Suggestive correlations between the brightness of Neptune and Earth's temperature

Geophysical Research Letters ^ | 19 April 2007 | Hammel & Lockwood

[jsh3180]

Suggestive correlations between the brightness of Neptune, solar variability, and Earth's temperature

H. B. Hammel

Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA

G. W. Lockwood

Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

Abstract

Long-term photometric measurements of Neptune show variations of brightness over half a century. Seasonal change in Neptune's atmosphere may partially explain a general rise in the long-term light curve, but cannot explain its detailed variations. This leads us to consider the possibility of solar-driven changes, i.e., changes incurred by innate solar variability perhaps coupled with changing seasonal insolation. Although correlations between Neptune's brightness and Earth's temperature anomaly—and between Neptune and two models of solar variability—are visually compelling, at this time they are not statistically significant due to the limited degrees of freedom of the various time series. Nevertheless, the striking similarity of the temporal patterns of variation should not be ignored simply because of low formal statistical significance. If changing brightnesses and temperatures of two different planets are correlated, then some planetary climate changes may be due to variations in the solar system environment.

Received 14 November 2006; accepted 15 March 2007; published 19 April 2007.

[roaddog727]

My error- it’s been a while.

degrees of freedom (df) is a measure of the number of independent pieces of information on which the precision of a parameter estimate is based. The degrees of freedom for an estimate equals the number of observations (values) minus the number of additional parameters estimated for that calculation. As we have to estimate more parameters, the degrees of freedom available decreases. It can also be thought of as the number of observations (values) which are freely available to vary given the additional parameters estimated.

In fitting statistical models to data, the vectors of residuals are often constrained to lie in a space of smaller dimension than the number of components in the vector. That smaller dimension is the number of degrees of freedom for error.

[PackerBronco]

If the sun was causing all the Earth’s changes, then why is it that the Sun is farther from Earth in the summer, and closer to Earth in the winter?

Crickey mate! A little Northern Hemispheric-centric aren't we now?

[SunkenCiv]

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic ·

[AndrewC]

Words like "suggestive" in describing the relationship between the model and the data have no place in a scientific report.

It is probably a P.C. thing. They want to keep their day jobs.

[roaddog727]

“If changing brightnesses and temperatures of two different planets are correlated, then some planetary climate changes may be due to variations in the solar system environment.”

Say it isn’t so!

DUH!