More proof global temps lag SOI

SOI forecast January 2011

NIWA, listen to this, it’s amazing

UPDATE 1, 11 JAN 2011, 09:30 NZDT

On December 1 last year, we wrote about Bryan Leyland’s prediction of significant cooling before the end of the year coming true. You can see from the chart exactly what happened. Not only that, it would appear that the temperature has not finished going down yet.

This remarkable forecast, now some eight months old, comes out of a 2009 paper showing a lagged correlation between global temperatures and the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), calculated from fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin, and indicative also of the start (and the state) of a La Nina (as now) or an El Nino. This correlation is a lot more convincing than comparing global temperature with CO2 levels!

Bryan Leyland

Bryan Leyland.

Leyland’s latest prediction

What is remarkable about this is that a retired engineer in New Zealand, armed only with Excel and the paper by McLean et al., was able to make this prediction and publish it on the Internet. Why did the “climate scientists” fail in this? They said nothing about end-of-year cooling, predicting instead that 2010 would be the hottest year ever! It wasn’t, but it was only marginally cooler than 1998.

Bryan now makes another prediction: world temperatures will remain cool until June at least. Whether or not this is the beginning of long-term cooling induced by sunspots (or anything else) remains to be seen.

SOI highest December value ever recorded

But there is no doubt that the present La Nina is intense. According to the Australian BoM ENSO Wrap-Up web page, “The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) value for December of +27 is the highest December SOI value on record, as well as being the highest value for any month since November 1973.” These seem to indicate we’re in for at least several months of cooling.

Here’s a longer-term look at the astonishing lagged correlation between global temperature and the SOI. Why hasn’t anyone else noticed this?

longer-term SOI v. global temperature

UPDATE 1, 11 JAN 2011, 09:30 a.m. NZDT

Joanne Nova has an interesting post on this global temperature prediction. She also reminds us that the SOI trace is inverted, as well as being pushed seven months into the future.

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8 Thoughts on “More proof global temps lag SOI

  1. Bob D on 11/01/2011 at 3:21 pm said:

    The current La Nina is predicted (by NOAA) to last through the SH winter. This means we can probably expect globally cooler conditions for almost a year, because of the lag.

  2. Richard C (NZ) on 11/01/2011 at 5:05 pm said:

    But I thought (as Doug Mackie puts it at HT)-

    But as an example of successful whacking I would like to cite the case of the McLean, de Freitas and Carter paper. It was shot down mercilessly. Now I’m not great frequenter of the denialosphere but I have formed the impression that this work is not often cited now that anyone can easily post links to solid refudiations.

    Note the Sarah Palin vernacular.

  3. Clarence on 13/01/2011 at 10:16 pm said:

    In climate science, it is unknown to predict an outcome of a particular hypothesis and accept that its truth will stand or fall on whether the prediction turns out to be correct.

    Instead, climate scientists “project” future outcomes based on storylines which are improbable but which can’t be disproved by results until all contemporaries are dead.

    • Goodness, Clarence, are you suggesting that some scientists might disregard this negation of the dangerous anthropogenic global warming theory?

      Now, just what the gosh-darn was that theory, anyways?

  4. val majkus on 16/01/2011 at 12:19 pm said:

    Warwick Hughes http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=780#more-780 has a Guest article by Pat Frank
    Dr Frank says
    We’ve all read the diagnosis, for example here, that the global climate has suffered “unprecedented warming,” since about 1900. The accepted increase across the 20th century is 0.7 (+/-)0.2 C. As an experimental chemist, I always wondered at that “(+/-)0.2 C.” In my experience, it seemed an awfully narrow uncertainty, given the exigencies of instruments and outdoor measurements. I did a study which led to the paper that is just out in Energy and Environment [5]. Here’s the title and the abstract:

    Title: “Uncertainty in the Global Average Surface Air Temperature Index: A Representative Lower Limit”
    (abstract follows and conclusion)
    This lower limit of instrumental uncertainty implies that Earth’s fever is indistinguishable from zero Celsius, at the 1σ level, across the entire 20th century.

  5. val majkus on 16/01/2011 at 12:25 pm said:

    There’s a link in a comment to the above article by Geoff Sherrington
    to http://www.geoffstuff.com/Jane%20Warne%20thermometry%20Broadmeadows.pdf
    A Preliminary Investigation of Temperature Screen Design and Their
    Impacts on Temperature Measurements

  6. Andy on 17/01/2011 at 8:19 am said:

    Joe Bastardi is on a similar theme here: (video)

    http://www.accuweather.com/video.asp?channel=vblog_bastardi

  7. Pingback: McLean’s folly and the climate clueless

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