Saturday, October 13, 2018

A Case of Severe Cognitive Dissonance?



[For details on the graph see below]

Cognitive Dissonance: When a person or a group of people have attitudes, beliefs or behaviors that are in conflict with each other. Generally, this produces a feeling of mental discomfort that leads to an alteration in their attitudes, beliefs or behaviors that moderates their mental discomfort and restores balance.

I believe that the level of cognitive dissonance that we have about the influence of lunar tides upon El Nino events has become so large that something has to give.

In a series of blog posts in November 2014:

http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com/2014/11/evidence-that-strong-el-nino-events-are_13.html

I showed that between 1870 and 2025, the precise alignments between the lunar synodic [phase] cycle and the 31/62 year Perigean New/Full moon cycle, naturally breaks up into six 31-year epochs each of which has a distinctly different tidal property. Note that the second of these 31-year intervals starts with the precise alignment on the 15th of April 1870, with the subsequent epoch boundaries occurring every 31 years after that:

Epoch 1 - Prior to 15th April  1870
Epoch 2 - 15th April 1870 to 18th April 1901
Epoch 3 - 8th April 1901 to 20th April 1932
Epoch 4 - 20th April 1932 to 23rd April 1963
Epoch 5 - 23rd April 1963 to 25th April 1994
Epoch 6 - 25th April 1994 to 27th April 2025


I claimed that if the 31/62-year seasonal tidal cycle plays a role in sequencing the triggering of El Niñevents, it would be reasonable to expect that its effects for the following three epochs:

New Moon Epoch:
Epoch 1 - Prior to 15th April  1870
Epoch 3 - 8th April 1901 to 20th April 1932
Epoch 5 - 23rd April 1963 to 25th April 1994

should be noticeably different to its effects for these three epochs:

Full Moon Epochs:
Epoch 2 - 15th April 1870 to 18th April 1901
Epoch 4 - 20th April 1932 to 23rd April 1963
Epoch 6 - 25th April 1994 to 27th April 2025


In addition, I showed that:

Moderate-to-strong El Niño events in the New Moon epochs preferentially occur near times when the lunar line-of-apse aligns with the Sun at the times of the Solstices.

Moderate-to-strong El Niño events in the Full Moon epochs preferentially occur near times when the lunar line-of-apse aligns with the Sun at the times of the Equinoxes.

Astonishingly, there has been almost no response from the climate science community concerning these important findings. 

This terrible state of affairs persists even though there is overwhelming evidence that the Perigean New/Full tidal cycle must play a role in instigating moderate-to-strong El Nino events. 

The following graph shows the astronomical declination of the strongest Perigean New/Full Moon between 1962 and 1997 (solid blue line)(1). These are the strongest lunar tidal events during the 5th (New moon) Epoch that spans the period between the 23rd of April 1963 and the 25th of April 1994. The declinations of strongest Perigean New/Full Moons reach their maximum distance from the Celestial Equator once every 4.425 (= 8.850 / 2) tropical years, as a result of the slow prograde precession of the lunar line-of-apse with respect to the stars.

In addition, the graph shows the declination at which the Moon reaches lunar standstill near the times of the strongest Perigean New/Full moon events (dashed red lines).

Finally, the following graph shows the months that are associated with moderate-to-strong El Nino events between 1962 and 1996 [histograms]. These months have been determined by Smith and Sardeshmukh [2000] (2) using a Bivariate ENSO Time Series (BEST) index that effectively combines the atmospheric component of the ENSO (i.e. the SOI index) with the oceanic component (i.e Nino 3.4 SST anomaly index). [Note that the less stringent list of El Nino months from Smith and Sardeshmukh (2000) are adopted here. The less stringent list uses 0.96 standard deviation cut-off rather than 1.28 (3),(4)]




A comparison between the timing of El Nino months and the times at which the strongest Perigean New/Full Moons approach lunar standstill, clearly show close alignments for eight out of ten of the moderate-to-strong El Nino events. 

[N.B. The two moderate El Nino events in 1963/64 and 1993 that do not follow this pattern occur right near the boundaries of New Moon Epoch 5 where a transitioning is being made between New and Full Moon epochs. These two El Nino events appear to be part of the sequences associated with the Full Moon epochs (i.e. epoch 4 and 6) which occur when the strongest Perigean New/Full Moon events are close to the Celestial Equator.]   

It is absolutely amazing that the climate community is ignoring such clearcut evidence in favour of the hypothesis that the 31/62-year Perigean New/Full moon tidal cycle is the trigger for moderate-to-strong El Nino events.

[N.B. The starting months for most of El Nino events in Epoch 5 are close to times where either full moons at standstill occur in the northern hemisphere near the winter solstice (i.e December) or new moons occur at standstill in the southern hemisphere near the winter solstice (i.e. December). These are the strongest Perigean New/Full moons over the period between 1963 and 1994.]      

References:


[1] JPL Horizons Web Interface Ephemeris - https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi#top - last accessed 14/10/2018


[2] Smith, C.A. and P. Sardeshmukh, 2000, The Effect of ENSO on the Intraseasonal Variance of Surface Temperature in WinterInternational J. of Climatology20 1543-1557.


[3] http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/cathy.smith/best/

[4] http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/cathy.smith/best/table33.txt

5 comments:

  1. Astronomers almost by definition are geometrically gifted. Thinking about objects and processes in three-dimensional space is a big part of what they do. The large majority of Climate scientist, in my opinion, have been shown to be one dimensional. Shown a graph of CO2 and Temperature both increasing they immediately conclude that must be the cause of global warming. They are not perturbed by your work because they can’t understand it, especially when described by terms like, Perigean, line of apse, declination, solstice, etc. They ignore it and work with their simple alternative facts.
    Visualizing the moon moving up and down threw the celestial equator, while also moving in its orbit that is slowly rotating about the earth and interacting with the oceans on an earth which is itself tilted and moving in its orbit around the sun is not easy. I’m not an astronomer and it hurts my head to do it. I think you are correct in your discovery and analysis, but it will take a large effort at visual simplification to get understanding by the Climate crowd. In addition, for a number of political and personal reasons your ideas will be strongly resisted by many so called scientist as it threatens policy and careers.
    I am not hopeful if it can be done. Of course, in the face of your predictions working and theirs not working or they can’t even make predictions, that would be definitive and something that can not be ignored. And it has always been the cornerstone of scientific advance.

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    1. Thank you for your well considered comments. As you say, time will tell whose predictions/models are correct!

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  2. Ninderthana, you are very brave making firm predictions for ENSO events over the next few years, and I wish you success. I note your success on predicting recent ENSO events in the past.
    I think the AGW movement is so sure ENSO events are somehow connected to carbon dioxide-driven global warming that they refuse to consider any other explanation.
    In the meanwhile please can I ask you to extend your diagram to 2020 with existing and predicted ENSO events shown. It ends at 1998! It will still be within your Epoch 6. I think publishing this extended graph can only help your case.

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    1. Thank you for you great comments! Sorry for my delayed comments as I have been away for a few days.

      It took me two weeks of intense work to prepare the diagram shown in this plot, so it will take a little time to do the most recent 31-year Full moon epoch from 1994 to 2025. During Full moon epochs, most moderate to strong El Nino events occur when the strongest Perigean New/Full moons are crossing the Equator - This is the same a saying that they occur at times when the line-of-apse of the lunar orbit is pointing at the the Sun at the Equinoxes. This rule is obeyed by all (i.e. 1997/98, 2002/03, 2006/7, 2015/16 but one (i.e. 2009/10) of the moderate to strong El Nino events during this time period.

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  3. Does your system show an el nino forming this year - 2018, or in the next year or two? Hind casting is usually easier than prediction.

    Regards acceptance, science has taken a turn towards accepting anything new, it seems as a given - accept if it contradicts something they have already accepted. There is a hard wall to break down to get traditional science to accept change of any sort of its chosen beliefs.

    Not sure what name and URL means here as most sites ask for name and a non-visible email address.

    ReplyDelete