New paper finds lunar-tidal cycles influence climate

A paper published today in the International Journal of Climatology finds the 18.6 year lunar-tide cycle influences rainfall and climate over adjacent land areas. According to the authors, in years of strong tides, tide-induced ocean mixing decreases sea surface temperatures and lowers air pressures, which in turn affects rainfall variability over the plains east of the subtropical Andes, South America. The opposite pattern is observed in years of weak tides. The paper adds to other peer-reviewed publications finding a lunar influence on ocean and atmospheric oscillations, which in turn have large scale effects upon climate. The IPCC ignores lunar, solar, and other planetary harmonics, which alone can explain climate change of the past century. 

The 18.6-year nodal tidal cycle and the bi-decadal precipitation oscillation over the plains to the east of subtropical Andes, South America

This work shows statistical evidence for lunar nodal cycle influence on the low-frequency summer rainfall variability over the plains to the east of subtropical Andes, in South America, through long-term sea surface temperature (SST) variations induced by the nodal amplitude of diurnal tides over southwestern South Atlantic (SWSA). In years of strong (weak) diurnal tides, tide-induced diapycnal mixing makes SST cooler (warmer) together with low (high) air pressures in the surroundings of the Malvinas/Falklands Islands in the SWSA, possibly through mean tropospheric baroclinicity variations. As the low-level tropospheric circulation anomalies directly affect the interannual summer rainfall variability, such an influence can be extended to the bi-decadal variability present in the summer rainfall owing to the nodal modulation effect observed in the tropospheric circulation. The identification of the nodal periodicity in the summer rainfall variability is statistically robust.