Guest post by Paul Vaughan, M.Sc. – August 18, 2010
Scientists characterize Earth rotation velocity using a variable they call length of day (LOD). The rate of change of LOD (LOD’) is related to global average wind patterns. Changes in wind patterns affect temperature patterns.
See the graphic below.
Could it be that apparent relationships between the rate of change of solar cycle length (SCL’), LOD’, & North Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperature (AMO = Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) are independent?
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UPDATE: Paul asked me to add these two graphs, he writes:
Notes on notation:
GLAAM = global atmospheric angular momentum
NOR = nutation in obliquity residual
[] indicates time-integration
SOI = Southern Oscillation Index
f(x) on the SOI, GLAAM, LOD graph indicates a filter that isolates interannual features. This result has been known to scientists for decades, so my SOI, GLAAM, LOD graph is simply a sample of what I discovered last year when I audited their claims using my own approaches. (If anyone wants the literature references, please feel welcome to request them and I’ll dig them out.)
Solar-Terrestrial Coincidence?
Paul Vaughan, M.Sc. – August 18, 2010
Scientists characterize Earth rotation velocity using a variable they call length of day (LOD). The rate of change of LOD (LOD’) is related to global average wind patterns. Changes in wind patterns affect temperature patterns.
Could it be that apparent relationships between the rate of change of solar cycle length (SCL’), LOD’, & North Atlantic Ocean sea su
Solar Activity, LOD, NAO, PDO. A link ?
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/solar-cycles/IanwilsonForum2008.pdf
phlogiston wrote:
“Help me with the maths – does SLC’ mean extending solar cycle length, as is now happening? (I’m a biologist.)”
I am also a biologist. Let’s not let that prevent us from understanding wavelet methods, which are simple (when explained using common sense).
SCL simply measures the length of the solar cycle (analagous to, say, car speed, for purposes of illustration here…)
SCL’ is the brake – or the accelerator (depending…)
Elaboration:
Positive SCL’ means the brakes are going on, while negative SCL’ means the gas is being hit.
For example: ~1900 solar cycles were longish; then they got down to 10.4 years (which means the car was driving faster to cover the same distance on the racing loop in less time).
If someone wants to supply the funding, I’ll write the webpages that make wavelet methods dead-simple for lay-people. 70% of my online statistics students (most of whom were social science students) rated my online course material & delivery “excellent” (…but to be clear, I require pay to do such clean work!)
Interesting article.
Just curious, did the author mean interdependent for independent?
I wish I had the resources to fund it. Would fund your research in a hot minute, Paul.
Interesting post. Thanks.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
F. Ross says:
And that was my thought also @ur momisugly 5:21
Sorry, I don’t tweet so I seem to lack som info out there in the ether.
Interesting graph. How else could short term changes in the LOD vary without a connection in the redistribution of the sea heights around the world? And, how could this not be tied to the currents? And, do the currents then connect to the overall winds therefore the temperatures as Paul pointed out? Some might suspect tectonic variances but that seems rather far fetched on such a short yearly scale.
Its almost like the oceans slosh about on a yearly basic and global scale and always driven by interactions in proper physics. Another example of why we don’t know exactly what the global climate is up to and more importantly what it has in store for us in the near future, yet alone decades away.
phlogiston wrote:
“[…] would not the PDO from the larger ocean have a larger effect? WUWT?”
PDO & AMO are related (as can be easily shown via integration), with one notable exception being the interval +/- about a decade either side of the Chandler wobble phase reversal (centred ~1930), when an opposite relation prevails.
This fascinating interval (~1920-1940) corresponds with a wave of heat reaching the Arctic, severe drought in North America, high Antarctic ice specific mass, low Southern Ocean & Southeast Pacific sea surface temperatures (SST), a critical point in lunisolar tides, a low in stratospheric volcanic activity, a low in solar cycle length, a phase reversal in nutation in obliquity residuals, … (this is a truncated list). Given the list of coincidences, the case for something being rather special about ~1920-1940 is compelling. HOWEVER: All of this confounding makes the task of sorting things out tedious.
I have 3 parallel tracks of research.
One track aims to further probe the Chandler wobble phase reversal by improving upon Mursula & Zieger’s interpretation of Figure 3 here:
Mursula, K.; & Zieger, B. (2001). Long-term north-south asymmetry in solar wind speed inferred from geomagnetic activity: A new type of century-scale solar oscillation? Geophysical Research Letters 28(1), 95-98.
http://spaceweb.oulu.fi/~kalevi/publications/MursulaAndZieger2001.pdf
[CAUTION: There are some (fairly substantial) problems with their conclusions …but the middle panel of figure 3 (all by itself) was a valuable contribution.]
Another line of research involves patterns shared by the Southern Ocean, the Southeast Pacific, and stratospheric volcanism. (These patterns also appear to be key to understanding the ~1930 Chandler wobble phase reversal.)
Finally, I have recently started investigating patterns shared by the solar wind, volcanism, & climate indices. (For now I remain very suspicious of the latter results, so I will be consulting with physicists…)
Very interesting Paul, I shall study about this astronomical influence (I’m an amateur astronomer). Thanks.
Re: F. Ross and John F. Hultquist
independent
The ENSO and the LOD are certainly tied together.
Here is the Nino 3.4 index versus Atmospheric Angular Momentum (which is bascially the same measure as LOD) back to 1958.
The July 2010 AAM was one the lowest ever recorded signaling strengthening La Nina conditions.
http://a.imageshack.us/img842/908/ensovsaamjuly2010.png
There are other, often overlooked mechanisms by which climate itself affects the length of day. For example, periods of flooding cause everyone to move their back issues of National Geographic magazines from the basement to the attic, slowing the Earth’s rotation due to conservation of angular momentum.
Just thought I’d point that out.
Perhaps this is another reason to quit calculating fancy sidereal gear ratios to turn a 60 Hz clock into 86,164.090538 seconds to an accuracy that would take over 10,000 years to accumulate a one second tracking error, or perhaps it’s an excuse to somehow have North Atlantic sea surface temperatures deflect a bi-metallic strip that engages a series of clutches to automatically compensate!!!!
*tromps back into a basement packed with gear cutters and mildewed National Geographic magazines*
Hmmmm?
After looking over your SCL/LOD/AMO graph it appears to me that the variables are somewhat “correlated” [and perhaps(?) implying causation]. That was my reason [and possibly John Hultquist’s reason too] for questioning your use of the word “independent.”
The LOD seems to be lagging the AMO & SCL by a few years but correlating well. Can you see?
Re: Jeff L – and further to this.
I have sent Anthony 2 supplementary graphs (which he is welcome to add in an “update”).
Notes on notation:
GLAAM = global atmospheric angular momentum
NOR = nutation in obliquity residual
[] indicates time-integration
SOI = Southern Oscillation Index
f(x) on the SOI, GLAAM, LOD graph indicates a filter that isolates interannual features. This result has been known to scientists for decades, so my SOI, GLAAM, LOD graph is simply a sample of what I discovered last year when I audited their claims using my own approaches. (If anyone wants the literature references, please feel welcome to request them and I’ll dig them out.)
Also:
Correction:
I’ve noticed that sunspot numbers been moved to a new directory since the last time I looked a few months ago:
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/INTERNATIONAL/monthly/
A request for website administrators:
Please keep data URLs stable. This is important to researchers who regularly update files for hundreds of indices. Thank you if this request can be courteously accommodated.
Re: F. Ross
So your answer to the question (as I’ve framed it)
might be “no”? [ :
Maybe. If I knew anything about it. 🙂
Thanks again for the interesting post.
It’s a bit confusing. Paul, can the answer to the question, as you framed it, be “yes”?
And what do you think? Is a corelation or even a relation not even likely?
Re phlogiston: “AMO in the last century or two has been regular and sinusoidal, and is not on the downward turn from the peak in about 2005. ”
It is on the downward turn, at least temporary as in 1945.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iamo_hadsst2a.png
OHC dropping since 2005 confirms that.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/inodc_heat700_280-360E_0-70N_na.png
When I plotted the EIRS data last year, it looked like the interannual variation related to exchanges of angular momentum between the atmosperic circulation (GLAAM) and the mass of the Earth’s crust were a small signal relative to the approx ten times larger changes in LOD taking place on multi-decadal timescales. It seems unlikely to me that windspeed changes that much over decades, so I came to the conclusion that most of the longer term change in LOD is caused by something else.
I plotted Richard Gross’ LOD data from 1840 against detrended global temperature and also the vertical motion of the solar equatorial plane relative to the centre of mass of the solar system and got this result:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/planetary-solar-climate-connection-found/
This post is well timed because I have a meeting arranged tomorrow with a prof at my university who is a specialist in LOD and terrestrial mechanics. I’ll report back.
sky asked:
“Could you give us more of a clue as to plausible mechanisms and provide some indication of the coherence at peak spectral frequencies?”
I will leave the former to physicists. Regarding the latter: Just by eyeballing, one can see what cross-wavelet analysis would confirm: both coherence & nonstationarity.
sky wrote:
“I’m not sure what you’re ultimately suggesting […]”
My primary interest is unexplained patterns in terrestrial polar motion ~1930 (+/- ~10 years). Climate modelers have an insufficient grasp of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle. This is not a trivial deficiency.
>>Haan
>>“In order to put the cherry on the cake you could consider to add the CO2 graph.”
And the temperature record too.
With a peak in the 1940s and a trough 1n the 1970s, this looks like the temperature record too.
.
New graphs.
Interesting. I seem to see here a correlation between the:
Solar Cycle SCL
and Earth’s rotation speed LOD
and Earth’s nuation NOR (nodding motion)
Is this correlation statistically significant?
And if so, what is the mechanism by which the Solar Cycle can effect the rotation and angle of inclination of the Earth? Or has the Earth just got into a gravitational synchronicity with the Solar Cycle – because the Solar Cycle is effected and controlled by the gravity of Jupiter and Saturn? (like the Moon’s obvious synchronicity with the Earth.)
.
BIL ILLIS
The July 2010 AAM was one the lowest ever recorded signaling strengthening La Nina conditions.
What exactly does this phrase mean please? What’s its significance?
tallbloke, I see in your article (to which you linked) the following:
“Extra info added: The data is smoothed over 24 years (Two Jupiter orbits) and retarded 30 years. This is indicative of the inertia involved in the LOD variation lagging behind solar motion. H/t to Paul Vaughan for recommending I make this explicit.”
While you are correct in attributing the former to me, I now suggest that you claim ownership for the latter notion, which is at variance with my interpretation of your graph. What you have isolated is primarily the period of Saturn (arbitrarily shifted horizontally). I encourage you to reconsider your interpretation of the work of R. Gross. Gross’ work draws attention to pressure variations. Pressure variations and flows are not independent. Solar system & lunisolar (tidal) variables are confounded.
I encourage everyone to look at the works of R. Gross for themselves (so thank you tallbloke for finding a creative way to put attention where it needs to be). If anyone is seeking the literature references, let me know and I’ll dig them out.
Looking good. One stamp of approval this correlation has is Leif hasn’t turned up yet and told you it’s all wrong.