Just another repeat thought for you.
The Sun orbits the barycenter (center of mass) of the Solar system as do the planets. The position of the barycenter in relation to the Sun alters dependent on the orbit of the major planets in the system. Sometimes it is inside the Sun but it can be significantly outside the Sun. The barycenter can run retrograde through the rotating Sun or prograde with the rotation of the Sun. This will have an effect on the rotation and motion of the Sun. It is this 'wobble' in stars that is one of the methods used by astronomers to identify the presence of planets around the star.
So the Sun Hale cycles and other effects could easily be affected by this motion around the barycenter (See writings of Rhodes Fairbridge and Theodor Landscheidt)
The Earth also orbits the moving Barycenter (or falls toward it if you want to be pedantic) so the Earth's orbit is affected as is its velocity and due to all the various energy laws its Length of Day may alter relatively significantly. So to add to the tides due to the Moon acting like a continual 'pump on ocean currents and the thermohaline currents due to convective and salinity effects, we now 'slop' the system by increasing or decreasing the rate of rotation of the Earth. This may happen over a long period as the barycenter transits through then around the sun in a particular direction. So for several years the rotation of the earth may be continually accelerating (as with centripetal force) while relative to the Sun which is orbiting the same barycenter there seems to be little or no change. The momentum and inertia of the oceans will lead to changes in the deep ocean currents and in kelvin waves. I don't know if anyone has linked these kelvin waves to the changes in the velocity of the Earth due to the motion of the barycenter it would be interesting to confirm there is a correlation.
However, after all that - the above is a hypothesized mechanism for an 'astrometeorologist' to identify planetary configurations which are likely to result in major oceanic effects such as an El Nino or La Nina.
Nautonnier,
I recently posted on Astrometeorology, the barycenter, the Sun, and the planets when it comes to identifying planetary configurations relative to the effects on Earth's climate. There are direct correlations to the rotation of Earth, the barycenter, the Sun and the planets.
Only those forecasters who apply those principles are able to forecast accurately.
As for ENSO, we all have gone over this before on the 2014 El Nino thread, where I said that there would be no 'Super El Nino' much less ANY El Nino last year.
The signatures for ENSO really are those that involve the Sun primarily, and there are planetary configurations that result in the altering of the Sun's output that affects Earth's oceans, and its climate.
And Graywolf, I will repeat what I said last year on ENSO.
In my climate forecast, there will be no ENSO until 2020, and that one will be La Nina, and a strong one at that.
ENSO events are solar-planetary forced and occur every 10-11 years.
The last ENSO, which I forecasted, was a El Nino in mid-2009 that was followed by a La Nina in 2010-11.
You are seeing what amounts to a large scale variability in the circulatory system, and when you take out ENSO you are removing a climate mechanism where the thermal/kinetic exchange to equilibrium is achieved.
However, ENSO is externally forced through the polar annular modes/AAM, and is climate change in action. What confounds the computer modellers about ENSO's cycle is that the thermodynamic response to perturbation is not linear.
And that is because the oceanic atmosphere responds to fluctuations by external forcing from the Sun.
ENSO is forced by the Sun externally and the effects are from the strength of trade winds (Walker Cell dynamics) and the AAM integral signals come before ENSO SST variation.
Now, the atmosphere is the less energetic body, so by definition, there has to be an 'external' perturbation present.
Evidence of such Solar forcing exists and the relationship is significant:
Corotating coronal holes of the Sun induce fluctuations of the solar wind speed in the vicinity of the Earth.
These fluctuations of solar wind speed are closely correlated with geomagnetic activity and the resultant geophysical climate and weather effects on Earth. It is basic to Astrometeorology. That is what I do.
Now, solar wind speeds have been observed and monitored by orbiting Earth satellites since the mid-1960s.
The long-term series of solar wind speed clearly reveals enhanced amplitudes at the solar rotation period of 27.3 days and at its harmonics 13.6 and 9.1 days.
The amplitude series are modulated by a quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) that has a period of 1.75a (that's 21 months) as bispectral analysis reveals.
A 1.75a QBO component is also present in the equatorial, zonal wind of the stratosphere at 30 hPa, in addition to the well-known QBO component at the period 2.4a (at 29 months.)
The solar wind QBO influences the stratospheric QBO, the global electric circuit, and cloud cover by modulation of ionospheric electric fields, cosmic ray flux and particle precipitation.
And the series of solar wind speed fluctuations are bandpass-filtered at the period 1.75a. The filtered series provide the amplitude of the solar wind QBO as function of time.
The maxima of the solar wind QBO series correlate with those of the ENSO Index. Analysis confirms that the solar wind QBO helps to trigger ENSO activity.
The solar/planetary forcing of ENSO is accomplished by changes in meridional flux through the NAM/SAM and that ties directly right back to solar and planetary wave action.
For instance, in volume 36, issue 17, of the September 2009 Geophysical Research Letters, Rodrigo Caballero and Bruce T. Anderson state that:
"Stationary planetary waves are excited in the mid-latitudes, propagate equatorward and are absorbed in the subtropics. The impact these waves have on the tropical climate has yet to be fully unraveled.
"Previous work has shown that interannual variability of zonal-mean stationary eddy stress is well correlated with interannual variability in Hadley cell strength. A separate line of research has shown that changes in midlatitude planetary waves local to the Pacific strongly affect ENSO variability.
"Here, we show that the two phenomena are in fact closely connected. Interannual variability of wave activity flux impinging on the subtropical central Pacific affects the local Hadley cell. The associated changes in subtropical subsidence affect the surface pressure field and wind stresses, which in turn affect ENSO.
"As a result, a winter with an anomalously weak Hadley cell tends to be followed a year later by an El Niño event."
Moreover, there is a link from the Pacific Meridional Mode to ENSO, as Ping Chang and Link Ji from Texas A&M University at College Station, Texas wrote in late 2008:
"The occurrence of a boreal spring phenomenon referred to as the Pacific Meridional Model (MM) is shown to be intimately linked to the development of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in a long simulation of a coupled model.
The MM, characterized by an anomalous north–south SST gradient and anomalous surface circulation in the northeasterly trade regime with maximum variance in boreal spring, is shown to be inherent to thermodynamic ocean–atmosphere coupling in the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) latitude, and the MM existence is independent of ENSO.
"The thermodynamic coupling enhances the persistence of the anomalous winds in the deep tropics, forcing energetic equatorially trapped oceanic waves to occur in the central western Pacific, which in turn initiate an ENSO event. The majority of ENSO events in both nature and the coupled model are preceded by MM events."
But there is no such thing as ENSO Neutral. Moreover, every single time we reach the vernal equinox, we see NOAA and other climate centers announce yet another 'El Nino,' due to "recent warming of the Pacific Ocean."
In reality, it is the tone of the climate computer modellers, playing with their models in their imaginary world of climate that has little to nothing to do with the Earth's climate in the real world.
Now, the reason why NOAA/NWS and every other conventional climate center on Earth, along with climatologists and their computer models cannot forecast ENSO is that their computer models are faulty.
They treat 'effects' as 'causes,' which is why they cannot forecast ENSO.
What has happened, and is still happening, are that these make-believe scenarios are being played with by modellers like a 'climate game,' however, they are not observing the real world of weather and climate, nor have they observed it professionally enough (even at amatuer-level) to keenly observe and note the physical laws that are functioning right in front of their own eyes.
That is why they cannot forecast; despite trying to find the golden goose that they think will make them wealthy.
I repeat - ENSO is an *astronomically-caused* climate event. Period.
And clearly the algorithms in their error-filled climate models are not programmed to understand ENSO whatsoever.
That is why they cannot forecast it and why every single year they come out with forecasts on ENSO and they fail. They did it last time when I forecasted the 2009-2011 ENSO three years in advance, from 2006.
Rather, what conventional modellers do is that they take an initial condition and then they apply their own perturbation theories to attempt to get a future projection - and those projections are always wrong.
In truth, in the real world of climate, ENSO is NOT an internally driven or a chaotic phenomenon.
This is not a 'theory' either, since I have already predicted a previous ENSO, both El Nino, the warm oscillation and La Nina, the cold oscillation.
Again, ENSO is a solar and planetary magnetically-driven event that forces upper stratospheric U-flow/QBO and you can witness the results and impact on the N/S annular modes.
Reports from the CFS project on the 2011 La Nina that I forecasted fell to -4C because those expensive computer models are founded on absolutely useless methods on the given boundary conditions that they use to project from.
It means that they are essentially using a system dynamic that *drives* the system state, rather than the other way around. They have it ass backwards.
For instance, if you subtract ENSO, then you also have to subtract the poleward migration of Hadley cells/expansion of the Ferrel cells seen since solar year 1976.
Now, once you do that, you will lose the 3-4 percent decrease that's observed in tropical cloud cover. Therefore, you lose essentially all of the warming that has occurred since the 1970s and that relates to about 3.5W/m^2 of loss since 1982.
NOAA/NWS and every other climate forecast center do not successfully produce accurate seasonal forecasts.
Again, that's because their models are only programmed to the general governing equations programmed into them.
For years now, with all that money they've wasted, the computer climate modeling world is a total disaster and they have to know it after busting every season, every year, year in and year out.
Again, there will be no ENSO until 2020. We will see signatures by mid-2019 when things really begin to get interesting, but by 2020 there will a full blown La Nina that will be in force for 2.5 years according to my calculations.