The Moons’ influence on the atmosphere over Australia

We know the moon changes our tides, but can it also change our rainfall? Could the moon also cause tides in the atmosphere? Some researchers have found such periodic movements in air above 3000m. Some have suggested that the moon drives the cyclical shifts in the Length of Day (LOD) that occur on a fortnightly and seasonal basis.

Ian Wilson has been scouring the data quietly for years, following these ideas, and has found a link between lunar cycles and the sub tropical high pressure ridge that occurs in summer over the East Coast of Australia. He noticed there were 9.4 and 3.8 year cycles which match periods in spring tidal cycles. What matters is how close the full moon is to perhelion (the  closest point Earth comes to the Sun).  It’s yet another piece of the puzzle that the IPCC favoured models ignore.

The lunar forces are, not surprisingly, smaller than the solar one, and as the abstract points out: “it is not so much in what years do the lunar tides reach their maximum strength, but whether or not there are peaks in the strength of the lunar tides that re-occur at the same time within the annual seasonal cycle.”

It remains to be seen how his hypothesis stands up in the long run, but it’s yet another example of a genuine research avenues that are not being followed by government funded researchers who are heavily funded to find connections between CO2 and climate, but not so much to explore all the competing possibilities. Only open research and genuine curiosity will help us to truly predict the climate, inasmuch as it is possible to do so. Farmers, people living in flood zones, town planners, and dam managers desperately need models that predict the climate, instead of models that just give fashionable answers.

Long live the spirit of relentless curiosity.

–Jo

Lunar Tides and the Long-Term Variation of the Peak Latitude Anomaly
of the Summer Sub-Tropical High Pressure Ridge over Eastern Australia

[PDF available from Bentham Open]

Guest Post by Ian Wilson

The main take-home conclusions from this paper are that:

  1. The most important influence upon the climate of Northern NSW and Southern Queensland after the La Nina/El Nino phenomenon is the Peak Latitude Anomaly for the Summer Sub-Tropical High Pressure Ridge over Eastern Australia (L(SA)).
  2. The interannual variability of L(SA) is major mechanism influencing inter-annual rainfall variability in Eastern Australia. It has also been shown to be connected to the inter-annular variability of the annual mean maximum temperatures, zonal westerly winds, meridional winds and mean air temperature.
  3. The long-term (i.e for periods of 2 to 20 years) variations of L(SA) are dominated by (significant) periodic signals at 9.4 (+0.4/-0.3) and 3.78 (+/- 0.06) years.
  4. L(SA) systematically moves away from the Equator as the angle between the Earth-Sun axis and the line-of-nodes of the Lunar orbit (at the time of perihelion) decreases. The magnitude of the movement of the mean summer peak latitude anomaly can amount to 1 degree of latitude over the 9.3 year semi-draconic spring tidal cycle.
  5. L(SA) moves towards the Equator as the number of days (to the nearest full day) that New/Full is from Perihelion decreases. The magnitude of the movement of the mean summer peak latitude anomaly can amount to 0.7 degree of latitude over the 3.8 year peak spring tidal cycle.
  6. The 9.4 year signal in L(SA) is in-phase with the draconic spring tidal cycle, while the phase of the 3.8 year signal in L(SA) is retarded by one year compared to the 3.8 year peak spring tidal cycle.
  7. This paper supports the conclusion that long-term changes in the lunar tides, in combination with the more dominant solar-driven seasonal cycles, play an important role in determining the observed inter-annual to decadal variations of L(SA).
  8. The IPCC does not take into account the important effects upon climate of long-term lunar atmospheric tides.

Fig. (3). A Lomb-Scargle periodogram of the LSA data set. The spectral amplitude is scaled such that the area under the spectrum is an estimator for the data variance.

ABSTRACT

This study looks for evidence of a correlation between long-term changes in the lunar tidal forces and the interannual to decadal variability of the peak latitude anomaly of the summer (DJF) subtropical high pressure ridge over Eastern Australia (LSA) between 1860 and 2010. A simple “resonance” model is proposed that assumes that if lunar tides play a role in influencing LSA, it is most likely one where the tidal forces act in “resonance” with the changes caused by the far more dominant solar-driven seasonal cycles. With this type of model, it is not so much in what years do the lunar tides reach their maximum strength, but whether or not there are peaks in the strength of the lunar tides that re-occur at the same time within the annual seasonal cycle. The “resonance” model predicts that if the seasonal peak lunar tides have a measurable effect upon LSA then there should be significant oscillatory signals in LSA that vary in-phase with the 9.31 year draconic spring tides, the 8.85 year perigean spring tides, and the 3.80 year peak spring tides. This study identifies significant peaks in the spectrum of LSA at 9.4 (+0.4/

Jennifer Marohasy has also posted an announcement of this paper for those who are interested in other comments there too.

8.7 out of 10 based on 36 ratings

102 comments to The Moons’ influence on the atmosphere over Australia

  • #

    I’m of the opinion that the moon’s magnetic field plays more of a role in climate phases and whether events than its gravity. Charge being delivered into our atmosphere by two libratiously interacting magnetic fields can alter moisture content and paticulate movement. Not to say gravity doesn’t have an effect, though.

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    John Brookes

    I’ll have a proper read of this soon, but my first thought is the Skeptical Science will have to add “Its the mooon” to their list of dodgy arguments…

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      Grumpy Old Man

      It’s now established by the warmist apologists that ,”It is a noble thing to lie for the Cause”. So if you don’t mind, Mr. Brookes, I’ll take anything you post with a large pinch of salt.

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      KeithH

      “to their list of dodgy arguments”…like it’s a few extra parts per million of that well known trace gas and proven plant fertiliser absolutely essential to all life on this planet, CO2!

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    • #

      I’ll have a proper read of this soon, but my first thought is the Skeptical Science will have to add “Its the mooon” to their list of dodgy arguments…

      Anyone who thinks “it’s just one thing” is a moron.
      Considering you and those buffoons at SkS reject anything and everything other than CO2, that makes all of you morons of first order.

      You need to open your mind and realise that many many forces effect Earths climate. We just need 1% of the money flushed down the CO2 toilet to reserach these other forces and come up with some reasonable answers.

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      • #
        Truthseeker

        Baa, more than one variable is right.

        Johnny boy, have a look at this for a list of variables that effect climate.

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      • #
        John Brookes

        Ah yes, the old, “warmists consider just one variable” move. I’d have thought better of you Baa. You know that climate scientists take into account many things which can influence climate, and yet you try and pretend that they don’t. Why?

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        • #
          KinkyKeith

          JB says:

          “You know that climate scientists take into account many things which can influence climate”

          Really I thought that they only looked at CO2 effects?

          Your comment, though, is a reminder to put CO2 in its place as you rightly say, among the Many climate influences.

          My comment relates to modelling and how CO2 fits in and how the facts about CO2 are

          distorted by an incomplete modelling process.

          It is quite acceptable when using a model in engineering processes, to take out a small

          element of a process and scrutinize it; hence the scrutiny of CO2 effects in isolation,

          is OK up to a point.

          What you can’t do is use that analysis to then determine the function of the whole

          model.

          The results of any working of a small part of the problem MUST THEN BE RE-INTEGRATED

          into the model and a full assessment made from there.

          The Climate Change people Never re-integrated the CO2 analysis back into what they

          presented us with.

          Had they done that it would have shown a number of important things:

          1. There is no model of the effect of CO2 on “Climate”. By definition a model describes, with reasonable accuracy, changes in a system when one or more variables are altered. No CO2 “model” has ever done this and successfully described or prediceted climate variability. There are NO models.

          2. CO2 and especially Human Origin CO2 is quantitatively irrelevant compared to Water as a green house gas.

          3. The concept of GHG is irrelevant anyhow because in the troposphere the main limiting heat transfer mechanism at work is Convection not radiation.

          4. The full “Greenhouse” analysis was never presented because it was always the intention to implicate and damn man’s combustion of coal and oil.

          As far as CO2s place in the Earth’s atmospheric heat balance: it doesn’t have one.

          It is irrelevant but for some reason our tax money keeps being shovelled to places we don’t want it to go eg Tim, The UN etc.

          JB Any of your so called “scientists” if they really were scientists, would know that the Earths Climate is far too complex to model. The fact that they don’t even know and continue to search for the “perfect” model tells me they are frauds not Scientists.

          Maybe they are Post Modern Political Scientists?

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        • #
          keith L

          When John Brooks claims that scientists “take many things into account” does that mean that they have accurate quantitative models which deal with all the variables which appear in the link by TruthSeeker?

          Or is it just John Brooks way of trying to avoid dealing with the fact that they cannot possibly.

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        • #
          Sonny

          John,your beloved scientists only consider these factors to the extent that their consideration does not overide their main government funded contention:

          THAT WHATEVER HAPPENS WILL BE VERY BAD AND IT IS ALL THE FAULT OF THE FOSSIL FUEL ICE AGE (INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE).

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      • #
        KinkyKeith

        Meatloaf had the right words for that:

        “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Want My Money Back !! de de de

        🙂

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    • #
      Sean McHugh

      John Brookes said:

      I’ll have a proper read of this soon, but my first thought is the Skeptical Science will have to add “Its the mooon” to their list of dodgy arguments…

      You mean, “It’s the moon”. But if our argument became, “It’s the moon”, we wouldn’t need to consider a list of contributing factors for temperature cycles, would we? Anyway, John, you and the left know the coal miners are to blame for our cold summer and all the damned rain (no pun intended).

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    • #
      Sonny

      No John you are correct.
      If I had $1000 then 40c of that would be CO2.
      Whether I have 37c or 40c of CO2 clearly must influence my overll financial situation.
      Nothing else could have caused a wee little bit of warming in the past 100 years.
      It must be CO2! That damn 40c!!

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    • #
      Mike Fomerly of Oz

      Why bother reading it? You appear to have your mind made up, and I think it’s safe to posit that, having betrayed your prejudice, nobody here is going to care much about what you have to say regarding the paper anyway.

      Most people who would care to maintain even a thin veneer of objectivity — you know, the proper scientific attitude — would reserve judgement until after they read the research. Once having read the research, they would discuss its merits in terms of the science, and refrain from displaying a juvenile, sneering attitude most commonly observed in high-school physics classes where there are precocious 16-year-old geeks who delude themselves that they understand quantum mechanics because they read some pop-sci book on the topic.

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    • #
      crakar24

      JB,

      Why dont we just refer to the teachings of Flannery i am sure he will back you up.

      Your hubris knows no bounds……………………..

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  • #
    Grumpy Old Man

    Well. We can predict where the sun and moon are going to be in the future, so it should be relatively easy to set up an experiment to falsify this hypothesis. If the hypothesis is correct, then it will be the first time that future weather patterns can be predicted so far into the future.

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    • #
      John Brookes

      Good idea. Very good idea.

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      • #
        brc

        If you’re so keen on falsifying theories, JB, tell us how we can falsify the ‘co2 is going to cause catastrophic warming’ theory.

        We know it’s not:
        – if we get more rain
        – if we get less rain
        – if we get more snow
        – if we get less snow
        – if we get warmer weather
        – if we get cooler weather
        – if we get more cyclones/hurricanes
        – if we get less cyclones/hurricanes
        – if we get lower average temperatures
        – if we get higher average temperatures

        All of the above have been invoked to ‘prove’ catastrophic global warming caused by an increase in co2 by 1/10th of 1% – according to the true believers, none of these can disprove it either.

        So tell us definitively how ‘catastrophic global warming’ can be falsified. Enquiring minds want to know.

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        • #
          KeithH

          That’s it in a nutshell brc! Seems like a very reasonable request, so what about it JB? Surely there’s a rational response lurking somewhere in the “overwhelming consensus” of the “settled science” of CAGW. Enquiring minds here really do want to know!

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          • #
            John Brookes

            There are a lot of predictions made with the tag of AGW. However only a few are central to their case. Two that immediately spring to mind are:

            Global warming, particularly at the poles.
            Nights warming more than days.

            Most of the other predictions are to some extent guess work, because the system is chaotic. Thus while polar sea ice has been in decline ever since satellite measurments began, I would have no problem if the current weather patterns shifted and polar sea ice began to grow again, at least over the short term (up to 30 years). I don’t think you guys should take too much comfort from short term changes.

            You’ll find that Jo believes that CO2 is warming the planet. Just ask her. She only disagrees about how much.

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          • #
            Streetcred

            JohnnyBoy … hate to break this to you, but CAGW predictions are ALL GUESS WORK. Father Christmas, Leprechauns, Fairies, Elves, etc., same same.

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          • #
            keith L

            Well if the only predictions are that nights and poles will warm a bit I don’t see what the fuss is about. Who cares if those two things happen? Nobody.
            And that is exactly why the warmists have had to make up all the other scary BS scenarios.

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          • #
            brc

            John Brookes, John Brookes, John Brookes. You should be on Gillards staff, you’re so good at avoiding the question.

            Let me repeat the question for you, with the relevant bits highlighted.

            What would it take to falsify the catastrophic global warming theory?

            I care not a whit for predictions, because that’s not what I asked. I don’t care when it would be falsified – any timeframe is fine, I just want to know what conditions would lead the very people who came up with the theory to say – OK, I was wrong.

            Tell us what observed conditions would falsify the theory.

            Just to clarify what I’m talking about here – the theory being that the extra observed co2 in the atmosphere will lead to global warming in the range of the IPCC predictions – for arguments sake, lets say 3 degrees.

            So what would falsify it?

            I don’t expect this to be answered, because you’ve never answered any other pointed questions.

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  • #
    janama

    hey – I’m a Cancer – don’t talk about the moon…….

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  • #
    KeithH

    Apologies for this outrageously OT comment Jo, but with the release of the Finkelstein (or should it be Frankenstein) Media report, the freedom of the press (and blogs) fight is well and truly on.

    May I recommend a remarkable but explosive site which will give a great background as to why Gillard, Labor, the Unions and the Greens are so keen to muzzle any dissenting voices.
    The current Arbib article is very topical.

    I know many regular posters here like Bob Malloy, Pointman, Tonyfromoz and others too numerous to name would be very interested and any and all feedback would make for great reading.

    If I know you at all Jo, I’m sure you’ll soon have a thread started on that Finkelstein Report and its implications, so apologies again if I’ve “jumped the gun”!

    There is something funny going on when one tries to access the site, so Google the following address:

    http://kangaroocourtaustralia.com

    http://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/

    and go to the site which currently shows the following:
    “One crook Stephen Conroy released the report by another crook Finkelstein”

    I forewarned everyone it’s explosive but read the articles especially re Gillards appointments to Fair Work Australia and elsewhere. Make of it what you will!

    [fixed] ED

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    • #
      Truthseeker

      Keith, I think that the link you are looking for is; http://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/

      I am not sure what you were surfing to at the time you copied the link 🙂

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      • #
        KeithH

        Thanks Truthseeker and Loki. I did inadvertently leave the stroke off, but enter even that correct webname in Google and you’ll see what I mean. I’m not IT savvy but even I don’t think it should bring up at the top what looks like some German fashion site “Love U Wear” which is the site I got with the link I originally provided!

        Given the content of Shane’s site, methinks somebody may be playing silly buggers and trying do a little sabotage or am I just being paranoid?

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        • #
          Truthseeker

          Keith, the important difference in the link is not the stroke. Your link was “kangaroocourtaustralia” when the correct link as “kangaroocourtOFaustralia”.

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        • #
          brc

          Yes, you’re just being paranoid.

          The DNS system that links urls with server addresses is a completely hands-off system that works in black and white, no shades of grey. Either the link is set up correctly, or it isn’t.

          Time for people everywhere to dump these ideas that people are somehow fiddling with the internet to hide your favoured sites. Either they are censored (and thus unreachable) or not (and thus reachable).

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    • #
      Loki

      Hi KeithH
      The link should be http://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/

      Cheers

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    • #
      Bob Malloy

      Keith,
      Simon at ACM has a good piece on Mr. Ray Finkelstein’s media enquiry.

      Censorship comes to Australia

      Saturday, 3 March 2012 18:37 pm · 2 comments

      by Simon

      The Australia of the future?

      UPDATE: Regarding jurisdictional issues, the following extremely concerning paragraph stands out:

      11.69 Another aspect of jurisdiction concerns how the News Media Council will exercise its power over all internet publishers. Foreign publishers who have no connection with Australia will be beyond its reach. However, if an internet news publisher has more than a tenuous connection with Australia then carefully drawn legislation would enable the News Media Council to exercise jurisdiction over it.

      Welcome to 1930’s Germany. or is it more post revolution Russia.

      I look forward to anything Jo comes up with on the matter.

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      • #
        Bob Malloy

        P.S. Menzies House is developing a new site that includes a petition.

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      • #
        KeithH

        Thanks for that link Bob, as absolutely sickening as it was which this clearly demonstrates:

        “It is clear from the report, in particular paragraphs 4.31-4.42, that silencing climate realists is a major reason for these regulations: it is unashamedly explicit in this (and even uses the dirty trick of using polls from – wait for it – 1966 as evidence the media is pro-climate skeptic, and that – wait for it – only the ABC is unbiased!)”.

        Andrew Bolt (at considerable risk) has also weighed in with an excellent article. I’m sure everyone here knows the way so I won’t bother with a link!

        The Report is a major Leftist rant and an absolute disgrace threatening our entire concept of democracy and freedom! If every Australian does not fight this tooth and nail then we don’t deserve to even live in this wonderful country.

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        • #
          sillyfilly

          Climate realists?

          How about this from Singo’ (courtesy Good Weekend) something A Bolt was very conspicuous in his disinformation yesterday, blaming sSwan for misinformation?:

          “Singleton tells me Rinehart has no interests besides mining. “There is no social life,” he says. “It’s just work.”

          ..Bolt’s voice is also heard on 2GB, the Sydney radio station that is majority-owned by Singleton and home to two of the country’s most strident talk-back hosts, Alan Jones and Ray Hadley. Says Singleton, who shares Rinehart’s views on mining and taxes: “We have been able to overtly and covertly attack governments … Because we have people employed by us like Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones and Ray Hadley who agree with her thinking about the development of our resources, we act in concert in that way.”

          Rinehart and her lobby group, Australians for Northern Development and Economic Vision, have been campaigning for mining companies to be allowed to import cheap labour from overseas.”

          And for BRC:

          re:
          What would it take to falsify the catastrophic global warming theory?

          [snip heavily]
          [I’ve snipped your libelous comment about a man who died in 2008. For the information of readers, Dr Frederick Seitz was an honoured and awarded scientist, a president of the National Academy of Sciences 1962-9, president of Rockerfeller University and the founding president of the George C marshall Institute. A much published and honoured man. Unreferenced, unverified lies by a stupid troll called Sillyfilly will not see the light of day so long as I’m a moderator of this blog. Shame on you Sillyfilly. Just one more comment about Dr Seitz will see you moderated off this blog for good, UNDERSTAND? Mod oggi]

          But on topic, you could prove that there is no greenhouse effect. You could prove that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. But then it’s down to the issue of sensitivity or radiative forcing of CO2 compared with other forcings and of course the natural cycles like TSI, ENSO, PDO etc. The maximum concentration of C02 for the ~1,000,000 years pre industrialisation was 280ppm (ice-core data) now it’s 390+. So we’re still a fair way away from the 560 ppm level that would induce the IPCC’s central temperature prediction of ~3DC. IEA latest data indicates were now pumping approximately 30 GT of CO2 into the atmosphere every year.

          And all this lack of knowledge about models is quite tiresome. A standard mathematical/statistical technique for forecasting is called “what-if” analyis. It’s standard procedure in many actuarial forecastings. The IPCC’s version of these in it’s scenarios. This analyis is attempts to predict CO2 concentrations into the future, so necessarily they are dependent on emissions intensity, that why there is a few of them.

          Here’s a good summary of the considerations.

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          • #
            brc

            Yawn. Question still not answered. Why am I not surprised.

            Standard Catastrapharian playbook #23 : try and insist that it’s up to everyone else to prove they are wrong. Usually after ranting and trying to blame some conservative figure for all the worlds problems.

            Sorry, chump. First, try ranting somewhere else.

            Next, come up with what can be used to falsify the theory.

            You know, real science is about coming up with both a theory, and a way to prove it is wrong. I have a theory about gravity. If I throw a ball in the air, and it keeps going up, then my theory is wrong. If the ball goes down, my theory lives on for a bit longer.

            That is how you falsify a theory. Not that I would expect any logical thinking from an escaped Bolt blog troll.

            Nothing about what-if scenarios, modelling, forecasting or other general soothsaying.

            What observed conditions would result in the theory being proven false? They have to exist, or it is a theory of no utility.

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          • #
            sillyfilly

            re:

            I’ve snipped your libelous comment about a man who died in 2008. For the information of readers, Dr Frederick Seitz was an honoured and awarded scientist, a president of the National Academy of Sciences 1962-9, president of Rockerfeller University and the founding president of the George C marshall Institute. A much published and honoured man. Unreferenced, unverified lies by a stupid troll called Sillyfilly will not see the light of day so long as I’m a moderator of this blog. Shame on you Sillyfilly. Just one more comment about Dr Seitz will see you moderated off this blog for good, UNDERSTAND? Mod oggi

            My understanding of the issue, referenced and verified: and I called the Oregon Petition a fraud not Seitz despite his involvment. My mention of Seitz was in reponse to a previous comment:

            What would it take to falsify the catastrophic global warming theory?

            Given this from the petition which constructed the “catastrophic” meme.

            There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.

            And references:

            Science 10 April 1998:
            Vol. 280 no. 5361 p. 195
            DOI: 10.1126/science.280.5361.195a
            News & Comment
            CLIMATE CHANGE
            Advocacy Mailing Draws Fire
            1. David Malakoff
            Summary
            In early March, tens of thousands of U.S. scientists received a bulk-mailed letter from a former president of the National Academy of Sciences inviting them to sign a petition urging lawmakers to reject the 1997 Kyoto climate treaty. Now some scientists and environmentalists are crying foul because its centerpiece is an article that looks like–but is not–a reprint from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
            “The mailing is clearly designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article, which is full of half-truths, is a reprint and has passed peer review,” says Raymond Pierrehumbert, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Chicago.
            “We’ve gotten several hundred calls from scientists asking what we are going to do about this,” reports Darren Goetz of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in Boston, an advocacy group that last year signed up 1558 scientists in urging the federal government to take action on global warming. Officials at the Sierra Club and the NAS say they, too, have gotten a flurry of complaints. Researchers “are wondering if someone is trying to hoodwink them,” says atmospheric chemist F. Sherwood Rowland, NAS foreign secretary.

            Robinson admits it is no coincidence that the article, which he designed on his computer, looks like one published by the academy. “I used the Proceedings as a model,” he says, “but only to put the information in a format the scientists like to read, not to fool people into thinking is from a journal.” He says he plans to submit a version shortly to a peer-reviewer journal.

            and this:
            STATEMENT BY THE COUNCIL
            OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
            REGARDING GLOBAL CHANGE PETITION

            April 20, 1998
            The Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is concerned about the confusion caused by a petition being circulated via a letter from a former president of this Academy. This petition criticizes the science underlying the Kyoto treaty on carbon dioxide emissions (the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change), and it asks scientists to recommend rejection of this treaty by the U.S. Senate. The petition was mailed with an op-ed article from The Wall Street Journal and a manuscript in a format that is nearly identical to that of scientific articles published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal.

            The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.

            In particular, the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a major consensus study on this issue, entitled Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming (1991,1992). This analysis concluded that ” …even given the considerable uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. … Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises.” In addition, the Committee on Global Change Research of the National Research Council, the operating arm of the NAS and the NAE, will issue a major report later this spring on the research issues that can help to reduce the scientific uncertainties associated with global change phenomena, including climate change.

            And finally the admission:

            2006 article the magazine Vanity Fair stated: “Today, Seitz admits that ‘it was stupid’ for the Oregon activists to copy the academy’s format.

            Now I leave it up to you. Are my comments reasonable or are your threats unreasonable?

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      • #
        Loki

        Speaking of 1930’s Germany check out this picture that was on the front of the NT News in July 2010.
        http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2010/07/08/162131_ntnews.html
        By the end of the day every copy I saw lying around had a pencilled in moustache and arm band.
        🙂

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    • #
      KeithH

      Thanks for the fix Ed. But the same thing happened when I tried to link the ‘kangaroocourt’ site at WUWT. Is it me, my computer or strange things going on at Google? Is it only me it’s happening to? Any suggestions or solutions appreciated.

      [Try copying and posting the link I added instead of the one you are using] ED

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  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    Um, Jo

    The Earth only has one moon, so it cannot be “the moons” unless you are talking about the other planets as well.

    Perhaps you mean “the moons’ cycles”.

    I just thought I would get in before one of the pedants did. …. but wait …

    ————————-

    Thanks 🙂 Fixed. Jo

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    • #
      Markus Fitzhenry

      A moon.

      (|)

      🙂

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    • #
      Brett_McS

      You win the “Eats, shoots and leaves” comma Panda award!

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    • #
      Stephen Brown

      The earth has but one moon. The influence of the moon is “the moon’s influence”.

      Psst! Jo!
      Move the apostrophe to the left, between the ‘n’ and the ‘s’.
      The apostrophe is then correctly the possessive apostrophe.

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      • #
        KinkyKeith

        Let’s do that.

        Whadda ya call that type of apostrophe? It’s not possessive but takes the place of something.

        🙂

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        • #
          brill

          Yhe possessive apostrophe ‘s is added if the word is singular (moon’s cycle) The apostrophe is placed after the word if it is plural (moons’ cycles) or has 2 s sounds (Jesus’ arm). There really isn’t a ‘proper term’ for when we use apostrophes in contractions.
          This is a summary of the use of the apostrophe. Any further grammar lessons, just ask LOL

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    Len

    Keith Nix from Boyup Brook predicted a very good year for WA farmers at the National Party conference last year at Carnarvon. It turned out to be the biggest harvest yet in WA. Keith based his predictions on the position of the moon which was going to be the furtherest away from the Earth.

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    Mark

    Hmmm… problematical, isn’t it Rereke?

    If we are discussing a single moon such as the earth has, would we not have “the moon’s cycle(s)”?

    Were there plural moons, would it not be “moons’ cycle(s)”?. Heck! Just say “lunar” and save a lotta trouble fer chrissakes!

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    Markus Fitzhenry

    Buggers

    Australian Climate Change Commissioner, Tim Flannery is in deep do do because during in his ramshackle potifications he didn’t take into account things like long-term variation of the peak latitude anomaly and probably another 100 causations. He should not be Australians’ climate commissioner. He should be left up a creek in a tinny without oars.

    Flannery:

    In 2005, Flannery predicted Sydney’s dams could be dry in as little as two years because global warming was drying up the rains, leaving the city “facing extreme difficulties with water”.

    In 2007, Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused “a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas” and made the soil too hot, “so even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems.

    But it’s not only Flannery that should get the axe there is a train full of snouts in the gravy, like the following;

    Australian Head of the National Climate Center at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, David Jones:

    In 2008. It may be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned.

    “There is a debate in the climate community, after … close to 12 years of drought, whether this is something permanent. Certainly, in terms of temperature, that seems to be our reality, and that there is no turning back.”

    Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO

    In 2009. It’s not drought, its climate change, say scientists.
    Three year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.

    Scientists working on the $7 million South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative:

    To see what role greenhouse gases played in the recent intensification, the scientists used sophisticated American computer climate models…
    ‘’It’s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,’’ said the bureau’s Bertrand Timbal. Source

    I would trust the predictions of a pet rock more than anything from these shining examples of hopelessness.

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      KeithH

      Markus: This is the “avalanche of (settled) science” from the organisations and scientists cited by Gillard the day she announced the carbon dioxide tax scam! And “rusted-on” Labor and Green voters still swallow it! Brainwashed, gullible and dumbed down doesn’t even begin to explain it!

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      Sonny

      The wort thing is that we are all paying increased water bills because of the alarmist pontifications by these no nothing experts.

      They were wrong about the water (BIG TIME WRONG).
      Why should I believe anything else that these government funded fraudsters spew from their bullshit holes?

      I want my f&@$ing money back.

      IVE HAD ENOUGH!!!!!!

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    J Knowles

    With something as multi-factorial and interactive as climate it’s tricky comparing only two sets of data. I like the yellow shading on that 1st graph which indicates aberrations from the pattern caused by major equatorial volcanic eruptions.
    Wilson’s hypothesis looks worthy of closer inspection.

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    Louis Hissink

    Piers Corbyn uses a lunar effect as part of his forecasting service analysis, coupled with solar plasma dynamics, so this study described here has merit, though I would personally suspect the connection is via the earth’s electric field rather than by a tidal one. In any case Piers has a success rate of 85% so there is a connection between the earth’s weather and a lunar effect.

    During 1989 at a scientific conference in Holland, a group of Russian scientists presented data on the alpha particle emission distribution over time of plutonium, noting that the emissions peaked just before the moon appeared at the horizon; they concluded that the link was gravitational. My take is that it’s more likely via the electric field. The general belief is that radioactivity (emission of nuclear particles) is physically invariant – gravity, temperature, pressure and magnetic fields do not affect it. Except no one tested the electric field.

    And some think that science is settled? Religions are though.

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      theRealUniverse

      There only one electron action. Magnetic action is a time variant. Action at a distance.

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      theRealUniverse

      Yes Piers is right too…

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      Wayne, s. Job

      This may also be a harmonic affect as plutonium is a pure substance.

      Keith @ 14 has a post about the predictive qualities of the moon for earth tremors, that also will be found to be caused by harmonic couplings and not gravity.

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    Andrew McRae

    Yep, bring it on. Throw ALL the effects into the climate research pot, stir, and let scientists simmer until a predictive theory crystallises.

    As many scientists (eg Bob Carter) have correctly pointed out, nobody lives in a global climate, it’s a statistical abstraction that doesn’t really exist. It’s our own peculiar regional climate and attendant weather events that we have to live with, prepare for, and adapt to. If the moon affected ONLY 20% of the summer rain of the Darling Downs and nowhere else on Earth, that alone would make it worthy of study.

    The rumour doing the rounds in the USA a few years ago was that Farmer’s Almanacs from 60 years ago can predict the season-by-season weather and rainfall better than the modern meteorologists. There has to be some regular periodic force behind this predictability. Solar and orbital cycles are just the obvious ones, so why not the Moon too?

    I suspect research along these lines will reveal warmists to be werewolves: the Moon brings out their worst side. 😉 The howls of frustration will be the first indicator of Mr Wilson’s success.

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    KeithH

    There is no reason to discount that the moon is another small piece in the climate puzzle.
    An interesting site run by a former CSIRO researcher (in a different field) Dr.R.J.Roberts PhD, reveals a man who puts “his money where his mouth is” by listing “Forecasts of Largest Regional Earthquakes for Full Moon and New Moon Periods of the Lunar Month Ahead”.

    From the site: “His research has already yielded astonishing results which bring accurate earthquake predictions a huge step closer to fulfillment. By sharing these predictions the author hopes that other researchers will benefit in the quest to make accurate predictions.”

    http://nextearthquake.com/index.htm

    Once again worth a visit and then make up your own minds.

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      Louis Hissink

      Corbyn has started to offer predictions of earthquakes based on the appearance of coronal holes in the sun, especially those which can be observed at the time from the earth itself. Coronal holes are interpreted to be the source of solar wind (a mass of + and -ve charged particles) and which when arriving at the earth seem to trigger earthquakes. So far from what I have been able see, Corbyn is right but the actual mechanism remains problematical from the stance of the standard theory.

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    Joe's World

    Jo,

    It would make sense that if the moon effects our tides, then the less dense atmosphere MUST be effected as well.

    Of course you know that, that is not temperature data and will be ignored by the consensus of scientists.

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      KinkyKeith

      Joe

      You’ve touched on a very interesting topic.

      Maybe the diurnal bulge might have a lunar equivalent.

      🙂

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      Brett_McS

      You win the “Eats, shoots and leaves” comma Panda award!

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      brc

      I’ve always thought this – just by observation I’ve noticed that bad weather systems always seem to coincide with big tides. I’ve also noticed that the ‘macro’ weather you get in Australia is pretty much the same by season, which is a consequence of the same high/low pressure system patterns at the regular latitudes. Sure, there are micro-changes depending on other things, but the big picture is pretty much the same year on year.

      I always assumed it was something to do with changes in wind patterns caused by the higher tides, or the greater flow of water to do with the tide. But of course the atmosphere would be ‘dragged’ around like the water is. Gravity is proportional to the mass of the two things, but the moon is ‘massive’.

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    Sonny

    Jo,

    The moons activities cannot possibly have anything to do with climate change. Only causes which lend themselves to taxation could be to blame.

    Honestly Jo, how can we blame what the sun does and the moon does on human beings in order to tax them? This science is of no economic benefit to government.

    I would say that this scientist must be in the pay of big oil.

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    Paul Vaughan

    Background reading:

    Solar, Terrestrial, & Lunisolar Components of Rate of Change of Length of Day
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/10/solar-terrestrial-lunisolar-components-of-rate-of-change-of-length-of-day/

    Recombination’s key:

    A) article Ian references:

    Li, G.; Zong, H.; & Zhang, Q. (2011). 27.3-day and average 13.6-day periodic oscillations in the Earth’s rotation rate and atmospheric pressure fields due to celestial gravitation forcing. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences 28(1), 45-58.
    http://www.springerlink.com/content/a74n3882q6064530/fulltext.pdf

    B) Figure 6 p.12:

    Lilly, J.M.; & Olhede, S.C. (2009). Higher-order properties of analytic wavelets. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 57(1), 146-160.
    http://www.jmlilly.net/papers/lilly09-itsp-cp.pdf

    “Seems somebody put out the moon …” -— Lights
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOU0ZGifTHY
    “… I can’t expect the hard curves.
    There’s no borders; there are no lines.
    How can I know where to turn?”
    — Lights

    Bright illusion masks hidden crepuscular balance.

    http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/vaughn4.png

    Elaboration – on the horizon…

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    FijiDave

    I just happened to be reading yesterday this, which should be of more interest than JB’s inane trolling.

    We may find, eventually, that we even now have only an Aristotlean understanding of what makes the world go around, with the vast bulk of knowledge yet to come. 🙂

    Gravity, anyone?

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    Thomas Scotland

    It could be coincidence, but the 9.4 year period apparently found is essentially the same as one of the well know lunar cycles. The moon’s orbit round the Earth is inclined to the plane of the Earth’s orbit round the sun by about 5 degrees. The result of this is that as the two orbits interact with each other the declination of the moon slowly changes from being additive to that of the sun (23.5 + 5 = 28.5) to being subtractive (23.5 – 5 = 18.5). These extreme declinations of the moon are termed the ‘Major Standstill’ and the ‘Minor Standstill’ respectively. The change over is very slow. Major to Minor 9.3 years and the same back again. There might be a link here. (Regarding the moon’s movements Wikipedia ‘Archaeoastronomy’ has a useful diagram.)

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    Ninderthana (aka Ian Wilson)

    Paul Vaughan is right in pointing out that my paper is not establishing
    whether or not Lunar atmospheric tides exist. This has already been proven
    by a series a papers by G. Li and associates in 2005, 2007 and 2011.

    What my paper has done is to show that the fortnightly to monthly atmospheric
    tides that Li and his co-workers find, also operate on the Earth’s atmosphere
    on inter-annual to decadal (~ 2 to 20 years) time scales.

    [3] Li G. 27.3-day and 13.6-day atmospheric tide and lunar forcing on
    atmospheric circulation. Adv Atmos Sci 2005; 22(3): 359-74.
    [4] Li G, Zong H. 27.3-day and 13.6-day atmospheric tide. Science in
    China (D) 2007; 50(9): 1380-95.
    [5] Li, G.; Zong, H.; & Zhang, Q. (2011). 27.3-day and average 13.6-day periodic
    oscillations in the Earth’s rotation rate and atmospheric pressure fields due
    to celestial gravitation forcing. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences 28(1), 45-58.

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    richard

    tell you what i find weird, no atmospheric gases on the moon but gets way hotter than the earth jn the daytime.

    thank goodness we have atmospheric gasses to keep earth cooler in the daytime and to slow down cooling at night.

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    Kevin Moore

    http://www.wingmakers.co.nz/Events%20That%20Causes%20Ice%20Ages%20On%20Earth%20And%20Mobis.html

    It is said that the Moon controls Earths’ tilt.

    …The effects of tilt on the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth are closely linked to the effects of precession.Variation in these two factors cause radiation changes of up to 15% at high altitude. Radiation variation of this magnitude greatly influences the growth and melting of ice sheets…

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    While this may not be about the topic of the Moon, it is about that other large body in the sky, The Sun.

    I understand this may open me up as a believer in crackpot theories, but I have long been a fan of Long Range Weather Forecaster Lennox Walker, who has now handed over the reins to his son Hayden, who is now the fourth generation to continue this work.

    Like his father, he continues to have an 80%+ accuracy rate, and now, thanks to those three before him, he has detailed data for Australia going back to the early 1800’s.

    His reports are relied upon far and wide.

    In this day and age we live, the work he does is treated in some areas of the Establishment as Mumbo Jumbo, something it is quite patently not.

    I have included the link to the last page at his site, and you can scroll back through the pages with the tabs at each page.

    This last page is his ‘Links’ page.

    Those links down the bottom left there are of a historical nature, and are well worth looking at, especially the History of Walkers Weather.

    The many links down the right are to 26 sites that are also of interest, and include real time location of Weather Satellites.

    This guy gets it right at a better strike rate than you see from any weather bureau, or any any of the nightly weather reports.

    Hayden Walker’s Links Page

    Tony.

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    Ninderthana (aka Ian Wilson)

    Thomas Scotland
    March 4, 2012 at 4:11 am · Reply

    Its no co-incidence Thomas. My paper links the 9.4 year period with half the lunar Draconic cycle
    of 18.61 years. The lunar Draconic cycle is exactly the same cycle as you mention. It is related to
    the 5 degree tilt of the lunar orbit to the Ecliptic. This line-of-nodes of the Lunar orbit join the
    two opposite points in the Lunar orbit where the Moon’s orbit crosses the plane of the Ecliptic.
    The line-of-nodes of the lunar precesses once about the Earth (in a retrograde direction) with respect
    to the “fixed-stars” once every 18.61 years.

    There is the possibility that the 9.4 year cycle that I am finding is in fact the average of half-draconic
    tidal cycle = 9.3 years and half the Metonic Cycle cycle = 9.5 years.

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    Paul Vaughan

    Ian Wilson (aka Ninderthana),

    Thanks sincerely for bringing my attention to this paper:

    Li, G.; Zong, H.; & Zhang, Q. (2011). 27.3-day and average 13.6-day periodic oscillations in the Earth’s rotation rate and atmospheric pressure fields due to celestial gravitation forcing. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences 28(1), 45-58. doi: 10.1007/s00376-010-0011-6.
    http://www.springerlink.com/content/a74n3882q6064530/fulltext.pdf

    Such clarity’s a rare breath of fresh air in the often stagnant online climate discussion.

    From the Acknowledgements:

    “This study was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40675031).”

    National Science Foundation of China: You are a beacon of sanity in a sea of climate naivety & deception. I give you the greatest salute I can imagine:
    =
    “When it’s all a blur,
    you are the hard line.

    In the disorder,
    you are the peace sign.

    When the riots stir,
    you are the sound mind.

    In the disorder,
    You are the peace sign.”
    — Lights
    =
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxskqp4rSPE

    Thanks to Joanne Nova for covering important material.

    Best Regards to All.

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      theRealUniverse

      Well China doesnt believe it (AGW) anyway. Only play suitable lip service to the globalists to keep them guessing which way to go regarding China. They’re pretty smart making billions of Yuan from wind turbine technology and solar cells, guaranteed to die in 5 years so you need another batch!

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    Ulric Lyons

    Louis Hissink
    March 3, 2012 at 10:04 pm · Reply

    “Corbyn has started to offer predictions of earthquakes based on the appearance of coronal holes in the sun, especially those which can be observed at the time from the earth itself. Coronal holes are interpreted to be the source of solar wind (a mass of + and -ve charged particles) and which when arriving at the earth seem to trigger earthquakes. So far from what I have been able see, Corbyn is right but the actual mechanism remains problematical from the stance of the standard theory.”

    Piers was using his weather impact periods for the timing of earthquake events, but it was Me that pointed out to him that they are often occurring when there is an Earth facing coronal hole. This is days before the fast wind stream reaches Earth. I suggested that it may be to do with the connections to the open field lines that emanate from the coronal holes.

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    crakar24

    OT again i know but has anyone seen this from Bolt?

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/P15/

    The teachings of Flannery, my God how does he back peddle out of this mess?

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    crakar24

    Sorry forgot a bit more………….

    http://www.waylink-english.co.uk/?page=21540

    This is the source of the teaching guide and i just want to highlight a few lines if that is OK.

    •Who is Professor Tim Flannery? (He is an Australian environmental scientist and an international leader on climate change.)

    No he is effing not he is nothing of the sort but then again the IPCC/SCAM is full of people pretending to being something they are not, the rail road engineer, Al Gore to name but a few.

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    Ninderthana (aka Ian Wilson)

    Here is a recently published paper that supports the assertion that atmospheric tides can have an influence upon regional weather patterns on times scales of ~ two weeks.

    Monthly lunar declination extremes’ influence on tropospheric circulation patterns

    Daniel S. Krahenbuhl,1 Matthew B. Pace,1 Randall S. Cerveny,1 and Robert C. Balling Jr.1

    Received 22 July 2011; revised 13 October 2011; accepted 13 October 2011; published 15 December 2011.

    Short‐term tidal variations occurring every 27.3 days from southern (negative) to northern (positive) maximum lunar declinations (MLDs), and back to southern declination of the moon have been overlooked in weather studies. These short‐term MLD variations’ significance is that when lunar declination is greatest, tidal forces operating on the high latitudes of both hemispheres are maximized. We find that such tidal forces deform the high latitude Rossby longwaves. Using the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data set, we identify that the 27.3 day MLD cycle’s influence on circulation is greatest in the upper troposphere of both hemispheres’ high latitudes. The effect is distinctly regional with high impact over central North America and the British Isles. Through this lunar variation, mid-latitude weather forecasting for two‐week forecast
    periods may be significantly improved.

    Link to Paper

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      Paul Vaughan

      Figure 4 [ http://www.agu.org/journals/jd/jd1123/2011JD016598/2011jd016598-op04-tn-350x.jpg ] is certainly interesting Ian. If I had the time & resources I would break the analysis down further, starting with time of year.

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        Paul Vaughan

        “Figure 4. (a) Kriged representation of height variations (m) from the long‐term mean for the 300 hPa pressure surface for negative–positive monthly extremes of lunar declination for the period 1948–2010 using the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data set. (b) Same as Figure 4a for positive–negative monthly extremes of lunar declination.”

        Krahenbuhl, D.S.; Pace, M.B.; Cerveny, R.S.; & Balling, R.C.Jr. (2011). Monthly lunar declination extremes’ influence on tropospheric circulation patterns. Journal of Geophysical Research 116, D23121. doi:10.1029/2011JD016598.

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    Geoff Broadbent

    The moon in fact has the major effect on the tides on earth. In Tahiti the tidal gyres cancel out so that there is only a sun tide of 40-50 centimetres daily with high tide at midday and midnight. You can’t sell tide tables in Tahiti, Geoff Broadbent

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    Gowest

    predictweather.co.nz has been analysing the moon’s influence to predict weather for the last decade – must be successful because it is still going and you have to pay for the service.

    Suck on that CSIRO!

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    Ninderthana (aka Ian Wilson)

    The dates of major floods in the Brisbane River Valley seem to be separated by
    period of the Lunar Draconic Cycle of 18.6 years. Unfortunately the picture is
    clouded by the fact that there appear to parallel sequences of 18.6 years that
    fade in and out.

    The dates of major floods in the Brisbane River Valley

    ________________________________Date of Flood____Brisbane____Ipswich
    __________________________________________________Gauge_______Gauge
    ____________________________________________________________________
    1825_______________= 1825.0__________1825________from historical record
    ___________________= 1843.6 – 3 years_{1841
    1825 + (1 x 18.6)__= 1843.6__________{1844________Maj_________?
    1825 + (2 x 18.6)__= 1862.2__________1863_________Maj_________Maj
    1825 + (4 x 18.6)__= 1899.4__________1898_________Maj_________Maj
    1825 + (7 x 18.6)__= 1955.2__________1955__________?__________Maj
    ________________= 1973.8 – 3 years__{1971
    1825 + (8 x 18.6)__= 1973.8__________{1974________Maj_________Maj
    1825 + (9 x 18.6)__= 1992.4__________1991__________?__________Maj
    1825 + (10 x 18.6)_= 2011.0__________2011_________Maj_________Maj
    ______________________________________________________________
    1856.2_______________= 1856.2________1857
    1856.2 + (2 x 18.6)__= 1893.4________1893
    1856.2 + (4 x 18.6)__= 1930.6________1931
    ______________________________________________________________
    _____________________= 1893.4 – 3 years
    1889.8_______________= 1889.8________1889 & 1890
    1889.8 + (1 x 18.6)__= 1908.4________1908
    _____________________= 1930.6 – 3 years
    1889.8 + (2 x 18.6)__= 1927.0_______1927

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      Paul Vaughan

      “Unfortunately the picture is clouded by the fact that there appear to parallel sequences of 18.6 years that fade in and out.”

      I wouldn’t call such a natural pattern “unfortunate”. It’s what I’d expect based on intuition about the spatial aspects of temporal evolution. As I’ve said many times: Climate & solar scientists have been using the wrong markers, methods, & assumptions. Thanks for sharing the insight.

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    You are not correct in implying that lunar tidal forces “are of course” less than the Sun’s tidal forces. In fact the Sun’s tidal forces are only about 48% of the Moon’s. That’s why the Moon dominates regarding ocean tides as we all know.

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    Regarding “connections between CO2 and climate” there will be an important peer-reviewed paper by a certain Australian to be published next week, using physics to prove that there are no connections between CO2 and climate.

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    Ninderthana (aka Ian Wilson)

    Doug,

    You have misunderstood my paper if you are saying that:

    You [Ian Wilson] are not correct in implying that lunar tidal forces “are of course” less than the Sun’s tidal forces. In fact the Sun’s tidal forces are only about 48% of the Moon’s. That’s why the Moon dominates regarding ocean tides as we all know.

    My paper does not say this. It says that atmospheric tides produced by the combined effects of lunar and solar tidal forces are much weaker (or less) than atmospheric
    thermal tides [this is not my choice of words but the historical name given to this phenomenon] which are driven by the daily heating of the Sun. The two are physically distinct phenomenon.

    Of course the solar tidal forces are weaker (48 % on average as you say) at the Earth’s surface than the lunar tidal forces. I have never claimed otherwise.

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    Don Gaddes

    The significance of the Lunar Metonic Cycle (18.61 years) in the exact forecasting of ‘Dry’ cycles was explored by Alex S. Gaddes in his book ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ (1990.)He also made important connections between the 27 day Rotation rate of the Sun (Sunspot Latitude) and the constant value of an 11.028148 year Sunspot Cycle. The ‘Dry’ Cycles he formulated orbit the planet from the West with the Earth’s Magnetic Field (30 degrees of longitude/month.)These ‘Dry’ Cycles are immutable,but may be ameliorated by explosive volcanic activity (albedo)(Just as the ‘Wet’/Normal periods between the ‘Drys’ may be exacerbated by such volcanic activity, eg. Australian floods 2011.)
    Note the recent flooding in Southern NSW and South East Queensland, caused by the break-up and forcing South of monsoon cloud (from a volcanically active Indonesia) by the onset of a One Solar/Earth Year ‘Dry’ Cycle reaching Australia in early January 2012. (No categorised cyclones have made landfall in Australia this season.) The current One Solar/Earth Year ‘Dry’ Cycle will be followed by a two Solar/Earth Year ‘Wet’/Normal period, and then a severe Five Solar/earth Year ‘Dry’ Cycle(drought.) As Australia is one of the last countries to be effected in the orbit of these Cycles, it can be expected that Europe and America will progressively be affected by the above mentioned Two year ‘Wet’/Normal Period over the coming months, and subsequently the following Five Year ‘Dry.'(Before these Cycles reach Australia in turn.)
    An updated version of this work (with ‘Dry’ Cycle forecasts to 2055) is available as a free pdf from [email protected]

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    David, UK

    That should be “Moon’s” not “Moons'” (apostrophe before the “s”) – unless we have more than one moon.

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    Ninderthana

    Thanks David – sometimes the things that are end of your nose are the
    last things that you see.

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      Paul Vaughan

      Ninderthana (Ian Wilson) wrote: “sometimes the things that are end of your nose are the last things that you see”

      Exactly.

      The solar cycle’s footprint on terrestrial climate manifests as anomalies in the seasonal switching of the hemispheric westerly winds, as indicated by semi-annual lunisolar-integrated variations in the rate of change of length of day. North-south asymmetry (due to the current distribution of continents) is evident.

      The Solar Cycle’s Footprint on Terrestrial Climate
      http://i43.tinypic.com/o52jbd.png

      Data:
      ftp://ftp.iers.org/products/eop/long-term/c04_08/iau2000/eopc04_08_IAU2000.62-now


      Dear Jo: If you want to run 2 articles on this, e-mail me. I’m a volunteer operating on hard-limited time & resources. I don’t have time for editorial cosmetic demands. The articles either run as they are or not at all. Your blog. Your choice. My confidence in the result depicted in the graph to which I’ve linked in this comment is absolute. This result can be considered definitive. It has absolute implications for ENSO research. Best Regards, Paul Vaughan, M.Sc.

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    Don Gaddes

    The only sure thing about ENSO research is the surely imminent rejection of the last forty years of waffle and deception!(originating in places like the University of East Anglia,in the early 1970’s and exported to Australia with eager and ignorant young recruits as the new ‘You Beaut’ Climate Theory.)
    You are ‘pissing in the semi-annual lunisolar wind’ Paul. Get the free pdf offered in #37 and read it.

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