“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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lgl says:
September 8, 2013 at 2:33 am
No, it orbits the center of mass of the Sun, Mercury and Venus
So the Earth does not orbit the solar system barycenter, right?
Leif
Right, but a spacecraft at ten times Sun-Pluto distance would.
I read the papers lined here with interest.
The south African one showing that the effective earth/sun distance is modulated by planetary activity is interesting if only for the blatant simplicity of the calculation that shows that at the very least this MUST modulate received insolation by a statistically significant amount. So that’s one factoid that the IPCC simply ignored.
As far as planetary activity modulating internal magnetohydrodynamics – case not proven.
Svensmark? I like Svensmark. He plods along a track, checking every stage, doing more experiments to test the hypotheses of others, and is slowly building a case for galactic interactions with earth’s climate.
The fundamental point though, is not who is right, but who is wrong. The IPCC. The science seems further from being settled than ever, and as fast as the IPCC comes up with plausible mechanisms (that don’t stand up to scrutiny) as to why global warming is really happening but we just can’t detect it any more, other scientists are showing other mechanisms equally as plausible as CO2 was when it first appeared.
Remember the IPPCC position was based on the fact that at the time the world was warming up, there was no explanation apart from CO2 as they saw it, and although CO2 itself wouldn’t actually affect it that much, if multiplied by positive feedback factors it would.
So the whole IPCC position rests on two increasingly shaky propositions.
(i) that all unaccountable global warming was driven by CO2 change since that was the only known factor they had in play
(ii) that some additional unknown factor must be amplifying it. (lambda/climate sensitivity et al)
These are shaky assumptions at best.
Papers are continually being published showing that more factors than they accounted for are in play.
Whilst they argue over the true value of lambda, the actual science is increasingly making it look like an irrelevant argument altogether..
CO2 will it seems turn out to be probably no more than a bit player in the climate change game, with Svensmark’s clouds and cosmic radiation, and pure solar system geometry playing at least as big, if not bigger parts.
The big news is therefore, the gradual erosion of the IPCCS foundation stone, that CO2 and CO2 alone, is the only explanation for late 20th century warming, by a rising sea level of alternative theories that show at least to similar levels of confidence, that several other factors could equally plausibly be in play.
The only beneficial result of the IPCC is that we are now intensely interested in them, and that can only be good for the science.
lgl says:
September 8, 2013 at 2:46 am
Right, but a spacecraft at ten times Sun-Pluto distance would.
Before we get to that, consider the situation where the Earth is on one side of the Sun and Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter are on the other side lined up with the Earth. If only the Sun, Mercury, and Venus are considered as contributing to the point around which the Earth orbits, what turns off the gravity of Jupiter so that it does not contribute?
Leo Smith says:
September 8, 2013 at 2:53 am
The south African one showing that the effective earth/sun distance is modulated by planetary activity is interesting if only for the blatant simplicity of the calculation that shows that at the very least this MUST modulate received insolation by a statistically significant amount. So that’s one factoid that the IPCC simply ignored.
I think you missed my response to that [or I was not clear enough]. At the times that paper mentions http://www.leif.org/research/DavidA10.png we know in other ways what the distances to the Sun were and can calculate [and actually measure – the black curve] TSI at those points and the values do NOT match what the South African paper claims they should be [red dots] http://www.leif.org/research/DavidA11.png so there is no such modulation.
Leif
You are a bit off track again. The Earth does not orbit Jupiter. Jupiters contribution is to make all the object inside its orbit to revolve around the BC and accelerate the inner planets from time to time.
De Vries periodicity arises from this planetary event string:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/ian-wilson-the-vej-tidal-torquing-model-can-explain-many-of-the-long-term-changes-in-the-level-of-solar-activity-part-2/comment-page-1/#comment-57568
(the thread where tallbloke banned me from his blog because I said that I could see what the planets do!)
Dr. S.
As usual, you got that wrong way around:
Vukcevic: Electromagnetic feedback is my hypothesis based on the scientific analysis by many solar researches
Svalgaard: Link to ‘many solar researchers’ talking about your hypothesis.
Give it a bit of time, last 10 years since its inception your data (Stamford WSO) is supporting it pretty well. No one else has come so closely with actual numerical verification.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PF.htm
It is often the case that the science is advanced by those who look for new and previously not known i.e. forwarding new ideas. It is often the case that the science has forgotten about those who oppose new ideas.
lgl says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:06 am
You are a bit off track again. The Earth does not orbit Jupiter.
Still does not remove Jupiter’s contribution. So my question stands. And the ‘inside the orbit’ bit is nonsense.
vukcevic says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:09 am
Vukcevic: Electromagnetic feedback is my hypothesis based on the scientific analysis by many solar researches
Which ‘scientific analysis’ by whom discuss electromagnetic feedback?
No one else has come so closely with actual numerical verification.
Curve fitting is curve fitting. Anybody can fit it with a better curve. And it fails going back in time.
It is often the case that the science is advanced by those who look for new
What you do is not science and there is no advance.
Leif
I did answer your question. Jupiter moves the Sun-Me-Ve-Ea center of mass around the SSBC making the inner planets follow the Sun around the SSBC. Of course you can not include Jupiter (or any of the outer planets) when the Earth does not orbit Jupiter.
lgl says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:34 am
I did answer your question.
I don’t think you did. [or I didn’t get it]. If the Earth does not orbit the Center of the Sun, but the Center of Mass of Sun+Mercury+Venus, the distance from the Earth to the center of the Sun would be modulated by the positions of Mercury and Venus, right?
Leif
Yes, like if the Sun were a double star and there were only the Earth, one would ‘modulate’ the distance, i.e the Earth would orbit the center of mass of the two stars.
lgl says:
September 8, 2013 at 4:10 am
“the distance from the Earth to the center of the Sun would be modulated by the positions of Mercury and Venus, right?”
Yes, like if the Sun were a double star
Except that there is no such modulation. Here is the FFT of the distance [JPL Horizon] between the Sun and the Earth http://www.leif.org/research/Barycenter11.png There is a strong 1-year period [366.36 days], and because the orbit is not a circle also a 1/2 year period and then, of course, a lunar period too. But no trace of Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, or any of the other planets…
Leif, you keep telling us that the suns output varies little and is not the cause of our warming or cooling. Yet the earth warms and cools over various cyclic time periods i.e. Maunder minimum etc that seems to be related to the sunspot numbers, and the biggie ice ages every 100,000 years.
Some thing causes these strangely cyclical events and as the sun appears to be our only heater, what in your opinion?
I have found that in a long and intriguing life that it is the rebels that think outside the square that are inventive and in science often proved correct in the long term. Some thing is causing our climate to vary, if your view of the solar system can not explain it, maybe your science is less than complete.
Putting down people with different ideas and calling them Kook,s is less than scientific.
wayne Job says:
September 8, 2013 at 4:17 am
Yet the earth warms and cools over various cyclic time periods i.e. Maunder minimum etc that seems to be related to the sunspot numbers, and the biggie ice ages every 100,000 years.
Going further back in time, solar activity does not line up with solar activity, and the ice ages are not caused by the Sun but [mainly] by Jupiter changing the shape of the Earth’s orbit.
maybe your science is less than complete.
Nobody’s science is complete, except the ones with ‘different ideas’ I referred to.
Leif
It’s not visible on that scale then. Make Mercury the size of Jupiter. Do you still think the Earth would orbit the center of the Sun?
lgl says:
September 8, 2013 at 4:31 am
It’s not visible on that scale then. Make Mercury the size of Jupiter. Do you still think the Earth would orbit the center of the Sun?
The JPL HORIZON Ephemerides are accurate to 14 significant digits, which is of the order of a few centimeters, so nothing wrong with the scale: the modulation should show if it is there. Note that there is also no sign of Jupiter or any of the other planets, but well of the Moon.
About making Mercury larger, I’m not sure, at some point it will make a difference. We could make Mercury ten times more massive than the Sun and ask the same question. Possibly, the answer has to do with how we define ‘orbit’.
As this little exercise has shown, you may not have the grip on this as you thought you had.
Leif
B t w, there is some ‘noise’ in your FFT below 300 days which would match the Ea-Ve line-up.
It’s not visible on that scale then. Make Mercury the size of Jupiter. Do you still think the Earth would orbit the center of the Sun?
lgl, I think you are correct on the orbital dynamics aspect, but that doesn’t mean there is a planetary influence on solar activity. Scientific interest in solar activity long pre-dates the contemporary climate controversy, and planetary influence is/was an obvious candidate as an actor that has been investigated many times with no positive result. There isn’t a conspiracy to silence the planets.
It is trivially true that any object in an orbital gravitational system will affect the orbit of every other object. That effect does not, however, have to be measurable. 😉
lgl says:
September 8, 2013 at 4:55 am
B t w, there is some ‘noise’ in your FFT below 300 days which would match the Ea-Ve line-up.
There is, indeed, but of extraordinarily small amplitude, and there should be some. The conceptual problem you have is that the center-of-mass is defined linearly R = sum(m(i)r(i))/sum(mi), but the gravitational force goes inversely with the square of the distances, so the sum of the gravitational force on some bodies on a test body is not the same as if all the other masses were at the center of mass. Consider the example of four identical masses spaced on a line 1 unit part. The center of mass of the three right-most would be at distance 2 from the left-most. If you thought that the gravitational force on the leftmost would be three times the individual masses divided by the square of the distance to the center-of-mass you would get 3/4. If you add up the forces for each of the masses you would get 1/1+1/4+1/9=23/18 and not 3/4.
As this little exercise has shown, you may not have the grip on this as you thought you had.
Actually Leif, strictly on the orbital dynamics aspect, lgl has been correct and you have been wrong. Suggesting that the principle might change at “some point” if masses are altered, and getting into semantics about “orbit”, won’t help.
Leif
And the Sun is extraordinarily large compared to Venus. I agree ‘orbit the center of mass’ is an approximation but now answer my question; with Mercury the size of Jupiter, would the Earth orbit the center of the Sun? Or with a double star, what would it orbit?
PJF says:
September 8, 2013 at 5:19 am
Actually Leif, strictly on the orbital dynamics aspect, lgl has been correct and you have been wrong. Suggesting that the principle might change at “some point” if masses are altered, and getting into semantics about “orbit”, won’t help.
I think it is question of magnitude as I explained in my calculation of the difference between center-of-mass and gravity. One is linear, the other one inversely quadratic. I agree that the semantic bit was weak [as I also qualified by saying I was not sure – still thinking this through]. I think that the ephemerides from JPL showed that the Earth did not orbit the center of mass of Sun, Mercury, and Venus, because [as lgl also thought] that would give a clear signature in the FFT spectrum.
This has got really complicated, and I wonder if those complicating it have really thought through their theories.
Back to square 1. If we can ignore ALL forces acting on the earth other than gravitation, according to Newton the earth would proceed on a straight line unless some force made it deviate. The major force is that of the Sun, so it orbits the Sun in an elliptical path (remember a circle is just a special case of an ellipse when the major and minor axes are equal). Add Venus into the system, and the orbit will be perturbed from the perfect ellipse it otherwise would be. The perturbation will be different when Venus is near (maximum gravitational attraction) and when Venus is on the other side of the Sun (minimal attraction). So when Venus is near the orbit will be a bit more sharply curved, and when Venus is the other side of the Sun it will be less curved.
Instead add Jupiter into the system. When Earth is near Jupiter, the perturbation due to Jupiter will be of the opposite sign from that when the Earth is near Venus. The net attraction of the Sun/Jupiter system will be less, and one could say that the earth’s path will be ‘straightened’ a bit. When Jupiter is on the far side, the net attraction will be increased, and the earth’s path more sharply curved.
So the centre of curvature of the earth’s path will be constantly moving as the various planets add or subtract their attractions to the Sun’s attraction. The earth’s orbit will be determined by the resultant attraction of all the planets and the Sun. Is the centre of curvature of the earth’s orbit then the Barycentre or some other point?
Which is a long way from the original proposition – I think!
Add Einstein and Relativity, does that make a difference?