George Monbiot probably burst a blood vessel when he read this. Congratulations to Piers, who doesn’t need a teraflop class supercomputer to render a forecast. This passage tells the story:
I have not a clue whether his methods are sound or not. But when so many of his forecasts seem to come true, and when he seems to be so consistently ahead of the Met Office, I feel I want to know more.
Maybe that’s why Mr. Johnson says London is prepared for snow, where others are not.
Here’s some excerpts:
Do you remember? They said it would be mild and damp, and between one degree and one and a half degrees warmer than average. Well, I am now 46 and that means I have seen more winters than most people on this planet, and I can tell you that this one is a corker.
Never mind the record low attained in Northern Ireland this weekend. I can’t remember a time when so much snow has lain so thickly on the ground, and we haven’t even reached Christmas. And this is the third tough winter in a row. Is it really true that no one saw this coming?
Actually, they did. Allow me to introduce readers to Piers Corbyn, meteorologist and brother of my old chum, bearded leftie MP Jeremy. Piers Corbyn works in an undistinguished office in Borough High Street. He has no telescope or supercomputer. Armed only with a laptop, huge quantities of publicly available data and a first-class degree in astrophysics, he gets it right again and again.
And this:
The question is whether anthropogenic global warming is the exclusive or dominant fact that determines our climate, or whether Corbyn is also right to insist on the role of the Sun.
Full story here. Boris John is the Mayor of London, more here.
h/t to WUWT reader “Roger” aka “Old England”
Pamela Gray says:
December 20, 2010 at 6:32 am
Plasma speed/temperature:
http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/form/dx1.html
Do a 27-day averaged plot for the last 10yrs and it is dead obvious which N.H. winters are warm or cold.
Mayor and celebrity….Good grief! He`s our Arnold Schwarzenegger! 🙂
E.M.Smith says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:14 am
“The Law Of Overwhelming Stupidity” it is simply great.
Time ago a lady scientist, here in WUWT, argued in favor of her “settled science” that it was based on years of effort solving advanced mathematic equations, ignoring, of course, that computers do all those using only arithmetics. Thus, the “overwhelming” part of your wise phrase describes “self conceit” as the origin of confusion.
Where is it my XT computer?
mike g says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:02 am
@gareth Phillips
Yes, but if we can open our minds on climate we should also be able to open our minds on politics and realize the left, socialism, communism, is really all about enslaving the population in dependency on government (the elites who run it, really). AGW is just a way they have found of intensifying that process of enslavement.
Indeed we must ensure our minds are open to all information and heed the fact that extreme right wing totalitarians governments do exactly the same thing, or are we overlooking fascism, Military Juntas etc in the pursuit of the right wing cause? Lets not give the warmists ammunition, we are non political and hopefully there is no room for the fantasies of right or left wing extremists in our cause.
Steven, you use the same argument postulated by AGW theories woven through the midst of strong intrinsically driven variability, yet you deny the voracity of those theories. Eventually CO2 will show up. Eventually the Sun’s affects will show up. The logic is very faulty for both theories.
Boris Schwarznegger, eh? I can just see him riding up the gangway at the next Intergovernmental Climate Junket on a Harley Davidson, his beer belly straining at the leather outfit, menacing in shades, and braying in his posh Old Etonian accent, “Hasta la vista, old chum”, and tugging at Pachauri’s false beard.
John Silver says: “Piers Corbyn puts his money where his mouth is:
“The biggest wager yesterday was a £750 bet from a weather forecaster called Piers Corbyn, who thinks snow in Leeds, Newcastle & Norwich is a certainty!”
That was in November. Do you think any of these morons would do that:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/management/executive”
No. The Met Office were consulted by the UK Department for Transport in a report out in October concerning preparedness of the transport infrastructure for winter. In October they were projecting a warmer than average winter with around 70% confidence. The Met Office advised that there was a 1-in-20 chance of a severe winter this year, or any year. In 2008, then, there was thus a 1-in-8000 chance that we would have three consecutive severe winters . The Met Office complain that the general public don’t understand risk and statistics, but I have to say that I don’t favour 1-in-8000 odds, i.e. the likelihood of three severe winters in a row only likely to occur once every 8000 years. I’m afraid these are actual Met Office statistics. If THEY understand statistics and risk, they should be repenting in dust and ashes by now because those odds are just way too long. Now, we know that the models that the Met Office use for climate change projections are the very same models as they use for weather forecasting – you might think they’d be different, but they categorically claim that they are the same.
With odds of 8000:1 I’m prone to question whether there is some bias or tomfoolery going on, and with the Met Office that’s a dead certainty. They are headed up by an eco-fanatic and are part of the UK Ministry of Defence.
Here are some extracts from the DfT report ‘The Resilience of England’s Transport Systems in Winter’ (July and October 2010):
“We have discussed these issues in some depth with the Met Office and their climate research team at the Met Office Hadley Centre…we are advised to assume that the chance of a severe winter in 2010-11 is no greater (or less) than the current general probability of 1 in 20…The probability of the next winter being severe is virtually unrelated to the fact of just having experienced two severe winters, and is still about 1 in 20. The effect of climate change is to gradually but steadily reduce the probability of severe winters in the UK…we need to understand and accept that the chance of a severe winter is still relatively small…the probability of next winter being severe continues to be relatively small.”
Remember – based on the Met Office models (on which the whole climate change scam is based), three severe winters in a row has a probability of 1-in-8000, or 0.0125%. Or, put it the other way, in 2008 the Met Office would have been 99.9875% certain that we would not have three severe winters on the trot. Start looking at these probabilities stacking up and understand that the global warming mantra is a scam.
We are always being reminded that weather is not climate. Fine. But when once-in-8000 year ‘weather’ events turn up you really do have to start asking questions. When the Met Office in their UKCP08 report were projecting much warmer summer and winter temperatures in UK to 70% and 90% confidence, that same year they would have put 99.9875% confidence on there not being three extreme winters on the trot.
One of the most glaring pieces to your argument is that when intrinsic active variability is low, these minute extrinsic drivers will show up. The fault in this logic is that intrinsic drivers don’t shut off as drivers during periods of quiet or long term slower change. The energy is still there to drive climate during periods of change as well as periods of quiet, in the short term and long term. Are you saying that the intrinsic drivers flip to standby to allow minute drivers to show? Or are you saying that somehow these extrinsic drivers of climate change get more powerful when intrinsic factors driving weather pattern variations have paused? As far as I can tell, your argument stands on correlation between extrinsic drivers of change and long term temperature anomaly, but regardless of your proposed mechanisms, the intrinsic mechanisms of change, be it fast or slow, have not been disproved either through lack of correlation or through lack of plausible causation. Therefore the null hypothesis stands.
You and AGWers must prove both your favorite theory AND disprove the null hypothesis. Saying, and correct me if I’m wrong in what you are saying, that for most of the time the null hypothesis (intrinsic drivers of short term change and long term trends) is quite easily the driver, means that the null hypothesis stands.
I would bet that the great George Monbiot, a true legend in his own lunchtime, is writing a rebuttal to Boris’s Telegraph piece right now, which will be posted on George’s blog in the Grauniad and filled with “yeah, me to…” comments from his loyal sycophants. Any comments supporting Boris will be at risk from deletion by the mods there, who are incredibly protective of the Great Climate commentator. George’s hatred for Boris is partly tribal as he hates everyone who will not accede to his Socialist doctrine, and he hates Boris particularly for beating the Socialist Mayoral incumbent in the last Mayoral election and for backing GW Bush in his rubbishing of the Kyoto Agreement.
Should be entertaining to read George’s Blog to catch his reaction.
Boris Johnson is not even ‘sitting on the fence’ on this one. Pointing out some interesting predictions is friend has come up with that contrdict warmist (met Office et al) forecasts , then saying it does not disprove the view of the overwhelming majority of scientists, that our species is putting so much extra CO2 into the atmosphere that we must expect global warming.
He believes and subscribes to the latter view as every politician, scientist and journalist (with one exception) does in this country. If he didn’t he wouldn’t stand a hope of being re-elected as London’s mayor.
We have an energy secretary, Chris Huhne, whose deranged obsession with global warming has committed us to spending £300 billion over 10 years to comply with the EU’s requirement that within this period 30% of our electricity must come from renewables, mainly through thousands more expensive wind turbines. By massively rigging the market against any form of electricity derived from fossil fuels (coal or gas) our electricity bills will be trebled from typically £0.134/kWh to £0.403/kWh adding £500 to £600 per household. He has full backing of the government and opposition on this with no dissenting voices. This they believe will make us “the greenest and most poverty stricken economy in the world”.
Michael says:
December 19, 2010 at 10:39 pm
The Sun went back to sleep again.
Sunspot number: 0
Updated 18 Dec 2010
http://www.spaceweather.com/
—————
REPLY: Sun’s got a broken belt, that happened to my Pontiac once. It didn’t work very well either!
See: http://www2.ucar.edu/news/2354/extended-solar-minimum-linked-changes-sun-s-conveyor-belt
We MIGHT be witnessing a profound change in the sun’s dynamics that will impact the climate. I think the possibility is exciting!
James Delingpole put it well – “Boris Johnson is so ambitious, he makes Alexander the Great look like Olive from On The Buses.” If so, it can only mean Boris has read the tea leaves, and has divined which way AGW is headed. Maybe he could stick his head over the parapet once more, and express some equally nuanced doubts about the coalitions new ‘energy policy.’
One of my favorite things I used to do with my grandma was use the old pressure cooker during canning season. When I got married in ’76, one of the gifts I got from my family was a big-ass pressure cooker. I still have it. Grandma’s had different, calibrated vie weight, “rockers” that were used to adjust internal pressure.
The most important working parts of the pressure cooking system are the steam valves (there are two, one for safety and one called a “rocker”), not the heat source. Grandma used hers on a wood cook stove. When the stove top splattered and sizzled water, it was hot enough to cook on. The size of the cooker valve is key to cooking the contents, the exact heat from the stove not so much. More advanced cookers come with different rocker weights to increase or decrease internal pressure. You don’t have to adjust the heat source at all.
So one could say that the most important part of pressure cooking is intrinsic to the pressure cooker and can be adjusted, with the heat source being extrinsic and can either vary a bit or be quite stable without much change happening inside the cooker. Take the rocker off, or change weights and suddenly change is upon us.
The metaphor isn’t perfect but may help some understand my thinking of extrinsic versus intrinsic drivers of weather (short term and long term) pattern change.
correction.. ‘his friend’..
Could someone please direct me to an explanation of what is known about Piers’ “Solar Lunar Action” method of forecasting? I understand that the details are closely held for business reasons. Still someone must have some idea how it works.
Please keep it simple, I was a Political Science major.
“Pamela Gray says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:09 am
Steven, you use the same argument postulated by AGW theories woven through the midst of strong intrinsically driven variability, yet you deny the voracity of those theories. Eventually CO2 will show up. Eventually the Sun’s affects will show up. The logic is very faulty for both theories.”
Not so. The sun’s effect is clear throughout history provided one looks at a long enough period of time to remove the more transient effects of oceanic and other forcings.
It now appears that the sun’s effect can be readily seen when there is a sudden step change such as the transition from active cycle 23 to quiet cycle 24.
The same cannot be said for AGW. By that account AO should still be firmly positive.
What is your explanation for such a large number of climate indicators (previously listed by me) all changing pretty much in unison as the sun came down from the cycle 23 peak ?
What internal variability could account for that ?
“Drooping Turns says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:52 am
Could someone please direct me to an explanation of what is known about Piers’ “Solar Lunar Action” method of forecasting?”
I believe he superimposes lunar effects onto solar effects to anticipate jetstream changes and extrapolates from there to the likely weather and climate consequences for specific regions.
Personally I think it’s just solar and oceanic effects working together. I don’t see how the lunar influences could work but hey, it’s not my theory and I support anyone brave enough to try.
I also think that natural chaotic variability has too great an effect in the short term for me to try predicting anything other than general seasonal characteristics but if Piers can make that extra step and produce a useful product then good luck to him.
Pamela,
A sound hypothesis should have predictive capability.
I predict that AO will not return to the late 20th century level of positivity in the absence of a more active sun and/or a very powerful El Nino.
I predict that with the degree of meridionality in the jets that we currently have the ocean heat content will not begin to rise.
I predict that increasing cloudiness and global albedo will not reverse in the absence of a more active sun and /or a powerful El Nino.
I predict that we will soon find that the slight net warming of the stratosphere since the mid 90s will not have gone back to the previously observed cooling and may now be warming a bit more noticeably.
I predict that the unexpected upper level ozone trends observed between 2004 and 2007 will be continuing.
I predict that once the cool surface waters from the current strong La Nina penetrate the more poleward oceans then unless we also see a very large El Nino the tropospheric air temperatures will show a significant drop.
I predict that for so long as the sun stays quiet, the AO stays negative, cloudiness and albedo fail to decline, then less energy will enter the oceans and the balance between El Nino and La Nina will shift in favour of stronger La Ninas and that despite those La Ninas the ocean heat content will not rise significantly.
There are lots of other predictions that I could make but those will do for going on with.
What predictions would you like to make on the basis of internal system variability ?
Stephen Wilde says:
December 20, 2010 at 10:29 am
What if the Moon’s “tides”, apart from pulling sea waters up, helps in pulling some heat up to the space?
BTW.The kind of Moon eclipse we will have next morning, at 08:53:34 UT it has not happened since the beginning of Maunder Minimum (coinciding with NH winter solstice). At that time the Moon position will be: Declination: 23 deg.43′ and R.A.: 5h 58′ 45″
Stephen Wilde says:
December 20, 2010 at 10:29 am
There is some evidence that lunar influences on tides affect the globe’s climate, particularly via the southern hemisphere, where there most of the oceans are, as opposed to the Northern hemisphere, where most of the landmasses are.
LazyTeenager says: Another interesting question is why you think a record cold winter or two is proof of global cooling, while you don’t think that a record hot summer or two is proof of global warming.
For the same reason that Warmers like to fantasize that “30 year average weather” is “climate”. It isn’t. There are known 60+ year WEATHER cycles, so a “30 year average of weather” is actually a ‘short term trend’ filter that will follow those cycles up and down. So we had “New Little Ice Age” quackery in the ’70s and AGW quackery now. Give it about 5 more years and we will have the “New Little Ice Age” stories back again. (Though this time we have a shot a real one due to solar action… all we need now is one big ass volcano to kick it over the top… er, under the bottom?)
So tell you what, you shift to defining “climate” properly as EITHER a function of: [ latitude, elevation, distance to water, major geography (i.e. behind a mountain rain shadow is dryer)] OR a 3000 year average of weather (so that Bond Event cycles are not contaminating with a bogus trend off THAT cycle) and I’ll stop using recent weather as evidence that nothing really has happened. Deal?
But you use recent weather (and 30 years is damn near instant in a geologic climate sense) then I can use recent weather. Period. Full stop.
Annei says:
Back in the 70s we had a warm November (it was 1978) which ended with a very heavy rainfall on Sat 25th and a hard frost on the 26th. We were being assailed by fears of a new ice age at the time!
Interesting… In trading (another field with chotic and fractal behaviours…) a reversal of trend is often preceded by an excursion “the wrong way”. So a rising stock will have a “blow off top” where it gets very high, then plunges. Often followed by a return toward that top. Spike, plunge, return, reversal of trend. Sign of a coming plunge, not a rapid rise. Here, too, we have a 70s cold period with an anomalous “wiggle” and reversal and in 1998 we had a spike up, then plunge, return to “retest the high” that failed, and a reversal of trend into our present freezer…
Spooky how similar it all is. Like riding a bike. To go right you first flick the front wheel a little left, that leans the bike, then you return to the right turn with the wheel once leaned into it… Most folks do this instinctively (it’s the hard bit for kids learning to ride a bike. They turn the handle right and fall over to the left while they are trying to figure out what’s going on…)
Useful thing to incorporate into the ‘ol mental model…
latitude says:
Now how stupid and scary is that?
Government actually thinks these glorified weathermen have a clue.
Sirrah, you denigrate weathermen! Might I correct that for you?
“Government actually thinks these FAILED weathermen WANNABIES have a clue.”
See, much better. Weathermen have to be right or they lose their jobs. Weathermen deal with reality. Weathermen have a clue. Weathermen beat the pants off whatever it is they have at The Met Office. Oh yeah, “Climate Scientists” (who would be better off studying geography if they really wanted to understand climate… Top of mountain – Alpine. Far from water behind mountain, air warming as it approaches – desert.)
Stephen Wilde says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:21 am
Increased jet stream meridionality did not happen as the troposphere warmed and the Arctic ice declined from the late 70s onward. In fact until around 2000 the Arctic Oscillation became increasingly positive with more zonal jets.
Very nicely done.
FWIW I’m working on integrating some ideas and not going as fast as I’d like. If anyone else would like to poke at this, feel free. The basic pattern is reached by following the trail of causality backward.
More cold in N.H. from a weak AO letting the cold air leak out.
More cold in S.H. from a STRONG southern current (wind driven) whacking into S. America and increasing the current strength into that cold center of the Pacific. (Drakes Passage is a bottleneck, so increased circumpolar current has to turn more volume north)
Due to the differences in land shapes, what ought to be an offsetting polar oscillation (one speeds up, the other slows down) becomes a global hot / cold cycle. N.H. driven by air as the water is constrained. S.H. driven by water as Drakes Passage forces it to be un-constrained.
The polar winds are diven by variations in the polar air flow, driven by solar actions. The variations in S.Polar air flow drive the circumpolar current speed and volume. (One of the fuzzy bits. I’ve actually got some data for the first bits… this one is speculation through and through… other than the wind driving the current, that bit is known.) How solar changes would speed up one polar vortex and slow down the other is, er, ill defined. Perhaps an “ozone thing”, perhaps a “cloud thing”, perhaps a “charged particle solar flux” thing…
So if that last bit can be worked out, what solar dingus modulates one polar vortex up and the other down in speed, the rest fits together fairly nicely. And what ought to be a “TSI has little impact globally” as one pole picks up and the other slows down gets turned into a Hot / Cold excursion due to differential land forms having differential impacts on air vs water.
I suspect it may be partially tied to things like earth wobble from gravitational impacts of moon / sun (thus their ustility in predicting) but that too is just speculation. I’m not the best at the physics of spinning things and I’m still puzzling over why “spin orbit coupling” is clear at the subatomic level but we simply ignore it at the planetary level. So someone gifted with “spining things” and at least a “3 body problem” and possibly a “6 body problem” needs to attack that point.
I think the ‘Differential Polar Vortex Impact’ conjecture explains the “hooks” though.
Just need about a decade of hard work to prove it 8-{
Pamela Gray says:
One of my favorite things I used to do with my grandma was use the old pressure cooker during canning season
Me too. And I learned a lot from it. Your analogy is great.
And I think a combination of the clouds and solar modulated O3 (that blocks a unique chunk of off planet IR radiation…) are the “rocker”.
There was an article a while back about a ‘cloud iris’ being found over the oceans that served to modulate heat exit for stability. I’d add to that a solar driven O3 “IR Window” at the poles that ‘changes the rocker’…
James Delingpole wades into the Met Office in the UK Daily Telegraph:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100069119/panic-and-fear-close-their-icy-tentacles-round-the-doomed-met-office/
There are many known oceanic and atmospheric oscillations that have both short and long term phases. Several are also known to be strongly teleconnected to ENSO changes. Right now, it appears to me that several indices have switched to “cool” for NH weather pattern variation predictions. Some are highly variable and don’t have much of a long term pattern evidenced by the short data series. Others are showing longer term patterns as well as short term noise. Again, the caveat being the short data series.
Here is a good place to start looking in on the discussion and data available for research purposes.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/telecontents.shtml
For example, under the subtopic Pacific/North Amercian Pattern there is this discussion:
“Although the PNA pattern is a natural internal mode of climate variability, it is also strongly influenced by the El Niño/ Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. The positive phase of the PNA pattern tends to be associated with Pacific warm episodes (El Niño), and the negative phase tends to be associated with Pacific cold episodes (La Niña).”
The outlook appears to be that the PNA will continue in its negative mode. The AO is also in its negative mode.
Under the subtopic North Atlantic Oscillation there is this:
“The NAO exhibits considerable interseasonal and interannual variability, and prolonged periods (several months) of both positive and negative phases of the pattern are common. The wintertime NAO also exhibits significant multi-decadal variability (Hurrell 1995, Chelliah and Bell 2005). For example, the negative phase of the NAO dominated the circulation from the mid-1950’s through the 1978/79 winter. During this approximately 24-year interval, there were four prominent periods of at least three years each in which the negative phase was dominant and the positive phase was notably absent. In fact, during the entire period the positive phase was observed in the seasonal mean only three times, and it never appeared in two consecutive years.
An abrupt transition to recurring positive phases of the NAO then occurred during the 1979/80 winter, with the atmosphere remaining locked into this mode through the 1994/95 winter season. During this 15-year interval, a substantial negative phase of the pattern appeared only twice, in the winters of 1984/85 and 1985/ 86. However, November 1995 – February 1996 (NDJF 95/96) was characterized by a return to the strong negative phase of the NAO. Halpert and Bell (1997; their section 3.3) recently documented the conditions accompanying this transition to the negative phase of the NAO.”
Outlooks are for continued negative conditions and has maybe flipped to its longer term cool oscillation.
My point is that any one of these indices, and indeed all of them, need to be considered when looking at Solar correlates and mechanisms. Have you done wriggle matching with any of these? Over how many Solar cycles? Which Solar parameter will you be selecting as the instrument of change? What is your proposed plausible and testable mechanism and can the energy source of this change be calculated to fit your proposed theory? Of even more importance, you must describe your chosen Solar parameter in terms of what the oceans and atmosphere are doing when your Solar parameter is not in play (which you stated is sometimes the case). In other words you cannot just focus on when they are synced up. You must extend your theory when they are not synced up and explain why your Solar connection is no longer in the game. You must consider the null hypothesis in case your theory is dumped on its head with a normally active Sun in the presence of a cool Northern Hemisphere.
For me, I can use these oceanic and atmospheric indices to predict maybe a month ahead and in some cases, a stab at a decade if a major index is in one of its warm or cool oscillations compared it a neutral oscillation. My stab is that El Nino will show up now and then among a predominantly neutral/cool ENSO pattern (if there is such a thing) and that the AO and NAO will stay cool for quite a while. The Eastern parts of the US and Europe will have a pretty long stretch of cooler weather, especially in the Winter, and the Western part of the US will continue to confront warmer and cooler conditions depending on the more noisy El Nino ENSO pattern. If there is a kind of long term oscillation, then the Western US will also be cool for a while as we experience more La Nina’s than El Nino’s within the backdrop of neutral conditions.
The mechanism for this: Movement of energy in and around the globe with some leaking out to space in various amounts, replenished well or scantilly by a fairly constant source of Solar SWR, depending on current oceanic and atmospheric conditions at the moment. Because of the size of our oceans and its ability to absorb SWR heating at greater depths, and its relatively slow movement track, combined with the atmosphere and its relatively fast movement track, differences of this energy transfer are likely noisy as well as oscillatory in different short and long term lengths of time. Bottom line, there is sufficient energy transfer oscillation to internally and intrinsically produce the noisy engine needed to create short and long term trends in the presence of a relatively constant Solar input taking care to replenish the leaks.
E M Smith said:
“The polar winds are diven by variations in the polar air flow, driven by solar actions. The variations in S.Polar air flow drive the circumpolar current speed and volume. (One of the fuzzy bits. I’ve actually got some data for the first bits… this one is speculation through and through… other than the wind driving the current, that bit is known.) How solar changes would speed up one polar vortex and slow down the other is, er, ill defined. Perhaps an “ozone thing”, perhaps a “cloud thing”, perhaps a “charged particle solar flux” thing…”
I’m with you on that and under my current scheme of things the AO and AAO ought to respond similarly to solar changes but it has previously been pointed out to me that the fit is not good on short timescales. However I read elsewhere that the fit improves over longer timescales and as I’ve said before what interests me is the MWP / LIA/ Current Warmth periodicity of about 1000 years peak to peak.
A poor match in the short term and a better match in the longer term suggests phasing issues perhaps because northern continents respond faster than southern oceans and feed back to the pole a response that puts the polar vortices out of phase in their reactions to solar forcing.
Unfortunately the records for AO and especially AAO variations are not as long as I need to resolve such matters. We will have to watch, observe and think.
Unless someone can help ?
Nonetheless the gaps in the jigsaw are slowly getting filled.
Drooping Turns says:
Could someone please direct me to an explanation of what is known about Piers’ “Solar Lunar Action” method of forecasting? I understand that the details are closely held for business reasons. Still someone must have some idea how it works.
Well, as it’s “closely held” there is little public known.
What I can add is speculative, at best. Some of it is a bit ‘fringy’ too.
OK, sun earth and moon are spinning in space all gravitationaly bound. One wiggles, the other wiggles. One wobbles, the other wobbles. They also bob up and down.
One of those “bobs” is, IIRC, a 19 year cycle of the moon.
As the moon moves up and down through the plane of rotation, the earth wobble changes a little bit. As both the earth and moon orbit the sun, they speed up and slow down and get closer and further away. All this tends to jiggle the air flow ( I’ve got an article somewhere on lunar diven air tides…) and water flow on the planet that influences the weather.
Stir in some naturally oscillating systems to provide ‘interesting’ feedbacks (like Ice in the Arctic modulating how that ocean cools… and warm Pacific waters with an 18 year time lag modulating Arctic ice) and you get a variety of cycles of changes that then can all interact. (The “natural oscillations” folks talk about. Pamela has a good lock on how this bit works.)
So you set all this in motion and watch it for a while. The clueful notice patterns that repeat. Ergo the good predictions. The clueless build computer models and play with their tiny CO2 trying to make it big and interesting and think others ought to be impressed with it. We look at how tiny and useless it is and just chuckle. But it’s theirs, and it’s all they have to play with…
Please keep it simple, I was a Political Science major.
If you can explain politics, you can handle ungodly complexity…
Sidebar:
For what it’s worth, there is a “19 counter” at Stonehenge. It looks like the whole thing was a giant astronomics lab. They were critically dependent on weather for food production. IMHO, that whole “Religious Celebration” explanation is just garbage. The folks digging the place up were not engineers and didn’t understand a machine when they saw one.
Circular slide rules and physical observation tools gain precision with size. They made it large to get more precision. The plains out to several miles in each side are part of the tool. Cleared to get precise horizons for observation of rise and set times and places.
Why do this?
I think they had a handle on the same thing Piers Corbyn is doing. Watching the lunar position and how it and the sun interact to wobble the earth and then how that gets reflected in weather (that determins when and what to plant…)
There has been a metal “hat” found that shows the moon in all it’s phases over a 19 year cycle. It, too, has been given the “religion” wash. It’s not. It’s a convenient conical lunar cycle calculator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonic_cycle has a decent description of the 19 year cycle.
So, Stonehenge gives you precise readings on when you have solsticies, equinox and various stellar alignments. These give you a very precise “clock”. It also gives a very nice lunar / solar eclipse predictor (using the Aubry stones) and has a 19 year counter in the inner stones. Everything you need to tell when to plant, what to plant, and what the weather will be like ( IFF I’ve got it right how Piers Corbyns stuff works…).
I’ve not worked out yet if they have a 176-208 ish solar / gas giant counter anywhere, but I’d not put it past them. Climate and stock stuff have been taking time away from the Stonehenge hobby / interest, so it’s likely to be a while before I get back to it. Sigh. Relearning what we once knew is a full time job.
At any rate, the thesis is that the various bobbing, spinning, wobbling interactions have some repeatable and recognizable patterns to them and that you can discover and use these to your advantage. One example is that the solar sunspot cycle is rather close to the orbital period interactions of the gas giant planets and the thesis is that them “stiring” the sun around drives the spot cycle.
Solar scientists like to call this Astrology. Yet it is actually shown to have fairly strong corrolation. But it’s not known “how”. So the whole thing sits. Two sides tossing rocks at each other. A side effect of this is that if you DID use planet and lunar positions to guide accurate prediction, you would be well advised to keep it a secret lest you, too, be vilified with “ASTROLOGER!!!!” by those who have pretty “scientific” theories that don’t work. BTW, most of the folks who believe “the planets do it” are NOT interested in astrology. They are interested in the mechanics of something we do not understand, but can see happen.
Hope this helps more than hurts your understanding…