Modelling Arctic Sea Ice (part 3)
In part 1 and part 2 of this series we noticed that the time series for mean annual Arctic land surface temperature anomaly (LSA) was rather knobbly.
Periodic is the word I used and I suggested the period to be about 13 years, which is almost solar but not quite.
This morning we are going to take a closer look at those knobbles and see if there is indeed a connection to solar cycles, so I suggest something funky to sip like a ginger and lemon tea.
I am going to start out by plotting the standardised scores for LSA along with standardised scores for the mean daily sunspot number for the period 1900 – 2022.
These aren’t just any old sunspot numbers but the WDC-SILSO sunspot numbers held at the Royal Observatory of Belgium – you can grab these for yourself from this handy page.
Mean Daily Sunspot Number
For those not familiar with the mean daily sunspot number (SSN) I shall start by saying collecting and deriving this figure is the longest running scientific endeavour in the world. Here’s what Wiki has to say:
Astronomers have been observing the Sun recording information about sunspots since the advent of the telescope in 1609.
However, the idea of compiling the information about the sunspot number from various observers originates in Rudolf Wolf in 1848 in Zürich, Switzerland.
The produced series initially had his name, but now it is more commonly referred to as the international sunspot number series.
The international sunspot number series is still being produced today at the observatory of Brussels.
The international number series shows an approximate periodicity of 11 years, the solar cycle, which was first found by Heinrich Schwabe in 1843, thus sometimes it is also referred to as the Schwabe cycle.
The periodicity is not constant but varies roughly in the range 9.5 to 11 years.
The international sunspot number series extends back to 1700 with annual values while daily values exist only since 1818.
What happens on the ground is a whole bunch of observatories will have a go at counting the number of sunspots each day and report their sighting to the WDC-SILSO database who then compute the mean value of all daily observations.
Back in 1900 some 365 observatories provided a reading, whereas in 2022 some 14,273 observatories provided a reading, so the error associated with this measurement is very small indeed. The 365 (or 366) mean daily counts are then averaged over the year.
So let us have a look at those standardised scores not as they stand but as a first order differenced series. This sounds scary until you realise all we are doing is plotting out the year-to-year change in mean LSA and mean SSN instead of the absolute annual values.
Why so? Because plotting out the differenced series removes any underlying long-term trend and leaves only the jiggling about knobbly bits, making it easier to compare two knobbly time series. Try this:
Isn’t that fascinating? There are times when a bump in land surface temperature follows a bump in solar activity, and there are times when a bump in land surface temperature precedes a bump in solar activity. All in all my eyeballs suggest there may be a connection since the jigging about has a similar feel. We better settle this using that spanner again…
A Spanner Called Cross Correlation
Now ain’t that just fabulous? We’ve got evidence of a possible causal relationship between mean daily sunspot number and land surface temperature anomaly (positive bars at positive lags), but we’ve also got evidence suggesting this relationship cannot be causal (positive bars at negative lags).
Then there are those negative correlations at positive and negative lags that confuse the issue. Brain ache or what?
Before anybody’s head explodes just drink in the whole picture. Can you see how regular the pattern of up then down is? If we measure the positive peak-to-positive peak distance we are talking 11 years plus or minus a couple of years.
If we now measure the negative peak-to-negative peak distance we are still talking 11 years plus or minus a couple of years. This, ladles and jellyspoons, is evidence of the mean daily sunspot number and Arctic land surface temperature anomaly oscillating in and out of phase with a periodicity that matches the solar cycle of approximately 11 years.
Cross-correlation (a technique that is used in engineering) reveals that the temperature of the Arctic land mass is most definitely linked to the solar cycle but it isn’t rigidly locked to the solar cycle.
Phase shifts are occurring (most likely due to lengthening and shortening of the cycle periods for both series) and these serve to muddy the water such that if we are not aware of this it would appear as if there is no relationship.
Pulling The Wool
Indeed so, for if I run a bivariate correlation of the differenced series depicted in the first slide I end-up with a total flop at r = 0.034 (p=0.709, n=122).
If I was an unscrupulous sort pushing a political agenda or bigging-up my academic career or flogging my latest book then I’d report this as hard factual evidence that the sun doesn’t play a role in determining Arctic land surface temperatures.
I’d back this by pointing out that the total solar irradiance (TSI) of the sun has changed very little since the seventeenth century and present (0.05 percent – 0.1 percent) and changes very slowly on decadal and longer timescales so cannot possibly be the driver for the changes we’ve seen in land surface temperature over the last couple of decades.
Except I’d be pulling the wool, and very few people would understand why.
What, How?
What we’re looking at here is a mechanism that is likely nothing to do with solar irradiance (visible and infra red light) and everything to do with the interplay of electric fields, magnetic fields, ionised particle streams (solar wind), cosmic rays, extreme ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff I shall be teasing out of NASA/NOAA wool later this year that reveal issues in how we go about measuring TSI and how the big players go about deliberately ignoring solar effects on climate, including the fudges embedded within CMIP6 that were supposed to tackle the phenomenon of solar particle forcing.
Skeletons in the closet are numerous as we shall see in the coming months!
See more here substack.com
Header image: phys.org
About the author: John Dee (not his real name) is a former British government G7-level scientist who now uses his analytical skills to highlight where the public is being lied to on various subjects.
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
VOWG
| #
More computer models, hot diggity dog. They worked so well with “covid”.
Reply
Koen Vogel
| #
An excellent post, though somewhat confusing, perhaps even to the author. Apparently climate change is not as simple as More CO2 More Temperature. But clear evidence that a) solar cycles play.a role but b) there is a confounding process and c) solar irradiation is not the confounding process. Very enlightening.The Arctic is a special case as it warms faster and more than the rest of the planet, and there may be a lag between Arctic and global heating.
Reply
Paul
| #
I’ve been following the Electric Universe school of thinking for some decades now, and support the basic premise of everything is soaked in unimaginable amounts of electricity.
With that in mind, is it possible, plausible that the earth is one big thermal diode?
This creates the hot end, cold end, but that’s tempered with the tilt of the planet and where in the elliptic we are.
Reply
Moffin
| #
Nikola Tesla, “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Moffin,
Energy creates electricity by separating matter into positive and negative charges.
Herb
Reply
Howdy
| #
In this case Herb, new age matters are being stated. The Vibrational frequency everything has, including people.
Reply
Moffin
| #
Spot on Howdy. An example of frequency is the singers pitch to shatter a crystal glass and a slower frequency is the approx. 100,000 year eccentricity Milankovitch cycle.
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Moffin and PSI Readers,
Sir Edmund Hillary stated something like the following which I read but now do not remember its reference and cannot cite ifs reference.
Rivers of dense, cold , air flows down snow covered rivers of Antarctica just rivers of liquid water would if the temperature was greater. Which I do not remember him as adding: JUST AS GLACIERS DO.
But I do remember him as stating the temperatures of these katabatic winds.
katabatic | ˌkadəˈbadik ,|adjective Meteorology, (of a wind) caused by local downward motion of cool air. (New Oxford American Dictionary). “Cool air” because the “cold air” is being warmed by adiabatic warming as the air rapidly flows to a lower elevation. However, this warming is limited (offset) because the extreme cold air of the high plateau is the result of a cloudless atmosphere which does hinder the surface’s emission’s transmission toward space.
Now I must add that the extremely cold atmosphere over the plateau drains from its upper most extent. Flushing any ozone in this Antarctica atmosphere, over the plateau, rapidly down to sea level.
Have a good day
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Jerry,
The atmosphere exists because above absolute 0 the gas molecules absorb energy, convert to a gas, and then that gas expands. As the molecules absorb more energy the collisions between molecules transfer more energy causing expansion. When those gas molecules lose energy the gas contracts (moves towards the center of the Earth). This loss of energy does not cause the gas molecules to gain energy. The increase in temperature is due to more molecules (mass) transferring energy (momentum) to the thermometer. There is no adiabatic heating.
Your ozone statement is also crap. Ozone is an unstable molecule which will decompose into an oxygen molecule and an oxygen atom when it loses energy. The colder it is, the faster it decomposes and the shorter its lifespan..
Herb
Reply