On the sixty-year periodicity in climate and astronomical series

Abstract: In a recent article by Scafetta, 2010, the author investigates whether or not the decadal and multi-decadal climate oscillations have an astronomical origin. In particular, the author note that several global surface temperature records, since 1850, and records deduced from the orbits of the planets present very similar power spectra. Among the detected frequencies, large climate oscillations of about 20 and 60 years, respectively, appear synchronized to the orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn. Other investigators have already noted that many climate, geophysical and astromomical data clearly show the appearance of a significant, approximately 60-year cycle. Of course, this cycle length is not exactly 60 years and varies by a few years (frequency band) between various climatic and astronomical phenomena. The main aim of the present research note is to further investigate the above results, considering different long-term time series and using a proper continuous wavelet analysis. In particular, we specifically consider the feature and importance of the sixty-year periodicity, in order to better build reliable models for climate predictions.