>This is quick post about an unusual similarity between the curves of two entirely different data sets.
The Armagh Observatory has numerous data sets unique to their location. One such data set is the hours of sunshine from 1880 to 2004. For the following graph, Figure 1, I converted their seasonal data to annual hours of sunshine. The data starts on page 86 of the paper titled “Meteorological Data recorded at Armagh Observatory from 1795 to 2004: Volume 10 – Daily, Monthly, Seasonal and Annual Hours of Bright Sunshine 1880-2004”, Butler et al.
http://climate.arm.ac.uk/calibrated/sun/sun-text-plus-tabs.pdf
http://i36.tinypic.com/1zobxac.jpg
Figure 1
The shape of the curve caught my eye, so I inverted it, Figure 2.
http://i33.tinypic.com/3091z47.jpg
Figure 2
Look familiar?
http://i35.tinypic.com/s3djds.jpg
Figure 3
Ponder that for a while.
Does anyone recall any other curves with the same basic shape?
SOURCE
The data bank of the Armagh Obsrvatory is found here:
http://climate.arm.ac.uk/main.html
The recently updated version of the Extended Reconstructed SST (ERSST.v3b), along with land surface temperature and combined (land + ocean) surface temperatures, are available in various latitudinal bands at:
ftp://eclipse.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ersstv3b/pdo
The overview for the update is here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/ersstv3.php
Bob Tisdale - Climate Observations 
>Bob,There’s very rough agreement between the shape of those graphs and a 21 year running mean of sunspot numbers, of which a quick plot can be seen here:http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:256Basil
>Thanks, Basil. That elevated stretch between approximately 1940 and 1960, which would be dominated by the peak of Sunspot Cycle 19, is tough to explain–unless there’s a maximum rate at which oceans can warm. That would then suppress that period–just thinking out loud.