A new theory of atmospheric variation

M.T. Cranium · 02-06-2010 2:03am #1

or -- why do we have weather, anyway?
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I had promised in another thread to discuss the research that I've done over most of a lifetime (turning 61 any day now), in which I attempted to uncover some of the mysteries of how the atmosphere actually works.

I will try to do this in a gradual, user-friendly way so that there isn't too much information all at one time, leading to a reader disconnect just from the sheer volume of what is bound to be controversial or thought-provoking new ideas on this oft-discussed subject.

From the outset, I want to make clear that I don't consider any of this research to contradict in any way the established science of meteorology. Let's be realistic about what that science does, and what it does not do. It does explain commonly observed phenomena in the atmosphere, such as fronts, jet streams, storm tracks, cloud development, air masses, stability, severe weather, hurricanes -- all of these are understood as systems. What meteorology (and its related science, climatology) do not even attempt to do, at present, is to explain why on any given day we have the weather we actually experience.

Now that may be somewhat too stark a delineation, because climate science does attempt to explain patterns in terms of cause and effect, to some degree. For example, an El Nino pattern is expected to produce more rain in California and the Gulf coast, and milder than normal winters across the northern plains states. This seems to work reasonably well and forms something of a counter-example to my paradigm explanation.

However, I think all will agree that a more detailed cause and effect hypothesis does not exist in the atmospheric sciences. There is no established reason, for example, why it may have rained heavily on 31 May in parts of Ireland, and why it may not rain at all on 2 June. The established science might be capable of saying that a trend would develop through that period with passing intervals of heavy rain. But there is no reason for a conventional forecaster to choose 31 May over 1 or 2 June as a date for heavy rainfall at a given point (such as Valentia). This can only be estimated when computer-generated maps appear in a "reliable time frame" to indicate that possibility.

And as most of us who follow these models know, a "reliable time frame" is generally no better than 6-8 days and sometimes a bit worse than even that. Although a lot of sophisticated physics goes into these computer models, essentially there is no "external energy driving force" that could allow one to generate maps for any point in time. One is always dealing with energy that has been detected and measured at time zero, and then with the best possible efforts of super-computers to forecast the future evolution of that energy picture. Of course, the computers are programmed to keep these developments within rational limits. If the model tried to place a 1060 mb high over Ireland, presumably the protocols of the computer program would reduce that to something within historical limits, like perhaps 1045 mbs.

The very broad explanation of my alternate research, and that of several other people working along similar if not identical lines, is this -- if external energy sources are significant in their impact on the atmosphere, then it should be possible to model what these impacts will be, based on the record of past similar cases. It would be even better science if there could also be a physical cause and effect theory to support the analogue technique, so that each development in the atmosphere had a reason to exist. For example, we know when and where to look for a lunar eclipse or a solar eclipse, and that science is so accurate that historians can use it to study possible exact dates for historical events that mention eclipses (although it works both ways in that small variations in the timing equations are refined through reference to known past events).

Now so far I have said nothing that goes beyond paradigm definition. I haven't said what external energy I am talking about, nor have I said how I studied it, how it appears to interact with other factors, and how it can be used for predictive purposes. I plan to do that in small steps over the month of June so that we can discuss a few cases that come along, and also so we don't go so fast that people get lost in a morass of details.

However, to conclude this opening post in the thread, I will just mention in very broad terms what the external energy fields appear to be. One of them is the interaction of the Moon with the atmosphere. In this, I have come to some similar conclusions to Ken Ring who is well known for his research into this field, and I have also compared some similar findings with two other researchers, David Dilley in the U.S., and weather enthusiast "Blast from the Past" whose real name I won't divulge for privacy reasons, but whose observations I noted on another weather forum. We've collaborated recently on two winter seasonal forecasts that were, at the very least, non-random and received by readers quite positively. So in other words, with the lunar factors that I study, I am not alone in my research, but finding that others have independently noted some similar concepts. What those are, I will leave for a more detailed discussion in a day or two.

Now it happens that my own research led me to notice that there were systematic variations that had periods unrelated to the Moon or its orbit, but apparently regular like astronomical cycles are, rather than irregular like raw climate cycles (such as El Nino) tend to be. My study of those (and here we are talking about a period from about 1980 to 1995) revealed that the atmosphere responded to interactions with the solar system magnetic field, which can be viewed as having sectors of slightly different energy levels. These energy levels are only subtly different from one another, but it seems to be enough to generate a pattern which is then imprinted into our magnetic field and hence into the atmosphere.

This will be the "new" part of this research to many of you -- I think some of you will already be familiar with some of the lunar concepts, but perhaps not with these magnetic field concepts. The two sets of variations are largely independent, but of course they interact in certain ways. An analogy would be this, if you had a pot of water on the top of your stove (cooker?) at a low boil, and then if you dropped ice cubes into one side of that boiling water, some predictable flow patterns would develop from these two independent energy inputs. If you then turned off the stove and stopped placing the ice in the water, these interactions would slowly fade out until the whole system returned to equilibrium (unless your house is devilishly hot, a slow cooling down to near room temperature). But with lunar and solar system energy always coming into the atmosphere with peaks on time scales that are typically about 3-10 days in duration, the atmosphere never goes back to "equilibrium."

So that's what this thread will be discussing, the input of these two systems, and an assessment of how significant they are in creating weather events. I will conclude today by mentioning how significant I think that may be, on the large scale. The answer is -- very significant. I have tried to model what the atmosphere would do if the earth had no Moon and if the solar system was just the Sun and the earth (because the sectors are caused by interactions between the Sun and the larger planets). Of course, in reality, the earth would stop rotating like Venus and Mercury have done, if there were no Moon to supply angular momentum. But let's say we had that situation, an atmosphere on that version of the earth would probably have much, much less weather. In fact, it might only have steady-state climate, perhaps with weak waves generated at random along frontal boundaries, but there might be a very slack atmospheric gradient, very little precipitation, and cloudiness would depend mostly on the constant slack flow of the air masses. There would be no science of meteorology, in all likelihood, because the weather would be largely the same day after day.

How that would support human life and the bio-diversity of our planet, it's hard to envisage. Such a slack flow might also favour the "ice planet" scenario, because once the polar ice caps expand beyond a certain limit, the higher albedo of the earth begins to lock in a global or near-global ice cover. So no doubt it is to our benefit that we have active weather on this planet. Sometimes it gets a bit too active for our ultimate welfare, but without this constant variability, we would quite possibly be unable to sustain human life on earth. However, that proves nothing, it's just my view of how the atmospheric system would work if these external energy sources were not there to regulate and modulate. So, look for another installment on this subject about the same time each day, if I have time (I may go slower than that pace) and I would suggest, keep questions off the thread until perhaps we get past the point where we are relating the theory to actual weather events. I can anticipate some questions and I will try to structure the thread so that these questions get answered at a good time in the discussion. But I am sure there would be some questions eventually and I'll be quite happy to try to tackle them.

Things you can do to be ready for this discussion -- find out some basic facts about the lunar orbit. Download a program like Skyglobe so that you can watch the Moon and planets moving against the background of the fixed stars (fixed being an approximate term).

ch750536 · 02-06-2010 12:23pm

My background. Software engineer working in modelling for 10 years commercially (nothing as fun or as difficult as weather), extremely skilled in model design (even if I do have to say it myself all the time). Modelled whale populations, energy decay, fire evacuation, complex markets as well as the dull usual commercially paying stuff.

Modelling the weather is the same as modelling anything else. Take a model of a car placed into a wind tunnel for the first time. Before placing it you thought you knew everything that was about to happen, you knew all the variables and built them in to the simulation. Once the fan starts you will definitely be wrong, just a question of degree.

What you have posted above is the right approach. I have thought about how I would tackle a weather model many times, analysing the errors in the current system. It is something I could build, given enough resource. The problem for me is that you have to model everything & I mean everything.

Luna is just where the model starts and is an easy one to spot in my opinion. What is far more difficult is to spot the other influences. If we were to build a conventional model then add the effects of the moon I think we would have a 30% accurate model, no more. At the moment as you say we depend on limits, both human and automated to bring things to something 'historically more accurate', in effect we are distorting the model as we believe it to be wrong. Human error (judgement) has to be removed from the model if you wish it to be more accurate.

So if my 30% figure were accurate then what else is needed for the weather to be predicted accurately (70% and above)? You need to model everything. Every atom of the planet, every calorie from the sun, the dust that falls from space, all these things need to be modelled as they are all related. You listed magnetic field strength, for example, what affects that? In the detail the weather affects the magnetic field, from no moisture in the air (ice caps?) to high moisture in the air, one does have an impact on the other. (I may have chosen a bad example as I know very little about magnetic field strenght).

Anyway, my purist perspective on weather modelling, something I would love to be involved in at some point in a professional capacity. Hopefully I can chip in from time to time with little nuggets if needed.

M.T. Cranium · 03-06-2010 5:19am

Thanks for that, it seems like we are on similar wavelengths about the general paradigm. I don't think I mentioned in my first post, but may have done in the Ken Ring discussion thread, that my general estimate actually is about the same, that the lunar contributions to the overall variation in the atmosphere is about 30 per cent, and that the other more complex set of external drivers is about 50 per cent, with the other 20 per cent (of unexplained variations now, of course the Sun actually explains over 99% of the explained variations) being such factors as random heat releases from within the earth, undiagnosed aspects of solar variability, large-scale feedback effects and many other things that may be partly recognized in research already.

Now if that's the case, you might ask, why do conventional long-range forecasts sometimes do quite well and how do other amateurs not using your approach manage to do quite well or really well sometimes on a consistent basis? That's a good question but I suspect the answer to it is that pattern recognition is not confined or perhaps even best demonstrated by those who may have uncovered reasons for the patterns -- and over the space of one month which is the popular test period for long-range forecasting skills, the challenge is not really a "black box" or over the horizon challenge but a complex blend of what you see now, what is very likely to happen soon, and what is less reliably going to happen in the second half of the month. I am sure if you check with the top monthly forecasters here or at other weather forums, or professionally, they will all agree that they take these three steps whether formally or informally, to assess the very likely anomaly from day one to day five, then the quite probable anomaly from about day six to day ten or perhaps beyond, then try to use whatever approaches they have found useful to estimate the trend beyond day ten, when perhaps there is also some model input but not of a very reliable sort.

If you asked people now to predict the weather in November, of course, they would have none of those tools available and they would have to resort to some sort of pattern recognition paradigm, whether based on my research variables or any other reasoning. There is no place on today's weather map where you can look and see "November's weather developing" so to speak, as perhaps you might see late June's weather developing in some current pattern. The number of variations and permutations between now and then is just too complex to allow any approach other than a cause and effect hypothesis to be useful. Analogue techniques are popular but even those who use them tend to say, you have to filter the analogues to make sure you aren't just taking in very different cases that happen to be on the same trend curve recently. But analogues don't seem to work as reliably as we need for "accurate long-range forecasting" because correlations are typically falling off from moderate values like 0.5 to nearly random values like 0.1 during the analogue period in seasonal to annual forecasts.

So anyway, this being my second post, the main objective today is to underscore that the research method is quite detailed and developed over a long period of time (1980 to present) in many rather small incremental steps. I have to be honest in saying that it's almost too much for one person to manage at this point, as to give some idea of the complexity, I have well over a hundred variables identified (most of them in the second part of the theory, the lunar variables are perhaps about five or six of these). Some of these are rather small "signatures" in the data. So, what is the data base?

I used to live in southern Ontario and when I first developed the theory, I noticed that the effects were being spatially concentrated near the strongest part of the earth's magnetic field which is in east-central North America. Therefore I was drawn to using the data from Toronto, which had a weather station established back in 1840, and has reliable daily data ever since then. My data base started out being 1841-1979 and has been expanded every few years, and quite often I generate output showing the comparative signatures of various factors in play in the research, for the cooler 19th century climate period, and the warmer 20th (and now into 21st) century period. In general terms, these signatures are often just displaced upwards by the same amount as the general warming trend. Some of them show somewhat different evolutions and this can be linked to the spatial aspects of the model.

I have also attempted to do some more limited data base studies for other key points in the northern hemisphere, but a lot of that research is more on the monthly than the daily time scales. From the first wave of my research in the 1980s, I generated a grid that you could visualize as being the atmospheric grid receiving energy signals, but it's offset from the terrestrial lat-long grid by about 15 degrees. If you visualized that the north pole of this system was around 75 N and 90 W in the Canadian arctic, and the south pole is near 75 S and 90 E well to the southwest of Australia in the Antarctic, this would do as a first approximation. The grid is capable of moving around on the earth's surface, a point which certainly feeds into climate change on any time scale relevant. Then as a second key concept to visualize, take a primary "timing line" (which I call timing line one) that connects these poles through a long curving meridian that extends roughly SSE from the north pole position, just west of the Great Lakes, curving more SE as it runs through South Carolina, then across the tropical Atlantic into Africa, where it crosses the equator close to the Greenwich 0 deg longitude, then continues on to reach the south pole through the Indian Ocean, passing quite close to the French research base at Kerguelen on its way (which was helpful because they have a reporting weather station there).

Then if you have either visualized that or perhaps sketched it out, the general idea is that there are eight more timing lines (for a total of nine) spread out equidistant around the globe, so that each successive one is about 40 degrees east of its neighbour. This places timing line two pretty much down the east coast of Labrador and eastern Newfoundland into the region of the Azores and then across north Africa towards the central and then eastern Indian Ocean. Timing line three happens to run close to Valentia on its way southeast from Iceland into France and the Mediterranean. Since we may be discussing the weather here as well, I'll mention that the last two of the timing lines are about equal distances to my east and west here, so that timing line eight is out in the Pacific running parallel to the west coast, and timing line nine is in the lee of the Rockies. The actual "empirical" version of the grid has a few less uniform features and I would wait until publishing my theory formally to get into those, for example these North American timing lines are a little closer together than the ones through Asia tend to be (based on observations of where similar weather events occur).

Now that's not meant to be an explanation, but it gives you a general spatial frame of reference for what I might be saying about weather events from the research perspective. The general concept is that an event in the earth's magnetic field will be concentrated onto timing line one. The atmospheric evidence of an event behind the earth in its orbit around the Sun will be found at some angle downstream in the system, in other words, around Europe in the model (and for s.h. readers around Australia and NZ). An event ahead of the earth in its orbit will be detected by atmospheric events to the west of timing line one, or near western N America and the eastern Pacific.

Note the diagonal curving nature of this grid introduces possible teleconnections that are not just reflections through the equator north and south. For example, the southern equatorial Pacific zone that is crucial in the El Nino phenomenon is around timing line seven, but north of the equator that timing sector tends to be out into the central Pacific Ocean which is already further west in the n.h. than the s.h., so a good 30-40 degrees further west.

Now at some point, if not in this thread, then in my attempts to get published before I pass on (a really close run thing evidently) there will no doubt be a call to explain the physical processes being theorized in this approach, and I will make some effort to do that eventually here, but as the theory is rather complicated in terms of detail and not that easy to absorb in one sitting, I find that it's probably easier to say, this is what I think is happening, then go on to the level of saying why I think it happens. And I may not get as far as I would like in the challenge of saying why, but it is not something that I have entirely neglected either.

All of which is a forewarning that the first 2-3 weeks of this discussion will slowly immerse the reader in "what" is alleged to be happening in the theory, and that we'll have to wait until that challenge is met before really trying to address "why" these things may happen. I do believe that if people see some evidence of what happens, they may be more inclined to consider why it happens -- after all, if the "what" part is not credible, then there would be no real reason to speculate about why.

For now, I'll leave it at this, and just mention that for any given postulated event that could be related to weather outcomes, I have crunched the numbers, the daily temps, precip, in some cases also pressure and sunshine, and found the "signatures" of these various signals in the long historical record available. In some future developmental stage of this research I would imagine other workers doing similar things with other data bases -- as I say, I got into some of that as time allowed, but by now I'm sure the reader will have a pretty clear idea of the complexity of this challenge in terms of time and organization. For example, I have one rather old p.c. device here entirely full of research files. Don't worry, they are backed up. What I do find somewhat disturbing is that on occasion I go back into them and realize that I have already half-forgotten the details of what was shown in that particular analysis. But with so many factors, the main problem has been that each one of them is not so large that it would cause a jaw-dropping astonishment if I were to publish that one variable alone as an indication of the research, so that I'm stuck with the problem that to publish anything comprehensive, I need to go well beyond the standard length of a paper and get into monograph territory (and there is in fact a monograph) at which point you get to a disconnect with peer reviewers. And because the system is that complex and has so many variables, it's not that easy to keep it all in your head and generalize it as you could do with daily tide tables in the oceans.

Well -- this account is bound to be a bit rambling as I start into it, but within a few more days I think we'll have the basic concepts covered and then it will be much easier to start talking about specifics and to bring in real-time examples.

ch750536 · 03-06-2010 9:35pm

It's like seeing ripples on a pond and having to work out what the shape, mass & velocity of the 10,000 objects that were thrown in were.

M.T. Cranium · 04-06-2010 7:58am

Today, a much shorter addition to this thread. I am working on some maps that I can post to illustrate this timing grid. Hope to have those available over the next few days.

One point I wanted to address (mostly so we can move on from this subject) is how the research interacts with the global warming or climate change concepts that have become controversial in recent years.

The short answer is, this research theory does not give any definitive indications one way or the other. You could have a situation where this research model is generally valid, but the atmosphere is warming up gradually in any case. Or, you could have the situation where the theory is responsible for a run of warmer weather in recent years, and so this explains the observed warming. We have, of course, reached that point where the "recent warming" is also coming into dispute and people are arguing about whether it continues to warm, if it is now cooling, if it was ever warming, etc etc.

All I can say is that there's nothing in the research method or paradigm to suggest that climate change of the AGW variety is real or not. There might be some potential for this kind of research to provide a more reliable "expected baseline" of natural variations which might be helpful because quite often the debate is about whether observed data are from natural variability or due to human-induced AGW, or as I happen to believe, some combination of these.

Okay, that's all I wanted to say about AGW. With the two different sets of research "signals" being studied (lunar and magnetic-field) the only way to start into a more detailed discussion is to choose one of these for a few posts lasting about a week, and leave the other for a second week.

I'm going to start with the lunar variables, because this is how my research started. If the readers don't mind, I am going to go quite slowly through this, because I know from experience it is complicated (not difficult necessarily, this is not like special relativity or complex chemistry we're dealing with) and perhaps more relevant, unfamiliar.

My own introduction to this concept came around 1980 when I was working in a forecast office with somebody who mentioned one day that every time there was a full or new moon, there was a big storm on the east coast (of the U.S.). This was something I had never considered, despite being an astronomy enthusiast from early school days. At that point in time, I was forecasting but my background was more in global climate than meteorology. It just happened that I got into forecasting as a requirement of the work available when some other research project came to an end, and I wasn't really planning a career in it. This observation about the moon made me quite curious to look back and check out the concept. I looked around in the literature too, and found one or two things that had been studied, some of them way back in the late 19th century. But only one small research finding seemed to have found its way past the peer review barrier, and that was from well-known climatologist Reid Bryson, who had commented on the correlation he saw between lunar declination and the swelling up of the subtropical highs in the oceans.

As to storminess at full and new moon, this seemed to have a folklore connection, but was it real? Or was it just a case that a few big storms had recently happened that way, and made a connection seem real? And if it was a real connection, where was it to be expected, because the first point anyone will soon confront in this avenue of research is rather obvious -- you don't see the same response to (postulated) lunar signals everywhere all at once. The atmosphere generally tends to organize into travelling areas of high and low pressure. It would make sense that if there was a lunar effect, just like high tides in the oceans, you would look for it in certain places. Perhaps the east coast of the U.S. was one of those places.

Later in 1980, I had a lot more time to study these matters, as my work contract expired and I decided not to stay on in the U.S. (I was permanently living in Canada all through this period). So I started to look at the data in more detail. My original approach was fairly basic and not statistically very "sophisticated." I would mark down on base maps where low pressure areas had been located at times of full and new moons. At first I was only looking at winter months. What I found was intriguing and a bit different from what the weather guru had said.

I noticed a pattern where these winter lows were scattered along a diagonal line from about Wisconsin (west of the Great Lakes) to the Carolinas and off into the Atlantic. There was another cluster out around Newfoundland. But as I checked into larger segments of data, I started to notice that there seemed to be a second set of energy peaks that ran ahead of the full and new moons in January and February. It took a while, but eventually I worked out that these were an independent group of energy peaks on a shorter cycle than full and new moon (whose cycle is 29.53 days). The average for the shorter cycle of events was about 27.3 days, and the events were coming along about every 3-5 days.

A good deal of my early research was concentrated on this one area, the Great Lakes and east coast of North America, in the zone that surrounded what I then called timing line one. But at some fairly early point, I noticed that there was a sort of nine-wave interference pattern that completed the whole grid around the globe, and that the rhythm of these events seemed about the same for all the timing lines. This gave me the basic concept that the lunar energy peaks are transmitted to the atmosphere through an interference pattern and that while timing line one might be unusually strong, there was no preference as to timing, but you could detect some apparently systematic oscillations where the individual timing lines shifted a bit to their east or west over time. I got into researching that much later on and the reasons are connected to the second energy source in this research, so I'll have to leave that topic for later discussion.

Anyway, to conclude today's instalment, I should just mention that the Moon has a number of orbital cycles that you need to understand to visualize the different signals coming into the system. The synodic month is the month that we all recognize, the 29.53 day interval from full moon to full moon. Notice this means about a 14.8 day interval from full to new moon, but in reality, these periods are not exactly so, because the Moon has a modestly eccentric orbit and may get from full to new moon in as little as 14 days or as much as 16 days (and vice versa). In the synodic month, the only "events" of interest to the research model are the full and new moon.

In the sidereal month of 27.32 days, the Moon completes an orbit of the earth as seen from the reference point of some fixed point in the galaxy. Because the earth is moving around the Sun, it takes that extra 2.21 days to reach the alignment needed to complete the longer synodic cycle or month.

The sidereal month sees the Moon travelling along the ecliptic (the Sun's path through the heavens) and past such gravitational sources as the galactic equator (twice in that 27.32 day period) and various planets and stars. The planets are moving forward slowly and therefore these periods are a bit longer than 27.32 days, although not very much so. The fixed stars are only moving very slowly over long intervals of time, so within our lifetimes they appear to be in constant locations. A considerable number of lunar energy peaks came from this paradigm, and evidence for them was checked against the signals averaged out at 27.32 days as well as other intervals slightly longer to detect other similar signals.

Now it needs to be noted that the Moon is quite unusual among large satellites in that it moves along the ecliptic -- most of the others move around their planets along the equatorial plane, hence they do not range far to the north and south of the equator as the Moon does. In fact, the Moon's orbit is inclined by 5.1 degrees to the 23.4 degree tilting ecliptic plane, so that at some points in time, the Moon ranges even further north and south of the equator than does the Sun as seen from any point -- the range can reach 29 degrees north and south at these extremes. At other points in time, the declination range is only 18 degrees. The Moon's orbit precesses around the orbital circle fairly quickly, in only 18.6 years. What that means is that we get a full cycle of declination over that 18.6 years, and the most recent peak (when the Moon ranged 29 degrees north and south) was 2006. We are now at the point where the Moon has almost reached average declination peaks, and by 2015 we will be seeing the least range condition.

There will be more to say about declination later, but the main feature of the declination cycle is that the Moon crosses the galactic equator in this epoch close to its northern and southern declination maxes, and so I refer to these events as "northern max" and "southern max." Take the case of a full moon around late December, when the full moon is also at its declination maximum (somewhere between 18 and 29 degrees). This event is a combined full moon and northern max. A month later, the northern max takes place two days before the full moon. Two months later, it's more like five days before. By the time you get to late June (and not quite as late, since the calendar dates will move forward), the summer full moon will be low in the sky, where the winter sun would be, and at the southern max. And the northern max is now at the new moon position.

These discussions will be taken up in more detail as to the weather connections in the next few days. For now, I just wanted to finish up this introduction to lunar orbital cycles. There is an "anomalistic month" of 27.55 days which runs from lunar perigee to next lunar perigee (closest point to the earth). Notice this is 0.23 days longer than the sidereal month. What that means is that lunar perigee moves slowly forward around the orbital cycle over a period of just less than nine years (8.86 years). Lunar perigee therefore occurs near northern max (making it a stronger tide raiser) every nine years, and about 4.5 years later, near southern max. I'll discuss on another day what signals the lunar perigee sends to the atmosphere according to my research and the research of others already mentioned.

There are a few other details about lunar orbit that could be added, but for now this seems like a reasonable summary of what happens with the lunar orbit. The 18.6 year declination cycle happens because the "nodes" shift backwards around the circle -- hence the 5.1 deg latitude peak relative to the ecliptic plane happens a bit sooner each sidereal month, on a 27.21 day cycle (this is the "draconic" month). A node is one of two points where the time-specific orbit of the Moon intersects the ecliptic plane -- there is an ascending node, and a descending node. If you're having trouble visualizing all of that, think of one of those old LP records from the 1960s era, spinning around, but not under much control, so that sometimes one side of the spinning record is a bit higher than where it's supposed to be and the other side is a bit lower. But imagine that this tendency is rotating backward relative to the record's spin. That's the movement of the nodes back against the orbital spin. But as to perigee, imagine there is a big speck of dust on the record, and that it is bouncing forward relative to the record. That's more like the perigee which is advancing faster than the other elements of the orbit.

Next instalment will be a discussion of what these lunar signals appear to be in the research data. This will get us to a point where we can start identifying real-time energy peaks and tracking those.

The exact periods of these lunar orbital variables go into several decimal places ... these are from the 1981 version of the Astronomical Almanac:

synodic 29.530589 d
anomalistic 27.554550 d
sidereal 27.321662 d
draconic 27.212221 d

M.T. Cranium · 05-06-2010 7:19am

Since it's a bank holiday weekend, I will just post once during the next three days, and it will be a short addition to give a basic list of the lunar events that show up in the research. I'll post this later today some time. Just to set the stage for that, the signals for these events tend to be temperature spikes of about 2-3 C deg against background (for the Toronto series, I imagine the amplitude would be smaller for a more maritime climate like western Europe). The research tends to show that these events are scattered in latitude enough that you could postulate their average actual intensity is more like 4-5 deg, but the statistical average is lower because some miss either far to the north which blunts their impact, or to the south so that the warming misses to the south.

That explains also why similar effects are not always found at all other sites. These effects are concentrated on the timing lines, and so far most of my research work has been (in detail at least) for timing line one as described earlier. Anyway, look for another instalment of this thread which will give a list of these events and relate that to the current lunar orbital positions this month.

ch750536 · 05-06-2010 9:03am

...temperature spikes of about 2-3 C deg against background.

That's much higher than I would expect.

M.T. Cranium · 06-06-2010 6:46am

Okay, I should mention that variation is from the more continental and variable climate in eastern North America where monthly anomalies tend to range about twice as far above and below normal as in Ireland. I was going to comment on that further as we got into the details, but from what limited observations I have been able to make for the UK and Ireland daily temperatures, these signals are more like 1-1.5 C on average. So it's probably about the same in terms of standard deviation (and one s.d. in the Toronto daily figures is about 7 C deg in winter and 4 in summer, presumably for Ireland it would be about 4 and 2.)

I will post the list of lunar events (which I have called the "astronomical agenda") some time later this weekend, it has been rather busy for me today with family visits and I need to turn in early so in any case, one could have a look at the Moon's current location on skyglobe or something similar and follow along for the past 2 weeks and next 3-4 weeks to get a handle on where the Moon meets up with other sources of gravitational energy.

Could say also as a sort of sneak preview that my research indicates that these interactions may be something as yet undiagnosed in conventional physics, whether it may be a sign of the mysterious gravitational waves or some other phenomenon, because the intensity shows that the energy or force involved in this interaction does not drop off by distance or distance squared (as energy and force do in Newtonian physics) but there is some scaling function of a very slight decrease both for mass and distance, in other words, the effects are somewhat similar to laser technology and you can expect the intensity to be reduced only slightly as objects become either less massive at similar distance, or located at greater distances. This basically means that the lunar events are not confined to being full and new moon which would be the only large-scale peaks if the interactions were in fact Newtonian. Anyway, I will try to give a more coherent explanation of what I've found in this regard with the examples of the actual events.

M.T. Cranium · 07-06-2010 6:29pm

Well, as promised, I have let the weekend slide by without adding much to the thread. But now it's time to start getting into the "nitty-gritty" of the lunar part of this theory, with a review of what events have been uncovered by the research.

Just to go over a general concept again, because this is rather complicated, the lunar part of the theory predicts travelling low pressure systems crossing defined timing lines at astronomical event times. It does not predict all low pressure systems because there is a second part to the theory relating to solar system magnetic field sectors and these can develop disturbances unrelated to the Moon. This is why any reader of this theory needs to be quite patient because we go through one set of new information (about the lunar events) then into a second new area with its own complicated set of postulated cause and effect. It's only when you relate the two sets together that you can approach a comprehensive view of what this theory can analyze and hopefully predict.

So, with that in mind, let's talk in general terms about lunar events. This post will be followed tomorrow by a list of actual events linked to the June 2010 calendar so that we can get into real-time discussions. But before we get there, what is meant by "lunar event" in this theory?

The two most obvious lunar events are new moon and full moon. With these, the Moon is aligned with the earth and Sun. We could call the new moon the "sun conjunction" and the full moon the "sun opposition." Nobody does this, but it is the logic used for other lunar events that we will discuss shortly. Note, the new moon is when the Moon passes between earth and the Sun, and might provide a solar eclipse if the Moon is close enough to the ecliptic plane (we discussed a few days ago that it ranges 5.1 degrees up and down relative to that plane, each 27.32 day trip around the earth) . The full moon is when the Moon is opposite the Sun and (if it's close to the ecliptic plane) might go into the earth's shadow and become eclipsed.

Most of the other lunar events are similar pairs of alignments involving the other planets and larger, massive stars that lie very close to the orbital path of the Moon near the ecliptic plane. Before we discuss those, let's add on the next two most significant lunar events which I have called northern and southern max. The max comes from maximum declination, but as it happens, I realized after naming these, that if I had done the research thousands of years before or after this current era, I would not have named them so, because the earth's axis precesses around in a giant circle over 26,000 years, and it's just a fluke of the orbital variables that the Moon currently passes the galactic equator near its highest and lowest declination values. As recently as Roman times, the Moon would have reached the "northern max" position three days after passing the galactic equator. If you were outside on a December night in those times, you would have seen the full moon near Castor and Pollux in Gemini, while the Milky Way and Orion would have been starting to fall lower to the southwest -- the way we see the sky now in late January. So, if this theory catches on, we'll need to call the northern max the "Orion transit" perhaps and the southern max the "galactic centre transit" But for the next few centuries, they will certainly remain declination max events.

When I first noticed these energy peaks that seemed at least as strong as full and new moon in the data (and turned out to be stronger by at least 30%) I thought the declination max was perhaps the cause. I now think it's more likely to be the gravitational wave interaction between the Moon and the mass of the galaxy. With the northern max event, there are also a number of nearby massive stars located at similar celestial longitude although well off the ecliptic plane (Sirius for example is well below the ecliptic). With the southern max event, there are no nearby stars but this is the actual centre of the galaxy, whereas the Orion spiral arm is a more distant region of the galaxy than our own (slightly).

In any case, these two gravitational sources appear very significant and produce stronger atmospheric waves (according to my research) than the full and new moon. But just to repeat another point, the annual cycle of these two sets of events is quite regular and predictable. Full moon is at northern max in late December (if you happen to have a late December full moon). From that point on, northern max runs progressively ahead of full moon at the rate of about 2.3 days a month. Meanwhile, southern max runs ahead of the new moon at the same pace. The exact timing depends on where lunar perigee falls, because the Moon moves about 12% faster in its orbital path near perigee. What that all means is that spring and autumn are times with a regular 7 day rhythm of these events, while (early) winter and summer are times with superimposed events. In some of the discussions that follow, I may mention "linked" events and these are events timed within 24 hours, so that the energy wave tends to form one complex response rather than separate events. Just picture that full moon around 21 Dec would be simultaneous with northern max, by about 6 January these events separate by more than 24 hours so the time window for linked events of this sort is about four weeks from say 8 Dec to 5 Jan and from 8 June to 5 July.

Returning now to the rest of the events in the agenda, the research showed that three stars along the ecliptic path of the Moon well separated from the galactic centre provided regular energy signatures. These were Regulus, Spica and the pair of Antares and Aldebaran which are almost opposite one another in the sky. Therefore there are three pairs of events related to these stars -- and these are labelled RC, RO; SpC SpO; and A (which occurs twice each 27.32 days). These add to the background regularity of the lunar energy cycles. The RC event comes about 3-4 days after northern max. It will be linked to full moon in late February. The RO event comes about 3-4 days after southern max and is linked to the new moon in February. The SpC event comes about four days later, after the Moon has crossed the equator southward and is heading for southern max. The SpC event is linked with full moon in April. Meanwhile, the SpO event comes each lunation as the Moon is rising from the equator towards northern max, and is linked with the new moon in April. The A events occur as the Moon passes Aldebaran (about three days before northern max) and Antares (about three days before southern max).

These three sets of stellar-source events appear to be about 50-75 per cent as strong as full or new moon events and about half as strong as northern or southern max. When you consider the physics of conventional Newtonian gravitation and energy, this suggests that the effect created by the considerably larger masses of these larger stars (at distances of many tens of light years from earth, whereas Sirius is only eight light years and Alpha Centauri about 4.4) must retain much but not all of its intensity over this vast distance. The raw data have shown that the intensity reduction over distance is down in the range of a tenth to fifteenth root value, so whatever is happening with the physics of this interaction, it does not fall off anywhere near as quickly as either gravitation or electromagnetic forces.

Just a brief aside, you may wonder, what about hundreds of other stars that are reasonably close to the solar system and massive enough to be possible sources of energy peaks? I have done extensive analysis of the whole 27.32 day cycle, and found very little evidence for any other regular peaks. The stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini were considered, but for one thing the Moon passes them within a day of northern max, so if there's a signature there it is probably embedded in the larger northern max signature. A very small peak was detected for the star Fomalhaut which is well to the south of the ecliptic. This seems to indicate that the angle between the Moon's path and the straight line from source needs to be within a critical range, perhaps about 8 degrees and obviously less than 15 degrees from some of the excluded possible candidates further afield. It makes sense that the effect would peak at or near perfect alignment and drop off regularly with increased angle of separation.

So, to that basic timetable which is regular within the 27.32 day sidereal month, we add the main planetary events as the Moon comes close to the gravitational energy lines of force from planets near the ecliptic plane. The planets are rarely more than 7 degrees from the Moon at conjunction (and opposition in terms of vectors) so we can expect a regular signal to occur each lunation. As the planets are slowly moving forward around the ecliptic, the events fall at random into the stated regular 27.32-day cycle (note also that full and new moon move forward in that cycle).

Mars is moving fast enough that the period between its energy peaks (conjunctions) is 28 days, Jupiter registers at 27.5 days and Saturn closer to 27.4 days. For Venus and Mercury, the periods average the same as full and new moon (29.5 days) although depending on which way they are moving in their orbits, the period can be as long as 31 days.

Now, the planetary events in the model showed up in the research as being quite strong also, and scaled approximately as you would expect from the principle already outlined, that distance hardly matters -- but from the stellar events alone, it was difficult to judge how much mass would factor into the equation. Speaking in very approximate terms, the planetary energy peaks suggest that mass is also scaled at a very conservative drop-off rate like a tenth to fifteenth root, as with distance. In other words, the much smaller mass of Jupiter relative to the Sun seems to be almost washed out of the equation, as is the five-times greater distance. The Jupiter events (labelled JC for Jupiter conjunction and JO for Jupiter opposition) appear about half as strong as the full and new moon events. This places them about as strong as the RC and RO events. For the Saturn events (SC and SO) the ratio is more like one third. There are also detectable Mars, Uranus and Neptune events although these tend to be in the 10-20 per cent range. These are labelled (MaC, MaO; UC, UO; NC, NO) events. Venus events are sometimes too close to new moon (and full moon for opposition) so the research on those divided the data into periods when these events fell before or after new moon by a significant time factor. That produced the result that VC events are moderate in intensity about half as strong as the JC events. There is still some uncertainty in the data analysis about VO events; meanwhile, the possible events for Mercury are almost always too close to new and full moon to distinguish them.

Whatever the physics of these interactions, the signals and signatures seem real in the data and survive the test of time as segments of the data tend to show them in quite similar proportions -- to give some context for that, the northern max event shows up in the Toronto data as having a signature of about 2.5 C deg, a pressure wave of about 5 mbs and a precip spike of 3-4 times random. Now that's a statistical finding from 170 years of data and probably about 2500 lunar cycles. But a map analysis where I track the lows that are formed near timing line one shows that the event tends to be scattered over a large range of latitudes and also the timing varies slightly as the timing line oscillates east-west. Some study has gone into those effects and a partial explanation for the oscillation emerged -- Jupiter and Saturn were having second-order timing effects on the magnetic field and dragging the timing lines east and west during their orbital periods. But this tends to reduce the intensity of the signal. The real effect isolated to where it actually hits the grid is probably more like a 5-6 C temperature spike in a 10-15 mb wave producing a 5-8 times random precip spike.

Now consider also that these events have many ways of combining. In the years 2000 and 2001, Jupiter and Saturn were very close in the sky, and approaching N Max. This made the A and N Max, S Max events much stronger than usual. Near timing line one, there was a series of very strong windstorms in the autumn of 2001 at the northern max when this energy was best distributed to peak at this already strong event. Some of those energy peaks were on the order of 30-50 mb pressure waves, 10 C temp spikes and 10-20 times random precip peaks. So a reinforcement effect of several lunar events can often lead to a major storm near timing lines.

Well, that's a lot of information, much of it bound to come across as controversial if not borderline revolutionary (other words may come to mind). I didn't just find all this out overnight so I had many years to stumble across bits and pieces of these findings, then also I have had many years to study the data (I have had the Toronto data base on computer since 1994) and to do elaborate testing and tracking. This is why I got interested in western Europe weather and climate because I wanted to see if these effects were happening in another climate region. It struck me as possible that the magnetic field only captured these peaks near the poles and timing line one would show much stronger peaks than say timing line three. So far, it seems more that the effects are about the same near each timing line. When the Ken Ring thread got into this discussion of full and new moon events in winter months (and I realized that these were also northern and southern max events) I was able to show that for the period 1974-2009 the daily pressures at Malin Head demonstrated a 12-14 mb pressure oscillation with the troughs right at the full and new moon timing in December and January. I've since expanded that out to the whole year and found that there are also northern and southern max pressure troughs running throughout the year, and another set of reinforced troughs in June and July. However for timing line three I would probably want to take daily data from Iceland to establish the total strength of these events. The storm track normally runs somewhere in between but the signatures might be more intense for a station in southeast Iceland.

Tomorrow, should I live that long, I will get into the "astronomical agenda" for real time, June 2010. We've just passed the JC event as the Moon is currently on the rise (with respect to declination) and will reach new moon on 12th June. You'll understand then that northern max this month will come just a fraction of a day after that new moon and the events should be linked.

So, much there to ponder, and I will take this up again tomorrow some time. Could I suggest if people have questions, perhaps some time later this week once we have an agenda set up. I can see that we should probably get into questions on lunar events before wading into the second part of this theory later in June.

thetonynator · 07-06-2010 7:01pm

My head hurts.

M.T. Cranium · 07-06-2010 7:43pm

See why I didn't want to spoil the whole weekend?

Su Campu · 07-06-2010 8:01pm

I'm going to copy and paste all your posts into Word, print it off and read it on holidays in a few weeks.....give it my full attention!

Great work, even at this early stage!

ch750536 · 09-06-2010 6:48am

Fantastic stuff MT. I'm over the moon (sorry) that you have data to back up what I have always thought but been to lazy to research.

M.T. Cranium · 09-06-2010 7:48am

Thanks, I will post this month's agenda today, but some time early in July and August I will post those months so if you are still reading and perhaps get more time then, we probably won't get too heavily into the second part of the theory right away either. I was hoping that if some people are interested we might keep a thread going in the more active autumn and winter months.

Anyway, the following table will list the June astronomical events ... from the first of the month, so a few of these have already happened. The event names can be decoded from re-reading the previous post (of mine).

JUNE 2010 ASTRONOMICAL AGENDA
______________________________

times in GMT or z, summer time add one hour

DATE EVENT(S)

01 ....
02 .... MaO + RO (00,03z)
03 .... NC 18z
04 ....
05 ....

06 .... JC+UC 11z
07 .... SO 10z
08 .... SpO 10z
09 ....
10 ....

11 .... MeC 03z + A 09z
12 .... new 11z
13 .... N Max 03z
14 ....
15 .... VC 07z (perigee 15z)

16 ....
17 .... RC + MaC (18z, 19z)
18 .... NO 12z, (JO+UO) 22z
19 .... SC 11z
20 .... SpC 22z

21 ....
22 ....
23 ....
24 .... A 08z
25 ....

26 .... S Max 03z + full 12z
27 ....
28 ....
29 .... RO 06z
30 .... MaO 00z

Before posting this, just a couple of observations. Notice how the lunar perigee and the faster motion of the Moon causes events to be closer together in the period 12th to 20th than other parts of the month. You can see this from the separation of the JO and SC events just after perigee, only 13h compared to a 23h separation of JC and SO events earlier in the month. A small part of this is due to Jupiter's faster motion than Saturn, but most of it is due to the Moon's faster motion.

You can also see evidence of relative motion when looking at the closely timed Mars and Regulus events. Mars passes Regulus today and this shows up with the MaO event preceding the RO event early in the month, but then the MaC event coming later than the RC event mid-month, and by the end of the month the objects are far enough apart that linkage is fading out.

So, take this monthly agenda and look through it, feel free to raise any questions about what the events signify (without getting into the weather) as I would like to have these terms and definitions clear before getting too much further into the thread.

Something interesting to keep in mind, Jupiter is gradually approaching the alignment position with Saturn in the solar system that will occur in the winter of 2010-11. Since the two largest planets will be opposite one another, the JC and SO events, as well as the JO and SC events, will become linked (very close in time). There are parallax considerations that make this less than perfectly linear, but to give some idea of how the two planets are approaching this alignment, we will pass Jupiter on September 21st, then Saturn will be behind the Sun on October 1st (in ut). This ten-day separation will be reduced at a pace of about 2-3 days a month as Jupiter moves almost 2.5 times as fast as Saturn. So, what that will mean for the winter season in particular, is that there will be stronger than normal storm opportunities from the lunar component of this model in between the traditionally strong full and new moon events that align with northern and southern max. In December and January especially, this should set up a strong seven-day cycle in the storminess.

M.T. Cranium · 10-06-2010 12:46am

Not sure if I'll add anything substantial today, but here are some concepts to consider with this agenda. You can see that events, excluding some of the weaker ones, come along about every 3-5 days. In what I call "standard lunar mode" the model responds to this by taking each set of events across the timing lines then on to the next timing line in the interval provided. This means that statistically speaking, the flow is more likely to be fast around lunar perigee and also between the A and RC or RO events through N and S Max. There's a longer interval around the other parts of the 27.32 day cycle, but the exact timing of the planetary conjunctions will alter this rhythm from one year to another.

Strong events that are about 1.5-2 days apart may be able to move from timing line to timing line, but there are situations where the 9-wave progression breaks into more of a complex 18-wave progression around the hemisphere. Because of that other major component to the model (magnetic field sectors) this is not the whole story of low pressure evolution in the model. But during standard lunar mode, the other energy source tends to blend into this progressive feature of lows every 3-4 days or so. The exceptions tend to come when there is blocking, something that is largely explained in the magnetic rather than the lunar part of the model, and/or when there is retrograde motion of high or low pressure related to those sectors. This distorts the lunar mode and forces it to split around the blocks.

There are several indirect "proofs" of the lunar effect on the atmosphere. If an energy wave were to travel around the hemisphere in 27.32 days, or 360 degrees in that period, then the average forward motion per day would be about 13.2 deg per day. My research shows that this is very close to the actual average eastward progression of low pressure areas. At times where the events start to transition from one energy peak to two linked peaks, you can watch the lows between timing lines starting to elongate and forming new centres. The speed often accelerates around perigee.

Also, there is a sort of background lunar cycle rhythm that goes like this: zonal flow increases before northern max and then peaks around the RC to SpC events (when the Moon is returning from its highest declinations). The flow often buckles after the SpC event and the southern max event tends to run a bit further south than the N Max and other events. The coldest part of the cycle is generally from about S Max to SpO, then there is often a swelling up of high pressure as the Moon returns across the equator towards its northern max. This seems to be about equally true for timing line one and timing line three. I have not had the opportunity to assess whether it's true in eastern Asia, for example, and I would expect it to be reversed in the southern hemisphere.

Now, one other point that is more of an interesting diversion into long-term climate change. The earth's orbit precesses every 26,000 years so that, while the ecliptic path stays where it is now, the northern declination maximum moves backwards along the orbit. As I explained, I call the near-Orion galactic transit the northern max because that's where northern declination max occurs in our era. But going back to about 2,000 BCE, or four thousand years ago, the northern max was at the RC event, while three thousand years before that, it was around the SpC event, and around 10,000 BCE it was close to the galactic centre where southern max is nowadays.

What that would mean for storm energy level is that we are now in an era of stronger storminess that peaks in the winter. In the post-glacial warm period the winters would have had a more spread out energy budget from these events, and long before that in the Dryas period the situation would have been more similar to today, except that the seasonal shifts in solar system magnetic field sectors would run opposite to the modern situation. I will return to that point because it may be involved in rapid warming after the Dryas period.

If you happen to look back (or far forward) on Skyglobe then be forewarned, the convention is to extend the Gregorian calendar forward but the Julian calendar backward. This has the effect of keeping summer (high sun angle) in June-July going forward as well as back to Roman times with the slight jog in the medieval period with the calendar change, but as you go further back in time, summer gets later in the calendar year. Of course, nobody was using the Julian calendar that far back in human history, and people had lunar calendars that were normally rebooted from observations by adding one month every three years and one extra month every 19 years. So people back in early historical times didn't think summer was in September or October as the program shows for say 4,000 BCE. This is just an artificial consequence of using the slightly-too-long Julian year of 365.25 days. Over time it adds enough days to throw the seasons further back into the calendar year. If the program took the convention of using the Gregorian calendar going back, it would keep pace. But note that the slight decrease in the length of day expected puts the Sun at zenith around 3 p.m. local time compared to the current 1 p.m. by 30,000 AD. This is a situation that will be reversed by periodic additions of leap seconds to the standardized timekeeping devices, but the program doesn't anticipate that and shows the Sun transiting south a little later every millennium from now to when the program ends in 30,000 AD. It does keep the highest solar angle in or around the 20th to 23rd of June.

M.T. Cranium · 11-06-2010 7:41am

On Saturday (12 June) I will illustrate the location in the northern hemisphere of the new moon and northern max complex lows related to each timing line around the hemisphere.

As mentioned, the lunar component of the theory accounts for one set of pressure patterns. The magnetic field sectors account for additional pressure variations.

Getting readers up to speed on that, given that we have just had this outburst of new information, will not be easy and I don't want to rush.

I thought I would just outline some very basic ideas about the magnetic field sector part of this theory, because if I get into describing real time weather patterns, I may need to refer to this other component, and while it may be under the condition that further explanations will be forthcoming (over about 2-4 weeks), at least the reader will have some idea what's being described.

Let's start with the largest planet, Jupiter. At any given time, according to my extensive temperature analysis, the earth's orbital path around the Sun may be in one of four field sectors that relate to Jupiter. Two of these will be on the same side of the Sun as Jupiter, and they are usually encountered just before and then 2-3 months after we pass Jupiter. This indicates that the first of these field sectors is almost linear while the next one is curved out ahead of the line connecting the Sun and Jupiter.

On the opposite side of the Sun, two more field sectors are encountered in roughly the same pattern.

That conclusion is based on temperature analysis of a 398.9-day "J-year" which is the mean period (it varies from 395 to 406 days) from Jupiter opposition to Jupiter opposition. The assumption is that these field sectors are zones (probably in three dimensions, cylindrical or oval-shaped tubes) that connect the Sun and Jupiter and have slightly higher outward energy flux or heat transfer. This is a concept being investigated more widely under the heading of "space weather."

I envisage that these J-fields, as I call them, have something like 0.5 to 1% more energy flux than average, and the earth becomes slightly warmer as a result. However, because the earth intercepts this differentially through its magnetic field, areas near timing line one benefit the most from the warming. Then a resonance pattern shifts the residual warmth around the northern hemisphere (and presumably this also happens in the southern) with the proviso that all sectors warm up somewhat during any field passage.

The J-fields are fairly wide and the earth is in them about half the time; any given field sector takes a month to six weeks to traverse (and sometimes longer). The impact on our atmosphere, from detailed observations near timing line one and seemingly confirmed for Europe as well, is that a stronger than normal anticyclonic circulation develops. A warm ridge develops near 40 deg north at timing line one, but due to the curvature in the grid, this translates to about 50 deg north over Europe. Energy packets that seem to be rotational features embedded in the field sectors rotate around the resultant highs in sets of concentric anticyclonic ovals. Obviously this needs more detailed explanation and will get that later, but for now, just be aware that I may throw in concepts in the next few days, talking mainly about the lunar effect lows, where there will be mention of J-field energy.

Meanwhile, a similar system of S-fields was identified related to the 378.1-day S-year related to Saturn. These field sectors apparently induce cyclonic rotation in our magnetic field and atmosphere. The energy packets that are embedded rotate in large cyclonic swirls. This allows disturbances to move south at the latitudes of the Great Lakes and also Ireland and the U.K. (if I ever say British Isles, forgive me ... :cool:). The easterly flow components of these large field sectors can often be found further north in the sub-arctic. In general, the S-field sectors show up as elongated ridges that are continuously modified by rotating energy in the cyclonic direction, so that warmth or cold will depend on regional climatology. While the J-fields seem to transfer heat from the Sun to our atmosphere a little more efficiently than other periods, the S-fields seem to energize the atmosphere but create a more complex temperature signal.

Now there are some other field sectors but none of these involve low pressure features outside of some very specific tropical examples. Therefore our initial discussions of the lunar effect lows will not be thrown off course by these field segments, because to the extent that they add anything to the stronger J-fields and S-fields, most of the effects are found to be stronger high pressure. Some of these are retrograde features and contribute to blocking.

That's about all I want to burden you with today, except to introduce the directional principle of field sector effects in the atmosphere which is that field sectors overtaking the earth will move retrograde, and field sectors overtaken by the earth will move prograde in their long-term resonant flow. Only the two inner planets, Venus and Mercury, are capable of producing field sectors that overtake the earth. Mars is capable of producing the occasional accelerating field sector that can keep up to the earth or almost do that over a long interval (several months) which can lead to a stationary field sector effect in the atmosphere. J-field and S-field resonance effects tend to be prograde at the rate of about one timing line every 44 days for Jupiter and 42 days for Saturn.

So, the next instalment of this thread will be our first real-time look at examples of events, the new moon and northern max events for 12-13 June.

M.T. Cranium · 12-06-2010 5:19am

I hope to get a much better map up on this thread soon, but this schematic will illustrate where "timing line three" is located, running from about the western tip of Iceland to about Valentia then through France and into the Mediterranean. The map would be very difficult to read with the other timing lines on it, but timing line 2 runs down the east coast of Canada to southeast Newfoundland and then to the southern Azores and into west Africa. Timing line one runs from west of Hudson Bay to west of Toronto (around Chicago) to South Carolina (south of DCA) then into the tropical Atlantic.

That may help to visualize the discussion that will follow shortly on today's strong events on timing lines from the new moon event (at 1115z) followed by the N Max event (12:03z).

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
-- 90 -- 80 -- 70 --60 -- 50 -- 40 --30 -- 20 -- 10 --00 -- 10 -- 20 --30
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -3 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
70 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 3- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- GRN- -- -- -3 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
65 -- -- -- -- -BAF- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ICE- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
-- -- -HUD -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -3 -- -- -- -- -- NOR- -- -- -- -- --
60 -- -BAY -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --3-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -3-- -- -- -- -- --SWE-- -- -- --
55 -- -- -- -- -- --LAB-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 3- --IRE-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 3- -- UK-- -- -- -- -- -- --
50 -- -- -- -- -QC- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 3- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --NFLD- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- FRA- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
45 -- -- TOR- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -3 -- -- -- -- -- --
-- -- -- -- --NYC-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -3 -- -- -- --
40 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- AZO- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -3 -- --
-- -- -- --DCA -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
35 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

At this point it looks like the strong event on timing line one is near Lake Michigan (the default position) while timing line two has a low moving northeast to the south of Newfoundland, and timing line three activity is the dying low in the Biscay, together with a weak wave further northwest near Iceland. The activity near timing line four is today's strong low pressure wave moving through the Baltic regions.

For timing line five, I see a front through western Siberia. For six, there's a low near Japan. For seven, it's the deep low southwest of the Aleutians. For eight, it's another deep low in the Gulf of Alaska. For nine, it's the low over Colorado.

Northern max and new moon are both high index severe weather events so the June combinations of these are often very strong. In 2007 on Net-weather I was able to make a documented 95-day forecast for the severe weather outbreak in mid-June of that year (hail and tornado activity reported around the Thames valley and south central England). Now in the central U.S. at this time of year, almost every day produces its fair share of severe weather but northern max tends to produce more on average than any other part of the lunar cycle.

As to the complicating magnetic field interactions with the lunar cycles, we are doing reasonably well at this early stage by having a rather co-ordinated set that doesn't seriously distort the basic lunar pattern. J-field sectors (which are anticyclonic) are located at present near timing lines 1, 4, 6, 8 but in this theory I developed a more precise method of identifying timing positions, called timing number. If something is right on a timing line, it has a detailed position of .5 in the system, so something right on timing line 3 would be at 3.5. A feature halfway from 2 to 3 would be at 3.0. This means that between 9 and 1, you go from 9.99 to 1.00 as you move east (through about Kansas as that happens) -- there are no positions defined from 0.00 to 0.99.

The current J-field positions in more detail then are centered about 0.2, 4.2, 6.3 and 8.1. There is no requirement for them to be equidistant, this reflects their actual orientation in space. In these J-field sectors, the flow tends to ridge and the jet stream tends to be strong and poleward.

In the S-field sectors, which at present seem to be generally on the back end of each J-field sector, rather than in the middle of the spaces between them, so at about 9.2, 3.7, 5.5 and 7.3, you will find generally more cyclonic flow and an equatorward motion of the jet stream, although a split flow is frequently found. Much depends on the instant setup of the rotational elements in these sectors. For the J-field sectors, the most recent activity has been near the poleward side of the ovals. For the S-field sectors, the strongest activity has been on the east side moving poleward.

This may help to explain why sometimes we look around the hemisphere and see some similar shaping to regional weather patterns. It's because normally the geometry of four J-fields and four S-fields are about the same in space, and therefore whatever their separation function, they will form four rather similar looking regional panoramas of about 80-90 degrees. The tilt may be different, as the mean flow around the grid is distorted by the polar positions as defined.

And here's a further diversion that we will take eventually -- solar variation fits into this rather well. There is a very strong 9.93 year modulation of the solar cycle corresponding to the two occasions every 19.86 years when Jupiter and Saturn are aligned (as they will be in 2011). This tends to place the field sectors in overlapping positions (although remember these are three-dimensional constructs that can fail to overlap in the vertical axis of the solar system). The Maunder minimum and the Dalton minimum are two occasions when this interaction fades to near zero, for whatever reason. But normally, the solar variation cycle peaks about 2-3 years before alignments, with a secondary peak just after alignment. This recent quiet sun period seems to be another exception to the rule but we may get a weak resonance now with the secondary peak. This also happened with the 1893 peak. In general, alignments of Jupiter and Saturn have been happening in years ending with 2 during the 18th and early 19th centuries, and in 1 from mid-19th to present. This will soon move to years ending in zero. The solar activity peaks have been generally in years ending in 8 and 9 for much of this time period with some exceptions.

This may then explain why people find correlations between weather patterns and sunspot cycles -- both are being caused by the same external cause and effect.

M.T. Cranium · 14-06-2010 6:34am

Before moving on to a discussion of the other half of this theory, I figured that perhaps we should open the thread up to questions on the lunar events part of the theory now ... and a reminder to look back a few posts, to find the agenda for June. The first quarter Moon is now approaching perigee, an event which does not (in my estimation at least) produce its own event, but is associated with a temperature peak in the 1-2 C range, when averaged out over a long period. I can only vouch for this near timing line one. I've heard from other researchers who say that they feel perigee can be associated with swelling up of blocking highs especially in winter. This might be expected to give a different temperature signal in Europe than in my data base.

In any case, we could spend a few days on questions and comments.

M.T. Cranium · 15-06-2010 12:31am

This may be interesting too, the astronomical agenda around the dates of the famous Daniel Defoe storm of 1703 ... note that the calendar in use in Britain at that time was Julian, but these dates are Gregorian, so that the storm occurs 7-8 December in this agenda (and on the night of 26-27 Nov in the Julian calendar then in use):

DEC

3 ....
4 .... SpO 06z, SO 12z
5 ....

6 .... MaC+JO 06z and VC 21z
7 .... MeC (13z) (moon at perigee, approx)
8 .... A (06z) new (22z) Moon passed just to north of Sun (near-eclipse)
9 .... S Max (10h)
10 ..

A reconstruction of this agenda shows that there was a very high energy peak from early on the 6th until late 9th, with the implication that timing line three may have been a bit further east than equilibrium through the North Sea from the timing of this event. The moderate energy peak on the 4th would have been ideal in fast flow situations near lunar perigee to set up a strong jet stream with constant disturbances on a 48h cycle, a bit too fast for the lunar resonance model to handle and therefore the energy tends to jump forward when you get this rapid energy peak buildup.

A look at the J-field energy at that time indicates an energy peak at 01z on 8 Dec which was likely the triggering event for the apparent embedded squall line in this storm.

With any major storm, from my research I have found that the lunar events are a necessary condition but the field structure from the magnetic field sector part of the theory is also required to be in a conducive pattern, otherwise the large energy peaks will tend to create less than a major storm at a given timing line. Usually with a major energy peak there will be a major storm on one of the timing lines, the one with the best set-up and it would be intuitively obvious that the best set-up involves having a J-field sector just downstream (confluent SW flow then develops), no blocking retrograde sectors nearby, and if there is cylconic S-field activity, it needs to be producing SSW flow ideally to maximize that energy contribution. The Great Lakes windstorm of 26 Jan 1978 had an ideal S-field energy signature, and happened 48h after a full moon but right on a strong energy peak from RC+SC linked events. This seems to be a signature of major storm systems in general, that there will be two energy peaks about 2 days apart. Since the system operates at low stress with 3-4 day energy peaks, and one day separations usually lead to linked storms, one can see that a 2-day energy cycle is ideal for accelerating storms so that they can satisfy storm location requirements on two successive timing lines in 48 hour periods. The average forward motion implied by such acceleration is almost one degree of longitude per hour. When this links up with even faster J-field explosive development, then you can get features moving at 2 deg per hour, or the pace required to cross Ireland in 90 minutes to 2 hours.

And going back to regular lunar energy flow, the time required to cross Ireland for any given progressive feature (3.5 deg long) is about 6 to 7 hours. Does that sound about right to you? (the mean direction of travel would be from WSW to ENE given the grid configurations). Near apogee this might fall off to 8-9 hours. Anything taking longer than that or showing unusual meridional or retrograde motion would be under the guidance of some field system and not regular lunar energy, or in some cases could be explained by rapid timing number change. Timing number is defined as the instantaneous departure from equilibrium of the timing lines. Equilibrium gives a timing number of 50. From the grid, the timing number near Valentia is 50, and increases to about 70 near London and 100 near Denmark, at which point one enters timing sector four and timing number is 00 and rising. The next location with a timing number of 50 downstream would be near Minsk, with Moscow at about 60.

Su Campu · 15-06-2010 8:12am

The mind boggles at the amount of work you've put into this research over the years, it's an amazingly complex mish mash of signals you've had to try to decipher, and my hat goes off to you. I think I'm with you so far and look forward to the rest of the chapters!

M.T. Cranium · 15-06-2010 6:40pm

Very true about the mish-mash and the work, did you notice how that weekend system (which was timed as N Max crossing the timing line) was considerably stronger in reality than at 96h or even 72h on the progs? It only started to show up as a real entity about 48h in advance, I thought.

If there are no questions by this time tomorrow, I may start into a more detailed explanation of part II of the theory. In case you're trying to link the World Cup weather to the timing lines, I have timing line eight running across South America and the South Atlantic dropping to about 250 miles west of Cape Town on its way to about 75S 80E, and timing line nine would run through Angola and Zambia, Malawi and southern Mozambique then off southern Madagascar on its way southeast to the same position. What this means is that the weather sequence in South Africa is about the same as where I live, adjusted for latitude.

Here's one principle to keep in mind. Northern to southern hemisphere comparisons once you take into consideration time of year and latitude, will also depend on whether the event is pulled north or south by lunar declination. The "southern max" event in the s.h. should be like the "northern max" event in the n.h. ... however, blocking will have similar effects in terms of driving events either poleward or equatorward; however, the blocking latitude may be more complex than just a reflection through the equator. If the block sets up far north in the n.h., it may set up in the subtropics in the s.h. in the same timing sector.

From what I've been able to see, J-field and S-field rotations are mirror images through the equator.

Note also where the "meteorological equator" will lie in this system. It goes furthest south of the terrestrial equator in the South American sector, and furthest north in the Indian sector. This corresponds generally to known positions of the ITCZ and the more robust southwest monsoon in India. However, the actual empirical details would need to be worked out, all of the grid parameters are basically just a first approximation, and the complexities of terrain and ocean-land distribution enter into the final shaping of the grid. The most notable distortions in the grid can be found around the Himalayas and the Rockies.

Su Campu · 15-06-2010 8:51pm

Here's one principle to keep in mind. Northern to southern hemisphere comparisons once you take into consideration time of year and latitude, will also depend on whether the event is pulled north or south by lunar declination. The "southern max" event in the s.h. should be like the "northern max" event in the n.h. ... however, blocking will have similar effects in terms of driving events either poleward or equatorward; however, the blocking latitude may be more complex than just a reflection through the equator. If the block sets up far north in the n.h., it may set up in the subtropics in the s.h. in the same timing sector.

Have you seen any differences between the hemispheres due to the very different ocean:landmass ratios, the northern hemisphere having much more landmass and hence different orographical and possible tidal/magnetic effects than the south?

M.T. Cranium · 15-06-2010 11:21pm

The modelling of the grid follows climatology to some extent, the effect of the Antarctic land mass is to squeeze the latitude lines together in terms of average storm tracks between 40 and 65 S. Otherwise the model runs off assumptions of energy level by climatic region, so that the stormier southern westerlies are handled that way (by range of pressure against the mean).

In other words, I don't think that this model would look totally different on a much different planet in terms of land and ocean distribution but the climate within that circulation is obviously greatly affected by air mass values that are caused by standard meteorological factors. If for some unconnected reason, let's say, the ice cover in the northern hemisphere totally disappeared, then we would be left with almost the same circulation but it would be moving about different air masses. I think this model would argue towards the fixed end of the spectrum in the ongoing debate about whether global warming (if real) could cause circulation patterns to shift, or whether they stay similar but air masses are altered, mostly to a warmer phase.

M.T. Cranium · 20-06-2010 9:44pm

Update ... I hadn't mentioned it here on boards.ie but I've had a busy week of distractions with family health issues (thankfully resolved in a good sort of way) so this thread has been one casualty of the time squeeze as I couldn't really drop the forecast thread.

So, as there seem to be no questions about the lunar events yet, I will start to post this week more extensive information on the second part of the theory, magnetic field sectors.

It's interesting today to compare the weather map for Australia which represents the s.h. analogue to the Atlantic sector between timing lines 2 and 3. If you picture these two timing lines as being the west and east coasts of Australia, and the west and east shores of the open Atlantic in the northern hemisphere, you'll be visualizing the analogue.

http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/nmoc/latest_MSLP.pl?IDCODE=IDY00050

In the current map, notice the sprawling semi-blocking high near timing line three, just off to the west of it actually. This is generally similar to the situation in the n.h. ... and part of the reason for the block is retrograde blocking at a moderate latitude as Mercury approaches conjunction (in this case, it's superior conjunction on the 28th). Whenever Mercury or Venus approach conjunctions (alignments with the Sun) blocking develops over Europe and the track of retrograde high pressure blocking seems to depend on the celestial latitude (inclination to the ecliptic plane).

Because Mercury reaches its highest celestial latitudes around the Jan-Feb side of the earth's orbit (or in R.A. 7 to 11h) in the modern era, the track of winter blocking is far north across Greenland, while the track of spring and autumn blocking tends to be more temperate zone and directly in the path of the jet stream's normal path. In summer, the blocking would be at low latitudes and this kind of blocking can only be seen in second-order analysis such as Hovmuller diagram that tracks pressures over time for various longitudes. It would show up as a gradual retrograde swelling of subtropical highs. The inclination range for Mercury is about 4 degrees. Mercury can only transit the Sun's face at inferior conjunctions around 8 May and 8 November of any given year. These dates will slowly get later in the year as the nodes of Mercury move forward.

Note the principle that seasonal inferior conjunctions and superior conjunctions will have similar paths as the inferior conjunctions are at opposite latitudes to superior ... superior being on the far side of the Sun, the projection of the compensating field sectors comes out in a similar latitude to the direct field configuration at inferior conjunction.

For Venus, the highest celestial latitudes are during March inferior conjunctions, and lowest during September. These inclinations are quite large, up to 8 degrees.

I will talk more extensively about these inner planetary retrograde blocking effects during the week. The Toronto daily temperature analysis shows quite a strong signal from Mercury, with a spike of about 2 C deg occurring near four days before inferior conjunctions in general, and another one about eight days before superior conjunctions in general. These tend to show sharper peaks when broken down into seasonal groups. The period of inferior conjunctions of Mercury is about 115.88 days (Mercury takes 88 days to orbit the Sun and in that time the earth moves about one quarter of the way around the Sun, so it takes almost another month for Mercury to catch the earth). This means that any given year has Mercury conjunctions about 17 days before the previous year, and that there are cycles of 6-7 years (the dates here get within a week or so), 13 years (after that period, the dates are a few days later), 20 years (here the dates fall a bit earlier after that interval), 33 years (almost exact) and 46 years (close to exact). The Mercury cycles may be one of several natural variations that contribute to El Nino although I've found more success in modelling those from interactions of Jupiter and other members of the solar system.

The Venus period is much longer, since Venus is travelling only slightly faster than the earth, so it takes 584 days from one inferior conjunction to another. Every fifth inferior conjunction is almost eight years after the previous one, less 2.2 days. What this means is that we have a complex eight-year cycle of Venus conjunctions, repeating 2.2 days earlier each 8 years. This means that in any given half-century, there are months with Venus conjunctions, and months without any. It takes 243 years for one of these long cycles of Venus to move forward one-fifth of a year to get the dates back to where they started. For example, nowadays we have Venus inferior conjunctions through June and have just had one recently (2004) on 8 June with a transit of the Sun's disk. Another one comes along on 6 June 2012. There have been no May Venus inferior conjunctions since the first half of the 19th century, and it will be 2036 before this set of dates slides back into May.

As a result, seasonal analysis for May suffers from the complications of long-term climate change from century to century. However, the data available show a sizeable warming that seems to start months ahead of the Venus conjunctions and fades out months afterwards. These Venus field sectors may be quite large, then, and may actually be part of our "normal" climate to some extent; with Venus absent from the solar system we might have a slightly cooler earth in other words. The reason for this is clearly not a heat source from Venus, but the tidal effects that Venus has on the Sun and the high probability that we will be somewhere fairly close to the two symmetric outflow channels. No doubt if this were true, Mars would be benefitting similarly from the earth's presence, and Saturn from Jupiter's etc. Mercury being a smaller object, faster moving and apparently generating very sharply defined field sectors of restricted width, is a more location-specific case study. I would imagine that in astronomy, there could be a finding that Mercury's interaction with other field sectors in the inner solar system might be related to flares and other surface events on the Sun. Some of the very small sunspots may also be related to this phenomenon (the more normal larger ones may be related to Jupiter-field sector interactions).

Okay, that's enough for this installment, I will give some general information on outer planet fields next, then get into some more detailed discussions during the week.

Here's a concept that I invented to help visualize planetary location. As you may know, Right Ascension (R.A.) is the most familiar astronomical locator, and works from 0h (zero hours) at the vernal equinox, or where we see the Sun on 21 March. Now if it were night on 21 September, we would be looking out at the stars or planets in this sector (zero hours), so that a planetary opposition in late September would be at something like zero to one hour of R.A. (others use longitude and that works the same way with a 360 degree scale, except that R.A. is perpendicular to the equator while longitude is perpendicular to the ecliptic path).

This places the northern max galactic transit near 6h R.A. and in fact I define northern max to be the Moon's location at this precise location, although this will slowly drift as the equinox precesses slowly through time.

However, these concepts are difficult to visualize easily in one's head for those of us whose primary field is atmospheric science. Thus I have invented the concept of Earth Opposition Date or EOD to make these positions much easier to visualize. At any given instant, EOD defines where an outer planet is located on the assumption that if the earth was in opposition (passing between the planet and the Sun) then the earth date would be the EOD. Let's take an example from today. We'll be passing Jupiter on 21 September, at which time, it will be at EOD 21 September. But last year we passed it in mid-August. Obviously, Jupiter has been moving steadily along at about 1/12 our pace, and has covered about 3/4 of the 36 days between the two dates, or 27 days. It has 9 left to cover while we move 92 days ahead. So today's Jupiter EOD is 12 September. On the average, it moves one day forward in EOD every 10-11 days (it's moving a bit faster than its average because Jupiter is now very near perihelion).

Meanwhile, Saturn is over near EOD 30 March. We will be on the far side of the Sun from Saturn on 1 October. Since 1 October is actually opposite 3 April (due to different lengths of our months) the EOD at that point will be 3 April rather than 1 April as you might first guess.

I don't use EOD for the inner planets, but I might refer to some concept like "moving through earth's January vector" which just means closer to the centre of some imaginary 12-piece pie, of which one piece is January. Clearly the inner planets move through these sectors rather quickly, Mercury is also near perihelion when on our side of the solar system in December, so that near Nov, Dec and Jan inferior conjunctions, it is sweeping through a month's worth of space in just 6-7 days.

Popoutman · 21-06-2010 6:44pm

Forgive me if I appear as a sceptic for some of this.

I'd certainly agree with the lunar effects - the atmosphere is a liquid just as the oceans are, and are affected by the same tidal effects. Those effects will be quite different of course because of the different ranges in density and the fact that the atmosphere does not have as obvious a free surface and has fewer geographical constraints (coastlines?)

The Jupiter effects - personally I'd say that these would be a very slight local space environment effect. It's not like we're 'feeling' the effects of Jupiter's magnetosphere, but it's also true that this may not have been examined in any great detail until now. There isn't any known structure akin to the Jupiter-Io plasma torus that I've seen in the literature, and from what I can gather Jupiter's effects on the solar wind won't ever propogate inwards far enough to affect the Earth's local environment.

As for effects due to Saturn, I'm a bit more dubious on this as Saturn isn't close enough for either the gravitational force or it's magnetosphere to have a direct effect on the inner solar system.

I do think that effects due to Venus/Mercury would need a thorough stats workup as I don't see the mechanisms in play. If there were effects through conjunction one would expect to see the superior conjunctions being a tighter and slower effect (less angular distance above/below the sun) and the inferior conjunctions being a lot shorter and more scattered given the length of time that e.g. venus could spend within 8 degrees of the sun as it undertakes us in its orbit when compared to when it is at the far side of the sun.

I'm not trying to criticise here, I do know a little of solar dynamics from years as an amateur astronomer. I'm just giving my 2 cents...

M.T. Cranium · 21-06-2010 8:52pm

Well, I have done a full analysis on temperatures for the 170 years of record at Toronto, which is my index for timing line one and timing sector one, and all of the effects that I report in this thread are documented by these numerical analyses.

The interaction being postulated here is not a direct connection between our atmosphere and magnetic fields of these planets, but the effects of these planets within the solar system magnetic field, which then divides into sectors that rotate at different speeds with the planets. Although the differences are likely to be subtle (in the order of 0.5 to 1.0 per cent of solar flux) they seem persistent and focused enough to bring about responses in the earth's magnetosphere and that in turn affects the upper atmosphere.

When I get into the research on the J-field and S-field sectors, I will list some of the numerical findings which are significant over that time period. Please note, if there are ten independent variables each capable of introducing a 0.5 to 1.0 (C) deg modulation of temperature (speaking of timing sector one here) then the cumulative effects of all ten could bring about anomalies of 10 degrees C, which is about the thresh-hold value for record warmth or cold in 3-5 day periods in a continental climate such as that experienced in east-central North America.

So in actuality this model is based on the interactions of a large number of rather small and (independently) weak cycles, a 1-2 deg temperature modulation may look impressive when displayed on a graph but variations that small go almost unnoticed day to day in a climate where the standard deviation of daily temperatures is often 5 C deg or more.

The interesting side note to all of this is that the effects can be demonstrated for time segments such as 1840-1920 and 1921-present, with the standard "climate change" separating the actual values -- in other words, the weak or moderate effects continue despite changes in climate regimes that are likely connected to shifts in the jet stream latitude, or air mass temperature modification (for Toronto, my research tends to show 80% jet stream shift and 20% air mass temp change mostly for cA air masses).

Whether or not these signals are also operational in the European climate, either directly or from downstream transfer, remains to be proven but my first indications from analyzing monthly temperatures in the long CET record show similar modulations on a monthly time scale.

Proof of the interaction would be difficult in any case from theoretical considerations alone, because there is no agreed scaling function for the configuration of field sectors in the solar system magnetic field, so in other words, the proof will probably come gradually through acceptance of the non-random predictability of the phenomenon. That is no doubt going to take a fair amount of time and effort and could be happening long after I'm gone at the rate things have progressed from 1980 to present. This is one reason I am reaching out in this and one or two other internet forums, because I have the feeling this work will have to be passed on within 10-15 years to someone younger and hopefully more persuasive than yours truly.

I am convinced of the reality of these mechanisms, and one of the better indirect proofs is that solar variation has shown a strong correlation with Jupiter-Saturn alignments both in the modern (astronomical records) period since the Maunder, and in the somewhat less precise records from about the third century to the 17th century. I can post some documentation for that in a few days time as well, but the mean period of this alignment, 9.93 years, compares very closely to "regular service" in the solar variability, for example, from 1917 to 1989 the period was 10.3 years, from 1718 to 1787-8 another very active period, the average was almost exactly 9.93 years, and from 1830 to 1870 it was 10.0 years. When the activity fades and peaks are less regular, it seems that the cycle slows to about 12 years and this makes me believe that perhaps Jupiter and the Sun have a secondary resonant cycle that exists in the background of the more active J-S interaction. I have not made any progress in isolating what, if any, predictable factor explains the periodic weakening and extinction of the J-S interaction (which seems to be the case at present, as well as 1790-1825 and 1875-1915, and of course the Maunder where the secondary factor seemed to disappear as well).

Not all of these processes must necessarily be predictable, of course, there may be an element of random flaring up and quieting down of the intensity, like lightning strikes in a thunderstorm.

M.T. Cranium · 10-07-2010 7:08pm

UPDATE on this thread ...

I had meant to post an agenda for July to continue the June agenda, but went on holiday without most of the material I would need, however, I will post it on Monday or early Tuesday.

The one really relevant detail is that new moon occurs 1930h UT on Sunday (11 July) and in fact there is a total eclipse in the southern hemisphere visible from Easter Island among other places in the South Pacific.

Now if you've grasped one of the key elements of this theory, by this point in July the northern max event (which would be right at new moon if that happened on 21 June) is about 1.3 days before the new moon, a time variation that explains the large number of two-part or dangling wave formations around the hemisphere crossing timing lines this weekend. For your vicinity near timing line three, which by the way seems to have drifted a bit east of equilibrium, the northern max energy came through mid-day Friday and this system today appears to be the new moon event. It's generally the case that most of the active weather is ahead of the actual pressure signature of these events but I think that timing line three is now about halfway east across the UK from its previous position to the west of Ireland.

On timing line one, the N Max and new moon couplet has moved across the Great Lakes and the east coast of the US in the past 24 hours, and there has been some sign of retrogression past week to ten days that is probably due to the weak Mercury retrograde pushing through a large q.s. blocking high which is associated with slow-moving outer field segments. With retrograde impulses at fairly low latitudes, you encounter a pattern of diving fronts as events split around that retrograde block (remember that timing in this model is equal on a NW-SE grid rather than north-south, and this gives opportunity for lows to follow in sequence despite being timed together as their trailing fronts are oriented at 45-60 degrees to the grid).

We also see strong activity brewing on timing lines 8 and 9 over western North America and as with timing line three, all these N American timing lines seem to have shifted slightly east of equilibrium. I think this is due to the second-order effect of Jupiter being ahead of the earth-sun line at present which shifts the whole system east. This angle will reduce rapidly soon which should force the timing lines to start drifting back to the west towards equilibrium, so I'll make notes on that process as we go along.

Otherwise, score one for the model on this rather strong low forming right at northern max and new moon as the long-term pressure waves predict in the region around Ireland. Another strong one can be expected around the time of linked SC+JO events later this coming week, and then around the S Max and full moon events (which by then will be 2-2.5 days apart, so separated enough to allow separate low pressure systems). See the agenda in a few days time for the exact details but you could look them up or take the June agenda and subtract about 2.5 days for most events named (0.5 for the full moon).

I have not really gotten into the second-order effects of these large field segments (in atmospheric response terms) and these I find both fascinating and the most difficult to explain using conventional physics, but my research has convinced me that they are real and predictable especially when the set-up positions are known with precision on a short time scale. Here again, I don't have access to all the info stored on home computer, so I can't easily check out the details on today's system, but more active events in the autumn months will be better for illustrating these in any case.

M.T. Cranium · 12-07-2010 6:49pm

Okay then, as promised, here is the July agenda ...

JULY 2010 ASTRONOMICAL AGENDA
______________________________

times in GMT or z, summer time add one hour

DATE EVENT(S)

01 .... NC 01z
02 ....
03 .... UC 20z
04 ... JC 01z
05 ... SO 00z

06 .... SpO 06z
07 ....
08 .... A 15z
09 ....
10 .... N Max 12z

11 .... new 20z
12 ....
13 .... MeC 01z, moon at perigee 11z
14 .... RC 12z
15 .... VC 01z, NO 10z, (UO 21z+

16 .... JO (01z) + MaC (05z) + SC (19z))
17 ....
18 .... SpC 07z
19 ....
20 ....

21 .... A 19z
22 ....
23 .... S Max 16z
24 ....
25 ....

26 .... Full 02z
27 ....
28 .... RO 00z VO 20z
29 ....
30 .... (UC 03z + JC 09z +
31 .... SO+MaO 02z)

Large-scale energy clusters will continue near the mid-way points from N Max to S Max due to the close alignment of Jupiter, Saturn and (during July especially) Mars. These moderate energy peaks are all timed close enough together to produce strong complex energy peaks at least similar to the main energy peaks of the July new moon - N Max cluster. Note the separation of S Max and full moon by the 23rd to 26th has widened to over two days and so these events have enough time to develop as independent systems (the ideal timing separation to fuel the nine-timing-line progression is 3.04 days).

With reference to timing line three and the weather systems affecting Ireland, the low scheduled to traverse the region on Wednesday is the RC+VC energy peak which is a growing energy situation given the strong energy peak due on the 16th from a cluster of four events.

Astronomy note -- if you have any clear skies the next few evenings, you could probably spot Venus and the crescent moon fairly low in the west after sunset. They won't form a very close conjunction as the Moon sweeps well to the south (left in the evening sky tilted orientation) of Venus on Tuesday evening. Meanwhile, Jupiter slowly emerges from the morning skies into the midnight viewing period during the summer, you may spot Jupiter rising in the east around the midnight to 0200h period this month but it will become very prominent in the skies from August to December at increasingly early rising times (by the late autumn it will be visible high in the south after sunset). This year is the brightest apparition of Jupiter (although these vary rather modestly) due to its perihelion close to the September 21 opposition.

M.T. Cranium · 08-08-2010 5:41am

Continuing to think that the late autumn and winter will be a more interesting time to follow these events in detail, but for the record, as we move through August, the N Max event was on Friday around 21z and the next significant event is the new moon on Tuesday 10th at 0308z with support from the RC event shortly afterward, and perigee. These two events, as you can see are now separated by 3 days and 6 hours which is easily long enough to keep the nine timing line model adequately "fed" on a regular basis. This will generally continue as the next cluster of events from late 12th through 13th (involving JO, VC, SC and then MaC events) will arrive on the timing line as a complex low almost 3 days after new moon, then another similar spacing to SpC, then to southern max and then to full moon. I will mention times for these as the weather events happen. However, it appears that near timing line 3, blocking is about to develop forcing the event train north and probably causing a split with shadow events appearing somewhere in the western Med in phase.

The block appears to be a progressive amplification being caused by low-latitude retrogression that is forcing a ridge to form to its north.

I've been studying the timing of the heat ridge over Russia, and it appears consistent with a progressive overlap of J and Ma field sectors that have moved downstream from North America last autumn to Greenland-Iceland last winter to western Europe around April-May then on to Russia now. There may be a retrograde overlap with this but I expect the Russian heat wave to flatten out as these components separate, with some of the height and thickness ridge advecting east towards West Siberia while another component builds back towards Germany. In this situation, a trough could very slowly take shape near timing line four (Norway to Belarus to Caspian, approx). Given the slow-moving nature of this block, such a feature could take 20-30 days to appear. It would bring eventual rains to drought-stricken areas there (aside from the isolated storms that have been very few and far between).

Meanwhile, the heat wave over east-central U.S. states is typical of a Mars-Jupiter field overlap, the strongest overlap being around 40N ... which is why this feature is so slow-moving (Mars field sectors move at half the speed of all other progressive field sectors). This field warming should, over time, reorganize more to the east but with continuing positive anomalies held back over the eastern U.S. However, retrogression will plow into this complex around early September and make for some very chaotic subtropical circulation patterns near the U.S., which is why I believe that the slow start to the tropical storm season will be reversed late in August and in early September by considerable activity.

For anyone regretting the somewhat helter-skelter nature of this discussion, I can say that a more organized on-line monograph or textbook style exposition of the theory should predate my death or at least celebrate it, depending on how soon I master the finer arts of internet map and chart graphics (I have started, which is good given my age). :cool:

Redsunset · 08-08-2010 8:42am

Really enjoying the thread MT.

Here's an editable world map to put those time lines on if you find it useful.Download link on bottom of page.

http://digital-vector-maps.com/world-maps-detail/4126/Vector-World-Map-Rectangular-Editable-PDF.htm#

Keep up the head scratching work.:)

M.T. Cranium · 08-08-2010 10:54pm

Thanks, I will try the map but so far my problem has been more in terms of posting maps that I've made up on my computer here, the extensions seem to be incompatible with the attachments options (but my wife is more advanced than me in these matters and she's on the case). I am not in a rush because I really feel the late autumn and winter are the ideal time to get into the meat of this theory, this is when the jet stream is more active and everything is more dramatic in any case. And this winter should be very interesting with the overlap of the secondary events, this only happens every ten years.

As part of my research, I have looked extensively at solar variation because my theory is that the same processes that cause weather and climate also cause solar variation (and not as presumed in much conventional research, that solar variation causes weather and climate variations, although I am open to a more complex idea where this is partly the case and needs to be factored into the eventual model).

I have been reluctant for largely irrational personal reasons to make a full disclosure of who I am elsewhere in the weather-internet world but I think it's fairly widely known here by now, and in the next few days I will get into breaking down that rather minor barrier because I have a lot of research information posted on Net-weather, the UK forum that many of you may also be members on, as well as a contributor on easternuswx.com, and because well why not, it's not a state secret (but it does involve revealing that I was born in the UK although I have an Irish background, apparently). I'm pretty sure these are not really factors of any real importance but I guess I have enjoyed the ride of being "M.T. Cranium" which is probably the most accurate of my various persona, certainly one of the better names in play.

For example, I have posted a fairly detailed analysis of solar variations from the perspective of the astro-climatology theory on Net-weather. I will post the link for that in a day or two (I need to find it first and see if it needs any updating). The basic idea is this -- the solar variation cycle of ten years (approximately) has conformed to the alignments of Jupiter and Saturn in general terms both in the modern (observational) period of about 1700 to 2010 and in the historical (derived from auroral records) period that Schove developed and extended back to 290 AD almost without breaks, and intermittently back before that too. I factored in that Schove's peaks might be 1-2 years later than sunspot-generated peaks because of the known lag time between sunspot max and auroral max. The problem area for my theory is to explain why there are periodic breakdowns, because whenever solar activity drops below the regular pulse of moderate to strong 10-year cycles, it lengthens out and only Jupiter's 12-year cycle seems to be significant in these pause periods (and then you have the Maunder period of sixty years with very little activity apparently).

During the regular cycles, the sunspot number count increases and hits a maximum about 2-3 years before alignment, then falls off, has a secondary max about +1 year relative to alignments, and the minima occur on average around the fourth year of the ten-year alignment cycle. The "ten-year" cycle of alignments is more precisely 9.86 years. The fact that these alternate, from mutual oppositions (J and S on same side of sun) to cases where J and S are on opposite sides of the sun, conforms to the alternating polarity of sunspot magnetic fields, the Hale cycle (but this is only confirmed in the 20th century high-activity time frame, we don't know for certain how the Hale cycle can be extended back).

Because the 10-year cycle is actually 9.86 years, this means that Jupiter-Saturn alignments take place in years ending in 1 from about 1861 to 2011, then back beyond that in years ending in 2 from about 1702 to 1852, etc. When I link through to the study posted on net-weather, you'll see very clear evidence that there is a strong modulation of the solar cycle by this 9.86 year alignment, and also, that intensity is about the same whether it's the one set or the other set of alignments.

Due to the curved nature of field segments, the theory as postulated may need to be studied for which of the two paradigms is true -- interference of field segments causes the increase in solar activity, or reduces it. By the way, if you view the diagram posted in the solar flare thread (for the Aug 1-2 events) you'll see that these curved field segments are shown schematically on that diagram, and that the solar flare occurs rather obviously from the graphics when Mercury moves in front of Venus, so imagine what potential there may be for interaction in this complex set of field sectors when Jupiter "moves in front of" Saturn (but in the sense of being in a curved field sector). The concept also may be related to the observed secondary peak as the field sectors may be pairs of bowed fields rather than all curved in the same orientation. The secondary peak is sometimes fairly significant, as in 2001-02, and 1972 (for the 1968 peak), also the 1905 to 1907 period. Some weaker cycles can better be described as flat-topped plateaux of activity, as with 1801-04.

What's very interesting (to me at least) about this situation is that in all cases I can find both modern and historic, the tendency is for the solar cycle to fix on a 10-year regular cycle that seems to run almost in sync with the J-S alignment then when it starts to drift closer to that exact timing, it slows down, fades out and the next few peaks are more like 12 years apart and regular activity starts up again after 2 or 3 weak to moderate cycles. The exceptions would be the Sporer and Maunder mins which lasted more like 5-6 cycles. This does not necessarily invalidate the theory so much as present a problem as to what causes the regular mechanism to break down -- it can't be a geometry problem because very similar alignments have been good for regular activity in the past or future from the missing peaks (for example a peak should have happened around 1808-10 but with the 1801-04 moderate peak coming late, the Dalton minimum period was underway, the 1816 peak was very weak and out of step, no peak happened 1818-20 unless you take the 1816 peak as being early, then the regular service resumed with the 1830 peak -- but note, that the peak of 1870 came on time sixty years after the missing 1810 peak, also 1928, and 1989 were "on time" peaks with J and S in almost identical positions.

So, the theory needs the added step of explaining the breakdown causation, something that I have found a few possible concepts to investigate, but nothing too definitive. We seem to have entered a breakdown period now, the signs are all classic, first of all the 1999-2001 flat-topped peak was a bit weaker than 1979 or 1989 and a bit late, then came a longer fade out (as with 1788-1795 before the Dalton) then apparently a missing peak 2008-10 that is starting to show up gradually now (similar to 1893 compared to 1870 and 1883). Are we now in for 2 or 3 weak cycles? Will they average 12-13 years in period? Or is this going to be a shorter interruption that sorts itself out with a fast return to service in 2011-12 and a regular peak in 2018-20? Since I don't have a final answer to the interruption part of the theory, I don't have my own opinion on this, and note that the general opinion of those in the field is mixed.

So, watch this thread for a link to the relevant net-weather thread which has a lot of the details on this theory.

A new theory of atmospheric variation

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