Our favourite TV forecaster strikes again
By Paul Homewood
Paul Hudson works as a meteorologist with the BBC. He has earned the wrath of the Team previously, as the Climategate leaks revealed, when he dared to question some of their religious tenets.
In the latest post on his BBC blog, he has discussed the extreme cold weather we are currently getting. He finishes by commenting:-
With December 2010 ending up the coldest since 1890, it’s yet more anecdotal evidence that something significant seems to be happening to our climate, driven by a jet stream that continues to be forced regularly further south than normal, across all seasons.
As ever the reasons for this are not clear.
But those who study how solar activity affects the positioning of the jet stream will, perhaps, feel increasingly vindicated.
I wonder how long it will be before the Team send in Richard Black again?
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
He’s not bad is Mr Hudson, he does seem to be open to ideas other than the CAGW mantra!
The more people that stand up for common sense the better, perhaps if enough find the courage to speak out against the BBC eco fools we might start to see the BBC actually live up to their constitution, something they illegally ignore at present.
“[…] study how solar activity affects the positioning of the jet stream […]”
TB: I’ve just e-mailed you a graph. Please feel welcome to share it with Mr. Hudson.
Best Regards.
I’m beginning to like Mr Hudson (not that I ever disliked him). Maybe some day he might make a good science editor at a public service broadcaster.
Paul, I’ll do that.
TB, as an experienced blogger & moderator you probably know the various rules about how to include & cite the graphs of other researchers in public communications. The reference on the graph is absolutely crystal clear. I would suggest that the public should see the graph. What concerns – if any -would you have about posting the graph publicly, for example in a comment right here in this thread?
[Reply] No problem,here it is.
Looks like it is time to revisit and update my New Climate Model from October 2010.
The behaviour of the jets and the expansion of the polar air masses since then is pretty much as expected from my model but entirely unexpected according to AGW theory.
Paul refers to “those who study how solar activity affects the positioning of the jet stream ” but I’m not sure how many of us have specifically addressed that narrow point.
There are lots who work on the effect of solar activity on climate in general terms but who else narrowed it down to jet stream and climate zone shifting ?
Stephen Wilde (March 30, 2013 at 4:19 am) asked:
“There are lots who work on the effect of solar activity on climate in general terms but who else narrowed it down to jet stream and climate zone shifting ?”
Ferdinand Engelbeen is very impressively crystal clear on this, making it appear that it has been common knowledge for decades. One possibility I see is that he is connected with sizable pockets of enlightenment that do not intersect with our limited community of online climate discussion. Another possibility is that many online climate discussion enthusiasts have actually been victims (at least partially) of the “sun has no effect” brainwashing, even though they may not realize it or like to admit it.
Stephen Wilde. “those who study how solar activity affects the positioning of the jet stream ” but I’m not sure how many of us have specifically addressed that narrow point
Piers Corbyn ?
Paul,
Didn’t know Ferdinand had covered that aspect. I have only found a contribution he made to a recent WUWT thread. Do you have anything else in mind ?
J Martin.
Yes I thought of Piers just after asking the question. However he seems to limit himself to short term solar effects on weather which does involve the jet stream.He doesn’t seem to have extrapolated that to multidecadal and multicentennial climate change such as the MWP and LIA though.
Has anyone proposed climate zone and jet stream shifting as a negative system response to all forcing elements ?
At one time the AGW crowd seemed to accept poleward drifting as a sign of a positive system response to our emissions but they went quiet on that over recent years.
Then there was this:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7758
“How Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann almost got it right in 2001”
It took me a few years to convince Piers that short term changes in the solar wind speed cause latitudinal shifts in the Jet Stream. Only last November he was asking me how good the correlation between the AO/NAO and the solar wind speed is.
Piers has been going on extensively about solar connections between jet streams & LIA in his WeatherAction newsletters, including 2 emphasizing exactly this in the past week alone.
There’s also a researcher named Drew Shindell who has published quite a lot on this, for example:
Link Between Solar Cycle And Climate Is Blowin’ In The Wind — Apr. 12, 1999
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/04/990412075538.htm
Ferdinand Engelbeen brought that up here:
It was Le Mouël, Blanter, Shnirman, & Courtillot (2010) who first alerted me that this could be proven beyond all shadow of sensible doubt via nothing short of Laws — of large numbers & conservation of angular momentum.
Later I became aware that Jean Dickey (NASA JPL) had quietly illustrated the pattern in 1997. I have since found related publications going back decades.
For specific attention to LIA, see:
Glaciers, Old Masters, and Galileo: The Puzzle of the Chilly 17th Century
By Drew Shindell — December 2002
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_06/
Includes map:
“Figure 3: Annual average surface temperature change (C) due to solar irradiance change between the Maunder Minimum (late 17th century) and a century later, when solar output had returned to relatively large values, in the climate model (top) and in the historical temperature reconstructions (bottom).”
Recently the broader mainstream’s paying a little more attention – e.g.:
“Issues in Climate Science Underlying Sun/Climate Research
Isaac M. Held, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
[…]
The ocean heat uptake and later slow release back to the atmosphere are the factors responsible for the difference between the transient response of the climate to radiative forcing as compared to the equilibrium climate […] equilibration takes centuries […] 11-year solar cycle […] in the Southern Hemisphere the surface westerlies (and the storm track) have shifted poleward […] horizontal temperature gradient near the tropopause. Strengthening the horizontal temperature gradient alters in turn the fluxes of angular momentum by midlatitude eddies. The angular momentum budget of the troposphere controls the surface westerlies.”
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13519
I’m not sold on mechanisms suggested by Shindell, Held, & Corbyn, but multivariate empirical coherence is certain.
Paul Vaughan says:
“Piers has been going on extensively about solar connections between jet streams & LIA in his WeatherAction newsletters, including 2 emphasizing exactly this in the past week alone.”
That’s because he messed up on his March forecast, he had the 2nd half far to warm, and really did not anticipate the depth of cold that this month would bring.
Clarification on the important graph TB generously inserted in comments:
SCD = Solar Cycle Deceleration – calculated from monthly sunspot numbers
Northern Hemisphere & Pacific sea surface temperatures are ERSSTv3b from KNMI Climate Explorer.
Superposed is figure 5 (p.198) from section 8 (pp.196-198) of:
Obridko, V.N.; & Shelting, B.D. (1999). Structure of the heliospheric current sheet derived for the interval 1915-1996. Solar Physics 184, 187-200.
Click to access 189.pdf
“Hα observations of solar large-scale fields were used to reconstruct the heliosphere structure for the time interval of 1915–1996. […] The q parameter, characterizing the divergence of the polar plumes in the epochs of the solar minimum […] ratio of the meridional and the cylindrical radial components, respectively. Calculations should naturally be performed far from the maximum (where both components pass simultaneously through zero) and as close as possible to the minimum of the solar cycle. Bugoslavskaya (1958) showed a similarity of the q values, calculated from the magnetic data and measured from the polar streamers. However the data, available at that time, did not allow the study of long-term variation of q. […] 3 extra points are added from (Bugoslavskaya, 1958). […] quasi-periodic oscillations […] The convergence region of the field lines moves up and down with the same period. […] results in secular variations of the entire structure of the heliosphere.”
Multidecadal Q is coherent with deeply insightful Figure 4 from:
Wyatt, M.G.; Kravtsov, S.; & Tsonis, A.A. (2011). Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Northern Hemisphere’s climate variability. Climate Dynamics.
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The Talkshop is doing an excellent job lately. Good work TB & Tim.
Paul, thanks for all those links.
It is clear that all the authors (in common with a lot of others) knew that there was an apparent link between the sun and climate changes but never really identified a potential mechanism other than to say it was something to do with ozone quantities.
I seem to have gone a couple of steps further than any of them IF my diagnosis turns out to be right.
In particular the reverse sign solar effect on ozone above 45 km and towards the poles is important, as is the need to change the gradient of tropopause height between equator and pole if latitudinal shifting is to be achieved.
The stratosphere above the poles must warm if equatorward shifting is to be achieved yet that happens when the sun is inactive which is the opposite of conventional climatology.
It is true that cooling from less ozone below 45km above the equator could have the same effect and that is the establishment line but I have grave doubts about that. The way the system shows expanding and contracting polar air masses over decades and centuries looks very much to me like a top down solar effect from the poles outward.
They all recognise circulation changes but do not specifically pin it down to latitudinal shifting to and fro.
The last very recent paper does at last refer to poleward shifting of storms in the southern hemisphere and mentions the need to consider the horizontal gradient near the tropopause but that is dated after my initial propositions to that effect. They are also considering primarily a bottom up effect from the oceans which I don’t think is sufficient.
Has anyone else suggested a combination of top down solar effects from the poles interacting with a bottom up effect from the oceans with the net latitudinal positions of the jets and climate zones representing the net effect of that interaction?
Also that it is enough to change global albedo for the jets to become more meridional which removes the need to consider cosmic rays or magnetic fluxes unless they affect the degree of meridionality over and above that caused by changes in stratosphere temperatures.
Furthermore, everyone initially failed to recognise the reversal of trend that I first noticed around 2000 but which is now becoming apparent to all.
Thus I still hope to obtain some credit for novel propositions unless more stuff comes out of the woodwork in the near future.
So we get a jet stream shift Southwards and that is caused in a significant part by solar effects or changes. This stays the same, throughout a period of low sunspot output and we get a mini ice age, a minimum.
Perhaps it flips back on occasion to give an occasional respite or hot summer as per the Maunder Minimum.
But if the sun stays inactive long enough and the jet stream stays South, is that what delivers the full glaciation ?
Stephen Wilde (March 30, 2013 at 6:00 pm) asked:
“Has anyone else suggested a combination of top down solar effects from the poles interacting with a bottom up effect from the oceans with the net latitudinal positions of the jets and climate zones representing the net effect of that interaction?”
That’s Meehl’s narrative.
None of theories I’ve read have been able to prove beyond reasonable doubt what drives the jet stream direction. There are regional effect (apparently well known) such as the Rockies but nothing that fully explains the recent blockage over europe.
There was a large area of stratospheric warming which appeared at the same time as the jet stream moved south but that did not last very long and no explanation has been given for the warming. No-one has proven the source of jetstream movement to my satisfaction and I would love to see it happen but alas the crimatologists are too hung up on CO².
Paul.
Here is a paper from Meehl:
Click to access meehl_additivity.pdf
He does try to net out the effect of multiple simultaneous forcings. I would say that any forcings other than sun and oceans would be trivial in terms of climate zone changes.
Nothing about latitudinal shifting from changes in the gradient of the tropopause between equator and poles and the bottom up oceanic section doesn’t include internal ocean cycles such as the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation which is the main one.
Nor does he recognise circulation changes as a negative system response.
He includes ozone as an anthropogenic forcing so he misses the top down solar effect on ozone above the tropopause completely.
J Martin asked:
“But if the sun stays inactive long enough and the jet stream stays South, is that what delivers the full glaciation ?”
In theory yes but in practice no since we are here considering solar variations on timescales of 1000 to 1500 years which appear regularly through the current interglacial.
A full ice age is the result of Milankovitch cycles primarily.
Stephen Richards said:
“No-one has proven the source of jetstream movement to my satisfaction”
Understandable with the present lack of data.
However historical records are a good indicator and a quiet sun always seems to result in more meridional and equatorward jets and climate zones.
It happened in the Dark Ages, LIA, the Dalton, mid 20th century (slightly) and now since 2000. Pretty persuasive.
Stephen, you’ll find Gerry Meehl has covered a lot of ground since that 2004 paper if you investigate.
“Top down” “bottom up” is the way he tells the story. That’s his brand. None of his papers are top level classics, but he’s smart enough to work on the real problem from inside the system without upsetting the apple cart, so he gets my respect for that.
Anyone working at the cutting edge needn’t worry about what Meehl is saying as he will stay within the boundaries of what is acceptable in the mainstream.
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Now, attempting to redirect the attention of pioneering explorers towards something more productive …
_
1. Tlatov & Makarov (2005) and Tlatov (2007) crystallize 22 year solar rotation frequency cycles and 11 year solar rotation amplitude cycles.
Tlatov, A.G.; & Makarov, V.I. (2005). 22-year variations of the solar rotation.
Click to access tl_22.pdf
Click to access nph-iarticle_query
Tlatov, A.G. (2007). 22-year variations of the solar rotation and solar activity cycles. Astronomy Letters 33(11), 771-779.
Click to access tl_al33.pdf
_
2. Hung (2007) and Obridko, Sokoloff, Kuzanyan, Shelting, & Zakharov (2006) highlight 7 year cycles.
Hung, C.-C. (2007). Apparent relations between solar activity and solar tides caused by the planets. NASA/TM—2007-214817.
Click to access 20070025111_2007025207.pdf
• “A fast Fourier transform (FFT) applied to the data (fig. 2(b)) indicated the data have a 7-year cycle. This cannot resonate with the 11-year solar activity cycle.”
• “It appears that the tide caused by Mercury, by itself or in alignment with other planets, does not resonant with the 11-year solar cycle. This is to be expected because the number of days of planet alignment involving Mercury would not be large due to the fast movement of Mercury. Without resonance, the tide caused by Mercury cannot affect the 11-year solar cycle.”
Obridko, V.N.; Sokoloff, D.D.; Kuzanyan, K.M.; Shelting, B.D.; & Zakharov, V.G. (2006). Solar cycle according to mean magnetic field data. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 365, 827-832.
Click to access 827.full.pdf
• “The nominal 7-yr oscillation yields a butterfly diagram with two domains.”
• “The nominal 7-yr oscillation demonstrates a clear equatorwards wave at lower latitudes and a polewards wave at higher latitudes.”
• “We conclude that the shape of the solar cycle inferred from the large-scale magnetic field data differs significantly from that inferred from sunspot data.”
_
3. Ballester, Oliver, & Carbonell (2005) find ~9 & ~43 year signals in sunspot asymmetry.
Ballester, J.L.; Oliver, R.; & Carbonell, M. (2005). The periodic behaviour of the north-south asymmetry of sunspot areas revisited. Astronomy & Astrophysics 431, L5-L8.
Click to access A+A431.pdf
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Some of you may be able to piece together where I’m going with this if you followed the tail end of Roy Martin’s recent thread here at the Talkshop. Before now I’ve been holding this material in reserve.
Time for a break from commenting …
Cheers!
I point out that Leroux stated a meme took hold in meteorology a long time ago, the synoptic view which is inverted, attention focused on the wrong thing. The jetstream is part of that.
As iI understand it he considered the air mass movements the correct focus. The jetstream is peripheral.
Now for being wicked. Heard of Stephen Wilde?
This from 2011 is pertinent
tim,
Thanks for reminding me of that 2011 WUWT thread.
It’s all the same thing gentlemen:
Häkkinen, S.; Rhines, P.B.; & Worthen, D.L. (2011). Atmospheric blocking and Atlantic multi-decadal ocean variability.
Click to access 20110008410_2011008681.pdf
Look at figure 2b. Compare it with:
multidecadal heliosphere structure, solar cycle deceleration, & terrestrial climate
and
sea level
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Here’s a reference I accidentally omitted from my last post above:
Vasil’eva, V.V.; Makarov, V.I.; & Tlatov, A.G. (2002). Rotation cycles of the sector structure of the solar magnetic field and its activity. Astronomy Letters 28(3), 199-205.
Click to access nph-iarticle_query
Note particularly figure 5.
Stephen Wilde says:
“Paul refers to “those who study how solar activity affects the positioning of the jet stream ” but I’m not sure how many of us have specifically addressed that narrow point.”
That would have to address why we had a very warm March 2012 with a poleward jet stream, and a very cold March 2013 with a very southerly jet stream.
So if that jet stream doesn’t move back then we’re in for a lousy summer. Unless we get a blocking high. Might need to be flexible on dates in that case.
@J Martin
You can get a feel for what the jet position was like through Maunder with this NAO reconstruction: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/historical/north_atlantic/nao_mon.txt
It didn’t stay continually further southwards, rather it was further south more frequently and for longer periods. Maunder was a denser cluster of short term solar events, of the severity that happen fairly regularly as one off’s, every century has several seasons of equal severity. These clusters are periodic, but are not a cycle as such, the solar activity does not ramp up and down over 500 or 1000yr cycles. Annual CET from 1730 to 1930 indicates how fast the warm up after Maunder was:
“That would have to address why we had a very warm March 2012 with a poleward jet stream, and a very cold March 2013 with a very southerly jet stream.”
I previously mentioned that local and regional effects at any given time depend on where any given location is placed relative to the nearest meridional loop.
Thus more meridionality gives both cold and warm spells but due to more clouds globally the overall effect is slow cooling.
Over decades / centuries the cold spells intensify and the warm spells get less warm.
Stephen Wilde says:
“I previously mentioned that local and regional effects at any given time depend on where any given location is placed relative to the nearest meridional loop.”
It has nothing to do with regional effects, March 2012 had a positive AO and zonal jet, and was very warm for most of the north hemisphere. March 2013 had a negative AO and was cold all round the north hemisphere, and the very southerly jet was often zonal too.
To show how solar activity affects the jet stream position, one has to explain the difference between this and last March.
I am aware of the means as I forecast both of these March temperatures (land, mid-upper latitudes) very well, and the mechanism has to involve the solar wind behaviour.
“Over decades / centuries the cold spells intensify and the warm spells get less warm.”
No, intense cold spells can occur at pretty much any time, the legendary one is 1740, right after the very warm 1730’s, Dec 2010 is high on the list too. What shifts over decades and centuries is OHC, in response to the frequency, duration, and intensity of temperature events.
Ulric.
I have also often said that ocean effects interact with solar effects to upset short term correlations.
I see no problem with periods of warm or cold and periods of positive AO and negative AO intermingling during periods of either high solar activity or low solar activity.
My interest is in long multidecadal and centennial trends and not the shorter term variations that you are most concerned with.
If you have a means of dealing with shorter term variations so as to produce some predictive skill then good luck to you, I don’t wish to compete in that area.
There may be some overlap between our works as regards the process of increasing or decreasing OHC but even there I look to the longer term than you do.
Due to cloud and albedo effects OHC increases from low solar activity to high (LIA to Modern Warm Period) and decreases from high solar activity to low (Mediaeval Warm Period to LIA) but there is still lots of variability within those time scales.
Stephen Wilde says:
“I have also often said that ocean effects interact with solar effects to upset short term correlations.”
That’s not what I was saying, cold shots on land will correlate regularly with a weak solar signal regardless of OHC/SST’s.
“I see no problem with periods of warm or cold and periods of positive AO and negative AO intermingling during periods of either high solar activity or low solar activity.”
I do, +AO will be with higher activity, and -AO with lower activity.
“My interest is in long multidecadal and centennial trends and not the shorter term variations that you are most concerned with.”
All the short term events, when summed, directly define any trends. I see clusters of short term events rather than centennial trends, eg CET 1730 to 1930: http://snag.gy/2q2kT.jpg
“There may be some overlap between our works as regards the process of increasing or decreasing OHC but even there I look to the longer term than you do.”
The ability to map out the detail is the only way to have any certainty about the long term. which I have explored for several millennia ahead.
“OHC increases from low solar activity to high (LIA to Modern Warm Period) and decreases from high solar activity to low (Mediaeval Warm Period to LIA)”
You should find that there are high and low phases in every century.
“Please check the address and try again”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/
Site down, first time I’ve seen this. Perhaps it’s just being updated.
Loed B: Working ok here
Working for me again, gremlins abound. 🙂