Astronomical Society of Australia publishes new paper warning of solar quieting and global cooling

I feel like I’m about to step in it but I don’t see why a free-falling astronaut doesn’t feel forces when those forces acting on him change the direction from which they are felt?
Also, if the mechanism ends up electrical, think of the large apparent change in Van de Graaf generators from minimal outside stimulus.
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“I have a little bit of trouble understanding how the “mass at a distance” gravitational effects of Jupiter and Saturn could have much effect on the solar dynamo.” — Well… so what?
The first step is to figure out whether something is going on, only then can you try to explain it. If the use of this theory produces correct predictions, it really doesn’t matter if anybody understands the mechanisms producing it yet. It may yet turn out that the theory produces correct predictions, but the supposed reasoning is completely wrong. It would not be the first time that (mostly-)correct theories were wrong about the mechanisms.
(I have not examined the claim they are making correct predictions consistently.)

One thing is obvious with regards the sun, climate etc is we need to have rigorous public debate before any ‘green’ laws are enacted. Our governments also need to have contingency plans for cooling as well as warming

I don’t believe a word of that. It’s not the first time that planetary “influences” have been invoked to explain sunspot activity. It remembers me of the infamous book “The Jupiter Effect” of Gribbin and Plageman which was published in 1974, and in which it was predicted that Los Angeles would be destroyed by a giant seism triggered by the so-called “superconjunction” of the planets in 1982.

My question is… Can they extrapolate this back and explain Dalton and Maunder Minima and the Medieval Warm Period? Did the sun hit an orbital/rotational sweet spot for these times?

John-X (20:44:37) :
“Dr. Ivanka Charvátová has also worked on this problem. See for example, “Can origin of the 2400-year cycle of solar activity be caused. by solar inertial motion?” (I have the PDF of this paper, but not the URL at the moment – sorry).”
It is here
http://www.ann-geophys.net/18/399/2000/angeo-18-399-2000.pdf
I found the hypotheses presented there fascinating, so I made a simulator verifying that the diagrams presented in that paper are in fact correct
http://arnholm.org/astro/sun/sc24/sim1/
What a lot of people do not realise, is that the solar system barycenter can coincide with the sun’s own center of mass or be as much as 2.2 solar radii away from it. This value is really the sun’s own orbital radius, and it changes rapidly.
A possible link between this effect and solar activity is due to conservation of the solar system’s angular momentum. When the sun’s orbital radius approaches zero, the sun’s orbital contribution to the solar system’s angular momentum appears to be very much reduced or vanish. So it could be that the sun’s own spin will have to change correspondingly. If the sun is not homogenious, then it seems plausible that internal relative inertial forces will be the result. Maybe these could explain the variation in solar activity.

Mostly (historically) a scientist will recoil from this purely because it “smacks” of astrology – “the planets have an effect on the climate old chap – never!”.
Kudos to Ian for his insight, his perseverance and his victory, for it is nothing less, in the face of the inertia inherent in monolithic establishments.
The irony is that those with the biggest toys and therefore the biggest chance of pinning this down have only grudgingly, and recently, joined the fray.
I know a lot of Anthony’s readers will have seen this paper but for those that have not:
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/Citations.aspx?id=330
TITLE AND SUBTITLE:
Apparent Relations Between Solar Activity and Solar Tides Caused by the Planets
AUTHOR(S):
Hung, Ching-Cheh
“…..Twenty-five of the thirty-eight largest known solar flares were observed to start when one or more tide-producing planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Jupiter) were either nearly above the event positions (<10° longitude) or at the opposing side of the Sun. The probability for this to happen at random is 0.039 percent. This supports the hypothesis that the force or momentum balance (between the solar atmospheric pressure, the gravity field, and magnetic field) on plasma in the looping magnetic field lines in solar corona could be disturbed by tides, resulting in magnetic field reconnection, solar flares, and solar storms. ”
This follows on from the work of John Nelson who, after moving to NASA (where he achieved an 85% success rate for long range prediction of favourable radio conditions) from his sponsors RCA where he realized that the @11 year sun-spot cycle of the Sun had an effect on signal transmissions.
He was in good company as Aristotle, Theophrastus, Ptolemy, Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Howard, Saxby, Herschel, Fairbridge, Jose, Milankovitch, Charvátová, and Landscheidt (amongst others) all found relationships.
Some more work (without links so as to avoid the spamfilter):
Ren Zhenqiu1
(1) Institute of Weather and Climate Research, Academy of Meteorological Science, SMA, Beijing
Received: 12 November 1985
Abstract This paper points out that (1) there were 5 abnormal periods of climate in China over the last 1000 years, in which the frequency, the severity and the influenced area of such calamities as low temperature, drought and flood increased greatly; (2) there were 3 or 4 worse periods of climate over the past 5000 years which were more severe than the above-mentioned climate; (3) the momental effect of the geocentric synods of nine planets is one of the important causes for the formation of the abnormal and worse periods of climate; and (4) from the 1960s to about 2000 A.D. China and the entire Northern Hemisphere would probably undergo another abnormal period of climate.
Khabibullo Abdusamatov head of a space research lab at the Pulkovo observatory in St. Petersburg:
“…..By 2041, solar activity will reach its minimum according to a 200-year cycle, and a deep cooling period will hit the Earth approximately in 2055-2060. It will last for about 45-65 years…. …..By the mid-21st century the planet will face another Little Ice Age, similar to the Maunder Minimum, because the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth has been constantly decreasing since the 1990s and will reach its minimum approximately in 2041….”
All of which won’t bother our pal Al as he has his (currently) $100 million and his energy gulping houses to shelter him from the coming cold.

I am a physicist, but not a solar physicist, so to an extent I’m blowing smoke here. This theory passes the smell test, i.e. nothing is obviously false about it. That does not make it true, and my smattering of astrophysics courses are over a decade back so don’t look to me for proof. I will simply try to explain how the Jovian planets _could_ influence the sun. No, this is not astrology.
The idea is based on a fundamental principle: Angular momentum is conserved.
What does that mean? Well, let’s take a simple example. You see an ice skater in a spin; she pulls her arms in and the spin becomes faster. Her angular momentum is the total sum of every bit of mass, times it’s distance from the axis of rotation, times the rotational speed. She started her spin with a total amount of angular momentum, and by pulling her arms in, they became closer to her axis of rotation. To keep angular momentum constant, rotational speed had to increase. Feel free to try this at home, kids!
Now throw in the concept of center-of-mass: For example, the Moon does not orbit the Earth; the two bodies orbit a common center of mass. In this case it is (IIRC) about a thousand miles below the earth’s surface. That’s right kids, once a month the Earth swings around a point 3/4 of an Earth radius from its center. However, this is a simple stable condition, and we don’t even notice it. This is a two-body problem.
Now let’s start looking at the whole solar system.
The Center of Mass (CoM) of the Sun and Jupiter actually lies just above the surface of the sun, at about 1.07 solar radii from the center. The CoM of the Sun-Saturn pair lies at 0.58 solar radii from the Sun’s center. So, looking at this three body system, if Jupiter and Saturn are on the same side of the sun, then the CoM is 1.65 (1.07 + 0.58 ) solar radii from the center of the sun. When they are on opposite sides of the sun, the CoM is at a mere 0.49 (1.07 – 0.58 ) solar radii. The CoMs for the other outer planets are 0.18 radii for Uranus, and 0.32 for Neptune. Adding in the other planets, the CoM for the solar system ranges from about 0.1 to 2 solar radii from the center of the sun. Jupiter dominates, but Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are significant players.
If Jupiter were the only player, this would be simple, and we’d have a nice, steady system like the Earth-Moon system. Big deal. But Jupiter is only about half the effect, AND it is also the fastest mover of the outer planets.
From the sun’s point of view, it can move from 0.1 solar radii from the CoM, out to 2 radii, in a mere 5 years or so (and other times it can spend decades at 0.7-1.3 or so). The sun’s orbital angular momentum is changing drastically during these times, but I said angular momentum is conserved. So what happens? The sun has to _transfer_ angular momentum from its orbit to its own internal rotation. Since it is a giant ball of fluid, this is likely a very complex problem indeed.
Everything up to here is freshman physics.
Now I leave freshman physics and start talking out my nether orifice: The sunspot correlation to the solar system barycenter, or CoM:
The ideas are twofold:
First, if you take a free floating ball of fluid (Mr. Sun) and perturb it with an 11 year cycle (Jupiter’s orbit relative to the other major planets) for a few billion years, you may get a bit of a resonance. It doesn’t matter if it’s weak, it is reinforced over 4 billion years. You will get an effect. Could this be why the solar cycle is so similar to Jupiter’s orbital period? My gut reaction (unscientific!!) is maybe. It’s the most fundamental perturbation in the system.
Second, you get these periodic large transients where the CoM moves from inside the Sun’s core to out in the corona in a few short years. Does this (a) mess up the sun for a short time? Probably. Does this (b) cause longer term periodicity in the solar cycle? It would not suprise me.
So that’s the theory in a nutshell. The freshman physics is sound, but as far as modeling momentum transfers in a rotating star, well, my solar modeling topped out with a static model back in undergrad.

Sorry, I put a couple colons after close parentheses, there should not be smiley faces appearing in the above post.

In an ancient fable, Chanticleer the Rooster takes credit for the sunrise.
Perhaps Al Gore and company should take credit for the lack of sunspots and claim victory for the Global Warming crowd.

Just to be a bit nitpicky, the paper doesn’t say anything about global cooling. It’s simply a quantification of a mechanical flow process within the sun’s atmosphere. The comment about cooling seems to come from a personal interview that Andrew Bolt conducted with one of the paper’s authors, Ian Wilson. The comment is neither quantified nor qualified – although it comes from an expert, he presents no research or data to support this offhand cooling hypothesis.
What is the latest on current research regarding the precise relationship between solar output and/or solar output patterns and Earth’s climate and/or climate patterns?

Well….. Astrophysicist find planets by looking for the wobble of their gravitational effect on their stars…… So there would be an effect from Jupiter on Sol….. small, but measurable I suppose…. therefor significant…? I don’t know. But it is possible.
We’ll have to wait and see I ‘spose.

Just noting it takes an average of 100,000 years for the energy produced in the center of the Sun to reach the surface and be expelled toward Earth. Some photons make the trip a little faster while others might never make it out.
Combined with the barycentre notion, and the fact that the Sun is held in orbit by the gravity of the Milky Way and its dark matter, this kind of system must be extremely complicated.

An interesting read:
http://webspinners.com/dlblanc/climate/astromod.php

We know the moon through gravity greatly influences the oceans and tidal activity on the earth. So why wouldn’t gravitational forces effect the sun, which is fluid after all. Couldn’t distorting the sun’s fluid mass influence its magnetic field?
And what about the gravitational influences of the Milky Way on our solar system?
The spiral-shaped Milky Way is glued together by gravity, whose field is constantly varying as the bodies within it constantly change their relative position. The Milky Way’s varying magnetic field could also act to vary the sun’s position, shape and fields – couldn’t it?
I’m also not sold on this idea. But it has to be checked out. Though unwelcome by those who believe good science can be advanced by populism, number-fudging, make believe consensus and blind faith in simplistic theories, good science has to withstand the test of tough scepticism and observation. Anything else is junk.

This is from Wikipedia, not the ultimate truth, but I needed a quikc reference for the solar dynamo:
“The solar dynamo is the physical process that generates the Sun’s magnetic field. The Sun is permeated by an overall dipole magnetic field, as are many other celestial bodies such as the Earth. The dipole field is produced by a circular electric current flowing deep within the star, following Ampère’s law. The current is produced by shear (stretching of material) between different parts of the Sun that rotate at different rates, and the fact that the Sun itself is a very good electrical conductor (and therefore governed by the laws of magnetohydrodynamics).
Any electrically conducting fluid can form a dynamo simply by shear within the fluid itself, because of a consequence of Lenz’s law of induction: moving the fluid through a pre-existing magnetic field will induce electrical currents in the fluid that distort the pre-existing magnetic field. The direction of the distortion is such that the existing field lines tend to be dragged along with the fluid, like threads of dye embedded in taffy or syrup. If the flow has a strong shear component then the individual field lines are stretched by the flow, amplifying the existing magnetic field. Such systems are called MHD dynamos. Depending on the structure of the flow, the dynamo may be self-exciting and stable, self-exciting and chaotic, or decaying.
The Sun’s dynamo is self-exciting and chaotic: the direction of the field reverses itself about every 11 years, causing the sunspot cycle as ropes of magnetic field lines rise to the surface of the Sun and manifest as sunspots on the surface.
The detailed mechanism of the solar dynamo is not known and is the subject of current research.”
It is obvious that what would be affected by gravitational tidal perturbations would be “shear within the fluid”, and that could change magnetic fields. A model is needed for this, and then, to have an effect on earth climate a mechanism of how magnetic fields operate on climate has to be found and proven.
So it is a long shot, that needs a lot of research.
Good.

The point about the equivalence principle is right – the sun is not aware of its motion relative to the barycentre, it can only detect it through tides or other external effects. (It would be interesting for someone to plot tidal strength instead of barycentre motion to see if the correlation holds up. I’d guess it should.)
Some further things to think about. The sun rotates differentially every 25 days at the equator, ranging up to about 35 days at the poles. So tides will occur roughly every 25-35 days. The sun’s axis of rotation is tilted only about 7 degrees to the ecliptic, so there isn’t a great deal of asymmetry there. Jupiter on its own will simply give a 25 day tide, wherever it is in its orbit. That’s why the Jupiter-Saturn synodic period was proposed, the effect being similar to that of spring/neap tides. Although it should be noted Saturn causes only one tenth the tidal force of Earth or Mercury, which are themselves about half that of Venus or Jupiter.
The forces are undoubtedly small, so some sort of amplification process is needed. Since we’re talking about sunspots and the solar magnetic cycle, the logical place to look is the physics of the solar dynamo, which is currently not fully understood. The basic theory is that the differential rotation of the equator faster than the poles causes polar magnetic field lines to get wound up, which magnifies their strength. Loops bubble up and get twisted by Coriolis-induced cyclonic cells (sensitive to disturbances?), which introduces helicity, induces a current along the toroidal field lines, which restores a polar field to get twisted up again. The magnification is exponential, so this seems fertile ground for looking for small perturbations becoming large ones.
The other area to figure out is why the sun has a differential rotation. It can because it is a fluid, but what drives it to spin faster than the underlying core at the equator? The cycle period is driven by the meridional current: which rises at the equator, moves quickly to the poles in about 7 years, where it sinks and returns slowly to the equator over about 20 years. It is a wave of activity in this underlying current that carries the sunspots towards the equator – sunspots being loops of magnetic field that bubble up and pierce the surface. And the motion is known to be affected by the changes in the magnetic field, although it’s not known if it can be affected by changes external to the sun. All the mechanisms are linked. Figure out what drives the flow, and you may be some way towards understanding how planets could affect it.
You may find these documents relevant.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1927PASP…39..228L
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0405/0405052v2.pdf
The second (big) one has a discussion of all the things that are not understood or don’t fit about the solar dynamo. Hope that helps.

Pierre Gosselin (08:56:26)
There are earth tides, i.e. the earth moving up and down with the moon’s drag. I think it is about 30 cms or so. I suppose enough to trigger earthquakes and volcanic activity if they are ripe from tectonic pressure, but I doubt they could cause them.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1022_041022_earthquakes_tides_2.html
and
http://www.jtbullitt.com/projects/small-sounds/solid-earth-tides
to listen to some 🙂 .

Interesting, too, to read speculation about global warming on Mars and Jupiter. Apparently the evil oil industry CEO’s have a baleful influence far beyond the Third Rock.

Dr Mike
“Now throw in the concept of center-of-mass: For example, the Moon does not orbit the Earth; the two bodies orbit a common center of mass. In this case it is (IIRC) about a thousand miles below the earth’s surface. That’s right kids, once a month the Earth swings around a point 3/4 of an Earth radius from its center.”
Somewhat off topic, but this comment brings me to something that Isaac Asimov put into an article many years ago.
All of the satellites of planets in the Solar System, with one exception, orbit their planets in a way which produces an orbit round the Sun which has a negative radius or orbit to the Sun for part of the track. Put another way their orbit wiggles in and out. They are also more strongly attracted by their planet than by the Sun, the advantage varying from about 4:1 up to around 100:1. However, the exception, our Moon, has an orbit around the Sub, which, while varying in magnitude, is always positive. During the portion of the orbit when it is between the Earth and the Sun, it never crosses the chord which can be drawn between first and third quarter points. Also, the Sun attracts the Moon more strongly than the Earth a factor of about 4:1.
So, the great man’s argument went that we don’t have a satellite, but a sister planet. Interesting viewpoint, if unimportant. In fact, in view of the recent downgrading of Pluto from planet to planetoid, isn’t the Moon due for upgrading from satellite to minor planet?
As to the paper, it would seem to make sense that constantly stirring the fluid of the Solar body will produce variations in the magnetic and electrostatic fields of the Sun. And since that beast is the only major player in the Earth’s weather system, well, why shouldn’t such variations have an effect on us?

Many thanks to Mike Z. for the link to the CLASSIC paper by Paul Jose.
Those interested in a quick contrast between the CO2/AGW “argument,” and the solar cycle/climate case, which come to diametrically opposed conclusions, should have a look at Archibald’s paper here
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/ArchibaldMarch2008.pdf
Archibald includes his specific predictions that the slight cooling since the ’97-’98 El Nino peak will quickly accelerate to an average decline of 0.2C _per_year_ and will reach a minimum during the predicted very weak Solar Cycle 25 in the mid-2020s.

I find it somewhat unsettling that hypotheses for correlation/causality have to be discarded just because the precise mechanism for the correlation is not known. If a long term correlation is shown with a very good statistical strength – that correlation exists. By all means request that research is done to assess causality and why there is a correlation, but claiming that there cannot be a correlation as the mechanism is unknown seems to be less than scientific. So why does weather on earth appear to be in synchronization with solar events that do not seem to alter the TSI significantly?
From Dr Mike above:
“From the sun’s point of view, [the barycenter] can move from 0.1 solar radii from the CoM, out to 2 radii, in a mere 5 years or so (and other times it can spend decades at 0.7-1.3 or so). The sun’s orbital angular momentum is changing drastically during these times, but I said angular momentum is conserved. So what happens? The sun has to _transfer_ angular momentum from its orbit to its own internal rotation. Since it is a giant ball of fluid, this is likely a very complex problem indeed.
Well the Earth is made up of a liquid core, a mantle (crust) with some breaks in it where magma can escape, liquid oceans and less dense fluid atmosphere. When the barycenter of the solar system alters rapidly the Earth’s orbital velocity will change slightly and it will be accelerated or decelerated into a slightly different orbit. If the conservation of angular momentum applies to the earth we could expect the atmosphere to show a rapid effect followed by the ocean currents and the stress on the Earth’s crust will change – it is possible that circulation of the magma may be altered. What will occur will be a differential rotation of these constituent parts of the Earth.
In earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews/2001/200112065794.html it states:
“A new NASA computer climate model reinforces the long-standing theory that low solar activity could have changed the atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere from the 1400s to the 1700s and triggered a “Little Ice Age” in several regions including North America and Europe. Changes in the sun’s energy was one of the biggest factors influencing climate change during this period, but have since been superceded by greenhouse gases due to the industrial revolution.
So perhaps the effect of the motion of the barycenter which shows effects on the Sun, also has a direct effect on Earth due to differential rotation changes as the Earth chases the barycenter. We would see this most obviously in changes in the gravity and Kelvin waves driving the jet stream into non-standard patterns – as the U.S. Mid-West has seen this year.
In the oceans we could expect changes in currents – much as we have had a La Nina and a PDO phase reversal into the cool phase.
We might expect stress increases in the Earth’s crust – triggering vulcanism and earthquakes that were already likely – but are triggered in clusters with the stress. This has also been shown to be true and statistically significant.
If the Sun also enters a quiet period then the effects on the Earth and the Sun from barycenter movement could reinforce each other. The changing of the Earth’s orbit due to the barycenter alterations would be chaotic as they are driven by the continually changing positions of the larger planets as well as that of the Earth in its orbit. Therefore, there may not be a regular ‘beat’ frequency that is easy to spot and the climate minima could occur at slightly different periodocities which appears to be the case.
Just some random thoughts.

Dr. Manuel Oliver, astrophysics professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia, has some different ideas on the core of the Sun.
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2005/The_Suns_Origin.pdf
Essentially, he argues that the Sun is not powered by nuclear fusion and that it is what he calls a “clothed neutron star“.
I can`t say I agree with this rather exotic view, but he believes that this neutronium core moves about as a result of tidal forces from Jupiter and Saturn.
tbirdnow.mee.nu/planetsolar_interactions_and_the_earths_climate
This paper definitely buttresses his case.
Thought everyone would find this interesting.

Dr. Svalgaard, I’m with you on the extremely small tidal forces.
But how do astronomers find planets around other stars based on the “wobble” of the star? What’s causing it to wobble?
REPLY: as I understand it, these are usually much more massive planets with smaller orbits than Jupiter and Saturn. To get an idea of how this works at the relative body sizes involved, see this animation of Pluto and it’s moon Charon:
http://orbitsimulator.com/gravity/PlutoCharon.GIF
Leif may have a different explanation, but I thought this would help visualize it – Anthony

Leif Svalgaards last sentence somehow makes me wonder: “I’m at a loss why not [although this does not disturb me in any way].”

Leif,
Since there is no [in my Newtonian thought experiment] limit to how far away we can move the pea, there is no limit to how far away we can move the barycenter, then watch the sunspots grow and GROW and GGRROOWW as we continue to move the pea away.
If there is no limit to how far away we can move the pea, wouldn’t we then have to consider every other object in the known universe having an affect on the barycenter?
the point was to show that having the Sun orbit the barycenter with the added pea moving away from the sun would create ever growing sunspot activity if you believe that the Sun’s movement around the barycenter is the cause of the sunspot cycle.
At certain point (most likely while still quite close to the barycenter) wouldn’t the gravitational affect of the pea on the barycenter become inconsequential?

Leif’s objection ot barycentric motion is, IMO, ridiculous. The sun is in freefall around the barycenter? As a reader pointed out in a later post, other stars have wobbles. That’s how we know that there are planets around other stars. The gravitational pull of planets makes the star wobble as it spins. In other words, the planet’s gravity pulls the star t’wards it a little. If there were no planet, there would be no wobble. Now take our solar system, there are many planets, several of them large. The planets take different lengths of time to orbit the sun, yet each pulls on it a little. That means the sun will have a different position in the solar system depending on the location of the planets. As the planets orbit over hundreds or thousands of years, there will be cycles where they are in certain allignment. When alligned, they will pull the sun that much farther away from the center of the solar system. This will cause changes in the movement of the sun’s inner core (be it liquid or solid) and it’s surface (liquid or plasma) which spin at different rates (the different rate of spin between the center and surface of the sun is what stretches and twists the sun’s magnetic field which causes sunspots). With increased sunspots there is increased luminosity, flares, solar wind, and etc, not to mention the whole cosmic ray and cloud theory which is still being debated. None of these things will individually change the climate much, but added together, as well as their effect on other phenomenon that affect climate (ENSO, PDO etc), then you can understand how the sun impacts climate. If you wanna get really fiesty, throw the following into the mix: a few barbecues and air conditioners at the local temperature station along with a few politically and/or financially motivated goof-bags, well, a lot of goof-bags.

He was thinking of Jolly Green Giant peas, yanno, the one’s the size of Jupiter

Leif Svalgaard (15:14:29) :
“Carsten: in my Gedankeneksperiment I’m allowed to alter the angular momentum. ”
But somehow you will have to follow at least some of the laws of physics and put the pea in a stable orbit, or else it will fall into the sun or leave the solar system alltogether (i.e. not be gravitationally bound). In any case the result will be the same as before after a short time. As you move outwards, the pea’s orbital velocity will have to approach zero anyway.

Robert Wood,
Yes, the effect can alter the sun’s orbital motion quite violently, but no, it has no effect, because the force causing the violent shifts exactly cancels the inertial effects you would expect from such violent shifts.
It’s the same reason astronauts are ‘weightless’, despite remaining in what is essentially full Earth gravity. It’s properly called free fall, and the principle is one of the foundations of relativity theory.

Lief –
You may well be right; I haven’t given the multi-body problem much thought. I started off explaining what the theory was, and by the end I’d convinced myself. But I haven’t sat down and done any real math, and until then I’m just blowing smoke. I agree that the tidal forces are minimal, I’ll have to sit and think awhile about the barycentric motion.
I’ll have to give this one much more thought. And a lot more math, but more than almost none really isn’t that much…
But my gut instinct is still telling me that: The barycenter orbits the Milky Way, and the solar system can be assumed to orbit the barycenter. Yes, the sun moves relative to the barycenter, yes it has to transfer angular momentum, does it automatically transfer to the other planets? Hence the need to sit and do math… A million opinions are not equal to one case of finding out, as Heinlein said. But I’ll settle for integrating a 3-body problem, going to 5 or more seems pointless…

“I’m sure both my readers, and Dr. Leif Svalgaard, who regularly monitors this blog, will have something to add”
You have more than two readers1 (LOL)

” Robert Wood (16:16:46) :
Anna V @21:33 Imagine the baricentre being a great christmass pudding stirring paddle, mixing up the convection cells and deep internal currents that produce the solar magnetic field. ”
Not really. I am with Leif in this. The barycenter is a virtual spot that “corrects” for all the wobbles in motion of a many body gravitational system. Everything revolves around the barycenter and makes visualizations simpler, that is all.
Its ( barycenter’s) motion though is interesting as a “clock”, a “location indicator” of how the tides, small as they may be, change on the fluid mass that is the sun, and there seem to be changes that can make up beats.
I do not know if they do, I do not know if (as if with the CO2 greenhouse effect hypothesis 😉 ) there is a huge positive feedback that can kick changes in the plasma and the way the magnetic field is generated in the sun. From the little I have read there are exponential feedbacks needed to describe the sun’s magnetic field anyway, so maybe regular even if tiny beats in specific directions can trigger huge effects. May be.
It is evident that a sun model has to be proposed for this hypothesis to have any real value and testable outputs.
I am an interested observer on this one.

“Leif Svalgaard (16:45:56) :
“Carsten and others: I do not have to follow the laws of physics. I can put the pea where I want when I want. What I tried to show was the absurdity of the barycenter theory of sunspots. I realise that I have failed, as so often before, as I have already remarked. The predicable next step is accusations of ulterior motives, hidden agendas, holocaust denials, AGW, Al Gore church fellowships, unsavory oil industry money, etc, etc. We don’t need any more of that, so, maybe, this is enough for now.”
Leif: I was really trying to participate in a scientific debate, but when the argument is that the laws of physics do not apply, it gets complicated. I cannot see a valid reason why the laws of physics should not apply, it gets absurd. I could for example say that your formula for center of mass does not apply (I am not saying that).
The question of motives, accusations etc. has no place in my opinion. I have no such views regarding your position. All I am interested in is discussing the science.
It appears that your argument for rejecting solar inertial motion around the barycenter as a possible cause for modulating solar activity is that the sun is in “free fall”. It is in free fall, but I think we have to take into consideration the fact that the sun may not be 100% homogenious. I read somewhere that sunspots are areas of higher buoyancy (i.e. lesser density) for example, ther might be other effects too. It does not seems entirely incredible to me that if you take a quasi-spherical non-homogenious body like the sun and let it move along a variable radius orbit (where the radius keeps changing) that internal inertial forces may cause some stir-ups.
Regarding tidal effects I think that is probably a non-issue. The tides caused by the planets on the Sun are extremely small (<1mm) and most likely neglible.

A stars wobble, is it’s movement observed from an outside reference, around the common barycenter of that star’s solar system. …. yar? …. Not the Planet’s gravitational “pull” on the star…. Where that misconception arises is when a planet is close and massive so that the wobble is fast and easily observed?
Have I got that correct Lief Svalgaard?

Leif,
“These new tools have confirmed that our theories about the interior were correct to high precision.”
See the document I linked to above for some of the aspects of the solar dynamo that don’t in fact fit theory, and aren’t understood. There’s a section towards the end that goes through them.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0405/0405052v2.pdf

It seems to me that once the laws of physics are violated in a thought experiment, then any conclusion drawn from that thought experiment are useless.
I remember a thought experiment whereby it could be proved that 1 equals 2. The trick was, half way through, there was a hidden divide by zero.

Lief:
I’ve been working a massive reconstruction of Jupiter’s atmosphere (a hobby) as I find the various meridional band depths quite illustrative.
So not knowing the science, but if I understand you, that without an equatorward conveyor then would it be that the sunspot fields aren’t getting – erm – “recycled” back to the equator.
Instead I might surmise the variable speed of the bands on the sun might go in and out of sync over time, yielding differential field elongation … some slower band periods less field stretching, other periods more, with respective sunspot levels. If I try to visualize what happens when the bands are furthest from unison, the more intense the stretching of the magnetic field might cause internal forces that increase the intensity of the system, and with that, observed magnetic strength.
Relative to the sun’s total output these are small variations that lead to changes in sunspot activity, solar wind, prominences and cosmic rays. As they are experienced on Earth by living creatures, it tends to matter.
If your reconstructed historical TSI values turn are higher I see a series of dilemmas: How the reconstruction impacts analysis of past temperatures, the temperature trend since the 1980’s particularly.
Speculating wildly here, but I also have to wonder if magnetic field flux might differentially warm the seas through metals in solution, akin to studies showing iron oxides helping align materials in solution rendering them more heat conductive. Or perhaps magnetized iron seeds algae with similar effects.
Granted the sun is in freefall and in its massiveness imparts its own intertial frame of reference, but then what imparts the sun’s wobble around the barycenter then? Or is it a perceived barycenter only from the POV from the planets?
Thanks for reading & sorry for the bad science. 😉

Leif, if the gravitational pull from the other planet s is enough to pull the sun as far from the barycenter as they do, then they should be able to affect the solar cycle which is caused by a difference of spin rate between the center and surface of the sun. I’d be surprised that the gravitational effects on a dense core and plasma surface would be the same. We’re talking about cycles ranging from 11 to 100’s of years.

… you need to calculate the difference in density between the center and surface since they are essentially two different bodies.

Thanks for the explanation. The impression I had received from your earlier comments was that you were trying to give the impression that the sun was sufficiently well understood, and fitted the theory accurately enough, that any potential alternative mechanisms by which small influences might be magnified could be safely dismissed. Yes I agree we probably have a broad understanding of the overall conditions, but I didn’t think we understood either the physical mechanisms that brought them about, or the fine details that might provide exceptions well enough to be able to make such definitive statements. If this wasn’t your intention, my apologies.
I agree that it is hard to imagine any tidal force having an effect over the general roiling chaos (and the force itself would only be consistently applied for 6-9 days before being reversed, rather than years) but then I could sometimes say the same thing on Earth, where storm-driven wave heights are far larger than the 36 cm tide force that is sustained over a mere 6 hours. The chaos cancels out. On the whole, I’m not inclined to pay much attention to this theory pending proposal of a testable mechanism, but it seems unduly negative to spoil people’s fun by saying there’s no point in even thinking about it because even Newton knew it was impossible. By the way, I assume that ‘millimetres displacement’ is against the sun’s more intense surface gravity? What delta-v does that add up to if applied horizontally for 6 days?
I don’t understand how the differential rotation can result from the Coriolis effect acting on convection. This was my own initial thought on what ought to happen in a rotating convecting fluid, but the Coriolis force seems to point in the wrong direction. As fluid rises, it ought to be deflected in the counter-rotation direction, as it moves away from the rotation axis and angular momentum is conserved. As it moves North/South away from the equator, it ought to get deflected in the direction of the sun’s rotation, resulting in a faster spin as one approaches the poles. Precisely the opposite is observed. It is as if the ice skater spread out her arms to spin faster.
One thought I had to try to resolve this is that being less dense fluid convecting, that its buoyancy gives it an effective negative mass, like bubbles in a water bottle being accelerated. But if the average mass flow is upwards at the equator, angular momentum conservation should still deflect the general mass backwards relative to the rotation, even if there are bubbles of lighter plasma moving forwards through it. So I still don’t understand.
It’s not important to the argument, but now that I’ve thought of the question, it’ll bother me until I’ve got it resolved.

Mr Svalgaard, you state that “The barycenter [or center of mass] is a fictitious point calculated from masses and distances.”
If we accept this and further acknowledge that the sun does not actually move to the barycenter, is something effecting the sun at the next level up (Galaxy Level).
Would the end result of the planets moving further away or closer to the sun move our solar system’s barycenter further away or closer to the Milky Way’s Center?
If this occurs, since the solar system’s barycenter is in free fall with the Milky Way’s center, would the result be a speeding up or slowing down of our solar systems movement around the Milky Way? Mass of orbiting objects determine
distance and speed of orbital paths?
Since the sun rotates on it’s axis, the change in our solar system’s orbital
period would cause forces inside the sun opposite in direction depending
upon a move higher up or lower, resulting in a reversal of polarity of the sun spots.

Thank you, Boris, for introducing some truly original research to our discussion. And for those of us who were suspect of the traditional analysis of TSI and its dominace in expert presentations of solar induced warming, especially welcome research, indeed.

Leif,
You said “Here is a good explanation of the differential rotation.” Are there some notes with the slides I can’t see? Because the only explanation I can find is one slide with an arrow pointing to some spirals representing convection rolls saying “global convection which drives the differential rotation.” I’m sure it’s a great slide when the lecturer is available to point things out and explain what it all means, but on it’s own it explains nothing.
I don’t particularly want to pursue this off-topic discussion too far and annoy people, but do you have one with an actual explanation? Thanks.

Leif, that’s a good read but the internal dynamics of the sun do not negate the gravitational forces of the planets on the sun’s surface. The planets have a strong gravitational pull on the sun as is evidenced by how far they pull it from the center mass of the solar system.

Gary,
I will mark there some additional aspects, concerning the 60-65 yr cycle
1. It seems that it was detected first by D.Schove still in middle of 20th century on the base of visual /morphological/ analysis of aurora data (Schove,1955)
2. There is also an amplitude and frequency evolution in the range of subcenturial solar oscilations (most probably modulated by the 2200-2400 yrs Halstadtzeit cycle) and correponding to changes of oscilation regime in convective zone of the Sun.
3.Before the Maunder minimum (MM) there was a single cycle by duration of ~ 77-78 years (in Schove’s series. At the beginning of 18th century (the end of MM) the last one has been splited on two components by durations of 90-100 and 60-65 yrs respectively. There was also a well expressed 60-65 yr cycle before AD 700.
I.e. the present /aurora activity modulated/ 60-65 year cycle is relatively new, only from ~ 300 years as well as the present quasi-centurial solar cycle.
4. A strong ~65 year cycle exist also in 10Be Greenland series (Komitov et al., 2003)
Directly saying it was the start point for me to search for cycle with the same duration
in other solar- geophysic data series. It exist also in 10Be Antarctc series, but essentially weaker.
5. .There is also a relative weak , but stable during the last~2000 years 52-55 year cycle in Schove;s series and 10 Be (Greenland) series (NOTE: Ocasionally or not but it is very close to the “sacral” Mayan solar cycle)
It is is very interesting that the meteorologists are commenting the 60-65 yr cycle in climate as a result of self-modulated oscilations (auto-oscilations)(Schleissinger, 1994)(?!!!). This is totally incorrect. This cycle is caused by the Sun.

Also, after three days of hotter than last year temps, we are back to being 11 degrees cooler than last year, following the consistent cooler pattern seen in June.

Just taking a gander at sea ice from seasonal minimums to maximums. The Southern Hemisphere continues to move upwards in terms of minimum amounts as well as maximum amounts but nothing that makes you go “woooheee, now that’s a comeback”. The Northern Hemisphere appears to have roared back big time in terms of a one season comeback. From the last minimum to maximum, it recovered 11 million sq km. Going back to 1978, NH sea ice recovered by no more than 10 million sq km. Now that calls for a “whhhoooheee”!

RE: To Basil
Yes! The natural time step of these data is 1- 1.5 year. But we use an interpolation procedure to use an equdistan step of 1year. And so we investigate this series for cycles in range 2 to 500 years. The “Greenland” 10Be series is very well known (Bier et al, 1991(or 1990?),1999, Damon et al., 1997). It is 563 years long -from AD 1423 to 1985. There are many studies concerning the 11 and 22 yr cycles in this series (for example Damon et al., 1997; Usoskin et al.,1999 etc).
I forget also to note that 60-65 year cycke is well shown in many
dendrochronological series in the all world (better in Northern hemisphere) .

“I have a little bit of trouble understanding how the “mass at a distance” gravitational effects of Jupiter and Saturn could have much effect on the solar dynamo.”
“Mass at a distance” is not the point. The alignment of the planets determines where the barycenter (center of mass) of the Solar system is, and how far it is from the center of the Sun (it can vary by millions of miles). The distance from the barycenter to the Sun center determines the gravitational tidal forces on the Sun, and those presumably are what couple with the solar dynamo.

Anthony,
I believe your concerns about this paper are valid. The primary author of this paper this Ian Wilson. When I looked at the following abstract things did not look quite on the up-and-up.
Does a Spin–Orbit Coupling Between the Sun and the Jovian Planets Govern the Solar Cycle?
http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/AS06018.htm
[comments questioning credentials removed – See Dr. Wilson’s subsequent post clearing up the issue raised – Anthony]
I believe that too much time has been wasted on this paper.
Mike

Michael Ronayne (14:01:07) :
Your conspiratorial paranoia got the best of you. All of these individuals are well known in their field as is their employment status. Particularly Ian Wilson. I’ve been in email groups with him and he is upstanding. Regardless of how many google searches you do, there are still changes in staffing and employment that will not make it’s way to the internet.

The title of the paper (I haven’t read it – it’s not available without purchase) asks whether spin-orbit coupling of the Sun’s spin and orbital angular momentum governs the solar cycle. The abstract states that spin-orbit coupling is empirically observed (“changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized with changes in the Sun’s orbital motion about the barycentre”), that the coupling is caused by resonance in the motion of the Jovian planets, and that it determines the Sun’s meridional flow period and the Hale (double sunspot) Cycle.
Dr. Mike wrote, “From the sun’s point of view, it can move from 0.1 solar radii from the CoM, out to 2 radii, in a mere 5 years or so (and other times it can spend decades at 0.7-1.3 or so). The sun’s orbital angular momentum is changing drastically during these times, but I said angular momentum is conserved. So what happens? The sun has to _transfer_ angular momentum from its orbit to its own internal rotation. Since it is a giant ball of fluid, this is likely a very complex problem indeed.”
Ric Werme then wrote, “No – angular momentum within the solar system has to be conserved, and most of it is held in Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun. I haven’t worked though the math, but I bet that when the Sun moves from or to the barycenter the distance between the barycenter and Jupiter/Saturn/Venus changes in the appropriate amounts to keep the solar system angular momentum constant. … For the Sun to speed up its rotational period it needs some torque, and the only source of that is from tides, and those are so weak that internal thermal processes must overwhelm it.”
Dr. Mike then wrote, “Yes, the sun moves relative to the barycenter, yes it has to transfer angular momentum, does it automatically transfer to the other planets?” and answered his own question later saying, “Now that I’ve had time to think about it, and crunch out a few back of the envelope calculations, I will agree that the angular momentum changes between the sun and the barycenter are made up for by angular momentum changes between the other planets and the barycenter. … So no, the sun does not need some massive angular momentum transfer between its internal and orbital momentums.”
So the question becomes, is there or is there not spin-orbit coupling? The Australian authors believe so. If there is it seems a very plausible explanation for the Hale Cycle.
Landsheidt (“New Little Ice Age instead of global warming”, section 7) states, “The dynamics of the sun’s motion about the centre of mass can be defined quantitatively by the change in its orbital angular momentum L. The time rate of change in L is measured by its first derivative dL/dt. It defines the rotary force, the torque T driving the sun’s motion about the CM. Variations in the rotary force defined by the derivative dT/dt are a key quantity in this connection as they make it possible to forecast Gleissberg extrema for hundreds of years and even millennia. A cycle of 166 years and its second harmonic of 83 years emerge when the time rate of change in the torque dT/dt is subjected to frequency analysis” His paper contains a graph (figure 9) showing the time rate of change of the torque and it’s correlation with the Gleissberg Cycle.

A pdf copy of Ian Wilson’s talk to the Lavoisier Group AGM (11th July 2008)
in Melbourne, Australia, is posted at:
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/IanwilsonForum2008.pdf
This talk proposes an alternative model for natural climate change

Can anyone figure out why he might be publishing his paper in Russian?
That is what it says in his Lavosier presentation.

Dear Anthony Watts,
I appreciate your prompt actions on this issue.
I would just like to say that I bear no malice towards
Michael Ronayne as believe that he was just trying to confirm that I was a bona-fide researcher in this field. I would just ask that he be more careful about what he posts about individuals on the blog in future.
I must admit that I am was not aware of this blog posting until late July. I realize to that I am essentially an unknown in this field, so it natural to expect that people would be suspicious of my credentials. Michael Ronayne would make a good investigative scientist if he is not already one.
Thank you for your kind offer to highlight the science behind this important issue. I would be willing to pass on a full copy of may paper to you if you could forward an email contact. The publishing journal PASA has strict restrictions on who I can send pre-print copies but I think I can justify sending a copy to you.
I am currently working on two related areas. One dealing with the nature of the spin-orbit coupling mechanism that could be responsible for moderating the solar dynamo, the other deals with an alternative theory for climate change here on the Earth. I would be willing to present something on either topic, as I believe the topics are related.
One (easy) way to kick off the debate could be to
highlight the talk that I gave the Lavoisier Group AGM (11th July 2008)
in Melbourne, Australia, by linking to:
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/IanwilsonForum2008
I am not asking you or your fellow bloggers to beleive
every word I post, all I ask is for good-hearted debate from people with a skeptical eye. There appears to be no shortage of people like that here on your blog.

Dr. Wilson,
While the mainstream climate science and solar physics communities don’t seem to give much credence to spin-orbit coupling theories, I commend you for having the courage to take a fresh look at this. Correlation does not imply causality, but the correlation of planetary orbits, solar cycles and climate change seems too significant to be merely a coincidence. Since many solar physicists seem to be downplaying the influence of solar irradiance on earth’s climate, the inertial mechanism that you are proposing is very interesting. The idea that sun spots (solar climate?) and earth’s climate are both manifestations of spin-orbit coupling is unlike anything I’ve read to-date. I hope your paper will be made widely available so it will receive the widest possible discussion. I look forward to the debate and I hope you will keep us informed as to its progress.
Best Regards.

Director of the Space and Science Center just sent a dire warning of impending colder climate to all the leaders of the US. See it at. http://www.spaceandscience.net/id16.html

E.M.Smith
There is a big misconception about Barycenters. Objects don’t notice them at all. They do not apply any kind of force on an object. Because of the way physics is taught, it is hard for us to let go of gravity tugging on the sun like a force. The sun (and every other object) does not actually “feel” gravity. It is not a force like electromagnetism, strong or weak nuclear. The only way that an object notices another gravitationally is by the tidal effect. If a massive object were close to the sun (as the moon to earth), then one hemisphere of the sun would “feel” a stronger “tug” than the opposite side of the sun.
But, I think you might be onto something in an indirect way. When a fluid ball is rotating in free fall, it naturally bulges from spherical into a pancake (the centrifugal force, if you will). Mass accumulates at the equator, which bulges. The earth does this to a much lesser extent. However, when mass starts accumulating at the equator, this increases the angular inertia of the sun, which would then slow its rotation (conservation of momentum). When the sun slows its rotation, then mass would no longer be able to pile up at the equator and would flow back to a more spherical shape. This would then decrease the angular inertia of the sun, which would then increase the rotation rate. We have an oscillating system. This phenomenon diminishes over time with objects that are only semi-fluid like the Earth, as the effect gets dissipated as heat. However, I would guess the sun is nearly superfluid. I wonder if a cycle of rotation speeds is noticeable, or has been documented? Also, there is a lot of convection and turbulence complicating the sun.
Now, I wonder what the oscillating frequency of the sun is? 11 years? 30 years? 5 days? I should ask Leif. He probably has already researched this phenomenon.