A new paper published by the Astronomical Society of Australia titled:
Does a Spin–Orbit Coupling Between the Sun and the Jovian Planets Govern the Solar Cycle?
contains a warning about earthly climate change not immediately obvious from the abstract:
Based on our claim that changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized with changes in the Sun’s orbital motion about the barycentre, we propose that the mean period for the Sun’s meridional flow is set by a Synodic resonance between the flow period (~22.3 yr), the overall 178.7-yr repetition period for the solar orbital motion, and the 19.86-yr synodic period of Jupiter and Saturn.
According to an interview with Andrew Bolt, of the Australian Newspaper, Herald Sun, Ian Wilson, one of the authors explained:
It supports the contention that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 – 30 years. On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by ~ 1 – 2 C.
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Hmmm, I’m not sold on this idea. This is a lot like what Dr. Theodor Landscheidt proposes. 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.
I’m sure both my readers, and Dr. Leif Svalgaard, who regularly monitors this blog, will have something to add to provide additional insight. – Anthony
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Sun’s meridional flow is set by a Synodic resonance between the flow period (~22.3 yr), the overall 178.7-yr repetition period for the solar orbital motion
Well that would cover both ends, wouldn’t it?
Hmm. How well does this match up with the Oort minimum, going forward, I wonder? Shouldn’t be hard for a pro to figure.
Ya know … It may seem far fetched … but .. their predictions have been comming true.
Landschiedt predicted this last La Nina, as well as the quiet sun, as well as a near future major cooling. (While many folks have been talking Dalton Minimum style, Landschiedt predicts a Maunder Minimum style .. guess we’ll have to wait and see).
IMO .. it’s not so far fetched that the mutual gravitational pulls of the giant planets and the Sun would have some type of an effect on the suns spin, which in turn would have some type of effect on plasma flows .. which according to all I’ve read lately, is a major driver of solar activity.
At the very least .. thier predictions seem to be more accurate than the warming crowd’s. The Globe has cooled since 2002, the Sun is flat out dead, and now the PDO has shifted negative.
Hmmmmmm.
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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The late Dr. Landscheidt was not the only one. The late Rhodes Fairbridge also had a lot to say on the Solar Inertial Motion (SIM) hypothesis. See
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
for a summary of his life and work.
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 was also intuitively obvious to Isaac Newton in 1687 that the sun had to be in continuous motion around the center of mass of the solar system (the “barycenter”) because of the mass and gravitational attraction of the planets, especially the big ones.
The physics of the interaction has got to be very complicated, especially given that the sun is hot plasma and thermonuclear reactions, and the 4 “gas giant” planets are their own complex mixtures of matter.
But at least within the estimates of the masses of the objects involved, there apparently is much agreement that yes, the sun does follow this oscillation around the “barycenter,” and because it is a “moving target” (the planets in motion), it’s not a simple oscillation, but includes recurrent periods of retrograde motion, in which the sun’s motion “loops back on itself.” During these periods it may be moving through its own previously generated magnetic fields.
What effect does this have on earth’s climate?
Once again, we have “cycles and correlations.” Landschiedt found ’em, Fairbridge found ’em, Charvatova found ’em, and now these ASA blokes have found ’em.
I’d really like to see a complete solar dynamo model that incorporates these SIM effects, as I’m sure you would as well.
These folks are quite honest in their abstract and say, “However, we are unable to suggest a plausible underlying physical cause for the coupling.”
“Cycles and correlations” by themselves aren’t worth much. In this case I think it does help to illustrate how weak our understanding of the solar dynamo and the solar cycle really is.
After all, given the mechanisms they do propose, solar equatorial rotation rate, meridional flow period resonance, with a complete and accurate solar dynamo model, this oughta be a piece of cake to confirm or deny.
Instead, if indeed the world’s temperature drops by 1C to 2C over the next 20 to 30 years, what do we have? The next generation will have a slightly stronger correlation to consider.
As in the case of the other solar-climate correlations, it is clearly an area worthy of much more study and more and better data.
P.S. – Fairbridge also, apparently, asserts that global volcanism increases as a result of the same principle, presumably on the theory that magma also has some similar response to motion around the barycenter. This is mentioned in a single sentence in the above-cited work, but I have not yet found this idea elucidated anywhere else. If anyone has any information on this in Fairbridge’s or anyone else’s work, I’d be grateful for a pointer. Thanks.
“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.)
Meanwhile…
I’m curious to see what actually ends up happening this year.
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 think the importance of this paper does not so much lie on the content, rather that it is a peer reviewed paper that introduces new theories in the mix.
The more the better to clarify for the public that the science is NOT settled and before humanity jumps into the economic chaos of CO2 witch chasing, it should be made aware of this.
It is unfortunate that a great number of national societies of this and that have come out for the AGW theory, I am sure without polling their members and stating percentages. It is like declaring their faith, and it is good that dissenting voices become loud.
As far as the content, as a physicist, and having seen elsewhere that the baricenter lies inside the fluid sun I do not exclude the possibility that these motions change the magnetic fields in tandem . Of course it needs a serious study by a magnetic dynamo solar theorist, and a fluid dynamics one for sure ( to see how the gravitational changes couple with the rotation) . In addition it needs proof that changes in the sun’s magnetic field create weather changes ( albedo and galactic cosmic rays? remains to be proven).
As I said, the science is not settled.
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.
I’m a physicist too, and the only mechanism I know of which would let planets effect the sun are gravitational-tidal effects. The tidal effects would just mean that one side of the sun is closer to Jupiter/Sat/Nept than the other side, so there is an asymmetric influence.
Here are my rough calculations for the impact of Jupiter on the sun. (The other planets would matter to, but much less than Jupiter.)
According to my calculations, (using the masses and distances from Wikipedia) the Gravitational acceleration which Jupiter imparts on the sun is about 2*10E-7 m/sec^2.
This will move the Sun over time, but shouldn’t matter in the sun’s reference frame.
But the sun is pretty big, so the tidal forces mean than the “close side” of the sun is accelerated about 7.5*10^-10 m/sec^2 faster than the “far side” of the sun.
That’s a small difference, but Jupiter moves slowly (12 year period) so it has some time to distort the sun. After a quarter cycle, the distortion will be out of phase with itself, so–rough estimate– lets say the maximum distortion is equal to the acceleration time one-eighth of a period. That would distort the sun by about two or three hundred km.
Is that enough change it? I dunno.
The sun rotates (more or less) once a month, so the effect of Jupiter would be a small distortion on the shape of the sun as it spins. That would slow the sun down a little, but obviously not much since it’s been 4 Billion years and they are still far from phase-lock.
For comparison, the tidal effect of our moon is about 2000 time stronger. Our moon had probably effected the vulcanism of the Earth. (Neither Venus or Mars have significant magentic fields)
So…Maybe? I guess I can’t rule out an interaction between the Jovian planets and the convection patterns of the sun.
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?
Dear Anthony, I share your intuition. Click my name to get to my article about these issues.
A direct effect of a relative distance between the Sun’s center and the barycenter violates the equivalence principle – phenomena at free fall should be indistinguishable from those outside gravitational fields.
However, it might actually be due to some tidal or gravimagnetic forces – some gradients of the acceleration resulting from Jupiter and Saturn – that help to change the phase of the solar dynamo.
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.
The Science is not settled. We need more data, more research, more patience, more theories advanced whether ultimately fruitful or dead ends, more dedication to the hard work ahead and more humility about our power to even understand the forces we live amongst let alone manipulate them. Scientific disagreements shouldn’t be allowed to devolve into proxy policy wars, but welcomed as the essence of scientific advancement.
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.
There was an interesting article published back in 1964 by Paul Jose titled
Sun’s Motion and Sunspots. It concerned itself with the barycenter of the soloar system and sunspots.
I have seen somewhere (I can’t remember right off at this moment) that most of the time barycanter of the solar system is above the surface of the sun. The trouble happens when this barycenter enters the sun. This upsets the angular momentum of the sun somehow.
I am not saying I understand or even believe all of it. Just throwing it out there for information.
My understand of Landscheidt is that when the motion of the barycenter is opposite of the rotation of the solar core, the sunspot count goes up and when the barycenter is moving in the same direction as the core, the sunspot activity is down.
Landscheidt maps this to observed warm and cool periods with great success.
This is what convinced me that he was in the right direction. Simple models that match observed data.
Accordingly, he predicted a low solar output for the next hundred years or so, starting right about now.
Here is the Landscheidt paper that finally won me over.
A New Ice Age instead of Global Warming
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new-e.htm
OK, I know I should have gotten this all in one post and feel free to combine them Anthony.
As the denser solar core is whipped around the solar barycenter, there is a transfer of angular momentum from the outer planets to/from the angular momentum of the core. The direction of the transfer of momentum is determined by the movement of the barycenter relative to the core. Add momentum to the core and there is an increase in magnetic field strength: More Sunspots. Decrease momentum and less sunspots.
Graph of position of the Barycenter: http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt
/new/Fig8L.jpg
Graph of Angular Momentum: http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new/Fig11L.jpg
Working Link
Graph of position of the Barycenter: http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new/Fig8L.jpg
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.
I have heard the arguments that the suns interaction with the moving barycenter is too small to change anything, but may I off up a little something.
Heat is generated in the suns core and then makes its way to the surface by a variety of mechanisms that include convection.
What happens when you disturb laminar/smooth flow and make it turbulent?
A small energy input can disturb the transition, and the heat carrying rate, between laminar and turbulent flow of currents within the sun.
If the system is on a knifedge, like smoke rising from a cigarette, then many things affect the transition.
Sorry, I put a couple colons after close parentheses, there should not be smiley faces appearing in the above post.
One wonders how many discerned solar cycles there are; Wilson/Carter/Waite postulate cycles at 22.3, 19.86 and 178.7 years; the latter is rounded off by Motl to 180; we have the Schwabe, Hale and multiple Hale; Blackwell had numerous papers on multiple cycles, but they are in the process of being absorbed by Wiley so I can’t check my references; Scafetta and West suggest a few, although they mainly look at Schwabe and Hale. At the risk of reopening the Tamino dispute maybe a compilation of the lot would be instructive (as if you haven’t enough on your plate!) and doing some sort of comparison with temp over a nominated period. In this respect Motl has also noted the Dalton minimum and its time correlation with the Wilson thesis; but this 180 year period doesn’t tally with the previous minimums; Oort, Wolf, Sporer, Maunder and Dalton, which don’t appear to have any pattern.
One thing is for sure, if the sun does go quiet up to and into 2009, the explanations from the AGW crew will have to be as creative as any attempt to produce a combined periodicity from all the solar cycles.
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.