The Fingerprint of the Cause of the 2009/2010 El Nino

Here is fingerprint of the instigator of the latest "cold" El Nino event in the Pacific ocean.

There were two proxigean spring tides in late June and July. The New Moon on July 21st of this year was an extreme proxigean spring tide event [as it coincided with the Solar eclispe on July 21-22.

It was the lead up to these two proxigean spring tides which set of the series of events in the Pacific Ocean that will produce a full blown El Nino around December 2009.

How does the pattern in sea surface temperatures in the North Pacific know about the motion of the Sun about the Solar System's barycentre

The upper curve in the second graph shows the PDO reconstruction of D’Arrigo et al. (2001) between 1707 and 1972. The reconstruction has been smoothed with a 15-year running mean filter to eliminate short-term fluctuations. Superimposed on this PDO reconstruction is the instrumental mean annual PDO index (Mantua 2007) which extends the PDO series up to the year 2000. The lower curve in the second graph shows the absolute deviation of the Earth’s LOD from its long-term trend between 1656 to 2005. The data in this figure has also been smoothed with a 15-year running mean filter.

A comparison between the upper and lower curves in the second graph shows that there is a remarkable agreement between the years of the peak (absolute) deviations of the LOD from the long-term trend and the years where the phase of the PDO reconstruction is most positive. While the correlation is not perfect, it is convincing enough to conclude the PDO index is another good example of a climate system that is directly associated with changes in the Earth's rotation rate.

What is even more remarkable is the fact that LOD variations preceed those seen in the PDO by an average of eight years. So whatever causes the deviations in the LOD from its long-term trend must also be responsible for flipping the phase of the PDO.

The solid curve in the first graph (above) shows the absolute deviation of the Earth’s LOD from its long-term trend between 1656 to 2005. The data in this figure has also been smoothed with a 15-year running mean filter. Superimposed on this plot is a scaled version of the assymmtery in the Sun's motion about the centre-of-mass of the Solar System. The reader can see for themselves that, from 1700 to 2000 A.D., on every occasion where the Sun has experienced a maximum in the asymmetry of its motion about the CM of the Solar System, the Earth has also experienced a significant deviation in its LOD from that expected from the long-term trends.

The question is: "How does the pattern in sea surface temperatures in the Northern Pacific ocean (i.e. the PDO) know about the postion of the Sun with respect to the barycentre of the Solar System?"

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/solar-cycles/IanwilsonForum2008.pdf

Many people argue that the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation)
Index is largely a reddened response to El-Nino-ENSO forcing
from the tropical Pacific ocean (see * below). However,
the graph above shows that this view is not compatible
with the observations.

The lower of the two graphs in this figure shows the phase of the
PDO from 1660 to 2000 A.D., as indicated by proxy tree-ring
data of Vernon and Franks (2006). Above it is a graph of the
(running) mean intensity of El Nino events over the same time
period, as published from proxy tree-ring data by Gergis and
Fowler (2006) [Advances in GeoScience, 6, pp. 173 - 179, 2006].

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that every time the
PDO switches positive, there is a progressive increase in the
mean intensity of El Nino events, and every time the PDO
switches negative, there is a progressive decrease in the mean
intensity of El Nino events.

Simple causational logic tells you that it is the El Nino that is
reponding to the long term changes in the PDO and not the
other way around. This evidence alone, should be enough to
completly invalidate the models of Newman et al. [2003] and
Shakun and Sharman (2009) [Geophysical Research Letters].

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/16/connecting-enso-pdv-and-the-north-and-south-pacific/#comments

A much more likley explanation for the results that these
authors are getting is that the underlying causal mechanism
for both the El-Nino-ENSO phenomenon and the PDO are linked.

In this blog, I propose to show that the common underlying
mechanism responsible for the changes seen in the ENSO
and the PDO are the lunar tides and their effect upon the
up-welling cool deep ocean water in the Pacific ocean.