A Possible Correlation Between the Southern Oscillation Index and the Solar Ap Index

A possible correlation between the Southern Oscillation Index and the Solar ApIndex

23 04 2009

Excerpts from WUWT Comments… See notable in red

I was pointed to this graph by an email from WUWT reader Phil Ravenscroft and I’m reposting it here for discussion.

Erl Happ (05:57:25) :

There is a QBO in solar activity with an average period of 27.1 months. This is the second most important variation on the sun after the sunspot cycle.

Sea surface temperature in the tropics is related very directly to the QBO in the stratosphere. The QBO in the stratosphere is linked directly to temperature variations at the poles which are in turn related to the aa index of geomagnetic activity. The Arctic Oscillation, surface temperature and wind patterns in both hemispheres are affected.

Essentially, the basic parameters of the climate system that drive responses in all those little grid squares in the climatic models are not stable. They depend upon the sun.

The story is here: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/solar-warming-solar-cooling/

Looking at it again I realize that for many readers it will be long and complex but I try to cross all the T’s and dot the I’s. There will be more to come as I understand it better.

From the paper:

Conclusion

Solar activity has weakened the vortex in both hemispheres. Periodic change in 200hPa temperature in response to changing ozone content and changing short wave radiation change ice cloud density and prevalence. This drives the Southern Oscillation. By and large it is the sea that stores energy and transports it to higher latitudes producing warmer winters. Ultimately sea surface temperature depends upon the Quasi Biennial Oscillation in ultraviolet radiation and the solar wind. The change in the solar QBO is responsible for the waxing and waning of the Southern Oscillation as it changes between El Nino and La Nina dominance.

Implications

Since warmer winters provide a longer growing season recent increase in winter temperature at high latitudes must be regarded as beneficial. That warming process is now reversing. If the sun descends into a deep minimum of ultraviolet and magnetic activity, all earth species will suffer.

The notion that carbon dioxide has caused a temperature increase is not supported by the climate record or observation of temperature dynamics beneath the tropopause. Limiting carbon emissions will do nothing to stem the course of solar driven climate change.

Modelling that begins with the assumption that influential parameters like ozone concentration, upper troposphere temperature and cloud cover are unaffected by solar activity, or that conditions in the troposphere are unaffected by QBO dynamics is devoid of value and has no utility whatsoever.

24 04 2009

Adolfo Giurfa (06:02:51) :

We are getting closer….

24 04 2009

Adolfo Giurfa (06:09:17) :

Bob Tisdale: What would it mean, then, for the near future of SOI the low Ap index values we are having?

24 04 2009

Bill Yarber (06:17:56) :

This looks like something Steve McIntyre of Climate Realists might like to analyze.

24 04 2009

Bill Yarber (06:18:54) :

Correction – Climate Audit. Anyone know how to forward him this tidbit?

24 04 2009

kim (06:23:55) :

I’d like to know if the full cycle of the PDO, around 60 plus years, fits historically within six solar cycles. Do we even have enough data to see if there is a fit going back in time?

The reason I ask is that if we can find something that alternates from one solar cycle to the next, like the shape of the peaks of cosmic rays, then alternating phases of the PDO, from warm to cool and back again, would each contain one solar cycle of one type and two solar cycles of the other type. It’s a nice little potential mechanism, but fails if the solar cycles and the PDO are not in synchrony.
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24 04 2009

fred (06:25:19) :

I don’t know much at all about Landscheidt, but I do know that the history of science contains many instances where someone notices correlations but cannot come up with a good explanation. The barycentric model seems a little far out to me as far as gravitational cause and effect, but who knows what is going on magnetohydrodynamically.

Alfred Wegner was not the first to notice how the continents matched up, but he pushed the correlation farther than anyone. He could not come up with a mechanism, but the mechanism that was finally found now comprises one of the best proven theories in science.

Immanuel Velikovsky was a crackpot, but he noticed a lot of exceptions that probed the rule of uniformitarianism and are now being treated with real scientific interest. No, no competent scientist hypothesizes that Venus was a comet, but there is evidence that comet Encke or its fragments may have affected the earth within the cultural memory of man if not in written Chinese history.

Hannes Alfven said words to the effect that physicist pronounce their theories, but the universe does not behave that way. We are only beginning to scratch the surface of the electromagnetic properties of the universe.

“Dark Matter” is hypothesized to comprise some 90% of the universe, but we have no idea what it is.

Correlation is not proof, but only a fool dismisses it, IMO.