351 Perigees per Year As a Predictor to the Madden-Julian Oscillation

Monday, 23 January 2017
4E (Washington State Convention Center )
Albert R. Boehm, AFGL Retired, Huntsville, AL

A perigee is when the moon in its elliptical orbit comes closest to the earth. Time measured from one perigee to 

another is termed an anomalistic month which is equal to 27.5 days. Thus some years have 13 perigees and others have 14. At the AMS meeting in Hartford, CT. in the Prob Stat session, Glen Brier calculated the effects of a perigee on the zonal winds. In an analysis of variance, he found that the perigees per year accounted for as much of the variance as the difference between summer and winter! At the 13th annual meeting on Statistical Climatology held in Canmore, Canada I presented that the decrease in a perigee per year was a good predictor of the El Nino with a .4 plus correlation. This correlation was highly significant with a chi square of 46.4. I am now using the same methodology of perigees per year to predict the Madden-Julian Oscillation 

Since the perigees per year predict both the El Niño and the MJO, the perigees per year provide a link between El Niño and MJO. 


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