Dr. Jean-Louis Pinault explains his idea about global climate forcing and his experience with climate politics

Dr. Jean-Louis Pinault

Comment and review by Denis G. Rancourt, PhD

Dr. Jean-Louis Pinault is a proven expert environmental physicist and statistical analyst of global spatio-temporal data. His publication record leaves no doubt in this regard: Pinault-Google-scholar-profile. A specific example of his work in climate science is HERE.

Dr. Pinault has developed a model, which he supports with extensive statistical analyses of global spatio-temporal data, whereby relatively small solar variations (relative to the large variations occurring on the lifetime of the Sun) acquire leverage on global climate via an oceanic resonance tuning that operates on the global ocean oscillations on Earth.

Dr. Pinault was met with sufficiently significant resistance from the dominant scientific cabal, know as "peer review", to decide to concentrate on writing a book, rather than fighting reviewers and spineless and lazy editors (my words). In his book he both explains his science ideas and exposes the scientific censorship which has frustrated him. His book is "From the melody of the oceans to climate change: a fight against ostracism", and was just released on May 10, 2014.

Dr. Pinault's ideas are important for two reasons: (1) they suggest a new and plausible mechanism whereby small solar constant variations have an amplified effect on Earth, which may dominate climate change within the current multimillion-year period, with the present ocean masses, and (2) they illustrate how difficult it is for a recognized scientist to propose a model that is not sufficiently aligned with dominant scientific dogma.

Dr. Pinault's model is consistent with my own calculations that show that average climate sensitivity, without ocean resonances, is greater for solar constant changes and for planetary surface modifications than for changes in CO2 concentration: HERE, and HERE.

In a recent email exchange, Dr. Pinault explained his new book to me in this way:

The theory of anthropogenic climate warming, i.e. resulting from the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide in particular, has produced the economic and political media frenzy we know, unprecedented in the history of science. On the other hand, there are those who oppose who are skeptical about this hypothesis. Arguing natural climate variability observed in the past, including the recent past regarding the Little Ice Age, they refute alarmist predictions that are becoming harder to sustain as the temperature of the planet has no longer increased over the last fifteen years, while the concentration of carbon dioxide is soaring.

This confrontation between the proponents of global warming due to human activity, supported by the IPCC, and skeptics reflects a misunderstanding of the mechanisms involved in climate variability. Computers of the former allow a "bad model to be accurately wrong", I quote William Gray, whereas the latter challenge the working methods and the scientific integrity of the IPCC members who cling tenaciously to the theory of greenhouse gases liable for global warming, which is the raison d'être of the IPCC.

But this very uneven debate, skeptics cannot enforce their arguments in scientific journals that are subject to censorship since the Copenhagen Climate Conference, should now be enriched with a phenomenon totally unknown to climatologists and oceanographers, which is the planetary wave resonance in the oceans. This discovery, which I did by chance at a time when I knew almost nothing about the oceans and climate, not only allows explaining and reproducing the warming of our planet, more precisely the middle and long-term climate variability, but also the El Niño phenomenon, the succession of wet or dry years observed in Western Europe since the 70°S, the surface currents in oceans...

Highlighting the resonantly forced ocean long-waves allows lifting the veil on many previously unexplained phenomena of both oceanic and climatic origin. Is that the tropical belt of the oceans produces long-waves, whose wavelength is several thousand kilometers. Trapped by the equator they are deflected at the approach of the continents to form off-equatorial waves that act as tuning slides, like a trombonist who uses his slide for resonating the air column in the pipe with the vibration of his lips to produce a note. This musical analogy explains the title of this book, my instrumental practice helped me a lot in understanding the oceanic and atmospheric phenomena, at least as much as my training as a physicist mathematician that provided me with a beautiful diploma from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, a long time ago.

These long tropical waves resonate with the main source of forcing that are the trade winds, whose period is annual, to produce sub-harmonic whose period is multi-annual. These long baroclinic waves result of the oscillation of the thermocline.

The tropical oceanic resonance is one of the drivers of ocean surface circulation and contributes to the formation of strong western boundary currents. Around latitude 40°N or S, those western boundary currents leave the boundary of the continents to join each of the five oceanic subtropical gyres. These resonantly forced baroclinic waves then become gyral, turning clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. Having the same periods as the baroclinic waves of the tropical oceans, they form where the western boundary currents leave the coast: again, like the trombone, the wavelength of these gyral waves tunes with the period  frequency of forcing.

For periods between half a year and eight years, the forcing of these gyral waves is induced from the sequence of warm and cold waters conveyed by western boundary currents, and now cause the oscillation of the thermocline of the gyre. But these gigantic gyral waves also have the ability to tune with the long-period solar cycles of one to up to several centuries, as well as Milankovitch cycles that affect the occurrence of glacial and interglacial periods, which reflect the changes in terrestrial astronomical parameters throughout tens of thousands of years, while filtering out the effects of the better known, the 11-year solar cycle.

These resonant baroclinic waves have the ability to 'hide' the thermal energy that drives them by lowering the thermocline; those warm deepwater little participate in evaporation so that the resonant gyral ocean waves act as heat sink by absorbing more thermal energy than they re-emit. On the contrary, during the uprising of the thermocline, thermal surface anomalies induce atmospheric instabilities say again baroclinic, depressions or cyclones, which, carried by the jet-streams at high altitude, travel throughout the continents. Changes in surface temperature of continents tend to balance with the thermal anomalies of subtropical gyres. Positive or negative, these thermal anomalies of sea surface tend to produce the same anomalies at the surface of continents due to the large heat capacity of seawater on the one hand, and the cyclonic or anticyclonic activity stimulated at mid-latitudes secondly.

This thermal balancing internal to our planet, which occurs over the years, smooth the climate variations we observe daily at mid-latitudes. This simple model, if not simplistic, is based on the imbalance between the energy received and re-emitted by the earth. This imbalance mainly depends on the depth of the thermocline of resonantly forced gyral waves, firstly allowing to account for long-term climate variability, and secondly to reproduce with high accuracy global warming observed during the second half of the 20th century, then the stagnation of the average temperature of the planet, precursor of the beginning of a slow cooling that will continue for several centuries. This warming effect results in the accumulation of warm seawaters by coupling with solar activity which showed a burst in the 20th century, what climatologists call the modern maximum which indicates the end of the Little ice age that occurred between the 16th and 18th centuries and also that of the Ice Age that happened more than 10,000 years ago.

This discovery gives reason to the skeptics when they observe a correlation between long-term variations in solar activity and climate. Up to now these arguments were refuted by the official theory since climate models were not able to interpret how a variation in solar activity well below the percent can impact the climate without involving the phenomenon of oceanic resonance. Then the influence of greenhouse gas emissions played the role of troubleshooter to remedy model failures.

Clearly the controversy over global warming emphasized our ignorance concerning fundamental oceanic and climatic phenomena. Gyral wave resonance should reconcile the community of oceanographers and climatologists, skeptical or not. But subjected to the ubiquitous ostracism in 'official' scientific circles, I resigned myself to suspend submitting my work in peer-reviewed scientific journals, giving priority to dissemination of results.

Dr. Pinault's book should be of interest to climate scientists worthy of the title, and to historians of science.

His model will be tested in the coming decades, since it predicts: "...firstly allowing to account for long-term climate variability, and secondly to reproduce with high accuracy global warming observed during the second half of the 20th century, then the stagnation of the average temperature of the planet, precursor of the beginning of a slow cooling that will continue for several centuries."

If he is correct, then it will be even more reason to conclude that modern CO2 increases don't matter and never mattered, regarding modern climate change. For the climate activists, read THIS. For historians of science and true scientists who are not solely careerists, read this: