People send me stuff.
Tonight I got an email that contained a link to a paper that takes on the wonky claims related to barycentrism and Earth’s climate, specifically as it relates to Nicola Scafetta’s 2010 and 2012 papers. This new paper taking on the Scafetta claims will be published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, April 2014. The author is Sverre Holm Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway.
Abstract, some graphs, and discussion/conclusion, along with a link to the paper follows.
Abstract
It has recently been claimed that there is significant coherence between the spectral peaks of the global temperature series over the last 160 years and those of the speed of the solar center of mass at periods of 10-10.5, 20-21, 30 and 60-62 years. Here it is shown that these claims are based on a comparison between spectral peaks in spectral estimates that assume that the global temperature data contains time-invariant spectral lines. However, time–frequency analysis using both windowed periodograms and the maximum entropy method shows that this is not the case. An estimate of the magnitude squared coherence shows instead that under certain conditions only coherence at a period of 15-17 years can be found in the data. As this result builds on a low number of independent averages and also is unwarranted from any physical model it is doubtful whether it is significant.
…
Discussion and Conclusion
Scafetta (2010) claimed the global temperature series for the last 160 years to have
spectral lines at 21, 30 and 62 years. Time–frequency analysis shows that the lines are
time-varying (Figs. 1 and 2) and very different from the nearly constant lines in the
time–frequency plot for the speed of the center of mass of the solar system (SCMSS)
(Fig. 3).
The supposed periodicity around 30 years in Scafetta (2010) is not really
present in the climate series at all and could be an artifact due to a combination
of model overfitting and smearing due to the time-invariance assumption which has
been forced on the data. The claimed spectral peaks by Scafetta (2010) for the global
temperature series are therefore not reproducible if proper consideration is taken of
the time-varying nature of the data. The only significant coherence between the cli-
mate series and the sun’s movement that was possible to find was at 15-17 years (Table 1). However, both the low number of independent averages that it builds on as well as the lack of a physical explanation for this coherence, makes us hesitate to claim that it is significant.
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Looks to me like “game over” for claims of Barycentrism controlling Earth’s climate. Clearly this was a case of pulling a signal from noise that is just an artifact of the process, much like Mann’s special brand of math that made hockey sticks from just about any red noise input data.
Full pre-print of the paper here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.1086.pdf
Moon’s role as a rudder to the earth’ spin.
This subject is simply fascinating to me. I have things to do but I had to look into the moon’s effects on the earth a bit more. One thing that leaps of the pages is the moon’s contribution to stabilizing the earth’s spin. To the celestial mechanics, having the moon in its particular orbit, forces the earth to remain in a 23 degree tilt thereby significantly and profoundly establishing a principle uniformity of exposure of the earth to the sun. Were it not for the moon the earth would tumble and roll and have a more chaotic behavior, apparently.
So in a very fundamental way, the moon sets the earth’s climate norm, in a similar way, at a lesser scale as does the sun.
In some way, the perturbations of the otherwise toppling of the earths stability is contributed by the gravitational interaction in real time. What is the nature of that “anti-perturbation” interaction?
It is even motre than that. The moon daily crosses the magnetosphere and generates dynamo-like potential differences which creates geomagnetic stress at ground locations particularly when in closer perigee impacting both the inner core which increases the Earth Tide at those points of nearer earth-moon contact and possibly the atmospheric tide through electrical charging. These can bring bearing on seismic events and electrical storms, particularly at lunar equinox in the declination cycle twice a month and for some reason more frequently at northern than southern declination. From the input of change in potential difference it is not unreasonable to suggest that huge deposits of iron ore may be forced to move within the earth in the manner of a solenoid. This would be only due to the moon although our geomagnetic field would undoubtedly be solar in origin.
Steven Mosher says:
March 12, 2014 at 11:34 am
I have spent many happy years modelling various things inside a computer. It is what I was trained for. I understand the limitations of what might better be described as computer games that you seem to think are precise instruments. They are not, they are gross approximations to a complex reality which they are very roughly constrained to follow.
They exhibit almost none of the observed reality and predict things which do not and have not occurred. Such is life with a computer game. Reality is just a little more complex than that.
Sverre Holm says: March 12, 2014 at 10:14 am
The frame of reference is the solar system barycenter, which is just fancy terminology for centre of mass.
You can at any time choose an arbitrary reference system, and compute the solar system centre of mass. This point is just an origin in a coordinate system and has no physical effect on anything. All bodies in the solar system, including the Sun, moves relative to this origin. You can plot the Sun’s movements relative to it as has been done, but the Sun feels no gravitational forces (other than tides), as it is in free fall just like all the planets.
It was discussed at length years ago on this blog. One idea was based on the principle of conservation of angular momentum (each object spins around its own axis, but also moves around the solar system centre of mass). The thinking was that since the solar orbital radius (relative to the solar system barycentre) was changing so much, then its orbital angular momentum variation had to be compensated by similar variation in the spin of the Sun around its own axis, to keep the total angular momentum constant. Presumably, this could cause some internal sloshing (or whatever) and influence solar activity. This is a short version of the so called spin-orbit coupling idea as I understand it. However, there is a major flaw in this argument: There is no need for the Sun to change its spin, because it can be shown that gravity perturbes the planetary orbits just enough to perfectly balance the Sun, and thus keep the solar system angular momentum constant at all times. No need to change solar spin, i.e. no mechanism to influence solar activity this way.
“the Sun feels no gravitational forces (other than tides)”
Wouldn’t that be enough to create solar cycles ?
Amatør1 says:
March 12, 2014 at 2:05 pm
There is no need for the Sun to change its spin, because it can be shown that gravity perturbes the planetary orbits just enough to perfectly balance the Sun, and thus keep the solar system angular momentum constant at all times. No need to change solar spin, i.e. no mechanism to influence solar activity this way.
Like tidal theory, perturbation theory has problems which are more or less dealt with by heuristics</i. However, the solar differential rotation has been empirically observed to vary on timescales consistent with planetary periodicities. Venus has slowed by six minutes in 15 years, which cannot be accounted for by perturbation theory. Saturn’s radio emission cycles, thought to relate to its rotation rate, have varied over the last three decades between 627 and 648 minutes. STandard perturbation theory can’t account for that either.
The observations in my recent papers show that the spin rates of the planets in the solar system are related by simple harmonic/resonant ratios, and that they also relate to the orbital periods of neighbouring planets. Whatever you think of any theory that might be presented, the brute facts of these observations stand.
What appears to be going on here is Fourier transform of time-series data into frequency series. This is very common in machinery vibration analysis. But there are all kinds of problems with that data transformation even in the much better understood area of machinery vibration. One has to be very careful about filters, data resolution, frequency ranges, etc.
The best way this has ever been characterized is in my favorite data acquisition book, “Real Time Programming – Neglected Topics” by Caxton Foster. In discussing Fourier analysis, he notes: “It says, in effect that any repetitive wave form may be viewed as being made up of a collection of sine waves, and further, with a sufficiently warped mind any signal is repetitive.”
We need either better data to see the repetitive signal or more warped minds!
Tallbloke – Thanks for the references to your papers, I’ll give them a scan. FWIW, in my book, phenomenology always takes precedence over theory and models. If theoretical models don’t match or predict reality, then there’s either a missing variable (or several), or the theory is wrong. If we can’t explain solar differential rotation or the other observations you mention with whatever models we’re capable of coming up with, we know that there’s something missing. If the variations are in fact correlated with planetary motion (I’ll leave that as an entirely separate discussion I’m not qualified to participate in; that seems to be what this abstract and thread are all about), I’d take that as a strong indication of an area in which to look for missing variables.
Dave Etchells says:
March 12, 2014 at 2:56 pm
So, by definition, all that’s left are tides
Ah, our old friend the missing variable.
A topic for which there is plenty of in depth research in the literature is orbital resonance. Astrophysicists know a lot about it, but it seems to have passed climate pundits by completely. It is capable of modulating and exciting quite enormous amounts of force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance
I do understand why some people stick to mentioning ‘tiny’ tidal effects and ignore this elephant in the room though.
Neptune and Uranus exchange considerable amounts of angular momentum on a ~1.12myr cycle according to a big orbital element integration done on a Cray supercomputer way back when.
Since the outer planets hold around 98% of the angular momentum in the solar system, their potential effect on modulating solar differential rotation shouldn’t be ignored IMO. Especially considering the fact that cyclic variation in solar differential rotation at planetary frequencies has been EMPIRICALLY OBSERVED.
A PS to my reply to Tallbloke: I’m also moved to note that you can find a Fourier series with enough terms to match *any* time series. The question is to what extent it can forecast and hindcast, outside the interval you based your calculations on. I’m a little uncomfortable with extracting 5 or 6 or more dominant frequencies from a time series and claiming to have found signs of fundamental, underlying processes. (You might have; in fact, there’s a good chance there’s something significant there, as long as the dominant frequencies aren’t artifacts of the sampling/windowing process. But it’s not a given, and particularly the higher-order terms give me pause.) Perhaps you address this concern in your papers (which I’ll read), but a Fourier transform can transform any time series into frequency space and back again, so the simple fact of being able to do it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something profound in the results. – And apologies as I say this, I’m sure you’ve heard it many times before – I’ll go read the papers before any further comment on the topic. Thanks again for the references 🙂
Konrad says:
March 12, 2014 at 12:46 am
[snip – off topic, your usual ploy -mod]
———————————————–
OK yes, I understand how that comment may have met the technical criteria for that [snip].
It was however not just having a jab at those claiming the death of barycentrism, but also those like myself claiming AGW done and dusted.
“Whoosh”, as they say.
Perhaps my point could be better made without reference to any of my own work. The point here was an issue of, dare I say it, “pattern recognition”. The pattern that can be observed in this “death blow” to barycentrism is not dissimilar to previous “debunking” papers. Many readers will recall some papers rushed through pal-review dealing with modelling and Forbush decreases. Papers claiming a death blow to the Svensmark hypothesis rushed into publication before even initial results of the ongoing CLOUD empirical experiment were available.
With regard to solar science, we are currently engaged in a grand ongoing experiment dependant largely on empirical observation. Just as Dr. S had to wait years to see his prediction of SSN ~70 proved correct for cycle 24, there is another 2 decades to go with regard to empirical verification or dismissal of planetary influences on solar cycles.
There is one (of a very long list) unfortunate side effect of the whole global warming scare that effects all sides. A desire for answers in a rush, rather than correct answers.
The sun is slow. For some answers we will have to wait.
Not when the maximum tide is less than a millimeter tall.
I am not up to date on what you have done recently. Thanks for the heads-up. We may see things differently, but I’ll have a look at your work.
We should keep open minds so that we don’t become as inolerant as the CAGW establishment:
“In We must not fall into the same poisonously intolerant attitude as the true-believers in the New Religion, who are unwilling to allow any discussion that they might regard as heretical.”
Thank you, Christopher Monckton for your many words of wisdom.
To all and everyone
I think I was thrown nout here, excommunicated and labeled officially as a communist behind the iron curtain, simply for not behaving the worshipful way in regard to a certain Nicola Scafetta.
Dave Etchells says:
March 12, 2014 at 3:18 pm
Amatør1 says:
March 12, 2014 at 3:54 pm
———————
Thanks both for your open minded approaches. There is more we’ve discovered since the papers were published, the bleeding edge stuff appears on my blog from time to time. All ideas are open to properly formed criticism in reasonable debate. In fact we welcome it.
Thanks for the feedback! It is not an easy subject so I am pleased to see I was able to communicate the way I see it.
‘The global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems | atmosphere, biosphere,
cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from
days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges
overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus
give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’ http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd/PREPRINTS/Math_clim-Taipei-M_Ghil_vf.pdf
The fact that the Earth system is complex and dynamic and exhibits behavior diagnostic of deterministic chaotic systems is not in doubt. The corollary is that cycles are a wrong interpretation of aperiodic shifts in climate state space. Statistically – all sorts of time series are non-stationary.
Typically we look at indices which – all of which exhibit abrupt change at interannual to millennial timescales. We may look at these as a network of chaotic oscillators on the underlying system. The PDO and ENSO are two of these. The PDO shifts on multi-decadal and probably longer scales. ENSO shifts sub-decadally but changes in frequency and intensity of ENSO states on centennial to millennial scales. The most obvious driver of these shifts is the state of the Northern and Southern Annular Modes driving more or less cold water south and north in the Californian and Peruvian Currents respectively. More cold water facilitates upwelling in the eastern Pacific which initiates the series of feedbacks in cloud, wind and currents that drive Pacific variability.
One of the drivers of SAM and NAM is stratospheric interactions of UV and ozone. High solar UV biases polar and sub-polar sea level pressures to positive states and vice versa. High solar UV biases Pacific variability to positive PDO and El Nino states. Changes in UV are related to changes in the Sun’s magnetic field. Low solar activity creates the conditions for La Nina and cold PDO dominance – over the next few hundred years as the Sun’s intensity falls from a 1000 year Grand Maxima. This pattern can be seen in millennial – and Holocene spanning – proxies.
e.g
It is presumed that variations in solar magnetism is related to the solar magneto.
‘Abstract – We present here a new theory of the solar cycle which is able to explain all relevant observations connected with quasi-periodic behavior of sunspots and other associated phenomena. It is based on the interaction between planetary movements and alignments and the evolving magnetic field of the Sun. The theory provides a very natural explanation for the roughly eleven-year change in polarity of the solar magnetic field and for the Maunder Butterfly Diagram. It overcomes all objections raised against other theories in this field, including those based entirely on magneto-hydrodynamics.’ http://tmgnow.com/repository/solar/percyseymour2.html
The multi-body problem of solar system orbits is definitely chaotic and aperiodic.
e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=150
Barycentrism may well be dead but at least we should give them credit for looking in a general area that was vaguely credible, unlike CAGW and CO2 which was a clear pipe dream from the start.
Us there anything that doesn’t affect the earth’s climate?
No.
What is the most salient influence?
Ah well now that’s a different kettle of monkeys…
Sverre Holm says to Antony:
March 12, 2014 at 10:14 am
“If we’re talking of the paper Scafetta, “Empirical evidenceforacelestialoriginoftheclimateoscillations
and itsimplications” http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/scafetta-JSTP2.pdf then I have been able to reproduce all figures in that paper but one. That was his Fig. 8. (Power spectra of the speed of the Earth relative to the Sun and of the speed of the center of mass of the Earth–Moon system relative to the Sun). Reproduction or not is not the point of my criticism of the paper, it is the method used and the assumptions that have been made.”
Holm’s statement is very important.
1) Holm stated that he was able to reproduce all my major findings and figure. The only problem he had was with figure 8 about the ~9-year oscillation of the solar-lunar tidal oscillation. To solve this problem Holm may try to read some introductory Astronomy book and he will easily figure out the existence of a ~9-year oscillation in the solar-lunar tidal oscillation.
Holm’s acknowledgment is very important, and I thank him for his testimony, because demonstrates people such as Mosher, Anthony, Willis etc, who have systematically claimed on this blog that my results are not reproducible, wrong.
Holm has testified that my results are reproducible with the appropriate study and competence, as I have always said. By the record, I never gave Holm any data nor codes. He could figure out these things by himself because evidently he is a competent person.
Thus, Holm has clearly demonstrated that more than one person on WUWT and on other blogs have systematically claimed to have a scientific knowledge that they clearly do not have.
2) Holm stated “Reproduction or not is not the point of my criticism of the paper, it is the method used and the assumptions that have been made.”
So Holm’s criticism is based on physical interpretation and mathematical analysis methodology.
This can be discussed.
Essentially the issue is: Which methodology is more appropriate? My analysis or Holm’s analysis?
Does my analysis contains flaws or is it Holm’s analysis that contain flaws?
I stand on the correctness of my analysis and methodology and interpretation.
I leave the reader of the blog to figure out the issue by themselves.
As I pointed above by addressing just one point, Holm was not able to find the 60-year astronomical oscillation in his figure 3. Which led him to not find the coherence between these cycle and the temperature cycle.
This points out one major issue with Holm’s analysis because the 60-year astronomical oscillation is macroscopic, it was known since ancient times and it is in phase with the temperature oscillations as shown in my papers. On this point it may be useful to read the comment from Ian Wilson who has an astrophysical background:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/death-blow-to-barycentrism-on-the-alleged-coherence-between-the-global-temperature-and-the-suns-movement/comment-page-1/#comment-71897
Other issues are present.
Carbomontanus says:
March 12, 2014 at 4:15 pm
To all and everyone
I think I was thrown nout here, excommunicated and labeled officially as a communist behind the iron curtain, simply for not behaving the worshipful way in regard to a certain Nicola Scafetta.
_________________
I do not think that is the case. Did you not just make a comment?
Carbomontanus says:
March 12, 2014 at 4:15 pm
To all and everyone
I think I was thrown nout here, excommunicated and labeled officially as a communist behind the iron curtain, simply for not behaving the worshipful way in regard to a certain Nicola Scafetta.
_________________
Did you not just make a comment? I doubt your claim. I can think of any number of reasons to toss your Scandinavian self overboard, but steering a tack counter to the main discussion isn’t one of those reasons.