Someone long ago must have stated that the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon was not related to lunisolar (lunar+solar) tidal forcing. This negative result (or null result) is not documented anywhere (AFAICT) but is likely considered conventional wisdom by climate scientists. The most direct evidence that climate scientists don’t consider lunisolar forcing is that it appears nowhere in the parameterization of general circulation model (GCM) source code.

As a general rule, negative findings are rarely reported in research journals:

“As it stands now, researchers are typically rewarded (tenure, grants, better jobs, etc.) for publishing a quantity of publications in prestigious journals. They do this by

• Running small and statistically weak studies (they are easy to do) that produce only positive results, since journals tend to not publish negative findings.
• Ignoring negative findings.
• Publishing only new and exciting findings that journals are looking for.
• Never checking old findings for accuracy and replicability.
• Changing methodologies in mid-stream to assure positive results.”

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I imagine that if a budding graduate student devised a hypothetical ENSO/lunar tidal connection as a potential thesis topic, it would be rejected by his advisor. The advisor would not want to risk his reputation or track record by going down a potential dead end. The same is perhaps true of the recent case of NASA JPL rejecting the proposal of one of their research teams who suggested funding for this actual topic.  Read an excerpt from this footnote:

“None of the peer-reviewers nor collaborators in 2006 had anticipated that the most remarkable large-scale process that we were going to find comes from ocean circulations fueled by Luni-Geo-Solar gravitational energy. We found evidence of the existence of this energy in the data produced by satellites like QuikSCAT and ASCAT. Following the standard

from the 1970’s of using these satellite data as winds in numerical modeling of oceans and climate has created and continues to create significant errors in the simulated ocean temperature, salinity, and currents as well as in the atmosphere. Together with our co-workers, we chose not to publish the errors until a solution to appropriately use

satellite data in numerical modeling was found. However, over the following years, proposed solutions were not considered because of various factors including economic and scientific pressure to publish and continue the standard agenda.”

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This is a clear example of confirmation bias stalling promising research. Yet, apparently there are no issues with pushing iffy models of ENSO based on nebulous chaos theory by climate change deniers such as Anastasios Tsonis.
Hmmm … something is not right with this picture.

So if this lunisolar model of ENSO pans out, it is an excellent example of how confirmation bias impeded scientific progress, but with the scientific method eventually winning out.

And we can do the same confirmation bias exercise with the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO) phenomenon, substituting the climate change denier Richard Lindzen for Tsonis as the impediment to progress.  Lindzen couldn’t find the lunar connection (even though there is plenty of evidence he tried), so just assumed it wasn’t there.  Everyone that followed Lindzen’s original model essentially confirmed his bias and so no progress was made, until the bias was removed and the lunisolar forcing re-evaluated.

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The difference here is that I am not preparing a thesis or working for NASA. This is one way of inoculating oneself from historical confirmation biases — by not being part of an inside consensus, there is no one to suggest to “not go there”.  By the same token, I now possess an apparent confirmation bias that a lunisolar forcing plays a primary role in certain climate phenomena.  Yet, it’s a weak confirmation bias because I didn’t start with this view, but it gathered steam based on all the evidence accrued over the past few years. It is now up to others to use the scientific method to reject this model. And, of course, I will be the first to abandon this model if I come across strong evidence to reject it. After all, I don’t have any particular allegiance to the moon gods, only in the learned view that oscillations of this nature do not occur via spontaneous resonance.

As an important footnote to this post, consider the recent admission that lunar forces play a significant role in triggering earthquakes. Up to the last year, the confirmation bias was that the lunar gravitational forcing was too weak to trigger earthquakes, and so the onset was historically described in statistical terms. The earthquake itself triggered by the passage and time and the slow creep of a fault. But the tide turned in 2016 when two independent groups found significant correlations with lunar cycles — a Japanese group led by Ide [1] and a US Geological Survey group led by van der Elst [2]. These are the same fortnightly lunar cycles (see Figure 2 below) that are used in the ENSO model described above (compare to lower chart in Figure 1).  So the new thinking is that indeed the gravitational pull of the moon will trigger the slipping of a fault, and this happens enough that future predictions of earthquakes (for example along the San Andreas fault [3]) can use tidal tables to aid the analysis.

The bottom-line is that we need to monitor the earth sciences consensus regarding lunar forcing in the next few years, both in terms of ENSO and QBO climate behavior and with regard to earthquake analysis.   Scientific theories are not binding, unlike sporting events — “World cup matches cannot be replayed, but science can be corrected afterwards.”. Thus, the confirmation bias of “no lunar forcing” is not necessarily set in stone.

References

1. Ide, Satoshi, Suguru Yabe, and Yoshiyuki Tanaka. “Earthquake potential revealed by tidal influence on earthquake size-frequency statistics.” Nature Geoscience 9.11 (2016): 834-837.
2. van der Elst, Nicholas J., et al. “Fortnightly modulation of San Andreas tremor and low-frequency earthquakes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2016): 201524316.
3. Delorey, Andrew A., Nicholas J. van der Elst, and Paul A. Johnson. “Tidal triggering of earthquakes suggests poroelastic behavior on the San Andreas Fault.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 460 (2017): 164-170.