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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Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2012 at 3:48 pm
Shows a slight cooling over recent years, like the majority below.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/plot/rss-land/from:2002/trend/plot/uah/from:2002/plot/uah/from:2002/trend
Even with HAD4 that recently fudged the data to create a little bit more warming.
Steven, post your new correlation graph and show that your solar proposal and mechanism hind casts and leads cooling based on standard statistical analysis. Then please provide a forecast with both the mechanism, lag and degrees cooling. It’s your proposal. Post it using standard scientific methods.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Sparks says:
November 11, 2012 at 3:24 pm
find the maximum force exerted on the sun. Which is substantially larger than the force the sun exerts on individual planetary bodies?
Actually NO. The latter is far larger because the Sun is far larger. E.g. the diameter of the Sun is only ten times that of Jupiter, but its mass is 1000 times larger.
———————————
Acutally, the gravitational force the sun exerts on a planet is exactly equal to the force the planet exerts on the sun. Actio = reactio.
P. Solar says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:00 pm
What I meant was what was the source of the data shown in Leif’s graph:
The best estimate of the sunspot number derived from our discussions at the SSN workshop
http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home
Manfred says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Actually, the gravitational force the sun exerts on a planet is exactly equal to the force the planet exerts on the sun.
Actually, the discussion was about the tidal forces which are not equal.
Matt G says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:05 pm
Shows a slight cooling over recent years, like the majority below
Try from 1999 instead…
As usual, the discussion has degraded to the pushing of personal pet theories and assorted nonsense and misunderstandings and the original topic is largely forgotten.
Leif – Sorry to have to disabuse you of your notion that “It is not credible that you have been aware of the A&A paper and the details of its peer review cycles. Abreu et al. have kept this very close to the vest.“, but that is incorrect. As I said, I have known about it since March 2011, including its review process. Unfortunately I can’t give you concrete information without permission, so you will just have to take my word for it (or not, as you please).
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.
Leif Svalgaard says:
P. Solar says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:00 pm
What I meant was what was the source of the data shown in Leif’s graph:
The best estimate of the sunspot number derived from our discussions at the SSN workshop
http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home
Thanks Leif, I’ve seen you discussion papers and I’ve seen the pics. What I meant is “where can I get the data?”
I don’t see any data on that Wiki.
Is the data available or not? Thanks.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Unfair comparison don’t you think? La Nina compared with recent neutral ENSO.
I could had compared with the peak warming in 1998 to how the majority showing that have changed since.
I compared a neutral ENSO period with one now, very fair.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Oh I don’t know about that. I find the discussion enlightening. Healthy banter like this allow the lesser informed (such as myself) to see first hand what some of the issues are. I could give a rat’s arse whose ox is gored as long as information is freely flowing back and forth.
Tallboke.
Its so weird of you to link to a comment that is supposed to contain some frank admissions, when it in fact does not contain any such thing
“We didn’t extend it further because it is a tentative and provisional result. The further out you go, the less accurate it will be, due to the imperfection of Lean’s TSI reconstruction and the strong possibility that the true cycles aren’t nice neat sinusoid shapes anyway. As Leif says, the Sun is a messy place.
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.
As it stands, I think the forecast is reasonable for the timeframe we have offered. Treat it as having +/-15% error bars.
Time will tell. In the meantime, I have a cunning plan for improvement.
”
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.
I see no admission of the fundamental problem which Leif, myself and others have pointed out to you guys repeatedly..
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.
Matt G says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:53 pm
Unfair comparison don’t you think?
It shows how sensitive this is to starting points. In any case the data since about 2000 is too short to establish a trend, which was my point.
P. Solar says:
November 11, 2012 at 4:53 pm
Is the data available or not? Thanks.
The TSI Guess is constructed from the best guess of the sunspot number, normalized to match the recent SORCE-TSI. It is a bit tricky to convert back to a sunspot number, but if you must here are my guesses: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SSN-Guess.xls
Use at own risk [this is NOT official in any way and is for entertainment only]
GeoLurking says:
November 11, 2012 at 5:23 pm
I could give a rat’s arse whose ox is gored as long as information is freely flowing back and forth
Fair enough, but you have to have a healthy BS filter [as not all is ‘information’] and that is often hard to come by..It could be cause of my training and profession, but scientific discussion is not ‘banter’ in my book. But if you enjoy the exchanges, good for you.
From P. Solar on November 11, 2012 at 4:53 pm:
Leif Svalgaard says:
Thanks Leif, I’ve seen you discussion papers and I’ve seen the pics. What I meant is “where can I get the data?”
NOAA National Geophysical Data Center
Solar Indices Data
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/results?t=102827&s=1&d=8,4,9
Sunspot Numbers, select International. Multiply anything before 1946 by 1.2 (20% increase).
If shoving into a spreadsheet, I recommend “Monthly plot data” available at bottom, if not using “Yearly plot data”. It is recommended to use smoothed data. “Smoothed plot data” is monthly, but lacks the 20% correction. So use a 12 month centered running average of corrected monthly.
tallbloke says:
November 11, 2012 at 3:26 pm
Thanks. Looks to me like the SIDC number has been inflated by speck and pore miscounting by as much as the GSN has fallen.
If you want to do some REAL research, you could try to duplicate my work on what is wrong with the GSN. All the data used is on the internet, start with the GSN dataset.
This comment is off topic but the persistent claims from Leif re the GSN need to be addressed.
Leif is claiming the pre Wolfer GSN records are wrong because H&S did not correctly apply the correct k factor to Wolf who counted less groups. Schatten seems to have had a memory loss on the method used but there are two k factor columns against each observer that are not explained.
Of more importance is that H&S were 100% aware of the Wolf and Wolfer method of counting groups as can be seen in the data notes associated with Wolf’s BIBLIOGRAPHY notes that form the base data of the GSN.
Comments:
1. Johann Rudolf Wolf (1816-1893).
2. Wolf was a poor observer, missing smaller groups. On
hazy days his group counts would drop markedly.
Nonetheless, he is the primary observer used by Wolf
for 1848-1893.
Leif is in the business of ironing the record flat, agenda driven science should be accepted for what it is and more heavily scrutinized. My own opinion on the pre 1840 sunspot numbers is that the Zurich values need to be re evaluated as they have a heavy geomagnetic component (proxy records) that have more inconsistencies than the older sunspot recordings. The Zurich numbers may well be the data series that need to adjusted down before 1840, as Wolfer showed for SC5 once more data became available.
Geoff Sharp says:
November 11, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Leif is in the business of ironing the record flat, agenda driven science should be accepted for what it is
That statement is highly offensive. As I said to tallbloke, all the data I use is on the internet. If you think that there is something wrong with my method, you can duplicate my analysis. The majority of the 65 scientists involved in the SSN workshops have no problems with the reassessment of the sunspot number. There is no agendas here.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: “So use a 12 month centered running average of corrected monthly.”
Thanks for the link (and the correction tip) but as I posted earlier I already have that data, I was looking for Leif’s data as used in this graph.
The one thing I certainly won’t be doing with it is screwing it up by using runny mean filter.
Geoff Sharp says:
November 11, 2012 at 6:26 pm
2. Wolf was a poor observer, missing smaller groups. On hazy days his group counts would drop markedly
Yet H&S has a k-factor for Wolf of 1.117 while that for Wolfer is 1.094 [statistically indistinguishably from Wolf’s]. Furthermore Wolf would not include data taken when seeing was poor.
I urge you to educate yourself on this topic. E.g. to repeat my simple comparison on slide 11 of http://www.leif.org/research/What-is-Wrong-with-GSN.pdf before making any further unsubstantiated comments.
Leif says:” It is a bit tricky to convert back to a sunspot number, but if you must here are my guesses: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SSN-Guess.xls
Use at own risk ”
I don’t quite understand this comment. are you saying that the GSN data here: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-Background-Not.png are “converted back” from your TSI guess data? Which itself is constructed from the best guess of the sunspot number.
could you clarify? I’m not sure what I’m looking at here.
From Geoff Sharp on November 11, 2012 at 6:26 pm:
2. Wolf was a poor observer, missing smaller groups. On hazy days his group counts would drop markedly.
From what I’ve read, Wolf simply didn’t count the smallest spots.
November 11, 2012 at 6:04 am
REPLY: I agree. Nicola’s arguments are often more rooted in emotion than they should be. – Anthony
Not really Anthony. My arguments are based on science. It is a fact that the theory of an isolated sun has been unable to explain any form of solar variation. For example the solar dynamo theory predicts a cycle but does not say that for the sun this cycle must be around 11 years, it could be 6 or 20 yr or any other number you want. The theory contains some free parameters that are actually “chosen” to reproduce something that looks like 11-year cycle for our sun.
In front of this failure, and on the other side in front of the fact that a planetary theory of solar variation gets patterns that are in good correlations with solar activity, it is those who a-priory reject the theory of solar variation who act “only” emotionally, like Leif and in part yourself.
Leif plays a lot with the emotion of the people by taking advantage of the fact that they may not know details and mislead them.
So, consider the facts with an open mind. At the end, it is Nature that decides which theory is correct. Scientists are only observers and propose theories which may be found erroneous or correct. And scientific debate is also made of respect and fairness which must be reciprocal. Things get humanly wrong when somebody thinks that it is ok to not respect others.
Do not try to cover your “errors” by stating “you are emotional”, which is by itself an emotional response.
P. Solar says:
November 11, 2012 at 6:45 pm
are you saying that the GSN data here: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-Background-Not.png are “converted back” from your TSI guess data? Which itself is constructed from the best guess of the sunspot number.
As the GSN is flawed and should not used, the SSN values are back-derived from TSI [which was constructed from SSN] before 1946. Missing data was filled in by linear interpolation. Data after 1945 are the official SIDC numbers. Data before 1826 are heavily influenced by the ‘corrected’ group sunspot numbers. Thus the data is not homogeneous but neither are the original data.
I am not going to get into an off topic argument with Leif, but I urge all readers to look beyond the hand waving.
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.
Back on topic, it seems there are no major issues with the paper in question, and no appearance of Willis yet?