Hello Jennifer,
My paper, “Rhodes Fairbridge and the idea that the solar system regulates the earth’s climate”** has now been published.
Here is the link:
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
I would be most grateful if you would post it on your website. I am sure it will be of interest to your readers.
As is usual for a high quality international scientific journal, my article was subject to a vigorous peer review process, to which I had to respond before the reviewers and the editors would agree to publish it. This having been done, the paper has now been published.
Yours sincerely
Richard Mackey
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Here is the abstract:
Rhodes Fairbridge died on 8th November, 2006. He was one of Australia’s most accomplished scientists and has
a special connection with Australia. In July, 1912 his father Kingsley established Fairbridge Village near Perth.
It contains a chapel of elegant simplicity designed by one of the world’s most famous architects of the time, Sir
Herbert Baker, as a labour of love to commemorate Kingsley. Rhodes is one of the few scientists to research the
sun/climate relationship in terms of the totality of the sun’s impact on the earth (i.e. gravity, the electromagnetic
force and output and their interaction). When the totality of the sun’s impact is considered, having regard to the
relevant research published over the last two decades, the influence of solar variability on the earth’s climate is
very strongly non-linear and stochastic. Rhodes also researched the idea that the planets might have a role in
producing the sun’s variable activity. If they do and if the sun’s variable activity regulates climate, then ultimately the planets may regulate it. Recent research about the sun/climate relationship and the solar inertial motion (sim) hypothesis shows a large body of circumstantial evidence and several working hypotheses but no satisfactory account of a physical sim process. In 2007 Ulysses will send information about the solar poles. This could be decisive regarding the predictions about emergent Sunspot Cycle No 24, including the sim hypothesis.
According to the sim hypothesis, this cycle should be like Sunspot Cycle No 14, and be followed by two that will
create a brief ice age. During the 1920s and ‘30s Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology published research about
the sun/climate relationship, especially Sunspot Cycle No 14, showing that it probably caused the worst drought
then on record.
And an extract from the paper:
"The earth’s atmosphere contains several major oscillating wind currents that have a key role in the regulation of the earth’s weather and climate. These wind currents include the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO); Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO); the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO); the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO); the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO); the Atlantic Multdecadal Oscillation (AMO); the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD); and the Arctic Oscillation (AO); and the northern and southern polar vortices, which are two permanent cyclones at the poles. FAGAN (1999), (2000) and (2004) has shown how the climate changes rendered by these global atmospheric systems have resulted in major historic changes to cultures and societies throughout the world since the dawn of history.
LABITZKE et al. (2005), COUGHLIN and KUNG (2004) and CORDERO and NATHAN (2005) report that the sunspot cycle drives these large-scale oscillating wind currents. For example, strength of the QBO circulation and the length of the QBO period varies directly with the sunspot cycle. COUGHLIN and KUNG (2004) also conclude that at a range of atmospheric heights and at all latitudes over the planet, the atmosphere warms appreciably during the maximum of the sunspot cycle, and cools during the minimum of the cycle.xix VAN LOON, MEEHL AND ARBLASTER (2004) established that in the northern summer (July to August), the major climatological tropical precipation maxima are intensified in solar maxima compared with solar minima during the period 1979 to 2002.
NUGROHO and YATINI 2006 report that the sun strongly influences the IOD during wet season in the monsoons climate pattern; that is, the December to February period. CAMP and TUNG (2006) found that a significant relationship exists between polar warming and the sunspot cycle. ZAITSEVA et al. (2003) found that the intensity of the NAO depends on solar activity. ABARCA DEL RIO et al. (2003) have found that the patterns of variation between indices of solar activity, the Atmospheric Angular Momentum index and Length of Day show that variations in solar activity are a key driver of atmospheric dynamics. The United States Geological Survey agency found that changes in total solar radiant output cause changes in regional precipitation, including floods and droughts in the Mississippi River basin.xx The tropical oceans absorb varying amounts of solar radiant output, creating ocean temperature variations.
These are transported by major ocean currents to locations where the stored energy is released into the atmosphere. As a result, atmospheric pressure is altered and moisture patterns are formed that can ultimately affect regional precipitation.
SCAFETTA et al.(2004) and SCAFETTA and WEST (2005) have found that the earth’s temperature periodicities, particularly those of the oceans, inherit the structure of the periodicity of solar activity. WHITE et al. (1997) and REID (1991) have found that the sunspot cycle produces periodicities in the oceans’ temmperatures. This research shows that sea surface temperatures in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans, whether taken separately or combined, follow measures of solar radiant output derived from satellite observations and the sunspot record.
The sun’s separate impacts on the atmosphere and the ocean, and the complex non-linear interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean, is another process that amplifies the non-linear impact of the sun on our climate. Given that solar activity is a key determinant of ocean temperature, the decline on solar activity measured over the last decade should give rise in due course to a cooling of the oceans.
Read the full paper here: http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
** MACKEY, R., 2007. Rhodes Fairbridge and the idea that the solar system regulates the Earth’s climate. Journal
of Coastal Research, SI 50 (Proceedings of the 9th International Coastal Symposium), 955 – 968. Gold Coast,
Australia, ISSN 0749.0208
We need to put the whole Climate Change issue into perspective vis-a-vis the Peak Oil Crisis. Everyone needs to ask themselves, their associates, all sitting elected officials and those seeking office, especially the office of President of the United States, "What is more threatening in both the long and short terms, a beneficial 1 degree F rise in average world temperatures over the past 100 years, or a 1 percent decline in world oil production over the last 100 weeks - with steepening declines forecast? Furthermore, can our economy better deal with declining fuel inventories in an environment of persistent warming, or in an environment of declining average temperatures over the next several decades, the most likely scenario given the highly reliable solar inertial motion (SIM) model forecasts of climate change?” Solar cycle # 24 will tell the tale. The problem is not AGW. The real problem is the end of cyclical warming coincident with the onset of Peak Oil.
Hi
I'm highly surprised by this blog. It's citing one of my papers (Abarca del Rio et al., 2003) where it is said exactly the inverse of what is said herein. In fact we showed that there was not a true relationship between solar activity, atmospheric angular momentum and length of the day, at these time scales (interannual time scales) ...Not a sole one. Even the one which was the more believed, the one related with the decadal time scales, is only coincidental. I do not know if at longer time scales it is true, but at least in the cases which we investigated, the linear relationship investigated over more than a century, was coincidental.
regards
rodrigo
Hi
I'm highly surprised by this blog. It's citing one of my papers (Abarca del Rio et al., 2003) where it is said exactly the inverse of what is said herein. In fact we showed that there was not a true relationship between solar activity, atmospheric angular momentum and length of the day, at these time scales (interannual time scales) ...Not a sole one. Even the one which was the more believed, the one related with the decadal time scales, is only coincidental. I do not know if at longer time scales it is true, but at least in the cases which we investigated, the linear relationship investigated over more than a century, was coincidental.
regards
rodrigo
Louis
the absorption of radiation by CO2 can be tested in the laboratory. CO2 is not going to behave any differently in the atmosphere.
Louis Hissink: Modtran and its successors
http://www.dodsbir.net/sitis/view_pdf.asp?id=DothH04.pdf
have been exhaustively experimentally tested. Yes. Exhaustively. Radiative transfer (RT) is a well validated science. The USAF does not want have to evaluate everything experimentally. I should have qualified what I said with "in the clear sky LTE domain", since that is what the MODTRAN calculator describes. Note I say RT, not "heat interception".
There are many, many other domains where RT is different, and many, many other problems with GCM's but clear sky LTE radiation transfer is not one of them. Matching the characteristics of RT theory in a GCM is a problem, but not one of the bigger ones. If you want some big ones, check out-- http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/FCMTheRadiativeForcingDuetoCloudsandWaterVapor.pdf
Allan Ames
The idea that CO2 intercepts heat is an hypothesis that cannot be tested since it assumes processes at the molecular level in the earth's atmosphere.
The earth's atmosphere is made up of three (3) components - gas (nitrogen, oxygen, plus minor amounts of hydrogen, argon and CO2) - solid - suspended particles and liquid - water vapour, or clouds.
Modtran, the computer program you linked above, is quite accurate in terms of its assumptions.
But what if the assumptions are wrong?
Just realised I shot myself in the foot. If CO2 means the presence of life then, logically, there must be Venusians and Martians.
Sigh - the price one has to pay for debating the mob.
SJT
There is no mechanism by which CO2 warms the earth. It is a gas at earth surface temperatures, as well as a gas at Martian surface temperatures, including Venus that is at a somewhat higher temperature.
All CO2 indicates is a proliferation of life, whether vegetable or otherwise.
You and your fellow travellers want to extinguish life, don't you?
re: Louis Hissink: Just to prove I am an equal opportunity skeptic, the science -- radiative transfer theory, compliments of the USAF -- says that OCO intercepts, on average, 20watts/sq.m. and shuttles it from the surface-to-space radiation field into the kinetic energy of the other gases, and that doubling OCO will add another 3(+/-) watts/sq.m. to the conversion. I do not think 3 will have a profound effect, but neither is negligible.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/cgimodels/radiation.html