The Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO)

Abstract

Clayton was the first to note that the precipitation and pressure at several stations in the United States contained an approximately two-year oscillation. His stations were located all over the country, most were from the period 1874–1883, but there were some among them going as far hack as 1839 (Clayton 1884, 1885). Clayton’s oscillation had a period of about 25 months; its existence was confirmed by Landsberg (1962) by means of data from the USA between 1870 and 1956. In Clayton’s day observations were scarce and the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) in the equatorial stratospheric winds was not known, and since many scientists then as now accept only phenomena which they can explain, Clayton’s findings were. as he himself often mentioned, met with much scepticism. His answer to the sceptics is worth reprinting:

I will admit that I am unable to explain the cause of my cycle. but if every discovery that could not be at once explained by known laws, or did not immediately fall into line with what had been previously ascertained, had been rejected in t he history of scientific research, then we should have lost some of the fairest flowers of modern science. There was no reason whatever known why Kepler’s laws should exist when he discovered them, in fact they were at complete variance with all that been before thought on t he subject, and Kepler never knew any reason for them: but Newton came and showed them to be the necessary consequence of the action of certain universal laws. There is no known reason why the number of sunspots should go through a cycle of about eleven years, or why there should be a connection between them and terrestial magnetism, but there is scarcely a scientific man of repute that doubts it. …