Dr. Nicola Scafetta writes:
Anthony, I believe that you may be interested in my last published work.
This paper suggests that climate is characterized by oscillations that are predictable. These oscillations appear to be linked to planetary motion. A climate model capable of reproducing these oscillation would outperform traditional climate models to reconstruct climate oscillations. For example, a statistical comparison is made with the GISS model.
Here’s the abstract at Sciencedirect:
Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications
Abstract: We investigate whether or not the decadal and multi-decadal climate oscillations have an astronomical origin. Several global surface temperature records since 1850 and records deduced from the orbits of the planets present very similar power spectra. Eleven frequencies with period between 5 and 100 years closely correspond in the two records. Among them, large climate oscillations with peak-to-trough amplitude of about 0.1 $^oC$ and 0.25 $^oC$, and periods of about 20 and 60 years, respectively, are synchronized to the orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn. Schwabe and Hale solar cycles are also visible in the temperature records. A 9.1-year cycle is synchronized to the Moon’s orbital cycles. A phenomenological model based on these astronomical cycles can be used to well reconstruct the temperature oscillations since 1850 and to make partial forecasts for the 21$^{st}$ century. It is found that at least 60\% of the global warming observed since 1970 has been induced by the combined effect of the above natural climate oscillations. The partial forecast indicates that climate may stabilize or cool until 2030-2040. Possible physical mechanisms are qualitatively discussed with an emphasis on the phenomenon of collective synchronization of coupled oscillators.
A free preprint copy of the paper can be found here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.4639 (PDF available in right sidebar)
Basil Copeland and I made some similar observations in the past, but we did not examine other planetary orbital periods. Basil also did a follow up guest post on the random walk nature of global temperature.
This paper opens up a lot of issues, like Barycentrism, which I have tried to avoid because they are so contentious. I ask that commenters keep the dialog respectful and on-topic please.
NOTE: Updated at 10PM PST to add Figure 12, plus some changes to the introductory text per the request of Dr. Scafetta. – Anthony
Scafetta’s paper is not about the physics, per se, but about a model that outperforms GISS, which is the basis of IPCC’s failure to predict.
“New Scafetta paper – his celestial model outperforms GISS”
GISS is not the only failure in weather/climate prediction. So did the MET and NOAA.
He’s done a good job of identifying the cycles in the climate, along with offering possible causes of those cycles.
Does it matter if cycle “F” is caused by function (foo) or function (oof)?
If the causes of certain cycles are what you disagree with, then give a replacement cause or simply say “it’s an unknown”.
If the cycles are what you disagree with, then say why there is not a cycle, or replace it.
To me, the best part of what he does in the paper is identify the cycles in thier detrended state.
The big question for the 21st Century is what delta in trended state comes next:
Continued trend, neutral trend, rising trend, or declining trend?
What cycle do you see coming into play that will be in sympathy with that delta?
Norman Page says:
June 5, 2010 at 8:10 am
Leif Svalgaard seems always to assume that the TSI is the best measure of solar actity as far as climate is concerned.
TSI, heliospheric magnetic field, 10Be, cosmic rays, sunspots, etc are all [almost] equally good measures of solar activity, as they all reflect the solar magnetic field that control variations in all these measures. It doesn’t matter which one you use.
We often use TSI because the energy involved is many orders of magnitudes larger than that in the other manifestations [CMEs, flares, etc].
I recently gave a presentation on solar variations that may be of interest in this regard:
http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf
Tenuc says:
June 5, 2010 at 8:35 am
SDO also monitors the sun’s extreme UV output, which controls the response of Earth’s atmosphere to solar variability.”
Is this a hint about the Earth’s missing climate ‘solar switch’, or something else ???
The usual confusion: what NASA mean is the UPPER atmosphere above [say] 100 km where solar activity controls the temperature and density [important for satellite drag, etc].
If you want to see a USA national weather forecast with daily maps generated 2 and a half years ago for the next four years, using a very similar method. They are available free for the looking at;
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
These maps do better than the NWS three days out, when the outer planets do not interfere with the lunar declinational tides, basic background cyclic patterns. Which right now will be until mid August 2010 when Uranus, Neptune, and Jupiter, all have a go at creating a surge of hurricane production September and October of 2010.
My own ideas on how the medium term (50 to 60 year) driving forces of the Moon and outer planets, affect the weather and climate, can be found in the research area of the site.
ok, so since correlation is not necessarily causation let’s not get carried away and say in all cases where there is correlation there is not causation
Are we doomed? Dr. S. has modulated his cycles onto a parabola. The temperature will keep on increasing at an ever accelerating rate. We’re all (OK, our great grandchildren) going to fry.
What am I missing?
I personally think that the falsified theory of uniformitarianism, a view in geology championed by Charles Lyell that the rate and mechanisms of geological change operating in the modern era are sufficient to explain changes in the past (contrasted with catastrophism), still is strongly in play.
As one poster has stated, it takes large energy changes for changes of large magnitude to take place.
I couldn’t help but to notice the recent “fireball” that struck Jupiter. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100604-science-space-jupiter-impact-flash-asteroid/
“Meanwhile, the odd coincidence of two Jovian smashes so close together has astronomers scratching their heads, since impacts on Jupiter have long been thought to be relatively rare.
Until the 2009 collision, the last known impact event on Jupiter was the famous “death” of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994.
“‘Unbelievable’ has been the word in many of the first emails about this one just seen,” Hammel said. “It’s back to the drawing board on our understanding of the statistics of impacting bodies.”
A similar strike of such magnitude on the sun could play havoc with the Earth’s “climate”, and there is nothing to preclude that from happening.
Mythology, I think, is based at least in part on catastrophes that happened a good ways back in history. The primitive explanations may have been completely wrong, but that does not in any way prove that the catastrophes didn’t happen. We ignore that at our peril.
I am not implying that the present studies of gradual processes don’t have significant value, but major global (and temporary, although long in the mind of humans) changes might well be better explained by catastrophes.
One refinement as an addendum to Dr. Scafetta’s paper would be to
measure the variation in tidal “pull” when either the Earth or the Moon
are aligned so one or the other is eclipsing Jupiter or combinations of
the gas giant trio (Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune) when they’re in the same
quadrant relative to this particular earth/moon alignment.
However, finding anyone with the money, the skills, or the will to
do such studies is doubtful. Worse, some would consider authoring
a paper on the subject a career killer in astrophysics or solar studies.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
The energy utilized in large body water tides is fairly well understood.
Less so is the tidal influence on ground water. The least studied and
possibly most influential for both gravitational and magnetic effects
are superficial and subsurface land tides.
As the earth’s continents slide around and the equator (and the equitorial
bulge) migrate in conjuction with axial tilt and procession, yet another
set of mutli-millenial variables are added to the length of day calculations.
The slight decoupling of Northern and Southern hemispheric temperatures
on a decadal or century scale that can’t be explained by GISS, Hadley or IPCC
models may have less to do with errors introduced by an urban heat island
(UHI) effect (McKitrick and Michaels, 2007; McKitrick, 2010) and
more to do with the volume of surface land mass in the Northen Hemisphere,
it’s vegitation, and albedo compared to the predominace of surface water
mass in the South.
For those wondering about observations and predictions concerning the
current solar cycle, please remember that David Hathaway, Leif Svalgaard,
et al, are predicting the monthly sunspot number (SSN)
to be over 60. For June, 2010, the spot number was 8.8.
See:
http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/
Dave Hathaway hasn’t really commented on planetary gravitational/magnetic
influences on water/earth tides or sunspot numbers and solar activity.
Leif Svalgaard has, in the negative, repeatedly. See:
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1127
anna v wrote:
“Let us suppose that the correlation in the frequencies demonstrated in this paper are real , i.e. significant within errors. An explanation could be that in the billions of years that the planetary clock synchronized itself, producing a moon facing us with the same side as a by product for example, the sun/moon tides of the earth became modulated by the frequencies of the rest of the planetary system. Then any influence of the tides on the climate would be carrying the imprint of the synchronized planetary clock from millions of years back, and the correlation with the planetary orbits , though not spurious, will not be the causative effect. Causation, i.e. energy input, would be the tides.”
After collecting key clues (arising out of my investigations of stratospheric volcanoes http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/VolcanoStratosphereSLAM.htm ), I arrived at the same understanding a few months ago:
Note on Confounding of Lunisolar Harmonic Spectrum & Solar System Dynamics – http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/Confounding.htm
Without going into a lot of details, these were the 2 graphs that fundamentally changed my view of the role of solar system barycentric dynamics:
1) http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/SAOT,DVI,VEI,MSI_SOI,L90,SOI+L90.png
2) http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/SAOT_Lunar_aa_SOI.png
[ both from draft notes here http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/VolcanoStratosphereSLAM.htm ]
Note to anyone who takes notes:
ALL of my webpages will soon be torn down.
The temperature will keep on increasing at an ever accelerating rate. We’re all (OK, our great grandchildren) going to fry.
What am I missing?
Newton’s first law of motion: A body continues in a state of rest or motion in a straight line at a constant speed unless made to change state by forces acting upon it.
If there were no forces acting upon climate, the 1st extreme that came along would stick. Earth has varied over geologic time periods, as if in a balance. Go out of the solar system, out of the galaxy and on to the Super Clusters of Galaxies and the expansion of the Universe. Should there be no limit to the size of the Super Clusters and the Compact Dominant monster galaxies at their cores? Should there be an upper limit to their Super-Massive Black Holes? There appears to be a good reason why these SuperCluster cores have stopped forming new stars: the temperature of the gas surrounding them has gone too high to allow condensation of new stars.
Macrocosm might be related to microcosm. If an old galaxy were to be expelled from the SuperCluster core region, it would enter cooler regions and could re-start star condensation/formation.
The Milky Way is laminated as to it’s dust/gas layers. We know this from surveys which have detected high-latitude clouds in the galaxy. How the Sun (or any star) is temporarily affected upon passage though these varying layers is an unknown, but the Sun does pass through them. It’s not a simple matter of one and only one gradient of density when it comes to the galactic plane.
Bottom line: You are not alone in asking “What am I missing?”.
Paul Vaughn (6:05pm):
The MATHEMATICAL lexicon does not vary much from field to field, and the problem of Scafetta’s claimed “coherence” goes much deeper than your comment allows. He is clearly trying to establish the coherence–in the widely-accepted sense– between pairs of signals, but Burg’s “maximum entropy” algorithm for estimating power spectra yields no cross-spectral information (no c0- and quad-spectra). Thus he improvises a measure of the proximity or congruence of spectral peaks for the pair. This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes coherence. It is not a measure of similarity of power density structure, but of the STABILITY of relative PHASE beween like-frequency components of the signal pair. It is independent of the power densities in the same way that cross-correlation is independent of total variances.
I’m surprised that I should have to explain this to you, who constantly touts “phase-aware” analysis methods. And I’m surprised that no reviewer caught this before publication.
vukcevic wrote:
” […] http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm but even that needs definition of the transfer mechanism, which I am pondering at the moment.”
Barkin has written insightfully about this. I would schedule a full day to sift through his works. The bits that are relevant to terrestrial climate are buried as paragraphs here-&-there in his many, many publications (which primarily address peripherally-related topics). I don’t think you will be disappointed if you make the effort. Barkin’s insights are both simple & powerful. You may quickly see how 36 & 90 year oscillations derived from different (but harmonically related) phenomena (perhaps entrained through different spatial pathways) might combine to produce the ‘illusion’ of some of the (perhaps ephemeral) “60 year” oscillations (north of 45°S [& this is absolutely key]) to which you have drawn attention. [Bear in mind north/south continental/maritime asymmetry, including its seasonal variation.] Based on M. Mann’s paper on ENSO/volcano relations, I would say Barkin’s knowledge is one of the key blindspots holding Mann back from an influential pivot & forward-lunge that could change the whole climate discussion.
Paul, noted.
Anna and Carsten, I’ll just repeat what I wrote earlier, as you both seem to have missed it:
tallbloke says:
June 5, 2010 at 1:34 am
The vertical tides (caused by the planets on the sun) are small, just as the vertical tide caused by the moon on the earth is small, but the horizontal tides are huge in comparison, and they are the ones which cause much more tidal motion, same as those caused by the moon here on earth.
Even tiny Mercury induces horizontal tides of hundreds of kilometers on the suns surface. Leif’s 1mm tide is a red herring.
JDN wrote:
“Nikola:
Please consider putting together a scientific presentation of your work for youtube. The paper is a problem to read. I would be making assumptions just in order to understand your terminology and graphs. I really think you need to present something like this live.
-JDN”
The links here http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/60yearCycles.htm will lead you to here http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/V_Sun_SSB_60a.htm , where you will find that Dr. Scafetta delivered a video more than a year ago.
[Note to anyone who may have bookmarked the link to Scafetta’s video last year: The host site changed the URL – I provide a link to the updated URL.]
Leif Svalgaard says: June 5, 2010 at 9:37 am
Dr. Svalgaard in his paper
http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf
asks
“Was the Maunder Minimum just an example of a strong L&P effect?”
Period 1600 – 1700 was time of a major magnetic perturbation not only in the solar activity but also in the Earth’s magnetic field.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC1.htm
and most likely it was solar system wide. Fact that it coincided with sudden cooling in the western Europe (and possibly globally) it may or may not be a coincidence.
Fact that the Arctic temperature anomaly has a good correlation with averaged geomagnetic field ( between two NH extremities)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
would suggest that link between GMF and climatic variation is not result of a coincidence.
Tenuc wrote [about disruptions of collectively coupled oscillators]: “No answers here, just more questions!”
…and damn good ones!!
I imagine that such disruptions are ongoing – and blinding for many investigators. It was precisely the background harmonies that immediately drew my interest as soon as I got involved, as I’ve noted in the intro here http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/Confounding.htm .
tallbloke says:
June 5, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Even tiny Mercury induces horizontal tides of hundreds of kilometers on the suns surface. Leif’s 1mm tide is a red herring.
A hundred km long and 1 mm high?
Perhaps a calculation or link to the 100s of km tides. Anyway, a sunspot is tens of thousands of km…
What is your reference for “horizontal tides of hundreds of kilometers on the suns surface”? I have never heard about it and would like to know.
anna v wrote:
“Let us suppose that the correlation in the frequencies demonstrated in this paper are real , i.e. significant within errors. An explanation could be that in the billions of years that the planetary clock synchronized itself, producing a moon facing us with the same side as a by product for example, the sun/moon tides of the earth became modulated by the frequencies of the rest of the planetary system. Then any influence of the tides on the climate would be carrying the imprint of the synchronized planetary clock from millions of years back, and the correlation with the planetary orbits , though not spurious, will not be the causative effect. Causation, i.e. energy input, would be the tides.”
This is what I have be saying all along. The corelation between the planetary motions and the Earth’s climate is primarily a faux or false correlation. I have work (some of which is published) that says that the level of solar activity is dependent on the planetary tidal cycles and other published work that says that the Earth’s climate is heavily dependent on the Moon’s tidal cycles.
The LINK between these two phenomenon is that the Lunar orbit has become synchronized with the planetary motions over many billions of years. Thus:
Hence, the abstract in my Russian paper which states that:
We know that the strongest planetary tidal forces acting on the lunar orbit come from the planets Venus, Mars and Jupiter. In addition, we known that, over the last 4.6 billion years, the Moon has slowly receded from the Earth. During the course of this lunar recession, there have been times when the orbital periods of Venus, Mars and Jupiter have been in resonance(s) with the precession rate for the line-of-nodes the lunar orbit. When these resonances have occurred, they would have greatly amplified the effects of the planetary tidal forces upon the lunar orbit. Hence, the observed synchronization between the precession rate of the line-of-nodes of the lunar orbit and the orbital periods of Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter, could simply be a cumulative fossil record left behind by these historical resonances.
In simple terms:
Planetary motion –> level solar activity
Planetary motion –> change in shape and tilt of lunar orbit (and hence tides
experience here on Earth)
Change in tides –> Earth’s climate cycles
As a result, you get a faux/false correlation between Solar activity and Earth’s climate.
This explains the “mysterious” amplification mechanism that is needed to explain the observed (supposed) correlations between the level of solar activity (as measured by TSI etc.) and the Earth’s climate cycles.
Most likely there are weak links between the level Sun’s activity and climate cycles here on Earth but that are closley paralleled by larger variations in the climate cycles that are driven by the Lunar tides. It is simply the fact that it is the planetary motions
are responsible for both the level of solar activity and changes in the shape and tilt of the Lunar orbit, that falsely attributes much of the Earth’s climate cycles to variations the level of Solar activity when it is fact being caused by the Solar/Lunar tides.
Look at this plot and you will see that long term variations in the Lunar/Solar tides are in fact linked with varaitions in the planetary cycles.
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com/2010/03/synchronization-between-solar-inertial.html
Leif, Carsten,
Semi Semerov wrote this on my blog some time ago:
“Due to current research of K.Georgieva, despite that the vertical component of the tidal forces is almost negligible, the horizontal component of the tides may influence (brake) the meridional flows by as much as 20m/s (when accumulated over the length of the 11-year cycle), which difference in the flow speed is said to be actually observed… Her research says, that influencing the meridional flow of magnetic field toward equator in the maximum phase of current cycle influences the strength of the next cycle.”
K.Georgieva et al., Planetary tidal effects on solar activity, 2009.
Solar-Terrestrial Influences Laboratory of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Acad. G. Bonchev str., Bl.3, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria
The sun’s strong surface gravity pulls things flat, but this means that although the vertical components of the tidal forces are small, the energy transferred is being squeezed out sideways into the horizontal component. The forces involved are non-negligible.
Ninderthana says:
June 5, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Planetary motion –> level solar activity
Planetary motion –> change in shape and tilt of lunar orbit (and hence tides
experience here on Earth)
Change in tides –> Earth’s climate cycles
As a result, you get a faux/false correlation between Solar activity and Earth’s climate.
Very interesting Ian. A priori, it seems natural that the Earth would be most strongly affected by it’s closest astronomical neighbour which has the strongest (varying) gravitational effect on it – The Moon.
I wouldn’t be too quick to write off the possible solar – Terrestrial climate link though. If both you and Svensmark turn out to be right, then both Sun and Moon are strong players in driving Earth’s climate variations. And the planetary motions and cyclic resonances are behind both drivers.
rogerL wrote: “[…] and it would be better to have a causal mechanism. But when two phenomena are correlated then either there is a (perhaps undiscovered) causal relation between them or there is a third (perhaps undiscovered) phenomenon driving them both.”
While there are other possibilities, it is very good to see so many folks explicitly drawing attention to confounding.
Indeed, statistical methods are independent of physics. I will take this opportunity to thank the physicists in this community for the comments which they have shared during the past 16 months, which have been instrumental in influencing (a) the direction of my knowledge-gathering activities and (b) the evolution of my speculation & interpretations.
Re: sky (which was re: my earlier comment)
I skied (skimmed & skipped) through Scafetta’s treatment of coherence.
My main [constructive] criticism of his spectral density plots is that he has *not presented crosses as a function of time (for example by using windowing techniques – I would suggest cross-wavelet).
This is actually very important, as is evident by reading some of the comments in this thread – i.e. people are clearly misled by these whole-time-series summaries, as if any power-spike represents a purely-cyclic stationary sine-wave of constant amplitude.
I want to see a cross-spectrum as a function of time so that I can see where (in time) coherence fails. Furthermore, I want to see the effect of varying the window (but that sort of detail doesn’t generally need to appear in a publication).
anna v wrote:
“Now synchronization is another story.
I could entertain the idea that somehow over the billions of years the fluid motions of the sun may have been modulated by all the gravitational bodies going around it, in the same way that the moon ended up looking with the same face on the earth. In that case, planetary motions and sun energy swirlings could have a similar frequency analysis spectrum and be correlated, not because of causation in the present, but because they are two giant clocks that have become synchronous over untold millenia.
(This would for example account for the 11 year coincidence.)
But this is just a hypothesis. […] we have to wait for a verified solid model of the sun behavior as well as a better gauge of climate than global temperature, which is a cousin four times removed from the energy of the system.”
I agree, with the exception of the bit which I have omitted (“[…]”).
I will support the dismissal of the 11 year coincidence as possibly a fossil, in part because of what I learned from pursuing the following:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/VaughanPL2009_11.1aCycleSSD.htm
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/SunspotsJEV.htm
I’ve never bothered tidying up the loose ends of those investigations for the simple reason that it would not be worth the effort. I learned all I needed to know: There is *loose* coincidence with J+N. Anna’s speculation is interesting, in part because if there is anything (physical) to her speculation it might help explain why the phase-concordance appears so loose.
If anyone has any doubts about an overwhelming planetary-solar activity correlational link then they do not have to look any further than the seminal
work of Paul Vaughan.
Paul’s graphs are often hard to fathom/follow but if you take the time you will find that he knows what he is talking about on this subject. A truly brilliant mind and someone who has laid the very foundations for future study in this area.