Dancing Partners

From WUWT
Archibald on sea level rise and solar cycles

Anthony’s post of the Jason data reminded me that I had produced this graph:



It is derived from a post on Climate Audit of Holgate’s rate of change of sea level rise over the 20th century.

The saw tooth pattern reminded someone of the solar cycles and he overlaid it. I had the graph redrawn. The correlation is striking. The reason the Earth came out of the Little Ice Age is because we had a more active Sun, more active than at any time for the previous 8,000 years. Holgate determined that 70% of the sea level rise of the 20th century was due to thermal expansion of the oceans and the rest due to melting glaciers. Now that the Sun has become less active, that will work in reverse.

Craig Loehle’s recent paper derived that the oceans post 2003 lost one third of the heat they had gained from 1990 to 2003. Although the maximum amplitude of Solar Cycle 23 was in 2000, maximum activity was in 2003. While we are mentioning solar activity, the Oulu neutron count is still climbing.