.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

David Archibald's Funny Sunny Prediction

Sou | 2:40 AM Go to the first of 4 comments. Add a comment

Global Surface Temperature Prediction - David Archibald


David "it's the sun" Archibald has another post and another prediction on WUWT.   Back in 2006 he published a paper in E&E (yes, that's the one) which made a prediction in the abstract (my bold):

Projections of weak solar maxima for solar cycles 24 and 25 are correlated with the terrestrial climate response to solar cycles over the last three hundred years, derived from a review of the literature. Based on solar maxima of approximately 50 for solar cycles 24 and 25, a global temperature decline of 1.5°C is predicted to 2020, equating to the experience of the Dalton Minimum. To provide a baseline for projecting temperature to the projected maximum of solar cycle 25, data from five rural, continental US stations with data from 1905 to 2003 was averaged and smoothed. The profile indicates that temperatures remain below the average over the first half of the twentieth century.
I've no idea why he thought "five rural, continental US stations" be they averaged and smoothed or not would be an adequate "baseline" for global surface temperatures.  But there you go.  I didn't bother with all that because it made no sense. Instead I've charted this prediction using GISTemp (click to enlarge):




That's colder than the coldest time in the Little Ice Age - in less than seven years from now!

Source: Adapted from Jos Hagelaars



Central England Temperature Prediction - Archibald-style


Today he seems to have changed to using the Central England temperature.  He has an optimistic headline: CET cooling in line with solar model prediction, although to my knowledge, he has never previously made a prediction about CET temperature.  The only other paper he references is about the temperature in Svalbard.  I expect he isn't fussy what his prediction is about, anywhere will do.  Might be Melbourne Australia next, or Bundangawoolarangeera :).

In any case, I'm no clearer on what he's predicting than any commenter on the thread, but I'll have a shot.  This is what he writes:
Over Solar Cycle 23 the average temperature of the CET was 10.4°C so the model predicts that the average over Solar Cycle 24 will be 9.0°C. For the first four years of Solar Cycle 24, it has averaged 9.8°C. For the prediction to hold from here, the average temperature over the remainder of the cycle will have to be 8.7°C. The average temperature of 2010 was 8.8°C – only 0.1°C more than what is needed from here. With solar maximum of Solar Cycle 24 now past us, the prediction is in the bag.
Thanks to Richard Altrock’s green corona emissions diagram we can also predict average temperature over Solar Cycle 25. Interpreting that diagram, Solar Cycle 24 will be at least 16 years long. In turn, that means that the CET over Solar Cycle 25 will be a further 1.4°C cooler than the average over Solar Cycle 24.
You'll remark that his optimism about his "prediction" is probably misplaced, if he ever did make a prediction about Central England temperatures.  In any case, what I've done is plotted the temperatures from 2013 onwards to get an average of 9.0°C for Solar Cycle 24 and an average of 7.6°C for Solar Cycle 25.  Here is the result, based on HadCET.




I don't think too many people will be betting his way.  What do you think?

PS Anthony Watts does keep strange company, doesn't he.  It might be a matter of Anthony being "impressed" by the photos on David Archibald's website.  Just like he's impressed by a titled potty peer.  I can't think of any other reason why he'd post their crank ideas - or maybe I can.


4 comments:

  1. Archiblad 2006 is clearly one of the worst climate papers ever.

    ReplyDelete
  2. At one point Archibald says that the solar maximum is past so he can be certain of his prediction:

    "Over Solar Cycle 23 the average temperature of the CET was 10.4°C so the model predicts that the average over Solar Cycle 24 will be 9.0°C. For the first four years of Solar Cycle 24, it has averaged 9.8°C. For the prediction to hold from here, the average temperature over the remainder of the cycle will have to be 8.7°C. The average temperature of 2010 was 8.8°C – only 0.1°C more than what is needed from here. With solar maximum of Solar Cycle 24 now past us, the prediction is in the bag."

    Shouldn't he have asked the Sun first? It is predicted, following an upsurge of activity in May, to have a second peak sometime in the summer.

    http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml

    Ruddy nuisance, this Sun thing. Won't do as its told.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good point. However IMO the duration of the solar cycle is the least of his problems :)

      Delete
  3. This will rival the McLean '1955 or even earlier' prediction!

    ReplyDelete

Instead of commenting as "Anonymous", please comment using "Name/URL" and your name, initials or pseudonym or whatever. You can leave the "URL" box blank. This isn't mandatory. You can also sign in using your Google ID, Wordpress ID etc as indicated. NOTE: Some Wordpress users are having trouble signing in. If that's you, try signing in using Name/URL. Details here.

Click here to read the HotWhopper comment policy.