My simple solar-planetary energy model

A lot of people are puzzled by the current El Niño. Global average Sea Surface Temperature (SST) has been high, but we don’t seem to have the balmy winters of ten years ago. My simple model explains why.

The graph compares sea surface temperature HADsst2GL (red curve), with curves generated from solar and planetary data.

The black curve uses a combination of Length of Day (LOD) data and sunspot number data. The monthly sunspot number values are added cumulatively as positive or negative values departing from my estimated ocean equilibrium value of ~40SSN. The LOD values are added via a simple best fit scaling technique using a hghly sensitive piece of equipment called tallbloke’s eyeball.

The yellow curve uses the sunspot numbers again, but instead of LOD data, I use the fact that LOD variation approximately correlates with variation in the distance of the solar system centre of mass in the ‘z’-axis from the solar equatorial plane (SSB-z) and substitute in those values instead as a scaled LOD proxy.

The green curve goes the whole hog. Since the SSB-z data can also be used as a proxy for sunspot numbers (on a different smoothing and lag value to the LOD proxy), it is used both for sunspot proxy and LOD proxy. This enables me to reconstruct past and predict future planetary surface temperatures, to a limited degree of accuracy.

There are a couple of obvious problems. The method does not capture individual El Niño events well. Nor does it predict individual big volcanos, although the volcanic explosivity index does correlate well with the motion of the planets, as I will show in a future post. One further problem is that the technique does not capture the collapse in solar activity which seems to occur when Uranus and Neptune are in conjunction, as at 1800-1840 during the Dalton Minimum, and during the Maunder minimum in the 1630’s . Whether we will see a similar deep solar minimum now following the conjunction of these two planets in 1993 remains to be seen.

The large departure of my reconstruction from the SST data around the WWII years is I believe due to well known issues with the switchover from bucket and thermometer measurements to ship engine cooling intake sensors on military vessels.

So, the basic premise of my model, is that a cumulative count of sunspots above and below the ocean equilibrium value I have determined will mimic the retention and release of energy from the ocean. At the same time, multi-decadal changes in Earth’s length of day which also correlate with the timings and sign of the major oceanic periodicities (PDO, AMO) add detail to the picture.

The high SSN of the late C20th means according to my model, that a lot of heat got absorbed into the ocean. Now the sunspot numbers are falling, that heat is being released again by El Niño’s and the temperature is dropping because that heat is escaping to space and not being replaced by solar energy into the oceans at the rate it was in the ’80’s and ’90’s. I have done calcs on this to support my theory and I will present them soon.

Comments please.

Predicting changes in Solar activity

Here’s a prediction graph I produced a little while ago which seems to be more or less on course:

ap-prediction

It uses the fact that changes in Earth’s length of day seem to precede changes in solar magnetism and sunspot production by several years. The yellow curve was generated by combining Sunspot data with LOD data to create a prediction for Ap out to 2015. The recent burst of sunspot activity has arrived on cue.

Here’s another graph which shows a possible correlation between sunspot activity averaged over the length of the solar cycle, and motion of the solar system’s centre of mass relative to the solar equatorial plane averaged over two Jupiter orbital periods:

What caused the collapse in solar activity at the start of the 1800’s known as the Dalton minimum? Could it be the conjunction of Uranus and Neptune which seems to accompany each of the grand minima? Does that mean we are due another one now?  I’ll investigate that in another post soon.

Why does the average sunspot number fall when the average mass of the planets is heading south? Speculatively,  could it be that the ‘lensing’ of an electro-magnetic effect emanating from the galactic centre diminishes when the planets are ‘on the wrong side of the sun’?

Answers on a postcard, or post your thoughts below.

Meet the new Kepler – P.A. Semi

Well, this guy has beaten the rest of us to the scoop. A small number of researchers including Geoff Sharp, Gerry Pease, Ian Wilson, Ray Tomes, Ulric Lyons, Gray Stevens, Milivoje Vukevic, Paul Vaughan and myself have been working away on the motion of the planets with respect to the solar system barycentre and various  interesting orbital periodicities and resonances. We’ve all found remarkable correlations between various phenomena which hint at a planetary effect on the suns behaviour.

Now Petr Semi Semerad has pulled a lot of things together and discovered the key to the holy grail: the resonances matching the sunspot cycle. But more than that, he has filled the cup to overflowing with a rare vintage of observations which will be keeping us all busy for a long time to come.

Earth - Venus - Jupiter cycle

Figure 88 -Earth-Venus-Jupiter cycle compared to Signed Sunspot counts
Series in the chart on fig. 88 are:
– Orange – Real data – Signed sunspot counts (every other cycle is negative or positive)
All other series are computed (from ephemerides), at times of Earth-Venus opposition only:
– Bold green (which matches the Sunspot frequency) – Half of angle between Jupiter and Earth (or to EVB, with center in Sun) during Earth-Venus oppositions, multiplied (scaled vertically) by sinus of Uranus-Neptune angle at these times (to match cycle damping arround 1820 and 1910 of the Gleissberg cycle…The Uranus-Neptune cycle of 178.5 years seems to match the length of twice the Gleissberg cycle, observed in the Sunspot data.)
The damping arround 1650 (little ice age) and unexpectedly large values arround 1990 are due to another influences (matches cycle of overall angular momentum change, see relevant chapter)
– Purple series :  Uranus/Neptune cycle. To avoid a sinus-like symmetric appearance, the angle between those
planets is multiplied by their relative velocity…
– Pink background serie – Tidal angle between Mercury and Jupiter at times of Earth-Venus oppositions.
– Outer blue serie – with connected maximums to show its envelope (see also fig. 89) – Tidal angle between Earth-Venus barycenter and Jupiter, with added or subtracted (with less importance) the Tidal angle between Jupiter and Mercury.
– Bold blue dots at X axis – historical record of “severe winters” in central Europe.

Earth-Moon system angular momentum relative to sunspot cycle

http://semi.gurroa.cz/Astro/Orbital_Resonance_and_Solar_Cycles.pdf
Download, read and enjoy!

h/t to French-Canadian blogger Simon Filiatrault

Planetary – solar – climate connection found

This graph shows the relationship between the motion of the planets, the length of Earth’s day, and the changes in global temperature.

Graph of the SSB-solar equatorial distance in the z axis against changes in length of day and global temperature.

Click graph for larger image

The Red curve shows HADcruV3 global temperature. I’ve detrended this to something more reasonable than the treasonable nonsense Phil Jones has left us with.

The Green Curve is the distance between the solar system’s centre of mass and the solar equatorial plane in the vertical ‘z’ axis. This distance is determined by the changing disposition of the planets in the solar system over time. Extra info added: The data is smoothed over 24 years (Two Jupiter orbits) and retarded 30 years. This is indicative of the inertia involved in the LOD variation lagging behind the combined effect of the gas giants motion.

The Blue curve shows changes in the Earth’s length of day in milliseconds. This has been detrended. This has been done to separate the effect of planetary motion from longer term cylicities which may affect LOD.

So, the multi-billion dollar question is:

What underlying physical principles connect these three phenomena?
Gravity? Magnetism? Resonant feedback between celestial bodies?

Answers on a postcard, or just post below with your thoughts.