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By Dr. Dietrich E. Koelle

(Translated/edited by P Gosselin)

As the reconstruction of the climate’s development in the past by proxy data shows, there’s a series of temperature cycles that appear to be unknown, or ignored by many climate scientists. Among these are the larger climate cycles of 150 million to 180 million years (see Part 1 and Part 2), but also the shorter and for us the more important following cycles:

1000 years (900-1100) Suess cycle with +/- 0.65°C

230 years (230-250) deVries cycle with +/- 0.30°C

65 years (60-65) Ocean cycles with +/- 0.25°C

In principle these cycles are sinusoidal in behavior as depicted in Figure 1. Bob Tisdale has also shown how the temperature increase of the 65-year cycle from 1975 to 1998 led to the assumption that it is due CO2 emissions because they too happened to be parallel. This has been naively extended all the way to the year 2100 and forms the basis for the climate models and the invention of the so-called “climate catastrophe”.



Figure 1: Sine wave characteristic of the 60/65-year ocean cycle (Source: Bob Tisdale at WUWT).

In this analysis we will attempt to see how the temperature development could be over the next 700 years, assuming of course that the mentioned climate cycles of the past will continue on into the future. This should not be (mis)understood as a forecast for the future climate. Up to now there is only the IPCC forecast that the global temperature will rise by 2 to 5°C by the year 2100 – based only on the expected CO2 increase. However that theory has failed to work over the last 18 ears because the various natural climate factors and cycles never got considered, or they were not allowed to be considered in the climate models. Included among these factors are the mean cloud cover (albedo) and the resulting effective solar insolation (watts per sqm) at the earth’s surface, or the sea surface, which is decisive for the temperature development.Next Figure 2 below depicts the 1000-year cycle and the 230-year cycle, which have been reconstructed from historical proxy data. They stem from a combination of results from various publications in the field of paleoclimatology over the last years. The diagram of the last 3200 years distinctly shows a 1000-year cycle; the last 2000 years of which are confirmed by historical documents. In fact this cycle goes back all the way to the end of the last ice age, i.e. some 9000 years. The reason for the cycle is still unknown today, yet its existence is undisputed.

The current warm period is no “anthropogenic product”, rather it is the natural result of a repeating 1000-year cycle that goes back far into the past. Today’s warm period does not even reach the temperatures seen in the past warm periods, which at times were 1 to 2°C higher. Moreover it is important to note that during both of the past temperature maxima of 1000 and 2000 years ago, the CO2 values were at 280 ppm while today they are at 400 ppm. This indicates that the earlier warmer periods likely were related to natural solar activity and not to a rise in CO2 because there was no CO2 rise during those warm phases.

Figure 2: Global temperature over the last 3200 years shows a distinct 1000-year cycle along with the 230-year cycle.

Of historical significance is the fact that over the course of human history warm periods were always times of economic and cultural prosperity. The cooler periods always led to serious problems that led to starvation and huge waves of human migration in Europe. Here it becomes undeniably clear that the alarmist claims that “the earth has a fever” made by politicians such as Al Gore are patentedly preposterous.

The “ideal” 1000-year cycle is varied by the 230-year cycle, which in turn gets varied by the 65-year oceanic cycle, which is depicted in Figure 1. Added to these cycles are the various typically non-cyclical events such as the ENSO, volcanic eruptions, etc. Figure 3 shows the temperature curve for the last 165 years along with the 230-year cycle and the effect of the 65-year ocean cycle. The current temperature values fluctuate by plus/minus 0.2°C due to the effects of ENSO, sunspot activity, volcanic eruptions, etc.

Figure 3: The 230-year cycle over the last 165 years has been superimposed by a 65-year cycle as well as by other effects like the irregular ENSO events and large volcanic eruptions.

The temperature rise of 0.6°C during the 1975-1998 period, which has triggered all the current climate hysteria, was of the same magnitude as the previous increase that occurred in the 1910 to 1940 period, which in turn had nothing to do with CO2 because back then the concentration in the atmosphere rose by only some 10 ppm (from 297 to 308 ppm). Also the temperature increase of 1.5°C over the last 150 to 250 years is also nothing “out of the ordinary” or “dangerous”, as we are often told in the media. Instead it is only the natural recovery from the Little Ice Age (LIA) that had gripped the planet from 1400 to 1750. The LIA not only led to the Thames River and Baltic Sea freezing over, but resulted in severe hunger in Europe and caused a mass migration to America.

The figures also show that all three climate cycles reached their maximum shortly after the end of the last millennium. With that in mind, we actually should have expected even higher temperatures than those seen in previous warm periods. Here perhaps the fact that the global temperature has seen a negative overall trend since the Holocene Maximum plays a role. That means that the global temperature has fallen by 2°C over the past 8000 years.

Based on historical climate fact, it is possible to extend the trend into the future to form a possible climate scenario. Figure 4 depicts the extrapolation of the 1000-year and 230-year cycle along with the generally expected trend. Added to this are the fluctuations of the 65-year ocean cycles, the impacts of the ENSO-events, sunspot cycles and volcanic eruptions, which result in additional fluctuations of a few tenths of a degree – just as they have in the past.

Figure 4: Extrapolating the 1000-year and 230-year cycles 700 years into the future.

Figure 4 shows the real global temperature development of the past 1000 years and its theoretical continuation over the next 700 years. This is not a forecast, but rather it is the extended possible course of the over all temperature trend, which over the mid-term in the next 100 years could see a drop of approx. 0.3°C and a 2°C drop in global temperature in 350 years – which would mean conditions just like those seen in the Little Ice Age from 1450 to 1700. In about 1000 years the 1000-year cycle will again take on its warm phase and temperatures like those of today can be expected.

In the next 50 years there would be no temperature increase, but rather a slight temperature decrease is expected. In the decades before and after the year 2300 a powerful temperature drop could occur because both the 230-year cycle and 100-year cycle would be dropping rapidly together in parallel.

References:

1 J.R.Petit et al.: Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420 000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica, Nature Vol.399, June 1999

2 Th.Steuber et al.: Low-latitude seasonality of Cretaceous temperatures in warm and cold episodes, NATURE Vo.437, 27 Oct.2005

3 W.S.Broecker and G.H. Denon: What Drives Glacial Cycles ? Scientific American, Jan.1990

4 H.Kawamura et al.: Antarctic Dome C Temperature Reconstruction, Nature, 23 Aug.2007

5 J.Veizer et al.: Evidence for decoupling of atmospheric CO 2 and global climate during the Phanerozoic eon, NATURE Vo.408, 7 Dec.2000

6 K.Kashiwaya et al.: Orbit-related long-term climate cycles revealed in a 12-MYr continental record from Lake Baikal, NATURE Vol410, 1 March 2001

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Note from the Die Kalte-Sonne editors: The main point of this post is to provide any analysis of natural cycles and their logical extension into the future. Unaccounted in the projection shown in Figure 4 is the climate impact of CO2, whose role in climate today is hotly disputed. In our book “The Neglected Sun” we presented two CO2 climate sensitivity scenarios: 1.0°C and 1.5 °C warming for a CO2 doubling. Current studies have corrected the original IPCC value of 3°C strongly downwards (see our articles “Studies from 2014 provide hope: warming effect of CO2 is considerably over-estimated. Official correction is imminent“). It will be exciting to watch how research will develop with respect to climate sensitivity over the coming years.