Main Message

Global temperatures will come off the current plateau into a sustained and significant cooling, beginning 2017 or maybe as late as 2021. The cooling will be about 0.3 °C in the 2020s, taking the planet back to the global temperature that prevailed in the 1980s. This was signaled (though not caused) by a fall in underlying solar radiation starting in 2004, one of the three largest falls since 1610 when records started. There is a delay of one sunspot cycle, currently 13 years (2004+13 = 2017).

(Please note that even if this solar hypothesis and prediction prove to be wrong, the identification of the errors in the conventional climate models and the finding that carbon dioxide is not the main cause of recent global warming are still correct.)

Documents

• Systems, Sinusoids, the Fourier Transform, and Filters. Frequency-domain knowledge behind this work, explained from scratch, including linear invariant systems, sinusoids, the Fourier transform, simple low pass, delay and notch filters, transfer functions, and step responses. [Last updated 19 Aug 2015.]
• The Optimal Fourier Transform (OFT). The OFT is a low-noise variation of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), essentially the same except the OFT is free to use any frequencies rather than the prescribed grid of frequencies used by the DFT. Slow to calculate, but more useful for analyzing time series containing only a few of the cycles of interest. [Last updated 18 Oct 2015.]
• Spreadsheet (Excel, 20 MB). Contains various climate data (with sources noted), the notch-delay solar model, and all the calculations. Programmed in VBA, the BASIC programming language that is part of Microsoft Office. Requires Excel to run the programming. [Last updated 17 Feb 2016.]

New Blog Posts

The notch-delay solar theory was introduced in the old blog posts of 2014, but was left incomplete. It has now been extended and updated, and is being rolled out at Joanne's blog in late 2015 and early 2016.

• New Science 20: Introduction. The series of blog posts continues on from the critique of climate model architecture that showed that carbon dioxide caused less than 20% of the recent global warming. This post begins the solar part of the series, where we search for what did cause the warming.
• New Science 10: Externally-Driven Albedo (EDA). Albedo is the fraction of incoming radiation reflected back out to space without heating the Earth, about 30%. Externally-driven albedo (EDA) is the albedo other than that due to feedback in response to surface warming—presumably it is caused by external influences. Here we show that EDA has at least twice as much influence on surface warming, and maybe much more than that, as the direct effect of variations in the total solar irradiance (TSI).
• New Science 21: The Notch. The empirical transfer function from total solar irradiance (TSI) to surface temperature has a notch at 11 years, the frequency of the sunspots. The extra radiation at every sunspot peak is not producing any discernible warming at the Earth's surface, where it should be detectable. Therefore a countervailing cooling influence is present at precisely the times when TSI peaks, is synchronized to the Sun, and is as strong as the direct heating effect of TSI. Furthermore, the transfer function is flat for low frequencies, suggesting that there is exists an indirect solar sensitivity that is ~14 times greater than the direct heating effect of TSI.
• New Science 22: The Delay. From independent and disparate observations, this post makes a strong case for a delay of ~11 years, or one sunspot cycle, between a change in smoothed or underlying TSI and the corresponding change in surface temperature here on Earth. We mean an actual delay between two discrete events—there is NOT a corresponding gradual surface warming smeared out through time as the effect of the change in TSI builds up over a decade or more. It’s not as if the energy from the Sun is arriving on Earth in eight minutes and then taking 11 years to reach thermometers. TSI is not the cause of global warming, rather it is a leading indicator. The effect due to a change in TSI only begins to act one sunspot cycle later, and quickly affects the surface temperature here on Earth. The flickering signals from total sunlight are a clue that precedes some other change in the solar dynamo, and it is that change that affects Earth’s surface temperature.
• New Science 23: The Force-X Hypothesis. Four clues about strong influences on surface warming are pieced together into a working hypothesis about a single strong warming influence from the Sun, called “force X”.
• New Science 24: The Force-ND Hypothesis. An alternative hypothesis to the force X hypothesis, with two indirect warming influences: “force N” causes notching, while “force D” explains the delay, the indirect solar sensitivity (ISS), and the externally-driven albedo (EDA) finding.
• New Science 25: Possible Force N,D, or X Mechanisms. We don’t know the mechanisms behind forces X, N, or D. We canvas several possibilities, including Solar stimulation of ozone via UV or energetic electron or particle precipitation, cosmic rays, solar stimulation of plankton, meteoritic dust, the interplanetary electric field, asymmetries in the motion of the Sun, and the influence of the Jovian planets.
• New Science 26: The fall in solar output in 2004 and the delay means global cooling is just around the corner. The notch-delay hypothesis predicts sustained and significant global cooling starting sometime from 2017 to 2022, of about 0.3 °C but perhaps milder. The 2020s will be no warmer than the 1980s.

Old Blog Posts

The theory was initially introduced to the world in a series of blog posts on Joanne's blog in 2014:

• BIG NEWS Part I: Historic Development — New Solar Climate Model Coming. Introduction.
• BIG NEWS Part II: Mysterious Notch Filter Found in the Climate. The TSI peaks every 11 years or so, yet there is no detected corresponding peak in the temperature, which is unexpected. This implies there is a natural notch filter that filters out the 11-year hum from the Sun.
• BIG NEWS Part III: The Notch Means a Delay. Several independent findings of a delay around 11 years between changes in solar radiation and the corresponding effect on surface temperatures exist in the literature, and without a delay it is hard to see how solar changes could have much influence on surface temperature (e.g. Lockwood and Froehlich 2007).
• BIG NEWS part IV: Understanding the Mysterious 11 Year Solar Delay. The delay is a true delay, not merely a time constant of a dissipative element like a store of ocean heat. The notching suggests that there is a countervailing force that counteracts the TSI peaks in the global surface temperature, which must be synchronized to the Sun.
• BIG NEWS Part V: Escaping Heat. The Three Pipes Theory and the RATS Multiplier.
• BIG NEWS part VI: Building a New Solar Climate Model with the Notch Filter. The notch filter, a delay filter, low pass filter and RATS multiplier are arranged in their correct order. The notch and delay filters are shown to modulate the albedo of the Earth — how much solar radiation is let into the climate system after reflections by clouds, ice, snow and so on.
• BIG NEWS Part VII: Hindcasting with the Solar Model. The notch-delay solar model hindcasts temperatures from 1770 to 2013 reasonably well, getting most of the major turning points about right, including “the pause”. It also reproduces some of the short term jiggles known as “natural variation”, which the CO2 models cannot begin to predict because CO2 rises smoothly.
• BIG NEWS VIII: New Solar Theory Predicts Imminent Global Cooling. There are three big drops in solar radiation in the 400 years of records. The first, in the 1600s, led to the Maunder Minimum, the coldest time in the last 400 years. The second in Napoleon’s time, led to the Dalton Minimum, the second coldest time in the last 400 years. The third started in 2004, but hasn’t led to cooling...yet. The delay is tied to the solar cycle length, currently 13 years, so the cooling is likely to start in 2004 + 13 = 2017. The cooling will be at least 0.2°C, maybe 0.5°C.
• BIG NEWS part IX: The Solar Model! The spreadsheet containing all the data, model, and calculations, all in one Microsoft Excel file, now available for download.
• Possible Physical Mechanism. Stephen Wilde's hypothesis could explain how the Sun is driving the albedo, and appears to fit with the notch-delay theory. It involves the Sun affecting ozone differentially over the poles and equator (possibly via extreme UV and energetic electron precipitation), which affects the height of the tropopause over the poles and equator like a see-saw, causing climate zones to shift towards then away from the equator, moving the jet streams and changing them from more zonal jet streams to more meridonal ones. When more meridonal, the jet streams wander in loops further north and south, resulting in longer lines of air mass mixing at climate zone boundaries, which creates more clouds. Thus the Sun can modulate the Earth's albedo.

Related blog posts:

• Lubos and a few misconceptions. Lubos Motl posted some inaccurate criticisms of the model, so we correct the main ones. Basically he attacked us for things we never said.
• Are transfer functions meaningless (the “white noise” point)? Beware your assumptions!. A review of the assumptions underlying the investigation that led to the notch, because some people haven't noticed both assumptions or appreciated their implications.
• The Solar Model finds a big fall in TSI data that few seem to know about. Leif Svalgaard beclowned himself in a vitriolic orgy of baseless accusations over at WUWT, so we graph his own data, and that of the IPCC’s preferred TSI reconstruction, and show that they also show strong falls in TSI, albeit from 1996 as well as 2003/2004.
• More strange adventures in TSI data: the miracle of 900 fabricated, fraudulent days. Answers the fallacious charges of Lief Svalgaard and Willis Eschenbach in comments in a recent post at WUWT. The repetitious, tendentious, and aggressive nature of their comments mark them as something other than truth-seeking.
• Notching up open review improvements — a correction to Part III. Originally we thought a notch in a linear invariant system necessarily implied the existence of an associated delay. However electrical engineer Bernie Hutchins showed that a notch filter can be causal, not necessarily non-causal as we thought in Part III. [We later discovered the original calculations using FFTs were correct, just incomplete -- a notch filter can be either causal or non-causal. However there is a lot of physical evidence for an 11 -year delay, so perhaps this misconception was a lucky accident, alerting us to the delay. Apart from the notch-causality, the rest of the theory stands. Oct 2015.]
• Is a mini-ice age coming in 2030, and does the sun have two dynamos? Another model of the Sun predicts decreasing solar activity. Combined with the Notch-Delay solar theory, this suggests cooler decades ahead.