Nicola Scafetta sent me this paper yesterday, and I read it with interest, but I have a number of reservations about it, not the least of which is that it is partially based on the work of Landscheidt and the whole barycentric thing which gets certain people into shouting matches. Figure 9 looks to be interesting, but note that it is in generic units, not temperature, so has no predictive value by itself.
While that looks like a good hindcast fit to historical warm/cold periods, compare it to figure 7 to see how it comes out.
Now indeed, that looks like a great fit to the Ljungqvist proxy temperature reconstruction, but the question arises about whether we are simply seeing a coincidental cyclic fit or a real effect. I asked Dr. Leif Svalgaard about his views on this paper and he replied with this:
The real test of all this cannot come from the proxies we have because the time scales are too short, but from comparisons with other stellar systems where the effects are calculated to be millions of times stronger [because the planets are huge and MUCH closer to the star]. No correlations have been found so far.
See slide 19 of my AGU presentation:
http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202011%20SH34B-08.pdf
So, it would seem, that if the gravitational barycentric effect posited were real, it should be easily observable with solar systems of much larger masses. Poppenhager and Schmitt can’t seem to find it.
OTOH, we have what appears to be a good fit by Scafetta in Figure 7. So this leaves us with three possibilities
- The effect manifests itself in some other way not yet observed.
- The effect is coincidental but not causative.
- The effect is real, but unproven yet by observations and predictive value.
I’m leaning more towards #2 at this point but willing to examine the predictive value. As Dr. Svalgaard points out in his AGU presentation, others have tried but the fit eventually broke down. From slide 14
P. D. Jose (ApJ, 70, 1965) noted that the Sun’s motion about the Center of Mass of the solar system [the Barycenter] has a period of 178.7 yr and suggested that the sunspot cycles repeat with a similar period. Many later researchers have published variations of this idea. – Unfortunately a ‘phase catastrophe’ is needed every ~8 solar cycles
Hindcasting can be something you can easily setup to fool yourself with if you are not careful, and I’m a bit concerned over the quality of the peer review for this paper as it contains two instances of Scafetta’s signature overuse of exclamation points, something that a careful reviewer would probably not let pass.
Science done carefully rarely merits an exclamation point. Papers written that way sound as if you are shouting down to the reader.
The true test will be the predictive value, as Scafetta has been doing with his recent essays here at WUWT. I’m willing to see how well this pans out, but I’m skeptical of the method until proven by a skillful predictive forecast. Unfortunately it will be awhile before that happens as solar timescales far exceed human lifespan.
Below I present the abstract, plus a link to the full paper provided by Dr. Scafetta.
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Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter–Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle
ScienceDirect link
Nicola Scafetta, ACRIM (Active Cavity Radiometer Solar Irradiance Monitor Lab) & Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Abstract
The Schwabe frequency band of the Zurich sunspot record since 1749 is found to be made of three major cycles with periods of about 9.98, 10.9 and 11.86 years. The side frequencies appear to be closely related to the spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn (range between 9.5 and 10.5 years, and median 9.93 years) and to the tidal sidereal period of Jupiter (about 11.86 years). The central cycle may be associated to a quasi-11-year solar dynamo cycle that appears to be approximately synchronized to the average of the two planetary frequencies. A simplified harmonic constituent model based on the above two planetary tidal frequencies and on the exact dates of Jupiter and Saturn planetary tidal phases, plus a theoretically deduced 10.87-year central cycle reveals complex quasi-periodic interference/beat patterns. The major beat periods occur at about 115, 61 and 130 years, plus a quasi-millennial large beat cycle around 983 years. We show that equivalent synchronized cycles are found in cosmogenic records used to reconstruct solar activity and in proxy climate records throughout the Holocene (last 12,000 years) up to now. The quasi-secular beat oscillations hindcast reasonably well the known prolonged periods of low solar activity during the last millennium such as the Oort, Wolf, Spörer, Maunder and Dalton minima, as well as the 17 115-year long oscillations found in a detailed temperature reconstruction of the Northern Hemisphere covering the last 2000 years. The millennial three-frequency beat cycle hindcasts equivalent solar and climate cycles for 12,000 years. Finally, the harmonic model herein proposed reconstructs the prolonged solar minima that occurred during 1900–1920 and 1960–1980 and the secular solar maxima around 1870–1890, 1940–1950 and 1995–2005 and a secular upward trending during the 20th century: this modulated trending agrees well with some solar proxy model, with the ACRIM TSI satellite composite and with the global surface temperature modulation since 1850. The model forecasts a new prolonged solar minimum during 2020–2045, which would be produced by the minima of both the 61 and 115-year reconstructed cycles. Finally, the model predicts that during low solar activity periods, the solar cycle length tends to be longer, as some researchers have claimed. These results clearly indicate that both solar and climate oscillations are linked to planetary motion and, furthermore, their timing can be reasonably hindcast and forecast for decades, centuries and millennia. The demonstrated geometrical synchronicity between solar and climate data patterns with the proposed solar/planetary harmonic model rebuts a major critique (by Smythe and Eddy, 1977) of the theory of planetary tidal influence on the Sun. Other qualitative discussions are added about the plausibility of a planetary influence on solar activity.
Link to paper: Scafetta_JStides
UPDATE 3/22/2012 – 1:15PM Dr. Scafetta responds in comments:
About the initial comment from Antony above,I believe that there are he might have misunderstood some part of the paper.
1)
I am not arguing from the barycentric point of view, which is false. In the paper I am talking
about tidal dynamics, a quite different approach. My argument
is based on the finding of my figure 2 and 3 that reveal the sunspot record
as made of three cycles (two tidal frequencies, on the side, plus a central
dynamo cycle). Then the model was developed and its hindcast
tests were discissed in the paper, etc.
{from Anthony – Note these references in your paper: Landscheidt, T.,1988.Solar rotation,impulses of the torque in sun’s motion, and
climate change. Climatic Change12,265–295.
Landscheidt, T.,1999.Extrema in sunspot cycle linked toSun’s motion. Solar
Physics 189,415–426.}
2)
There are numerous misconceptions since the beginning such as “Figure 9 looks to be interesting, but note that it is in generic units, not temperature, so has no predictive value by itself.”
It is a hindcast and prediction. There is no need to use specific units, but only dynamics. The units are interpreted correctly in the text of the paper as being approximately W/m^2 and as I say in the caption of the figure “However, the bottom curve approximately reproduces the patterns observed in the proxy solar models depicted in Fig. 5. The latter record may be considered as a realistic, although schematic, representation of solar dynamics.”
{from Anthony – if it isn’t using units of temperature, I fail to see how it can be of predictive value, there is not even any reference to warmer/cooler}
3) About Leif’s comments. It is important to realize that Solar physics is not “settled” physics. People do not even understand why the sun has a 11-year cycle (which is between the 10 and 12 year J/S tidal frequencies, as explained in my paper).
4)
The only argument advanced by Leif against my paper is that the phenomenon is his opinion was not observed in other stars. This is hardly surprising. We do not have accurate nor long records about other stars!
Moreover we need to observe the right thing, for example, even if you have a large planet very close to a star, the observable effect is associated to many things: how eccentric the orbits are and how big the star is, and its composition etc. Stars have a huge inertia to tidal effects and even if you have a planet large and close enough to the star to produce a theoretical 4,000,000 larger tidal effect, it does not means that the response from the star must be linear! Even simple elastic systems may be quite sensitive to small perturbations but become extremely rigid to large and rapid perturbations, etc.
It is evident that any study on planetary influence on a star needs to start from the sun, and then eventually extended to other star systems, but probably we need to wait several decades before having sufficiently long records about other stars!
In the case of the sun I needed at least a 200 year long sunspot record to
detect the three Schwabe cycles, and at least 1000 years of data for
hindcast tests to check the other frequencies. People can do the math for how long we need to wait for the other stars before having long enogh records.
Moreover, I believe that many readers have a typical misconception of physics.
In science a model has a physical basis when it is based on the observations
and the data and it is able to reconstruct, hindcast and/or forecast them.
It is evident to everybody reading my paper with an open mind that under the scientific
method, the model I proposed is “physically based” because I am
describing and reconstructing the dynamical properties of the data and I
showed that the model is able to hindcast millennia long data records.
Nobody even came close to these achievements.
To say otherwise would mean to reject everything in science and physics
because all findings and laws of physics are based on the observations and
the data and are tested on their capability of reconstruct, hindcast and/or
forecast observations, as I did in the paper
Of course, pointing out that I was not solving the problem using for example
plasma physics or quantum mechanics or whatever else. But this is a complex
exercise that needs its own time. As I correctly say in the paper.
“Further research should address the physical mechanisms necessary to
integrate planetary tides and solar dynamo physics for a more physically
based model.”
Leif Svalgaard,
There is a lot of parameter tuning including cycle lengths and “average” values input in that dynamo model, and since it is a 2-D model, 3 dimensions might provide state to “remember” more than the two previous cycles giving the possibility of longer cycles. But I doubt it will be able to sustain patterns of activity variation on the scale of centuries without coupling to external drivers of some sort. I look forward to further development.
Martin Lewitt says:
March 26, 2012 at 7:44 am
But I doubt it will be able to sustain patterns of activity variation on the scale of centuries without coupling to external drivers of some sort. I look forward to further development.
As the paper states [and I agree]: “Since the dominant processes during the rising phase of a cycle from a minimum to a maximum are fairly regular processes like the magnetic field advection and toroidal field generation by differential rotation, a good knowledge of magnetic configurations during a minimum should enable a good theoretical model to predict the next maximum reliably. On the other hand, the dominant process in the declining phase of a cycle is the poloidal field generation by the Babcock-Leighton process which involves randomness and cannot be predicted in advance by theoretical models. In other words, we suggest that the rising phase of the cycle is predictable (enabling us to predict the strength of the maximum a few years ahead of time), but the declining phase is not predictable. So, it may never be possible to make a realistic prediction of a maximum more than 7–8 years ahead of time, even when we have better theoretical models and better magnetic data.”
It is like forecasting the weather: if we don’t feed in new observations all the time, the forecast soon becomes meaningless, but will work for a limited time into the future.
Martin Lewitt says:
March 26, 2012 at 7:44 am
But I doubt it will be able to sustain patterns of activity variation on the scale of centuries without coupling to external drivers of some sort.
The drivers proposed are either physically impossible [barycentrics] or energetically unfavorable [tides, magnetic forces], so I doubt they will be useful. But, as I said, we are getting many more exemplars for observations of exoplanetary systems that might guide us to further understanding. So far it doesn’t look too good for the proposed drivers, but perhaps other ones will turn up. This might be evident in a few years, not the several lifetimes that will be needed to postpone falsification of current ideas.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 26, 2012 at 8:27 am
Martin Lewitt says:
March 26, 2012 at 7:44 am
But I doubt it will be able to sustain patterns of activity variation on the scale of centuries without coupling to external drivers of some sort.
The drivers proposed are either physically impossible [barycentrics] or energetically unfavorable [tides, magnetic forces].
Did you finish writing any rebuttal of Wolff and Patrone and submit it?
tallbloke says:
March 26, 2012 at 9:07 am
Did you finish writing any rebuttal of Wolff and Patrone and submit it?
No, it is low on my list [and does not advance science]. Bad papers die all by themselves. Douglas Gough [one of the leading experts on solar circulation and dynamics] had commented on W&P [and I have quoted from his comments before] and we were thinking of providing a rebuttal, but as it does not advance the field, it has not been high on our list. There are better things to do. Such rebuttals will not be persuasive for pseudoscientists anyway, so why bother? After having read his comments http://www.leif.org/research/Gough-Comment-on-Wolff-Patrone.doc you might confirm my above point.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 26, 2012 at 9:38 am
with ref. to tallbloke.
Douglas Gough [one of the leading experts on solar circulation and dynamics] had commented on W&P
You might enjoy one of Gough’s recent papers: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.4924v1.pdf
Bart
If there is no significant bulge or inhomogeneity of the Sun, then there is no classical avenue for spin/orbit coupling
I’m not talking about tial force. The body is Sun-Ea-Ve and the ‘bulge’ is Ea-Ve and every 22 years this bulge is more often on the same side of the Sun seen from Jupiter.
yes, tidal
Bart and lgl,
The sun has an equatorial bulge significant enough to account for some of the precession of Mercury, and it has mass currents from its rotation and from convection. Mass currents and density heterogeneity presumably from the dynamo itself gives it a quadrupole moment relevant in general relativity. There is no free fall for extended bodies in curved space. The GR effects scale as the mass and the inverse distance cubed, like newtonian tidal forces but have effects that don’t occur in the classical newtonian gravity.
The high correlation between the cock’s crow and the sunrise does suggest causality, as does the correlation between daylight and sunrise. Maybe the dawn causes the cock to crow, but does the dawn cause the sun to rise? The intuitively far fetched notion that the sun is responsible for daylight seems to require the far fetched notion of a round earth with antipodes.
Galileo rejected the theory that the moon was responsible for tides in spite of an observed correlation as old as the one between sunshine and daylight–there was just too much extraneous baggage for him–gravitation and menstrual cycles? –give me a break.
And Wegener. Continental shelves fit like a puzzle. Even the stratigraphy matches, including the paleontology. But with no mechanism it must be coincidence.
OK, maybe the rooster doesn’t make the sun rise, but there seems to be a causal connection. And the geologists weren’t any smarter about continental drift than the rooster. Solid correlation is not to be dismissed for lack of a causal mechanism. –AGF
Martin Lewitt says:
March 26, 2012 at 12:40 pm
There is no free fall for extended bodies in curved space. The GR effects scale as the mass and the inverse distance cubed, like newtonian tidal forces but have effects that don’t occur in the classical newtonian gravity.
True, but the effects are vanishingly small in the weak gravity of the solar system. As the tides, but much smaller.
agfosterjr says:
March 26, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Solid correlation is not to be dismissed for lack of a causal mechanism.
The problem is that the correlation is not solid, but marginal, with shaky data sets.
Martin Lewitt says:
March 26, 2012 at 12:40 pm
The sun has an equatorial bulge significant enough to account for some of the precession of Mercury
The bulge is due to solar rotation ( http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.2202.pdf ) and is so small [0.014″/century] that its influence on the precession is too small be be measurable [less that the error bar on the precession value]. It is useful to keep the effects in proper perspective.
Leif Svalgaard,
“True, but the effects are vanishingly small in the weak gravity of the solar system. As the tides, but much smaller.”
The effects will be twice as large for Venus and Jupiter as for Mercury, and if concentrated in gravity waves in the 2% of solar mass in the convection zone, we gain 2 orders of magnitude. It is still a small effect in the sense that it won’t dominate dynamic forces there, but I don’t think we can rule out a more subtle coupling.
Martin Lewitt says:
March 26, 2012 at 1:54 pm
The effects will be twice as large for Venus and Jupiter as for Mercury, and if concentrated in gravity waves in the 2% of solar mass in the convection zone, we gain 2 orders of magnitude.
You are mixing the effect on the Sun and the effect by the Sun.
It is still a small effect in the sense that it won’t dominate dynamic forces there, but I don’t think we can rule out a more subtle coupling.
It won’t even by measurable, and instead of ‘we can’t rule out’ you should calculate how large the coupling is and then compare. ‘Gravity waves’? the Sun is extremely stiff, gravity waves have periods of hours.
“You are mixing the effect on the Sun and the effect by the Sun.”
Yes, I’ve been assuming Newton’s third law still applies.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 26, 2012 at 9:38 am
The drivers proposed are either physically impossible [barycentrics] or energetically unfavorable [tides, magnetic forces].
tallbloke says:
March 26, 2012 at 9:07 am
Did you finish writing any rebuttal of Wolff and Patrone and submit it?
No
Thanks.
Martin Lewitt says:
March 26, 2012 at 12:40 pm
I already addressed issues such as quadrupole and Lense-Thirring. AFAIK, nobody has measured a widely accepted value for the quadrupole moment, much less a significant one. If I remember correctly, that pretty much died with Brans-Dicke. The other effects are very tiny.
@Myrrh:
The explanation by the IPCC of how projection and prediction are SO different, the way they use them, reminds me of Humpty Dumpty and words meaning exactly what he says they mean…
===================
Well, I’m flattered. From all that I said, the only rock that was tossed was that I find hard what Leif finds easy! I must be right then 😉
Running the software to solve the 3-body problem is easy, writing it from scratch is harder (at least for me 😉
On the other hand, it might help for every statistician to take a course in Kabbala. –AGF
Martin Lewitt says:
March 26, 2012 at 2:31 pm
“You are mixing the effect on the Sun and the effect by the Sun.”
Yes, I’ve been assuming Newton’s third law still applies.
So you are assuming that because solar oblateness causes a precession of Mercury of 0.014″ per century, there is an equal and opposite precession [or whatever] of the Sun’s bulge of the same magnitude. [of course not, but that is your flippant answer]. As for Jupiter gaining two orders of magnitude, its mass is 6000 times larger than Mercury, but its distance cubed is 2400 times larger so you gain only a factor of 2.5.
This paper http://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.0543v3.pdf provides a justification for the gravitational Detweiler-Whiting axiom that a “point mass” moves on a geodesic [that is ‘free fall’] in a suitable background field.
Anyway, what you are trying to say is that solar activity due to barycentric effects is an effect of General Relativity. I think that is a bridge too far.
tallbloke says:
March 26, 2012 at 2:41 pm
Did you finish writing any rebuttal of Wolff and Patrone and submit it?
“No”
Thanks.
But I also explained why not and invited you to tell us if Gough’s comment [that would have formed the core of our rebuttal] was persuasive so that you from now on will refrain from using W&P as a pseudo-argument. Or if my assessment of your reaction was near to the mark?
Martin Lewitt says:
March 26, 2012 at 2:31 pm
Yes, I’ve been assuming Newton’s third law still applies.
Except it does not: http://www.nd.edu/~astro/MWRM18/Scientific%20Program.pdf
“4:00 Self-forces and generalized symmetries
Abraham Harte University of Chicago
A non-perturbative formalism is developed that greatly simplifies the understanding of self-forces and self-torques acting on compact bodies. New notions of effective linear and angular momentum are identified, and a simple law of motion is derived for extended scalar and electromagnetic charges in curved spacetimes. The Detweiler-Whiting axiom that a body’s overall motion should only be influenced by the so-called “regular” component of its self-field is shown to follow very easily in an appropriate limit. Corrections to this result are related to the failure of Newton’s third law for the remaining “bound” portion of the self-field. Alternatively, excess forces and torques are shown to arise from deformations of a particular Green function under the action of generalized Killing fields.
tallbloke says:
March 26, 2012 at 12:34 am
[….]
Thanks for the invite, Tall Bloke, be sure I’ll taking you up on it. Speaking of websites and artsy stuff, I did notice you’ve a cool graphic interface and wondered if it’s custom or template. I’m fond of that style; takes me back to the “old” days when I started in Web design in ’99, halcyon times when the heavily Photoshopped look with the airbrushed, tv-lines and glowing, fuzzy effects ruled. And we did all the crazy, multi-layer and multi-effect stuff with 286s and 386s. You clicked on an effect and went out for a smoke to wait as the drives rattled away. Sometimes the thing didn’t hang or crash.
We didn’t have history or philosophy of science at my university, although I took an intro to astronomy which I quickly withdrew from after asking to look at the stars through the great big telescope; it was around noon. Actually what sped up my departure was my first assignment to calculate orbits for objects of different masses. The high school I went to was still into New Math, which I couldn’t explain what it means because I cut all math classes to become the local Pinball Wizard. Ditto for chemistry, which I avoided because the teacher had halitosis from Hell. Once I got through my ESL classes I did enjoy English lit, though, and spent many a period reading aloud, with my own special sound effects, to a class in which more than half of the kids had major reading issues. Ah, the good old days of inner city school laxity; graduate them before they rob you or cut you up. Anyway, somehow they let me into university where my major was in History, which I did enjoy very much and Judaic Studies as a minor of sorts, which were to take me on a path of becoming a pulpit rabbi. Life got in the way of that plan.
So, apropos yesterday’s talk, I’m starting off with the Solar system. Freaky, freaky stuff; the insane distances, the masses, the energies. The reminder that the most of the universe we see no longer is what it looks like to us now. And I like Sedna a lot, reminded me of the end-of-science malaise lecture you attended. And I delighted in the sense of poetry some astronomers had when they named the orphan planet(?) after an Inuit goddess of the sea. Even better when they displayed enough gumption to push the name to an indignant International Astronomical Union’s Committee on Small Body Nomenclature. It’s stuff like that that keeps me reading and gives me hope.
[Thank you, once again, Mod, for fixing my last html booboo. I’ll try even harder.]
The Pompous Git says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:39 pm
[……]
Say WHAT? Obscurantist history professors? At our universities?
Excursus time. There was a second-year course I took in the way-back-when-time on the medieval witch craze. I didn’t read the course outline of course (misplaced), and missed the first three or four lecture sessions because the seven friendly pubs at the university obstructed my passage to the lecture hall and severely degraded my motility and navigational skills. I was also unable to attend the seminars because they were scheduled ridiculously early, at 11 AM. So, due to understandable circumstances beyond my control, I never had the foggiest about what I was getting into when I submitted my first essay. It dealt with partial records hinting at the finances behind the witch hunts in several towns in Germany. How and why I had microfilm printouts of these records is another story.
In any event, I used those records to support a view first advanced by the late Columbia U anthropologist, Marvin Harris (worth a look-see), who interpreted the craze as a huge financial scam resulting in expropriation of property which was divvied-up by the State and Church authorities. There are similarities between that and the CAGW scam, btw, which if I ever get serious one day, I’ll try to write up and submit to Anthony. Right.
Anyway, I was sure I had nailed an A+, so I was a bit shocked when I saw an unsightly C+ on the title page. My prof hand-wrote a barely legible critique in which she criticized my treatment as too materialistic, patriarchal and grossly insensitive to the “real women involved.” I didn’t, for example, discuss how these women felt or what their matriarchal naturalistic beliefs and customs were. I met with her at her office and explained that there are no records or diaries (in an illiterate age) to hint at how any of the victims thought or felt, given that all we have on them are names and summarized descriptions of the routine “trials” and predictable decisions. As for their beliefs, these were by and large ordinary church-going women with unremarkable beliefs, but more interestingly to the authorities, widows who had been left with property, such as town homes, pastures, orchards or fields, mills or foundries. The witchcraft charges were all boiler-plate crap concocted by idiot friars and psychopathic theologians. No records I was aware of reliably established that these victims held any sort of unusual beliefs for the times.
My professor’s response was to point me to the “literature” of modern-day feminist neo-Pagan “witches,” the alleged “spiritual descendants” of the imagined high-priestesses of ancient Natural religions. That would’ve been the sandalwood-oiled purveyors of herbal teas and experts in prana and kundalini yoga, who had accessed the mystical founts of wisdom cleverly hidden at their community libraries to concoct elaborate syncretistic mythologies stretching to the dawn of prehistory…all the way back to the early 1960s. She also recommended books by that lunatic fraud, the 1970s peyote-dropping “witch,” Carlos Castaneda. Fortunately, I managed to panic-withdraw from the course without academic penalties, although I lost about half of my course fee, valued at the time at about 20-30 pub sessions.
This adventure took place in ‘82 or ’83, and was a-typical of the times. Most history profs were, by and large, still sticklers for facts, documentary evidence and sound logic, although some of their young course assistants already displayed the early symptoms of the malady of obscurantism and the turgid and incomprehensible diktatura of neo-Marxism. No one saw a linear trend back then, least of all one that would “amplify.” Today, from what I read and hear, things are…worse than we thought… in the PC-hallowed towers of post-this and post-that academia.