People send me stuff, my email is like a firehose, with several hundred messages a day, and thus this message was delayed until sent to me a second time today. I’m breaking my own rule on Barycentrism discussions, because this paper has been peer reviewed and published in Elsevier.
George Taylor, former Oregon State climatologist writes:
Nicola Scafetta has published the most decisive indictment of GCM’s I’ve ever read in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. His analysis is purely phenomenological, but he claims that over half of the warming observed since 1975 can be tied to 20 and 60-year climate oscillations driven by the 12 and 30-year orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn, through their gravitational influence on the Sun, which in turn modulates cosmic radiation.
If he’s correct, then all GCM’s are massively in error because they fail to show any of the observed oscillations.
There have been many articles over the years which indicated that there were 60-year cycles in the climate, but this is the first one I’ve seen which ties them to planetary orbits.
– George
===============================================================
The paper is:
Scafetta,N.,
Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications .
Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (2010),doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2010.04.015
I find his figure 11b interesting:
Here’s the link:
www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/scafetta-JSTP2.pdf
In the late 1880s E Bruckner believed he had found an erratic 20-50 year cycle from wetter-colder to dryer-warmer in middle lattitude (eg both sides of the alps, Aust, USA) in the instriment records (rainfall as well as temp) for the past century, and then traced back 5 (?) centuries of proxy data. The last two cycles had a hotter peak in 1850-60 (?) and a wetter trough from about 1880. He then predicted dryer period coming up for inland USA (warning for the agricultural expansion in Utah in the 1880s). I have been planning to compare these with various cycles of PDO, ENSO…and now this one. Bruckner got an average of the cycles at 34.8 years. I suspect he erred in not try a more complex pattern of 2 or more cycles. All the same, the work on climate cycles of this time by Bruckner, Penck, De Geer, Douglass, Huntington is interesting to look back on now that we have more so much more evidence, and more evidence of possible causation. I like the way they worked with rainfall and the movement of storm paths as well at temp in their attempts to find a pattern in the time series.
George E. Smith says:
October 13, 2010 at 3:23 pm
“…when you run “climate data” through a filter, it will also generate a signal which was not there to begin with.”
Filters can selectively extract signal components in any frequency band or interval. But well-designed ones do NOT generate anything that wasn’t there to begin with. If there is no appreciable signal power density in a particular band, the output of the filter will be of negligible variance. It’s only people who don’t understand analytically the pitfalls of poorly designed filters that believe otherwise.
It seems to me that if the orbit of a planet can cause the wobble of a distant star, thus allowing we earthlings to detect the existance of such planets, then we must accept that planets in our own solar system will cause our own star to wobble. Since our star affects our climate then the wobbles must also have some effect on our climate.
REPLY: A prescient thought, thanks- Anthony
MikeTheDenier says:
October 13, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Since our star affects our climate then the wobbles must also have some effect on our climate.
_____________
Yeah, but how are ya gonna tax that wobble?
Soooo… the average temperature change is… ZERO. Amazing that it was funded and published.
MikeTheDenier says:
October 13, 2010 at 3:52 pm
It seems to me that if the orbit of a planet can cause the wobble of a distant star,…
This is possible …. the Principle of Equivalence is not corrupted.
precaution,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/12/supposed-new-planet-20-light-years-away-has-been-undiscovered/
Sorry…bad english….
In the graph above, it looks like temp is a leading indicator,
Which implies that the planetary orbits are driven by weather on Earth.!:)
This is all very interesting, and I will read this paper in detail.
However, our problem is that even to accept the obvious 60 year periodicity of recent times is heresy. There is a similar split in economics: capitalists and realists acknowledge economic cycles as inevitable natural occurances; socialists and statists deny them.
This was heavy going for a lazy afternoon. Lots of correlations and interesting ones too. My only problem with this and it is not a show stopper, models of models and correlations of results of moved with models. Do I think the earth’s position in universe effects things? Sure but the question, which things and by how much?
Isn’t this what the late Timo Niroma was saying some years ago see http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspots.html
Help!
It gets very complex if the planets orbits are pushing and pulling the sun, which in turn may (must?) have an effect on sun-cycles, sun-spots etc, and the radiation put out by the sun.
Would someone please sort this out, my head is spinning from trying to envisioning the complex carousel at work.
Richard Hills says: October 13, 2010 at 4:34 pm
I gather the important aspect of the study is: His analysis is purely phenomenological.
Unless I am mistaken this is an attempt to look for patterns in the past. As has been pointed out many times, correlation is not causation. However I have watched Joe Bastardi with his long range weather forecasts often enough and I gather a historical analysis is also behind weatheraction.com forecasts. Apparently looking for past patterns can often give insight into the future even if all of the actual causes of those historical patterns are not completely understood. Once patterns are found to match then it is a scientific endeavor to investigate and validate whether the match comes from coincidence or whether the physical cause can be found for those patterns and explained (subject to that infamous peer review process).
Can the planets modulate solar activity?
Do other class G main sequence variable stars, which do not have planets, exhibit markedly different cycles and flare frequency?
If a relationship is discovered, it may be a mistake to assume gravitational effects on solar activity alone.
Satellites and spacecraft have detected electrons streaming from the poles of Earth, Jupiter and Saturn towards the Sun.
here: http://www.physorg.com/news10765.html
Do these active currents of negatively charged particles effect the sun’s behaviour? If electrons are flowing towards the Sun, doesn’t that mean it is a positively charged anode?
If we consider the mechanics of just the sun and jupiter, they both orbit around their center of mass. Since the mass ratio is 1050:1, this point is near the surface of the sun facing jupiter.
The center of mass for all the planets is pretty close, and the earth orbits this point. So the sun-earth distance is not just changing due to elliptic orbit by 3%, but also due to jupiter by 1%. Double those percentages to get change in solar radiation at earth.
Whoa!
Yes, there are obvious oscillations in the climate record, with reasonably well defined periods (or pseudo periods). And yes, Fourier spectral analysis will confirm what your eye can see.
But these oscillations are not likely the influence of Jupiter or Saturn. Stuff happens, and if you look hard enough for correlations, you will find them. Causation is a tougher issue than correlation (which may mean something or may not). Professor Scafetta needs to show the physical processes by which Jupiter, the moon, Saturn, etc) change the Earth’s energy balance, then provide supporting data for those processes.
Well, the study was clear enough and compelling enough. Many of us have long suspected the changes we’ve seen in the climate are cyclic. This study, of course, doesn’t prove anything, and obviously much more is needed to be learned. One of the things I liked about this study, “The physical mechanisms that would explain this result are still unknown.”
To the skeptics of this study, well done, stay skeptical, only make sure its skepticism and not cynicism. To the supporters, I offer this……..Ad astra per aspera.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” ~Shakespeare
It’s no mere coincidence in my opinion that Hansen and Horatio both start with an H.
Eric Gisin,
“So the sun-earth distance is not just changing due to elliptic orbit by 3%, but also due to jupiter by 1%. Double those percentages to get change in solar radiation at earth.”
Nope. The Earth-sun distance does change due to the Earth’s elliptical orbit, but not due to Jupiter (nor Saturn, Neptune, etc.). The 6-7% annual cycle in solar intensity due to Earth’s orbit is quite consistent, and depends not at all on Jupiter.
Yes corn crop yields are down but this is still the third largest corn crop ever produced in the USA
This paper would have made Prof. Dr. Theodore Landscheidt and Carl Smith very happy. I’m sure Geoff Sharp will be happy too.
I have little beef with his discerning the cycles and relevance of the jovian influences. Quite believable as many have said. However, the reviewers should have objected to the use of a quadratic fit to match recent temp rises and predict the future temps. Yes, it may give a good fit to the recent data, but it doesn’t reflect reality. Continuing his quadratic curves out gives a 1.34 C rise at 2100, 11.4 C rise by 2500, 36 C rise by year 3000…. If you don’t believe there will be a 36 C rise by 3000, (any takers???) (maybe Hansen descendents will just cool the old records by 36 C?) then there’s no reason to believe it when his quadratic equation says 2100 will be hotter than 2010. There is no ecological or long term temp record that suggests an ever rising temp curve. He really undercuts his own argument about the cyclic influence.
The temperature range for Fig 11b is about +/- 0.06 degrees C, or about a tenth of a degree F either way. This is hard to distinguish from random fluctuations, especially as even local temperature measurements are much coarser than that.
Unless there is some substantially larger effect shown elsewhere in the paper, it seems somewhat peripheral.
No, he doesn’t. He only has to show the correlation, which he’s done in spades. That’s enough to justify further inquiry into the matter. He has suggested some possible mechanisms by which this correlation could be expressed, so other researchers might be able to devise experiments to confirm or disprove those mechanisms.
Since these oscillations are quite obvious, why aren’t they calculated in the GCMs?
Why not plug them in as a “what if”?
Because if the oscillations improve the predictive power of the GCMs it pokes a hole on AGW?
Scafetta cites: Sidorenkov N.S. and I. Wilson (2009), The decadal fluctuations in the Earth’s rotation and in the climate characteristics., Proceedings of the “Journees 2008 Systemes de reference spatio-temporels”, M. Soffeland N. Capitaine (eds.), Lohrmann-Observatorium and Observatoire de Paris., 174-177.
They since presented: Decadal variations in geophysical processes and asymmetries in the solar motion about the Solar System’s barycentre Nikolay Sidorenkov, Ian Wilson, and Anatoly Khlystov, Geophysical Research Abstracts Vol. 12, EGU2010-9559, 2010 EGU General Assembly 2010
Sinchronizations of the geophysical processes and asymmetries in the solar motion about the Solar System’s barycentre, N. Sidorenkov, I.R.G. Wilson, A.I. Kchlystov, EPSC Abstracts Vol. 5, EPSC2010-21, 2010, European Planetary Science Congress 2010
Don Easterbrook predicts global temperatures based on the 60 year POD.
EVIDENCE OF THE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING AND COOLING: RECURRING GLOBAL, DECADAL, CLIMATE CYCLES RECORDED BY GLACIAL FLUCTUATIONS, ICE CORES, OCEAN TEMPERATURES, HISTORIC MEASUREMENTS AND SOLAR VARIATIONS
See also: Length of day correlated to cosmic rays and sunspots WUWT, from
Solar forcing of the semi annual variation of length of day, Le Mouël, J.L., Blanter, E., Shnirman, M., and Courtillot V. 2010, Geophys. Res. Lett, 37, L15307, doi:10.1029/2010GL043185.