Changes in strength of solar wind
Changes to frequency/size CME events
Changes to frequency/size of x-ray producing events
Any further ideas are more than welcome…
Roger.
All I can say is ‘well spotted’! 🙂
There’s a marked difference in ‘Cp’ (thermal capacity) between the ocean and the atmosphere. It’s quite reasonable to expect a ‘lead-lag’ – ‘lag-lead’ scenario as a ‘disclosure mechanism’ that declares ‘the ocean warming the atmosphere’, or the converse of ‘the solar flux warming both’.
It’s ‘doubly’ well spotted because ‘land surface’ warming is shallow, but ‘ocean surface’ has depth.
Best regards, Ray Dart.
Tallbloke:
Thank you. Very interesting. I will respond as soon as I get through thinking deep thoughts.
Tenuc and Ray: Ditto.
We’ve heard nothing from David, so I’m taking the liberty of reposting his comment from the earlier thread. David, if you’re there. I will be responding to this too.
“Re Roger Andrews says:
February 15, 2011 at 3:01 pm
David
“Thank you. There are large seasonal fluxes in the earth’s energy budget, and as you say these could tell us something about how longer-period solar flux could impact it. To explain a +/- 110-year cycle, however, we would have to assume some type of cumulative heating impact, as Tallbloke did with sunspots. Then we would have to explain why the air warms relative to the sea during for half of the cycle and cools relative to the sea for the other half.”
Thanks Roger, and I read your links also. The graph #18 was very curious. A part of my point was that the same atmosphere/ SST reversal happens annually and the cause is known, a change in the amount of SWR / TSI at the ocean surface. So the possible factors that influence SWR at the surface on a 110 or 120 year sine wave is , of course, one logical direction our inquiry can take.
The problems I see are numerous. We do not know the TSI at the SURFACE over this period, nor can we quantify the possible factors that could change it. (Solar cycles and there affects on cloud formation, ESNO cycles, Jet streams and therefore cloud cover location, cloud cover changes affecting albedo, etc. We know neither the duration or magnitude of these relationships. We do not know the residence time or the spectrum flux of the various SWR solar spectrum that enters the ocean, therefore we do not know how much a small but prolonged change can be and has been amplified over time. If we do not know how this has changed over the 120 year period we should confess our ignorance, and the null hypothesis is certainly still in effect as the observed effects are within the range of natural changes. With all these possibilities, I see no reason to definitively point the finger at CO2.
BTW, I saw an interesting link to a study at WUWT tips and notes indicating a 50% LARGER TSI change at the surface (in some SWR spectrums) measure at the artic (I think) then the increase at the TOA would indicate. I will take a look for it if you like.
It is of interest to note that although the SST and atmosphere reverse there rate of change relative to each other, the sign between them is consistent with the atmosphere chasing the warmer ocean. The sine wave flux in the temperature distance between the two favors an OHC driven system. OHC changes favor SWR flux, due to SWRs greatly enhanced ability to affect OHC relative to LWIR.”
[edit] Hang in there for a suitable thread Joe.
🙂 LOL
Tallbloke,
The time frame that is being looked at is like .0001 % of the planets life span so far.
Joe:
You’re right, the time frame we’re looking at covers only a minuscule fraction of the earth’s history. Problem is, this is the only fraction we have instrumental data for.
Re Roger Andrews says:
February 18, 2011 at 3:34 am
Hi Roger, I am here so any further thoughts on my comment are welcome. I listed numerous things I think we do not currently know..”.We do not know the TSI at the SURFACE over this period, nor can we quantify the possible factors that could change it. (Solar cycles and there affects on cloud formation, ESNO cycles, Jet streams and therefore cloud cover location, cloud cover changes affecting albedo, etc.) We know neither the duration or magnitude of these relationships. We do not know the residence time or the spectrum flux of the various SWR solar spectrum that enters the ocean, therefore we do not know how much a small but prolonged change can be and has been amplified over time.”
The ocean RT of different SWR W/L is a huge unknown and knowing how much this fluctuates over solar cycles and trends at the SURFACE is, IMV, an area of research seriously lacking in climate science. The RT of any input energy can have an effect on the HC of any system far greater then the amount of that energy. This is why even a change in geothermal output in the ocean depths can have an effect far greater then the W S/M input, as it can accumulate for perhaps centuries.
If any of the unknows I address are known, please inform me, or if they are not relvant, I would like to understand that also.
Hi everyone:
I have now thunk deep thoughts, but I’m afraid none of them have turned out to be great ones.
My first and rather obvious thought is that the direct cause of the cyclicity in sea-air temperatures has to be systematic changes in ocean-air heat transfer. Solar amplification just adds the beef. (Incidentally, Tallbloke, I really like your solar-humidity correlation. Any idea how much amplification something like this might cause?)
And how much do we know about ocean-air heat transfer? I did some reading up on this subject and here’s what I found.
1. Heat gets transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere across a “viscous layer” at the top of the ocean that’s less than 1mm thick.
2. We don’t really know how heat gets transferred across this viscous layer.
I guess this qualifies as a “known unknown”.
Then I looked at how climate models handled ocean-air heat transfer. I compared surface air and sea surface temperature simulations from the GISS Ocean-Atmosphere model, which is one of the models the IPCC cites in the AR4. The simulations tracked each other almost exactly except for some minor long-term drift. There was no sign of cyclicity. In other words, according to GISS OA any excess heat in the ocean gets transferred immediately to the air. The coupling is in fact so strong that the ocean-air interface might as well not be there.
And this alone is potentially a big deal, because if climate models can’t simulate large cyclic variations in something as fundamental as ocean-air heat transfer then it’s back to the drawing board.
Then I looked at the question of a coming up with a theory to explain the cyclicity. Can we
identify and quantify the physical processes that it? I don’t think so. There are too many uncertainties. But we can still maybe come up with something by reasoning backwards from the observations. Here’s as far as I have got:
We start with the assumption that net heat transfer is from the sea to the air. (The sea is warmer overall than the air and there isn’t enough heat in the air to warm the sea anyway.)
And that was as far as I got. I couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation as to why solar
cycles should cause the sea to warm relative to the air for 50 years and then cool down relative to the air for the next 50, except that I’m sure it’s somehow related to ocean cycles and deep ocean circulation. Maybe someone who knows more about these things than I do can fill in these blanks.
Roger Andrews says:
February 18, 2011 at 5:44 pm
1. Heat gets transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere across a “viscous layer” at the top of the ocean that’s less than 1mm thick.
2. We don’t really know how heat gets transferred across this viscous layer.
I guess this qualifies as a “known unknown”.
To get a better understanding of heat and liquid/vapor exchanges I would suggest a study of the operation of distillation columes. First flat plate and then packed colume. Transfer of energy from evaporation and condensation drives water from warm solution to cool vapor that carries the energy away. pg
Tallbloke, maybe we need a primer on the known science of air, water, heat/energy etc..
I made this comment at WUWT as it appears to me the understanding of the fundamentals needs to be made more clear before everyone can work from the same page. Perhaps a wiki on weather/climate as Lucy Skywalker has suggested. pg
P.G.
If you haven’t already seen it there has been a lot of discussion of the viscous layer question over at Science of Doom. (http://scienceofdoom.com/2011/01/18/the-cool-skin-of-the-ocean/)
Hi Roger,
well yes, this is where where we meet the elephant in the room. Or more correctly, the big white fluffy elephants in the sky – clouds.
ISCCP data shows a drop in tropical cloud cover 1980-1998. The climate bigwigs accept we are nowhere near knowing either the data accurately enough, or the forcing theoretically well enough.
I don’t think they tried as hard as they might have done with the ISCCP data however, and the website seems like the poor relation of the climatology data collections.
The ocean air interface is well studied and shows that there is a dynamic balance between air temperature and the speed of release of energy from the ocean. The rate at which energy is lost from the system at the top of the atmosphere is the main issue. See the berenyi post for our latest thinking on that. Bear in mind the solar variation caused shrinking of the mesosphere by 30% will more than likely have affected the rate of OLR (outgoing longwave radiation).
So I came to pretty much the same conclusion. All we can do is try to reverse engineer the climate from other better known quantities. This is not a hopeless task. Tim Channon send me a second spreadsheet last night which successfully reconstructs the entire Lean TSI from simple variables. There will be a post on this in due course.
Roger,
science of doom came over here a few months ago for a long argument on the question of whether back radiation warms the ocean.
and here:
It got pretty intense 🙂
Roger Andrews says:
February 18, 2011 at 5:44 pm
“1. Heat gets transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere across a “viscous layer” at the top of the ocean that’s less than 1mm thick.
2. We don’t really know how heat gets transferred across this viscous layer.”
Progress is never easy Roger, all we can do is take baby steps and perhaps question some of the wisdom handed down by climate scientist as facts, when they are actually supposition.
My favourite beverage is good old PG Tips tea, and I’ve been drinking an average 10 mugs of this delicious hot brew for more years than I care to remember. From this vast pool of experience I have observed the following effects, but have not quantified them – yet!
I like my tea strong with only a splash of milk, so in my anxiety to drink the refreshing brew I often blow gently across the brown nectar parallel to its surface before taking a quick sip. From this I observe the following effects…
As I blow the surface of the tea becomes turbulent and increases in surface area. The tea at the very surface cools very quickly whilst the air current over the surface warms.
Applying this knowledge to the ocean I come up with some odd conclusions…
1. The size of the surface area of any portion of the ocean varies dynamically depending on the height of the waves present – it is at a minimum during a flat calm and probably at a max during a hurricane.
2. The depth of transfer of heat depends on the amount of turbulence caused by the wind and is, I suspect, considerably greater than 1mm. The weak forces which cause the surface layer to be viscous are easily overcome by the agitation caused by the turbulence.
3. Perhaps the answer to the conundrum lies in how the changeable winds effect the rate of heat transfer through radiation, conduction and evaporation???
Perhaps a few more baby steps and some observation of the real world of dynamic deterministic chaos in action will give us some more clues???
P.G.
Sounds good, but it’s someone else’s job. 🙂
Wikipedia itself is quite good on some of the basics. Maybe we could put a list of useful pages together between us?
Tallbloke: Sorry I missed your science of doom head-butting threads. Will read them ASAP.
“The ocean air interface is well studied and shows that there is a dynamic balance between air temperature and the speed of release of energy from the ocean.” If we accept that there is a solar-driven cyclicity in the sea-air temperature relationship we have a dynamic imbalance, not a dynamic balance. Or maybe I’m just getting too semantic.
And I once saw a cloud shaped just like an elephant.
Tenuc: I don’t think you conclusions are odd at all. Having bobbed around on the briny deep in some seriously bad weather I too have difficulty seeing how a continuous 1mm thick viscous layer could survive on the sea surface when there’s a gale blowing. I agree that the impacts of wind have to be factored into the equation. And we already know that hurricanes bring cold water to the sea surface.
Tenuc, yes. There was a Japanese study which discovered that at even very moderate windspeeds, the surface layer was broken up and cooled and the interaction changed. When I discussed this with Judy Curry and Peter Webster at Lisbon, on the castle walls, I asked if the right way to approach the problem would be to look at energy densities a short depth below the surface and simultaneously just above. They agreed.
There has been a lot of theoretical codswallop talked about the ‘ocean skin’. Peter Minnett is one of the worst offenders IMO. It’s down to desperation to find a way the air can heat the ocean. The enhanced greenhouse effect, such as it is, works not by heating the ocean, but by slowing the rate at which it cools, due to creating a thicker layer of atmosphere above it.
The wind over the oceans surface is the fume scrubber of the world. At about 4,000 feet per minuite, the surface tension( viscous layer) is breached physically, and intrained materials or chemistry can be driven inside the water. Part of the “art”( trade secrets) of designing dynamic fume scrubbers. I hold a US patent on “a gas liquid contacting device and methoid”. pg
What a dark horse you are P.G.
Can we see this patent online anywhere?
Oh yes I should add that I have seen very dry 80f air cool a body of water to 45f. happens all the time in the desert. 😎 pg
tallbloke says:
February 18, 2011 at 7:58 pm
“When I discussed this with Judy Curry and Peter Webster at Lisbon, on the castle walls, I asked if the right way to approach the problem would be to look at energy densities a short depth below the surface and simultaneously just above. They agreed.”
Seems very odd that these effects have not been well researched and are thoroughly understood!
Perhaps climate scientists would make more progress drinking cups of tea, rather than meddling in the politics of the green agenda? The IPCC cabal of climate ‘scientists’ seemingly want to ignore any information that contradicts the dogma of the CAGW conjecture.
I’m certain that these sins of omission will come back to haunt them one day soon.
Real science requires real work and not just computer simulations. Real engineering requires real data, not just armchair postulations. Observering a cups of tea is a good start. pg
for those that wish: US Patent no.5,076,819 US Patent Office link,
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=5076819.PN.&OS=PN/5076819&RS=PN/5076819
Did you build a working prototype P.G.?
If so, what did you test it with?
A solar driven W/L change at the ocean surface could impact how much of the TSI enters the oceans relative to how much stays in the atmosphere, even if the TSI remains the same. As I said, the same sine wave occurs annually due to more insolation entering the oceans during the S/H summer. A long term fluctation in TSI could have a similar effect on larger time scales. Unfortunately, as I said, “We do not know the residence time OR the spectrum flux of the various SWR solar spectrum that enters the ocean, therefore we do not know how much a small but prolonged change can be and has been amplified over time.” Never the less, as the spectrum changes it will affect how much energy enters the oceans relative to the atmosphere, even if total TSI remains the same.
David: Good stuff. Thank you.
Can I ask you a couple of specific questions?
First, let’s ignore the cyclicity for the moment and look just at temperature differentials. Between 1915 and 1970 the sea surface warmed by 0.9C but the air above it warmed by only 0.3C. What physical mechanism could have caused this?
Second, let me turn the question on its head and rephrase it as a statement. The warming differential is an artifact of bad data. The sea couldn’t have warmed by 0.6C more than the air above it over a 60-year period. It’s physically impossible.
Roger Andrews says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:29 am
“Second, let me turn the question on its head and rephrase it as a statement. The warming differential is an artifact of bad data. The sea couldn’t have warmed by 0.6C more than the air above it over a 60-year period. It’s physically impossible”
This may not be poor data. This may be a misunderstanding of the mechanics of energy in water and energy of water vapor and air. Heat, energy, temperature are not interchangeable. The “heating” of the sea water is separate from the “heating” of the air. The oceans help to heat the air, the air does not heat the ocean, the air cools the ocean through evaporation. The air loses energy to space through the hydrological cycle. The temperature of the surface air is the result of solar in and the speed of loss to space.The temperature of the oceans is determined by solar and geothermal in and evaporation out. So the gain or loss and the temperature difference of sea and air are only loosely connected. Clouds slow down the solar in and the heat energy out as well as act as the condenser part of the heat engine that raises the energy from the ocean to space.
Thanks P.G. No, I don’t think it is poor data. But until we can come up with a plausible physical explanation for the cyclic behavior this is what the establishment is going to say.
Off to bed, back tomorrow.
tallbloke says:
February 18, 2011 at 11:18 pm
Built and tested several different sizes and configurations. They have operated in beauty salons, bars, circuit board shops and homes. I have one next to me to reduce the dust and dander of 5 cats and a dog as well as my own farm dust. Tested on burning rubber road flare and diesel engine exhaust. A number of industrial facilities in central California have fume scrubbers that I have designed and built. This dynamic air washer is very compact and effective. Most important, it just uses tap water.
Roger Andrews says:
February 19, 2011 at 3:49 am
Yes, the cyclic behavior is a bear. We have cycles in cycles. The rotation of the earth, the orbit of the moon, heating and magnetic activity of the sun, the winds and sloshing of the tides. on and on. Quite a can of worms to work on. 😉 pg
Roger, P.G.,
I created something quite similar to P.G. but totally different.
[edit] Whoah! Hold up Joe. Supply me with drawings and photos of your prototype and I’ll give you your own thread for this.
I used to build centrifugal pumps for a Swiss multinational and I know a thing or two about the fluid dynamics of vortices and the centrifugal forces involved in rotating components.
Roger Andrews says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:29 am
David: Good stuff. Thank you.
Can I ask you a couple of specific questions?
First, let’s ignore the cyclicity for the moment and look just at temperature differentials. Between 1915 and 1970 the sea surface warmed by 0.9C but the air above it warmed by only 0.3C. What physical mechanism could have caused this?
I do not know. There appears a reasonable correlation to PDO shifts of two complete 60 year cycles. The main reversal (eyes say about 80%) appears to be about 1920 to 1950. As I say, there is a lot we do not know about this period. BTW, is the air temperature from before or after the adjustments due to some unknown algorithim? (I never noticed the Al Gore pun in that word before. (-;
Just a note of caution on datasets. There are several different ones, and they all tell different stories.
@P.G. Sharrow says:
February 19, 2011 at 4:01 am
🙂 “The devil is in the details”….need to seek for general laws instead….
David: The air temperature series is the GISS “meteorological station only” series. The records used to construct it were subjected to some dubious-looking “homogeneity adjustments”, but these cancel out when all the records are averaged together. A while ago I reconstructed this series from scratch using unadjusted records only (and throwing out all records that showed any hint of a UHI gradient) and got almost exactly the same results as GISS. The Lugina et al. series also tracks GISS (and me) very closely. So I think we can consider the GISS series to be validated.
I didn’t even try to reconstruct the ICOADS SST series from scratch because there are about 200 million individual SST readings. But so far as I know this series is unadjusted except for the use of EOFs to average the data.
Tallbloke: Different data sets in fact don’t tell different stories here. Even HadSST2 shows the cyclicity when you take out the “Thompson Discontinuity”.
Verry cool post at WUWT pointing out the current Forbush decrease.
[…] Roger Andrews: The Solar-SST Relationship – The Plot Thickens […]
[…] cycle identified by Roy Martin, and the ~110 year cycle noted recently by Roger Andrews in his SST vs Air temperature analysis. Roger notes in comments that not only is the periodicity right, but the phase is pretty close […]
Anyone know of a good long-term seasonal temperature series has been constructed for the NH (latitude 45 to 75 ideally) – same data for SH would also be useful.
I’m thinking that the link between a weaker, loopier jet stream seen when solar activity is low and colder NH winters is down to our quiet sun. I wonder if this can lead to a change in mid-latitude albedo, with more snow and ice closerer to the equator, and it is this that amplifies the changes in solar output to cause a change to a colder weather regime.
Should the sun choose to remain quiet for a prolonged period, perhaps long term changes will occur which will push climate into ‘cool’ mode?
Tenuc:
Climate Explorer ( http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere ) has all kinds of temperature series that you can break down by latitude, longitude, year, month season etc. Just click in the circle for the series you want and press enter.
Thanks Roger, I’ll go and have a browse around.
William Briggs, statistician, says “DO NOT correlate or do other statistical tests on smoothed data”.
If you smooth two lots of random noise a couple of times, you get almost 100% correlation.
I have a problem with your chart 10 on your earlier post of this subject.
My problem may just be that I am eyeballing the chart which can be quite misleading, but here goes:
(1) if you look at Solar and SST for 1910-1950, they are almost exactly parallel, while Anthrop is flat in that period. When you add Solar to Anthrop over that period, the average of these two should show a shallower rise than Solar alone, not at all like your Total line.
(2) From 1950 on, it is Anthrop that rises rather roughly with SST, while Solar is quite flat. Again, I can’t see how you could get the Total line to fit the wriggly temperature so well.
From the little I know of SSTs I would have thought that this data is rather suspect, not because of fiddling, but by the haphazard way the data is collected.
I keep changing my views about global warming as I learn more about it.
At present I tend to go with Roy Spencer, that all the instrumental rise that we have seen is due to cyclic fluctiations, random noise, with a little UHI thrown in (land only naturally).
I tend to think it is wrong to keep modeling on the basis of doubtful data.
The more I learn, the more powerful the unknow unknowns become.
Perhaps that should be the main thrust of the attack on AGW.
It is crazy to be throwing billions at a willow the wisp type of problem each year, while attempting to turn the foundations of industrial world upside down.
AusieDan says:
March 22, 2011 at 12:14 pm
“…I tend to think it is wrong to keep modelling on the basis of doubtful data.
The more I learn, the more powerful the unknown unknowns become.
Perhaps that should be the main thrust of the attack on AGW…”
This is the elephant in the CAGW scientists room. Poor data granularity, dubious measurement accuracy and our climate systems inherent spatio-temporal chaos make modelling an expensive waste of time. They do not even hind-cast well and the forecasts they produce are worthless to policy decision makers.
Aussie Dan:
“DO NOT correlate or do other statistical tests on smoothed data.” The temperatures I used were annual averages, not smoothed data, and I don’t think that applying 11-year smoothing to the TSI data to get rid of the Schwabe cycle will have invalidated the results.
“I have a problem with your chart 10 on your earlier post of this subject …. I can’t see how you could get the Total line to fit the wriggly temperature so well.” Well, I got it by multiplying the w/sq m anthropogenic forcings by 0.3 and the solar forcings by 3.2. The resulting anthropogenic and solar temperature contributions are plotted on the Figure and the black line is the sum of the two.
“From the little I know of SSTs I would have thought that this data is rather suspect …. because of …. the haphazard way the data is collected.” But random errors will tend to cancel out if enough haphazard data are collected, and the unadjusted ICOADS SST record I used contains about 200 million individual SST readings.