From the University of Liverpool , something I found interesting because a few years ago, former State Climatologist Jame Goodridge said he saw correlations between length of day and other atmospheric processes.
Research reveals Earth’s core affects length of day
Research at the University of Liverpool has found that variations in the length of day over periods of between one and 10 years are caused by processes in the Earth’s core.
The Earth rotates once per day, but the length of this day varies. A yeas, 300million years ago, lasted about 450 days and a day would last about 21 hours. As a result of the slowing down of the Earth’s rotation the length of day has increased.
The rotation of the earth on its axis, however, is affected by a number of other factors – for example, the force of the wind against mountain ranges changes the length of the day by plus or minus a millisecond over a period of a year.
Professor Richard Holme, from the School of Environmental Sciences, studied the variations and fluctuations in the length of day over a one to 10 year period between 1962 and 2012. The study took account of the effects on the Earth’s rotation of atmospheric and oceanic processes to produce a model of the variations in the length of day on time scales longer than a year.
Professor Holme said: “The model shows well-known variations on decadal time scales, but importantly resolves changes over periods between one and 10 years. Previously these changes were poorly characterised; the study shows they can be explained by just two key signals, a steady 5.9 year oscillation and episodic jumps which occur at the same time as abrupt changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, generated in the Earth’s core.
He added: “This study changes fundamentally our understanding of short-period dynamics of the Earth’s fluid core. It leads us to conclude that the Earth’s lower mantle, which sits above the Earth’s outer core, is a poor conductor of electricity giving us new insight into the chemistry and mineralogy of the Earth’s deep interior.”
The research was conducted in partnership with the Université Paris Diderot and is published in Nature.
The period of global cooling in the 1960s/70s and the period of warming from the mid 1970s to the late 1990s was predicted by the distinguished scientists, Kurt Lambeck (Australian) and Amy Cazenave (French) (see here: http://tinyurl.com/l5turxx, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anny_Cazenave and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Lambeck ) in 1976 using decadal plus variations in the earth’s rotation as the independent variable.
There are well established, close relationships between the long-term fluctuations in the Earth’s rotation, on the one hand, and the variations in the ice sheet in Antarctica, epochs of atmospheric circulation, global air temperature, regional precipitation and cloudiness, and even in the catches of food fish in the Pacific Ocean, on the other.
Lambeck and Cazenave (1976), “Long Term Variations in the Length of Day and Climatic Change” published in 1976 in the Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society Vol 26 Issue No 3 pps 555 to 573, were the first to report evidence that established the relationship between the Earth’s decadal variable rotation and climate dynamics.
As LoD shortens, (i.e. the Earth rotates faster) the planet warms; in contrast, as LoD lengthens, (i.e. the Earth rotates slower) the planet cools. There is a time lag of between six and fifteen years between changes in the Earth’s rotation and global temperature.
Their paper warrants careful study.
Lambeck and Cazenave (1976) found that:
“The long-period (greater than about 10 yr) variations in the length-of-day (LoD) observed since 1820 show a marked similarity with variations observed in various climatic indices; periods of acceleration of the Earth corresponding to years of increasing intensity of the zonal circulation and to global-surface warming: periods of deceleration corresponding to years of decreasing zonal-circulation intensity and to a global decrease in surface temperatures. The long-period atmospheric excitation functions for near-surface geostrophic winds, for changes in the atmospheric mass distribution and for eustatic variations in sea level have been evaluated and correlate well with the observed changes in the LoD.“
Lambeck and Cazenave (1976) argued that the cooling of that the planet experienced in the 1960s arose from a slowing of the Earth’s rotation. They wrote:
“if the hypothesis [that decadal rotation decrease (increase) results in planetary cooling (warming)] is accepted then the continuing deceleration of[the rotating Earth] for the last 10 yr suggests that the present period of decreasing average global temperature will continue for at least another 5-10 yr.”
Lambeck and Cazenave (1976) comment further that:
“Whatever mechanism is finally proposed it will have to explain the apparently significant lag that is found between the LOD and the various climatic indices, temperature and excitations. The interest of this lag suggests that the LOD observations can be used as an indicator of future climatic trends, in particular of the surface warmings.”
Lambeck and Cazenave (1976) predicted that the cooling would come to an end by the mid 1970s and be followed by a period of global warming because they had discovered that the planet’s rate of rotation had begun to accelerate from 1972. They wrote:
“Perhaps a slight comfort in this gloomy trend [of global cooling] is that in 1972 the LoD showed a sharp positive acceleration that has persisted until the present, although it is impossible to say if this trend will continue as it did at the turn of the century or whether it is only a small perturbation in the more general decelerating trend.”
These findings have been corroborated by more recent similarly high quality papers.
There is a substantial literature about relationships between decadal and longer changes in the Earth’s rotation and climate dynamics.
Nikolay Sidorenkov summarises a good portion of it in his recently published book The Interaction Between Earth’s Rotation and Geophysical Processes Wiley VCH 2009. Amongst other things he concludes:
“We have shown that there are strong correlations between the decadal variations in the length of day, variations in the rate of westward drift of the geomagnetic eccentric diapole, and variations in certain climate characteristics (the increments of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, anomalies of the atmospheric circulation regimes, the hemisphere-averaged air temperature, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc).”
Lambeck and Cazenave (1976) provide a broad overview of how decadal rotation variations over the period 1800 to 1950 change ocean/atmospheric oscillations and thereby global and regional climates using results reported by Horace Lamb in his 1972 treatise, Climate, present, past and future.
Lamb reported this pattern based on detailed observations of 150 years of climate data:
Observations of climatic fluctuations during the last two centuries show two principal types of atmospheric circulation alternating typically every 20 – 40 years. The first type (type I) is characterized by an increasing intensity of the zonal circulation at all latitudes and with a poleward migration of the belts of maximum wind intensities. The circulation is accompanied by a decrease in the overall range of surface-air temperatures between the equator and the poles, and by an overall increase in the mean global surface-air temperatures. Ocean-surface temperatures also tend to increase at high latitudes. The type II circulation is characterized by a weakening of the zonal circulation, by a migration of the main streams to lower latitudes and by an overall decrease in temperature. For both types of circulation the migration in latitude and the changing intensities are global phenomena, occurring at all longitudes and in the northern and southern hemispheres although the trends in different regions are not always in phase. Both easterly and westerly winds increase with the type I circulation and both decrease during the type II circulation.
Sidorenkov (2009) updated these patterns considerably, drawing on an extensive literature.
Sidorenkov (2009) concluded that because long-term variations in LoD can now be determined with great accuracy, the many-year findings he and others have documented show that the long-term variations in LoD present a unique nature-born integral index of the global climate changes.
Henk Kraa says:
July 11, 2013 at 11:53 pm
“but winds slowing down the earth rotation is a cause and effect swap, sorry.”
Everything is a cause and effect swap. Downwards to ‘thermal ground’ anyway..
Arbab (2009) found an empirical law for the variation of the length of the Earth’s day to increase at 0.002 sec/century (present rate). He found the length of the day found to be 6 hours when the Earth formed.
For most of Earth’s life day length has been shorter than 14 hours!
Talk about linear extrapolations! Anyone like to speculate on the shape of the newly-forming “Earth” if it were rotating every six hours? Maybe the Earth WAS flat, after all!
Apparently Cesium atomic clocks aren’t accurate enough, losing 1 second in a 100 million years or so. So now atomic clock are being mad that are 3 times more accurate. At the current rate of stupidity and war, I am not sure the human race will be worried about losing 1 second in ~100 million years!
Patrick says:
July 12, 2013 at 1:28 am
If we can get a better ‘level surface’ with which to survey the future you object? Without enquiry first?
It’s those bloody models again !!!
There is a relatively large gravitational interaction between the moon and the earth but with the moon moving further, and further away that interactio is diminishing.
Stephen Richards says:
July 12, 2013 at 1:52 am
“There is a relatively large gravitational interaction between the moon and the earth but with the moon moving further, and further away that interactio is diminishing.”
The Moon is still trying to lose all that enrergy and matter it got with that old, brief, encounter betwen it and Earth. Nearly done now, just a few more tweaks to the Earth and that gravity ‘spring’/’low slow rocket’ will let it get away. Only a few more millennia. “Shall I play with the Earth’s Cilmate in the mean time? Might be some more energy there.”
RichardLH has it backward. In order to move from a lower to a higher orbit the moon must gain energy, which it gets from the earth’s rotation. The farther away it gets, the less energy is transferred, so the process gets slower. The moon is not on some parabolic trajectory losing energy from some remote “brush with earth”.
Another factor not mentioned above is polar ice. the more ice at the poles the faster the earth rotates. I would expect this to be more effective than core changes which would be very slow compared to earth’s rotation and have little effect.
Factors affecting LOD
http://op.gfz-potsdam.de/champ/media_CHAMP/luehr_2_geodyn.gif
Factors effecting Earth’s Climate ae well as LOD.
1. Moon having left Earth’s influence is the true, ‘thermal ground state’ of the Earth.
2. Until then all the energy stored in orbit by the Moon is here on Eearth some-how.
3. Leaking away down that long thermal slope to zero.
4. With top-ups from the slightly varying Sun.
Was thinking exactly the same thing. Periods of increase in rotational speed (or reduction in the slowdown of rotational speed) appear to correlate well to periods of rising temperatures. Assuming the earth was spinning much more rapidly aeons ago, we could expect it to be warmer than today, other things being equal.
Further study needed, etc, but it’s another variable that matches climate changes much more closely than atmospheric CO2 levels. It’s also another second-order variable that is likely to be influenced by the solar system.
I really don’t see much room for CO2 in determining climate other than as a ‘lubricant’, helping to spread heat around the globe more effectively and evenly rather than actually increasing the ‘average’ global temperature in any measurable way. If Venus has a fairly uniform temperature, despite its extremely slow rotation making for very long nights, this would mean I might not necessarily be barking up the wrong tree.
Don’t forget that longer days intersect more incoming sunlight, but then comes the night, with some reversals.
What are the main differential factors that cause the daytime warming of planets to be at a different rate to the night time cooling?
The earth-moon orbital system is changing. As the tides create friction on the earth from moving the air, sea, and land (yes, the land is moved by the tides, too), energy is lost from the earth-moon system. Angular momentum must still be conserved. This occurs by transferring angular momentum to the moon, raising its orbital distance from the earth, while slowing the spin of the earth (reducing its angular momentum AND rotational energy.
The tides will stop when the earth’s rotation slows so much that it always keeps one face towards the moon. That event is MANY millions of years away. By my calculations, the day and the month will both be about 1100 hours (about 45-46 days) long, as we currently measure time.
This is still the best conceptual presentation of the astro-solar (LOD) theory developed by Ian Wilson:
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/solar-cycles/IanwilsonForum2008.pdf
…and other slight changes in characteristics such as earths overall diameter and mass. Imagine a flatter earth would spin faster than one with high continents. As we collect space junk, our masses increases.
More idiocy that tries to measure things that are smaller than the margin of error. For every slowdown in the Earth’s rotation due to wind pushing on mountains, a meteorite impact on the Earth (or within it’s atmosphere) may speed it up, again. Or maybe an impact will add to the rate of slowing. Does this guy pretend to know all the impacts of the impacts (sorry)? How about friction of the atmosphere with the solar winds? Does he know how internal friction with the molten core and magnetic interactions influence the rate of rotation? And as another poster suggested, does he negate or ignore the impacts of tidal forces from (primarily) the moon and other planets?
More important than those questions are these: are our research universities facing a crisis of idiocy? Do we have too many people doing worthless science to get worthless science degrees, just because they cannot think of how to either make a living (or contribute to society) in a more productive manner?
@ur momisugly Ron C.
And here is a link to the paper mentioned in Slide 41
Does a Spin–Orbit Coupling Between the Sun and the Jovian Planets Govern the Solar Cycle?
I. R. G. Wilson, B. D. Carter, and I. A. Waite
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 2008, 25, 85-93.
@ur momisugly epitrochoid
Link to K. Lambeck and A. Cazenave Long Term Variations in the Length of Day and Climatic Change Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, (1976) 46, 555-573.
ENSO, SOI and LOD indices are all driven by the variations in the tidal forcing as I described on WUWT http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/20/analysis-shows-tidal-forcing-is-as-a-major-factor-in-enso-forcing/
I recently made similar runs using my artificial neural networks for SOI and LOD indices. But for better result I also included the solar wind, the Kp index and the Ap index. However I very much doubt that the planets or the barycenter has anything to do with Earth rotation or ENSO.
Why the connection with the magnetic indices and the solar wind?
I don’t know!
Here is the result for SOI the Southern Oscillation Index
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/images/LOD-Neural-network.gif
which gave me a wow impression.
And here is the graph for LOD.
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/images/SOI-Neural-network.gif
Note that the first part between 1997 to the end of 2004 is the training part and the part from 2005 onward is the test part. So the graph in itself is not made as a prediction. Still the correlation at the test part is impressive.
Next I am going to do the same for the NINO3.4 index.
I have now after I have analyzed the TAO buoys for the sea current values a much better understanding how the tides drives the ENSO phenomenon than before.
Sorry II mixed up the LOD and SOI. Just change the order.
@Per Strandberg
Any chance you can extract some sort of matrix from your network that could be reduced to a conventional math model?
Based on the misconceptions above I will note the following:
1) While distinguishing between frequencies of LOD variation is critical, the first, most important determination is whether the process is reversible or irreversible. Both processes are mixed at frequencies across much of the spectrum.
2) The single irreversible process is tidal braking, but this varies in periods ranging from lunar cycles to eons, the former including primarily: a) lunar/solar phase (full moon, etc.); b) lunar perigee/apogee; c) angle of lunar orbit to the ecliptic.
3) Over the eons and shorter periods tidal braking varies according to: a) the irreversibly increasing distance of the moon; b) the configuration of the continents (Pangea had comparatively little coastline); c) sea level (high sea level reduces land area and coastline).
4) Reversible processes include those shown in Vucevic’s link, and vary in frequency from the instantaneous (which of course cannot be measured) to ice age frequency. These processes (atmospheric and ocean coupling, core/mantle coupling, ground ice melting with associated eustatic sea level rise, steric SLR, post glacial rebound, etc.) entail variation of angular momentum within the lithosphere/cryosphere or between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere (all reversibly), and impart no angular momentum to the moon’s orbit or to the earth’s orbital energy.
5) LOD has been measured with precision since the advent of crystal clocks and the subsequent advent of atomic clocks. It can be reconstructed with moderate precision for the telescopic period, and approximated for the period of historic astronomical observation as far back as Babyolonian Cuneiform records. (The time of day an eclipse is reported to have occurred allows for calculation of average LOD between reported eclipses.)
6) Accordingly LOD data detail a combination of reversible and irreversible processes so that good data interpretation requires first a sorting out of causal processes of overlapping frequency. Lots of good work has been done toward attribution of LOD measurement, and a whole lot of junk science has been done, some of which shows up at WUWT.
7) LOD may be correlated to eustatic SLR at a rate of about 0.1ms/cm. This is of course of the reversible sort, and it places constraints on ice mass balance taking into account the uncertainty of the contribution of core/mantle coupling. It should be noticed that this is three orders of magnitude greater than contributions due to steric SLR or long term increase in atmospheric angular momentum due to rising T. Of course there are are competing processes with opposing contributions to LOD, but on the whole warming melts ice which increases LOD. Since we see no such increase, the minute SLR observed must be attributed to thermal expansion (steric SLR).
8) ENSO involves enormous energy, which is radiated to space irreversibly. Accordingly any tidal contribution to ocean heating of any type is constrained by the measured rate of decrease of the earth’s kinetic energy of rotation, equal to the displacement of the moon’s orbit plus the solar contribution to tidal braking. This amounts to an increase of the whole ocean of 2 thousandths of a degree per century. It is thus impossible to attribute ENSO to the moon.
9) Whereas tide oscillations do drive small ocean currents, some slight heat transport may turn out to be measurably correlated to tide intensity as governed by lunar orbital parameters.
I hope this can serve as a starting point for informed discussion. –AGF
The centripetal acceleration that keeps the Earth in it’s orbit, decreases as the sun’s mass decreases, and the sun is continually losing mass through the solar wind, as well as converting mass to energy. At any given instant, the Earth’s velocity is slightly too fast to counterbalance the acceleration, so there’s a net velocity component that increases the Earth’s orbit over time. This is a very small effect. Assuming a constant solar wind, it would have increased the Earth’s orbit less than 1% over the age of the solar system.
Another thing, the atmosphere of Venus rotates many times faster than but in the same direction (prograde) as its lithosphere. The average rotation of the earth’s air is also slightly prograde, and must be powered by differential heating of the earth’s surface and air as they rotate in the sun’s direct and re-emitted rays. While mountains must provide friction to any lower atmospheric rotation, it follows that they also function like a Crookes radiometer, the western slopes being warmer in afternoon heat than eastern slopes. Still orogenic wind resistance must be much greater than the radiometer effect, but if this is true it follows that an entirely mountainous planet would not have a rotating atmosphere, at least at low altitude. A jet stream maybe. –AGF
If you want a classic example of an “expert” creating a paper tiger argument you need go no further than the comments by agfosterjr:
July 12, 2013 at 8:15 pm
“…It is thus impossible to attribute ENSO to the moon….”
It is obvious that the ENSO (i.e. El Nino/La Nina events) is not being energised by the Moon (i.e. Lunar/Solar tides). No one with any skerrick of scientific literacy would claim this is the case. This is just a smoke-screen to divert the intellectually timid.
However, even a junior high student student can tell you that it is possible for the energies produced by a massive steam engine to be governed by a small control valve.
agfosterjr:
July 12, 2013 at 8:15 pm
tries to consolidate his “scientific authority” with the following statement
“Lots of good work has been done toward attribution of LOD measurement, and a whole lot of junk science has been done, some of which shows up at WUWT.”
Note how he sets himself up as the arbiter as to what is “good work” about LOD measurements and what he believes is “junk science”.
This is just an absurd appeal to [self-appointed] authority, rather than using evidence to back your case.
I let the reader decide who is actually pushing the junk science in this case.