I was pointed to this graph by an email from WUWT reader Phil Ravenscroft and I’m reposting it here for discussion.
While the correlation looks plausible, it seems almost too good. Since the email tip for this graph did not include the source data files, I was ready to dismiss it.
UPDATE: my first impression was the correct one – see comments
But in doing my own research, I found myself being led back to late John Daly and his references to Theodor Landscheidt in this page. While I don’t put much stock in Landscheidt’s barycentric theories, I’ve never known John Daly to pursue a wild hare. Looking further, in the peer reviewed literature, there is this paper:
Connection between ENSO phenomena and solar and geomagnetic activity (PDF) by M A. Nuzhdina, Astronomical Observatory of Kiev National T. Shevchenko University, Kiev, Ukraine in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (2002) 2: 83–89. European Geophysical Society.
I find this passage interesting:
The analysis of planetary fields of pressure shows that they
are connected both with the 11-year and the 22-year solar cycles
(Wagner, 1971). The atmospheric barometric centers,
Icelandic and Aleut depressions, Pacific, Siberian, Azores
anticyclones in the northern hemisphere, displace close to
the maxima of 11-year solar cycles. The Azores and Icelandic
barometric centers tend to displace on the east close
to the maximum of a solar cycle (Herman and Goldberg,
1978). The clockwise circulation, connected with Azores anticyclone,
causes passat winds in the north-east direction.
The response of barometric formations at the midday regions
of the Earth (namely, recess or filling of cyclones or
strengthening or destruction of anticyclones) depends upon
tbe sign of the magnetic field of the sunspot which is crossing
the central meridian of the Sun (Nuzhdina and Barkova,
1983). Spontaneous phenomena of solar activity (solar
flares) and crossings by the Earth of an IMF sector boundary
are accompanied by changes of atmospheric pressure and
cyclonic activity in some regions Mustel, 1972; Roberts and
Olsen, 1973; Herman and Goldberg, 1978). A low-pressure
region in the gulf of Alaska is more significant, when the
IMF is directed away from the Sun, than towards (Wilcox,
1978).
The authors conclude:
– QB and QA oscillations in ENSO data are coherent with
the same oscillation in Ap-index and Wolf number data. 5.3-year oscillation is coherent in ENSO and Wolf number data.
– In our opinion, cyclic dynamics of ENSO phenomena
are due to solar activity and geomagnetic variations.
It is background long-period variations on which high frequency
oscillations are imposed.
This is an interesting concept and worth further discussion. My goal in posting this is to have our team of WUWT readers take a good hard look at this and see if the SOI – Ap graph has any merit.
I’m traveling today, so have at it. Please, please, keep on topic. Lately people have just been posting random links and OT’s.
The paper at the first external link [John Daly site, Landscheidt’s paper] doesn’t carry a date that I could find. Maybe I missed it. Seems about the year 2000 by looking at the dates of the references. Any ideas or anything more recent?
Also, Landscheidt claims to have been converted to this phenomenon by Nigel Calder, while before thinking that only the motions of the solar system mattered. The point Anthony referred to.
I haven’t gotten to the second paper yet. That will have to wait until Friday. Sleep awaits.
I’d agree that this does look too good to be true.
Any idea where these measurements came from?
According to the pdf, it came from INTERNET!, but that seems a bit broad.
I’m a bit skeptical, too. The graph looks good, all right, much better than some “the-peaks-almost-match” charts that turn out to be like “94% of all homicides occur within two weeks of a full or new moon.” Still, it’s worth looking into. Even “worth blogging about.”
I don’t know where the data is coming from, but the yellow curve is not the Ap index. Looks like some kind of normalized or manipulated version. E.g. the sharp dip at month 813 [that makes for the good correlation with SOI] is not in the Ap index. Beware of correlations that are ‘too good’, or people claiming almost perfect match.
Just at first glance, and knowing nothing much about it, this graph appears to be telling us the SOI turns on a proverbial dime. That seems highly implausible.
Here is the monthly Ap-index in closely the same format:
http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-Index-1932-now.png
Gosh, I really think you are getting it all wrong. As with CO2 and temperature, you’ve got the correlation backwards. Everybody knows that solar Ap lags the SOI.
Of course I was being sarcastic.
The analysis of planetary fields of pressure shows that they
are connected both with the 11-year and the 22-year solar cycles
(Wagner, 1971). The atmospheric barometric centers,
Icelandic and Aleut depressions, Pacific, Siberian, Azores
anticyclones in the northern hemisphere, displace close to
the maxima of 11-year solar cycles. The Azores and Icelandic
barometric centers tend to displace on the east close
to the maximum of a solar cycle (Herman and Goldberg,
1978). The clockwise circulation, connected with Azores anticyclone,
causes passat winds in the north-east direction.
The response of barometric formations at the midday regions
of the Earth (namely, recess or filling of cyclones or
strengthening or destruction of anticyclones) depends upon
tbe sign of the magnetic field of the sunspot which is crossing
the central meridian of the Sun
Extremely interesting. I maintain if the term ‘climate change’ means anything, it means the high and low pressure systems that cause the world’s weather move poleward or equatorward and intensive or weaken.
The reference above says the pressure systems move according to the solar cycle and strengthen/weaken in direct response to the magnetic orientation of individual sunspots. If true, WOW! Forget about solar irradiance, because it means the sun directly (not indirectly through heat) controls our weather (if true).
Took NOAA’s SOI index values here
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/GEOMAGNETIC_DATA/INDICES/KP_AP/
and BOM (Australia) SOI index values here
ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/sco/soi/soiplaintext.html
and the Ap index here
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/GEOMAGNETIC_DATA/INDICES/KP_AP/
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/GEOMAGNETIC_DATA/INDICES/KP_AP/MONTHLY.DAT
(file description in MONTHLY.FMT)
Could not reproduce the results. Ap-SOI R2 < 0.01. SO no correlation whatsoever. R2 of both SOI indices for the period 1932-2009 was 0.934
The Ap temporal variations appear (by eye) similar to the ones shown here
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/ap-index-1932-2008.png
Please check, I could easily have made a mistake …
I don’t know if you’re aware of Robert Baker’s work on the relation between the sun’s magnetic activity and the SOI: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121542494/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
In the graph above, the 1939/40/41/42 El Nino appears as the dip from months ~100 to ~160 when it should be more toward ~81 to ~125. The 1981/82 El Nino appears centered near month 639, when it should run from ~595 to ~617, And the 1997/98 El Nino above occurs around month 813, when it should run from ~770 to ~800. So the SOI has been shifted (lagged) as far as I can tell.
And those specific El Nino dips do NOT appear on Leif’s AP Index graph.
Leif, if you’ve got the AP Index data in monthly format, I’ll plot it with the SOI.
Regards
The concept is one that I have entertained. So, the chart is interesting to me on that account. Like others have posted, the fit may be “too good to be true”. Anyhow, I never did more than “thought experiments”.
It will be interesting to see if the above chart stands up to community scrutiny.
The SOI does seemed determined to remain positive at the moment, almost inspite of the more neutral readings from other ENSO factors. The correlation had crossed my mind and am fascinated if somethng showed up. They’re sailing on Lake Eyre, which just indicates that we’ve had a reasonable “wet” season in ENSO effected regions of Australia.
It would be interesting if one you math experts could come up with a variation between the two and then on top of that one with a comparison to periodic CO2 levels. It might show a link or it might show just how much of a non factor just one GHG is to the system. Establishing two links might be adding errors or just isn’t a good match of historic data.
If this were a fingerprint and I were a defense attorney I would advise my client to plea bargain.
There is a QBO in solar activity with an average period of 27.1 months. This is the second most important variation on the sun after the sunspot cycle.
Sea surface temperature in the tropics is related very directly to the QBO in the stratosphere. The QBO in the stratosphere is linked directly to temperature variations at the poles which are in turn related to the aa index of geomagnetic activity. The Arctic Oscillation, surface temperature and wind patterns in both hemispheres are affected.
Essentially, the basic parameters of the climate system that drive responses in all those little grid squares in the climatic models are not stable. They depend upon the sun.
The story is here: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/solar-warming-solar-cooling/
Looking at it again I realize that for many readers it will be long and complex but I try to cross all the T’s and dot the I’s. There will be more to come as I understand it better.
From the paper:
Conclusion
Solar activity has weakened the vortex in both hemispheres. Periodic change in 200hPa temperature in response to changing ozone content and changing short wave radiation change ice cloud density and prevalence. This drives the Southern Oscillation. By and large it is the sea that stores energy and transports it to higher latitudes producing warmer winters. Ultimately sea surface temperature depends upon the Quasi Biennial Oscillation in ultraviolet radiation and the solar wind. The change in the solar QBO is responsible for the waxing and waning of the Southern Oscillation as it changes between El Nino and La Nina dominance.
Implications
Since warmer winters provide a longer growing season recent increase in winter temperature at high latitudes must be regarded as beneficial. That warming process is now reversing. If the sun descends into a deep minimum of ultraviolet and magnetic activity, all earth species will suffer.
The notion that carbon dioxide has caused a temperature increase is not supported by the climate record or observation of temperature dynamics beneath the tropopause. Limiting carbon emissions will do nothing to stem the course of solar driven climate change.
Modelling that begins with the assumption that influential parameters like ozone concentration, upper troposphere temperature and cloud cover are unaffected by solar activity, or that conditions in the troposphere are unaffected by QBO dynamics is devoid of value and has no utility whatsoever.
We are getting closer….
Bob Tisdale: What would it mean, then, for the near future of SOI the low Ap index values we are having?
This looks like something Steve McIntyre of Climate Realists might like to analyze.
Correction – Climate Audit. Anyone know how to forward him this tidbit?
I’d like to know if the full cycle of the PDO, around 60 plus years, fits historically within six solar cycles. Do we even have enough data to see if there is a fit going back in time?
The reason I ask is that if we can find something that alternates from one solar cycle to the next, like the shape of the peaks of cosmic rays, then alternating phases of the PDO, from warm to cool and back again, would each contain one solar cycle of one type and two solar cycles of the other type. It’s a nice little potential mechanism, but fails if the solar cycles and the PDO are not in synchrony.
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I don’t know much at all about Landscheidt, but I do know that the history of science contains many instances where someone notices correlations but cannot come up with a good explanation. The barycentric model seems a little far out to me as far as gravitational cause and effect, but who knows what is going on magnetohydrodynamically.
Alfred Wegner was not the first to notice how the continents matched up, but he pushed the correlation farther than anyone. He could not come up with a mechanism, but the mechanism that was finally found now comprises one of the best proven theories in science.
Immanuel Velikovsky was a crackpot, but he noticed a lot of exceptions that probed the rule of uniformitarianism and are now being treated with real scientific interest. No, no competent scientist hypothesizes that Venus was a comet, but there is evidence that comet Encke or its fragments may have affected the earth within the cultural memory of man if not in written Chinese history.
Hannes Alfven said words to the effect that physicist pronounce their theories, but the universe does not behave that way. We are only beginning to scratch the surface of the electromagnetic properties of the universe.
“Dark Matter” is hypothesized to comprise some 90% of the universe, but we have no idea what it is.
Correlation is not proof, but only a fool dismisses it, IMO.
Could this also have bearing on the NH? The squirrelly jet stream has gone South yet again, and I recall another article along these lines that showed some correlation to the jet stream.
BTW: If I were in the Mid West/Great Lakes area, I’d forget about removing my snow tires just yet…
I’ve wondered about these connections before, but if memory serves, there have been different series used to establish correlations. Thus it is important that those of us (not including me) who are most handy with data and most hard headed in their use dig deep.
Would it be useful to use sunspot series instead of the AP index as a second way of looking at the issue?
Assuming for the sake of argument that there might be a connection between solar activity and the SOI, can anyone knowledgeable on the subject make an informed guess as to what might have happened to the SOI when the sun was cooler than it would be during “normal” 11 and 22 year cycles, e.g., during the Dalton minimum in the early 19th C, or the less pronounced minimum in the early 20th C?
Also, if the proxy historically for solar minima is C14, and C14 varies according to cosmic rays, that is evidence that solar minima vary the cosmic rays impacting the earth, and hence, possibly cloudiness and temperature.
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