Theory Sessions

[Roger J Smith]

NOV 4/05 _ Welcome to the ongoing theory seminar presented by Roger Smith over the winter of 2005-06 ... the intention is to proceed in very small, easily digested steps so that by the end of the process, the reader will have an overview of this new theory and can then use it for his/her own research or forecasting as desired. Any research work that you might then produce in written or electronic form, if based on this seminar, should observe the copyright principle and give appropriate reference to this material. Any concepts or additions/amendments/improvements that are suggested by NW readers over the course of this seminar will then be attributable to those individuals under the same principles.

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INTRODUCTION TO ASTRO-CLIMATOLOGY -- OVERVIEW

A general introduction and overview was posted in this forum several days ago. In this session, I will proceed in a somewhat easier to follow series of steps for the reader. The first order of business is to create a framework within which the theory can be explained. I should point out at the very beginning that the name of the theory, "Astro-climatology" is meant to convey the principle that the theory somehow unites principles of astronomy and principles of climate and weather. Perhaps it should be named Astro-magneto-meteorology, but that's quite a mouthful. One could imagine a school of AMM with competing schools of WAMM and BAMM following along in short order.

It's a daunting task for me to try to reduce the theory to one paragraph, but this is required by the conventions of science, so here goes. Astro-climatology seeks to investigate and to some extent explain or predict the variations in the earth's atmosphere through a complex series of hypotheses that relate the atmosphere to the magnetic field of the earth, the solar system magnetic field, the motions of the earth's Moon and the gravitational field in general, especially where it relates to the Moon's orbital motions relative to other objects in the solar system. The general framework for this research as far as the earth's atmosphere is concerned is the "meteorological grid" which is an adaptation of conventional latitude and longitude to the actual conditions of the atmosphere as related to the magnetic field. Any given point on the earth's surface is located at a defined meteo-latitude, which in most cases varies from terrestrial latitude by no more than 15 degrees. And, each point is located at a defined timing point which is based on a system of timing lines. The primary timing line, or "timing line one" joins the north meteorological pole (78N 100W) to the south meteorological pole (78S 80E) and runs south-south east then south-east from the NMP to the equator and crosses it near 10W, from which it runs south-east then south-south-east to the SMP. A system of nine timing lines has been adopted, with successive timing lines further east at regular intervals, so that timing line 9 is immediately west of timing line 1. Specific weather events are then located within this grid and analyzed with reference to it as well as to the conventional grid which still governs the Coriolis force. In very general terms, the theory has two large foundations that are interactive but independent. The first is the concept that the Moon generates powerful waves in the atmosphere which are captured in the atmosphere, seen as an extension of the magnetic field, at the nine regular intervals suggested by the timing lines. These powerful waves occur when the Moon intereferes with gravitational energy and possibly waves emanating from such sources as the Sun, the larger planets, the galactic equator, and the fixed stars along its path. This sets up a lunar monthly tiimetable of weather events that is both regular with regard to some of these events, and slowly changing in terms of others. This explains in part why the process was not observed in earlier research which assumed regular effects repeating at intervals. The second foundation is known as field theory. The solar system magnetic field is essentially a three-dimensional modelling of outflow of solar energy. It must be stressed that no variations in this flow amount to much more than 1 per cent. Long-term variations in solar heat output would be of greater significance than these sectors. However, the sectors are fairly broad and slow-moving, which placces the earth within them for relatively long periods of the year. A cumulative effect on the earth's magnetic field and therefore the atmosphere build up and are projected onto the surface by the structure of the magnetic field's timing structure. The key concept is that whatever cause-and-effect results are postulated as the earth moves through a field sector, the effects will fall on to timing line one. Other effects in other regions are either off-centered extensions of the same phenomena, or moving by-products of them after they are established. In other words, for the northern hemisphere, the "action" is generated over eastern North America, and then it translates mainly downstream towards Europe and then Asia. However, some effects are retrograde, and these circle around the NMP in a complex pattern, or in some cases, they move westward through the subtroipical latitudes. All of this is explored in detail in the theory (later). Therefore, the weather pattern over any time scale for any given location can be conceived theoretically as the interplay between the lunar atmospheric waves and the system of ridges, troughs and other energy flow dynamics of the field ssctors. When I say, "other energy flow dynamics" I refer to a large body of research that identifies and predicts variations within field sectors that have their origin in high-energy interactions between Jupiter, Saturn and the Sun. Apparently these are sufficiently focussed and energetic to tranmit energy patterns from the strong magnetic fields of these planets to the inner solar system. Hence the patterns in what I label the J-fields and S-fields are based on orbital variations of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. There is usually a four-component structure for both J-fields and S-fields, which means that at any given time, we are dealing with four J-fields somewhere around the hemispheres, and four S-fields. Quite often these overlap, as is the case in 2005. The fact that Mercury and Venus have no moons, and that Mars has very small ones that display no impact on the data as far as can be seen at this stage, somewhat simplifies the theory -- the field sectors of these planets are fairly strong also, but without the internal variations. The field sectors of Uranus and Neptune show up in statistical form in the research, but they remain largely uninvestigated to date. They would have some amount of internal variability from their satellites. The asteroids and Pluto have been investigated also, with the finding that there are some possible interactions for the larger asteroids, but not necessarily for small and distant Pluto. In overall terms then, the theory can be summed up as being the effects of the Moon and the solar system magnetic field strucutre on the earth's atmosphere, seen as an extension of the earth's magnetic field.

THE METEOROLOGICAL GRID

The familiar system of latitude and longitude uses the north and south pole as its fixed points of reference, and this determines the location of the equator. Convention defines the Greenwich longitude as zero degrees, and so points east and west are defined from this. The choice of 180 degrees of total latitude and 360 degrees of total longitude are, of course, entirely arbitrary.

In the meteorological grid used in this theory, the system is modified so that the north meteorological pole is set near the North Magnetic Pole at 78N 100W. Although the South Magnetic Pole is not exactly opposite this (it is located near 65S 125E) we place the south meteorological pole at 78E 80E which is directly opposite on the earth's sphere. This defines the meteorological equator to be a curved (w.r.t. the terrestrial equator) line that heads as far south as 12 S near 100 W and as far north as 12 N near 80 E. In practice, the met-equator derived from the real state of the atmosphere is rather subdued and we place it nearer to the terrestrial equator although with the same general curvature. The timing lines in the system run from pole to pole, but tend to curve regularly towards the east until they meet the equator, then towards the west as they head south to the south pole. Timing line one runs from the central Canadian arctic south southeast along the west coast of Hudson Bay into western Lake Superior, from where it goes across Michigan towards South Carolina. It then travels along the familiar path of Cape Verde hurricanes towards Africa, and reaches the equator around 10W. From there, it travels through the Congo and Madagascar on its way between Crozet and Kerguelen towards the south pole. I will post a map in the next session, but I think if you can find a blank map and sketch out the system, you'll probably get a better feel for it than by just looking at a map. The other timing lines, 2 through 9, can be located by dividing the globe into equal segments. This places timing line 3 fairly close to Ireland, into France and the Med. The significance of that fact is that whatever the theory suggests for the Toronto data set located just east of timing line one should have a roughly equal significance for the UK relative to timing line three.

In any case, if you take the blank map and sketch on this system, you can then compare what you have to what you know about the mean flow of the atmosphere. You'll notice quite a similarity in general. The mean 500-mb flow over North America shows a trough near timing line one. Over Vancouver where I live at present, the mean flow is about 290 degrees. Back in Ontario where I used to live, it was 250 degrees. For the UK, you'll derive about 240 degrees, which seems about right. Of course, the system that is derived from all this is subject to what I call "reality re-tooling" since this is after all as much an empirical as a theoretical system. So the actual lines that I have derived, especially for meteo-latitude, are adjusted in some places to respect the principles of atmospheric flow around large topographical features. For example, in eastern Asia, the meteo-latitude lines split to some extent around the large barrier imposed by the Himalayas, Hindu Kush and Tibetan plateau.

Okay then, this very brief introduction to the grid system will bring this session to a close. The next session in about a week will begin with the promised map and will get into what is meant by "lunar events" and how these were identified and assessed in the research data.

I would suggest holding off on questions until after the second session. I think a lot of questions might be answered by the following list of observations on the research. Bear in mind, this all applies to the very limited concept of the "generating zone" of the model over the Great Lakes region as implied by the Toronto data series from 1840 to let's say 1992 since that's about when the theory was up and running.

-- most lunar events show a signature of about 1.5 to 2.5 C degrees in the data. Individual events are larger, in the range of 5-8 C degrees, but other considerations make the latitude of all events in the sample set highly variable. So isolating any one factor such as "new moon events in November" will yield a smaller peak of significance.

-- this theory was not uncovered earlier for several reasons, many of them accidental. Much interest was shown in lunar effects on the atmosphere in Europe in the 1880s. The data set chosen was that of Berlin, Germany. By unfortunate coincidence, that location lies about mid-way between two timing lines, which would imply a large lag between lunar event and atmospheric response. Also, in the 1880s and 1890s, the climate was undergoing a large natural variation, and my research data indicate that the timing structure changed radically around then for North America. Timing line one was apparently east of Toronto before 1880 and drifted well to the west after 1880. I think this all has something to do with the understandable low-significance results of the early research, which then led to a lack of interest in the subject in later years.

-- it is widely known that the Moon induces "tides" in the atmosphere on the order of 1-2 mb twice every 25 hours, analogous to the ocean tides. My research has little to do with that fact unless one can somehow link the much larger systems generated in the magnetic field oriented atmosphere with these tides. I have not proceeded along those lines and suspect that the effect is not related.

-- one general proof of the concept of lunar effects on the atmosphere can be given as follows. The Moon has a sidereal period of 27.32 days (the 29.53 days between full moons is a result of the extra time required for the Moon to reach the changing position of the Sun relative to its orbit around the earth). Hence in this theory, weather events should be moving from west to east at a speed that would take them once around the earth in periods of 27.32 to 29.53 days. Let's simplify that to 28 days. This implies 360/28 degrees of motion every 24 hours. Now 360/28 is 12.8 degrees. Therefore, on the average, a well-developed low centre should make 12.8 degrees of progress every 24 hours, or 3.2 degrees every six hours. This is very close to the actual motion of systems. One could also see that considerations of which event and the changes in orbital speed of the Moon (it is moving 10% faster than average at perigee) would also show up in the data. This system would be more regular, except that complexities get in the mix -- the timing lines oscillate as I'll discuss later, there is a second set of generating energy waves that is not on this timetable, and redevelopment processes involve stalling of centres with new features forming downstream.

Time to clear the room now -- as I say, kindly hold off on questions until we get a little more substance on the table, otherwise I will be asked to go faster than I think is the best speed for this process in general. After all, this has all taken me the better part of thirty years, and there have been periods of false leads or re-thinking concepts so what I'm laying on you is a pretty large body of work. I think it's best if we take it one step at a time and try to link the concepts to weather events in real time.

Speaking of which, the recent strong low was the "new moon + JO" event of Nov 2 in lunar terms. I will explain what JO means in the next session when I give you a list of the major lunar events and how they usually size up in relative terms. Maybe you'll guess what it means before then.

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NOTE ON THIS THEORY SESSION: All subsequent portions of the ongoing series will appear in the same thread. This will allow later readers who hear about this to start up from this same base and catch up as they wish. I consider the theory to be in an intermediate stage of development. That means it has been substantially tested and it has attained a modest level of completeness, but that work must now continue to develop it globally, since much of what I have done so far relates directly to North America. My work in 2005 on forecasting and research over the UK and western Europe is aimed at providing me with real-time experience of how the theory works. The theory could be used to generate a model forecast, but I consider the current global models to be quite accurate over at least the 3-5 day time frame, and I suspect that many of the processes in the atmosphere predicted by this theory are routinely absorbed into the models by way of the initial data and equations of motion used. Where this theory might have an advantage over other models would lie beyond 5 days in particular. There is no reason why the theory could not be used to generate model maps well out into the future. Studying such output for North America has convinced me that this is feasible. I have not had enough time to do the same thing for Europe yet. My LRF, available on the members' LRF thread, is based on a more general application of the theory. ... and if anyone cares about formalities, Roger Smith is a climatologist by training, a forecaster with 30 years of experience, and 25 of those doubling up forecasting with research into global climate. Born in the UK but resident in Canada from the age of eight onward.

[johnholmes]

fascinating Roger.

I have to say I am a sceptic but happy to follow your tutorials and try to keep an open mind.

A great idea to teach those of us unaware of this concept in meteorology.

Sceptic I am but as I've often said throughout my career in meteorology one learns something every day.

cheers

John

[Portland Paul]

Thanks Roger for an extremely interesting read.

This reading, so far, has suddenly given me a somewhat rather refreshed and different view on Meteorology - I look forward to reading more.

[Roger J Smith]

This seems like as good a place as any to repeat my qualifier, stated in the previous thread (theory intro) on this forum.

I do not seek to challenge anything already established in meteorology in this research. Textbook meteorology, and for that matter, climatology, proceeds from the very necessary empirical starting point which says, okay we understand the physics of the atmosphere, we understand the patterns of weather that form climate, but how do we analyze and then predict weather events in real time, because this is what people are looking for meteorology to do, to give them advance notice of changes in the weather.

As far as processes in the atmosphere, these are already fairly well understood and my theoretical approach is meant to provide more of a timing and locational frame of reference than an alternative to these processes. So you're not going to be reading something later on about how vorticity doesn't exist or lapse rates are unimportant or anything like that. Whatever you already know transfers over to this framework and the main additional attribute that it may provide is a better sense of timing and evolution, which will be especially useful the further out you go since the models run out of accurate developmental details around days 5 through 8 and more or less degenerate towards climatology if an effort is made to drive them too far beyond day 15. When you read this research, it will be clear why this is so and would remain so if the variables in this research are not fed into the models long-term. We are talking here about energy cycles of 3 to 10 days that won't even incubate for day 40, let's say, until somewhere around day 30. So you could have the biggest super-computer imaginable and it would still have no luck anticipating what it doesn't know will happen after time zero. On the other hand, I wouldn't put it past the natural order (or God if you prefer) to have planted the seeds of these developments in the here and now, so that extremely sophisticated models might detect them from further out than I think they could.

What I do try to accomplish in this research is to provide an observed set of cause-and-effect hypotheses that have their origins outside the system. When you consider these in detail, you then get the feeling that you are actually just re-visiting traditional meteorology, but with some sort of new dimension as to timing and predictability, because now you can foresee the kinds of pattern development that you always were aware existed and governed weather forecasting in general.

Also, another grand qualifier needs to be repeated -- this is just one avenue of research, and even after this length of time and effort, I doubt very much that it forms the total foundation for understanding weather patterns. Ocean currents and SST patterns are obviously a large part of the total picture of global climate. Whether these are causes of climate patterns, or co-dependents of more complex cause-and-effect mechanisms that affect both together, remains to be proven. I suspect the latter, which means that I am not excessively worried about how SST variations would "screw up" the model I am trying to develop -- it's likely they would be handled as part of the overall pattern development. But I am aware that this may not be exactly the case. And if a huge volcanic eruption occurs, or the Sun starts to give off considerably more or less heat, then all bets are off, but I think we would all settle for an understanding of the "normal" climate regime for now. And finally, global warming -- does it matter at all to this model, do you just take the results and warm them up slightly, or do you try to factor in changes in pattern that may result? At the moment, I am taking the resistant approach of saying, global warming of natural origins is part of the model itself, and global warming of human origins will fall into the system as an increase in surface temperatures mainly overnight lows, and as such, won't for many years make that much difference to how the model performs.

The wonderful thing about the atmosphere is that it's pretty obvious what's actually happening at any given time, and theories can be tested out. However, I am also at the stage here where I am trying to extend a working theory in one part of the world to this part of the world, and so I expect this process to involve considerable trial and error at first, just as it did for my first attempts in North America. I may find myself regrouping from observed errors, but if these are systematic errors then it should be fairly easy to redesign the details for Europe. That's really what I am doing this for, to study how the broad general theory will play out in detail over Europe. I am also looking at Australia and New Zealand for the rather obscure reason that they are in the same timing sector of the magnetic field as Europe.

As time goes on, I will try to issue predictions that are worded in the terminology of this theory. Then you can see whether these are just re-worded versions of conventional forecasts, which in itself would be interesting because it would add cause-and-effect reasoning, or whether in some cases different outcomes were predicted, in which case a better indication of the theory's value would be provided.

Just to give you an idea of what might happen to meteorology if this theory became established over a few years (say after 2010) this is how one might analyze the current weather pattern. You'll find this is almost like an alien language, but it's what I have been using for about 15-20 years now.

J-4 field continues to cover most of Atlantic with central timing line at 3.35. S-2 field slightly ahead of this near 3.55. Lunar event currently on timing line 3 at 3.50 (A) is weak to moderate at energy level 3. All lunar event evolutions expected to be of normal type as 2.4 day interval from A (3) to S Max (7.5). Therefore expect rapid development especially J-field which phases with S-max at 5:23z as strong J-I / J-III energy peak likely near 3.5 ... this places rapid development zone over Ireland to Wales. S-field rotations continue to send weak pulses southeast with dampening influences of stronger J-field and lunar energy systems. A more phased appearance likely by Monday to Tuesday with J-field progressing to 3.7 and S-field retrograde slightly due to principal components moving east to west at high latitudes. With SO event timed for 7:12z and height fall from J-field evacuation in field-free strong NNW flow held in place by hidden Me retrogression 30W, prognosis near 3.5 will be sharply forced upper flow, and UK may see very volatile system development with all internal J-field elements forced to rotate against strong jet then released in phase. S-field internal energy peak at 7:18z bringing strong cyclonic energy into system suggests

possible meso-scale wave entrainment along jet giving ideal conditions for TRW development and narrow wind-max along perhaps southern Ireland to central England axis.

I hope that by March, a statement like the above will actually mean something to my readers and that you'll see these elements of the circulation. But what you see already is more than good enough to make accurate weather forecasts, so there is a rather obvious point that comes up from that, the short-range utility of the research can only be small if forecasting is already quite good. We can't go from 80% accuracy to 120% accuracy. Everyone knows there's an upper limit to accuracy that comes from sheer detail, so the room for improvement is generally very small. I think there is potential for this approach to improve model interpretation skills, which is to say, maybe we don't always get the most out of long-term models because we have to imagine the weather elements that will occur in a general pattern. This approach gives you some additional weapons in that struggle.

Now, the thing to remember is, I could write this about a period in February or June as easily as the next four days, but the accuracy of the forecast would depend on whether the field sectors were correctly predicted. The processes can be anticipated over the conventional time horizon. That's what excites me about the new approach. Where it is least useful is in 24-hour forecasting where conventional meteorology has a full handle on the processes. However, it does have useful applications to severe weather forecasting, especially in the tornadic thunderstorm or windstorm categories.

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

Roger

Keep it up this is good stuff and will definitely rapidly expand my knowledge on 'outside' influences on our climate/weather.

regards

BFTP

[Roger J Smith]

THEORY SESSION ON TIMING LINES, TIMING NUMBER AND METEO-LATITUDE

-- posted Nov 11/05

Kindly refer to previous session for an introduction to this topic. If you start with this session, you are likely to run into concepts that were explained there.

If you were able to sketch out the global map of timing lines and meteo-latitude as mentioned, you would have a map that would include the following segment, which I have sketched out in a format that I can use as a blank map later to update with weather system modelling and other notes. I will post a more comprehensive global map in the next session but I wanted to give people something fairly limited but a good introduction, to work on over the next few days.

This map segment shows in a schematic way the vicinity of the British Isles and western Europe. The longitude of 10W is the only longitude line shown here, but you might assume a slightly Mercator projection. Since this is meant to be very conceptual and a basic introduction to the local application of the theory, I would not place too much stress on exact map details here. The UK and Ireland are represented by the x symbols on the map, and Iceland is also depicted. The outline of Europe is shown also.

^^^65........\.xxxxxxxxx.........................|................................x......

.....................65^^

^^^^-..........\...xxxxx............................|..................................x...

.......................-^^^

^^^^-............\.3.5................................|........................4.0.....x.....

......................-^^^

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^^^55............................\......................|......x.x....xxxx............///(50).........x..x..55^^

^^^^-.........................TL3\....................|...xxx...x..xxxx..///..........................xx....-^^^

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^^^^-...................../(50)...................\...|.../(45)..x...............................................-^^^

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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^10W^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The concepts of the theory which are added to this map are meant to give you a foundation rather than the whole picture. First of all, timing line 3 is depicted, running generally southeast to the west of Iceland, then Ireland, then into France and Italy. Notice how the timing line curves more to the east as it approaches the equator.

Also depicted are two lines of "meteo-latitude" namely 45 N and 50 N which intersect their respective terrestrial latitude near 11 W. Just connect the /// symbols to derive the lines of meteo-latitude. These can be thought of as west to east pathways for elements in the model at a defined energy level in the model. In other words, based on empirical observation systems of roughly equal energy level follow these lines of meteo-latitude. Their actual meteorological characteristics may vary also with conventional latitude but these system meteo-latitudes only vary from those by small amounts. They are about 10-12 degrees closer to the equator across North America. This conforms to the observed situation that the rain-snow boundary in winter is often around 37N in North America when at sea level it is often around 45-50 N in Europe. Of course, there are other lines of meteo-latitude around the hemisphere besides these two. Note how they begin to flatten out to the east of Britain -- by about timing line 6 they have finished gaining terrestrial latitude and around timing line 7 they start dropping slowly southward again. When I post the global map you'll see there are some significant modifications to that in eastern Asia because of the topography there.

The other concept illustrated in the map is timing number. Any given location on the grid has a defined timing number, and this is an extension of the timing lines. The convention I have adopted for this is to define the timing lines as having their own timing number set to .5 so that timing line 3 has timing number 3.5 -- the same applies to all timing lines. As you read in the first session, there are nine timing lines in total. This means that as you go east from the UK around the northern hemisphere, you'll come to timing lines 4 (in the Baltic area to western Russia), 5 in the Urals or western Siberia, 6 around eastern Siberia, 7 in the western Pacific, 8 in the eastern to central Pacific, 9 fairly close to the Rockies, and then back to 1 near the Great Lakes, with 2 running east of Newfoundland slightly then towards west Africa. So in this system, timing number 9.5 is at timing line 9, and 9.99 increases not to 10.0 but to 1.0 -- there would be no defined location for a timing number lower than 1 or higher than 10.

This concept of timing number (TN) is important to the research and the operational use of the model in two ways. It helps to quantify the motion of systems being studied or predicted in a more precise way. It also gives a system-oriented axis for other model elements that may be projected on to the grid. For example, there has been a strong J-field sector over the UK in recent months, according to my research. I can track the motion of this by noting when elements of the J-field cross a given timing number. There is no particular reason for any element to be right on a timing line. The significance of the timing lines is only in the lunar portion of the theory, and states that defined events in the lunar cycle will cross timing lines at astronomical event times.

Refer to the map and you will see that timing line 3 is defined as TN 3.5 while further to the east, I have located timing number 4.0 which would be halfway to timing line 4, which is largely off this map grid, just making a brief appearance in the northeast corner of the grid. In a few days time I will have some better maps to show you, but this will give people something to sketch out and, bear in mind, with slight variations to shape the model to real atmospheric flow patterns, the timing lines are 40 degrees apart which means that every tenth of a timing number will be 4 degrees different, so if 3.50 is at 10 W then 3.60 will be at 6 W and 3.70 will be at 2 W. All of them are parallel (in the frame of reference of this grid) and convergent at the north meteorological pole over at 78N 100W.

Field sectors may drift around anywhere in the model grid and timing them will be a matter of comparing similar cases from past data. Although this may set up hopes for a cyclical model of forecasting, in reality, the field sectors are somewhat interactive so there are a very limited number of analogue cases. Each case has to be built from its elements and since there is no grand repeating cycle of all major elements (in historical time), there is no way to make a total analogue forecast using this technique.

I should also mention that these locations are not permanent over long periods of time. The earth's magnetic field is a slowly changing entity and my research points to slow drifting changes in the timing lines. I have not even begun to sort that out for Europe yet, but for my Toronto data set 1840-present, I have noted that timing line one seems to have been a few degrees further east than its current location (through WI-sw MI-IN-KY-eTN-SC) around 1880-1890 than either before or after, and it may have drifted a little west of where it is now for much of the early 20th century. The implications for century-to-century variations in climate are obvious -- if the north magnetic pole is further south as it was in the 19th century, the whole system will be more distorted and various regions will expect to see greater variations from the long-term average. The 19th century was in fact much cooler in North America than the 20th century. The differences are much less significant for Europe until the more recent postulated global warming period since 1980.

For operational purposes, the timing lines may shift in the system because of off-centered major components in the solar system. Therefore timing line 3 is not always found at 3.5, this is an equilibrium position. Its current location is closer to 3.6 than 3.5 and I am expecting it to drift west over the course of this winter. Locating it at any given time is a matter of observing where low pressure systems are at defined astronomical event times. The system was built from surface weather patterns and it is probable that in its final form there will be a nested vertical series of grids that are slightly tilted towards the west. For reasons I will explain in a later session, this implies that the energy creating the lunar events in the atmosphere usually falls into the upper atmosphere in a curved path that, seen from a polar perspective, would imply a slightly curved set of force lines between the Moon and the earth. A straight line would result in a stacked system of low pressure from surface to highest atmospheric levels.

This is a grid used for describing and predicting events in the model. So far, we are still building up some knowledge of the theory's frame of reference. This tells you nothing about the events themselves or the postulated theory.

The first concept that I uncovered in my research journey from 1980 to the present was the basic set of major lunar events that take place every sidereal month. This leads to the next segment that I will post during the weekend of Nov 12-13 on the lunar orbit and lunar events. So stay tuned for that and also for some higher grade maps, but I wanted to have this interactive map available because I can then block-copy it and use it for anything that comes up later by way of questions or illustrations. As long as you get the basic concept that there is a timing line generally to the west of the British Isles, that it is curved rather than north-south, and that the flow is generally WSW to ENE in the model in this part of the world, that's the main point here.

I plan to keep up a fairly slow pace with this theory explanation so that anyone who is following along can absorb one concept at a time without spending a lot of time in any given week. Some may come upon this much later and if you do, I would suggest a fairly leisurely pace. Some of the concepts to follow are fairly detailed and this may require time to digest.

Just to review:

Timing lines, nine in number, are locations where lunar events are expected to occur. Otherwise they form a foundation for a timing system for non-lunar components of the model.

At any given moment, the timing lines may shift in the system due to second-order variations. This drift is usually slow and so within given months the operational timing line positions are fairly constant. At this moment, timing line 3 is closer to 3.6 than its equilibrium position of 3.5 -- it is normal for the timing lines to oscillate mainly in the range of about .7 to .3 in their timing sectors, so they don't often get as far afield as the midway point to the next timing line. This is related to blocking as we'll discuss fairly soon.

Timing number is the specific location relative to the timing lines, and is defined by a two decimal location where x.50 is on timing line x. Any value higher than .50 in the decimal position shows a location east of a timing line, any value lower shows a location west of it. Midway between two timing lines, the value will be y.00 where y is the timing line immediately to the east.

Meteo-latitude is a concept of system latitude which corresponds fairly closely to terrestrial latitude, adjusted to the system's displaced poles. In practice, it is an empirical system and as such has no precisely defined locations. For most regions, it is higher than terrestrial latitude between timing lines 3 and 8 and lower otherwise, reaching its lowest values relative to terrestrial latitude on timing line 1. The amount by which meteo-latitude exceeds terrestrial in the interval of 3.5 to 8.5 peaks at about 8 degrees near timing number 6.0 but in the narrower segment where it decreases below terrestrial latitude, the difference can be 12 degrees.

[Roger J Smith]

Theory Session 3

Nov 13/05

(please note: this is an ongoing series of on-line seminars to introduce a new theoretical framework known as astro-climatology. Interested parties are advised to begin reading from the top of this thread.)

In this session, we will discuss some of the basic components of the lunar orbit and the "lunar events" which form one of the foundations of the theory.

Before getting to that, I have improved the map used in the last session and I am storing it here so that I can retrieve it for on-line discussions of events later in this series. My intention is to try to give you the basic foundation of the theory within the next week or two, in about four sessions, so that when the interesting winter weather begins to roll out, we won't be restricted by having the theory only half-explained where it's necessary to point to concepts in all of the foundation areas. The order in which I am discussing these foundations will be the same as the order in which my research uncovered them over a fairly long period of time (roughly 1980-1995).

-- Blank map for future discussions --

^^^65........\.XXXXXXXXXXX...................|................................x..........

.................65^^

^^^^-..........\...XXXXXXX.......................|..................................x......

....................-^^^

^^^^-............\.3.5................................|............x...........4.0.....x.....

......................-^^^

^^^^-..............\....................................|.............X.............\......x.............x...........-^^^

^^^^-................\..................................|...............X...............\...x..........x..x........-^^^

^^^60..................\................................|.............X....................\....x.....x.....x......60^^^

^^^^-....................\..............................|........x.XXx......................\..xxx........x......-^^^

^^^^-.......................\...........................|.......x..XXXX.......................\............x.....-^^^

^^^^-.........................\.........................|.........x.XXXX...........................\........x.....-^^^

^^^^-...........................\.......................|...........x.XXXx............................///..x......-^^^

^^^55.............................\.....................|......x.x....XXXX............///(50).........x..x..55^^

^^^^-..........................TL3\...................|...XXX..x..XXXX..///..........................xx....-^^^

^^^^-.................................\.................|..X/XX.....XXXXXXX.......................xx...xx.-^^^

^^^^-...................................\...........///|.XXXX..XXXXXXXXX..............xxxx...........-^^^

^^^^-......................................\...///.....|XXXX.....XXXXXXXX......xxx........///.........-^^^

^^^50...................................///..\.........|..........XXXX......xxxx.///.........................50^^

^^^^-............................///............\......|...............X.///x.......................................-^^^

^^^^-...................../(50)...................\...|.../(45)..X...............................................-^^^

^^^^-..............///.............................../\|..............X..............................................-^^^

^^^^-.....///..................................///.....|\..............X.............................................-^^^

^^^45....................................///............|...\............X..........................................45^^

^^^^-.............................///...................|........\.......X...........................................-^^^

^^^^-......................///..........................|..............\X..............XxX............XX........-^^^

^^^^-.............../(45).............................|...XXXXX.....TL3.\.XxX.......XXX....X...X......-^^^

^^^^-.....///...........................................|..X...................X.......\\\.........XX...X....X..-^^^

^^^40....................................................|...X..............X...

.................\\...XXX..X....40^^

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^10W^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The lunar orbit

Although I said in my introduction that it would be assumed that people would have some basic astronomical knowledge to understand this new theory, the following information about the Moon's orbital variables is not necessarily that well known.

The Moon orbits the earth at an average distance of 384,000 km and describes a slightly eccentric orbit so that every "lunation" or orbit around the earth, it is at some point about 6% closer than this, and at another point about 6% further away.

One "sidereal" lunation of the Moon requires 27.32166 days to complete. I am not going to use so many decimal places for most of my descriptions, to keep things fairly user-friendly, but in this one case, just to prevent any needless work on the part of anyone enthusiastic enough to start crunching numbers, I give this important element in five decimals. By "sidereal" (which you pronounce side -ee-real) I am referring to the time taken by the Moon to perform one orbit relative to the fixed background of the stars (even that changes slowly over long periods, of course). You can visualize this as follows. In the winter, as you know, when you look up to the south around midnight on a clear night, you'll see Orion and if you're in a very dark area away from city lights and the Moon is not bright, you'll see the galactic equator or "Milky Way." The sidereal period of the Moon is the time between successive crossings of this galactic equator, or any other fixed point along the Moon's path.

The fact that the Moon requires an extra 2.2 days to get back to the moving line between earth and Sun (this line moves with the earth as it goes around the Sun), gives a longer "synodic" period of 29.53 days which is the time between successive new or full moons. And you will observe also that the planets such as Jupiter and Saturn are moving along the same path as the Sun and Moon, the "ecliptic plane" and so the period between occasions when the Moon passes Jupiter, for example, amount to 27.5 days, Saturn more like 27.4 days because it is not moving as fast, and Mars 28.0 days because it is moving faster. For Mercury and Venus, a more complex period emerges because they are always fairly close to the Sun in the sky, so on average the Moon passes them also every 29.53 days.

Another important period for the Moon is the time between perigees, which is on the averaqe 27.55 days. What this tells us is that the Moon's closest approach to the earth is a little later in its sidereal orbit every lunation, by about .33 days or 8 hours. This means that in about 8.9 years, the Moon's perigee makes a leisurely circuit of the orbital plane so if the Moon is closest to the earth around the winter new moon as it was last winter, then about four or five years later it will be closest at the winter full moon.

The other significant lunar period which impacts on the research on a longer time scale and will be discussed briefly in a later session on long-term change, is the 18.6 year cycle of declination which was apparently known to the ancient peoples and thought to be of some importance by them. This comes about because the Moon does not orbit around the earth right above the equator, but in a plane which is inclined to our equatorial plane (extending out into space) by 5.1 degrees. This creates two points where the Moon's orbit intersects our equatorial plane, the "nodes" and these also move forward like perigee, although about twice as slowly. As a result, it takes 18.6 years for the nodes to make one circuit of the lunar orbit. What this means for us is that the Moon occasionally reaches its highest orbital point around the winter full moon, when it is already high in the midnight sky here in the northern hemisphere. But instead of being where the Sun would be six months later, the Moon is another five degrees above that in these extreme cases, and in fact the winter of 2005-06 is one such time, so we will be noticing the winter full moons are very high up in the sky indeed.

I have sketched out the current path of the Moon around the ecliptic plane, which technically is the path of the Sun through the fixed star background. The Moon does not follow this precisely but instead may be found as much as 5 degrees above or 5 degrees below this plane. The diagram is for the sky as seen this month, Nov 2005.

Be aware that the Moon (and the Sun) are moving from right to left across this sky background. The planets are also moving slightly, but not enough to matter over the course of one month on the scale of this diagram. The Sun is shown for Nov 15 and its position on this diagram would change by one-twelfth of the width of the diagram, from right to left.

The OOO symbols depict the path of the Moon, which can be taken to run 5 degrees above the ecliptic at the "northern max" shown as N Max, and 5 degrees below that plane at the "southern max" shown as S Max.

..........................Galactic...................equator....................

................

.............................../...................................\.......................................................

............................/........................................\.....................................................

........................../............................................\...................................................

..........................O.N Max....................................\.................................................

..................O.../........O.........................................\...............................................

.............O.x..../..........A..F..x..O...............................\.............................................

......O.R....Sat/..............Mars........O...........................\............................................

O-----------/---------------------------------O-----------------\-------------------------------Eq

............./...................................................O................\..........................JupxO.........

........../.........................................................your-.O.........\............Sun@.O......Sp...........

......./...................................................................Ne-..O...\........OA.....(15th).............

...../................................................................................

....O...................................

../................................................................................

...S Max...............................

................................................................................

..............\..............................

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^note that the Moon (O) moves from right to left.

THE MOON's PATH THROUGH THE SKY AS SEEN IN NOV 2005

The main elements of the "lunar event calendar" can be seen on this diagram now. Follow along from right to left, and we'll follow the Moon through one lunation starting where it dips below the equator in the sky. Now this is not the same as making a southward pass through the earth's equatoria plane, because that is inclined at an angle, but in the case of 2005, the Moon's "descending node" is very near that point. The Moon last went through this location around Oct 30, so what we'll trace out is pretty close to the Moon's path through the sky this month.

First of all, the Moon passes Jupiter, as well as the bright star Spica, around Oct 31 to Nov 1st. Soon after that, it passes just south of the Sun on Nov 2nd, so there is no solar eclipse. Around the 4th, it passes Antares, a bright red star that always appears low in the sky in the spring and summer months. Soon after this, around the 6th, the Moon passes the galactic equator at a position known as Southern Max in this theory. As I've stressed, this year the southern max position is close to 29 degrees south, its maximum southward declination. (declination is the scale north or south of the equator as depicted above in the sky's frame of reference. The Sun does not follow the equator but instead the ecliptic plane, which as I've explained is within a few degrees of the lunar orbital path sketched out here.) I left out their positions for clarity, but Venus and mercury as of the 6th were both near this southern max position. Mercury will move in front of the Sun later this month, while Venus is edging towards it, ready to pass in fron in mid-January.

Shortly after the Southern Max, the Moon passes Neptune, then Uranus. Neither of these planets is bright enough for naked-eye viewing, and at this stage of the theory explanation, I don't include them in the detailed information. If you happen to be reading soon after I post this on Nov 13th, the Moon is now rising up towards the equator and the full Moon position is reached on the night of the 15th-16th, shortly after passing above Mars on the 15th. That full moon position is marked by the letter F. Close to this position (which is opposite the Sun's position in the sky) is another bright red star, Antares. Around the 18-19th, the Moon reaches N Max and will be seen very high in the sky on clear nights around those dates. By the 21st-22nd, the Moon will pass to the north of Saturn, then on the 24th past the bright star Regulus ®, and by the 27th it will be back to the start of this lunar orbital month.

When I began my research using some suggestions I had received about the influence of the full moon on weather events in North America, I had little if any warning that any of these other events might prove to be of any significance. Gradually, I was able to find that low pressure areas formed near timing line one in the model on most of the occasions described above. This shows up to some extent in the Toronto temperature and precipitation series, the usual signature being a temperature peak about 1-2 C degrees occurring the day after each event (this due to the lag between timing line one and Toronto's location downstream), and a rainfall or precipitation peak of about 3 times the background. The stage of my research by about 1984 was that, after four years, I had come to the conclusion that some, but not all of the variations in the atmosphere were being produced by these lunar events.

Part of my interest in UK and western Europe weather is to study in more detail than previously how this same situation applies to timing line 3 and the weather in Britain. Since London is at a quite similar orientation to timing line 3 as is Toronto to timing line one, I should be able to find similar effects as the pattern is generated over the nine timing lines. I will say a little more about this process in the next posting which will occur within about an hour of this one.

To keep the files manageable, I am now going to post this file and start a second half of the description of lunar events.

[Roger J Smith]

(part two of lunar events session)

The physics or cause and effect behind these postulated lunar events is still somewhat of a mystery to me at this stage, but I have reached the following conclusions. Before I list those, I think you'll agree it would be quite useful just to know these events would happen, even if we had no good explanation for them.

I visualize the system as follows. The earth's atmosphere is an extension of the magnetic field and that is an extension of the solar system magnetic field.

A system of nine timing lines is constructed, as we've already discussed, and these connect the north to the south meteorological poles, which are essentially the locations of the magnetic poles. The atmosphere is then visualized as a directional field system within that frame of reference. All of the remarks that follow apply to the northern hemisphere, the reader can make the necessary adjustments to the southern hemisphere as required.

All of this part of the model and theory apply to the moving westerlies in the mid-latitudes. Systems moving westward in the subtropics or tropics are less completely studied in this research even today, but at the time when this part of the theory was developed, there was no attempt made to discuss events outside the mid-latitudes.

Lunar events are defined to be those astronomical events where the Moon aligns with a significant source of gravitational force or energy. These include the Sun, the galactic equator (encountered twice as southern max and northern max), the larger planets and the larger fixed stars which happen to lie within 10 degrees of the Moon's orbital path. Let me just discuss the situation that applies to other massive and nearby stars further afield from that path, such as Canopus in the n.h. or Alpha Centauri in the s.h. -- most of the candidates for possible inclusion in the model are either apparently too far from the orbital path of the Moon to produce the required potential for interference, or are too close to the galactic equator to be separated out in the data.

The key concept to remember here is that the Moon passes through an alignment with each of these sources twice in one lunation. The most obvious examples of that already discussed are new moon and full moon, and southern max and northern max. It may not have been obvious yet, as it was not to this researcher for a year or two, that if there is going to be a significant event when the Moon passes Jupiter, for example, there will be another one when the Moon is opposite Jupiter.

Thus, the complete timetable of significant fixed events, listed in general terms, would include the following list, using the letter short forms for each source of the gravitational energy impacting on the atmospheric system:

(Gal. eq.) N Max, S Max

(Reg) RC, RO

(Spica) SpC, SpO

(Ant/Ald) A, A

Let's just note that these will occur in the order of N Max, RC, SpC, A, S Max, RO, SpO and then A. The convention adopted is that since Antares and Aldebaran are virtually opposite one another, their events are just simplified to the designation A.

To give some idea of how intense these interference waves are for each of these fixed events, I list the following levels of intensity, with 10 being a maximum storm intensity.

N Max and S Max peak near 7

RC and RO events peak near 5

SpC and SpO events peak near 4

A events peak near 3.5

You'll see that for Regulus and Spica the events are either "C" which stands for conjunction (where the Moon is seen next to the star) or "O" which stands for opposition, the opposite case. Now that's the fixed schedule of the events that always fall in the same rhythm every 27.32 days. They may have slightly different spacing due to the changing lunar perigee cycle, but in essence this series of events always comes and goes at the same pace every lunar month. I first thought that the RC event, for example, was a resonance of the N Max from upstream, but its timing proved that it was probably being independently generated. The pace of these fixed events is about one every three to four days.

The more variable events start with the most dominant of the events, Full and new moon, which are listed as

Full, new (peak near

and these will occur wherever the Moon's orbital path dictates. In practice, full Moons occur with the N Max in late December, and then occur 2-3 days later than them for each month that goes by, until by late June they fall at new moon. Then the cycle returns through the second half of the year. Conversely, new moons fall at the S Max in late December, and reach full moon in late June.

The fact is that the Moon is not always full or new on the same dates of each year; if you examine some data, you'll find that every year, they fall about 10-11 days earlier than the year before, which makes them fairly similar every 3 years. There is a more exact repeat of dates every 19 years. So, this winter, take note, the new moon around Dec 30-31 will also be the S Max event. This kind of doubling up of events is very significant to the model. In fact, the whole question of spacing between events is significant, and this is where the next set of variables, the planetary events, comes in.

The planetary lunar events include the following main players:

Jupiter (JC / JO) peak energy level 7

Saturn (SC / SO) peak energy level 5

Mars (MaC / MaO) peak energy level 4

In the research, I found some peaks of significance for the UC and UO events, but these are almost like background noise compared to most of the events in the timetable. As for Mercury and Venus, the events are likely to come close to the new and full moons, so that they are usually secondary features of those peaks.

Well, this gives some overview of the main lunar events. I did not really finish trying to describe what the cause and effect process is postulated to be.

As each of these events occurs, some kind of interference pattern sets up in the earth's atmosphere (seen as part of the magnetic field). This interference pattern apparently sets up nine waves at the timing lines, in each hemisphere. These take on an intensity governed by some kind of equation for mass and distance of the source, as well as the Moon's distance from the earth at the time, so that any events that happen at perigee will be that much stronger than those at apogee.

I just wanted to stress that the gravitational force or energy being interfered with by the Moon could be conventional gravitation, and is not likely to have anything directly to do with postulated gravitational waves, which are still being studied in a rather preliminary way by scientists after fifty years or so of effort trying to isolate them.

It is also clear that the process is not exactly the same as conventional gravitational force, because the energy levels derived from the study so far do not conform to anything close to M / R squared or even M / R.

In fact, the energy levels are closer to something like this (taking away the variations caused by the Moon's distance from earth):

Energy level = (Logarithm Mass of generating object) / (Logarithm distance)

so that both mass and distance in this energy level model drop off rather slowly.

Jupiter and Saturn on this scale have log mass values that are fairly high fractions of that of the Sun while their distance values are on this scale also high fractions of the shorter distance to the Sun. Things get very approximate when trying to fit the more distant galactic objects to the model, but it's clear that the events, if real at all, are being generated by an interference of fairly powerful waves or wave energy that does not lose much of its intensity over long distances.

By the end of this series of theory sessions, and based on some of the observations made in the winter to come, I hope to have this equation more formalized and I will present the updated version of it. Perhaps in any discussions that come up, I will also make some advances in this understanding.

This session ends on this note, and the next posting expected some time tomorrow will give a timetable of the significant lunar events for this winter period, Nov 15 to Mar 15, so that we can conclude this portion of the theory and move on to the other, interactive portion, which is the role played by the field sectors in the Solar system Magnetic field or SSMF.

[Roger J Smith]

Astronomical Agenda for the period Nov 15 to Dec 31 2005

This table lists the major "lunar events" as discussed in previous files in this thread on the new theories of astro-climatology. The table is arranged by date (left margin) and time in UTC or z time (scale across top of table). The events are then listed in the table in the appropriate location.

^^-----02------04------06------08------10------12------14------16-----18------20------22------

Nov

15............................MaC...............................................

.............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

16..Full........................................................................

................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

17..................A...........................................................

................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

18..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

19..................NMax........................................................

..............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

20..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

21..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

22............SC................................................................

................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

23..............................................................................

..........RC....................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

24..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

25..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

26..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

27..............................................................................

..................................................

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Nov

28..................SpC.........................................................

...............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

29....................................JC........................................

................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Nov

30................MaO...........................................................

..................A...........................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

01..............................................................................

new............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

02..............................................................................

......................................SMax.....

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

03..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

04..............................................................................

..VC.............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

05........................perigee...............................................

...............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

06..............................................................................

.......................................RO......

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

07..............................................................................

..UC............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

08..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

09..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

10..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

11.......................SpO....................................................

.................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

12.........................MaC.......................JO.........................

.............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

13..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

14.......................................................A......................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

15..............................................................................

.....Full.........................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

16............NMax..............................................................

...............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

17..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

18..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

19................................................SC............................

................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

20..............................................................................

.........................................RC.....

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

21..............................................................................

.................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

22..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

23..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

24..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

25.............................................................................S

pC.............................................

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Dec

26..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

27..................JC....MaO...................................................

...............................................

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Dec

28..............................................................................

..................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

29...........A..................................................................

.................................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

30....................................................................SMax......

..............................................

___________________________________________________________________________

Dec

31.......new....................................................................

...............................................

(Jan 1/06: SO event)

___________________________________________________________________________

These are the major "lunar" type events that we will be monitoring during the next six weeks as the theory is expanded to include the field sectors. I have included the timing of the lunar perigee, which does not generate its own event in the system, and the weak VC (Venus conjunction) and UC (Uranus conjunction) events. There are also VO and UO events in the system but I have not shown them for clarity.

Now, to build a little more theory now that we have some concrete examples to work with, the intensity of complex events is not derived from a simple addition of intensity levels, but after studying how such events unfold in reality, I have used the formula of adding the strongest intensity to half of the next strongest intensity and one-third of the next strongest, etc. In effect then, complex events will be stronger than single events, but their intensity builds only moderately from the foundation of the strongest event. We do not have any really coincident lunar events in this period, but the full moon on December 15 is close to the N Max and the new moon on Dec 31 is close to the S Max. These will probably turn out to be double-centered strong lows near the timing lines. When the events are more like 18-36 hours apart, the situation is usually one of having two lows sharing one upper trough. The formation of a secondary seems to be best indicated at around 12-18 hours of separation in the timing.

As we are going to discover by studying actual events, this lunar-based astronomical agenda is only about half the story in terms of using the model to analyze low pressure areas. The other half of the story will be revealed in a few days' time. The field sectors in the SSMF generate complex energy-wave formations as well, and these are interactive with the lunar events. I will deal with these major field sectors before the month of November is finished, so that by December first we will be able to start looking at daily weather patterns through the perspective of this theory. So right now, you're in the intermediate position of having access to half of the timing and intensity data for the model, although there are a lot of details that remain to be addressed.

I think the best way to proceed is just to take the theoretical foundations and spend a whole season examining actual events. This will probably be a better way to handle questions about how things relate in the model, and by the end of this winter season I hope you will have the basic concepts well enough understood that perhaps we can start to deal with questions about details and application to forecasting. I'm sure that you can anticipate some of the possibilities as well as the potential limitations of this method already.

The next set of theory sessions will get into the field sectors and how they apply to the model. If you have any questions so far, either PM me or raise them on the thread. Anything along the lines of "I just don't see how this can work" I can already answer in general terms by saying that this is a theoretical framework that is extensively researched with relation to the data from the vicinity of timing line one, so for that region at least I can stipulate that anything presented as a hypothesis here has already been tested out. I am currently assessing how things fit together in the vicinity of timing line three. So for now, we'll keep tabs on how these astronomical events play out but keep in mind that there is a second set of energy peaks to be discussed yet.

[Roger J Smith]

Nov 16/05

Introduction to Field Analysis

(note to reader -- this is part of a series of sessions designed to familiarize readers with the new theory of astro-climatology. It is recommended that new readers start at the beginning of this thread.)

Today, I just wanted to make a brief introduction to the second stage of the theory, now that we have had an introduction to the first stage, lunar events.

There are a few basic concepts that I will outline here today which are the general foundations of field analysis. Here, we are talking about sectors in the solar system magnetic field which rotate with the various planets as they orbit the Sun.

The first point to be stressed is that these sectors are components of the outflowing solar wind and in each case represent variations in solar heat output of about 1-2 per cent at a maximum. Their effect on the earth's atmosphere (viewed as explained earlier as an extension of the magnetic field) is apparently due to their persistent influence on given areas of the atmosphere over weeks or months, which allows the development of the meteorological processes familiar to all of you in terms of ridges and troughs. Since there are many field sectors at play, the effects are cumulative so that a number of weak to moderate effects can be all added together for some portions of the atmosphere.

The second main point to stress is that field sectors associated with the two "inner planets" that orbit closer to the Sun than the earth, are responsible for retrograde motion in the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the rest of the field sectors for Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the outer planets will be generally prograde or will drift eastward in the atmospheric system.

Due to time constraints, I am posting this general statement and I will continue with a second file in a few minutes.

-------------------

[Roger J Smith]

Continuing with the field analysis now, there is a very significant concept that we need to introduce here to make general discussion clear for weather-oriented readers as well as any astronomers who get interested in this theory. This concept is meant to simplify or clarify location of planets in the solar system for those who don't have a strong foundation in astronomy.

Astronomers use a system of "right ascension" or celestial longitude to locate objects in the sky in terms of their east-west position. These systems work roughly as follows (relax, we're not going to use either of them). Right ascension divides the sky into 24 hours and begins with the vernal equinox. At that point (in the modern epoch) where the Sun is located around March 22nd, the right ascension is said to be zero hours and from there, north-south meridians are drawn around the sky, so that what I've defined as the northern max position is around 6h R.A., the autumnal equinox is about 12h, and the southern max position is about 18h. Now, as far as celestial longitude, that is at right angles not to the equator like right ascension, but to the ecliptic plane, so it varies slightly from right ascension. It also uses degrees, so that R.A. 6h would be 90 degrees longitude.

Now before I introduce the clarifying terminology that I use, I should for the sake of completeness mention that in astronomy, the north-south aspects are handled by two corresponding systems. When you're using right ascension, you then speak of north-south location in terms of "declination" which is distance from the celestial equator. Therefore the declination of the Sun at the winter solstice is 23.3 degrees south. However, its celestial latitude is zero. Celestial latitude runs along the ecliptic plane so the sun's latitude is always just about zero. I say just about because the Sun actually bobbles around slightly due to the gravitational influences of Jupiter and Saturn in particular. These variations are very small in terms of even the minutes and seconds of celestial latitude.

Now, the clarifying terminology that I find essential to making field analysis easily visualized for weather-oriented readers is that of "earth-opposition date" or EOD.

Essentially, any object in the sky, but with greater relevance any object in the solar system, will have an EOD defined by taking its position (in R.A. for the sake of clarity) and considering at what date the earth would be in "opposition" with the object, or in a straight line between that object and the Sun (the concept is not necessary for Mercury and Venus but could be used for them). To give an example, right now Jupiter is on the far side of the Sun, and its EOD is approximately April 25th. Since Jupiter moves about one-twelfth as fast as the earth, its EOD will change by one day every twelve days of earth time. We had our 2005 opposition with Jupiter on April 3 and we will next pass Jupiter on May 4, 2006. Jupiter was behind the Sun (actually a little above its disk) on October 22, 2005. At that time, Jupiter was located at EOD April 23.

The convention that I use (in common with most astronomers) for depicting the solar system is the view from above the north pole of the earth (and most of the other planets, Uranus more or less rolls along in its orbit and its poles are oriented at a large angle to the orbital path), so that as you see below, EOD January is near the top of the diagram and EOD July is near the bottom. This diagram shows the current locations of the four large outer planets. In this research, Pluto is not mentioned because data analysis has failed to find any significant temperature or precipitation peaks in phase with it (which is a way of saying that at least for the Toronto data that have been extensively analyzed, some significance can be seen for even Uranus and Neptune, but as I'll document in a later segment, Jupiter has the largest signature in the data, and it's quite a large one).

LOCATION OF THE OUTER PLANETS, EARTH AND MARS

AS OF NOV 16, 2005

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...............................................................|....July........

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...........o.Neptune..................

the diagram is accurate to direction from the Sun but compresses the scale somewhat, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are really about 2, 4 and 6 times the distance from the Sun of Jupiter.

Most of these planets have fairly circular orbits, when compared to Mercury, Pluto and some of the asteroids, which have eccentric orbits in the order of .10 to .30 (this basically means they have elliptical orbits not circular). Mars is quite a bit closer to the Sun in EOD August and September (about 1.4 times the distance of the earth to the Sun there, and about 1.9 times in EOD February and March). But the other outer planets have only minor eccentricities in their orbits. Jupiter is also a little closer to the Sun in EOD September than in March. Saturn, like the earth, is closest to the Sun in EOD January. Saturn just passed its "perihelion" and will be in opposition on January 27, 2006. At the slow pace that Saturn is moving, it is now at EOD January 25.

So for now, just familiarize yourself with this frame of reference, which makes our discussion of certain concepts of field analysis a lot easier than it would be if I were trying to use "right ascension" as my frame.

The next session, to be posted in a few hours, will talk about field sectors that are associated with the planets, and how these relate to the atmospheric system being used in this theory. As I say, the field sectors move with the planets, but they are not linear and also there is a complexity to them which moves beyond anything that you might anticipate if you're familiar with astrology. I should mention here (as good as anywhere else) that as far as I can determine, both the western style of astrology and Chinese astrological concepts that are apparently based somewhat on Jupiter, have no relevance to this theory or for that matter to anything else. The concepts involved in conventional astrology talk about the significance of birth date, linear alignments of planets, the Moon and the Sun, and even concepts of right angled lines between these. None of this is directly used in this theory especially when it comes to cause and effect. I went to the trouble of reading some astrology "texts" to compare notes, and I didn't really find anything there that I would want to add to the framework being developed here. Meanwhile, there are aspects to this theory which have no part to play in astrology as outlined in these texts, especially the curved nature of the field sectors.

So, I just wanted to go on the record here as saying that I have no particular interest in astrology as practiced, and I would imagine that if there is any significance to it, that lies in some kind of minor overlap with the physical frame of reference in this theory, but I have never really seen any real-world significance to it. In particular, I can think of people I know who share birth dates and who have entirely different personalities and whose daily "horoscopes" would not be likely to overlap. That part of astrology in particular seems entirely spurious to me. Anyway, I won't touch on this again, but I didn't want anyone, skeptic or enthusiast, to confuse my research with astrology. I perceive the cause and effect in this theory to be actual physical processes such as magnetism or the known processes in the atmosphere, and not mysterious supernatural forces.

[Roger J Smith]

Nov 19/05

Field sectors

The analysis of field sectors began in this research with a full study of how solar cycles can be linked to the interactions between Jupiter and Saturn. This led to a theory of field sectors which states that the "sunspot cycle" of about 10.6 years on average seems to be modulated by the motion of Jupiter through the field sectors associated with Saturn, as well as the motion of Saturn through the field sectors associated with Jupiter.

The geometry of the field sectors provides that in most cases, when Jupiter is in the strongest portion of the S-field system, at that same time Saturn is in the strongest portion of the J-fields. So which of the two conditions is more significant for sunspot development was not immediately clear.

Since we are more interested in the weather aspects of the theory, I will just briefly summarize what was discovered about solar variations in this study. When the Sun is active and there are more or less regular cycles of 10 to 11 years (this applies to about 70% of the records compiled from around 300 A.D. by Schove), in these cases, there will be two sunspot peaks every 19.85 years, one as Jupiter passes in front of Saturn, and the other when they are opposite one another. Since the field sectors are curved and come in sets of four, two pairs that are relatively close together in space, the double-peaked nature of many solar cycles is possibly related to this finer detail.

The other 30% of the time, solar cycles diminish in intensity or disappear altogether for many decades as they did in parts of the 15th and 17th centuries, as well as other periods well back in the past according to what evidence is available (such as auroral records, and some sightings of sunspots). Here, the peaks are not as well correlated to the interaction of Jupiter and Saturn, but the lower activity seems correlated with certain relative positions of Saturn and Uranus or Neptune. What this suggested was that the sunspot cycle could be "shut down" for periods of time because Saturn in particular was not generating a strong field system for Jupiter to disturb.

Incidentally, a lot of number-crunching on both sides of the Atlantic has convinced me that there is little weather variation with sunspot activity. I think that the correlations for temperature and precipitation are so low as to be negligible, so I have come to the conclusion that solar variations and weather variations are two independent results of processes in the solar system magnetic field. Solar variations themselves seem to have no direct impact on the weather.

Some time later I can post more about this astronomical portion of the theory, but I wanted to get right to the main agenda, the weather-related aspects of field sectors.

The main points to remember are these:

(1) Field sectors are either "active" or "passive" in this model. An active sector is one that links the Sun to a planet other than the earth (I assume the earth generates fields as well, and these probably play quite a role in the weather variations on Mars in particular, but we are always in these field sectors.) When the earth is in a field sector, the direct effects, usually a ridge or cut-off high, show up over timing line one. The field sectors in atmospheric terms then drift east or west from that point as the earth leaves the field sector in space.

(2) For the inner planets Mercury and Venus, the motion of the field sectors in the atmosphere is retrograde. Mercury and Venus are actually in an alignment at this moment, racing towards their "inferior conjunctions" with the earth. (I.C. is the point where the inner planets pass between earth and the Sun). Mercury will be there on Nov 24 at 16z, while Venus will reach its I.C. on January 14, 2006 at 00z. But as of early today, Mercury was passing Venus at about EOD Nov 1.

(3) The Mercury and Venus "fields" may have the curved structure of the outer planet fields (see sketch in point 5 below) but these sectors are probably so close together that most of the time we experience them as one combined field. So I do not refer to numbered fields for Mercury (Me) or Venus (V) but simply call the resulting atmospheric features the Me-field and the V-field. At this point in the development of the model, I assume that the Me and V fields oscillate back and forth across timing line one. Since these planets are not always in the earth's orbital plane, the projection of these sectors into our atmosphere varies in latitude. The overall system seems to be that the atmospheric field sectors split near the equator as they spiral into the magnetic field and atmosphere. For the northern hemisphere, I have found that for Mercury, the fields may be as far south as 30 degrees meteo-latitude around Mercury's southern latitude max of -4 degrees, and as far north as 70 degrees for the northern latitude max of +4 degrees. Roughly the same applies to the Venus field sectors although Venus is closer to the earth so the apparent latitude variation is more like -8 degrees to +8 degrees. The equilibrium position for the field sectors is then 50 degrees meteo-latitude.

(4) Mercury fields apparently rotate in the atmospheric system between timing line 4 as their eastward limit and timing line 7 as their western limit. Since Mercury rises through the earth's orbital plane around EOD Nov 7 and falls back below it around EOD May 7, the highest point in Mercury's orbit is around EOD Feb 6. Thus, if Mercury is in inferior conjunction after this date by about two weeks to a month, its blocking high will be found over northern Europe as it rounds the Sun after its "superior conjunction." This will be the case in 2006, which is one reason why I have predicted strong blocking over Scandinavia later this winter. The motion of the Mercury field in various winters is quite different for Europe. With a period of 88 days, the "synodic period" of Mercury is 115.9 days, which means that every year, the inferior conjunctions of Mercury fall about 17 days earlier than the previous year. You can visualize, then, that the periods 20-30 days before Mercury's I.C. (when the field sector will be over Europe) each year after 2006 will see an earlier winter appearance of the block, and at a lower latitude. The effect shows up quite clearly in an analysis of the January CET series 1658 to 2005: reducing the data series to a complex 7-year cycle (the actual is 6.58, and the data are arranged in blocks of either 6 or 7 so that from a starting point the steps are 7, 13, 20, 27, 33, 39 and 46 yr), we find an almost perfect sine curve of January temperatures ranging from a minimum of 2.8 in the case closest to 2006, to a maximum of 4.2 in the second year after that. We'll leave our introduction with this information, and get into more details as real-time situations evolve. Right now, the Me-field is stretched out across the western and central Atlantic. I believe that parts of it retrograded past France and Iberia about a week to ten days ago. As Mercury is currently rising, its blocking will move generally northwest towards the eastern arctic of Canada. This will show up in terms of dramatic storm development next week off the east coast of North America.

Meanwhile, the Venus field block is probably embedded in the current high over the UK and is probably the feature expected to retrogress across the Atlantic in the next two weeks. Eventually, this high pressure will translate to Greenland, as Venus rises above our orbital plane around Dec 18 (at EOD Dec 7). Venus field blocks are typically large circular highs that seem to circulate mainly below-normal temperatures until they finish their retrograde motion, then on the rebound eastward they tend to be warm. This is probably more to do with atmospheric dynamics than any transfer of heat energy from the magnetic field structure. Once again, we'll deal with this Venus field sector in more detail in real time.

The one general comment I can add about both Me and V fields is that as they retrogress, it is a lot easier to see them in isolation when the planets are above the earth's orbital plane (the reverse is true in the southern hemisphere). The effects of retrogression at lower latitudes is bound to be masked by the constant subtropical jet stream and a westerly pattern, so that finding the retrogression may be a matter of some fairly sophisticated techniques like the Hovmoller diagram technique which isolates retrogression within this westerly flow. When the effect goes closer to the poles, the field sectors are more likely to separate from the westerlies or any other field sectors, and thus show up as cut-off highs or omega blocks.

To keep the files manageable, I will post this now and begin describing the outer planetary fields in the next session. Look for that later this weekend. I would like to lay down a basic framework, even if it means simplifying a fair amount of complexity, so that we can get into the details by looking at real-time data. Then after the winter is over, we can return to the theoretical framework having seen some of the details in active weather patterns as an orientation to how the theory works in real time.

[Roger J Smith]

We have examined the atmospheric “field sectors” that are retrograde and associated with Mercury and Venus. Before moving on from that, I had mentioned the characteristics of the Venus (V-) fields but we did not touch on the periodicity of these.

Venus orbits the Sun in about 225 days and overtakes the earth once every 1.6 years, or 583.9 days to be more precise. What this means, interestingly, is that Venus returns to a similar position every eight years. In that eight years, there will be five inferior conjunctions and five superior conjunctions. The period is not exactly eight years, but about 2.3 days short of eight years. So, knowing that there is to be a Venus inferior conjunction on January 14, 2006, there were similar events around Jan. 16 in 1998, Jan. 18 in 1990, Jan. 21 in 1982, etc. And you will note by looking at archived weather maps for November and December of 1997, 1989 and 1981 that there were similar mid-Atlantic blocking highs showing retrograde motion, comparable to this year. Venus blocking ridges do not always make such a distinct appearance as the current one, if there is a strong prograde field such as a Mars or Jupiter field in the same vicinity the Venus field may just be washed into the whole zonal flow until the block rises to a higher meteo-latitude. Venus is currently rising towards the ecliptic plane but won’t reach it until around Dec. 28th.

The pattern of Venus inferior conjunctions, then, from the current one forward, is that the following year (2007) will have one in August, then two years later there will be one in March (2009), followed by one in late October (2010) and finally a June event in 2012. With the slowly changing dates in each series, there is a long cycle of 253 years where, for example, if you go back from this winter’s January event, you will find that while this sequence drifts back through January into February then March through the 19th century into the late 18th century, the autumn series drifts back towards December then into January. Around 253 years before any given event, the next sequence falls on the same dates. So looking for close Venus analogues involves taking every eight years back for about 64 years (after which you are more than three weeks out) and then going to the date 253 years previous and taking the various years that fall within say 40 years of that on either side in multiples of eight. This will give you a Venus analogue set for comparison. The number crunch for Venus in the CET was not of a very high amplitude, and in fact the same could be said for the Toronto temperature series; Mercury creates a stronger signal for both. I suspect that this is because the Venus blocks move so slowly that second-order variations tend to mask their presence in the data. It is usually fairly easy to find the corresponding atmospheric blocking features but as we just saw with this year’s blocking high, it can create a period of anomalous cold while if it were part of a different regime it might be associated with anomalous warmth. I found that the V-field pattern showed up better in Toronto precipitation, and I have not had the opportunity yet to study UK precipitation data for this theory.

Now moving on to the various prograde field sectors that dominate the flow; I should introduce this by saying that, ignoring the retrograde blocking highs already discussed, if the model was comprised only of the lunar events and there were no other planets in the solar system, then the theory would hold that the atmospheric flow would be essentially zonal within the framework of the theory’s grid, and that the lunar events, while potentially fairly strong, would be weaker than the lows we observe now, and the variations in the atmosphere would be rather subdued. There might be ridges and troughs in the upper flow to some extent, but I would expect the earth’s atmosphere to be permanently in the kind of bland, boring weather pattern that sometimes prevails when the flow remains zonal.

These field sectors associated with Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in particular, are very strong features of the model. I began to discover evidence of them when my original work with the lunar events began to leave a lot of unexplained variations, especially in temperature regimes. There were also additional low pressure areas that did not seem to fit the lunar theory alone.

Each of these planets, as well as Uranus and Neptune, apparently generate a complex four-sector field system in the solar system magnetic field. I sketch this out for Jupiter in its current location, and for Saturn in its current location, below (next file, just to be on the safe side, I am using a scanner - generated file).

J-fields and S-fields in the solar system, north polar view, as of Nov 2005

[Roger J Smith]

Okay, I have downloaded my scanned image (previous file) and you can see it at almost any size now, small for overview, large for more detail.

This flexed set-up is the normal appearance of the field systems of these planets, and the convention I adopted was to number them 2, 1, 4, 3 in the order that the earth would encounter them because the leading segment on the same side of the Sun as the planet was thought to be the primary field sector, with the rest of the structure built up as a balance or resonance of some kind. Whether this is true or if it’s just simply the case that the motion of the planets creates this complex curved structure is difficult to determine and at any rate irrelevant to how the theory operates in its atmospheric application. But in any case, the one piece of evidence I had that the J-1 or S-1 field was somehow more important to the system than the J-2 or S-2 field was that the solar variations seemed to peak when one planet was in that sector of the other planet’s field structure, and a secondary peak would occur for the –3 field sector.

This sketch did not show the Mars field structure, but it is similar to the current S-field structure, on the much smaller scale of the segment of the solar system between the Sun and Mars (which you'll note is just behind the earth now, we passed it on 7 Nov and it is currently in EOD 19 Nov). As a result, there are strong Ma-1 and Ma-2 field sectors that the earth has been moving through for several months, especially considering the fact that Mars just passed its perihelion back in the summer and is moving relatively fast now. You'll remember that in this theory, if the earth is in a field sector, the effects show up over timing line one. Thus, eastern North America was in the warm Ma-1 field most of the summer, which is typically a weak ridge that adds about 5 dam to the 500-mb flow from my analysis of past data. This field sector is now over timing line 2, which explains the persistent ridge over Newfoundland and the western Atlantic. This ridge should build over the next month as the V-field retrogresses into it, and the J-3 field (see diagram previous file) progresses into the same timing sector. The Ma-2 field is currently just between timing lines 1 and 9 over central North America. A Mars field sector standing alone is a rather weak feature that can be occasionally overwhelmed by stronger energy flow in a J-field or other feature, so when you're looking at or for Mars fields in weather data, expect them to show up better in monthly or even seasonal trends. From what I've picked up here in the past year, I suspect that Mars fields and Bartlett highs are probably one and the same. The Ma-4 field, in theory would be the persistent European high of this past summer and autumn, and its current position should be Ukraine to western Urals. Having said that, a J-field moving across timing line 3 should also resemble a Bartlett high, but I would expect a J-field alone to be more dynamic than a quiet, omnipresent speed bump feature. The J-4 field sector was over timing line three most of October, from my analysis of second-order variations, and has recently been pulled well to the north by its energy rotation, but I expect to see it return to these latitudes next week. This weakening of the J-4 field has allowed the S-3 field to become a dominant player over western Europe. When J-fields and S-fields interact in the atmosphere and try to set up their energy rotations in the same place, the J-field usually dominates and the S-field energy is seen as a weaker background system, rather like how two TV programs being received on one channel used to look back in the days before cable television sometimes. In fact, that TV reception analogy is probably good way to visualize this system in general -- a lot of complex signals are being transmitted around in the solar aystem magnetic field, and out atmosphere somehow acts as a receiver and the programs are visible if you tune in at the right locations.

J-FIELD and S-FIELD VARIATIONS

The J-field structure appears to be quite intense, and can be correlated with the temperature regime by taking daily or monthly data and subjecting that to a 398.9-day filter which is the period between Jupiter oppositions, or the mean period of our planet’s passage through the four-field structure. The results of this for 160 years of Toronto’s temperature data show a pattern that identifies the four-field structure of what I call the “J-year.” The amplitude of this even when smoothed to a running mean of 11 days is quite large, about 1.5 C degrees. Since I think that there are some second-order variations introduced by different flex angles as Jupiter moves around its slightly eccentric orbit, I suspect that the actual intensity of the J-field temperature signal is around 2 to 3 degrees. This is more or less a third of the total variation for monthly anomalies in a variable continental climate such as Toronto has.

The situation for the S-fields is almost as strong. For some reason, the S-2 field shows up stronger than the J-2 field or any of the other segments. The S-year is 378.06 days long. There is a sharper signal in the data because Saturn has a more circular orbit than Jupiter and is further from the Sun.

I have concluded that the basic physics of the field segments must be that these are rotating sectors of enhanced solar wind directed towards the planets, or else there would be no obvious reason for these field sectors to be warmer, in theory. At the same time, there must be some kind of interactive flux at work because the signature of the large satellites of these planets, presumably ingrained into their magnetic fields near source, somehow works back towards the inner solar system and can be traced in energy flows around the fields.

After several years of observation, I discovered that these energy rotations were in two opposite systems. The J-field energy rotations corresponding to the four larger moons of Jupiter, revolve around the J-field systems in an anti-cyclonic pattern, or clockwise. The S-field energy systems rotate counter-clockwise, or in cyclonic flow. This means that a typical J-field in atmospheric terms will be a warm ridge of considerable magnitude with predictable energy flows racing around it in periods as short as 1.7 days (for J-I) and as long as 16.75 days for J-IV. The dominant player is J-III (Ganymede) with a period of 7.166 days. The system has some intriguing features. The three closer satellites are locked into synchronous orbits that have mutual "resonances" so that J-I, J-II and J-III are never in a three-moon alignment. There is a constantly repeating 435.17 day cycle of these three satellites. What happens in that cycle is that J-I overtakes J-II slightly earlier each 3.54 days, and at the moment we are at the point where J-I overtakes J-II about half-way between their eclipse positions (when they are behind Jupiter) and their transit positions (when they cross the face of Jupiter). This point will slowly retreat to the "mutual eclipse" positions around February. The last time there were mutual transits of J-I and J-II came back around May and June. This has implications for severe weather forecasting, as the J-field energy peaks get quite a boost when events are aligned. These details will be explored more in a later session. Meanwhile, J-II and J-III have the same kind of mutual dance over the 435.17 days, and we are about to enter the sequence of mutual J-II and J-III transits later this winter. This will be a very significant factor in the weather analysis that follows when we get past the theory stage and into the (much more interesting) real-time weather sessions. J-IV has an orbital period of 16.75 days and has long cycles of mutual transits with J-III, every 3.42 years, and as luck would have it, this winter is one of those peaks. I also find this has a direct application to timing line 3 forecasts, because the track of J-III energy peaks in the model when a J-field is over timing sector 3 runs over southern Greenland, where J-IV runs over central Greenland and north of Iceland. About a week ago, during that persistent blocking high over the UK, there was a sequence of J-III and J-IV transits which played out in the form of the cyclonic storm development in the lee of Greenland and around Iceland.

Just to complete this segment, I will mention that the S-fields have the strong lunar energy features embedded in them as well. The difference is that these rotations are

cyclonic, so when the various moons are in transit, the energy is rotating around the base of the S-field rather than across the top of the field. This makes the S-field appear on the weather map like a large meridional block of low pressure and, you guessed it, the current weather pattern shows strong evidence of being an S-field pattern. For this reason, the temperature peaks in an S-field analysis show up as strong rises before the postulated time of the field passage, since the flow becomes generally southerly ahead of the core of an S-field. The S-moon system is a lot more complex in terms of timing and mutual resonances than the J-moon system. The key player is S-VI (Titan), which is a much larger moon than the rest. However, the energy level scale for these satellites is not totally dominated by S-VI. The rest of the crew from S-I with its period of 0.95 days to S-VIII which takes almost 80 days to complete an orbit, are all visible in terms of rotating energy around the S-field. S-IV and S-V energy has quite a noticeable modulating influence on weather in the S-fields because of their orbital periods of 2.74 and 4.52 days. The inner three make fairly frequent alignments, and S-moon alignments show a strong peak of significance in my North American research into severe storms and lightning. The general theme of S-field patterns is that near the centre of system rotation, you get fast-moving energy waves that can overtake each other at any angle to the system's rotational grid, so you find all possible permutations of activity; for the volatile region of central North America, mutual transits of S-I/S-II and SII/S-III tend to take place across the central plains or Ohio valley, Lake Erie regions, and may produce active severe weather.

Well, there is a lot to digest here already. I think we are nearing the point where this theory can be related to active weather patterns, and after a few more odds and ends that need to be mentioned for that to be feasible, I propose to start a daily posting in this quiet synoptic room (so that it's easy to find) which will be essentially an astro-climatology model analysis and prognosis. This way, you can gradually work yourself up to speed on the model in the same way that I gradually discovered the material for it, one case study at a time until some general themes and trends emerge. I think you will find the most immediate application of the theory comes in terms of severe weather forecasting. The applications to longer-range forecasting are also fairly obvious by now, I would think -- if you can relate atmospheric variations to predictable features in the solar system magnetic field, then you may have some idea what to expect the very complex atmospheric flow to be doing. The problem is that this research is not really finished yet, and I am still working on some aspects of how various components interact, what makes them occasionally flare up or fade out as they tend to do, and what happens when Mercury and Venus move through field sectors (large storms develop being the basic answer to that).

If people have questions after getting this far, I don't plan to add too much more this week, so we could get into Q and A if anyone wants. However, as I say, the real process of understanding how this theory works is probably a season or two of real-time application. So, watch for a few more small details of the theory, then a daily discussion posting which I will place around 0630 before most start their day, so it's there for the day and I can check it out for questions or comments at various times.

[Roger J Smith]

4 Dec 2005

This will be the last post in "Theory sessions" so that interested parties can begin to follow weather events in real time starting on 5 Dec. This ongoing daily analysis and predictions will be organized in a new thread to be titled "Daily Astro-Climatology Report."

First, a book-keeping note; if you are following the December astronomical agenda posted earlier, please add the "SO" event to the lunar perigee event on 5 Dec -- this was not entered in the file and I can't edit the file now.

In this final session, I just wanted to review some of the recent developments from the theory's perspective, and give more details on the structure of J-fields and S-fields.

Since mid-November when we introduced the concept of field sectors, you will note the following developments:

** Rapid retrogression 19-23 Nov occurred when Mercury raced past Venus and then the earth, so that one wave of retrogression proceeded very rapidly towards southeast Canada and another less rapidly towards 30W. The Mercury field has been showing up not so much as a continuous blocking feature as a tendency towards higher 500-mb heights along the expected path through a very active section of the circulation, eastern North America. The expected path for the Mercury block would have been almost due west from 40N 40W towards the lower Great Lakes then more NW towards the NWT and Yukon, and from there well north of Alaska. In general, this trend has been noted and the Mercury field is now the prime cause of the strong high settling over northeast Siberia (it is already 10 days from Mercury's I.C. and the planet has passed its perihelion, so in that time it has moved well into EOD January, and also well above the ecliptic plane, reaching its maximum latitude in a day or two). From now on, the Mercury feature will be expected to split: one portion will return at lower latitudes towards the Pacific, North America and the Atlantic through mid-January, while a second harmonic will move west through Siberia into Russia. ... Meanwhile, the V-field moves much slower than that, but Venus is also gaining latitude and will be north of the ecliptic by 20 Dec. This fact accounts for the persistent height anomaly in the western Atlantic in the past week. You've probably noticed how the jet approaches this feature and makes a sharp northerly turn over eastern Canada. This tendency will probably shift slowly through December to a vortex developing further west around 47N 78W in response to the V-field's northwest drift. Eventually strong blocking should develop over west Greenland and Baffin Island as Venus heads for its I.C. at a latitude of about 2 degrees and continues to build over the Canadian arctic.

** The Mars 2 and 1 fields (they appear in that order to the west of the UK) have been anchored in the flow over the western Atlantic and central North America for several weeks, with a mean trough over timing line 1. There should be a slow drift east through the winter. The Ma-2 field is only just behind the earth now so as it continues to keep up a fairly similar pace to the earth for the next two months, it won't make it across the Atlantic before late March. The Ma-1 field will probably reach the east coast of North America by February. Mars is also rising in latitude which will tend to lift the flow through this whole sector through the winter. The feature that usually separates Ma-2 and Ma-1 fields is a shallow 500-mb low or even just a trough, so that the combined effect of the fields has to be considered as a warming influence without a huge cooling influence separating them. Although the Mars fields are strong in the long-term data, they tend to be background features in the flow; I model them as fairly small 3 to 5 dam anomalies in the 500-mb heights but when a Mars field sits over Europe for months as the 4 and 3 fields did in 2005, you have a major Bartlett opportunity.

** The J-4 field has been slowly drifting east across timing line 3 since early Nov. I observed that its energy (which as we discussed rotates clockwise or anti-cyclonically around the central "high" feature in the flow) had moved so far north due to transits of J-III and J-IV around 20 Nov that the J-field system disappeared into the arctic around eastern Greenland and north of Iceland. Part of this disappearing act was due to Venus moving through the J-3 field and blocking it out, so that the J-4 field weakened as well. Venus will move through the J-3 field in a few days. Since the J-3 field is also embedded in the complex of fields over the western Atlantic, this should lead to major storm development there. Meanwhile, the position of Hurricane Epsilon and its westward drift earlier last week suggested that it was a feature created by Venus moving through the Ma-2 field. It is fairly typical of such events that they try to continue west but eventually they become atmospheric captives, as I call them, slowly swept away from their original geomagnetic origins. This part of the theory is not as well developed as others, but the general concept is that hurricanes (and tropical storms) develop when inner planets move through outer-planet fields, and that there can be a "reflection event" in another field in the system (in other words, Epsilon is a direct effect, something that shows up around timing line 6 would be a reflection event.) In the theory, there is a parallel feature which I call "tropical-midlatitude continuity" which means that strong storms may form either as hurricanes (or TS) or as regular lows, depending on the geometry of the field interactions. Since Mercury and Venus reach their lowest celestial latitudes in the period August-October EOD, this favours tropical storm formation in such interactions during the tropical season and land-based regular cyclonic storms in the non-tropical season. The existence of warmer SSTs may be equally important, but in this theory, there would be no reason for such storms to form over the North Atlantic during winter month cases of Mercury or Venus passing through J-fields or S-fields.

** Returning to the J-field structure, four ovals of energy are postulated to be orbiting around the centre of the system. If the J-field is on a timing line (such as timing line 3) then the energy wave will be crossing that timing line as the J-moon transits Jupiter. The four ovals are normally located about 200 km, 400 km, 700 km and 1500 km from the system centre at this time. They are observed to orbit around in a wide ellipse so that by "western elongation" (eastern in terms of the atmosphere) the positions are something like 300, 600, 1000 and 1800 km downstream, which in the case of timing line 3 is ENE of the centre. Then as the energy flows back towards the centre at the time of superior conjunction or eclipse, the location tends to wrap back around the centre or pass just to its southeast. Typically, these events occur as buckling of frontal zones since in the faster flow of the westerlies energy cannot easily translate against the flow. However, on occasions when a J-field is near timing line 9 and the centre of the system is over Kansas or Colorado, the retrograde motion of J-moon energy can easily be seen across the Gulf and Texas, because here the magnetic field forces the effects south of the most active westerly zone and places some of it in a transitional zone near the subtropical SE flow. To complete the orbital journey, the energy waves then flow back to the WSW to "eastern elongation" (the astronomical terms are opposite to our directional frame of reference because they refer to the planet's frame of reference which is mirror-image) and head back around towards their transit positions.

The J-field geometry is analogous to what an observer would see from above the south pole of Jupiter. This suggests that the J-field energy is reflected at some point between Jupiter and the Sun, unlike S-field energy which we witness as though seen from above the north pole of Saturn.

As I was suggesting, the J-4 field pushed so far north during the blocking episode that its energy features were not found near the UK and Ireland for several days. Since 28-29 Nov I have been watching the J-field system re-assert its presence and now it seems to be back in business, having drifted downstream so that its timing location is 3.8 as of today. That places the centre of the rotation near Holland and the J-I track is across southern England running northeast into the North Sea. The J-II track is across southern Ireland and southern Scotland and the J-III track is across n.w. Scotland. At present, J-I is heading for transit at 07z (4 Dec), J-III at 19z and J-II at 01z (5th). J-I passed J-II around 13z on 3 Dec and this was probably reflected in the heavy rainshower activity over southeast England. It then reached alignment with J-III around the time of this post, some activity should be noted around the east coast or western North Sea in phase with other activity over Ireland. Around 07z Monday, J-II will pass J-III; this event will be analyzed in the first briefing. Meanwhile, J-IV has rounded the "turn for home" as I call eastern elongation or western J-field elongation in atmospheric terms. This will be taking energy in this field from near Newfoundland towards Greenland and Iceland. Just to review, the periods of the four satellites of Jupiter are about 1.77, 3.54, 7.16 and 16.75 days. The mutual transits of J-II and J-III are currently approaching a series where both will be at transit together, on Mondays since the transit of J-III is 7 days, 4 hours later each time and by late December J-III transits will be entering Monday in that cycle. These mutual J-II and J-III transits should be fairly strong events mainly over Scandinavia and upstream over eastern North America as the J-3 field reaches timing line 2. They will be happening as J-I approaches eclipse in this series. The position of J-IV is more variable and adds a strong element of random scatter to J-field data; if J-IV were not there I suspect the J-field might have been noticed a long time ago especially due to its weekly rhythms.

The J-field also has faster-moving inner packets of energy due to small J-V (Amalthea) which orbits in just under 12 hours, and the position angle of the Great Red Spot, which orbits in 9h 50 min. These have a mutual cycle of 2.6 days which I have been tracking in detail over the North American severe weather zone for five years now. Tornadic activity peaks when the GRS overtakes J-V, or J-V overtakes J-I, and especially when J-I overtakes J-II. The following diagram shows a theoretical radar plot of a severe weather event where all four of these elements reach an alignment near transit (alignments at other angles are almost as severe, the J-field energy system should be pictured as a very strong signal in the overall magnetic structure being analyzed in this theory).

THEORETICAL J-FIELD SEVERE WEATHER ANALYSIS

(note x for moderate radar echoes and X for strong)

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Tornado activity in this plot would be most likely in the positions of the GRS, the large X for J-V, and near the southern fringe of the J-I energy, although to some extent might occur anywhere along the axis running NNW through the J-II energy as well.

It is rare that all four of these elements align, and the position of J-III at the time of actual alignments is important too. These factors will be analyzed in daily briefing messages as we proceed. Luckily, the J-system does not permit J-III to be in alignment with J-I and II at the same time; otherwise there could be possibly even stronger severe weather events. The J-III energy is often associated with moving 500-mb lows and large swirls of stratocumulus with steady rain at the point where the J-II or J-I alignment feature (likely to be a trowal) intersects the J-III energy. Because the J-IV energy is so far north of the other components, it tends to form separate lows that may become linked to J-III energy on some occasions by a trough. You can probably picture such a system as one low over the northern coast of Alaska and a second one over the Yukon, for example, or one over northeast Greenland and another south of Iceland.

** Now we move to the final discussion of the theory sessions, S-field energy. During the J-field breakdown in November, the S-field totally took over the energy flow over timing sector 3. You'll recall the slow-moving low over the North Sea around 24-27 Nov. This was the apparent centre of the S-3 field structure, which is cyclonic. The various energy systems rotate around it in periods of 0.96, 1.38, 1.89, 2.74, 4.52, 15.96, 21.32 and 79.8 days. During that episode in late November, the S-I to S-III energy took up positions over the North Sea and western Europe, with the S-III loop generally reaching East Anglia on its western extreme. This placed Britain in the path of S-IV, S-V and S-VI energy, all of which rotated south from the vicinity of Norway around 25-26 Nov. If you recall the strong waves that were associated with 70 mph wind gusts from NNE in northern Scotland, and the strong N to S squall-lines of wintry precip associated, these were caused (from this perspective) when S-V overtook S-VI just before their "eastern" elongations (remember, eastern in astronomy equals western in our atmosphere). These were followed by the S-IV energy which was traced as hail showers moving south from Lincs towards London on 26 Nov. Around 29 Nov as the J-field began to reappear, S-VII energy moved south around 20W and since it was not in alignment with any other energy for several days, it was a weak feature that failed to make much impact on the surface flow. If such a feature moved across the UK, it would produce variable amounts of cloud and a weak windshift, possibly a few marginal showers. At the present time, S-VIII is near its transit (3 Dec 21z), so there is a peak of wave formation associated with its weak but persistent energy over north Africa. There is an alignment of S-VII and S-VIII late 4 Dec as S-VII reaches its transit. Just to review, in the S-field, energy at transit will be found SSE of the system centre (in timing sectors 1 to 4, the geometry is different 5 to 9) at a similar timing number. By observation, the S-3 field is now located near timing number 3.8 -- I will be locating the S-VII / S-VIII energy flare-up in the first briefing message later today (4 December).

In case I slip into names of these moons instead of using the Roman numeral systems, they are (from I to VIII) Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion and Iapetus.

There are some interesting mutual cycles of the various moons of Saturn which show up in the data. First of all, understand that S-VI (Titan) is the strongest of these energy systems, and is capable of generating a weak to moderate low pressure system in some cases. S-V and S-VII are also fairly strong energy peaks. S-I and II can be seen in active S-fields, rotating rapidly around a centre at about 150 and 300 km (like the J-field, the S-field has oval or elliptical paths but the eccentricity is lower). S-I overtakes S-II every 3.0 days and the angle of this overtake is progressively 60 degrees further around the cyclonic loop (example, W then SSW, or E then NNE). At this overtake time, if it's a summer thunderstorm situation, severe storms with hail are often noted, especially when the overtake is south of the system centre (when it's north you tend to see easterly flow and q.s. lines of storms). Each of the other sets of S-moons have their periodic overtakes, but they are further apart and form no easily remembered patterns. When you get out to S-V overtaking S-VI this can be a powerful explosive deepening formula if it occurs during the bottom of the cyclonic loop. If you have a situation where non-adjacent orbits develop an alignment, then the effects are muted but not zero. S-IV overtaking S-V can be fairly active as well. You can probably visualize how this feeds into conventional meteorology, for example if the S0field in question is rotating around a point near Lake Ontario, then storm development east of Cape Cod is potentially explosive when S-IV overtakes S-V, or S-V overtakes S-VI. If you get a rare triple alignment, bomb cyclogenesis is likely. For S-VI and S-VII (Titan and Hyperion), these two moons are locked into a nearly 4:3 orbital resonance. Titan overtakes Hyperion every 63.44 days, at a point slightly earlier in the loop than the previous overtake. This generaes a 12.02 year cycle of Ti-Hy overtakes that moves slowly backwards around the energy loop system. This winter, the mutual alignment position is at "western elongation" or east of the centre in our terms, actually ENE. This will slowly drift back towards the south end of the loops by 2009. The next mutual alignment of Titan and Hyperion is scheduled for 22 Jan 2006; the two are currently separating out after an alignment 20 Nov. In that period of time, Titan will make four orbits and Hyperion three. Around 21-22 Dec the two will be opposite one another in the S-field system. Since there are weak reflection waves that travel around, expect some peaks of storminess with these events.

Here's what to look for in visual terms, based on my growing familiarity with this complex system of eight energy packets or systems. S-I to S-III tend to be fast-moving clusters of small cells that flare up at alignments and transits. They can be fairly weak or dormant towering cumulus at other times. S-IV and S-V tend to be what one might term infant waves or lows. They may develop some meso-scale wave structure and generate 2-4 mb pressure waves especially if they come into alignment with S-VI or VII. They sometimes generate more powerful convective cells or sporadic precip shields. S-VI energy can rival J-II or J-III for synoptic development (J-I moves too fast and is more of a strong meso-scale producer). When J-field and S-field rotations are occupying similar space in the model, their energy packets can cross at various angles, which produces energy peaks too, for reasons that I assume are entirely due to conventional meteorology since nothing significant is happening in the SSMF at these times. S-VII energy peaks resemble S-IV or S-V in their intensity and appearance, but can dig down fairly deep into the subtropics near transit, and well into the arctic at eclipse. In North America, S-VI and S-VII energy near eclipse routinely create retrograde energy flow or even moving low pressure centres at times when an S-field is between timing lines 1 and 2. The S-VIII energy is weak and usually shows up in the form of a sketchy wavelet or jet streak. Its only real significance to the model is to anchor some of the field's energy directionality. At present, I would expect storminess to peak in the eastern Med, later this winter there might be a relative peak around central Russia then later on in January, a peak around Norway. Remember that the J-fields and S-fields are drifting downstream in the overall system of the atmosphere. What you see today will not repeat under exact duplicate circumstances later in time; that duplication would be expected to occur downstream.

I think at this point, the theory sessions have probably given enough of an overview that a reader can now proceed to interact with the daily astro-climatology report. As questions arise there, I may post more material on this thread (theory sessions) rather than disrupting the flow on the more time-sensitive daily report.

I would imagine that for those of you who are trying to keep up with this new theory, you may well have some idea what I am trying to explain, but I could well understand if you feel a little lost in the torrent of new information and perspectives. Hopefully, the daily reports will help you to complete the orientation and by the end of this winter, you will be more familiar with the workings of the new theory. Feel free to post questions or send me private messages which I can then answer the same way.

And by the way, my own research continues. This is by no means a complete overview of the theory, there are other aspects which I have not mentioned, but these involve rather detailed concepts that do not add large amounts of variability on a large scale. For example, by extensive number crunching of the Toronto data, I have discovered that some of the larger asteroids are leaving similar "signatures" in the J-year data. Please see below where I re-post the J-year temperature profile from Toronto; this shows the basic four-field structure of the J-year of 398.9 days in the 150 years of temperature records near timing line one. When I run filters based on various large asteroid locations (these tend to pass Jupiter about every 8 to 12 years) I find similar indications of an interference or eclipse (Mars also leaves a similar signature). I think that some of these long-term interactions may be significant to climate rather than weather time scales. Although there is a suggestion of a four-field structure for some of the asteroids, I have not yet found much atmospheric evidence for these effects, so I assume they are smaller than 2 dam in the 500-mb flow. At that small impact level, such effects may be significant to modelling but not to day-to-day analysis of the system. But you can see how five to ten of them all in the same timing sector could cumulatively build a ridge or trough.

Following then, and concluding this theory session thread for now, is the profile of the J-year in Toronto temperatures, starting from 1841. Since Jupiter was in opposition on June 5 of that year, the vertical line about 40% of the way into the J-year is the "JOS" date (Jupiter in opposition to the Sun) and from the curved geometry of the fields, this is about where you would expect the J-1 field to begin. I identify various segments of the J-1 field as well as the other three fields on the diagram, which is smoothed with a 21-day running mean. The actual daily data show a scatter about this rather smooth curve, and the amplitude on that time scale is about 2 C degrees (here it is from 0.4 to -0.4 anomaly values).

TEMP ANOMALIES IN J-YEAR TORONTO DATA 1841-1990