Russ Steele
Leif Svalgaard, an accomplished solar scientist has been carrying a lengthly discussion of solar science and its connection to global warming on Climate Audit. David Archibald, has been posting on this thread, defending his paper, which we posted earlier here. Here is a recent post, in response to challenge by some one called "See - owe to Rich"
Re 159, Rich, thank you for having a look at the Hanover, NH graph. What I did in that graph was plot the length of a solar cycle against the average temperature of the following solar cycle. There was no filtering. There is no need for filtering that I can see. I included three US sites to provide local relevance for the New York conference. They are the three longest series that I have found to date in the US that provide a statistically significant signal. I have now worked through Europe. Sites closer to the Arctic Circle provide a better response than those further away. In graphical presentation, dispersion from the linear trend is mostly on the low side, which means volcanoes perhaps.
Anybody can repeat what I have done on Hanover – it is simple enough for highs school students to do.
By the way, the one year average decrease in solar cycle length in the 20th century relative to the 19th century explains all of that warming of the 20th century by the relationship demonstrated by the Hanover data.
In terms of 20th century warming, why didn’t you use the last 30 years of satellite data, which shows no warming over that period. As shown by Hansen’s fiddling of the Peruvian data etc, the Hansen temperature series has no credibility. It would be better to splice the satellite data to a pre-1978 data set. I think that would show the 1930s as warmer than present.
On the length of Solar Cycle 23, I simply reverse engineered it from Clilverd’s estimate of the amplitude. He has a slightly higher amplitude for Solar Cycle 25. Two consecutive cycles of an amplitude of around 45 is a repeat of the Dalton Minimum – solar cycles 5 and 6. What was the length of Solar Cycle 4? It was 13.6 years. Hathaway found a weak, inverse relationship between solar cycle length and the amplitude of the following cycle, so there is a physical basis in the relationship.
Clilverd’s estimate is within the error bar of Schatten’s estimate, so wavelet does not preclude solar dynamo theory. Solar dynamo theory is a simple ratio affair. I applied it to polar faculae (the poor man’s magnetometer but more up to date) and came up with a Solar Cycle 24 amplitude of 45. The general shape of the solar cycles in the 20th century is similar to the general shape of them in the 18th century.
The beautiful thing about the solar cycle length/temperature relationship is that you don’t have to know how it works to use it. Every day’s delay in the onset of Solar Cycle 24 will lower the temperature of Hanover, NH by 0.002 degrees. It is a freight train, it is unstoppable, remorseless and most dreadful in its certainty.
This the Hanover Plot from the Archibald paper:
Here is photo tour of the Hanover Surface Station, from Anthony Watts Surface Station Data Base. I am still looking for a current temperature plot, the best one I can find so far ends in 2005.
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