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
Kim, “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?”
Because he is so small.
Free fall sensation occurs when a body does not resist an accelerative force that acts evenly over the entire body. Since the human body is so small, any gravitational force from a planetary (or larger) body will act equally over the entire human body (same for a distant compact gravitational source).
The reason that we have tides is that the diameter of the earth is a significant percentage of the distance to the gravitational source. This is why the moon causes larger ocean tides than the sun does – the diameter of the earth is a much higher percentage of the distance to the moon than it is to the sun. This is also why the premise of “The Jupiter Effect” book was so laughable.
Intuitively, it makes sense that a fluid body of solar dimension is going to be affected by the planets that are close enough or large enough to have measurable tidal effects.
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?
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (01:20:02) :
Thanks for the simulator. Intriguing.
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.
Of course, we need a link to Timo Niroma’s http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspots.html too.
Barycenter motion/tidal forces, I think it’s all the same. The barycenter track is derived from integrating the gravitational forces twice, the tidal force is just the difference of the gravitational force from one side of the Sun to the other. Minor forces all, but they are by far the largest externally applied forces on the Sun. However, given that blobs of plasma are moving about at miles per second speeds within the Sun, tidal forces are really, really minor. Understanding needed, skepticism warranted.
Thoughts about the Sun’s angular velocity having to change with the distance to the barycenter seem bogus – the angular momentum that is conserved comes from all the bodies in the solar system and it seems to me that ought have all the momentum necessary.
I wonder if Jupiter’s magnetic field has some effect on the Sun. I have no idea what the direct strength might be and even less what the indirect effects might be.
kim (20:28:35) :
“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?”
The forces are there and computable, but they’re just too small to be observable.
Well, supposedly. A fascinating experiment decades ago showed that crabs taken from salt water bays to someplace far away from the coast (Chicago?) shifted their behavior to match the tidal forces of the new location. I don’t believe a mechanism was identified.
Even more fascinating, around 1976 I read about a blind student with frequent bouts of insomnia. He happened to be at a university with a sleep research department and ultimately they found his body was on a 24.9 hour cycle synchronized with tides. Not being able to see the sun or moon and not being near the seacoast, no mechanism was identified, but the paper conclude that some people do retain the ability to detect tides.
I tried out that cycle for a month once when I want to get a lot of work done. (I’m a software engineer, computers don’t seem to mind late nights.) Worked pretty well. I suggested this to my sister who was working on her marine biology Phd at the time and she came across a few other larval scientists who had done the same thing when they were doing tidal-synced population sampling.
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.
[…] Solar quieting? Global cooling? Huh? How can that possibly happen when Bush caused global warming by not signing Kyoto? Seriously, Watts Up With That? […]
An interesting read:
http://webspinners.com/dlblanc/climate/astromod.php
I may be all wet here, but must this be strictly a gravitational/tidal matter? The Sun has a magnetic interchange with the planets, and wouldn`t this interchange (and the ionized plasma in the solar interior) be influenced by the position of some of the larger bodies in the solar system-especially Jupiter, with its strong magnetic field relative to the Barycenter and the Sun`s position.
I`m not a physicist, and may be completely out on a limb here.
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.
And concerning the Earth’s volcanic and tectonic activity, it could also be influenced by gravitational interaction with other celestial bodies. The Earth with its molten core and thin crust also warps and distorts. I wonder if variations in gravitational forces acting on the earth by other planets etc. could jar its tectonic plates, thus unleashing earthquakes or possibly volcanic eruptions.
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.
I’m viewing this — the SIM hypothesis as first proposed by Fairbridge and still being refined — as being at the stage the theory of continental drift was when Wegener first developed his hypothesis. Even if the next 2-3 solar cycles bear out Fairbridge’s hypothesis there still remains the small matter of understanding the why of such an effect happening. The idea seems to have merit but we need to remember that correlation does not prove causation.
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.
Theodore Landscheidt (what an unfortunate last name) seems to have been a bit of a New Ager, with an interest in astrology and alchemy. I had bookmarked an essay of his on the Jovian inluence on the rotation and orbit of the sun, but I seem to have lost it. As I remember, his argument for this influence did not depend on any horoscopy hocus-pocus but on the law of conservation of angular momentum in a multi-body system. Newton, another astrologer/alchemist of note, worked out the basics of this influence under the reign of Good King Charles II–in the middle of the Maunder Minimum, co-incidentally.
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 🙂 .
If Landscheidt is correct then heaven help us.
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.
I came across Landscheidt’s work several years ago – he had a remarkable capacity to predict both sunspot activity and El Nino – and this led me to review much of the oceanographic data indicating links to solar cycles – I am now convinced the solar wind affects cloud cover in pulses that somehow time the varying ocean cycles – ‘global warming’ (1980-2005) coincides with a triple peaking (harmonic) of the Atlantic 20yr cyle, Arctic 70 yr cycle and Pacific 30yr with the 1998 El Nino providing the record high – now all three cycles are entering negative phases and I expect the Arctic to begin refreezing this year or next – you can track all this my following ‘depth-average temperature’ data rather than surface data for the oceans. So the recent oceanic shifts would indicate a solar shift – with a time lag period (Landscheidt had also worked out the lime-lags) – and reflective-type cloud data points to 2001 as the crucial year (global thinning from 1983-2001, thicker since).
I could not, with my limited physics, understand how Landscheidt derived cycles of amplitude (which he equated with Gleissberg cycles of 70 years) from the spirograph patterns of the COM around the sun. But whatever the correlative method, which was obviously accurate, we need to have a more open mind about the mechanism – the movements of the COM may be correlated with more than gravitational tides or transfer of angular momentum – the solar system is a complex almost neuronal web of magnetic fields and channels along which plasma flows, is accelerated and constrained – and this plasma is electrical current, which in turn generates magnetic field . If I recall correctly, there is still no physics explanation for the accelerating solar wind – other than it being pinched by magnetic field lines – and it snakes around the solar equatorial belt and ecliptic in four massive spirals within the current sheet that occasionally align with the earth – solar storms move very quickly through these arms. What happens to the reverse current?
Or do we still have a model of a unipolar electric current that ends at the Heliopause and simply disappears? Hannes Alfven proposed that the photosphere could not reach its 3m degrees without the backcurrent. Did anyone ever answer that question satisfactorily? If he is right, then we may be looking in the wrong place for mechanisms – could not solar visible light variability, flares and sunspots be induced by electrical phenomena caused by the back-current (and this would be influenced by Jupiter’s field)?
And let’s not forget – there may also be galactic cycles influencing the sun – there are 5000 year peaks of varying amplitude in the berrylium-10 profiles.
Shouldn’t there be a major effort to integrate all this breaking science?
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?
anna v
The first sounds like my UFO coming in for a landing while the second sounds like the camp fire I build on winter nights while waiting for a ride into town. (I have to land in the desert because they won’t give me a clearance to land at LAX — something about an uncertificated craft or some such — and I can’t land at Edwards because I’m not military).
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 the link with periods of irregular motion at the Barycenter and the following solar minimum’s effect on climate as credible.
For one, the correlation is very good. Always when the Sun enters a period with irregular motion and the Sun enter a retrograde motion, the Earth goes through a period with lower global temperatures of 1.5 to 2.5 degree C.
Although the exact mechanism is not known between the gravitational effect and the Sun’s magnetism, we know this, the plasma rotation time near the equator is shorter than near the poles. The rotation time is shorter near the surface than deeper down in the interior.
The gravitational effect is largest near the equator and near the surface.
It seems to me that the Sun needs continuous build up of frictional energy to create magnetic and eruptional activity. But when the Sun is near the Barycenter this buildup of energy stops and this somehow affects the Sun’s magnetic dynamo.
Compare this correlation and the AGW theory which is based on CO2’s greenhouse effect which in itself is logarithmic and is based in computer models. These models don’t take into account variations in the Earth’s Albedo, can’t simulate correctly the relations between increase of the CO2’s effect in clouds, its effct on the amount of water vapor and its effect on convections in the clouds.
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.
Ian Wilson –
I’m not sure I can agree with that. For a few reasons.
First, the Earth does not orbit the sun. The Earth orbits the solar system barycenter.
Second, the order of magnitude: If the solar barycenter moves from 0.1 to 2 solar radii in 5 years, then the sun goes from orbiting a point inside its core, to well outside it, in 5 years. This is very dramatic, from the sun’s perspective. To us, however, in the time it takes to spin around the sun (really, the barycenter) five times, it moves 0.01 AU relative to the Sun. Call it 0.002 AU per year. I don’t see that as being nearly as great an effect. But again, it’s the sun moving relative to the point we’re orbiting, not a change in our orbit.
Third, the earth’s orbit is an ellipse, ranging from 0.983 to 1.017 AU. So we already adjust our distance to the sun and the barycenter by 0.034 AU every year.
From our point of view the whole thing is a non-issue; we orbit the barycenter, plowing happily along. The Sun, however, sees a dramatic shift and this could ( could, I said ) have an effect. Even if it’s minor, the solar system is 4.5 billion years old; an 11 year effect from Jupiter would have had 100,000,000 cycles to make an impression. I see it like sloshing your hand in a bathtub; if you hit a resonance you can make some big waves quickly, but even if you hit an off frequency you still have some effect. Now slosh your hand back and forth a few million times…