Guest post by David Archibald
A large part of the US is currently in drought. A recent paper by Springer et al – “Solar forcing of Holocene droughts in a stalagmite record from West Virginia in east central North America” – analysed the Sr/Ca ratios and C13 values in a Holocene stalagmite from east-central North America. Their work “demonstrates solar forcing of droughts in east-central North America on multiple time scales. Droughts typically occur during solar minima when SST in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are comparatively cool. These SST anomalies cause migration of the jet stream away from east-central NA, yielding decreased meridional moisture transport and reduced convergence over east-central NA.”
Futhermore: “The 210-year period coherency in the BCC-002 Sr/Ca andd13C time series is evidence that the de Vries solar irradiance cycle has significant effects upon moisture levels in east-central NA.”
So, to predict the onset of de Vries cycle droughts in North America, all we have to know is when the last de Vries cycle started. That was in 1798 at the beginning of the Dalton Minimum. 210 years after 1798 makes 2008, which happens to be the end of Solar Cycle 23 and the beginning of Solar Cycle 24. Solar activity has been quite weak since 2008, so everything is happening on schedule.
That is shown in the following figure of the annual average temperature of Providence, Rhode Island:
The periods of the Dalton Minimum (Solar Cycles 5 and 6) and the current Eddy Minimum (Solar Cycles 23 and 24) are shown as blocks. Gleissberg maxima and minima from a paper by Peristykh and Damon are shown as down-facing red arrows and up-facing blue arrows respectively. The next Gleissberg maximum should be around 2043, which agrees with a projection of solar activity by Fix (2011, in press).
Separate to the de Vries cycle-based projection of climate, the onset of a cold period is confirmed by application of Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory, shown above on the temperature record of Providence, Rhode Island.
Drought has an obvious agricultural impact, but this will be compounded by lower average temperatures and a shorter growing season.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) stated that “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Whether or not we are aware of previous de Vries cycle events, we are going to experience them and their consequences anyway, but knowing means that should not be a surprise.
Links to papers cited:
http://www.geo.wvu.edu/~kite/SpringerEtAl2008GRLpaper.pdf
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/BinWang07-d/PeristykhDamon03-Gleissbergin14C.pdf
Bruce says:
April 18, 2011 at 8:44 am
John (Finn)-The Sporer date-range looks a tad late.
I was referring to the fact that there were 2 warm cycles and 2 cold cycles between 1410 and 1800. This is a period commonly known as the Little Ice Age. If high solar activity was responsible for warming in the 16th and 18th centuries then it’s not really a Little Ice Age is it? Of course it’s possible that solar activity has very little to do with temperature shifts other than the ~0.1 deg over the solar cycle
Once again: Wriggle matching without the necessary and difficult – but have been done – maths. No matter the observations, once the calculations are done, there isn’t enough solar energy available from any of the gauzy solar mechanistic proposals suggested here to drive recent warming or cooling. But El Nino, La Nina and decadal oscillation calculations do have energy available to be such a driver.
I’m not sure you know how ‘precip’ works east and west of the I-35 corridor in Texas – have you recently seen a map of historic rainfall amounts for Texas (there is a reason why things ‘green up’ heading into East Texas)?
Any coincidence that the Gulf of Mexico also straddles this line – as it is extend to the south?
(Hint: It involves a predominantly south wind transporting, a rich, moist airmass from the GOM.)
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A couple maps to demonstrate this concept (I-35 corridor delineating a ‘precip’ line):
http://web2.airmail.net/danb1/annualrainfall.htm
http://www.landwithminerals.com/resource-center/article/texas-average-anuual-precipitation-map/
The long term interactions between the inner solar system center of mass following the center of the sun around the SSB, and the corresponding perihelion of the outer planets counterbalancing the COM of the sun can be seen in the electromagnetic effects seen in the solar and geomagnetic field strengths.
http://research.aerology.com/natural-processes/solar-system-dynamics/
The perihelion point for Jupiter was on the 30th of March, and has been gradually moving away from the sun. As the resultant magnetic coupling is decreasing so is the field strength from (-)pole to (+)equator, with the mixing of the lower ion content air mass in the mid-latitudes there develops a band of neutral air mass that behaves the way Main stream meteorology says it does all of the time [with out consideration for the ion charges in the air masses and their habit of changing the nebulized droplet particle size and density of the clouds.]
So to see a trend in the widening of the dry inactive band of neutral air that gives rise to droughts, when not moved around enough in latitude to allow precipitation fronts driven by ion charge gradients, is to be expected. It happens every time the 18.6 lunar declinational cycle goes from a Maximum extension ~28.8 degrees from the equator [as in 2005 with attendant strong tropical storms] toward this point where the declinational angle at culmination is close to 23.5 degrees off of the equator.
The drought effect will strengthen and continue as long as the mostly zonal flow continues across the area, when the lunar declinational tidal pattern shifts to a more meridional flow pattern as the solar and lunar declination are ~same in mid summer and mid winter the stream of dry air will move accordingly and wet and dry areas will overlap better and the average rainfall/month/week/day balances out again.
The good news is that these declinational patterns repeat well enough to be used as a long term forecast. The maps posted on my site have been generated from the past 6558 day cycles when the solar activity level was much higher, the global circuit ion flux was higher then and you can clearly see the frontal boundaries interacting in the same process [now as then] just that the point where the edge of the ion charges is separated and not conflicting or participating in assisting in rapid depolarization precipitation patterns at this time under these conditions.
What you are left with in these droughty areas is just plain old condensational rain.
but great at heating the surface underneath [minimum cloud coverage] so after noon small thermals popcorn is all you get. You need a tidal air mass with temperature, moisture, AND strong ion charge gradient to get heavy rain snow and flash floods.
The problem with road killed deer is they don’t realize there is a vehicle behind the head lights till it is too late.
Legend is the look on their face as the truth hits them. Looks a lot like CAGW’s today.
Gang? I hate to be Cpt Buzzkill(actually I enjoy the hell out of it), but that is not a drought for Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona and western Kansas. Thats just how it be like naturally. Now I will admit, east Texas ain’t usually that dry, given that, I don’t really see the desert west of America having a drought.
Holle, are you suggesting that your mechanism has energy potential higher than Earth’s internal oscillations to drive such weather pattern variations? Exactly how much energy is available in your air masses that are some degree greater than the energy potential available in oceans to affect said weather systems? And please show comparative calculations.
2hotel9 says:
April 19, 2011 at 5:39 am
I grew up in east Texas, and trust me, the Houston County area is always dry. We used to say,’It hasn’t rained in so long, the word ‘rain’ seems foreign to our lips.”
Pamela Gray says:
April 19, 2011 at 6:23 am
The lunar declinational tides in the atmosphere, and the oceans are the drivers of the “Earth’s internal oscillations”, coupled with the shifts in the solar wind speed and density because the North/South movement of the moon/earth system is driven by the oscillations in the polarity of the magnetic fields of the solar wind, as the magnetic poles of the sun rotate in the same 27.32 day period. The lunar response to the solar field is to impart tidal forces into the atmosphere that ends up driving the meridional flow surges and developing the periods of Rossby wave generation and jet stream Variation.
The ion drivers coupled on top of the air mass movement is what drives the spring uptick in tornadoes and severe weather, the monsoonal flows, and past mid summer, the discharge drives the generation of the hurricanes, and sets the timing for the pattern of the occurrence in the cyclonic turbulence, that runs on top of the annual increase and decrease of ion current that powers the hurricanes and monsoonal flows.
With out the moon, the weather on Earth would be rather boring, no frontal systems, condensational rain only, and a slow season shift that would be set to the equinox timing and not drift much. The lunar declinational tides are most of the power behind the weather, Coriolis effects are a net loss to the system.
The phase shift in the declinational tides [18.6 year period] and the solar tides combined with the shifting interference with the long term lunar phase [19 year metonic period] drift in timing, gives rise to the “Earth’s internal oscillations” across the ocean basins and the surges in the mid-latitude zonal winds and the trade winds along the equator, are a combined product of the outer planet conjunctions inductive surges into the ion flux modulation of the solar wind driven ion shifts at the declinational culminations of the moon.
The SOI , PDO, QBO, and all of the other alphabet soup of secondary effects are a result of the dynamics between the inner and outer planets harmonic periods interacting with the lunar declinational tides 27.32 day periodicity.
The amount of power available is enough to drive the weather as it exists, and the resistive component of the zonal wind flow interacting with the surface shifts the LOD physically as well as the solar wind fields directly inductively driving the core, mantel, crust, and ionosphere, in phase with the shifts in solar wind polarity, that is also driving the lunar declinational movement that is dampened by the tidal interactions with the Earth at all levels.
The part of the weather driving effects not directly affected by the moon are the radiative input from the sunlight reaching the Earth, the thermal drivers of vertical convection, although the ion induction effects the resultant albedo because of the interactions of the outer, inner planets, and the moon change the droplet size of the nebulized moisture in clouds along with the Gama ray background levels from outside the solar system.
It is like asking how much of the power of the engine of your car is affecting the movement of the car down the road. All except known losses with in the system, that results in the force available at the tire / road interface.
Just my opinion, for what its worth, I don’t have number.
Richard Holle
Well as far as numbers the Moon’s counterbalancing effects around the Earth moon barycenter moves the center of mass of the entire Earth above and below the ecliptic plane between 800 to 1600 Kilo meters as well as closer and further from the sun ~1200 kilo meters every 27.32 days. which is about the same as the gravitational attraction of Jupiter moves the earth/moon system’s orbit out from the sun as we lap it almost every 13 months.
I’ll give ya that, CFA! East Texas is dry, just not as dry as west Texas. And compared to New Mexico and Arizona it is a veritable rainforest. Well, raingrass, at least.
Continuing with the previous meme, an example demonstrating why precip patterns are what they are vis-a-vis the I-35 corridor (the east Texas – ‘west’ Texas divide as it relates to precipitation):
Example of the initiation of thunderstorms along/near the I-35 corridor with dryline and cold front convergence –
Time/date: 19 Apr 2011, 1935z – 2100z
RADAR image: http://oi53.tinypic.com/2l9tfme.jpg
Surface conditions: http://oi52.tinypic.com/3021id1.jpg
Images courtesy http://vortex.plymouth.edu/nids.html and http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/surface/ respectively.
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