Saturday, October 17, 2009

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Many people argue that the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation)
Index is largely a reddened response to El-Nino-ENSO forcing
from the tropical Pacific ocean (see * below). However,
the graph above shows that this view is not compatible
with the observations.

The lower of the two graphs in this figure shows the phase of the
PDO from 1660 to 2000 A.D., as indicated by proxy tree-ring
data of Vernon and Franks (2006). Above it is a graph of the
(running) mean intensity of El Nino events over the same time
period, as published from proxy tree-ring data by Gergis and
Fowler (2006) [Advances in GeoScience, 6, pp. 173 - 179, 2006].

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that every time the
PDO switches positive, there is a progressive increase in the
mean intensity of El Nino events, and every time the PDO
switches negative, there is a progressive decrease in the mean
intensity of El Nino events.
Simple causational logic tells you that it is the El Nino that is
reponding to the long term changes in the PDO and not the
other way around. This evidence alone, should be enough to
completly invalidate the models of Newman et al. [2003] and
Shakun and Sharman (2009) [Geophysical Research Letters].

A much more likley explanation for the results that these
authors are getting is that the underlying causal mechanism
for both the El-Nino-ENSO phenomenon and the PDO are linked.

In this blog, I propose to show that the common underlying
mechanism responsible for the changes seen in the ENSO
and the PDO are the lunar tides and their effect upon the
up-welling cool deep ocean water in the Pacific ocean.

1 comment:

  1. The North Pacific knows because when the planets and/or the Sun gives the Moon a little 'extra' acelleration the Earth has to counter that motion but the Earth is not given any extra energy so it has to take that from it's own rotational energy, and when rotation changes so will the currents.