Evidence of a Significant Solar Imprint in Annual Globally Averaged Temperature Trends - Part 2

Part II

By Basil Copeland and Anthony Watts

In Part I, we presented evidence of a noticable periodicity in globally averaged temperatures when filtered with Hodrick-Prescott smoothing. Using a default value of lamda of 100, we saw a bidecadal pattern in the rate of change in the smoothed temperature series that appears closely related to 22 year Hale solar cycles. There was also evidence of a longer climate cycle of ~66 years, or three Hale solar cycles, corresponding to slightly higher peaks of cycles 11 to 17 and 17 to 23 shown in Figure 4B. But how much of this is attributable to value of lambda (λ). Here is where lambda (λ) is used in the Hodrick-Prescott filter equation:

The first term of the equation is the sum of the squared deviations d_t = y_t − τ_t which penalizes the cyclical component. The second term is a multiple λ of the sum of the squares of the trend component’s second differences. This second term penalizes variations in the growth rate of the trend component. The larger the value of λ, the higher is the penalty.

For the layman reader, this equation is much like a tunable bandpass filter used in radio communications, where lambda (λ) is the tuning knob used to determine the what band of frequencies are passed and which are excluded. The low frequency component of the HadCRUT surface data (the multidecadal trend) looks almost like a DC signal with a complex AC wave superimposed on it. Tuning the waves with a period we wish to see is the basis for use of this filter in this excercise.

Given an appropriately chosen, positive value of λ, the low frequency trend component will minimize. This can be seen in Figure 2 presented in part I, where the value of lambda was set to 100.

Figure 2 - click for a larger image

A lower value of lambda would result in much less smoothing. To test the sensitivity of the findings reported in Part I, we refiltered with a lambda of 7. The results are shown in Figures 3 and 4.

Figure 3 - click for a larger image

As expected, the smoothed trend line, represented by the blue line in the upper panel of Figure 3, is no longer as smooth as the trend in the upper panel of Figure 1 from Part I. And when we look at the first differences of the less smoothed trend line, shown in Figure 4, they too are no longer as smooth as in Figure 2 from Part I. Nevertheless, in Figure 4, the correlation to the 22 year Hale cycle peaks is still there, and we can now see the 11 year Schwabe cycle as well.

Figure 4 - click for a larger image

The strong degree of correspondence between the solar cycle peaks and the peak rate of change in the smoothed temperature trend from HadCRUT surface temperature data is seen in Figure 5.

Figure 5 - click for a larger image

The pattern in Figure 4, while not as eye-catching, perhaps, as the pattern in Figure 2 is still quite revealing. There is a notable tendency for amplitude of the peak rate of change to alternate between even and odd numbered solar cycles, being higher with the odd numbered solar cycles, and lower in even numbered cycles. This is consistent with a known feature of the Hale cycle in which the 22 year cycle is composed of alternating 11 year phases, referred to as parallel and antiparallel phases, with transitions occurring near solar peaks.

Even cycles lead to an open heliosphere where GCR reaches the earth more easily. Mavromichalaki, et. al. (1997), and Orgutsov, et al. (2003) contend that during solar cycles with positive polarity, the GCR flux is doubled. This strongly implicates Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) flux in modulating global temperature trends. The lower peak amplitudes for even solar cycles and the higher peak amplitudes for odd solar cycles shown in Figure 4 appears to directly confirm the kind of influence on terrestrial climate postulated by Svensmark in Influence of Cosmic Rays on Earth’s Climate (199 From the pattern indicated in Figure 4, the implication is that the “warming” of the late 20th century was not so much warming as it was less cooling than in each preceding solar cycle, perhaps relating to the rise in geomagnetic activity.

It is thus notable that at the end of the chart, the rate of change after the peak associated with solar cycle 23 is already in the negative range, and is below the troughs of the preceding two solar cycles. Again, it is purely speculative at this point, but the implication is that the underlying rate of change in globally averaged temperature trends is moderating, and that the core rate of change has turned negative.It is important to understand that the smoothed series, and the implied rates of change from the first differences, in figures 2 and 4, even if they could be projected, are not indications of what the global temperature trend will be.

There is a cyclical component to the change in global temperature that will impose itself over the underlying trend. The cyclical component is probably dominated by terrestrial dynamics, while the smoothed series seems to be evidence of a solar connection. So it is possible for the underlying trend to be declining, or even negative, while actual global temperature increases because of positive cyclical factors. But by design, there is no trend in the cyclical component, so that over time, if the trends indicated in Figures 2 and 4 hold, global warming will moderate, and we may be entering a phase of global cooling.

Some are probably wondering which view of the historical correspondence between globally averaged temperatures and solar cycles is the “correct” one: Figure 2 or 4?

Such a question misconstrues the role of lambda in filtering the data. Here lambda is somewhat like the magnification factor “X” in a telescope or microscope. A low lambda (less smoothing) allows us to “focus in” on the data, and see something we might miss with a high lambda (more smoothing). A high lambda, precisely because it filters out more, is like a macroscopic view which by filtering out lower level patterns in the data, reveals larger, longer lived processes more clearly. Both approaches yield valuable insights. In Figure 2, we don’t see the influence of the Schwabe cycle, just the Hale cycle. In Figure 4, were it not for what we see in Figure 2, we’d probably miss some similarities between solar cycles 15, 16, and 17 and solar cycles 21, 22, and 23.In either case, we are seeing strong evidence of a solar imprint in the globally averaged temperature trend, when filtered to remove short term periodicities, and then differenced to reveal secular trends in the rate of change in the underlying long term tend in globally averaged temperatures.

At one level we see clear evidence of bidecadal oscillations associated with the Hale cycle, and which appear to corroborate the role of GCR’s in modulating terrestrial climate. At the other, in figure 4B, we see a longer periodicity on the order of 60 to 70 years, correspondingly closely to three bidecadal oscillations. If this longer pattern holds, we have just come out of the peak of the longer cycle, and can expect globally average temperature trends to moderate, and increased likelihood of a cooling phase similar that experienced during the mid 20th century.

In Lockwood and Fröhlich 2007 they state: “Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified.” . Yet, as Figure 5 demonstrates, there is a strong correlation between the solar cycle peaks and the peak rate of change in the smoothed surface temperature trend.

The periodicity revealed in the data, along with the strong correlation of solar cycles to HadCRUT surface data, suggests that the rapid increase in globally averaged temperatures in the second half of 20th century was not unusual, but part of a ~66 year climate cycle that has a long history of influencing terrestrial climate. While the longer cycle itself may be strongly influenced by long term oceanic oscillations, it is ultimately related to bidecadal oscillations that have an origin in impact of solar activity on terrestrial climate.

UPDATE: We have had about half a dozen people replicate from HadCRUT data the signal shown in figure 4 using FFT and traditional filters, and we thank everyone for doing that. We are currently working on a new approach to the correlations shown in figure 5, which can yield different results using alternate statistical methods. A central issue is how to correctly identify the peak of the solar cycle, and we are looking at that more closely. As it stands now, while the Hodrick-Prescott filtering works well and those results in figures 2,3, and 4 have been replicated by others, but the correlation shown in figure 5 is in question when a Rayleigh method is applied, and thus figure 5 is likely incorrect since it does not hold up under that and other statistical tests. There is also an error in the data point for cycle 11. I thank Tamino for pointing these issues out to us.

We are continuing to look at different methods of demonstrating a correlation. Please watch for future posts on the subject.

References:

Demetrescu, C., and V. Dobrica (2008), Signature of Hale and Gleissberg solar cycles in the geomagnetic activity, Journal of Geophysical Research, 113, A02103, doi:10.1029/2007JA012570.

Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature (HadCRUT) monthly averaged global temperature data set (description of columns here)

J. Javaraiah, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, 22 Year Periodicity in the Solar Differential Rotation, Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy. (2000) 21, 167-170

Katsakina, et al., On periodicities in long term climatic variations near 68° N, 30° E, Advances in Geoscience, August 7, 2007

Kim, Hyeongwoo, Auburn University, “Hodrick-Prescott Filter” March 12, 2004

M. Lockwood and C. Fröhlich, Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Astronomy doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880; 2007, 10th July

Mavromichalaki, et. al. 1997 Simulated effects at neutron monitor energies: evidence for a 22-year cosmic-ray variation, Astronomy and Astrophysics. 330, 764-772 (199

Mavromichalaki H, Belehaki A, Rafios X, et al. Hale-cycle effects in cosmic-ray intensity during the last four cycles ASTROPHYS SPACE SCI 246 (1): 7-14 1997.

Nivaor Rodolfo Rigozo, Solar and climate signal records in tree ring width
from Chile (AD 1587–1994), Planetary and Space Science 55 (2007) 158–164

Ogurtsov, et al., ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SOLAR CYCLE LENGTH AND TERRESTRIAL CLIMATE, Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 5, 03762, 2003

Royal Observatory Of Belgium, Solar Influences Data Analysis Center, monthly and monthly smoothed sunspot number. (Description of data here)

Svensmark, Henrik, Danish Metorological Institute, Influence of Cosmic Rays on Earth’s Climate, Physical Review Letters 15th Oct. 98

Wikipedia, Hodrick-Prescott Filter January 20, 2008

Joe Bastardi on 60 Minutes and Gore

Veteran Meteorologist Joe Bastardi of AccuWeather on Al Gore’s 60 minutes interview:

I am absolutely astounded that someone who refuses to publicly debate anyone on this matter and has no training in the field narrated a movie where frames of nuclear explosions were interspersed in a subliminal way in scenes of droughts and flood, among other major gaffes, can say these things and then have them accepted… by anyone.

See the complete writeup here on the AccuWeather Blog

If you wish to write letters to CBS New regarding the issue, see my post on the same subject here.

(h/t Jim Arndt)

Solar Cycle 23 Forecasts - The Movie

Click image for movie - note download is large 2.4MB

A guest post by Michael Ronayne

Note: Mike has created a movie (solar_cycle_23-24_sunspots.gif large (2.4MB) animated GIF) that shows how the cycle 23 forecast has progressed through time. Given that NASA’s David Hathaway recently commented on SpaceWeather that we are still seeing Cycle 23 spots, this seemed like a good time to post Mike’s effort.

The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) at http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ issues weekly reports on solar activity know as Preliminary Report and Forecast (PRF) of Solar Geophysical Data or “The Weekly”. Generally on the week following the end of the month a monthly summary is issued which includes graphics for the past month.

In the summary is the “ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression” graphic which shows past, present and predicted average sunspot numbers by month. SWPC maintains a compressed archive of all weekly PRD reports in PDF format since 1996 which is available here.

Individual weekly reports for 2007 are available here  and current reports for 2008 are available here .

The most current graphic is always here.

All of “The Weekly” reports were inspected to identify the monthly summaries and determine the quality of the “ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression” graphic contained therein. It was determined that the graphs prior to April 30, 2003 were in a significantly different format, had quality control problems and skipped months, therefore only graphs from April 30, 2003 to present were used.

Using Adobe Acrobat Professional the “ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression” graphics was extracted from each of “The Weekly” PDF reports as oversized TIFF graphics to preserve resolution. The standard publication size for the graphic was 720×550 pixels but the aspect ratio for some of the graphs was not preserved within the PDF document. When the oversized TIFF graphic were resized to 720×550 without preserving the aspect ratio within the PDF the original 720×550 graphic was recovered in all cases. The 720×550 TIFF graphic was then converted to a GIF graphic for use in the animation sequence.

While extracting the “ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression” graphs it was found that January 31, 2008 monthly summary had not been generated, a fact which SWPC confirmed in response to an Email inquiry. The February 29, 2008 graphic was hand edited at the pixel level to recreate the missing month and is identified in the animation sequence “proxy200801.gif”. The remaining graphics are all identified by the PRF document number.

The Advanced GIF Animator program was used to create the animation sequence. With the exception of January 31, 2008 all of the frames are prefixed by PRF9999 when 9999 is the document number of the original PDF report from which the graphic was extracted.

When the animated frames were inspected in sequence it was found that there was a discontinuity between July 31, 2006 (PRF1510), August 31, 2004 (PRF1514) and the September 30, 2004 (PRF1520) frames. The causes of the discontinuities were:

1. Data was retroactively changed on the August 31, 2004 frame.
2. The August 31, 2004 data point was not plotted on the August 31, 2004 frame.

These three frames were not altered or correct in anyway and are displayed as published. This technique is very good at identifying data discontinuity problems.

Excluding the problems noted above the reconstructed graphic went very well and there was no discernible flicker between frames indicating that the PDF extraction process was near prefect. With the exception of the problem about August 31, 2004 and the missing monthly summary for January 31, 2008 the SWPC product has been amazingly consistent since April 30, 2003.

Silent Protest of Light

A couple of comments have mentioned the global “turn off your lights” night. Lubos Motl at the Reference Frame has a suggestion

Earth Hour: turn your lights on at 8 p.m.

Tonight, at 8 p.m. local time, you should turn on all the light bulbs you have for 60 minutes (it will only cost you 3 cents per light bulb in average for the whole hour) to fight global obscurantism. You should look how many lights are on around. Every light bulb you see will be a sign of the audacity of hope, as Jeremiah Wright would say.”15 years ago, I would have done this. Now, I plan to turn all my lights on as my silent form of protest against the likes of Gore and his Enron like carbon credit scheme. I’m going to “Watts Up” my house!

If you want to learn about the event, here is the web page:
http://www2.earthhourus.org/

Of course if you are simply interested in saving money and using less electricity (something I’m for, especially here in California since the state has hamstrung itself for future power generation) then get one of these:

I have several. They work great. And, buying one via this link sends some help back to me for keeping my www.surfacestations.org effort running.

Gore to throw insults on 60 minutes

There will be a story featuring Al Gore and his climate views on CBS 60 minutes this weekend. Normally I don’t pay much heed to this program, but Gore is publicly calling those who question the science “…almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat…”.

To me, a person who has at one time been fully engaged in the belief that CO2 was indeed the root cause of the global warming problem, I find Gore’s statements insulting. In 1990 after hearing what James Hansen and others had to say, I helped to arrange a national education campaign for TV meteorologists nationwide (ironically with CBS’s help) on the value of planting trees to combat the CO2 issue. I later changed my thinking when I learned more about the science involved and found it to be lacking.

I’ve never made a call to action on media reporting before on this blog, but this cannot go unchallenged.

The press release from CBS on the upcoming story on Gore is below. You can visit the CBS website here and post comments:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/27/60minutes/main3974389.shtml

See the video clip here

But let’s also let the producer, Richard Bonin, know (via their communications contact) what you think about it, as I did when Scott Pelley aired a whole hour long special telling us Antarctica was melting. They did no follow up.

Kevin Tedesco KEV@cbsnews.com

Director, CBS News Communications (”60 Minutes”)

That email is listed on the CBS website, so it is fair to send comments to it. In fact, here is a contact list they have on their website where you can comment about this story. I feel it is important to respond and to spread the word to others. While I have not seen the video segment, let us hope that it has some semblance of balance, because the press release certainly does not.

UPDATED: New sunspots, but still solar cycle 23 spots

 
Click for magnified view of the sun showing the most recent spot.

Sunspot 987, 988, and now newly emerging 989 are shown above.

With all being near the equator, they are still a cycle 23 spots. A cycle 24 spot would be at a much higher latitude.

The most recent magnetogram shows them to have the magnetic polarity of cycle 23 spots, in addition to being near the equator.

Cycle 24 remains late. There was one sunspot of high latitude and reversed magnetic polarity on January 4th, 2008, but none have been seen since:

Click for a larger image

UPDATE 2: The solar holographic image shows a potentially large spot on the far side of the sun, we’ll have to wait until it comes around to see what it is. The method is not always perfect.

Darker area is the far side of the sun.

Seismic waves propagating through the sun are used to image potential spots on the far side. Here is a description of how it is done.

UPDATE 3:

It looks as if the spot seen yesterday on the far side of the sun via the holographic technique has disappeared. As I said “The method is not always perfect.”

The two spots above are earthward, 987, and 988.

Evidence of a Significant Solar Imprint in Annual Globally Averaged Temperature Trends - Part 1

NOTE: This essay represents a collaboration over a period of a week via email between myself and Basil Copeland. Basil did the statistical heavy lifting and the majority of writing, while I provided suggestions, reviews, some ideas, editing, and of course this forum. Basil deserves all our thanks for his labor. This is part one of a two part series.  -Anthony

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Evidence of a Significant Solar Imprint in Annual Globally Averaged Temperature TrendsBy Basil Copeland and Anthony Watts

It is very unlikely that the 20th-century warming can be explained by natural causes. The late 20th century has been unusually warm.

So begins the IPCC AR4 WG1 response to Frequently Asked Question 9.2 (Can the Warming of the 20th Century be Explained by Natural Variability?).  Chapter 3 of the WG1 report begins:

Global mean surface temperatures have risen by 0.74°C ± 0.18°C when estimated by a linear trend over the last 100 years (1906-2005). The rate of warming over the last 50 years is almost double that over the last 100 years (0.13°C ± 0.03°C vs. 0.07°C ± 0.02°C per decade).

Was the warming of the late 20th century really that unusual?  In recent posts Anthony has noted the substantial anecdotal evidence for a period of unusual warming in the earlier half of the 20th century.  The representation by the IPCC of global trends over the past 100 years seems almost designed to hide the fact that during the early decades of the 20th century, well before the recent acceleration in anthropogenic CO2 emissions beginning in the middle of the 20th century, global temperature increased at rates comparable to the rate of increase at the end of the 20th century.

I recently began looking at the longer term globally averaged temperature series to see what they show with respect to how late 20th century warming compared to warming earlier in the 20th century.  In what follows, I’m presenting just part of the current research I’m currently undertaking.  At times, I may overlook details or a context, or skip some things, for the sake of brevity.  For example, I’m looking at two long-term series of globally averaged annual temperature trends, HadCRUTv3 and GHCN-ERSSTv2.  Most of what I present here will be based on HadCRUTv3, though the principal findings will hold true for GHCN-ERSSTv2. 

I began by smoothing the data with a Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter with lambda=100.  (More on the value of lambda later.) The results are presented in Figure 1. 

Figure 1 - click for a larger image

The figure shows the actual data time series, a cyclical pattern in the data that is removed by the HP filter, and a smoothed long term low frequency trend that results from filtering out the short term higher frequency cyclical component. Hodrick-Prescott is designed to distinguish short term cyclical activity from longer term processes. 

For those with an electrical engineering background, you could think of it much like a bandpass filter which also has uses in meteorology:

Outside of electronics and signal processing, one example of the use of band-pass filters is in the atmospheric sciences. It is common to band-pass filter recent meteorological data with a period range of, for example, 3 to 10 days, so that only cyclones remain as fluctuations in the data fields.

(Note: For those that wish to try out the HP filter, a freeware Excel plugin exists for it which you can download here) 

When applied to globally averaged temperature, it works to extract the longer term trend from variations in temperature that are of short term duration.  It is somewhat like a filter that filters out “noise,” but in this case the short term cyclical variations in the data are not noise, but are themselves oscillations of a shorter term that may have a basis in physical processes. 

For example, in Figure 1, in the cyclical component shown at the bottom of the figure, we can clearly see evidence of the 1998 Super El Niño.  While not the current focus, I believe that analysis of the cyclical component may show significant correlations with known shorter term oscillations in globally averaged temperature, and that this may be a fruitful area for further research on the usefulness of Hodrick-Prescott filtering for the study of global or regional variations in temperature.

My original interest was in comparing rates of change between the smoothed series during the 1920’s and 1930’s with the rates of change during the 1980’s and 1990’s.  Without getting into details (ask questions in comments if you have them), using HadCRUTv3 the rate of change during the early part of the 20th century was almost identical to the rate of change at the end of the century. Could there be some sense in which the warming at the end of the 20th century was a repeat of the pattern seen in the earlier part of the century?  Since the rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions was much lower in the earlier part of the century, what could possibly explain why temperatures increased for so long during that period at a rate comparable to that experienced during the recent warming?

As I examined the data in more detail, I was surprised by what I found.  When working with a smoothed but non-linear “trend” like that shown in Figure 1, we compute the first differences of the series to calculate the average rate of change over any given period of time.  A priori, there was no reason to anticipate a particular pattern in time (or “secular pattern”) to the differenced series.  But I found one, and it was immediately obvious that I was looking at a secular pattern that had peaks closely matching the 22 year Hale solar cycle.  The resulting pattern in the first differences is presented in Figure 2, with annotations showing how the peaks in the pattern correspond to peaks in the 22 year Hale cycle.

Besides the obvious correspondence in the peaks of the first differences in the smoothed series to peaks of the 22 year Hale solar cycle, there is a kind of “sinus rhythm” in the pattern that appears to correspond, roughly, to three Hale cycles, or 66 years.  Beginning in 1876/1870, the rate of change begins a long decline from a peak of about +0.011 (since these are annual rates of change, a decadal equivalent would be 10 times this, or +0.11C/decade) into negative territory where it bottoms out about -0.013, before reversing and climbing back to the next peak in 1896/1893.  A similar sinusoidal pattern, descending down into negative annual rates of change before climbing back to the next peak, is evident from 1896/1893 to 1914/1917.  Then the pattern breaks, and in the third Hale cycle of the triplet, the trough between the 1914/1917 peak and the 1936/1937 peak is very shallow, with annual rates of change never falling below +0.012, let alone into the negative territory seen after the previous two peaks.  This same basic pattern is repeated for the next three cycles: two sinusoidal cycles that descend into negative territory, followed by a third cycle with a shallow trough and rates of change that never descend below +0.012.  The shallow troughs of the cycles from 1914/1917 to 1936/1937, and 1979/1979 to 1997/2000, correspond to the rapid warming of the 1920’s and 1930’s, and then again to the rapid warming of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

While not as well known as the 22 year Hale cycle, or the 11 year Schwabe cycle, there is support in the climate science literature for something on the order of a 66 year climate cycle.  Schlesinger and Ramankutty (1994) found evidence of a 65-70 year climate cycle in a number of temperature records, which they attributed to a 50-88 year cycle in the NAO.  Interestingly, they sought to infer from this that these oscillations were obscuring the effect of AGW.  But that probably misconstrues the significance of the mid 20th century cooling phase.  In any case, the evidence for a climate cycle on the order of 65-70 years extends well into the past.  Kerr (2000) links the AMO to paleoclimate proxies indicating a periodicity on the order of 70 years.  What I think they may be missing is that this longer term cycle shows evidence of being modulated by bidecadal rhythms.  When the AMO is filtered using HP filtering, it shows major peaks in 1926 and 1997, a period of 71 years.  But there are smaller peaks at 1951 and 1979, indicating that shorter periods of 25, 28, and 18 years, or roughly bidecadal oscillations.  There is a growing body of literature pointing to bidecadal periodicity in climate records that point to a solar origin.  See, for instance, Rasporov, et al, (2004).  A 65-70 year climate cycle may simply be a terrestrial driven harmonic of bidecadal rhythms that are solar in origin.

In terms of the underlying rates of change, the warming of the late 20th century appears to be no more “unusual” than the warming during the 1920’s and 1930’s.  Both appear to have their origin in a solar cycle phenomenon in which the sinusoidal pattern in the underlying smoothed trend is modulated so that annual rates of change remain strongly positive for the duration of the third cycle, with the source of this third cycle modulation perhaps related to long term trends in oceanic oscillations.  It is purely speculative, of course, but if this 66 year pattern (3 Hale cycles) repeats itself, we should see a long descent into negative territory where the underlying smoothed trend has a negative rate of change, i.e. a period of cooling like that experienced in the late 1800’s and then again midway through the 20th century. 

Figure 2 - click for a larger image

Figure 2 uses a default value of lambda (the parameter that determines how much smoothing results from Hodrick-Prescott filtering) that is 100 times the square of the data frequency, which for annual data would be 100.  This is conventional, and is consistent with the lambda used for quarterly data in the seminal research on this technique by Hodrick and Prescott.  I’m aware, though, of arguments for using a much lower lambda, which would result in much less smoothing.  

In Part 2, we will look at the effect of filtering with a lower value of lambda.  The results are interesting, and surprising.

Part 2 is now online here

How not to measure temperature, part 54: Los Angeles, the city

Please click the picture then continue reading.

This is the city. Los Angeles, California. I study weather stations here. I carry a thermometer. My name’s Anthony. The story you are about to see is true; the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The day was Monday, March 24th, four days after the vernal equinox. It started out like any other day, with a bad cup of coffee and a stack of reports on scumbags you normally wouldn’t give the time of day to. But then, just as I was about to down that last gulp of coffee, a tip came in on the email hotline. It was Goetz, and his side kick Foutch.  They said there has been a heist of a weather station on the southeast side. It had been moved, and then it was dumped mysteriously on the campus of USC.

9:15AM Goetz and Foutch told me they had picked up the trail of the weather station the night before. They knew it had been bagged, and that some g-men were hopping mad about it. The g-men had written a report on the crime. In it, they claimed that because of the heist, which had been orchestrated by some other g-men at NOAA, the great City of Los Angeles had been denied it’s due: A new rainfall record year of 2004-2005. Worse than that, the temperature of the city was going down.

I’d heard about this station. It was ugly, it was dirty, it was perched on a rooftop, and it was on the wrong side of town, out by the City Department of Water and Power, just south of the Santa Ana freeway. It hung out with utility trucks and those little red street racers the punks around here drive. There was only one single photo of it. It wasn’t the kind of pristine weather station you’d take home to introduce to your mother.

10:05 AM I knew this was going to be a tough case to crack without hard as nails proof, so I decided to setup surveillance. I called in a favor from a chopper pilot named Barney that I used to share a beat with. I asked him to get aerial photos, lots of them. He asked why. I told him it was because nobody would believe that a City of Los Angeles official weather station had been on a rooftop of a parking garage and now was a shell of it’s former self sitting over at the USC campus.

I told him that when they dumped it in a cool park at USC, they killed the heart and soul of the city’s temperature record with it. And worse, they not only moved the station, but they replaced the man who had sweated and toiled on the rooftop in the hot LA smog and sun to get that weather data with one of those sissy robot contraptions. They call it an ASOS, and it has a sleek look about it, but it could never do a man’s job.

12:01 PM So Barney sets me up with the aerial surveillance from this morning. He sends the photos. I took them down to the lunch counter of the corner drugstore to develop them on my laptop. I had a cup of coffee while I did that. It cost 25 cents, and included pie.

The first aerial photo was a little fuzzy, it was hard to make out the station:

Click for a live link

But I found it, and marked it with an arrow. It wasn’t a pretty sight, right in the middle of acres of blacktop and automobiles. I kept reminding myself I’d seen worse, like in Tucson, and down the street from that Ace hardware store parking lot in Lampasas, Texas. But still, it ate at me.

12:15 PM I finished the pie, and asked for refill on the coffee. The waitress looked at the first photo and just shook her head. Barney had made several passes from several angles, and he snapped one good photo of it that hit me between the eyes like the butt end of a .38 special. There it was, our beloved City of Angels Weather Station. It made me sick just to look at it. What kind of people would do something like this?

The Solar to Global Warming Connection - A short essay

My good friend Jim Goodridge, former state climatologist for California, came to visit yesterday to offer some help on my upcoming trip, as well as to talk shop a bit about the state of affairs on climate change.

He had previously authored a paper that I had hoped to present on his behalf at ICCC, but unfortunately it got excluded from the schedule by an omission. Yesterday he decided to rework that paper to bring out it’s strongest point.

One of the best and simplest ways of seeing the solar connection is to look at accumulated departure. Here is Jim’s essay on the subject:

Solar - Global Warming Connection
Jim Goodridge
State Climatologist (Retired)
jdgoodridge - (at) - sbcglobal dot net
March 22, 2008

Solar irradiance has been monitored from satellites for three sunspot cycles. The sunspot numbers and solar irradiance were shown to be highly correlated. Since sunspot numbers have been increasing since 1935 the irradiance must also be increasing.

The sun was once considered to be constant in its output, hence the term “Solar Constant”. Recent observations suggest that the sun is a variable star. Observations of solar irradiance have been made with great precision from orbiting satellites since about 1978. These observations are from Wikipeda: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

They clearly indicate that the solar irradiance varies with the historic sunspot numbers:

Click for a larger graph

Click for a larger graph:

Using this relationship, 307 years of solar irradiance is easily inferred.

Sunspot numbers since 1700 were plotted as accumulated departure from average in order to compare them with weather variables. The sunspot number index indicates a declining trend for the 1700 to 1935 period and an increase from 1935 to 2008. The eleven-year cycle is clearly visible.

An increase in sunspot activity, and by inference, irradiance since 1935 is plainly indicated.

Moderators note: And I want to also call attention to these graphs, which shows the change in solar irradiance since 1611 and Geomagnetic activity over the last 150 years:

Clearly, solar geomagnetic activity has been on the rise. There will be more interesting posts on sunpots coming in the next week or two, stay tuned -Anthony

Snow and Storms at Easter in Europe, Canada, and USA

More indicators of a colder than normal winter continuing in the northern hemisphere.

From the London Telegraph:

Britain is enduring its most miserable Easter for 25 years as Arctic winds sweep in, bringing snow, hail and sleet.

Easter Sunday temperatures could drop to as low as -3C at night with a band of snow and sleet forecast to move down from the North. The bad weather is most likely to affect the Midlands but snow could even reach London, forecasters said.

From the Sofia news agency:

Bulgaria Meets Vernal Equinox With Snow, Sun Gleams

From This is London:

It’s Bad Friday: Britain braced for worst Easter weather in 25 years as country is battered by gales and sleet.

From the Stars and Stripes:

Snow hits Germany military bases with more possible for Easter.

From CTV.ca

‘Spring’ weather nasty for Eastern Canada

Also from CTV.ca

Six more weeks of winter, top weatherman forecasts

From KDKA-TV:

Snow Advisory In Effect For Parts Of Western Pa

From RedOrbit:

Nebraskans and Iowans heading east for the Easter weekend were experiencing flight delays or snow-covered roads today, and the troubles could continue into Saturday.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Heavy snow across Michigan and points west meant increasing cancellations and delays at Metro Airport today, with things getting worse as snow piled up.

From swissinfo.ch

The Easter break has started with heavy snowfall and strong winds in Switzerland, causing some disruption to traffic.