Studying Causes Of El Nino -- Rjs Ac Model

[Roger J Smith]

Studying causes of El Nino --

from perspective of the astro-climatology model of Roger Smith

____________________________________________________________________________

This thread will present some new research findings about the El Nino phenomenon derived from the astro-climatology model of Roger Smith's company, Future Weather Inc. There has already been some interest in possible links of the El Nino to lunar gravitational forcing from the two threads in another area about Global Weather Oscillations. David Dilley of GWO has postulated that the El Nino is closely related to an index he describes as the PFM, and that this mechanism drives the El Nino by a connection to the latitude of the South Pacific subtropical high, a feature which is normally located somewhere to the immediate north of Easter Island around 25 S 120 W.

My research into the El Nino had been indicating stronger causation from a different external source, modulations of the J-field segments in the model. A J-field segment is a large atmospheric system built around high pressure that in this theory is postulated to be the signal derived from the earth's atmosphere interacting with the Jupiter-to-sun segments of the solar system magnetic field (hereafter SSMF).

These segments, which are postulated to align in sets of four field segments having somewhat curved form, can be pictured as extending from the Sun to Jupiter, on either side of a straight line connecting the two, with average angle of separation around 60 degrees. The field segments have related components extending through the Sun and radiating out in the opposite direction. Visualize that the earth, in its 13 month synodic passage through this set of J-fields from one Jupiter opposition to the next, would encounter the four J-field segments about one, five, seven and twelve months after opposition. Sometimes the curvature or "flex" is somewhat greater than this, for example, at Jupiter's perihelion (which occurs next in about two years). The field segments are obviously three-dimensional so they have the form of cylinders or tubes within the larger complex structure of the SSMF.

Now, the theory postulates that these field segments contain interactive mechanisms that involve two processes. One is an area of slightly enhanced solar wind or flux outward from the Sun. The other is a signal returning to the Sun from Jupiter and therefore influenced by any changes in the region of Jupiter's powerful magnetic field.

Another principle of the theory suggests that the field segments will imprint onto the earth's atmosphere most forcefully in a strong area of the magnetic field that runs SSE from the north magnetic pole through eastern N America, thence through the Atlantic Ocean, Africa and the Indian Ocean to the south magnetic pole. And events in other longitudes will reflect the distribution of field sectors as they are oriented to the sectors currently being traversed by the earth. This principle leads to the assumption that field segments in terms of the atmospheric response drift east (for prograde elements, retrograde elements are seen as segments travelling faster than the earth) around the northern and southern hemispheres.

The curvature of the timing structure means that the region west of South America is at a similar timing line to the central North Pacific and Alaska, or near timing line 7 in a system where timing line 1 is the aforementioned strong magnetic timing line and others are located at 40 degree intervals eastward. Timing line 8 curves down the west coast of N America offshore and parallel to central America, running through Colombia and the Amazon basin, so that timing line 7 tends to run through the principal area of interest to the El Nino phenomenon, approximately Line Islands to Santiago Chile. What tthat means to the theory in predictive terms is that disturbances in the J-field occurring 1/3 of a cycle before they peak will cross timing line seven (from seven, it is three timing lines to one, counted 8, 9, 1).

Around 1995 to 2000, the theory was at a stage of development that I was watching events in real time for the strong 1997-98 El Nino and noticing similarities in J-field disturbance timing to the previous strong El Nino 1982-83. In the next post in this section, I will show some of the stronger cycles in play and comment on them, using the El Nino index on the NCEP site from 1950 to the present.

The analysis will show that several major disturbances in the J-field system may account for the El Nino phenomenon. I also think the lunar cycles have a place in this complex mechanism and will get to those once the main J-field disturbances have been investigated. So, the next post will go on to show the El Nino index, and some of the analysis that supports this theory of its cause and modulation.

[J07]

David Dilley of GWO has postulated that the El Nino is closely related to an index he describes as the PFM, and that this mechanism drives the El Nino by a connection to the latitude of the South Pacific subtropical high, a feature which is normally located somewhere to the immediate north of Easter Island around 25 S 120 W.

I don't wish to pick holes but this seems important. I am sure that the South Pacific subtropical high does not tend to sit to the north of Easter Island. That seems too much equatorward. It's part of the subtropical ridge, and is more usually found around ~30S (in terms of a mean 365 day latitude).

[Roger J Smith]

Here are the El Nino index values from the NCEP site:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/anal...ensoyears.shtml

Now, it is well known that the El Nino tends to peak in the southern hemisphere summer, around Christmas time and this is why it got the name El Nino which is associated with the Christ child (the boy). So it would probably be good for research purposes to normalize the data by differences from monthly averages. The index already spreads out the value for a three-month period centered on the month shown. This technique may be necessary when we get to some of the shorter cycles in the J-field, but the first one to address is the well-known "seven year" cycle which has always seemed to observers to be the main pulse of the El Nino. In more recent years, I would say that this pulse has been joined by a 2-3 year pulse in the estimation of most casual observers of the El Nino. And it has become more obvious as the phenomenon is studied, that the El nino comes in many shapes and sizes. It may well correlate to a number of other global phenomena, for example, drought in northeast Brazil, wet winters in southern CA and the Gulf coast, a mild, dry pattern extending from southern BC and WA state across the north-central US, decreased tropical storm activity in the North Atlantic. However, each El Nino has its own unique global signature. The 1982-83 El Nino came with a notably mild, dry winter in the Great Lakes region, while the 1997-98 El Nino came with the infamous ice storm in eastern Ontario, Quebec and New England. These were clearly somewhat different downstream correlatives, and by the time one gets to Europe, the El Nino correlative is more like an ensemble of many different circulation types.

In any case, this first analysis was my first effort to delve into the El Nino cause and it involved a leap of faith in the model's basic parameters. Strong signals had been detected from the Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus & Mercury field segments in the Toronto (and later CET) temperature data. These generally showed peaks of about 0.5 to 1.0 C degrees at various standard time periods linked to the orbital cycles of these planets, suggesting that on a regular basis, timing line one (and three from the CET part of the research) responds to the earth's passage through the field segments. Since Mars is travelling about half as fast as the earth, it takes 2.15 years on average for the earth to pass through the Mars-field segments, so the signature for Mars extends over that 2.15 years as compared to 1.09 years for Jupiter and 1.03 years for Saturn. But the logic of them is essentially the same, a complex of four warmings as the earth passes through four field segments, and four other intervals that are cooler than these intervals.

The leap of faith involved was to study some of the larger asteroids, at first just to eliminate them as variables, because of their smaller size and presumed inability to be players in the solar system magnetic field. For example, Uranus and Neptune had somewhat fainter signals than Saturn, as one might expect, whereas Pluto showed almost no signal and was not used as a variable in the eventual model. One signal was detected beyond Pluto and work is still ongoing as to whether this is any of the recently identified trans-Neptunian objects, or some other variable.

However, quite to the surprise of the researcher, the larger asteroids generated large signals that had a somewhat different logic than say the Mars field segment signals. The signals were stronger when Jupiter was in a similar longitude, but maintained their integrity through the asteroid's orbital cycle. Eventually it became obvious from comparing the signals that larger asteroids were disturbing the J-fields and that their signatures were probably due to this ongoing process rather than any direct effect they might have on the SSMF.

The largest asteroid, Ceres, is located at about 2.77 AU and has a reasonably circular orbit while other large asteroids are generally in the range of 2.2 to 3.5 AU and have orbits that vary from almost circular to quite elliptical. Many of them also display large inclinations to the solar system plane.

An asteroid at the distance of Ceres takes 4.6 years to orbit the Sun and requires about 7.52 years to overtake Jupiter. This means that asteroids closer to the Sun than Ceres will take 5 to 7 years in most cases to overtake Jupiter, and those further out can take as much as 10-11 years, before we reach a large zone of exclusion beyond which there are only a few asteroids in the area of Jupiter itself or as with Chiron, in an orbit generally outside that of Saturn.

Although asteroids come in a variety of sizes, Ceres actually accounts for a large percentage of the total mass of the group and is more than twice as large as the next two or three in diameter. So if there were anything to a concept that asteroid interference in the J-fields was promoting the El Nino, it would be dominated by a signal from Ceres (and from Mars, as we will see ... Mars is several times larger than Ceres although twice as far from Jupiter on the average).

So let's go on to examine the signal possibly associated with Ceres as it travels through the J-fields. I have taken the El Nino monthly index values and arranged them in columns of 91 months to correspond to the 7.52 year cycle of Ceres' overtaking of Jupiter. The actual timing of these can vary slightly because of different eccentriciities in their orbits, but these are very small differences for the modest eccentricity of Ceres (for some other objects these second-order variations would be more significant).

START

01/50..08/57..02/65..08/72..03/80..09/87..03/95..09/02...mean

-1.7....+0.9....-0.5....+1.4....+0.4....+1.6....+0.6....+1.1......+0.48

-1.5....+0.9....-0.3....+1.6....+0.3....+1.5....+0.3....+1.3......+0.51

-1.4....+0.9....+0.0....+1.8....+0.2....+1.2....+0.2....+1.5......+0.55

-1.4....+1.2....+0.2....+2.1....+0.3....+1.1....+0.1....+1.4......+0.63

-1.3....+1.5....+0.7....+2.1....+0.3....+0.7....-0.1....+1.2......+0.64

-1.2....+1.7....+1.0....+1.8....+0.2....+0.5....-0.2....+0.9......+0.59

-0.9....+1.5....+1.3....+1.2....+0.0....+0.1....-0.5....+0.5......+0.40

-0.8....+1.1....+1.5....+0.5....-0.1....-0.3....-0.6....+0.1......+0.18

-0.8....+0.7....+1.6....+0.0....+0.0....-0.9....-0.8....-0.1......-0.04

-0.8....+0.5....+1.6....-0.5....+0.0....-1.3....-0.8....+0.0......-0.16

-0.9....+0.5....+1.5....-0.8....+0.0....-1.4....-0.8....+0.3......-0.20

-1.0....+0.4....+1.2....-1.0....-0.2....-1.2....-0.7....+0.4......-0.26

-1.1...+0.2....+1.1....-1.2....-0.4....-1.3....-0.5....+0.5......-0.34

-0.9....+0.0....+0.8....-1.4....-0.4....-1.6....-0.3....+0.5......-0.41

-0.7....+0.0....+0.5....-1.7....-0.3....-2.0....-0.2....+0.6......-0.48

-0.4....+0.2....+0.3....-1.9....-0.2....-2.0....-0.2....+0.4......-0.48

-0.2....+0.4....+0.2....-2.0....-0.3....-1.8....-0.1....+0.4......-0.43

+0.1...+0.4....+0.2....-1.8....-0.3....-1.6....-0.2....+0.2......-0.38

+0.3....+0.5....+0.0....-1.6....-0.3....-1.2....-0.1....+0.2......-0.28

+0.5....+0.4....-0.2....-1.2....-0.2....-0.9....-0.2....+0.2......-0.23

+0.6....+0.2....-0.2....-1.1....-0.1....-0.7....-0.3....+0.3......-0.16

+0.7.....+0.1....-0.3....-0.9....-0.1....-0.4....-0.4....+0.4.....-0.11 Ce-J

+0.7....-0.2....-0.3....-0.7....+0.0....-0.4....-0.4....+0.7......-0.08

+0.6....-0.4....-0.4....-0.5....+0.0....-0.4....-0.3....+0.8......-0.08

+0.3....-0.5....-0.5....-0.4....+0.1....-0.4....-0.1....+0.9......-0.08

+0.2....-0.4....-0.6....-0.5....+0.2....-0.3....+0.3....+0.8......-0.04

+0.1....-0.3....-0.5....-0.7....+0.4....-0.2....+0.8....+0.8......+0.05

+0.1....-0.2....-0.2....-0.8....+0.7....-0.1....+1.3....+0.8......+0.20

+0.0....-0.3....+0.0....-0.7....+0.7....+0.1....+1.7....+0.6......+0.26

-0.2....-0.3....+0.0....-0.6....+0.8....+0.1....+2.0....+0.5......+0.29

-0.3....-0.3....-0.2....-0.6....+1.0....+0.3....+2.2....+0.4......+0.31

-0.3....-0.3....-0.4....-0.7....+1.5....+0.3....+2.4....+0.5......+0.38

-0.1....-0.1....-0.5....-0.8....+1.9....+0.2....+2.5....+0.5......+0.45

-0.2....-0.1....-0.4....-0.9....+2.2....+0.2....+2.5....+0.5......+0.48

-0.2....-0.1....-0.5....-1.1....+2.3....+0.3....+2.3....+0.5......+0.44

-0.1....+0.0....-0.7....-1.3....+2.3....+0.3....+2.0....+0.3......+0.35

+0.1....+0.0....-0.8....-1.3....+2.1....-0.3....+1.4....+0.2......+0.18

+0.3....+0.0....-0.8....-1.5....+1.6....+0.3....+1.1....-0.1......+0.11

+0.4....-0.2....-0.7....-1.6....+1.3....+0.3....+0.4....-0.4......-0.06

+0.4....-0.2....-0.4....-1.7....+1.0....+0.4....-0.1....-0.8......-0.18

+0.5....-0.2....+0.0....-1.7....+0.7....+0.4....-0.7....-0.8......-0.23

+0.4....-0.1....+0.3....-1.6....+0.3....+0.4....-1.0....-0.6......-0.24

+0.4....-0.1....+0.3....-1.2....-0.1....+0.3....-1.2....-0.3......-0.24

+0.4....-0.2....+0.3....-0.9....-0.5....+0.3....-1.4....-0.1......-0.26

+0.4....-0.1....+0.4....-0.6....-0.7....+0.6....-1.4....0.2......-0.15

+0.3....-0.2....+0.7....-0.5....-0.9....+0.8....-1.5....+0.3......-0.13

+0.3....+0.2....+0.9....-0.2....-0.7....+1.0....-1.5....+0.4......+0.05

+0.2....+0.1....+1.0....+0.1....-0.4....+0.9....-1.2....+0.5......+0.15

+0.3....-0.3....+1.0....+0.3....-0.2....+0.9....-0.9....+0.7......+0.23

+0.2....-0.6....+0.9....+0.6....-0.2....+0.9....-0.8....+0.9......+0.24

-0.2....-0.6....+0.8....+0.8....-0.3....+1.3....-0.8....+1.2......+0.28

-0.6....-0.5....+0.6....+0.8....-0.4....+1.6....-0.8....+1.1......+0.23

-0.8....-0.4....+0.5....+0.8....-0.4....+1.8....-0.9....+0.8......+0.18

-0.8....-0.5....+0.4....+0.6....-0.3....+1.7....-1.0....+0.4......+0.06

-0.8....-0.5....+0.4....+0.5....-0.2....+1.5....-1.0....+0.1......+0.00

-1.1....-0.4....+0.6....+0.3....-0.2....+1.4....-1.2....-0.1......-0.09

-1.2....-0.5....+0.6....+0.2....-0.6....+1.2....-1.4....+0.0......-0.21

-1.2....-0.4....+0.7....+0.4....-0.9....+0.9....-1.7....-0.1......-0.29

-1.1....-0.3....+0.6....+0.4....-1.1....+0.5....-1.7....-0.2......-0.36

-1.0....-0.2....+0.5....+0.4....-1.0....+0.2....-1.4....-0.5......-0.35

-1.0....-0.3....+0.3....+0.5....-0.9....-0.1....-1.0....-0.8......-0.41

-0.9....-0.4....+0.2....+0.5....-0.8....-0.1....-0.8....-1.1......-0.43

-0.9.....0.6....+0.1....+0.7....-0.8....+0.1....-0.6....-1.2......-0.40

-1.0....-0.7....+0.0....+0.8....-0.8....+0.3....-0.6....-1.4......-0.43

-1.1....-0.7....-0.3....+0.8....-0.6....+0.4....-0.4....-1.5......-0.43

-1.0....-0.6....-0.6....+0.8....-0.6....+0.4....-0.4....-1.4......-0.43

-1.0....-0.3....-0.7....+0.5....-0.5....+0.5....-0.4....-1.1......-0.38

-1.0....+0.0....-0.7....+0.0....-0.6....+0.7....-0.5....-0.7......-0.35

-1.4....+0.1....-0.7....-0.3....-0.4....+0.7....-0.7....-0.5......-0.40

-1.8....+0.1....-0.8....-0.4....-0.4....+0.7....-0.7....-0.4......-0.46

-2.0.....+0.3....-1.1....-0.3....-0.4....+0.4....-0.7....-0.1......-0.49

-1.7....+0.7....-1.3....-0.3....-0.5....+0.3....-0.5....+0.0......-0.41

-1.2....+0.9....-1.4....-0.4....-0.5....+0.3....-0.4............-0.39

-0.7....+0.9....-1.2....-0.4....-0.3....+0.3....-0.3............-0.24

-0.6....+0.9....-0.9....-0.3....-0.2....+0.3....-0.1............-0.13

-0.6....+1.0....-0.8....-0.2....-0.1....+0.3....+0.1............-0.04

-0.5....+1.0....-0.8....-0.1....+0.0....+0.2....+0.1............-0.01

-0.5....+0.9....-0.8....-0.1....+0.2....+0.2....0.0............-0.01

-0.6....+0.4....-0.8....+0.0....+0.4....+0.2....+0.0............-0.06

-0.8....+0.0....-0.8....+0.1....+0.6....+0.3....-0.1............-0.10

-0.8....-0.5....-0.9....+0.2....+0.9....+0.4....-0.1............-0.11

-0.9....-0.7....-1.0....+0.1....+1.0....+0.4....-0.2............-0.19

-0.8....-0.7....-0.9....+0.0....+1.2....+0.5....-0.1............-0.11

-0.7....-0.7....-0.7....+0.1....+1.2....+0.5....+0.1............-0.03

-0.5....-0.8....-0.3....+0.2....+1.3....+0.7....+0.2............+0.11

-0.1....-1.0....+0.0....+0.3....+1.2....+0.9....+0.4............+0.24

+0.3....-1.1....+0.3....+0.5....+1.1....+1.3....+0.6............+0.43

+0.6....-1.1....+0.6....+0.5....+1.0....+1.3....+0.8............+0.54

+0.7....-1.0....+0.8....+0.6....+1.2....+1.2....+0.9............+0.63

+0.9....-0.8....+1.1....+0.5....+1.5....+0.9....+0.9............+0.71

+0.9............................+1.7........................(+1.3)......+0.84

Analysis to follow in the next post ... the means show the gradual change in signal in this 7.52 year cycle from positive (El Nino) to negative (La Nina). The EN signals come around months 34, 51, and 90-91. More about this in a day or so, then eventually will show (without the detailed tables) the profiles for some other asteroids and for Mars as they interact with the J-field system.

Okay, with some relief that chart posts reasonably well, I was somewhat fearful of having to line it up in the 30 minutes they provide for editing, but it's reasonably lined up.

On the subtropical high question, sorry about that, I think my hemispheric disorientation is showing, I was thinking poleward and said north. You're quite right about the mean position being south of Easter Island.

As I post a few other profiles, this first one will perhaps make more sense in context, but I also checked back where data are less reliable and found roughly the same pulse over the years between 1850 and 1950 for which we do have any records of El Nino events. However, I think with this index being developed with the observational data, I am just going to develop the predictive model from the data since 1950 and test it out as time goes on.

So, will discuss this further in the coming day or two with some more profiles. This Ceres-Jupiter profile will be shown in graphical format once I input the data above into a graph program that I can upload.

[Roger J Smith]

Before doing more analysis and interpretation, I wanted to add the signal for Mars traversing the J-field system. This occurs over a much faster cycle of 2.23 years which equates to 26.68 months. For this, I will just display the means rather than the whole table as with Ceres. The periods are taken as (27,27,26) months in succession starting with January 1950. It will be necessary to compare the setting of the Mars-Jupiter cycle with the Ceres-Jupiter cycle as we analyze. Just to put that detail in the forefront, Ceres passes Jupiter around month 22 of a 90.25 month cycle, or about 24% of the way into the cycle. Mars passed Jupiter in December 1950 so the first cycle (and the rest of them within a month of variability) has the Mars-Jupiter pass at month 12 of a 27 month cycle, or 44% of the way into the cycle. This factor will have to be considered when we compare the signals. Bear in mind also, the Mars-Jupiter cycle takes only about 30% of a Ceres-Jupiter cycle to complete.

As I was promising, the Mars-Jupiter data will be presented below with just the mean value of 27 cycles from January 1950 to the present (cycle 27 started in Feb 2008).

-0.06

-0.02

-0.05

-0.02

-0.05

-0.06

-0.05

-0.02

-0.01

+0.05

+0.01 Ma-J

+0.02

+0.04

+0.06

+0.08

+0.02

-0.02

-0.05

-0.09

-0.13

-0.16

-0.11

-0.04

-0.02

+0.02

-0.04

(Ma-J indicates where Mars passes Jupiter each time in this cycle)

The signal here is somewhat fainter than the Ceres signal, but follows roughly the same logic. The positive peaks showing El Nino tendencies come in months 11, 16 and 26 of the 27-month cycle. The peaks at months 11 and 16 may correspond to 34 and 51 in the Ceres cycle. This would indicate that the effect occurs as Ceres and Mars enter a large area of disturbed J-field segment in the SSMF, but in the case of Ceres, either the effect reaches the inner solar system with a lag, or the disturbed sector is further ahead of Jupiter at that distance from the Sun. The peak for Mars at month 26 occurs basically just after Mars passes behind the Sun as viewed from the perspective of Jupiter, and a similar peak for Ceres would occur at month 70 or so, showing that once again the corresponding second El Nino peak occurs later in this field segment.

The rather surprising conclusion from the Mars analysis is that the effect is considerably weaker than at Ceres, which certainly suggests that the interaction is from Jupiter inwards towards the Sun, and not vice versa, otherwise Mars would dominate Ceres having every other variable covered except distance from Jupiter.

More evidence of this sort of relationship in the SSMF complex structure will be seen when several other asteroid-Jupiter signals are analyzed. Once we have several more cycles to work with, some graphs will be posted to show the similarity in the curves on a graphical basis.

The asteroids that have been studied so far include about thirty of the larger members, but not all have shown significant signals either in this study or in the separate but possibly related study of their temperature signals in the Toronto and CET data series. The logic of the signals runs about as one might expect, larger asteroids have more robust signals, groups that happen to be in similar orbits (but different parts of that orbital family) tend to cancel one another out, and there is a stronger signal than expected for Vesta which is a brighter asteroid than the rest. This may be because it is closer to the Sun than most, but more likely has something to do with the process at work, which I believe may be a sort of sweeping up and transport of charged particles in the asteroid belt, originating from Jupiter as well as the Sun, therefore being constantly reinforced from Jupiter and more abundant in the portion of the solar system adjacent to where it happens to be in its 12-year orbit.

So for now, if you're following this, look for more data to follow on some of the other larger asteroids, and then a look at how much of the total El Nino variance is handled by these components, and how much may be attributable to a separate mechanism that might involve the Moon and the earth's oceans and atmosphere.

Edited October 26, 2008 by Roger J Smith

[Iceberg]

Morning Roger,

My appologies in advance,I am not sure whether this is purely for your research,(which does sound interesting),or whether we can ask questions.

Personally I am not convinced of any of the thoery's including the standard ones and so have a very open mind on this.

The causes for ENSO changes could be normal ocean cycles,sun spots (which I am not a fan of), earthquakes or your kind of astro gravity changes.

I think that your theory(and GWO's) put a reliance on the displacement of the normal trade winds which in turn effect upwelling i.e The effects come before the SST's and the SST's are a primary sympton rather than a cause. If this is the case would you theory co-relate better with the SOI.

Can you also say that what your thoery allows is the opening of the front door to whatever is the dominent sub surface behaviour i.e your mechanism controls the resistance to the underlying likelyhood. ?

Cheers

It could be all of them are drivers of ENSO but it's the weightings that need to be discovered to get a unified theory.

[Roger J Smith]

Iceberg, do you think I would get a much different result from the SOI than this index? I'll have to see how correlated they are. As to process at work, I was going to speculate about that once all the evidence is posted. I think what triggers an El Nino event is a general weakening of the subtropical highs on both sides of the equator in the eastern half of the Pacific. My feeling is that the northern hemisphere "response" to an El Nino would be better visualized as a northern hemisphere El Nino, if there is any conceptual difference. At any rate, I will go on with some of the other profiles I have derived for the index already in use.

The second largest asteroid signal I have found is for Vesta, one of the larger asteroids but also the third closest to the Sun of "major" asteroids (those with diameters over 200 kms) and unlike almost all the others, a bright object with a high albedo like Venus.

Since Vesta is closer to the Sun than Ceres it takes less time to complete an orbit (3.6 instead of 4.6 years) and so it passes Jupiter in a shorter period, 5.22 years, which equates to 62.64 months. For this study, we therefore use a grid of (63, 63, 62) months which would require one further reduced period every 250 years or so, therefore not much of an issue for this analysis. The first overtake of Jupiter by Vesta in this time period (since 1950.0) took place in March 1954. This places the event in month 51 of the 63 month data set. As such, it is almost totally out of phase with the Ceres analysis which had the event in month 22 out of 91.

I'm going to post the results in graph form to compare with Ceres, rather than just spewing out the list of numbers. The graph will show quite clearly that the same process is in place, once you adjust the Vesta signal so that it has the overtake at the 24% point as with Ceres. The signal then looks quite similar, but is about half as large. In other words, the three peaks appear in almost the same orientation to the overtake, but are generally smaller. The two peaks after the overtake are about 50-60 per cent of the Ceres data, and the peak that occurs with Vesta on the far side of the Sun from Jupiter is a little less than half of the Ceres peak at that point. But it's quite clear that we are looking at the same process.

I hope to have this graph posted soon. Then it's on to investigate the third and fourth largest signals I could find among the asteroids. There were about ten that looked significant enough to consider for modelling, however, when you get down below the first half dozen or so, the signals would only change the composite index by 0.1 at any given time, and if these various smaller signals are scattered at random around the solar system, they probably wouldn't "force" the signal in any evident way.

[Roger J Smith]

Now the graphs are ready for uploading, there are probably six reasonably large signals to illustrate.

First of all, here's the 90.25 month signal for Ceres, with the 63 month signal for Vesta on the same graph. To synthesize them, I had to expand the data from 63 to 90 months and reset the starting point so that the two signals are normalized to the same orientation to Jupiter. This involved shifting the first 60% of the Vesta cycle as derived from the data to the end of the cycle, placing its overtake point of Jupiter at the same position as Ceres.

I was saying that the two curves look similar, but the similarity is more obvious before you spread the Vesta curve from 63 to 90 months. When you spread it, I found that the El Nino signal is later and wider. Will have to consider why this may be, as the signal may turn out to be contaminated by any other signal at 10.4 to 10.5 years, which would include a number of asteroids and the sunspot cycle in this data epoch. I did a separate 125 month analysis and found that this Vesta cycle shows up more or less as a double cycle in that, which probably means that most of the cause is to be found with Vesta, but there is a larger peak in the first half of this double cycle, indicating a second signal available every 10.4 years. This is probably one of the asteroids at around 3.1 AU, the signal is not large enough to rank in the top seven that I have found so far but around tenth overall.

This is the graph then showing the "El Nino Index" signal as Ceres and Vesta pass Jupiter:

ELNVESTA.xls

[Roger J Smith]

Going back to the Ceres signal, it should be noted that there are a number of other significant sized asteroids including Pallas and Eugenia which have such similar orbital periods to Ceres that over this short period (58 years) their signals would appear in the Ceres signal. It might require 500-1000 years for some asteroid signals to decouple in this sort of analysis. So the double peak after the overtake might represent the action of both Ceres and one or two other asteroids. Pallas happens to be trailing Ceres by about 25% now and falling very slowly further behind. However, Pallas has such a highly inclined orbit that it could easily miss the cylindrical volume of the J-field segments by a considerable margin in many cases. This may also be a factor with Ceres to a lesser extent, as the 1982-83 and 1997-98 El Nino events occurred at times when Ceres was near the orbital plane of Jupiter (which is the orbital plane of the solar system generally speaking, the earth is never more than 2 degrees from this plane, and Saturn never more than 3 degrees. Ceres reaches about 10 degrees above and below the orbital plane of Jupiter, but Pallas can be as much as 33 degrees above or below it.

There are no major asteroids within a range of orbits of plus or minus two months for the synodic cycle of Vesta, but as I've already mentioned, it could have a signal contamination from any events with a period of 125 months (10.4 years), and there are several asteroids in that range in terms of their overtake period for Jupiter. Davida, Themis and Hygiea are the most likely to be candidates.

By the way, to save somebody endless hours of research, I thought of the possibility that an asteroid in that time scale could be associated with the sunspot cycle. The best candidate for this was Themis, which has been passing Jupiter around the same time as sunspot maximum for most of the past 200 years. However, the cycle then drifts off and in any case there is nothing about the orbital dynamics to explain the Maunder minimum or other changes, so in this case I just wrote it off to coincidence. The one thing about asteroid Themis that is worth further investigation is that some indications show it to be a much denser object than others in the asteroid belt. I am awaiting new info on this, the original estimates gave a very high density for it. Most asteroid densities are like the Moon or Mars, in the 1.5 to 3 range, but Themis was assessed as much higher, something like 10 to 15. It was assumed to be an error of some kind, but I haven't seen any published follow-up on this.

There are three other asteroid signals that seem fairly strong, at least that I have uncovered so far, there are still a few orbital ranges to investigate. Once you've looked at about ten to fifteen periods, you've covered the lot, because they tend to clump into similar orbits.

The next graph I post here shows the signal from asteroid Juno, which has a slightly closer orbit to the Sun than Ceres, but considerably further out than Vesta. As a result, its period is about 4.4 years, and the synodic period relative to Jupiter (the overtake period as I've called it) is 6.9 years or just about 83 months. The cycle for Juno has a different appearance to Ceres but rather similar to Vesta. The symbol (@) on the graph shows the position of the Juno-Jupiter overtake, so as you'll see the El Nino signals are about a year before and after this event from this component.

ELN_JJ.xls

[Roger J Smith]

EN_FLORA.xlsThere are two other fairly large asteroid-Jupiter cycles that this research has uncovered. They relate to two relatively large asteroids that are even closer to the Sun than Vesta. Victoria is only slightly closer and has a synodic cycle of 61.5 months, and Flora is in an orbit that averages 2.2 AU and requires only 55.2 months to overtake Jupiter.

The first signal for asteroid Victoria is a large signal that rivals that of Ceres. I had indicated Vesta was in second place but perhaps this one is larger, so Vesta might be tied with Flora for third in this presentation and Juno a close fourth. This cycle has not been adjusted to show the overtake in a similar place as others, in fact, the overtake is at the very start of the data (1950.0 and every 61.5 months), and Victoria's orbit is rather eccentric so that there might be variations in the strength of signal to research.

ELN_VIC.xls

For asteroid Flora the signal is similar to that of Ceres, but about half the amplitude. On the graph below, you'll see that the overtake position is similar, about one-third of the way into the data, marked by the symbol * on the graph.

EN_FLORA.xls

Edited October 28, 2008 by Roger J Smith

[Roger J Smith]

Now, we seem to have at least five signals here that have amplitudes between 0.6 and 1.2 on the El Nino index scale (meaning from -0.3 to +0.3 and from -0.6 to +0.6), so if all five superimposed at some point they would pretty much dominate the El Nino index range of about -2.5 to 2.5 at that point. In a day or two I will be posting the actual results of a synthesized version of this research, extending it back to the period 1850 to 1950 to see how well it handles known cases of the El Nino in the more distant historical past, such as 1869-70, 1876-77, 1897-98 and 1925-26 to name a few that I have read about.

However, before we jump into that, some variability is attributed to the lunar gravitational forces by David Dilley in his research, and I had considered this too at some earlier point in my work (these El Nino signals were generally observed to exist about 5-7 years ago but I was pretty busy with other aspects of the theory and wanted to look into El Nino when I thought this other research was further along).

So I have gone into the data again to examine the lunar gravitational effect that is associated with a 4.43 year cycle of lunar perigee. This cycle is really half of a longer 8.85 year cycle where the Moon's perigee moves forward around the ecliptic rather quickly and, using the example of this winter as a starting point, begins from a position near the winter full moon or what I've called northern max because the moon is at its highest declination at that point, and within 4.43 years it runs forward to the winter new moon position, or summer full moon position, that I call southern max for the same reason. Then it takes another 4.42 years to get back to the current position, perigee at northern max.

David identifies these perigeean winter full or new moons as stronger tidal forcing events in his research, and people reading this thread have very likely been following that discussion under "Global weather oscillations" -- meanwhile I had also been doing some research into lunar perigee as a component of the astro-climatology model although I see it as one of a large number of cycles.

In any case, David had seen a connection between this 4.43 year cycle and the El Nino events of the recent past. Looking into the exact correlation to the El Nino Index, I have just found (in the past day or so) that there is indeed a good signal and one that does not have any obvious contamination from any of this other Jupiter-asteroid-Mars sort of interaction. By the way, a graph for the Mars-Jupiter interaction over 2.2 years will be added, but I need to do some further study on that because I suspect there is a strong variation by orbital positions that I need to figure out before commenting further on it. In any case, this Mars-Jupiter signal is not as strong as any of the asteroid-Jupiter signals, which is a puzzler but I have to deal with the facts as they emerge from the research. Possibly this segment analysis will reveal some reasons why.

Getting back to the lunar signal, I have crunched the numbers for 1950 to 2008 (El Nino Index) and found that the El Nino signal tends to come about one year after the northern max and southern max perigees that occur every 4.42 years. This graph will demonstrate that, and show the amplitude to be about half the Ceres amplitude, in other words, a modest El Nino spike of about 0.3-0.4 on a regular basis. We are into the 14th cycle of this data series now, so there are 13 complete lunar perigee cycles analyzed here, and we recently entered the 14th cycle.

In this graph, I have shown the positions of the months of the year in 2009 for reference. Of course that data has not yet occurred so when we get to the end of 2009 this graph will look slightly different. If there is a strong El Nino in 2009 there will be a bigger spike there, and if there is no El Nino or a la Nina return, then this spike will lose a bit of its amplitude. So that the numbers of the months don't overprint, I just show the odd-numbered months, so 1 = Jan, 3 = March, etc.

EN_LP.xls

Now on this second graph, I have taken the one-half of the data that would correspond to the northern max perigee, in other words, columns 2, 4, 6, 8 etc of the data. This gives considerable support to the real nature of this cycle because as you'll notice, the "northern perigee" half of the data looks very much like the overall data, so that obviously means the southern perigee curve would look much the same. The one big difference is that around this point in the cycle, there is a stronger La Nina signal than there would be before the southern max perigee.

The secondary peaks on the lunar El Nino graph seem to reflect secondary gravitational peaks when lunar perigee occurs near the equatorial transits at 2.2 year intervals before or after the main peaks. However, these are very weak looking signals compared to the main activity at the northern and southern perigees. It is quite obvious then that both northern and southern max perigee provide the same sort of El Nino signal. However from this analysis it would not appear that the lunar orbital cycle drives the whole El Nino cycle. The floor remains open for suggestions as to other components of the lunar orbit playing a role. The 18.6 year declination cycle comes to mind but it is clearly too long to drive the El Nino, it must be more of a shaping factor.

EN_LP2.xls

At this point I am going to move on to some other things for a while and get back to this thread in a day or two.

[Roger J Smith]

Brief update -- will be posting two more profiles that seem to complete the Jupiter-asteroid connections in this theory, for groups near 2.45 AU and 3.0 AU, or periods of about 5.5 and 9.9 years. Another group at 10.4 years requires further study because it seems to be largely influenced by a half-period cycle associated with Vesta at 5.22 years.

The Mars-Jupiter analysis is bogging down in zero-improvement of model territory, which is not that bad a deal because the model components just added without adjustments of any kind yield (already) a correlation of .71 to the index. This is based on nearly one to one matching throughout most of the 58 years but a handful of cases where either the signal is weaker or stronger than expected, and one case where there was a La Nina event that the model does not foresee.

So this is very encouraging. Next step will be to investigate how the model does from 1850 to 1950.

More later.

[Roger J Smith]

The progress report as of "today" .. I have added three more curves of varying amplitude to the developing model, and run a check for the period 1950-2008 where the correlation of the total model at present is a whopping 0.7, and I have back-cast the model through the century 1850-1949 where it seems at least reasonably close for the El Nino events of which I am aware in that period.

I will post some of this in a few days; right now I am working on an error data set which is basically the unexplained variance after these steps. The characteristic errors are about three years apart on average and are off-set from either El Nino or La Nina events. In other words, where the model does not work more or less 100% accurately tends to be in marginal cases where it is suggesting conditions like a slight El Nino where there is a neutral or slight la Nina tendency. The main peaks and troughs are generally well handled by these already-identified variables (including three now that are not yet shown in this report).

This is probably a better result than I was expecting from the first few cycles, and there is nothing to say that the El Nino - La Nina oscillation process is not at least partially randomly driven from feedback loops within the system, so that I may at some point exhaust the predictive capability of this technique.

[Roger J Smith]

ELNINO.xlsThe current status of the developing El Nino model is very encouraging.

Posted below is a graph of the model vs reality, 1950 to 2008 with a prediction through to 2019, showing two strong El Nino events to come in the next decade or so.

The correlation coefficient of the model vs reality is 0.71 explaining about half the variance. The eyeball method tells you that in most cases the model has nailed the oscillation within a very narrow time error range which a human forecaster might improve just by looking at the calendar.

Despite the fact that El Nino almost always peaks in Dec-Jan, the index was assessed as non-biased because the average non-El Nino months seem to overcompensate, perhaps La Nina peaks in Dec-Jan as well. In any case, the moving averages for the months are almost flat-line.

The current model incorporates all of the variables discussed above, plus four similar asteroid-Jupiter interactions which generally amount to similar-looking oscillations of about 0.3 to 0.5 index units. The correlation is only marginally enhanced by adding these four factors, it was sitting at 0.70 before these were added.

The back-cast for 1850 to 1949 is still being assessed and refined using these same curves. There are some problems with timing the curves in a couple of cases because it is suspected that the modern asteroid data have shifted enough to throw off the data before about 1920. This suspicion is raised by small but potentially significant differences between data in the modern data-base and an ephemeris from 1981 that showed some slight differences that would place some of the asteroids on 10-30 per cent different orbital periods back further than 80 years.

In any case, here is the very encouraging graph of the model results. Some general comments follow.

ELNINO.xls

The 1957-58 El Nino was larger than the model suggested and somewhat later although embedded in what the model predicted to be a long moderate El Nino interval.

There is some break-up of model signal in the late 1960s. This is the poorest period of validation performance in the 59 years of actual data.

The strong El Nino events in 1972-73, 1982-83 and 1997-98 are somewhat astonishingly well predicted by this model. Some intervening La Nina events are also well detailed.

The recent La Nina was predicted to occur somewhat earlier by about a year and this is a similar error to the 1954-58 period so that one might be suspicious that a disruption of the model prediction may continue through 2009, which might favour at least a weak El Nino emerging from what the model assesses to be a neutral or even returning weak La Nina signal. Strong El Nino events are held off until well into the next decade by this model. However, the Ceres factor which is the strongest individual signal may try to produce an El Nino as soon as 2011-12.

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

Fascinating stuff.

BFTP