From this Georgia Tech article:
In 1657, Christiaan Huygens revolutionized the measurement of time by creating the first working pendulum clock. In early 1665, Huygens discovered “..an odd kind of sympathy perceived by him in these watches [two pendulum clocks] suspended by the side of each other.” The pendulum clocks swung with exactly the same frequency and 180 degrees out of phase; when the pendulums were disturbed, the antiphase state was restored within a half-hour and persisted indefinitely. Huygens deduced that the crucial interaction for this effect came from “imperceptible movements” of the common frame supporting the two clocks.
I can’t tell just yet if this is a new paper, or if the news story is a re-hash of the 2007 paper by these authors. Either way, it is interesting. See the authors pre press paper here – Anthony
MILWAUKEE — The bitter cold and record snowfalls from two wicked winters are causing people to ask if the global climate is truly changing.
The climate is known to be variable and, in recent years, more scientific thought and research has been focused on the global temperature and how humanity might be influencing it.However, a new study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee could turn the climate change world upside down.
Scientists at the university used a math application known as synchronized chaos and applied it to climate data taken over the past 100 years.”Imagine that you have four synchronized swimmers and they are not holding hands and they do their program and everything is fine; now, if they begin to hold hands and hold hands tightly, most likely a slight error will destroy the synchronization. Well, we applied the same analogy to climate,” researcher Dr. Anastasios Tsonis said.
Scientists said that the air and ocean systems of the earth are now showing signs of synchronizing with each other.
Eventually, the systems begin to couple and the synchronous state is destroyed, leading to a climate shift.”In climate, when this happens, the climate state changes. You go from a cooling regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime. This way we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global temperature trend in the past century,” Tsonis said. “The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001.”The most recent climate shift probably occurred at about the year 2000.
Now the question is how has warming slowed and how much influence does human activity have?”But if we don’t understand what is natural, I don’t think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand — first the natural variability of climate — and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,” Tsonis said.Tsonis said he thinks the current trend of steady or even cooling earth temps may last a couple of decades or until the next climate shift occurs.
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We can see where this is going and how it will be picked up by the Climate Change Mob. Whatever which way you look at this hypothesis, we will be blamed for introducing chaos in the system, just like a butterfly’s wings can create a hurricane the other side of the planet.
Nobody listens to the real climate change experts The minds of world leaders are firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers, says Christopher Booker
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4990704/Nobody-listens-to-the-real-climate-change-experts.html
booker does it again (you can delete this if you wish. just for your information)
Why do they feel any need to pin changes between warming and cooling phases on a single oscillation such as NAO ?
They are clearly on the right track in my opinion but the answer lies in appreciating the net effect from the varying inputs of ALL the oscillations though admittedly PDO and NAO would be the main players.
Much better to try to ascertain when there is a net energy gain or a net energy loss to the air alone when the effects of all the air and ocean circulations are netted out.
I have suggested that the best diagnostic tools for that would be:
i) The average latitudinal position of the mid latitude jets after accounting for seasonal shifts and possibly also
ii) Whether there is any divergence in progress between satellite measurements of temperatures at the top of the air (air/space interface) and ground based measurements of temperatures at the surface (sea/air interface).
What we need at any given point is to know whether the air is warming or cooling so that we can identify a change in trend as soon as possible after it occurs.
Just Friday I read a report that might provide some answers –
Global cooling rattles food chain
Friday, March 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — Changing eating patterns linked to global cooling are altering the food chain in Wisconsin and may lead to further increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The most basic food, bratwurst, is increasing north of the Illinois border reaching toward Canada, researchers report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.
At the same time, populations of indigenous Germans, which require a colder climate, have increased sharply in that region.
“We’re showing for the first time that there is an ongoing change of the brat concentration and composition along the land mass west of Lake Michigan that is associated with a long-term climate modification. These foodstuff changes may explain in part the observed increase of some Wisconsinite populations,” Marty Monte-Hogg, a marine scientist at Rutters University, said in a statement.
Andy Monhan, a polar expert at the NCAR in Boulder, Colo., said the report ties all the implications of global cooling together in a biological chain of events
A direct cause-and-effect relationship of the team’s findings is still unproven, Monte-Hogg said, but it’s clear that the changes in brat, beer and human distribution do resemble a chain reaction.”
The change reflects shifting patterns of Germans, beer/brat availability and eating, the report said.
A separate report in the same edition of Science raises the possibility that new eating patterns could result in more outpouring of unfathomable gases in the region, which would include release of methane and stored carbon dioxide, potentially stabilizing global weather to the point of nonexistence.
“The faster the food chain turns over the higher volumes, the more out gassing will transpire, releasing ever higher amounts of CH4 and CO2 to the atmosphere,” said Bob Andersen, a geochemist at Colombia University’s Earth Observatory. “It’s this rate of overturning that regulates CO2 in the atmosphere.”
About damping mechanisms: energy momentum and angular momentum conservation in the oceans, primarily, and the atmosphere will provide it. See the metronome display above.
I do not think that the Tsonis et al paper claims phase lock, just some type of beats in the system.
Synchronicity is found everywhere in nature: click
This is a good example of the application of good mathematical theory to a hypothesis (a model)
The mathematics is well documented eg
Pikovsky http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Synchronization
Samoilenko A.M http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Quasiperiodic_oscillations
JimB (11:51:00) :
Isn’t this Tesla, on a larger scale?
I wonder if you would be so kind to elaborate.
Thanks
“”” Ray (09:32:47) :
When you take many different oscillators with each having their own frequency, it might look chaotic when the sum is made but eventually and maybe for a very short time, they will all be synchromized and at another time they will all cancel themselves. “””
They are not summing as in adding up. Eacvh is oscillating driven by parameters of its design (and hopefully some energy source) but they are weakly coupled together so that they can send small amounts of energy between them (but only if they ARE NOT at the same frequency AND phase locked.
If they were to come into synchronism AND phase lock then they would not have any energy transfer between them so they would stay in that condition and therefore by definition; they are already tuned to the same frequency.
Don’t confuse the summation of independent oscillations (or waves for example) with weak coupleing of otherwise independent oscillating systems.
And by the way, in earth’s climate, we don’t have too many oscillating systems; Just name one for example.
“maksimovich (12:23:22) :
This is a good example of the application of good mathematical theory to a hypothesis (a model)
The mathematics is well documented eg
Pikovsky http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Synchronization”
From that helpful article I’d guess that reality is best described as ‘synchronisation with an arbitrary phase shift’ with the proviso that on Earth the phase shift is not arbitrary but ultimately solar driven even if other processes are also involved.
Milwaukee Bob (12:08:45) :
Huh? I knew that the start of Daylight Time got moved up a couple years ago, when did April Fool’s Day get moved up? Perhaps there’s a preceding Friday the 13th clause I don’t know about.
M Bob — Where’s the link? That has to be from the Onion or something, or else a total fabrication.
Stephen Wilde (11:28:59) :
All one needs to affect climate is an overall net balance of all the seperate cyclical components at any particular time trending towards cooling or warming and shifting between each at variable intervals
I described what I thought was going on last June in this article:
http://climaterealists.com/news.php?id=1487&linkbox=true
and so far the real world is co operating.
Stephen,
That’s a really super series of articles. An excellent introduction to what really drives our climate. I especially appreciate the way you go back to first principles regarding the importance of the oceans as a thermal buffer to the system. I think you need to add Svensmark and his Israeli colleague and you’ve got it.
George E. Smith (12:54:00) :
And by the way, in earth’s climate, we don’t have too many oscillating systems; Just name one for example.
Um, day/night cycle, seasonal cycle, PDO, ENSO, milankovitch cycles, 11-year solar cycles, etc… there are many more.
Mark
theBuckWheat (09:20:43) :
So, what are good candiates for the next Urgent Issue?
I would nominate: estrogen analogs in wastewater.
I welcome other nominations.
———–
Stricter regulation of sub-prime carbon credit trading following further collapse of Western economies ??
“And by the way, in earth’s climate, we don’t have too many oscillating systems; Just name one for example.”
Day/Night.
Summer/Winter.
Seasonal (and probably non seasonal) latitudinal movement of the jet streams.
Variations in size and intensity of weather systems.
Solar variations (even if rather small in relation to total energy received).
Responses of the air to oceanic oscillations.
George E. Smith (12:54:00) :
“Don’t confuse the summation of independent oscillations (or waves for example) with weak coupleing of otherwise independent oscillating systems.
And by the way, in earth’s climate, we don’t have too many oscillating systems; Just name one for example.”
I don’t know in climate science but natural oscillators are found everywhere in nature. Why would climate be any different?
I would tend to think that in climate you would have mainly strong couplings and much less weak ones since all the components at play are all in physical contact and added energy by the sun (mainly).
From the Wang et al paper above,
In this realm we hope that our results will provide some direction and focus to this perpetual quest for understanding climate variability.
That’s the issue. Why does the Earth’s climate vary to the extent we know it does – MWP, LIA, Sierra mega-droughts.?
Which brings us to the ‘unprecedented’ late 20th century warming, which wasn’t unprecedented, it wasn’t even particularly large. Which in turn makes the question of whether CO2 was the cause or not, largely irrelevant because we are likely to see larger natural variations.
Whatever you may think about CO2 causing climate change, worst case is we will have decades to prepare for the consequences.
With our current level of understanding of natural climate cycles we could be hit at any time and without warning by a climate shift with severe consequences for food supply, energy supply, etc.
What’s the chance that their funding gets cancelled?
Mike & Ric (and others), yes it’s a “fabrication” or more accurately a rewrite of an article that appeared in the local news paper, (it follows in this post) that seems to have an obligation to print something about “global warming” on a weekly basis no matter how tortuous.
I did it as a “Thank you” to Anthony for creating this blog and to you, ALL of you that take the time to post here your reasoned (and sometimes humorous) thoughts and as a congratulation to Anthony for achieving the 10 million milestone. I am humbled by most of you in your intellect and have learned and used a lot of what you have posted to “force” others to at least look at another view of our global climate.
THANK YOU! Keep up the good work, all of you. Hopefully someday there will be subject I can jump in on with equal insight.
Here is the original article –
Global warming rattles food chain in the Antarctic
Times wires
In Print: Friday, March 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — Changing wind patterns linked to global warming are altering the food chain in Antarctica and may lead to further increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The most basic food, plankton, is declining in the northern portions of the Antarctic peninsula reaching toward South America, researchers report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.
At the same time, populations of Adelie penguins, which require a colder climate, have dropped sharply in that region.
“We’re showing for the first time that there is an ongoing change on phytoplankton concentration and composition along the western shelf of the Antarctic Peninsula that is associated with a long-term climate modification. These phytoplankton changes may explain in part the observed decline of some penguin populations,” Martin Montes-Hugo, a marine scientist at Rutgers University, said in a statement.
Andrew Monaghan, a polar expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the report ties all the implications of global warming together in a biological chain of events
A direct cause-and-effect relationship of the team’s findings is still unproven, Montes-Hugo said, but it’s clear that the changes in phytoplankton, krill and penguin distribution do resemble a chain reaction.”
The change reflects shifting patterns of cloud cover, ice formation and winds, the report said.
A separate report in the same edition of Science raises the possibility that new wind patterns could result in more upwelling of deep water in the region, which would then release stored carbon dioxide, potentially increasing global warming.
“The faster the ocean turns over, the more deep water rises to the surface to release CO2,” said Robert Anderson, a geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “It’s this rate of overturning that regulates CO2 in the atmosphere.”
Information from the Associated Press and San Francisco Chronicle was used in this report.
vukcevic (12:47:15) :
JimB (11:51:00) :
Isn’t this Tesla, on a larger scale?
I wonder if you would be so kind to elaborate.
Thanks
Well…wasn’t tesla the guy who, among other things, believed there was an inherent “rythm” in everything, including the earth? And that if you hit one spot on the planet, repeatedly, at the right rythm, that the earth would literally shatter…
JimB
And by the way, in earth’s climate, we don’t have too many oscillating systems; Just name one for example.
George,
Maybe we are missing your point, but to those that have already been mentioned, what about the 18.6 year lunar nodal cycle? This has been linked to climate fluctuations. Or the QBO?
What are you really trying to say?
Basil
Well Basil, we have a number of things that are being “Driven” by external forces. The earth’s annual orbit around the sun being one. or the moon’s monthly trip around the earth, and the variations in orbital parameters in those processes can and possibly do cause cyclic changes in climate. But all of these driven systems have their own frequencies that depend on the driver. The moon is not going to cause “oscillations with a period of ayear; nor is the sun going to create monthly cycling in eqarth weather patterns.
My point is that each of the driven systems operates at the natural frequency of the driver, and they aren’t all likely to tweak each other to some common fequency and lock.
Closest thing we have to a phaselock situation is the moon’s day and month reaching approximately the same magnitude. they currently are phaselocked though with a variable non zero phase error cycle (is that nutation)
I’m not going to detail every one of the “oscillating systems” people mentioned.
You have to distinguish between a closed system that is not being driven by some external (and cyclic) driving force; but is simply exchanging energy between two or more different energy storage mechanisms, which would persist on their own if the systems were lossless; such as the free exchange of energy storage, from magnetic field storage in an inductor, and electic field storage in a capacitor. Such a system oscillates without any external drive; and it only stops oscillating, when the total included energy in the system is zero.
Yes we have various cycles that are driven by external sources, which provide both the driving energy, and also set the frequency of the cyclic behavior. The earth’s orbital parameters set the frequency of its annual orbit around the sun; but the mutual gravity between tow massive bodies provides the driving energy; until it too runs down.
These strange attractors seem a lot more sensible than the AGW epicycles.
Glass spheres are extremely fragile and easily broken by observation.