“Barycentric” influence of the planets on the sun is just statistically insignificant, and a previous paper that claims to find a signal in isotopic records is proven to be nothing more than a statistical artifact.
In 2012, Astronomy & Astrophysics published a statistical study of the isotopic records of solar activity, in which Abreu et al. claimed that there is evidence of planetary influence on solar activity. A&A is publishing a new analysis of these isotopic data by Cameron and Schüssler. It corrects technical errors in the statistical tests performed by Abreu et al.
They find no evidence of any planetary effect on solar activity.
In a new paper published in A&A, R. Cameron and M. Schüssler, however, identify subtle technical errors in the statistical tests performed by Abreu et al. Correcting these errors reduces the statistical significance by many orders of magnitude to values consistent with a pure chance coincidence. The quasi-periods in the isotope data therefore provide no evidence that there is any planetary effect on solar activity.
Source: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-evidence-planetary-solar.html#nwlt
The paper (h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard)
No evidence for planetary influence on solar activity
R. H. Cameron and M. Schüssler
Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Max-Planck-Str. 2, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany e-mail: [cameron;schuessler]@mps.mpg.de
Received 16 April 2013 / Accepted 24 July 2013
ABSTRACT
Context. Recently, Abreu et al. (2012, A&A. 548, A88) proposed a long-term modulation of solar activity through tidal effects exerted by the planets. This claim is based upon a comparison of (pseudo-)periodicities derived from records of cosmogenic isotopes with those arising from planetary torques on an ellipsoidally deformed Sun.
Aims. We examined the statistical significance of the reported similarity of the periods.
Methods. The tests carried out by Abreu et al. were repeated with artificial records of solar activity in the form of white or red noise. The tests were corrected for errors in the noise definition as well as in the apodisation and filtering of the random series.
Results. The corrected tests provide probabilities for chance coincidence that are higher than those claimed by Abreu et al. by about 3 and 8 orders of magnitude for white and red noise, respectively. For an unbiased choice of the width of the frequency bins used for the test (a constant multiple of the frequency resolution) the probabilities increase by another two orders of magnitude to 7.5% for red noise and 22% for white noise.
Conclusions. The apparent agreement between the periodicities in records of cosmogenic isotopes as proxies for solar activity and planetary torques is statistically insignificant. There is no evidence for a planetary influence on solar activity.
…
Concluding remarks
The statistical test proposed by Abreu et al. (2012), a comparison of the coincidences of spectral peaks from time series of planetary torques and cosmogenic isotopes (taken as a proxy for solar activity in the past) with red and white noise, is logically unable to substantiate a causal relation between solar activity and planetary orbits. Furthermore, the execution of the test contains severe technical errors in the generation and in the treatment of the random series. Correction of these errors and removal of the bias introduced by the tayloring of the spectral windows a posteriori leads to probabilities for period coincidences by chance of 22% for red noise and 7.5% for white noise. The coincidences reported in Abreu et al. (2012) are therefore consistent with both white and red noise.
Owing to our lack of understanding of the solar dynamo mechanism, red or white noise are only one of many possible representations of its variability in the period range between 40 and 600 years in the absence of external effects. This is why the test of A2012 is logically incapable of providing statistical evidence in favour of a planetary influence. Alternatively one could consider the probability that a planetary system selected randomly from the set of all possible solar systems would have periods matching those in the cosmogenic records. In the absence of a quantitative understanding of the statistical properties of the set of possible solar systems to draw from, the comparison could again, at best, rule out a particular model of the probability distribution of planetary systems. Here we have shown that the test in A2012 does not exclude that the peaks in the range from 40 to 600 years in the planetary forcing are drawn from a distribution of red or white noise.
We conclude that the data considered by A2012 do not pro- vide statistically significant evidence for an effect of the planets on solar activity.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/aa21713-13-No-Planetary-Solar-Act.pdf
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Quick typo: the opening should say “is proven to be nothing more…”
SCheesman says:
September 7, 2013 at 1:14 pm
Quick typo: the opening should say “is proven to be nothing more…”
Perhaps ‘is shown to be nothing more’ would be better. Proof and disproof are big words.
“Lots of evidence of solar influence on planetary climate”
There, fixed.
(That’s what really matters.)
RockyRoad says:
September 7, 2013 at 1:24 pm
“Lots of evidence of solar influence on planetary climate”
Yeah, turn off the Sun and see what you get.
How about staying on topic…
Wow….that was a less than intelligent remark, Leif. Why is your mind so closed? Supporters of wind, are supported by wind, same for solar. The climate scare is your only sales gimmick, and you are fighting to hold on to that. Give it up. It’s over…..go home.
1957chev:
re your post at September 7, 2013 at 1:34 pm.
Leif is “home”.
He rightly complained at an anonymous troll trying to deflect the thread from its topic.
Your offensive and untrue bluster does not hide those facts.
Richard
Ooooh, Anthony allowed barycenters on WUWT. Its been a while. The comment section will surely be fun.
Oh, c’mon, Leif thinks it’s possible the Sun controls the Earth’s climate. He just doesn’t know how yet, nor whether either.
===============
“There is no evidence for a planetary influence on solar activity.
The Cameron and Schüssler paper is a specific takedown of the Abreu et al. paper, so all the proponents of alternative notions of planetary influence (here and elsewhere) should not lose heart. So long as you keep your ideas away from that science stuff, they’ll be safe.
I like seeing papers like this. As a professional statistician/meteorologist/money manager (this most recent profession of mine because I left the atmospheric sciences in disgust over its pseudo-religious takeover), I know all too well the temptation to find significant statistical associations that seem to confirm a hypothesis. The problem – when you have too many potential data series to explore, you will eventually find SOMETHING, especially if you want to find it. And it can fool you and others if you are not careful.
In general, statistical “proof” of a claim generally only holds up in one of the following two cases:
1) If the results are extreme, lead to a casual mechanism that can be separately investigated, AND that control/factor for the find-something-by-random-chance bias problem.
2) If they are the results of a rigorously controlled experiment that can be reproduced, follow a hypothesis, and in which aliased effects/causes can be ruled out (the discovery of the Higgs boson being a recent good example of this).
The statistical discovery by chance problem is all that much worse because of publication bias – namely that only “significant” findings are published, negative findings are not, and the development of conformity thinking within a field that can exacerbate the publication bias problem (a great example of this is the association of sodium intake with blood pressure within the medical sciences). So whenever papers come out that challenge a “statistical finding”, I am glad to see them. It helps to keep science honest and free from fooling itself.
With Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Jupiter having the greatest effect on the sun in terms of tides,
there’d be scads of conjunctions, oppositions, and other orbital configurations to play with to get spurrious matches with past climate- “celestial dynamics climatology” likely is just like the current “climatology” models cherry pick wise
This reminded me of one of my favorite quotes illustrating the difficulties of understanding the Sun:
“Statistics are like loose women, once you get them you can do anything you want with them.”
Walt Michaels
kim says:
September 7, 2013 at 1:46 pm
Oh, c’mon, Leif thinks it’s possible the Sun controls the Earth’s climate. He just doesn’t know how yet, nor whether either.
===============
_________________________
I think you have it…
It seems to me, Leif spends a good deal of time correcting the errors made by those who claim that the sun influences our climate. Turning off the sun would definitely influence our climate, but how has it been shown that observed changes in solar output have changed our climate?
Wait, I can’t tell if people are being ironic here or not… obviously the sun is the dominant influence on the climate, it is the energy source after all.
Turning it off would have some upsides… no more solar flares, yay! As a whole though I think we would miss it… probably, at least unless we manage to advance to a mature Kardashev Type 3+ civilization and no longer care about something as trivial as a single star.
Why would someone be looking for solar barycenter signals in isotopic records? The barycenter signal is seen in the long term climate changes as evidenced by long term cooling and heating of the Earth. Each time the barycenter transits the surface of the Sun, as opposed to moving perpendicular to the surface, solar activity declines and a cooling phase on Earth soon follows.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 7, 2013 at 1:27 pm
My comment WAS “on topic”, Leif–since, according to this paper, there “is no evidence of planetary influence on solar activity”, the only meaningfl point that isn’t null and void is the alternative position I stated.
Unless, of course, you have evidence to refute the claims of this paper, then by all means, let’s hear them.
RockyRoad says:
September 7, 2013 at 3:18 pm
since, according to this paper, there “is no evidence of planetary influence on solar activity”, the only meaningful point that isn’t null and void is the alternative position I stated.
Your are still off-topic. The logic is also false: ‘No evidence of A on B’ does not imply ‘evidence of B on C’. Go away, please.
I think you guys are reading this story wrong. It is not about how the Sun affects the Earth, but how the gravitational effects of other planets (namely Jupiter) affects the solar activity.
Regarding the planets’ possible influence on solar activity, I came to a similar conclusion in 2009:
http::/arnholm.org/astro/sun/sc24/sim1/
The current paper appears to be saying there is no statistical evidence. I say there is also no known physical mechanism involving the planets, other than tides, that could influence the Sun, and the tides are miniscule in the extreme.
Carsten Arnholm says:
I say there is also no known physical mechanism involving the planets, other than tides, that could influence the Sun, and the tides are miniscule in the extreme.
The tidal theory would only affect surface behavior of the Sun. Oliver Manuel (omatumr.com) has shown physical evidence that the Sun has a solid core, rather than being a gas ball of hydrogen and helium. The solar barycenter would be acting on the solid core of the Sun and causing it to move within the surrounding gases and liquids. It is this movement of the core that is supposed to drive the magnetohydrodynamics of solar behavior.
It would not take much displacement of the solar core to cause fluids surrounding it to flow and modulate the Sun’s magnetic field strength.
Max™ says:
September 7, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Wait, I can’t tell if people are being ironic here or not… obviously the sun is the dominant influence on the climate, it is the energy source after all.
_____________________________
This part of the discussion is way off topic, but No one is being ironic. Saying the sun is the primary energy source is meaningless to the discussion- it’s a given. No one is going to turn off the sun. However, the changes in the sun which we have observed have not been shown to cause any climate change.
This article is about a lack of observed changes in the sun due to planetary gravitational pull.
Isn’t this tantamount to a spoof article, I read a few sentences I could understand among many I could not, to get the admittedly intuitive impression that someone might be testing the real discernment of the readership of WUWT here.
Could intuition trump those genuine (or otherwise) efforts to land the other side of genius. Or am I simply out of my depth. (quite possible)
Back in 1980, the Presidency of Jimmy Carter was a joke, Ronald Reagan won the election.
Around 1991, the George H. W. Bush presidency was not well loved, between the Persian Gulf War, “No New Taxes”, “War on drugs”, etc.
About 2002, George W. Bush had his presidency defined by the 9/11 attacks and subsequent retaliation. Axis of Evil, No Child Left Behind, etc.
2013, we have Obama.
Also in 1980 we had a joke of a Democrat President with a no-policy energy policy, with surging extremist Muslims threatening Americans and world peace. 2013, the same. Except there is an alternation, Carter worked to prevent war, while Obama is hellbent to start one (that will strangely coincide with 9/11).
There it is. An ~11-year repeating cycle, obviously a sign of solar influence. Plus there are also indications of something three solar cycles long, possibly a harmonic, although the alternation shows that may be a half-cycle.
Now where’s my grant money?
Luther Wu says:
September 7, 2013 at 3:37 pm
Max™ says:
September 7, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Wait, I can’t tell if people are being ironic here or not… obviously the sun is the dominant influence on the climate, it is the energy source after all.
_____________________________
This part of the discussion is way off topic, but No one is being ironic. Saying the sun is the primary energy source is meaningless to the discussion- it’s a given. No one is going to turn off the sun. However, the changes in the sun which we have observed have not been shown to cause any climate change.
This article is about a lack of observed changes in the sun due to planetary gravitational pull.
There are those that would contend that a quiet sun has been shown to cause climate change. The noted astronomer William Herschel first put this forward. However, we are witnessing the Sun go quiet as it has done before, and when it did before the climate cooled – in Dalton and Maunder minima. So now we will be able to directly measure if there is any impact. The discussion is not way off topic – I presume someone has thought to follow Landscheidt and track what the barycenter path was in Dalton and Maunder and compare its motion then to its motion now? Or is your mind made up already? Just think a simple check and you could shoot down all those tin foil hat theories – or not 😉