New theory suggests Earth’s 60‐Year climate cycle may be driven by planetary oscillations directing micrometeors toward Earth, creating more dust – which change cloud cover.
A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters claims there is increasing evidence that Earth’s 60-year climate cycle may be driven by planetary oscillations. They claim a 60-year climate cycle is found in the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, aurora sightings, rainfall, and ocean climatic records.
The paper says:
“…the orbital eccentricity of Jupiter presents prominent oscillations with a period of quasi 60 years due to its gravitational coupling with Saturn.” The authors propose that the planetary system modulates the interplanetary dust falling on Earth and modifying the cloud coverage.
The orbital eccentricity of Jupiter presents a strong 60‐year oscillation that is well correlated with several climatic records and with the 60‐year oscillation found in long meteorite fall records since the 7th century.
Since meteorite falls are the most macroscopic aspect of infalling space dust, we conclude that the interplanetary dust should modulate the formation of the clouds and, thus, drive climate changes.”
The paper and abstract:
A 60‐Year Cycle in the Meteorite Fall Frequency Suggests a Possible Interplanetary Dust Forcing of the Earth’s Climate Driven by Planetary Oscillations
Nicola Scafetta Franco Milani Antonio Bianchini First published: 14 September 2020 https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL089954
Abstract
One of the most famous climate oscillations has a period of about 60 years. Although this oscillation might emerge from internal variability, increasing evidence points toward a solar or astronomical origin, as also argued herein. We highlight that the orbital eccentricity of Jupiter presents prominent oscillations with a period of quasi 60 years due to its gravitational coupling with Saturn. This oscillation is found to be well correlated with quite a number of climatic records and also with a 60‐year oscillation present in long meteorite fall records relative to the periods 619–1943 CE. Since meteorite falls are the most macroscopic aspect of incoming space dust and their motion is mostly regulated by Jupiter, we propose that the interplanetary dust influx also presents a 60‐year cycle and could be forcing the climate to oscillate in a similar manner by modulating the formation of the clouds and, therefore, the Earth’s albedo.
Data Availability Statement
All data are available from references and public domain repositories: Figure 1 uses the ephemerides data of the orbit of Jupiter available, for example, from the NASA HORIZONS web interface (https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi); Figure 2 uses the temperature reconstruction of Ljungqvist (2010, https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/9924); Figure 3 uses the HadCRUT4 record (Morice et al., 2012, https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/), the Indian summer monsoon record (Agnihotri & Dutta, 2003; Sontakke et al., 1993) (http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.Indices/.india/index.html); and the G. Bulloides abundance variations data by Black et al. (1999, https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/2532); Figures 4 and 5 use the record of meteorite fall in China from AD 619 to 1943 published in Yu et al. (1983).
A caveat: In the past, I have dismissed much of Scafetta’s work as being little more than “cyclomania”, i.e. finding spurious cyclic correlations in data where there really isn’t any.
That said, there is a bit of plausibility in this idea that the gravitation of Jupiter might herd more micrometeors into Earths orbital path, and it is plausible that with more meteor dust in Earth’s atmosphere, that could form more cloud nuclei. Changes in cloud cover would modulate sunlight over time, and thus climatic records.
Or, it may be just another spurious correlation. Either way, I thought it was worth discussing. – Anthony
And on top of that, the sun and all the past and existing natural cycles, the new, additional dominant climate driver, human CO2.
[…”the new, additional dominant climate driver, human CO2.” Still unproven – mod]
CO2 has been present in earth’s atmosphere for at least 4 billion years. In fact, on geological scales, its present concentration is at a minimum. Compared to natural CO2, “human” CO2 is miniscule.
And even in the industrial era there is no correlation between CO2 and global temperature.
I vote griff off the island for incessantly repeated trolling of fake info.
I don’t agree. We need our trolls to keep us honest. It may well be that griff has never been right about anything. (I do have a vague recollection of being surprised at agreeing with something griff said, but it must have been a very trivial point where he slipped up, or I misunderstood).
We need our trolls but it would be better if we didn’t let them clog up the comment threads. There’s no need to post multiple times refuting some doltish comment. Occasionally maybe just respond with a link to a previous posting?
It’s not as if griff is a font of new ideas. There’s arctic ice disappearing, heat wave in Siberia, CO2 the control knob, maybe a handful of other talking points. There must be dozens of great postings refuting these kindergarten concepts, on WUWT alone.
+10
regarding too much time spent responding to inane troll comments. These could be addressed with just a few comments/links without allowing the thread to be hijacked.
And to remind us just how easily humanity can be diverted from rational behaviour by shamans, ideologues and snake oil sellers.
As for the 60 year cycle and mechanisms that make it happen, who’d a thunk it for us here on a rotating planet with an orbiting moon 70% lighuid surface and then 100s gasous overlay in turn orbiting a start in concert with a family of other planets including a coiuple of monsters not to mention cslusters of asteroids, comets and ‘zodiacal dust’ that there might be cyclical responses in our weather, climate, sea levels, atmosphere etc. What a radical idea! /sarc.
Yes, but. It would be a lot easier to tolerate the trolls if the commenting system allowed us to collapse response threads. Once I’ve seen that someone has debunked a troll, I’d rather jump down to the next substantive comment. Trying to guess where the next indentation layer begins is too hard on old eyes. Can we please have a “collapse” button?
Agreed.
As with the other aggressive trollops, wastes huge amounts of commenter’s time.
They keep no-one honest.
Their aggressive falsehoods offer zero discussion. It is all doctrinal alarmist propaganda.
They practice the belief that if repeated frequently enough, people will believe their falsehoods.
giffiepoo and other thread bombing cultists never offer factual science or any new science. They simply repeat the same lies, time and time again.
Nor do they ever answer questions regarding the problems with their climate religious dogma.
What you said. 🙂
Prove your sh…Prove warming, prove anthropogenic, prove anything other than the simple, aeons old fact that the weather changes. Do you even understand how the seasons are caused? Thought not, none of you Warmist can.
P.S. How much do they pay you “internet narative steerspersons”. Also, what exactly is your job title, so I can apply? Paid money to shit on other people’s thoughts, how nice!
Griff, how do you know today’s modest warmth is caused by anthropogenic CO2 and not whatever natural forcings that was responsible for much greater warmth during most of the Holocene Epoch, poorly understood though they may be.
I”d like to know where he gets that, too. I made up a spreadsheet on the warming v. cooling periods for the last 600, 000 years and was surprised to find that the WARM periods are generally longer than the cold periods. The exception was what they used to refer to as the Wisconsin cold period, which made my chart look like a sine wave. Nothing to do with HOW it happened, only the length of time.
It was eye-opening, and I only took it back that far to find out the general length of cold v. warm.
Sara – Can you write it up as an article for WUWT? No guarantee that they will post it of course, but I for one would be interested in reading it.
I don’t know if it would work here. I put it on an Excel spreadsheet. I could ask them, but they’d probably start giggling and then fall off their chairs laughing.
Can’t say that I’d blame them, since I’m not a “science gal”, just an observer of things like trees not leafing out on time because the weather is too cold. And it isn’t very “scientific”, just done out of curiosity.
The same “sine wave” form is visible in time/temp charts that the science guys here provide when they post historical stuff.
Well, griff, according to the melting of the 65 mile long Alaska Glacier Bay glacier, the warming was well under way back in 1850, prior to the invention of the airplane, the automobile, and when earth’s population was a fraction of what it is today. The melting rate did not change significantly as all of the above came into effect. With this in mind, please explain to me how we have any possibility of doing anything about the change you are complaining about.
I recall a trip to the Alberta Rockies in the 60’s where we drove past the Northern edge of the Columbia glacier field. Sign posts and photographs showed the steady retreat of the glacier since 1850. Nothing to do with humans. Griff is just part of the conspiracy against Capitalism . This conspiracy is one of the few great evils left in the world.
Throughout the history of the earth, CO2 has never been a dominant driver of temperature. Why do you believe that now, after 4+ billion years, CO2 has decided to step up and make itself a major player?
Even climate alarmist scientists will admit that water vapour is the dominant climate driver, not CO2. And you well know that “human CO2” is only about 4-5% of the total CO2 produced, behind that of terminates that produce about 30% more.
“human CO2”
FANTASY.
You and others have been asked MANY MANY times to provide empirical evidence.
You all remain TOTALLY EMPTY
There is in fact NO POSSIBLE WAY in which CO2 can cause warming in an atmosphere controlled by pressure gradients.
Maybe you would like to try again.. or just RUN AWAY in childish avoidance…
1… Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2?
2… In what ways has the global climate changed in the last 50 years , that can be scientifically proven to be of human causation?
You remain NOTHING but a chihuahu yapping behind a 2ft fence.
Griff goes from “CO2” now to “human CO2” as the new dominant climate driver. Thank you griff, I was feeling down this morning and your post has made me laugh for hours.
griff why have scientists who believe CO2 has such a big effect made so many failed predictions? Could it be that they are wrong in their theories about the causes of climate change?
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions
griff, seriously, get some help with your problem, please.
Humans have been making campfires and cooking stuff and keeping warm with them since we left our distant relatives the Great Apes behind. That goes back a LONG WAY in time, and the archaeological and paleontological records show it. And before that, LONG before humans existed as primordial critters, there were massive wildfires producing CO2 during the Silurian and Carboniferous epochs when there WERE NO HUMANS AROUND. The dinosaurs produced more CO2 than you can possibly imagine. Do you have even the slightest idea what the CO2 volume of a mature brontosaurus might have been, never mind the Argentinosaurus, the apatosaurus, the diplodocus, the brachiosaurus and all the rest of them. Your statement about human CO2 is lame and incorrect.
Give it up, will you? Human produced CO2 is NOT something new. Aboriginal campfires in Australia prove that as do other, similar sites. And CO2 was being produced by OTHER CRITTERS, including dinosaurs and before them, whatever 4-leggers existed on this planet.
You do yourself NO credit by coming up with some of your statements. It just makes you look ridiculous and stubbornly uninformed. Without CO2 in the atmosphere, plants will die off, period. Then what will you eat????
dominant climate driver, human CO2.
=====
Ice ages end when CO2 is low and start when CO2 is high.
That means CO2 causes cooling and a lack of CO2 causes warning.
That would be an article of faith (right Griff?), a tenet of the true religion?
So Jupiter is Klendathu?
I don’t think this would be due to dust, but due to subtle changes in solar output. The gravitational tidal effect on the Sun from Jupiter and Saturn stretches and squeezes it’s core, slightly varying the rate of fusion. It takes a while for this effect to bubble up to the surface, so any climate effects being observed, including perhaps effects from the Sunspot cycle, would be the result of Jupiter and Saturn’s tidal effects on the Sun’s core that had occurred ages ago.
It takes a while for this effect to bubble up to the surface
Yes, on the order of 100,000-250,000 years….
Ice Age cycle?
Leif, if the “Jupiter” cycle was 60 years all during those hundreds of thousands of years, then the cycle effect could be the same, although the timing of the “bubbling up” would’nt likely be such as to fit the present oscillation in timing.
The bubbling up takes so long that any variations on a time scale as short as the the ‘cycles’ in question are completely washed out.
Might it have more immediate tidal effects on convention nearer to the surface of the sun?
but the fusion only takes place in the core
Something that’s always intrigued me is that most of the stars we observe have variable intensity with arbitrary periods. Tidal effects are one possibility that can have such a widely variable effect.
AFAIK, there is no ~60 years solar cycle, however there is well known centenary ~105 year cycle, its semi-periodicity (5 cycles) gives the alternation of the N-S excess. It has two components which are about 2 Jupiter-Saturn synodic and 8 Jupiter orbital periods.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/N-S.htm
However, there is solar component in the 60 year the AMO cycle. Principal components are solar magnetic cycle (21.4 years, related to the Jupiter-Saturn synodic period, see link) and the Earth’s magnetic cycle (16.1 years – derived from from Jackson A & Finlay CC. Earth’s core magnetic variability data)
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GSOsc.htm
Uh, has meteorite dust or any dust measurement been made? Maybe that International Space Station could hang a bag outside and see what they collect?
Yes, hypotheses that can be tested help to support a theory or not.
Yes, I recall from geology courses over 60yrs ago that it has been measured in some fashion and there is estimates of the annual mass added to the earth. I would think ice cores would have such info. There is a confounding factor with earth sourced dust, but composition should serve to differentiate.
Annually, around 40,000 metric tons of cosmic dust is added to Earth’s mass. Compared to the Earth’s mass of about 6 x 10^21 metric tons, this is very small.
I had the same question. It seems to me that micrometeorite concentrations are something we could realistically measure from ice core samples. Has anyone done this???
The paper Modulation of ice ages via precession and dust-albedo feedbacks by Ralph Ellis and Michael Palmer – http://www.futureofenergyinitiative.org/Pubs/Ellis.pdf – used dust measurements in ice cores.
That the planets modulate meteorites and that they in turn drive various phenomena is an old idea. It has even been suggested that they drive the solar cycle: https://leif.org/research/See-and-Meteor-Theory-of-Sunspots.pdf (from 1921)
Personally, I’ll not put much confidence in any of this.
Leif, I’ve been using highly sensitive twilight photometry to measure the elevation of aerosol layers from 2 km to 170 km since 2014. My ultra-sensitive instrument is described in MAKE magazine (https://makezine.com/projects/twilight-photometer/). Some evenings there are multiple layers of meteoric smoke/dust, sometimes reaching 150 km. Occasionally the descent of very high layers can be observed over several evenings. I’m not sure how to analyze these data beyond the dates and elevations. I hope to complete a paper on this over the coming year.
Measuring the Earth’s shadow…..what a cool idea !……never heard of it before….Earthshine yes….bring on the Moonshine jokes…
Yes, about 40,000 tons of such dust enter the atmosphere each year, but spread out over the surface the ‘dust veil’ does not amount to much, so the influence on incoming solar radiation is minute. You can compare that to the mass of the atmosphere: 5000 trillion tons.
Forrest, a very interesting and informative read. You have an uncommon skill in communicating technical information. I’m a geologist and mining engineer and had no trouble understanding this unfamiliar topic and believe I might even be able to construct and use a twighlight photometer solely from your article. Thank you.
Since its measuring the height of the earth’s “shadow”, this is in fact the height of the penumbra portion of the shadow. The umbra itself is the true night dark of the shadow.
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/umbra-and-penumbra/
T. Landscheid was on it too.
While a plausible mechanism has been identified, it feels like P-Hacking of nature.
Let’s look at everything we can find that might be cyclic and sort of correlates with our sort of identification of cycles and when we finally find something that our critics say might be plausible, Voila, we found the cause.
That’s sort of how science works. In the long run, we hope that good ideas displace bad ones.
You missed the “sort ofs” in my comment.
Its more like ‘anything but CO2ism’. WUWT’s speciality.
Don’t like WUWT? Go back to your fake news/cultural marxist/social media sites — there are sh*tloads of ’em.
Is it a spurious correlation? The period 619 to 1943 is 22 sixty year cycles. That’s probably enough to establish that there is a correlation. The next question is about the reliability of the data.
As our dearly beloved Dr. Mann has amply demonstrated, it is possible to massage data to get whatever result you desire.
It’s probably worth some bright young PhD candidate’s time to try replicating the result.
And another thought.
Does this current theory by Scafetta invalidate all his previous theories?
Maybe it’s…nevermind.
Wait, maybe it’s…nevermind.
Ooh ooh, I know. It’s THIS!
You could say the same about Kepler…
and Einstein static/expanding universe, light bending by gravity are two I can remember
Charles, plus other confounding or supporting effects in a complex system. I suppose if we were to predict the “Jupiter oscillations” from the upcoming Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillations without any fiddling that would be pretty solid.
I’ve often wondered:
Is there a lot of our atmosphere that is starved for seeding nuclei? I know that silver iodide can be fired into clouds to “seed” them, but I thought you already needed clouds present. I always thought that pretty much anywhere you had temperatures below the dew point you got clouds, but is this wrong? Would this dust make more clouds, or would it just increase the drop density in existing clouds?
Areas over the oceans tend to be pretty clean.
Being skeptical is good. Being knowledgeable is good. Being open minded is good. I am skeptical of everything. But people do get hit by lightning. And their are magic BB’s.
It appears we have so many purported “cycles” in the Earth’s climate you wonder what would happen when they all max out or min out at the same time. Do we get a giant rogue wave like we see in the oceans?
Or are there mini cycles and one or two maxi ones? We currently have Jupiter/Saturn going into conjunction which may (or may not) influence the Sun enough to influence us, the AMO/PDO are in some kind of cycle state and then there is the sunspot cycle and the Earth’s geomagnetic cycle.. and many more.
But the big kahuna just may be the 12,000 year galactic magnetic flux cycle that may cause our Sun to micronova and really mess things up including a winter to end all winters and possible other mega disasters. But with CO2 killing us all in the next 10 years, this one could come and go and no one would notice (since we will all be dead).
I am more concerned with the current cooling cycle, cooler than 1,000 years ago and even cooler than 6,000 years ago, all of which tells me the next big ice age is relatively rapidly approaching. See the spate of serious record cold temperatures we had about the end of October.
60 year cycle? That’s twice the duration assumed/asserted by the consensus.
Yep, and they start in 1979 at the very bottom of the AMO cycle.
OF COURSE there has been some NH warming compared to the coldest period in the 20th century.
But we are now about 40 years through that cycle.
AMO data shows the cycle meanders about at the top of the cycle for 20-30 years, then drops quite quickly.
We shall see in the next several years.
Yeah, there is a fairly obvious 60 or so year undulation in the temperature record. The WMO/IPCC use ony half of this because they want to exploit all the hype they can from the natural warm rise. They have incrementally pushed the 1930s-mid 40s warm period down 0.5 °C (and still being pushed down) to remove the earlier warm segment and at the same time eradicate the 35yr cooling period after 1945 which was the climate science cooling scare “Ice Age Cometh” period.
When 1998 super El Niño failed to set a new world record, GISS under Hansen set about in ernest to “wrought” a new 20th Century official climate series getting rid of an embarrassing natural variability that had all of the 20th Century warming occurring before 1940 when CO2 from human sources was not sufficient to account for this. Also, to have a half degree or more of cooling til’ 1979 with CO2 pouring out apace and the warming to 1998 just erasing this deep cooling, couldn’t be tolerated! Then to be hit over the head with the temperature hiatus lasting 18yrs (beginning of natural variability’s cooling period) was a no-more-mister-nice-guy call to arms by the Climate Wroughters.
Hey, my faux space cloud theory actually being presented!!!! Lol
If the “Jupiter Oscillation” herds meteors towards earth, then it alternatively should herd them away from earth, too, doubling up on the effect.
Well if the data is public then I expect to see one of Willis’s analyses soon, showing those peaks that either line up or don’t.
I forget what it’s called, but it culls the noise and finds whether there’s an my “there” there or not. And he does it in plain English, which I enjoy.
Given the distance between the earth and both Jupiter and Saturn, any meteorites, micro or otherwise, that are perturbed by this Jupiter/Saturn oscillation would take a number of years to get here. It’s also possible that they meteorites would take a large number of different paths to get from there to here (existing meteorites are already on a large number of different orbits, so how strongly this postulated affect impacts those meteorites will also vary)
As a net results, some meteorites would only take a few years to wander from out there to down here, while others will take more time.
The more I think about it, because of this smearing effect, it may be difficult to find any peak in infalling meteorites, even if this Jupiter/Saturn affect can be proven.
More Scaffetta cyclomania, in my opinion.
There are three reasons:
1. If there really was enough remaining solar system ‘dust’ to affect cloud nucleation, then we would have observed some accumulation of it on the ISS over its more than twenty years of continuous occupation. We haven’t. And such requisite quantities would have affected deep space missions to Jupiter and Saturn. They didn’t. Observational fails.
2. There are massive amounts of organic cloud nucleation agents: turpenes from coniferous forests, isoprenes from deciduous and tropical forests (why the Great Smokey mountains are ‘smokey’ in summer), and marine bioaerosols like dimethyl sulfide (DMS) that overwhelm any ‘space dust’ contribution.
3. There is no good evidence for a ~60 year climate cycle in either Greenland or Antarctic ice cores having high resolution over the past few hundred years. The stadium wave hypothesis for the Arctic is about 60 years, but varying locationally (the stadium wave). If Scaffetta causality were correct, there would be no wave.
2. There are massive amounts of organic cloud nucleation agents: turpenes from coniferous forests, isoprenes from deciduous and tropical forests (why the Great Smokey mountains are ‘smokey’ in summer), and marine bioaerosols like dimethyl sulfide (DMS) that overwhelm any ‘space dust’ contribution.
I’m going to divert to a theory on the effects of CO2 increases in the atmosphere. Increased CO2 reduces desertification by increasing growth and biomass which holds moisture. Evaporation of this moisture creates clouds. There is a debate on the effects of low level vs. high clouds, but all come from moisture in the atmosphere.
Will increased CO2 in the atmosphere over a period of decades to centuries increase the biomass enough to increase the albedo of the planet resulting in lower global temperatures?
But Dan, the increased CO2 results in increased plant growth, which gives more shade, and everybody knows it is cooler in the shade! Al Gore will likely make a movie about this growing menace, featuring scenes of hurricane-force winds toppling supertrees, able to demolish tall buildings with a single crash. A proposed title would be “Little Planet of Horrors.”
The greening is also endothermic, sequesters energy in the plants thereby having a cooling effect. Also, the higher CO2 makes plants more drought tolerant, reducing evapotranspiration and meaning marginal desert conditions with no temperature change or no increased precipitation become green.
So we have a barely perceptible change in weather which is causing a change in the belief systems of the climate religion. Weather effects that were the norm in my youth 70 years ago are now all caused by Jupiter. So we need to spend very large sums to reduce our emissions. If we examine the atmosphere and forget about patting ourselves on the back for emission reduction it is found the efforts have an immeasurable effect. Perhaps we should endeavour to change the orbit of Jupiter makes as much sense to me. What does make sense is this is not about fact or logic it is about religious belief.
Cracked it.
Firstly,the figure I recall from somewhere was 100 tonnes per day of dust falling onto Earth
Do Radio Hams bounce themselves off the ionisation trails the stuff leaves behind?
There’s a website somewhere where you can listen to it in Real Time
In answer to someone, they’ve already ‘hung a bag outside’ and catched some…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_(spacecraft)
Next and as I keep raving, Earth is old. The soil/dirt is old. All the plant nutrition that it had, that grew all the coal, oil and gas we now have, all that nutrition is out at sea, making up the Continental Shelves.
Is it possible that this infalling dust is helping feed the plants and keep them alive?
What would happen if it slowed or stopped? Would the plants not become weak and die?
Leaving behind a desert perchance?
Ah but you (*repeatedly*) say, The Climate Changed and created the desert.
OK. I say, which comes first in a rainforest – the forest or the rain?
What if I then say “Deserts are cold places”
High (daytime) temperatures maybe, but there’s no energy stored there. You need water (rain) to store energy.
And if you have a lot of Cold Places dotted around the globe – is that or is it not “An Ice Age’?
Well what about the timing of said Ice Ages?
Quote:
“The Sun is near the edge of the Local Interstellar Cloud. It is thought to have entered the region at some point between 44,000 and 150,000 years ago and is expected to remain within it for another 10,000 to 20,000 years.”
Would roughly line up with Ice Ages, timings and durations?
From here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Interstellar_Cloud
Got it?
The dust from that thing is feeding the plants, the plants control the climate and as Sun & Earth move through it, Ice Ages come and go.
Also intervening Warm Periods
just perfect
That’s my space dust cloud theory again, lol. Enough dust would act as a screen lower the solar radiation reaching the earth. So much fun! Lol
Been throwing this out there for years as a joke.
Mr. boder: If you had thrown in the jupiter part, you coulda got a grant.
I have utilized the research work of Scafetta et al. and Ermakov et al. by constructing a combined model with TSI, space dust index, and GH gases changes starting from1610. The model and the observed temperature has an exceptional good correlation of 0.97.
A blog story here: https://www.climatexam.com/single-post/2015/08/31/cosmic-models-explain-global-warming-almost-perfectly-and-forecast-cooling-in-510-years
I also was going to comment that I’m surprised to see this sort of thing being even considered by the climate establishment. But then I saw that Scaffeta was an author.
I’m not saying he’s wrong, just not part of climateriat. The significant involvement of multiple small-to-medium sized extra-terrestrial impacts around the time of the Younger Dryas also seems increasing credible to me.
Sure, there probably is something in the dust theory but scientists somehow overlook the significance of the priodic alignment of the very powerful magnetic fields of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune with the sun’s magnetic field. Because Uranus has a magnetic field that is almost perpendicular to the other planets it has to be on the other side of the sun. When magnetic fields are aligned they create temporarily an overall stronger magnetic field. So for the time of the alignment the sun’s primary magnetic field is strengthened, this would trigger a reduction in the “chaotic” solar magnetic storm activity, hence reduce EUV emissions, so cooling the upper atmosphere. Because of the various feedback mechanisms in a variable magnetic star, like our sun, the reduction of solar magnetic storm activity lasts for two or four solar cycles depending on the closeness of the alignment. Of couse there are other factors including the gravitational factor because we saw what happened to the sun’s orbit around the solar system baricenter when this type of alignment occurred in the early years of this century even though it was not a very strong (exact) alignment.
The solar wind is ‘Alfvenic supersonic’. In simple terms it means that no magnetic or electric influence can travel towards to sun. Not Jupiter’s nor Uranus’ magnetic fields.
Jupiter and Saturn’s magnetic field are constantly aligned with the Sun’s for about 11 years, then they are opposite it for 11 years. It doesn’t matter where in their orbit they are, the impact will be the same.
If the north pole of both fields are pointed in the same direction, then they are aligned. If they aren’t then the fields aren’t aligned. The length or shape of the orbit doesn’t matter.
but because the solar wind moves outwards 10 times faster than any magnetic influence can move towards the sun, it doesn’t matter if the fields are aligned or not.
I thought that magnetic fields propagated at the speed of light — and isn’t solar wind made of particle masses which can only approach the speed of light?
The solar wind is almost a super conductor and magnetic fields in a conductor move with the Alfven speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfv%C3%A9n_wave and do not move at the speed of light: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamics
The field is almost ‘frozen’ into the moving plasma and moves with it, that is:away from the sun.
So his nonsense was wrong for two reasons instead of just one.
Is there stellar dust….and micro stellar dust? Microscopic particles in the air of large US cities are captured with a special filter and a fan device that forces the air thru the filter….requires a powerful microscope to view…the microscopic air profile is different for different cities….the particles go in a person’s lungs, but don’t come back out.
Is not cosmic dust is concentrated in the equatorial belt in orbit around the Earth? Cosmic dust remains very long in high layers of the atmosphere. How long does dust in the stratosphere last after super volcanic eruptions?
Empirical answer, depending on the >VEI 4 eruption, at most about 2-3 years, and more typically <1 year. For data and references, See essay Blowing Smoke in my ebook of same title (but so titled for different reasons).
Cosmic dust falls from space, and the centrifugal force at the equator is strongest.
Centrifugal force is a fictitious force so has no effect on falling objects. But you know that.
This is off topic, but is down to Earth, and it is real:
I’m not fond of “cycles” but do find “episodes” interesting.
Such as the “no wind” episode currently impacting the Oregon and Washington power supply.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx
earth dot nullschool dot net
. . . shows the situation – with a powerful “Low” in the North Pacific.
Where is that going, and what is it going to do?
What’s Up for December? A meteor shower, an extraordinary close meetup between Jupiter and Saturn, and the winter solstice.
December brings one of the most reliable annual meteor showers – and one of the best in 2020: the Geminids. This shower is active from December 4th through the 17th, as Earth plows through the trail of dusty debris left behind in the orbit of asteroid 3200 Phaethon – which might actually be a burnt-out comet.
https://www.nasa.gov/mediacast/jpl/whats-up-december-2020
Glacier experts say that principal cause of melting is the direct absorption of sunlight not warm air. Glacial ice is quite dark in color. The key variables are CLOUDINESS and snow cover. It would interesting to know the degree of cloud cover in the arctic from the start of polar satellites 1979 to present. This should relate to melt in Greenland and perhaps sea ice. You then have something to compare the 60 year cycle to and meteor dust
Glacier experts say …
rain.
Ken McCracken and others put the planetary cycles at “87, 350, 510, and 710 years”. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11207-014-0510-1
Nicola Scafetta – would you care to comment? Also, while they refer to the solar effect on GCRs, could the effect be on dust instead or on both?
This is interesting but there’s no info on exactly how the change in Jupiter’s eccentricity mediates the flux of micrometeors towards Earth. I clicked on the link but it’s just the same AGU abstract and the full paper is paywalled.
I suspect the abstract could’ve summarised the mechanism in a few short sentences but didn’t so we’re left hanging on the most important aspect of the paper: the jovicentric hyperbolic flyby characteristics of the the dust and how that changes when Jupiter’s eccentricity waxes and wanes.
Incidentally, I can’t see how it can change much although, a slower Jupiter (at a cyclicly higher aphelion) will perturb dust more than at any other time.
“…with a period of quasi 60 years due to its gravitational coupling with Saturn.” The first thing I thought of when I read this is the astrological concept of the 60 year cycle of ‘Saturn return’, not that I think astrology has anything to do with the micrometeors, just that the 60 year Saturn cycle is common.
By Jove!
It is quite interesting for me to see micrometeors, auroras, and 60 year cycles all mentioned in the same article. Exactly 60 years ago I was just entering high school in Northern Minnesota. I was interested in science, and had a close friend with the same interests. He had found articles discussing micrometeorites, and auroras and convinced me to join in observing both. We put dishes in our rooftops to collect the micrometeorites, and spent many evenings looking for, and occasionally recording and sending in postcards describing them. To whom, I don’t remember.
The story at the time was that, in our area, auroral displays happened every three days, or so. However, half the time it was daylight, and in another half it was cloudy. We also were asleep much of the dark hours. This would mean that we could only expect to see the auroras every couple of weeks, or so. And we did. When either of us noticed, we would get together, usually in my back yard in sleeping bags to keep warm and record what we saw. Each would send in a post card. I saw more aurora displays that fall than I have in total since then. I’m not sure where we were in the 60 year cycle, but if there was a peak then, we would be in another one now. I haven’t seen any here in Texas.
Our micrometeorite collections were less successful. My dish did get dirty, but it was dismissed by parents and teachers as dust from US highway 2, which passed several feet out from my front door. I think they were probably right.
The number of days with magnetic storms per year indicates the effect of the Sun’s magnetic activity on the Earth’s magnetosphere. You can see a huge decline since 1997 (beginning of the 23rd solar cycle).
Forgive me if others beat me to this question (to excited to read all the posts).
Does this “space dust-nucleation-clouds-albedo” “”forcing”” (yes, I used double quotation marks!) correlate with ice age interstitial periods? The post discusses only the 60 year pseudo cycle.
If all this dust is falling on earth – would the earths rotation speed be getting noticeably slower?
Can we try to persuade governments that the same kind of procedures, audits, certifications that apply to many areas of our lives, particularly products should apply to climate science?
I think the problem is few people will listen to alternative views on climate because in their view we’re in a climate emergency and must persuade the world to act because the apparent consensus of experts cannot possibly be wrong, sceptics are not qualified and are either stupid or deliberately trying to cast doubt and cause delay because they are being paid to or don’t want to change their lifestyles. Even if we could get through I imagine many will still not change, afraid of the consequences to them of questioning the apparent consensus and approved experts.
So I think we need to first show why all the above is wrong and dangerous:
My concern is that rather than being a win/win situation if we have the science wrong we are in a very dangerous position because we do not adequately understand longrange weather/climate and don’t know what real dangers lie ahead.
In many other high consequence areas of everyday life we have a system to avoid dangerous mistakes and give us confidence, like food hygiene certificates, kite marks for household goods, a wide system of procedures, independent audit, certification for aviation etc. From what I can make out little or none of this applies to climate science which to my mind is also producing a product of very high consequence if it fails. We would not accept lack of this in the examples above, so why climate science where the stakes are very high?
I think the relatively recent 737Max issue may be a good example, I may have it wrong, but think the problem was the FAA failed to remain independent of Boeing and failed to correct their inadequate use of procedures. The apparent consensus of experts seemed convinced the plane was safe. I think this example shows that despite our best efforts and intentions, however impossible it may seem the apparent consensus of experts can be wrong. If we do not have a suitable system, or in this case if it fails there are likely to be disastrous consequences for everyone. Shows the importance of learning the right lessons from failures (e.g. aircrash investigations), procedures, independent audit, certifications. In these kinds of engineering situations we also have many supplier/customer interactions where many of the customers will also be large engineering companies who need to be sceptical their suppliers product will do what it says on the tin which I think also greatly improves reliability.
I am not sure the current science system is the right kind of system to develop this kind of important product (understanding longrange weather/climate) with such massive implications for us all both if it is right or wrong; I think engineering works quite differently.
I presume much of the above mentioned procedures, audits, certification etc (e.g. food safety, household appliance, aviation etc) comes from governments; can we try to persuade governments that the same should apply to climate science? This is about getting the decisions right, avoiding dangerous mistakes.
Oops please delete the above, it was meant to go under the Lancing the Lancet’s…Sorry about that
Jupiter attacks!
We’re doomed!