Shaken and stirred: When Bond meets Suess-de Vries and Gnevyshev-Ohl

Abstract

We argue that the most prominent temporal features of the solar dynamo, in particular the Hale cycle, the Suess-de Vries cycle (associated with variations of the Gnevyshev-Ohl rule), Gleissberg-type cycles, and grand minima can be self-consistently explained by double synchronization with the 11.07-years periodic tidal forcing of the Venus-Earth-Jupiter system and the (mainly) 19.86years periodic motion of the Sun around the barycenter of the solar system. In our numerical simulation, grand minima, and clusters thereof, emerge as intermittent and non-periodic events on millennial time scales, very similar to the series of Bond events which were observed throughout the Holocene and the last glacial period. If confirmed, such an intermittent transition to chaos would prevent any long-term prediction of solar activity, notwithstanding the fact that the shorter-term Hale and Suess-de Vries cycles are clocked by planetary motion.