One of the big questions in solar physics is why the Sun’s activity follows a regular cycle of 11 years. Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), an independent German research institute, now present new findings, indicating that the tidal forces of Venus, Earth and Jupiter influence the solar magnetic field, thus governing the solar cycle.
In principle, it is not unusual for the magnetic activity of a star like the Sun to undergo cyclic oscillation. And yet past models have been unable to adequately explain the very regular cycle of the sun. The HZDR research team has now succeeded in demonstrating that the planetary tidal forces on the Sun act like an outer clock, and are the decisive factor behind its steady rhythm. To accomplish this result, the scientists systematically compared historical observations of solar activity from the last thousand years with planetary constellations, statistically proving that the two phenomena are linked.
“There is an astonishingly high level of concordance: what we see is complete parallelism with the planets over the course of 90 cycles,” enthused Frank Stefani, lead author of the study. “Everything points to a clocked process.”
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The Next Grand Minimum 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
There is a functional solar model based on this principle:
Click to access prp-1-117-2013.pdf
Looks like a really interesting paper. Will have to find some time to study! Thank for the link.
From the paper suggested by Gabriel
6 Conclusions
The model predicts that the sun is entering a grand minimum, and the general shape of the model’s future multi-cycle pro- jections suggests that this minimum may persist for an extended period of time.
I believe this model captures a fundamental relationship between a gravitational disturbance in the Sun’s magnetic field through the Tidal Torque process and a magnetic disturbance in the Sun’s magnetic field through the Jovian planets.
I also believe this model describes a chaotic process where small changes in frequency and/or phase modulation param- eters over time lead to large variations in individual solar cycle outcomes. Fortunately, because the changes to the base frequencies and phasing occur slowly in terms of human life spans, we can make forecasts that may be useful.