LOVE THIS ONE! IT'S THE SUN, STUPID!
So Far so good.
"Mathematica" first plots out the data itself (see Atachment 1)
The first part of the instruction set lets "mathematica" do a Fourier Transform on the data, ie. searching out the periodicities, if there are any. The result is shown on Attachment 2.
The transform result shows a sharp spike at the 11 year point (I wonder what is significant about 11 years?). The second part of the instructions now acts upon this observed spike (the Cos 11 bit), to extract it's waveform from the rest of the noise. The result is shown as a waveform in attachment 3, the waves having an 11-year period, with the long-term Sydney warming easily evident.
Attachment 4 shows the original Sydney data overlaid against the 11-year periodicity.
It would appear that the solar cycle does indeed affect temperature.
(I tried the same run on the CRU global temperature set. Even though CRU must be highly smoothed by the time all the averages are worked out, the 11-year pulse is still there, albeit about half the size of Sydneys).
Stay cool.
William Herschel correlated wheat prices in London (a proxy for climate) with sunspot number over a span of a couple of centuries as far back as the late 1700’s.
2005-06-30 First look at S+C's MSU vn5.2?
Not sure what they are talking about.?