Over on Ned Nikolov’s thread discussing his and Karl Zeller’s new paper, Robert Cutler posted an interesting graph he’s plotted, showing solar inertial motion and it’s possible connection with a terrestrial climate oscillation known as the Eddy cycle. Robert says:
I believe the Eddy cycle to be 938 years long. This is based on spectral analysis of the sun’s acceleration around its barycenter. The phase of the plotted sine wave is based on the complex Fourier coefficient at the spectral peak. This is the planetary forcing, not the sun’s response, or the earth’s response to changes in solar activity, so while the sine wave has a peak around 1968, peak temperatures are likely to occur a number of decades later. I’ve also annotated a few other cycles of interest.
There is discussion to be had concerning Robert’s comments about phasing and lags, but this post will focus on the periodicities enumerated in the frequency plot in the bottom panel.
Observations
These peaks in the acceleration of the Sun around the solar system barycentre occur at 938yr (Robert’s proposed Eddy cycle period), 165yr (Neptune’s orbital period), 84yr (Uranus orbital period), 61yr (Jupiter-Saturn Axial rotation period) and at two sidebands around 65yr and 57yr (due to the interaction of the 61yr and 938yr periodicities).
It’s also worth noting the periodicities of minima in the acceleration. Two of these occur between the 938yr and 165yr peaks, at ~400yr and ~200yr. Another two occur between the 165yr and 84yr peaks, at ~135yr and ~97yr. Finally, two more minima occur close to the sideband maxima of 65yr and 57yr.
Discussion
The changing rate of acceleration of the Sun around the barycentre is controlled by the motion of the four gas giant planets. It’s not too surprising then, that we see peaks in acceleration relating to their orbital periods. It’s an indication of the well integrated timings of the motions of the planets. An indication that the gas giant’s orbits and syzygies have also shaped the orbits of the smaller planets is found in another observation relating to Earth. Every 83 and 166 years, The Earth, Jupiter and the Sun align on the same day of the Earth year. This holds true even as the Earth’s seasons slip through the precession of the equinox during a 25,771yr cycle. One implication of this is that orbit-spin coupling is in operation between Gas giant orbital motion and Earth spin-axis precession.
The 200yr and 400yr minima could be connected to the de Vries cycle and it’s pair (10.5 and 21 J-S). These would be in 9:2 and 9:4 ratios with 938 year period. The 97 yr could be half the 193yr solar magnetic cycle, which is also the beat period of 61.1 and 166 years.
There is much more to be said and hypothesised here, but let’s throw it all open for discussion and see where that leads us.
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