The Moon and Rainfall in Eastern Australia
Posted by jennifer, March 3rd, 2012 - under Information, News.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
Dear Jennifer,
My paper ‘Lunar Tides and the Long-Term Variation of the Peak Latitude Anomaly of the Summer Sub-Tropical High Pressure Ridge over Eastern Australia’ has been published at:
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toascj/articles/V006/49TOASCJ.pdf
It can be down loaded for free!
The main take-home conclusions from this paper are that:
1. The most important influence upon the climate of Northern NSW and Southern Queensland after the La Nina/El Nino phenomenon is the Peak Latitude Anomaly for the Summer Sub-Tropical High Pressure Ridge over Eastern Australia (L(SA)).
2. The interannual variability of L(SA) is major mechanism influencing inter-annual rainfall variability in Eastern Australia. It has also been shown to be connected to the inter-annular variability of the annual mean maximum temperatures, zonal westerly winds, meridional winds and mean air temperature.
3. The long-term (i.e for periods of 2 to 20 years) variations of L(SA) are dominated by (significant) periodic signals at 9.4 (+0.4/-0.3) and 3.78 (+/- 0.06) years.
4. L(SA) systematically moves away from the Equator as the angle between the Earth-Sun axis and the line-of-nodes of the Lunar orbit (at the time of perihelion) decreases. The magnitude of the movement of the mean summer peak latitude anomaly can amount to 1 degree of latitude over the 9.3 year semi-draconic spring tidal cycle.
5. L(SA) systematically moves towards the Equator as the number of days (to the nearest full day) that New/Full is from Perihelion decreases. The magnitude of the movement of the mean summer peak latitude anomaly can amount to 0.7 degree of latitude over the 3.8 year peak spring tidal cycle.
6. The 9.4 year signal in L(SA) is in-phase with the draconic spring tidal cycle, while the phase of the 3.8 year signal in L(SA) is retarded by one year compared to the 3.8 year peak spring tidal cycle.
7. This paper supports the conclusion that long-term changes in the lunar tides, in combination with the more dominant solar-driven seasonal cycles, play an important role in determining the observed inter-annual to decadal variations of L(SA).
8. The IPCC does not take into account the important effects upon climate of long-term
lunar atmospheric tides.
Cheers,
Ian Wison
Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
Mark,
I am sorry if I confused Marc with You. Please accept my apologies.
I was not really have a go at anyone on this blog – I was just directing my comments to the two people who were leading the discussion at the time of my post.
All I am saying is that my paper does not claim to be able to specifically predict rainfall down to the level of which river system will flood in which any give particular month or year. All, I can say at this time is it will be generally wetter [i.e. it is likely that flooding will occur] in SE Australia during the summer months spanning a one or two year period. I am claiming no more than this.
Ian; Two things-
1 your paper got me thinking
2 In the end, you must relate to surface data such as it is for both our short term and long term rainfall history
Cheers
PS Call up David Jones
Luke,
you are also making me chuckle.
As pointed out to Gavin, a little bit of humility would not go astray.
Climate Science quite cearly has a long way to go.
Being defensive and pretending there are no major errors is not matching reality, it is only matching the politics.
There are more and more well heeled and respected scientists willing to admit that.
Despite your rude and dismissive comments, it appears as if the warnings from some of the ‘real scientists’ should have been heeded.
Some of the generational, primary source information should also have been heeded.
Climate science and environmental science are not yet capable of being prophetic. The input data is not sufficient and it is subject to other ‘forcings’ that we obviously don’t understand yet.
At this point, we have very little hope of controlling and managing our climate.
I hope that one day we will have a better chance of understanding all the variables and therefore more accurately predicting climate/weather patterns.
Telling lies and playing politics does not do anything to make that happen.
Neither does waving around reports designed to give credibility to a pre determined hypothesis.
Ninderthana (aka Ian Wilson)
That’s OK Ian, I’m getting used to it.
Never realised how common my name actually is, I still prefer to post under my name than to use a pseudonym.
Not exactly related to your paper but it made me think about other forces in general.
Many mentioned it before, but why do we dismiss forces present in our solar system like gravity, solar eruptions, other kinds of solar radiations, cosmic forces and many others as unimportant?
After all it’s not that we know a great deal about them and investigated their total affect in detail?
I may be totally wrong and out of my little mind, but these forces hold complete systems and galaxies together and we ignore them focusing on a harmless life sustaining trace gas instead?
That’s hardly an argument from a physicist is it?
and not reading those reports and making bogus ambit claims that can’t be substantiated is also hardly helpful either Debbie.
Debbie – there’s this thing called chaos. So weather and climate futures can never be perfectly known. Albeit that chaos being bounded.
Luke,
Just because you claim I don’t read reports doesn’t mean I haven’t.
I always take particular notice of the ‘subjective interpretation’ and the ‘terms of reference’ and the particular hypothesis that is being tested.
Don’t you?
And Luke….
Debbie – there’s this thing called chaos. So weather and climate futures can never be perfectly known. Albeit that chaos being bounded.
You think?
How profound of you and of course I have never said anything similar at all.
ROFL