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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Martin Lewitt says:
November 10, 2012 at 12:42 pm
No extended body is in “free fall” under general relativity (even a human is a space suit), however this paper is only using Newtonian tidal quadrature effects. Has anyone figured out what this projects for the Sun’s immediate future, a Dalton or Maunder type minimum?
The theory put forward in this paper doesn’t really cover the grand minima. My own research (following on from work originally done by Theodor L in the 1980’s indicates that deep minima events are precipitated by a non-linear reaction to a set of possible planetary positions which make the barycentre of the system coincide with the solar surface within 0.1 solar radii for several years.
This occurred just before the onset of the Dalton minimum, and more briefly at other times when there has then been been an anomalously low solar cycle following the event. It is happening again now, 206 years (De Vries cycle) after the Dalton event.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/radial-ssn.png
One of the profound ironies of the “environmentalist” belief that Co2 drives planetary warming, while the activities of the Sun, and in turn the possibility that that solar cycles are themselves partly a product of influences of other planetary bodies in our solar system, are considered anathema. The entire concept of real “environmental” or “ecological” thinking is that all entities exist within larger frameworks of influence.
The moon causes tidal cycles on earth. Why is it so difficult for so many to see that the possibility that planetary bodies create similar effects on, e.g., the sun, is one that deserves serious consideration and has a prima facie claim to plausibility based on the lunar-tidal analogy?
Kev-in-Uk says:
November 10, 2012 at 11:14 am
However, we still have a large number of Earth events to ‘explain’ – e.g. Ice Ages, etc
Dr. Leif replies
Ice Ages are not caused by solar activity, but by changes in the Earth’s orbit, mainly caused by Jupiter, so in a sense planets do control the climate.
Good. At least some of us agree on at least the second part of that.
With top authors such as Steinhilber, McCracken and Beer joining the lead author Abreu attributing a planetary influence on solar activity is a large leap forward in the solar/planetary theory arena. With many papers of this realm now appearing, the balance is now shifting to other causes of a solar driver outside of the Babcock/Leighton theories. The solar dynamo is still intact but perhaps it is modulated by planetary forces?
In regards to the Abreu et al paper there are some points that need to be fleshed out. A full understanding of how the torque values are calculated in perhaps layman’s terms would be useful. Is the torque produced only from the rocky planets and Jupiter (tidal mechanism) or is there a solar torque contribution incorporated. The main diagram shows a SSB vector that is there for a reason.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/abreu1.png
A major contribution to this paper would be a timeline plot of the torque calculations. I imagine this would represent a sine wave of sorts that should allow hindcasting of the Holocene and future forecasting of grand minima events not unlike my own research. How this graph compares with Carl Smith’s AM graph would be interesting.
I have a small article dealing with this paper last month that also questions the viability of FFT type analysis in regard to solar proxy records.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/290
It would be helpful to receive informed comment from qualified reviewers other than Leif to get a more balanced perspective.
Thanks David for promoting this paper to Anthony.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
November 10, 2012 at 1:10 pm
I await the claims of Leif and his cronies being paid shills of Big Solar…
We’re here to discuss Abreu et al’s interesting paper. Leif’s …interesting historical connections… with lead IPCC authors can wait for another day.
tallbloke says:
November 10, 2012 at 1:24 pm
My own research (following on from work originally done by Theodor L in the 1980′s indicates that deep minima events are precipitated by a non-linear reaction to a set of possible planetary positions which make the barycentre of the system coincide with the solar surface within 0.1 solar radii for several years.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/radial-ssn.png
Solar radius, solar torque and solar angular momentum are pretty much all the same with your graph imitating Carl’s original work. As pointed out previously Landscheid*s work in this area had nothing to do with solar output or grand minima.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/243
There is also a new method of identifying solar AM perturbations that slightly enhances the perturbations shown on Carl’s graph. The method is to simply take the solar/Jupiter distance away from the SSB/Jupiter distance.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/jup_dist_diff.png
tallbloke says:
November 10, 2012 at 1:24 pm
For what its worth, after reading this paper I have decided to not call the current minimum a de Vries cycle event. It has come exactly 208 years after the Dalton Minimum and may be largely a de Vries cycle event but for it to be abrupt it must be coinciding with one or more of the shorter period cycles. That begs the question of where are we at with respect to the cycles, that is what are the years of the peaks of the Gleissberg, de Vries cycles. Like cracking a safe, it should be easy enough to find the alignment of cycles that matches the Be10 record.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 10, 2012 at 11:45 am
so if Ice Ages are a result of orbital changes – what is the net result of orbital changes on solar ‘incoming’ radiation? – obviously, it changes. Ergo, Ice Ages are related to solar activity changes? Yes?
These may seem like trivial points – but they are crucial in deciding where to start to look for climate changes. It is all very well trying to state that natural solar variation changes are small – but in truth, we only have limited valid observational evidence for that when compared to real geological timescales. And thence to discuss solar activity ‘mechanisms’ and ‘processes’ which are largely speculative (the last I heard, nobody or no probe has visited the internal bits of the sun and provided answers!) is somewhat clouding the issue when, in a nutshell, the primary biospheric and hence climatic energy source – is the suns energy.
Sure, this is simplistic – but it is fact, is it not? The fact that recent solar observations do not appear to suggest massive solar variation (i.e. TSI) does not automatically discount that it has not happened in the past.
I appreciate that yourself and others are working on other ‘effects’ – but they sum to the same thing – a change in incoming/outgoing radiation/reradiation, whether caused by magnetospheric, cosmic rays, planetary movements, solar flares, CME’s, etc, etc – the NET result is the same – a change in the incoming/outgoing radiative ‘budget’ with resultant climatic changes.
The net signal of any one of these individual effects will likely be difficult to isolate. And then when we look at actual biosphere measurements (temp and the like) we are thus measuring ‘lagged’ effects too, of a multi-affected ‘subject’, with combined positive and negative feedback effects, all masking or countering the supposed ‘external’ cause of change. The temp/co2 lag issue from ice cores is a classic example – and in terms of not knowing where we are in any cause and effect timelagged signal – finding that was a scientific eye-opener. The earth is like a big pan of water, with a net ‘average’ temperature that takes a definite time to change, either from increased energy or decreased energy. That change may occur centuries down the line, from a cumulative effect of a very minor (almost indetectable?) change in some parameter or other!
In a climatic sense, they call it climate sensitivity – but assigning values to it is complete BS (IMHO) because we have no way of knowing the lag effects of previous ‘changes’ given our paucity of actual measurements. Modelling individual or even suites of cause/effect paramteres, is just guessing on a grand scale.
As a geologist, for example, we know that in order to lay down coal measures, the seas went through different depositional stages as a result of tectonic and climatic changes over millions of years. What caused them? or more accurately, what are they the net result of? Obviously, it has to be at least partially due to climate (and thus possibly solar) changes?
Leif Svalgaard
said “Ice Ages are not caused by solar activity, but by changes in the Earth’s orbit, mainly caused by Jupiter, so in a sense planets do control the climate.”
And a couple of weeks ago you also said that you think that temperatures are going to go down, possibly approaching a Maunder, or words to that effect. I haven’t looked it up. You also said that this would not be caused by the Sun but by Jupiter. Sadly you didn’t elaborate.
But now finally, you reveal why. So it is clear that you have some thoughts and no doubt also some figures on Jupiter altering the orbit of Earth to influence even control climate.
I am very interested indeed on anything you have to offer on this subject. Is there a paper pending perhaps ?
Presumably the influence of Jupiter is to move Earth’s orbit further out. Would this not produce a measurable influence on TSI ? or is there some other mechanism or consequence at play as a result, perhaps a step change of some sort…? Obliquity ?
I can see how a wider orbit would bring on a glaciation, the step change out of glaciation is trickier.
And I’m not sure where the variable 100,000 year timing can come from, unless the outer giants are at play here. Or does Jupiter have some 100,000 year ish orbital eccentricity that takes Earth with it.?
A new theory is just awesome.
Please tell me / us more. I need to know more.
Geoff Sharp says:
November 10, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Landscheid*s work in this area had nothing to do with solar output or grand minima.
We can respect our differences in interpretation on that issue.
There is also a new method of identifying solar AM perturbations that slightly enhances the perturbations shown on Carl’s graph. The method is to simply take the solar/Jupiter distance away from the SSB/Jupiter distance.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/jup_dist_diff.png
Nice.
Also of interest is the plot Vukcevic made of successive Jupiter – Saturn alignments along the Parker Spiral at solar minimum.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/how-can-jupiter-and-saturn-affect-solar-cycles-brief-review/
There’s more to all this than just gravity and gravitationally induced tides in my opinion.
So we’re making progress, good to see considering current events.
David Archibald says:
November 10, 2012 at 2:15 pm
tallbloke says:
November 10, 2012 at 1:24 pm
For what its worth, after reading this paper I have decided to not call the current minimum a de Vries cycle event. It has come exactly 208 years after the Dalton Minimum and may be largely a de Vries cycle event but for it to be abrupt it must be coinciding with one or more of the shorter period cycles. That begs the question of where are we at with respect to the cycles, that is what are the years of the peaks of the Gleissberg, de Vries cycles. Like cracking a safe, it should be easy enough to find the alignment of cycles that matches the Be10 record.
Hi David, and thanks again for writing this article for consideration on WUWT.
This plot made by Tim Channon might help:
http://daedalearth.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sbf-tsi-a.png
tallbloke says:
November 10, 2012 at 12:35 pm
What? We supposed to believe anything peer reviewed? Your reputation precedes you, Mann’s Best Friend. They do need to do more work, I don’t. They are making claims, I am not. I’m just poking holes in their work, and it’s pretty easy to do.
tallbloke says:
November 10, 2012 at 2:50 pm
Geoff Sharp says:
November 10, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Landscheid*s work in this area had nothing to do with solar output or grand minima.
————————————-
We can respect our differences in interpretation on that issue.
As long as the differences are pointed out. I am taking all of the information from his book whereby you are taking a paragraph or two out of context.
I still think you have a duty to clarify this to your readers.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 10, 2012 at 10:04 am
“If the Abreu torque-mechanism is working, Geoff’s Angular Momentum [AM] ideas are moot. The AM ‘mechanism’ would not have worked anyway because the Sun is in free fall.”
Leif, the Sun is not in free fall by itself. It’s accompanied in it’s free fall by the mass of our solar system, therefor the sun will still be under the influence of this orbital mass, so your argument here is inaccurate.
Here is the comparison with the original data:
http://daedalearth.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sbf-tsi-c.png
And the Spectral analysis of the data and the model:
http://daedalearth.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sbf-tsi-b.png
Kev-in-Uk says:
The earth is like a big pan of water, with a net ‘average’ temperature that takes a definite time to change, either from increased energy or decreased energy.
Er…, yes
Lets assume that the pan of water has reached certain temperature, and the heat source is an infrared lamp somewhere from above (warmer water at the surface, cooler below) supplying constant amount of energy, as Dr.S suggests sun does, and surprisingly I do agree with.
If we measure surface and the air temperature above, not withstanding any other changes, it can be assumed that at two locations temperatures will be different but more or less constant.
Now if we stir the uppermost warmest layer, it could be expected that the both temperatures (water surface and the immediate air above) would change. What implement can be used for stirring? If water has a degree of salinity (good conductor of electricity), then a pulsing magnetic field would do.
So we have achieved temperature change of water surface and the air above with a constant thermal input.
Translating to : sun, earth, oceans and atmosphere gives the natural decadal and multidecadal oscillations at least in the N. Atlantic and looks like in the whole of the n. hemisphere.
vukcevic in UK too.
Bart says: “It does have a very significant effect on Earth-bound satellites, so I would not blithely discount the possibility.”
I would do those calculations, if I were you. You may have to consider surface to mass ratio when comparing Jupiter to and orbiting satellite. 😉
Hoser says:
November 10, 2012 at 3:02 pm
I’m just poking holes in their work, and it’s pretty easy to do.
Pretty easy to do if you think a wave of the arm and the incantation of “Seems likely” is sufficient to dismiss their work.
tallbloke says:
November 10, 2012 at 11:46 am
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.
It is not credible that you have been aware of this.
tallbloke says:
November 10, 2012 at 12:19 pm
So, what have you got to offer us in the way of a “well grounded in solid physics” shallow dynamo theory? Who has been publishing a broad overview we can read?
Hathaway has something on the observations http://www.leif.org/EOS/20111212_NSO-Hathaway.pdf
The theory may be over your head. Try http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0512637v1.pdf or
Bart says:
November 10, 2012 at 12:26 pm
I would not blithely discount the possibility.
But you blithely put it forward. The solar radiation momentum flux is TSI/c and [although much larger than the solar wind’s] is too minute to affect the planets at all and varies as little as TSI does. The flux is always in the same direction so the planets are always pushed out [never in]. Comet tails are not due to solar wind pressure, but to ions picked up by the magnetic field in the wind.
Martin Lewitt says:
November 10, 2012 at 12:42 pm
No extended body is in “free fall” under general
I don’t think anybody will claim that planetary effects are General Relativity effects.
Geoff Sharp says:
November 10, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Is the torque produced only from the rocky planets and Jupiter (tidal mechanism) or is there a solar torque contribution incorporated. The main diagram shows a SSB vector that is there for a reason.
The torque depends on the mass, not on the composition and Saturn is also involved. The SSB vector is there for the sole reason of providing the reference coordinate system [which they immediately transform to a sun centered one]
A major contribution to this paper would be a timeline plot of the torque calculations.
I asked them to do that, and they did, but the result was so poor that they did not want to publish it.
Kev-in-Uk says:
November 10, 2012 at 2:15 pm
so if Ice Ages are a result of orbital changes – what is the net result of orbital changes on solar ‘incoming’ radiation?
Almost none, but the orbital changes determine where on the Earth and when that radiation falls, and that makes the difference.
J Martin says:
And a couple of weeks ago you also said that you think that temperatures are going to go down, possibly approaching a Maunder
No, nothing like that, no mention of temperatures. What I said was that the number of visible sunspots will go down [it has already gone some of the way]
figures on Jupiter altering the orbit of Earth to influence even control climate. I am very interested indeed on anything you have to offer on this subject
This is standard ice-age theory that has around for decades.
Presumably the influence of Jupiter is to move Earth’s orbit further out.
It can’t. The influence is the change the eccentricity and when during the year the Earth is farthest from the sun.
I need to know more.
Standard theory. Try google it.
This is not “just” correlation.
If these would be 2 terrestrial parameters A and B, there are 4 possibilities:
1. A causes B
2. B causes A
3. Third variable C causes A and B
4. correlation is incidental
But as A is the sun and B an effect on earth, only 1 and 4 are plausible. This is a huge increase in information.
Again correlation with a solar variable is so good, that it should blows doubts about mechanisms out of the water as well as doubts about measurements of the 2 variables. It also tells you a lot about the Nature Journal.
tallbloke says:
November 10, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Well, well, well. That graph is very interesting. The correlation between the de Vries cycle and what I presume to be the Be10 record is very good a lot of the time. It is evident that the last de Vries cycle cooling event was the unnamed cooling event associated with the Be10 spike centred on 1890. So the Dalton minimum was not a de Vries cycle event, and the peak of the next de Vries cycle cooling will be in 2100. Therefore the current minimum must be a combination of some of the other cycles. But which ones?
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 10, 2012 at 11:45 am
Ice Ages are not caused by solar activity, but by changes in the Earth’s orbit, mainly caused by Jupiter, so in a sense planets do control the climate.
Leif is it glacial cycles that are caused by changes in Earth’s orbit, or is it Ice Ages or is it both?
Carsten Arnholm, Norway says:
November 10, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Re Figure A.1: It isn’t “Drowning Maud Land” unless you believe the Antarctica is melting. The name is “Dronning Maud Land”, which is Norwegian for “Queen Maud Land”.
Thanks Carsten, that had me a bit worried there for a moment – visions of Australia’s Climate Change Minister Greg Combet delivering one of his “fire and brimstone” performances come to mind.
It might be interesting to hear what Prof. Nir Shaviv has to say in his presentation “The cosmic ray climate link – evidence and implications to the understanding of climate change” at ICCC-8 in Munich Nov 30 – Dec1.
Corrected links for my above post.
Fire and brimstone:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/sermon-mount.jpg
ICCC-8:
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/Bilder_Dateien/5._IKEK_Muenchen/Programme_Climate-Conference_Munich_2012.11.30_V10.pdf
Sparks says:
November 10, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Leif, the Sun is not in free fall by itself. It’s accompanied in it’s free fall by the mass of our solar system
And of the mass of the Galaxy and that of the Virgo Cluster. All the masses in the solar system, the galaxy, the universe determine the local curvature of space-time where the Sun is. The Sun moves freely such that time goes the slowest. That is free fall. Experiments show that all objects in free fall accelerate at the same rate, as noted by Galileo, is the basis of the Equivalence Principle, on which Einstein’s theory of general relativity relies.
tallbloke says:
November 10, 2012 at 12:19 pm
So, what have you got to offer us in the way of a “well grounded in solid physics” shallow dynamo theory? Who has been publishing a broad overview we can read?
Hathaway has something on the observations http://www.leif.org/EOS/20111212_NSO-Hathaway.pdf
The theory may be over your head. Try http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0512637v1.pdf or http://www.leif.org/research/SORCE%202010%20Schatten.pdf