New paper in GRL shows that a 60-year oscillation in the global tide gauge sea level record has been discovered

See also the new paper by Dr. John Church (lead author on sea level for IPCC) on cycles (PDO and ENSO) and sea level – http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL053240.shtml

To the 60-year Scafetta cycle: As comment #2 above shows, external “(greenhouse gases,
solar variations, volcanic aerosols)” forcings do not produce a 60 year cycle….Then, along
comes some internist, setting up an “internal model” with “internal input”, which, of course,
was made to vary, indeed ….and as result they conclude:
“We ‘suggest’ (!) that the cycle seems to be purely of 60 internal years”……Cleverly
achieved is the excluding of the trisynodic Jup/Sat Scafetta cycle., being talked off the table
by “internal” congestion…
…….you may also go into the cycle-phobic IPCC AR4 literature and there is no 60 year
climate driver mentioned or quantified, neither internal nor external……….JS….

Sea level modulation agrees with the PDO cycle, who would have thought?
Lots of valid comments re internal or external drivers, but no mention of the Aleutian Low. Sea level fluctuation could easily be linked to the PDO which has major influence over the ENSO cycle (Tisdale will no doubt disagree). Sustained periods of La Nina and the associated trade winds will have impact on sea levels of particular basins. The Aleutian Low also correlates with the PDO and is an atmospheric cycle, which is more likely to be influenced by solar/UV fluctuations. The 60 year cycle in the Aurora record is also of interest.
The jury is just forming, but all informants need to be questioned.

Mike Jonas says:
“I want to do a Fourier Transform looking for signs of cycles”
You could always try the spectrum function in R.

[i]„We find that there is a significant oscillation with a period around 60-years in the majority of the tide gauges examined during the 20th Century, and that it appears in every ocean basin.” [/i]
Kindergarten science.
It can be shown that tide spectra (San Francisco bay) correlates positive with global temperature. This is a very simple coherence because of the temperature/volume property of water > 4° C.
Science is to show coherence of real functions in nature. Nonsense cannot be shown.
Real superimposed solar tide functions are in coherence with the real reconstructed global temperature function (except volcano effects). Depending on the number and frequency range of solar tide functions of synodic couples it has been shown here that i.) not a stupid sine wave frequency of ~ 1/60 years without any geometry function on Earth or in the solar system has any scientific meaning, but ii.) superimposed solar tide functions of real object couples have.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/hadcrut3_vs_solar_tides.gif
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/svalbard_vs_ghi6.gif
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/uah_remss_9_2012r.gif
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/jux1.gif
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sea_level_vs_solar_tide.gif
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sea_level_vs_me_er_ju.gif
Solar tide functions are not of sinusoidal function, if there is an elliptic trace involved. This can be shown for the major tide oscillator for millennia and not only for the 20th Century.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images ghi_vs_comnispa_5k.jpg
I wonder that each peer reviewed Kindergarten science paper is in discussion because it is peer reviewed, followed by 500 + personal statements.
V.

but that a coupled climate model forced with only climatological fluxes and run over 1000 years will reproduce a quasi 60 year oscillation in surface temperature that is related to fluctuations in the thermohaline circulation in the model [Delworth and Mann, 2000]. This suggests the multi decadal oscillation is an internal mode, and not externally forced.
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Or that the model has a feature built into the code that causes the 60 year oscillation in the model, but tells us nothing about the causes of this oscillation in the real world. It could simply be an artifact of the model builder’s assumptions and expectations when they built the computer code.
The day someone can model the tides accurately from first principles the way climate models try and model climate, then there might be something to talk about. However, what we have learned about the tides is that they are too complex to model accurately from first principles (forcings/feedbacks).
As it is likely that climate is orders of magnitude more complex than the tides, it seems quite likely that climate models will have even less success at predicting the future than will tide models run from first principles.
As a result of the complexity problem, we model the tides in a manner very similar to computing a horoscope. Who would have thought, Astrology more accurate than scientific principles at calculating the earth’s tides.
The reason why this is true has nothing to do with Astrology, it is simply a result of observation that natural processes tend to be cyclic, not linear. Thus if you can through observation find the cycles in the natural processes then you can make accurate prediction about the future, that would otherwise be too complex to calculate by other means.

Dario from NW Italy says:
November 6, 2012 at 12:39 am
If we think at the correlation between El Nino and volcanic/tectonic/seismic activity on the ocean floor, first proposed by Winkler back in 1995-97 and by others since then (mainly from the “Surge tectonics” school), we can suppose a 60 year cycle in the Eart’s “engine”….
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A cycle in tectonic activity could easily be a harmonic of the tidal forces on the earth, resulting from the near integer harmonics of the planets that stabilizes their orbits. Similar to soldiers marching on a bridge, harmonic oscillations result in much larger effects than would otherwise be predicted.

Leif Svalgaard says:November 6, 2012 at 5:45 am
You are right, Leif. The referees’ comments speak for themselves in demonstrating their ignorance and unfairness.
The referee’s process needs to be reformed to prevent those abuses. Good papers should not be rejected simply because some charlatan is chosen as referee and because some editor is unfriendly toward a specific author.

vukcevic says:
November 6, 2012 at 6:16 am
There is possibility that interaction between two fields happens in the lithosphere or conductive magma, or both, magma is some 10-20 km below ocean surface
No, there is no such possibility as there is no dynamo operating in those magma chambers. A dynamo is necessary because the magma is above the Curie temperature. As I said, the correlation is spurious.