Guest post by David Archibald
Long suspected, it seems that this has now been confirmed by a paper in Astronomy and Astrophysics with the title “Is there a planetary influence on solar activity?” by Abreu et al that was published on 22nd October, 2012.
From the Discussion and Conclusions section:
The excellent spectral agreement between the planetary tidal effects acting on the tachocline and the solar magnetic activity is
surprising, because until now the tidal coupling has been considered to be negligible. In Appendix A we show that the possibility of an accidental coincidence can be ruled out. We therefore suggest that a planetary modulation of the solar activity does take place on multidecadal to centennial time scales.
The authors note that current solar dynamo models are unable to explain the periodicities in solar activity such as the 88 year (Gleissberg), 104 year, 150 year, 208 year (de Vries), 506 year, 1000 year (Eddy) and 2200 year (Halstatt) cycles. They adopted a different view by regarding the planets and the solar dynamo as two weakly coupled non-linear systems.
The idea that planetary motions may influence solar activity seems to have been initiated by Rudolf Wolf in the 1850s. While energy considerations clearly show that the planets cannot be the direct cause of solar activity, they may perturb the solar dynamo.
Specifically, the authors calculated planetary torque at the tachocline. The tachocline of the sun is a shear layer which represents a sharp transition between two distinct rotational regimes: the differentially rotating convection zone and the almost rigidly rotating radiative interior. The tachocline plays a fundamental role in the generation and storage of the toroidal magnetic flux that eventually gives rise to solar active regions. A net tidal torque is exerted in a small region close to the tachocline due to the buoyancy frequency originating from the convection zone matching the tidal period. The tachocline is thought to be non-spherical – either prolate (watermelon-shaped) or oblate (pumpkin-shaped). The authors’ model describes planetary torques acting on a non-spherical solar tachocline.
Figure 5 from the paper shows the 10Be record, shown as modulation potential, and planetary torque in the frequency domain:
Panel a is the Fourier spectrum of the solar activity quantified by the solar modulation potential. Panel b is the Fourier spectrum of the annually averaged torque modulus. The spectra display significant peaks with very similar periodicities: The 88 year Gleissberg and the 208 year de Vries cycles are the most prominent, but periodicities around 104 years, 150 years, and 506 years are also seen.
The match between theory and the physical evidence is very, very good. As the authors put it,”there is highly statistically significant evidence for a causal relationship between the power spectra of the planetary torque on the Sun and the observed magnetic activity at the solar surface as derived from cosmogenic radionuclides.”
They also advance a plausible mechanism which is that the tachocline, playing a key role in the solar dynamo process, is a layer of strong shear which coincides more or less with the layer of overshooting convection at the bottom of the convection zone. The overshoot layer is thought to be crucial for the storage and amplification of the magnetic flux tubes that eventually erupt at the solar photosphere to form active regions. Small variations in the stratification of the overshoot zone “of about -10-4 may decide whether a flux tube becomes unstable at 2·10-4 G or at 10-5 G. This makes a great difference, because flux tubes that do not reach a strength close to 10-5 G before entering the convection zone cannot reach the solar surface as a coherent structure and therefore cannot form sunspots.” This sounds like an explanation for the Livingstone and Penn effect of fading sunspots.
Figure A.1 from the paper also shows the very good correlation between cosmogenic radionuclides from the period 300-9400 years BP and the model output:
Upper middle panel: 14C production rate derived from the INTCAL09 record
Lower middle panel: solar modulation record based on 10Be records from GRIP
(Greenland) and Dronning Maud Land (Antarctica) and the 14C production rate
Bottom panel: Calculated torque based on planetary positions
If planetary torque modulates solar activity, does solar activity in turn modulate the earth’s climate? Let’s have a look at what the 10Be record is telling us. This is the Dye 3 record from Greenland:
All the cold periods of the last six hundred years are associated with spikes in 10Be and thus low solar activity. What is also telling is that the break-over to the Modern Warm Period is associated with much lower radionuclide levels. There is a solar mechanism that explains the warming of the 20th Century. It is also seen in the Central England Temperature record as shown in the following figure:
Conclusion
This paper is a major advance in our understanding of how solar activity is modulated and in turn its effect on the earth’s climate. It can be expected that planetary torque will progress to being useful as a tool for climate prediction – for several hundred years ahead.
Reference
J.A. Abreu, J. Beer, A. Ferriz-Mas, K.G. McCracken, and F. Steinhilber, Is there a planetary influence on solar activity?” Astronomy and Astrophysics, October 22, 2012
Thanks to Geoff Sharp, the full paper can be downloaded from here.
(Note: This post was edited for title, form, and some content by Anthony Watts prior to publishing)
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Nicola Scafetta says:
November 11, 2012 at 6:52 pm
Leif plays a lot with the emotion of the people
I think the folks here are fully capable to make up their own minds and would resent the insinuation that their emotions are being ‘played’ with..
Geoff Sharp says:
November 11, 2012 at 7:22 pm
I will wait for the published paper that address any GSN AND SIDC issues, which, if ever published will be forensically inspected. Until the evidence is properly produced Leif should drop his claims that the GSN is rubbish, there are still too many questions not answered to be making claims.
That ‘argument’ would also apply to your specific claims of your ideas. But here are no valid and relevant questions not answered. The analysis of the GSN is clear and can be reproduced by anybody. The same is the case with the weighting of sunspots at Locarno.At the end of the workshops everything will be duly published for the record. In the meantime you get a heads-up on the progress we are making.
A few open-ended questions for assembled writers to correct or extend.
1) Do all agree that sunspots themselves (the size, quantity, or lack of) do NOT affect the earth’s climate themselves, but rather they could be a “symptom” or a “result” of elector-magnetic circulation patterns within the sun that in turn may (or may not!) affect the earth’s climate through other first/second/third order effects.
For example, the moon and sun’s positions with respect to the earth directly cause the tides.
But if somebody tries to claim that the moon’s phase (what side is lit by the sun and how much is lit by the sun) causes tides, they could probably present plots showing just that effect. The claim might look good, but it would be wrong. They’d be wrong the same way somebody says that sunspots cause the earth to heat up or cool down is wrong.
Note closely, however, that Their charts WOULD accurately predict tides and the height of tides as it changes through the year!
2) If sunspots are a visible “symptom” of the sun’s changing magnetic fields and internal circulating loops of plasma, then has any one looked for “changes” in the sunspot cycles over time?
Just looking visually at the sunspot counts implies a pattern that might be important, trivial, or an artifact of my eye: 1 rising (increasing number) even cycle, a relatively high odd cycle, a falling (lower count) even cycle, a lower odd cycle, a very low even cycle, a slightly higher odd cycle, etc.
The sunspt “period” itself might show clues to any pattern: Do the small changes in cycle length change regularly over time? If somebody separates the even and odd cycles apart, do either even or odd cycle “length” change over time?
Do any such changes vary, but vary with the same period that any planetary or barycentric change?
3) Sunspots appear “immediately,” stay a few days or a few orbits, then go away. The red Spot on Jupiter has stayed visible for centuries: Does IT change with Jupiter’s orbit or the orbit of any other planet?
The Red Spot is a variable, rotating “storm-like” feature – so if planetary or barycentric changes are assumed to affect the sun’s circulation patterns, then would they not affect Jupiter’s visible orbiting patterns? Consider the number of bands in Jupiter’s atmosphere, the Red Spot’s density, its diameter, its relative color, etc. Have they changes periodically over time since first drawn several centuries ago?
Look up Gleissberg in Wiki and read the total BS about CAGW. They say that correlation with Sun Spots isn’t causation, yet they insist the non-correlative CO2 is causitive. There’s a lot more BS in there, probably edited by our favourite CAGW editor. These guys are idiots!
The agreement between SSN proxy and planetary forces spectra is very impressive. What puzzles me is that there are no planetary motions that give rise to a 208 year cycle, so how does that appear in the planetary forces?
Ray Tomes says:
November 11, 2012 at 8:07 pm
The agreement between SSN proxy and planetary forces spectra is very impressive. What puzzles me is that there are no planetary motions that give rise to a 208 year cycle, so how does that appear in the planetary forces?
Yes there is, but as stated before it is an artifact of another cycle, namely the 172 year avg cycle. Think of the 3 prongs on the hour hand.
The preceding is fascinating debate indeed. To this sometimes struggling amateur a couple of observations are prompted. First, in virtually all of the solar based analyses which have appeared over recent years (the number/frequency of which has certainly accelerated – and that’s good to see) there seems to be steadily emerging better defined correlations which justify the declaration of plausible solar origin hypotheses.
But as several contributions have reminded, correlation is not causation, and the basis of sound supporting observational/experimental evidence is still awaited as far as I can see, with the solar origin hypotheses referenced in this string of postings and elsewhere. (Of course our friends at IPCC have dispensation granted by themselves whereby in their case correlation alone is enough.)
The referenced correlations all seem to centre around planetary and solar dynamics/solar/sunspot cycles sometimes intertwined with the claimed cosmic ray/cloud factors – and perhaps CERN activity might in time shed more light on the latter. What seems to me to be missing still is the mechanism which translates from these correlations, as strong as they might be, into the energy gain/loss which must eventually arrive at Earth to prompt the cycles (of the various durations).
The mechanism/s which as I recall, people like Shaviv and Scaffeta have referred to as the ‘missing amplification mechanism’. It seems to me the hypotheses which have been defined are like the loaded gun, but that necessary whisp of smoke from the gun is still missing.
Whilst there seems to be much effort at refining the correlations, apart from CERN and its possibilities, it is not apparent to me where the research is going on which might otherwise find links to the smoking gun.
LAPW
There may be a typo where it says “Received 17 Mai 2011 Accepted 17 Mai 2011“.
In http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=doi&doi=10.1051/0004-6361/201219997&Itemid=129 it says:
“Title: Is there a planetary influence on solar activity?
Author(s): J. A. Abreu, J. Beer, A. Ferriz-Mas, K. G. McCracken, F. Steinhilber
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201219997
Accepted: 09/24/12
A&A – Year: 2012
[PDF (3.726 MB)] ”
[my bold]
Even in CAGW-land, completion of reviews in a single day would surely be rather unusual.
Steven Mosher says:
November 11, 2012 at 5:41 pm
Tallboke.
Another unsatisfactory aspect is that although many of the periods in the seven cycles are close to observed planetary and planet pair periods, they are not exactly at those frequencies. This will be due to the imperfection of the Lean TSI reconstruction and to non-linear solar responses to planetary modulation. Once we have completed other studies which approach the problem from different angles, better constrained the non-linearities and found the relevant periodicities which are common to different approaches, we hope to offer an updated and improved forecast.
What I see you doing here is trying to throw Lean under the bus, except when you need her. Then you trot her chart out as if there was nothing wrong with it.
The shape of Lean’s curves (ooer missus!) wouldn’t have to change very much at all for the periodicities to drop into place and align with planetary frequencies. So we’re not ‘throwing her under the bus’, but adopting the realistic viewpoint that since all proxies are affected by multiple factors, it is unlikely that Lean’s TSI reconstruction is not contaminated by non-solar factors.
I see no admission of the fundamental problem which Leif, myself and others have pointed out to you guys repeatedly..
Yours and Leif’s and Willis’ fundamental problem is that if you don’t have an explanation for something then you just sweep it under the carpet and pretend it doesn’t exist.
The every 45 year (inner planets return) beach ridges which line Hudson bay and northern Siberia are really there, we have the photos. Every second one is higher (Gleissberg cycle) and every fourth higher still (Jose cycle – Gas giants return). You can’t explain them with co2 and volcanos.
I will say, however, that you have one step up on Wilde who is allergic to numbers. he cant even rise to the level of numerology or cyclemania.
Stephen’s qualitative analysis is valid, and has plenty of falsifiable content, as he laid out for you. As for the slur words, I never had much respect for your ability to think scientifically. Now I just don’t have much respect for you full stop.
Mike Jonas says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:08 pm
Even in CAGW-land, completion of reviews in a single day would surely be rather unusual.
A long review period from May 2011 to Sept. 2012 is also rather unusual. And the parallel submission to another Journal is not normal either. If I had to guess, the paper was first submitted to A&A, rejected there, then submitted elsewhere, also rejected, then revised and resubmitted to A&A. But since you know all about it and tallbloke has followed the whole process and presumably read all the reviews as necessary to make his claim, perhaps some light may be shone on this story. Review seemed to have been quite a struggle [as is proper].
Mike Jonas says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:08 pm
There may be a typo where it says “Received 17 Mai 2011 Accepted 17 Mai 2011“.
In http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=doi&doi=10.1051/0004-6361/201219997&Itemid=129 it says:
“Title: Is there a planetary influence on solar activity?
Author(s): J. A. Abreu, J. Beer, A. Ferriz-Mas, K. G. McCracken, F. Steinhilber
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201219997
Accepted: 09/24/12
A&A – Year: 2012
[PDF (3.726 MB)] ”
[my bold]
Thanks Mike. We’ll now be treated to the fulsome apology being made by Leif to the authors and Astronomy and Astrophysics for the slurs he has cast against them from his very first comment on this thread onwards.
It’s coming along just now,
I can sense it…..
Leif??
Mike Jonas says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:08 pm
Well done Mike. If correct that would suggest many many months of review. I hope there has been no deception involved here.
tallbloke says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:20 pm
the slurs he has cast against them from his very first comment on this thread onwards.
what slurs? I simply pointed out that as published there could not have been much review done in that single day. I doubted [and still do] that you would have been privy to the whole review process as that would have been highly irregular.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Mike Jonas says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:08 pm
Even in CAGW-land, completion of reviews in a single day would surely be rather unusual.
A long review period from May 2011 to Sept. 2012 is also rather unusual.
So what is the Goldilocks review period in la-la land Leif?
And when are you going to apologize for your accusations of “irregularities”?
Ethically minded people want to know. Who runs the Stanford board of ethics? What’s their email address?
tallbloke says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:50 pm
So what is the Goldilocks review period in la-la land Leif?
Typically a few months
And when are you going to apologize for your accusations of “irregularities”?
I do not accuse, I discover and report.
Ethically minded people want to know
Who are they? They don’t seem much in evidence here.
The sun is not a stationary object, it is traveling at tremendous speed in a galactic soup of dust, flux, gravitational waves, dark matter (assumed), pseudo particles,etc, in varying density and forever cutting across the wake of its orbiting planets. It would be prudent not to model the mechanics of the Sun as if its in a closed system.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:48 pm
tallbloke says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:20 pm
the slurs he has cast against them from his very first comment on this thread onwards.
what slurs? I simply pointed out that as published there could not have been much review done in that single day.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:47 pm
Mike Jonas says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:38 pm
I have known about it since March 2011, including its review process.
Including the process that in its whole took place in a single day in May 2011?
An almost identical paper was submitted some months later to another journal. All journals take a dim view on duplicate publication. One of the questions asked is if ‘the paper is considered for publication elsewhere’. The situation with the A&A is highly irregular, to say the least.
There are several explanations which might account for this which don’t involve “irregularities”. You choose to put the most negative possible spin on it as a slur against Abreu et al.
I doubted [and still do] that you would have been privy to the whole review process as that would have been highly irregular.
I never said I was, that’s just your straw man. I said:
“Those of us who have been aware of the progress of this paper throughout that time know how rigorously it has been vetted prior to publication.”
I didn’t claim I was one of them. You trying to make out I claimed I was is just another of your [many] false arguments.
tallbloke says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:50 pm
If Leif was ethical he would apologize for his accusations and he would also refrain from making any more comments about the accuracy of the GSN until all data is in.
Edwin says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:59 pm
The sun is not a stationary object, it is traveling at tremendous speed in a galactic soup of dust, flux, gravitational waves, dark matter (assumed), pseudo particles,etc, in varying density and forever cutting across the wake of its orbiting planets. It would be prudent not to model the mechanics of the Sun as if its in a closed system.
Well said. I concur.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2012 at 10:56 pm
tallbloke says:
Ethically minded people want to know
Who are they? They don’t seem much in evidence here.
Don’t judge others by your own standards.
Geoff Sharp says (November 11, 2012 at 8:51 pm):
Ray Tomes says: … What puzzles me is that there are no planetary motions that give rise to a 208 year cycle, so how does that appear in the planetary forces?
Geoff: Yes there is, but as stated before it is an artifact of another cycle, namely the 172 year avg cycle.
Ray: How do you get from 172 years (U-N synodic cycle) to 208 years? These two cycles make beats every ~1000 years which is also not a meaningful planetary cycle.
Geoff: Think of the 3 prongs on the hour hand.
Ray: Sorry Geof, I have a digital watch. You will need to explain this in a bit more detail please.
tallbloke said:
“Stephen’s qualitative analysis is valid, and has plenty of falsifiable content, as he laid out for you. As for the slur words, I never had much respect for your ability to think scientifically. Now I just don’t have much respect for you full stop”.
Thanks tallbloke.
It’s not that I’m allergic to numbers but rather that the numbers I need do not yet exist so I am limited to interpreting the scale and timings of changes of trend in multiple climate parameters.
Those changes of trend lend themselves well enough to the creation of an over arching concept which fits both the observations and basic physics.
That is what I have endeavoured to put forward and with so many possibilities for falsification it should not be long before it is either rebutted or enough new (or recent) changes in trend become more clearly apparent for its coherence and applicability to be confirmed.
Kadaka says:
“Sunspot Numbers, select International. Multiply anything before 1946 by 1.2 (20% increase).”
Ah, I just realised you were saying this is how to recreate the SSN that Leif uses. Thanks.
Comparing Leif’s version of SSN counting ‘corrected’ and current GSN metric:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2a5zujs.png
Leif’s data already has 12m runny mean “smoother” applied , so I filtered both with a slightly longer gaussian to get comparable time series.
The bottom line is that Leif is proposing that group count “should not” be used and should be replaced by new adjusted version of SSN. A change which progressively doubles the variation in the earlier data effectively removing most of the long term signal variation over that period.
So it would seem that the step change of +20% adjustment to SSN is not the key factor in the discussion though it does contribute to the same effect.
The key question would seem to be is SSN or GSN the better metric.
while science has the right to correction and revision , I’m always sceptical of attempts to rewrite the data record.
Ray Tomes says:
November 11, 2012 at 11:47 pm
Ray: How do you get from 172 years (U-N synodic cycle) to 208 years? These two cycles make beats every ~1000 years which is also not a meaningful planetary cycle.
Geoff: Think of the 3 prongs on the hour hand.
Ray: Sorry Geof, I have a digital watch. You will need to explain this in a bit more detail please.
I will try to explain.
Look at the altered path of the Sun drawn in green on the following diagram.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/carsten.jpg
The altered path coincides with ALL grand minima events through the Holocene, but they differ in intensity. The next diagram shows the only planetary position that can cause the altered path.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/type_a_b.png
Now the important bit, that I am sure you will understand. The planetary position displayed previously which I call the AMP event can happen 3 times (most common) every time N/U are together. The strength of each AMP event is what determines the length and depth of the grand minimum of that particular cycle (N/U cycle). This is the 3 prongs on the hour hand of the 172 year clock, each prong is separated by around 40 years. Because most of the Holocene has weaker forms of grand minima and by using other methods we can determine that most of the time all three prongs are NOT strong. This gives the gaps between grand minima like witnessed with today’s oncoming grand minimum and the Dalton that is most common. The 3 chances to invoke solar slowdown is the key and why FFT analysis will not see the complete picture because of the multiple options involved. There are no precise cycles when it comes to grand minima.
This should be an eye opening revelation if understood.