Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. writes about a new paper from Nicola Scafetta.:
A new paper has just appeared
Nicola Scafetta 2011: A shared frequency set between the historical mid-latitude aurora records and the global surface temperature. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics In Press doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2011.10.013
This paper is certainly going to enlarge the debate on the role of natural climate variability and long term change.
The abstract reads [highlight added]
Herein we show that the historical records of mid-latitude auroras from 1700 to 1966 present oscillations with periods of about 9, 10–11, 20–21, 30 and 60 years. The same frequencies are found in proxy and instrumental global surface temperature records since 1650 and 1850, respectively, and in several planetary and solar records. We argue that the aurora records reveal a physical link between climate change and astronomical oscillations. Likely in addition to a Soli-Lunar tidal effect, there exists a planetary modulation of the heliosphere, of the cosmic ray flux reaching the Earth and/or of the electric properties of the ionosphere. The latter, in turn, has the potentiality of modulating the global cloud cover that ultimately drives the climate oscillations through albedo oscillations. In particular, a quasi-60-year large cycle is quite evident since 1650 in all climate and astronomical records herein studied, which also include a historical record of meteorite fall in China from 619 to 1943. These findings support the thesis that climate oscillations have an astronomical origin. We show that a harmonic constituent model based on the major astronomical frequencies revealed in the aurora records and deduced from the natural gravitational oscillations of the solar system is able to forecast with a reasonable accuracy the decadal and multidecadal temperature oscillations from 1950 to 2010 using the temperature data before 1950, and vice versa. The existence of a natural 60-year cyclical modulation of the global surface temperature induced by astronomical mechanisms, by alone, would imply that at least 60–70% of the warming observed since 1970 has been naturally induced. Moreover, the climate may stay approximately stable during the next decades because the 60-year cycle has entered in its cooling phase.
The highlights listed in the announcement of the paper read
► The paper highlights that global climate and aurora records present a common set of frequencies. ► These frequencies can be used to reconstruct climate oscillations within the time scale of 9–100 years. ► An empirical model based on these cycles can reconstruct and forecast climate oscillations. ► Cyclical astronomical physical phenomena regulate climate change through the electrification of the upper atmosphere. ► Climate cycles have an astronomical origin and are regulated by cloud cover oscillations.
========================================================
Dr. Scafetta writes in and attaches the full paper in email to me (Anthony) this week saying:
I can forecast climate with a good proximity. See figure 11. In this new paper the physical link between astronomical oscillations and climate is further confirmed.
What the paper does is to show that the mid-latitude aurora records present the same oscillations of the climate system and of well-identified astronomical cycles. Thus, the origin of the climatic oscillations is astronomical what ever the mechanisms might be.
In the paper I argue that the record of this kind of aurora can be considered a proxy for the electric properties of the atmosphere which then influence the cloud cover and the albedo and, consequently, causes similar cycles in the surface temperature.
Note that aurora may form at middle latitude or if the magnetosphere is weak, so it is not able to efficiently deviate the solar wind, or if the solar explosions (solar flare etc) are particularly energetic, so they break in by force.
During the solar cycle maxima the magnetosphere gets stronger so the aurora should be pushed toward the poles. However, during the solar maxima a lot of solar flares and highly energetic solar explosions occurs. As a consequence you see an increased number of mid-latitude auroras despite the fact that the magnetosphere is stronger and should push them toward the poles.
On the contrary, when the magnetosphere gets weaker on a multidecadal scale, the mid-latitude aurora forms more likely, and you may see some mid-latitude auroras even during the solar minima as Figure 2 shows.
In the paper I argue that what changes the climate is not the auroras per se but the strength of the magnetosphere that regulates the cosmic ray incoming flux which regulate the clouds.
The strength of the magnetosphere is regulated by the sun (whose activity changes in synchrony with the planets), but perhaps the strength of the Earth’s magnetosphere is also regulated directly by the gravitational/magnetic forces of Jupiter and Saturn and the other planets whose gravitational/magnetic tides may stretch or compress the Earth’s magnetosphere in some way making it easier or more difficult for the Earth’s magnetosphere to deviate the cosmic ray.
So, when Jupiter and Saturn get closer to the Sun, they may do the following things: 1) may make the sun more active; 2) the more active sun makes the magnetosphere stronger; 3) Jupiter and Saturn contribute with their magnetic fiend to make stronger the magnetic field of the inner part of the solar system; 4) the Earth’ magnetosphere is made stronger and larger by both the increased solar activity and the gravitational and magnetic stretching of it caused by the Jupiter and Saturn. Consequently less cosmic ray arrive on the Earth and less cloud form and there is an heating of the climate.
However, explaining in details the above mechanisms is not the topic of the paper which is limited to prove that such kind of mechanisms exist because revealed by the auroras’s behavior.
The good news is that even if we do not know the physical nature of these mechanisms, climate may be in part forecast in the same way as the tides are currently forecast by using geometrical astronomical considerations as I show in Figure 11.
The above point is very important. When trying to predict the tides people were arguing that there was the need to solve the Newtonian Equation of the tides and the other physical equations of fluid-dynamics etc. Of course, nobody was able to do that because of the enormous numerical and theoretical difficulty. Today nobody dreams to use GCMs to predict accurately the tides. To overcome the issue Lord Kelvin argued that it is useless to use the Newtonian mechanics or whatever other physical law to solve the problem. What was important was only to know that a link in some way existed, even if not understood in details. On the basis of this, Lord Kelvin proposed an harmonic constituent model for tidal prediction based on astronomical cycles. And Kelvin method is currently the only method that works for predicting the tides. Look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide-predicting_machine
Figure 11 is important because it shows for the first time that climate can be forecast based on astronomical harmonics with a good accuracy. I use a methodology similar to Kelvin’s one and calibrate the model from 1850 to 1950 and I show that the model predicts the climate oscillations from 1950 to 2010, and I show also that the vice-versa is possible.
Of course the proposed harmonic model may be greatly improved with additional harmonics. In comparison the ocean tides are predicted with 35-40 harmonics.
But this does not change the results of the paper that is: 1) a clearer evidence that a physical link between the oscillations of the solar system and the climate exists, as revealed by the auroras’ behavior; 2) this finding justifies the harmonic modeling and forecast of the climate based on astronomical cycles associated to the Sun, the Moon and the Planets.
So, it is also important to understand Kelvin’s argument to fully understand my paper.
…
This work is the natural continuation of my previous work on the topic.
Nicola Scafetta. Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate
oscillations and its implications. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics Volume 72, Issue 13, August 2010, Pages 951-970
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682610001495
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 and 0.25°C,
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 21st 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.
=======================================================
The claims here are pretty bold, and I’ll be frank and say I can’t tell the difference between this and some of the cycl0-mania calculation papers that have been sent to me over the last few years. OTOH, Basil Copeland and I looked at some of the effects of luni-solar on global temperature previously here at WUWT.
While the hindcast seems impressive, a real test would be a series of repeated and proven short-term future forecasts. Time will tell.
@Volker Doormann
You’re attracting attention:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/scafetta-and-aurora/#comment-9318
Cautionary note from first-hand experience:
If your commentary becomes too mature, you’ll be banned from that site.
The proprietors of the site have a theory (based on observation, supposedly) that mature commentary deters site visits.
Nicola,
Perhaps you might explain why FFT does not show a 60 year cycle but MEM does.
Dr. Scafetta
a) solar activity (300 year record) has no 60 year cycle
b) the Arctic circle magnetic field, to which auroras are related (400 year reconstruction from the navigation records available, i.e. from shipping logs of magnetic inclination and declination ) has no 60 year cycle
c) the most accurate temperature record available, the CET (350 years long) has no 60 year cycle.
This is not to say there are no natural cycles in the climate records, indeed there are, and they can be loosely correlated to the solar activity, but there is no astronomical 60 year connection.
There is about 50-ish year period in the solar activity, Arctic magnetic events and the CET, this can be linked to the astronomical events as I have shown in here :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm
(P1+P2)/2 =107 (half period 53.5 years)
P1-P2 =22 Hale Cycle
All clearly seen in the solar cycle spectrum:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/FFT-Power-Spectrum-SSN.png
and in the CET natural variability waveform
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NV.htm
and if you whish in the geomagnetic field.
Paywalls suck. I’d love to read the discussion of possible physical mechanisms.
Leif Svalgaard says:
And there is also no 60-yr cycle in the global temperature during the last 2,000 years: http://www.leif.org/research/FFT-Loehle-Temps.png
If there were, one could not hope to see it in the log graph that you link to.
@Lief,
I am honestly confused by this discussion. Doesn’t the paper show power spectrums and data clearly demonstrating a 60 year cycle? The data is right there in the paper. So, the question is, what exactly are you refuting?
What needs to be refuted is the source of the data being used to show these 60 year cycles (as are clearly shown in the paper, power spectrum and raw data), or the statistical/mathematical methods employed. The data source itself may be corrupted, or manipulated, analysis applied incorrectly, etc. But just saying there’s no power spectrum showing 60 seems ignorant, since the paper shows that in several ways, clearly.
That’s what confuses me about this discussion. You two are talking past each other, and nothing is getting discussed, from what I see.
I really would like an actual comprehensive discussion on what is going on in this paper, with its data, and such.
“davidmhoffer says:
November 10, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Jupiter on the other hand, is big enough to cause the centre of gravity of it and the sun to be somewhere between the centre of the sun and the surface of the sun.
The moon raises tides on earth, even though it is only one sixth the mass of the earth,”
I wish to comment on these two sentences. As for the last one, the moon actually has 1/81 of the mass of the earth. Where you got that 1/6 from is that if you were to stand on a scale on the moon, you would weigh 1/6 as much as on earth. So since the moon averages about 240,000 miles away, the center of mass for the earth-moon system is about 3000 miles from Earth’s center or 1000 miles below the surface of Earth.
As for the first sentence, that is correct. But I just want to add that when several big planets are on the same side as Jupiter, the center of gravity can actually be beyond the surface of the sun.
Dave Springer (November 11, 2011 at 10:06 am) complained:
“Paywalls suck.”
There’s NO paywall here:
Scafetta, N. (2011). A shared frequency set between the historical mid-latitude aurora records and the global surface temperature. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2011.10.013.
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Scafetta-auroras.pdf
M.A.Vukcevic says:
November 11, 2011 at 9:58 am
Vukcevic you need to read my paper and the references that it contains that argue for the 60 year cycle first.
For example, you reference CET. You need to realize that CET is a too local record that may be effected by vocano and local patterns. On the contrary in my paper
A. Mazzarella and N. Scafetta, “Evidences for a quasi 60-year North Atlantic Oscillation since 1700 and its meaning for global climate change,” Theor. Appl. Climatol., DOI 10.1007/s00704-011-0499-4 (2011).
I use a reconstruction of the NAO that includes CET as well as all other available records from europe and a quasi 60 year cycle appears more clearly.
The same can be said for the other records you reference.
Data analysis is a complex matter that requires careful mathematical and physical considerations in particular when proxy models are used with all their errors and ancertenties.
Not all records are equally valid for a specific purpose, not all records show the same things. This is perfectly normal and it is part of the complexity of the problem.
Moreover FFT is the poorest way to calculate the spectrum for a lot of reasons, beginning by the fact that it is discrete.
In any case, if you believe that your analysis is better and you have a better theory, you need just to write a scientific paper and submit it to a science journal. Once it is pubblished we can discuss it.
My above paper focuses on the Aurora records patterns and global temperature patterns, not on other things. And I show that the two records presents the same major frequencies and these major frequencies correspond to major planetary frequencies.
So, I invite you as well as Leif to focus on the actual content of the paper, not on things that the paper was not supposed to address in any details such as what happened in central england or what happened to the sunspots that are only a small subset of the solar and heliosphere dynamics.
Nicola Scafetta says:
November 11, 2011 at 9:28 am
One paper connecting things is
A. Mazzarella and N. Scafetta, “Evidences for a quasi 60-year North Atlantic Oscillation since 1700 and its meaning for global climate change”
The NAO is made up of two components, one has a quasi period of 50+ years, the other one around 70 (but they change a bit if you change length of the data sets), and as result you get (P1+P2)/2. This is also directly reflected in the AMO, so you get 60-65 quoted by various authors.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NA-SST.htm
To Ged says:
November 11, 2011 at 10:14 am
Yes, Ged, Leif wants to confuse things in the hope to confuse people less careful than yourself.
To M.A.Vukcevic says:
November 11, 2011 at 11:00 am
I never said that the cycle must be exacly 60 years. In dynamical system the things oscillate around limit cycles, So sometime a physical cycle may be larger than 60 year and another time may be smaller than that. This is particularly true if you look at subsystems. In the literature there are a lot of papers arguing for a 50 to 70 year oscillation in mutiple records. My interpretation is that ther exists a dynamical attractor at about 60-year that would explain the finding. This attactor points to Jupiter and Saturn 60-year oscillation.
If you do not like the interpretation, that is fine for me, but does not change my position.
Paul Vaughan says:
November 11, 2011 at 10:44 am
There’s NO paywall here:
Scafetta, N. (2011). A shared frequency set between the historical mid-latitude aurora records and the global surface temperature. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2011.10.013.
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Scafetta-auroras.pdf
_____________________________________________
Thank you but I’d already found the link on Tallbloke’s blog. 🙂
Caveat: The preprint isn’t necessarily the same as what goes to press.
Vukcevic, can you tell us whY?…
AnimKEhfv
http://i41.tinypic.com/8zenb7.png
Paul Vaughan says:
November 11, 2011 at 9:39 am
@Volker Doormann
You’re attracting attention:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/scafetta-and-aurora/#comment-9318
Cautionary note from first-hand experience:
If your commentary becomes too mature, you’ll be banned from that site.
The proprietors of the site have a theory (based on observation, supposedly) that mature commentary deters site visits.
I think the very point in this age is the climate code and is it hacked?.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_11_had1960.gif
It is.
I’m off.
V.
I don’t understand the objections to the 60-yr cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg
The friggin’ Atlantic ocean SST record has it clear as a bell. This shows up in the “global” instrument record although not quite as obvious but you can still see it.
jimmi_the_dalek says:
November 10, 2011 at 1:55 pm
“Without a physical mechanism, this is astrology not science.”
You didn’t get an impressive score on the verbal part of the SAT, didja?
FAIL
Nicola Scafetta says:
November 11, 2011 at 11:19 am
……….
I am only pointing out that one has to take into account that the oscillation at a fundamental frequency is not the same as cross-modulation, which may produce a particular frequency.
Paul Vaughan says:
November 11, 2011 at 11:22 am
Vukcevic, can you tell us whY?…
Could you be more specific?
Abstract
The study of the global atmospheric electric circuit has advanced dramatically in the past 50 years. Large advances have been made in the areas of lightning and thunderstorm research, as related to the global circuit. We now have satellites looking down on the Earth continuously, supplying information on the temporal and spatial variability of lightning and thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are electric current generators, which drive electric currents up through the conducting atmosphere. They maintain the ionosphere at a potential of ∼+250 kV with respect to the Earth’s surface. The global electric circuit is completed by currents flowing through the fair weather atmosphere, remote from thunderstorms, and by transient currents due to negative cloud-to-ground lightning discharges. The time constant of the circuit, , demonstrates that thunderstorms must occur continually to maintain the fair weather electric field. New discoveries have been made in the field of sprites, elves and blue jets, which may have a direct impact on the global circuit. Our knowledge of the global electric circuit modulated by solar effects has improved. Changes to the global circuit are associated with changes of conductivity linked with the time-varying presence of energetic charged particles, and the solar wind may influence the global electric circuit by inferred effects on cloud microphysics, temperature, and dynamics in the troposphere. We now have a better understanding of how the conductivity of the atmosphere is influenced by aerosols, and how this impacts our measurements of the fair-weather global circuit. The global atmospheric electric circuit is also beginning to be recognised by some climate researchers as a useful tool with which to study and monitor the Earth’s changing climate.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682600001127
Nicola
I found the paper you referenced to me, thank you
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Mazzarella-%20Scafetta-60-yr.pdf
In it you have an appendix in which you comment on a new paper From John Kennedy concerning SSt’s
I wrote this article that appeared at Climate etc
http://judithcurry.com/2011/06/27/unknown-and-uncertain-sea-surface-temperatures/
and subsequently had a long series of email exchanges with John Kennedy. The manner in which SSTs were collected are highly unscientific and have little merit as a serious temperature record . Dr Judith Curry is also of the opinion that anything prior to around 1960 is seriously flawed.
I do not think they have a place in any scientific paper due to their huge margin of error. Sorry.
Incidentally I am sure that you are aware that CET is very well correlated as a significant proxy for Northern Hemisphere temperatures? It would be very interersting to see the results of your study (which I thought verygood) using CET but excluding SST’s to 1850.
best regards
Tonyb
I didn’t see a section in the paper discussing the aurora data itself. While I don’t necessarily disagree that aurora strength is a decent proxy for solar magnetic field strength, and I don’t necessarily disagree that solar magnetic field strength can influence albedo, what I would point out is that the relationship between climate and aurora record works in both directions.
Here’s what I mean. I grew up at 43N latitude. That’s a mid-latitude and I don’t ever really recall seeing an aurora. They’re rare events in mid-latitudes. I’m sure there were some and if I’d been diligent I might have spotted some. But here’s the thing – auroras can only be seen on clear nights, which has foiled my viewing more often than not. So the very clouds that are purportedly regulated by the aurora (or the solar activity for which auroras are a proxy) themselves effect the ability to see the aurora. So not only might auroras influence cloud cover, cloud cover influences the ability to observe auroras! The influence might work in both directions is what I’m saying.
Moreover, in looking at what little is portrayed of the aurora record in the paper I notice the graph of them, figure 2B, is cut off at the year 1966.
It would appear that the last 45 years of aurora data is not taken into account in this study. That seems like a pretty big omission. Hide the decline kind of stuff to put it bluntly. A suspicious person might think the correlation fell apart after 1966…
Ged says:
November 11, 2011 at 10:14 am
I am honestly confused by this discussion. Doesn’t the paper show power spectrums and data clearly demonstrating a 60 year cycle? The data is right there in the paper. So, the question is, what exactly are you refuting?
A very powerful ingredient of the scientific method is replication. If a claim cannot be replicated, preferably with different data and different methods, it suffers. Just cranking through the same data the same way is not replication [as one always assumes that the claim was made in good faith by competent people – unless evidence to the contrary]. If an effect is clear in the data, even the crudest method [such as FFT, which does in my esamples find the semiannual peak and the solar cycle peak and a 60-yr peak if I put one in] will show it. If it takes extensive massaging and tweaking to ferret out an effect, it is plausible that it is not there in the first place.
So, I use independent data of geomagnetic activity [much better than auroral counts – which for example show a clear lunar cycle, because they are harder to see at full moon], cosmic ray data, sunspot numbers, and even climate, and show that none of these show any 60-year cycle over long enough time periods [centuries]. Thus replication fails and the claim fails.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2011 at 12:54 pm
……
Hi doc
You might find this disturbing, but I do agree with the above post.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2011 at 12:54 pm
“Thus replication fails and the claim fails.”
Great. Give us a link when your refutation is peer reviewed and published. Personally I don’t think you’ve compared apples to apples and it won’t be accepted but that’s just me. I think you first have to establish a link between mid-latitude auroras and the hodge-podge of other proxies you mention. Scafetta’s discovery is a correlation between mid-latitude auroras which may or may not correlate well with those other proxies. Apples and oranges IMO. At least for now.
Leif, read the paper and the references!
Your way to analyze the data is just naive. You need to think more deeply.
Tonyb.
I may agree about the fact that the composite of the tempeature data may have problems, but that is what we have.
If Judith Curry believes that the data before 1960 are seriously flawed she should have said it in her BEST papers and she should have limited her BEST reconstruction to post 1960 which is something that she did not.
In the paper I analyze several records, not just the Kennedy record, including both HadSST2 and HadSST3 records.
Moreover, I have analyzed all available temperature records from all groups and from all regions of the Earth (Norh and South, Land and Ocean) and the results are approximately the same. Those records present major frequency peaks at about 9, 10-10.5, 20-21 and 60-62 year.
Although these records might have errors, their error is likely less than the error of using CET as a proxy for the global temperature.
About CET you clealy see maxima around 1940 and 2000. Then the 60-year cycle predicts a maximum in 1880s which is seen in the global temperature data. However CET does see a cooling instead of a warming. This is probably because in the 1880s there was a huge Krakatoa volcano eruption that might have caused a significant cooling in England and disrupted the pattern. Then the 60 year cycle predicts a maximum around 1820 and a minimum around 1790 and these are there. Before 1790 CET is very poor, and the patterns are less clear. So a 60-year cycle may be present in CET although it may be disrupted by some volcano activity in particular in the 1880s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CET_Full_Temperature_Yearly.png
But the issue is that global accurate records needs to be used, the local one are just “local”
davidmhoffer says:
November 10, 2011 at 8:28 pm
“Jupiter on the other hand, is big enough to cause the centre of gravity of it and the sun to be somewhere between the centre of the sun and the surface of the sun. The moon raises tides on earth, even though it is only one sixth the mass of the earth”
The moon has barely 1% the mass of the earth. Jupiter has less than 0.1% the mass of the sun.
You really, really, really need to double check what you intend to write as facts before you hit that “post comment” button. Seriously dude. Even I do that. If you don’t someone else will and it ends up being very embarrassing.